How Are You Making Your Manager's Job Easier?

I learned a valuable lesson this week that I thought I’d share with you. Let me ask you something: what is your job?

You’ve probably just pulled up a mental picture of a job description. The thing you tell people at a cocktail party when they ask you what you do. You’ve probably said something like “I’m a project manager for IT projects,” or “I work in accounts payable,” or “I’m a customer support specialist.” And, if I were to answer that question – I’d say “I run the operations of a professional services organization.” It is what my job description says after all.

But, the lesson I was reminded of this week is this – my job is also to make my manager’s life better. The way I do that is by making the operations of our professional services company run smoothly.

For our project manager, the way she makes her manager’s life better is by ensuring the project stays on budget and on schedule.

For our accounts payable clerk, he makes his manager’s life better by ensuring everything is paid on time and nothing is overpaid.

Our customer support specialist handles customer issues in a manner that they don’t get escalated.

How do you do your job in a way that makes your manager’s life better?

Think about it for a minute. How are you contributing to your manager in a way that makes their job easier?

What value are you adding for your manager?

More Personal than Objectives

There are a lot of articles and books that talk about how important it is to ensure that employees are able to tie their objectives to the corporate objectives. Can each employee tie what they do to the overall success of the company?

Having spent my entire career in back office type roles, I know first hand that it can really be a stretch to do this sometimes. Many times, company objectives are sales or revenue related, which means that if you aren’t in a sales or marketing role, it can be hard to see how what you do contributes to the company objective. It can sometimes feel like the company doesn’t value your role as much as the sales team because all eyes are focused on the corporate objective of growing revenue.

If you struggle to tie your work to your company’s objective, what I’m suggesting is that you change your perspective.

Don’t think of it in terms of objectives. Instead, tie what you do every day to how that makes your manager’s job easier.

If everyone did that all the way up the management chain, everyone would understand how they support the company's objectives.

This takes something a bit esoteric – objectives – and makes them more personal. Finding ways to make your manager’s life easier brings it to the personal level. It is also more fulfilling.

Let’s be honest – most of us work for companies with objectives that aren’t really all that fulfilling. That’s ok – you can get your fulfillment through other means. One of which is by becoming an employee that makes life easier for others.

Spend some time this week thinking about what you are doing to make your manager’s life easier. Not only will you feel more fulfilled by doing this, you’ll also be more successful at work because manager’s reward employees who make their job easier.