How to boss without being bossy
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How to boss without being bossy
1–10 of 206 posts
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#2I like the chart and examples. Thanks! I'm going to read over theme here in a bit.
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#3I like this approach - with the extra clarity added
"The trash needs to be taken out because . Can you look after that ?"
Clarity: 5/5
Harshness: 1/5
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#4Here's how my wife does it...
"Do you want to take out the trash?"
My engineer mind interprets it literally every time :)
Usually I don't mind taking out the trash... but occasionally I don't really want to. I have to always translate this to "She wants me to take out the trash".
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#5This seems a bit superficial, because it concentrates only how you communicate an instruction to people.
I suspect, especially in high competence and nominally high trust environments like (much of) tech, mostly when people consider a superior "bossy" it's not because of the way they communicate (though that could contribute) but because they do not trust the communication or the motivations behind it, or question why they (the boss) are getting involved at all.
To put it another way, if there is a high degree of trust anyway you are likely forgiven a harsher communication style, but if the the trust isn't there no amount of wordsmithing that will improve it.
That being said, poor communication styles will ruffle feathers and cause problems, and if you are leading people you should learn to do this better. I just don't think that's at the heart of what being considered "bossy" is, so working on it won't likely fix that.
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#6I like this approach - with the extra clarity added "The trash needs to be taken out because . Can you look after that ?" Clarity: 5/5 Harshness: 1/5
"Why should I be the one to take out the trash?"
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#7I like this approach - with the extra clarity added "The trash needs to be taken out because . Can you look after that ?" Clarity: 5/5 Harshness: 1/5
"Can you clear out three points of trash mountain til next Friday? Five points? No, it is three."
These analogies fail in that the scope of taking out the trash is way too clear.
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#8This is a terrible article that rambles on for far too long without offering an actually polite way to tell/request someone to do something.
These are the best approaches:
1. "Please take out the trash."
2. "The trash needs to be taken out. Can you do it?"
3. (If there are several people around). "The trash needs to be taken out. Who can do it?"
Extra consideration:
I'm assuming this refers to a context where there's a prior agreement in place that A can tell B what to do (e.g. a business, where B signs a contract stating that he has sold X hours/day to the organisation). It usually should be unnecessary to bark out orders or to beat around the bush -- both are insulting: if B is a functioning adult they accept that they work for an organisation and so need to complete certain tasks.
However, direct instructions are rarely necessary for knowledge workers or highly-skilled professionals. Unless things have broken down horribly, they're aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success.
E.g., instead of "you will write unit tests today" or "would you mind terribly writing unit tests today?", A would do best saying something like "we're introducing too many regressions when we change things, we need a better testing strategy -- let's discuss our approach to unit testing" and then let the team weigh in with their own ideas so they have ownership over whatever is decided.
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#9This is a terrible article that rambles on for far too long without offering an actually polite way to tell/request someone to do something. These are the best approaches: 1. "Please take out the trash." 2. "The trash needs to be taken out. Can you do it?" 3. (If there are several people around). "The trash needs to be taken out. Who can do it?" Extra consideration: I'm assuming this refers to a context where there's…
> "they're aware that the success of the business they work for will contribute to their own career success."
If this was commonly true, then it wouldn't also be commonly true to feel best served by switching companies every 2 years. Other than simply continuing to be employed, but even that's tenuous and often volatile.
> "Unless things have broken down horribly"
It's a lucky individual who's never experienced this in their career.
Re: How to boss without being bossy
#10This seems a bit superficial, because it concentrates only how you communicate an instruction to people. I suspect, especially in high competence and nominally high trust environments like (much of) tech, mostly when people consider a superior "bossy" it's not because of the way they communicate (though that could contribute) but because they do not trust the communication or the motivations behind it, or question wh…
I'd put that the author hasn't managed people in a multicultural team before. It quickly becomes apparent that there is a cultural component to communication style that changes language expectations by a lot. And at the end of the day word choice doesn't matter much.
There is a deeper aspect to watch which is response over time - "tracking what does the boss say to me?" as it transforms into "What are the consequences later on?". A big part of being "bossy" IMO is creating consequences for getting trivial instructions wrong.