My boss sucks!

Five strategies for improving your working relationship with your boss.

Over the course of your working life, unless you are incredibly lucky, you will work with more than one boss you think is less than awesome. And unless you are incredibly unlucky, you will also be fortunate enough to work with one or two who are pretty amazing. 

If you think of management as a bell curve, it stands to reason that approximately half of all managers in the workplace will be average, or less than average. You won’t always get to work with rock stars. Unless you are a roadie, in which case you might.

In the last decade or so of my corporate career, I declared that I would never again work for someone I didn’t like or admire. That was fine in theory. So I ‘chose’ a boss twice and on both occasions, that boss was promoted out of their role to something else within a couple of months of me arriving. I was then left with a leader I hadn’t chosen. I thought one of those leaders was great. The other one, not so much.

Bear in mind, this was just based on my personal opinion and assessment. It was neither right nor wrong. 

So. What do you do when you find yourself in a position where you don’t enjoy working with your boss. Well, unless you are independently wealthy, you really only have two choices - to stay or to go.

It’s very important to note that if there are really serious issues at play in your working relationship, such as bullying or harassment, you absolutely need to raise those issues through the channels available to you. These behaviours are not tolerable, under any circumstances.

Assuming those issues are not in play, and you do choose to stay, here are five ways you can start to improve the working relationship with your boss:

1. Don’t personalise it. It is rarely personal. Novelist and teacher David Foster Wallace once famously said   “You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realise how seldom they do.”   The problem is that once you have formed an unfavourable opinion about someone, confirmation bias will kick in. Your brain will helpfully find any and all evidence that confirms your negative impressions. Not helpful. Find someone who does have a positive working relationship with your boss. Observe their interactions. Is there anything that is clearly different to your interactions. What can you learn?

2. Get connected with his or her communication style and preferences. Whenever I begin working for someone new, I ask them how they like to communicate. Some hate email. Some like it. Others prefer a quick call or text, particularly on more important issues. In my experience, there is nothing worse than being blind-sided by an issue at work and have one of your team members say ‘Oh - I sent you an email on that yesterday.’ Never assume your boss has had the time to read or even see an email unless they have replied to it! Effective communication is another topic in itself but if you start by understanding how your boss likes to communicate - you will have made a good start.

3. No matter what has happened between you and your boss, continue to treat him/her with consistent and unrelenting respect. I have been privileged to have Colin James, co-founder of Inner Profit coach me over the years. In one of our sessions I made an offhand comment about someone I worked with. Colin said to me (in no uncertain terms) “You may not like them, but you must treat them with unrelenting respect. It doesn’t serve you, and you will achieve nothing by speaking about them like that.” It was a timely reminder and one that I have never forgotten. On that topic, if you talk negatively about your boss (or peers ) behind their back, it WILL get back to them in one form or another. It can be tempting to air your grievances and seek an empathetic ear at work. This will rarely end well. If you do need someone to vent to, choose a trusted source from outside the company. The added benefit of cultivating this discipline, is that you will become known as someone who doesn’t repeat things and who is trustworthy. Not a bad attribute to have.

4. Understand that you do not need to be friends with your boss. The relationship between you is really just an employment contract that either one of you can choose to end at any time. Getting on like a house on fire might be an added bonus but it isn’t an essential part of the working relationship. In fact being friends with your boss can become complicated very quickly. Once you understand this, it will take a lot of pressure off your interactions. 

5. Step back from how you are feeling and try and critically evaluate what is really going on. Focus on the issue, not the person. What feedback have you had from your boss or others in the past? Maybe you should have a conversation with your boss to see how you can work together more effectively. Perhaps you are just experiencing a clash of working styles or values. I have worked with many people over the years who I didn’t particularly gel with when I first met them. It generally became apparent that the only thing wrong was that we were polar opposites. Appreciating and understanding that diversity, can lead to strong and productive relationships over time.

There is no question that, given the choice, we’d all work for someone who inspires us, and who we would follow to the ends of the earth. Maybe we wouldn’t take a bullet for them, but we might accept a bruise or two along the way.

The reality is that you will probably work for five decades in your life, if not more. Your relationship with your boss will rarely, if ever, reach these dizzying heights. But you can work on making the relationship stronger and more effective. You can make a conscious choice not to be a victim. You are not going to change your boss unless you get a new one. Instead you have the choice to focus on what you can influence and what changes you can personally make to improve your working relationship.