The Introvert Leader

The Secret to Getting Everything You Want from Your Boss

• Austin Hopkins

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0:00 | 11:25

If you are tired of not getting what you want from your boss, don't worry, you're not alone. So many people think hard work will get them what they want, but that's rarely the case. Today, I'm gonna show you the simple secret that will help you get exactly what you want from your boss.

Timestamps

0:55 – Don't Confuse Hard Work With The Right Work: Strategy beats brute force. Figure out how to focus your efforts on what matters. 

3:00 – Every Boss Has A Currency: Figure out what motivates your boss so you can give it to them. 

5:48 – Ask For What You Want: Come up with a plan and make the ask using three clear steps. 

10:44 – Challenge for Listeners: Define exactly what you want. Look for a pattern of what your boss values. 



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Why Hard Work Is Not Enough

SPEAKER_00

Your boss isn't giving you what you want, even though you work hard for them. Now, your boss may like you, but that doesn't mean they're gonna help you get what you want. Your boss needs to see you as high value and irreplaceable in order to help you achieve your career goals. The single best way to get what you need is to give them what they want. It's an even value exchange. It's that simple. This idea isn't new, people have been doing it for thousands of years, but today I'm gonna help you understand the fastest and easiest way to use it with your boss. Hello, this is your host, Austin Hopkins, and welcome to the Introvert Leader Podcast. If you haven't clicked the follow button, you are missing out, my friend. I drop new career and leadership episodes every other week. I don't want you missing anything this year, so click the subscribe button for me. With that, let's get into it. Don't confuse hard work with the right work. I've said this a hundred times, and I'll say it a hundred times more. Hard work isn't enough to get you what you want. Being strategic beats working hard every day of the week. So the big mistake I see people make is misguided effort. What's important to you may not be important to them. Maybe you're like me and you thought that important stuff to you is going to be important stuff to your boss. The reality is that there's almost never perfect alignment on what you value and what your boss values. Even though you're working in the same org and in theory are working towards the exact same thing, your boss isn't you. He or she didn't have your same background, doesn't have your same expertise, doesn't have your same interests. So all the effort you put towards stuff that you think matters might be just a waste. The next mistake I see people make is taking it personal. The next time you try really hard with something and your boss doesn't give a shit, don't take it so personal. Instead, quickly switch it up and give them exactly what they want. Or if you decide you have to keep doing what you're doing, don't just expect your boss to recognize you. Do it for you, not for them. I want to give you an example to kind of bring this into focus. I once worked for a systems detail leader. He was incredible at systems, processes, and organization. You could ask him almost anything, and he would be able to show you a detailed step-by-step process he created and where to find it. Well, I'm not necessarily the most detailed leader, to be honest. Sure, I had some systems and I was organized enough, but it wasn't my strength zone. It wasn't my greatest passion. I thrived in the relationship aspect of leadership. My greatest strength was getting my team to accomplish amazing things by getting out of their comfort zone through coaching and development. Now, I made the mistake early on of thinking my boss cared about the same things. Well, he didn't. So I spent time sending him positive feedback my team shared and my development wins. If he responded to the email I sent him, it was with one sentence at most. He didn't care. During performance reviews, he didn't even mention things like my company best employee satisfaction ratings. I had the best score in the company, he didn't care at all. He spent time instead giving me negative feedback on the processes I didn't have in place. Eventually I had a revelatory moment. My boss didn't give a shit about what was important to me and never would. Even though to me, coaching and development was everything, it was almost worthless to him. Now it was an expensive lesson to learn, but I learned it. Now I'm hoping I can save you some time and you don't make the same mistake. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. Every boss has a currency. In his book Influence, Robert Child Dooney covers reciprocity. In chapter two, he talks about the rule of reciprocity and its roots in human psychology. He says the rule possesses awesome strength, often producing a yes response to a request that, except for an existing feeling of indebtedness, would have surely been refused. Now this rule gets amplified when you give your boss something that they want that is uniquely valuable to them. I want to cover how to figure out the currency your boss wants to get paid in. So a couple things you got to do. Number one, you gotta observe and define. So what gets them excited? Every person has a lever that when pulled brings out their excitement. When do they perk up and start bringing enthusiasm? This is the work that brings out their passion. If you can figure out where they get excited, you can find out what lever to pull. The next thing you gotta do is look for patterns. Patterns show us who somebody is. What they've done in the past informs how they're gonna show up in the future. Who is your boss recognized in the past? Who is their favorite and why? What do they always talk about during meetings? What are they always stressing about? What are they always sending emails about? Figure out what the patterns are that you see with them and you can get a glimpse of what they want and what they need. Next thing you gotta do is define their currency of choice. Once you observe what they care about and what gets them excited, you can define what their currency is. Is it respect from their peers? Is it being a friend of everyone? Is it never making a mistake? Is it helping them get promoted? What is the thing that if you give to them, they will never forget? Now, P.S. sometimes a well-placed question can go a long way. So maybe even ask them directly what's keeping them up at night. This may even give you more insight than just observing those patterns. So I want to give you an example from my own career. My company hired a new executive from a competitor as my boss. He was brand new to our organization. I could tell he was a little unsure of himself and his footing was a little uncomfortable. He gave off a small scent of insecurity, even though he never directly said it or showed it broadly. I could just kind of tell. You know, he had been at his last org for a decade. So he was very comfortable there and he was uncomfortable here. He kind of seemed like a fish out of water. And I got a sense that he wanted some big wins early on to help him show the senior leader team that he was worth all the money they spent on hiring him. So in the first few months, I delivered him a big win that I knew would help him look good. I sent out an email to the senior leadership team. I CC'd my new manager, and in the email, I even thanked him for the support and guidance in achieving this win. Now, was he super crucial to the win? Maybe not, but you know, I know how to play the game a little bit. After that day, the guy thought I was a hero. He gave me more resources, autonomy, and even a promotion with a big pay bump within just a couple of months. He needed a high visibility win, so I gave him exactly what he wanted, and he gave me what I desired. All right, let's move on. So we've defined what our boss wants, we've observed the patterns, now it's time to give it to him and then ask for what we want. So many of my clients that I talk with are scared to ask for what they want. They have a hope that their boss is kind of gonna just instinctively know what they want. The truth is, most leaders are so worried about their own needs that they don't pay much attention to what their team wants. I know that's a tough pill to swallow, but it's the reality. They need you to directly tell them. So let me help you understand how to do it with polish and do it with class. So the first thing you gotta do is define exactly what you want. Before you can ask for something, you obviously need to define it, right? Do you want more pay? Do you want more freedom to try creative projects? Do you want a promotion? Do you want a budget for training? What do you want exactly? The more specific you can get, the easier this process becomes. Don't pick three things that you want. Pick one thing that's most important to you. So I think the next thing to be aware of is picking the right time to ask. Timing is half the battle when it comes to getting what you want. Asking for something right after you make a big mistake isn't smart. Asking for something after you get a big win is what the pros do. So two things to consider when you're asking for something you want. When is your boss the happiest? Look for that pattern. And when did you just deliver the most value? And if you can find the intersection of both of those things, you are gonna significantly raise your chances of getting what you want. All right, so you figured out what you want to ask for. You found the perfect time to ask. Now it's time to actually make the request. Now you might be nervous to ask your boss for what you want. That's okay to be nervous. I'm nervous when I do that. But it's not okay to let it affect the way you show up. I need you to do a little bit of practice. Write down exactly what you want to cover ahead of time. Practice it with a friend or a spouse. The ask needs to have three parts. I'm gonna walk you through each part and I'm gonna give you some examples of stuff to say. Part one, the ask. So start by giving some context of what you want, what led you to this request, and what are you looking for specifically? So it might sound something like this. Hey Josh, thanks for taking some time to meet with me today. I wanted to chat with you about my pay and where I wanted to be within the next year. I've really been enjoying the work, and I believe that based on the value I'm adding, I'd love to take a second look at my compensation. Right now I'm at 120K from a base, as you know, but I really believe that my value demonstrates I'm worth closer to 140. Now, if I'm to compare my value add to other roles within the company and outside the company, 140 puts me right in the middle of where I think I'm worth. Part two, why you think you've earned it. Share one to two concrete examples of why you think you've earned what you're asking for. You can't ask for something that you haven't earned. So use facts, not feelings, and tie your examples to their priorities. So you may see something like this as you know, Josh, I've been putting a ton of focus on making sure our team hits delivery metrics, which has helped us be at 100% on-time delivery for the last three quarters, which I'm super proud of. I've been going way beyond the scope of my role to help our partners create a success framework and volunteering to take on numerous stretch projects anytime you ask for extra help. This has been a blast, and I love helping our team hit our potential. Part three, next steps. Don't ask for an answer right on the spot. Don't do that to your boss. It makes it uncomfortable, and it's gonna be much more challenging to get a yes right on the spot. Instead, schedule a follow-up chat in the future. But don't leave it open. Get the data on the calendar during that meeting. This helps everyone stay accountable to the progress. So you may say something like this Hey Josh, I totally understand a request like this may take some time to research and effort on your part. I'm not looking for an answer today, but would you mind if we put something on our calendars for like two weeks from now? Do you think that would give you enough time to get back to me? So I'm not putting pressure on them, but we got something on the calendar to keep the momentum going. So I want to give you one more example from my career to kind of bring it all together. So I remember I worked for an awesome leader back in the day, probably one of my favorite leaders I've worked for. She was young, super talented, and her claim to fame was being the best at generating revenue. Her office consistently ranked in the top three in our region. I was on her sales team back in 2012, and I quickly figured out that almost nothing mattered more to her than being the best in sales. This was her currency. So I devoted a majority of my time and energy to making sure our office killed it. And guess what happened? She gave me almost anything that I needed. Extra days off? No problem. Bigger raise than my peers, you betcha. Autonomy, tons of it. She even promoted me way faster than I expected. I got all of this because I knew what she needed, I knew her currency, and I delivered it in spades. Now, asking for what you want gets easy when you understand how the game works. It's a simple reciprocity play. You do something for them, they do something for you. Now I hope that was helpful, but before we wrap up, I want to give you two things I've been into recently. I'm not sure if you saw that new Paul McCartney documentary, Man on the Run on Amazon. It's about his post-Beatles era when he started the massively successful band Wings. Now, I've always been a huge Beatles fan, love them, obsessed with them, got a picture on my wall, but I was sleeping on Wings. So many jams. The doc was great. I highly recommend giving it a watch, amazing music. But let's say you're not a documentary fan. I got a show for you. One word, homeland. It's a show on Netflix, it's about the CIA, and dang, it's good. I'm in full binge mode at the moment. I think I've got through three seasons in the last couple of weeks. I'm embarrassed to say. Highly recommend. Gotta check them out. Now I want to switch gears and give you a challenge. In the next couple of weeks, I want you to do two things for me. Number one, I want you to define exactly what you want. What's something you think that you deserve that would bring you career satisfaction right now, today? Number two, I want you to look for the one pattern you see with your boss. What do they keep talking about? If you do those two things, you will be one step closer to getting exactly what you want. Getting what you want is not only possible, it becomes totally doable with the right strategy. I hope you learned a little about how to set yourself up for the next big goal at work. Takes a little timing, a little focused effort, and a little confidence. But maybe you don't like handling these big moments by yourself. I can help. I work with clients just like you. I help them get paid what they deserve and get the titles that they want. People who work with me get paid 57% more and get promoted three times faster. I've helped hundreds of people quit second guessing their decisions and move with confidence. If you know you're capable but aren't getting what you deserve, click the link in the description to learn a little bit more. Every boss has something they need. It's up to you to give it to them. When you do, getting what you want becomes incredibly easy. I want to say thank you so much for listening. Make it a great day.

Contributor

Austin Hopkins

Host