How to Manage Your Manager

How To Manage Your Manager
By Geoffrey James | December 6, 2010

If you’re like most people, you probably assume that the success of your career rests upon your basic competence at doing your job. And like most people, you’re dead wrong. While job competence is important, the simple truth is that raises, promotions, career advancement and other perks depend directly on how well you can manage your boss.

If your boss doesn’t warm up to you—or worse, doesn’t remember that you exist—you’ll never land the plum assignments you need to get ahead. Therefore, in addition to performing well, you must make sure your boss (gasp!) actually likes you and knows all the things you’re doing right.

Here’s a simple five step process to make sure that your boss sees you as both a top performer and pleasure to work with… without becoming a brown-noser.

STEP #1: Keep Your Boss in the Loop

If you’re going to get ahead, you’ve got to constantly reassure your boss that you know what you’re doing. More importantly, you’ve got establish the groundwork on which to build a strong working relationship. Here’s how.

The secret fear of every boss is that employees are screwing up and either not telling anyone or (even worse) aren’t aware there’s a problem. To reassure themselves, bosses may sometimes pick an aspect of an employee’s job and begin randomly asking penetrating questions about the details. If you answer these queries with grace and aplomb, the boss assumes you’re competent. Hesitate or evade, and the boss may assume all your work is slipshod.

Since you don’t know in advance which questions your boss might ask, be prepared for every contingency. “One of the dumbest moves you can make is to walk into the boss’s office unprepared,” says Jack Cooper, the former CIO of Bristol-Myers Squibb. “For every hour that you’ll spend meeting with your boss, you should spend 10 hours making sure you can answer any questions that the boss might ask.”

Ten hours of prep? For a one-hour meeting? Okay, that’s probably overkill for a typical employee who interacts with his boss on a daily basis. But for senior managers at big companies where meeting with the CEO is an event on par with a presidential visit, Cooper’s 10-to-1 formula makes sense.

Since you’re probably not going to spend THAT much time, here’s a shortcut — a quick list of exactly what your boss expects of you:

* Credibility. Follow through on assignments and do what you say you’re going to. If you want your boss to trust you, your word has to carry weight.
* Professionalism. Bosses appreciate individuals who are serious about what they do and willing to take the time to achieve a deep understanding of their craft.
* Integrity. The test of integrity is whether you’ll take a stand, even when it’s unpopular with your boss. The boss has the final decision, but it’s your job to make sure it’s the right one.
* Caring. Bosses value relationships with direct reports who care about them. Show that you’re truly concerned about what the boss has to say by responding with solutions rather than complaints.
* Knowledge. Bosses need people who have unique expertise. You don’t have to be a pro at everything, but you do need a specific area of knowledge that your boss values.

Make sure that your work life embodies those five things and you will absolutely be well on the way to becoming a star performer in your boss’s eyes.

STEP #2: Create a Core Message

Sad to say, bosses are often forgetful. They’ve usually got plenty on their mind, and may not always be noticing what a great job your doing. The purpose of this step is to make sure that your boss knows exactly how valuable you are.

It’s irritating, of course. When you’re working your butt off, you naturally expect your boss to know exactly what you’re doing. But even though she may have assigned your work to you, in the crush of daily pressures and changing priorities, your contribution can get lost in the shuffle.

In fact, your boss might easily get so overwhelmed that she thinks that she told you to do something different, but actually forgot. Worse case, you could end up pursuing goals that no are longer important priorities — and then find out that your hard work isn’t valued. It’s unfair, sure. But it happens all the time.

According to Spencer Clark, a former general manager at General Electric, the cure for this creeping invisibility is to become a one-person marketing group, constantly positioning your contribution. “Your most important task is to market your services to your immediate boss,” Clark says.

To do this, create a “core message” — a brief summary of exactly what you’re doing and why it’s vital to the boss’s success.

A core message might be, “My team is designing the follow-on products to our most successful product line,” or “I’m recruiting the hard-to-find technical personnel required for the new R&D facility.” Then, Clark suggests, find a way to work that message into every conversation that you have with your boss-even hallway chats.

The trick is to do this without getting all smarmy about it. Think about ways you can casually talk things up without overselling — and without driving your core message into the ground.

Each interaction should add new information, and when you can, fold the message into the day’s news. Examples:

* “I just got off the phone with a candidate for the R&D job. We’re getting resumes from some really impressive people. It looks like my recruiting program is really working.”
* “We just ran my module through the entire suite of stress tests. It looks like the power control system you told me to build is going to do the job nicely.”
* “The agreement with Acme Corp that you asked me to negotiate might come in a little late, but I think we’re going to get the terms that you asked for.”

STEP #3: Cultivate The Boss’s Influencers

It’s not enough to simply inform your boss of what you’re doing. If you want to advance your career and your personal agenda, you need to make sure that the other “powers-that-be” spread the word about your importance to the company.

Here’s some political wisdom for you. You may think you have a one-on-one relationship with your boss, but you’re actually part of a crowd of people — from your peers to your boss’s peers to your boss’s bosses — who influence the boss’s decision-making.

Like it or not, their comments and gossip will inevitably affect your boss’s opinion of you and your work, so you want to be certain that, if they’re not actively singing your praises, at least they’re reading from the same hymnal.

So here’s what you do. Create a list of everyone who carries weight with your boss. Include their job title and whatever you know about their background and role inside your firm. Now craft a variation of your core message that positions what you’re doing as helpful to each person.

Then use that to frame any conversations you have with them. “You want a consistent message coming from the entire organization, not crossed wires that might confuse the boss about your importance to the organization,” says Ken Evans, former North American VP of sales and marketing at Waste Management.

For example, suppose you’re working in a marketing group, developing new sales channels. Here’s how you keep your manager’s peers updated:

* For Your Boss (VP of Marketing): “I’m developing a channel sales program that will increase revenue and profit.” (This is your core message.)
* For the VP of Engineering: “This new channels sales program I’m developing will get the products you’re designing out to an entirely new class of customer.”
* For the VP of Manufacturing: “With the channel sales program I’m developing, we’ll be able to better predict demand, which will cut down on job overruns.”
* For the VP of Human Resources: “The sales channel program I’m developing will let us expand the business without exceeding headcount limitations.”
* For the CFO: “With the channel sales program that I’m developing, we’ll be able to sell products at a 20 percent higher gross margin than with direct sales.”
* For the CEO: “My boss [name] has got me working on a channel program that’s could improve net profitability by several percent. You ought to ask him about it.”

Take especial notice of that last message. Ultimately, every employee has, as their highest priority, trying to make their own boss look good.

STEP #4: Learn About Your Boss’s Career

Now that you’ve convinced the boss that you’re competent, it’s time to make yourself invaluable.

To do this, you’ll need deliver what the boss wants-even before he knows he wants it. Over time, of course, you can observe and learn, but fast-track the process by researching the boss’s career and asking questions that will help you understand his way of thinking.

This activity has a side-benefit your boss will be flattered that you’re interested — as long as your interest is honest and not purely self-serving. But, then, people are interesting, right? Even your boss.

So here’s what you do. Use the Internet, the grapevine, and the boss’s admin to learn about the boss’s work history. Then, when appropriate, find opportunities (such as during lunch or offsite meetings) to express a healthy curiosity about your boss’s experience.

Apart from the fact that most everyone enjoys talking about themselves, bosses find this kind of inquiry valuable because it provides an opportunity to explain the logic of their decision-making processes. To help you out, here are some sample questions:

* “I was on the web learning more about our industry and I noticed that you presented at the [name] conference. What kind of response did you get?”
* “Your admin mentioned you used to work for [name of firm]. What was the most valuable thing you learned from that experience?”
* “I hear you used to work in the [name] industry. What are the main differences between the way that industry runs and the way this one runs?”

STEP #5: Cultivate Compatible Personal Interests

The ideal situation is to have a boss who looks out for your interests during difficult times. This protectiveness is nurtured when the boss thinks of you not just as a competent contributor but as a kindred spirit.

Therefore, if you want a more expansive and resilient relationship with the boss, you’re going to have to cultivate an interest in something that also interests the boss. Ideally, this should be an interest or activity that segues nicely into the work experience.

For example, if your boss likes to talk business while playing golf, learning to play-and enjoy the game-will inevitably bring you closer.

“To really understand your boss, you need to see him or her as a person, not just as a business contact,” explains Dilip Phadke, Hewlett Packard’s director of business development strategic initiatives. “My current manager is a big soccer fan, and although I was never particularly interested in soccer, I keep up on the topic because it gives us something to talk about that’s not directly work-related but can be used to illustrate the value of teamwork, planning, and so forth.”

While this may seem like “selling out”, it’s really just the same sort of thing that you in other relationships, with friends and with family.

Here’s the simple truth. Likeability is a matter of intention and behavior rather than of personality and chance, so to become more likeable, you find similarities and then raise them to the surface, according to Robert Cialdini, author of the bestseller Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion. “If you can find something that you truly like and respect about a person, then that person will naturally like and respect you,” he says. “While this may seem manipulative, it’s not, because if you truly like somebody, you will be committed to help making that person more successful.”

MY THOUGHTS

last night i had the opportunity to spend some time with some of the greatest bosses i've had the chance to work with. i guess i've been lucky when it comes to bosses. i can only think of 1 or 2 who didn't deserve their title. the rest are true leaders, not just managers. but this article is right. no matter what kind of boss you end up with, there is a way of managing them.