How to Deal With New Boss?
You always don’t meet your new boss during interviews when you join an organization. Very few can do that. If you’re lucky, you may get the last round of interviews with them, but judging someone within a few minutes is not easy.
So, to help you deal with the new boss, we need to assume a few things.
- First, your new boss is assumed to be difficult to deal with. Why are we making this assumption? It’s because if your he/she is easy to deal with, you may not need to read this article.
- Second, it’s also assumed that you’re overwhelmed with the position you have been offered and don’t have a clue how to approach your new boss so you can create a lasting impression on them.
- Third, you are more emotional and sensitive; even minor criticism hurts your core. So if he/she remarks something about you, your persona, or your work, you take things into the heart.
We’re assuming these extremes because nothing can surpass these three assumptions when you join a new job and face your new boss. And it would be easier on our part to help you succeed in your new job and create a great impression on your new boss.
First Things First
You need to know a few things to effectively deal with he/she. Applying the strategies below will be much easier if you use these things first. Let’s look at the few things that will ease the tension within you, and you will be perfectly ready to deal with your new boss.
Remember, we’re assuming the above three, which we mentioned before.
Minority
Imagining your new boss takes a lot of work to deal with. It can easily be said that he/she lies within a minor portion of all new bosses. There are very few good new bosses and very few problematic bosses. More than 90% of bosses lie in between them. So, remember, when you’re dealing with your demanding new boss, you’re dealing with someone who is a minority in the field. Realizing this will ease your tension and will make you calmer.
Strategy vs. Emotion
When someone joins the organization, it’s natural to get scared and panicky occasionally. Because when you join, everything is new, and you don’t know how to deal with these situations. But remember, even if you are very emotional and sensitive, you need to think more of strategy than emotion while dealing with he/she. “My new boss is a blah blah blah” will not solve the problem. Instead, you must calm down and strategize how to deal with the new boss.
Examine the New Situation
Instead of panicking, relax and observe. Having a difficult new boss is one part of the whole job. Your job, benefits, co-workers, growth opportunities, and treatment from other supervisors and top management may be suitable. So, instead of judging your new job through your new boss is a foolish idea. Think of things about why you joined this job in the first place.
Be Compassionate
Don’t think that your new boss is challenging to deal with. Think from a distance. Ask yourself why they are difficult to deal with. What is the problem with your new boss? If you dig, you will find that maybe he/she is pressured by their boss or from childhood, they were not dealt with love. So, try to be compassionate. It’s hard. But new information about your new boss will help you become more empathetic to them.
Be Honest
Instead of blaming them for their difficulty, ask yourself, are you part of the problem? Do they deal with others in a similar way or just with you? Do you have any habit that makes your new boss super-angry? Go within and find out. Observe yourself for a week. If you don’t find anything wrong within you, then you would be sure the problem doesn’t lie on your side.
Strategies to Deal With Your New Boss
It’s time to articulate the strategies to deal with your boss more effectively.
Let’s begin.
Strategy 1: Prepare Yourself for the Engagement
If you know in your heart that this job is good and can offer you growth opportunities in your career, you won’t like to get stopped by one person, yes, you guessed it right, your new boss. So what to do in that case?
First, you need to deal with he/she day in and day out, even when you don’t want to. And secondly, you need to report to them your progress whether you care or not.
So, it’s better to take an approach to help you work with them.
Here’s what you should do to effectively engage with your new boss.
- Find out a few commonalities between you and them. They may be very few, but list them down and plan to talk about them quite often. If you can talk about things you both like during lunch or any coffee break, the difficult air between you and your new boss will disappear. You will be able to become more accessible in talking to them and asking for their guidance.
- Even if you don’t like how they deal with you, find something you may like about them. Maybe their passion is to play a particular instrument. Ask them about how to play the instrument. This is to connect with the deepest core of your boss.
Strategy 2: Find Out Something You Can Learn From Your New Boss
It’s easy to find something from your new boss. As they are your new boss, something has made them your boss. So, find one or two things you can learn from them. Here’s how you should approach the whole situation.
- Take a five-minute meeting with your boss. Not very often, but twice a week is ideal. In that meeting, you need to prove three things –
- First, ensure you want to know your boss’s thoughts about your current work.
- Second, ask them about one thing you can improve to deliver better results.
- Third, tell them you want to learn something from them.
- Notice them very carefully; don’t skip them. When you notice their moves, you will see that even if they are challenging to deal with, they have something (maybe organizational skills or getting things done quickly by others) that you can learn. The best time to learn a new skill from your new boss is after work. Take 15-20 minutes after work and ask them whether you can learn a particular thing’s basics if they are not busy. They may say no. But try again until you can get to sit with them and know. This will improve the relationship between you and your boss.
Strategy 3: Thank Your New Boss Quite Often and Talk Good About Them Behind Their Back
The above strategy may or may not work, but you must be willing to make it work. If the five-minute meeting and being curious work with your boss, well and good; otherwise, you need to bend the strategy to get their attention. Why is attention necessary? Even if your new boss is difficult to deal with, they are human first.
Here’s what you should do to bend the strategy.
- Even if there’s little room for saying ‘thank you’ to your boss, find minor things and say ‘thank you.’ If you don’t get anything to talk about, add a ‘thank you’ note once in a while with your email regarding work. You can say, “Thank you for the opportunity to work with you.” Even this line will do wonders.
- If your new boss is challenging to deal with, they have earned many reputations for being bad among other people. Work on repairing it. Find good things about them and publicly talk about those good things. You can speak like – “You all may not like how they treat you, but they have a heart of gold. Every month they pay 5% of their salary to charity. I like that about them.” If you do it quite often, there will be two things that will happen.
- First, the reputation of your new boss will improve, and your words will at least make other people think about their perception of your new boss.
- Second, they will get to know that you’re constantly talking well about them in public. This will improve your relationship with them.
Strategy 4: Find Someone Who Can Help You Deal With Your New Boss
If the above strategy doesn’t work or works in bits and pieces, you need help from someone senior in this organization. Understand that you can’t blame or complain against your new boss to them, but you will learn what you need to know from them to deal with your boss effectively. Here’s how.
- Talk to that senior person that you want to learn a thing or two from them, which can help you get good at specific skills. Make sure you find someone extremely good with people. Ask them how they do it. And learn.
- Once you learn the things, apply them and see whether they work. If you find any difficulty, ask them for guidance in that particular situation.
- In most cases, senior people are always ready to teach. But make sure of two things – One, and they are not taking advantage of you in ways (meaning they are not sharing everything you say with your boss). Thus, you mustn’t take any names during your conversation, even after seeing they are trustworthy.
Strategy 5: Break Food With Your New Boss
This great strategy always works irrespective of people and their differences. Here’s how you should approach the whole situation.
- Find out what your boss likes to eat. You can ask your senior colleagues. Don’t make it obvious; ask in between a food conversation.
- If you’re a good cook, you can prepare or order the food yourself. Then eat together with your boss. Nothing is more powerful than breaking the food with someone challenging to deal with. It eases up the tension between you and creates a harmonious relationship.
- Many of you may think it’s a sort of oiling your new boss. But it’s not. You don’t need to disrespect yourself to do that. See, you need to work in your current organization for some time, and it’s obvious that if you need to work here, you must always deal with your boss. Why not try to create a harmonious relationship where your self-respect is not at stake?
Use these above strategies and see whether you can effectively deal with your new boss. Yes, we know that everything will not work out for everyone. Pick something that speaks to you and discard the other/s.
A word of advice:
- Don’t pick everything at once.
- Try one at a time.
- Decide a time, maybe a month.
- For one month, implement one strategy.
- See whether it works or not.
- If it works, keep on doing it.
- If not, go to the next and see it for one month again.
- See again whether it works or not.
- In this way, try all (if you’re open).
We assure you that one or two strategies above will work in dealing with your demanding new boss.
