Every single boss is different. Every boss has her own style, preferences, and habits when it comes to managing. Every boss has his own standards when it comes to evaluating your work. You will be held accountable. You need to work out in advance with each boss the details of exactly how you will be held accountable by that boss; and where and when and for what.

How do you do that?

First, everything will be a whole lot easier if you establish ground rules up front. Try to have a conversation with every boss, at the outset of your working relationship, for how you are going to work together. Maybe there are corporate or organizational policies in place already that define aspects of your working relationship with any boss. In fact, there almost certainly are policies in place. Don't let that make you complacent. You need to have the up-front ground-rules conversation anyway. Clarify exactly where, when and how you are going to observe and practice those policies whenever you are working on any tasks or project answering to that boss. Make a commitment to follow these practices and then take responsibility for following through on that commitment. Through your course of dealing, you can do a lot to keep your relationship with each boss on track.

You might discuss briefly, at the outset of your working relationship with each boss, some of the broader goals you have for working together, like productivity and quality standards; making a valuable contribution; achieving measurable results. You might even discuss subtleties and intangibles like attitude. What else? Attire? Conduct? Cursing? Would cursing be OK or not OK? Personal issues? Personal calls? Personal business on company time? What about work hours?

All of these issues are variables and the most important thing you need to agree on, up-front, with every boss, at the outset of your working relationship is what are the ground rules? And most important, what will the ground rules be for the communication practices you will observe together: Will you keep a regular conversation about the work going? Will you keep those conversations focused on the work? When you and that boss talk about an assignment, will you make sure that the expectations have been understood, that the goals have been spelled out, that the guidelines and parameters have been clarified; that the timeline of deliverables has been specified. Will you make it a practice to ask each other clarifying questions? Will you make it a practice to spell out step by step instructions if there is any new task or responsibility? Will you make it a practice to take notes and check with each other at the end of each conversation to make sure you've written down the same thing; to make sure that you are on the same page? Those communication practices are the most important things to agree on with each boss in advance. You need to establish ground rules for every aspect of your working relationship but the most important ground rules are the ones that have to do with how you are going to talk about the work on an ongoing basis.