By Michael Holland
So you’re telling me your boss just isn’t the best leader. He has weaknesses and struggles and just isn’t as effective as you really need him to be. Maybe it’s time for you to help him become a better boss. Here are three ways you can invest in your boss to enable him to be great.
- Serve Him – What are the things you can do to help your boss be successful in his role? Go deep with your thoughts – beyond the “accomplish all my work” type thoughts – to thoughts regarding what is causing my boss to be less than fantastic? Move beyond being selfish to truly seeking ways to help your boss to be better, energized, excited, thoughtful, strategic, administratively efficient, and charismatic.
- Speak His Language – Analyze your and his preferred communication styles. You invest time to think through how best you can communicate with your employees, really trying to make the road a two way street. Invest the same time in understanding the uniqueness of your boss’ style and in what ways you can adjust your energy, style, approach, and language to elicit the best communication from your boss. (See our sample DiSC assessments and particularly the sample Comparison Report for examples.)
- Read About Leadership – Invest in learning about your chosen profession. Read books, articles and blog posts on leadership every week and use the tools, techniques, tips, strategies, methods, approaches with your boss. It may sound counterintuitive at first, but what are the real differences in managing up versus managing down versus managing sideways. The implementation or execution of certain methods will have to be adjusted since your authority and influence differ and the perception of your role by others differs, but otherwise, most of the methods are stakeholder neutral.
Coaching Thoughts – For You and Your Peers
- What will you start doing today to adjust the trend line of your boss’ performance?
- Do you think that by investing in these efforts, you will also be modeling the behavior you expect from employees? How?
