Managing up, with Melody Wilding

Career expert Melody Wilding explains how to get what you need from the people in charge

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice

(00:23):
they have for the rest of us. So today I
am delighted to welcome Melody Wilding to the show. Melody
is the author of the brand new book Managing Up,
how to get what you need from the people in charge.
So Melody, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
I'm excited to have you. So why don't you tell
our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, my background is as a therapist and that's how
I started my career. I teach human behavior at their
graduate level and am a executive coach, and all of
my work is really about helping people find what I
call your professional power position, where you are able to
manage your own psychology at work, your own insecurities, doubts,
hang ups, but you're also tackling the other side of

(01:06):
the equation, which is influencing other people's psychology. And that's
where managing Up comes in.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, well, I have to say I get a lot
of career books, leadership books, etc. Crossing my desk, there
are not that many that go in that direction, right,
that are about managing up. And so I wonder how
you came to this topic and why it was interesting
to you.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah. Well, A big thing is because my first book,
Trust Yourself, came out in twenty twenty one, and that
was really the managing yourself side of the equation, and
what I kept hearing from people over and over, regardless
of what level they were at, whether they were more junior,
but most of my clients are mid to senior level,
and there was this theme of where all of my

(01:50):
confidence breaks down is when I have to deal with
people that feel more intimidating to me, or I'm in
those rooms or those conversations that feel higher stakes. And
there was this conce distant theme about managing up, dealing
with people in authority, navigating politics and power dynamics. And
so I think for so many of us, especially those
who are recovering people pleasers, this is not a skill

(02:12):
you're really taught yet. So much of it comes down
to being able to leverage your empathy, your emotional intelligence,
just channel it in a different way.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah. And one of the things you say in the
book is, I mean, this is not about, you know,
flattering your boss, like managing up is not purely about
making sure your boss thinks he or she is the
most awesome person in the world, and by reflection, you
are too. I guess maybe you can talk a little
bit more about what it truly means and why this
might be a benefit to someone beyond just you know,
getting in good with the people in charge.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah. I appreciate you saying that, because that is most
of the time we hear managing up and we think
sucking up. Right, we equate those two things together. And
it makes sense because traditionally, for decades, that's how it
was portrayed. If you think about like Wolf of Wall
Street or any of those old movies, the person who's
managing up is the person who's running behind the boss
with the coffee order and just the yes person. And

(03:07):
the workplace has changed, but also what people want out
of work has changed, and so rather than having that
subordinate order taker mentality where it's just managing up is
me pleasing my boss, what I am advocating for and
when I see people do this successfully, they realize that
managing up is something you actually do for yourself. It's

(03:30):
something you do to create the conditions for your success,
whether that is pushing back, giving feedback up the chain
of command, being able to set limits and expectations around
the work, getting clarity around what success does look like
in your role so you can track against that, advocating
for your own advancement. Those are all things that put

(03:50):
you in the best position to get what you need
from the people who.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Are in charge. Absolutely, So you have ten conversations in
this book that you want people to have with with
their managers as part of managing this relationship. We're not
gonna be able to talk through all ten, unfortunately, but
I do want to talk about a few of them.
Why don't we start with the alignment conversation? I guess
we truly want to know what the person sees as good, right.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
That's right, we have We have to start there because
if we don't know what we're trying to work towards,
we're we're going to be spinning our wheels, right, And
that's that's where when we fail to have the alignment conversation,
we feel frustrated. We feel like we're sidelined because unbeknownst
to us, we may not be working on what our
boss or the organization actually sees as important or promotable work.

(04:40):
And so that's why it is the first conversation in
the book. It is the most foundational. It also tends
to be an easy entry point because so much of
it is about observation, noticing what is important to your manager,
but also asking good questions. So this is not having
to come right out and advocate for yourself. It's mostly

(05:01):
being a good listener.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
And we're not starting with promote me. We're going first
in with being like, well, well, you can tell me
what are some good questions I should be asking a
manager in order to make sure that our visions of
success are aligned.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Correct. Yeah, ask a better question, you get a better answer.
And so instead of just saying, well, what are your priorities,
you might get a surface level answer from that. A
few of my favorites from that chapter. One of them
is what are the metrics your boss is discussing with you?
Because that gives you almost a very instant shortcut into
what your manager is being evaluated against and guess what

(05:36):
they're going to care a lot and give a lot
of attention to that. So that's one of them. Another
one is what does good performance look like in this
role to you? And then pause, let your manager answer
and say, great, what does great performance look like now?

Speaker 1 (05:52):
And you may put a.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Timeframe around that over the next three or six months
or by the end of the year. But that one's
really useful because that comparison between good and great it
helps get under the hood of maybe some of the
unspoken or abstract, the intangible qualities that your manager or
the organization sees make someone a high performer that may

(06:15):
not come out in a roadmapping or KPI exercise.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, and you mentioned that earlier in your career at
one point, like sometimes all these alignment conversations or sense
it will surface some things like you've learned that your
role is expendable, And I guess that's good to know.
I mean, you went through that in your career at
one point.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Right, I did I talk about that in that first chapter.
It is really something I kept hidden for many years
because I was embarrassed by it. And yes, I had
failed to have the alignment conversation deep enough. I had
surface level alignment with my manager, what are we accomplishing
day to day, week to week? But I really fail
to push further and say why is what I'm working

(06:58):
on important to the business and how is that being reported?
And what budget is going into this? I did not
dig deeper. I didn't have the courage to do it. Frankly,
I think maybe I was afraid of the answer now
as I reflect on it further, But yes, you know
when time came for cuts that my role was eliminated
because it wasn't core, was seen as a money pit.

(07:20):
And this is where, yes, we're not going to get
to all ten conversations today, but were some of the
other ones could save you. For example, if I had
been on top of having more of the visibility or
the networking conversation, then I might have had other advocates
behind my boss who knew about my skills beyond just
what I was doing on this one project, who may

(07:41):
have been willing to pull me over to their teams.
But I did it. So it's an extreme example of
what can happen.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Absolutely Well, we're going to take a quick ad break
and then I'll be back with more from Melody Wilding.
Well with Melody Wilding, who is talking about her brand
new book, Managing Up. We're learning how to deal with
the people in charge, not just to flatter them, but
in order to make sure that we get what we

(08:09):
want out of our careers. So we were talking about
aligning and making sure that what success looks for our
managers is informing what we are we are doing with
our time at work. Another one of these important conversations, though,
is the style one. And I wonder how much of
clashes or people perceive as trouble and like I have

(08:30):
a terrible boss or something like that, is a different
style and how we can sort of suss out what
this person.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Is A lot to answer your question, A lot of
what I see conflict tension in the workplace does come
down to a difference in styles, because what we often
perceive as someone being difficult, you know, they're hard to
work with, is actually a we're talking past each other
in terms of our preferences, our approaches are values around
the work And so how can we susce this out?

(09:00):
You said, we need to really focus on decoding the
people around us, because when we can understand that, when
we can put their behavior in context and see this
is a product of how this person's lens and this
is not them trying to talk over me, railroad me.
We stop taking the work so personally and we can
make thoughtful adjustments to how we do that. So in

(09:23):
the book I talk about how, if you look at
a lot of the psychological research, communication styles really break
down into two dimensions. We have dominance, how assertive and
how much control does someone like? And we have associability
how much connection and rapport building interaction with other people
does the person want so higher low. You plot that

(09:47):
and we get again, broadly speaking, four different communication styles.
There are lots of different models for this. In the book,
I call them the four c's. And let's just take
a classic example. You may be working for someone who
in the book I would call a commander. This is
someone who is highly dominant and lower on sociability. These

(10:09):
people are very results oriented, they get to the point fast,
they move quickly. They really don't care as much about
people's feelings and consensus, and so sometimes they can seem
a bit dismissive and dominant. Frankly, now, you may be
someone who is what I would call a caretaker, the
exact opposite someone who is low on dominance and high

(10:32):
on sociability. You value stability, harmony, You do value relationships.
You want everyone to be happy and on board. You
care about morale. And a classic clash between these two
people is that the caretaker is someone who likes to
think before they act, who may need questions in advance,

(10:53):
who want to deliberate before they make a decision, whereas
the commander is someone who just wants you to get
right to the point. And so if you, as a
caretaker employee, are approaching your manager and you're leading with
all of the context and background and the theory and
how we got here, your manager is likely going to
cut you off and say that's great, I don't really care.

(11:14):
Can you tell me the main point of what you
need from me right now? And that's when you feel dismissed,
right you feel like I put so much time into
this and you're just cutting me off here. And so
not only again, we can put that into context and
not take it personally that my boss hates me and
I should just leave, but we can also just make

(11:34):
little tweaks. I call it flexing in the book flexing
your style. You don't have to change who you are
and what you value. You just change how you package
and present it. So instead of leading with all the context,
you give your executives a summary or a few bullet points.
And at the end of the day, that benefits you
because you eliminate a lot of stress for yourself. Your

(11:55):
message actually lands and again you're not you're not not
being true to yourself. You are still getting what's important
to you across but in a way they're actually going
to hear.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
And I suppose that goes in the other direction too.
I mean you can envision the opposite where you have
more of a caretaker boss and you are very kind
of to the point kind of person. You're walking in
and saying I want this, and the person's like, WHOA,
can't do that right now? And because they want the
whole context, they want you to lead up to it,
like why or why am I asking for this? Like
what's the background? Who else has done this? They want
all that sort of information first.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
That's exactly right. Yeah, and you can you can make
that thoughtful adjustment pretty easily, right, just just come with
a little bit of the background and that's it.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, really quick story gets them on the all at ease.
It'll all be good. And part of this though, of course,
is you have to know yourself then, because I'm sure
there's plenty of people like, well, I don't know which
C I am? So how are we? How do we?
How do we go about figuring that out?

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yes? Well, in the book there's there's a much deeper
kind of diagnostic that it that it walks through all
of the different values, the strengths, the weaknesses of all
of the different types. But in that chapter there's one
exercise that actually is my favorite in the entire book.
I call it the me Manual, which is you creating
a guide to yourself as a professional. This is something

(13:15):
you do first and foremost for yourself because most of
us never slow down to think about our own preferences.
It's just the water we swim in, so we've never
taken the time to articulate actually, how do I make decisions?
How do I like to receive feedback? What are some
of the maybe unspoken expectations I have about how quickly
work should be done or when when my hours on

(13:39):
or off are And so your MEW manual actually forces
you to get that down on paper. It's almost like
your operation manual to you it can absolutely be something
you share with your manager. I have people who are
in workplace cultures where they bring this to their boss
and they say, listen, I want to give you the
chee chet for getting the best performance out of me,

(14:01):
and we can talk through some highlights here. And I
have had people who say their boss is like, this
is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Can can I do this too?

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Because I want to give this to my leader. So
you never know the reaction you might get, but at
the very least, it gives you a way to be
able to assert your preferences and your style when you
need to. So an example is, let's say that a
new project team is coming together. And I'm using this
example intentionally because managing up it, especially in today's workplace,

(14:34):
it doesn't always look like or rather I should say,
it has to look like extending beyond just our direct supervisor,
because we're dealing with other people in power beyond our boss.
And so let's say you have a new project team
coming together and there's other folks from cross functional divisions
who have more authority than you. What I always suggest

(14:56):
is that people at the beginning of those types of relationships,
you are the one to say we are not always
going to see eye to eye. And when we have
those situations where we have to work through some sort
of conflict or tension or prioritization, how do you want
to approach that. What are the sorts of things you
weigh or that are important to you that I could
bring to that conversation, And you let that person respond,

(15:18):
and you say, that's so helpful for me. Here's what
I would really value, Here's how I tend to think
through these things. So it becomes more of a two
way street rather than you just becoming a chameleon who's
adapting to everybody else.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Absolutely. One of the other conversations is about boundaries, and
you know, this is a podcast about time management, and
so one of the things that obviously you know, keeps
people from managing their time in the way that they
want is that their manager is making demands that are
perhaps not helping in that regard. So let's say that
your boss is making demands that is making your life bad.

(15:55):
How can you approach them to get to a better place.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yes, well, let's start with the fact that why is
this so hard for us? And because most of us
we're trying to straddle this tightrope of wanting to be
a team player, right, we need to create that perception
that we're collaborative. We step up when it matters, but
at the same time, we don't want to be a pushover.
And I always say, you teach people how to treat you,

(16:21):
and so those having those boundaries, we want to make
sure we're teaching people to respect our time and our bandwidth.
And so start by asking questions, because so often, when
yet another thing is dumped on our plate, yet another
task is given to us, we go to one extreme
or the other. We go to the extreme of the

(16:43):
people pleaser passive, Sure, I'll get it done, I'll figure
out how to fit it in. Or we are already
at our limit and we snap back, and even if
it's our manager, we might say, I can't believe you're
giving this us. We're already underwater. So rather than those
two extremes, ask questions first by yourself a little bit
of time to calm down and get more details about

(17:06):
what's involved, because you may not always know on the
face of it, is this something I want to say
yes to or no? You can ask things like what's
driving the urgency here, what's the real deadline, Who else
is this visible to or who else is going to
be involved? Why did myself or my team come to
mind for this at first? And that can give you
a lot of good details to decide maybe this is

(17:28):
a good exposure opportunity or a skill building opportunity for
me or somebody else on my team. It can also
give you information about maybe I can redirect this to
somebody else. Maybe you find actually this is a process
that sits with operations or HR not with us, and
it gives you a leg to stand on to redirect it.

(17:49):
That's one thing is to ask questions first so you
know what's involved in that chapter. I give a number
of other different frameworks you can use for setting boundaries.
My favorite of those is the trade off approach, which
is essentially saying, I hear that you want both X
and Y done. In order to do that, then we

(18:09):
need to delegate or deprioritize something else. Are you okay
with that? When you do that, you're setting up a
Actually what's in what in research is called force choice, right,
you are setting up the illusion of control that someone
can only choose from A or B, and you're just

(18:30):
highlighting the reality that both of these things cannot be done,
but you're also approaching it from problem solving perspective. You're
not just shutting the request down and saying we can't
do that. You're approaching it to say, Okay, I understand,
I want to make both of these things happen, but
something has to give and subtly, especially if this is
someone who is maybe a level or two above you,

(18:52):
it's important to also signal that you do have some
recognition of the hierarchy. You are putting it back in
the other person's core to say, you make the call.
I can make a recommendation to say, based on from
where I said, I think we should prioritize A and
then pick up B in a couple of weeks. But
at the end of the day, it's your call. You

(19:13):
tell us what to do, and then we'll execute that.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Yeah, I love it. It's like what we do with toddlers.
You could wear the red pants or the blue pants.
It's like, I don't want to wear any pants. Well,
that's not really a choice.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Do you know what is so funny? As I have
been talking about the book, that example has been brought
up over I would say a dozen times now it's
so interesting what we do with.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Course choice with everyone. All Right, well, we're going to
take one more quick ad break and then we'll be
back with more for Melody Wilding. Well, I am back
with Melody Wilding, who is the author of the new
book Managing Up about getting what we want from the
people in charge. Let's talk about if it doesn't happen

(19:56):
the first time though, maybe you ask for something, you
try to have a conversation about boundaries or even about
you know, future promotions or anything like that, and you
get a lot of resistance. Is this just the way
it is? Or the things we can do to kind
of work through the resistance over time?

Speaker 2 (20:16):
I would say there's always things you can do. Everyone
has their threshold of how much they are willing to do.
But in the book, I took a lot of care
to make sure that there was a lot of tips
and strategies for what do I do when this happens
or I get this objection or this type of resistance.
So a moment ago we were talking about boundaries and

(20:39):
a common form of resistance you may get there is
when someone tries to guilt trip you to say, oh,
but I thought you were a team player, I really
expected more from you. When that happens, you can actually
turn that assumption around and say, I'm bringing this up
because I am a team player, because I do care
about us being successful, and because of that, I to

(21:00):
make sure our deadline is realistic here. And so that's
a really good strategy there.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
When that happens, excellent, excellent.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Well.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
One of the things I always ask people with this
show is about your own personal productivity. Do you have
any routines in your daily life that help you be
more effective?

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yes, I am disciplined. Is my top strength finder strength
if you're familiar with that. And the way that ends
up manifesting for me is I try to eliminate so
much decision fatigue from my life, and so I am
one of those boring people who eats the same thing
every day because I want to remove the decision fatigue

(21:38):
of worrying about what I have to eat, and I
have processes for things I need to do in my business.
I am always looking for ways how do I remove
little choices and decisions so that I have brain power
for all of the other things. I start all of
my days the same way with a workout, and that
really helps just wake my brain up in the morning.

(22:03):
But yes, routine is huge for me because I forget
who said it, but that idea of discipline equals freedom
for me, That's absolutely true.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
I'm curious when you say there are certain things you
do with your business to like, do you devote certain
times each week to certain aspects of your business? Is
it like time block that way? What's the what does
that look like?

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Great question? So I do time block. But what I
have found works for me is I do almost like
themed days when I can. So I have sort of
on days and then content creation days. My on days
are podcasting, speaking, meetings clients, and then I have days
where I don't have to be on camera, I don't

(22:42):
really have to be speaking out loud, and I'm heads
down and creating emails or writing podcasts and things like that.
So for me, I kind of kind of think about
what mode do I need to be in, and I
try to you know, thankfully, I do have more control
over my schedule than the average person. I try to
batch those things together. It's not always possible, but it

(23:03):
definitely helps me eliminate some of that context switching.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Excellent, excellent. And then I also ask guests, what is
something you've done recently to take a day from great
to awesome?

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Oh, what is something I've done to take a day
from great to awesome? I have really been making an
effort to get outside more because someone who works from home,
it's very easy to just sit at your desk for
eight hours a day, and finally the weather is starting
to get better, and it just it just shifts your
whole perspective. There's something just about getting outside that and

(23:39):
also just changing modes. Like I was saying, context switching
a moment ago, sometimes you need those breaks in the
day as almost a reset moment. I'm always telling my
clients because they are people who will beat themselves up
and say, oh, well I wasted today, the day is gone.
Don't get into that all or nothing thinking. Every moment.
You know, every hour is another chance to reset, and

(24:02):
just taking that break to go outside can be that
opportunity to say, all right, now, this is the second
half of the day, how do I want to make
this successful? Even if the first half didn't quite turn
out just as I wanted it to.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Absolutely, you can always seize any sort of fresh start.
What are you looking forward to these days?

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Oh, I am looking forward to we are actually now
that the book is out, we're in the process of
completely revamping a lot of my programs and we just
went through a huge rebrand, so it's been very fun
and exciting to shift everything to be around this idea
I was talking about before, of the professional power position,

(24:39):
kind of the combination of mastering yourself and also influencing others.
So that's been a lot of fun, and it's also
been intellectually challenging, let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
That's so exciting. It's always good to shake things up
in a good way. Melodie, where can people find you?

Speaker 2 (24:53):
You can head to Melody Wilding dot com. All the
information about my books speaking, everything's there.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
Awesome, Melie, thank you so much for joining us. Thank
you for everyone for listening. If you have feedback about
this or any other episode, you can always reach me
at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime,
this is Laura. Thanks for listening, and here's to making
the most of our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast.

(25:24):
If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast
is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia,
please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(25:46):
listen to your favorite shows.