Employees who take the initiative and respond to their superiors' demands are more valued than those who cause problems for their boss, writes Gabrielle Monaghan
Managers now assume staff will meet the minimum requirements of the contemporary workplace - showing up on time, being a good team player and corporate citizen, knowing the job well, and being productive. But it is the employee who knows how to manage their boss well that stands out from the crowd, recruitment experts say.
"Managing up" is the ability to understand and respond to the demands of a boss and even a boss's boss, according to Siobhán Mockler, manager of the banking and financial services division at Sigmar Recruitment. It means working effectively with someone else's goals and style to achieve results for you and the workplace as a whole, she says.
"If only the world was a true meritocracy, but it's not," said Rowan Manahan, managing director of career advice firm Fortify Services and author of jobseekers' guide, Where's My Oasis? "You need to understand human psychology. It's this kind of awareness that distinguishes the quick climbers of the greasy totem pole."
Successful employees at all levels of an organisation should be skilled at managing up, Mockler believes. Being aware of the demands placed on your boss will help you anticipate how your work can support meeting those demands and enable you to focus your energies on the most important tasks.
An employee who knows their boss's needs can be counted on and is a better valued employee. If, on the other hand, you are the source of problems for your manager, even if you are technically competent, you will be a less valued employee.
"I don't care what your role is - your job is all about alleviating your boss's headaches, taking crap off their desk, and making them look good," Manahan said. "Your boss may be the most insecure pain in the world, but when you go out in the world as a department, it's 'us against them'. If you don't get that as a subordinate, you are not an attractive subordinate and your boss won't look after you."
Communication skills are an essential component of managing up, Mockler says. A person good at managing up knows when to inform the boss and when not to bother them with minute details.
"If you report too much, your boss becomes immune to your messages, not unlike the story of the 'boy who cried wolf'," Mockler says. "Keep to the point and just highlight key messages. You don't want to over-inflate your own work."
Unless your workplace norm is to report every interaction you have, limit your reporting to the boss to what they need to know to be reasonably informed about significant issues or problems. Generally, these issues are those with legal implications or the potential for repercussions outside your department or area.
"It's important to find out from your boss what information they will need on a daily, weekly or monthly basis," Mockler says. "What you don't want is for your boss to be blindsided by an issue you should have told him about."
"Take the following scenario," Manahan said. "If you're a boss with two subordinates and one approaches you and says there is an issue that needs to be resolved but he's looked at the alternatives and now needs permission to go ahead with the solution - as a boss you can say yes or no. The other subordinate is in and out of your office like chicken licken saying 'the sky is falling down.' Which do you take more seriously?"
Unfortunately, there are no classes you can take to learn how to manage up. But by learning about your company's business, not just your own job, you can manage your boss.
"Make sure you understand the needs and challenges your business is facing in general," Mockler says. "If there's a competitor on the horizon, learn about their business. If new regulations or laws are threatening how you do business, become conversant with them."
Mockler's other golden rules for successfully managing your boss include recognising that your superior will not change - you only have control over yourself and how you are perceived. "Most employees have strong opinions about other people and how they should be working but they're not so good at turning that laser focus onto themselves," Manahan says. Mockler also recommends attending meetings you don't normally get involved with and educating yourself about tasks and requirements outside your area of expertise.
Manahan advises, though, that there is a caveat to this strategy: employees should show integrity when striving to manage their boss. "Licking up to the boss is not acceptable," he says. "And you are not managing up to play someone else down. You need to help other people when doing it and they will help you back, unless that other person has some sort of psychosis."
Just as ambitious employees need to learn to manage up, bosses should be familiar with how to "manage down" successfully, Mockler points out. "Your subordinates are almost as important as the management," she says. "Caring about them will make them respect you and what you do."
Most bosses maintain a balance between the two extremes of management styles - those who are insecure and fear delegating work to others and those who refuse to entertain any issues employees bring forward, as Manahan himself experienced.
"I remember when I was working as a product manager for a multinational. It was my first day on the job and I was only 22, but I was responsible for the sales and distribution of some prescription drugs. I took a call from a panic-stricken pharmacist at a hospital who asked if we had drugs for a girl who was starting chemotherapy the following day.
"We didn't have any and the hospital certainly didn't. I tried making a few phone calls to see if there was anything I could do. I realised the sky was falling down. I approached my boss and all he said was 'don't come in here to me with any problems'.
"I talked to the boss's PA and cobbled together a solution that entailed me ending up at the airport the next morning waiting for this drug to arrive."
