5 indicators that your boss is proud of your job (and you should ask for a raise)

We all know that, for a manager, showing pride and appreciation for their team’s work is an essential skill. However, what many people ignore is that identifying that pride is an extremely valuable skill for us as employees.

I feel frustrated in both extremes:

• When I do an amazing job but receive no recognition.
• When I do an amazing job but receive just empty words.

More often than not, our boss is proud of our work, but they don’t know how to express it. They may even try, but we either don’t catch the message or get it wrong. So, it’s always good for us to learn to get those messages from our manager.

Doing so, we will avoid frustrations, know when to ask for more, and work with them to improve communication.

These are 5 ways in which our boss may express their pride in our work, ranked from absolutely worst (even unacceptable) to best:

5 - Appropriating the employee’s idea/work

Who hasn’t suffered from this? It’s the most frustrating experience we may go through as employees. We did an incredible job, but someone else got the recognition.

Lack of recognition always happens, and we need to deal with it. But we immediately lose respect from our boss when they intentionally appropriate our work.

On the other hand, if they went so far as to steal our idea, it’s because they thought it was excellent—good enough to do such a horrible thing to get recognition.

So, it’s a twisted way to show pride (however, the only one who knows about that pride is us).

4 - Acknowledging the employee’s work but highlighting their participation

I find this one particularly annoying. But it happens a lot, and it seems that the author of the robbery does it unconsciously. In this case, they are not stealing the idea from us, but they are stealing the scene. It’s our moment, but they turn the spotlights to them.

They may highlight their leadership, support, having hired or chosen us for the activity, or any other implication they had on your work (and can get extremely creative on their participation). They use phrases like:

• I’m so glad I fought that hard to have Leandro doing this work.
• I knew he was going to perform that way. That’s why I assigned it to him.
• I guided Leandro through our needs, and he did it well.

3 - Praising the employee for their work privately

This is a good practice. By doing this, the boss generates a trustful communication channel. They open the space to expand and highlight what was particularly remarkable about the employee’s job.

This kind of communication also allows the boss to give negative feedback, as it creates the idea of objectivity in the employee’s head (“Today they are telling me I messed it up, but they also tell me when I do great things”).

Although we enjoy receiving this acknowledgment, we still feel something is missing. Our bosses already know we are good at what we do, and this is just reassuring. But no one else knows that outside our team.

2 - Presenting the employee’s work to others

This is the equivalent of public recognition. We gain exposition:

• People who know us can associate us with good jobs.
• People who don’t know us start hearing good stuff about us.

By doing so, our bosses not only highlight our work but also certify it and expose themselves. They risk part of their reputation by remarking on what we did, which is a good way of showing pride.

Consequently, we may get new opportunities and be seen as more valuable employees for the company.

1 - Supporting the employee in presenting their own work

Here, we have the exponential of the previous item.

We have the chance to present what we did on our own without intermediates. People will relate our faces to the jobs we do.

If our boss put us in that situation, it not only means that they are proud of a particular job we did, but they are also proud of our regular job. They are introducing us to a new inner circle, which represents a lot.

Conclusion

Sometimes, recognition doesn’t come in the way we expect.

If your boss does any of the above (including the “bad” ones), they may be happy about something you did. It’s a good signal, even when they don’t say it explicitly. That means that your value doesn’t go unnoticed.

These kinds of situations can lead to that conversation you always avoid. You don’t have more excuses. Go and ask for what you deserve.