How I Manage Up

Everyone’s boss is different — we all have our weird blind spots and paranoias and strange weaknesses and hyper-focused strengths.  So my tricks for managing up may not work for you, in fact they probably won’t.  But if my boss ever hires you, you can use these tactics on him.

1.  I debate with him. He likes debate.  He likes to argue the point and the merits.  Once I got some feedback that he & my former director liked me because at the time I was one of the only people pushing back.  That little reinforcement was all I needed to get super comfortable saying, “I completely disagree, and here’s why.”  The real tactic here is that I communicate with him using his preferred style.

2.  I give him direct, relatively blunt constructive feedback. He’s from Jersey, he likes direct communication.  We live in MN, there’s a lot of passive aggressive communication.  I try to be plain & straightforward.  I give direct feedback to him on his performance and style because 1) he’s not very self-reflective and doesn’t always monitor the interpersonal after-effects of his approach.  And 2) he once invited me to give feedback.  The first time I gave it, it felt like a big risk.  But there were no bad consequences to me; in fact he thanked me.  And that encouragement was all I needed to keep doing it.  The real tactic here is that I help identify pain points & friction points, and suggest possible solutions, before they cause trouble.

3.  I demand clear expectations and well-defined, specific desired outcomes. Actually, I need to get better at demanding these things, at the time, in the moment, when the confusion is happening.  He’s strategic, and he’s often thinking out loud at a mile-a-minute clip.  He usually locks onto his desired outcome like a pit bull locking it’s jaw, but often the outcome is not fully baked and it’s up to the rest of us to bake it.  A lot of the time I feel like I’m trying to mind read.  Or, I’ll have to digest our conversation for a while and then go back to say, “This is what I think we discussed, and now that I’ve mulled it over, here’s what I actually think I should do.”  This, more than anything, directly causes most of my stress, so my goal in 2009 is to stand up for myself right in the moment and get specifics and clarifications.  Just like the ROWE people say I should.  The real tactic here is that I [should] insist on specifically defining, and agreeing on, desired outcome and timing. Also I [should] ask for proof/data/objective facts when he makes an assertion that’s way out of left field.

4.  I take abstract, vague ideas and execute them. I take the crazy ideas and make them happen.  Like I said, he’s often stuck in his desired outcome without a clear path to getting there or an understanding of all the steps to take and issues to clear, and a lot of the time he’s lighting a panicky fire to get there.  He’ll be the first to admit, he isn’t organized, task oriented or a process master. (On the HBDI: no green.)  So he hires people like me, who are.  The real tactic here is that I complement his weaknesses with my strengths. Part of the success here is that he hired me to be this complement — however, I spent a lot of time early on figuring out what his strengths & weaknesses were so that I knew where I could add value.

5.  I make sure he recognizes the team. I show off their wins to him, insist he send thank-you’s or notes, nominate them for awards he gives.  Because it’s not a strength of his at all, and because it helps him not be scary.  The real tactic here is just a variant of both #2 and #4.

6.  I make him look good. Because: DUH. His priorities are my priorities. I’ll drop everything to get him a deck for a meeting with his boss or an important client.  I scan his calendar to figure out when big-deal meetings are happening and either offer or ask what he needs. I feed him wins & measureable successes from my team so he can in turn show them off to his boss and partners. I get shit done. I warn him when trouble or stupidity happens, if it’s likely to get back to him — no surprises. The real tactic here is that I make him look good. Dang, I wish my own team would take this one more seriously with me! LOL.

7.  I delegate up. I am not afraid to give a clear request or assignment back up to my own boss.  I particularly like to deploy him when I think some particular action on his part will make it easier for me or my team to cut through an obstacle and move forward.  Becuse our success is his success. Also sometimes I just think there’s something he should be doing, not me. The real tactic here is that I protect the boundaries of my own work, and ask for the resources (usually action from my boss) I need to be successful.

Cool Orderly Not-Mess

Team, as you know I’m a hot jumbled mess this week.  But I’m taking steps to fix it, so here’s some crack for you organizing junkies out there: how I organize my career files.

Admin: administrative stuff like job descriptions, compensation comparison calculator, salary survey results, etc.

Accomplishments: I like to have things easy to find at my fingertips come review-writing time.

* Feedback – written feedback on my performance & contribution.

* Flash Status -  a short status document we produce at work highlighting our major accomplishment, learning and regret each week

* Goals & Objectives – my long-term and current-year GO (both job-specific and developmental), my boss’ and VP’s GOs, any recaps of GO accomplished.

* Reviews – mid-year and annual reviews.  I keep my self-review write ups & my boss’ write up if I have it in electronic form. I keep a hard copy of all reviews, with signatures, and compensation change summaries as well.

* Wins – tracking of major projects and key accomplishments throughout the year.  In order to dissuade myself from tracking every single minute task, I call these Wins to help me keep focused on the key accomplishments.  (The flash status could, and probably should, replace this. It’s faster & easier.)

Branding: Let’s face it, interviewing is just a type of personal branding, and personal branding is about way more than just resumes, interviews and job searches.

* Bio & Elevators – occasionally I’m called on to write a short career bio blurb for panels I’m on or other such uses.  And we must always have our elevator speech (who you are, what you’re working on now, how you add value) at the ready.  I update/re-write my elevators on a regular basis.

* Interview Prep – I save, if I can, copies of interview forms I’ve encountered over the years, and I have an extensive question set of possible interview questions.  This helps me practice my answers, and is also handy when I’m called on to be an interviewer.  Sadly, I think I may have to re-consolidate my enormous question set. Back up your files weekly, people!

* Presentations Portfolio – I save copies of really great presentations and writings I’ve done, in case I ever need to provide samples or a portfolio to prospective employeers or collaborating partners.

* Resume – I have writing-focused and a project-management-focused versions of my resume and of the internal resume format that my company uses. While each resume is tailored to showcase different talents and focus, they all have key components in common: highlighting my strenghts, showcasing leadership & people management, and showcasing steady promotion/progression. I also keep all prior copies of my resume in an archive, as well as sample resumes, action-word lists, and even job postings I find exciting/compelling (to copy the language used).

Career Library: Copies of really useful or inspiring articles and presentations — because you can’t always count on things staying in place on the interwebs.

Development: All things career-advancement-, skill-development-, and assessment-related.

* Career Statuses - notes and agendas from career development meetings with bosses and mentors.

* Diagnostics – tools, inventories, tricks, tips for diagnosing or clarifying aptitude, interest, values, vision, work style, preferences, etc.  And results of the diagnostics I’ve done that I find most helpful.

* Learning Journals – notes/postmortems from key learning moments. I haven’t used this technique lately, but have found it very helpful in the past.

* Networking – copies of networking correspondence, contact tracking and networking to-dos.

Job Searches: cover letters, correspondence, one-time tailored versions of resumes, and all other schwag related to specific job hunts.

Hot Jumbled Mess

I am a hot jumbled mess and the only career advice I have for you today is to please, please back up your home computer on a regular basis. Oh, and also don’t keep important personal documents on your work computer.  Duh, right?

As you know, my main MIT this week is to update my resume. I’m returning from maternity leave soon and will be engineering a change in role.  It pays to arrive prepared with an updated resume.  As well my LinkedIn profile is several roles out-of-date and I will use my resume language to update that.

Prior to my leave, I spent considerable effort purging and organizing my career development files.  These include an extensive library of articles, my reviews over several years, current and prior resumes, accomplishment and feedback tracking, interview prep materials, goals, official job descriptions and more. Until this point, I had them stored mainly on my work computer as that’s where I mainly used them; part of organizing them involved exporting them to home, as that’s just the smart thing to do.

And my file structure on the home computer was a hot jumbled mess.  Random crap. Really old versions of important documents, but no current versions. The kind of jumbled mess that stems from an aversion to wanting to deal with career issues when at home on “me” time.  The kind of jumbled mess that comes from keeping every random thing “just in case,” but finds keeping a current resume or being prepared to interview at any time a chore.

You’re a smart bunch. You see where this is heading, don’t you?

So I go to access my current resume in order to update and find only a version from 2006.  Two years ago, people!  Shortly before my maternity leave, but after all my hard purging and organization work, my computer crashed.  And I restored from an outdated backup.  Because I don’t back up often enough.  And of course any current versions of my resume, reviews and feedback documents are still on my work computer. If I didn’t erase them entirely when exporting home.  And did I mention I’m locked out of my work files while on leave?

Is this the outcome of a savvy, responsible, truly talented and rockin’ leader who is going places? No, not really. But I’m going to make it right.  We now have a Time Capsule networking the house and backing up both computers hourly, with a side benefit of wireless printing.  I am reworking my file structure to be more simple and user-friendly than ever.  And I will update my resume (and post a masked version for you) after I return to work, in hopes that I’ve got the most recent version there.  I will commit to updating by November 30.

For you organization junkies out there, I’ll share my simplified file structure in a future post.

Onward and upward!