Topics—Problems
Managing Your Boss
Your Dad? Your Mom? Darth Vader? Or is that your Boss?
Morphing your boss from giant—or mom, or dad—back to boss-human being, can be a liberating experience and a valuable skill to carry into future work settings. This is worthwhile work you can do, even if you don't have the cooperation of the other person when you begin.
Our projections, our fears, and our personal history distort authority figures. Our feelings about our boss come largely from childhood, when we experienced our parents as all-powerful giants. Burdened with this old baggage, it's hard to see our boss as a person like us—with hopes, fears, likes, dislikes, problems at home, and self doubts. But Presidents and bosses are not giants—they put on their shoes one foot at a time. Fortunately there are some actions you can take to build a more casual rapport with your boss.
Open Up...Start Talking
Managers often feel isolated, left out of the loop on what's happening below them. This is an acute problem for CEOs at the top of the authority pyramid. This isolation occurs if employees don't feel comfortable initiating casual conversations with the boss—they leave it up to the boss to make the first move. This constricts communication and information upwards. Senior managers are hungry for improved relationships and information, but they don't know how to change things, or they might fear being seen as currying favorites.
For those lower down the hierarchy, improving the relationship with the boss does not have to be a big dramatic event. You might just smile and say, “Hello” in the morning, mention your son's baseball game, or ask how his or her weekend was. One small comment might open the way to a conversation, and lead to a more responsive boss. Here is an example.
For six years I taught management courses at the UC Irvine campus. Each course was 5 all-day Saturday classes, one every two weeks. Between each class, the students, all budding supervisors and managers, had to apply class work to their job. One required assignment was to practice the Cultural Interview. Each had to "Interview" a person they worked with but did not know well personally. The results were always striking. One example.
This student, in his mid-20s, was a first-level engineer in a 12 person consulting company. He felt distanced from the firm's owner, who "spent too much time in his office." He decided to invite the owner to lunch and "Interview" him. He was very apprehensive about initiating such a move, but the class was supportive. At the next class he said that the interview went well, and that the following day, the owner walked around the office, talking with other employees. “ It was the first time I had seen him do that.” Two years later, at a professional conference, the young engineer sought me out to excitedly report that he had been promoted to office manager. He said his promotion began with that Interview. It changed their relationship.
Do Something Together
The most usual, and a very effective way to build a relationship, is to do something together. This might be a formal action, such as working together on a business project, or it might be something informal, like playing on the unit's softball team, or working together on a United Way drive.
What if Your Attempts at Bridge Building Fail?
Unfortunately, attempts to improve relationships upwards aren't always successful. Many managers use their role to isolate themselves and avoid intimacy. They find relationships too difficult, preferring to keep employees (and others) at a distance.
If your repeated attempts to establish better communications with your boss are getting nowhere, you may just have come up against one of these well-defended (fearful) managers. In that case there is little you can do. Your best solution is probably to find another position, hopefully with a more open person. Having a difficult boss is one of the most common reasons people leave companies.