Everything you want to know about your future boss, but may be afraid to ask...

The future isn't what it used to be...

If there was one thing that I wish could have known before taking on employment in a corporate organization, it would have been a lot about my future boss! We can glean loads of information about an organization from its website, talk to industry champions about its performance and perhaps gather snippets of unreliable "internal-to-company" juicy gossip from the grapevine, but getting accurate hi-fidelity specific details in advance about our future boss(es) is a whole new ballgame altogether. Which I should have learnt to play..., more effectively.

They say.....if you can't do, teach. Or preach.

So here I am, trying to compile a list of questions on the "Boss-personality", that prospective corporate aspirants, freshers and future employment seekers could browse through, to save themselves some pain, or at least anticipate what could lie in store for them as they step into the jazzy world of private corporate enterprise. Some questions may sound repetitive or extreme, but those are intended for emphasis.

No gender bias intended; only for the sake of convenience in writing, I am using the male pronoun in the narrative below.

Here you go, with the "Dirty Dozen":

1. What is his actual "leadership style" on the ground?

• Autocratic or democratic or abdicating laissez-faire?
• Is he a "servant-leader" or a "situational leader", or a "transformational or

transactional leader"?

• Is he "task-focused" or "relationship-oriented"?

2. Is he short-tempered or even-tempered or a "cool-as-a-cucumber" dude?

• What triggers him to "fly off the handle"?
• What are his "hot buttons"?

3. Is he a "shock-absorber and sponge" or a "direct conductor of heat and electricity"?

• When bad news comes from the top, does he buffer the impact to the team or does he just cascade the misery like a waterfall?
• If he becomes the victim of a dressing down from the top on any issue, does he take it out on his reporting team members or keep quiet, swallow his pride to accept the situation by himself and move on?

4. If you are joining the organization as a manager with a team that will report to you, will your future boss travel on the "bypass road"?

Specifically, will he by-pass you and interact in "skip-level" fashion with your team members...

• either individually or in groups?
• without keeping you in the loop of information or topic of discussion?
• without your prior consent or "heads-up"?

5. Is he likely to appreciate your work outputs or mostly criticize them?

• Will he express annoyance or irritation openly in front of others if you make a silly unintended error? Has he heard of the maxim: praise in public, pull-up in private?
• Or will he gloss over it and ignore the same?
• Or is he the type of character who will remember the mistake and store it in his long-term memory to quote it at a later date, for example, at the performance appraisal time, to corner you lock, stock and barrel?

6. Will he actively defend your opinion, or work outputs in a meeting when others attack, simply because they don't like you or don't value your judgment or have an axe to grind with you OR will he throw you "under the bus" when the going gets tough?

• What will he speak about you to another person, especially to his boss, when you are not around?
• And what will he not tell?

7. Will he be inclined to treat you as a "resource", in other words, a "pair of hands" or will he engage and involve you in decision-making?

• The boss tells, you just do.
• The boss asks you: what is your view? And then you do anyways!

8. Is the boss a "big-picture/headlines only" guy or is he a "micromanager" with lots of questions on details of a plan or on work-in-progress?

• "Tell me the bottom-line, the net-net message. Is the work done or not done?"
• "How did that happen? Who is responsible? Why didn't you take care of that? How could this be overlooked? When was the due date?" Etc. etc.

9. Is he likely to invest in your learning and development during your tenure in the organization?

• Will he actively explore training programs and learning opportunities for you and recommend you to attend? OR
• Will he expect you to learn "on-the-job" and perform on your own ("sink-or-swim" approach)?

10. Will he always want to have the last word and the final say on every topic that comes up for discussion or in every conversation with him?

• Will he listen to and accept suggestions and opinions that do not align with his own mindset?
• Will he always pull rank and throw power with his reporting team members and juniors in every interaction?

11. Is the boss a "perfectionist" (Excellence is perfection, nothing less type) or is he willing to live with a few jagged edges?

• Does he tend to "dot the i's and cross the t's" in every issue, major or minor?
• Does he nit-pick on every trivial detail in any issue?

12. Is the boss approachable or unapproachable in daily work-life?

• Is he an ego-driven high-handed "emperor-of-his-castle" with whom prior appointment on an Outlook-calendar has to be sought even for a two-minute clarification OR
• Can you walk into his office anytime or call him on the mobile for a casual chat without prior intimation?

Agreed that answers to the above questions and their component sub-questions will not be forthcoming or easy to gather. Most, if not all of these may be garnered in hindsight, and perhaps only after the "rites of passage" and "baptism-by-fire" experiences. However, it would help a new entrant into an organization to ponder over these factors in advance to prepare to face the future, so that he can accordingly waltz to the music that is likely to play out in his corporate life. You may have additional or different questions in your mind and they are most welcome. Please feel free to add to the above list.

As they say, "forewarned is forearmed".....with forethought!

Note: The above article/post, with its contents is the personal view of the author, expressed purely in his personal capacity and is not related to any specific existing organization, institution, group or individual. Any such perceived resemblance or derived linkage or relationship as such is purely coincidental and unintended.