Whether you’re currently in a good place with your boss or not, it always pays to work at the relationship. Your boss is in the unique position of being able to directly influence your career in the organization you work in.

Examples of how having a good relationship with your boss will help you:

• See that you’re doing a great job and give you formal recognition
• Gladly provide glowing references for you
• Recommend you to other managers who are hiring for jobs you’re interested in within your organization
• Give you excellent performance reviews
• Take you with them on their upward trajectory

Here are the five easy steps you can follow to improve your relationship with your boss

1. Understand them (or try to)

All of the following steps build on this one. It’s important you do your best to understand what type of person your boss is and their working preferences. If you don’t actually know your boss too well, or you’re not sure how they like to work start here. You can try the following to see if you can get to know them and their style a bit better:

• Ask them how they like to be kept up to date with progress
• Check on their preferences on how to plan the work you’re doing
• Ask them what plans they have for the weekend when you meet towards the end of the week

It’s important when you’re doing this not to pass judgement on the methods of your boss, you simply want to understand them. This may also take some practice too!

2. Feed and fertilize your relationship with them

Business relationships are like any relationships, they need to be nurtured so that they can develop and get stronger. When you feed and fertilize the relationship, it will blossom into a strong and powerful entity in itself. Did you know that 70% of bosses find it difficult to even make basic conversation with their people? Work conversations can be tough from both sides, to get comfortable often takes work – this is where the feeding and fertilising comes in.

Most people will have been in a situation at some time in their lives where they meet someone new and really hit it off. It’s great because your conversation seems to flow really well and the more you chat the better things normally get.

The key to hitting it off like this is a shared interest. When you chat, look and listen for areas of shared interest, for example, do you have sports you like to play or watch in common? The chances are you’ll very quickly find a common interest, and even if you’re only slightly interested in this thing it will make it possible to have relationship building conversations with them.

Don’t expect to be best mates with your boss, you need to keep it on the professional level.

3. Open lines of communication relating to work and projects

Make it easy for them by communicating very clearly with them about the work you are doing on a regular basis. Follow the guidelines you established in step 1. If in doubt at all it’s usually best to err on the side of over-communication.

Some people worry that if they run to their boss about everything it will be a problem. This is true. You need to strike a happy balance between unable to think for yourself, and taking the right things to them when their input is needed. You can ask for their opinion without being subservient, and getting aligned will mean they should always have your back.

4. Be adaptable

The one thing that will enable you to build strong relationships with any boss, is adaptability. Being able to do more of the things they find comfortable, and tone down behaviours that don’t necessarily combine well with their style and personality is a superpower.

If your skills or work preferences are opposite to your boss all is not lost! Communicating to them how you complement each other and how you’re stronger together than individually is a great way to avoid conflict about differing styles. Style or preference differences are not wrong – they introduce balance and diversity of skills, thoughts, and opinions – which in turn strengthens a team.

5. Build trust

Trust is a weird thing, it’s not always easily given, yet it is crucial to a successful business relationship. Any good leader will be looking for opportunities to build trust with their people, and it’s a two way thing.

They need you to trust them, and you need them to trust you, without both your chances of success will be limited. Respond to these opportunities by demonstrating that you do what you say you will, and in the time agreed.

It’s sadly common that leaders are not looking for their people to trust in them and they rule by keeping a very close eye on people. If this is the case then it is still possible to gain their trust but it could be a bit of a long game.

Conclusion

It can pay huge dividends to improve your business relationship with your boss. The forethought and effort you put into this will be rewarded with great things like a better atmosphere, more trust, and probably greater leeway to execute on the work you’re interested in. You don’t need to put in a whole lot of effort to do it. Use the five steps above to help you and stay positive. In no time you will reap what you have sowed.

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