Bad management is not usually a result of bosses not knowing what to do to manage better. Rather, it stems largely from bosses not putting conventional managerial skills into practice. Little wonder, then, that despite the billions that organizations pour into managerial training, instances of shoddy management abound.

Here are a few simple and specific actions you can take now to become an effective boss.

1. Smile more
2. Appreciate more, judge less
3. Compliment openly; critique and correct in private
4. Don’t worry about who gets credit; give credit where due
5. Give feedback now; don’t wait until the next performance review
6. Reiterate employees’ strengths and make them feel smarter
7. Get rid of busy work
8. Simplify work and encourage expediency
9. Establish deadlines and stick with them
10. Organize employees’ time and priorities
11. Explain what needs to be done and get out of the way
12. Avoid giving conflicting orders
13. Find the time to listen to your employees and follow-up
14. Recognize the small picture
15. Seek to understand what inhibits employee effectiveness
16. Give employees adequate latitude
17. Fix problems, not blames
18. Encourage mistakes; own up to your mistakes
19. Standup for your employees
20. Encourage participation in decision-making
21. Be tough-minded, not mean
22. Do not play favorites; discourage sucking up
23. Be accessible and friendly, yet consistent and objective
24. Earn respect; don’t demand deference
25. Attempt to influence by persuasion, not by wielding authority

Recommended Reading

• Four keys to an excellent relationship with your boss
• What are your excuses for not praising people
• Four telltale signs of an unhappy employee
• People want their thinking to count
• The ‘Puppy Theory’ of giving feedback too late

***See other articles related to being a better boss, managerial skills, leadership skills, office environment

• They are not aimless. In reality, at some point in their careers, they made a conscious choice to not pursue the traditional career advancement paths and stay in their roles as “senior contributors.” Their dominant priorities lie elsewhere: usually with family, community, faith, and creative interests. They view their careers as means to other ends. They set goals for what they seek to achieve, create a plan, and relate to their values in the right way, everyday.
• They are quite influential in their organizations. They gain credibility not by virtue of positions or titles, but from years of experience, awareness of processes and historical perspectives. They seek to mentor young engineers and offer their opinions and judgments when consulted by management. They gain an immense sense of satisfaction by helping their organizations grow. They are widely respected.
• Their salaries are quite comparable to people who have identical spans of service in their organizations and have assumed leadership roles. They are highly valuable contributors.

The “senior contributors” are not the only ones who have shunned the corporate ladder. Many women choose to work three days a week once they have kids. Husbands of career-minded moms have relinquished their rewarding careers to become stay-at-home dads and support their wives’ careers. Frequently, executives decline international assignments that could keep them away from family. All these people tend to feel in command of their life and career — they are more contented in their careers and have a stronger sense of work-life balance. For sure, they can teach the rest of us a thing or two about setting the course of our lives.

The long-hours culture is not for everybody

You probably recollect the days when corporate people had reasonably secure jobs, showed up at work every workday, clocked in, worked eight hours, clocked out, stopped thinking about work until the next workday, and enjoyed four weeks of vacation a year. They could maintain a healthy separation between work and personal time. Alas, those days are long over.

In today’s workplace, the demands on our energy, time, and creativity constantly overwhelm us, despite access to technology, computers, and other productivity tools. We have so much on our plates that we only rarely complete things WHEN and AS we would wish to. The workday is longer, the pace of work is faster, and most projects tend to be open-ended. The pressure to learn new skills and pursue higher education like through the top online MBA programs is prominent. A successful corporate career demands a high-level of performance for sustained periods. At what cost, though? Unsurprisingly, the pressure to work harder and longer results in poor physical health, stress, anxiety, lesser time with family and friends, fewer opportunities to pursue hobbies and creative interests, and insufficient rest and relaxation.

Some people get off work and study in online MBA programs to increase their education in hopes they open doors to better career opportunities at better companies. http://www.onlinemba.com

Work or life or both — its your choice

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”
* Henry David Thoreau

There is no magic potion or canned method for balancing your work and life. Finding balance is rather an exercise in finding a healthy perspective that works for you. Nobody but you can make the right choices and work out what is best for you to bring about a sense of satisfaction of physical, mental, financial, intellectual, professional, and social well-being.

Everyone has to find his or her own individual balance

The quest for work-life balance begins with defining what balance means to you. Reflect on what you value most in life and prioritize them. Include your family in your contemplations of choices and consequences. Establish a set of boundaries between an adequate amount of effort and return. Consider your personal and professional aspirations, the family and social life you desire, your hobbies and interests and your goals and dreams.

Ask yourself, “How much is adequate?” and, “How much success and money is good enough?” Set boundaries and limits between what you must do and what you want to achieve in the short term and in the long term. The choices you make and your ability to respect the limits your set for yourself should shape your work and career, not the other way around.

Explore alternate arrangements at work

After you reflect on what could constitute a sense of individual balance for you, examine your career objectives. Once you are clear about what you want, consider the potential consequences to your employer. Discuss your options and proposals with a trusted advisor, the human resources / personnel department, and your boss. Most companies care for their employees enough to offer options for part-time or flexible schedules, working from home or sabbaticals.

Lead a life to your own script, not to others’

The world will shape your life, if you let it. Establish what you want to achieve in your life; do not let others impose their proposals for you. Make the right choices and live true to your values. This is, in essence, the key to finding the illusive work-life balance.

Recommended Reading

• 7 easy ways to get more done in less time
• How hard you should work
• Make your weekends feel longer
• Who manages your career?

***See other articles related to happiness, time management, managing priorities, effectiveness, personal organization, getting things done, execution, work-life balance

Consider the all-too-familiar boss’s pet employee at an office. He uses flattery, goes out of his way to help the boss, curries personal favors, and constantly tows the boss’s line no matter how unreasonable it is. He never corrects the boss when necessary. He either sugarcoats or withholds information that the boss would rather not hear. Over time, he has perfected the art of stroking his boss’s exaggerated sense of self-worth.

How about leaders who go overboard on their intention to exceed customer expectations and turn out to be “customer compelled?” They bend over backward to fulfill every whim and fancy of their customers to the likely peril of their own organization’s values and priorities.

Sucking up or brown-nosing is widespread approach to win a boss’s approval solely with one’s own self-interest in mind. Consider the consequences of sucking up:

• An employee that sucks up to his boss loses the respect of his peers and employees. They assume positive discrimination and favoritism because of his ingratiatory behavior. The suck-up recursively promotes sucking up in his organization — he encourages others to establish themselves in his good graces.
• Suck-ups quickly get into a pattern of slavishly reacting to every impulse of the boss. Without realizing, they become vulnerable to obligations to support their boss. Neither can they set limits on favors, nor do they stand up for themselves or their employees.

Be Resourceful, Don’t Suck Up

“One does not make the strengths of the boss productive by toadying to him. One does it by starting out with what is right and presenting it in a form which is accessible to the superior.”
* Peter Drucker, in The Effective Executive

Contrary to popular opinion, a vast majority of promotions are not handed out to employees who are most willing to suck up. Research and empirical evidence proves that employees who are honest, sincere, open, straightforward, and helpful earn management’s respect and attention over time. They move up fast because of their demonstrated ability to make the right choices. In addition, most people can innately distinguish the brown-nosers and differentiate genuine compliments from insincere flattery.

Do not get me wrong. There is enormous value in being helpful to the boss. After all, making yourself resourceful can go a long way in staying in the boss’s good graces. It can open professional opportunities and increase your access to new ideas, initiatives, and restricted information. However, there is an obvious boundary between doing favors and sucking up. Running an urgent errand when the boss is busy preparing for an important meeting or watching over his pet when he is travelling are well within reason. Compromising your values and priorities just to get on the boss’s side will not get you anywhere in the long term. Try these suggestions:

• Be sincere and timely in your compliments. Refrain from making flattering remarks.
• Use facts and logic to support or challenge the boss’s ideas. Never praise, or comment on your boss or his plans in front of others.
• Ask your boss how you could help him achieve his goals and follow-up earnestly.

Recommended Reading

• Four keys to an excellent relationship with your boss
• Never surprise your boss
• How to seek proactive feedback from your manager
• Are you ready for a promotion?
• Talent is more than skin-deep

***See other articles related to Managing the boss, flattery, promotions, career planning, managing people, sucking up

Last week, Time Magazine discussed research that suggests that using curse words can help cope with physical pain. This reminds me of a 2007 research that implies that regular swearing helps employees better express their feelings in stressful circumstances and boosts team morale.

Such research is misleading in that the findings may be perceived as approving of profanity at work. As work environments have become more laid-back over the years, swearing is more commonplace than in the past, especially in blue-collar environments and certain other workplace cultures.

Harry S. Dennis III of The Executive Committee (TEC) in Wisconsin and Michigan explores two bases for the tolerance of profanity in workplaces.

• The laid-back we-are-all-in-this-together culture is almost like a fraternity environment. The use of profanity somehow communicates a symbolic unity. Employees believe that their degree of comfort with one another means it’s OK to let down their guard. It becomes a casual exchange and falsely suggests a degree of communication intimacy.
• In the hard-driving aggressive environment, employees use profanity to communicate urgency, a need for action. Most swear words are one syllable, so they carry a bullet-like impact and light a fire under the butt of the person on the receiving end so they get the job done. It is, in fact, a terrible negative motivator.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, Bob Nardelli at Home Depot, Carol Betz at Yahoo! and other executives are reported to have cussed at work. When leaders and managers swear without restraint to express annoyance at an employee, colleague, competitor, customer or circumstance, the message they convey to their organizations is that profanity is acceptable. This is akin to potty-mouthed parents hinting that it is probably OK for their watchful kids to use curse words.

Swearing and poor language is not acceptable in any professional setting. Swearing is dysfunctional to the cohesiveness of teams. Many employees find use of expletives as discourteous and quickly lose respect for those using profane language. Managers’ abusive management style can quickly intimidate employees who may hesitate to speak out.

Bad language is unacceptable behavior. Organizations should require that employees exercise common sense and avoid using colorful language. HR must deal with issues of swearing in the workplace as they occur and institute disciplinary procedures to prevent charges of workplace bullying, abuse or discrimination. Leaders and managers should curb their own language and comply privately and publicly. Employees, even high-performing ones, who repeatedly disregard such requirements and undermine the trust and morale of workplace environments must go openly.

Recommended Reading

• What happens when a manager badmouths an employee
• Jack Welch’s four types of managers
• Forced ranking in performance management systems
• Four keys to an excellent relationship with your boss

***See other articles related to communication, work environments, managing people, human resources, workplace cultures

Here are six guidelines to delegate work to an employee who does not directly report to you. These guidelines are applicable even when you delegate to one of your employees’ employees.

• When requesting a routine work from an employee, copy her boss as a courtesy. Such requests must be components of the employee’s work plan or previously agreed to by her boss.
• When delegating special or time-consuming work to an employee, first write to her boss and request for the employee’s time. Do not go around the boss.
• Provide all the necessary inputs and describe what you expect, and how and when you expect results. Be specific. Ask for timely updates.
• If you have not gotten a response to an earlier delegation email, call or visit the person. Confirm that the employee understands your expectations. Ask for a status update.
• Do not “copy up” (copy the boss or, worse, HR) as a means of coercion. Work with the employee directly to resolve problems before elevating your concerns to her boss.
• Avoid prolonged debates or arguments over email. Problems are often easier to defuse using a more personal means of interaction. If you have difficulty in saying something via email, pick up the phone or walk up to the other and talk to her.

More on Effective Delegation

• Delegate outcomes, not just tasks
• On failing to distinguish accountability from responsibility
• Four telltale signs of an unhappy employee

***See other articles related to effective delegation, managerial skills, accountability, responsibility, managing people

Instructions for Life. 43 quotes of wisdom and flashes of insight. My personal favorites: (1) When you say, “I’m sorry,” look the person in the eye. (2) Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before. (3) Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

***See other articles related to patience, resume tips, managing your boss, stress, well-being, effective leadership

Among the hundred blog posts I wrote in year 2008, here are the ones that received the most visitors, largely by means of Google Search and referrals.

1. The ‘STAR’ technique to answer behavioral interview questions. The best way to impress an interviewer is to discuss your credentials and accomplishments in terms of personal success stories using the ‘STAR’ technique. By following this simple technique, you can narrate direct, meaningful, personalized experiences that best identify your qualifications.
2. Jack Welch’s four types of managers. Organizations face the challenge of developing and sustaining a culture that is both values-centered and performance-driven. Nothing hurts morale more than when leaders tolerate employees who deliver results, but exhibit behaviors that are incongruent to values of the company.
3. Why the sandwich feedback technique is ineffective. The sandwich feedback method consists of praise followed by corrective feedback followed by more praise. However, the sandwich technique amounts to undercutting praise with criticism. A praise followed by criticism undermines the positive impact of praise and weakens the significance of the corrective feedback.
4. Time management: Log where time actually goes. Before you begin managing your time effectively, you need to develop an idea of how you spend time currently. Track how you use your hours and minutes during a suitably long period of time, ideally a whole week. The immediate benefit of time logging is that it induces a sense of significance of your time.
5. Keeping good eye contact. Our eyes play a major role in our interpersonal communication. The eyes express our moods and reactions more overtly than does other body language. People who keep good eye contact are usually seen as personable, self-assured and confident.

6. Overcoming procrastination: The ‘10-Minute Dash’ technique to get a task going. One of the easiest techniques to overcoming procrastination is to begin. Quite often, seemingly difficult tasks get easier once we get working on them. In short time, we get into the ‘flow’ and work towards completion.
7. Effective delegation: Delegate outcomes, not just tasks. The key to effective delegation is to approach delegation as an offer to present to a team member, not a demand to be made. Delegating outcomes–not just tasks–helps managers skillfully present assignments to their team members and empowers them to get the job done.
8. Don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘done’. We need to accept the prospect of compromises to our goals and aspirations. We need to acknowledge that our expectations are often excessive and uncalled for. When we develop a ‘good enough’ or ‘perfect enough’ mindset, we realize that imperfection is, after all, a negotiable outcome.
9. Never surprise your boss. Success in building a relationship with your boss begins with recognizing that this relationship hinges on open communication, cooperation, and credibility. Bosses dislike surprises–positive or negative. Keep your boss in line and suit her preferred style of communication.
10. Make your weekends feel longer. The key to making your weekend feel longer and having a relaxing time is to reorganize your plans and freeing-up time for your favorite, pleasurable activities during the weekend. By prioritizing, improvising and staying on top of things you can arrive at the end of your weekend contented and full of energy for the fresh week ahead.

Thank you very much for your continued readership and support of my work. I wish you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous year ahead in 2009.

This article is the final article in a series of four articles that presents the basics of diagnosing how you tend to spend your time and how you can develop the discipline of spending your time on what really matters to you. Here is a synopsis of the preceding three articles.

1. The first article established that effective time management is truly not about managing time as such; rather, it is about managing priorities. See full article here.
2. The second article outlined a simple exercise to help you track how you use your hours and minutes during a suitably long period of time, ideally a whole week. See full article here.
3. Yesterday’s article described three steps to tally up your time logs, analyze how you actually use your time, and recognize non-productive tasks and activities. See full article here.

Today’s closing article details a simple process to list your life’s values and priorities and create a time budget to help you center your actions on the truly important aspects of your life and career.

Define Your Values and Priorities

A great deal of anxiety and stress in your life is largely from doing things that are inconsistent with what you believe and what you know you should be doing. Your lack of control over your time stems from doing things that are incoherent with your core values and priorities in life and career.

Matching your actions to the truly important aspects of your life will help you be more focused, more disciplined and more effective. With this objective, spend about 15 minutes to reflect on your life and career, clarify your short- and long-term goals and discover your overriding priorities.

Identify Your Priorities in Life

1. With the help of your spouse or significant other, catalog the core values that you hold dear — the guiding principles of your life. Include personal characteristics, traits and achievements you desire to realize in the short-term and the long-term. Your list many include family, career success, well-being and happiness, prestige, wealth, sense of community or anything else that you feel is important.
2. Rank your values and goals. Sort your list in order of their importance to you. Begin with most important value or goal and end with the least important. Judge between conflicting values to help you commit to ideas and activities that are truly important. Condense your list to 7 to 10 priorities.
3. Rewrite your priorities in terms of actions and achievements that would satisfy each priority or the associated value. Consider the following example.

Example 1: Top Three Priorities of Linda, a Housewife

The previous article on time analysis featured Linda, a housewife who works part-time. Consider this list of her top three priorities in life.

1. Husband and daughter. “Love and care for my husband. Support his career and goals. Nurture our daughter and give her the best upbringing.”
2. Family and friends. “Provide for my aging parents. Support my entrepreneur-brother. Spend more time with dear friends.”
3. Part-time work. “Learn and contribute in my profession as an accountant. Supplement family income.”

Identify Your Priorities at Work

Your desire to be productive at work should begin with understanding your most important tasks in terms of what your role demands of you.

1. Collect your job description, your boss’s and your employees’ job descriptions, your organization’s objectives, any metrics that you report on a regular basis, your recent performance reviews, and your documented career plan. Review these documents.
2. List and rank your priorities. What does your role require of you? What goals have your boss and your organization set for you? What are your key projects and initiatives? How your organizational objectives direct impact your own work? Do not list any more than three major priorities (priorities that require 25% of your time or more) and two minor, comparatively less-significant priorities.

Example 2: Top Priorities of Kumar, a Middle-Level Manager

The previous article on time analysis featured Kumar, a middle-level manager at an aerospace company. Kumar aspires to reorganize his time, adopt productive means to get his work completed by working no more than 45-48 hours per week. Consider the following list of his projects, in order.

1. Project A
2. Project B
3. Coaching and developing team members
4. Initiative M
5. Project C

Realize How Your Current Actions and Priorities are Incoherent

The root of the feeling of being under constant time pressure is the disparity between your actions and priorities. You tend to take advantage of almost every opportunity that comes your way, irrespective of the significance of these opportunities in relation to your core values.

Compare your time log and time analysis report with your list of priorities and decide objectively how much time each of your activities was worth to you in contrast to the time you actually spent on it. You may realize that, perhaps, 80% – 90% of your time is wasted in non-effective activities.

As you review your time analysis report, think about everything that you do that should not be done at all or should not be done by you and recognize all the non-productive, wasteful activities. You will realize that you have been spending time instead of investing time in what really matters.

Resolve to eliminate all activities and commitments that are not aligned to your priorities. For example, Linda — the housewife referred above — spent six hours each week volunteering on the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school “just to be involved.” She realized the lack of value in spending six hours every week on an activity she did not contribute much and decided to withdraw from the committee. Kumar, the middle-level manager, spent way too much time attending meetings. He decided to attend only the most important meetings where his presence was truly required, participated via telephone wherever possible and spared 10 hours on his weekly calendar.

Prepare a Time Budget to Schedule Your Priorities

A time budget helps you decide how your hours should be used given the priorities you have identified for yourself. This is the first step in exercising more control over your time and your life. Preparing a time budget could be as simple as deciding how many hours you would devote to each of your priorities, or could be as complex as setting up your weekly calendar to reflect your priorities.

1. Beginning with your top priority, setup appointments in your calendar and block-off as many hours of the week that are necessary for your priorities. If your most important priority in life is family (it should be,) first allot time for all the activities you desire to do or share your family — set aside time to coach your kids in basketball, set aside time to help your spouse with chores around the home, etc. At work, schedule time to work on your most important projects and initiatives.
2. Locate your most important tasks hours when you tend to be most efficient. For example, if you tend to work best in the mornings, schedule your most important projects for the mornings.
3. Schedule time for your minor projects and lower priorities around your major projects and higher priorities. Decide on the right time to do email, run errands, conduct regular staff meetings, etc.

Your time budget should essentially serve as a guide for how you will spend your time. As with a financial budget, you may not necessarily comply with your time budget. Nevertheless, it is important to prepare a time budget to help you direct how you should spend your time.

Your time budget will help you decide how you can live your priorities. You will realize that by complying with your time budget, your use of your personal time improves dramatically; you are able to focus and reduce anxiety.

Example 1: Time Budget for Linda, the Housewife

Linda prepared the following time budget to help her comply with her stated priorities in life. She eliminated or reduced activities that did not directly contribute to her priorities or were not as productive. For example, she

• ‘found’ six hours by quitting from the curriculum committee at her daughter’s school
• saved four hours by seeking her husband’s help to clean her home and hiring a landscaping service to tend to her yard.
• reduced her time watching TV and on the internet.
• ‘discovered’ more time for her family and friends, exercise and well-being.

Example 2: Time Budget for Kumar, the Middle-Level Manager

Kumar, who previously could not “get it all done” in over 65 hours each week at work, reorganized his calendar around his most important projects and prepared the following budget for 45-48 hours of productive work per week.

Wrap-up: Managing Priorities (and Time) Effectively

This series of articles on the basics of time management described a simple and effective process of logging and analyzing how you use your time, and budgeting your time around your priorities. This process reveals time wastefulness and provides a structure to help you focus on your chosen priorities.

Your personal and professional values and priorities change often based on your progress in life and career. Plan to perform a detailed time analysis regularly — ideally once every six months, — monitor your time, review your priorities and adjust your time budget. Keep your focus on achieving the top priorities.

In sum, time management is, simply, an orderly discipline of controlling how you spend your most valuable resource. The singular purpose of this quest is to regulate the pace of life, reduce unwarranted stress, organize your actions and responsibilities according to the main values and priorities in your life, and realize a meaningful, purpose-driven life.

Recommended Reading

• Don’t let ‘perfect’ be the enemy of ‘done’
• Overcoming procrastination: the “10-minute dash” technique to get a task going
• Seven habits to beat Monday morning blues

***See other articles related to time management, managing priorities, effectiveness, personal organization, getting things done, execution, time logging, time survey, work-life balance

Feedback is a critical component of our work. We need to understand whether our performance is in line with what is expected of us. We need to learn what we are doing well, what we need to change and how we could improve. We need help to discover opportunities to advance our careers.

One of the common grievances of professionals is that their managers rarely give them adequate feedback. Such feelings are not totally unfounded. Managers tend to be busy and choose to deliver feedback only during cursory performance reviews. And, instinctively, managers fear confrontation: they assume that their employees may respond to even the slightest of criticisms with anger, defensiveness and alienation. Employees, for their part, resent feedback because they hate being criticized.

This article suggests what you can do to become effective at getting feedback from your manager. I have shared this process with several professionals who have successfully adopted it to develop effective relationships with their managers.

Soliciting Feedback

• Setup regular meetings with your manager to seek feedback. Do not wait for the quarterly or annual performance reviews to solicit feedback.
• Prepare and send an agenda to your manager at least one day prior to your meeting. Use the questions in the following section to guide your discussions and agenda. Tailor the questions to suit your unique projects and goals. Cover all the important topics on a regular basis.
• Assure your manager that her opinions and suggestions matter and that you will listen and act on them. You need not necessarily agree to every assessment. Be open; do not become defensive or get angry. If you must disagree, do so politely. Offer your opinions using phrases such as “Could it be because …,” “how about …,” or “perhaps, another way to look at this is ….”
• Ask for specific examples. Take down notes. Conclude the meeting by thanking your manager. Affirm that you will develop and share with her a plan of action.
• Review your notes from the meeting. Look for patterns in her comments and suggestions. In a day or two, develop and send her a plan of action.

Ten Topics to Solicit Feedback On

1. “How am I doing on project or goal X? What can I do differently to be more effective?
2. “My most important projects or goals are X, Y and Z. Do you think I have the priorities right?
3. “Do I meet your expectations in keeping you updated on the progress on project X? How can I organise information better to help you understand my projects and our achievements?
4. “What goals do you see for me on project X (or over the next N months?) How will you measure me against these goals?
5. “What strengths do I bring into your team? What personal skills will enable me to grow and contribute better?
6. “How do you see my career developing in this organisation or function over the long-term? What suggestions do you have for me to prepare for such opportunities?
7. “What steps do you suggest for me to broaden my exposure to our functional area and build my skills? What specific steps can I take to broaden my perspective in our functional area? What key challenges will I face meeting my goals?
8. “What can I do to expand my role? May I assume any additional responsibilities?
9. “What are your goals for the immediate future? What are the most important projects and initiatives for your team? What opportunities do you see for me to support your goals?
10. “How do you think our organization and customers will change in the future? What opportunities do you see? What challenges will we face? How will our roles change? How can we prepare? What is our management’s perspective on the future?”

Concluding Thoughts

This article suggests an informal and effective process to solicit feedback from your manager. By taking the initiative, asking the right questions and proactively soliciting feedback, you can recognize and adapt to your manager’s and the organisation’s expectations of you and discover prospects for larger responsibilities and promotions.

Your manager will appreciate your eagerness to openly communicate, improve, adapt, and contribute further. She will be more forthcoming to share her assessment of your work and offer suggestions for improvement.

By understanding your manager’s expectations and priorities, you can secure the support and resources you need to achieve your goals. Keeping your manager informed helps foster dependability and build a stronger, mutually-beneficial working relationship that benefits you, your manager and the organization.

Recommended Articles

• Never surprise your boss
• Four keys to an excellent relationship with your boss

***See other articles related to Feedback, appreciation, managing your boss, managing vertically, managing relationships, building credibility, performance evaluation, performance review

Bosses Dislike Surprises–Positive or Negative

The world of work is awash with relentless changes, troubles and crises. In the midst of these uncertainties, your boss does not need surprises from you or any of her employees.

Bear in mind that your boss’s output is the aggregate of the outputs of all the members of her organization. She must be in complete control of her goals and be able to answer her boss’s questions about the status of her organization’s projects and progress made on the latest crises. Consequently, she does not expect to be blindsided by good or bad news on your projects. She needs to know the status of each of your significant projects, and the challenges and opportunities therein.

Keep Your Boss in Line

A surprise is simply the difference between a previously-identified goal of a project and its apparent result. Give your boss a heads-up: have a conversation with her about forthcoming opportunities or mounting problems as soon as you perceive these variations in the output of your work.

Suit your boss’s preferred style of communication. If she is organized and detail-oriented, she may prefer comprehensive written reports itemizing the status of your projects, financial expenditures, and, performance against set goals and budgets. In contrast, if she is informal and perceptive, she may just need you to summarize the status of your projects in an email each week.

Pre-wire Your Boss Prior to Meetings

In meetings that include your boss, her boss, peers or customers, never introduce a contentious topic or discuss positive or negative details of your project without preparing your boss ahead of the meeting.

Make it a habit to meet with you boss prior to such meetings, show her drafts of your presentations and seek her comments and inputs. By ‘pre-wiring,’ or, discussing your findings and recommendations with key decision-makers ahead of a group presentation, you ensure their support for your conclusions and avoid surprise reactions or disagreements. See my earlier ‘Ideas for Impact’-article for details on the technique of pre-wiring.

Be the First to Let Your Boss Know

As a rule of thumb, your boss should first learn about any surprise from you–not from her peer, her boss, customer or consultant. Recognize that, occasionally, you may not have discussed certain facts or figures with your boss solely because these details appeared irrelevant or unimportant to you. However, others may be experienced enough to foresee the consequences and, much to your chagrin, bring up the details with your boss. If your boss asks, “Carrie from accounting told me … why you didn’t tell me that?” acknowledge that you did not foresee the consequences. Learn from your lapses and discover how you could read such trends.

Clarify Mutual Expectations Early and Often

If you see a need to reassess your goals and priorities on a project, bring it to the attention of your boss. Involve her in evaluating the challenges so that she feels just as accountable in redefining your common goals and priorities. Be prepared to clarify your thoughts and offer alternative solutions.

Realize that It’s a Matter of Trust

The relationship between you and your boss is a sensitive one–one that hinges on mutual cooperation, credibility and trust. Trust is a virtue that depends on the predictability of your behavior, honesty and dependability. If you surprise the boss repeatedly without forewarning, she may begin to mistrust you.

Concluding Thoughts

Your boss is important to you because she is the primary source of approval of your work. And, the relationship with your boss is a critical aspect of a favorable work atmosphere and your job satisfaction.

Success in building a relationship with your boss does not come easily. It begins with recognizing that this relationship hinges on open communication, cooperation, and credibility. The onus is on you to effectively manage this key relationship and achieve the best results for yourself, your boss and the organization.

Never keep your boss in the dark.

Recommended Reading

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• ‘Pre-wiring’ presentations to key audience for their buy-in

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