Ideas To Build A Better Relationship With Your Boss
Your relationship with your boss affects your performance, your job satisfaction, and your future. It’s to your advantage to have a great relationship with your boss.
A good relationship with your boss can lead to a work environment where you are motivated, productive, and look forward to going to work.
Below are a few tips that can help build a strong relationship with your boss.
Make It Your Mission To Understand Your Boss
The first and most important step to developing a good relationship is to understand your boss’s character traits. Without understanding, you’ll fail at building a strong relationship.
Naturally, when you know more about your boss, what the priorities are, and what’s important to your boss, you have a good chance of creating a strong relationship.
To start, you need to make a list of their character and personality traits, and priorities.
Here’s a sample list.
Character and Personality Pros of my Boss:
- Will recognize my work
- Values my opinion
- Respects me
- Leaves me alone as long as I complete my work
Character and Personality Cons of my Boss:
- Delays resolving issues until he consults with other managers
- Doesn’t offer many promotions
- Pushes hard for results no matter what it takes
- Loves recognition for his achievements
- Often blames others or the system
Character Traits of my Boss:
- Values professionalism
- Values using the chain of command
- Values respecting others, how you treat people, and coaching
- Laid-back but won’t be taking advantage of
- Doesn’t like people interrupting
- Values Critical thinking
- Wants people to follow up on problems
The Limits of my Boss:
- Against people doing nothing at work
- Against uneven workloads
- Against lying, or people taking advantage of the system
After creating my list, I have an overview of what my boss is like and can focus on those issues that are valued most.
I know that I always have to be accurate; I need to act professionally, treat others with respect, stay calm, and always follow up with problems until they are resolved. I also know my boss’s limits and what never to do.
Be Authentic
You want to make sure you are authentic and not building a relationship to manipulate your boss. If you are sneaky or planning to manipulate, then it’s like you are living a lie and not being true to yourself, you become an actor. You don’t want that because it’s deceptive, and you never know when you slip up and show your true colors.
Dealing With The Traits, You Don’t Like
If your boss is difficult to get along with, and everyone knows it. Then accept the fact your boss is difficult to get along with. If you try and defend your boss to others in the organization, they will view you as the “Teacher’s Pet” and dismiss your opinion.
Be true to yourself, and accept the traits for what they are. Focus on the strong ones. For example, your boss has poor people skills, but he’s a genius when it comes to getting the orders out and maximizing production levels. When you speak about your boss, focus on the fact that he always figures out how to get the orders out, and rarely falls behind.
Make Your Boss Look Good
It’s never a good idea to make your boss look bad, for example, if you’re in a meeting with your boss and his boss, never appear to be a superstar or smarter than your boss. Upper management will rarely fire your boss and make you the new boss.
It’s more likely your boss is promoted, and you take your boss’s position, because of your boss’s recommendation.
You can always make your boss look good, for example, if you worked on a very successful project and it reached the manager of your boss, and that manager reached out to you to congratulate you on the project. Be sure to give your boss credit. Let’s say your boss didn’t help you, and you did it on your own. You can say I couldn’t have done it without my boss giving me the time and support needed to work on it.
Help Your Boss See
It’s always a good idea to keep your boss thinking and act as a guide when you have that opportunity. For example, your boss is discussing combining some of the jobs on the warehouse floor. You listen to the idea, and you find a flaw because there won’t be anyone available to perform the final inspection.
You could say, no, that won’t work because no one can perform the final inspection.
Or A better way of doing so
Say something like, “I can see how you’re focused on efficiency and combining the two jobs into one. But how will we handle the final inspection? You have identified the problem and asked your boss what he thinks is the best way to handle it. You haven’t made your boss look bad, but made him think. When you get into the habit of doing this, he will start to ask your opinion before deciding because of you’re thinking process. You become a valuable member of his team.