More about Managing Up

Sorry I have not posted recently. I spent the last week wrestling with shoulder and neck pain. The drugs that my doctor prescribed kept me from having any real coherent thoughts. I go back to the orthopedic guy on Tuesday to see how the MRI looks.

Enough about my cervical problems.

I received some good comments on my previous post about managing your boss or what is known as “managing up.”

Anonymous wrote:

“Good managers use their resources to make better informed decisions. It is important for employees to manage upward and to engage management in healthy dialogues. When an employee understands the thought process that went into make a decision or participates in the decision process, it helps the employee ‘buy into’ the vision and work towards the goal.”

This is an excellent point. People do not embrace decisions that are made in a vacuum. People need to feel like they were part of the process; their ideas heard and validated.

Another reader, Allen wrote:

“This is a great point. It is also important to point out to stay positive about it. When your boss makes a decision that goes against what you expected or believed what was right for the company, do you take it to mean that your boss is an idiot or do you use it as a way to recalibrate?

To recalibrate, after your boss makes a decision that you didn’t expect you should be asking yourself questions:

1. Is it because he has access to more information or can see more of the picture?
2. Did I not give my boss enough information to make the correct decision?
3. Is it not the right time, is it not for the right reasons, or the right cost to make this decision?

If you are of the my boss is an idiot mindset and you use that as an excuse to undermine them, you are hurting yourself more than your boss. If they are an idiot, most likely everyone else knows it as well – and all you do by pointing it out or trying to make your boss look bad is to make yourself undesirable by other managers in your company. Why would a manager want an employee like that working for them? Wouldn’t they rather someone who is able to get good work done without making others look bad?

That said, if this truly is the right decision to make, there are many ways to force your boss to make the right decision without undermining him…”

Allen drives home an important point. I agree with his approach to recalibrate. Even if your boss is an idiot, you cannot act on your own opinion – even if it is shared among colleagues. You become part of the problem. The most important point Allen drives home is the act of “undermining” your boss. You can never be successful by undermining someone in authority. It is a bad reflection on you ultimately. You do not influence your boss in a positive way by tearing him down.

Thanks for the posts!