Photo by Javier Molina
Do you remember how it felt to have a manager for the first time at work? Perhaps you are new to the world of work and only just finding out?
We expect a lot of our managers. Sometimes we even forget that they are people just like us – with hopes, fears, concerns, career aspirations, and a manager of their own.
We often expect them to be there for us – to make it straightforward for us to fulfil our responsibilities, to support our development, to ensure we get pay rises and promotions, to back us in a meeting, to listen to us and to value our opinions. Sometimes, it is all too easy to blame them when we don’t want to take accountability ourselves for something not going our way: If only my manager had done this or that.
How to ensure your manager is your greatest advocate
While there are many sources for managers who want to learn what to do to be an effective manager, there are less sources available for those of us that want to do what we can to ensure that we are an effective employee in terms of how we work with our manager and yet that can be of great benefit to us – and to them.
Below you will find 5 tips on steps to take to ensure that your manager is your greatest advocate and that you build a strong, mutually beneficial relationship:
1. Set up your relationship for success:
When you first start to work for your manager, you can take steps to ensure that you learn quickly how best to work with each other. It is useful to set up a meeting where you can gain an understanding of:
(a) Their goals and aims: If you fully understand their goals and aims, you will better understand your own and how they support your manager’s.
(b) Their communication needs and preferences: There are an increasing number of ways to communicate at work, depending on your context, which may include face to face, telephone calls, text, instant message, video connection, discussion threads, emails, written reports, and more. It’s important that you are able to get what you need from your manager in terms of information about your responsibilities and equally important that they are able to understand your progress, successes, hold ups and questions when they need to. Finding out that your manager prefers regular short check ins by telephone rather than lengthy emails could save your time but may require some adaptation by you if email is your preference. That being said, you have a right to ask for what you need to be successful so it is worth outlining your needs too and working out how best to meet both.
(c) How they prefer to work with you: Some managers are more ‘hands on’ and some fairly removed from your day to day work. When you are new to a role, you are likely to need a little more support from your manager for certain responsibilities and probably less when you gain experience in role. The Situational Leadership model by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hershey can help you to know what levels of help you might need and could expect. Situational leadership explains that the level of support may be different for each task depending on your level of development related to that task – are you an enthusiastic beginner (you’ll need more direction), a disillusioned learner (you’ll appreciate more coaching), a capable but cautious performer (light support is required), or a self-reliant achiever (delegation works for you)? If your manager understands this model, they may be proficient at providing you with what you need. If not, it may be helpful for you to work out what you think you need and then talk to your manager to explain.
Photo by Alexis Brown
2. Build their trust in you:
Some people extend trust up front until proven otherwise. With others, trust needs to be earned. Considering a model such as Stephen M. R. Covey’s Trust model can help you consider how to speed up the building of trust. Covey explains that trust is a combination of character and competence with different behaviours backing up each. For example one of the behaviours is ‘keep commitments’ – to do what you say you will do. If you agree to complete an activity by a certain date, it is important to do that – or at the very least talk to your manager to reset expectations if that turns out not to be possible.
3. Make their life easier:
Imagine a manager with 2 team members. Which team member is the one that the manager is most likely to find it easy to spend time with and feels grateful that they have them in their team? Team member A who brings problems to be solved, let’s deadlines pass by without comment, and who does the absolute minimum to fulfil their responsibilities or Team member B who considers options for problems to get input on before taking them to their manager, who manages expectations on deliverables, and who not only completes what they need to but looks for ways to support others in the team when they are able. It seems obvious when written in black and white. Would you rather be team member A or B?
4. Help them ‘get better’:
Helping your manager to ‘get better’ needs to be undertaken with tact and genuine care. That being said, it can be a great way to deepen your relationship. You can do this by providing both recognition for your manager and developmental feedback. Recognition can start from day 1 as long as it is genuine. Developmental feedback may require you to have ensured you have built a level of trust first, unless your manager explicitly asks you for this. Of course, in your initial contracting conversations you could not only ask for their continued feedback to support your development but ask if they are interested in you giving them feedback if relevant.
5. Remember the human connection:
Many of the tips above enable you to act in a certain way to support building a relationship however, it is important to consider that you are both human beings – not perfect, no doubt trying hard to do your best, and sometimes you have a good day, and sometimes not so good. Assume positive intent, and, if you feel for whatever reason your relationship isn’t as strong as you would like it to be, take time to talk.
In summary, managers have a lot of responsibilities towards their team members. Let’s remember that a good relationship with your manager is not down to the manager alone. Taking a few of the above steps can make a difference to the benefit of both you and your manager.
Leave a Reply