Yasim's Blog

Would you like a better boss? A boss who helps you obtain valuable information, win needed resources, and secure important support for your group and for you personally — in short, a boss who's a real ally and partner? If your boss provides these benefits, you're lucky. We hear far more complaints than praise from people about their bosses. If you're unlucky, this blog is for you, and its message is simple — your relationship with your boss is less a matter of luck than you think. When we talk to managers with complaints, we find they usually assume the relationship rests entirely in the hands of the boss. It is what the boss makes it, and there's little they can do to change it. Do you assume that it's your boss who sets the tone in your relationship? If so, test that assumption. Almost certainly, you have more ability than you think to shape how you work together. After all, it's a relationship of mutual dependence. You each need the other to succeed. Unless ...

The first thing to recognize about collaboration is that it is something that best happens over a period of time, with a "warm-up" period before critical work happens. Just like a runner, you don't want to do a 10K cold. You need to get things loosened up first. Recent study among college students indicate that, student moving into the workforce are even less well prepared for good collaborative experiences since collaboration requires empathy, being able to look at a problem from other peoples' perspectives. Unless you are going for a "Team of Rivals" approach, sustainable collaboration is best when the people know and trust each other. Ideally they have met in person, know a bit about each other personally as well as professionally, have a sense of communication and work styles, and what the individual strengths, weaknesses and points of view are. Companies need to consciously and actively help people get to know each other in these ways as much as possi...