How To ACTUALLY Get Your Boss To Listen

If you've ever been on a software project and you can't get your boss to listen, I've been there. Many of us are technical types, so we often think facts are enough to convince management to support us.

In this episode, I share 4 strategies I've used to actually get your boss to listen. These take some patience, but if you want to see real results - they do work.

No matter what tech job you work on, you'll eventually run into problems that can only be solved if you can win support from management. If you practice these strategies, they can unlock new opportunities in your career that few other professionals in IT ever get to experience.

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CHAPTER MARKERS

0:00 Introduction
1:45 4 Strategies to Influence Management
1:58 1. Frame Your Feedback in Terms of Impact
7:44 2. Build Allies and Gain Support
10:51 3. Choose Your Battles Wisely
12:43 4. Present Solutions in Steps

#persuasion #convincing #management

[HealthyDev]

Are you in a situation where you need your boss to support you? Having trouble getting them to listen to reason? What are you facing? I hope these tips help.

[vincentmontano]

A key takeaway from Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss includes:

Accusation Audit: Address objections before they come up. For example, "You might think I'm asking for too much here, but..." This reduces resistance by acknowledging concerns upfront.

Calibrated Questions: Instead of making demands, ask open-ended questions like, "How can we improve this?" or "What would make you comfortable with this decision?" This shifts the focus to problem-solving rather than confrontation.

[maartenderie]

17:40 In Dutch we say; Trust arrives by foot, but departs by horse

[randyriegel]

My teams boss is the VP of Engineering at our company. He was also a developer in the past. So when our team has a problem he understands what we are talking about and why it might not work. If we are behind on a project he understands why. He'll just says you guys are good and he would jump into the fire to protect us... He'd go let the CEO know issues and everything so no one bothered us. He always takes one for the team. It's an international company but I work in the Pittsburgh office (about 1 day a month, home otherwise) which is the headquarters. If I pass CEO in hall or something he just stops and chats LOL. It's so laid back.

[wahoobeans]

“Future pace” is a nice way of saying “manage your managers”

[Erik_The_Viking]

Great advice. Framing the impact is crucial - putting a $$$ value on the problem can help get their attention. You're spot on about picking your battles wisely - you can't win every battle but you need to fight the battles that are important.

[seinfan]

My manager is a corporate simp. They say jump, he asks how high. Unless what they're asking for is simply impossible, he tries his best to bend over backwards for them.

[GerbenWijnja]

Regarding building trust slowly but losing it fast, we have a Dutch saying: "Trust comes by foot, and leaves by horse."

[imqqmi]

I've used 'It's a no brainer' sometimes to get a written proposal accepted. Doesn't always work but if you've got a well written proposal with clearly defined business wins in it or avoiding business losses, there's a pretty good chance at least most of it gets accepted. Just doing it verbally and hoping it'll stick doesn't work that well. Proposing 2 or 3 alternatives with differing impact can also work, if they go for the least impact, at least they know what the roadmap is and what to expect next time.

Dripfeed change proposals and going for the long haul, it depends if the job works out for you. If you find it's more of an energy taker than giver it's time to move on to avoid burn out. Better start something new while you still have energy. It's much harder if you're out of energy, burn out is unavoidable.

[KamoriGoat]

Another well timed video. I've definitely been struggling with burnout recently. And a lot of what you said was already something I knew I needed to do. But the burnout was strong enough I kept asking myself, "is this worth it? I can always do something else because I'm frustrated not getting more wins." The way you talk about it though, I think I'm realizing I'm not picking my battle well enough and worrying about "everything." Thanks for your videos.

[kenito]

Thanks Jayme, for this post.

I, agree, that when you are having difficulty trying to convince your boss of a certain course of action, it is critical to get other "allies" involved. That way, they can help to convince the manager that (1) what you are arguing for is valid and that (2) it shows that others are aware of the issue and care about resolving it.

Thanks again.

[clintvee]

After years of being talked over at meetings, dismissed and ignored I just perform the role of magic mouse cursor and take the money.

I've yet to meet anyone in over a decade in this field who actually wants to write good software or make the end user experience optimal, it's just people wanting to feel important at the expense of any logic or goodwill.

[brightshital]

Helpful suggestions indeed. Since I was planning to talk to my manager during my one on one meeting, I was really looking for some effective ways to communicate but I have a strategy now . Thanks.

[MissPlaced]

I definitely struggle most at describing the impact of whatever problem I'm facing. For some reason, I tend to expect leadership to understand the impact just by hearing me explain the problem/suggested solution. That really only works when the problem is already obvious to them.

[robt]

Insightful advice, thanks! I forgot I follow you for IT advice, I've been practicing guitar lately and saw you playing and just wondering what music practice you were discussing haha.

[Gauravmann]

At the end you perfectly described the kind of team I've been on for some time now.

[criticaloptimist]

I think this might just be good advice for anybody that’s neurodivergent. To me impacts will seem very self evident, but I can’t expect others to follow my train of thought.

[pieflies]

Framing can also help you to understand when something you think is a problem isn’t really that big of a deal, before you get to wound up about it.

[harrytsang]

Since moving into mt current role, I have taken the boil the frog approach and slowly introduce my methods one by one. Just ask with an open mind, what's the SOP and where's the infrastructure if there's none, suggest existing tools with fast turnaround.

No CI? Ok, can I borrow a VM to set it up so my stuff has CI run tests?
No tests? Well here's a tool I have used to start having integration tests. Want me to spend a day and integrate it?
Someone messed up the main branch because it is not protected? Better late than never

I have introduced so many of these methodologies that I package as "industry standard", one at a time, each with not a lot of time cost.

[piotrszopa]

Great content. Solve problems one by one :). Like in programming divide and conquer!