FREE online courses on Building a Winning Team - Support - Manage Your Boss
Is your relationship with your boss a ‘boom' or ‘GLOOM' situation? If it's the
latter, if you don't hit it off with him, then it's probably your fault as much
as it's his; it takes two to woo!
Remember four things about bosses: -
-
They are HUMAN. Being mortal, they too
have needs and hang-ups
-
They are as dependent upon you as you
are on them
-
They have different constraints, which
you will probably never be fully able to appreciate
-
They, too, are answerable (to someone,
if only their wives)
For
your own sake, and for your people, you have to vibe
well with the boss. That
doesn't mean you have to cringe before him, but due deference apart, you need to complement him to pull together as a team.
He has to see your strengths as his own, and you have
to be sure that he will always back you up if your need is justifiable and
genuine. Examine these aspects of
your relationship:
-
What are his aims, objectives, priorities and values?
-
What does he expect of you?
-
What are his main strengths and weaknesses?
-
DOES HE KNOW OF YOUR ACHIEVEMENTS?
-
How often does he want you to make direct contact?
-
How does he like information? Anything special? Does he want post facto
feedback?
Most problems are opportunities yet to be managed, and so is a
shaky boss-subordinate situation.
Douglas Bader, the legless RAF fighter pilot found he had an
advantage over others: in a steep dive in his Spitfire or Hawker Hurricane,
he did not tend to black-out like other pilots due to tremendous G-forces (blood
draining away from the brain) since his ‘no-legs' status short-circuited the
blood cycle and blood reached his brain faster). When he was shot down, in
1942-43, and taken POW, he had 22 confirmed kills and at least 5 ‘probable's',
one of the highest scoring aces of the war. (Germany's Adolf Galland had 44
kills at the time of his death). Bader was not known to be a great respecter of red-tape, a
firebrand bosses got along with well with
because of his enormous personal charm, the fact that he was a folk-hero and the fact that, had the war not intervened,
he would have worn the England colors in Rugby.
We can't all be Baders, but see
that:
- You
don't hide your
light under a bushel
- You use/develop skills to your own/ your boss's advantage
- You use what charm you have; smile; you may not have the charisma of an RAF
ace, but being pleasant is not hard
- You put your resources at his disposal
Now use whatever you have gleaned from the above data to
influence your boss's attitudes towards your department's training needs:
- Bosses tend to allocate
‘training/ dev.' to performing departments
- Demonstrate to him the
scope for improvement of your staff, bring up your personal development plans,
specific recommendations
- Share with him positive
results of T& D efforts
- Take his help by
suggesting intra-company contacts/ net-working which would be beneficial to you
- Give him thanks for
being so supportive!
QUESTIONS:
- How do you get along
with your boss? What do you think is the reasons for this? Why is it important, organizationally,
to have good vibes with him?
- How would you
systematically go about analyzing the situation, and what sort of a checklist
would you prepare to optimize the relationship? What would be point of the
whole exercise?
