Article Presentation: Managing your boss

1. Article Presentation: Managing your boss Presented: Giang Dang

2. Managing your bossby John J.Gabarro and John P.Kotter “Successful managers develop relationships with everyone they depend on – including the boss”

3. Misreading the boss-subordinate relationship • Personality conflict: very small part • Unrealistic assumptions and expectations: the nature of boss-subordinate relationship is mutual dependence between the 2 fallible human being • Failed to see the dependence of the boss on his subordinate: help, cooperation and honesty • Some are too self-sufficient: no need critical information and resource a boss can supply

4. Misreading the boss-subordinate relationship • Unrealistic expectation: all boss can provide information or help subordinates • Reasonable expectation: boss can only provide modest help. Effective managers should seek information and help they need instead of waiting for their boss to provide it

5. Misreading the boss-subordinate relationship • Requirements to manage mutual dependence among fallible human being: • Good understanding of other person and yourself: strengths, weaknesses, work styles and needs • Use this information to develop and manage healthy working relationship: compatibility, mutual expectation and critical needs

6. Understanding your boss • Goals and objectives: organizational and personal • Pressures: from his own boss and others at the same level • Strengths and weaknesses • Preferred working styles: • How a boss like to get information? Memos, meeting, or phone calls • Does he thrive on conflicts or try to minimize them?

7. Understanding your boss • Should be more sensitive to work styles of a new boss • Should seek out this information on a going basis as priorities and concerns change over time

8. Understanding yourself • Boss is one-half of the relationship • You: the other half and have more direct control • Effective working relationship: know your own strengths, weaknesses and personal style. • Not change the basic personality structure of you or your boss • But be aware of what is about you that impedes or facilitates working with your boss • Take actions that make the relationship more effectively

9. Understanding yourself • Gaining self-awareness and acting on it based on past experience • Subordinates more dependent on the boss: frustrations • Handle these frustrations based on predisposition: • Counter-dependence • Over-dependence

10. Understanding yourself • Both these predisposition lead managers to unrealistic views of what a boss is • In fact: bosses are imperfect and fallible: they don’t have unlimited time, encyclopedic knowledge, or extrasensory perception nor are they evil enemies • Awareness of these extremes and the range: useful to understand your own predisposition, implications, and predict your reaction and behaviors

11. Developing and managing the relationship • Compatible work style: • Listeners vs. readers • Decision-making style: involved or not • Complement skills to make up for each other’s weaknesses • Mutual Expectation • Boss’s expectation: broad or specific • Communicate your own expectation to the boss

12. Developing and managing the relationship • Mutual Expectation: to deal with inexplicit expectation of the boss using different approaches that depend on the boss’s style: • Detailed memo with key aspects of a manager’s work approved by the boss • Initiate an ongoing series of informal discussions about “good management” and “our objectives” • Getting information indirectly through those who used to work for the boss and through the formal planning systems

13. Developing and managing the relationship • Flow of information: • How much information the boss needs depends on the boss’s style, situation and confidence with the subordinates • How to deal with a good-news-only boss: management information system, communicate immediately

14. Developing and managing the relationship • Dependability and honesty • Be consistent and meet the deadlines • Be honest to gain trust from the boss • Good use of time and resources • Boss has limited time, energy and resources: be wise to draw on these resources selectively • Recognize that managing relationship with the boss takes time and energy • Effective managers understand that this part of their work is legitimate

15. Summary: Checklist for managing your boss • Understand your boss and his or her context: • Goals and objectives • Strengths, weaknesses, blind spots • Preferred work style • Address yourself and your needs: • Strengths and weaknesses • Personal style • Predisposition toward dependence on authority figures

16. Summary: Checklist for managing your boss • Develop and maintain a relationship that: • Fits both your needs and styles • Is characterized by mutual expectations • Keeps your boss informed • Is based on dependability and honesty • Selectively uses your boss’s time and resources