How to Talk to Your Boss Effectively When You Were Raised to be too Respectful
Rewire your communication DNA and have better conversations with your manager/boss.
[Even though I originally wrote this article for mid-level managers in Tech workplaces, in my experience, these tips are easily transferable and applicable to any kind of workplace with a hierarchical setting]
Mid-level management can be quite tricky. While keeping up with your core tech skills so you can meaningfully support/guide your team with daily tasks, you have to be good at the human aspect of managing downwards (your direct reports) as well as managing upwards (your boss).
Hierarchy in communication
A big part of “managing up” is communicating with your manager well enough to influence them with your ideas, tech experience & unique insights from being closer to the day-to-day business. This is easier when you have a boss who shares at least a few common cultural contexts or personality traits with you. But in today’s diverse & hybrid Tech workplaces, that’s not a common occurrence.
Communicating upwards can be especially harder if you come from a culture where being “respectful” to hierarchy (based on gender, age, social roles) was inculcated as the DNA of your interaction with others.
The problem with too much “respectfulness”
Often, in a modern workplace where outspokenness gets equated to assertiveness, knowledge, or even honesty(yes, really!), having too much “respectfulness” in your tone can sometimes get misinterpreted as a lack of confidence or even reliability. And if your boss is from a more outspoken culture, your subtle deference may even cost you some tech/leadership creds.
They may perceive you as being “unsure” making them less open to relying on your leadership and opinions. And you’ll end up wasting so much time and energy trying to prove yourself and/or fix these perceptions. It can be really hard to detect this in yourself, especially if you were socialized this way early on. Also, the damage caused by perception is usually very gradual, subliminal and subtle, so you may never even realise it until it’s a bit…
