How to Manage Up With Dave Stachowiak

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute here at A&I. We believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate, passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings, both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Dave, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, Kwame, good to be back. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Yeah, man, it's my pleasure. It's always great having you on the show. So for those of you who don't remember, let's get an introduction. So tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Sure. Well, thanks. I am the host of a podcast called Coaching for Leadership. My work is helping leaders discover wisdom through insightful conversations. And so we do that through the podcast. I also do that through the Coaching for Leaders Academy to help leaders make movement in the direction that's going to serve their organizations, it's going to serve their employees, and ultimately it's going to serve them well in their careers, too.

Fantastic. And if you haven't checked out that podcast, make sure you check that out. It is always one of the top podcasts out there. So kudos to you, Dave. You are the podcaster I want to be.

Well, part of the reason that we've had some wonderful response from the show is you've been on the show three or four times now, I think, and I always hear just such wonderful responses from our audience when you're on. And the thing that I appreciate about your work so much is just how practical you make it. And I think we're going to dive in on that a lot today on just some of the practical things we can all do and in influencing and managing up, because these are things that we all know we need to do a better job at, or at least to do a somewhat good job at. And yet a lot of Times we don't get a lot of advice or training in certainly our academic work, but even within organizations on how to do this. Well, it's kind of awkward to ask your boss, can you teach me how to manage up better? So we're going to do a little bit of that today, see if we can dive in a bit.

Fantastic. Well, great. So, yeah, the three things we're going to talk about today, first, managing up. For those who don't know, let's discuss what it is, and then how do we do it? And then we're going to end up with how do we do it online? How do we do this in a remote world? So tell us what we need to know about managing up.

Well, managing up is a term that we, we have all used in the service of, hey, how do I get my boss to do what I want my boss to do? Right? And that's how we often think about it. And to the earlier point, it is a bit awkward because we are trying to influence the behavior of the person that ultimately we work for. And so that requires us to tread carefully and to think about mindset a bunch. And one of the things hopefully we'll talk a bunch about is the mindset around this, because I think mindset makes a big difference on how you approach this conversation and how you attempt to affect change. I also want to say this, Kwame, if I may, that managing up is not about changing your boss or whoever you're trying to manage up to. I don't know about you, but I have a hard enough time changing my own behavior and trying to change someone else's behavior. If you've ever tried to do that, and I think we all have in marriages with kids, it's really challenging to do. And in the workplace, it's even harder. And it's even harder when it's the person you work for. And so I think that our mindset should not be, hey, I am trying to change my boss's behavior or change something about them. My mindset should instead be how do I serve my customer? And I can say more about that in just a bit.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And it makes sense. And I know our listeners are not going to be surprised hearing it's about mindset, because a lot of times it comes down to that. And just shifting your mindset can lead to the necessary behavior change before even talk about strategy or tactics or anything like that. And I think that's a really interesting perspective that you just introduced thinking about your clients. Can you tell us More about that, too.

Yeah. My friend Tom Henschel, who is the host of a show called the look and Sound of Leadership, it's one of my favorite leadership shows, and he's a talented executive coach out here in Southern California. Tom has been on my show a number of times, and he has made the point that your boss is your biggest customer and that you're really there to be able to serve your customer in what your customer needs in order to serve the organization well. And I think that's a really helpful. That's been a very helpful mindset for me and been very helpful for a lot of the leaders in our academy of thinking about, okay, here's my customer. My customer is asking for something, but I'm also here to serve my customer and help them to do well. And I think one of the parts of mindset that's really important for me to think of when I'm trying to influence someone who has more power in the organization is how is that person being measured for their success, their results within the organization? And I think to start from a mindset standpoint is I'm not here because I'm trying to. I'm not making this request because I'm trying to change my boss. It's not about me feeling comfortable getting things my way. It's about how do I influence this person in a way that is good for them, to help them to get the results that they want to get, and that is ultimately going to serve the organization well. So thinking about it from the standpoint of I want to serve my customer, if my boss is one of my most important customers, what can I do to serve my customer well? And if I do that in their interests, that I'm more likely to have success at being able to influence change and to be able to do it in such a way that's going to be helpful to them, the organization.

This is great. And I think it demonstrates one of the issues with the mindset that people often face. They focus on their own needs and their own frustrations, and they say, this boss isn't doing what they need to be doing, and that's what needs to change. Instead, what you're suggesting is you look at it from their perspective, what they need and what they want, what they're trying to accomplish, and then it becomes a lot easier.

Can I also say that that's super hard to do? It's really hard. And you know this, Kwame, when you're working with folks who are in heated negotiations, there's large dollar amounts involved or there's big emotions involved, often both. And it is really, really hard to set aside our own personal emotions when our boss isn't behaving well. Right. A lot of times that's the time we want to manage up is we look at what our boss is doing and something that seems obvious to us, like, why is this person micromanaging everything I'm doing? Or why is this person going all kinds of different directions in every team meeting we have? Or why is this person jumping in and causing chaos within my team? Why is my boss doing this? That's causing my team to go all different directions and we're wasting time and we're getting people upset and causing stress. And that quite rightfully generates a ton of emotion and frustration. And it is so easy to walk into a conversation with that person and to bring, even if we don't say it, to bring that emotion into the room and to have the conversation framed around emotion and what's not working for me and what's pushing my buttons wrong. And all of that stuff is super real. And it's really important for us to be present with it. And I think when we're having a conversation with our boss, it is really helpful if we can not discount those emotions that we have, but be able to set them aside in a box for a few minutes and have a conversation that is a learning conversation and a conversation that focuses on the business case for whatever we're trying to influence.

Yeah. And I think this is a perfect time to transition into that second point. Let's get deeper into how we actually do it. Does your company invest in professional development training? If you believe that your team would benefit from a negotiation workshop, all you need to do is go to our website, fill out the workshop request form, and then we'll set up a time to chat. These workshops are completely customizable, and we've done them all all around the country. Negotiation and conflict resolution skills are beneficial across all professions, but they're especially useful in procurement, purchasing, sales, sourcing, and contract management. Our calendar is filling up quickly and we even have some workshops scheduled for next year if you think you might want one. I'd suggest reaching out soon so you don't miss out. Check out the link in the description to learn more and we will be right back after this. And I want to focus in on that distinction between a learning conversation or a probably a venting conversation where your emotions are starting to take over in a negative way. So when you say learning conversation, what do you mean by that?

A learning conversation is a conversation where you're coming again with that mindset of, okay, I want to serve this person, my boss. I also want to serve the organization well so they can use their resource as well. That resource maybe is me, maybe it's my team, maybe it's the resources within the organization, whatever it is. Right. And so the, the mindset shift here is that's what I want. That's where I want to enter this conversation. I don't want to enter it from a place of all the frustration that I'm feeling. So the place to not start this conversation is to walk in and to say, I'm really frustrated when you. And that might be the kind of conversation we would have with a friend or with a spouse or with a child. Right. But I don't think that's helpful for a conversation when we're doing it from a context of the organization. By the way, some bosses are ready for that kind of a conversation, but a lot are not. And so if we can frame it, especially when you, as you go up higher in the food chain, if we can frame it for more senior people in the organization on what's the business case for this? So one of the mindsets is how do I serve my customer? But then the other mindset is coming in. And when I say having a learning conversation, it's actually coming in with questions and curiosity about something you do not know. So here would be an example. Your boss. In fact, this came up in our community this week. Your boss is coming in and regularly causing stress to your team. Let's say you lead a team of five to 10 people and you're doing a good job at trying to get people to get work done and provide positive reinforcement and all the good things leaders should do. But you're but their skip level boss. Your boss comes in and tends to dive in and micromanage and send people in different directions and cause lots of stress and just generally cause chaos. And the person who brought this to our conversation this week said, I am spending so much time trying to clean up messes that my boss is coming in and causing. And my boss doesn't even realize that they're doing, doing this, but they're coming in and causing all these problems and I'm spending all this time cleaning up the mess. How do I handle that situation? So here's what a conversation like that coming in with the attention of, hey, I'm here to serve my customer, right? Because if it's my boss, it's their team. We're part of their organization, we're helping them to achieve results. And so I think one of the phrases that I really like is here's something I'm noticing. And so you can come into a conversation with the boss and say, you know, one of the things that I'm noticing is after we have conversations with the entire team is people are coming to me with a bunch of questions about changing direction. And, and I'm noticing that that's happened a few times recently that people don't seem to have clarity after they're coming out of conversations. And the business impact of that is we're spending whatever amount of time, two or three hours, whatever the metric is of what problem that's causing from a business standpoint and a numbers and a result standpoint and then asking a question that you don't know the answer to, which is something like what I'm wondering what we might do to help provide clarity so that they walk out of a situation knowing what's the next step. And you might just ask that question to them saying, you know, I wonder what we might do or what I can do to help you to even provide some of that clarity. And so you're approaching this from a standpoint of curiosity and learning of how can I help my boss to come into a conversation and to communicate their message in a way that is useful for the team so we get the result that everyone wants.

This is great. I think this is a brilliant approach for essentially negotiating with your boss in that situation. And the way that you've approached it is so non threatening and collaborative that it makes it more likely for them to engage and it circumvents most possibilities of defensiveness that you can that you'd experience. And I think just simply using that approach and that question, you'll probably see better results just if you take this small segment of the, of the episode. Right. Because I think for a lot of people the hardest part is starting the conversation. They don't even know where to start, how to approach it, so they don't even broach the sub is the subject. And this approach is so simple but, but powerful that I think that clarity is going to lead people to actually take action and have these conversations.

You talk about compassionate curiosity all the time. And this is that same mindset in a situation with your boss of wow, here's what I'm noticing, here's the business impact. What could we do? Or maybe even come with a suggestion of here's one thing I see. But what do you think? And you're exploring together what could work and what could be different. And it's possible you have that conversation with your boss and they say they offer nothing that's helpful. Right? And then, okay, you tried. You did your best to try to influence change and to help them to think about it through a lens of business results. But I think your chances of getting a better result or of hearing something that you didn't already know coming out of that conversation are a lot higher if you approach it from a curiosity standpoint and a. How can I help you to meet these numbers? How can I help you to save time? How can I help you to get your message across? If you can do that, well, then that is going to increase the percentage of then hearing something that you say, oh, interesting. My boss is coming to this conversation with this mindset. Now let me go either explain that or align to that or adapt a bit, knowing that this is the way that approach it.

I love this. And now we're in a time where we're doing a lot of this online. And so let's say you find yourself in this position where you want to address a situation with your boss, but you're remote. You haven't seen your boss physically in months. And so that disconnect can often create a little bit of awkwardness, especially when you're having difficult conversations. So what changes when we are having these conversations online?

I think it's a lot of the things that change online with many of our conversations, which is it's a lot easier in the physical space to hang behind on a meeting for a few minutes or catch someone in the hallway or to, as an adjunct to a regular meeting, say, you know, I just wanted to ask you a quick question. You know, here's something I'm noticing that's harder online because you have to create the opportunity for that. So I don't think the conversation's much different. And by the way, I don't know if I would in most situations, set up an entire meeting to talk specifically about the thing you're noticing that's causing a challenge. I think that that is often helpful as a. Oh, by the way, as part of a conversation, here's something I've noticed over the last couple of sessions. And that way, it comes from a place of curiosity, it's coming from a place of service, it's coming from a place of you wanting to learn. So I'm sure there's exceptions to that, But I think the key is finding a place within an existing conversation to bring that in Whether it's your one on one, whether it's a meeting, whether it's a conference call, whatever it is. And the key is to make the space. And that's the hard thing in the online environment because we're all used to, or at least a lot of us are used to, getting to interact informally. So you may have to make that space intentionally. And this could be as simple as say you're on a zoom session and you're having a regular interaction with your boss and maybe it's a small team of people. You could say something like, hey, hey, Maria, I have a quick something for you to chat with offline. Do you have two minutes after the session? And then you get that two minutes and you say, hey, I just wanted to, I'm curious about something. Here's something I noticed last week at our meeting and I'm noticing this caused this issue. Hey, I've got a question for you about it. And it could be that simple. But the difference here is you really do have to carve out and make the space for it. And I think you can do that in a way that's, hey, could you stick around for a minute or two or as part of an interaction you're already having, or maybe there's something else that's part of that meeting too, but you're building it around having that interaction and having that learning conversation.

Yeah, I really love this approach because it's so simple, right? And again, the more simple it is, the simpler it is, the more likely people are going to execute. But I know they're probably going to be people out there who are skeptical who are saying, well, it can't be that easy. Right? What if it's harder? What if it doesn't work out? So what happens if this simple strategy doesn't work? What adjustments do we need to make then?

You do the best you can with what you've got with your boss. You're not going to change your boss. You're just not in almost every situation. And if you push back and you fight to try to change your boss, that is probably not going to go well for you in most situations. So I think you're better off with a simple, curious, learning approach. It shouldn't be that complicated. And I don't think in most situations there's always exceptions, of course, but I don't think in most situations it's probably useful to book a half hour meeting with your boss and to say, you know, I'm, I'm frustrated by some of the things you're doing. And I want to sit down and really kind of hammer it out with you of what the things you're doing that are causing issues on my team. Right. That's not the way to approach your customer. If I'm serving a client, I'm not going to set up a meeting with them and say, I want to talk through with you all the problems you're causing for me and my organization and how difficult it is to work with you. Right. Going to approach that from a, you know, here's what's working, here's what's not. Here's the issues we're running into. And I'm going to set aside my emotion if I'm talking with a client and we're going to address how do we move forward for them to get the results they want. And that's the same thing I want to do with my boss. So I think keeping it simple is the best way to go. The hardest part of this is setting aside your emotions. And I think that this is where we can really practice of being able to think about this through the business lens. And this is the. And I say business. Kwame. I'm conscious there are folks in nonprofits and many kinds of organizations listening, but all of us have things we're trying to achieve and results we're trying to aim for. And that's the focus of a conversation. And that's also, by the way, the lens that a lot of senior executives tend to look at things, they tend to look at things less from the lens of emotion, and they tend to look at things more through the lens of numbers and data. There are, of course, exceptions, but if you look at the distribution of executives and their personality preferences in a lot of organizations, the people that are the data people, the thinkers, tend to be a lot of times in the senior roles. And so when you're running into a tough situation, managing up or otherwise, being able to meet them where they are, to speak their language, to be able to approach it from the business case is the place I almost always default to start.

Right. And really, even if it's not, if the person listening here isn't in the business world, you still come from a world where results matter. Right. It's just in the business case, oh, it's clear money.

Right.

Though pretty easy. Right. But other things, there are other outcomes and results that we're going for. And so the question becomes, how does this situation impact the results that we're trying to accomplish? Right. And as long as you keep it focused on the results I think it makes it a lot easier for people to accept, especially from the boss's perspective, because the boss wants to meet those goals. And it's funny now, as the team here at the American Negotiation Institute grows, I'm thinking about them hearing this episode and wondering how they would approach me with their concerns. And now, from that perspective, it makes a lot of sense, because I might have some kind of emotional tie to doing something a certain way, not necessarily a strategic tie that is narrowly tailored to meet a specific business outcome. And sometimes the person who is actually doing the work is in the best position to see it. And the boss, just because of that distance, they can't see it the way that you do.

And this also speaks to mindset, too. If I see something that my boss doesn't see and it is affecting the results of the organization, and by results, I mean cost, quality, or time. Those are the three big ones for almost every organization that we are measuring work on. Right? Some version of those three. If I see a problem there and it's something my boss may be doing that's causing that problem or the organization isn't addressing, and I see it clearly. And by me being curious and putting the business case in front of my boss and asking some curious questions to learn how we can address that, I think that's a responsibility. I have to bring that to the table. So this isn't even a, hey, I just want to feel better about how my boss is treating me and all those things. And, yeah, that comes along with it from an emotional standpoint, but I think this is a responsibility that we have in order to serve our boss well. Now, if they get that information and they see those numbers and they say it's fine, that's their call. They're in charge. Sorry. I mean, that's just the nature of organizations and power and bosses, right? And so then you have to decide, like, okay, can I live with that? And I think most of the time, in most situations, outside of ethical things, of course, most of us say, all right, you know, I can live with that. Probably. Now I just need to adjust my expectations on how I handle this with my boss and my team going forward. But I think, sadly, a lot of people don't ever do that. Their boss is doing something that is causing pain in the organization. And by pain, I mean not only emotional pain for people, but it's causing pain as in it's. It's not allowing the team, the organization, to perform well on one of those three measures. And they don't know it. They don't see it because they've got a blind spot for whatever reason or they're not equipped to handle that or whatever. I think we have a responsibility to get that on their radar screen. And if they don't do something, they don't do something. But this is a good way that helps to get that on the table and have a conversation about it.

I love this, Dave. This has been fantastic. And I know the listeners got a lot out of this. And listeners, you're probably saying to yourself, my goodness, don't end the episode. Where can I get more information? Well, it's good that you have a podcast, Dave. So can you tell them about the podcast and your academy too?

Well, thank you for the kind words, Kwame. If folks want to find out more, coaching4leaders.com is the best place to go. Or just search for coaching for leadership on whatever podcast app you use. And we air every single Monday and have for 10 years now.

Fantastic. Dave, thank you again for coming on, my friend. We appreciate it.

The pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me.

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