Questions to ask yourself about how you communicate upwards

 
‘Boss-ology,’ is the process of giving your boss what he or she wants and needs in a way that suits you best and makes you look as good as well. Much of the skill involved comes from using communication effectively: choosing your time, choosing the context, choosing the approach and choosing the words. It’s also very much about listening. You don’t need to be eloquent or cunning or a good salesperson. You need to listen to the boss, so you can adjust your approach to make it register as important and useful.

It’s a truism of communication generally, not just communication upwards, that you must start by listening. Many people with good ideas fail to get their boss to listen to them because they don’t listen themselves. They jump in with the details of what they want to say — only it’s the wrong time, the wrong context, the wrong approach and the wrong words. The boss either ignores them, sends them away, or even gets angry at being interrupted with what seems to him or her to be some irrelevant chatter from an over-eager subordinate.

There isn’t some magic approach that is going to work every time — bosses are too varied for that — but there are some principles that can make a big difference to getting all the elements of communication right more often than not. Like all useful principles, they come as questions. It’s up to you to think about them and find the answers in your own situation,

Is this the right time?

More good ideas are shot down, more sensible requests denied, and more important questions are ignored because they were presented at the wrong time than for any other reason. You need your boss to be ready to listen — attentively — and at least partially primed to consider what you’re saying as important. You don’t want to present your big idea when the boss is tired, distracted, irritated or half a dozen others are clamoring for attention. Nor do you want to have others sniping at you are trying to shoot your idea down while you’re still trying to explain it.

That’s why meetings are nearly always bad times to share fresh ideas. Most of them are too competitive. There’s always someone at the table itching to get their own idea in. If that means shooting yours down first, that’s what they’ll do. In fact, most meetings to ’share ideas’ do nothing of the kind. They’re much more like a group of people telling one another jokes at a bar: each person is only interested in capping the last joke with one of their own.

What else can make the timing wrong? Surprise. When you take someone by surprise with a novel idea, their first reaction is typically to push it aside. The element of surprise makes it sound more risky than it is. Worry or stress. If the boss is already up to the neck in crocodiles, your long-term notion for draining the swamp isn’t going to seem that important right now. Distraction. Don’t try to get your boss’s attention when he or she is being distracted by other things. You become just another annoyance. Embarrassment. If you spring your notion when the boss is talking to someone more senior, you risk embarrassing them. If your idea is good, you rob them of the change to get some of the glory by being the one to present it higher. If it’s bad, you suggest to the senior person that your boss employs idiots and doesn’t know when to keep them safely hidden.

Is this the right context?

Context affects meaning. A long-term idea presented when people are worried about some short-term crisis is always going to sound irrelevant, even if it’s really a good way to prevent the problem coming back. Asking for extra budget when the boss has been lecturing everyone on the need to save costs is plain silly.

The right context is always the one in which what you want to say will sound most relevant, timely and likely to save the boss from something that is annoying him or her. It’s truly worth being patient until the context is just right. Then the boss will likely not only approve your suggestion on the spot, but will become almost as committed to it as you are. What you have just said seems exactly the answer needed. Tell the boss the same thing in a different context and it’ll be rejected.

How do you find the right context? You listen, of course. Listen for a situation in which your idea is going to sound exactly right. Listen for a time when the boss is seeking answers. Listen for the signs that the boss has the time and the inclination to pay proper attention. Listen to what others are saying and frame your contribution so that it sounds as if it is building on what they said, not putting them down.

Those who are good at handling the boss tend to be unusually patient. Those who get most frustrated with constant rejections or disinterest tend to be impulsive. They can’t wait until the context is right, so they rush in with their idea when no one, least of all the boss, is ready to receive it.

Have you chosen the right approach?

The direct approach — here’s my idea, so shut up and listen — is nearly always the worst one. It’s demanding, it seems egotistical, and it implies that you’re brighter than the boss, because you’ve got the idea and he or she hasn’t. It’s just about guaranteed to get things off to a bad start.

Not is it very useful to slip in your idea in the midst of talking about something else. Others may be poor listeners — it’s a very common flaw — and they’ll either miss your idea completely or dismiss it without paying it much attention.

To choose the right approach, you need to study the boss like a biologist studies the behavior of some rare animal. What seems to interest the boss most? What are his or her habits of thought? When is he or she active and alert; when tired and liable to become inattentive? What makes the boss take immediate notice? What are his or her favorite ways of doing things?

Armed with the results of your study, you should be able to work out an approach that is going to fit in best with the boss’s favorite way of working. If the boss likes ideas, present it as an idea. If he or she likes practical answers, begin with how your idea is going to deal with an important problem. If your boss is impatient, try to go instantly to the heart of what you want to say, in as few words as possible. If the boss is arrogant, begin by explaining how something he or she did or said helped spark your response and lay the flattery on with a trowel.

Again, if you aren’t sure of the right approach, be patient and study the boss some more. What you don’t want is the boss you send you away, while your idea lodges in his or her brain. If that happens, you’ll find your great idea being taken up as your boss’s. Many bosses who steal ideas do so quite unconsciously. When the subordinate presented it, they were put off by the approach and dismissed — not the idea — but the subordinate’s handling of it. The idea lodged in their mind, only to surface later without any recollection of how it got there. Now they believe it’s theirs — and don”t you try telling them otherwise.

Are you using the right words?

Nearly all words carry some kind of emotional overtones. The problem is that the precise overtones depend on the individual. A word or phrase that raises emotions of pleasure or interest in one person may cause another to become angry, upset or afraid. It’s mostly a matter of long-buried experience and personal upbringing.

Two categories of words are especially important: those that trigger positive values and those that trigger negative ones. Imagine these as ‘hot buttons’ with a direct line to the listener’s emotions. Since it’s well known that the majority of decisions are taken emotionally, then justified later with logic and reasons, hitting a negative hot button is going to doom your idea in an instant. Hitting one or more positive ones can steer your listener towards finding reasons to justify what he or she already feels they want to do.

This is where listening and paying attention at other times really pays off. If you observe your boss carefully, you should soon learn which words provoke which kind of response. Watch specially for any words that seem to produce positive or negative reactions that aren’t logical or don’t fit the context. Those are the true hot buttons. We can’t help responding to them, even if the response is irrational or bears no relation to what is going on at the time.

Once you know what these words are, the action you need to take is obvious. Use the right words and your boss will quickly start to help you justify why your idea is so good. Use the wrong ones and he or she will spend the whole conversation coming up with more reasons to turn you down.

I hope you’ve found these few posts on handling the boss useful. If you have, please let me know. I could do an ‘advanced course’ if there is sufficient demand.

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