Learning their boss's goals, pressures, and preferred way of working, a manager keeps the boss informed and delivers what was promised, so the boss carries the manager's proposals upward.
An example
Two of a project director's proposals stalled in her first month under a new boss, a regional vice president an engineering services firm had hired from a competitor. She asked for an hour with him on what he needed. She learned that he answered for regional margin every month, that the chief operating officer had told him the region's bids ran too thin, and that he wanted a one-page written summary before any meeting. She changed how she worked: a page before each meeting, a margin line on every bid, and a call before any bad news could reach him from someone else. Two months later he took her proposal for a new water-treatment design team to the chief operating officer himself, with her margin analysis attached, and it was approved.
Why it works
Proposals shaped around the boss's goals and pressures look better to the boss, and they are easier to carry upward once the boss has learned to rely on the manager's information and delivery. The relationship is one of mutual dependence: the boss needs the manager's work and honesty, and the manager needs the boss's backing and access. It rests on understanding the boss's real pressures, adapting to their way of working, and being dependable and honest over time.
The thinking behind it
John J. Gabarro Managing Your Boss (1980), by Gabarro and Kotter, defines managing your boss as consciously working with your superior to obtain the best possible results for you, the boss, and the company. They treat the relationship as mutual dependence between two fallible people, which works when the subordinate understands the boss's goals, pressures, and working style, and is dependable and honest. Each of the project director's changes answers one of those terms.
John P. Kotter Power and Influence: Beyond Formal Authority (1985) argues that managerial work is shaped by dependence on many people over whom the manager has little or no formal authority, so managers must build influence beyond their authority to get things done. The boss is the most important of those dependencies for most managers. A boss who trusts the manager's information becomes the route by which the manager's proposals reach people the manager cannot.
When it fits
Every manager has a boss, so it applies widely, and most of all with a new boss, a boss under pressure, or proposals that keep stalling at the boss's level. It asks for the willingness to adapt your style to someone else's, the discipline to keep them informed, and a record of delivering what you said you would.
How to use it well
Learn what the boss is up against before you ask for anything.
- Find out their goals, their pressures, and the people they answer to. Ask directly, and watch what they spend time on.
- Learn how they like to work: written or spoken, detail or summary, before or after a meeting.
- Keep them informed, bad news especially, before it reaches them from someone else.
- Deliver what you promise, and promise only what you can deliver.
- Frame proposals around what the boss needs to win, and give them what they will need to carry the proposal upward.
Be candid about your own needs as well. A boss who knows what you need can provide it; one who has to guess usually will not.
What it costs and where it backfires
Adapting to a boss takes effort and can feel like subservience. If the boss's goals drift away from the company's, managing them well can draw you into their agenda. The relationship is with one person, and much of it leaves when they do. Honesty and dependability are what make it legitimate; once managing the boss means telling them only what they want to hear, or holding back problems until they are too late to fix, the relationship runs on information that will fail them.
When it is used on you
A peer whose proposals reach your shared boss with an advantage you lack is usually doing something you can see: how they inform, frame, and deliver. Learn from it. If you suspect the boss hears only one side, ask for a regular slot to present your own work and its results.