a mind to travel

With a little forethought, traveling with your boss can do wonders for your career.

Travel on business often enough, and it’s bound to happen: You’ll be traveling with your boss or his boss or their bosses. Any of these people can affect your career—for the better or the worse. There is no question that it can be a time of added stress, but it can also be an opportunity to improve your position in the company.

According to Lee Silber, author of Career Management for the Creative Person, there are two things to keep in mind when traveling with your boss if you want to advance your career: Have an objective and be prepared.

The stated purpose of your trip may be to resolve a manufacturing problem, sign up a new client or gather information about a competitor. That’s all well and good, but you should also develop a career objective. For instance, you may want to demonstrate to your boss that you are a first-rate presenter, an expert in a particular relevant area or a person with a wider range of management skills than your boss normally sees.

Then, with your career goal in mind, prepare for your trip, focusing on those characteristics of your boss and those phases of travel that can help you achieve it. Your preparation will pay dividends, and as Silber notes, “It will provide the confidence that comes from being prepared.” To that end, here are some pointers to help with your preparation.

Flesh out your itinerary. You are likely to be given a basic itinerary that includes travel dates and times and the location of destination hotels. Take it upon yourself to fill in some blanks. For instance, you may note that you intend to meet for breakfast at 7:00 a.m. to review a presentation. Or you may list the telephone numbers of the clients you plan to visit—just in case. Or you might throw in a reminder that a company you will be visiting just posted record profits.
Once you’ve added some meat to your basic itinerary, send a copy to your boss a week or so in advance of your trip. The idea here is to add information to your itinerary that your boss will find useful and that shows efficiency and initiative on your part. This exercise will also help you determine where opportunities lie for you to demonstrate the skills that will help you meet your career objective for the trip.

Learn about your boss. Sure, you may know the company line on your boss: his duties, his responsibilities, what is written about him in the media. But do you know his hobbies, his charities, his workday routine? By learning about the personal side of your boss, you can engage her in conversation that she finds interesting. Likewise, by knowing your boss’s habits and lifestyle, you are less likely to stumble. (You wouldn’t want to take your vegetarian boss to an all-you-can eat ribs joint.)

Learn about the destination. With just a little bit of research, you can become a near expert on the fastest way to get to and from appointments, the best restaurants that serve up your boss’s favorite dishes, and a couple of cool, off-hours diversions that can impress her with your ingenuity. If you are clever, you may even be able to finagle an upgrade somewhere along the way.

Be extra prepared. Chances are there will be a hiccup in your travel plans—a very good chance. Though you can’t prepare for all of the possible things that can go wrong, you can have contingency plans for the most likely problems that could pop up. For instance, know a nearby hotel in case yours has been overbooked. Carry an extra battery for your cell phone, laptop or camera. Bring along hard copies of PowerPoint presentations. If something does go wrong—and when is that more likely than when traveling?—you’ll look like the star that you are.

To this list of “Dos,” I would also add some “Don’ts.”

Don’t complain. Whining about a bad situation is what people do when they aren’t working to resolve the problems that can extricate them from it. Complaining reflects a lack of creativity and a focus on the wrong things.

Don’t lose your temper. Emotions cloud rationality and make for an uncomfortable atmosphere. And what boss wants to supervise a person who can’t control his emotions?

With some forethought and a little effort, you can make the next trip with your boss into a career advancement opportunity.

_____________________________________________ terry riley is a psychologist (appliedpsychology.com) and internationally recognized authority on understanding, managing and influencing business travel behavior. His is also the author of Travel Can be Murder, C.H.A.R.M. School and The Complete Travel Diet. Email Terry at editor@executivetravelmag.com.