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Traits of a Good Boss in the IT World
(August 2016)
A boss has traditionally and per the dictionary been described as a respectful way of addressing a person to acknowledge that person's leadership or authority. Boss as an adjective has always meant excellent, outstanding or superior. A boss in office has been the higher authority taking authoritarian decisions.
The rise and proliferation of service industry and more specifically IT industry in India has witnessed a significant change in the office environment and traditional corporate culture. This new corporate culture deals primarily with white collared people with sharp intellect, strong academics, youthful energy and a very delicately poised ego. A boss here is no longer a superior mortal in the organizational authority only but is a part of the team. He is no longer “Sir” but “Mike”, “Bill” in the US or “Ramesh” or “Ajit” in India. Needless to say, the nature of boss-subordinate relationship has undergone significant changes accordingly.
Boss management is more complex in the corporate IT world as most of the organizations have a matrix reporting structure with one major fall-out. You do not have just one boss to manage but multiple ones! While the structure varies across organizations, this reduces the solitary dependency on the immediate boss (commonly, Manager) as it existed in the authoritarian management structure. For example, an employee may work with different Managers during an appraisal cycle (typically a year). Each Manager is responsible for evaluation for a certain period of his/her association with that employee. However, another boss is responsible for career management, vertical growth, increment, bonus etc. This new set of bosses are referred to as “Coach”, “People Manager”, “Line Managers”, “Mentors” and so on in different organizations.
The characteristics and qualities of a good boss have accordingly been redefined. An IT boss is challenged with earning authority through leadership and hence key leadership skills become parameters for judging of a good boss.
In my years in this industry, I did experience many bosses and have been a boss for many - directly and indirectly, thanks to the matrix organization structure in the new-age Corporate IT world. My attempt to define a good boss is based on my experience and judgement of leadership traits that I have witnessed in select bosses who made a difference. The approach may have some inherent bias. This bias stems from my professional alignment with my bosses and their influences on me to see things through their vision.
The leadership traits that made the most significant impact on my professional delivery and career development can be characterized by what I term as “Decide-Delegate-Direct (D-3)” principle.
Incidentally, my interpretation of these traits has changed over the two decades of my professional career. In my early career, I admired a boss who provided me with a clear direction of what I needed to perform. In other words I expected my boss to be technically superior to me. That was my first boss Ramesh. He was able to respond to my technical queries immediately – a trait that I witnessed in my teachers during my academic days. While I turned out to be lucky with Ramesh, many freshers in this industry may not be so while assessed in this yardstick! What I discovered later is Ramesh helped me learn his style of problem solving in the professional environment – how he logically dissected an apparently large problem into smaller components, prioritised them and decided the solution often by these smaller components. The leadership trait “ Decision” as I term it.
Let me discuss another example. Raj, my boss for more than five years, has been a strong believer of “Delegation”. Raj, to me, is not a detailed professional and he accepts that, “I watch tips of the icebergs and navigate the ship. You should focus deep into the sea, ensure that the ship has necessary stuff to run and warn me ontime so that I can navigate safely” It took a significant time for me to realize, a long-enough period to struggle and a considerable duration to learn before I started delivering to that expectation. Over time. I started enjoying the independence by managing the team or delivery with no or minimal intervention from my boss. Raj changed my perspective and helped my grooming into an “adult" manager!
A right delegation is dependent on many factors: identifying the right pieces of work for delegation, assessment of time, effort etc of the delegated work, ability of the person(s) delegated to, setting the right expectation to the delegated team, mechanism to put check and balances to monitor etc. This means that an effective delegation includes the boss’s ability to demonstrate the other two traits: decide and direct. All the three traits are inter-linked in most cases and ability to take a decision is an equally critical trait.
Ajit is a fast decision taker, thanks to his intelligence and risk-taking abilities. For most of the key issues, he asks his team’s suggestions but takes his decision based on his own interpretation of the issue and our suggestions. He also expects the same from us in our own areas. In case of problems with our decision, he stands to support if we can interpret the reasons for our decision. This has helped me taking calculated risks, developing confidence on my ability and building trust with my boss. Ajit also says that he puts emphasis on fast decision vis-à-vis best decision for majority of his cases. In such cases, he thinks of the negative fallout of a wrong decision and his ability to follow corrective measures. He feels that almost 80% of his work falls in this category.
The ability to deliver successfully rests on ability to demonstrate the traits of the D-3 principle by the bosses. I have tried to demonstrate through some of my experiences that these are adopted traits. The strength of the better organizations lies in their ability to develop such bosses to effectively adopt and percolate the traits of these D-3 principles. A good organization tries to drive these traits among all its leaders and develop a culture within the organization.
While emphasizing these traits, I have witnessed some other secondary traits in good bosses: robustness in communication, patience in dealing with people, focus in fast learning of business dynamics and demonstration of energy/ passion. The extent and intensity of the characteristics vary but these qualities are demonstrated by good bosses.
In today’s global delivery model, this is more important as only leadership qualities can earn superiority in this virtual with multi-stakeholders organization. However, two other characteristics are distinctly needed: Cross-culture adjustment and faster assimilation with new group/ team.
While I discuss different traits of a good boss, we must remember: a boss is a boss is a boss! Like you do not decide your parents, you do not decide your boss too. You are given one and you experience it! In the process you learn that your boss is always right still holds right !!
(The view expressed by the author is personal)