![]() ![]() Ensure your boss is familiar with the the concept of strengths-based management. Offer your own support in doing this, perhaps by taking on other roles yourself, especially those which utilize your strengths. Discuss their strengths and how they can be most effectively employed. One effective way to manage your boss is supporting them in doing what they themselves are good at. We all feel good when we get better at what we’re already good at! 3 – Build on Strengths “It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than to improve from first-rate performance to excellence”. Ensure you meet regularly with your boss and try to develop a professional relationship based on mutual trust and respect. Peter Drucker put it well when he said: The important thing is coming to understand what makes your boss tick, and developing an effective working relationship.įar better to work on the basis of that relationship, and the way in which it’s conducted, than to try to change your boss. Difficult and not necessarily time well spent. However, it’s difficult trying to change personal preferences, habits, styles, and agendas. Especially if you feel things aren’t going well. So ask yourself: “what can your boss do really well?” Where do her strengths lie?It is tempting to try changing the way your boss works. If that’s good advice for managing your own staff, it’s equally good advice when trying to manage your boss. As we’ve discussed in other articles, it’s a far more productive approach to build on strengths, than trying to remedy limitations. 2 – Manage Your Boss: Don’t Try To be a Reformer!Īccept that your boss is human, with strengths and limitations just like yourself. Trying to manage your boss makes sense because it makes your job easier. To fail to make that relationship one of mutual respect and understanding is to miss a major factor in being effective.” How do you get the resources you need, the information you need, the advice, even the permission to keep at it? The answers always point toward whoever has the power, the leverage – that is, the boss. “Just think of the job and how to be effective in it. Then, you need to do the same for yourself. As Kotter and Gabarro discovered in their research, it may seem an unusual expectation to “manage up” but the need to do so is obvious. In the classic Harvard Business Review article: “ Managing Your Boss”, John Kotter and John Gabarro suggest several ways to achieve this. They state that you need to ensure you understand your boss, and her working context, by understanding her: What do you do when working with your boss is hard work? Well, before you do anything, think about our tips to help you manage your boss – our 8 ways to manage up.ħ How to avoid being overloaded or having your time wasted.Ĩ Build a bigger network. What could be a more effective use of time than ensuring we have a mutually effective relationship with our own line managers? But conversely, what could have a worse impact on our time management than when things are difficult between you and your boss? And one of the most critical factors in answering that question is the relationship we have with our boss. Especially, how we make most productive use of our time. These suggest that it’s not really time we need to manage – it’s how we use it. So crucially, it’s important to consider the idea of quality time. In our previous articles we’ve considered some different approaches to time management. ![]() And from there, perhaps you’ll be one step close to being a more effective manager yourself. Whether or not you agree with trying to manage your boss, it’s still important to understand how he or she works. Is it really possible to manage your boss? If so, is it really necessary? After all, it can be hard enough managing those we’re responsible for without “managing up” also! ![]()
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