BUILDING GOOD RELATIONS WITH MANAGERS:Impressing your manager, Coping with a problem manager

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Human Relations MGMT611

Lesson 21

BUILDING GOOD RELATIONS WITH MANAGERS

Skill building approach

This topic presents a variety of strategies and tactics aimed at building constructive relationships with

your manager. Developing effective relationships with work associates is regarded by many as having good

political skills, an interpersonal style that combines awareness of others with the ability to communicate

well.

Developing a good relationship with your manager or team leader

Getting along well with your manager is the most basic strategy for advancement. It must be kept in mind

that every organization has its culture. Employees have to adapt themselves according to the culture of the

organization. The approaches are grouped into two categories:

1. Creating a favorable impression on your manager or team leader

2. Coping with an intolerable manager

1. Impressing your manager

Achieve Good Job Performance

Display a Strong Work Ethic

Demonstrate Good Emotional Intelligence

Be Dependable and Honest

Be a Good Organizational Citizen

Create a Strong Presence

Find out What Your Manager Expects of You

Minimize Complaints

Avoid Bypassing Your Manager

Use Discretion in Socializing With Your Manager

Engage in Favorable Interaction with Your Manager

A. Achieve Good Job Performance

Good job performance remains the most effective strategy for impressing your manager or team leader. An

advanced way of displaying good job performance is to assist your manager with a difficult problem he or

she faces. Employees should support their managers when they attempt to introduce the technological

change instead of showing resistance.

B. Display a Strong Work Ethic

A major factor contributing to good job performance is a strong work ethic, a firm belief in the dignity and

value of work. Having a strong work ethic is also important for favorably impressing a manager.

Six suggestions for demonstrating a strong work ethic are:

Work hard and enjoy the task.

Demonstrate competence even on minor tasks.

Assume personal responsibility for problems.

Assume responsibility for free-floating problems.

Get your projects completed promptly.

Accept undesirable assignments willingly.

Demonstrate Good Emotional Intelligence

A worker who deals effectively with the emotional responses of co-workers and customers is impressive

because feelings and emotions are a big challenge on the job.

Demonstrating good emotional intelligence is also impressive because it contributes to performing well in

the difficult area of dealing with feelings.

Human Relations MGMT611

Be Dependable and Honest

Dependability is a critical employee virtue. If an employee can be counted on to deliver as promised and to

be at work regularly, that employee has gone a long way toward impressing the boss.

Be a Good Organizational Citizen

An especially meritorious approach to impressing key people is to demonstrate organizational citizenship

behaviour, the willingness to work for the good of the organization even without the promise of a specific

reward. The good organizational citizen goes "above and beyond the call of duty." An effective way of

being a good organization citizen is to step outside your job description. If people only do work included in

their job description, a mentality of "It's not my job" pervades.

An impressive way of stepping outside your job description is to anticipate problems even when the

manager had not planned to work on them. Anticipating problems reflects an entrepreneurial, take-charge

attitude.

Create a Strong Presence

A comprehensive approach to impressing your manager or team leader and other key people is to create a

strong presence, or keep yourself in the forefront. Get involved in high visibility projects such as launching

a new product. Joining a team is effective as is getting involved in community activities of interest to top

management. Also, take on tasks your manager dislikes.

Find out What Your Manager Expects of You

You have little chance of doing a good job and impressing your manager unless you know what you are

trying to accomplish. Work goals and performance standards represent the most direct way of learning your

manager's expectations. A performance standard is a statement of what constitutes acceptable

performance. These standards can sometimes be inferred from a job description.

Minimize Complaints

It is unwise to continually complain about various aspects of the work environment. Aside from being

perceived as a pest, listening to complaints takes up considerable management time. A better tactic than

frequent complaining is to make constructive suggestions to improve substandard situations.

Avoid Bypassing Your Manager

A good way to embarrass and sometimes infuriate your manager is to repeatedly go to his or her superior

with your problems, conflict, and complaints. The bypass suggests that you don't think your boss has

enough power to take care of the problem, and that you distrust his or her judgment. Bypassing your

manager is looked upon so negatively that most experienced managers will not listen to your problem unless

you have already discussed it with your immediate superior.

Use Discretion in Socializing With Your Manager

Advocates of socializing with the boss contend that off-the-job friendships lead to more natural work

relationships. However, socializing with the boss can lead to role confusion, or being uncertain about what

role you are carrying out.

Engage in Favorable Interaction with Your Manager

A study of interactions between bank employees and their supervisors showed that trying to create a

positive impression on the superior led to better performance ratings.

2. Coping with a problem manager

A problem manager is the one who, gets angry easily, intimidate, ignore the requests or is overly committed.

Difficult people create obstacles to getting the job done. Employees experience unnecessary stress or are

limited

completing

tasks

because

problem

manager.

Dealing with Difficult People gives employees strategies and tactics for dealing with and even positively

confronting difficult people about their behaviours to make suggestions for working together better.

Human Relations MGMT611

A challenge to ambitious people is to cope with a difficult manager, yet remain well regarded by that person.

Suggestions follow:

Reevaluate Your Manager

Some problem bosses are not really a problem. Instead, they have been misperceived by one or more group

members. You and your boss may simply have a difference in roles, goals, or values.

Confront Your Manager about the Problem

A general-purpose way of dealing with a problem manager is to apply confrontation and problem solving

techniques. Use considerable tact and sensitivity because your manager or team leader has more formal

authority than you. Gently ask for an explanation of the problem. Confrontation can also be helpful in

dealing with the problem of micromanagement, the close monitoring of most aspects of group member

activities by the manager.

Learn from Your Manager's Mistakes

Even a bad boss contributes to our development--he or she serves as a model of what not to do as a boss.

Also, should your manager be fired, analyze that situation to avoid the mistakes he or she made.

References

Dubrin, A.J. (2005). Human Relations: Career and Personal Success. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey,

07458.

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