How to Manage Your Boss 2= Knowing your Boss’s type
What does the boss actually do?
Your job is to help the boss achieve their objectives. They probably have wider-ranging objectives than you, and you are responsible for only a part of what they hold responsibility for. For example, they may be responsible for sales throughout the country, while you are responsible only for sales in the south-west region. Or they may manage the entire accounts department, while you deal only with bought ledger.
So identify your boss’s objectives. For example, their job may be to boost positive PR coverage for the whole organization, or to ensure a smooth and cost-effective dispatch system for all goods sent out to customers.
Whatever their precise function, it’s likely to be more comprehensive and to have more impact on the organization than yours.
The point of this exercise is two-fold. That is to say, it will help you to understand:
_ How much greater your boss’s responsibilities are than your own.
This helps you to put their relationship with you in perspective.
Much as they may want a strong relationship with each of their team members, you may be a much smaller part of their working life than they are of yours
_ The scope you have to be of more value to your boss. While your top priority is to meet the objectives in your job description, the most valuable team members are the ones who can give their boss support wherever it’s needed. Without treading on your colleagues’ toes, you can still increase your value to your boss by being able to step in when they need support elsewhere, because you understand the priorities and issues for the whole department, not just your own part of it.
The big picture
Once you understand your boss’s objectives it makes it far easier for you
to see the bigger picture that they have to look at every day. This means
you can present ideas and solutions that meet all your boss’s requirements, not only your own. For example, when they ask for ways to reduce costly accounting mistakes, you can come up with a proposal that works not only for bought ledger but also for customer accounts. This is more useful to your boss and, obviously, scores you more brownie points too.
Here are a few more questions to ask yourself ; the answers will help you to understand your boss’s job better, and how you fit into it:
_ How many people does your boss manage in addition to you?
_ How many people is your boss answerable to, and who are they?
_ How much of your boss’s time is spent simply managing the department
(running team briefings, training, handling staff-related paperwork, communicating, holding interviews and appraisals and so on)?
_ How much of your boss’s time is spent generating and promoting ideas?
_ What sort of decisions does your boss have to take?
By the time you’ve answered all these questions, you should have a good picture of the tasks and concerns that occupy your boss’s attention.
And you will be able to see that while a good relationship with you will make their life vastly easier, they don’t have as much time as you to invest in it, and they have wider concerns than yours.
What sort of boss have you got?
There are lots of different types of boss and, while some are certainly better than others, many are neither good nor bad, except perhaps in
You need to identify your boss’s working style so you can do your best to fit in with it.
relation to you. We all have our own working style – some of us like detailed work, some hate risk-taking, some are intuitive decision-makers and so on. You need to identify your boss’s working style so you can do your best to fit in with it. Here are a few examples of types of working style – your boss may exhibit several of them.
_ Bureaucratic: this boss sticks to the rules, and likes paperwork. They’re not great risk-takers.
To keep them happy: you need to put things in writing and stick to the rules yourself. Don’t bother putting forward any proposals which involve taking major risks.
_ Laid back: results are more important to this boss than dotting i’s and crossing t’s. So long as things are going well, they won’t be too concerned with details.
To keep them happy: don’t bother them with petty details, just focus on getting the results they want.
_ Consultative: if you have this kind of boss, they are likely to involve you in decisions, projects and information, and keep you in the loop generally.
To keep them happy: don’t be secretive around them. They won’t necessarily want to be bothered with every detail of what you’re up to, but they will want to feel that your general approach is as open as theirs.
_ Non-consultative: quite the reverse, this boss never tells you what’s going on until they decide that you need to know. While their judgment may often be right (if frustrating), sometimes you need to know more than they realize.
To keep them happy: don’t ask for information you don’t require. If you do need to know something, explain why, so they realize your need to know.
_ Concerned with detail: this is not necessarily the same as being bureaucratic, although it often goes alongside it. This boss will breathe down your neck most of the time if they can, always wanting to know the nitty-gritty of what you’re doing and why.
To keep them happy: give them plenty of progress reports and supply all the detail they want. This will make them feel they can trust you.
_ Focused on the big picture: this boss doesn’t want to be hassled with minor detail. They are concerned with objectives and results, and how they are achieved is your concern, not theirs.
To keep them happy: don’t trouble them with small things – use your initiative. Express ideas and suggestions in terms of the objectives and results that interest this boss.
Learn the lingo
Whether your boss’s personal style is included in this list or not, you’ll see that it’s not hard to recognize how to keep your boss happy once you’ve identified their working style. Remember, this is really about how you work in relation to your boss, not how you work when you’re left alone.
Your boss may, in fact, have given you the job because you’re different to them – an unorganized boss might have chosen an organized team member to look after the tasks they’re not cut out for. But when you deal directly with them, it still helps if you can speak their language.
Creative: originality and inventiveness are what grab this boss, and they want ideas and creative suggestions from you about everything from how to double sales to a novel approach to the Christmas party.
To keep them happy: learn from them – and from other sources such as books – how to exercise your creative mind so you can approach problems and challenges in the same way they do.
_ Logical: this boss likes all ideas and suggestions to be based on logical reasoning, not on creative leaps of the imagination. Facts and figures should back up every argument.
To keep them happy: make sure you have data to justify every proposal or solution you bring to them.
_ Organized: a tidy desk and a well-kept planner or diary are the hallmarks
of this boss. They like plenty of lists, and they always know what their priorities are, both short- and long-term.
To keep them happy: look organised yourself. This boss won’t believe you can work effectively if your desk is a mess and you’re always late for meetings.
_ Unorganised: this boss may work very effectively, but they don’t look it. Papers all over the place, always wondering where they’re supposed to be next, and never quite appearing to be on top of the job.
To keep them happy: learn to anticipate what they will want, because
they won’t. Give them plenty of warnings and reminders before deadlines or important meetings, but don’t give the impression you’re nannying them (unless you know they like it).
_ Proactive: new projects get this boss excited, and they’re always looking to initiate schemes and ideas.
To keep them happy: show enthusiasm for their ideas, and be ready with plenty of your own, geared towards key objectives (yours and your boss’s).
_ Reactive: this boss spends more time responding to issues and ideas than initiating new ones. So they tend to be more thoughtful and less inclined to take risks (it’s not unusual for them also to be the bureaucratic type).
To keep them happy: don’t try to get them to launch endless new projects. Instead, concentrate on getting the job done thoroughly and seeing things through to completion.
Sales Tips
- Know ur boss
- Know ur Boss’s Type
- Selling Tips
- Successful Selling goes beyond sales Training
- Selling Strategically
- Open plan selling
- Examples of how to improve ur selling skills
- Changing Face of Selling
- The seven Steps of Selling
Manager Tips
- Delegation
- Project Management Process
- Time Management Tips
- Running Workshops for motivation & Team Building & improving performance
- Running Meeting
- Teamwork & team building games ideas
- the glass half full & half empty
Marketing Tips
- Motivate your Team
- Running Training Information Events
- Multiple Intelligences Theories. Which one you are?
- How to make a Questionnaires for your staff or customers
- How to make a newsletter for your Staff or Customers
- How to choose an advertising media
- Tricks of the trade Guidelines Advertising
- Principles of the Advertising design process
- Advertising Design Tips
- Branding Advertising Promotion
- Marketing is more than Selling
- Marketing Planning
- Hierarchy of Marketing Business Planning Stages
- External Agency role in Design Production
Mahmoud Bahgat