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Melody Wilding, an executive coach and professor of human behaviour at Hunter College in New York City, believes that most of the stress and frustration people experience with their bosses is fixable, because it stems not from pure incompetence or antagonism but a lack of awareness on both sides about how to work together effectively.
“Most professionals know they need to manage up but few know how to do it well,” she writes in her new book Managing Up.
The first step, she advises, is to adopt a strategic, investigative mindset. As you start to see your boss less as a gatekeeper or overseer and more like a human being dealing with their own pressures, distractions and demands from higher-ups, you will begin to discover what drives their decisions and unlock how best to communicate with them.
That may seem unbalanced. Making the relationship work better is falling upon your shoulders. But she asks you not to view it as making your boss’s life easier. It’s about taking control of your own work experience. “Even if you have a good relationship with those above you, why settle for good when it could be great,” she writes. “Consider it an investment in your satisfaction at work.”
You will need conversations with your boss to ensure better alignment, so you don’t seem pulled in 100 different directions or spend so much time trying to decipher cryptic feedback or mixed messages. You want to figure out how your work fits into the bigger picture and make sure you and your boss agree on success.
“No more emotional drain from doing what you think your boss expects, only to get it wrong and face frustration and disappointment,” she says. “You can replace any simmering tension with a sense of shared purpose and understanding.”
Beforehand, she suggests spending some time figuring out your one-year vision – what work would be like 365 days from now if it was the best possible situation. What would you be doing? Who would you be interacting with? What would make the day energizing and fulfilling? What key projects might you be leading? What organizational changes can you foresee now and how can you best prepare?
That will allow you to understand where you want to steer. Now you are ready to get into your boss’s head. In upcoming one-on-one meetings and more general conversations with your boss, she recommends weaving in questions like:
- What goals are the most important to you and why are they a priority now?
- What are some of the metrics your own boss discusses with you and how are they calculated?
- How do my responsibilities and tasks contribute to the overall sense of the team/department/organization?
- What does good performance look like? Great performance? How can I exceed your expectations with respect to deliverables and output?
- In terms of impact and value creation, what would you like me to accomplish in the next three, six or 12 months?
- What do you wish you had more time to work on and/or what is one thing I could do that would make your job easier?
- What actions or changes would allow you to look back in 90 days and say, “Wow, that really made a difference?”
- We have multiple priorities, so I would like to understand how X priority compares to other tasks on my plate? Are there any areas where I should focus more?
If it’s your first time bringing up alignment or the relationship with your manager has been rocky, she warns you will need to ensure the questions don’t seem to come out of nowhere by indicating your overall desire to understand things better. And the answers won’t necessarily be crystal clear. You will undoubtedly need to dig deeper with further questions.
Bringing yourself in alignment with your boss can help improve the relationship dramatically. You will want to supplement that by subsequent observation and conversations on issues like differing styles, how to get beyond bottlenecks and take greater ownership of your work, providing feedback to the boss on frustrations such as their lack of vision to favouritism to other colleagues, how to position yourself for promotion and remuneration. Managing up is part of your job.
Quick hits
- Your smartphone is not your friend, warns Joseph McCormack, author of Noise: Living and Leading When Nobody Can Focus. You need to stop taking orders from it on what to do and when. Try his 7 to 7 rule: Put your phone away at 7 p.m. and don’t pick it up again until 7 a.m., or some similar formula that fits your life.
- Who lies the most during hiring, candidates or hiring managers? Contrary to what most people believe, recruiting specialist John Sullivan says it’s managers – 36 per cent admit to frequent lying compared to 35 per cent of candidates. And it comes in significant areas, the survey found 40 per cent of the managers who lie do so in discussing employee growth opportunities and 24 per cent in their offer letters.
- Aim to walk at least 1,000 steps after dinner, suggests productivity writer Laura Vanderkam. This can reshape and recharge your evenings, perhaps taking you outdoors and encouraging family time if the activity can be shared with others. She stresses 1,000 steps is not much – probably takes 10 minutes – but it can have a powerful impact.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.