Can you tell your boss he/she is wrong and change their mind? (consulting, average)

[Tough Questions]

Once I had a great boss who actually wanted me to challenge him on his decisions. Sometimes he would direct me to do illogical, impractical things. The average person would just accept the direction of the boss, do it the crazy way and mess up the assignment as a result. My boss was nice in the fact that he was completely open to my ideas and he would accept my criticisms of him. If I could convince him in logical arguments that his direction was illogical or impractical, he would change.

How about your boss, will he or she accept your criticism or advice?

[annerk]

Explaining other options and how they can be more profitable or cost effective will almost always work.

[Irene Garcia]

Originally Posted by Tough Questions

Once I had a great boss who actually wanted me to challenge him on his decisions. Sometimes he would direct me to do illogical, impractical things. The average person would just accept the direction of the boss, do it the crazy way and mess up the assignment as a result. My boss was nice in the fact that he was completely open to my ideas and he would accept my criticisms of him. If I could convince him in logical arguments that his direction was illogical or impractical, he would change.

How about your boss, will he or she accept your criticism or advice?

I had a boss before that never accepted any suggestions, advice or criticism. He is quite narrow minded when in comes to planning so I find our meetings useless since he always makes the decision without consulting even other department heads. You're lucky to have one great boss!

[sike0000]

My last boss criticized me relentlessly for not arguing with him enough. I never bothered arguing with him because he would just do what he wanted anyways, regardless of how stupid his idea was. He never gave any ground, and it didn't matter whether he was wrong or not.

Our group used to call him out on it to no avail. Either give-in once in a while, or just tell us what to do. We would spend hours, literally, trying to get him to see our pov. He liked when we did this but it is not productive.