A Masterclass on Managing Up
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
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Great message, Shreyas! The simple rule is: If you manage your manager(s), they don't have to manage you!
Managing up by asking for resources to unblock is high agency by itself. Asking for help demonstrates how you would approach the problem, how do you think the support could turn out, and make your manager feel been seen.
This works out especially good if you always have some credibility in the team.
This one was especially helpful.. something that I’m really struggling with myself
Can relate so much to what you articulated
Hi Shreyas thanks for sharing this. Did you ever feel like operating behind the scenes sort of negated your work and results you were able to accomplish? If it did, how did you find a balance?
Wonderful question. I LOVED operating behind the scenes. It made me a much better manager (and a much happier person) later in my career.
It also brought better results. When you operate behind the scenes and let team members / cross-functional peers take the limelight (if they like that), you get much greater buy-in from everyone. For example: if you make people arrive at the idea themselves (by nudging them towards it), they will be much more excited to work on the idea than if you tell them the idea and ask for their feedback (the standard management approach).
Now, with regards to whether I got "all the credit I deserved", likely not. When you operate like this, you kinda have to be fine with not getting personal credit for everything, from everyone.
Some astute managers above me were able to see how my fingerprints were everywhere (even though I wasn't overtly visible). So I got recognized for my work by them (because they mainly cared about impact to the business, not optics).
Simultaneously, I am sure there were many people around me who didn't quite see how my leadership style was very different than is typical in our industry. They might have been confused why the products I ran always succeeded, even though I was not very visible. They might have attributed that success to other factors (e.g. luck, other people who were working around me). And frankly, by the time I had fully embraced operating behind the scenes as a leader, I had reached a level of success, competence, self-awareness, and maturity that it didn't bother me that everyone wasn't aware of my singular impact.
One book I recommend on this topic: Tao Te Ching. In some of its verses, it brings up the topic of this type of quiet, behind the scenes leadership style. When I first read Tao Te Ching a few years ago, it was very validating that something I had independently discovered through my own experience and adaptation was actually written almost 2500 years ago!
@ShreyasDoshiVideos Great insight. Thanks for sharing this. Although I got it why we need to manage up and in situations where managing up is definitely needed/helpful but not able to get how to manage up. Will you be elaborating more towards how to manage up as well 🙏
@@Sachin19219 This video describes some techniques and approaches for that. Perhaps give it another listen?
@@ShreyasDoshiVideos thank you for your response. This validates some of the thoughts I've been having about my leadership style as a product manager. I'll also be checking out Tao Te Ching and hope it helps me.
@@ShreyasDoshiVideos Very useful, thanks for sharing this. Would be interested to learn more about how you had nudged/influenced people such that they thought it was their idea instead of yours...!
Shreyas - did you figure out a way / template that made it less of an overhead for you when you did communicate more frequently as a leader to your management?
Hi Shreyas, I face a similar issue in my career currently. I somewhere feel that if I complain/show frustration about difficult issues while I am handling a complex project or issues working with other teams, I am worried that the manager might think that I am not competent and share all the problems. So, I always end up talking about the issue only after solving the problem. But again, it is always a watered-down version as I am not good at bragging about it or talking about all the hard work that went into it to resolve that issue. Any advice on how to balance when to discuss such issues and how much so that my manager is aligned with me and recognizes/appreciates all the hard work that goes into my job?