Choosing the Right Boss

Tips to find your perfect boss from someone who has done it multiple times.

#mentor #career #selfdevelopment

1.??Introduction

a.?????? Can it be done?

b.????? Pick Charles Barkley for example.

c.?????? Be the person bosses want to pick.

2.??The Benefits

a.?????? Imagine working for your best boss.

b.????? Have less stress.

c.?????? Have more trust and honesty.

d.????? Have a better relationship with your boss.

e.?????? More willingness to take risks and try something new.

f.??????? The boss has more confidence in you, which leads to higher pay, bigger bonuses, and earlier promotions.

3.??What to do with your current boss

a.?????? Work to shape your current boss into your best boss.

b.????? Help your boss.

c.?????? Make your boss look good in front of her boss.

d.????? Predict what your boss will need and do it before she asks.

e.?????? Make it easy for your boss to be your boss. Be prepared for one-on-one meetings.

4.??How to choose a boss

a.?????? Reflect on your nature. Figure out what you like to do and what kind of boss matches the work you like and the boss/employee relationship.

b.????? Get to know your peers and other bosses you work with to determine which ones have a management style that resembles what you like in a perfect boss.

c.?????? Get to know them better on work/social activities. Gravitate to them at company picnics.

d.????? Engage with them on work projects when you have the flexibility and skills.

e.?????? Don’t expect quick results or any results at all. Some peers will become bosses.

f.??????? Build relationships and be open when the opportunity arrives.

g.????? Be bold. Take the opportunity. Ask for the opportunity if they don’t offer it.

5.??Concluding thoughts

a.?????? It is possible to choose your boss.

b.????? It takes time, effort, and the ability to build multiple relationships.

c.?????? Have the attitude of giving and helping without expecting anything in return.

Now to the meat and potatoes.

Introduction:

Yes, you can pick your boss. Choosing your boss is like choosing the work that you do. When you show certain skills at work, you tend to be given work that matches those skills.

For example: At large corporations, there are often end-of-year celebrations or end-of-project celebrations. Organizing, planning, and executing these celebrations is not in anyone’s job role. The bosses typically ask for volunteers. I avoid volunteering for that work mostly because I dislike doing it and I’m not good at it either. But I do know people that enjoy it and are good at it. And they are almost always the ones chosen. They get asked first because they have expressed their interest, demonstrated their skills, and have done a good job in the past.?

Think back on your career or life, have you been picked to do things you’re good at? In high school, did your math teacher ask you to tutor others because you were good at math? When a new project needed someone who knows how to build an Application Programming Interface (API) from scratch, and you had that skill, did they ask you if you were interested? You’ve probably had a similar experience.

How does this translate to picking a boss? I’ll get into the details in the sections to follow, where I’ll cover the benefits, how to work with your current boss, and specific steps with one or two examples of how I picked my bosses. One of the keys to choosing a boss is to be the kind of person that the bosses want on their team. The goal is to be “the Charles Barkley” at the kid’s playground when they are choosing their basketball teams. You’ve probably seen the commercial.

The Benefits:

Imagine what it would be like working for your best boss.

In your mind, compare the best with the worst. If you haven’t had a boss yet, compare teachers or create an imaginary best and worst boss.

Perhaps the worst would be micromanaging every task assigned to you, telling you how to accomplish each step of the task. But the best boss gave you a task and the freedom to use ingenuity and skills to accomplish the task faster and better than if they treated you like a resource, not a person.

I’ve had several worst bosses early in my career, but after the first 5 to 10 years, I learned and applied my techniques to find and choose the best bosses for me. In my later career, I’ve only had one boss that would fall into my worst boss category. Several have been neutral, but most have been best bosses. I’ve only worked for large corporations and currently I’m a contractor from a large corporation contracted to a large corporation. In my case, I currently have two management-type bosses and two project related bosses.

From my experience, these are a few of the benefits you get working for a best boss:

• You have a friendlier, kinder relationship. You are happy to see each other and have coffee or tea or lunch together if you’re collocated.
• You have less stress. The boss gives compliments freely when you do a good job and is more understanding when things do go so well.
• Have a better working relationship with more trust and honesty. The boss believes you when you explain the rationale for a delay. And you believe the boss when he gives you a miserable task to do, that you’re the best person to do it and he trusts you’ll do a good job. Work is still work; sometimes you have to do work you prefer not to do. And you do your best to accomplish the task.
• Both of you are more willing to take risks. When your team is asked to work on some new technology, like AI, the boss asks you to jump in, perhaps with a Proof of Concept (POC).
• The boss has more confidence in you, which leads to more interesting work, and over time to higher pay, bigger bonuses, and earlier promotions.

You may be able to think of more benefits, but the key takeaway is that having a better boss is better for the boss, better for you, and better for the company.

What to do with your current boss:

Let’s say your current boss is not your best boss, and it will take some time to find and attract your best boss. Still, there are actions you can take to improve your boss and your relationship. You may not be able to “make” your current boss, but there is always room for improvement. Having a neutral relationship is better than having an antagonistic one.

Of my four current bosses, two were already the best bosses, one was neutral, and one distrusted me for more than 6 months. Now, they’re all some version of my best bosses.

?These are actions that I’ve taken with all four of my bosses to improve our relationships and you can do these too.

• Work to shape your current boss into your best boss. You know what you like and dislike in your current boss/employee relationship. Choose one thing you dislike and work to improve it. If you don’t like being micromanaged, have a heart to heart during a one-on-one session. Let your boss know that you realize he is busy, and you’d like to help him save time. Suggest that for one of your current tasks he lets you do the next 2 steps without his input and show him the results next week. Outline what you intend to do to reinforce that you can do it without his guidance. Over time, your boss will gain confidence that you have the skills to work more independently, and he will realize it gives him more time and less stress.
• Help your boss. Every boss is also a worker who has a boss. Even the CEO reports to the board of directors. Everyone appreciates help that’s helpful, but not intrusion. An easy way to help without intruding is to be prepared for meetings and one-on-one sessions. I always make a list of topics before my one-one meetings with my boss. Most people don’t and it puts pressure on the boss to ask each employee the right questions. Your list should start and end with something positive. If you have an issue that the boss can help with, put it in the middle of your list. Let her know what you’re doing and be prepared with a presentation slide or examples of your work. Intend it to be a dialog, not a presentation. For any issue, give some background and ask for her advice. If her advice sounds remotely reasonable, thank her, and tell her how helpful that will be. If there is innovative work or extra work that you are doing, share that with her last and ask her opinion on how that work fits in with the bigger picture that she has.
• Make your boss look good in front of her boss. Look for opportunities to share honest praise when you’re in a meeting with your boss and her boss. If the boss’ boss praises the innovative work that you’re doing, tell him how you and your boss discussed it early on in a one-on-one session. Explain one or two ways that she helped you make progress. It could be as simple as her giving you the time to do it and encouraging you along the way.
• Predict what your boss will need and then do it before she asks. This is a good practice to adopt with your teammates and other colleagues too. From my current work, one of my bosses was creating a report manually. I knew a developer that could automate that report, so I met with him and asked if it was feasible to automate it. When he said yes, I wrote some requirements, and he developed an initial draft. On a one-on-one, I shared with him the intent to automate the report and relieve him of that manual labor. He was interested, but wanted to make sure it had the same look and feel, and that the data was accurate. Over the next 6 months, the three of us worked on the report in our spare work time. Today he has an automated report that he helped to create. It gives him accurate data and reduces his workload. The end benefit is good, but working together has the greater rewards because he could see firsthand how I work with him and with the developer, the different “work languages” that I speak and how quickly we can make progress and resolve issues. Solving a problem for your boss doesn’t always have to be a big effort like automating a report, it could be as simple as the next tip.
• Make it easy for your boss to be your boss. At times, your boss has work to do that no one wants to do. Either volunteer to do it if he ask in a team meeting or say yes if he asks in a one-on-one environment. Be quick to say yes to your boss. Most people complain but eventually say yes. Skip the step of complaining and your boss will notice how easy it is to work with you.

Don’t be overwhelmed and attempt to do all these tips at the same time. Get started with one that seems easy with your current boss. Build positive momentum and then attempt another tip.

Please post a comment and add a tip from your personal experience. We all have different work experiences, and your tip could help someone else.

How to choose a boss:

Firstly, figure out what the ideal boss is for you. Reflect on your nature.

Consider these aspects:

• How much do you like to be guided versus working autonomously?
• What kind of work do you like to do: technical, administrative, management, or something else?
• What kind of relationship would you like to have with your boss? You may want it to be work only, work and some personal, or a friendship that involves a working relationship too.
• The domain of the work that you like to do or the role you want. It could be your current role or a role of the future. In my career, I’ve had many roles including developer, system tester, logical data modeler, team lead, teacher, course developer, cross-application architect, and my current role, scrum master.
• Think of anything else that’s important to you in a boss.

After you know what kind of boss matches what you want, observe the people you work with to see who are likely matches. Existing bosses are obviously relevant, but some colleagues strive to be bosses. Think long-term when seeking the best boss. One of your colleagues could be the perfect boss for you in 4 or 5 years. Building the relationship now is the foundation for that potential future.

A real-life example from my career.

More than 10 years ago, I met a colleague, “fake named” Tom, at work who was in my age group, and he had been a high-level manager before leaving and then returning. We sort of just clicked and saw each other in the office occasionally. We worked in the same building and saw each other at some various events over the years. Five or six years ago, I moved my office to the same section as Tom. We built a stronger relationship.

?Around that time, I was working with a contractor for a large contracting company. I’ll call her Lena. Lena and I worked closely on similar projects for a few years. She was brilliant and a hard worker, just the kind of person I like to have as a colleague. We would sit together for afternoon coffee one or two times a week. From time to time, her boss would join us. That’s how I got to know “fake name” Sandra. Of course, we would talk about work and sometimes families etc. When Lena left her company, I maintained and grew my work relationship with Lena.

A couple of years later, I got laid off as part of a force management program. Tome was one of the people I asked for a job to stay with the company, but he didn’t have any openings. Then the pandemic hit. It turned out that I stayed out of the workforce for around a year.

After that year, I was ready to go back to work and started polishing my resume. I was nervous about where I would find work and how transferable were my skills. That week, Tom called me. He said he couldn’t hire me back into the company, but he could hire me as a contractor. He asked if it would be okay to share my name and resume with a person named Sandra from a big contracting company. I asked Tom a few questions and we figured out it’s the same Sandra that I’ve known for years.

My interview with Sandra was my favorite kind. She had read my resume, but she also knew the work that I did the past few years. Tom also highly recommended me to Sandra. At the beginning of the interview, Sandra said that she knew some of what was in my resume but was pleasantly surprised by how many different things I had done in my career. The she said those magical words, “I know I want to hire you, so let me tell you why you’ll want to work for me at this company. And let me tell you about the interesting role and work they are looking to fill.”

Hopefully you can see from this example that laying the groundwork can have miraculous effects later.

Some Key Points to Consider.

• Get to know them better on work/social activities. Gravitate to them at company picnics.
• Engage with them on work projects when you have the flexibility and skills to do it.
• Don’t expect quick results or any results at all. Some peers will become bosses.
• Build the relationships and be open when the opportunity arrives.
• Be bold. Take the opportunity when it arrives. Ask for the opportunity if they don’t offer the opportunity

Concluding thoughts:

• It is possible to choose your boss.
• It takes time, effort, and the ability to build multiple relationships.
• Have the attitude of giving and helping without expecting anything in return

Leave a comment, ask a question, and share the post on social media