In my last post, I talked about how to develop credibility with your boss. In a perfect world, everyone would get along very well with his or her boss. There really would be no need for me to write this blog post! It also would be quite boring. Of course, we all know that does not happen. Once you have immersed yourself in your job to the point where you have established credibility, you will form a certain opinion about your boss and your boss will form a certain opinion about you. You will now face a burning question. Is it worth it to develop and maintain this relationship or should you be looking somewhere else? In this post, I am going to go over the four different boss types and how to adjust to their working styles.
Values and Performance
When it comes to understanding boss types, the key factors to look out for are values and performance. The concept of performance is well understood. High-performing bosses are technically competent in their field. In addition, they are able to pull the team together in the direction they want to get the desired results.
The other aspect is values. More than ever, millennials and Gen Z place more weight on values that increase their well-being, with a particular emphasis on coaching and career growth.
Type 1 – Good Values/High Performance
Type 1 boss types are without a doubt the best. They are the ones who drive strict accountability, provide the necessary support, treat mistakes as learning opportunities, recognize your achievements, provide constructive feed-back and take a genuine interest in your personal and professional growth. People outside the team talk positively about them and respect them for their breadth of knowledge. If your boss happens to be one of them, you are in luck.
What to do: learn as much as you can from your boss. Relationship building is easy as the trust levels will naturally be quite high. Your biggest challenge here is complacency. Remember, sunny weather does not always last forever. These bosses are generally in “high-demand”. Sooner or later, they will shift to other parts of the organization with more pressing problems.
Type 2 – Good Values/Poor Performance
Type 2 boss types are one step lower in the pecking order. Similar to Type 1 bosses, they treat mistakes as learning opportunities and provide the necessary support as needed. However, they will provide feedback and advice on professional and personal growth when asked to do so. More often that not, the advice will be vague in nature. They will often extend due dates for missed and incomplete deliverables without a real accountability conversation. People inside and outside the team will hold mixed opinions about them. Type 2 bosses become entrenched in their comfort zones and don’t see any need to come out of it.
What to do: hold yourself to high standards of performance. Make sure to meet your obligations as I outlined in my post about developing credibility. Communicate frequently with your boss. Ask specific, pin-pointed questions on what you need to do improve yourself and actively solicit precise feedback about your work. In short, you need to do the driving.
Type 3 – Bad Values/High Performance
With these types of bosses, you are now moving into the low-trust scenario. Type 3 boss types are the most difficult to deal with. They treat mistakes as performance issues and drive accountability without providing any real support. They see their direct reports as inanimate objects to be taken advantage of and take credit for other people’s work. Type 3 bosses often display a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality – displaying the right behaviors when upper management is present and acting the complete opposite when they are not around.
They pick favourites in the team who will obey orders without question and are definitely not smarter than them. People outside the team respect their knowledge and track-record while acknowledging their personality issues. They are excellent in producing results. That is the reason why upper management often persists with them, despite the grumblings down below.
What to do: avoid getting into any sort of confrontation, even if you are right. Don’t give your boss the opportunity to use his or her position authority to rain down on you – it is a battle that you are unlikely to win. Second, communicate through email most of the time so that a proper documentation is always maintained (in case you might need it later on).
Since Type 3 bosses have a command-and-control personality, it is always advisable to simply adjust to that attitude – the best way to do that is to seek the boss’s input and feedback on every major deliverable and simply follow the rote instructions as provided. This simple tactic will make your boss feel in control and absolve you of any responsibility if anything goes wrong later on (after all you just did what he or she told you to do).
What if the situation gets bad?
Type 3 bosses, because of their performance, tend to stick around for a long time. You may find yourself in a situation where you might it difficult to go on and consider the prospect of looking for another job. In that case, it is important to re-evaluate the five signals of job fit I highlighted earlier. If you feel comfortable with the trade-offs that you made, then putting up with the boss is worth it. If not, then it is appropriate to make plans to leave gracefully.
On a side note, this is exactly the reason why you should always target to become financially independent. It is no fun to get trapped in a toxic situation you cannot get out of.
Type 4 – Bad Values/Bad Performance
Type 4 boss types are at the other end of the spectrum – the complete opposite of the Type 1 boss. They exhibit typical mannerisms of Type 3 bosses to the point where teams fall apart and more time is spent with HR rather than doing actual work. One has to wonder how someone can become a boss with bad values and bad performance. The reason often boils down a simple explanation – there is no other choice. Type 4 bosses are usually considered in-betweens. Upper management puts these types of bosses in place for a temporary period of time until a permanent replacement is made available (sometimes those temporary periods can last forever!). Fortunately, these situations are rare. Type 4 bosses, sooner or later, are shown the door.
What to do: since you are in a low-trust scenario, communicate through email so that a documentation trail is maintained. Hold yourself to high standards of performance. Patience is the key aspect of dealing with Type 4 bosses. Eventually, they will exit.
Summary
Whew, that is a lot to digest. Hopefully the length of it emphasises how important is to manage the relationship with your boss and how critical is to your professional and personal growth. My aim here is to make you understand that most bosses are simply trying to deliver on their own responsibilities and have their own problems to deal with. They are not some psychotic fiends who seek pleasure in their subordinates’ pain. You can’t control your boss’s performance, but you can certainly control the quality of that relationship.
A word of caution. If you are having problems with your boss, then ask yourself – is your own behaviour the issue? Finding the honest answer to that question is advisable before you start compartmentalising your boss.
That’s about it.
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