A fresh look

The long weekend has given most of us time to rest. Even if some of us had to go to work, it is an entirely different experience to work with no pressure. You seem to accomplish more and to top it all, you enjoy doing things without the boss around.

There is no exception to this phenomenon and ironically we become more productive when no one seems to be breathing on our necks. Though not all bosses are neck-breathers, employees instinctively raise their defenses when their boss is around. Why is this so?

A lot of the reasons I picked up have become descriptions of a despicable leader.

Somebody in authority is around so you are afraid to make mistakes. When the rule-giver is present, you are afraid to deviate from the standard set. So you take extra care to do your work. This is positive! Even though you may not know it, your standards may also be improving and you may be developing a taste for better quality. It becomes burdensome when you take extra care to please the boss rather than to do the job.

Your boss limits your creativity by insisting on his own ideas before you complete your concept. This may truly hurt when one thinks that he knows what he wants and how to do it. So if the boss is around when you are preparing your concept, hear him out and do not insist on your own ideas. Later when you make a full presentation, you may pick on his suggestions and integrate your ideas. He may see your point of view in a fresh environment and take it up.

Your boss talks to you a lot and takes up your time and then asks for your output. I used to have a friend like this whose boss would eat up all her time. Even till the wee hours of the morning and still demand for reports and presentations at the first hour. Even of Mr. Boss never allowed her time to do the job. The only thing you can do about this is to tell your boss you have to finish work. If he is the type who is a bit pushy or insensitive, you will have to build on more courage to remind tactfully him of what he wants the next day or on the deadline.

They add up to your planned work so you lose focus. This is a usual story. Just when you plan your work for the day, the boss comes to you to ask you to give priority to a new assignment without giving you slack to do a previous one. Sad! If you are not organized you will never be able to get things done. Having a boss like this may require you to be more organized and to compartmentalize your mind to segregate what is urgent and important from what is important but not urgent. Remember the lessons from Stephen Covey? First things first!

Another reason that makes regular work tedious is when “You really don’t like your boss or you feel your boss doesn’t like you!” Whoa! Now take away the paranoia, it could be true but perhaps you may want to look deeper into the situation. What is it that you don’t like in your boss? Why don’t you like him? Is it because he asked for something and you could not deliver it? Is he pushy and abrasive? Is he insensitive to your need for time to think or recharge? As soon as you get down to the reason why you don’t like your boss, then you can work on reversing the feeling by attending to the things you can do, and accepting your limitations to things you can not do. Accepting your limitations though does not end there. You have to tell your boss that this is all you can do, and if he needs more, he will have to help you by either tooling you or providing you with resources to do the job in the way he wants.

If you feel your boss doesn’t like you then in the same token, ask yourself what you have done or not done to deserve his dislike or disfavor. If it is something that you can fix, then fix it. If you can not shape up, you may have to ship out. However if it has nothing to do with your incompetence, and it simply shows sheer bias, you may have to consult the person in the next level to your boss on how to make things work.

Remember, all bosses are God-ordained, and sometimes we deserve the leader we have. But rest assured in this promise, that “all things work together for good to those who love God.” So take a fresh view.