What We're Reading Now
Help Your Boss Become a Multiplier
14 January 2025
Allison read How to Bring Out the Best in Your Boss by Liz Wiseman and was grateful for an appreciative approach to managing up.
Tags: allison read, managment and supervision
Liz Wiseman’s research on the two types of bosses she classifies as “diminishers, who get less than 50% of the capability of people around them, and multipliers who get virtually 100%,” is from 2010, but I bet this frustration from a high school science teacher still resonates with many employees today, “The principal of our high school is a diminisher. At meetings he does 90% of the talking, always has to have the last word, and will usually say something that puts the listener down. He walks into classroom while instruction is being given and interjects his thoughts on how the lesson could go differently.”
Sound familiar? I hear about this kind of manager and other demeaning behaviors from so many of the people I talk to, and often employees feel like they have no power to improve the situation. While I agree with Wiseman that employees often have more power to deliver feedback than they imagine, I think many people will be more comfortable with her lower risk recommendation to “change the dynamic of the relationship” by “multiplying up.”
Rather than finding the courage to deliver feedback or go over your boss’s head, Wiseman recommends employees “exploit your boss’s strength” and “listen to learn.” These strategies will require you to take a deep breath and lean into the very things that irritate you about your boss’s diminishing behavior and find something useful for you. You may very well get new insights, and you’ll approach your boss with an appreciative energy which often will shift the dynamics of a stressful relationship in interesting ways.
Wiseman’s shorter Harvard Business Review post from December 2010 and her longer article from May 2010 provide a variety of examples of how employees utilized her recommendations. You might also enjoy this post I wrote about Bruce Tulgan’s book, It's Okay to Manage Your Boss: The Step-by-Step Program for Making the Best of Your Most Important Relationship at Work.
Finally, if you’re in Charlottesville, perhaps you or someone else in your organization can encourage managers to attend The Art of Being a Great Boss with me on Tuesday, February 25. As I discussed with Jay James on News Radio WINA in October, our work at Allison Partners is rooted in the belief that anyone can learn the skills needed to help employees succeed. I had 45 people join me in October, and I am looking forward to sharing our approach to supervision with another wonderful group of folks next month. You can learn more about the workshop and register here.
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