#77 Balancing the Relationship With Your Boss with Susana Serrano-Davey

Who is your boss? Do you have more than one boss? Perhaps you are number 2 to the CFO and you report indirectly to other people too. Maybe you are the CFO and you need to be mindful of the needs of both CEO and investors in the business. Getting the relationship right with all those people is important. Finding the right balance between your needs from the relationship and their needs is key. It’s no secret that the relationship between you and your bosses, whoever they might be, can be a tricky one. It’s often difficult to find the right balance between being respectful and assertive, humble and ambitious, compliant and determined. When you report to more than one person you get the added complication of competing needs and being pulled in several different directions at the same time.

In this podcast, Susana Serrano-Davey and Kevin Appleby explore some of the challenges that come with trying to maintain a healthy relationship with your boss. We’ll offer some tips on how to handle common situations, as well as how to stay sane while working under someone else’s control!

Susana breaks the problem down into 4 areas:

• Mutual responsibilities
• Separate the job from the person
• Finding your Voice
• Professional to professional relationships

We explore each of these in turn and provide some practical examples to illustrate the key points.

Links

• The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by  Don Miguel Ruizon on Amazon UK and Amazon USA
• GrowCFO Show episode 74 discussing personality types as birds with Merrick Rosenberg
• GrowCFO for Finance Teams
• The communications module within GrowCFO for Finance Teams
• Susana Serrano-Davey on LinkedIn
• Kevin Appleby on LinkedIn

Timestamps

01:04 Everyone has a boss unless you are the CEO

03:18 Building or balancing relationships

04:48 Susana’s personal experiences

06:08 Introducing the 4 areas for balancing relationships

06:49 Mutual responsibilities

13:37 Separating the job from the person

15:10 The four agreements book

21:55 DISC and the 4 personality types

25:02 GrowCFO for Finance Teams – communications course

25:42 Finding your voice

30:37 Tackling conflict

35:44 Professional to professional relationships

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