When it comes to the managing upwards and developing credibility with your boss, it is not unusual to hear lots of interesting stories – both good and bad ones. The bad stories are usually poured over in detail – after all, who doesn’t what to hear something juicy, right? There is a popular saying that people do not quit their jobs – they quit their bosses.
After landing the right job, the single biggest key to success is developing a positive relationship with your boss. When it comes to developing credibility, managing upwards is especially important. Some bosses take the time to build a connection with each direct report. However, most are too busy handling their own jobs. Bosses can enable or disable your ability to do your job well in terms of resources, information and coaching. By controlling those levers, bosses have an enormous impact on your compensation and career. So, it is in your benefit to “own” the relationship. After all, you have far more to gain than lose.
So, how do you effectively manage upwards without coming across as a two-bit sycophant? This is such an important topic that I have devoted two separate posts about it. In this post, I will talk about to how to develop credibility with your boss. In the next post, I will talk about how to assess your boss’s personality and how to develop a working style according to it.
Developing credibility with your boss involves three steps. Lets go through each one.
Hold yourself accountable
Make sure you and your boss are fully aligned on what is expected of you. Deliver fully and on time. If you cannot meet a deadline for a genuine reason, make sure that you make your boss aware about it ahead of time and negotiate a new date. Do not walk in with surprises.
Develop a method that works for you to keep track of your deliverables and due dates. Some people flag emails for follow-up, some use sticky notes and some simply jot things down in a notebook. Whatever method you use is up to you, as long as it is efficient and easy to use.
Overcome barriers through networking
Developing credibility by holding yourself self-accountable the way I described above seems relatively straight forward. However, the most common problem that most people run into is obstacles or barriers that prevent them from completing their assigned tasks. It could be as simple as not having access to a specific software or something more complex as not having the history of the previous work done on a project to understand the rationale of some of the decisions that were made.
Overcoming barriers is a key behaviour trait that differentiates the ones who can deliver and the ones who make excuses for not getting things done. But how do you effectively overcome barriers? The common method that most people use is to approach his or her boss about a problem and then simply wait for the solution or a workaround to be provided. Unfortunately, this is a flawed strategy. It is useful only in limited circumstances when you need your supervisor’s position authority to provide you the support that you need. The reason that most people fall into this functional silo is that during the on-boarding process and the early days of a new job, almost all of the interaction is only with the boss.
Network effectively
The key to effectively overcoming barriers lies in building effective lateral relationships and networking. Simply put, you need to get to know your co-workers, their areas of responsibilities and the challenges they face. If you happen to be part of a team that has several experienced people with a lot of organizational history, then that will be even better. The single biggest advantage of starting the networking process early on is that you will have access to the “unfiltered” information which is invaluable in getting to know the team culture, understanding the “nuts and bolts” of your job and the different groups outside the team you will need to interact with to deliver on what you are expected to.
Also, certain people are “portals” to other people – these people can connect you to more and bigger networks. The “unfiltered” information is far more powerful than the “official” information which is often provided in the form of formal onboarding sessions and organizational charts.
When you start to network effectively, you will overcome the barriers in your job at a much faster pace compared to simply waiting for the boss to get back to you. Consequently, you will rapidly accelerate the process of developing credibility in the eyes of your boss – you will start to be seen as a resource who can be relied upon rather than a liability who needs to be brought up to speed.
Do not use your boss’s political capital
Developing credibility is a gradual, incremental process. It requires constant care. However, ruining credibility is like going down a ski slope. One of the fastest ways to lose credibility is to create a sticky situation where your boss has to use his or her political capital to save you.
What is political capital exactly? It is the piggy bank of goodwill that your boss has filled up over time. How? By delivering in the organization and building valuable connections. That piggy bank opens doors for your boss that are not open for everyone. It allows him or her to get valuable support for your team. That support could be anything in the form of resources or important assignments.
A real life experience
As a supervisor, I had a young person in my team (I will call him John) who showed a lot of promise. He was a fast learner and impressed everyone with his friendly personality and eagerness. As a development move, I decided to temporarily transfer him to a high-profile project in another department so that he could get valuable exposure. I had to go out of my way to convince the department as the position was not really there. But somehow we made it work. John agreed to the role as well, as I expected.
What I did not expect that only after two days in the new role, John decided to pull out. His reason? He did not like the schedule. I tried to probe if there was something he was not telling me. However, he was upfront that was the only reason. In the end, I had to scramble to get a replacement for him. At the same time, I had to swallow an earful from the people he had abandoned. My political capital took a severe hit in that whole episode. As for John, he lost almost all of the credibility that he had built up and was never able to fully recover it.
A rescue act because of a screw-up on your part will dent that political capital. Don’t ever do that.
That’s about it.