You and your boss

Objective

Any sensible leader has a strategy for their line manager. It is about understanding, agreeing and managing expectations. What a boss will want is no different from what you will want from your own direct reports:

• clear and honest communication on agreed issues;
• early warnings of potential issues relating to performance, risk and reputation;
• regular information delivered to agreed timetables;
• delivery of agreed operational targets.

Your task with any line manager is to assess where the expectations and boundaries are in each of these areas – they will never be the same. For example, some line managers will demand regular written reports, some want regular verbal updates, some require communication only on an exception basis. Your task is to assess which it is, not to apply your own set of preferences.

The key objective must be for you to deliver answers to your boss and not questions; to present remedies rather than issues – always to be seen as a problem-solver rather than a problem-maker. In this way, your boss will see you as a resource that assists, rather than a challenge to be contained.

Context

Any line manager you encounter will have their own set of issues of which you may not be fully aware:

• career aspirations;
• relationship with his or her own boss;
• performance targets;
• relationship with his or her peers and associated politics;
• competition for resources.

These will affect all relationships and judgements. So the sensible approach for you to take is to map out what you believe these issues are, and to plot your own support strategies alongside them. The alternative (myopic) approach – to see all issues outside your boss’s context – runs the risk of alienating the very person you should be striving to support. If this sounds political, it is. And the more senior your line manager is, the more political it gets.

Challenge

You face your greatest challenge when you are finding it difficult to strike an effective relationship with your boss:

• you feel that you cannot easily anticipate your boss’s requirements;
• whatever you do fails to win appreciation;
• you have the sense that your relationship lacks empathy.

In the end, of course, you are not paid to be friends with your staff or your boss and you will have to accept that on some occasions relationships will be better with some than others. A relationship based on trust can only emerge after a period of successful accomplishment, so you should ensure that:

• you and your boss are clear about the overall vision and direction;
• you learn what kind and what frequency of communication your boss likes (which might well be different from how they actually describe it);
• you think solutions rather than problems;
• you make sure that you are seen to put yourself out.

Success

The key to a successful relationship with your line manager is to have a clear and unambiguous understanding of expectations and to deliver them. The goal should not be to ‘get on’ – a successful interpersonal relationship is more likely to emerge from delivering objectives than be a starting point.

You will be likely to succeed in your relationship with your boss on the following basis.

• Objectives – you ensure that you have a clear and agreed set of objectives.
• Updates – you regularly update your boss on progress against these objectives in the preferred manner.
• Delivery – you demonstrate (notably in relation to financial performance) that you are performance- and delivery-orientated and do not easily accept under-performance.
• Solutions – you raise problems as soon as you are aware of them, and demonstrate that you expect to be the source of solutions.
• Advice – you ask for help or advice when you know you need it.
• Relationships – you focus on managing internal and external relationships in a way that is to the credit of your boss (and does not generate negative feedback).
• Priorities – you adjust your various leadership strategies to ensure that you reflect your boss’s own priorities and never allow other staff to see a lack of concordance between you.
• Values – you reflect your boss’s values when dealing with other people.

What you are not is a proxy or carbon-copy – the most successful relationships are based on shared values and objectives delivered through complementary, but distinctive, styles and personalities.

Pitfalls

If your relationship with your boss becomes impaired, it can take a considerable time to repair it. So the ‘upward management’ of this relationship is on your ‘critical’ to-do list. While this will always depend to an extent on the specific nature of your boss and the organisation, there are nonetheless some clear traps you should avoid:

• failing to take assertive action to deal with sales or cost performance;
• failing to complete specifically requested tasks;
• failing to communicate in the way your boss demonstrates, rather than says;
• failing to inform your boss of key performance or people issues early enough;
• failing to involve your boss in discussions with others – a key area of learning here is knowing where political sensitivities are; there will be colleagues your boss will always be especially sensitive about.

And these are all failures – it is your role to manage your boss as much as to be managed.

Leaders’ checklist

• Position yourself as a problem-solver with a bias to solutions – always present a possible solution along with a problem.
• Understand the framework and constraints (often political) within which your boss operates – if needs be, write out a list of the issues you believe contextualise your boss’s approach.
• See your primary role as delivering to expectations through attention to performance.
• Ensure in your leadership strategies that you reflect your boss’s priorities and values.