Managing Up to Achieve Success for You, Your Supervisor, and Your Organization

1. Understand the goals and needs of the people above you.

Accomplishing things that are a part of your job description is great, but ensuring that the work you’re doing also supports what your supervisor needs to accomplish is even more critical. To achieve that, you first need to be clear on your boss’s priorities and goals and what he or she needs or wants to get done. Whether it’s expanding the team’s resources, getting a promotion, launching a new program, or attaining high evaluation metrics, once you understand your boss’s goals, you can tailor what you do to help achieve them. In fact, it’s wise to develop your goals collaboratively. According to Gallup’s State of the American Workplace, only 30% of employees strongly agree that their manager involves them in setting their goals at work, but those who do strongly agree are more than three-and-a-half times more likely than other employees to be engaged in their jobs.

2. Tailor your communication to your supervisor’s style.

You’ll be more successful if you communicate in a way that aligns with your boss’s style when you meet to discuss your goals, projects, and progress. The DiSC personality assessment is an excellent tool that will not only help you understand yourself better, but will also help you understand how to adapt your communications and behaviors to work more effectively with your boss (manage up). The DiSC model has four basic styles: Dominance, influence, Conscientiousness, and Steadiness. Each one is further broken out into character traits, strengths, and weaknesses. Your profile report will define your work style and provides guidance on how to identify other people’s styles, in the event your boss hasn’t done the DiSC assessment as well. So you’ll be able to develop a good understanding of how to act and react toward your boss to create more effective connections and build a better relationship.

For instance, if your boss is a people person, he or she will appreciate your efforts on relationship building and teamwork. A task-oriented supervisor will be focused more on results and getting things done. If your boss is a reflective and methodical type, you’ll need to give him or her time to think things through before making decisions. An assertive, dynamic supervisor will want more immediate action so you’ll need to show more concrete and rapid progress. The DiSC report will provide you strategies for increasing your effectiveness with your boss, whether you have similar or very different work styles. You’ll also receive guidance on how to better connect with your boss when problems need to be solved, especially when things get tense.

3. Explicitly state how you’ll help your boss.

Lastly, when you do meet with your supervisor, go in prepared and be explicit. Frame the discussion in a way that gets your boss’s attention. State what you would like to do, how your proposed plan can help achieve a specific goal, what the timing may look like, and what you’ll need to do to accomplish your part. Don’t leave it up to your boss to make the connection between what you intend to do and how it can help him or her, make that the crux of the conversation. And, if it’s a problem that needs to be solved, go in with a well-thought-out solution. Show that you are able to take initiative and can be depended on to tackle tasks that might be pressing and adding stress to your manager’s work life.