Managing your manager

It has been well documented in management circles the difference between leading and managing relates to transactional and transformational principles. Leadership occurs at all levels of an organisation, unfortunately all too often an ineffective manager stifles the work of a subordinate with the worker needing to manage their manager to get the job done efficiently.

This bottom-up approach to leadership is in direct contrast to the top-down approach employed at most organisations, yet it is proving to be more effective in many circumstances. The role of the manager is for you to perform your job efficiently, their role is to allocate resources you require to succeed, to make decisions based on metrics and to secure support to perform the task.

If success was measured exclusively on how well you do your job, there would be no requirement to manage your boss, this unfortunately is rarely the case. This requires you to identify their prime motivations, support their success by understanding their weaknesses and reacting accordingly and finally bring them solutions - not problems.

The manager works for the worker, not the other way around - the manager is a direct cost to the business whereas the worker is a productive resource. With a greater level of training and development the classic roles of management of planning, organising, leading and controlling are known - understood and practiced by workers. There is an old adage, you don't leave jobs, you leave managers - this rings true again.