1) Know your manager 2) Understand his objective. 3) Learn about his expectation 4) Show your personality professionally 5) Set boundaries ,6) Make yourself competent 7) Don’t take his words personally 8) Communicate clearly 9) Never hesitate to keep your opinion 10) Be honest at your work 11) Don’t lose yourself for pleasing them. 12) Set your own goals ,13) Don’t work harder than required .14) Consider changing jobs once in 2 years before age 30. 15) Gain more experience and be resilient 16) Document & seek support with HR, 17) Never encourage bad attitude & tones,18) Voice out on toxicity,19) Learn to stay calm and express yourself.20) Never try to relate with them.
Let’s move towards detailed explanation:
Know your manager without getting influenced from team:
Before concluding someone as good or bad, we should spend enough time to know the person. Also give preference to your own experience than listening the story from someone else in making idea about any situation or the person. Since behavior is certainly a two-way traffic, so when you know your manager through your collogues, probably you see the other part of coin.
- Understand his objective:
All organizations have their own goals, motivation & core values which a manager is supposed to meet by ensuring the employees working under him or her is adhering to it, hence you must be aware of manager’s perspectives & goals the way we are aware of syllabus before studying a subject. Work without understanding the goals will be incomplete & cause friction between manager & an employee.
- Show your personality professionally:
Personality is combination of an individual’s traits, behavior, basic nature & emotions hence each one of us differ in our personality. For example: Water has its nature to extinguish the fire & fire has its nature to burn the things. Both are important situationally, but both cannot be handled in same manner. Manager should know his people before handling the team, if you let him/her know of your basic nature, you have option to fight back for the unusual situation if ever arises.
- Set boundaries:
Establishing limit to let your manager know what is acceptable, safe & reasonable in your interaction & day to day business empowers you to exercise at your full potential. You must follow a discipline but beyond that must be addressed.
- Make yourself competent:
The word competent can be seen in two different ways:
One is growing professionally well enough to get recognition, being neck to neck with your colleagues but second one is, just being yourself & give best of your abilities, be straightforward & unapologetic, never try to please & impress anyone, rather focus on your goals & be authentic. I prefer the 2nd method to remain competent.
- Don’t take his words personally:
When manager say something in team meeting or while discussing any agenda, don’t assume anything because he or she deals with multiple people at different levels. Also sometimes under work pressure, people might act differently so avoiding taking anything personally until something said directly to you keeps you at peace.
- Communicate clearly:
Make a note of challenges you are facing, the way you expect it should be, your ideas, plans & suggestions on the issues. You write an email & schedule some time for the one to one, this not only documents the issues but this approach is unavoidable & one will not take you lightly. Clear communication is key to solve the problem.
- Never hesitate to keep your opinion:
You have the right to keep your opinion at workplace in a professional way. Organize your thoughts, be objective & share your views. Never fear the rejections, it’s part of process. Rejections give us an opportunity to learn & grow but suppressing your opinion is not good for emotional health.
- Be honest at your work:
Being honest at whatever we do, makes us bold & confident. Quality over quantity speaks volume. Never compromise with the standard and values you create. Doing less numbers can be acceptable but doing anything with half heart & mistakes can fire you back, so we should follow the rules: “Honesty is the best policy”.
- Don’t lose yourself for pleasing them:
No matter how hard you try, you cannot make someone else happy until they actually like you. When you try to please someone, you end up in unhappiness. It’s not necessary to like & get liked by people we work with, so we should not give up on our own self. Do what is needed, ignore the response. Focus only on your happiness. Only when you are happy, things will fall the way you wish.
- Set your own goals:
You should have your own goal or motivation points to move on daily basis. Other’s motivation is temporary but self-motivation is permanent. Find your own interest area and work on it. This gives you a sense of fulfillments.
- Don’t work harder than required:
There will be someone to break the limit of working hours & efficiency at workplace & your manager can give the reference of that one giant, but you have to decide the requirements. You have to look at the pay scale, expected standards, being on above average on scale of bare minimum to last point will keep you emotionally healthy.
- Consider changing jobs once in 2 years before age 30
As you don’t have much responsibilities within age 30 & moving from one location to another also is not a challenge, hence you must change work frequently to gain experience & exposure. You get less exploited & working with multiple managers help you identify the difference between good & bad boss. Also beware of soft-spoken people who exploits you without letting you know, at least you are prepared for the bad one.
- Gain more experience and be resilient:
Gaining more experience & exposure makes us more resilient however we should not entertain the incorrect behavior of someone at workplace, rather we learn how to identify & address it fearlessly.
- Document & seek support with HR:
Whichever triggers you and disturbs your peace, you must make a note of it. You communicate effectively over formal means like outlook or teams to your manager & if you find, talking to him will not result in any solution, you must take it to HR.
- Never encourage bad attitude & tones
Pick the right moment & call out that you don’t appreciate the bad tones & wrong attitude. Explain them the effect of their behavior & attitude on your perspective towards work & life. After saying, observe the changes, if at all there is no change, irrespective of who the person is & what’s his/her position, you mirror their tone & attitude in the response, if the organization is good, the issue will get attention & outcome will be positive. Bad is bad & must be addressed.
- Voice out on toxicity:
Keep a record, document the ill behavior, collect evidence, discuss with trustable collogues & approach to the person who can address it effectively. Toxicity should not be entertained.
- Learn to stay calm and express yourself:
Being in your own self gives you happiness. Practice to remain positive & say yourself positive things that, nothing can impact you until you allow. Building healthy life style, associating with people with right attitude helps you in staying calm.
- Never try to relate with them.
Since there is gross difference in terms of role, responsibilities, connections & pay, never expect that you can relate yourself with your boss or he will be able to understand what you feel until you express your requirements. Remain non relatable & help yourself by communicating effectively.
People also ask! FAQs
How to deal with toxic boss?
You have access to perform, improve your metrices, make your data strong & keep your book of records clean & handy. You cannot control other’s behavior but you can choose to respond wisely. You can still mirror him by mirroring him or by showing the body language that you do not like his toxicity. Adress it to right person like HR or senior management by providing evidence. If it doesn’t help, work towards cha