Helping your boss do his or her job can make life easier for you.
In ancient times--say, the 1970s--many professional employees were pretty much in a "Thank you sir, may I have another?" position when it came to dealing with the boss. This applied even to those employees that had bright ideas about making the company better. So introducing a concept like "managing up" would have been greeted about as warmly as signing off a quarterly report with one of those annoying, smiley-face symbols that you see in e-mails these days.
But being a boss today demands a different mindset, and "managing up" isn't a warm-fuzzy but relatively useless concept. Business is changing too rapidly--and the limited talent pool means employees are too valuable--for top executives to dismiss ideas from below. It's a practical way for employees to both help their bosses do their jobs better, and advocate their own ideas for improving the workplace environment, policies and execution. Today, it's virtually ubiquitous in an economy driven by hyperspeed competition.
"Managing up in this sense is nearly always informal, but it permeates most organizations," says John Case, executive editor of the Harvard Business School Publishing newsletters, which have focused upon the subject. "After all, the person you report to has a huge effect on how you spend your time at work and on your career prospects. Who wouldn't want to have a say in what the boss demands?"
But say you're at a company where there's still a cloud of old-school autocracy? There's still potential for 'managing up' effectively, but your approach will dictate how successful you are. Workplace expert Bob Nelson, author of the new Workman Publishing book, "1001 Ways to Take Initiative at Work", says the key is your attitude and approach. "Your potential for application is wide open," says Nelson. "It's like the shoe salesman who returns from an underdeveloped country to report 'There's no opportunity for our business here--no one wears shoes' while a counterpart at a competing shoe company visits the same country and reports 'The potential for shoe sales is extraordinary--no one here wears shoes.' It's all in your outlook."
Above all else, the key is convincing the bosses that it's going to make life better for them. Nelson's book details successful cases of employees who 'managed up' at Random House, Citibank, Fleet and numerous other companies. In one case, an employee for Metro Source, a radio news network in Scottsdale, Arizona, convinced the bosses to switch from an eight hour/five day work schedule to ten-hour days four days a week. How? Not by whining for three-day weekends. The employee instead convinced management that ten-hour days would allow for more overlap in employee work shifts, therefore improving communications as one crew 'handed off' developing news content coverage to another.
Here are other tips to get you "managing up" effectively:
Know your boss
Is he/she ambitious and competitive, or more along the lines of "business as usual" and "don't rock the boat"? Is he/she threatened by top talent, or invigorated by it? Is he/she a micro-manager or a delegator? Case's newsletter advises professionals to figure all of the details out before coming up with a strategy. Present your ideas in a manner that your boss is more likely to swallow, given his or her make-up.
You'll set the table for yourself much more readily if you make a sincere effort to actually listen to your bosses, and even make their lives easier. No, this doesn't mean offering to do dry cleaning or other humiliating, shoe-licking duties. "Find out their priorities," Case says. "Commit to doing some things that make their lives easier--for example, taking their place on a committee, or gathering up the numbers they need for the next budget round." You need to cultivate a reputation as someone who rallies around your employer's objectives and that you make results happen. "This will gain you a reputation as a person of action so that when you have a need or request it will be taken a bit more seriously by your manager and you will be granted greater authority to act," Nelson says.
With this, management will be more receptive to your request to get placed into that attractive new project. Or that your team should get that new, budgeted position filled. "It isn't manipulation," says Michael Dobson, co-author of Amacon-published "Managing Up! 59 Ways to Build a Career-Advancing Relationship With Your Boss." "It isn't dishonest or even shady. It's the act of managing your boss to his or her strengths and beyond his or her development needs to get results. These results are about mutual success for you, your manager, your department, and your organization ... Those are, of course, fully legitimate goals and they benefit everyone."
"Managing up" isn't about you
Or, at least you don't want to make it look that way. Keep in mind how the Metro Source employee used the concept of "we" instead of "me." "Too often we advocate from a self-centered posture instead of putting ourselves in the other person's shoes whom we are trying to influence," says Susan Onaitis, author of Silver Lake-published "Negotiate Like the Big Guys." "So put yourself in that person's shoes and ask yourself, 'Why would I say yes to this person's idea?' Unless you can come up with several good reasons, your chances of success are limited."
In other words, don't propose a staggered hours policy by saying "Many of us are single and don't crawl into bed until 2 a.m., so we prefer to come in sometime after noon." A more effective pitch would sound like: "By being in the office at different hours, counter-productive distractions that stem from being in crowded cubicles will be reduced significantly and projects will get completed on deadline. Meetings that involve the entire workforce can be held during the core hours of noon to 5 p.m." Back up what you say with fact, not emotion.
Build constituencies among other respected office leaders
"There is strength in numbers," Nelson says. "The more people you can bring around to your point of view, the better chance you will have to see it implemented."
Says Dobson: "(Getting) your job done, in most situations, involves getting cooperation from people who don't report to you, both sideways and above you in the organization." So it's vital to mesh your understanding of company goals with people-friendly communication/motivation skills.
Test the waters
Discuss the ideas with your manager before diving in head-first with a potentially ill-conceived, formal proposal. And avoid turning these informal opportunities for interaction into gripe sessions. "Bring solutions--not just problems--to your manager, along with plans for implementing your proposed solutions," Nelson says.
Be a savvy fighter
Pick the right battles, Dobson says. Fight on principal, not personal gain. Use anger effectively and appropriately. Remember that your opponents need to save face; make them feel like part of the solution if you win. And know how to lose with grace. "Tilting at windmills is occasionally necessary to preserve your integrity," he says. "But once you've made your point clearly and it's obvious further pushing will accomplish nothing, learn to let it go.
Don't forget about the job you were hired to do
Being the next bottle-breaking genius is a lofty goal. But if you were hired to design a widget, then make sure you've met that demand first. "Set and be the new standard in your industry, in your office, in your department," says business coach Linda Talley, author and producer of the audio-cassette "How to Manage the Boss." It's also important to do the job well that your company wants you to do, as opposed to what you believe your job is. Misunderstanding or refusing to accept your core role is a common stumbling block. "Some of us like parts of our jobs better than others, or don't see the value in certain job elements," Dobson says. "Therefore, we do parts of our job very well and don't concentrate on others. But if the parts of our job we neglect are the ones our boss and the organization truly needs, all our good work won't be enough to excuse the areas in which we have low performance."
Dennis McCafferty lives in Alexandria, Va., and is a staff writer for USA Weekend magazine.
