At times, dealing with your manager could prove really stressful and youâd often return home exhausted and frustrated. However, there are certain ways to deal with managers successfully.
Discuss the topics with your manager
If you really have a good relationship with your boss, start talking about it. Acknowledge that you are quite aware of the values, for example, timeliness. Explain to him/her that you could rather work more effectively and better with lesser check-ins. Ask your boss about what all he/she needs and discuss various solutions to it. Make your boss understand that you work best when you feel trusted. You can even suggest your boss that regular check-ins could be left for those weekly status meetings instead. That would rather be a better platform to discuss all such matters as there would be less time constraint. Tell your boss that he/she could count on you to let him/her know for any changes throughout the remaining week. In case, you don’t have a good relationship with your boss, you can definitely use a third party to facilitate the discussion. You can also speak to the HR, another manager, or even your ombudsperson.
Learn about the triggers and values
You should pay extreme attention towards the work related things which you are being managed for. Just think and evaluate as in what are you being allocated and why. This could usually be around certain timelines like, meeting various deadlines. It could also relate to the quality of work or even the flow of information. Therefore, it is really important to notice your managers underlying values and triggers. This would be a starting step to begin with while dealing with such managers but it is extremely useful and important for anyone dealing with such issues. Once you have managed to understand this value, working and dealing with managers would become much easier.
Take the initiative
Once you have come to know about your managers trigger points and values and say more emphasis is being laid on being on-time, the next thing you need to do is work upon the same. In many cases your manager would be calling you on a daily basis and inquire about the on-time status of a project or report. This would definitely become a routine and pretty frustrating for you. What one can do is call or even poke his/her head in the managerâs office and let him/her know the status even before youâre actually asked. Doing this a couple of times would definitely relax the dynamic between you and your manager. Please remember that you need not to reverse the management roles here. You should however preempt by using a natural frequency and addressing all the questions before/first asked. This would be beneficial in two ways; firstly, it would let your manager know that you really understand the value of being on-time and secondly, it would help in building trust and a strong bond. Whenever your boss sees that youâre on top of it, he/she would definitely relax about checking in on you all the time.
Re-build ownership and trust
At times extreme management takes place when you have made a mistake, let a team down, missed a deadline, etc. If such things happen, people stop trusting and relying on you, and start worrying. They’ll always try to control the situation so that the “miss” doesn’t happen again. In such cases, you’ll want to stay focused on results. This might definitely look like coming through difficult times, showing up, meeting deadlines, communicating clearly what you can and cannot do/real expectations, etc. It might definitely take some time before the manager sees a repeated difference and start to loosen the reins with you and trust again. If you have amends to make, do make them strong and the re-building process can start.
You should understand the situational context
If you are new to a certain position, have taken an additional responsibility or are learning a new task, do expect your boss to check-in more often and to be more hands on. At the very beginning, your boss will be more instructional, ask about any support needed in the process and check-in to see how things are going with you. However, after some time, once he/she sees that you’re cruising right along, the best managers will give you space.
