Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep203: Boss is not your friend.

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

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Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Your boss is not your friend. Your boss is your supervisor, but your boss is not your friend. The moment that you forget this very important corporate rule

is usually when problems start appearing in your career. Now, I have spoken to many corporate professionals in my community and in my program, and I think there's a very fundamental misunderstanding of what your boss's job is supposed to be. So when I talk to a lot of professionals, particularly younger professionals, many of them tell me, oh, Mei Ping, my boss is responsible to guide me every single day at work. My boss is responsible to help me every time I need support. My boss is supposed to help me plan my career. My boss is responsible to help me plan my career. My boss is responsible to help me grow my career. Now, all of these sound right, but I think this is only one

small part of the picture. Now, the reality is, and this is something that I don't hear a lot talked about online or any communities, and maybe that is because, you know, not many people are really in management and leadership positions to talk about it. And now let me tell you what actually is the role of your boss. The role of your boss is your supervisor. Your boss is responsible to make sure that you have completed the work deliverables per your performance KPI. Your boss is your manager who is responsible to ensure that you have completed and delivered all your workload per the scope, the quality, the timelines, and everything else that is agreed as part

of your job description. That is your boss's job, right? So your boss is your manager responsible to manage you, right? And managing you, not really regarding your personal life or your personal growth. That's definitely one small part, but it's actually managing the day-to-day responsibilities, making sure that like things actually move, right? So that's actually the role of your boss.

Now there's this other role of bosses that I think we don't talk about a lot and that is the people manager part. If your boss has people reporting to him or her, meaning that your boss has direct reports, right? Per the organizational structure,

it means your boss is a people manager and part of the role of becoming a people manager is to make sure there's a talent retention goal. Meaning if there are people leaving your boss's team, right, resigning, quitting for whatever reason, right, that is a problem that will be considered as part of your boss's performance review. So therefore, every single people manager is responsible to make sure that they also hit their talent retention goal. And that means making sure that you do not quit and making sure that you remain happy just doing the thing.

And I think this is something that you should not forget. The reason is because the moment you forget this and you start pouring your heart out to your manager and pouring your heart out to the boss is when usually problems tend to happen. Let me share a couple of quick stories with you. I have worked with hundreds of people in my career program and these are nine to five professionals just like you. The stories that I've heard where my clients, my community, my students feel, I guess, betrayed is the word that they would use by their managers and bosses. It really comes to workload. Like for example, promising that

certain workload will go away, but ended up because they treat their boss as their friend, they continue to say yes and yes and yes, but eventually they end up doing workload that should have been done by someone else

or they end up taking workload that two or three headcounts are supposed to handle. That's because they see their bosses as their friend and therefore they don't say no and therefore they end up taking everything

without any additional compensation. Talking about the second problem in which if you think your boss is your friend, you will naturally think that, oh, then my boss is responsible to help me fight for salary increments. My boss, as my friend, is responsible to help me fight for promotions.

Now, most of the situation, it doesn't always happen like that because work performance and job promotions is kind of a separate process process in itself. And that's also something that I teach in my program as well on how you can advocate to increase your chances. But I wanted to make it really, really clear that just because you are friendly with your boss and your boss gets along with you and talk very well with you doesn't necessarily mean that a certain promotion or performance rating or bonus or salary increment is guaranteed because you are friends. In fact, I've actually seen the other way around in which

because you think your boss is your friend, it actually makes it easier for your boss to tell you that, oh, we can't promote you this year because whatever reason, or we can't give you a salary increment because of whatever reason. And you may feel bad to ask any more questions to really ask about hey you know actually what are my chances of promotion and why can't I get salary increment everything else is kind of in a way you feel guilty for asking for something that you may deserve and whether that's a promotion that's an increment that's a bonus or like new responsibilities or even just moving away some workload that doesn't belong to you right so the point I'm trying to make here is

that like if you see your boss as your friend, that is a change in the relationship dynamic between you and your boss, right? You may think that your boss is your friend, but don't get upset when certain things that you assume what a friend is going to do for you, eventually you don't see your boss or your manager do the same for you.

I don't want you to feel upset because I've seen many, many of these cases in which I would say unrealistic expectation because you may think that your boss is your friend, but your boss may not see you as a friend. So I just want to make it really, really clear that just because we are friendly with one another doesn't make us best friends, doesn't make us close friends that hang out all the time in which your boss will always support you 100% and will always fight for you for promotions, bonus, salary increment, everything else. That one is up to you. So I would say that it's important to be friendly for sure. You know, be nice. You'll build very strong working relationships, but never forget this fundamental corporate rule in which this is a working relationship. So therefore, you know,

maintain a productive working relationship, you know, get visible, learn how to advocate for yourself, learn to talk about your achievements and learn to ask for job promotions and salary increments because you deserve it, not because your boss is your friend. It may sound like a very subtle difference there, but the more that you can be objective and kind of like look at it as like, hey, you know, it's just part of the corporate structure, right? I'm here to deliver my role. And if I've done well, then I want to communicate to my boss. And therefore, I get recognized because of my hard work

and the value that I bring to the table, not because my boss is my friend. And once you remove the unrealistic expectation, usually you'll feel more fulfilled at work. And you also don't feel guilty if certain things doesn't happen or when you want to pursue newer opportunities outside of the company,

then you can basically just go for it because you know that you're getting hired, you're getting headhunted because of the value that you bring and not because of the friendship that you have.

So hope this gives you an idea of the relationship dynamics at work. And again, I want to really, really emphasize here. You do not need to be best friends with your boss, you know, to get promoted, to get recognition at work,

salary increments and everything else. The way that I teach my clients is that we focus on our work performance. Get clear on the corporate world, get confident corporate skills, get visible personal branding. And once you can do all of these things, the job promotion, salary increments,

they will all come. And you do not need to be besties, besties, friend, friend with your boss in order to make that happen. The relationship is very objective. If you can deliver your work, you learn how to explain it, articulate and communicate the value that you bring to the table,

then you will then enjoy all these new opportunities, work recognition, salary increments, job promotions that you deserve because you have learned how to get those for yourself. So with that, I hope that this gives you a bit of an idea of how you can actually take back control of your career without feeling the need

that you need to be friends with every single person to suck up to anyone because you really don't have to so focus on yourself focus on what you can do focus on increasing your value

and you should be good to go if you found this episode helpful drop a comment if you're watching on YouTube and if you want to learn more about the approach that I teach you can download my 5-day career growth guide

at www.mayping.com and you can find it in the description below. With that, all the best and see you soon.