Align With Your Manager With This One Question

Imagine it is the end of the quarter and you are having a feedback session with your manager to discuss the usual reflection questions, that is:

• What worked?

• What didn’t work?

• What could have been better?

Or the start, stop, continue framework. That is:

• What should we start doing?

• What should we stop doing?

• What should we continue doing?

After answering the above performance related questions your manager asks you:

How can I help you succeed in this role?

This is a question I love! It is an opportunity to share with your manager what you need to succeed. I would take this a step further and even say it gives us an opportunity to discuss our working styles with our managers.

When we get into roles before discussing working styles with our managers, two things can happen. Either:

1. We are forced to study our managers working style and adapt to theirs to ensure alignment and prevent conflict or

2. We get frustrated because we work differently and no one has intentionally taken time to understand the other. (This often leads to miscommunication, misunderstanding and misalignment)

If you have never had the chance to discuss working styles with your manager, this is your chance to bring it up.

Using myself as an example, when this question comes up, I think of the 3 key things I need to succeed in my role:

1. Clarity - The expectations of the role needs to be clear and the context (the ‘why’) clearly defined. This ensures we are all reading from the same page.

2. Autonomy - Once the expectations of the role are clear, I need trust from my manager to take ownership of the tasks and run with it. This allows room for me to engage in deep work and creatively think about how to implement the task.

3. Support - Once I have autonomy, it’s important for me to know that I can reach out to my manager or my team for support any time.

As you read through the 3 key things, other additional traits pop up, e.g, open communication, room for creativity, collaboration etc. which can become stand-alone values, however for now let’s focus on the 3 things above.

In this example, let’s assume that my manager offers me clarity and autonomy but is never available to provide guidance if and when needed, an example of a response could be:

Manager: “How can I help you succeed in this role?”

Me: “I really appreciate the clarity and autonomy you’ve offered me in this role. This is what has enabled me to take ownership of my tasks and complete the majority of my OKRs/KPIs. However, in the remaining targets that I did not meet, I experienced a couple of bottlenecks that I was unable to maneuver on my own. Is it possible for us to introduce bi-weekly check-ins, where I could share my current blockers and get guidance on how to proceed?”

Chances of your manager saying no to this is pretty low. When responding to this question, make sure to clearly share what challenge you faced, how it affected your work and propose a solution.

You could alternatively use this opportunity to bring up the working style conversation:

Manager: “How can I help you succeed in this role?”

Me: “Thanks for that question. Is it possible for us to incorporate this question in a larger working style conversation? I would love to know more about how you prefer to work while I also share with you my preferred way of working to ensure that we better align for the next quarter. Can I make this the agenda for our next check-in?”

Depending on the relationship you have with your manager, I would advise that you tailor the response to suit your relationship. For some managers this might be too forward while others might appreciate the suggestion and even advise that the whole team, including themselves, do a working style test to improve the team dynamics (I once had a manager introduce this and it really helped us better understand each other as a team).

The more we understand each other, the kinder we are to one another, both in a personal and professional setting. It’s therefore important that we get to know each other professionally through conversations around communication styles, personalities, working styles and management styles. Being direct about how we prefer to work reduces the chances of misalignment, misunderstanding and miscommunication.

Next time you feel misaligned with someone in your team, engage in a conversation and get to better understand the ‘why’. If it’s your manager, try to understand how they work and adjust your style to suit them or bring up the working style discussion in a strategic manner that will not be taken the wrong way.

So before you have your next performance review, remember to:

1. Reflect on the values that matter most to you in a work setting. What needs to be present in your role for you to succeed?

2. Reflect on the roles and work environments you excelled in and write down what worked.

3. Reflect on the roles and work environments you didn’t enjoy and write down what didn’t work and what you wished you had.

4. Find the common themes and that’s it. You have your list.

There is a lot of information online on work styles but this is a good place to start. Once you have your fundamentals in check, you can build on it with an online test or by reading through the online content.

I wish you all the best on our journey!

#ChooseToThrive