What Have You Learned from Your Bosses?

Every day I receive a “Management Tip of the Day” from Harvard Business Review. Sometimes they are a good review and other times they are chock full of great ideas. Today’s falls in the second category. Deborah Mills-Scofield shares “Four Lessons From the Best Bosses I Every Had“.

And of course, this has me thinking about the lessons I’ve learned from my bosses.

1)  My first real boss taught me about trust (or lack thereof). I was selling copiers to small businesses and this was long before the days of smart phones. He would have us call during the day so he could check-in on us. I resented this “babysitting”. I did very well in my job and met or exceeded my sales quotas (at least that the story I remember now) every month.  So just to show him, I would break away from watching “General Hospital” with my roommate (who also reported to him) to call from the pay phone across the street from my house in downtown Baltimore so he would think I was “on the streets” doing my work. He didn’t trust me and I think my behavior met his expectations. Not proud, just reflecting.

Years later, after working for someone for almost 10 years, she took the side of our company’s leadership and didn’t want to pay me a commision I was due after I resigned and moved away. She had been a fabulous boss, mentoring me, giving me tremendous opportunities and letting me fly.  Yet, in a moment of bad judgement, she sat across the table and acted like it was okay to not pay me what I was due. I saw 9+ years of trust disintegrate in the course of a few months.

Great bosses trust their team members – maybe even before they “deserve” to be trusted.

2) My last official boss taught me the value of time. Liz Dunne was my boss at LifeBridge Health in the Education Resource Center. Liz taught me the value of conducting one-on-one meetings with her team. Being on the receiving end of these meetings, I always appreciated the uninterrupted time Liz spent with me. We talked about goals, aspirations, frustrations and other important stuff. She listened, advised, laughed and even cried with me. Her time meant the world to me.

She also taught me and my team members that time spent away from work was important. She role-modeled work/life balance (if there really is such a thing) by arriving early and leaving at a reasonable hour each day. She would tell us that the work would always be there and it was fine to leave to be with family, go to school, etc. Of course we all had late days to finish important projects, worked night shifts to support those team members, and even took work home on the weekend. We knew that it wasn’t the norm and Liz was very fair when it came to our time.

3) I’m my own boss now and everyday I’m learning the value of honoring my talent. When you work for yourself, it’s easy to spend time focusing on what’s going wrong or mistakes you’ve made. This is definitely not helpful or kind. So to counteract what can be a mind-numbing focus on the need for second guessing or constant improvement, I’m learning to be grateful for my talent on a regular basis. I do this by sharing my strengths (I had two calls last week to help two newbies in nursing and speaking with their networking skills cause that’s a talent of mine). Sharing my strengths through this blog, my new LinkedIn group, my SimpleSTEPS newsletter and my speaking are all ways that I’m honoring and sharing my talent.

As a boss, your team members are looking for you to share your own talent. They want you (as Marianne Williamson so wisely says) to “let your light shine” and help them with theirs. Sharing your talent and recognizing and honoring talent in others is a real gift.

So as I reflect on lessons learned from bosses on this foggy Monday morning, I realize that I learned the value of trust, time & talent from my managers along the way. Thanks managers!

I’d love to hear what you’ve learned as well.

More Posts