JT5 | First, Be Reliable To Win Your Manager’s Trust

You’ve contributed good ideas in meetings. You’ve taken on new projects. You even volunteered to take that weirdly quiet new guy for a drink – and man was that a boring evening. Yet, whenever there is something to be done, your manager always turns to the other person to get the job done. You give it your best, yet they are your go-to guy or gal. What are you doing wrong?

Discussion Topics: First, Be Reliable To Win Your Manager’s Trust

• Managers value reliability at work, the same way we do in our personal lives; but it’s easy to get there.
• Understand and set expectations properly.
• Follow through and ensure you and everyone else involved get the job done.
• Communicate proactively, so people know how things are going.
• All these together ensure there are No Surprises.

Transcript: First, Be Reliable To Win Your Manager’s Trust

You like Rohit. He’s a nice guy and great to work with. But man do you also secretly hate him? Because at the end of every meeting your manager turns to him and says “Hey Rohit, you’ve got this right? Could you make sure it gets done before the next update?” Why always Rohit? Why can’t you be Rohit?

Hi there and welcome to JobTok, My name is Amit Ray and over a 20-year career, I’ve had the privilege of working in dozens of roles across a variety of companies. During this time I’ve managed or worked with literally hundreds of smart, talented people and developed a pretty good behind-the-scenes understanding of what it takes to succeed in the corporate world. Through this show, I hope to share those learnings so you can accelerate your career, land great opportunities and become a highly valued professional.

And, before we begin, a quick reminder that notes and resources related to this episode are linked in the episode summary so feel free to just listen in for now and click through later for a recap if you need one. If you have questions, you can also leave them as comments on the notes page and I’ll respond to you directly.

Now, there could be a million non-work reasons for things to be this way. Perhaps they worked together in the past. Or maybe they live close to each other and play squash on weekends. Or perhaps you have bad breath from all that coffee you keep drinking and your boss doesn’t want to spend more than the bare minimum amount of time with you in a conference room. And those may be true. But even if they are, there is most likely one reason above all – and it’s a pretty mundane one: Rohit is reliable.

Think about your own life. Who do you rely on for your daily needs? Perhaps you order food from the delivery service that always shows up on time. Or pay a bit extra to the handyman who takes your calls and doesn’t show up 6 hrs late. And you probably prefer the phone or internet provider that you know offers uninterrupted service and predictable bills rather than seeking your thrills from one that just shuts down in the middle of the workday and then bills you for your neighbour’s usage. It’s the same at work. Managers are busy taking care of all kinds of non-work things, like presentations and people issues, and office politics so they need others to take care of work things. And of course, when they need someone to get stuff done, they turn to those that have proved reliable in the past. So if you want to be the manager’s go-to person, you need to develop a reputation for reliability. Don’t worry, you just need to remember three things.

• First, you have to get good at setting expectations. For a given piece of work, make sure you understand the scope of the work so you’re delivering what the manager expects and not what you thought they wanted. And based on that understanding, ask for a reasonable amount of time to complete it. Don’t just blindly promise things overnight or on Monday because either you won’t get it done or you’ll end up doing it badly because you rushed it or because you got no sleep.
• Next is to follow through. If you promised something by a deadline, get it done by that deadline. If you held a meeting and there were action items, make sure you circulated the action items and got them completed by the next meeting or when promised. If someone else is responsible for it, chase them till they get it done. Reliability is not just about personal deliverables but about the overall outcome.
• The third is communication. Provide proactive, regular updates for those things that take longer than a few days. And definitely give advance warning about things that are going to slip so everyone knows well in advance and can plan for the changes. Updates don’t have to be fancy newsletters. A well-written paragraph summarising the situation is good enough for most things.

Summary: First, Be Reliable To Win Your Manager’s Trust

All this is ultimate to ensure there are no Surprises. Reliability means No Surprises. Your manager is going to be happiest when they give you some work and it comes back as expected without fuss and hassle on the appointed day or maybe slightly ahead of time. But delivering something different from what was asked, too too late and without any kind of heads up messes things and makes them look bad to their managers and stakeholders. And then they might look for Rohit.

Thanks for listening and I hope you enjoyed our chat today. Do click through to our website via the episode description for the show notes to remind you of the key points from today’s discussion. And yes, do let us know in the comments what else might have worked for you in gaining your manager’s trust.

See you later and Zai Jian to my friends in Singapore and Taiwan. This was Amit with JobTok.