With a great manager you get lots of work done and feel good about yourself and your accomplishments. You get the right amount of recognition for your work (no

With a great manager you get lots of work done and feel good about yourself and your accomplishments. You get the right amount of recognition for your work (not more or less than you want). You understand what's expected from you and you feel free to express yourself. The really difficult thing about this question is that it's not a 1 way street. If you don't work hard and have a good attitude, it will be hard to achieve anything. You need to have realistic expectations of how others will perceive what you do. You need to be able to balance the needs of others with your own needs (not too selfish and not too selfless). Your manager can help you with those things, but they can't actually do it for you. I've been in a bad place at work many times in my career. The most important thing to ask yourself is: is it me, or is it my environment (including your manager)? Try to rule out as many of the "is it me" scenarios as you can. Try to put yourself in a good place. If you hit a wall where you are thinking, "I'm trying to do X, but Y is getting in my way and there is nothing I can do about Y", then you can see where the problem is. After you've "levelled yourself up" as much as you can, if you still feel constrained, then it's probably good to look for another place to go. I usually advise more junior people to stay in a job (even if it is not ideal) until they get to that point. It's easy to say, "That manager sucks! I can't work with them," and fly out the door having learned nothing. If you do that you run the risk of doing it over and over and over again. When things start to work well, the thing you will hopefully notice is that it isn't just you. You can't perform to your maximum ability without a great manager (if you are in a job where a manager helps). Similarly, you can't perform to your maximum ability without working well with your coworkers. When it clicks, make sure to spend some time appreciating what those other people do for you. Everybody is different and I can't tell you exactly what it will be for you. The key is to work hard so that when you are in the situation where you can excel, that you are up to the task.