Manage Your Boss
How do we make our time most productive? What could be a more effective use of time than ensuring we have a mutually effective relationship with our own line managers? Here are our 8 tips to help manage up: 1. First try to understand your boss. 2. Don’t try to be a transformer. 3. Build on strengths. 4. Focus strengths on things that matter. 5. Find out what works. 6. Build your relationship. 7. How to avoid being overloaded or having your time wasted. 8. Build a bigger network.
1 – First Try to Understand Your Boss
On This article suggest several ways to achieve this.They state that we need to ensure you understand your boss, and her working context, by understanding her/his:
Goal and Objectives
5 – To Manage Your Boss – Find Out What Works
Before you get the wrong impression, this is not an article about “crawling” to the boss. You need to start out with what you consider to be the right things to do. Then find ways to communicate these to your boss, and to get them accepted. Don’t forget we are all different, so it’s important to understand which method of communication and discussion is most appropriate for each particular boss.
In “The Effective Executive”, Drucker suggests that some people are “listeners” and others are “readers”. Some prefer to talk to understand, others must first read before discussing. If your boss is a listener, brief her in person and then follow up with a memo. If she is a reader, cover important points of your proposal in a memo or report, then discuss them. How can you encourage you boss to be involved in doing more things that they are good at? Remember this isn’t something you’re trying to do to your boss. Rather you’re trying to do things and comunicate ideas in a way that relates to their strengths.
If your boss is particularly good with your clients, but demands of work are restricting her time to do that, then make sure that you invite her out to meet important clients on a regular basis. Show appreciation of what she has done, and the value that her involvement brings.
Ask your boss to do something, propose activities which you know build on their strengths. Your efforts to manage your boss should be guided by what