Working with a new manager: building that relationship

• Why it is important to have a good relationship with your manager.
• How to create that good relationship with a new manager.
• How to maintain a good relationship with your manager in the long run.

There are so many reasons why having a good relationship with your direct manager is important. These include:

• Having their support: your direct manager can make a great career mentor. After all, they were once in a similar position to you, and have climbed the ladder into a leadership role. Having a strong relationship with your manager can help you to tap into their knowledge and learn by watching how they deal with the realities of their job.
• Getting opportunities: now, in theory, a good manager shouldn’t play favourites and only present opportunities to their friends. But if they know you well, and know that you’d love to be involved in a specific development opportunity, it’s definitely not going to hurt your chances.
• Obtaining a reference: if you eventually decide to leave the role, you’ll want to ask your manager to provide a reference for the new position you’ll be moving into. Again, a strong relationship with this manager will be a great asset here.

It’s likely that, during their first or second week in the job, your new manager will arrange 1:1 meetings with each member of their team. These meetings will likely involve conversations about things like personal development plans, objectives and also how you both want the relationship to work.

While it can be intimidating to tell this new boss how’d like to work with them, it’s crucial that y0u do this now, rather than telling them what you think they want to hear. For example, if you’ve had to deal with a micromanager in the past, this is the time to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. In this case, you don’t want to say something like “I don’t like micromanagement”, because no micromanager thinks they’re a micromanager. Instead, talk about how you like the opportunity to take responsibility for your own work, and set a schedule for regular but not too regular catch ups.

Early on in the relationship, you’ll also want to set expectations to ensure you’re both on the same page from the outset. There are a number of elements to this, including your KPIs and personal development plan.

It’s likely that your new manager will have taken over when you have multiple projects in the works. So the first thing you’ll need to do is bring them up to speed with where these tasks are at, what remains to be done and the timeframe you’re working towards. This allows them to get a handle on what you’re working on day-to-day, and ensures there will be no confusion regarding deadlines.

The other key element to discuss in terms of expectations is any upskilling you’re currently doing as part of your role. This is particularly important if you were working on this with your former manager – for example, in a career mentor scenario. Any decent manager will be ensuring that their reportees have as much access as possible to resources that promote upskilling, so your new boss should be keen to ensure there is no interruption to your development program.

As well as helping your new manager find their way around during their first days, this is also a good time to, subtly, show what you bring to the table. Again, you don’t want to be blatantly trying to curry favour or show yourself off as a know-it-all, but there’s nothing wrong with putting up your hand to take on a few extra tasks that might make things a little easier for your boss. This is particularly true if you’ve been at the organisation a while, and can act as a ‘caretaker’ in some elements of the operation while the new boss settles themself in.

Similarly, once your manager is comfortable with their surroundings, they’ll likely be keen to hear suggestions from their team about how things could be improved. These might be suggestions about streamlining processes, or something more people-focussed, like team-building ideas. While these are fantastic opportunities to show initiative, you need to be tactful and avoid anything that might be taken as a negative comment about your former boss (for example, “I suggested X ages ago, but they weren’t keen on it”). As we all know, New Zealand is a small world, and such remarks have a way of coming back to haunt you in the future.