Managing Up: Know Your Boss’s Hotspots
Shortcut # 43
It is important to get to know your boss’s pet peeves. Perhaps it’s people being late to meetings or interrupting her when the office door is closed. Find someone who worked with your boss in the past and ask for a list of these hot spots. Your boss’s personal assistant is a key person to get to know. Often, he’s the person who knows your boss best.
Just like your boss, you have your own hot buttons. Often these buttons are pushed when a person’s actions remind you of someone you don’t like or something negative that happened in the past. Try to see these annoyances as learning experiences, because you will undoubtedly have more work relationships in which the same behaviour materializes. It is important that you know your own hot buttons so that you can self-manage your emotions. You cannot control the way your boss behaves but you can control your reaction.
It’s almost guaranteed that you will find something about your boss that is really annoying. The same is true of clients. I once had a boss who loved to show his team members he cared with lots of pats on the shoulder and using terms of endearment like ‘sweetie.’ It really got on my nerves and the nerves of co-workers. In the end I decided not to bring it up because, bottom line, he always showed a lot of respect for my contributions. I reframed his behaviour as an acceptable habit of his generation
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