Supervisor's Survival Kit: Your First Step into Management, Ninth Edition

DEALING WITH A DEMANDING SUPERIOR

Your most difficult challenge as a new supervisor may be dealing effectively with your own boss. It is one thing to deal with a superior as a regular employee; it is another ballgame when one management person (you) must build and maintain a strong, open relationship with another. Upper management people can often be more demanding (with vastly different behavioral patterns) than those at the beginning supervisory level. This distinction does not mean you should be intimidated by a powerful person. Three suggestions might assist you in this respect.

• Your new supervisor is more of an equal because you are both members of the management team.

• You can initiate communications more easily because the traditional employee-boss ...