The Fine Art of Managing UP!

Is it “managing up” or is it just brown-nosing?

Everybody manages his or her boss to some extent: there’s no way around it. Bosses are human beings too: imperfect and in need of help. At the same time, bosses have power over us, and their feelings and perceptions of us can influence pay, promotion, and even basic job security. Managing our relationships with our bosses is fraught with temptation and danger. At the same time, it’s one of the most important skills you need.

You can find any number of books on working for crummy or difficult bosses (it’s not for nothing that “B-O-S-S” spelled backward is “Double S-O-B”). Bad behavior on the part of people in authority can be hugely damaging. But the truth is that even the best boss can be a challenge at least on occasion. Even the best boss needs managing.

People often think that managing up is something you do to your boss, to get power over him and her, but that’s not the case. “Managing up” is something you do for your boss, and if you’re the boss, it’s something you wish more of your employees knew how to do. Managing, after all, is the art of getting work done through the agency of other people. If you need your boss’ help to succeed, you’re a manager. You need to act like one.

The difference between managing up and brown-nosing is simply this: managers get work done; brown-nosers manipulate people to get what they want. The key difference is in the goals you choose. Are you there to help your boss and your organization succeed, or are you just looking out for Number One?

The two categories aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, nor should they be. But they aren’t necessarily at odds, either. Doing what’s right for your boss and for the organization is very often the best way to get ahead. People who look out only for themselves and don’t care about the organizational consequences sometimes get short-term advantage, but more often suffer long-term consequences.

In our book Managing UP! (AMACOM, 2000), we identified 59 different skills and techniques you can use to build a career-advancing relationship with your boss. They break down into a few categories: self-improvement, working with different styles and temperaments, managing organizational systems and procedures, building teams, and solving problems.

Self-improvement. Do good work, manage your time effectively, and build your skills. Take your job seriously, but take yourself lightly.

Working with styles and temperaments. Pay attention to the styles, preferences and pet peeves of your boss and others. Tolerate some bad moods and imperfect behavior — we’re all guilty. Learn how and when to fight, and when to leave well enough alone.

Managing organizational systems and procedures. Learn the paperwork. Prepare for meetings. Build relationships throughout the organization. Give solid feedback, both positive and negative. Pay attention to the politics of the organization, but avoid getting “political.” Pay attention to the hidden keys of status and the symbolic language of the organization.

Build teams. Teams are all the people you need — regardless of whether they work for you. Think of your boss as a customer. Learn to train others. Improve your skills at delegation. Build your skills in win-win negotiation. Build connections in other departments. Be a “goodmouther.”

Solve problems. Give negative feedback well. Be supportive, not competitive. Accept responsibility. Stand up for what you believe and need. Get organized. Sharpen your decision skills. Work on better communication. Develop a personal intelligence network in your organization.

These skills not only improve your relationship with your boss and higher ups, they also help the group and the organization succeed. Managing up isn’t just the smart thing to do — it’s also the right thing.

— Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson

(This was originally written as a guest post for the AMACOM Books blog.)

Heads I Win, Tails I Win (and the Same to You)

Negotiation is such a fundamental “threshold” skill that it’s nearly impossible for you to succeed long-term without developing skills in this area.  Unfortunately, many people get the wrong idea about what negotiation is and how works.

The distaste that some people feel for the concept of negotiation results from seeing negotiation as “win/lose” (I win, you lose) or “lose/win” (I give up rather than make an enemy out of you) rather than “win/win” (we both come out of the negotiation with our needs met).  In addition to moral or ethical qualms, the reality is that we leave someone unhappy, and that person is unlikely to forget.  We will have to deal with the leftover negativity at some future time.  “Win/win” approaches aren’t just nice, they’re necessary for our long-term relationships and performance.

But how is it possible to negotiate and have both parties win?

Understanding “win/win”

Negotiation isn’t simply about compromise (let’s just split it 50-50).  While sometimes a compromise solution in which each party gives a little bit is acceptable, often a compromise turns into “lose/lose.”

Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project point out that in many negotiations the participants see a “fixed pie,” but that it’s often possible to “expand the pie.”

They tell the story of “the proverbial sisters who quarreled over an orange.  After they finally agreed to divide the orange in half, the first sister took her half, ate the fruit, and threw away the peel, while the other threw away the fruit and used the peel from her half in baking a cake.”

In other words, “common sense” would suggest the orange could only be split in such a way that the parts added up to 100%, but this particular orange could have been split 100-100, not 50-50...because the two sisters had different yet complementary interests!

The “win/win” concept of negotiation emphasizes that preserving the relationship is an important goal in most negotiations, and that’s particularly crucial when the other participant in negotiation happens to be your boss.  You might be able to force your desires through his or her resistance, but you have to expect him or her to remember that in the future.  “If you wrong us,” Shylock says, “shall we not revenge?”

Win/win isn’t only ethically superior, it’s more practical as well.

“Hard” vs. “soft” styles

You can make a lifetime study of negotiation, and it will benefit you in every area of your life.  It’s worth adding to your list of areas for personal and professional development, because you will ultimately find yourself in continual negotiation situations.  Negotiation styles are sometimes divided into “soft” and “hard,” but that’s not a very meaningful distinction.

The Fisher/Ury Getting to Yes techniques are sometimes referred to as “soft” because they involve collegiality and teamwork.  But even in a “hard” negotiation program such as Roger Dawson’s excellent The Secrets of Power Negotiating, you’ll find his commitment to “win/win” negotiation, “a) Never narrow negotiations down to just one issue.  b) Different people want different things.”




Some key principles of win/win negotiation


As you study negotiation skills, you’ll find that different authorities have certain specific detailed and tactical suggestions.  However, some general principles of effective negotiation are common to the various styles and strategies.

1. Do your homework.

Before negotiating anything with anybody, there are a couple of things you should do.
First, analyze your own goal, making sure that you focus on your interests (the reasons you want what you want) instead of only your positions (the specifics for which you’re asking.  The position of the sisters was that each wanted the orange.  To find the underlying interests, you focus on why.  Why do you want the orange?  What exactly would you do with it if you had it all?  What would not be useful or necessary for you?

Second, determine your bottom line.  What do you need--and what is the best you can do assuming that the negotiation goes nowhere?  You need to know this so you’ll know when you’re getting results...and so you won’t take an offer that’s less than what you’d get if there is no deal.  Fisher and Ury call this your “BATNA”:  your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.”   Roger Dawson calls it “walk-away power.”

Third, put yourself in the shoes of the other person and do the same thing.  The more you understand the interests and goals of the other participant--and their own BATNA or walk-away options, the easier you’ll find it to locate win/win options.

2. Listen—for the real issues.

Being a good listener is a valuable negotiation technique for several reasons.  First, your understanding of the other person grows, which helps you in working toward the best outcome.  Second, when you listen, you automatically validate the other person, lowering their stress and emotions, and create a climate in which better results can occur.  Paraphrase what you’re being told to make sure you understand it fully.

3. Be persistent and patient.

You want to negotiate in order to achieve results for both parties.  Surrendering and giving in are examples of lose/win, not win/win strategies.  Keep your dignity and your personal strength intact by refusing to yield to hardball tactics and pressure.  One reason to study such tactics yourself is that it becomes easier to counter them in practice.

Being in a hurry to reach a deal often gives you a worse deal than you’d get with patience.  If a particular round of negotiation isn’t panning out successfully, maybe it’s time to walk away for now, think about what you’ve learned, and try again later.

4. Be clear and assertive.

You’ve heard it said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”  That’s true even in cases where the other person isn’t necessarily hostile or negative to your interests.  If you don’t ask, there is a good chance the other person doesn’t even know what it is you want--and if he or she doesn’t know, how can you expect him or her to read your mind?  One of the most interesting elements of preparing well for a negotiation is how often you get your needs met without actually encountering the resistance you expected!


5. Allow face-saving.

When a negotiation or conflict situation ends up making one person be “in the wrong,” don’t be surprised if that person feels negative about it.  Being embarrassed or humiliated is not a positive emotion.  When you must show your boss that he or she is incorrect, or has made a mistake, or has make a bad decision, you not only have to get the situation corrected, you have to resolve the emotional issues in a way to allow your boss to “save face.”

Some techniques for face-saving include the “third party appeal,” in which you don’t say, “I’m right, you’re wrong,” but instead find a neutral third party (such as a reference book) that you’ll use to resolve the issue.  Another valuable technique is privacy.  It’s easier to admit to one person that one is wrong than admit it publicly to everyone.  (And never gloat afterward!)  A third is to find a way to allow the person to be partially right, or to allow yourself to be partially wrong.  (At least you can always allow for the possibility of improvement.)

You negotiate every day of your life and with all the people in your life.  Don’t wait until you are in a major conflict situation with the power dynamic stacked against you to develop this skill.



From Managing UP: 59 Ways to Build a Career-Advancing Relationship With Your Boss, by Michael and Deborah Singer Dobson (AMACOM, 2000). Copyright © 2000 Michael and Deborah Dobson. All Rights Reserved.

Six Skills for Managing Your Boss

I didn’t learn to appreciate the art of managing up until I first had the experience of managing down. One of the common surprises a new manager experiences is how much time you spend doing things for your employees. And when it comes to your employees doing things for you—well, I was so naïve when I first became a supervisor I actually thought that meant that people would do what I said.

How quickly we learn.

When I talk about “managing up,” people often think that’s something you do to your boss, that the goal is for the employee to get power over the boss. But that’s not the case. “Managing up” is something you do for your boss, and if you’re the boss, it’s something you wish more of your employees knew how to do.

At work—and at home, for that matter—we live inside a tightly woven web of mutual obligations. If you’re the boss, your employees are obligated to do certain work for you. And you normally have obligations in return: you review and approve and advise and decide. You go to bat. You run interference. You receive the passed buck. And occasionally you call for a Hail Mary play.

You have a similar relationship with your own boss, and he or she with his or her, and so ad infinitum. And that’s not even getting into the more complicated lateral relationships that cut across organizational boundaries.

Management, in a nutshell, is getting work done through the agency of other people. Whether those people actually report to you is largely irrelevant. You have to manage in three dimensions: up, down, and sideways. The official power you get as a supervisor or manager is never adequate to the task at hand. Ultimately, we’re all Blanche DuBois, from Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire: we rely on the kindness of strangers.

We had better be good at it.

A few years ago, my wife Deborah and I researched and wrote a series of three books on the practical challenges of the workplace: Coping With Supervisory Nightmares, Enlightened Office Politics, and Managing UP! As we interviewed managers on what worked and what didn’t, we also looked back on our own careers. We had learned most of these lessons the hard way ourselves, many of them imperfectly, and more than a few we had missed altogether.

While the target audience of the book was new supervisors, we quickly learned that higher ranks of leadership were far more interested in the skills we had identified. That’s because we feel the need most keenly because we’re also on the other side.

Of course, you’ve long since learned the basics, but like us, you probably acquired your knowledge the way the cat learned to swim—by being thrown into the deep end. Even more importantly, you’ve learned what’s at stake.

Managing up isn’t just about taking care of your personal career, although it does. Managing up is the missing link in the relationships you need to run a large, complex organization in today’s crisis-prone environment.

SELF

To manage up effectively, you have to start with yourself and move outward. The first issue, the first rung on the ladder of MANAGING UP, is you: the self. A big part of your success in managing others, in whatever direction, comes from your own fundamentals: the quality of your work; the value of your word; and the content of your character

STYLE

From the inward self, we move outward to style: our own and that of others. None of us checks our humanity at the door when we clock in. For better and for worse, human beings have personalities, preferences, and interests. Friction is unavoidable. Without lubrication, the machine grinds, and eventually freezes.

SUBSTANCE

Style without substance, however, is insufficient. We begin our rise up the management ladder by demonstrating technical merit. But we quickly discover that there’s no such thing as a promotion, not really. Instead, each level is a career change, and we have to discover for ourselves what we need to be successful at the next level. The current age requires continuous learning: what do you need to know next? Where do you need to grow?

SYSTEMS

We can’t do it alone. We need systems in order to function effectively. Leaders are necessarily generalists; the higher you go the wider the set of skills and knowledge you need. Eventually you need to know everything, and that’s impossible. We feel we’re stuck in the Peter Principle trap, promoted to the level of our incompetence. But we can pull ourselves out. There are two ways out. Sometimes we have to acquire new skills and knowledge…or else we have to manage others to provide the work we need.

SYNERGY

The word of the day is “team,” because none of us, it is said, is as smart as all of us. Sadly, sometimes the opposite is also true. Nothing is dumber than groupthink gone wild. The real synergy involves balancing the wisdom of the team with the wisdom of the individual. If “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’” it’s equally true that “you can’t spell ‘team’ without ‘m-e.’"

SOLVING PROBLEMS

General rules will take us only so far. We have to apply our skills tactically as well as strategically. Managers manage problems as well as people—not to mention problem people—up, down, and sideways. Some bosses are harder to manage than others, and some live up to the old observation that “BOSS” spelled backwards is “double SOB.”

In an ideal world, you want your work environment to have certain characteristics, from the level of challenge and responsibility you desire to how you want to balance the demands of the office and the home. It's unlikely that happy accident alone will achieve what you want. Take responsibility for managing the relationship between you and your boss, you and your peers, and you and your worklife. You'll be much better off.