Choose your boss carefully

In today’s times, with frequent job changes being made by most professionals, when one is switching a job what is one looking for – a higher level, more compensation, stocks, career, learning opportunities, organization, and location? But one is missing an extremely important factor – that is the kind of Boss one will be working for. Have you ever thought of choosing your Boss?

Normally, Bosses choose their team members based on the tasks at hand and their preferences. How will you feel if you also evaluate and select the right boss? I can share my personal experience that doing this well can make a big impact on your performance as well as your work life. Even in my recent roles at the senior level as CXO, while I had a large team working with me, I also had a boss in CEO/ MD, who immensely contributed to my success, job satisfaction, and quality of life.

Gone are the days when work used to be the only important thing in life and people used to work for 12-16 hours, ignoring their health, family, and friends. The new generation is definitely more aware, demanding, and clear about their priorities. They want to achieve a nice work-life balance. I strongly believe that the boss has a very important role to play in your quality of work life, opportunities made available as well as work-life balance.

What kind of boss you should choose?

In one of my jobs during the early part of my career, I had a boss who was very friendly, easy to work with, less demanding, had no interference, and just used to assign the work and accept whatever I delivered. At the same time, I used to see my batchmates working in other teams, under much more stress and having very limited time to spare for fun and outing, unlike me. It was a cool life with no pressure and a lot of time to spare.

Was he a good Boss? Initially, I thought so and enjoyed my spare time in the recreation room, cafeteria, and so on. But I soon realized that I was actually underutilizing myself, missing much-needed on-the-job learning, and not adding any value to my experience, unlike other friends. Immediately, I started looking for challenging opportunities within the organization and chose a Boss who was generally not very popular, as he had much higher expectations from his team members and used to make us work on challenging assignments.

Traits of a good boss:

The set of traits that one should look for in their boss should not be considered static for all points in time during the career. Mostly, we would aspire to have an ideal boss, who has all the positive and desired traits but that is not always possible. It is therefore realistic to look for some priority traits at different stages of your career, that should be preferred, and other add-ons may be a bonus.

Accordingly, in this article, I have identified certain indicative traits that one should look for in their boss at different stages of their career.

At the early career stage, it is advisable to have a boss who assigns challenging assignments, invests time in planning your career, and focuses on Skill requirements and training needs.

At a mid-career stage, one may prefer to have a boss who helps in career growth, appreciates good work, provides constructive feedback, has an empathetic approach, owns failures, drives Retention, and celebrates every small win.

In the later part of the career, when one has reached a relatively senior level, one expects a boss who delegates authority, is supportive and trustworthy, doesn’t micromanage, and understands that you have a personal life.

You can also view this in a concise manner in the below model.

How to choose the right boss

Although it is difficult to completely assess and choose a perfect boss, one can give it a fair attempt, which could definitely help in avoiding the extreme situation. The following approaches can help in a big way to get a very good idea about the person, one is going to work with.

• Social Media Research – Locate your prospective boss on various social media platforms like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. Check their profile, and go through the posts, responses, career growth, achievements, and recognitions – that would give a fair idea about various aspects of her personality.

• Reverse assessment during interviews – Traditionally interviews have been a one-way process but you should make it a two-way process so that both interviewer and the candidate have the opportunity to assess each other. Mark his body language, framing of questions, reaction to your responses, attitude, and behavior.

• Ask intelligent questions - At end of the interview, ask thoughtful questions to know about his career path, challenging assignments, roles handled, present positioning in the organization, and family life.

• Interact with Team members - Ask the recruitment team to arrange calls with the team members that you will be joining. During the conversation, try assessing their work life, team culture, Boss behavior, and related aspects like delegation, micro-management, and leadership style.

• Use your network - Connect with your contacts to collect more information about the prospective organization as well as the Boss. You may also be able to find certain common connections on your Linkedin, who can be of help.

Based on all the inputs received from various sources, match them with your expectations from the Boss, and use your gut to decide whether you would like to work with him/her or not. Whether a person like this will be right to mentor you in helping build your career?

Trust your gut and hope you pick the right boss.

So while looking for a next job, you should look for all the aspects like Role, Learning and Growth opportunities, Compensation, Location, and Organization Culture but on top of all –

Do Choose the Right Boss.

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