Managing upwards

There is a phrase that confuses every new joiner the first time they hear it: managing your manager. Wait — isn't managing supposed to be her job?

It is. This is the other half, and almost nobody teaches it.

Here is what you cannot see from inside your first job: your manager is not sitting at a control panel watching your work. Ms. Fernandes has eleven clients, a tax deadline, a hiring decision and a boss of her own — and somewhere in that noise, a new joiner whose work she cannot check without stopping her own.