Your relationship with your manager is a key driver of how well you do at work and how happy you are in your job. Love your boss, and a not-so-great job can become more satisfying. Hate your boss, and a great job can become one you're desperate to quit.

Having a strong relationship with your boss can actually be pretty straightforward if you know how to go about it. Here are eight key levers that can improve the way you interact.

1. Bring differences in perspective to the surface. Often when you disagree with your boss, it's because you have information or a perspective that she doesn't, or vice versa. When you're in conflict, take that as a sign that one of you knows something that the other doesn't, or that one of you is looking at the situation from a different perspective, and try to bring that difference to the surface. This won't solve every disagreement, but it will solve a lot of them – and if nothing else, it will help you each have a better understanding of where the other is coming from, which can make differences of opinion easier to live with.

2. Respect your manager's communication preferences. If you're an email person and your boss is an in-person communicator, you'll get frustrated if you try to rely on email for asking questions and getting input, and vice versa. Pay attention to how your boss prefers to communicate – email vs. in person vs. phone, as well as whether there are times of day or days of the week when she's especially available or particularly inaccessible – and adapt accordingly. It can be painful to switch from your own preferred method, but it will often get you what you need faster, and make your boss see you as someone easy to communicate with.