I Don’t Feel Confident Facing My Boss… Why?

You feel that you are not con­fi­dent fac­ing your boss at work.  Why is that so?  Why are you uneasy when fac­ing them?  You feel infe­rior in front of him – but why?  You are afraid to make mis­takes — but what mis­takes exactly?  The strange thing is you do not ques­tion your­self about it.  Instead, you choose to hide from him in the office.  Some­thing like those noc­tur­nal ani­mals you watch on Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel shy­ing away from the daylight.

Hav­ing no con­fi­dence to approach your boss can be attrib­uted to the lack of aware­ness of the You fac­tor.  Remem­ber, per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity is the equa­tion of the Me, You and Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor.  Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity requires con­fi­dence of one self and han­dling of sit­u­a­tions.  You’ve got­ten your Me fac­tor right.  Now you’ve got to work on aware­ness of the You factor.

All of us have needs.  Marslow Hier­ar­chy of Need tends to explain at the fun­da­men­tal level, what a human being would desire (need) to have.  He pro­posed that all of us have needs of dif­fer­ent level, in par­tic­u­lar, phys­i­o­log­i­cal, safety, love/belong, esteem and self-actualization at the top.    That may be too abstract for us now.  Let’s bring the con­text closer to us.  Your boss may be think­ing of his tar­get, such as the next pro­mo­tion or hit­ting com­pany sales.  Maybe he is con­cerned with the timely deliv­ery of the piece of work.   Or it could be even out of work con­cerns, such as if he can leave the office on the dot to catch a din­ner with his fam­ily on time or he just wants a peace­ful hol­i­day with­out phone calls from the office.  Do you feel more “closer” after under­stand­ing him more?

Now think.  You can’t hide from your boss every­day.  You need to con­sult him for advice.  You need his approval.  You need to meet up with him to dis­cuss your career devel­op­ment.  Career devel­op­ment equals pro­mo­tion!  (A dis­cus­sion about your per­sonal career devel­op­ment shows your inter­est to work for him)  Are you say­ing you are going to for­sake your chance of pro­mo­tion?  Every lit­tle day that you “expose” your­self to the boss, you stand a higher chance of pro­mo­tion than the oth­ers.  So you see, it’s impos­si­ble for you not to see your boss.  Not even using the rea­son of uncon­fi­dent meet­ing him.

So, what now?  Bridge the gap between you and your boss.  Remem­ber, he is also a human being.  He has to eat, drink and sleep.  He too has needs to address.  Find out what he REALLY wants.  Is it his pro­mo­tion or a less prob­lem­atic hol­i­day?  At the task level, find out what he wants to achieve.  Is it a date­line or a polit­i­cal agenda he is dri­ving through the com­ple­tion of the task?  Also, find out how he think, what is he’s men­tal model like?  Is there some form of work­ing style that he is par­tic­u­lar with?  Are there things that he doesn’t like to see?    With a lit­tle bit self-questioning and obser­va­tion of your boss, you’ve got the You fac­tor answered.

After you have found out what he really wants, you get down to the man­ag­ing process.  Your per­sonal aware­ness of the Me fac­tor will come in handy as it com­ple­ments the You fac­tor.  With the Me and You fac­tor, you are more accus­tomed to han­dling your boss.   You do not feel uneasy approach­ing him.  Now, con­fi­dence is regained when work­ing with him as you now how to man­age his expectations.

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