“If you do not manage your boss, she cannot manage you!”—Anonymous

Managing your boss appears like an irony! Why? Most assume that it is the boss’s responsibility to manage you. Yet, Dilbert is the most widely syndicated cartoon strip that almost anyone who has worked in the corporate jungle can relate to in how they deal with their boss.

Why, then, is managing your boss such an important part of a job? One reason is that today’s role the boss plays is very different from the one they played during our parents’ time. With telecommuting and departments dispersed around the world your boss’s responsibilities are now very different as are their priorities. Under these conditions it is easy to fall victim to the “Out of sight, out of mind” syndrome!

If you feel that you are maundering through your job, getting no where, especially with your own boss, then you must become aware of how to manage your boss. Worse yet, if your boss is undermining your efforts and you are at the risk of losing your job, not because of what you did or did not do, but because of what your boss did, then you must awaken to a new reality.

Before taking for granted what your boss is going to do for you, or if you feel unappreciated, frustrated, dumped on, or set up for a fall, ask yourself these questions:

• What is my goal with this particular job or assignment?
• What is my superiors’ agenda and what is their style of managing?
• How will they know the real contribution I have made in advancing their agenda?
• What must I do to work within their framework so that I can be viewed as a valuable contributor without compromising my values?
• What can I do to rise above my colleagues to make a positive impression on my chain of command?
• If I stay and commit myself to the current job, what can I do to help myself and to help my boss to succeed?
• If I decided to move on how can I prevent getting into a similar situation—or even worse—with my next boss?
• Can I change my boss? (Ha! No one has changed anybody)

The following list is provided to help those who wonder about the process of managing their boss:

1. Have an initial meeting with your boss as you come on board (or if you get a new boss midstream).
2. If you have not had such a meeting to begin with, it is never too late to have one.
3. In this meeting clearly lay out roles, responsibilities, expectations, measurements, rewards, and deliverable. Boss’s role and responsibilities must also be made clear in this meeting.
4. If you are in a matrix organization with two (or more) bosses, make sure that you keep them in the loop. Have individual meetings regularly. If you do not agree with the way things are going with the project boss (the one to whom you are assigned) meet with your functional boss (the one who writes your reviews and manages your salary) and get their support.
5. Agree on a scheduled reporting structure and the method of reporting. A weekly summary of progress and issues can be sent to the boss by email every Friday afternoon. If any items need attention or help, they must be at the top of this short message that is more in a bulletized form than as a long narrative. Also, it should be presented as an exception report than as a status report.
6. Under promise and over deliver. Move from managing expectations to managing excellence.
7. Periodically meet (or you can also have a cyber meeting) with your boss and ask for their ongoing agenda and how they are driving it. Ask how you can help in their success and show how you have been helping them already. Do not assume that because you work for them that they already know this.
8. It is not unusual that your boss will act so busy that there is never time to get together. In that case send an email and calendar a meeting. If the boss ignores it call and leave a voice mail and, failing a response, write a follow-up note. Check with your peers to see if they are having a similar experience. If the boss continues to ignore, inform your boss that you are going to get in touch with HR and the boss’s boss. Wait a few days and then “meet” with them to show them your notes. Better yet, let the HR representative take care of this. By choosing to take this route, however, you have compromised your relationship with your boss.
9. Without getting personally close to the boss, develop a relationship of trust and respect. The ideal relationship is when the boss comes to you asking for help in shepherding their agenda or just comes and chats with you when they are having a difficult day.
10. Every quarter schedule to have a substantial meeting (1-2 hours) with your boss. Going out to lunch is a good way to conduct such a meeting. Treat your boss to a nice lunch.
11. If you get a chance to spontaneously compliment your boss for something that they have done well, bring it in a meeting with their superiors and comment on that achievement. Nothing is more gratifying to a boss than when a subordinate conveys to their superiors their great work! Such occasions can quickly change your boss’s view of your relationship with them in a very positive way. Just make sure that the compliment is genuine.
12. Figure out your manager’s blind spots or weaknesses. Collaborate with them to neutralize those weaknesses so that your boss looks good to their chain of command.
13. If you do not agree with your boss’s stand or views on an issue, do not contradict them in a public meeting, especially when superiors are present. Even if they are not, someone in the meeting will rat on you to elevate themselves.
14. Volunteer to take on jobs that your boss avoids.
15. Request a formal acknowledgement of your contribution from those who benefited from it, especially when they volunteered that information as a compliment. Ask those who can influence your chain of command with inputs about you that can set the tone of your future course of work at the employer. Asking for something in writing to be sent to your chain of command is never a bad idea. It is how you ask that sets the tone of how people respond to it. Also, acknowledging someone, whom you want, in turn, to acknowledge you, can work wonders, both ways.
16. Engage in “straight talk” with those who are undermining your efforts to make things better.
17. Keep your boss informed about what you know is happening around your own circle of awareness. Do not assume that your boss knows what you know. Although gossiping or spreading rumors should not be what you have to resort to, if there is some trouble brewing that affects your boss, keeping your eyes open and then communicating what is happening to your boss can only help your relationship.
18. Focus on the organization and place its agenda ahead of yours or your boss’s. Always keep the big picture in mind in every action you take.
19. If you are expecting a child or are pregnant wait until a few months before the child is due to announce it to your boss. If possible do this in person.
20. If a task or the job itself does not work out, do not personalize the failure. May be changing the place of work is your best option. Find ways to put the best face on what you have done and honestly discuss with your boss what might be done better. Move on with a positive outlook, without blaming anyone, especially your boss.
21. If your boss sees you as a threat because, perhaps, you are an overachiever or that you have more to offer, slow down and see if you can collaborate with others, including your boss, to improve the situation. If this does not work move on.
22. If your boss is like Dilbert’s they are riddled with insecurities and self doubts. Do not openly challenge them or threaten them, this makes their insecurities worse. Because of the power they hold they can make you pay for your criticism.
23. Always show respect for your manager’s position, if not for them personally. Remember, they are the manager and hold the power of employment over you!
24. In today’s world, every employee is expected to do more. Always be on the look out for learning something new and increasing your value to your boss and the organization.
25. Avoid going around your boss to their superiors. If you must or that if it happens because the superiors initiate it, make sure that your boss is immediately apprised of this and the circumstances. When this happens do not get ahead of yourself by undermining your boss.
26. Find out what your boss does for fun, charity, or hobby. If you can connect that way, it is always a plus.
27. It is a good idea to explore your boss’s Type by directly asking and then looking at how you can manage your interaction. For example if your boss is ISTP and you, an ENTJ, then make sure that when you present an idea, go with data (she is an “S”), do not force a decision (she is a “P” and you a “J”). Such strategies generally work well to increase your “compatibility.”
28. Remember: An ounce of loyalty is worth more than a pound of cleverness!
29. Act positively and smile often. People often wonder about those who smile and it annoys other enough to make it worth your while.
30. If all of this sounds basic, it is. But, how many do not follow this simple prescription and suddenly get surprised by a “Notice of Concern” or a sudden and unexpected termination or a layoff?

The following prescription may be useful:

1. The conventional wisdom is to challenge the boss and to make them feel even more insecure. This does not work because then they can find ways to make you irrelevant or even make you lose your job. Remember, insecure people are manipulative magicians. They can even set you up for a fall and that can hurt your resume.
2. Others retreat when they come to realize that their boss is a feckless aberration in the scheme of their organization’s hierarchy. They quietly resign to their fate and stay out of sight and off the radar screen. This is a mistake.
3. One strategy that can work with an insecure boss is to meet with them privately and to ask what their agenda is. This must be done tactfully. If you already have had an adversarial or confrontational relationship with them it is time to recognize that this must stop.
4. In this “agenda discussion” see if you can slowly open up the dialog to bring in the broader aspects of the job: the department, the company, the customer and the relationships your company has with them, and so on. Generally starting a discussion from the customer’s vantage point can work well. You just need to connect the dots between the customer expectations and your team’s behaviors that accommodate those expectations.
5. Because insecure people are suspicious by nature, do not drag others from your department in these discussions. Any negative remarks about someone, especially, their favorites can scuttle your mission. Stay objective, focused, and non-judgmental. Even if they ask about someone else, if you do not have a positive thing to say about them, pass on the opportunity.
6. You may need to have a series of dialogs in this vein just to bring the boss to think that you are there to make them look good. Once that trust begins to develop you may want to start setting things up so that your ideas on how to repair customer relationships or to improve department’s performance slowly become your boss’s ideas.
7. Collaborating with your boss start implementing the ideas to improve things and to give your boss credit in departmental meeting or even in larger venues. Insecure people like nothing more than to be acknowledged for things that happen despite them.
8. Once the boss start feeling secure in your relationships with you, you have taken charge of that relationship. The boss will continue to get credit and feel increasingly more secure in their ability to do things that are happening in spite of their insecurities. As you turn up the gain on your initiative the chain of command will come to see the change and the progress in areas that had tanked in the past. If the chain of command is otherwise smart, higher ups will know who is really pulling the strings.
9. Once the higher-ups come to know what is going on, you need to decide whether you want to gradually expose your ideas to these managers, thus making your boss gradually irrelevant.
10. If your chain of command is not smart enough to see this, you must update your resume (make sure the updates include this achievement) and get out.

It is estimated that more than 50% of the managers reflect some deficiency that is based on their inability to lead. Working for such feckless managers prevents your own growth, especially during your early career and as you are looking for opportunities to expand your reach.

Good luck!

There is absolutely no reason why you cannot manage your own career through a series of preemptive actions. Most complain about how stultifying their jobs are, how they have reached a glass ceiling, or how insecure their boss is and how he is holding them back. Then they let each one of these factors militate against their career to let it take its own course. Most are far more comfortable being a victim of their circumstances than they are being a victor. Because to move from being a former to the latter involves taking charge of your situation, taking some risks, and then acting on the plan that you set out to execute.

Regardless of the specifics of your own career barrier, the following prescription is offered to transform your usage of the word “career” from a noun to a verb:

1. Take a stock of what is happening and what should be happening in your career trajectory. Assess how much of the blame points inwardly; you’d be surprised what you discover if you remain objective in this assessment.
2. Shed the victim mantle and put of the victor armor. Make a list of things you must do to turn the situation around that has got you stuck. For example, if your boss is ignoring you and you are not getting any credit for you good work, take charge of the situation and write a memo to everyone in your team thanking your boss for giving you the opportunity to take on a project that you successfully completed. Send a copy to his boss and let her know that your boss is a good leader. Mention this in open meetings where your boss is going to be present. Pretty soon he will get the picture that you are there to make him look good and he will start paying attention to your needs.
3. If no one has praised you for your good work, take a random person and praise them. Praise must be specific, genuine, timely, and spontaneous. When you give this praise the recipient should light up and start telling you about their accomplishment proudly. Praise is a contagious sport; pretty soon it will boomerang back to you. If you feel shy doing this in person, do it by email or a note! The amazing aspect about giving someone praise is that the recipient assumes that you are someone important!
4. As you move up in the hierarchy what matters is the relationships you have with those around you. This is particularly important for those who come from technical ranks. They are raised in the belief that as long as their technical work is flawless, everything else should not matter. Wrong! No one likes a smart alec, but everyone finds irresistible people who make them genuinely feel worthy and good. This is the basis of establishing good relationships.
5. Set out an objective to advance your career in a measurable way. For example, if you are a senior manager vying to become a director in a year, merely doing a good job in your current position is not enough. You must become visible at the level that matters. Supporting your boss in front of their boss; becoming visible by taking initiatives and social causes that the company believes in, and so on. If you do this well, most of the people working with you will wonder how is it that you are just a senior manager and mingling with higher ups effortlessly. Once you become part of the circle in upper management you will be seen as a part of the upper management. Remember, to move up, relationships matter and not merely your competence.
6. Look for outside jobs that are one or two levels above your current title. Find what job skills you need to develop to qualify for those positions and then ask your boss for assignments that allow you to take on those opportunities. Each year proactively draft your resume for those positions and see what assignments will take you to claim that expertise. Now you are managing your career with you in the driver’s seat.
7. Learn how to look and feel important and project that image. You can influence people without authority. Understand the difference between influence, power, and authority.
8. Understand how senior executives in your company spend their time professionally, socially, and in the way that they project their image. For example, if they all belong to a certain club or a network, join that club and get in to be seen as one of “them.”
9. The best way to claim a position that you are vying for is to act as if you already are in that position and to start behaving as if you have that responsibility. Without alienating your team, show leadership that allows you to be seen as doing that role and getting everyone’s cooperation. When time comes for a promotion no one would be surprised if you get that promotion.
10. Senior managers and those in the executive suites have extensive networks. Start developing your own network of influential people and take time to nurture and expand your circle of friends and professionals. Make an investment of time every week to make this a scheduled activity in your routine.
11. Learn how to communicate effectively and to take on opportunities that require you to speak publicly. Nothing creates greater visibility than to have done well in a presentation that has public exposure. Join Toastmasters or similar organizations to ratchet up your leadership and communication skills
12. Do not wait to be assigned a project. Identify a project that will improve the company’s position and take it on. Send out a memo spreading the news of your successful accomplishment, and, once again, thanking your boss!
13. Take on someone to mentor and find yourself a mentor. Learning is painful but without pain there is no growing. Seek out opportunities to take risks and do not be afraid to fail. As Winston Churchill said, Success consists of jumping from failure to failure without admitting defeat!

Good luck!

You know within yourself that you are a reasonable person who is willing to make an effort to get along with others harmoniously.

But, difficult people operate on a principle that defies this expectation of civility. Their “operating system” is vitiated by their own imprinting and a self-centered yet cynical view of the world around them. Their modus operandi is to bully you, intimidate you, and manipulate others to get what they want without so much as even lifting their finger, taking credit for what goes well and having a ready outward-pointed finger when it doesn’t! The worst part is that most people tip-toe around them so as not to raise their ire. Difficult people take delight in this response and treatment from those around them; they have the tendency to desiccate an environment that is  otherwise full of life.

As you retreat home after a typical day when encounters with such people infuriate you, you begin to wonder what you are doing wrong.  As you are reaching home gnashing at the teeth and muttering all the things that you should have said and wondering about the hopeless inadequacy of your own vocabulary to express with civility how you feel about these people, the same person is perhaps having a drink with your boss, talking about you, planting seeds for your removal from the scene!

This scenario is played out too often throughout the corporate world regardless of the size of an organization. It is estimated that nearly ten percent of the workers are difficult to work with—incorrigible—and of them, once again, nearly a fourth are diehard incorrigible! The interesting fact is that it takes only a few to create a toxic environment at work.

So, what is the remedy for such situations and for those who perpetrate this environment?

One reason for the continuing nature of such objectionable behavior is that it is tolerated. Once uncivil behavior goes unchallenged the person exhibiting such behavior continues to behave in that manner because they enjoy being the bully; they may even amp up their incivility and the frequency with which they continue to abuse others.

Abusers get what they want, primarily because others abet this behavior and even perpetuate it by acquiescing to their ongoing abuse of others. Often, they rely on the fact that those who are subjected to such abuse often blame themselves. Abusers rely on the insecurities of their victims to take the abuse and to find the blame within themselves.

The underlying cause (if not the root-cause) of why some people behave in this offensive manner is their communication style that others tolerate. Our communication style conveys to others how we wish to treat them and how we think of them. There are four distinct styles of communicators:

• Aggressive
• Passive
• Passive/Aggressive
• Assertive

Aggressive Communicators are driven by either anger or hostility. This can be either internal or external. In either case it does not matter where it comes from, but the way that it manifests is through the way they communicate with others. Their tone is often demanding, abusive, and demeaning, or sometimes, even condescending. The person with whom they are communicating usually feels intimidated by their language and its tone, and, rather than confronting them about their behavior, they quietly truckle to their demands with the hope of avoiding any further interaction with them.

Often, aggressive communicators succeed in creating the perception that if the person refuses their request or challenges them that they might explode and get out of control. This often helps aggressive communicators go unchallenged and results in their getting exactly what they want. In return, those around such aggressive communicators often shy away from them and keep their distance in their interactions with them. This is not a positive relationship.

Passive Communicators, on the other hand, do not express their views. They quietly surrender to the situation and go with the flow just to get along. Passive communicators are often shy, easily intimidated, but are often hard working. They compensate for their inability to openly communicate by working harder than most and by not making any waves when things seem to go awry. Passive communicators end up being time bombs that quietly tick away and explode in some insidious ways that surprise those around them. An extreme case of passive communicators is those that “go postal.” (Going postal is a phrase derived from the behavior of those who suddenly explode, mostly at their place of work, by randomly shooting people because they believe that they have been wronged in some way.)

A yet another flavor of passive communicators are those who feel uncomfortable speaking up in a group setting such as a departmental meeting. They often shy away from speaking up and articulating their ideas forcefully in meetings. They often feel that assertive participants are hijacking their ideas and that they themselves never get taken seriously. They often suffer in quiet resignation, blaming those who openly communicate without fear. In private they act out by being passive-aggressive communicators (see below), especially when dealing with those who they think steal their ideas and take credit for them in meetings. The situation they create is thus entirely a result of their own communication insecurity.

Passive-Aggressive communicators use manipulation as a means of getting what they want. Rather than coming out openly and stating what is on their mind, passive-aggressive communicators often play games in achieving what they want. They often have hidden agendas; they usually get what they desire through insinuation, manipulation, and deceit. To those whom they perceive as insecure, such communicators often use sarcasm to get what they want.

Assertive Communicators are interested in creating a win-win relationship. They first identify why the person with whom they are communicating would be interested in their proposal and then present it in a way that creates a positive opportunity for both. In such a dynamic assertive communication works even if the person “wanting” something from the other person is a superior and who does not need to use their positional authority to get their subordinates to do what they want done. In such an exchange even the subordinate feels positive about the exchange! Assertive communication takes an effort to evaluate why the other person would engage in a meaningful exchange with them and then developing a strategy that makes it a reality. Both parties walk away feeling good in such a transaction. Assertive communication begins with an outward view of the need and not with an inward-focused (self-centric) view.

In any random organization there is a mix of communicators who belong to all these four groups. Dealing with any particular type of communicator will depend on the preference that the person communicating with them will display. Also, one person can display different dominant modes of communication style depending on a particular situation. The trick is to situationally evaluate what is happening to you and then take action so that you come out on top. This is a learned skill.

When you are dealing with an aggressive communicator the best strategy is to confront them and to politely ask them in a language that you can deal with. If they are demanding or abusive, merely reminding them that there are better ways of asking what they are looking for and then asking them to repeat their request the way you expect is generally a good way to drive the point home. Smiling throughout this interaction always diffuses any ill-will the person may feel when you try this approach.

When you are dealing with a passive communicator, their body language speaks volumes on what they are really feeling about what is going on around them. Learning to read their body language and then confronting them usually works to your advantage. They typically do not expect anyone to challenge their thinking through the body language they unwittingly project.

Passive-aggressive people can be dealt with by looking at their past pattern of communication and behaviors and then by confronting them when there is a potential for a conflict between what you want and how you expect them to react to that need.

Once you begin to read how people communicate it is not difficult to codify their preference and to then get them in the win-win mode by dealing with how you communicate with them. Open communication and getting into the assertive mode is a freeing experience. It also empowers you to take control of how things happen around you and to manage the stress level you feel from how you are being treated by others.