ELLE Asks: 'I Love My Job But Not My Boss, What Should I Do?'
ASK ELLE: 'I love my job and the work I do, but recently got a new manager who I struggle to work with. The new dynamic is making me miserable. I don’t want to quit, but I’m not sure what else to do. Help!'
ELLE's Agony Aunt Sharmadean Reid: 'I always think of managers like I do school teachers. A good one can make the year a pleasant experience, a great one can change your life. But a bad teacher? That can traumatise you and make you hate getting out of bed in the morning, so I understand why you feel the dynamic is making you miserable.
When dealing with difficult people, I treat it like a personal challenge – coming to work every day with the task to build a healthy working relationship and feel that I have some control of the situation. And the way I do it is this: I urge you to write a Guide To Working With Me, like I have. This document gets out all the elements of your identity, your work, your motivations and your productivity. It’s a series of questions to uncover everything about the way you like to work and get closer to ensuring that the eight or more hours a day you spend at work are working for you.
Why is this important? The process of asking yourself these questions will help you understand exactly what it is about the dynamic of your manager that you find isn’t healthy for you. It might be that you like to brainstorm in meetings, whereas their belief is that you ought to come to meetings prepared with a list of ideas. Or maybe they schedule client calls at 3pm when you prefer to do them in the morning when your brain is more alert. Neither way is right or wrong but the Guide can help you uncover where the miscommunication may be.
Once you've written your Guide, send it to your manager with the following note: 'It’s important to me to do great work while under your supervision; here is a guide on how to get the best out of me.' And if you’re feeling sassy you can also say: 'Here is the template if you’d like to do yours. I’d love to get to know your ways of working as quick as possible so that we can achieve more for the business together.'
FIND OUT MORE ON ELLE COLLECTIVE
They may think you’re utterly precious or that you’re genius. You and your manager might even find a new formed bond over shared morning routines, who knows? Either way you’ve set your boundaries and expectations very clearly in a fun and informative way and you have put the ball in their court. While I love the challenge of smoothing over a relationship, I also think life is way too short to be where you are not wanted. If you’ve given them a manual on how to get the best out of you and they decide to ignore it then maybe it’s time to move teams, role or company.
Read my Guide and get your template here.
And if you have a work woe or money dilemma for Sharmadean email ELLEASKS@ELLEUK.COM with your question and we'll get them answered, ASAP.
ELLE Collective is a new community of fashion, beauty and culture lovers. For access to exclusive content, events, inspiring advice from our Editors and industry experts, as well the opportunity to meet designers, thought-leaders and stylists, become a member today HERE.
You Might Also Like
