Our relationship with your boss is in many ways similar to simple relationships with a spouse or significant other—each person depends upon the other for encouragement, guidance, and support. Each one greatly affects one’s future and can make or break each other’s personal concept of happiness and success. You spend many hours together, day in, day out, perhaps for years. And most certainly, each of you can work the other’s last nerve. But, as in a marriage, you’re in the relationship for better or for worse. Fortunately, you can adopt some strategies that will lead to more of the better and less of the worse.
In his book The Power of a Positive Attitude: Discovering the Key to Success, Roger Fritz writes: “Nobody, but nobody is more important to your job satisfaction and happiness, your progress and development on the job than your boss. Some people are lucky to be assigned to a boss who is a good leader, teacher, and mentor, while others may work for one who is the opposite. No matter who the fastest give you as a supervisor, you can make the most of it by studying your boss’s goals, style, and work habits and then tailoring your actions accordingly.”
Our boss/superiors/managers create a great impact on our personality and self-perspective especially during work hours and while inside the work premises. They can add up to our feelings of negativities or mend and heal our misconceptions of ourselves and the output we deliver.
Here, from Fritz’s book, are some basic guidelines that will help you develop coping strategies for dealing more effectively with your supervisor.
The Dos
• DO watch the example of the people who get along with your boss. They, after all, have learned how to cope. Try to learn from them and following their example. There is nothing wrong in asking tips and ways to get along with your boss from someone who experienced the hardship that you are experiencing now. Apply modifications if necessary and revisit the plan if needed.
• DO consider that you may be partly responsible for your poor relationship with your supervisor. Remember it takes two to tango. And while you can’t change your boss, you can change how you behave, so take responsibility and take action to make positive change happen. Change should start from within, it is a self decision to be better and eventually give your boss an impression that you are serious in helping him out achieve the company’s goals and vision.
• DO try to make your employer’s job easier by offering to take responsibility for those tasks that he may dislike doing. Remember, as someone who works under a superior, we maybe tasked of things that we don’t find interesting at first. What we can do is to exert effort in looking for things that are likeable with the task delegated to us. It is through this way that we can earn the trust of our boss.
• DO keep track of your boss’s mood swings. Observe the times of day and days of week when he is in the most receptive frame of mind. Know when to take distance and when to be up close to your boss. We all wake up in the wrong side of the bed and we have to respect it.
• DO tell the boss how you feel about her treatment of you. Don’t hide your feelings. Wait until she has cooled down to discuss how you feel, and then talk calmly and, of course, in private.
Being frank with our feelings and emotions is necessary to make a superior-subordinate relationship. This can set each other’s limits in dealing with each other. Just always remember to do it in an acceptable manner. Being hurt accidentally doesn’t give us the privilege to hurt deliberately.
• DO monitor your progress. If you are not having the success you desire, reevaluate the way you are dealing with your supervisor and take another tack if necessary. Be patient. Don’t expect it all of happen at once.
The Don’ts
• DON’T dispute your employer’s authority, even if you disagree with her judgment in a particular situation. There are better ways of saying and expressing our disapproval of an idea or suggestion.
• DON’T take criticism as a personal attack. Even if your boss is out of line, it will help to distinguish between your job, which may be bearable, and your boss, who may not be.
• DON’T put yourself in a position to be criticized by seeking the boss’s approval when it isn’t required. Do some things, and tell him about them…later.
• DON’T malign your boss by gossiping behind her back. Be loyal! Consider the times and situations that your boss became so objective in dealing with you so as to lessen back stabbing.
• DON’T go over the boss’s head unless it’s absolutely critical, such as an emergency or crisis situation. Violating the chain of command almost always causes more problems than it solves.
• And, above all, DON’T lose your self-respect. If your coping strategies have failed and a transfer is impossible, do what you have to do to keep your self-esteem, even if it means finding a new job and a new boss.
Respect begets respect. It is through this simple word that a relationship can flourish and grow or can be destroyed and end.
Acknowledge each other’s peculiarities and individualities to start, develop, and maintain a harmonious relationship with your boss and superiors. Yes, we deserve fair treatment from our boss but also take into consideration that they deserve it from us as well.
Dealing with our boss and superiors becomes an everyday and integrated part of our living when we work for them and for the company and comes with is are the times of happiness, contentment and affirmation but never forget the other side of the coin that we need to overcome and deal positively.
As one famous personality said “Whatever experience, good or bad. We learn from it.” Make everyday a learning experience and creat a good and lasting relationship with your superior.
Adapted from The Power of a Positive Attitude: Discovering the Key to Success, by Roger Fritz
By: Anna Liza D. Salas | Teacher III | Limay National High School | Limay, Bataan
