5 Ways to Get Your Boss to Trust You More

1. Do what you say you’re going to do. Being known as someone who follows through on commitments 100% of the time will establish you as someone your boss can trust. Which relationship would you rather have: one where your boss checks up to make sure that the conversation you had last week hasn’t fallen off your radar, or one where she trusts you implicitly to keep the commitments you talked about?

2. Own up to mistakes. People’s first instinct is often to downplay mistakes (or even worse, hide them), but that’s a fast path to losing your boss’s trust. In fact, the more blunt you are, the better it will usually come across – because it instills confidence in your boss that you’ll give her bad news directly and not try to massage the truth.

3. Don't guess when you're unsure. If you’ve ever felt put on the spot by your boss wanting to know some specific piece of information right now, you might have been tempted to guess and hope for the best. Guesses are fine when you’re explicit about the fact that it’s a guess. But guesses presented as fact can have disastrous consequences.

4. Don’t let your own agenda outweigh the company’s point of view. So often, people consider things at work only from their own perspective, without thinking about what makes the most sense for the organization. If you become known as someone who doesn’t let you own agenda bias you when considering things (whether it’s a new idea or a new hire), you’ll build a huge amount of trust with your boss – who won’t have to wonder whether the input you give her is self-serving or not.

5. Tell your boss when things are going well. You might do a great job of keeping your manager in the loop about problems, but do you do an equally good job of updating her on your successes as well? Seeing you pull off victories will build her confidence in you – so make sure she knows when you do. You don't want to do this in an overly braggy way, of course, but a simple “Hey, I was able to shave 15% off the project budget by reexamining our vendor expenses” or  “I got this great note from the client thanking us for our work on the new campaign” is exactly the kind of thing most managers want to know about.

SOURCE:www.quickbase.com