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		Make Your Life Easier: Manage Your Boss! By Anthony Fusari, Associate Director of Residential Life and Services at SUNY Downstate Medical Center Over the last ten years, I have attended dozens of programs, workshops, and in-service training about supervision, almost all of them excellent. These sessions helped me clarify my own values, learn valuable strategies for accomplishing projects by including others, motivational techniques, and have given me tips for holding employees accountable. Very few of the programs I have attended however, focus on the importance of building a good relationship with your supervisor. There are at least three reasons for this. First, many of the workshops we present or attend are normative. In our profession, we tend to look at the world and see the way that things ought to be, rather than looking at the way things are. This is not negative. In fact, it is this vision that attracted me to higher education when I began working in residential life in 1993 and it’s the reason I’m still here. But it does mean that we engage in a good deal of wishful thinking when we talk about managing people. Secondly, organizational structure contributes to our tendency not to discuss our relationships with our supervisors. The structure of almost all organizations is hierarchical. As a result, we have a tendency to view the process of managing others as something we do with folks who work directly for us and not the folks we work for. Finally, when we think about behavior, we often have a tendency to focus on other people’s behavior and how they can work to make things better rather than thinking about how we can act to make things better for our managers, for our institution, and ultimately, for ourselves. In 1995, my supervisor asked me to read an article from the June 1993 issue of the Harvard Business Review titled “Managing Your Boss.” Written by John J. Gabarro and John Carter, the article was very influential in my own development as a professional and became the lens through which I viewed subsequent relationships with supervisors. Many of the ideas below are representative of their original work, but are told through my own relationships and experiences. According to Gabarro and Kotter, building a good working relationship with your supervisor has extraordinary benefits ranging from increased freedom of action to feeling more appreciated. Consciously working toward this goal will also help you be more effective. Failing to work toward this goal will almost assure that you are ineffective. I’ve worked with some supervisors I’ve liked and I’ve worked for supervisors that I didn’t like very much at all, but I never felt that I could not work with that person or do my job effectively. I just needed to find the right strategies for working with them - strategies that could accomplish departmental goals and strategies for making myself feel good. So here are a few tips for building a good working relationship with your manager. Managers are people too - When we think about supervisors, we have a tendency to view them as monoliths of perfection. When they do not conform to our expectations, they are a “bad” manager. But recognize that managers are people too. Even the “best” managers make mistakes, we just have a tendency to be more forgiving with them because they have earned our respect. In fact, managers are just like us. They have good skills, great skills, and skills that need improvement. For example, I worked with a manager that I thought was excellent. But my manager was terribly unorganized. I jokingly called the filing system the piling system. However, my manager almost always knew what was happening throughout the campus and motivated people to do incredible things. As I thought about it, I realized that organized people surrounded my manager. This manager could lead, motivate, and recruit the people he needed, resolve conflict, make people feel good, but didn’t keep a very good calendar or a very clean desk. Oh well. Also try and keep in mind that managers are at different stages in their personal careers. Some managers are experienced and others are new managers. They feel the same things that we do and ask themselves the same questions. Am I doing a good job? Did I do the right thing? How can I do that better next year. Get to know your manager - This does not mean become friends with your manager. It means understand what is expected of your manager. What is your manager’s role in the institution? Who do they report to? In the same way that you have things to do everyday and every week, so does your manager. Your manager also has a boss who asks them the same types of questions you must annoyingly ask your own employees on occasion. If you understand their responsibilities, chances are you will begin to understand the types of decisions they make and you can more readily understand and process why the disagree with you about some issues. You will also begin to understand the various constituencies on campus to whom your manager is accountable such as parents, boards of trustees, presidents, executives, students, community interest groups, and institutional politics. Meeting deadlines - Nothing pleases a manager more than employees who meet deadlines consistently and presents information to them the way they want it. This includes accuracy and formatting. Get to know how your manager likes information presented to them and give it to them that way. This is a guarantee - if you don’t provide management with information when they need it, you can be sure that they will call you and interrupt what you are doing at the least convenient time for you. Managing your boss will provide you with greater freedom and flexibility. Manage information effectively - As I mentioned above, get to know how your manager likes information presented to them and give it to them that way. For example, I had a manager that was an “early bird.” Up at 4:00am and into the office by 6:30am. My manager would often take work home. I began writing things down for my manager and presenting written options (plan A, B, or C). Everything I submitted was read thoroughly. Feedback was available first thing in the morning. But that same manager was not very good at reading things during the day and was often not at his best in the very late afternoon. Here’s why. By 10:00am, the managers office would be filled with paperwork, most of it junk. Issues would begin to crop up that required resolution, the phone would ring and keep my manager busy for twenty minutes at a time. Here’s my point, managers are not stupid, but every human being has a limit on their time and cognitive capacity. You cannot expect your manager to provide quick feedback when they are at their limit. Keep in mind that not every manager processes information in the same way. For example, during the middle of the year, there was a change in management. Having found a style that I thought worked pretty well before, I continued to use it. But my new manager really didn’t want to read so many documents and detested formal meetings. There were other things that needed to be read and the additional written options and weekly meetings overwhelmed my new manager. I quickly learned that the strategy I used for my former manager was doomed to fail with my new manager. I asked my new manager, how would you like me to update you on events and projects. It worked - my manager told me what I needed to know to build a good relationship. I began using e-mail and voice mail to deliver short updates on my progress and would stop into my manager’s office at convenient times to provide verbal information and my relationship with my manager instantly improved. Your own attitude - Two important factors will help you maintain a good working relationship with your supervisor. Try and make contact with your supervisor, to the greatest extent possible, when you are at your best, not at your worst. Be careful about what you choose to vent and how you choose to do it. Always keep your remarks professional and to the point. Secondly, even if you dislike your manager, never forget that you need them. They have access to knowledge and information that you don’t. Gabarro and Kotter call this mutual dependence. Purposefully excluding yourself from communicating with your manager because you don’t like them and want to avoid them will only cause you trouble. It increases the possibility that you will not be able to do your job effectively because you don’t have information that is critical to your success. No matter how much you don’t like your manager, never forget that you need them. Even if you find yourself in a position where you feel your own skills are better than your managers skills, which is possible given the fact that we are all good at some things and not so good at others, you still need them. Don’t be sandbagged by your own arrogance. So much of what we experience everyday is not within our control, but as I hope I have demonstrated above, there is a great deal of what we do that is entirely within our control even though we may feel that it is not. Make the time to look at your relationship with your supervisor and ask yourself how you can make that relationship stronger. Building a good relationship with your supervisor is critical to your success and is an important part of creating and maintaining and environment in which you can be happy. If you ignore this relationship, you will find that the work that you do may not be as fulfilling as you hoped that it would. Sources: Gabarro, John J. and Kotter, John K. “ Managing your Boss” Harvard Business Review. June 1993, Vol. 1, No. 3 “Rapport with Top Execs: 15 Point Road Map for Accounting Managers” Accounting Department Manager’s Report. August 2002. www.ioma.com Brown, Tom. “Managing Your Boss: It’s Critical.” Apparel Industry. Jan 1998, Vol 59. No 1 About the Author: Anthony Fusari is currently serving as the Associate Director of Residential Life and Services at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. During his 9-year career in Student Affairs in the area of residential life and services, Anthony has worked with both undergraduate and graduate students and has served in both entry level and middle management positions. He received his Masters degree in Public Administration from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York and is currently a candidate for his Ph.D. in Political Science at the City University of New York. Since his entry into the profession in 1993, Anthony has been an active member of NEACUHO. He has been a frequent presenter at the conference and has served as a member of the organization’s executive board as co-chair of the program committee and as district coordinator for Eastern New York State.