7 Hacks to Make Your Boss Work for You with Melody Wilding
Melody Wilding - Professor of Human Behaviour, Author and Career Coach
Melody Wilding is a professor of human behavior at Hunter College and was recently named one of Insider’s “most innovative career coaches.” Her background as a therapist and emotions researcher informs her unique approach, weaving evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with professional development. She is the author of Trust Yourself, and her latest book ‘Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge’.
Have you ever felt out of control in your career? Subject to the whims of your boss and internal politics?
What if you could take back that power and drastically amplify your professional profile – in the space of a few simple, impactful conversations?
Well, you can, by Managing Up. In this conversation we asked Melody Wilding, author of the brand new ‘Managing Up, How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge’ exactly how we can do this. In this conversation we explore some incredibly practical research-based ways you can shape key conversations with every leader you work with, to create great outcomes for you, your team and that leader – and help you feel a greater sense of agency over your work life.
And Melody gave us a number of insider tips to help you manage up which we discuss in-depth in this episode, including:
1. How to set boundaries with finesse
2. How to give upward feedback strategically
3. How to be solution-focused in framing challenges
4. How to highlight your impact through storytelling
5. How to take control of your career trajectory
6. How to teach people how to treat you
7. How to kick-off 1:1 for success
Learn more about Professor Melody Wilding, and connect with her work here:
Connect with Professor Melody Wilding on LinkedIn.
Get your copy of her latest book ‘Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge’ here.
Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Sally Clarke: Welcome to, we Are Human Leaders. Have you ever felt out of control in your career subject to the whims of your boss and internal politics? What if you could take back that power and drastically amplify your professional profile in the space of a few simple, impactful conversation? I am Sally Clarke, and today Alexis Zahner and I are sitting down with Melody Wilding, author of the brand new ‘Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.’
Melody is Professor of Human Behavior at Hunter College. And was recently named one of insider's most innovative career coaches. Her background as a therapist and emotions researcher informs her unique approach, weaving evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with professional development. We explore some incredibly practical research-based ways you can shape key conversations.
With every leader you work with to create great outcomes for you, your team, and that leader, and to help you feel a greater sense of agency over your work life. Let's delve in.
[00:01:11] Alexis Zahner: Welcome to We Are Human Leaders. Melody, it's such a pleasure to have you here with us today, and we'd love to begin our conversation by getting to know you a little bit more and the journey that's brought you to this important work that you're doing now.
[00:01:25] Melody Wilding: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be with you. And I think as with most things that getting here has been windy and it's a little bit personal and professional, so I am a lifelong recovering people pleaser. And at first that may not seem like it has a lot to do with managing up, but it certainly does because managing up is all about your relationship with the people in authority.
[00:01:50] For us people pleasers. That's usually where our confidence breaks down is when someone with power above us asks us to do something or we feel like we have to be overly deferential and we start to lose ourselves in the process. So that has certainly been my own journey, trying to hold my own, be more assertive, but also make sure that I have strong relationships and at the end of the day, people still like me and want to work with me.
[00:02:19] So how do you straddle that line? And when you combine that with, my professional career has really been about helping people I call sensitive strivers who are deeper thinkers and feelers. Navigate the emotional ups and downs of the workplace. And managing up has been a really big part of that because there's so much overthinking that can happen.
[00:02:42] Second guessing of yourself, lack of confidence. And really the impetus for this book came about because of the pandemic, because I was hearing from so many people that they felt so much more out of control at work sometimes to the point of helplessness. I. There were so many changes happening around them, whether it's a reorg, a round of layoffs, priorities are changing day to day, you're getting another thing dumped on your desk.
[00:03:09] Your boss is acting in a certain way and you feel like you want to or need to give them feedback. So all of this sort of came together and I just saw this need for a very tactical guide to managing up in the modern world because it has changed in the last 10 years or so. To have one that was really driven from this psychology perspective, giving people tools to manage the, yes, to influence effectively, but to communicate well, to build trust and rapport, and do that in a way that doesn't dishonor their values.
[00:03:44] Sally Clarke: Amazing melody. I'd love to just highlight one of the terms that you use there, which is Sensitive Striver, because I feel like both myself and Alex, and also everyone listening right now is probably in that category of sensitive Striver and really relates to your own journey of finding that balance between being that authentic, likable, lovely person to work with that you are, but also bringing in things like boundaries and ensuring that there's clear expectations.
[00:04:12] And building healthy relationships is not just about people pleasing as we've all learned from experience. It's finding that sort of perhaps more authentic way of leading ourselves and engaging with others. And your book is such a beautiful, tactical way of approaching these relationships that we inherently have in the workplace.
[00:04:31] I'd love to, for a moment, just hold space for the term managing up the title of your book. And sort of understand from you, how do you define that or how do you see that term? How do you explain that concept?
[00:04:43] Melody Wilding: Yeah, it's interesting because I was really resistant to calling the book Managing Up at First, and I think that's precisely because it tends to be a very loaded term, sometimes a negative term, and certainly here in the States, when you hear managing up, a lot of people think sucking up.
[00:05:00] They think ingratiating yourself to your boss or. Being the person who knows their coffee order or is the blow hard, right? Someone who is just playing off as politics and who wants to do that? Nobody wants to be that person. So it's something we end up shying away from often to our own detriment. And I think it's time managing up needs a rebrand.
[00:05:23] So very simply put, it means navigating relationships with people that have more positional power than you. Primarily that's going to be your manager, but in today's workplace there are a lot of other players besides your manager. So it may have been true 15, 20 years ago that your direct supervisor was the person you spent most of your time interacting with and reporting to.
[00:05:47] That is not true anymore. You may have project or work stream leads. You may have to interact with your skip level much more, or even people in power at a client or a vendor, for example. It's much more matrixed and complex. It's not just we need to think beyond our managers. So all of that factors into how we think about managing up.
[00:06:10] Really, at the end of the day, it's something we need to do for ourselves to make sure we are creating the conditions for our success to the best of our ability, because we're always going to work with imperfect people. Our managers are humans. That's why I love the name of this podcast. They are human leaders, which means they are imperfect.
[00:06:30] They have bad days, they get stressed out. Maybe more than we would like. And so how do we not let that jeopardize our success or our wellbeing? Not take all of that personally and feel like we can have some agency in this situation.
[00:06:47] Alexis Zahner: So helpful to get clear on that melody. Thank you. And something that really struck me about your book and to this idea that there's sort of.
[00:06:55] Managing up directly with the managers that sit positionally above us in organizations. But I think there's a lot of lateral power now in organizational structures, especially with the hybrid remote working settings where we also need to be able to manage people, key impact players, you know, with influence within the organization as well to perhaps bring them on the journey with us, you know, as a leader of ourselves and of of different teams.
[00:07:20] So that's such a great way of expressing that. Now your book Melody looks at. 10 different key conversations that we need to be able to have to successfully manage up. One of the ones that really struck me when I know Sally and I were remarking before this conversation, that this is something we've both struggled with in our career and that is setting boundaries.
[00:07:41] I. Something that interestingly, early on in my career, I made the mistake of saying yes to everything, thinking that being boundaryless and being a yes person actually would buy me rapport with superiors. But in fact, when it came to things like promotions and being the lead of different projects, oftentimes we see that saying yes to everything has us being.
[00:08:04] Overlooked because it tends to kind of demonstrate that maybe we can't prioritize time and energy. So we would love to double click on this particular conversation around boundaries and understand from you how we can set boundaries that both help us build a respectful relationship with our superiors, but also maintain our own credibility.
[00:08:27] Can you help us understand
[00:08:28] Melody Wilding: this? Of course. Well, I really appreciate you sharing that experience because that. What you went through is something far too many people discover way too late. Yeah. Which is, yes, there is a time and a place, especially earlier in your career, you're gathering experiences and you want exposure, but there starts to become this turning point where, correct, it starts to work against you.
[00:08:52] Leadership starts to think, well, we don't know if you know how to prioritize or have hard conversations or manage the different stakeholders and expectations and. We can't promote you because you already seem overstretched, so how could you possibly take on more? Yeah. Who else is going to do your job? I think that is a mindset shift in itself for people to realize actually this being able to push back tactfully is a leadership skill.
[00:09:20] Mm-hmm. In itself, we think of it as a negative, as a defensive strategy, when in actuality it is what leadership wants to see. That really factors into this approach. I almost called this the pushback conversation because I think boundaries implies that we just say no. Yeah. And the conversation stops there.
[00:09:40] No, I'm not doing that. No, I can't do that. And unfortunately, no is not a complete sentence in the workplace. We have to be more diplomatic and tactful about how we go about delivering it. And when it comes to pushback to straddle that line of team player while also protecting yourself, there's a few different approaches you can use.
[00:10:04] One of my favorites is called the Trade Off Approach, and this is all about saying, I hear both of these things are important. It's not possible to do both of these at once. So what would you like to deprioritize or slow down on? What would you like me to delegate here? My recommendation would be we focus on this.
[00:10:22] Does that sound good to you? Or even better? If that sounds good to you, I'll proceed with that. You can make it a, a binary question, but the key with that you'll hear in all of these approaches is making it more of a problem solving exercise rather than just a dead end to the conversation because you're a manager.
[00:10:42] This is particularly true if you work in a hybrid or fully distributed environment. Your manager may not have line of sight into what you're doing. They may have assigned you something weeks ago. Now they're asking you to do something else. They forgot about that thing that they gave you weeks ago. Yet you are now stewing thinking, oh my gosh, one more thing.
[00:11:02] They don't respect me. So it's up to us to voice that in a way that our manager can hear to say, I have these things on my plate. My understanding is this is the rank importance. Is that correct? Do I have that correct? So that's the first one, the trade off approach. I also really love the conditional Yes, which is say yes now, but recognize it as an exception.
[00:11:28] And this is particularly useful when you are managing up, especially if it's someone maybe a few levels above you to say, I hear this is important, so I'm happy to take this on now because I know we need to get this done by the end of the month, or we need to get this to the client. I hope we recognize though I won't be able to always adjust timelines like this in the future.
[00:11:51] Or I would love to sit down after we get through this and make sure that we have a process in place so I can be more proactive about these types of requests going forward. And so it's all about setting, saying yes now, but setting a boundary or a process change, different expectation in the future.
[00:12:11] Sally Clarke: I think you've highlighted such key sort of issues around the word, both the word boundaries.
[00:12:16] I think it's such a, it is quite a loaded word in the workplace, so I love that we're thinking about kind of push by and other ways of sort of communicating and what came through in those examples. For me, melody was this idea of transparency and really clear expectation setting because when there is a lot of moving parts.
[00:12:31] Different projects, different stakeholders, and particularly if you have different managers who may not be aware of what you are working on at the time and who else's sort of projects you may be involved in. Having this level of clarity and being able to say yes and or what about this, and in particularly like the example you give of almost offering the solution, especially if some, if a manager is very busy, I think that's a really good one to be able to say, Hey, these are the two things that are going on.
[00:12:58] I recommend we do this and this will mean X, Y, Z. If this is okay with you, let's go. And I think that really, you know, gives them also the sort of A, the clarity that they need. And B, also just takes, makes the decision making process so much easier rather than simply saying, no, that's not feasible. And so I think it's that conversational approach almost that you're bringing that is so, so amazing.
[00:13:19] Another of the conversations that we really stood out for us, and is actually quite passionate for us at the moment is the feedback conversation. This is I think, one that a lot of us struggle with in terms of giving feedback to those higher up in a way that actually improves the relationship and gets the results that we need.
[00:13:36] I think often we tend to avoid this conversation to the detriment of ourselves, but also of our managers. Can you tell us how to have the feedback conversation, including sort of timing maybe if there's any preparation for the conversation and anything else we need to be aware of to really make these conversations work for us?
[00:13:54] Melody Wilding: And it was important to me to include this because we often think of feedback as something that rolls downhill. We don't often talk about upward feedback. There's not a lot of guidance around this, so I'm happy you zeroed in on it too with most of these managing up conversations. What's ironic is that managing up to someone else often starts with you getting right within yourself first.
[00:14:17] So you probably noticed that with most of the conversations. There's a little bit of like. Self pre-work, that has to happen. And with the feedback conversation, that's very true because we wanna make sure that we're choosing our battles and thinking about, is this a one-off instance? Has this really become a pattern?
[00:14:37] I like to look at the rule of threes. Has this happened three times across three different situations with three different people? That's how you know it's maybe not your manager having a bad day. This is actually something that's probably worth speaking up about. Do you have all of the details? Are there other people you need to talk to or a situation you need to wait out to see?
[00:15:00] Are you willing to be part of the solution? Because that old adage about managing up, don't come with problems, come with solutions. This is one place where it applies, but mostly because. You wanna make sure that you are driving the solution and the direction that you would like to see the change that happens.
[00:15:19] And when it comes to actually thinking about how you give that feedback, I talk about defining your ABCs. A is your assumption. What is the label you are putting on this person's behavior? Even the accusation maybe. So they're a micromanager. They're flighty, they're favoring somebody else. It's usually something negative about their behavior, and that's usually not useful.
[00:15:44] If you give feedback on that and say, well, you're micromanaging me and I don't want that. Don't micromanage me. That's not going to be the most productive conversation. So we really need to focus on B. What is the behavior? What is the observable? Situation, the observable actions that are happening that tell you the person is a micromanager because that someone can change and work on.
[00:16:09] And so maybe they are asking, I had a client a few weeks ago who said, my manager is asking to review every single slide for this particular project before it goes out. And she was spiraling about it and it was annoying her to no end. So we identified that behavior and then we also identified change.
[00:16:28] What was the change she wanted to see here to that behavior that she could propose. And so she was able to go into that conversation, put the A, the assumption aside and say, I've noticed that with this particular project you are asking for a bit more oversight. In terms of the slides, I'm not sure if anything has changed.
[00:16:47] I would help me understand if something has changed, but my understanding is this is a project that. As the lead I would be able to run point on, but correct me if I'm wrong, and what I would love to do is sit down with you and take the project list and understand out of everything, where do you need additional oversight now, where can I run, take the ball and run with it, so to speak.
[00:17:12] And so it turned much more into a solution-focused conversation rather than just. You're doing something and I don't like it, which a person feels like I can't fix my personality and I'm not micromanaging you. I have these other needs. It becomes more of a, let's find a workable compromise here for both of us.
[00:17:32] Alexis Zahner: I think what's so useful about that approach as well, melody is from a relationship perspective, it's giving the person the benefit of the doubt and showing that you trust that they have the best intentions at heart. 'cause when someone comes to you with an assumption or an accusation that you're doing this because you're a micromanager, I.
[00:17:50] It seems really obvious when we discuss it now that that would make someone defensive or put two people against each other versus saying, Hey, I've recognized this. I've noticed this behavior. I'd like to dive into it a little bit more. It feels more of an invitation than a you always, or you've done this again, kind of thing, and I think that just, it's such an approachable way of having that conversation.
[00:18:13] Melody Wilding: Yeah. And even better if you can create a shared goal. Mm-hmm. Right? Because feedback tends to feel like me against you. Yeah. We're across the table from each other. Yeah. Versus if you come and say, I'd love to talk about how we work together more effectively, or I'd love to talk about how we get this to the client even faster and automatically it's like, okay, we're on the same team and it's us again solving this problem that is separate from each of us as people.
[00:18:39] Thank you so
[00:18:39] Alexis Zahner: much, melody. I love that. And. Another conversation that we loved in this book and that I think for some of the sensitive strivers in the room as well will really resonate for them is the one around visibility. And the reason this was striking for me as well, is I think for some of us, there's a real natural awkwardness around making ourselves visible, perhaps singing our own praises, and doing that in a way that doesn't feel cringey or icky and actually feels authentic to who we are as well.
[00:19:07] So can you help us unpack the visibility conversation a little bit more, why it's important and how we also do that in a tactful way?
[00:19:15] Melody Wilding: Yeah. Well, I was talking a few moments ago about how your manager may not have line of sight into what you're doing. Yeah. If your manager doesn't, many other people in the organization may not too.
[00:19:26] Everyone is very busy. Yeah. And our work cannot speak for itself. It will not speak for itself. We have to be the advocate for it. And that does not mean you have to say how great you are, but it does mean you have to socialize the results, the outcomes that you're getting, not just reporting on what you're doing, but why it matters in the bigger picture and what it's creating.
[00:19:51] Facilitating, enabling. That's where the magic is because you could fix a process and you could say that in a meeting like we streamlined this method. Okay, great. To a certain amount of people. That's going to seem like something that's technical, maybe even administrative. But if you say We streamline this process and conservatively over the next couple of months, it's going to save us about 60 hours in terms of our operations.
[00:20:18] Wow. That is having a conversation at a different level of impact and it adds so much more weight and gravitas to what you've accomplished. And so I think we have to be. Proactive and intentional about logging those situations because it's very easy in the day to day just to be knocking tasks off and you get to the end of the week or the month and you, you almost feel like, what did I actually accomplish and what did it produce?
[00:20:45] I'm not even sure. And so getting into the habit of weekly, maybe even daily logging, this is what I worked on, this was the result. And it doesn't always have to be. We increased sales this amount. It's also worthwhile to log situations where you had to have a tough negotiation with someone, or you had to manage different stakeholders because that's how you quantify quote unquote soft skills is capturing those stories.
[00:21:16] And in the book I talk about that, that we have to focus more on storytelling to convey our accomplishments rather than just the task oriented approach. And so storing them, capturing them is one part, but then also looking for opportunities to communicate those out. So in a meeting, a lot of people are very effective with conveying their accomplishments in terms of lessons learned.
[00:21:41] So actually we encountered something like this a couple of weeks ago, and here's what was effective for us. So it's you showing how you tackled a problem and how you came out above. But it's also adding value to whoever is there. So it's conveying expertise while also providing value. I think looking at how do you optimize your one-on-ones is important too.
[00:22:05] 'cause that's a very opportune time you have with your manager, yet a lot of us just fritter it away, and so you wanna make sure that you're starting those sessions with wins milestones, you can call it whatever you like, but that is your time to give your manager your punch list of. Not just status updates of here's where this is at, but here's what we've accomplished.
[00:22:27] And by doing that, you're giving your manager a list that they can run up their own chain of command. They're going to love you for making their job easier to report those up their chain of command as well. But also making it easier for them to advocate for you for other resources. Those are just two things, but looking for where can you add value in in meetings, and also optimizing your one-on-ones
[00:22:51] Sally Clarke: incredible.
[00:22:51] Melody, the term you used, socializing. The results really landed for me because I think it's that kind of. Translation of what we do and the amazing things that we achieve, but perhaps take for granted into stories, into ways that they will actually land for other people. That I think is so important, and I think the process of us really intentionally starting to socialize the results that we have.
[00:23:13] With colleagues could also really drive our own self-confidence. I think as someone who has a fairly high level of sort of self-criticism, I can quickly lose sight of actually what my accomplishments are and then sometimes even minimize them. But that kind of very intentional and sort of conscious process of looking at what we're achieving, what we're contributing.
[00:23:33] And whether that's individually and as a team, I think it's such an important lens for us all to focus on. And I think also using those one-on-ones such a great reminder to not just be status updates. This is where we're at, but this is what we've actually achieved. Even if it is simply a lesson learned from perhaps an intelligent failure that we've had.
[00:23:52] Really helpful and practical skills there. Melody, and you spoke earlier to this, you know, through Covid, how people had. To some extent lost a sense of control in their work and that this is a part of where your work comes from. And I'd love to understand how it is that managing up can help us really regain a sense of control, perhaps some agency in our work lives.
[00:24:16] Melody Wilding: Well, let's take an example from one of the other conversations, which is goes hand in hand with visibility, which is advancement, right? So once you're more visible, once more people know about your work and your accomplishments, you're positioning yourself for more advancement, whatever that means for you.
[00:24:32] Because it may not mean a formal promotion, it may mean growing your scope or your team size. It could mean a stretch project. And so broadening our idea of that. When it comes to advancement, a lot of us sit back and wait to be anointed with that. We sit back and we wait to be noticed. Or worse. What I have seen happen is we fall into the performance review paradox where we wait and we think our performance review is going to be this time where we have this professional development conversation.
[00:25:06] And I've had so many folks that leave that very disappointed because their manager will say. I wish you told me this six months ago when we were doing headcount planning or we were doing leveling or whatever it was, and so a great example of you being more in the driver's seat, taking control of your career is starting to plant those seeds much earlier.
[00:25:28] To say now at your mid-year review, you know, by the end of this year, I would love to move from an L six to an L seven. What specifically would you need to see or what would need to happen by that point to make that possible? And by doing that, you've gotten your intentions out on the table, right? You're going to feel more confident that, right?
[00:25:48] I'm not just letting this happen to me. I'm engineering the future that I want, and it's also going to allow you to unearth objections that your manager may have. You're not ready. We need to see this skillset, or this stakeholder needs to be bought in, whatever it is. It allows you to contract around that so that every quarter in your one-on-ones, you can say, right.
[00:26:11] I know earlier in the year we had talked about this in terms of being prepared for my promotion. I've accomplished X, Y, and Z. Do you still feel I'm on track? Has anything changed? And again, this is where, because you're taking your development more seriously, other people will take it more seriously. It's going to be more likely that it happens because you actually have a clear plan.
[00:26:34] And it's less likely you're going to be sideswiped by some of those changes because. It's top of mind. It's top of mind for you and for them.
[00:26:43] Alexis Zahner: Thank you so much for that melody. And going back to the visibility piece, when we actually earmark ourselves as being someone who wants to strive for a promotion or we make those intentions clear to our superiors and to those around us, I think it just puts ourselves in the conversation.
[00:26:57] So often in my career, I've just assumed that people know, of course I want professional development. Of course, I want progression. Why else do any of us, I. Well in my mind, do this to begin with, but it's actually not that obvious and we forget that just by asking, we actually can fast track that progress as well if we weren't even up for a consideration.
[00:27:19] So such a helpful way of looking at it.
[00:27:21] Melody Wilding: Yeah,
[00:27:22] Alexis Zahner: exactly. Now Melody, the book is full with extremely powerful conversations that I do hope people get a copy of your book and go and use in a very practical way. 'cause certainly there's so many tangible skills in there that Sally and I were remarking before this podcast we're already using as a result of your book.
[00:27:40] So we really loved it. But could you leave us with one final message for leaders listening to this conversation around the power of managing up? If there's nothing else they take from this, what is it they really need to know right now?
[00:27:53] Melody Wilding: I wanna say something that really wraps up a theme of everything we talked about today, which is you teach people how to treat you.
[00:28:01] So I want everybody to think about how you are teaching people how to treat you, whether you are someone who is managing up to others, or you want people to manage up to you because. Something we didn't touch on too much, but is one of my favorite chapters is actually the styles. Yeah. Conversation. Yeah, that's a great example of this.
[00:28:21] If you as a leader can be explicit about, Hey, here's how I like to receive feedback when you send me a presentation, these are the types of things I'd like to see or questions you should be thinking about. That removes so much ambiguity and uncertainty, which is rampant today. So if you as a leader can create that clarity for people to get the best out of working with you, it also goes if you are trying to manage up, if you approach someone and you're tentative and say, well, I don't know if this is really gonna work, or you ramble with your idea, other people respond to that.
[00:28:58] Yeah. And they take cues from your behavior and. If you can come to the table with more confidence, more conviction, greater clarity for yourself, people respond to that and the dynamics change around you. So we have much more power than we think we do.
[00:29:14] Sally Clarke: Incredibly powerful. I had goosebumps when you said, we teach people how to treat us, and I think it's such an important insight.
[00:29:20] And what I'm also hearing is we think of managing up as the context of our relationship with other people at the workplace. And what I'm hearing as well, melody, is that it's also our relationship with ourselves that can change fundamentally through this process of thinking about these conversations, having them and managing up.
[00:29:36] So thank you so much. For sharing your incredible wisdom with us today on we Are Human Leaders. We've loved this conversation.
[00:29:43] Melody Wilding: Thank you so much. Me too.
[00:29:51] Sally Clarke: Thank you for joining us at We Are Human Leaders, and even in the short time since we recorded this conversation, I've found myself. Adapting melodies wisdom to so many of my own conversations in the context of work and finding it an incredibly useful framework. You can learn more about Melody and her work in the show notes, and of course, learn more about we are human leaders at www dot.
[00:30:12] We are human leaders.com. See you next time.