How to Manage Your Boss

To become indispensable, learn to anticipate your manager’s needs

Photo: Francesco Mondino/Moment Open/Getty

Managing your boss is a skill no one ever told you you needed. But it’s an essential one for both your career success and satisfaction. A productive relationship with your manager can mean getting to work on more meaningful projects, being chosen for more opportunities, and gaining respect within the office, all of which will help drive you forward. Here’s how to “manage up” in a way that makes your boss’s professional life easier and yours better.

Overperform

Sure, you already do everything in your job description. But managing your boss means going beyond that. It means doing the unexpected.

You should:

• Be a resource. Do the work your boss would like to, but can’t.
• Have your finger on the pulse. Gather information from the front lines, meet with teammates often, and speak to customers frequently.
• Constantly be furthering your knowledge. Take time to research, gain insights, and develop a deeper understanding of the organization to help your boss make better decisions.
• Elevate others. Build up those around you.
• Model empathy. Curiously ask colleagues about their work, push back…