Along with managing your subordinates, for real success you also have to manage your boss. In other words, you have to “manage up.” According to Thomas Zuber and Erika James, “managing up is the process of consciously working with your boss to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss and your organization. This is not political maneuvering or “kissing up.” Rather, it is a deliberate effort to bring understanding and cooperation to a relationship between individuals who often have different perspectives.”
Managing the boss is a way to have a win-win-win situation where everyone, including the organization, wins. Failure to manage your boss frequently results in misunderstandings about expectations and causes wasted time and effort on tasks not in line with organizational goals or needs. And looking at it from a purely selfish perspective, career progress rarely happens if you don’t manage your boss successfully.
As a manager at any level, though, you have to think about managing both up and down. Some managers only manage in one direction. If you only manage up, your subordinates will assume you don’t care about them and may withhold their respect or slack off in their work. On the other hand, if you only manage down, you can’t advocate for your team or gain buy-ins from others up the chain for your team’s endeavors. Successful managers pay attention to managing both directions.
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