HBR 20-Minute Manager Boxed Set (10 Books) (HBR 20-Minute Manager Series)

Knowing Your Manager—and Yourself

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your manager extends the accommodation in the

other direction, adjusting her practices a bit to suit

what matters most to you.

Motivators

At every employee’s core, from entry-level worker to

CEO, are the things that drive her to do good work.

Identifying what motivates your boss is a key compo-

nent of managing up.

Sometimes it’s easy. For example, if your manager

is driven by a desire to trim costs, she has probably

shared that publicly. You might support that aim by

streamlining redundancies in processes or systems

that you oversee.

But some motivators run deeper. Perhaps your

manager is a “big picture” person, inspired by vision,

and prefers to leave details to team members like you.

In that case, don’t dive ...