Have you really got to care for your boss?
Logically, you would think that your job should be to get to work on time, do a good job for a fair day of work and be happy everything will be okay. You are sadly mistaken brother, sister, friend or stranger you may be.
Bosses are also human. As much as you want to be motivated, so do they. If you boss makes a great speech or does a good job at anything, an honest compliment is good for relationships. May be the biblical interpretation of that is "it is better to give than to receive." However, those compliments if they become too frequent may result in the steady hand of leadership unnecessarily fishing for compliments under the guise of feedback. So don't over do it Mr./Ms. subordinate. Mostly, avoid ambiguous compliments such as "your are a nice boss or you are a good boss." What the hell does good or nice mean? What are the good things or nice things that he or she did?
Moreover, things can get pretty uncomfortable when the boss demands that you must care for him or her in some ways where it becomes part of the job description. Examples are many, but a few common ones are balancing the checkbook for the boss, remembering birthdays of children and his/her spouse or taking care of their baby for a few hours or accompanying her to the hair saloon. I knew of one boss in the UN system who very much wished that some of his staff play golf with him on Sundays. It was so patronizing that some of them had to do it. But when it comes to the corporate sector the UN can be put to shame. One WSJ article reports how one colleague had to accompany her boss on a seven hour shopping spree, part of a 3-day business trip that cost about $25,000 in airfare and lodging. And the subordinate confessed when she blew the whistle that no business was discussed in that 3-day trip.
And this is my advice to UN colleagues. Don't ever get dovetailed in caring for your boss. You can be a friend but not a friend by force. And never allow the family of the boss to dictate any terms to you. You work for UNICEF, but work "with" your boss not "for" your boss. Well, it will certainly help all staff if HRM rightly briefs existing and new managers that under no circumstances can they expect a subordinate to be caretaker of the boss's personal needs or a psychologist in waiting.
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