The diplomatic art of managing your boss

Gaston de ROSAYRO

An important but most disregarded aspect of leadership and diplomacy is your relationship with the boss, who could determine your success or failure as a leader. Effective managers take time and effort to manage not only their relationships with their subordinates but also those with their bosses. Managing your team as a leader is as important as managing your boss.

But really, managing your boss? Isn’t that merely manipulation? Corporate cosying up? Out-and-out apple polishing? Not really! In fact, we manage our bosses for very good reasons. Mainly to get resources to do the best job, not only for ourselves, but for our bosses and our companies as well.

Managers and supervisors often don’t realise how much their bosses depend on them. They need co-operation, reliability, and honesty from their direct reports. Many managers also don’t realise how much they depend on their bosses, for links to the rest of the organisation, for setting priorities, and for obtaining critical resources.

Recognising this mutual dependence, effective managers seek out information about the boss’s concerns and are sensitive to his or her work style. They also understand how their own attitudes toward authority can sabotage the relationship. Some see the boss as the enemy and fight him at every turn. Others are overly compliant, viewing the boss as an all-wise parent.

We must actively pursue a healthy and productive working relationship based on mutual respect and understanding, understanding our own and our bosses’ strengths, weaknesses, goals, work styles, and needs. Mainly you have to have a good understanding of the other person and yourself especially regarding strengths, weaknesses, work styles and needs.

This information is used to develop and manage a healthy working relationship - one that is compatible with both people’s work styles and assets, is characterised by mutual expectations and meets the most critical needs of the person. This combination is essentially what highly effective managers are found doing.

Managing the boss requires that you gain an understanding of the boss and his or her own context, as well as your own situation. At a minimum you need to appreciate your boss’s goals and pressures as well as his or her strengths and weaknesses. Such as what are the boss’s organisational and personal goals and objectives? What are the pressures? What are your boss’s long suits and blind spots? What is his or her preferred style of working? Does she or he like to get information through memos, formal meetings or phone calls? Does she or he thrive on conflict or try to minimise it?

Without this information, a manager is flying blind when dealing with the boss and unnecessary conflicts, misunderstandings and problems are inevitable. The boss is only one half of the relationship. You are the other half, as well as the part you have more direct control over. Developing an effective working relationship requires that you know your own strengths, weaknesses and personal style.

One cannot change the basic personality of oneself or one’s boss. But one can become more aware of what it is about you that impedes or facilitates working with your boss and take action to be more effective.

Gaining self-awareness about oneself and acting on it are difficult but not impossible, but this could be managed by reflecting on past experiences. Although a superior subordinate relationship is one of mutual dependence, it is also one in which the subordinate is typically more dependent on the boss than the other way round.

Some people behave as if their bosses are not very dependent on them. They fail to see how much the boss needs their help and cooperation to do his/her job effectively. These people refuse to acknowledge that the boss can be severely hurt by their actions and needs co-operation, dependability and honestly from them.

A manager’s immediate boss can play a critical role in linking the manager to the rest of the organisation, making sure that the manager’s priorities are consistent with organisational needs and in securing the resources the managers needs to perform well. Yet some managers see themselves as self sufficient, not needing the critical information and resources the boss can supply. Creating a compatible relationship also involves drawing on each other’s strengths and making up for each other’s weaknesses.

The subordinate who passively assumes that she or he knows what the boss expects is in for trouble. Some superiors spell out their expectations very explicitly but most do not. And though many organisations have systems that provide a basis for communicating expectations these systems never work perfectly.

Also between these formal reviews expectations invariably change. Ultimately the burden falls on the subordinate to find out what the boss’s expectations are. They can be both broad such as what problems the boss wishes to be briefed about and when, as well as very specific when a particular project should be completed and what kind of information the boss needs in the interim.

If a boss is vague and not explicit it maybe difficult to get information out of him but effective managers find ways to do that. Some managers will draft a detailed memo and follow up with a face-to-face discussion. Others will deal with an inexplicit boss by initiating an ongoing series of informal discussions about ‘good management’ and ‘our objectives.’Still others find useful information more indirectly through those who used to work for the boss and through formal planning systems in which the boss makes commitments to his or her own superior. Which approach you choose would depend on your understanding of your boss’s style.

Few things are more disabling to a boss than a subordinate on whom he cannot depend, whose work he cannot trust. No one is intentionally undependable. A commitment to an optimistic delivery date may please a superior in the short term but become a source of displeasure if not honoured. It’s difficult for a boss to rely on a subordinate who frequently misses deadlines.

Dishonestly is another issue. It is almost impossible for bosses to work effectively if they cannot rely on a fairly accurate reading from their subordinates. Because it undermines credibility, dishonestly is perhaps the most troubling trait a subordinate can have. Without a basic level of trust a boss feels compelled to check all of a subordinate’s decisions, which makes it difficult to delegate.

The boss has limited time, energy and influence. Every request a subordinate makes uses some of these resources so it’s wise to draw on these resources selectively. Many managers use up their boss’s time over relatively trivial issues.

No doubt some subordinates will resent that on top of all their other duties they also need to take time and energy to manage their relationships with their bosses. Such managers fail to realise the importance of this activity and how it can simplify their jobs by eliminating severe problems. Effective managers recognise that this part of their work is legitimate and know the need to establish and manage relationships with everyone on whom they can depend including their boss.

[email protected]