 | | Heidi Younger |
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Remember the good old days, when you could clear up an ambiguously curt email from your boss with a stroll by her desk? Or when the anxiety of getting a dreaded "We need to chat" Slack message could be alleviated with a quick pop-in? |
If only we knew how good we had it! |
By this point, those of us who have moved to working from home have figured out the big stuff. Maybe your kitchen doubles as a desk now, and your pet has become a frequent surprise guest on your Zoom meetings, but nearly a year into the pandemic and most of us are making it work. But there are certain things about communicating digitally that don't always translate so easily, and of those things, experts said, is how we communicate with our bosses. And if yours wasn't great before the age of working from home, odds are he or she hasn't improved. |
But that doesn't mean there isn't hope to salvage the relationship — and now, as pandemic fatigue has fully set in, may be a better time than ever, said Mollie West Duffy, a co-author of "No Hard Feelings," which looks at how emotions affect our work lives. |
"We know through research that we're much more likely to read into a lack of emotion in digital communication as being negative, because we're missing all the context cues," Ms. West Duffy said. "So if your boss says, 'I want to chat tomorrow,' without saying something like, 'I think you did a great job and I just have some comments' you're going to assume your boss has something negative to say." |
She added that because a return to normalcy is kinda-sorta on the horizon, "we're in a transitional moment, and we like to capitalize on transition moments because it makes having these conversations that can be awkward a little less awkward." |
Outside of the work itself, a lot of the time, a poor relationship with one's manager can boil down to bad communication, said Mary Abbajay, author of "Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work and Succeed With Any Type of Boss." This was true in normal times, and even more so now that we're unable to read body language and other nonverbal cues that provide useful context and information when we communicate. Establishing how to interact is just as important as the actual communication itself. |
"A lot of times we have conflict because we prefer different forms of communication," Ms. Abbajay said. "You want to make sure you're having conversations with your colleagues around how you want to communicate and what kinds of things are going to be communicated in what way." |
She added: "Make sure that you're communicating and adapting to other people's preferences in terms of getting their attention and time." |
Now is as good a time as any to check in and have these talks, as annual reviews may be happening and the new year is a good excuse to do an evaluation about what's working and what's not. |
Directness, Ms. West Duffy said, is often the best way to get what you need from your manager, and being proactive and naming an issue rather than hoping it will go away on its own can help give you agency in improving a bad situation. |
"If you think the relationship isn't great, chances are your boss thinks that, too," she said. "Just naming that and saying, 'I know it's been difficult to communicate,' and being on the same page during the pandemic" can clear the air and help you train your manager on how best to manage you. |
Having these conversations is never easy, but going into them well-prepared can help you get what you need from them, Ms. Duffy West said. Write down what you think the pain points are, and think through the language you want to use to discuss them. Use statements of fact, like "When you do this, it affects me this way," and avoid ambiguity by saying, "Help me understand" the issue. |
"It helps us mentally to go into these conversations not only knowing the topics, but knowing the words you'll say," Ms. Duffy West said. |
Also keep in mind that your managers are dealing with their own stressors at home outside of the job, and have compassion and empathy about the ways that may be influencing their approach to work, Ms. Abbajay said. |
Added Ms. West Duffy: "We don't know what's going in someone's personal lives, home lives, the calls they've just been on. We just have this one little slice, and emotions bleed into other meetings and we just don't know. So there is a little bit of giving them the benefit of the doubt and depersonalizing it a little bit." |
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