Every working person works with a manager at some point in their career. It can be a terrible experience or a great one.
The relationship you share with your manager greatly impacts how you like your job. Like for me – the managers I worked with in the first 4 years of my career were terrible people. And I was not as happy with my job. I avoided communication with those people. The reasons don’t matter right now; maybe I’ll write a different post about that later on.
Then, in the last 6 years of my career (since 2019), I’ve worked with a gem of a manager. He’s one of the reasons I realized my potential and pushed myself to where I am today. Resultantly, I invested proactively in building a great working relationship between us.
So now, after all these years, I believe I’m eligible enough to write about how to earn your manager’s trust. I can tell you – the things I’ve written down below work wonderfully well. Given that you work with a sensible person, of course.
Put effort into understanding their working style
Things get a lot more manageable when you understand how your manager works. Notice what they usually ask for; what they think about deadlines; how they like to be reported to; what kind of details they often ask you to exclude from your messages, and so on.
Every manager would love it if their direct reports understood how they function and adapted. It’s a blessing for them if they don’t have to repeat the same things again and again before someone finally starts to remember them.
Learn about their weaknesses, too. For example, my manager has a weakness – he doesn’t remember things. And rightfully so – the number of people he deals with daily, if he started remembering everything, good luck to his sanity.
As for me, I have taken upon myself to add a little bit of context to help him reconnect to a given topic. So now, his weakness doesn’t affect the quality of our conversations. (Thankfully, he’s able to recall things when reminded about them.)
Own up to your mistakes and confess before you’re asked about them
This one plays a huge role in how much your manager trusts you. In my earlier years at Klarecon, I made a lot of mistakes. A lot of them were unintentional, but still, those were mistakes.
Owning up to my mistakes came naturally to me. To a lot of people, it doesn’t. They’re too afraid to look bad, which keeps them from admitting their fault before someone confronts them.
When you mess up and confess proactively, it shows your accountability, and every good manager appreciates this quality.
You still have to learn from your mistakes and actively avoid repeating them. If you keep making mistakes, especially the costly ones (money, time, or trust), owning up to them wouldn’t work. Once your manager gets an impression that you and mistakes have too close a relationship, they won’t be able to trust you enough to fully rely on you.
Respect their time
You probably wouldn’t meet a working person who’d say, “I have lots of free time on my hands. Feel free to waste it.”
No matter the reason, the fact is – managers always have more work to do than the time they have to do it. They have to deal with their direct reports, their own bosses, clients, and their own tasks to do, too.
The more you remember this, the better.
How to respect their time?
- By communicating clearly
- By not asking lazy questions
- By scheduling meetings well in advance
- By keeping them updated, so they don’t need to chase you
- By not giving them a chance to point out the same mistakes repeatedly
There can be many more ways, but you get the idea.
Don’t use their busyness as an excuse to not communicate with them, though. A lot of people make this mistake. “Oh, she’s so senior, she has a lot to do, I don’t want to bother her.” If it’s something that would suffer because of this assumption, you’re making a big mistake. Do communicate, but make sure to come prepared so your manager can help you fast.
Communicate clearly, don’t make them ask questions because of confusion
Lots and lots of time – precisely, about a dozen hours per month (per person) – gets wasted in companies because people don’t communicate clearly. They will mean one thing and say another. They will not add enough context. They will add too much information.
This frustrates your manager the most. Like I advised before, respect their time and yours. If you make them ask too many questions because they’re confused about what you said, you’re disrespecting their time. It’s not a court of law where people get paid for asking questions to uncover a crime.
I know clear communication is not a natural skill, but the great news is it can be learned easily by being a bit attentive. Since it’s a big topic, I won’t be able to cover it in depth in this post, but I’ll be linking other posts about communication here later on.
Offer help
Surprised at this piece of advice? You may not have thought that your manager could need help.
I get it. If it’s someone who’s crushing in their job, it appears as if they never need any help. Oftentimes, that’s the assumption direct reports make about their managers.
The fact is – managers could use a lot of help. They have projects, people, and clients to manage.
When I say offer help, it comes with a condition – don’t offer help when you can’t manage your own tasks and finish them on time, just to impress your manager. The idea is to keep your work organized enough first so you have the bandwidth to help someone else.
How would you know if your manager needs help?
They may not necessarily ask you for it, but you can still learn about their tasks and challenges by talking to them.
Yes, when you talk to them, it doesn’t always have to be about you. Ask what they have been up to. Observe if they mention something often. And if it’s something you already have experience with, tell them you’d be interested in assisting them with it or even taking it off their table.
Not every manager may instantly agree to using your help, especially if they’re new to working with you. Still, keep at it and when you get the chance – make the most of it.
Make yourself easy to help
You might have come across this advice – be easy to work with. Making yourself easy to help is an extension of it. It ties back to respecting their time.
When reaching out to your manager for help, consider if
➡ You’ve had a similar situation before. If yes, what was the solution your manager recommended? Can you implement that here as well?
➡ You’ve referred to a given guideline or SOP to confirm what you’re seeking is not there.
➡ You’ve brainstormed a few ways to tackle whatever you’re trying to solve, and have your opinion about the effectiveness of each.
➡ You’ve gathered enough context to share with your manager while presenting the issue.
Do you notice what these points indicate? Preparedness.
When you seek your manager’s help, you’re giving them the material they need to understand the problem, why it occurred, how you think it should be solved, and why you seek their help. By doing so, you’re helping them help you.
All they have to do now is to provide feedback or suggest alternatives. I know this might be an oversimplification because some problems are much trickier to solve than others. Still, if you go well prepared to your manager, there are much higher chances that the two of you can focus on solving the problem than figuring out what caused it in the first place.
Seek guidance and advice
Sounds obvious? Except, it’s not so obvious to many people. They wouldn’t reach out for their manager’s guidance until they’re fully frustrated or have missed a deadline.
You might also relate to this. There might be instances where reaching out for guidance came with thoughts full of hesitation, especially when you’re also a manager.
I am a manager now, I must know the solutions to all problems. I must have answers to all questions. It wouldn’t look nice if I asked my manager for help. They’d think I’m incapable.
You keep dragging and pushing yourself, only to realize much later that it’s all in the wrong direction. Even worse, your manager notices the mess, and now you’ve added worry or pressure to their table as well. Even though it was far from what you wanted, you wanted to impress them.
After navigating through my managerial journey – from being a novice to a much experienced manager – I can testify that seeking help doesn’t make you look bad or incompetent. In fact, it makes you look wise and mature if you bring things up at the right time.
Sometimes, your manager may not have great advice to give to you. Talking to them still generates new ideas or helps you move forward with a decision you were unsure of. Sometimes, it will just be about letting them hear what you have to say. You might get an instant OK, and the better part is that you get rid of the doubt you first had.
Listen to what they say and adapt
A reason I was able to build a trustable working relationship with my manager was that I listened to him.
What listening means in this context
➡ What kind of feedback he gives in which situation
➡ What he expects when bringing a problem to him
➡ How he wants me to think in different scenarios
➡ What he teaches me to do differently next time
➡ What kind of mistakes bother him more than the others
When I listened, I picked up cues, and that enabled me to adapt. Note that it’s not about changing your character or personality for others. Instead, it’s moulding the way you operate so both parties – you and your manager – establish a rapport that makes working together much easier. And at the same time, you develop tremendously as a professional. I know because I kept observing and reflecting on my growth over the years.
Know that they could use appreciation, too
Yes, good managers deserve appreciation, too. When a manager helps you develop a better version of yourself – thank them.
It’s true that sometimes you’re hesitant to say words of appreciation because you feel it may appear as flattery. Well, it will come across as flattery if you overdo it or you say things you don’t mean.
I don’t have a perfect playbook to give to you here, but here are some tips:
➡ Don’t wait until you get a promotion to thank them for their help and support.
➡ Offer help when you notice they’re swamped (this is also a kind of appreciation).
➡ Don’t look for fancy words. A simple “thank you very much for your help today” is just as good.
➡ Tell them if something stands out to you about them: “I’ve been noticing that you’re really good at XYZ. I’ve learned quite a bit about it because of our discussions.”
➡ Sometimes, you don’t need to use words to appreciate them. Just have their back in tough times. For that big project or a tough deadline where they could use extra help and ask for it – go ahead and help them. This is not to suggest that you stretch your work days regularly to impress your manager. When the time comes, just give them that helping hand. And yes, sometimes, that could mean working a few extra hours.
