In leadership development we talk a lot about managing, motivating, and leading your staff, but what about managing your boss? I have always believed that if you want a good working situation it is important to tune in to the needs of your boss.
I have worked with several very difficult and demanding bosses and people would ask me how I could stand working for them. However, I rarely had any issues with them because I figured out what they wanted and needed so I could provide it to them. Just like customers who don’t get the service they expect, bosses can get demanding and difficult when they are often disappointed with the performance they get from their employees.
Make sure you are clear about what your boss expects from your performance. If they do not volunteer the information or are vague in their instructions, ask enough questions to make sure you understand and can deliver what they want.
Make your work as error free as possible and turn it in on time. I had a boss who saw any error in a written document as a license to edit it. He also liked giving others an assignment to write something, but ended up using it as a draft to help organize his thoughts. What I learned was that if I asked enough questions and made the document error free, he rarely changed my work. However, I saw others who would give him a very rough draft thinking it didn’t matter because he would change it anyway. He saw that as an open invitation to rewrite it and often took it in another direction, which really frustrated them.
Something else that is important in managing your boss is keeping him or her informed of your activities and accomplishments. You don’t have to be bragging all the time, but frankly, your boss is too busy doing their own thing to notice everything you do. If you want to get credit for the good work you do, then blow your horn once in a while.
I don’t consider this sucking up to the boss. Instead, you are building credibility with the boss. You find out what they want and deliver it to them. That makes you a highly desirable employee. When you let them know what good work you are doing that they might not see, it gives them a chance to recognize your efforts, further giving you credibility. In today’s competitive workplace, if you want to stand out, you have to manage up.