Why your manager should talk to you?
We usually come across a discussions, articles where managers have trouble managing associates due to numerous reasons which eventually leads to people management training’s, tools and resources and anything which helps them to do their job better.
Being in a manager role for sometime I believe its not hard job if you educate associate to manage themselves and then eventually manage you. This can significantly minimize and reduce the time spend on people tools required to manage people.
I wouldn’t give you list to follow when you have conversations with your manager but I would definitely recommend few things which have/has been very helpful to me as an associate. (I personally believe that you are always an associates.)
Every manager has asked to have regular conversation with an associate for numerous reasons but eventually frequency of one on one’s goes down and at some point of time you both avoid having conversations. In most of the cases, the reason is your are not making your conversations productive. Think, why your manager would be interested in talking to you? how many of your conversations turned into ideas? This doesn’t mean you don’t talk about regular agenda item, what it means is that you need to discuss ideas, thinking outside the box or something which makes both of you feel not only satisfied but also energized, inspired and have more conversations which leads to build strong relationship. This leads to second point.
Talk little bit strategy. It doesn’t matter what position you are at, you can always discuss your portion of strategy and share with the person who could help you to take it forward. your manager. Again I am not saying you shouldn’t be talking about strategy anywhere else but your manager can help you to connect with right folks. Your strategic conversation could probably turn into strong feature, project or product tomorrow. This helps in two ways, highlights how much you care about everything that you do and second contributes to team success.
Last and important point if you are reporting to remote manager. Help her to understand your culture. You don’t need to talk about your culture in your regular conversations but you can definitely highlight differences. You can in fact give tips on how thing works in your culture whenever observe conflicts in understanding or communication. I am sure managers would change their strategy and wont be taken as offence. Many a times we refrain ourselves from saying such things to manager because you feel that she doesn’t know your culture but that’s the opportunity that you are loosing.
You may give one more suggestion to your manager or if you are manager and reading this, keep your management dictionary aside when you have conversation with associate. Who wants manager who speaks only management. Associate wants manager who speaks language which they understand.
I hope this information helps you to build strong relationship with your manager. Thank you.
