How To Manage Your Boss

We can’t choose our bosses. But we can certainly manage them

Bosses are complex, and often difficult to understand—ambiguous, and unpredictable. The biggest challenge for all of us is to find the right one. Unfortunately, as I always say, God has not bestowed us with the power to choose either our parents or our bosses. But we can certainly manage them; that is definitely possible.

We need bosses who love their work and organizations, and respect the people whose lives they affect. Bosses, according to me, should be both artists and analysts, who are flexible and versatile enough to reframe their expectations to suit the organizational need, as well as help us seek new learnings by allowing us to experiment and discover in ourselves the art of possibilities by establishing order and finding simplicity.

Tough bosses do not always require tough ways to deal with them. All it requires is understanding them well as an individual, their drivers, needs and motivation, and then an implementable action plan to build a collaborative approach. The key to this approach is thinking as simplistically and practically as possible with an unwavering focus on building a collaborative and productive relationship. I have, like many of you, have had the opportunity to work with many bosses, both men and women of impeccable competency, experience and stature from across geographies round the world for the last two decades. Remarkably though, most of them are still in touch with me from different parts of the world indicating that “we had good times (if not always) together”.

Every nasty boss has the capacity to bog down the sturdiest. However, one must understand that even the worst cannot stop you from learning. Knowledge is the utilization of information and data, and when applied in a job, it gets converted into skills. Ours is a knowledge-based economy and one can only gain it when one works on it diligently. I believe that key to your growth future is directly proportional to the investment that you are making for self-development. The most apt learning from your boss is to get the tips which help you to make you “industry-savvy”.

The most important thing that you need to get what you want is to exhibit your drive and enthusiasm to walk the extra mile; remember it’s your need and not his. Apart from this, bosses look at your analytical skills and understanding of domain. Your desire to develop in-depth subject matter knowledge, approach to answering questions, helping your colleagues, ability to brainstorm, think out-of-the box and overall diction/clarity of communication.

Bosses do also tend to look at the spark in your eyes. I do not remember any of my bosses who liked a moron. When bosses see this in you, that gives him/her an array of options to development opportunities, and he/she becomes more open to help you learn on the job, build a strong bonding, celebrate success with you standing next to him/her. You also certainly discover the need to develop creativity, risk-taking, and playfulness in you, in spite of grueling work schedules. If you develop a bond with him/her, at this stage you will find that he/she is asking you the right questions, and helping you search for a deeper meaning and faith leading to the development of passionate, committed, flexible, and ethical relationships that may be key to your future professional development.

But I am sure you must be thinking by now: “that’s not the case with me, I have the most draconian boss the world would have seen”. So what do I do? First things first. You must not indulge in self-criticism or complaint in a spirit of helplessness. If you are getting overawed by the situation, remember that you will get confined to the present. One never knows what doors this turn of events may open for you.

I remember, a couple of years ago, I was counseling a brilliant software engineer. She was having a tough time with her boss, but did not give up and worked hard. She maintained good relations with her peers, and was always wiling to put in extra hours and stretch beyond the call of duty in spite of the turmoil in her work life. And guess what, all this was watched by the boss of her boss, who noticed her perseverance and commitment. Next month, she was called by this Super-boss for a meeting. She was pleasantly surprised when she was told that the management has decided to give her an out-of-turn promotion in recognition of her performance. So the moral of the story is: “If the going gets tough, tough gets going”.

Remember that apart from learning technical languages and soft skills, you need to develop an attitude of “Let Go” if you want to manage your boss. Psychologist Dr Allen Zimmerman calls it “the art of letting go”. The fact of life is that even your best boss will disappoint you in some way. He/she might communicate something or fail to communicate something that will hurt you. And they’ll do something or fail to do something that will make you angry. It’s inevitable.

Unfortunately, you can make things worse when you stew over his /her words and actions. When you get stressed by a remark or an insensitive action of your boss and brood over it, you’re headed for deeper agonies. In fact, the more you dwell on these things, the more burdened you will feel. You are much better off and productive when you can forgive your boss.

You need to learn to forgive your boss. It’s very difficult, especially when you think your boss doesn’t even care to ask for it. I think the difficulty stems from a common misunderstanding about forgiveness as an act. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that you are OK with the misbehaviour of your boss. And forgiveness doesn’t mean that the boss is let off the hook for ever. I believe an act of forgiveness facilitates in letting you off the emotional hook. It’s about getting rid of your own negative emotions and feelings that you may carry by burdening yourself. It’s all about letting go of the past so that you can step into the future seamlessly.

As Dr Zimmerman says, “everyone in your life, everyone on and off the job is going to disappoint you. If you know how to respond to those situations, you’ll be way ahead of most people. You’ll be able to live above and beyond your circumstances.” And as I say, live your life both with and without bosses in organizations.

I will end this piece by dedicating this article to one of my most dreadful bosses because it was he, through his unwanted actions, who taught me to stand in front of a mirror and ask courageously: “Do I want to be a boss that I want my boss to be?”