Today’s comment came from a busy professional and an entrepreneur:
It seems that my boss is never happy. I cannot figure out what to do to change this. Do you have any thoughts or suggestions around how to impress a boss that is hard to please?
It is very difficult to try to make someone else happy, especially if you have not taken the time to understand his specific role and responsibilities. Belief it or not, you boss has a similar dilemma. He needs to make his boss happy. And chances are your difficulty in making him “happy” stems from his difficulty in making his manager happy.
Therefore, if you help him make his manager “happy”, you will in turn make him happy.
How do to this?
Take the time to understand your manger’s business goals and commitments.
- Talk to your manager. Setup weekly one-on-one meetings with your manager. Create an effective but rotating agenda (changes each week). Cover things like his department goals, his department mission/vision statement, how your role and responsibilities support his goals, your work status, your career goals, your individual development plans, etc.
- Understand his business commitments goals. Then create SMART goals for yourself (within your particular role and responsibilities) that supports and help achieves his goals.
- Convert these SMART goals into your own PBCs or your own personal business commitment plans. You PBCs will be based on their PBCs such that when you achieve your goals… they achieve theirs.
- When you review these with your manager, they have an opportunity to modify and give you feedback. Once approved, both you and your manager will have a plan of action that accomplishes both your PBCs .
- Understand what it means to do your job well. Then focus on excelling that definition. Focus on how your role and responsibility will make the company money. Quantify your performance in regards to increased revenue, reduced costs and improved client loyalty/satisfaction/retention.
- Gain visibility outside your manager. If you manager is the only one that knows about your talent, strengths, and experience – then you are doing yourself a disservice. Volunteer your services to sibling departments; network with employees and managers of other departments; create problem-solving proposals to your 2nd line manager; publish articles and give presentations in your area of expertise. Make yourself visible to others outside your department. Learn how your talents and skills fit in other roles and department. The more valuable you make yourself to the various departments, the more valuable you are to the company on the whole. And the more valuable you are to the company on the whole – the less important that one manager’s opinion of you will be.
- Do some window-shopping. Meet with an external recruiter to evaluate your current skills set and value to the current job market. Find out the current state of things in your industry or area of expertise. Find out what you need to do (in regards to sharpening your soft skills and technology) to increase your value to both your company and job market on the whole.
Conclusion:
Keep the end in mind. If you make yourself extremely valuable to your company and other companies, the less your single manager’s opinion will matter.
For help on how to make yourself more valuable in the workplace, please contact LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info
Or sign up for a complementary one-on-one coaching call, just use this link https://www.timetrade.com/book/WFSFQ