Why you need to become a ‘boss-whisperer’ — and where to start

‘Boss-ology,’ you’ll recall, is the process of giving your boss what he or she wants and needs in the way that suits you best and makes your actions look as good as possible. And a ‘boss-whisperer’ is like a horse-whisperer for bosses: someone who can get the boss to do what he or she wants without any fuss, dishonesty or dirty tricks.

Why bother? Why take the time and effort to manage your boss? He or she is paid more than you are and is supposed to be leading you, right? Let the boss make the decisions and face the consequences if they’re wrong. You were just following orders.

This is a short-sighted view. “I was only following orders” is a defense that rarely works and always makes you look like an incompetent idiot. Assuming that the boss knows best — and will unfailing choose the right course for you both — is naïve to the point of foolishness. The boss needs your help and you need help in return if you are both to make successful careers. You’re a team, like it or not. You know things the boss doesn’t and vice versa. Only by pooling that knowledge can you find the right way forward.

Where do you start?

The place to start in becoming a ‘boss-whisperer’ is with your own knowledge and skills. The boss doesn’t know what he or she doesn’t know. He doesn’t know exactly what you can offer that may help — what knowledge, skills, creative ideas or insights. She doesn’t know what you may know about the situation, since you’re approaching it from another direction. Subordinates often know far more about the details of what is going on. They know many of the personalities involved at their level, whom the boss knows merely as names, if at all. They may be closer to the customer. Other people may speak to them more openly and reveal more of their motives.

Subordinates often have skills the boss either lacks or hasn’t used in a long time. Since technology moves fast, the boss may well be out-of-date on what is possible and how to do it. He or she may never have been closely involved in the systems that have to be negotiated to get a result. Equally, a good boss will know about personalities higher up in the organization and what it will take to win their support. All organizations are highly political. Being a boss means you have gained at least enough understanding of how the politics work to make it as far as you have. Besides, in a political context, it can be vital that a suggestion or a request travels along ‘the right channels’ on its way to the top. Present many top executives with a suggestion that comes through the wrong route, or via the wrong person, and they’ll reject it on principle — however good it may be.

Sharing your knowledge

This isn’t just a simple matter of walking into the boss’s office and spilling the beans. For a start, you have to remember that most bosses have rather well-developed egos. They may not know what you know, but they don’t like to be reminded of that fact. You need to share your knowledge in a way that builds you up in the boss’s eyes and doesn’t appear to put the boss down. The skill of sharing knowledge is to choose your timing and approach to make it seem as if you are doing it for your boss’s benefit and the organization’s, rather than simply your own.

One effective method is to build on a remark your boss just made. Say your boss talks about what might tempt a particular customer to place an extra order. You can slip in your knowledge by saying that it sounds a great idea, especially since you heard recently that the customer has won new business that could well use your company’s product or service to good effect. If the boss’s idea doesn’t sound so good from where you stand, you might still say it would be great — but you did hear that customer is in some financial difficulties right now and might even need to cut back on their regular orders. However, another customer you know of is in the opposite position and might be a better bet.

Successful boss-whisperers never flaunt their knowledge, let alone make it seem that the boss is ignorant or out-of-touch — especially if they are! They wait patiently for an opening and slip information into the conversation without making a big deal about it.

Do things this way and your boss will soon learn that you often have useful knowledge, maybe even going out of his or her way to mention things you might know about. In time, you become a advisor whom the boss rates highly. And because you don’t offer your ideas in a way that makes her look foolish, she trusts you even with half-formed plans or controversial areas. You get to be able to intervene before anyone is committed to the wrong course. She gets to be warned before putting her credibility on the line with those above her.

Finding purpose and direction

This brings us to one of the key reasons for trying to influence the boss at all: finding the right purpose and direction that will make your life enjoyable and your prospects better, while still meeting the needs of the boss and the organization as a whole.

Leading implies choosing a direction and some goals at the end of it. It’s a prerogative most bosses protect carefully. After all, they are given their own objectives by the people above them and can only advance their careers by delivering good results. It’s very tempting for a boss simply to translate his or her objectives into similar objectives for the team, then hound everyone to deliver even better.

Tempting, but often ineffective. In finding the right goals, context is everything. What excites the boss may well leave you cold — or, worse still, demand working in areas that neither interest you much nor play to your strengths. What you need to do is find ways to translate your boss’s goals into requests that you will enjoy complying with, and which will allow you to display your skills to the best advantage.

This is where patience and careful listening will pay huge dividends. You listen to what the boss says he or she wants of you. You don’t argue or object. Then, at the right time, you come back with a suggestion on how to meet that objective in a way that will get the result and work for you at the same time. The boss is happy because he feels he has set the goal — that’s his prerogative as a leader — and all you have done is suggest a good way to achieve it. You’re happy because what you have suggested plays to your strengths and will make your job more enjoyable.

I’ll be writing much more about the skill of communication with the boss in a later part of this series, so watch out for that. It’s critical in getting what you want.

Building credibility for the bad times

We all make mistakes. Things frequently go wrong, regardless of careful planning and skill. How you handle situations like this can make all the difference between being trusted and supported by your boss and being thrown to the wolves to get them off the boss’s trail.

If you’ve established in the boss’s mind that you have useful knowledge and skills, know how to use them, and can be relied on not to make your boss look bad when he or she messes up, you’re a long way towards finding support in the bad times rather than criticism. Add to this that you have been the source of good suggestions on how to achieve the boss’s objectives — that they suited you is irrelevant — and your credibility should be high. And it’s credibility than can see you through the bad times.

If someone with strong credibility makes a mistake, even a bad one, other people usually recall all previous good performance and are willing to put the mistake into context. If your credibility is low, any mistake is immediately seen as further evidence that you cannot be trusted. You won’t be cut any slack. They always knew you weren’t much good and now you’ve proved it again — even if, this time, it wasn’t remotely your fault.

Good relationships, especially between a boss and a subordinate, rely on trust in both directions. If the boss has to go out on a limb to save you, he or she needs to know that you don’t make a habit of getting into this kind of mess, and that you will do the same for them in the reverse situation. If a trusted subordinate says the mistake wasn’t their fault, they’ll most likely be believed.

Here’s the crux: if you don’t trust your boss, he or she won’t trust you. The small signs of lack of trust are easy to see, if you look: withholding information, using weasel words to conceal true meaning, faking your responses, talking behind the boss’s back (others can’t wait to report what you said, however much they promised not to do so), giving in to the temptation to make the boss look a bit of an idiot, proclaiming loyalty while acting to undermine their authority.

Trust is a gift. Whatever people tell you, it’s not earned — not at first. All you can earn is continuation of trust. You can’t earn it at the start, because earning trust comes from showing you are worthy of the trust placed in you — and it has to be placed, as a free gift, before you can do that.

If you want the boss to trust you (and who wouldn’t want that?), you have to start by giving him or her your trust and accepting their gift of trust in return. Only then can you show that gift isn’t misplaced.

Technorati Tags: managing your boss, managing upwards, boss-ology, getting your boss to do the right things, building credibility, building trust with your boss, making yourself look good in the boss’s eyes, how to be a valued subordinate, enhancing your career prospects, dealing with the boss more effectively, trusting relationships

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