How You Can Be a Better Boss
5 min readOct 25, 2019
I spent 34 of my 40 years in industry in all levels of management with several great companies (IBM and Lockheed Martin). I was always looking to improve my trade to be a better boss. See if any of these signs sound familiar.
Worried that you might be a subpar boss?
Signs that you’re in fact doing a terrific job managing your team.
Those signs include: You’re able to try new things, you challenge your employees, and you have a sense of humor.
It’s not always easy being in charge.
Overseeing others comes with a ton of pressure. And when you’re in a management position, it can be difficult to evaluate how you’re doing.
Are you striking the right balance between commanding respect and appearing accessible? Are your employees responding well to your style of leadership? Are any of your actions breeding resentment in the office?
Being a good boss is crucial for your organization — a third of the employees in one survey revealed that they’d quit a job because of a bad manager. But you can’t exactly go wandering around the office begging people to tell you how you’re doing.
Here is a short video as an introduction to this topic.
Listen to what is being said.
You’re better off organizing employee satisfaction surveys and soliciting feedback from your direct reports.
Take a look at these ways that I learned from many years as a boss.
Share the limelight
Does your boss constantly use the word “I” when associating with success? Do they fail to invite you to meetings to present your own work?
They may be intentionally keeping you out of the limelight so that they can stay in it.
This is in the DNA of a bad boss. These types can become glory hogs and take credit for your hard work. Your best option is to manage up and understand the real root of the problem.
Always look for ways to share the credit.
Admit mistakes
Learning to admit that you’re wrong is one of the best things you can do for your colleagues.
Ask Lexi Reese, the COO of Gusto and a former Googler, and she’ll tell you the best thing a boss can do is communicate to their reports the type of leader they aspire to be.
Most importantly, the boss should encourage their reports to let them know when they’re falling short.
If your boss refuses to admit that they’re wrong, this means they’re not willing to go out of their comfort zone for you.
A national independent study by Lynn Taylor Consulting found that 91% of employees said that owning up to one’s mistakes as a manager was an important factor in employee job satisfaction.
Admitting to mistakes sends a message to your employees that it’s a safe environment to take smart risks — and without that, you’re sapping the best of the relationships.
Be truthful at all costs
A boss who lies is untrustworthy — not a good foundation for a productive relationship. Some can become so immune to their own stories that they can convince themselves that the lies are true. They may legitimize their fibbing by rationalizing that others do it, deflect this character flaw by pointing the finger to others.
Other bad bosses just can’t face the fallout that will result from telling the truth.
You must examine what motivates your boss to lie. Make sure you have all your facts before you start any questioning. And remember that it’s best to encourage honesty than to go on the offense.
Don’t have favorites
Playing favorites is a great way to torpedo office morale. If you make it clear that a certain person is the apple of your eye no matter what, then that’ll just encourage your other employees to give up on trying to impress you.
Give feedback freely
Good employees crave feedback to learn how they can improve and grow. Great bosses are happy to oblige.
Recently, experts have noted that the feedback process at many companies is broken because it’s too subjective. As leadership experts Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall write in the Harvard Business Review, it’s better to share your personal reaction to an employee’s behavior than an overall assessment of their performance.
For example: “This is how that came across for me,” or “This is what that made me think.”
Offer more chances to grow
There are few things more aggravating at work than being kept stagnant with the same routine responsibilities over a long period of time, especially after you’ve voiced interest in expanding your level of contribution.
If you feel your sentiments are going unheard, you may still proactively demonstrate your more strategic skills on a current project and propose them to your boss.
Always look for ways to contribute new ideas to your boss’ pet project; get more specific with how your background and credentials could specifically be better tapped for XYZ initiatives.
With your manager’s permission, offer to volunteer on a related department’s project where your skillset applies, building on your existing credentials. Bosses love initiative.
Try new things
Good bosses adopt certain methods because they’re the best way of doing things — not because they’ve just fallen into certain habits. The best managers give their employees room to experiment and innovate.
