The Stressed Manager
Situation
My boss is a good guy but at times he can be so frenetic I don’t even want to be around him. When he gets that way, he changes his mind three or four times a day. He half-apologizes for all the changes, but not really. He expects me to remember every tiny detail he has ever mentioned to me.
On the whole he is a good manager when he isn’t feeling pressure and freaking out. When he’s relatively calm which is about 80% of the time, he is a good mentor and collaborator. I want to manage my relationship with my manager instead of just weathering it.
Right now I live in fear of the next incident of my manager going into fight-or-flight mode and making my life hell. I want to get some control over those episodes if I can.
Coaching Tips
The relationship is the key; you can manage your relationship, but you’re not actually going to manage your manager.
You and your manager jointly manage the relationship you share. We all manage relationships with other people. We have to do that, because we interact with a lot of different people and those relationships need attention — and intention — to thrive.We manage our relationships by paying attention to the needs, concerns, sensitivities and preferences of the people we interact with frequently.
If you want to learn from difficult experiences you’ve had, you have to see your part in whatever caused you pain. If you don’t see your part, you will not be able to change anything when the same circumstances show up again.
Coaching Outcome
The client successfully completed her studies in record time and gained confidence to enrol for the desired Specialist qualification.
“Sometimes goals can seem so overwhelming , when you look at where you are now and where you want to go. But after the coaching intervention I learnt to sit down and plan the steps I need to take to ultimately get to my goal ( after all that’s how you eat an elephant piece by piece)“
