MANAGERIAL SKILLS
Managing your manager
- Open productive and honest lines of communication with your manager
- Understand better how and when managers can help
HOW TO
Good communication is critical to any successful work relationship, and that
holds twice as true when colleagues are interacting within a relatively
unstructured environment. Simply put, without strong communication with your
manager, at least in the initial stages of a work relationship, whatever you
are doing is headed to failure. Moreover, poor communication also drags this
ill-fated process out, making it all the more damaging to yourself, to
colleagues and to the organization as a whole, raising the costs and risks for
everyone.
Of all the
possible criteria a manager may base his or her recruitment process on, early
signs of effective or defective communication are among the most vital. In my
view, they are second only to compelling evidence of motivation (to work and,
most importantly, to learn). Everything else – your smarts, your skills –
becomes relevant if and only if those two boxes have been checked. Indeed,
decent work may be done independently, but the best outcomes always entail more
collaborative components and phases.
Good
communication, paradoxically, is both a matter of common sense and intriguingly
rare. It revolves around basic principles, which may be straightforward, but
require some effort, some discipline and at times some courage to apply.
First and
foremost, the longer a problem is left unaddressed the worse it tends to
become, and the more difficult the process of finding a solution. This is
particularly true of problematic personal relationships, but applies to
virtually everything else too. To ignore a concern, hoping it will solve itself
or just go away, almost guarantees that it will become systemic. Naturally, you
shouldn’t be pestering your manager whenever you face an obstacle—try hard to
find a solution of your own, but not for long. As soon as you can sense that
you’re stuck at your level, take it up to the next one.
Good communication is both a matter of common sense and intriguingly rare
Managing conflict
is an essential part of good communication. Too often, misunderstandings are
left to fester; tensions and frustrations to grow; and animosities to entrench
themselves. Typically, a backlog of problems turns into a psychological ordeal.
Therefore the factors of conflict (say, disagreements over objectives and
strategies or any sense of unfair treatment) must be discussed as they arise.
Ideally, the best approach is a structured one: take just enough time to
fact-check your views, dampen your emotions, and formulate reasonable requests
before making an appointment to talk to your manager while formally putting the
topic on the agenda. That helps your manager prepare, and defuse his/her own
impulsive reactions.
A related aspect
of good communication is to always seek closure. Ideas, conversations,
initiatives, projects all need a conclusion. In the work environment, loose
ends must absolutely be tied up. For example, if no one follows up on a task
you’ve been assigned, or on a great suggestion you’ve made, don’t just let them
lurk in limbo. Make a point of raising them to revive them or, alternatively,
to kill them consensually.
Gentle reminders
are the bane of our time. They’re as annoying as they are indispensable. Never
assume that your manager truly remembers your proposals, your problems, or even
your deadlines. They should, but they rarely do. To be fair, there is no
fail-proof mechanism to effectively oversee very different people working on a
range of issues, within varying timeframes, and facing specific sets of
problems. In other words, so much depends on you managing your manager’s
memory…
Another frequent
impediment to good communication is our tendency to assume that we, as human
beings, have a capacity to detect and grasp other people’s intentions. In my
experience, not only are we naturally inclined to get them wrong, but we also
tend to assume the worst. Digital communication adds to this problem: an
aggressive tone can so easily be read into a neutral message, along with other
intents and purposes supposedly written in between the lines. Oral
conversations, formal meetings and more casual encounters may take up a lot of
our time, but in the long run they save us a huge amount that otherwise would
be wasted on misunderstandings and letting relationships slip.
Helping others to get things done is exactly what a manager in meant for in the first place
Also bear in mind
that a personal problem ceases to be personal when it clearly prevents you from
delivering on your professional duties and goals. Health issues? Raise them. A
family catastrophe? Give your manager a chance to surprise you with his or her understanding,
moral support and flexibility. Petty logistical issues getting in the way?
Well, it’s always good to talk: you may not have thought of all the solutions,
and at least it explains the slow work pace that managers almost always
perceive.
As a rule, any and
every unresolved obstacle to a productive routine is reason enough for a
conversation. Confused by ambiguous expectations? Make an appointment to
clarify them. Merely overwhelmed and falling behind? Come clean and ask for
help. Uncomfortable with certain requests? Perhaps adjustments can be made, or
better explanations given. Don’t trust your manager? Maybe he/she is to blame.
But in any event, if you’ve reached that stage, you should already be looking
for another job.
It will greatly benefit you to overcome your inhibitions and reach out to your manager for help or advice whenever you may need it. Your manager is there to help you, if only because helping others to get things done is exactly what managers are meant for in the first place. That’s their responsibility. Yours is to enable them to be there for you.
3 November 2016
Illustration credit: To assist the hearing on Flickr / public domain.
