Sucking Downward

Sucking up is the accepted or better known path to corporate success but sucking downward helps too.  Sucking downward means not just looking to your 'superiors' for advancement or ideas but also being nice to the people below you because you never know who you are going to meet on their way up on your way down.

Here is an article on sucking up I saw at the Wall Street Journal Online.  Browse and then go to Uncle Bill's 10 steps for success.

Why Mr. Kiss-Up Keeps Getting Ahead
	By Jared Sandberg

It's one of the most enduring mysteries of the workplace: How can talented people languish in their jobs unrecognized and under-compensated while others, some seemingly dumb as a stump, thrive and rise?

The answer lies largely in a skill often cited by experts as one of the greatest determinants of career success: "Managing up" -- more or less the ability to influence your boss to invest in your ideas and advancement. It's one of the cluster of so-called soft skills, including social graces and leadership talent, that have gained almost as much popularity in companies as it has among the legion authors and coaches who profit from it.

But managing up is a skill so soft it's squishy. It's easily mistaken for something else: self-promotion, manipulation, covering one's fanny, and glossing over the ugly stuff. Sometimes it looks like upward managers are noshing on the fruits of others' labor by presenting their staff's work as their own; other times like they're kissing up -- one of those perceptions that is in the other eye of the beholder.

Managing up is supposedly distinguished from fawning because it's not done for personal gain but for the benefit of the company that will nevertheless result, some career coaches tell you without irony, in personal gain.

It's easy to do badly and hard to do with your dignity and friendships uninjured. "This is fraught with danger," says Robert Cialdini, professor of psychology at Arizona State University. "It's one thing that's especially subtle and textured in the way that it works."

And yet, like buying insurance and flossing, we're all supposed to do it. That's because the notion that you are master of your career is a quaint one. "Many people believe that if you are doing a good job and accomplishing something, your bosses necessarily know this, but they don't," says Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "The only people who can help you are people above you."

That means, he says, you have to do two things: Tell your boss about your accomplishments and tend to the relationship, including face time, flattery and asking for advice. But those things, I point out, can sound like gross ingratiation, the kind that wins enemies and loses self-respect. "I guess," says Prof. Pfeffer. "But how are you going to fare in a competition against people who have fewer inhibitions?"

The good news is self-promotion may not work as well as it seems. Arizona State's Prof. Cialdini and Prof. Pfeffer co-authored a recent study in which they found that self-aggrandizers don't pull the wool over the eyes of others as well as they do over their own. The bad news: You have to all but deputize someone as your campaign manager. "Your most subtle and savvy strategy for managing up in terms of presenting or promoting your general accomplishments is to have that information come from the lips of someone else," says Prof. Cialdini of his study's findings.

Among the most effective ways to manage up, he adds, is to give ownership of your ideas to your boss who is likely, by virtue of being your boss, confident that his ideas are better than yours. "Point out that what you're recommending is logically consistent with a stand they've already taken," says Prof. Cialdini.

For Jane Vawter, an IT program manager at a nonprofit, managing up is effectively getting to know your boss's preferences, tastes and quirks and then aligning your own with them all so you can "get him/her to allow you to work the way you want."

It sounds exhausting. "Some are more work than others," she says. But she concedes that anyone who has a good relationship with the boss, rightly or wrongly, "can easily be perceived as someone who kisses up."

A bigger problem than managing up well is working for someone who manages up to the exclusion of down and sideways. Even the boss being sucked up to won't necessarily appreciate it. Paul Nesbitt, founder of an engineering firm, remembers one employee who was so good at telling him what he wanted to hear that he once listened to a retelling of one of his own stories he had just passed on a few days earlier. "He repackaged it so well he had me listening for a while," he remembers. "Wow, that's really neat," he thought briefly.

One administrative assistant at a family business, who says she prefers to remain anonymous rather than go into protective custody, has a colleague who manages up by keeping her boss in the dark "so he has to rely on her." Meanwhile, she doesn't help her own reports move up and has withheld approval for training expenses. "You can get an audience with the Pope easier than trying to get her to do something sitting on her desk," she says.

Upward-only management is one of the intractable problems that even consultants admit is intractable. What's an employee to do? "People ask me this question all the time," says executive coach Marshall Goldsmith. "Prayer is one alternative." Surviving as best you can and looking for another job are others, he says. "I'm a consultant. I'm not a magician."

End of article.  Not a bad article.  But not great.

So here are the best ways to handle your boss and your career learned from years of screwing up by Uncle Bill.

1)  Your boss has more to worry about then you.  Your boss has a spouse to deal with, a boss to deal with, probably kids to deal with and mounting bills to deal with and, oh yeah, his or her career to worry about.  Anything you can do to make life easier for your boss will make life easier for you.  Helping and doing what you are paid to do is not sucking up.  Not helping puts you over in the problem category and your boss, as stated, already has enough problems.

2)  This assumes your boss is not a nut.  If your boss is a nut, then find a way to work around the mental illness or get out.  I had two bosses that were certifiable.  The first one got promoted and promoted again till he thought he knew more about the cereal business than the chairman and then he got canned.  Cheers went up throughout the company.  The other one flew from Dallas to Sydney for a two hour meeting and then flew back.  That guy was nuts.  I found a better job.

3)  Be a Boy Scout.  Be prepared.  In a meeting, have a pad of paper and write what you think and summarize it.   Doesn't have to be Hamlet, just a summary of the problem and a plan of action.  Make recommendations, not ask for them.  I made that mistake once and my boss responded with that "What am I paying you for?" look. 

4) Do it right even when people aren't watching.  You may not get credit for it right away but you did something noble and you know and somehow that gets out, even if nobody saw it.

5) Suck down.  Look around and see who seems to have their head screwed on right.  Get to know them because they, and you, may be running the place someday.

6) You can say no, just come up with another solution.  I was in corporate and operations hated us because we always said no.  No more money, this is illegal, or can't do it for tax reasons or any other reason just to say no.  Because some people like to say no and often times the idea was a dumb one and thank God, somebody would say no.  But if you say no, think of another way to get what the guy wants done done.  Because people remember people that say no.  They also remember people who try.

7)  Smile.  Walk confidently. Laugh easily but try and not laugh at somebody.  I said try.  Nobody is perfect.  I was the worst at laughing at people but hopefully it was laughing at the pompous ones.

8)  Leave work after your boss.  At least at the beginning.  If your boss leaves at 9 in the evening either rearrange your schedule or, all together now, get a new job.  One of my nut bosses loved to work till 9, 10, 11 at night.  The thing is he didn't get to work till 10:30 in the morning.  I got up at 6 because our kids had to get to school.  I found a better job.

9)  Dress well.  Superficial, you bet.  But if you go in a store and have to pick between a clean, neat box of cereal and box with a dent in it or a bit crumbled, you will pick the clean, neat box everytime.  Same goes for people.

10)  Never think you are going to be anyplace forever.  This doesn't mean slack off.  It means you are a one person product.  All you have is you.  So make it the best product you can and get the best price for it.  People will pay.

Comments

[John M]

People are always watching how you dress. Obviously you don't want to wear a suit and tie to a business casual environment, but if you get the best business casual clothes you will stand out positively from the crowd, people notice what you wear, even if they do not tell you.

[cahoots]

good advice i think, the only prob is some times getting another job is not a great option coz of responsibilities or bad market. And in case of people who don't deal with clients (like me) our firm really doesn't care how we dress...i am wondering if i shd still spend money on good clothes...usually i don't.

[John M]

I think that sucking down sounds negative. But it is amazing how much inside knowledge you can gain just by taking the time to talk to all levels of employees in a company. Establishing a network of employees from all levels of a company can be very helpful for getting a whole picture of what is actually going on. Most employees will not tell their boss all of the bad stuff that is going on in their department, but they will be likely to tell a close ally, you can suggest improvements or at the very least, know what time wasters to avoid.