Being able to make your boss smile

How much you can get away with at work is all to do with personality. I remember I knew a guy who could get away with slagging off managers. He could get away with saying things quite extreme, all because he was acting as if he was saying it in a good natured way.

What he was essentially doing, whether he realised it or not, was that he'd get the managers used to joking around first (about harmless things)... and then when they were used to that he could suddenly say something to undermine them while acting as if he was just messing. You'd see the manager having to laugh it off. But what this really meant was that he had a little bit of power over them.

At the end of the day he was still following all their orders just like me. But the difference was that he got to speak his mind on the job about the things he didn't like. And that is quite therapeutic. Where as if I felt I was being unfairly treated, I'd bottle it up while carrying on with my work. I always felt that if I called someone out on what I didn't like or if I stood up for myself, that I'd piss people off and thereby put my job at risk.

I do believe that if you can make your boss smile just every once in a while, that it will be harder for them to fire you.

 

i get away with a bit of shit talking on my boss because he knows his life would be a lot harder without me there.

but yes, ass kissing can help too.

 

The thing is, the guy sounds genuine, and that's why it works. If you set out to make someone smile because it will benefit you, it's not going to be the same. Maybe it will still work.. But on the whole I think humans are pretty good at sensing the ungenuine, even if they don't know what they're sensing.. and they don't like it.

See, maybe he wasn't acting. Maybe he is good-natured. Even when you have a real complaint, it's still possible to be good natured in expressing it.

And no, he probably didn't realise what he was doing, if he did he'd be extremely calculating in a kind of psychopathic way.

The best approach is decide you want to be a chilled, good natured person who speaks their mind and still makes people feel at ease, and set out to BE that for its own sake, for the sake of how that benefits those around you, not for how it might benefit you. Anything else is false.

 

I've noticed in general, not at work specifically but just in life, people often let me get away with things that I dont think they always let other people get away with. But people dont seem bothered by me. And I do think it is because I'm extremely easy going. People dont stay mad at me, but I also rarely ever get mad and I never stay mad at anyone. I dont have the patience for it. And I think people will often reflect the personality of who they're interacting with back at them, so because I project good humor and easy goingness (not sure that's a word but let's roll with it) to people, it is more often than not reflected back at me.

It's all about the approach. There are ways to be honest and to speak your truth without coming across as passive aggressive or threatening to someone else

 

^
I agree and can kind of relate. I often say blunt and confronting things with a certain face and/or body language (comes naturally in my case) and this is why they (strangers too) take it the right way generally. On solely text based media like a forum or in whatsapp i often notice a subtile difference

 

Yes I'm not sure people always react to me the same way on here

 

Part of being successful in the workplace is understanding the culture and the people you work with. You have to know the rules - both written and unwritten. You also have to know what makes your boss happy - I like to call it managing your manager. What may work with one may not work with another simply due to the difference in the type of people they are.

 

I was good at making my boss frown. I was like the Ferris Bueller of my job except worse.

 

Everybody hates their boss.

 

Definately not true. Over the course of my career I have had more than few great managers.