Success at Work: People Skills : Working With Your Boss

By Stephen Bucaro

Most advice about success at Work focuses on becoming a good leader, but you can't become a good leader until you first become a good follower. Your boss is most important individual to work with to achieve success at Work. Your boss can provide you with training, assignments, opportunities, and advancement within organization.

Many young people entering work force are surprised to learn that their boss is not perfect. Your boss is a unique individual that can get in a bad mood, make a bad decision, or exhibit imperfections just like anyone else. The key to achieving success at Work is to Work around idiosyncrasies of Your boss.

Meeting Your Bosses' Standards

Some workers never take time to understand requirements of an assignment. At Motorola, I worked on a project that was getting behind schedule and over budget. At a project meeting, boss asked us to not embellish our assignments with all kinds of extras. He said "Just meet requirements".

After that meeting, every time I received an assignment I stopped and thought, "Exactly what are requirements for this assignment?" Stopping to consider requirements has served me well through years - including getting me through college.

What are your bosses standards for quality? Some bosses just want a quick and dirty job. Some bosses expect everything to be perfect. Some bosses SAY they just want a quick and dirty job, but when they don't get perfect results, they complain. The solution is to determine requirements of assignment and just meet requirements. Nothing more, nothing less.

Accommodating Your Bosses Work Style

Some bosses like to involve them self in your assignment. I've seen cases where boss gives an assignment, and then sits with you while you're working on assignment. Most of time, boss involvement relates to making decisions. Some bosses want to make all decisions, especially when worker is new and unknown.

Some bosses expect you to make all decisions yourself. They give you an assignment and then make them self scarce so you can't ask any questions. They just want you to get job done. They don't want to be bothered with details. Some bosses want to know every little detail of progress of assignment.

You need to learn how to accommodate work style of your boss. It's best to make as many decisions as possible yourself. Keep your boss informed about progress of your assignment with regular updates. Recognize when importance of a decision requires you to consult with boss. Respect your bosses time. If you need help, approach boss at an opportune moment for boss and ask when would be a good time to talk. Before you approach boss for a decision, be prepared to offer possible solutions that boss might choose from.

I couldn’t help myself…As we talked, I asked her if she had thought about going into business for herself which would be a perfect way to do work she loves while making money. Her reply to me was, “It’s really hard to make money at it. People aren’t willing to pay.”

Now if Mary were a client, my next question would have been, “So no one makes money doing landscaping and interior design?” Of course her response would have been, “Well some do.” And my next response, “So why not you?”

The real reason Mary won’t consider going into business has nothing to do with industry she is interested in, it’s that she isn’t willing to see that SHE could make it happen.

In reality, she could have best landscaping business in area…if she believed she could!

Can you see yourself in Mary’s example? How many business ideas have you shot down because you really don’t believe you can pull it off?

Here is how a lot of my conversations with clients go…

Client: “I would love to do such and such, but I can’t make money doing it.” Me: “Ok, well how much money can you make doing it?” Client: “I really don’t know.”

Money is excuse; your belief in yourself is problem. So what do you do? In order to create what you want, you have to move beyond what is.

1. Suspend disbelief and envision yourself doing and making money doing, work you really love. The trick here is to think about what you want, not how you are going to get it. So in Mary’s case that would be easy;