Women Days

Workplace success is strongly linked to your relationship with your supervisor.  This is important for raises, development and advancement.  Your supervisor has a significant role in each of those areas.

On the other side, the “boss” is one of the largest reasons employees change organizations.  Thus, it is critical to optimize this working relationship.

There are three approaches you can employ to have an effective relationship with your supervisor:

1. It provides you an opportunity to clarify these expectations, and determine the resources you’ll have to achieve the goals—human, financial, training, etc.

This also establishes the basis for future dialogue on performance throughout the year.  The annual document becomes the standard for evaluation of your efforts.

1. The objective is to determine if you are on track to meet your goals and modify behavior/actions/plans as needed to stay on track.

Quarterly meetings are spaced far enough apart to enable you to have meaningful discussion of performance.  There are enough data points to highlight strengths and opportunities with sufficient examples of each.

Importantly, you should use this feedback to modify your performance as agreed.  This approach will keep you aligned with your supervisor.

1. The objective is to insure alignment on key projects and priorities.

One suggestion is one page document with three sections.  In section one; provide highlights of accomplishments from the prior period.  This enables your supervisor to learn of your recent accomplishments.

In section two, outline the projects and priority of those projects for the upcoming period.  This provides your supervisor the opportunity to weigh in on your projects and the priorities.  After the review, you should reach agreement on the priorities for the next period.

Communicating with your supervisor and staying aligned can avoid gaps and increase the quality of your work experience.