What do I want from my boss?

The overriding theme and take-home message of this is alliterative as an aide-memoire: What do I want from my boss? BALANCE

Support

Support can be subdivided into three main categories: clients, procedures and the diary.

Clients

It is crucial to success that your boss ‘sets you up for a win’, especially if you are unfamiliar with the client. By this, they should brief you on the situation and task they are dispatching you on beforehand. Knowing the situation you are about to arrive at before you do will help you immeasurably in dealing with it. Examples of this may be: known high input client, gold standard diagnostics and treatment will be requested, vs. budget client – don’t suggest an MRI in the second sentence. Or, the dog will bark but probably not bite. Your boss should also prepare the client, as a minimum by telling them your name. The other aspect of support with regards to clients is sticking up for you when things go wrong. A good boss will take time to actively listen to your perspective on a situation when dealing with a complaint from a client.

Procedures

No matter whether a new graduate or a boarded surgeon, we all require help on occasion. To advance your skills, a boss should assist you when necessary and to the level that is required. This could range from doing everything for you when the task is completely new or you are fatigued, to just being present with you and maybe assisting with only one part of an operation that you are struggling with. Bosses who are especially good at this will recognise the input required, or instigate a conversation with you to ascertain. Sometimes they will push you out your comfort zone and tell you to go alone.

Diary

You want to be neither overworked nor understimulated. Bosses should oversee your workload to prevent these, so don’t be offended if they ask where you are, what you’ve done, what you’re doing next; this will allow your boss to be your troubleshooter. Your boss should recognise flaws in your plan before they happen. Occasionally, things will go wrong. These may be of your making or not; nobody can help if three colics in opposite directions phone in at once. Either way, you want a boss that will help you as best they can. This may be only phone advice, it may be physical assistance, or an empathetic post-mortem of the debacle, that could avoid repetition.

Expectations

From the author’s personal experience, it is fundamental that your boss accurately communicates exactly what they want from you. Once this has been established, you both have a clear standard to work to. These expectations may not be set out at interview, on the first day, or even in full by the first month; but the quicker the better. Expectations will touch all aspects of your work including (non-exhaustively): • punctuality (for work and for appointments within).
• standards of dress, etiquette and demeanour with clients and behaviour towards animals.
• management of other staff.
• care and cleanliness of vehicles and equipment.
• response times to correspondence.

If these aren’t forthcoming; seek them out, ideally before you are found to have fallen short of them. If you do, use that as a catalyst for open and honest dialogue. Such expectations are easier to meet when they are aspired to by the whole team; you, your colleagues, and by your boss – leading by example.

Feedback and recognition

Prompt, regular, and above all judicious feedback on all aspects of your employment is critical to a long and harmonious relationship. A good boss will not constantly badger you with pedantic details of each and every task you complete; micro-managing you to the point you become like a beaten dog. Nor will they tell you everything is fine, when it isn’t. This communication is critical to maintaining the ‘psychological contract’ [1], a set of unwritten promises, that by this nature, need to be adhered to and regularly discussed if they are to be maintained. This will be far easier if your boss has a high level of social intelligence. Social intelligence and not an extreme personality will mean your boss is far more likely to be empathetic to a situation. To take an example of an expectation from above, you might be expected to have finished your notes and invoices from each working day before leaving. A good boss may allow you to forgo this so you can attend a time critical event after work on occasion, provided you complete the task swiftly after. Being able to meet with your boss informally, either in or out of work time, will facilitate this. Someone who is a brilliant clinician, or researcher, whom you may have selected as your boss because you aspire to be like them, may not be the best person to get you there. Perfectionists won’t let you have a go as you inherently won’t be as good as them. You want a boss who is interested in you, and your development, personally, and professionally. In recognition of hard work from you they should not just pay your wages each month, they should give you their time now and then, for whatever you may need it for. Forbes magazine [2], in addressing the same question as this presentation, says your boss should be willing to give you a ‘seat at the table’. In an equine veterinary context this may be more like a stand in the pouring rain at the local point-to-point, where they’ve asked you to come as ‘third vet’.

References
1. Hill, J. and Moffett, J. (2017) Psychological contracts: the unwritten promises of veterinary employment. In Practice, 39, 42-44.
2. Llopis, G. (2013) The 6 most important things employees need from their leaders to realize high potential. Forbes, 30 September 2013. ...