Leading from the Middle

4Leading Your Boss

Anyone who has ever had a boss knows that effectively influencing and interacting with said boss can be tricky and even angst inducing. Those who do it best realize that it's not just one of the many relationships you must manage while leading from the middle, it's the opportunity for a full‐on partnership, one vital for business success and that's two times more critical for your career success than any other relationship, according to a McKinsey study.¹ Being held in high regard by your boss is one of the most powerful forms of influence and visibility you can wield. Not to mention that if you want to be considered good at managing people (which most of us do), people includes your boss.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to build a partnership with your boss (and even their boss), step by step, play by play, with a method proven over three decades of research and experience. Understand that in attempting to create a great partnership with their boss, too many try to do too much, too soon, or skip critical actions that dramatically compromise the quality of the collaboration further down the line. But you can step up to a power partnership by following The Managing Up Staircase (as shown in Figure 4.1). Let's take it one step at a time.

Step 1: Nature Before Nurture

First and foremost, before you can nurture anything, it's important to understand and embrace the fundamental nature of an effective boss and subordinate relationship. That is, it's interdependence ...