Career
10 Myths Making Your Relationship With Your Boss Worse
Don't fall for these common misconceptions about how we should be managed.
Posted April 10, 2025 Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
Key points
- Undermanaged employees often don't take a proactive approach to improving the management relationship.
- Trying to take a covert approach to improving the management dynamic is misguided advice.
- To earn more at work, ask your boss exactly what requirements and expectations must be met.
There is a lot of advice out there on how to effectively “manage up” in the workplace. Many of the recommendations rely on a lot of assumptions and covert tactics, from assuming your boss is incompetent to catering to your boss’ whims in an attempt to follow them up the career ladder.
But working relationships—in any direction on the hierarchy—are built much more effectively on straightforward communication. When employees who feel they are undermanaged are asked why they don’t take a more proactive approach to the management relationship, there are several reinforced misconceptions that are frequently cited.
These 10 myths about managing up may be preventing you from establishing a better working relationship with your boss.
Myth 1: If you are a high performer, your boss shouldn’t tell you how to do your job.
No matter how good you may be at your job, everybody needs guidance, direction, and support to succeed. You don’t want to waste your valuable time and energy doing the wrong things or going the wrong way. Even if you know more about the specific task, responsibility, or project than your boss does, you are not operating in a vacuum.
You need to be given concrete deadlines, clear timelines, and reasonable performance benchmarks to meet. And your boss is the person who needs to communicate these requirements to you and to make sure you stay on track.
Myth 2: To be creative or innovative at work, you need to be given as much freedom and autonomy as possible.
If you really want to be creative at work, the first thing you need to know is exactly what is and what is not up to you. So much of what gets done at work is simply not up to you. You need to know the requirements of every task, responsibility, or project before you can even think about being creative.
Myth 3: If someone else is getting special treatment, you should, too.
If someone else is getting special treatment, figure out exactly what that person did to earn the special treatment and what exactly you need to do to earn the special treatment you want. If your coworkers are receiving rewards that you are not getting, take that as a big reality check. What you need is a fair and accurate assessment of your performance so that you can continually improve and, thereby, earn more of the rewards you want.
Myth 4: The path to success is catering to your boss’s style and preferences.
Your boss’s style and preferences may or may not be smart business practices. Your best path to success is making sure you get clear and realistic expectations every step of the way; the necessary resources to complete your tasks; fair, accurate, and honest feedback; and appropriate recognition and rewards for your work.
Myth 5: Making friends with your boss is smart workplace politics.
The smartest workplace politics is to keep your work relationships focused on the work. That is not to say that real friendships do not or should not occur in the workplace. If that’s your situation, then you’ll have to work hard to protect that friendship from the realities of the workplace. That means you need to manage that boss very well, not just for the sake of your success at work but also for the sake of your friendship.
Myth 6: Hiding from mistakes and problems is a good way to avoid trouble.
The best way to avoid trouble is to immediately come clean about the details of any mistakes or problems as they occur as part of your ongoing one-on-one dialogue about the work with your boss. When you deal with mistakes and problems as they occur, you are much more likely to solve them while they are still small and manageable, before they get out of control.
Myth 7: No news is good news, but being coached on your performance is bad news.
No news may not be bad, but it definitely does not do you any good. Being coached on your performance, on the other hand, is an opportunity to improve—and that is always good news.
Myth 8: If your boss doesn’t like to read paperwork, you don’t need to keep track of your performance in writing.
You owe it to yourself and the organization to keep track of everything you do in writing. Most managers monitor employee performance only incidentally, when they happen to observe the employee working, when there’s a big win, or if there is a notable problem. They rarely document employee performance unless they are required to do so, leaving no written track record other than those bottom-line reports that tell so little about the day-to-day actions of each employee. Whether or not your boss keeps track of your day-to-day performance in writing, you should.
Myth 9: If you are not a people person, you’ll have a hard time getting ahead in the workplace.
The key to getting ahead in today’s workplace and the wider free market for talent is being really good at consistently delivering valuable contributions at a swift, steady pace while constantly adapting to changing circumstances. That takes more than relationship mojo.
Whether or not you are a people person, learn proven techniques for self-management and boss-management, and practice those techniques diligently until they become skills and then habits.
Myth 10: Some bosses are just too busy to meet with you.
No matter how busy your boss may be, your boss does not have time not to meet with you on a regular basis. When you fail to check in regularly with your boss, you miss crucial opportunities to keep projects going in the right direction, avoid unnecessary mistakes, and improve your own overall performance at work.
