Want to find better ways to get along with your Boss?

These seven questions will open up a dialogue guaranteed to improve relationships right now.

What are your expectations of me over what timeframe?

What style will help us best work together?

How do you prefer me to communicate with you?

If a situation presents itself, tell me how I can disagree with you in public where it won’t look like I am challenging your authority. Should we develop a system of verbal “cues” to tip the other off?

Do we see the situation the same way?

How will I know when I am pushing your buttons? What are the signs?

How do we negotiate over resources and what I need to deliver?

As well as a time-saver and refresher course in keeping things on track, this exercise gives you all the tools for managing the boss.

So, how can you maximize their effectiveness?

Here are a few of my favorite tips:

Brainstorm ways to surpass expectations.

Take on difficult tasks and ‘ace’ them.

Make your work make the boss look good.

Finally, having exhausted all other avenues, do the boss’s work. Seriously. They have more to do than they can ever hope to complete, so offering to take some of the more mundane tasks off their overloaded desks helps everyone. It also gives you that single-most-important commodity – even more important than respect (or lovability) – you can acquire in the boss-employee relationship fandango: their trust.

Trust me, it goes a long way these days.