Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up,   ISBN:9780814415054

Customer Rating: 

The fact is that I would have given this book a six star rating if the title was something like, "Help Your Boss and Your Team Succeed" or "Influencing Your Boss." The sixth star would have been extra credit for avoiding the current-day compulsion to label everything good as "leadership."

But the publishers and perhaps the author, John Baldoni, chose Lead Your Boss: The Subtle Art of Managing Up as the title for the best book I've read on a subject that most managers want to know more about. I know that from a quarter century of training men and women entering their first job as a boss.

In every class, we identify the things that these people want to learn about. There are only two items that ever come out on top. One is confronting team members about poor performance. The other is dealing with the boss.

This book is not a compendium of theory or a program that promises success if you just follow the author's five, or five hundred, "easy steps." It won't be easy. What John Baldoni describes in this book is some of the pick-and-shovel work you have to do if you have a boss.

After you read this book, you'll still have a lot of work ahead of you. But the good news is that you'll know what you need to do. You won't have to learn on the job and you won't try a lot of things that don't work.

Baldoni has divided the book into three sections. The first two direct you to ask two diagnostic questions: "What does the leader need?" and "What does the team need?" That's head work.

The pick and shovel work comes when you ask the question that guides the third section: "What can I do to help the leader and the team succeed?" That's a critical question because it moves things out of your head and on to your To Do list.

That action orientation is one thing that makes this an excellent book. But there's more.

The advice is helpful. Baldoni doesn't just suggest you "think like a boss" and leave it at that, the way many other authors do. He suggests three simple behaviors that will help that happen. The first one, "Be around" is similar to what my research identified as a key behavior of top performing supervisors. I called it "show up a lot."

The book is practical and realistic. Too many books of advice act like things will always work. They ignore the fact that there will probably be times during your career when you work for a great boss and there will probably be a time when you work for a jerk.

Even if you work for a good boss, sometimes he or she won't think your ideas or recommendations are the thing to do. What then? You'll find a guide to what to do next in a section at the back of the book called, "The Smart Guide to Positive Pushback. It's worth the price of the book all by itself.

There's a bonus here, too. The advice won't just work for dealing with your boss. It will also work for you if you are a boss.

Bottom Line: Whether you're a boss yourself or you just work for one, this is the best book out there about how you can do a better job of influencing the boss so that you, your boss and your team succeed.

Customer Rating: 

Companies, especially now as they struggle to pull themselves out of a deep economic recession, need everyone to contribute their best thinking and best leadership. Innovation and competitiveness cannot come just from the top. John Baldoni, in "Lead Your Boss," provides middle managers with a roadmap for how they can successfully lead their organizations from the middle. The book tells these managers how they can become a person of influence and action in order to achieve positive outcomes for their organizations. It is full of useful insights and practical suggestions. At the same time, Baldoni doesn't promise a "rose garden." His advice is realistic about the risks involved in being persistent and assertive when some top level leaders might not want this from their direct reports. "Lead Your Boss" is must reading for any manager who wants to make a significant contribution to the success of the organization while at the same time is looking for career advancement.

Customer Rating: 

John Baldoni offers a great deal of wonderful management advice that would work quite well in any progressive organization that truly engages its employees in a trusting environment of open and honest communication. Unfortunately, some organizations are not so progressive; rather, they are hierarchial and bureaucratic; micro-managment is pervasive, and a culture of fear defines its essence.

Welcome to corporate America.

Strangely enough, the concepts Baldoni proposes throughout this book alligned with my management philosophy during my 26 year experience in corporate America; throughout this book, I was constantly nodding my head in agreement in support of the strategies "to lead the boss"; they would work quite well in any organization that believes in giving its employees as much autonomy as possible to effectively run the business, and most importantly, stay focused on its customers' needs and expectations.

In the real world of business, some bosses have hidden agendas which don't always take into consideration the best interests of those they manage; rather, they inhibit autonomy and make it virtually impossible to sustain any sort of long-term career growth. Under those conditions, no one wins.

Certainly, anyone with a good set of core values and a desire to succeed as an integral part of a team, would embrace the tactics proposed by Baldoni. It's terrfic management advice, in theory.

From firsthand experience, implementing these wonderful concepts can be extremely challenging in the real world of business. Proceed with caution.

Review submitted by Larry Underwood, author, Life Under the Corporate Microscope: A Maverick's Irreverent Perspective

Customer Rating: 

While we often think of leadership as a process of leading subordinates, good leaders are those who know how to lead up. Leading from the middle requires a combination of talent and skill, and Baldoni's new book shows us how.

Stewart Nelson

Customer Rating: 

Baldoni's strength is finding good stories and then using them to make a point. This is one of those management books you can open to any chapter and begin there. Each chapter can stand alone. Although the title is "Lead your Boss" ... it is really about how to influence others at any level in the organization in a positive way. If nothing else, pick this one up for the stories. They will stick with you long after you forget where you read them.