The Boss - How do you build this important relationship?

Undoubtedly, the relationship with your manager or supervisor is an important one in the world of work. This relationship can influence you to stay in a job, or to leave a company; to get a promotion, or to hover at a career plateau. A change of boss can be a great thing - doors open, new opportunities and project are offered; or it can prove a challenge - learning to negotiate a new personality or to establish trust, credibility and "rules" of working once gain.

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In a recent post, The Brazen Careerist offer a number of tips for boosting the subordinate-superior relationship.

• Following Through
• Communicate Often
• Pitch New Ideas
• Always Have a Positive Outlook
• Be Able to Joke Around
• Ask to Take on Additional Projects
• Act on Feedback

Of course, every relationship is individual - each manager is different, and work situations vary across industries, and countries and cultures (see for instance Maurne 2011 for his work on female supervisors, or Abraham 2011 for an interesting study on career management strategies in Indian Banks). Increasingly, methods of work are varied with virtual work and telecommuting becoming common and presenting additional challenges for relationship building (see the work by Golden and Veiga 2008 on the role of superior-subordinate relationships and job satisfaction and performance of virtual workers).

Perhaps it is you that is the boss, with team members seeking to establish and further a relationship with you. When becoming a "boss" for the first time, this can be a challenge. Many questions and doubts may surface - How do I act as a manager? How do I establish relationships with my team members that will lead to a productive and successful team?

In my experience - having worked for male and female managers, and having been a manager to both men and women; managing in-office and remote teams, and now being a virtual worker myself -communication is  the key to establishing and reinforcing my relationships at work - both upwards and downwards.  When there have been difficulties (and certainly there have been some!) a disjoint in communication styles or expectations has often been the culprit.  "Communicating Often" has been particularly important as I've changed roles or increased in seniority and the geographic distance of my superior or team members has increased (perhaps he/she/they are in another state or country) or as the number of members in my team has grown.

What are your tips for developing and improving relationships with those more senior? if you are a boss, how can you encourage healthy and beneficial relationships with your team members? As a woman, do any of the tips listed above seem more important or poignant to you?

Not for Profit, Charitable and Community Sectors - Women on Boards survey

Women on Boards are currently conducting a survey on the gendered nature of senior management and boards in the Not for Profit, Charitable and Community sectors.

If you are on the board, or employed in these sectors, please assist by completing this 8 minute survey:

http://www.surveymethods.com/EndUser.aspx?AA8EE2F8ADEAFEFEAE

On the Horizon - Women as Leaders Program 29 September - 1 October 2010

Curtin University are pleased to host "Women as Leaders", a residential program for women in senior and executive management roles.

The highly regarded Women as Leaders program is based on 20 years of research and has run successfully at Cranfield University, UK for over 10 years. This year the program will be offered for the first time in Australia by Cranfield University UK’s International Centre for Women Leaders in partnership with the Maureen Bickley Centre for Women in Leadership, a centre within the Curtin Graduate School of Business, Curtin University.

Designed for experienced women professionals and managers that are ready to accelerate their careers, this program provides women with the knowledge and attitudes to overcome barriers and help to develop winning strategies that will increase promotional opportunities. It focuses on thinking positively about ambition, power, impression management and career success. A very participative approach is designed to help participants develop insights about their assumptions, beliefs and behaviours.

For further information and registration details please follow this link

Part-time Managers: A Rare Breed

At the recent EURAM conference, a paper by Jennifer Tomlinson and Susan Durbin from the UK really resonated with us. The paper "Female Part Time Managers: work life balance and careers" presented research exploring the transition to part-time work of a group of female managers in the UK and the impact of this career decision on mobility, future career aspirations and work-life balance. The paper commented that part-time work is commonly requested - with 49% of working women seeking a permanent or temporary reduction in hours at some point in their career. However, women working in part-time managerial roles is very uncommon. In the UK, it sits at ~ 4% of women working part-time.

Part-time work at a managerial level enables women to continue to occupy challenging, high-status and well paid roles. However, the study highlighted a number of challenges for the women working in part-time managerial roles:

- a reduction in hours is accompanied by the perception and acceptance that career prospects are put on hold;

- women working in part-time managerial roles feel that they are overlooked for role and promotions despite having the experience and qualifications for the job;

- persistant negative perceptions of part-time workers exist, despite the women in the study being productive and highly focused at work and frequently working on excess of their contracted hours for no extra pay.

Image: www.delawareemploymentlawblog.com

Some connected issues are emerging in some research currently in progress by our group at the Maureen Bickley Centre on women engineers and their journey to management. Feelings of frustration, of invisibility and of being discounted are experienced by highly talented and practiced women managers who shift to part-time work, often following the arrival of children. These feeling are exacerbated by company policy that, for example, does not offer management roles on less than four days per week, a culture of long hours and presenteeism that creates a sense of needing to be in the office for 50 hours a week to do the job and a lack of creativity in job design of management roles that discounts job share or formation of alternative look management teams. This results in part-time managerial roles being difficult to obtain and to sustain.

It is disappointing that organizations retain the inflexible mind-set of manager = fulltime / long hours. The number of women in part-time management roles and the feelings experiences by women seeking and occupying these positions indicate that organisations are severely limiting their choice of managerial candidates by not offering sustainable, well designed part-time management roles. What are your thoughts? Is your organization innovative in the design of roles at management level? Do you have examples of part-time or flexible contract managers that are successfully operating in companies?