What do you admire about your boss? Date:   Tuesday , October 02, 2007 Many managers never receive a word of admiration because people mistakenly believe that praise should come only from the managers to employees and not vice versa. This might be because many of the studies have proved that people quit their jobs because of their bad bosses. Even in a recent survey of visitors to the wonderfully-named Badbossology.com found that almost 48 percent of the U.S. workers would like to fire their bosses. However, on the contrary if you interpret the survey results, there are 50 percent good bosses that are not admired by most of the employees. It is not that a right pat at the right time is applicable only to employees but is applicable to your boss as well. Good managers are always truly graceful to give constructive, useful feedback, and will grab any opportunity to appreciate team members so that they feel encouraged and get to learn how to do a better job. Admiring the managers will motivate them to hone their skills and help reduce the current shortage of skilled managers cited by McKinsey in its recent study. Here is a slice of views of some techies who admire their bosses. Prasenjit Manna, Lead Engineer, Alcatel-Lucent Every boss should have an urge to motivate their colleagues. As every employee has an aspiration to grow in the organization, a boss should give room for his colleagues to grow within the organization, which is a rare trait among most of them. This quality, which I saw and benefited from my boss, made me admire him. Reviewing my performance, my boss was impressed and he encouraged me to work on new innovations. Further, he gave me the opportunity to write patents for the innovations. My boss also assigns many leadership opportunities by interacting with our customers. This benefits us and serves as a platform for the mid-level techies to identify their leadership skills and hone them. Dhanunjayudu Yaravarthi, Software Test Engineer, Satyam Computer Services When one of my colleagues missed out a set of coding procedure which affected the entire project, my boss did not lose her temperament. On the contrary, she was patient enough to find out what went wrong and at which level. Though some important coding had gone wrong, my boss was keen on motivating her employee to be more cautious rather than letting her down. The amount of effort, which she put to understand her employee has made me admire her most. Today, such quality is lacking among most of the bosses, they get carried away by the hierarchical ego. Saurabh Shrivastava, Senior Business analyst, Stratify A boss usually earns the admiration of his subordinates if he has a high stature in areas of technology, communication skills, personal relationship, and the team member have to strive to reach that standard. And for one of these aspects, I admire my boss. While we were in a critical stage of our project, one of my colleagues left the company. Hence, we were in a need of an experienced techie. With great effort my team and I short listed a candidate. Though the candidate cleared almost all the stages of the interview, he failed to answer a simple question in the final interview with my boss. Later, my boss said that though he was technically sound, he was unfit as a decision maker, to take a decision on his own if he gets stuck in a crucial stage of the billing project. My boss is good at assessing his colleagues. He knows who fits what role. B Karthik, Recruitment Executive, Bally Technologies India The clarity of thought and attention to details are the qualities that I admire most about my boss. When we were undertaking a hiring process, the candidate whom I had short listed was rejected by my boss. He was keen on getting into every minute details and he covered many other aspects which I had not. The clarity of thought and the amount of attention that he gets from the employee or any attendee through his communication skills is another aspect which I admire in my boss. Ideally, I believe that if a leader has good communication skills, simplicity, and cares about the minute details then he might be very creative and productive.