I made a list of all the bosses I have had since I began my working life over fifty years ago. It was fun and illuminating for me to pull it together. There are twenty-eight names on the list. Some have had a great impact on me, while I had to struggle to remember the names of a few.
The faces of those individuals are in my mind now as I type these words. They were Black, White, male, female, young and not so young. Some were highly educated, while others had at most a high school diploma. As I reviewed the list, I tried to ferret out a common thread – a characteristic that all possessed.
My conclusion? They had no shared characteristic, attribute, set of values or approach to supervision or management. Beside the fact that I reported to each of them at one time, no single variable was common to all.
Sure, they all wanted to get their mission accomplished, and I was one of the resources to reaching that goal. But there was no one straight line that united all of them. That’s understandable, since supervisors are people, too(!), and they bring different qualities to work with them.
What does that mean for employees? In order to have a productive and positive relationship with a supervisor, one must strive to understand the boss – what makes her/him tick, what are the expectations, how does the boss react to various inputs. Of course, supervisors should also be doing that regarding their staff. Employees are people, too(!), and they also need to be understood as individuals.
When I first started as a supervisor, I reported to the assistant chief of a division. I’ll call her Margaret. She could be described as a force of nature, who was an inspiration to many. She had an over-the-top personality driven by ambition and made as big a splash as possible in whatever she did. She was widely admired by many, but a sizeable portion of staff and other managers did not care for her approach. Over three decades later, I can still remember her quickly walking to a meeting, while underlings, including me, tried to keep up and take notes of what she wanted us to do while she was away for an hour.
Although she could be very directive in such instances, Margaret had a much looser rein on bigger assignments. If there was a long-term project plan with a deadline for the final product/deliverable, she didn’t worry about it. It was pretty much, “Have a great voyage. Let me know when you get there.”
Eventually, Margaret left the assistant chief position and was placed in a senior management position elsewhere in the institution. I then started reporting to the chief, whom I will call Peter. Although I had worked in his division for a couple of years, I can’t say that we had a close relationship. In fact, for the first two weeks on the job, he just welcomed me once, then didn’t say anything to me. He later explained that I was “Margaret’s Hire,” and he didn’t want to get in the way.
Peter was unlike Margaret in many ways. He lacked charisma and was very much a bureaucrat, enmeshed in the system. I immediately saw a difference regarding those big projects. Whereas Margaret provided independence for me to complete the work, Peter obviously did not have that level of trust in me. The first week I started reporting to him, he asked me for my weekly status report on a lengthy project that I was undertaking. Margaret had never asked for such reporting. That continued for the balance of my time reporting directly to him.
That was not the only aspect in which his approach to supervising me was quite different. He often would come into my office, sit down in the chair next to my desk, and start giving me the third degree about this or that. I had a little puzzle toy on my desk that he would often pick up and start playing with, sometimes losing his train of thought. Before you knew it, I had about half dozen little puzzle toys on my desk. This had the intended impact of distracting Peter from haranguing me, but it also gave him an excuse to come into my office on a regular basis to play with the toys. It took a while, but I gradually learned what made Peter tick. That allowed me to keep him satisfied regarding my performance while maintaining my own sense of self and professionalism.
Ultimately, understanding your boss lets you customize your own workstyle to meet that person’s expectations. A boss wields a lot of power and can make one’s work life really bad or really good. Luckily, we all have tools (or toys) at our disposable to help tilt the needle in the positive direction. And it starts with taking the time to know your boss.