Surviving a new boss
By Anne-Marie Moodie | theage.com.au | 04 July
When Hayley West moved to Australia to take a job as a human resources manager for an industrial equipment manufacturer, her new boss was nothing like her old one.
"In New Zealand I worked for a young woman I always touted as my best boss," West says. "But my new boss was a man whose style was conservative and direct. I had been used to a young, charismatic woman."
The human resources professional had three options: leave, put up with the situation or try to change it. Taking the third option, she sat down with her boss to give him some feedback about how she needed to be managed.
"I needed more structure and more feedback." His response was receptive and he made all the changes she requested. "Now I'm 100 per cent engaged and I buy into every bit of his agenda."
In the excitement of winning a position, it can be easy to overlook the finer details of the job, including how to deal with your new boss. West, who also runs a special interest group on employee attraction, recruitment and retention for the Australian Human Resources Institute, has some advice on the best ways to handle a new boss.
"I've learned that when you start a new job or get a new boss, it's stressful and the situation only adds to the stress unless you deal with it. It's easy to give up but I'd advise giving it a go first," West says.
The ideal time to explore a new boss's approach is at the job interview. Be aware that other interviewers on the panel may give biased answers. Consider contacting them privately to discuss the chief's management style.
If you're already in the job and the relationship isn't as smooth as it could be, West advises figuring out how you can work together.
Dealing with changes in management personnel is a reality of today's workplace. In a survey analysing chief executive officer turnover at the world's largest 2500 publicly traded corporations, management consultants Booz Allen found that 357 chief executives (or almost 15 per cent of all surveyed) left their post last year. This is up almost 60 per cent from a decade earlier.
Chief executive turnover has increased, which means that working with a new boss is likely to be regular occurrence.
To avoid being sacked, demoted or "encouraged" to leave by a new boss requires a range of tactical approaches. The most important is to forget the past, says Kevin Coyne, a professor of strategy at the Harvard Business School.
"The new boss is eager to implement a new agenda and doesn't want to hear about your issues, squabbles with other executives or how you've been mistreated," Coyne has told the US media.
Instead of identifying problems, suggest solutions. "When the new chief is under pressure to improve performance and boost the company's share price, you need a game plan that can get results ... Let the new boss know that you want to be on the team and ask how you can help."
Organisational behaviourist and senior lecturer at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, Dr Paul Nesbit, says preconceived ideas held by the new boss and the subordinates are the foundation for the success or failure of the new relationship.
"When people go into a leadership role, they often have an implicit model of leadership they try to emulate," says Nesbit, who teaches a managerial self-development course.
"The most common mistake a new manager makes is to try to immediately stamp their impression on the job. Instead they need to understand leadership is about leading people, making sure everything is going well and making incremental improvements. This is especially the case because new subordinates also have an implicit expectation of what it means to be led and what it means to lead."
Nesbit gives the example of a past student who had recently become a store manager in a large retail company. Despite his requests to the contrary, he was unable to encourage the staff to leave the tearoom tidy and clean. Frustrated, his first managerial decision was to ban tea and coffee-making facilities in the staff room.
"With hindsight, it's a very minor issue but the problem grew to be so big that it involved the union because tea breaks were part of the employees' award," Nesbit says.
"Even though it was quite a while ago in this person's career, his memory of it is fresh and he regrets making the decision. However, he learned not to react too quickly and avoid a dictatorial management style."
Another common problem occurs when the new boss is a former co-worker. "The typical error made by the new boss in these circumstances is to try to maintain distance, which translates to extreme distance when they tell their former co-workers and friends, but now subordinates, to do something. It's a difficult balancing act."
Ian Burgess, the new chief executive of the Australian Orthopaedic Association, started his role in the middle of this year.
Burgess says listening is critical to garner support from the staff as well as to learn as much as possible about the organisation. "The trick is to be able to discriminate and sift through what you're being told in order to find out what's important."
An understanding of the organisation's financial position is an obvious first objective as well as making some early achievements, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. "The symbolism of early successes sends an important message to staff," Burgess says.
First published by TheAge.com.au on July 04 2008
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