How to Make Your Boss Appreciate Your Hard Work

1. Promote your work often

If you don’t place consistent effort to show your work, your boss won’t see or value it.

Remember this:

• Your boss may not be aware of how hard you worked.
• Your boss may forget how hard you worked.
• Your boss may forget the importance or significance of your work.
• Your boss may forget he/she asked you to work on something and then changed his/her mind about the work.
• Your boss may not know the value and impact you created through your work.

Here are 3 ways you can show your work to your boss:

1. Remind your boss weekly of your accomplishments with bullet points.
2. Talk about the outcomes, findings, or customer response to your work.
3. Request monthly feedback meetings where you share what you’ve done and get regular feedback.

2. Show the attempts

While showing results is ideal, you also want to show the process of achieving or trying to achieve results.

Here’s why:

• When you take risks and challenging projects, there is a higher chance you won’t succeed, but you learn in the journey.
• Sometimes a project becomes obsolete before it completes. This is common with information technology and when an organization is undergoing fast changes.
• Often outcomes don’t show the complexity behind the process to get to the outcomes. The best communicators are those that can simplify a message. However, it may also give the impression that the job was easier than it was.Here’s 3 ways you can show the effort and journey of achieving something:

1. Involve your boss and other stakeholder in the journey by summarizing each completed stage and the lessons learned.
2. Before you start, show the full process or framework used to do the work.
3. Negotiate time off to compensate for some of the extra time put into the project (this will show that you put in extra time).

3. Broadcast your work beyond your boss (diversify your audience)

Don’t just rely on your boss’s recognition. That will limit your job satisfaction and growth. You may do exceptional work and your boss may still dislike you for no clear reason. Diversify your bets for growth and appreciation just like you’d diversify your investment portfolio.

New opportunities may come from any direction:

• Colleagues from other departments
• Colleagues who leave the company and join other companies
• Colleagues who are promoted
• Boss of your boss
• A friend from school

Not only that, in most companies your evaluation process may originate from your boss, but may conclude with a much bigger group of people in a process known as bell curve system of performance appraisal, where everyone that is more senior to you in the department will weigh in your evaluation.

Therefore, whenever you get a chance, broadcast your great work to a wider audience.

Here are some suggestions of how to broadcast your work:

1. To colleagues in the hallways, in meetings, and at lunch
2. To the the boss of your boss in events, meetings, or the elevator
3. To your extended network in reunions, social media, and get togethers

4. Don’t be afraid of boundaries and of ask for the right work

Don’t connect your value solely to how hard you worked.

I used to do that with the hope that I would get rewarded for working long hours and making myself available when others weren’t interested. I learned that type of attitude did not earn respect or admiration.

Paradoxically, once I questioned work requirements and set boundaries, I was far more respected while working less hours. My boss gave me work with more visibility, work that I was interested in, and more opportunities for growth.

Your growth is more dependent on the right type of work than on time commitment. It’s about getting strategic work that has high exposure. Focus on that instead of hard work.

5. Appreciate what your boss does for you

People have a strong impulse to reciprocate even when they don’t expect reciprocation. For example, people will often reciprocate a smile, a compliment, or a favor.

If your boss is not a ‘natural’ in giving appreciation, try setting the example by appreciating what your boss does for you or for the team.

For example, appreciate training provided, added resources, special perks, and even your boss’s effort or intention to help. Appreciate generosity, kindness, and mentorship. Be sincere and do not expect anything in return.

By noticing your boss’s supporting actions, you signal that you recognize their effort, that you like those actions, and that you also like appreciation.

6. Say how you want your boss to appreciate and notice you

Have you considered that your boss may be expressing appreciation to you in a language that you don’t understand?

At the start of my career, I felt appreciated when my boss approved days off to attend industry conferences or training events. Mid-career I felt appreciated when my boss had me attend meetings with very senior people in the organization. How would the boss know my preferences if I didn’t express it?

Here are some other examples:

• Some people like public acknowledgement, other prefer quiet one to one acknowledgment.
• Some people see appreciation as access to more challenging projects, others want time off.
• Some feel appreciated by getting more visibility in senior meetings, others want the pay increase.
• Some like gifts, others like words.
• Some want a desk in next to the boss, others want a desk in the quiet corner away from everyone.

Spell out what appreciation means to you in plain language. Don’t leave it up for interpretation. For example, in your one on one meetings with your boss you could say “I really value having the opportunity to attend leadership trainings.”