Personal Narrative: My Interview With A Manager

Words: 1954
Pages: 8

For the paper I interviewed 3 people in different levels who have known me in a professional capacity for 2 years – My manager, coworker and mentor.
Manager- being part of a two-member team, my manager and I worked closely and had very high inter dependence on each other. Being her only subordinate to report to she was able to focus and assess on my development closely which helped her gauge my strengths and weakness considering all our achievements and failures we have gone through together.
Co-worker/peer – Also my confidant at office, I choose her as we were close professionally as well as personally. Being each other’s support system for 2 years, she was someone I would trust to give me a candid yet brutally honest feedback.
Mentor- also
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An example given by my manager was how when I started I did not like the way she managed me and often resisted to her ways. I am someone who likes autonomy in doing work and would like interference from my manager only if there is a problem or fault in the work executed. My manager had a highly structured way of working and required to be informed at every step of the task being executed. This caused frequent friction and outbursts between us as I dint realize the importance of constantly informing her of what I was doing. Eventually I adapted to her work style and began to inform and update her before she asked me. In time we both developed and established working styles that fit both of us by understanding each other’s strengths, weakness and work style and established mutual expectations that helped us to be a productive and effective team. This aligns to the “checklist for managing your boss” in the article “Managing your Boss” by Gabarro and Kotter. Over a period of time, she began to trust me and she gave the autonomy in performing tasks.
Another weakness they pointed out was how although I am amiable and could hold a conversation comfortably with a stranger, I was hesitant to make the first move in starting a conversation. This hesitant behavior can be an impediment as people can misjudge me as someone who is closed off or not