Exploring Workplace Communication and Framing - Relationships with your Boss!
The relationships which we have with others in the workplace
is highly important. Getting on with your co-workers and your boss/manager is
important towards your survival in the workplace and will make sure that you
are respected in your job. Everyone strives in their job to be excellent and
this is the point of today's post, being excellent in your job and making an
impression on your boss.
In the field of Study and human excellence known as NLP or
Neuro-linguistic Programming there is a method of application which you can
apply to your life which will impress your boss and this is known as framing
and re-framing. Framing is a technique where you look at a particular challenge
or problem in your life and seek to resolve it by changing the way you think.
NLP helps to change the way you think about anything in life through the use of
language and cognitive patterns which you can learn and apply time and time
again to change your opinions, behaviours and belief systems.
In this blog post however, I am not going to take the
traditional route of teaching you language patterns on framing. My reasoning
behind this is that it would take too long to do so and would take away the
value that I have wanted to present in this article. However, if you want to
learn the langue patterns for framing and reframing in NLP then I recommend
that you look at this webpage:
Or read two books from Amazon:
In this post, I will take a much simpler approach to framing
and reframing by getting you to think. By getting you to think, I have found
that the best way to frame and reframe is to phrase and rephrase something
which bothers you in your life. You can easily phrase problems in your life by
changing the way they sound. When you change the way something sounds, you are rephrasing
what bothers you in a different way and this gives you the chance to look at
your life from a new and novel perspective. Taking the example of novelty in
this article, we will talk about something you can reframe in your working life
which is the way you relate to your boss.
For those who read this post and who dislike or fear their
boss, consider the types of statements you make about them such as "my
boss is always rude to me", "he/she expects too much of me" or
"he/she makes outlandish deadlines for my work". Considering these
and similar statements which you may make about your boss for a moment, ask yourself
what would happen if you rephrased or changed your above statements about them.
Take for instance how they may want too much from you, may
act rude towards you or try to discipline/control you. If you consider such
behaviour from your boss as negative then you will most probably continue to
believe that any behaviour they display towards you is negative. However, if
you also consider that your boss may be there to help you do your job better
then, their behaviour may also be seen through a different perspective.
Sometimes, your boss will want you to succeed. They will
often do this by setting up deadlines to help you complete your work on time.
This allows you to go home early from work and may also be the incentive to
have both of you be promoted to higher positions in the workplace. This of
course relies on how you understand your boss and their motives.
When I worked in the corporate world, I made it a habit to
understand who and what my boss was - I.e. their motives. I also worked hard at
understanding how and why my boss worked and when they planned to retire etc. I
did this because it enabled me to build rapport with my boss and better
understand them. This gave me the slight edge, or an advantage to frame and reframe
some of the challenging statements they had made towards me and what I believed
the meaning of their communication was.
While their communication may have sounded negative on the
surface, when I dug deeper I found that what my bosses were saying to me was
actually quite motivating. This is why I
spent time to understand my boss better and ask them questions about their life
outside of work. I wrote a checklist down called "ways to understand your
boss better" and it looked a little like a checklist I have written below.
Check listed ways to understand your boss better:
1. Ask about their family and home life.
2. Talk about their hobbies.
3. What is their favourite meal or food.
4. Where do they see themselves in 10-15 years time.
5. What do they want to achieve.
It was a small checklist, but it was enough to help me
realise that my boss was/is human too and has human emotions. I also learned
that no matter how authoritarian my boss may have appeared to be, that they
could also be considered the type of person who is always there to make sure
that we both succeed. Otherwise they wouldn't have hired me. So with what I
originally thought was many of my bosses negative attitudes, I also learned to
ask myself some tough questions about my boss and what they wanted from me such
as:
1. How can my boss help me complete my work on time?
2. How can my boss help me to be a better, to the point
communicator?
3. How can my boss allow me to become a better team player?
4. How can I make my own and my bosses life easier?
5. How can I become their "favourite" - I.e. How
can I make sure that even if my boss gets angry at me that they'll be soft on
me because I am usually a hard worker.
These are some of the questions which you need to ask
yourself. The types of questions that set up frames while you are working and
will help you survive in the workplace while you are working there. These
questions and these frames cause you to have better communication and because
you have better communication you will also get better responses and respect
from your boss and your co-workers.
This concludes this week on relationships and starts the
week off with Financial intelligence.
Stay tuned.
Count. Daniel John Fogarty, Sunday 27th of October 2013.
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