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    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series)
    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series)
    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series)
    Ebook186 pages2 hours

    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series)

    By Harvard Business Review

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    ARE YOUR WORKING RELATIONSHIPS WORKING AGAINST YOU?

    To achieve your goals and get ahead, you need to rally people behind you and your ideas. But how do you do that when you lack formal authority? Or when you have a boss who gets in your way? Or when you’re juggling others’ needs at the expense of your own?

    By managing up, down, and across the organization. Your success depends on it, whether you’re a young professional or an experienced leader.

    The HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across will help you:

    • Advance your agenda—and your career—with smarter networking
    • Build relationships that bring targets and deadlines within reach
    • Persuade decision makers to champion your initiatives
    • Collaborate more effectively with colleagues
    • Deal with new, challenging, or incompetent bosses
    • Navigate office politics
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarvard Business Review Press
    Release dateJan 8, 2013
    ISBN9781422187616
    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series)
    Author

    Harvard Business Review

    Harvard Business Review es sin lugar a dudas la referencia más influyente en el sector editorial en temas de gestión y desarrollo de personas y de organizaciones. En sus publicaciones participan investigadores de reconocimiento y prestigio internacional, lo que hace que su catálogo incluya una gran cantidad de obras que se han convertido en best-sellers traducidos a múltiples idiomas.

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    • 3/5
      A lot of the chapter, particularly those on managing up, talk in generalities rather than systems of concrete actions. The parts on managing across are much better.

    Book preview

    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across (HBR Guide Series) - Harvard Business Review

    HBR Guide to

    Managing Up

    and Across

    Harvard Business Review Guides

    Arm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

    The titles include:

    HBR Guide to Better Business Writing

    HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

    HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need

    HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job

    HBR Guide to Getting the Right Work Done

    HBR Guide to Giving Effective Feedback

    HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter

    HBR Guide to Managing Stress

    HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

    HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

    HBR Guide to Project Management

    HBR Guide to

    Managing Up

    and Across

    HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

    Boston, Massachusetts

    Copyright 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

    All rights reserved

    Printed in the United States of America

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Guide to managing up and across.

    p. cm. — (Harvard business review guides)

    Includes index.

    ISBN 978-1-4221-8760-9 (alk. paper)

    1. Managing your boss. 2. Management—Psychological aspects.

    3. Interpersonal relations.

    HF5548.83.G85 2012

    650.1'3—dc23

    2012025301

    eBook development by eBook Architects

    What You’ll Learn

    Does your boss make you want to scream? Do you have more than one boss? Do you spend your day herding cats? Working across departmental silos? Corralling contractors?

    Then you know that managing up and across your company is critical to doing your job well. It’s all about understanding your boss’s and colleagues’ priorities, pressures, and work styles. You need to manage up and across not just because you may have a problem boss, incompetent colleagues, or projects that involve stakeholders flung far and wide. You need to manage up and across, for example, to get your marketing and sales folks to see that your project will help them meet their goals, too; to establish authority with higher-ups so they’ll bless your new product ideas; to secure people’s time for a new team when they’re already feeling overextended.

    Managing up and across will help you get the information and resources you need to solve your complex problems, increase your effectiveness, and make your work more enjoyable.

    You’ll get better at:

    Getting what you need from people who don’t report to you

    Coping with micromanaging, conflict-aversive, or generally incompetent bosses

    Discovering what drives colleagues of all ages

    Partnering with your boss—and her boss

    Selling your ideas up and across your company

    Making the most of your boss’s influence

    Establishing a shared vision and commitment

    Juggling multiple bosses’ priorities

    Tailoring your pitch to your audience

    Collaborating with remote colleagues

    Working with a new boss

    Navigating office politics

    Contents

    Section 1: MANAGING UP

    Managing Your Boss

    Build a strong partnership with your boss by clarifying her priorities and your needs.

    BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

    Winning Over Your New Boss

    Make yourself indispensable.

    BY LEW MCCREARY

    Steps for Presenting Problems or Opportunities to Your Boss

    Get the support and resources you need to advance your agenda.

    Manage Up with Your Mentor’s Guidance

    Your mentor can help you build a better relationship with your boss.

    BY JEANNE C. MEISTER

    Change the Way You Persuade

    Tailor your idea to your audience.

    BY GARY A. WILLIAMS AND ROBERT B. MILLER

    Get to Know Your Boss’s Boss

    Accelerate your career.

    BY PRISCILLA CLAMAN

    How to Make Your Boss Look Good—Without Becoming a Sycophant

    Sell your boss to his boss.

    BY MICHAEL SCHRAGE

    Stop Being Micromanaged

    ...and start focusing your boss on the big picture

    BY AMY GALLO

    Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss

    Turn your boss’s weaknesses into opportunities for you to shine.

    BY AMY GALLO

    Coping with a Conflict-Averse Boss

    Make bad news bearable so your boss won’t run for the hills.

    BY ANNE FIELD

    How to Give Your Boss Feedback

    ...without putting your career in jeopardy

    BY AMY GALLO

    Managing Multiple Bosses

    Meet their competing demands without getting caught in the middle.

    BY AMY GALLO

    Section 2: MANAGING ACROSS

    What Makes a Leader?

    Polish your people skills by focusing on your colleagues’ priorities and pressures—not your own.

    BY DANIEL GOLEMAN

    The Discipline of Teams

    How to lead a group of people who don’t report to you

    BY JON R. KATZENBACH AND DOUGLAS K. SMITH

    Managing Remote Relationships

    What it takes to collaborate with people you don’t see every day

    BY KAREN DILLON

    A Smarter Way to Network

    Build a strong support system for your next crisis or opportunity.

    BY ROB CROSS AND ROBERT THOMAS

    How to Deal with Office Politics

    Focus on mutual advantage.

    BY LINDA A. HILL AND KENT LINEBACK

    Make Your Enemies Your Allies

    Three steps to reversing a rivalry at work

    BY BRIAN UZZI AND SHANNON DUNLAP

    The Necessary Art of Persuasion

    Win people over by establishing credibility, discovering common ground, sharing vivid stories, and developing an emotional connection.

    BY JAY A. CONGER

    Three Ways Not to Persuade

    Avoid these common mistakes.

    BY JAY A. CONGER

    Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

    Influence your colleagues by appealing to basic needs such as reciprocity and their desire to be liked.

    BY ROBERT B. CIALDINI

    How to Get Your Colleagues’ Attention

    Frame your message so your colleagues immediately see what you need from them and why.

    BY AMY GALLO

    Collaborating Across Generations

    Work more effectively with Boomers, Xers, and Ys.

    BY TAMARA ERICKSON

    When the Direct Approach Backfires, Try Indirect Influence

    What they don’t teach you in business school

    BY MARTHA CRAUMER

    Index

    Section 1

    Managing Up

    Neglecting to manage up may cost you promotions or chances to put your great ideas into action. But understanding what makes your boss and his cohort tick and embracing their priorities will open doors for you.

    This isn’t kissing up or manipulation. You’re not trying to inflate egos. You’re helping the people you work for succeed, which in turn helps you succeed.

    This section of the guide is about creating win-win relationships with higher-ups. You’ll learn how to present problems and opportunities to them, give them feedback, connect with your boss’s boss without doing an end run, and deal with a variety of difficult managers—from the micromanager to the conflict-averse.

    Managing

    Your Boss

    by Linda A. Hill and Kent Lineback

    Managing up is important because your boss plays a pivotal role in your success—or your failure. You can leverage your boss’s influence in the organization on your behalf in several ways—for example, by obtaining valuable information, winning needed resources, and securing important support for your personal development and career. When you face difficult trade-offs and must make decisions that create both beneficial and painful consequences for others, your boss’s advice, insight, knowledge of the organization, and access to higher management can be invaluable. As your organization shifts and changes shape in an uncertain market, a good relationship here becomes a necessity for navigating through the turmoil. The penalties of a poor relationship are many: less influence, little information or advice, fewer resources, and limited personal development and career support. Worst case, you can find yourself isolated, ignored, pushed out—your journey stalled, your career derailed.

    Why Is It Often an Uneasy Relationship?

    This relationship can be problematic for two reasons. First, a boss plays conflicting roles: supporter and evaluator, which can create confusion. Second, people often bring their past experience with authority into the relationship, which can create unnecessary complications.

    This is an area where being a star as an individual contributor may not have prepared you for management. As an exceptional performer, you probably had minimal interaction with your boss. If so, you most likely didn’t develop the skills of managing up that you need.

    Do you see your boss as coach and developer or as evaluator and judge?

    You’re caught in a difficult dilemma, one that can feel personally threatening. The boss is not only a potential source of great help, in both your job and your career, but also the one who evaluates your performance. To get help from her as a developer, particularly with your personal development, you must reveal your shortcomings. But if you do, she in her role as evaluator may interpret your weaknesses as serious faults. Many managers handle this dilemma by striving to appear capable and in control even when they’re not. They see their boss more as threat than ally and lose the potential benefits of her help.

    Are you confused by your boss’s dual role? Do you tend to see your boss as primarily a judge? Does that attitude seem safer to you? That’s understandable, but it’s not always the most helpful point of view.

    What can you do? Don’t presume your boss is always one or the other, judge or coach. Instead, think of his dual roles as extremes between which he moves back and forth depending on the situation. At first, in small ways that aren’t risky, test his willingness to provide support. That way, you can see when, where, and how he’s likely to focus on development rather than evaluation. Learn his feelings about what’s important in management—such as careful planning, decisiveness, building consensus— and make sure you develop and display those qualities.

    Do you see past bosses in your current boss?

    How do you feel about your current boss? How do you respond to authority in general and to those who have it? If most of your bosses have frustrated you and fallen short of your expectations, you and they may be victims of the emotional baggage you carry forward from past experience. Reflect on your own history and the feelings it’s created in you. That history may lead you to perceive your current boss not as who she is but as an amalgam of past authority figures, with all the positive and negative feelings that flow from that past. Unless you’re aware of these feelings, you’ll be at their mercy.

    WHAT YOUR BOSS EXPECTS OF YOU

    You and your boss agree on your annual, individual performance targets that support larger organizational goals. But what about her undocumented expectations? What should you be doing beyond your formal job description that will make you indispensable to your boss and your organization as a whole?

    Collaborate. Overcome differences between you and others so you work together effectively—even if you don’t like each other.

    Lead initiatives. Don’t be reluctant to associate yourself with unproven ideas, especially those that cross functional or unit boundaries. Raise your hand, and you’ll climb the ladder faster than those who don’t.

    Develop your own people. Take as active an interest in your employees’ development as you do in your own—if not more. Go out of your way to criticize and praise your people when they need it. And during performance reviews, supply people with specific, candid, and useful feedback.

    Stay current. Regularly read and watch the

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