Understand the fact that your boss, like yourself, is a human being. Like everyone else, bosses come in all shapes and sizes. Like you, he/she has ambitions, aspirations and dreams. Some bosses are good managers, others bad, but most fall somewhere in the middle range.
Unless you’re working for a very small company, your boss probably has superiors of his own – that no doubt can, and do, drive him crazy at times. What it boils down to more than anything else is, how well you and your boss can deal with the emotional rollercoaster of everyday life, and perhaps most importantly, how each of you view your job.
To get along with your boss, or other people for that matter, you have to know how to understand and react to personality traits and get inside your boss’s head. In short, you need to develop your human relations skills.
This does not mean becoming a “yes” man and always siding with your boss no matter how dumb a mistake he makes, or how big of a fool he makes of himself. Your boss may appreciate such blind devotion, but unless you are willing to drop anchor and never advance up the corporate ladder you also need to know when to put some distance between you and your immediate supervisor, and the powers that be, because if your boss really goofs-up – you may be shown the door at the same time your boss is!
Back to getting along with your boss, you of course need to get on and stay on his good side and in short become a team player. That means becoming the type of employee everyone would like to have work for them. Someone with a positive outlook, someone who’s also friendly, loyal, tolerant, compassionate, understanding, courteous and supportive. Someone who knows when to speak-up, and when to keep his mouth shut.
Regardless of what you think of your boss, the first thing your should learn is his style of supervising. The two extremes of management style are a boss who enjoys playing the part of a military leader, where he/she barks with orders that must be followed exactly and without question. Or there is the boss who maintains a very low profile, giving employees broad guidelines and then disappearing. Fortuntely, most bosses fall somewhere in between the two extremes, or little work would ever get done!
If you have the type of personality that demands you must be given very specific orders or you’re “afraid you won’t do it right”, you better have a boss who is willing to spend the time watching your every step.
On the other hand, if you must be left to you own devices to make things work to get the job done and you resent a boss for looking over your shoulder or constantly “picking on you”, you better have the type of boss who is willing to give you enough room to do your own thing.
Either way, if you are stuck with the wrong kind of boss for you, it will be a real source of irritation that frequently ends in you not seeing eye to eye with your supervisor. If you can’t change or at least try, you would be better off finding employment elsewhere, because the boss isn’t going to change his management style to please you!
It also pays dividends to learn what your boss likes and dislikes and then adapt what you do to suit his personality and management style. All bosses expect their workers to know how to do their job, and to get it done correctly and on time, but problems are bound to come up in any business. One thing that can really “set off” your boss is not handling problems like “he thinks” they should be handled.
Remember, he’s the boss, so be sure to learn how he wants you to communicate problems. Does he prefer you put it in writing, arrange a meeting, or just drop-in his office anytime you have a question? Use common sense. If the boss is in a bad mood, or otherwise having a bad day, he’s probably not in the proper frame of mind to listen to any new suggestions, or for you to ask to go home early, take a day off, or get a raise.
Besides consideration for the boss’s mood, and receptiveness on any particular day to listen to new ideas, the employee who thinks he has a good idea for changing an operating procedure should always re-think his idea through from every angle before presenting it to the boss.
You should always give your boss the feeling of confidence that you’re a team player and you want to be the one he or she can depend on to make his/her job easier. You should try to figure out what your boss’s goals are then help him to reach those goals through contributions as a good employee.
So, the bottom-line to getting on with any boss is first be a good employee yourself. Master human relations. Understand that your boss is a human being just like yourself – with a job to do, and bosses of his own to answer. So do everything you can to make his/her job easier. It will go a long way in making your job easier and having a good working relationship with the boss!
