Good boss/bad boss: Which one
you’ve got is partly up to you.
Throughout this story, replace "[YourCo]" with the name of your company.
[YourCo] and other employers nationwide want their people to feel engaged in their work. So they pay close attention to surveys asking how employees feel they’re being led.
To help its supervisors meet this challenge, [YourCo] has programs to train them to be inspiring leaders. But officials advise that acquiring the needed skills can take time, and meanwhile, some teams will have to get by without their “dream boss.”
Experts from inside and outside [YourCo] say if your boss isn’t perfect in your eyes, instead of just complaining, there’s a lot you can do to improve his or her abilities. In fact, since no one’s perfect, these pointers apply to even the best of boss relationships.
Empathy mixed with assertiveness are the keys, these experts say. And by tuning into how your boss thinks, you can not only smooth the relationship but bolster your career and the happiness of your whole team.
Here we report their advice, and sum it up in five top tips for boss relations.
Have you noticed that [YourCo Inc.] asks for your opinion a lot these days?
In its ongoing effort to measure and improve performance, the company fields a number of feedback devices, from informal polling and focus groups to surveys of employee engagement – and in some cases, reverse or “360-degree” appraisals – in which team members get to rate the boss.
That practice mostly draws cheers from experts inside and outside the company. They say when matched with appropriate leadership training, it puts [YourCo] in step with a global workplace trend that should result in more effective bosses leading happier, more productive teams.
But these same professionals and academics also urge the members of those teams to use caution. As one put it, “No one enhances their own career by making the boss look stupid.”
Compassion, or club? The experts say it can take a manager months of training and practice to perfect the skills needed to meet the heightened expectations of a more consulted staff. Meantime, they warn, employees must exert their new leverage responsibly and with compassion – not as a club, to bash bosses who aren’t there yet.
“As employees, we often assume the quality of our work lives rests entirely in our managers’ hands,” says [YourCo HR executive]. “Most of us don’t take responsibility for our own happiness. So if our boss isn’t ‘making us happy,’ we complain to each other, or suffer in silence, and wait for him or her to somehow ‘get it.’”
Full story continues, with these subheads to keep readers reading:
The ‘inner idiot’
In the lion’s cage
Some examples
Why you?
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