Leadership Effectiveness #10 Managing from Below

[samvara]

Readings!

Gabarro, J. & Kotter, J. 1993, Managing Your Boss, Harvard Business Review, vol. 71, no. 3, pp150-158.
Not a bad read, discussed the need to understand your boss and where they are coming from. Has a handy checklist.
Managers who work effectively with their bosses ... seek out information about the boss’s goals and problems and pressures. They are alert for opportunities to question the boss and others around him or her to test their assumptions. They pay attention to clues in the boss’s behavior.

Schmieding, N. 1993, Successful Superior-Subordinate Relationships Require Mutual Management, Health Care Supervisor, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp52-63.

• Understand one's beliefs about one's subordinates
• Use authority appropriately, do not undermine
• Use inquiry to explore options with staff
• Hold regular meetings and use them to explore, not direct
• Engage with subordinates' expectations - when do you intervene?
• Engage with your superior, choose to manage the relationship
• Develop self consciously
• Examine assumptions about one's superiors
• Understand one's superior's expectations
• Understand one's own reaction to authority

A bit irritating, talks about the mutuality of the relationship and about ways to have a functional relationship.

Seminar!

Discussion of experiences as subordinates about roles and relationships. Exercise where we rated our relationships with our bosses then discussed what caused our rating.

Exercise writing up an exercise on what we know about our bosses preferences and priorities - do we know much about them?

Managing Your Boss - step 1 (them)

• Context - the boss's world
• Challenge, pressures and needs
• Strengths, weaknesses and blind spots
• Style
• Goals and priorities

Managing Your Boss - step 2 (you)

• Strengths and weaknesses
• Style
• Goals and priorities
• Roles and needs
• Predisposition around authority figures

What is your power base?

• Referential - people look at you and see something they want, someone they want to be
• Reward / connection - positive feedback, acknowledgement, treats!, being thanked or publicly acknowledged, money (this is problematic because you have to keep escalating)
• Expertise - specialist skill or knowledge
• Information - can supply or withhold information
• Coercion - can punish
• Rank - role based

Back to the Drama Triangle, when we engage with power what position do we adopt? Persecutor, Victim, Rescuer. Do we have an instinctive response that perhaps come from being a lot younger?

Think of a time when things went bad with your boss, what happened?

Break!

Developing a more powerful and proactive relationship with our boss. Get the best out of them for your success.

Managing Your Boss - step 3 (develop and maintain relationships)

• Fit both your style and needs
• Is characterised by mutual expectations
• Keeps your boss informed
• No surprises
• Is based on dependability and honesty

Working with personality types to leverage the relationship, we know each person has a preference for:

1. How we direct energy
2. The information we take in
3. How we make decisions
4. Emphasising #2 or #3

Quick MBTI. Boss is probably ESTJ / ISTJ and I am ESTJ / ENTJ. Heh.

Reflect on...

• How does your boss's personality contribute to their (and your) effectiveness? Our mutual TJ tendencies mean we value the same things and get along well. Our non mutual S and N mean we are able to better communicate with others because we can bring different styles.
• How does your boss's personality get in the way of their (and your) effectiveness? We have to work to maintain relationships sometimes. Our non mutual S and N means we have to talk a lot before we get what we need from each other.
• What can you do to mitigate this? We work very hard on relationship building and communicate a lot.

Relationship Management Practices

• Adjust to how they like to receive info
• What info do they want?
• Find a way to communicate bad news (so they hear it)
• Adjust to how they like to make decisions
• Make a vague senior manager specific
• Communicate your expectations
• Avoid commitment to unrealistic deadlines
• Use their time wisely
• Don't ask them for info you can get elsewhere

Exercise! Stacie demonstrated the exercise on a 'volunteer'.

Strategies for Influencing without Power

• Working individually, identify a project or initiative of yours that would benefit from a greater ability to influence others (without formal power)
• Working in small groups of four, each person will turn:
  • Describe this situation in four or five bullet points to the group (2 mins)
  • Listen and respond to a 'coaching question' from each of the other group members (followed to it's logical conclusion) (7 mins)
  • Summarise the questions asked and the insights (or further questions) they have created (if any) (1 min)

Standards conflict at work, looking for ways to non directly communicate frustrations. Person wants metrics but it never happens, looking for source of resistance to gain understanding and maybe leverage.

Debrief! How did it feel like asking questions? What did it feel like answering them?

Case study! Read through but then we ran out of time and ran away.

Recommended reading:
Throwing the Elephant: Zen and the Art of Managing Up by Stanley Bing
Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship With Those Above You by Rosanne Badowski, Roger Gittiness, and Jack Welch.