Managing Up

ANNA is an account supervisor at a large direct marketing agency. The account grew and the job was split between Anna and her peer Dayna. They were both to report to Brad, a newly hired management supervisor.

Everything seemed fine until Brad met with Anna and Dayna to introduce himself. It was there Anna learned that Brad and Dayna attended the same college, and received degrees from the same department. Soon Brad and Dayna were sharing names of professors as well as fraternity and sorority acquaintances.

At first, Anna was not rattled by this. But as the weeks wore on, Brad began to hold court at client meetings, and he would remind everyone of his and Dayna’s college experience. Anna started to sense that Brad offered more public praise to Dayna than to her.

Then one Monday, Anna arrived to find an e-mail to the entire account team from Brad announcing that Dayna would be taking on an important strategic assignment. This was a job Anna wanted and felt she deserved — she’d been at the agency two years longer than Dayna and had more experience developing marketing strategy.

So she stormed into Brad’s office to tell him off. She bitterly complained that he disregarded her, and was playing favorites with Dayna.

He didn’t fire her, but he might as well have. Anna floundered at her job for six months, and in the end saw no alternative but to leave.

And it was nobody’s fault but her own.

How so?

There were many opportunities for Anna to manage her relationship with her boss before her explosion in his office. Her intuition told her early on that Brad was favoring Dayna, but she chose to ignore those signals until it was too late.

If she had made an effort to understand her boss, she would have seen that personal connections were very important to Brad. Anna needed to try to find the common ground she had with him. If none existed, she at least needed to appreciate what he was trying to accomplish.

She needed to manage up — a necessary skill for every employee, from the receptionist to the CEO. And there are endless opportunities to do so.

Under the guise of delegation, an incompetent DM boss may dump his responsibilities on his employees, Some managers don’t like to say no to anyone and feel it is more important to be a nice guy or gal. Some old-time DM bosses are bullies and have little emotional control.

There are remedies for each of these challenging situations. But before you can use them, you must realize that you’re not the victim and that you have the power to bring about changes.

But it helps to have the following:

• Acceptance that you are responsible for your career growth. You are the CEO of Me Inc. and as such you are in control of managing your boss in order to steer your career.

• Belief that you have personal power to affect your situation. Although it might feel more comfortable to think of yourself as an unwilling participant in an unfair situation, the reality is that there are no victims — only willing participants.

• The ability to perform scrupulous self-assessment. Clearly recognize your assets and liabilities. Know when the problem is really your missed deadlines, your attitude or your lack of knowledge and work to fix your own flaws.

• Acceptance of your boss’s personal characteristics. Bosses are also human, with their own flaws, insecurities and idiosyncrasies. None of us likes everything about the people we know. When there’s something about your supervisor’s personality that annoys you, you have a choice to accept it or move on.

What’s next? You have to learn assertive communication techniques rather than passive or aggressive models. Assertive communication is speaking your truth while not being discourteous to the other person. In using communication skills in managing up, you have to manage your own negative emotions regarding his/her behavior so that you do not engage in these self-defeating actions (for example, stonewalling, or counterattacking your boss).

And once you’ve learned all that, consider these suggestions:

• Understand your boss’s goals and objectives. See how they align with the goals and objectives of the organization. Work to help your boss meet his/her goals.

• Pick your battles. Don’t confront your boss over every little thing that annoys you. Prioritize what’s important to you, what you can tolerate and let go of and what behavior is overstepping a personal bottom line that you have set for yourself in your work relationships.

You can’t change another person entirely, but you can modify the behavior directed at you. Once you really start to manage your boss, you will find that you feel more in control of your work life and your career path. The results you get when you turn the tables and effectively supervise your relationship with your boss can open doors to career growth and job satisfaction. Take a risk. It can change your life.

VICTORIA JAMES is president of Victoria James Executive Search Inc., Stamford, CT, a management search firm focused on the direct marketing business.