What We're Reading Now

Improve Your Relationship with Your Boss

8 July 2014

Allison read It's Okay to Manage Your Boss: The Step-by-Step Program for Making the Best of Your Most Important Relationship at Work and appreciated another dose of Bruce Tulgan’s advice for dealing with the crisis of undermanagement in the workplace.

Tags: allison partners favorite, allison read, bruce tulgan, leadership, management and supervision

Bruce Tulgan’s book, It's OK to Be the Boss: The Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming the Manager Your Employees Need is one of our absolute favorites at Allison Partners. We include a lot of his advice in our course, The Art of Being a Great Boss, and we recommend that all of our clients who are supervisors read his book. It’s just that good.

All of the employee engagement research points to the fact that the one of the most important drivers of employee satisfaction is his or her relationship with the boss. And yet, years of promoting people who were good at their own work in the hopes they could manage others, the flattening of organizations, experts touting “leading” instead of “managing,” and a misplaced pride in being a “hands-off” manager have led to what Tulgan calls an undermanagement crisis.

Employees in every industry and at every level in the organization are left to figure out their work days without guidance, support, positive and negative feedback, and help getting necessary resources. And more often than not, a boss who prides himself on not being a micromanager swoops in at the end of a project and proceeds to micromanage the employee painfully.

If you’re a boss, please read my blog post about Tulgan’s first boss book and then go get the book! If you’re an employee who wishes your boss would read that book, fear not. Tulgan has written a book that will help you to help your boss be the manager you need.

In this second book on the topic of bosses, Tulgan does three things I really appreciate before diving into the practicalities of managing your boss. First, he outlines why your boss might be struggling with her boss duties including no training on how to supervise, a fear of micromanaging, a desire to be liked, conflict aversion, and an organization that doesn’t encourage and perhaps even penalizes good management practices. Tulgan isn’t making excuses for all the failing bosses out there, but I do think he will help you to be more empathetic with the boss who isn’t giving you what you need and empathy is always a good place to start when we're embarking on asking for some changes in a relationship.

Second, Tulgan makes sure you understand why you need to help your boss manage you rather than enjoying “flying under the radar.” You may not realize that much of your frustration at work is actually a result of being undermanaged and that you have the power to do something about this.

Third, while this book is all about how to get what you need from your boss, Tulgan makes it clear that none of what he recommends will work if you aren’t doing a great job of managing yourself. I always like an expert that works from the viewpoint that there is only one person we can be certain we can change... ourselves! Long before you start managing your boss you may need to do a better job of managing yourself and Tulgan gives very practical advice on how to do exactly that.

Once you’re managing yourself effectively and ready to start managing up, Tulgan will guide you through how to, “Maintain an ongoing dialogue with every boss about the four management basics:

• What is expected of you.
• The resources you need to meet those expectations.
• Honest feedback on your performance and guidance on how to adjust as necessary.
• What credit and reward you will earn for your hard work.”

As he's wrapping up his advice, Tulgan also acknowledges that sometimes you have a boss who really is a jerk or at least does some pretty jerky things and that you may have to address this behavior if you want things to actually get better. However, if there’s one concern I have about Tulgan’s books, it’s that he doesn’t spend much time helping people to figure out the mechanics of difficult conversations and there are bound to be plenty of them if you’re trying to change the dynamics with your boss. (When I made this observation in my blog post about It’s Okay to Be the Boss, I was impressed that Tulgan replied and acknowledged that it’s something he’s been trying to address in his seminars.)

So if you struggle with difficult conversations, I recommend you get a copy of another one of our favorite books, Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler. With Tulgan’s advice plus the tools in Crucial Conversations, I think you’ll find that you can begin to change the relationship with your boss in a way that leads to greater workplace satisfaction and that’s going to be good for everyone.

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