23 Ways to be Happy at Work: #6 - Walk in Your Boss’s Shoes
Think about your boss’s responsibilities in managing you. What do you see?
Have you thought about what your boss does in his or her job? Perhaps he or she manages several functions, like marketing and sales. Where do you fit in? What are your supervisor’s hot buttons on your department’s performance? For example, one of my direct reports was responsible for Salesforce.com in our department. He knew exactly what I was responsible for sales operations. He always knew how to successful in generating specific reports that help meet our department’s goals in sales operations. He was flawless in creatively applying his expertise with Salesforce.com, coming up with new ways he could use data to improve or manage sales metrics.
List things that you boss is probably not happy with in managing you
Sometimes the things we work on doesn’t make our boss happy with us. Whether it’s always making typos in emails, or taking initiative at the wrong time, list the things that probably makes your boss unhappy with you. I know one of my former bosses wasn’t pleased with me when I recited office gossip in our one-on-one meetings. By the disapproving look I received, I quickly learned to not discuss gossip. In this job, I should have learned to not gossip in the first place.
How can you change that?
If you don’t know how your boss feels about your work or behavior, then ask for feedback. Being happy at work requires us to be proactive about our successes. These successes results in making our boss happy, because it supports the department or company goals. Or better yet, you may be making your boss look good to his or her boss. Happiness can be as simple as knowing that we make our boss happy with our performance.
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23 Ways to be Happy at Work Series
The 23 Ways to be Happy at Work series reflects on 23 ways to help you reflect about the course of your career. After deciding to identify what made me happy at work, my list became this list. Here the are the drivers to my happiness at work that may help you manage your career:
- Work by your values
- Love your work, love your career
- Decide what makes you happy in your job
- Work can be play
- Know the big picture
- Walk in your boss’ shoes
- What is the problem?
- Try the same old thing to get different results
- Try something new to get different results
- List your accomplishments
- Don’t gossip
- Don’t react
- Don’t worry
- Don’t be unhealthy
- Read up
- Read It
- Share knowledge
- Mend fences
- Be a squirrel
- Change your workspace
- Give yourself a gift
- Let it go
- Change this!
For previous entries in this series, click here.
