Mindsets and Methods for Managing Up
Episode 496 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Melody Wilding
How you communicate with your boss can deeply impact your career success.
The ability to manage people is vital for directors and those in charge of employees, but it’s just as important for anyone who has to interact with an authority figure. We all need to manage up on occasion.
Despite its ubiquitous nature, it’s a skill many of us are never taught or tend to overlook unless we’re in a formal leadership role. Melody Wilding, an author, therapist, and professor of human behavior at Hunter College, combined years of experience and research around this topic in her new book, Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge, out today!
Melody was named one of Insider’s Most Innovative Career Coaches, and she excels at combining her background in evidence-based neuroscience and psychology with professional development. After writing her first book, Trust Yourself, she got feedback that the book helped people feel more confident in their interactions with others but that dealing with leaders felt particularly challenging.
Influencing and persuading can feel sneaky or disingenuous if it’s not something you’re used to, but people who can accommodate both their own communication style and that of the person they’re communicating with drastically change how they are perceived and how they rise through the ranks at work. And best of all, it’s a completely learnable skill.
In this episode, Melody shares some key points from Managing Up that can help all of us reconsider how we think about and improve our communication with those in positions of power.
Get into your boss’s head - for both your sakes
All of us have interacted with someone with a different communication style at some point. You think you’re saying all the right things, but at the end of the conversation, you feel frustrated that you haven’t accomplished what you hoped.
Melody kicks off Managing Up with communication alignment: in order to have productive conversations, you need to understand where your boss (or whomever you’re speaking to) is coming from.
Asking them to list their priorities can help, but questions that really get to the heart of their goals will net you even more details. If you have a supervisor who isn’t great at detailing the nitty gritty, say, phrasing questions as binaries instead of leaving them open-ended makes a huge difference. Try swapping “What’s the best approach?” with “Do you think approach A or approach B is better?”
In addition to the emotional labor of catering to multiple communication styles and influencing workplace outcomes (something women, for better or worse, naturally excel at), the extra prep can feel like you’re doing their job for them—isn’t it up to them to provide helpful answers and clear guidance?
In fact, you’re serving both your own and their interests with this approach. When you show up armed with options, you highlight that you’ve thought about the situation and have ideas—you’re there now to align those ideas with their priorities. With simple adjustments to how you seek guidance, you present yourself as a trusted partner to your boss instead of simply a direct report.
It’s up to you to teach people how to treat you
One important part of managing up is setting clear boundaries around your time and responsibilities. Take the person who responds to every email in seconds, for example. As soon as you flash-reply to a few emails, you create an often unattainable standard that others might come to expect.
Likewise, we need to check ourselves before offhandedly apologizing. For so many people, it becomes a crutch—sorry, I was just thinking…; sorry, I can’t help with that; sorry I missed your unexpected phone call. If we auto-apologize for every question and unaccepted task, we imply that our opinion and our time shouldn’t be taken as seriously as the person who avoids this knee-jerk response.
Balance being a team player and pushing back
Melody points out that, as we’ve heard for years now, “no” is a complete sentence…just not always in the office. We might have to be softer in our negatives to ensure we come off as the team players we truly are.
To strike the balance between responding in the negative and agreeing immediately, Melody suggests using requests as springboards to highlight risks and tradeoffs your manager may have overlooked.
They’re focused on something that needs to be checked off their list—maybe their manager is demanding it be done. Instead of refusing to take on a task, ask for specifics about how urgent it is, why you were tagged for it, and who else will be involved. Now, you can frame your response in a way that shows you’re dedicated and organized even if you pass on it: if you tackle task A, it will mean that tasks B and C need to be reassigned or delayed. You know more about task A, so you can confidently ascertain whether or not those delays are wise and express this opinion to your boss.
Plant the seeds for your next promotion
At the end of Managing Up, you’ll be a pro at communicating with your boss. But how does all that hard work translate to the promotion or pay raise you’ve been striving to secure?
It’s been bred into us that if we keep our heads down and do good work, we’ll be recognized eventually. However, countless workplace horror stories disprove this. Rather than waiting patiently for that promotion, Melody stresses that we have to seed our interest and prime our managers along the way.
If you’ve ever walked into a performance review certain your promotion is in the works, only to be shocked and disappointed when talk of advancement doesn’t even come up—or worse, see the look of surprise on your boss’s face when you mention it—you’re far from alone.
Don’t wait for that meeting to bring up your interest in future opportunities. As soon as you complete a successful project, build on that win by telling your boss that you’d love to do more. This not only puts the bug in their ear early and repeatedly, but it also helps you feel out any objections along the way. If they mention someone else will be handling the next project, you can facilitate a conversation about what more you need to earn that distinction. Put the onus on your leader to be clear about what you need to do to succeed.
At the end of the day, taking these steps might show you that you’ve hit the proverbial wall in your position. If you are setting boundaries, communicating proactively, and highlighting your wins, and you’re still not getting any promotion bites, you need to gather up that hard-won integrity and leave. Take your top-notch conversation skills and career experience to a company where you can thrive.
What do you make of the art of managing up? Have you always been good at it, or does it feel like a huge chore? Does the added emotional labor feel unfair or worthwhile? Join the conversation in the Courage Community on Facebook or our group on LinkedIn, and share your take on Melody’s psychology-backed recommendations for improving your communication skills and confidently driving your career progress.
Related links from today’s episode:
Order “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge”
Episode 218, “Managing Your Inner Critic”
SPEAK UP: An Assertive Leadership Course for Women in the Workplace
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 496. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up,
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
and today I'm delighted to be sitting down with a longtime friend in the personal and professional development space, an author, a rock star, and a friend of the show, Melody Wilding, whose new book Managing Up: How To Get What You Need From The People In Charge is out today. Melody is a professor of human behavior at Hunter College and the author of Managing Up as of today, as well as her previous book Trust Yourself, which we broke down with her back in 2020 on this very podcast, which I will drop a link to in today's show notes.
She was recently named one of Insider's most innovative career coaches and her background as a therapist and emotions researcher informs her unique approach, weaving evidence based neuroscience and psychology in with professional development. Melody, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast or welcome back, I should say.
MELODY: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be back with you too.
EMILIE: Yeah, it's great to be back. We're old pals and I've admired your rise from afar and think what you're doing is phenomenal. Why Managing Up, why this topic? And how do you even kind of conceive of this concept?
MELODY: Yeah, well, we talked way back when in like 2021 when my first book came out, Trust Yourself. And as that book sort of made its way around, I would hear feedback from people saying, this is great. I feel more secure in myself, I feel more confident. But it all breaks down when I have to deal with someone that has higher authority than me or who is a more dominant personality. And that caught my attention after hearing it so many times. And I work with people who tend to be a bit more sensitive, right? Thoughtful, very perceptive, but at the same time may overthink things. And they were telling me, you know, I just, I keep rewriting this email five times and I'm just such a people pleaser. When someone comes to me, I just automatically say, yes, I can't push back.
And what I realized is that they were blaming themselves and thinking this is a inadequacy, a fault, like a fundamental flaw in me that I need to work on psychologically and unpack, when in reality everything they were talking about really came down to missing the skill set of Managing Up, of influencing, persuading other people, being able to diplomatically push back, give up more feedback. And that's all very learnable. So I hope that's a relief for people that it's actually a solvable problem.
EMILIE: Yeah. And it's a multifaceted one because you're not only trying to control for your own communication style and your own variables that are within your, you know, immediate sphere of influence, but you also have to kind of put yourself in the shoes of other people and try to read their minds, which is just a really hard skillset. Is there any mind reading strategies that you have in here? Because if only we could just put ourselves in our boss's shoes. Like how do you approach that?
MELODY: A little bit. And actually you're speaking to the first two chapters of the book. The first chapter is all about the alignment conversation, which there's literally an entire section about how do you get in your boss's head? Because you can say, oh, can you tell me about your priorities? And you may get a really vague answer, your boss may be rushed and sort of just brush you off. And so it's really about how do you ask better questions to really get at the heart the hidden motivations and fears and what's actually top of mind for your manager.
And then you mentioned like dealing with different personalities. And so if through alignment we know what we need to work on, what's most important and meaningful, then we need to talk about how do we do it. So the second chapter is all about the styles conversation. How do you decode the communication style of people you work with and then also how do you share and assert your own? Because managing up today, it needs to be treated more like a two way street. It's not just like pleasing your boss, sucking up to them, it's really about you getting what you need, creating the conditions for your success.
EMILIE: Yeah. And that requires some deep self worth, doesn't it, right? Like it requires knowing that even in hierarchical environment where there's power dynamics at play and you might not be the most powerful person in the room. If you're picking up this book, right? You can presume that we're going to be dealing with people with more authority and power. But if you come from a place of deep self worth and say, look, our communication styles may be different, but my needs are worth articulating, right? My needs are worth advocating for. And having your scripts and your strategies for how to do that in a diplomatic way can certainly be helpful. But like it starts from a place of self worth and knowing that it is worth your time, energy and effort to advocate for yourself, right?
MELODY: It does. We need to know how to master our own psychology, right? Like, our own insecurities and doubts and then also influence others. And a key philosophy that underlies everything in this book is that, you teach people how to treat you at work. And I'm sure you've seen examples of this for yourself. Like, if we respond to things within two seconds of getting them, then you're teaching people you're always going to be available.
EMILIE: Or, you know what I hate the most, Melody, is like, someone replies to an email that I sent two hours ago and says, I'm so sorry for the delay. And I'm like, what are you doing to set the bar for all of us by saying that? You know what I mean? Because we want to please, and we want to perfect, and we want to perform, and make everyone happy. But it's like coming from a well of deep self worth, we're going to say, you know, we're not going to apologize for being human. [LAUGH]
MELODY: Exactly. And you said a keyword there, apologize. I work with so many women in particular, like, we fall to over apologizing as a crutch. Like it just, it almost automatically just comes out. But if you're saying, you know, oh, I'm sorry for the delay, I'm sorry, I just have a quick question, right? People pick up on that signal and it sends the wrong message about how your idea should be taken seriously versus if you just say, I have a suggestion I would like to add here, right? When you show up differently, the way people respond to you, it shifts to the dynamics around you.
EMILIE: Totally. Now, I love how you, in this book really created 10 core conversations that can help us Manage Up. One of those is about boundaries conversations. What element of boundary setting has to do with Managing Up? And how can you do that in a diplomatic way so that it doesn't feel like you're ruffling feathers unnecessarily?
Especially if you do, as a high performer, want to please. Like, I get that I'm, you know, a brown noser, recovering perfectionist myself. It's like, how do I assert my boundaries? And coming from a place of self worth is a good place to start, but how do I actually set those boundaries and say no without, you know, pissing people off?
MELODY: That's right. And we have to reimagine what managing up means. Again, it is not sucking up. It may have looked like that 20, 30 years ago. You know, you think of like Wolf of Wall Street kind of a thing, and everybody's just falling at his feet. And your boss says, jump. And you ask, how high? That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about moving from that sort of professional people pleaser to being more of a trusted advisor, a partner to your manager.
And when it comes to pushing back to saying no, no is a complete sentence. In most other aspects of life, except for in the workplace, we have to be more diplomatic and sometimes softer about our no because we do have a reputation to manage. We do have to balance being a team player and protecting what's going on. And so when you act like more of a partner to your manager, saying no is really about surfacing risks, trade offs that your manager might not be aware of at their level because they're not in the work day to day, you are.
And so in the chapter I always say start out by digging for details. Don't just give a yes or no off the bat. Like for us people pleasers, we have to work on that knee jerk reaction of sure, yeah, sure, I can get to that. And asking a question really helps with that. It can be as simple as like, what's driving the urgency here? Can you explain or can you help me understand why I came to mind for this project? Who else is involved or who else will this be visible to? That does a few things, it helps you understand the fuller nature of the request because you might want to say yes to it. It's if it provides exposure or important skills, it may also introduce a piece of information that you could say, oh, actually that's better for the operations team to work on. Let me make an introduction or that's something I can pass off to them.
EMILIE: What you're saying here is so on point because I've always said in my communication around assertive communication, which is a big topic I speak to, I write about a lot, I podcast about all the time. Which is an assertive communication moment can also be a question. You can ask powerful assertive questions. And the help me understand question is just such a magic wand of a conversation starter that I think it's really worth underlining here, because if you can get the full context, which so rarely comes from a over scheduled under pressure boss, right? If you can get that person to really give you a little bit more context then then you can be that advisor and say, actually what I'd recommend here is not me for this job, not Friday for this deadline or if we do need to get this done by Friday, I'm going to push X, Y and Z off my plate until next week. Does that sound good to you, right? So I love asking questions to get more information, especially around boundary setting. It's such a secret sauce to Managing Up.
What happens when you are trying to Manage Up for someone who doesn't seem able to articulate their priorities? You know, when you were talking earlier about getting a sense of their vision or getting a sense of your own vision for how you move forward and in taking on ownership over your work and alignment with your boss, what happens when the environment that your boss is in is so volatile that things just constantly change? Priorities continuously get reshuffled.
MELODY: Yeah, a few things, you know, going to the boss. Some people do just have trouble articulating details like, it can be a styles difference where some people are just more 10,000 foot big picture thinkers, where there's other of us who are like, you know, on the ground in the minutia. And if you have a manager like that, it can be really helpful to present options or present binaries. So instead of asking a very open ended question like what do you think about this? Or what's your thoughts on the best direction.
You provide options to say, you know, based on my research, I think we should consider going with A or B. The considerations are A is cheaper, B will be faster. So based on those two, which is your preference, it reduces the cognitive load. And so much of successfully Managing Up, is reducing your leader's cognitive load, whether it's giving them something to react to in that way, or for example, if they have to advocate in a room that you're not in, giving them an email template they can send or FAQs, for example. And that goes to what you were saying around assertiveness is really, it gives you the opportunity to shape the narrative that's being told in the way you want it to be versus the other person's interpretation of it.
EMILIE: Totally. I love that so much. I feel like it speaks to taking initiative, right? We think of managing up as this potentially combative moment where you could step on someone else's toes. But really it's a kind thing that you're doing, right? You're doing the mental labor and taking on some of that cognitive load or mental load for your boss.
I was just in a meeting yesterday and I kind of knew the person coming to the meeting might be a little frazzled because they had been in back to back all week and they'd had a couple of really tumultuous weeks. And I took the initiative to say, well, here's the agenda that I put together. I'm going to assume you haven't had a chance to look at it yet, have you? Oh, you have. Okay, well, then let's dive right in. I hope you don't mind that I took a stab at this. Do you want to add anything to the agenda before we start?
And so I'm trying to give that person ownership and agency and power and influence, but also I'm not going to show up to this meeting and say, what do you want to talk about? Because I've got my own agenda. And so for folks who might be reticent to take that initiative because they want to ask for permission, and I squarely fall in the camp of asking for forgiveness, you know, what would you say to someone who's like, I could never do that to my boss? Like, that might feel like I'm being too much.
MELODY: Start small. If it's helpful, you could say, would it be helpful if I put together an agenda first? You can ask for permission in that respect. And actually there's a chapter called the Feedback Conversation, and there's this idea in there about, you know, getting that, that small buy in getting that micro. Yes. From someone that. Sure. Go ahead with that. Or even when it comes to feedback asking, oh, do you have a moment to chat? Or could we review what happened in that last meeting? Sure, yes.
When you do that, someone's a bit more bought in to it and they're going to want to act consistently with actually hearing you. And so I think just throw it out there and feel out the situation. They may say, actually, no, I need to get input from X, Y and Z from this person before we do that. That also gives you an opportunity to say, would it be helpful if I stepped in and I contacted the VP on your behalf to take that off your plate, right? Again, approaching it more as a partnership. That also gives you an opportunity.
EMILIE: Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And that partnership approach, again, speaks to self worth. It's like putting yourself on the same level of like, I'm a human who's worthy of this time and energy and attention and so is my boss, and so was this director. So it was this C-suiter, who I had the chance to speak to. And that sort of levels the playing field there psychologically.
So, Melody this book, it looks like, was really grounded in some original research you conducted. I'm dying to learn more. How did that look? What did that involve? And what were some of the biggest findings that came out of that research process?
MELODY: Yeah, and it was really like an excavation for me, like the researcher in me came out, that's my background. And like I said, I started noticing these patterns among my clients. But, those are the people I deal with, you know, day to day. And there may be some selection bias there. And so I went out to my broader community and first I wanted to understand how do people see Managing Up? And second, why would they want to do it? And actually the answers to that second question were even more interesting to me.
And I thought for sure I was going to hear people say, well, I want a promotion, I want to make more money, I would like a bigger title. Not at all. That was maybe 15% of people. I also held convert, like one on one conversations, like did some, yes, quantitative, but also qualitative research. And in every single one of those conversations, people were saying, I care about impact, I care about, and what they meant by that is like feeling like my work matters at the end of the day, that my ideas are being heard, that I can put my head on the pillow at night and think I actually made a contribution.
There was that and then there was just, I want to enjoy going to work every day. I don't want it to be stressful. I spend the vast majority of my life there. I don't want to feel like I'm taking everything personally or I'm in conflict with these people. So it was really this idea, this feeling of contribution, which I know you talk a lot about agency, right? And it really comes down to that, that sort of progress principle idea, like, are we making progress? Do we have momentum? Are we moving forward? And this feeling of, I just want day to day satisfaction and not to have this cloud hanging over me.
EMILIE: Measurable progress on meaningful work, right? That is definitely on the wish list for so many people these days. And I can see how managing up is almost like this diplomatic skill set that very few of us are taught over the course of a lifetime. And then all of a sudden we get into the workplace and we're like, can I just avoid office politics altogether? And the answer is no, right? [LAUGHTER]
Like, if you have a boss and if your boss has a boss, or you're surrounded by powerful people even who don't have a direct line to you, their thoughts and perceptions can influence your day to day realities in both good ways and bad, right? And so that ability to pick your head up off your desk, look around you, take an analysis of the landscape and then try to influence it is kind of a 21st century necessity, don't you think?
MELODY: 100%, yes. And I appreciate you use the words, office politics, because I think we try to like stay away from that. And you know, you'll even notice I say like influence, persuasion, and it's just, it feels like a dirty word.
EMILIE: It does.
MELODY: And that I think is a problem because no matter what, you were sort of alluding to this, but if there's humans involved, there's going to be power dynamics and politics at play. That's just how human systems have worked for a millennia and are going to continue to work. And so if you say like, I don't play politics, I just want to keep my head down and do good work, it may feel noble, but, it's going to catch up with you.
And playing politics does not mean you have to become someone you're not and machiavellian and stab people in the back. It means you have to have that organizational awareness. You have to be able to read the room and adapt your message and also know what other advocates you need besides your boss. Because if you're only building a relationship with your boss, you put yourself in a precarious position, they could leave, your relationship could change. Your boss is probably not the only person that has control over your projects, your promotion, and so you need those other advocates.
EMILIE: Good point. Yeah, you don't wanna put all your relational eggs in one basket, so to speak. So speak to me about the relational skills involved in Managing Up. You've mentioned a few of them already, but this is a pretty complex set of skills, isn't it?
MELODY: It is. There's so much psychology involved. And just to go back to office politics for a second, you know, I know so many people in your audience and you also care deeply about social justice and equality. I'm a big believer. I don't know, Emilie, I would love to hear your thoughts.
EMILIE: I'm so excited by where you're going with this right now.
MELODY: Yeah, I think you have to play the game in order to change the game. And what I mean by that is when good hearted people are in power, then guess what? You have influence to shape the policies. You always say, like lift as you climb, right? Bossed Up mantra. You can do that when you are in a position of higher authority. And so if you are someone who cares deeply about making the workplace more diverse and equitable, then you have to learn these skills in order to be an agent of change. So I would just love to hear your thoughts on that.
EMILIE: Well, I'm so glad you raised that because I also think the environment we're operating in now is so fundamentally different than it has been in the past few years. I've been talking a lot on the podcast about the attack against DEI, but never has it been so acute as it has been in 2025 thus far. So I think you're right in that I've always said you've got to play the cards you've been dealt while you change the game. Those two things can happen at the same time. And when you grow your power, you have more power to influence systems.
But I do think that's a cop out in some ways too. Like if we live in an environment where the dynamics have shifted so vastly, where even the word inclusion is now just offensive and completely disappearing from a lot of organizations playbooks, it's like, there's an element of risk taking that people at any level on the hierarchy can choose to take. But. But risks have consequences, right? Speech has consequences. Even though we have free speech, that doesn't mean we have free speech free of consequence, right? So you have to know your own circumstances, choose your battles wisely. I know that's something you speak to in the book, right? Really think about, is this the lever I can and should pull in this moment? Because we can't be activists all day, every day, even full time activists need to sustain themselves, right? And have to put food on the table for their families. So it's like you need to understand what is at risk here. And your job may be one of those things.
So I think you're right to be prudent, to read the room, to borrow a phrase, and to see the long game. Because lifting as you climb is the original motto of America's First Black Women's Club, set way back in 1896. You want to talk about long game? This is a journey that I didn't, you know, create or a quest that I didn't start. Like, this is very much part of a bigger picture around civil rights and equality and the fight for justice takes a while. So don't martyr yourself on the corporate, you know, on the corporate altar. And really, I think you're right to, uh, we can all be more courageous in leveraging our voice, but we have to do so diplomatically. I'd be curious to hear what your philosophy is on picking your battles, especially as it relates to Managing Up. Because we can't spend all of our days Managing Up, right?
MELODY: No, no. And, you know, I do think, though, that Managing Up gets a bad rap and that people think it's something you only do when you have a bad boss or a toxic boss.
EMILIE: Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
MELODY: When in reality it's, it's just a way of being, it's a more mentality you should approach your work with. But to your point, I think there's both ands here that a lot of people will say to me, why should I have to take on this emotional labor?
EMILIE: Mhm.
MELODY: Correct. You're absolutely right that it is additional emotional labor for you. And you know, at the same time this is for your own benefit in the end. And there are small, small tweaks you can make that will have a huge outsized difference.
EMILIE: When we talk about emotional labor and gender for a moment here, I think it's worth pausing because I want to just dig into what you just said because we know that women shoulder the majority of emotional labor both at home and according to some research in the workplace. And this can feel like more emotional labor, like I'm taking on the responsibility of preempting the needs of my leaders, the majority of whom, statistically speaking, are men, right? So should I have to do that? Is a fair question.
But to your point, it benefits you. This is something that women have as a superpower and that a lot of new research shows men are really struggling in not only the workplace and our economy overall, especially working class men, non-college educated men, but this skill set, emotional relational skills, is now so salient in our workplaces that it actually disproportionately benefits women. Now I'm waiting to see that bear borne out in like all the women CEOs that we don't see. But there is good evidence to suggest that relational skills such as taking on emotional labor can be leveraged as inherently more traditionally feminine superpower.
And so I'm, I'm curious how the gender dynamics might break down when you say that. I know you work with all kinds of people, but a lot of women, you know, how can we leverage that superpower if we do have it to benefit ourselves? And how does managing up benefit you?
MELODY: Yeah, well, you know, I was mentioning earlier that I work with people who are more sensitive. I would say, you know, my clients and audience are about 70% women. And so you have a huge advantage when it comes to this skill set because you are naturally perceptive and thoughtful. You're paying attention to the subtleties that are happening in the environment around you.
Who might be the real decision maker that people go to for approval when that's not the person on paper or on the org chart, or even noticing when you're presenting in a meeting how the demeanor is changing and being able to adjust your approach on the fly. Even being someone who is the connector I've been talking with a lot of my clients about, there's so much value in being the bridge builder in your organization. That is a like super connector place to be is of high value. And you know, I feel like every conversation is about AI now. But to bring AI into the conversation for just a second, [LAUGHTER] that's never going to replace these like fundamental human skills.
EMILIE: We can talk AI as long as we talk about it in that arena, not like how AI is going to change your life for the better. It's like, no, AI cannot do this. I'm into that conversation.
MELODY: Exactly. And so if you lean into it, it can be your competitive advantage. But as you were saying before, you also have to protect yourself. You have to be boundaried around it. Because this comes in, in the book. And I know you're familiar with Linda Babcock's work on promotable work, right. And how often as women we, we get the office housework, so to speak.
And that's where you have to going back to the boundaries conversation. You have to say, all right, take the trade off approach. I hear doing this sort of report is important. At the same time, if you want me to focus on that, then these other priorities are going to shift. Is that something you're comfortable with? I would suggest we treat this an XYZ way so I have the capability, but it's more about you surfacing risks, trade-offs than just saying, no, I'm not doing that.
EMILIE: Or god forbid, yes I’ll do it all.
MELODY: Correct, yes.
EMILIE: Right. Because sometimes the trade-offs with your own calendar and your own relationship to the space time continuum you're like, I could be planning the birthday party for our boss again because everyone expects me to, or I could be working on actual promotable work that's going to get me advanced in the workplace. Tricky.
So where does your book round us out with that conversation? Around advance or those conversations, I should say in, in the chapters on getting a raise and getting a promotion.
MELODY: Yeah. So the later chapters in the book are about visibility, networking, advancement, money, and then everything rounds out with quitting. Because you may realize you have done everything in this book and it's still, you're still hitting up against brick walls. And at that point you have to have enough integrity and self worth to say, this is not the environment where I'm going to thrive.
EMILIE: I'm so glad you first of all end there. That's encouraging because, you know, especially as pleasers, we can just read a book like this and say, what am I doing wrong? And to not have that last chapter on, okay, you've tried this all, get the hell out of there, is a disservice to the reader. So I'm glad you end there.
MELODY: Right. And when it comes to advancement, you know, I think many women in particular, we have that, keep our head down, do your good work, you'll be recognized in time. And that doesn't work today. So when it comes to advancement in particular, you need to seed your interest and prime your manager along the way. Because too many women I have worked with, maybe you have seen this too, fall into, like, the performance review paradox of they come to their performance review and think, okay, this is it. This is the moment. I'm going to get that raise. I'm going to get that new title or be assigned to that new project, and nothing.
Or they bring it up and their boss is like, totally taken aback because, well you should have brought that up six months ago when we were doing headcount planning. And so when you seed your interest, it's things like building off of wins you've had. So let's say you just nailed a major project. You can say, you know, it was really great being involved in this. And actually, I would love to work more with the board, like I had the opportunity to during this project.
And you're gradually again planting those seeds in your manager's head. But you can also feel out objections. It may be like, well, if we were to add you to that meeting, so and so isn't going to be happy, or this other person really needs to be involved with this decision. That project's actually not as high priority as this other project. You can start to feel things out and get ahead with them, proactively plan for them, and then also contract around what is needed for your actual advancement.
So rather than it feeling like this sort of vague, well, you'll know it when you get there. It's more, in the next year, I want to go from an L5 to an L6. And what would it take specifically to get there and for you to actually grant that request for me to get to an L6, what would have to be different? And then you can map against that. You can bring that up throughout the year, say, all right, it's July. We're halfway through the year. Here's what I've accomplished so far. What else do you need to see, am I on track? So there's no surprises along the way. And I think for women in particular, that's important so that we're not falling as much into that kind of moving goalpost that can happen around us.
EMILIE: Yeah. Which can affect, to be clear, men and women and all kinds of folks. But we know that there's still a huge leadership gap when it comes to gender. We know that men are still getting promoted at much higher rates than women are. And why is that? Is it because men are inherently higher performing? I think we all know the answer is no. In fact, you know, a lot of the documentation now is ringing the alarm bells around boys and men saying, oh my gosh, women are inherently doing much better.
And so again, like this promotion paradox is so critical here. Let's put the onus on our leaders to be really clear about what is it going to take for me to get there. And whereas you might be Managing Up during the day, operationally during meetings to say, let me take that cognitive load off your plate so I can come and make suggestions and be prepared when it comes to your advancement. There is kind of a Jedi mind trick around saying, well, what is your vision for the future that I might have at this company and being more open ended there can actually serve you and say, how might you suggest I think about my advancement six months before our performance reviews on the table? Yeah, I think that's really, really key.
Well, we could talk forever, obviously. Melody, you and I could just jam on this topic all day. Why don't we leave our listeners with who you feel like your book is really best suited for and where we can get our hands on it.
MELODY: Well, I wrote this book because I came across two stats that just felt unacceptable to me. And the first of those is that since the pandemic, the number of people who feel out of control at work or helpless has more than doubled. And that's not okay to me as someone who's like, top value is like agency and freedom and independence. And second is that our managers have a bigger impact on our mental health than our doctors, our therapists, and almost as much as our spouses, which is really shocking.
And so it goes back to what I found in those survey results, that this is a non-negotiable skill set. If you want to be happy, more balanced, if you want peace of mind and a feeling of confidence and control, then you need to learn how to do this. And so for anyone who finds themselves there, even if you, whether you have difficulties with your manager, whether your relationship is good or okay and you want it to be great. It's for you. Tons of scripts and templates as you said, and all the information about it can be found at ManagingUp.com you can buy it from any other places there.
EMILIE: Amazing. Congratulations. I'm so excited for you. This is such a phenomenal resource and I know folks who really want that sort of guidance about how explicitly to approach these tricky conversations. They're going to find exactly what they need in here. Melody, thank you so much for being a longtime member of the Bossed Up Community, friend of the show for coming back and joining me again for your next and latest and greatest of, what I'm sure is many to come wonderful books. Your writing is spectacular and I'm just, I'm just so delighted to have you as a friend and comrade in this quest for advancing folks careers and lives. Thank you.
MELODY: Likewise. Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.
EMILIE: For links to resources that Melody and I just mentioned and so much more, including a full transcript and a blog post summarizing Melody's key points, head to bossedup.org/episode496, that's bossedup.org/episode496.
Now I want to hear from you. What do you make of the art of Managing Up? Do you find that this comes easily to you? Does this feel like a huge chore? Is taking on that emotional labor and that mental load for your supervisors at work something that comes naturally to you, or does it feel like a huge chore?
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Let's keep the conversation going as always in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook or in our Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. And in the meantime, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, and together let's lift as we climb.
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