Boss Management

Barbara Reinhold

Director, Career Development Office
Smith College
Northampton, Massachusetts

Change is not a process for the impatient. It takes time -- a simple truth that many of us fail to realize. First, understand that the metabolism rate -- the tolerance for change -- of your boss or of your organization might be dramatically different from your own. Then look around. Find other people who are willing to take the journey of change with you. Never go at it alone. Undoubtedly, others in your company feel as you do. Your task is to find them.

In a previous job incarnation, I was director of student services and a member of the management team for an entire school system. At the first team meeting, I realized that there were only 7 women on the whole team, versus 41 men. In fact, the 7 of us were the first female administrators that the high school in that school district had ever had. So we formed a strategic support group. When the entire management team would meet every other Wednesday, we women wouldn't really acknowledge each other. But when the meeting was over, we would all meet for dinner -- at another location.

Those dinners were totally clandestine -- a very strategic, well-planned assault on the status quo. Our intention was not to kvetch but to relentlessly trickle our ideas and agenda into the system. We had very clear ideas about the changes that needed to take place. And we strategized ways to help one another advance these changes. We would prioritize the issues and then figure out who would push each idea forward and how.

We were secretive because we wanted to take the system by surprise. And we did not want anyone to dismiss our group as a silly feminist whim. We never couched any of our initiatives in personal or "feminist" terms. We taught each other a new language -- a language of business outcomes and organizational effectiveness. For years, we planted seeds of change within the organization and then sat back as the rest of the management team gradually came around to our point of view. We were quiet, but we were potent.

Barbara Reinhold (breinhold@smith.edu) is head of the career development office at Smith College and is an adjunct associate professor of psychology. She is also the author of Toxic Work: How to Overcome Stress, Overload and Burnout and Revitalize Your Career (Dutton, 1996).

Stephen Covey

Cochairman
Franklin Covey Co.
Provo, Utah

Don't get into the habit of broadcasting your boss's sins. Don't let yourself become a victim of your boss's weaknesses. And stop looking for evidence (in clandestine watercooler sessions with your colleagues) to justify your feelings about your terrible boss: how he's the source of your career block -- a traditionalist who flat-out resists change. If you fall into these habits, you'll become addicted with the "metastasizing cancers" of the workplace: complaining, criticizing, comparing, and competing. Instead, learn to manage your boss by focusing on your own circle of influence.

That circle includes all the things over which you have control. The first step: Make sure that your job is in order. If it's not, you have no credibility. Credibility is something you earn gradually by being one of the best performers. Also, don't bad-mouth your boss: Be loyal to people in their absence. Then watch how others begin having more faith and confidence in you, because they know that you won't be talking about them behind their backs. And finally, understand the place from which your boss -- or for that matter, any of your colleagues -- is coming from. Nothing is more validating and affirming than feeling understood. And the moment a person begins feeling understood, that person becomes far more open to influence and change.

Learn and practice the art of personal leadership, and see how it inspires those around you -- including your boss.

Stephen Covey (www.franklincovey.com) is an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, and organizational consultant. He has made principle-centered living and leadership his life's work. He is the author of many books, including the acclaimed best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Fireside, 1990), which has sold more than 10 million copies. It has been translated into 32 languages, and is sold in 72 countries.