HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across

Does your boss make you want to scream? Do you have more than one boss? Do you spend your day herding cats—corralling people who don’t report to you? Do you work across departmental silos? Collaborate with outside contractors? Then you know that managing up and across your company is critical to doing your job well. It’s all about understanding your boss’s and colleagues’ priorities, pressures, and work styles. You need to manage up and across not just because you may have a problem boss, incompetent colleagues, or fabulously hairy projects that touch all parts of your organization. You need to manage up and across, for example, to get your marketing and sales folks to see that your project will help them meet their goals, too; to establish authority with bigwigs so they’ll bless your new product ideas; to secure people’s time for a new team when they’re already feeling overextended. Managing up and across will help you get the information and resources you need to solve your complex problems, increase your effectiveness, and make your work more enjoyable. You’ll get better at:

• Getting what you need from people who don’t report to you
• Coping with micromanaging, conflict-aversive, or generally incompetent bosses
• Discovering what drives your colleagues
• Partnering with your boss
• Selling your ideas up and across your company
• Making the most of your boss’s influence
• Establishing a shared vision and commitment
• Juggling multiple bosses’ priorities
• The art of persuasion—tailoring your pitch based on your audience.

Articles in this collection: ""Managing Your Boss,"" ""Change the Way You Persuade,"" ""How to Make Your Boss Look Good—Without Becoming a Sycophant,"" ""Stop Being Micromanaged,"" ""Dealing with Your Incompetent Boss,"" ""Coping with a Conflict-Averse Boss,"" ""How to Give Your Boss Feedback,"" ""Managing Multiple Bosses,"" ""What Makes a Leader?"" ""The Discipline of Teams,"" ""A Smarter Way to Network,"" ""The Necessary Art of Persuasion,"" ""Harnessing the Science of Persuasion,"" ""How to Get Your Colleagues' Attention,"" and ""When the Direct Approach Backfires, Try Indirect Influence.""

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