Managing Up: Managing your manager = Manage your success

These are some of the warning signs that you may not have a good working relationship with your boss.

• You don’t know what your boss is required to achieve and what your role in their success is.
• You don’t know how your boss evaluates your performance (hint: it’s not the performance review)
• You don’t know how & when your boss wants work done.
• You don’t know what your boss’s communication style is and how to effectively communicate with them.
• You don’t know who is in your boss’s political landscape and how these relationships affect you
• Your boss doesn’t know about everything you accomplish and deliver.
• You don’t have regular, frequent one on one time with your boss
• Your boss doesn’t know what you are capable of and what your preferences, skills & abilities areManaging Up — Personal Story About

Why You Must Manage Your Own Boss

Now I want to share this personal story with you to show you what I did wrong, so you don’t repeat the same mistakes that I did. You will also see that I have a very personal attachment to this subject because I know how much your work affects your personal happiness.

This short story demonstrates why you cannot rely on your boss and why you need to take charge for managing your relationship with your boss.

Picture This

So one year I was exceptionally determined to smash my objectives. I checked my objectives every month to make sure I was on track. When performance review time came I was prepared with evidence about how I’d exceeded every objective my boss had given me. But my boss gave me an average rating because I hadn’t done something he never asked me for.

Needless to say I was pretty upset. I felt it was unfair. My boss could’ve asked me at any time for what he wanted and he would’ve got it. And it cost me thousands in bonus money.

But this is just another sad story that’s far too common. It’s so common there’s even a Dilbert cartoon about it :

Now of course it’s your bosses job to tell you what they want. But the reality is that most bosses just plain haven’t been trained how to be a boss. My boss wasn’t a bad person. He was in fact an extremely good leader but being a good leader doesn’t necessarily make you a good boss.

What to Do Instead

Now years later, I know that it’s the bosses job to communicate their expectations. But I’ve also realised something else: blaming your boss doesn’t fix anything. Instead take responsibility for managing your relationship with your boss. What I could’ve done differently was:

• Finding out my bosses goals and objectives
• Finding out my role in delivering these
• Finding out what my boss needs for his own boss and
• Checking in with his expectations before the performance review (in regular one on one meetings)
• Taking responsibility to communicate my achievements to my boss because yous boss can’t give you recognition for what they don’t know.

This is one short story about expectations but it also applies to other boss responsibilities.

Bad Bosses Can Really Ruin Your Day

Bad bosses make great material for comedies like “The Office” but if you have a bad boss then you know that it’s no laughing matter. A bad boss could simply suck any joy from work, or in the worst case can leave you clinically depressed, looking for a new job. You see bad bosses come in many shapes and sizes but there is a universal truth about bad bosses and when you know this truth, then you don’t have to let a bad boss get you down anymore.

It’s Not Their Fault

Now some bosses are bad bosses because they suffer from personality disorders. But even bosses with personality disorders don’t want to be bad bosses. Because being a bad boss is going to mean that they fail at work. The truth is that they are bad bosses because they simply don’t know how to be a good boss. And that gives you the key to fix a bad boss. You don’t have to rely on your boss doing what they are meant to do by taking ownership for doing it yourself.

If you think that sounds simplistic, then try the following thought experiment: Who in their right minds wants to be a bad boss? Only someone who is crazy, pure evil or trying to sabotage themselves would want to fail at being a good boss. The truth is they just don’t how how to be a good boss in an ethical way.

And the reason why they don’t know how is simple: hardly anyone actually gets trained how to be a manager.

Even Nice People Make Bad Bosses

Even perfectly nice people can turn bad when they are given all the responsibility of being a boss. They are expected to lead their team to produce great work but they don’t know how.

And it’s Worse When Bad People Become Bosses

And that’s what happens to “nice”, “well meaning” people, when someone with a borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder is placed into a position of power, placed under stress and doesn’t know how to positively manage their employees, then this stress and confusion is just going to magnify their bad parts.

Of course sometimes you do have a truly flawed boss and your best option is to make a plan to get a better boss (aka change jobs).

Take Responsibility for Getting Your Own Needs Met

But because most bosses aren’t trained, the chances are your new boss isn’t going to be the answer you really need. The simple answer is if your boss isn’t doing what they’re meant to, then instead of accepting this state of helplessness, you can take responsibility for making sure that your needs are met as I will show you below.

The only place you can turn frogs into princes is in fairytales. You’re not going to turn a bad boss into “World’s Best Boss” contender but you can do enough to turn the situation around. The things that bad bosses do that impact you and you can easily fix are:

• Bad bosses don’t give you a clear direction of what work to do
• Bad bosses don’t build functional relationships with their employees
• Bad bosses aren’t aware of the contribution you make and don’t give you credit for the work you do
• Bad bosses don’t let you know in a constructive manner about your blind spots and your career limiting mistakes
• Bad bosses don’t grow you and develop you

Instead of waiting for your boss to do the right thing, you can empower yourself by accepting responsibility for the above. Essentially if your boss doesn’t manage you then you can manage up. What you can do instead:

• Find out what your boss’s goals are and what your role is in achieving these goals,
• Invite your boss to One on One Meetings to build functional relationships,
• Give your boss status updates on what you’ve done and problems you’ve solved (in those one on one meetings with your boss),
• Solicit feedback and ensure that you are working on the right priorities by asking the right questions (See questions you must ask your boss)
• Find out what skills your boss wants you to develop and take responsibility for developing yourself (See 9 Ways to get your company to pay for your training)

We Don’t Live in a Perfect World, Adapt

In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to manage your boss but the truth about bad bosses is that they don’t know how to manage their employees. The temptation is to blame your bosses character flaws to explain why they are a weak manager but the truth is more mundane. That’s because the truth is no one showed them how to manage employees and they’re trying to hide their shortfall with bluster.

Leaving it up to your boss just leaves you helpless. It’s far more empowering to take control of your own destiny. And bosses love employees who take the initiative to get things done. This isn’t just for bad bosses, doing the above is going to help you have a happier and more successful career in any job.

The first step to managing upwards is to find out what your boss truly expects of you. A few problems about your bosses expectations include:

• If you don’t know what your boss truly expects of you, you are going to waste your time working on the wrong priorities
• Your boss will be upset with you because they haven’t got what they expected of you (regardless of whether they told you what they wanted or not)
• If you’re lucky enough to have a Job Description or Objectives, you have no guarantee that these truly reflect your bosses expectations or if they are not out of date
• Your work may not support your boss to achieve their own objectives in turn (due to a lack of alignment of corporate goals)

Fix:

Meet with your boss and ask:

1. What are their own goals and objectives are
2. What is your role in achieiving these goals and objectives
3. What level of autonomy do you have with making decisions in these areas
4. What frequency & type of communication does you boss want in the different topics

Example:

1. Say your boss has an annual sales target goal of $25m
2. Your boss needs you to deliver $5m of this annual target
3. You need to approve new customers and credit levels with your boss
4. Your boss wants weekly updates on your sales for the prior week and sales pipeline for the week ahead

Credits: Learnings from a publishing by Manager Foundation