You don’t have to like your boss to get ahead

You’ve probably heard that people don’t leave their job, they leave their manager. It’s a popular saying because it’s often true. Having a toxic boss, however, is different than having one you simply don’t like. If your boss is toxic, you need to take steps to protect yourself. But if it’s simply a matter of personalities not jiving, slow your job-search roll, suggests Stephanie Chung, author of Ally Leadership, How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You.

“There are people in your family you probably don’t like,” she says. “But if you like your company, you like your colleagues, you like how much money you’re making, you like your benefits, and the only thing you don’t like is your boss, then you really shouldn’t just jump to another role or another job. . . . Look at the entire totality of your situation and then decide if you should stay or not.”

Fortunately, you don’t have to like your boss to grow in your career. Start by getting to the bottom of your dislike. 

“You don’t just naturally not like somebody,” says Chung. “Go a little bit deeper to figure out why you don’t like them. Maybe there’s something about them that reminds you of something or someone else. Usually, it’s that you come from different perspectives, different backgrounds, different upbringings, and therefore have different viewpoints. If you’re bothered by everybody that’s different than you, you’re going to spend too much time hopping around.”

Focus on What’s Important

Even if you don’t like your boss, you still need to perform well at work. “Is this person hindering you from being able to do your job?” asks Chung. “If the answer is ‘no,’ and you just have different personalities or different communication styles, you can still get the job done.” 

When you don’t like someone, the common response is to ignore them and talk to everyone but them. Chung says this is a mistake. Employees have a responsibility in creating a positive work environment.

“People find comfort in complaining to their colleagues,” she says. “It’s easy to point fingers. To say, ‘The boss doesn’t know what they’re doing. This is a stupid process.’ I’m looking for the worker who says, ‘I don’t think this makes sense, but instead of talking to April, May, and June about it, I’m going to actually go to the boss and say, ‘I am not sure that I agree with the thought process here. From my perspective, it doesn’t look like it makes a lot of sense. Am I missing something?’”

Often the root cause of not liking someone is lack of communication, miscommunication, or different styles of communication, says Chung, and the only way to fix that is to engage in more communication with them. 

“If you want to move up in your career, you don’t have to wait for your boss to make the first effort,” she says. “It is possible that there’s something that you are not doing correctly or as good as you may think. If you want to be that person who’s constantly moving up in their career, who has a brand that stands for itself in a powerful way, you’re going to have to own your stuff. Part of that in the workforce is being able to own the fact that maybe it is them and maybe it’s not. You play a part in your relationship, as well.” 

By going to your boss to work out your differences or to clarify what could be misunderstandings, you demonstrate that you care about the company and want to take ownership for your career. It’s managing up. 

“Employees who want to move up, want to be seen as people who are productive and can add value to the company,” says Chung. “How you do that is not being the person who’s sitting around complaining. It’s being the person who’s trying to help leadership and your colleagues solve the problem.”

An ability to work with people you don’t like—people who are not like you—is an important skill to develop. Chung likens it to being on a sports team. 

“If everybody on the soccer team was a forward, you’d never win,” she says. “In the workplace, the same rules apply. There are different positions, different talents, different strengths, different weaknesses. Different perspectives ask different questions. When everybody gets along because we don’t have any disagreements, we’re all cookie cutters of each other. But that doesn’t help in business.”

Leading diverse teams—people who don’t think alike, act alike, have a back same background—is quite challenging, says Chung. “The results are great, but there is a challenge to it because they’re so different. Real leaders [know] how to harness those differences in a powerful way that allows the team to be unstoppable and sets the company up to win.”

The key is knowing that the leader doesn’t always have to be the one higher up on the org chart.

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