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Hello, I’m Elaine Kung. We continue on our series SHINE Your Talk! We started last time on S - speak with SINCERE and 8C. Now we're gonna dive deep into PREPARE to Lead Up. Very important because in our working relationship, our boss, our peers, and our subordinate, which one is the most important? It will be your boss. It is important to align to your boss’ direction, so that you're effective in working with your subordinates. That will be the second important relationship. And it's through your subordinates as a team that you deliver what your boss needs. And then you work with your peers.
So now we're gonna spend quite a few sessions to learn about how to LEAD Up. So let's start with the definition of leadership when we say LEAD Up. And I used these 17 words to define leadership: Ability to influence others - in this case, your boss - to be their best for the greater good, not just their good, not just your good, but for the greater good, aligned to a shared vision. That's the definition of leadership. My definition based on my experience, based on what I learned from the Bible, based on many executive education, training, courses and books I've read.
So in a very simple word, as John Maxwell, a great leadership guru would say, “leadership means influence”. I elaborate a little more with these total 17 words. So it's about helping others to be their best. Using this definition, everyone is a leader, because everyone has an influence on perhaps your boss, your parents, your teacher. So you can LEAD Up to influence them to be their best boss for the greater good aligned to a shared vision. You can lead ACROSS with your peers. You can lead DOWN with your subordinates. So it's a 360 ° leadership perspective. So adopting that definition, I can now put my boss in it, so its ability to influence your managers to be their best for the greater good aligned to a shared mission. That’s the definition of leadership.
So I don't like to use the word manager. We don't want to manage up. Manage up means some sense of manipulation or manage your boss. It's more about influencing and leading up, so that would be a better way to say it. So we start with PREPARE. This is 7 strategy to Lead Up. And I have used a reference from Margie Warrel. And I summarized it in a 7 phrase acrostic, PREPARE. P is Proactive. We're gonna spend more time to talk about how would we be proactive to seek to understand your boss’ work style? What is their SWOT? And we'll explain what that is and how do they prefer to communicate? R is Research and know their “why”the reasons. What are they most interested in, what is their goal, values, what's their drivers, their motivations? So do your homework research. E is to Encourage your boss when you work with them and communicate. Your boss is not perfect. There are areas that they may be weak at and how can you support them and complement that so that together we achieve the shared vision. So encouraging.
P is Preferences. Know what is your boss preference in project detail or big picture, communication style, try to adapt to them. So we're gonna learn about the different types of boss. And how do we meet up based on their preference? A is Assertive to speak up. So we talked before, assertive definition is to care about their needs, your boss’ needs, and also care about your own needs and set boundary. So that assertive to speak up and then allow time for your boss to respond. R is Refused to be intimidated by a bully. I know somewhere along the way we have a boss, who may be a bully. We're gonna go in more detail on how can we stand tall and not be a coward and not to be intimidated? And of course, if they continue to be a bully, a long period of time, then we want to go back and seek God through the five steps of praying, the Bible, the Spirit, the people who surround us, through the circumstances and then through God’s sovereignty to decide: do I stay with this boss or do I leave if they continue to be a bully and not reasonable and not professional.
And finally, E excel in taking the high road that we keep our own value and our own high EQ and take the high road and be excellent in what we do and how we LEAD Up using this PREPARE 7-step strategy. So we talk about proactive, then understanding your boss’ SWOT. This swot is a very practical and powerful tool that all my students will use. And I use the SWOT, usually for product analysis, organization, or service, and look at your strength, your weakness, your opportunities with the environment and what are the threats? In this case, during my career, I used the SWOT for myself and discussed with my boss on my SWOT. You can also consider doing a SWOT of your boss.
Now, when you do this, you want to be careful. It's something that you use as your own tool and homework for your boss. So you don't want to necessarily share with them unless they're interested. In fact, one of my students was preparing their own SWOT and also looking at their boss’ SWOT for their own private use. Turns out the following week, the boss actually initiated asking my student, “Oh, what do you think my SWOT is?” That was such a pleasant surprise, so it’s always good to understand yourself and your boss’ SWOT. So on the top half is your internal assessment of your strength. This is an example of my mentee’s strength, what they're good at and their own internal way of doing things. And then the upper right is your weakness. Your weakness tend to be sometimes overdoing certain things, like perfectionist, not very good with time management, not knowing how to prioritize.
And then opportunities in the bottom are external interaction. What are some opportunity you can grow in? Whether it's hard skill or solve skill, technical or business. And then the lower right is your threats. What are some blind spots. What could be the fatal flaw when you interact with the outside world? What are some threats in the environment that you cannot control? Or things that you may be able to be more aware of your blind spot, so that you're more self-aware, others-aware, and most important God-aware. Let the Holy Spirit remind us so that we avoid the fatal flaw.
So there was a year that my boss saw a fatal flaw in me that I was not as respectful of the audience in my communication. I prayed and I learned to be more self-aware, others-aware and God-aware. In a few months, my boss said “Hey, Elaine, you're no longer so ignorant of your audience. This is no longer your fatal flaw.” So this tool is very powerful to help us get to know ourselves, help us communicate our strengths, and will give you a tool how to say a good story about your strength, and also track your progress of how you're using your strength.
In fact, that is the most important of all the SWOT, how to make sure you use your strength. That's the most important in all this one here. Then you can look at opportunity to grow, then you can see how to develop better, avoid those weakness and threats. That's the priority, to have an action plan, starting with your strength then opportunity, followed by weakness and threat.
And you can do this SWOT as your self-assessment, at your boss, your subordinates and your peers to give you input.
And when you do this, you get to know yourself well, others-aware and God-aware. And you demonstrate your humility, and you have good way to grow out of your spot. You're ready for interviews because interviews always ask, “hey, tell me about your strengths or tell me about your weakness.” And we're gonna learn how to tell those stories. So it's helpful all around.
When we get to know the different Boss types, to be proactive is to figure out the different pieces in the puzzle to get to know your boss. Seek to understand.
So these are some areas to get to know your boss. Communication preference. How does your boss prefer to communicate? Are they introvert or extrovert? Later I would go through in detail each one of these, and how do we handle it and LEAD Up? What is their work style? Are they collaborative or more independent? Are they cautious or innovative? Willing to take risk? Are they detail or big picture? So you tune to and meet them where they are.
Time orientation and pace. Are they patient or impatient, fast, or moderate? Time oriented or task oriented or relationship oriented?
So is it a task person or relationship-centric person? Are they task first or people first? For us, we need to learn to be people first. But your boss, we need to respect them. Engaging or reserved? Their goals and motivations. What motivates your boss? What are their goals? What are their values? What's the drivers? What do they prioritize as important?
And then concerns and climate. What does your boss worry about? What does your boss or what does her boss worry about? So you want to think from their perspective. So when we piece together the boss puzzle, I'm gonna share with you total of 11 common boss types.
So let's start with one this time. The bully, like we said earlier, they could be bully bosses. I had that. I have all types of bosses. So the bullies, they don't like surprises. They want to be in control. There could be unexpected outbursts of anger. They use fear to intimidate people. They would berate others so that they would look good, consistently deliver good result because they want to shine and be the best. They tend to have strong self-confidence, but more in a selfish way, kind of me, myself and I so they tend to be very aggressive.
Remember what we talked about the definition of assertive. So people who are aggressive, they are self-confident, but it's a selfish confidence. It's not caring about others. They may handle crisis well. So the bully are very direct and people may, in some way, respect them that way. However, there's so many other negatives that it's very difficult to get along with the bully boss.
So remember, we learned in the past the REASON, ask these 6 questions. Why would the bully boss behave this way? So perhaps they don't feel secure. Perhaps that's the upbringing, the personality. So you go through, how can you empathize with them, meet them where they are. Connect with them in that emotional level, address their need. And we don't want to spoil them and let them continue. So we need to still set boundary and offer solutions. I think when they realize other people cannot stand how they bully others, then they would appreciate your help to help them to be their best and not as bullies. So that way you can nurture their trust.
So how do we LEAD Up a bully boss? Don't take it personally because that's how they are. Try to find humor in it. “Oh boy, that must be difficult!” Just kind of make it more relaxed. Realize it’s temporary. We'll see how we can overcome this overtime. So we need to avoid surprising your boss, because they want to be in control. They don't like surprises. Be a source of news and information that would help your boss and then build alliances for now, because you can imagine, for bully bosses it may be difficult to have good network or good relationship. You can help them to be their best, helping with alliances. That would really be a big plus.
So here's the Do’s. The task that he hates or not good at, you can help complete them. You can deliver measurable and meaningful tasks that help them look good. You need to be self-controlled, flexible, and subtle in how you communicate. Don't just be a yes man or yes woman. You do want some courage and set boundaries and be assertive. Don't get labelled, adapt your behavior to the situation. And don't let your boss see you sweat or scream or cry. In other words, make sure you have high EQ, not low EQ. I hope you can practice these 4H in leading up with your bully boss. It’s not easy. It takes time. We'll know what to add, subtract, multiply and divide. See you next time.