Communicating with Your Manager
Effective communication takes a deft touch when you’re managing up. If your attempts to persuade are too obvious, they may not succeed. Yet you need to be deliberate in your approach. This chapter helps you walk that fine line.
How to listen and observe
As you engage with your boss in everyday activities, try to identify the messages behind her speech and behavior. The words and deeds matter, of course, but the values that underlie them often mean more. Listening with a keen ear and observing with a sharp eye can make all the difference in understanding, not just labeling, your manager’s communication style.
Consider the statement “My door is always open,” which many bosses make to their direct reports. That seemingly transparent sentence can have a variety of meanings. Here are three examples:
Rebecca:
When she says, “My door is always open,” Rebecca means it literally. To foster honesty and camaraderie, she wants people to feel free to approach her in person at any time. It invigorates her when a direct report has an idea and spontaneously pops into her office to share it. When a problem arises, she wants to hear about it immediately, because it reassures her that every one is working as a team. She bristles when people who come in to speak to her close the door behind them. Indeed, she worries that colleagues will see a shut door as evidence of hypocrisy. If Rebecca must talk with someone in complete privacy, she reserves a meeting room.
Raul:
Raul’s open-door policy is one that he expects people to observe in spirit, not in absolute terms. The door to his office is open 90% of the time, but when a deadline is imminent, he shuts it so he can concentrate, especially if he is writing. He wants people to see him as easy to approach and “always available,” but he views e-mail and team meetings as legitimate ways for people to reach him. If someone considered him a hypocrite for shutting his door once in a while, Raul would think that the person lacked common sense.
Janice:
Janice works in a cubicle with low walls, as do all of her direct reports, so she doesn’t even have a door. To her, an “open door” is merely a metaphor for how colleagues work together. She doesn’t want people to fear making mistakes, even in front of her. But she also places a high premium on giving folks the mental space to do their work quietly and to consider proposals deliberately before acting on them. She wants her direct reports to share novel ideas but expects them to submit those in writing before asking other people to react. To Janice, an open door does not mean an “instant response,” a phrase that she often uses when describing slipshod work.
As varied as these “open door” interpretations are, at least Rebecca, Raul, and Janice give their employees something to go on. Some managers don’t even have an explicit policy about how—and how often—to communicate with them.
Whatever your manager’s preferred style of interaction, you’ll probably need to do a little investigating to figure it out. Start by asking yourself these questions:
• Is my manager a listener or a reader? Listeners want to hear information first and read about it later. Readers prefer to see a written report before discussing it with you.
• Does she prefer detailed facts and figures or just an overview? If she thrives on details, focus primarily on accuracy and completeness; if she prefers an overview, emphasize the clarity and crispness of the main idea.
• How often does she want to receive information? Your manager may always want to receive updates at specified junctures or she may have different thresholds for each project, such as daily reporting on critical endeavors and periodic updates on secondary initiatives.
Every exchange of information with your manager has implications for productivity. These tips will help you be more efficient:
• When discussing deadlines, use specific language. Pinpoint a certain date—even a specific hour, if appropriate. Avoid vague commitments like “sometime next week,” “ASAP,” or “as soon as we can get to it.”
• Be honest about what you can and cannot handle. When you commit to an assignment, clearly identify what resources you need to get the job done.
• Explicitly identify your objectives each time you communicate with your manager.
• Ask questions to clarify what you don’t understand. Inquire about opportunities for follow-up in case you think of other questions later.
How to present problems and opportunities
One of your manager’s main jobs is responding to news, both bad and good. She must factor brand-new problems and opportunities into existing goals, plans, and work flows. You can help by following this process:
1. Describe the impact in clear terms. In discussing a problem, pinpoint how it affects your work and your organization’s performance. In presenting an opportunity, outline the potential benefits. Explain exactly how solving this problem or seizing this opportunity will help you and your manager achieve your shared goals.
2. Identify your solution or approach. Recommend a specific plan, but also present other options. Outline the pros and cons of each possibility and explain why you favor the one you do.
3. Flesh out the implications. Do your best to identify everyone who has a stake in the matter. Give concrete examples of the risks and benefits for each stakeholder. If you have tested your solution or approach on a small scale, present the results and what you have learned from them.
4. Fine-tune your plan. Actively engage your manager in developing a final action plan to increase the likelihood of smooth implementation. Doing this will demonstrate your commitment to ensuring success.
How to disagree with your manager
When you communicate with your manager, you’re looking for common ground. If you don’t find it, however, it’s important not to panic or retreat. You may think that disagreeing with her will make her perceive you negatively or trigger a defensive reaction. But managers want to make better-informed decisions, so they often seek other perspectives. Indeed, most of them report that they don’t hear enough alternative points of view.
To disagree constructively with your manager, show respect and understanding for her point of view, and demonstrate that you care about achieving the best result for the organization. Here are some ways to do that:
• Link your idea directly with your manager’s and your organization’s goals. This will show that you are motivated by a desire to collaborate and achieve shared aims, not to be contrary.
• Provide suggestions that your manager can act on, not just objections. You can say something like, “How about contacting others in the industry who have used this system to see if they’re having the same problems? Would you like me to draw up a list of people to call and schedule some time with them?”
• Explain how your idea can prevent pitfalls. Identify those pitfalls in precise terms, and present supporting data to show that your proposal is fact-based rather than emotional.
• Offer a range of options. Binary choices (“Your way or my way”) are likely to meet resistance. Suggesting a few possibilities signals your flexibility and invites your manager to respond in kind.
• Give verbal and nonverbal feedback. Use phrases such as “I see” or “I know what you mean.” Nod or smile to indicate understanding.
• Avoid “hot button” language. If, for example, your boss always recoils when someone describes an approach as a “best practice” or “the next big thing,” find another way to express yourself.
• Reflect your manager’s concerns as you speak. For instance, “I understand that you’re worried about how this new plan will work, and I was initially concerned about that, too. But when I did some research, I realized something important . . .”
Moments of disagreement are usually a bit uneasy, but a trusting relationship with a boss allows room for them. Indeed, navigating differences of opinion successfully and with maturity can make the relationship even stronger. And having a solid bond with your manager makes negotiating with her easier.
David is a high-performing project manager with a talent for creating dashboards. He likes his work but is frustrated by his repressive, micromanaging boss, Thaddeus. Thaddeus drones on about the high point of his own (now stalled) career, calls unnecessary last-minute meetings, and frequently tries to one-up his direct reports. Meanwhile, David has managed to impress Irving, an executive VP in the company’s European division, enough to receive a job offer, but it’s a lateral move with no increase in pay.
What should David do? Experts in managing up recommend three options:
1. Stay Put. Consultant and author Gini Graham Scott thinks that David should try to remain where he is for now. Taking the job that Irving offers would be the equivalent of announcing, “This is the level where I’m supposed to be.” Plus, Thaddeus might see a lateral move within the organization as a personal slight, and the bad blood could trail David to his new position. To cope, David can form a supportive network of colleagues, explore interests outside work, and even attempt—subtly and nonconfrontationally—to get his boss to change some of his crazy-making behavior. For instance, David might describe (in a memo or face-to-face meeting) what he thinks his boss wants from him and offer ideas on how to achieve it. That would place the focus on David’s work, not on his boss’s actions. If he can’t tolerate working for Thaddeus any longer after trying to improve the dynamic, he should look for an opportunity outside the company.
2. Make the lateral move. Brad Gilbreath, an associate professor of management at Colorado State University-Pueblo and a former HR manager, says David should escape from Thaddeus and accept the job with Irving. Research shows that bad bosses’ behavior can lead to high blood pressure, depression, and other health problems in their subordinates. Working for Thaddeus is clearly taking a toll on David’s psychological well-being—and probably on his physical health as well.
3. Create a new option. Lauren Sontag, an executive coach and former head of development at JPMorgan Chase, says David should set clear and explicit boundaries with Thaddeus. David might dread the thought of discussing what’s bothering him, but having that difficult conversation could dramatically improve Thaddeus’s behavior. That said, staying with Thaddeus (whose career is stalled) might be more of a dead end than accepting Irving’s lateral offer—because if your boss isn’t moving up, you probably aren’t either. So David should consider a third option: carving out a new role for himself that capitalizes on his expertise in creating useful dashboards. He might even propose setting up a dashboard “center of excellence” to serve both Thaddeus and Irving, and adding a junior employee who would report to him. That way, he could meet both their needs and advance in his career.
Source: Adapted from David Silverman, Gini Graham, Brad Gilbreath, and Lauren Sontag, “Surviving the Boss from Hell,” Harvard Business Review (September 2009).