How to Gain Respect from Your Boss or Manager
Gaining respect from your boss or manager is the most important thing employees want – according to a study by Harvard Business Review of 20,0000 employees around the world.
We all want to be valued as individuals and our work viewed as valuable. Whether you have just started a new job or been with your manager for years, there is a lot you can do to encourage your boss to respect you. Gaining their trust, appreciation and respect happens in stages. An example of the stages of your boss’ thinking towards you:
- This person is doing a good job – they are worth keeping
- They are fitting in with the team, not causing problems and everyone seems to like them
- I feel they help me personally with my problems and pressures
- I like this person and am happy to chat about my life outside of work with them
- Now, I am happy to invest my time to give them interesting work and develop their careers
- I value and seek out their opinion and views
How to Gain Respect from Your Boss or Manager
- Show respect to get respect
- Align your work
- Put the team before yourself
- Adapt your communication style
- Provide Solutions
- Have your own opinion
- Educate your boss
How to gain respect from your boss is a top priority for pretty much everyone. I have 7 actions to share with you to proactively gain respect from your manager and then deepen that respect to become a trusted partner to your manager.
Be proactive in managing your relationship with your boss. Having a good relationship with your manager matters more to you than it does to them. Take ownership of the relationship and actively work to gain respect from your boss by taking action on what I share with you today.
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How to gain respect from your manager starts with showing respect to get respect
You can’t expect your manager to respect you if you don’t respect them first.
Pay close attention to your boss – what they do in their job, how they interact with the team, what are they really good at, what impresses you, what do you think you can learn from them. Focus on the positives and you will find lots of areas that you can consciously respect your manager for.
Even if you have a difficult boss, a demanding boss, there will be things they do that you will admire and therefore respect your boss for.
Demonstrate your respect by giving your manager positive feedback in these areas. Or ask them to teach you a bit about how they do X. Or stand up for your boss in the areas your respect them for when colleagues are complaining.
Manage your body language, tone of voice, and how you behave to demonstrate your respect for your boss and admire them for what they do or at least parts of what they do. Be proactive without going over the top.
Thinking “I respect and admire my manager” alone is not enough. Demonstrate your respect for your boss in ways that you are comfortable with. Show respect to get respect.
align your work – The second action to gain respect from your boss
Your boss will be under pressure and have a long list of challenges and problems to overcome and tasks and activities to organise.
What can you do help them personally?
Observe what they talk about, complain about, and spend their time on. Ask them what they are working on and how to prioritise your work to help them? Speak to your colleagues. Ask your boss to pass over a few of their minor problems and then do a good job of delivering against them. Then ask for more complex problems, deliver and repeat.
Firstly, this gives you more interesting work to do, and secondly, your manager will be very grateful. You will gain respect from your boss for proactively helping them. Don’t forget to deliver on your day job first before taking on extra work.
Look to personally help your boss reduce their challenges. Deliver on what they ask of you proactively and with energy and you will get respect from your manager.
Put the team before yourself – The third action to gain respect from your manager
Your manager’s performance is mainly assessed on how well the team performs. Improving team performance is the main goal of most people managers. Improving team performance is how managers can add the most value to the business.
There is loads every team member can do to visibly help improve team performance. A few of them are:
- Proactively help colleagues where you can – they will appreciate it plus it helps improve the team’s output overall
- Work at building positive relationships on a professional and personal level with team members. The more trust that is build within the team, the better team performance
- Be positive in your outlook. Encourage a positive and a can-do attitude in other team members.
- Do extra work to help other team members and to help reach team targets earlier.
- Manage expectations realistically and honestly, thus ensuring no-one get many surprises, and consistently deliver to the expectations you set
- Participate in team social events to get to know and build stronger relationships with the other team members
- Work to be above average in terms of what and how you deliver your work
All of these actions will help the team’s performance overall and contribute to the motivation and energy of the team. Work to put the team before yourself and it won’t be long before you feel “my manager respects me”!
The fourth action for the boss to respect you is to adapt your communication style
Your boss will have more relationships to manage than you. Plus having a good relationship with your manager is much more important for you. For both of these reasons, adapt your communication style and communication activities to what your boss wants rather than expect them to adapt to what you prefer.
Ask your manager how they want to be kept in the loop with what you are doing. Popular options include:
- A formal one-on-one meeting each week or every other week
- Email summary each day or each week
- Ad hoc emails
- Ad hoc meetings
- Weekly team meetings
The hardest is a boss that doesn’t tell you what they want or does give you much or any time. Build a list of actions you could take to keep them in the loop. Try each one and see what the response is. Repeat the ones that seem to get a response or work better for your boss.
Adapt your communication style to what works best for your manager. Your efforts will help ensure your boss respects you.
The fifth action to get your boss respecting you is to provide solutions
Every boss loves team members that consistently spot problems AND work out a solution for that problem before chatting through the solution with their boss. The message from the team member is “I have spotted a problem and taken the time to solve it – are you happy with my solution?”
What is not to like about this approach? It saves the manager time, energy, and effort. Providing solutions is an act of proactively taking work off your boss’s to-do list. This is one of my favourite ways to get respect from my boss.
You should know more about your area than your boss. Be the first to spot problems and understand the impact of those problems. You may need to educate your boss on the issues. You are also in a good place to build practical solutions. If you are struggling, ask team members to help create a solution. Proactively creating solutions and implementing them is very valuable.
Another very good way of spotting problems is asking a lot of questions of others and listening to what they tell you. Be curious, and work to understand the why and the context behind requests and activities the team undertakes.
When you spot problems, create at least one practical solution before speaking to your manager. This is a brilliant way to get your boss respecting you.
The sixth action to get respect from the boss is to have your own opinion
You have to earn the right to have your opinion listened to by your boss. You need to earn your boss’s trust before they will value your opinion. When your boss starts seeking out your opinion you know you have gained their trust and respect.
When you are consistently delivering on the first five actions we have already gone through, it is very likely your boss will trust you enough to seek your opinion.
Having an opinion that adds value to dealing with the problem or situation and being confident to honestly communicate that opinion diplomatically – are also key.
Good managers want other people’s opinions and views. They value the differences of opinion to their own. They value the different ideas, the different backgrounds and the different perspectives other people bring.
To form a considered opinion, reflect on the issues the team is facing and work out your opinion on those issues AND what assumptions and data you have to support your opinion. Everyone has an opinion. A considered opinion, supported by data, experience, and insights is much more valuable in the workplace. If you want to gain respect from your boss, put in the time to think through your opinions on a range of issues currently facing the team and be prepared to defend them with reference to data and insights.
Express your opinions in private with your boss unless they specifically ask you to express your opinions in public – especially if they are not aligned to your boss’s opinion. Your boss will respect you a lot more for taking this approach.
in summary
Earning respect from your boss is super important for any team member. When you have a good relationship with your boss, your life at work is so much more enjoyable and you are much more likely be successful in your career.
Your boss showing their respect of you and you consistently demonstrating your respect for you boss is a key sign of a good relationship.
Work to get your boss respecting you by taking each of these seven actions:
- Show respect to get respect
- Align your work – share common objectives
- Put the team before yourself
- Adapt your communication style
- Provide Solutions
- Have your own opinion
- Educate your boss
Be proactive and take responsibility for your most important relationship at work.
If you have any questions on “How to Gain Respect from Your Boss or Manager”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
