How I Learned To Manage My Super Bosses To Work With Happiness

Manage people to work with happiness

Background

I worked in an organization where females were floating in different positions. I was the middle management head and above me, there were three super bosses.

All the three bosses above me were male. Look at the irony! No female in the highest platform and only 3 males in the junior and middle level. It was rather an unequal situation of male-female spread.

The idea here however is not the male-female projection or diversity but the point that I had only 3 people above me and they were all males. Bosses are bosses whether they are males or females and you have to learn to manage them to be happy working in an organization.

Let us see how I learned to manage my bosses and lead a perfectly happy existence.

How did I learn to manage my three super bosses?

Understanding the organization and its goals

When we join an organization, we must first find out certain things about an organization

Objectives and goals of the organization: Before learning anything, when you join a new workplace, the first thing to do is to understand the objectives and goals of an organization? What are the primary and secondary goals that we have to attain while being in this organization?

Vission and mission: The next thing that we must learn about is the vision and mission of the organization. This will make us understand where exactly do we have to take the organization. What is the direction to move in? What is our mapping or road towards success?

Organization chart: Once we are clear about the goals and vision and mission, we must look at the organization chart and understand where we stand. What is my position? How many people are senior to me? How many people are in the same working position as me? How many junior to me?

A look at objectives and goals, vision and mission, and the organization chart will give a lot of clarity of your own function in this organization.

This is the first thing that I did and became familiar with my pattern of working in the new organization

Analyzing my bosses

Once I became familiar with my pattern of working and what was I to do to perform, I set about understanding my bosses. I was told that they were difficult bosses.

What did I do? I analyzed the styles of bosses.

The styles of bosses are

• The Workaholic
• The micromanager
• The narcissist
• The ghost
• The gaslighter.

The workaholic boss: Workaholics have one of two styles. Either they draw strength from controlling people or derive strength from empowering people. Generally, such bosses are the first to come and last to go and flood the inbox with emails and to-do lists. It is quite a struggle to work for such bosses.

The micromanager boss: Micromanagers control you from far and do not delegate the work properly but criticize you all the time for the work that you do.

The narcissist boss: A narcissist boss thinks no one is better than him and the organization will fail if he leaves. Narcissists require constant admiration. They claim credit for other's work.

The ghost boss: The ghost is never seen in the office but he manages from behind the curtains. Such managers do not give any guidance. They leave their staff to run whole projects without any assistance, and swoop in at the last minute and criticize the work that is produced.

The gaslighter: The gaslighter keeps you in a good mood making you happy and comfortable and discredits your work in front of others. He is a toxic leader and he goes out of his way to see that you do not develop or learn anything.

Out of these types of styles of bosses, their traits were obvious. These were that I had to deal with a workaholic, a control freak, and the third, a narcisist, a micromanager and a gaslighter having three traits in one person .

All the three superbosses were workaholics and control freaks. They were also extroverts.

How I learned to manage my bosses

Boss 1: The workaholic was always working and making life difficult for others. He wanted daily reports from everyone and then he would cross-tally them. If someone had done some work that you had not done then you would be questioned. There were emails from early morning till night and plans for every day.

In the beginning, I worked all the time and it was never enough. The more I worked the more the work expanded and my table was always full of work. Then I learned to frame time schedules. I gave dates for my work. I would submit it on that date.

This eliminated one major super boss's problem and created a happy environment.

Boss 2: The workaholic boss pushed the other two bosses who would control me and ask for work done. I learned to have coffee with one of them every day and never to go home without discussing the work done and the work for the next day.

He discussed everything in detail and became very friendly with me. He began to trust me completely and had full confidence that I would never tell him a lie. I never did. I shared all the work details with him every day and he was very happy with my work.

Gaining trust and confidence was so important for a person who was a workaholic and who was pushed by another workaholic to keep things in order.

Boss 3: The third boss was jealous to the core but never showed it and unfortunately I did not recognize it at all in the beginning. Slowly it became very obvious. Meetings began to be held in my absence and information was withheld. Luckily for me since the two bosses recognized my work the third boss could not succeed at all, however much he tried.

I still began to document every communication that I had and so it was difficult for the person to outwit me. The trial and tribulation went on but I continued to work without any fear or scare and small incidents happened but nothing serious.

The takeaways

• Never be afraid to face challenges in life. The first thing is to identify the problem and to face it.
• Life’s situations at work are not easy. You have to be careful not to tread on other’s shoes. Gaslighters try their best to see that you are discredited but if your main super bosses are happy with your work, one can be thankfully ignored. Also, they do not always succeed.
• If you are organized and love your work, you will do it sincerely no one can point a finger at you. The workaholic bosses also recognize sincerity and hard work.
• Wherever you work you must learn and find out the culture and objectives and goals of the particular institution. The vision and mission statement should always be adhered to.
• Communicate with your bosses and find out their expectations. Communication and discussions are important.

Last thoughts

Always remember no matter who you work with, sincerity at work is very important.

It brings merit and gives you credit.

There are challenges but after you identify the problem it can be taken care of.

Bosses are human beings and you must find out their traits to be able to deal with them.

Wherever you work it should be with happiness. If all your attempts still do not work and the place is toxic it is time to move out.

I would like to quote that I loved to think what Benjamin Disraeli said

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

©Dr. Preeti Singh, 2021.