Work Matters

Tag: bosses

  • A Tough Question From Professor Bret Simmons About Being An Authentic Boss

    Bret_Simmons

    I did an online interview on Good Boss, Bad Boss with Professor Bret Simmons, who is one of my favorite bloggers.  Bret does a lovely job of striking a practical balance between what the best evidence shows about management and other organizational behavior and the practicalities and realities of organizational life (as an example, don't miss his most recent post on the Ten Most Important Leadership Functions).  Bret asked me some mighty hard questions about the book; perhaps the one that caused me to pause most is this exchange (see the rest of the interview here)

    Bret's Question:

    Of
    all your suggestions on how to be a good boss, the one I struggled the
    most with was the first one – take control. Is it really possible to
    “trick” others that you are in control? What conditions might cause the
    illusion of control to be ineffective or even backfire?

    My Answer:

    Bret, I struggled with this too.  In fact, if you look at the table
    that summarizes these tricks I warn “Learn to be assertive enough. Don’t
    become an overbearing asshole when you use these strategies.”  I guess
    there is sometimes a fine line between what is “faking it” versus what
    means a skilled leader uses to convince others that he or she is in
    charge.  There is pretty strong evidence that when we BELIEVE our
    leaders are in charge, we do better work and they have a better chance
    of keeping their jobs and being admired by others.   That list was meant
    to show well-meaning leaders the evidence-based moves that help
    convince others they are in charge so they can get things done.

    So, in
    the case of one leader I worked with a bit who was well-liked but was
    not instilling enough confidence, it was useful for him to learn things
    like he should go to the head of the room and stand-up, to battle back
    when others interrupt him too much, that going through a process of
    grabbing some power and then giving it away (he did this by taking a
    large high status for awhile and then, as he saw how crowded people
    were, he had it turned into a conference room and took a smaller
    office).  On one level, these are “tricks,” but on another level, by
    learning about the kinds of things that were seen by his people as
    evidence that he was “finally stepping-up and taking charge” made him a
    more effective leader.

    When does that backfire?  It backfires especially badly when a boss
    becomes so confident or pig-headed that he or she feels superior to
    everyone else – the smartest person in the room, who doesn’t need to do
    things like listen to people, like allow and encourage them to question
    his or judgment, and to admit and learn from setbacks and failure.  Note
    this is delicate balance that I talk about a lot in Chapter 3 on
    wisdom.  More broadly, the best bosses constantly do a balancing act
    here – acting confident but not really sure (see this post
    at HBR).  I think of three bosses I’ve met who are especially adept at
    his, David Kelley of IDEO, Brad Bird at Pixar, and AG Lafley at Procter
    & Gamble.  In fact, I seriously considered naming the book “Top Dog
    On A Tightrope (this was Marc Hershon’s idea, a guy who, among other
    things, names things for a living – he named the Blackberry and the
    Swiffer).

    I think that Bret forced me to think more deeply what I see as a real dilemma for bosses.  Yes, I believe that all of us, including bosses should aim to be our "authentic selves" BUT we also need to realize that there might be times when we follow or habits and instincts and say whatever is on our minds, that we undermine the ability of others to get their work done, drive them crazy, and undermine their confidence in us.  Or to put it another, I once had a rather unpleasant argument with a colleague where (without using the word), I asked him to be less of an asshole to students, he argued back that  he was just being his natural sense.  I argued back that his authentic self was doing enough doing enough damage to other people and to his reputation that he might want to think about making some adjustments. I am not arguing for bringing in the clones,there is clearly a tough balance to reach here as weirdos, people rough edges, naysayers, and a host of other difficult people play essential roles and, if we stomp the zest out of them or send them packing, our lives will be duller for it, we will make worse decisions, and our organizations will be less creative.

    I would appreciate your thoughts on this dilemma or balancing act, as it can be a tough one for bosses and their followers, peers, superiors and mentors to navigate.

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss On New York Times Bestseller List

    We're Number 9! That is, Good Boss, Bad Boss is #9 on The New York Times "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous" list, which will be published on Sunday, September 26th.  Don't ask me why they release this so far in advance, I don't understand it — indeed, even after five books, I remain bewildered by the publishing industry. I have a zillion people to thank, but for this post, I will stick to my wife, Marina Park, to whom the book is dedicated to; Marina was not only was enormously supportive while I wrote it, she also taught me much about being a boss because while I mostly just study and write about the craft, she has been practicing it for a long time.  In addition, I was pleased to learn that the new paperback of The No Asshole Rule is #15 on the "extended" paperback bestseller list.  "Extended" means they only list the top 10 in the newspaper, but add five more online and in the pdfs they send around.  Here is the hardcover list.. sorry it is a little awkward looking, but I am not great at this cropping thing!

    Bsl_092610_Page_6

  • CEOs Love Their iPads

    A couple months back, I wrote a blog post reporting I had bought an iPad and was trying to love it, but couldn't bring myself to do it.  I am pretty much in the same place with the gizzmo as I write this post.  It sits next to the bed, and I occasionally use it to read The New York Times or do a quick web search — but I still find it awkward for reading or watching movies as it gets heavy in my hand and the glare is bad enough that I have trouble getting it in the right position.  I also wonder about its intrinsic appeal because neither my wife nor kids seem interested in borrowing it from me.

    But clearly there are many others who love the thing, and if my experience in recent months is any guide, CEOs especially love them. I have done a couple workshops on Good Boss, Bad Boss for CEOs in the last few months (for small groups, 12 or so in each case), and was rather surprised to see that iPad's seem to be the tool of choice for these folks.  In June, at the session I did for CEOs, about half of them had iPads.  And at the session I did this week, about 75% of them had them.  I asked one CEO why he had one, and then a a few more jumped in to add comments.  They really did seem to love them.  The reasons I heard included:

    1.  They boot faster than a PC or a mac.

    2. They have much longer battery life than a PC, Mac, or iPhone — which was better for meetings, planes, and home use as they don't have to deal with running out of power all the time.

    3.  They are a lot better to type emails on or read emails on than an iPhone or Blackberry. 

    4.  Related to point 3, because the screen is bigger than a phone, you can more easily glance at emails during meetings than on a phone.

    5. They are much better than a phone for surfing the web — important during meetings as you can do it more quickly and more discreetly than on a phone.

    6. They are less intrusive to use during a meeting than a laptop because you don't have the screen up in front of you, which is borderline rude.

    7. It is almost as good as laptop yet much lighter, and has a lot longer battery life to compensate. 

    If you take these comments as a set, one interpretation is that CEOs spend A LOT of time in meetings and on planes, and it is a better device than a phone or laptop for both settings when you balance all the competing demands. 

    I wonder, how do others who own iPads, or who have considered getting them, react to this apparent pattern?  (The sample I have is very small, but I find their arguments in combination with the prevalence in these meetings to be suggestive and intriguing).  Do any of you do work where the iPad fits in beautifully too?  Or is it just for elites like CEOs?  Given the millions that have been sold, they clearly are not just being bought by CEOs.

  • Bad Is Stronger Than Good: Why Good Bosses Eliminate the Negative First

    The Sunday New York Times just published a piece I wrote for their "Preoccupations" section called "How Bad Apples Infect the Tree."  This post digs into the arguments that I made about rotten apples in more detail.

    Of all the tunes in the Johnny Mercer songbook, the most generally beloved must be "Accentuate the Positive" — whether your favorite cover is Bing Crosby's, Willie Nelson's, or someone else's. Chances are that you yourself could summon up the chorus word for word (and click here if you want accompaniment).

    You've got to accentuate the positive
    Eliminate the negative
    Latch on to the affirmative
    Don't mess with Mister In-Between

    It trips off the tongue so easily that you might not even notice that Mercer is telling you to do two things, not just one. Eliminating the negative, as any skilled leader can tell you, is not just the flipside of accentuating the positive. It's a whole different set of activities. For someone with people to manage, accentuating the positive means recognizing productive and constructive effort, for example, and helping people discover and build on their strengths. Eliminating the negative, for the same boss, might mean tearing down maddening obstacles and shielding people from abuse.

    Certainly, every leader should try to do both. Yet, given that every boss has limited time, attention, and resources, an interesting question is: which should take priority? A growing body of behavioral science research provides a pretty clear answer here: It's more important to eliminate the negative.

    The seminal academic paper here is called "Bad is Stronger Than Good" [pdf]. Roy Baumeister and his colleagues draw on a huge pile of peer-reviewed studies to show that negative information, experiences, and people have far deeper impacts than positive ones. In the context of romantic relationships and marriages, for example, the truth is stark: unless positive interactions outnumber negative interactions by five to one, odds are that the relationship will fail.

    Scary, isn't it? Yet it was confirmed by several studies that, among relationships where the proportion of negative interactions exceeds this one-in-five rule, divorce rates go way up and marital satisfaction goes way down. The implication for all of us in long-term relationships is both instructive and daunting: If you have a bad interaction with your partner, following up with a positive one (or apparently two, three, or four) won't be enough to dig out of that hole. Average five or more and you might stay in his or her good graces.

    Studies on workplaces suggest, along similar lines, that bosses and companies will get more bang for the buck if they focus on eliminating the negative rather than accentuating the positive. For some time, I've been campaigning for a certain form of this, urging companies to eliminate the worst kind of colleagues from their workplaces. Research by Will Felps and his colleagues on "bad apples" is instructive. (You can hear him talk about it on This American Life). Felps decided to look at the effect of toxic colleagues on work groups, including what I would call deadbeats ("withholders of effort"), downers (who "express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity, and irritation," a toxic breed of de-energizers), and assholes (who violate "interpersonal norms of respect"). His estimates that a team with just one person in any of these categories suffers a performance disadvantage of 30% to 40% compared to teams that have no bad apples.

    Similarly, another study by Andrew Miner and his colleagues tracked employees' moods, and found that the impact on an employee's feelings of a negative interaction with the boss or a coworker was five times stronger than that of a positive interaction.

    So, negative interactions (and the bad apples that provoke them) pack a real wallop in relationships at work and elsewhere. They are distracting, emotionally draining, and deflating. When a group does interdependent work, rotten apples drag down and infect everyone else. Unfortunately, grumpiness, nastiness, laziness, and stupidity are remarkably contagious.

    My chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss on "Stars and Rotten Apples" opens with the story of how I got to know a CEO named Paul Purcell. It was after his company, Baird, had landed on Fortune magazine's list of the "100 Best Places to Work". Fortune briefly explained, "What makes it so great? They tout the "no-a**hole rule" at this financial services firm; candidates are interviewed extensively, even by assistants who will be working with them." Having written an entire book on that topic, I immediately contacted Leslie Dixon, their HR chief, and she introduced me to Paul Purcell. As I wrote in Good Boss, Bad Boss:

    Paul told me that he had seen and suffered destructive assholes in past jobs, so when he got to Baird, he vowed to build a jerk-free workplace. When I asked how he enforced the rule, Paul said that most jerks were screened-out via background checks and interviews before they met him. But he did his own filtering too, 'During the interview, I look them in the eye, and tell them, "If I discover that you are an asshole, I am going to fire you."' He added, "Most candidates aren't fazed by this, but every now and then, one turns pale, and we never see them again — they find some reason to back out of the search." When I asked Paul what kinds of jerks are most poisonous, he said: "The worst assholes consistently do two things: 1.Put their self-interest ahead of co-workers and 2. Put their self-interest ahead of the company."

    Clearly this is someone who didn't need any research to tell him that "bad is stronger than good." By refusing to tolerate selfish jerks, Paul Purcell gives us a great model of eliminating the negative. And the fact that he doesn't seem to procrastinate when it comes to doing the unpleasant work of dealing with destructive people and poor performers is another benefit backed up by research. Consider a classic study [pdf] by Charles O'Reilly and Barton Weitz on how supervisors handled "problematic" sales employees (in which category they placed salespeople guilty of bad attitudes as well as other problems like low productivity and lack of punctuality). Bosses of the most productive groups confronted problems directly and quickly, issued more warnings and formal punishments, and promptly fired employees when warnings failed. The words and deeds of these no-nonsense bosses inspired performance because they made crystal clear that they would not tolerate crummy work. Related studies of punishment in the workplace show that employees respect bosses more when they punish destructive characters more swiftly and intensely – so long as they are fair and consistent.

    The upshot is, if you are the boss, doing such "dirty work" is part of your job — and although you might not enjoy playing the heavy, doing it doesn't make you the jerk. If you can't or won't do it, either you ought to be in another line of work or, at least, you ought to team up with someone who can.

    With further apologies to Johnny Mercer, sure, as boss you should spread joy up to the maximum, but your main task is to bring gloom down to the minimum. Get that priority straight, and set the stage for your people to do their best work. Or pandemonium is liable to walk upon the scene.

    Note: I originally posted this over at HBR.org as number 10 of my list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe.  Some of the comments over there are from people who don't quite buy this perspective, and think that accentuating the positive is job one for a boss.  Part of me agrees with these concerns, as in some ways, asking what is more important — accentuating the positive or eliminating the negative — is a silly question.  It is akin to asking "what is more important, your heart or your brain?"  But an evidence-based perspective suggests that step 1 for leading a great team is getting rid of (or repairing) bad actions, procedures, and people and step 2 is amplifying and importing "good" stuff.

  • Being a Good Boss is Pretty Damn Hard: Reflections on Publication Day

    Today, September 7th, is the official publication day of Good Boss, Bad Boss.  I've got an hour or so before I need to run to the airport, and find myself looking back on what I've learned from writing the book, talking to people since the book was finished some months back, and all the blogging and comments (especially here at Work Matters and over at HBR Online where I have been developing my list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe).

    The thing I've been fretting over most lately is how hard it is to be a good boss — the job is never done, it is amazingly easy to screw-up, and wielding power over others makes it all even harder because you are being watched so closely (and are prone to tuning-out your followers — the other half of the toxic tandem).  Yet, despite all these hurdles, the best evidence shows that many, if not most, people find their bosses to be competent and compassionate.  And most bosses I know work extremely hard and are dedicated to improving their skills.  Indeed, one of my main motivations for writing Good Boss, Bad Boss was that so many of the managers and executives who I spoke with and who wrote me in response to The No Asshole Rule were so concerned about becoming better at practicing their difficult craft.

    When I think of the bosses that I admire and want to be around versus those that I despise and want to avoid if at all possible, the main factor is not their skill at the moment.  Rather, it is whether or not they care and are working on core questions like:

    1. What does it feel like to work for me? 

    2. How can get more "in tune" with my followers, peers, bosses, customers, and other people who I deal with?

    3. What are my weaknesses and strengths?  What can I do to attenuate my weaknesses — what do I need to learn and who can I work with to best offset my drawbacks and blind spots?

    In contrast, people who are arrogant and suffering power poisoning — and never admit their weaknesses, let alone try to overcome or dampen them — are in my view, the worst of the worst, regardless of past accomplishments  Yes, as I emphasize on this blog and in Chapter 2, the best bosses need to act like they are in charge, to instill confidence in others and themselves.  But the bosses I want to be around  (and that I believe will triumph in the long run) have the attitude of wisdom, or as rocker Tom Petty put it, are confident but not really sure.

    That's what I am thinking about; I would be curious to hear your perspective on the kinds of bosses you want to be and be around.

  • Good Boss, Bad Boss Speeches in September

    Susan Angel Devil

    As Good Boss, Bad Boss is officially published this month — in fact, today is the official publication day — I am doing quite a few speeches on the book. Most are "closed," but three are open to the public, as indicated below.  I hope to see you at one of these events:

    September 8th: Disney Studios (Burbank, CA)

    September 8th: IDEO (Palo Alto, CA)

    September 9th: Pixar  (Emeryville, CA)

    September 10th: Google (Mountain View, CA)

    September 16th: Center for Corporate Innovation (Boston, MA)

    September 17th: Leading Strategic Execution (Stanford Executive Program, requires enrollment)

    September 20th: Commonwealth Club, San Francisco (Open to the public, admission is $20 and 7$ for students, sign up online)

    September 23: Learning Essence (Mexico City, Mexico).

    September 29th: Amazon (Seattle, WA).

    September 30th: Commonwealth Club, Silicon Valley, noon to 1pm (Santa Clara, CA. Open to the public, admission is $20; sign-up online)

    September 30th, Xerox PARC Forum (Palo Alto, CA, 6:00 PM.  Free and open to the public)

    3 P.S. Those beautiful angel and devil chairs at the top of the post above are by Susan Kare , who did them (and the rest of the design) for my Good Boss, Bad Boss PowerPoint deck, and who also consulted on the cover design for the book.  Susan has done many fantastic designs and is most famous for designing many of the icons on the original Macintosh, including the trash can and that frowning smiling face that Macs made when they booted.
    Susan-kare2

  • Luis Urzua and the Trapped Miners: A Good Boss, Performance, and Humanity

    I first wrote this post on September 6th.  I am highlighting it today to celebrate the rescue and to show some of the nuances of Luis Urzua's impressive leadership.

    When people ask me for one sentence summary of a great boss, I answer "He or she promotes both performance and humanity, and strikes a healthy balance between the two when trade-offs are necessary."   In Good Boss, Bad Boss, I quote a cool 2008 American Psychologist article by Mark Van Vugt, Robert Hogan, and Robert Kaiser who, after examining descriptions of admired and effective leaders in settings ranging from ancient human tribes to modern corporations and sports teams, conclude the best leaders are both "competent and benevolent."

    In light of this perspective, I am intrigued with reports (see here and here, for example) about 54 year-old foreman Luis Urzua and the impressive steps he is taking to oversee, organize, protect, and tend to the emotional needs of the 33 men trapped in the mine in Chile — a group that faces months trapped underground.  Urzua kept the men alive by immediately rationing food (two spoonfuls of tuna and a glass of milk every 48 hours for each man), which enabled them to survive and to avoid dysfunctional conflict until food started arriving through a small hole drilled be rescuers — a crucial move because none the miners had run out of food 48 hours before despite the rationing.  Uruza has organized the underground space (he is a skilled topographer) into a work area, sleeping facility, and so on, and is keeping the men on 12 hour shifts by using the headlights of trucks in the mine to simulate daylight.  He not only needs to keep the group healthy and focused to survive the ordeal, he  needs to stay in control because, under some rescue scenarios, the men will need to remove many tons of rocks to help with their own rescue operations.

    I was also taken with reports about the "leadership team" that has emerged.  The New York Times tells us that the oldest miner, 62 year-old Mario Gomez has "become the spiritual guide to his men, government officials said. He has organized a small subterranean chapel and is serving as unofficial aide to the psychologists working on the surface to cope with the miners' sadness and fear."  In addition, another miner, "Yonny Barrios, 50, the group's impromptu medical monitor. He is drawing on a six-month nursing course he took about 15 years ago to administer medicines and wellness tests that health officials are sending down through the 4-inch borehole and then analyzing in a laboratory on the surface."

    This case is so striking to me because Urzua and his team have taken such impressive action to tend to both the performance and human needs of the group — the blend of their competence and compassion is striking.  Moreover, if I go through the mindset of the best bosses discussed in the opening chapter of Good Boss, Bad Boss, the key elements are all there:

    1. The men are being pushed by their leaders (especially Urzua) hard enough to maintain their discipline and order, but not so hard as to be overwhelmed (consistent with the notion that the best bosses strive to be perfectly assertive).

    2. Uruza is showing extreme grit; in particular, a hallmark of gritty leaders is they treat life as marathon rather than a sprint,

    3.  In related fashion, Uruza and his team — and their advisers above — are treating this ordeal as a small wins situation, where the final goal of escape (and not getting overwhelmed by this big hairy goal) depends on one tiny victory after another.

    4. Uruza is clearly not suffering from detachment or power poisoning, as he is hyper-aware of how the large and small things he does affect the miners' moods, actions, and ability to survive; and he is not taking more goodies for himself than others.

    5. There is no doubt that he "has his people's backs," that he will do whatever is possible to protect them.  One way that good leaders protect their people is by limiting outside intrusion, and you could see this mindset when he urged experts to keep the medical conference call short because "We have lots of work to do."

    This is clearly an extreme situation, and you could argue that parts of it don't transfer well to the mundane organizational settings where most us work.  But I do think that extreme situations sometimes bring into focus what human groups need to thrive in terms of both performance and well-being, and what the best leaders do to help make that happen.  Indeed, I gleaned the five elements of the mindset of great bosses — being just assertive enough, grit, small wins, avoiding power poisoning (and being aware that followers are watching the boss very closely), having people's backs largely from research and cases in ordinary and mundane settings.

    P.S. For a take on how the miners can best survive this ordeal, check out this New York Times piece by psychiatrist Nick Kanas. 

     

  • New Research: There Are A LOT Of Good Bosses Out There

     
    AngelChair In the introduction to Good Boss, Bad Boss, I emphasize that — following an inspiring comment from my wife, Marina, who has worked in numerous management positions — my motivation for writing it was to describe the moods and moves of the best bosses.  Or as Marina put it, to draw on the best evidence and cases I could find to show "what that looks like."  I sometimes worry that in talking about bossholes, brassholes, and assholes that I emphasize  bad bosses too much.  I think it is important to keep in mind that most bosses want to be both competent and caring, and there are a lot of good bosses out there who are aiming to hone their craft.  Those are the people that I had in mind when I wrote the book — not so much the losers and jerks.

    Toward the end, a new study came out today that reinforces this positive spirit.  It is based on a nice random probability sample of Americans by StrategyOne, which suggests that most working Americans have good bosses.  In this survey, over 80% of respondents reported that they felt respected by their bosses and that their bosses respect their work.  There was evidence that some people out there fear their bosses, as 26% feared being fired by their bosses if they took a day off from work.   On the whole, however, this survey paints a picture of people who are generally satisfied with their work, bosses, and companies — although I given all that, I found it strange that 56% would be at least somewhat interested in leaving for a job with the same compensation elsewhere. Perhaps that was explained in part by the general job insecurity out there, which you see in this survey as well, with 44% reporting that they have had their pay cut in the last couple years and 46% reporting being concerned about losing their jobs. 

    To return to my main point, however, I think it is important — as Labor Day weekend in the U.S. is starting — to take some pride in the quality of most of the 20 million or so bosses in our country (estimates run as high 38 million bosses), and to remember that while work can be a source of dissatisfaction and distress, and bad bosses do suck, that most of the 90% of us in the workforce who have bosses are satisfied with these immediate superiors and, more important than that, feel respected by them.  I would also add that, equally heartening, is that most bosses I know are not only competent, most devote considerable energy to getting better at their jobs.  As I said at the outset, I wrote Good Boss, Bad Boss in hopes it would be of some help to all the hard working bosses out there strive to keep honing their difficult craft.

  • Is Your Boss A Certified Brasshole? Take The BRASS And Find Out

    Frequent readers of this blog know that one of the most successful tools, or if you prefer, PR gimmicks, we did for The No Asshole Rule was an online quiz called the ARSE, the Asshole Rating Self-Exam.  This is a 24 item quiz to determine if you are a certified asshole.  Approximately 250,000 people have completed it so far, and I still have people come up to (or email me) and say things like "I scored a 2, I am very good" or "I got a 9, I am borderline, watch out."  The items on ARSE appeared in book, but the name was added by Guy Kawasaki and he recruited the wonderful folks at Electric Pulp to develop an online version.

    DevilChair In the spirit of the ARSE — and once again with some great coaching from Guy– I have developed the BRASS, the Boss Reality Assessment Survey System (I know it is dumb spelled out, in fact if you have a better idea, let me know… one suggestion that I kind of liked was "Bob's Roughly Accurate Superior Survey").  The 20 items on the BRASS draw on major themes from Good Boss, Bad Boss, which are used to rate your boss on items including:

    Is so pushy and overbearing that it drives us nuts

    Lacks confidence in his or her ability to lead others

    Doesn't have our backs, won't go to bat for us, and doesn't protect us from the idiocy that rains down from on high

    Leaves me feeling drained and de-energized after even a short conversation.

    Is a chronic credit hog.AngelChair

    The higher the score, the worse your boss.  If your boss is really bad, if he or she scores "true" on 15 or more items like these, then you have the misfortune of working for a certified brasshole. And if your boss scores below five, my advice is that you better treat him or her right, because one like that is hard to find! 

  • What Are Signs That Your Boss Cares About You?

    My post on the power of bosses who take a moment to offer a simple "thanks" to people got me thinking about the more general question of little signs that your boss cares for you.  Certainly, as my recent HBR article shows, when a boss "has your back" that is sign that he or she cares about you.  But when I made my top 10 list, I had the distinct feeling that I was leaving out a lot of important stuff.  So I guess this is a form of open source PR.  To get the conversation started, here are are 10 signs that your boss really really cares about you, based largely on Good Boss, Bad Boss:

    1. REALLY listens to what you say, doesn't just pretend.

    2. Is careful to give you as much — or even more — credit than you deserve.

    3. Sticks-up for you behind your back.

    4.  Takes care not to embarrass you.

    5.  Apologizes sincerely and completely when he or she does something that upsets or hurts you.

    6. Goes out of his or her way to make it easier for you to mesh the challenges in your personal life with your job.

    7. Is respectful of your time.

    8. Takes time to learn your quirks and idiosyncrasies — and accommodates them within in reason.

    9. Goes the extra mile to make sure that you succeed at your job and keep developing skills.

    10. Doesn't bullshit you about your weaknesses or screw-ups — tells you the truth.

    This is just first draft.  What should I add?  What should I remove?  Do you have any stories along these lines?   I look forward to your comments and I will revise and extend the list after hearing your ideas and comments.