How do you manage your manager?

Dear Sergio,

Would kindly elaborate a little bit on your statement " Employees must make their bosses work, not the other way around".

Sure. Bossess are accountable for making the work of people under its suppervision easy and as happy as they can. Things like clarify the work to do, giving the needed tools and recources to do the work, stablishing the priorities, are all bossess work. Some people talk about self-organized teams which it does not mean that for those people bossess or how organizations like to call them have to facilitate people work.

Dear Sergio,
Thanks for the explanation/clarification.
I like the below statement “Bosses are accountable for making the work of people under its supervision easy and as happy as they can”.
I have worked with some managers where they used to delegate the staff only regardless if it is understood or not by their team and unfortunately this was source of conflict always with this style of management.

Best Regards,
Riad

Riad,

while I am not Sergio, I agree to his statement.

Employees or team members are the specialists, the people who know how to do something. Managers often specialize in assigning work, developing people and other things. They are many times not better specialists than the team members.

In this context, it would be good if a manager can listen to his people and have empathy about what they need to do a good job. And vice versa, employees better have a point to go to for support. Good managers provide a lot of support to their specialists.

In my job in a matrix organization, I was happy to report to up to 5 bosses at one time. So I had the resources of 5 different people to support my work. This was easy.

With all due respect I take exception to Sergio's statement: "Bosses are accountable for making the work of people under its supervision easy and as happy as they can".

In my project world, bosses are accountable for project delivery . However, I do accept the theory that keeping an employee informed and happy is the best way to motivated an employee and a motivated employee produces better work.

That being said, keeping employees happy does not necessarily translate to a successful project delivery. It's only part of the equation. As an employee I never asked for "easy" work, I asked for clear direction and expectations.

Yes there are bad bosses out there and the boss has the advantage in a work relationship. However, don't spend too much effort complaining about the boss and look in the mirror. You'll have much more success managing what you can control (yourself) than looking for an excuses for failure.