Managing Your Manager - Brie Wolfson

This resource first appeared in issue #120 on 30 Apr 2022 and has tags Strategy: Managing Up

Back in #95 we had an article by Roy Rapoport about manager “guard rails”, introducing us to the idea that there are spectra people tend to fall on when they are leading, like “freedom vs guidance” or “caution vs speed”. There’s no intrinsically bad side to either end of those spectra, although they can be better suited for some environments than others (nuclear plant safety equipment manufactures tend to avoid “move quick and break things” sorts of leaders in their technical staff, one supposes). Rapoport’s article talked about the different failure modes for leaders and the far ends of those spectra, and that you should have ways of detecting if your tendencies are causing problems.

In this really nice article, Wolfson gives a deeper typology of managers (but it could also be stakeholders, or even peers) along six dimensions:

Develops people ⇌ Delivers outcomes (do they tend to favour developing the people, trusting that over time that will lead to better outcomes, or do they favour focusing on the outcomes, and trust over time that that will provide opportunities for people growth?)
Craft ⇌ Machinery (do they tend to preferentially focus on the work, or the processes around the work?)
Uphold conditions ⇌ Challenge conditions (how likely are they to favour stability in the organization vs improve the organization?)
Assigns tasks ⇌ Assigns goals (In Rapoport’s version, “context vs control”)
Compassion ⇌ Hero (Roughly, provide support vs provide answers)
Prefers to see Raw Materials ⇌ Finished work

She also gives very detailed advice about successful ways of working with people who lean strongly to one side or the other of those spectra. The advice is very actionable and helpful; the article is worth reading in its entirety.