To think we spend too much energy trying to get our managers to like us and not enough asking if we even like them?

[ThisWaryCrow]

It’s easy to get caught up in trying to impress a manager - staying late, over-explaining, people-pleasing. But lately I’ve started wondering, do I even respect this person? If they weren’t in a position of authority, would I even want to work with them? AIBU to think we should flip the script a little more often?

I don't recognise myself in any of that.

But YANBU that you should flip the script.

This.

I dont suck up to managers because they are a manager.

But good on you for recognizing it, and stopping it

What was everyone’s favourite Christmas present?

Are you the same person who made a sweeping statement, anti-manager post yesterday which very quickly got deleted?

Yes I think so, I think at times we can certainly not question certain dynamics in our life.

I think it’s good to question them for a bit of perspective

I got a lovely little nasal hair trimmer - does the job beautifully!

I think essentially we need to do what they want us to do as it’s what we’re paid to do. I don’t think too much about whether they like me, but equally I don’t want them to think I’m useless & a slacker. You don’t need to get on with them on a personal level.

I don’t do any of that and no one else does where I work. People pleasing doesn’t ever make you liked or respected.

As a manager, I don't necessarily want you to like me. I want you to crack on with what you're supposed to be doing without treating it like the school playground. I'd like us to have mutual respect, which we get by being professional.

I can honestly say it has never occurred to me to wonder if a manager liked me.

I don’t relate. I get a new manager and I can tell that she is desperate for everyone to like her

One of the best things I was ever told was 'You can fire your workplace, you know'.

I have always been so obsessed with being the best employee I could be- with a corresponding result of being used and abused (sometimes literally) that I forgot that actually my work had to please me as well. And if they failed, then I could fire them.

So I did. And have never looked back.

This all over.

Ditto.

We don’t need to like our mangers or to try and get them to like us. You’re colleagues not friends. What you need is mutual respect. One of the women I respect the most in my workplace is not someone whose personality I like. She’s just really good at her job and goes above and beyond for our service users.

I do like my current manager, but I’ve happily worked for managers who I privately thought were terrible people. The managers themselves would never know the difference.

I do my job to the best of my ability and maintain a friendly, cheerful and professional demeanour.

Whether I like them or not is fairly irrelevant to my behaviour.

I have 2 managers now…love them both….loved my last manager and the one before….that takes me back 22 years….they always been really flexible ….allowed compressed working…..wfh 2 days a week….very supportive through long periods of sickness allowing long phased returns….never had any annual leave requests denied….I’m NHS and I don’t have a single complaint about management and have never ‘sucked up to a manager in my life’
no one in my team does….we go in …try to do the best we can in the hours we are paid for…then go home to our familes