Seek a Mutually-Beneficial Relationship

Gabarro and Kotter offer some specifics. Try to understand your supervisor s goals and objectives, pressures, and preferred work style. Look within yourself and assess your strengths, weaknesses, preferred work style, and predisposition toward authority. Use the preceding to manage your boss or, more specifically, your part of what ideally will be a mutually-beneficial relationship. 

Consider this conversation in Shakespeare s Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2 as quoted by Norton (1994) who notes that Polonius is the one who gets stabbed to death behind the curtain  

Hamlet Do you see yonder cloud that s almost in the shape of a camel Polonius By the mass, and tis like a camel, indeed. 

Hamlet Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet Or like a whale  

Sometimes it s easier to just go along. Say and do what your boss wants, or you think he or she wants. Keep your supervisor happy rather than developing an informed, mutually-dependent, beneficial relationship in which you give the best that you have to offer. 

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