{"id":1543,"date":"2019-10-01T14:06:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-01T13:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/?p=1543"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:17:01","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T14:17:01","slug":"being-your-boss-a-view-from-the-other-side-of-the-desk-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/2019\/10\/01\/being-your-boss-a-view-from-the-other-side-of-the-desk-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Being your boss: A view from the other side of the desk #1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2019\/10\/feedback.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1544 alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2019\/10\/feedback-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"a present\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2019\/10\/feedback-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2019\/10\/feedback-382x215.jpg 382w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/82\/2019\/10\/feedback.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Debbie Pye is our Application Adviser and has written this excellent series of three blogs looking at the viewpoints of business leaders hiring graduates and placement students. The next part in the series will be published next Tuesday.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Being your boss: A view from the other side of the desk #1<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As an executive coach working with middle and senior business leaders, I rarely know in advance of a coaching session what issue\/challenge my client will arrive with. Coming from all sectors in the corporate world \u2013 banking &amp; finance, consulting, tech, manufacturing, engineering, FMCG and the rest- you might think that their challenges as leaders would vary widely. That\u2019s true to an extent, however looking back over thousands of coaching sessions, there are some very common themes which crop up again and again, regardless of whether the client is new to management or is a Director\/CEO. You might assume that all experienced managers would have these things sussed\u2026but how wrong you would be!<\/p>\n<p>The top three issues I get asked for coaching on are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>How to give feedback to an employee\/colleague \u2013positive or critical<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>How to delegate without looking as if I am \u201cdumping\u201d work on someone<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>How to motivate and retain good staff without paying them more\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Whether you are starting your new role after graduating or are starting your placement it\u2019s always helpful to look at things from your new boss\u2019s point of view. <em>Empathy <\/em>(putting yourself in someone else\u2019s shoes) is a <strong>key transferable skill<\/strong> and one that is worth consciously developing; it is a great way to build working relationships, be more influential and is even a great tool in negotiation.<\/p>\n<p>So how can you make your manager\u2019s life easier and in the process make an impressive impact in this important new stage of your career journey?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><em>Be open to feedback\u2026.<\/em>and even proactively ask for it. Receiving feedback is definitely as much a core skill as actually giving it. It demonstrates that you are keen to develop and learn and that you respect the other person\u2019s perspective and expertise. Of course it can be scary to \u201cput yourself out there\u201d but there are some simple techniques for managing the risk:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Be very specific about what you would like feedback on, rather than \u201chow am I doing\u201d. For example, \u201cPlease may I have some feedback on how I interacted with that new client yesterday?\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Give your manager time to think about it \u2013 maybe drop them an email and ask if it\u2019s something you can have on the agenda for your next 1-1 meeting<\/li>\n<li>Give them a framework to structure what they say to you. A good one is \u201cPlease can you give me one example of where I delivered that task well and one thing I could do even better\u201d\u2026.known in the trade as <em>\u201cWWW (what went well)\/EBI (even better if)!<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Listen carefully, ask if you don\u2019t understand and say thank you. By the way you don\u2019t have to agree with what they have said, but their observations should nevertheless give you food for thought. They have made the effort to give you feedback so that demonstrates positive intent on their part.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There\u2019s a phrase in the world of work which goes \u201cFeedback is a gift\u201d. Cheesy, but true. We don\u2019t usually ask for presents, or at least not since we were toddlers, but in this case you are actually doing your manager a big favour by demonstrating that you are open to feedback. They may even ask you to give them some too!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>In my next \u201c View from the other side of the desk\u201d blog I will look at how to help your boss be a better delegator and why that will help your career. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Debbie Pye is our Application Adviser and has written this excellent series of three blogs looking at the viewpoints of business leaders hiring graduates and placement students. The next part in the series will be published next Tuesday. Being...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":827,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[748],"tags":[505,504,506,170,503,283,423],"class_list":["post-1543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","tag-business-communication","tag-business-leader","tag-corporate","tag-feedback","tag-graduate","tag-placement","tag-transferable-skills"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/827"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/careers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}