I have had some good bosses and a bunch of bad ones. I tried to be a good boss, but I bet there are some people who worked “for” me that would dispute that. As a soccer referee assigner, I try hard to be fair while also putting officials on the games where they would be most likely to succeed.
From Seth Godin, who talked about being the type of person that a good boss will appreciate. Hopefully you have one of those. If not, I wish you luck in leaving and finding a good one.
He compiled a list of attributes. I would suggest not looking at this like a check list. It’s more of a description of a type of person.
Are you now, or can you develop into, this type of person? I try…
- Ask useful questions
- Show up before you’re expected
- Make big promises and keep them
- Identify errors and flaws and self-correct
- Default to optimism
- Do work worth doing
- Build a useful network worth outsourcing work to
- Show your work
- Develop good taste
- Generously invite feedback
- Make productive decisions
- Communicate with precision
- It’s easy to claim these skills, but not easy to commit to being quite good at them.
Seth concludes, “Most bosses don’t deserve this level of effort. I hope you can find one that does.”
