When it comes to your career, your boss is a key player. A good relationship with your boss can elevate your career, whereas a rocky relationship with your boss can easily derail your career. Once you decide to consciously manage this important relationship, you’re setting yourself up for unprecedented success.
In today’s article, we’ll talk about upward management so that you’re ready to set much larger goals for your career – be it financial success, career progression, or personal fulfillment.
Why Boss Management?
Managing your boss is the first step towards putting your career on the fast track. While common wisdom says that your boss is your key to opportunities, it mostly takes only two aspects into account – pay raises and promotions. But that’s not all. By managing your boss, you can unlock a range of untapped opportunities, including:
- taking up high-value projects that make you more prominent
- co-creating challenging tasks to pivot your career in your desired direction
- having unhindered access to your manager’s knowledge and experience
- tapping into her network for a wider range of learning and career opportunities
Let’s look at how to manage your boss effectively to position yourself for getting showered with all these perks.
Tips for Effectively Managing Your Boss
Here are a few pointers to help you manage your boss for a fulfilling career.
1. Be an Active Participant
Traditionally, people take a passive approach toward their relationships with their higher-ups. They simply go along with whatever their boss tells them to do. This most important aspect of your job is left to chance.
In his HBR article, Roger L. Martin makes this point very clear by stating that subordinates should co-create projects with their managers instead of waiting to get boring assignments. By doing this, you’re participating in your job’s design and taking on challenges that will develop you into a better professional.
2. Accommodate Manager’s Preferences
To get your manager’s attention, you need to align yourself with her working style. To do this successfully, you’ll first need to know her style and preferences. This valuable information can be easily gleaned from the Catalyst platform by Everything DiSC.
To understand your manager’s personal dispositions, simply head over to your manager’s DiSC profile on the Catalyst page. The rest will come naturally to you. For example, imagine you have an SC style (thoughtful and dependable) and you’re reporting to Dave who is an I style (outgoing and optimistic). When you go to his DiSC profile, you’ll get several important insights into his working preferences.
Go through your manager’s DiSC profile thoroughly and come up with a plan to improve your relationship, which will lead to more wins for your career.
3. Have a Communication Strategy
Communication is the key to a great relationship. Most boss-subordinate relations go wrong not because of real friction but because of a communication mismatch. To avoid running into a miscommunication patch, you need to know your manager’s communication style. For that, the Catalyst platform by Everything DiSC can come in handy. Using the same four pieces of information on Dave’s personality, you can also come up with an effective communication plan.
For example, unlike you, Dave prefers to work with others. Be sure to include others in your plans and thinking, as Dave will appreciate the effort to be part of a team. As you’ve seen previously, Dave tends to be more precise. This means that while discussing a project or task with him, you need to provide more accurate details rather than sharing your thoughts in general. This will ensure that he stays attentive to what you’re saying and isn’t annoyed by fleeting statements.
4. Empathize and Support
It’s natural to harbor a negative feeling about your boss in times of pressure and chaos. When this happens, try to put yourself in her shoes and see what kind of pressures she is facing and what kind of bosses she’s having to deal with. Realizing your manager’s hardships will make it easier for you to understand her behavior. With the help of Everything DiSC’s Catalyst platform, find out your manager’s weak areas and fill in those gaps with your strengths.
Working With Your Team
Managing your boss is a conscious decision that you can make today to take your career to unprecedented heights. If you’re ready for exponential growth in your career, head over to our Everything Disc section to explore our range of solutions designed to help you manage your boss for a mutually rewarding relationship.
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