Managing your boss is not as difficult as it may seem and ‘managing upwards’ has become an accepted term in today’s corporate workplace. No matter what your position in a company, you need to be able to communicate well with your superior and focus on the things that matter to him or her. This is essential to career development success, as well as ensuring that your working relationships are effective.

Whether your boss is easy or difficult to engage with, here are some tips that should help you to manage upwards:

• Understand your boss’ objectives and how they fit into the company’s overall goals. Don’t be afraid to be inquisitive and ask questions about these.
• If your boss isn’t in overall control of the company, but in turn has a superior, try to find out what this higher-up’s priorities are, so that you can understand what motivates your boss, what puts them under pressure, and what drives their objectives.
• Keep your boss informed about details of day to day issues. He or she may not be close to these and could rely on you for crucial information but be conscious of how much information he or she actually needs.
• Don’t ask your boss to give detailed guidance on absolutely everything. It’s a manager’s role to make decisions, but if you come up with options to choose between, it saves time and reflects well on you.
• When presenting ideas, ask yourself how these will improve the company’s bottom line and how they fit in with your manager’s objectives. If they don’t match up, then reconsider and adjust them until they’re a good fit.
• Suggest how being given various tasks may affect your overall workload, and then establish what the priorities are. Ask which projects need to be completed first and give an honest appraisal of expectations. For example: “We could definitely get this done by Friday, but that will mean that completing the other project slips to next week. Which one is most important to complete first?”
• If you bring your boss a problem, bring a set of solutions too. Avoid consulting your boss about a problem if you haven’t spent time thinking of ways to resolve it.
• Come up with solutions that you can implement yourself and ask for the authority to go ahead with one or more of them.
• Co-operate with colleagues at the same level as you, or below, to work on solutions to problems or suggest ways to achieve the company’s and your boss’ goals.
• It’s also a good idea to find out about their pet hates and what he or she considers unacceptable. Whether it’s being late, poor spelling in emails or bad language in the workplace, make an effort to avoid these.

The key to upward management is that it should be based on making sensible suggestions for ways to resolve issues, and understanding when it’s important for your boss to make decisions.

Adrian Treacy is Director of technology, finance and healthcare recruiter Arrows Group: www.arrowsgroup.com

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