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

Customer Rating: 

I recently read Lead Your Boss by John Baldoni, The Subtle Art of Managing Up. He was the author of Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders and Lead By Example.

As most of my readers know, I did not really have a boss (unless you count the Board of Directors) for most of my working career. Then for five years I worked for Synnex, although I was CEO of the Canadian entity, I did have a direct reporting relationship to the CEO in the States.

At some point I may again have a boss.

The title itself makes me think, how do you manage up. After I sold my business to Synnex for the first six months I was depressed thinking it was the worst mistake I had ever made, mostly because I hadn't learned how to manage up. A good friend of mine took me aside when I was complaining about not being able to do what needed to be done and said that I needed to treat it like a sale.

That switch in my head, that reframing caused me to love the five years that I worked at Synnex. They were challenging but I viewed my job as simply selling head office to do the right thing and for some reason I don't get depressed when I don't make a sale, I simply go out and figure out what is a better way to make the sale.

From the book: "Leading up requires great courage and determination, writes Michael Useem, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and author of an eponymously named book that popularized the concept. "We might fear how our superior will respond, we might doubt our right to lead up, but we all carry a responsibility to do what we can when it will make a difference."

Individuals who lead up are those who demonstrate that they are aware of the bigger picture and are ready, willing, and able to do what needs to be done for the good of the team."

He suggests in order to do well you need to think like a boss. I guess because I've always been a boss that doesn't take much. His suggestions are to be around, be seen, and be curious.

The obvious is ask what you can do to help.

I found my time at Synnex was made somewhat easier by me doing a weekly report and I turned this into a process I call rollup weekly reports. I would have the people who reported to me do a weekly report, then cut and paste snippets of things I thought should be known by California into a weekly report. Also as my week progressed, if I thought there was something relevant they might not have heard or seen that I would simply put it in a file. When it came time to do my weekly report, I could fairly easily generate it. The weekly report of course always had some of my opinions of what was happening, which was one way for me to subtly sell my points.

Over time, I've modified the weekly report to even include things like having 3 or 4 organizational goals and asking everyone when they do the weekly report to report what they've done on these goals. This is a great way to get a company focused.

Another line which I like to add is what do you need from me. The reason for adding this in, is it makes sure I'm not the stumbling block, although no one can use waiting for something from me as an excuse.

With so many books written about leaders, I'm surprised there aren't more written about how to be a good follower leader (or a good senior person on the team), because there's many more of those positions than there are of the true leaders.

If I ever take another position where I have a boss, I will simply treat it as an additional challenge to the job. And I will study it.

Customer Rating: 

Intended to be the ultimate survival guide for mid-level managers in complex organizations, this book is missing one very important element from being a good reading: structure. Listing vast amount of ideas, probably way too much for a single book, addressing common wisdom and certainly not untrue, you get lost by turning a page and hardly remember what has just been read. The best books I have read share one common thing, they focus on topics around a central point and keep it simple, so it is easy for you to take away something important. With this book I would hugely struggle to take away anything.

Customer Rating: 

LEAD YOUR BOSS; THE SUBTLE ART OF MANAGING UP offers a fine plan for delivering what the boss and team needs, telling how to think like a boss without stealing the position, how to turn ideas into action, and how to handle criticism. A manager who truly supports a boss with his own perspectives support the entire team's efforts - and this tells how in a selection key for any business library.

Customer Rating: 

We generally think of leadership as coming from the top. But John Baldoni offers a different perspective - that middle managers can help themselves, their bosses and the organization by leading up or leading from the middle.

I believe that progressive managers have always engaged in leading up. Baldoni has just put a name to the practice and given some practical tips and an organized structure for leading up. "Those who lead from the middle are those that think big picture and can do what it takes to get things done so their bosses and their team succeed."

The whole point of the book is that middle managers should take a very active role in leading up. They must be assertive and proactive about leading. If the concept is applied correctly, the middle manager can have much more influence on the goals and outcomes of the company.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one asks the question: What does the leader need? There are three steps to answer that question.

Part two asks: What does the team need? Part three asks: What can I do to help the leader and the team succeed? There are three steps to answer those questions.

In each part, Baldoni explores the steps in great detail and gives guidance on how to apply the concepts.

The book is very easy to read and has lots of examples to illustrate the points the author is making.

Your view of the book will probably depend on your experience and how well you function in a team setting. The more entrepreneurial you are, the less value you will place on these concepts.

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.