How to manipulate your boss

Jkjk, we’re talking about managing up ;)

Author

McKay Roozen
September 03, 2024

Welcome to The Thinker, a twice-monthly newsletter where I provide thought-provoking questions to help you cultivate a fulfilling and high-performing career.

Heyyyyyo, 

As a career and leadership coach, one of my favorite growth areas is helping clients 10x their ability to manage up.

Managing up to your boss and your skip level (and your boss's skip level) is such a critical skill set because, if done right, it allows you to see around corners, at the personal, team, and company levels.

The way that I think about it, managing up is all about helping other people get what they want. And then aligning what you want with those goals. Everybody wins.

To that end, here are 3 questions to ask yourself so that you can manage up and get everyone a W.

1. What does everyone care about?

→ What are your boss’s goals?

→ What are your CEO’s goals?

You absolutely should know what your manager wants and what they care about. We’re talking career goals, personal goals, and family goals.

Knowing what they want and why will give you clarity on their biases and how they’re prioritizing your team’s work. Same goes for the CEO. Does she want to sell to PE? Or does she want that big moment on the Nasdaq stage?

2. What is everyone’s fatal flaw?

→ What’s holding your boss back? 

→ What does the Board think is holding your CEO back?

The inversion of desire is equally important: do you know what will keep your boss and CEO from achieving their big goal? Do they know what will keep them from achieving their own big goal?

Everyone has a fatal flaw, and one of the greatest dirt roads of our journey called life is discovering what it is and then deciding if we want to try to fix it or just pretend like it doesn’t exist. If you can figure out someone’s fatal flaw, you can help them get out of their own way. 

3. How can you be a dream maker?

→ What are the blind spots?

→ How can you fill them?

With your goals and flaws in hand, you can now position yourself to help your manager and skip level get what they want. This is the ultimate managing-up maneuver.

For example, if you know your boss wants to get promoted to SVP, can you execute on the CEO’s pet project and celebrate it as a team win? If you know your CEO wants to go public, can you build a stellar dashboard for her so that she has a pulse on key metrics that will go into the IPO roadshow deck? 

Managing up isn’t about manipulating. It isn’t about politics. It’s about identifying the opportunities that are in your realm of control and executing on them so that others win. 

Because when you help others win, they’ll remember how it happened, and they’ll bring you along with them. 

Until next time!

McKay 

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