Know Your Boss—and Yourself

You and your boss probably differ in numerous ways. Work to understand the differences—
then use your insights to build a productive working relationship with your manager.

 Learn
 Practice
 Reflect

Learn
Build a work relationship

To build a productive work relationship with your boss, you must understand the differences
in your:

F RO M T H E C O L L E C TI O N

Managing your boss

How much detail does your manager want? What are his or her top priorities? To work
effectively together, you'll need to know these things and more.
Read More
Roles
You and your boss each play different roles in the organization. By understanding these
roles—and how the differences between them affect your interactions—you can forge a
productive working relationship.

Your boss *
Hill, Linda A. and Kent Lineback. Breakthrough Leadership. Module
3: Manage Your Network, “Understand Key Differences.” Harvard
Business Publishing, 2012.
Your boss fills several roles:

 Human being. Like any other person, your boss is a human being. She has hopes,
frustrations, and fears; a personal life; and a cultural background. Your boss may
also be significantly older or younger than you.

 Manager. As a manager, your boss has distinctive strengths and weaknesses,

working styles, needs, goals, and responsibilities.

 Coach. As a coach, your boss helps you develop your skills and pursue your career.

 Evaluator. As an evaluator, your boss assesses your performance and makes

decisions about your pay and promotion opportunities.
To better understand your boss’s roles:

 Ask others. Seek out people who know your boss. Ask them what they can tell you
about your boss as a person and as a manager.

 Initiate casual conversations. Find opportunities—during breaks, while traveling

together—to chat casually with your boss. You’ll draw out personal information about
her and get a sense of your boss’s distinctive characteristics as a manager.

 Share information. Provide personal information about yourself, such as your

interests and family background. You’ll encourage your boss to disclose similar
information.
Know your boss’s boss *
Claman, Priscilla. “Get to Know Your Boss’s Boss.” In HBR Guide to Managing Up and
Across. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2013.
Your boss advocates for you and supports your career development. But your boss still has
to get the approval of her boss for your pay increases and developmental opportunities.
When you’re trying to advance in your career, it’ll help if your boss’s boss thinks highly of
you.
To earn the attention and respect of your boss’s boss, you need to get to know that person.
Here’s how:

 Interact. Smile and say hello when you see your boss’s boss. Ask how you can help
her. 

 Reach out. Communicate with your boss’s boss when opportunities arise—such as
sending a congratulatory email if he or she gets a promotion or award. 

 Ask for advice. Get your boss’s okay to email her boss (cc’ing your boss on the
message) to ask for advice. For instance, maybe you’d like suggestions on courses
you’re thinking of taking or professional organizations you’re considering joining.
Make your own boss look good in these emails by writing something like, “Michele
thought you’d have some good ideas about this.” 

 Extend invitations. If you’re giving a presentation or your boss is leading an

important meeting, ask your boss if it’s okay to invite her boss.  

 Pass along praise. If you receive praise from a customer or other key stakeholders,
send it along to your boss. Your manager will likely pass it along to her boss, since
your success makes your boss look good too.

 Volunteer for a cross-functional team. Leading or taking part in a cross-functional

effort helps you contribute to the larger organization. And that makes you more
visible to your boss’s boss.

 Fix a problem. Find a way to make an improvement that furthers your organization’s
goals or supports a core value. Share the results with your boss and her boss.
TOOL

Accommodate Your Boss’s Work Style

 Accommodating your boss’s work style

 If your boss...

Do this...

 Prefers a formal, organized approach to handling work

o Make sure meetings with your boss have set agendas.

o Prepare meeting agendas and give them to your boss before meetings.

 Prefers to process information by studying it

o Give your boss information in written form.

 Prefers being able to ask questions about information

o Present information to your boss in person.

 Likes to be highly involved in decisions

o Check in with your boss often.

 Prefers to delegate decision making

 o Keep your boss abreast of important changes and major problems, but handle the
other details on your own.

 Seems to thrive on conflict

o Be prepared for lively, spontaneous exchanges with your boss.

o If these exchanges become heated, don’t assume your boss is angry with you.

 Tends to minimize or avoid conflict

o Respect this preference—but don’t fall into the trap of telling your boss only good
news.

o Inform your boss about failures and significant problems in private.

Yourself
Like your boss, you fulfill several roles. You’re a unique human being—as well as a
manager, coach, and evaluator for your own direct reports. It’s especially important to
understand these roles in the context of your working relationship with your boss.
Answering these questions can help: 

 How do you and your boss differ as human beings? Are your cultural backgrounds,
upbringing, experiences, outlooks, likes and dislikes, and education similar or
different? How might any differences affect your relationship?

 How do your attributes as a manager compare to your boss’s? How do your

pressures and responsibilities as a manager compare? What do these differences
imply for your working relationship?

 How might you manage your boss’s coach/evaluator roles? The dual roles of coach
and evaluator present a paradox: To get your boss’s support for career development,
you need to discuss your weaknesses. Talking about your weaknesses might make
 you worry that your boss will hold your shortcomings against you during a
performance evaluation. So, you might avoid talking about your weaknesses. But if
you do, you won’t get the support your boss can offer as a coach. How will you
manage this paradox?
To manage your boss’s coach/evaluator roles, you try proposing development opportunities and see
how your boss responds. You also ask what your boss thinks are the most important managerial
skills, and listen to any comments he or she makes about your performance. By analyzing your
boss’s responses to these suggestions and questions, you gain valuable insights. You also get a
sense of when your boss is filling the coach role and when he or she is filling the evaluator role.

Boss Management 101

 

 About
 Bio
 Transcript

Lauren Mackler — Executive Coach, Consultant, & Author

Get to know your boss's personality, communication style, and preferences.
Lauren Mackler is a coach, consultant, bestselling author, and keynote speaker. She is the
author of “Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness and Transform Your Life” and a
contributor to “Speaking of Success” with Jack Canfield, Stephen Covey, and Kenneth
Blanchard. Lauren is a blogger for the Huffington Post and a frequent TV commentator for
CNN and FOX.
Over the past 25 years, Lauren has been a psychotherapist, educator, corporate executive,
consultant, and personal and professional coach. She lived in Germany for several years,
where she gained recognition for her work in psychodynamic psychotherapy. In 1995,
Lauren returned to the U.S. and worked in the corporate arena. She led Arthur Andersen's
People Strategy practice and worked as a management consultant and coach before
founding Lauren Mackler & Associates LLC in 2001.
Lauren offers experiential workshops and professional programs to audiences around the
world, and she has presented to Fortune 500 companies, educational conferences,
universities, and professional associations. Her work has been covered widely in the media,
including NPR, Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Money Magazine, Forbes,
Parade, and many other media. She has been a member of Northeastern University's
executive education faculty, as well as a featured presenter at Canyon Ranch, Omega, and
Kripalu.
Lauren holds Master’s-level German certification in psychotherapeutic counseling from the
Tao Zentrum, and an MA in organizational development and a BS in psychology from
Lesley University.
There are a lot of resources on the market about how to manage people, but there are not a
lot of resources about managing up. And what that means is how to manage a boss--
Effective Boss Management 101. A lot of people don’t know how to do that, and then they
end up not saying things, they hold things in, they feel stressed, they feel overwhelmed, and
then they create alienation with the boss and resentment that ultimately can diminish their
motivation and performance. So this is a really important skill.
So the first thing to know—inside scoop, very important—get to know your boss’s
personality. Get to know how they operate. Get to know what they like, what their work
preferences are.
So for example, find out: “How do you want to be communicated to? Do you like email? Do
you want me to call you?” Do they like the face-to-face meetings? Or, “Do you want, even, a
lot of information, or do you want me to just kind of go off and only [let you] if there’s a
problem?” Because some managers are micromanagers—they want to know every little
detail—and some want you to be able to work autonomously. You need to know what your
boss’s work preferences are.
Find out your boss’s personality. Do they tend to be more introverted and quiet, where you
have to go and solicit their time, you have to go and just kind of drop by and keep them
updated on what’s happening? Or are they extroverts who are always coming by and want
to be engaged with you? You need to find that out.
Are they more high-level, visionary kind of people that don’t want a lot of details, or are they
more of the detailed, “Tell me step by step how you’re going to get there”?
Those kinds of tips are really, really important because that’s going to help you develop a
better relationship with your boss.
The other thing I’m going to tell you is, toot your own horn! The workplace is not a place to
be modest. Now, I’m not talking about being arrogant and, “Oh, I’m just such a great
manager.” No. What you’re going to do is you’re going to very subtly get your
accomplishments out there.
So the way you can do that: Let’s say your team has a big hit, home run. You’re going to
send out an email blast congratulating your team on what a wonderful job they did. And
that’s a way of getting in front of other people, that they can see that you’re doing a good
job managing your team.
Also, keep what I call an “accomplishments file.” This is very important. Track all of your
completions, all of your activities, all of your projects—and when I say, “you,” you and your
team’s—so that you can always know exactly what you’ve accomplished. And at
performance review time, you take those completions, those accomplishments, and you’re
going to put them right into your performance review.
I even suggest sending that once a month to your boss and saying, “Just thought I’d keep
you in the loop. Here are all of the completions and activities over the last month.” Those
are really your accomplishments, but you’re not going to call them that to your boss. You’re
just going to say “completions.”
Toot your own horn, because otherwise you may not get that promotion. You may not get
that bonus or those other new opportunities to stretch your own leadership skills and
expand your skills. You want to be able to create those opportunities, and managing up is a
critical way of doing that.
EDITOR'S CHOICE

How to Be an Intrapreneur: You Can Still Be Nimble and Creative in a Big Company
Feeling restricted by management? Learn how to apply an entrepreneurial mindset to your
work.
Read More
Strengths and weaknesses

When you understand your boss’s and your own strengths and weaknesses as managers,
you can learn how to maximize each other’s best capabilities and minimize each other’s
shortcomings. As a result, you’ll boost your effectiveness as a duo.
EDITOR'S CHOICE

7 Habits to Win in Office Politics

Be engaged—but don’t take things personally. Discover the behaviors that’ll help you
navigate workplace politics.
Read More
Your boss
To learn about your manager’s strengths and weaknesses:

 Ask her openly what she sees as her strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and trigger
points.

 Speak with other staff members about their insights into these aspects of your boss.
Ask for their advice and feedback.

 Closely observe your boss as she pursues objectives and interacts with others.
Determine what her behavior and approach to her job suggest about her strengths
and weaknesses.
Your boss is particularly good at delegating, data analysis, project management, and negotiation.
But he sometimes has difficulty preparing presentations. He also has a “blind spot” when it comes to
hiring: He tends to recruit people who are very much like him rather than individuals who bring
diverse skills into the team. His “trigger point” is not hearing about problems in his team until they’ve
become crises: The last time one of his direct reports withheld information about an emerging
problem, your boss became very angry—in part because his own boss was upset that the problem
wasn’t dealt with promptly.
 Yourself
What are your own managerial strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and trigger points? If
you’re not sure:

 Take stock of praise and constructive feedback you’ve received from your bosses
during previous performance evaluations.

 Recall successes and failures you’ve experienced as a manager.

 Think of times when you reacted strongly—perhaps overly so—to something that
happened at work.

 Ask trusted colleagues as well as friends and family members what they see as your
strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and trigger points.
Once you have a clear sense of yourself, consider how you compare with your boss. Think
about how you might build on one another’s strengths as well as compensate for one
another’s weaknesses to form a more productive relationship.
Your boss has acknowledged having difficulty preparing presentations. In particular, she knows he
tends to create long slide decks and pack the slides with too much detail. You happen to be good at
creating concise, engaging presentations. So you help her prepare the slide decks for several
upcoming talks she’ll be giving. You’ve also learned that your boss has a major trigger point about
not hearing about business opportunities early enough to capitalize on them. So you make sure to
discuss emerging opportunities up front with her during your weekly status meetings.

Work styles

You and your boss may have different work styles. These styles affect how organized or
informal each of you is in handling day to day work. They also affect how you each process
information, make decisions, and handle conflict. By understanding how your work styles
differ, you can craft strategies for accommodating those differences.

Your boss
To understand your boss’s work style, ask him or her about them. Seek insights from
people who know your manager or who have reported to him or her before. Observe your
boss in action to glean whatever clues you can to these preferences.
Then consider how you might accommodate your boss’s work style.

Accommodating your boss’s work style

 If your boss...
 Do this...

 Prefers a formal, organized approach to handling work

o Make sure meetings with your boss have set agendas.

o Prepare meeting agendas and give them to your boss before meetings.

 Prefers to process information by studying it

o Give your boss information in written form.

 Prefers being able to ask questions about information

o Present information to your boss in person.

 Likes to be highly involved in decisions

o Check in with your boss often.

 Prefers to delegate decision making

o Keep your boss abreast of important changes and major problems, but handle the
other details on your own.

 Seems to thrive on conflict

o Be prepared for lively, spontaneous exchanges with your boss.

o If these exchanges become heated, don’t assume your boss is angry with you.

 Tends to minimize or avoid conflict

o Respect this preference—but don’t fall into the trap of telling your boss only good
news.

o Inform your boss about failures and significant problems in private.

TOOL

Accommodate Your Boss’s Work Style

Yourself
Analyze your own work style—including:

 Whether you take a formal, organized approach or a casual, ad hoc approach to

work

 How you like to process information

 How involved you want others to be in decisions you’re making

 How you feel about and handle conflict

Identify where your preferences might differ from your boss’s and how such differences
might affect your working relationship. Think of ways to bridge such differences.
Suppose you come from a culture where it’s considered inappropriate for a subordinate to disagree
with a supervisor. You thus tend to avoid disagreeing with your boss. But your boss seems to thrive
on conflict and lively debate. He also comes from a culture where it’s considered okay for
subordinates to disagree with their supervisors.

Your boss recently said that, to decrease costs, he wants to change the way a critical business
process is carried out in your group. You’re concerned that the change will require costly training for
people to master the new process. You find a way to disagree that feels comfortable to you. For
example, to show deference to your boss, you express your opinion in the form of a question: “What
are your thoughts about costs of providing training on the new process?”

Is Your Boss a Listener or a Reader?

1. Wrong Way

2. Ask the Coach

3. Better Way

 About
 Bio
 Transcript

Harry’s written a detailed report for his boss, Doreen, about a customer management
system he’s advocating. But when he meets with Doreen to discuss it, she hasn’t read his
report. Instead, she wants him to talk her through the highlights, and he’s not prepared. A
professional coach explains how to adapt to Doreen’s preferred way of receiving information
—so Harry can communicate far more effectively with her.
Coach
Lauren Mackler is an internationally renowned executive and life coach, bestselling author,
and keynote speaker. Over the past 25 years she’s been a psychotherapist, corporate
executive, leader of Arthur Andersen’s Human Capital consulting practice, and a leading
authority in human behavior, leadership, and professional performance.
Lauren’s the author of the international bestseller “Solemate: Master the Art of Aloneness &
Transform Your Life,” and contributor to “Speaking of Success” with Stephen Covey, Ken
Blanchard, and Jack Canfield. Her work is frequently featured in the media, including CNN,
FOX, the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, the London Daily Mail, the Boston Globe,
and the Boston Business Journal.  
Actors
Harry Gordon was born in Vermont and began his performing career when he sang “Hard-
Hearted Hannah” to his grandparents at the age of seven. He is a performer, writer,
instructor, and comedian who earned his chops at the Improv Asylum in Boston’s North End
and ImprovBoston in Cambridge. He hosts the critically acclaimed “Harry Roasts America!”
at ImprovBoston and improvises in a variety of shows and troupes, including Directions. He
is an active member of the Greater Boston Zen Center and volunteers for a variety of
organizations through them.
Harry has work experience in a variety of fields, including insurance, investment, higher
education, consulting, and transportation. He is a Sales Executive at Zipcar in their Zipcar
for Business program.
Doreen Collins’ show business career began at the tender age of eight in front of 20,000
people, performing with Diana Ross and the Supremes. Since then, she has been an active
member of SAG, AFTRA, and AGVA and has performed Off-Broadway and on television,
film, and radio. Doreen’s one-woman show “BOOZICAL the Musical: The Unorganized
Biography of Doreen Collins” is proof there is nothing that can embarrass her! She lives to
perform. She’s the host of “Rhode Bytes” and “The Unreal Deal” two shows on TV that air
periodically on Saturday nights on NBC 10 in Rhode Island.
Doreen studied under Stella Adler as a theater major at NYU.
Wrong Way
Harry: Hi, I'm Harry. I'm an IT manager at a financial services company. Two weeks ago I
sent Doreen a report on a client management system that I'd like to implement. I'm about to
meet with her now.
Doreen: Hi, Harry.
Harry: Hey, Doreen.
Doreen: How are you?
Harry: Oh, good. How are you?
Doreen: Good. So, what have you got?
Harry: Well it's the report I sent you on the new client.
Doreen: Yeah, give me the highlights.
Harry: It's all in the report. I highlighted here at the beginning. And then there's some—
Doreen: But tell me about it. How are we going to put it together? What's it going to look
like?
Harry: So if you take a—so the issue that we're running into is we have—so different teams
have to work with—for clients—
Doreen: Harry, do you need a little more time to get your thoughts together, maybe? So we
can, you know—
Harry: No, no, no, no, no. It's all put together here in the report, so—
Doreen: Honestly, busy week last week. The kids are out of school. So, you know, I really
need you to focus. OK? And collect your thoughts. Get it all in order. And then why don't we
re-meet, OK? When you have all that done. And we'll see if it'll work. End of the week?
Harry: OK, so you'll be able to read the report by then?
Doreen: I'm going to do my best.
Harry: OK, I'll schedule something else then. OK.
Doreen: Thanks, Harry.
Harry: Thanks, Doreen.
 
Ask the Coach
Harry: Hi, Lauren. Thanks for meeting with me.
Coach Lauren Mackler: Sure.
Harry: I'm having a lot of trouble with my boss. Any time I send her information or want to
get something done, she doesn't read the reports. She doesn't even read my emails. And
then when I meet with her, she makes it like I'm the unprepared one. I have no idea what to
do to get her to actually see that I have a lot of valuable information.
Coach Lauren Mackler: Well, you know some people like to receive information different
ways. Are you aware of that? Not everybody likes to read stuff. Some people are visual.
Some people are more auditory, they want to hear something. Do you have any idea what
her preferred style is? It's probably not the written word if that's the kind of outcomes you're
getting.
Harry: I never thought—
Coach Lauren Mackler: Does she like—is she a talker?
Harry: Oh yeah. Very much so.
Coach Lauren Mackler: So she probably prefers verbal communication. So you have to
adapt yourself. Part about managing up—and people don't realize you have to actually kind
of manage your boss in certain ways. So figuring out what her style is. You know, does she
like to receive written word? Does she want to hear something? Talk it out? Does she like
visual pictures, graphics? So if you're not sure, cover all three bases. So go ahead and
send the written report ahead of time. Plenty of detail. Maybe she looks at it, maybe she
doesn't. But prepare verbally. Get those high points, the highlights of your written
presentation. And prepare. Practicing, so you go in there, you sound like you know what
you're talking about. And maybe even include a couple of graphics, some visual things that
give the point very quickly from the visual perspective. Include that in your written
presentation, as well. But be prepared to talk and give it to her verbally. Talk about those
points in a very concise, prepared way.So it's not that she's not prepared, she just has a
different style. And you need to adapt to her style so that you're speaking the same
language.
Harry: I didn't even think of it like that. And I think I also—I'm not so much a person who
would actually do things verbally. But being prepared makes a lot of sense. That way, she'll
have the report, but I can explain things to her in the way that she'll actually be able to hear
it.
Coach Lauren Mackler: That's right. And practicing will make you feel more prepared, which
will make you feel more confident.
Harry: OK.
Coach Lauren Mackler: So practice.
Harry: Great.
Coach Lauren Mackler: That's a really, really important part of the preparation.
Harry: That's what I'll do.
Coach Lauren Mackler: All right, go for it. Have fun.
 
Better Way
Harry: Hi. I'm Harry. I'm an IT manager at a financial services company. Two weeks ago I
sent Doreen a report on a new client management relationship system that I'd like to
implement. I'm going to meet with her in person about it now. Hey, Doreen.
Doreen: Hey, Harry. How are you?
Harry: I'm very good. Yourself?
Doreen: Good, good. Sit down. OK. Let's hear what you have.
Harry: So, we are having trouble with managing our clients effectively. Different teams are
overtalking each other to the same client and they're getting annoyed. I want to put in a
management system so that everybody is saying the same thing at the same time, and
know who is talking to who and who is responsible for what. And with that, you will also be
able to take a look at a report, each day if you want to, or even by the hour, and see how
many client touches we've had, what kind of material has been sent to them, and any kind
of requests that are currently in the system. So that you'll have a dashboard every day to
see who's doing what and who to go talk to when it's time to actually figure out what's going
on with that client.
Doreen: That sounds great. And that's all right here?
Harry: That's all in there.
Doreen: It's all in the report?
Harry: And I got all the information.
Doreen: Excellent. OK. That's great. I love the clarification.
Harry: Fantastic.
Doreen: Great job.
Harry: Thank you.
Doreen: No, thank you, Harry.
Harry: Let me know if you have any questions. And I'll be happy to start rolling it out when
you're ready.
Doreen: Excellent.
Harry: Thanks so much, Doreen.
Doreen: OK.You're welcome.

Motivators

People each have unique motivators driving them to do good work. Identifying what
motivates your boss and what motivates you is a key component of managing your boss.

Your boss
Sometimes it’s easy to determine what motivates your manager to do good work.
Your manager is clearly driven by a desire to trim costs. She has shared that desire publicly, and
she often mentions it during meetings and conversations. You tap into that motivation by looking for
processes that can be streamlined in your group.

Some motivators run deeper in your boss. But you can still identify and tap into them.
Even though your boss has asked for weekly meetings to review your team’s progress, you notice
that he seems impatient when you provide detailed updates. You have the sense that your manager
is a “big picture” person. He’s inspired by bold visions, and prefers to leave practical details to team
members. So instead, you briefly sum up what you’ve done and explicitly state how it supports his
overall goals.
EDITOR'S CHOICE

What Executive Assistants Know About Managing Up

Executive assistants are masters of collaboration who wield considerable power. Read
about the skills they use.
Read More
Yourself
Think about what your most powerful motivators are for doing good work. Pay attention
when you find a particular work activity especially exciting as you carry out your job
responsibilities. Those moments can give you clues to your motivators.
During check-ins with your manager, talk about what motivates you. And whenever you feel
particularly inspired and excited by a job activity, let your boss know.
Sharing this information with your boss helps him or her identify assignments that will
engage you and inspire you to deliver your best on the job.
Your core business interests
 *
Butler, Timothy and James Waldroop. “Job Sculpting: The Art of Retaining Your Best
People.” Harvard Business Review Feb. 2000.
Everyone has core business interests—work activities that they enjoy doing most. When
you’re expressing your core business interests, you’re powerfully motivated to excel.
To identify your core business interests, consider when you feel most energized and
inspired by something you’re doing at work. You can think of core business interests as
falling into three categories: application of expertise, working with people, and control and
influence:

 Category 1: Application of expertise

 Application of technology

Examples:

o Engineering

o Computer programming

o Production and systems planning

o Product and process design

o Process analysis

o Production planning

o Systems analysis

o Mechanical crafting/manufacturing

o Research

Quantitative analysis

Examples:

o Market research analysis

o Forecasting

o Computer-model building
 o Production scheduling

o Cash flow and investment analysis

o Accounting

 Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking

Examples:

o Economic-theory developing

o Business-model development

o Competition analysis

o Designing "big-picture" strategy

o Process design

o Teaching business theory

Creative Production

Examples:

o New-product design

o Marketing and advertising

o New-idea generation

o Developing innovative approaches and solutions

o Event planning

o Conducting public relations

o Entertaining

o Writing

o Illustrating
 Category 2: Working with people
 Counseling and mentoring

Examples:

o Coaching

o Training

o Teaching

o Helping

o Drawing people out

o Supporting

o Providing feedback and advice

Managing people and relationships

Examples:

o Managing others to accomplish the goals of the business

o Directing

o Supervising

o Leading and inspiring others

o Selling

o Negotiating

o Motivating

 Category 3: Control and influence

 Enterprise control

Examples:
 o Controlling resources to actualize a business vision

o Setting strategic direction for a company, business unit, work team, or division

o Having ultimate decision-making authority

o Making deals

o Holding ultimate responsibility for business transactions, such as trades, sales, etc.

Influence through language and ideas

Examples:

o Negotiating

o Deal making

o Conducting public relations

o Selling

o Persuading

o Designing advertising campaigns

o Communicating ideas through writing or speaking

Expectations

*
Hill, Linda A. and Kent Lineback. Breakthrough Leadership.
Module 3: Manage Your Network, “What Your Boss Needs”
and “What You Need.” Harvard Business Publishing, 2012.

You and your boss expect different things from each other. By understanding these
differences, you can better meet your manager’s expectations while also getting what you
need.

Your boss
 At a minimum, your boss expects you to:

 Produce. You need to create the expected results your boss has to answer for. You
can do this by achieving your team’s goals—such as reaching sales targets,
improving productivity, reducing costs, or hitting deadlines.

 Collaborate. You should be working with colleagues across the organization,

including getting involved in cross-organizational projects to support your boss’s and
the company’s priorities.

 Be reliable. This means fulfilling your promises, including achieving goals on time.

 Share information and ideas. Your boss counts on you to share “good” information,
such as positive results from an experiment, as well as “bad” information, such as
delays or mistakes in a project. He or she needs both kinds of information to make
smart decisions. Your boss also wants you to share your ideas to spark innovation.

 Resolve your team’s difficulties. You should be ready to step in if one of your
direct reports falls behind with his or her commitments, if an interpersonal conflict
crops up, or if a crisis erupts.

 Stay current. Pay attention to the news. What happens in the world affects what
happens with your team, your company’s marketplace, and the organization’s
competition. Also, know what’s going on with your organization’s customers and
competitors—how they’re changing, and how technology and world events are
affecting their plans.

Alya is an assistant director in Purchasing at a quick-service restaurant company with numerous

store locations around the country. The prices of the ingredients that go into many of the company's
products are rising. Alya reads economics reports and trade journals to find examples of what some
companies in her industry are doing to manage volatility in commodity prices, such as consortium
buying and locking in prices when they're low. She shares what she has learned with her boss.

Mad Dog
 

 About
 Bio
 Transcript

Raymond Carvey — Executive Vice President of Corporate Learning, Harvard Business

Publishing
Clarify and confirm what is expected before you work on a new assignment.
Ray Carvey is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Learning and International at
Harvard Business Publishing. He is responsible for expanding the reach and overall
strategic direction and impact of HBP’s Corporate Learning business and for the company’s
global strategy.
Ray joined the company in January 1995 as Chief Financial Officer. He was promoted to
Vice President of Finance in July 1995 and then to Senior Vice President, Chief Operating
Officer, and Chief Financial Officer in 1999. In 2002 he was named Executive Vice
President and Chief Operating Officer.
Prior to joining Harvard Business Publishing, Ray was Vice President of Finance and
Administration and Chief Financial Officer of Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries, Inc.,
Chief Financial Officer of Blyth Software, and Corporate Treasurer of Ingres Corporation.
He also worked at Charles Schwab & Company and DiGiorgio Corporation.
Ray earned his undergraduate degree and his MBA at Boston College.
 
I was once the manager of financial planning and analysis for a pretty large company on the
West Coast. The CEO of the company was a former Princeton football player who had the
nickname that he carried from college that everyone in the company knew him—they didn't
call him that but they knew him—as "Mad Dog." I think he earned it in college, but it did stick
with him as the CEO.
In my role, I had to interact with him quite a bit. I found myself constantly sitting in his office
listening to some urgent problem that he wanted solved or some analysis that he wanted
done. Well, you know, I was not going to say anything except, "Yes sir, I'll go do it." I'd go
back down and talk to my folks and we'd do the analysis and after many hours put into it, go
back up and present our findings to him.
The first thing he'd say was, "That's not what I wanted done." We'd go through another
round, and then we would be chasing our tails eventually. One day I was in his office and
he's barking at me about something, and I left the office with marching orders to come back
with the analysis. I got out as far as his secretary's desk and I looked at Terry [his secretary]
and I turned around and I went, "Nah."
I walked in and I said, "Do you know how much time we waste because you're not clear
about what you're asking for and we go do all this analysis, and then you say that's not what
I asked for?"
He looked at me and he said, "Why do you think that's my problem?" I said, "Well, because
you're not being clear."
He said, "No, if you don't stop and ask me what did I mean by that or 'I don't quite get it' and
maybe we'd talk about it, is it my problem or is it your problem?"
I went, "Ahh! Good point."
POLL
Does your manager clearly state what he or she expects of you?

 Yes

 Sometimes

 No

See Results

Yourself
You can expect your boss to:

 Define goals for you and your people. You need your boss to share the
organization’s strategic priorities with you and the role your team will play in fulfilling
them.

 Make resources available. Your boss should help get you the funding, staff,
management attention, and other resources you need to achieve the goals defined
for your team.

 Be available. You boss should be accessible when there's a major problem to solve
or when you need updates on what's going on in the organization.

 Advise you on tough trade-offs. When you face a difficult decision, you count on
your boss to offer advice and knowledge of the organization to help you choose a
course of action.

 Support your career development. You want your boss to provide opportunities for
you to develop your career—such as taking courses and carrying out challenging job
assignments that build your skills.
Clarify your expectations of your boss during meetings with him or her. Check for
agreement. If your expectations don’t match your manager’s, try to negotiate an agreement
that works for both of you.
During a meeting with your manager, you say, “For me to be effective on this project, I need clear
direction from you on what our unit’s strategic priorities are. I’ll also need to know what resources we
have available to support those priorities. My understanding is that I’ll be able to hire two additional
people to complete the project. Is this correct?” Your boss replies, “Sorry, but we can’t afford to hire
two more people.” You propose another solution: the use of freelancers to get the work done. Your
boss supports this alternative, as long as the cost of using the freelancers is lower than what it would
be to hire two new people.