Don’t Respect Your Boss? Try These 3 Tactics*

One day, whilst having a workshop discussion about getting buy-in to your personal brand from your key audiences (what I refer to as your ‘A-Listers’), an interesting question came my way:

“What should you do when the A-Lister you need to buy-into your personal brand is someone whose own brand you don’t respect?”

It’s a common situation, judging by similar questions I’ve been asked, and more often than not, the A-Lister in question is the person’s boss. (Indeed, it’s a situation I’ve found myself in during my corporate career.)

Unless changing jobs and getting a new boss is an option, there’s a limit to what you can do. But you can at least to something, using these three tried and tested tactics. (Tried and tested by me, when I had the boss I didn’t respect.)

1. Stand back and review the situation

So long as your boss is your boss, you’re going to have to work with them. The aim, therefore, should be to dial down the feelings you experience when you interact with them – be it annoyance, frustration, anger or anything else.

How?

The first step is to realise – and it took me a long time to do this myself – how much effort it takes to be annoyed/frustrated/angry, as well as the knock-on effects of that.

In my case, I became pre-occupied with just how much of an idiot my boss was, digging around in every interaction for another example of their stupidity. Once I found it, my ire would increase and my stress levels would follow suit – to the point of making life miserable not just at work, but at home too.

That’s when I really stood back and reviewed the situation.

Instead of looking at everything from my point of view, I tried to look at it from my boss’s. (It was hard as we were wired so differently, which was the heart of the problem.)

I thought about what might be driving them (in this case, a need to feel in control by micromanaging me and never being left out of the loop). I also thought about how I might be coming across to them.

For instance, because I wanted to keep our conversations to a minimum, I never sat down when I talked to them; I’d simply approach where they were sitting and loom over them. Looked at from their viewpoint, that could be quite intimidating.

I realised I had to change my behaviour (as they say, ‘If you keep doing what you always did, you’ll keep getting what you always got’). So I decided to do the next step…

2. Oil the wheels

It’s in your best interests to work with, not against, your boss – oiling the wheels of your relationship.

That doesn’t mean just rolling over and agreeing with everything they say. What it does mean is being more tactical – thinking about the little things you can do that, whilst costing you only minimum effort (and perhaps a gritting of teeth) can pay big dividends.

For instance, even though I’m someone who likes to paddle their own canoe (hence why I found it galling to have to run things by my boss) I started telling them what I was up to. More than that, I would sometimes ask their advice. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do (after that many years’ experience it’d be shabby if I didn’t). However, I knew it made them feel valued for me to do so.

I also made sure what I was communicating with both my spoken and body language was more convivial (I’d sit at their desk when we talked). On occasions, having made myself look for the positives rather than the negatives, I’d even compliment them.

After a while, our relationship improved, my stress levels dropped the wheels ran more smoothly.

3. Move up the A-List ladder

As I keep harping on about, authenticity and consistency are key to a strong personal brand. If oiling the wheels is a step too far and you’d feel like a fraud, gritting your teeth to the point you had no gnashers left, there is another option: promote your brand further up the chain.

Make sure your boss’s boss is aware of who you are and what you deliver, or if you can, raise your profile even further up the hierarchy. (I’ve been lucky that past jobs often led me to work directly with the CEO.)

By promoting your brand and building a positive reputation with a wider range of A-Listers, you can diminish the effect on your work and career from the eejit directly above you. Who knows? You might discover you’re not the only one who doesn’t respect your boss’s personal brand.

*Despite what the picture might suggest, I’m not advocating violence as a coping tactic.