From “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Managers Guide to Getting Results” by Alison Green and Jerry Hauser
Chapter 12: Managing Up
“You can maximize your results by using the right practices with the person who manages you…Managing up isn’t about manipulating your boss or managing her perceptions. It’s about working with your boss in the way that will produce the best possible results for the organization.
Your sphere of control
If you have frustrations about your boss, you’re far from alone. Most people do, even when that boss is a good manager. Maybe your manager isn’t responsive enough to email, or she cancels meetings at the last minute, or she changes her mind after you thought a decision had been made…
Whatever your frustrations, one key to working effectively with any boss and to keeping your own sanity is to get clear in your own mind about what you can and can’t control and to focus on making the pieces you can control go as smoothly as possible. Rather than stewing over an aspect of your boss that you can’t change, it’s far more productive to understand that her working style may not change dramatically and to find ways to work effectively within that context.
For instance, if you have a busy manager who frequently cancels your weekly meeting, rather than being paralyzed by frustration and unable to move forward without your boss’s input, you could say, “I know you’re really busy, but can I talk to your assistant and get 10 minutes on your calendar?” You also might anticipate that she’s likely to cancel your meeting tomorrow because of an upcoming [event], and as a safety measure, grab her for two minutes after today’s staff meeting to ask your most pressing question.
As you brainstorm about how you might respond to a less-than-ideal context, think creatively, and don’t feel locked into how you’ve been doing things up until now (especially if those techniques haven’t been getting you what you need). If your boss doesn’t respond to your emails, print the email out and leave it on her chair. Or leave her a voice mail telling her how you plan to move forward if you don’t hear from her by the end of the week.
Again, the point here is not to get so focused on your boss’s less-than-ideal behaviors that you miss the things that are in your control. So with your sphere of control in mind, let’s turn to some specific strategies that can work.
Get Aligned
A lot of disagreements between managers and manages at their core stem from a lack of alignment about what the managee’s priorities should be how work should be conducted, and how the relationship should operate. This lack of alignment can be a significant root cause of dissatisfaction on both sides of the relationship, so it’s essential to surface it and fix it.
Ideally you and your boss would agree about what you’ll do, how you’ll do it, and how the two of you will work together at the start of your relationship. But if you’re struggling in an existing relationship, it’s not too late to step back and get aligned now.
Priorities
Talk regularly throughout the year about your goals and priorities. Start by getting clear about what success would look like for you this year, as well as what you should not spend energy on at all. At least every quarter and often more, talk explicitly about what you’ll be focused on in the next few months. These periodic alignment checks can be very simple, such as, “For the next two months, I’ll be spending a lot of energy on getting the membership department straightened out and I’m not going to worry about filling the gaps on the communications team until after that.”
Managers and managees are often clear in their own minds on these questions, but haven’t connected with each other on them. An explicit discussion can bring conflicting assumptions to the surface and resolve them.
How to Approach Specific Issues
In order to ensure that you’re both in agreement when it comes to how you’ll operate, it can be hugely helpful to raise potentially tricky situations and talk through how you plan to handle them. For instance, you might discuss how to handle a low-performing staff member who reports to you, or how to handle an adversarial coalition member. By getting in sync on these sorts of things upfront, you’ll be able to act with more confidence, knowing that you won’t be unpleasantly surprised to learn that your boss had an entirely different take on the topic than you did.
Scope of Your Authority
Proactively discuss what decisions of yours you boss wants to be kept informed about, what sorts of things she’d like to be consulted on, and what she wants final approval over. The MOCHA (manager-owner-consulted-helper-approver) model… is a helpful tool for talking this over. And in keeping with making your boss’s job easy, as we discuss in the next section, you might propose what you think the right assignment of decision making rights is.
Communication Systems
Make sure to establish a system for checking in and getting questions answered. For instance, you might have a regular weekly meeting, plus conversations throughout the rest of the week as the need arises. Whatever system you decide on, err on the side of investing a good amount of time talking at the beginning of your relationship (or when rebooting it); you can always reduce it over time.
Important: Once your system is established, put yourself in charge of making it work, meaning that if your boss cancels a meeting, you should take the lead on rescheduling it. We often seepeople in this situation leave the ball in their boss’s court. Although this might be the way to handle a social situation when someone cancels plans, it’s not the way to handle your boss, or you may rarely get to meet with her.
Make Your Boss’s Job Easy
As a manger of others, you well know the demands that come with management. Almost by definition, your boss probably has an evenbroader role than you, with many competing demands. So once you’ve agreedon general expectations and how you’ll work together, another way to get good results with your boss is to make things as easy as possible for her.
Apply the Principles of Delegation Downward
When you delegate a responsibility to a staffer, you articulate the desired outcome, constraints, prioritization… Do the same thing when your manager gives you a responsibility in order to make sure you’re aligned. For instance, if your manager asks you to oversee the development of a new logo, you might want to say, “So we’re looking for a logo that is professional and modern, and we want to convey forward motion. It sounds like the budget needs to be kept under two thousand dollars, and I’m thinking I shouldn’t tackle this until after we’re done with the spring conference. Does that sound right?” Once you’re both aligned, take the two minutes to do a repeat-back email, so that weeks later, you both remember what was decided on. And just as when you’re delegating to others, help your boss stay engaged by checking in on an ongoing basis, offering updates, and giving her chances for input as the project unfolds. For instance, you might suggest to your manager that once you have developed five good options for the logo, you’ll run them by her to get her views.
Make it Easy for Her to Give Input
Ask yes/no questions, keep emails short, and suggest solutions so your boss can respond quickly with a yes or no… Saying, “What should I do about X?” puts the problem on her. You make it easier for both of you if you say, “I’ve been wrestling with what to do about X. I’ve though about A, B, and C, and I think we should do C because… Does that sound okay to you?”
Remind Her of Context
When you’ve been tightly focused on a project, it’s easy to forget that your manager’s attention might have been on other things. Instead of expecting your manager to retain al the details you’ve talked about previously, a simple reminder of context or past decisions can be enormously helpful. For instance, if you’re checking in with your boss about a project you’ve discussed in the past, assume that she’s probably not as focused on it as you are and say something like, “As a reminder, here’s where we are on the schedule, and this is what we talked about last month.”
Notice Her Themes and Address Them Proactively
If you pay attention to the kinds of questions your boss asks, you’ll draw larger messages about the sorts of things that she’ll care about in the future. You can then anticipate those things in advance and address them before she has to ask, which will make you both happier wit the relationship. It’s also useful to understand why she focuses where she does, so if you’re ever unsure, ask. Asking, “What’s driving that?” or “Just so I understand, which part of this is worrying you?” can often lead to a conversation that gives you both more insight into each other.
Ask for Feedback After a Project is Over
While ideally your boss would be offering feedback on her own, in reality she may be pulled in numerous other directions. Make it easy on her, and get what you need, by raising it yourself. Simply saying, “Can we debrief about how this went?” and then offering your own view and asking for hers can make it easier for her to tell you what she really thinks.
Be Emotionally Intelligent
We often work with clients who are emotionally intelligent in how they approach the people who work for them but fail to apply the same skill in working with their own manager.
Don’t Take it Personally
There will be times when you have a different point of view than your manager does on something where she is the ultimate decision maker. When this happens, you should advocate for what you believe, and if you think your boss is making a mistake, part of our job is to explain the reason. But if your boss ultimately picks a different route, it’s helpful to have reasonably think skin: don’t take it personally, and keep your ego out of it. It’s a bonus if you can find the humility to recognize that she might even be right!
Don’t Forget Your Boss is Human
… Bosses are human too. There may be times when your boss is grouchy, frustrated, or frazzled, or times when she would appreciate hearing that she handled something well. In addition, realist that in the same way you might have sensitivities about the relationship, she may too. For instance, if you’re taking on responsibilities that used to be hers, she likely won’t appreciate hearing that they used to be a disaster until you came along. All of this is to say, be thoughtful.
Don’t Stew in Silence
The most effective manages tend to see the responsibility for making the relationship work smoothly as theirs. If you’re frustrated about something, such as your manager undermined a decision you made, raise it, talk about the impact, and discuss how it could go differently in the future. Mistakes will happen, so use them as opportunities to strengthen your relationship. Of course, be smart about this: you’ll get better results if you raise these issues at a time when your boss has time to consider them, just as you would if you were speaking to a subordinate about a sensitive issue.
Have Your Act Together
We hear from a lot of people who think their managers are overly controlling or micromanaging… the easiest way to solve the problem is to give her confidence that things are under control. In other words, stay on top of things, do what you say you’re going to do, take good notes on the subtleties of what your boss asks you to do so you do it right, don’t let things fall through the cracks, and generally be someone she can rely on.
Discussion Questions
- How does this advice translate to a school environment?
- Which of these suggestions resonate with you?