Leadership Beyond Your Team Managing Up and Across

Become the “boss whisperer” who works well with everyone. In this course, you will learn how to target the right business outcomes as a touchstone to deal with differences in power and influence. By understanding your manager’s role, behavior, and management style, and how to work with new or multiple managers, you will be able to effectively escalate an issue to get the decisions you need. This will reduce organizational conflict, and improve trust and confidence among your peers. 

• Team leaders who are responsible for leading skilled people and reporting results to upper management
• Managers who need to improve working relationships with their peer managers
• Managers continually frustrated by their inability to influence projects and programs or to sell their ideas
• Anyone who wants to strengthen and simplify relationships with executive management

Executive communication–including reporting–is a key element of your new skill set. Real-World Toolkit including a Boss Whisperer Plan and Management Wrangler Tactics. You will also be provided with an opportunity to review these tools for managing up and across, and develop a comprehensive, personalized action plan to apply back in the workplace. This limited-enrollment course is highly rated and fills quickly. 

This course is part of the Technical Leadership Certificate. Course can be taken individually as well.

What Is a Boss?

• Why we need bosses
• What bosses do
• What bosses worry about
• What bosses need
• What bosses really want: both documented and unstated
• How to understand a boss’s needs, fears, and priorities
• How and why the role of bosses has changed in the 21st century, especially when it comes to leading skilled technical people

Understanding Managerial Behaviors and Styles: Up and Across

• Personality differences
• Behavior styles
• Emotional intelligence
• Leadership styles and attitudes
• How to profile your boss
• Profiling your fellow managers
• Understanding the organization
• Looking two levels up and across
• Your boss’s boss
• Who manages your peers?
• Expectations and influence in your part of the matrix

Understanding Your Dual Leader-Follower Role

• Winning follower styles and attitudes
• Problematic follower styles and attitudes
• What you can do to improve managing up
• How to avoid being micro-managed

Understanding Your Relationship with Other Managers

• Winning interaction styles and attitudes
• Problematic interaction styles and attitudes
• What you can do to improve your relationships across the organization
• Monitoring and managing your relationships across the organization
• Achieving the Right Business Outcome, Regardless of Your Boss Type
• Understand power and influence
• Understand boss-worker roles
• Understand politics and true business priorities
• What you can do to get what you need from your boss
• What you actually do–and do not–control (despite what you are told)

Achieving the Right Business Outcomes in Cooperation with Other Managers

• How to set up mutual wins
• How to escalate your issues to the larger picture of the managers above you

Dealing With a New Boss

• Meet and educate your new boss
• Handle any changes demanded while protecting what is working well
• Avoid constantly bringing up the past
• Optimize the new relationship as quickly as possible

Workshop: Seeing the Big Picture

A practical session that demonstrates the importance of including your colleagues and your manager’s needs when setting your own priorities

Managing Multiple Bosses

• Identify who your real bosses are, despite the reporting lines
• Deal with virtual bosses
• Deal with your boss’s boss
• Deal with conflicts between your line management and corporate demands
• Skillfully say ‘no’ to people who are not your boss

Dealing With Difficult Bosses

• Identify acceptable versus unacceptable behavior
• Deal with cultural, generational, and gender conflicts in bosses
• Understand what you can and cannot do to change the situation

Effective Escalating

• Know when to escalate
• How and when to deliver the bad news
• Escalate to exploit your boss’s influence
• Escalate without abdication
• Achieve win-win outcomes when escalating
• Get fast results when escalating in a crisis

Effective Upwards Communication and Reporting

• How to write an effective senior management report
• Develop effective presentation techniques to senior management
• Define the desired outcomes for you and your management
• Create the right structure and message
• Learn how to identify what senior managers really want to know about

Conclusion: Managing Yourself So That You Can Manage Others

"I left this course with surefire ways to improve my relationship with my boss."

"The course helped me to change my mindset about my boss."

"I have had difficulties in getting my priorities approved by other managers. I now understand why, and what I can do about it."

"I understand why ‘managing myself’ is the first and most important task."

"The instructor’s real life examples and willingness to talk off-line helped me understand the issues."

Trevor Manning

Trevor Manning runs his own training and consulting business (TMC Global) that specializes in the training and development of technical people who have transitioned into management.  He is also the Director of Operations (COO) for Vertel - Australia’s largest privately-owned wireless carrier.  Mr. Manning also serves on the company’s advisory board. 

Prior to this, he had global responsibility for sales and engineering at Actix Ltd, a privately-owned international software optimization company, specializing in the mobile/wireless telecommunication field. During Mr. Manning’s tenure as Chief Operating Officer, Actix won the London Sunday Times award for "Top 100 Fastest-Growing IT Companies" for five years in succession. He was also technical director for Aviat, a US-based microwave radio supplier, and chief engineer of Eskom, a large South African electric utility, running the radio telecommunications department. 

With a 30-year career in the IT and telecommunications sectors, Mr. Manning has had personal experience as a design engineer, a middle manager, as well as board-level executive responsibilities. His global experience includes managing people in mature, stable environments with fixed structures and processes, as well as in the chaotic startup phase of a new business. Mr. Manning also has experience managing people in fast-growing environments with the challenges of recruiting and developing teams and in organizations downsizing during lean years.

Mr. Manning authored the classic best-seller ‘Microwave Radio Transmission Design Guide’ published by Artech House (second revision 2009) and more recently he has self-published ‘Microwave Radio Handy Reference Guide’ (2019).  He has also authored two management books ‘’Help! What’s the Secret to Leading Engineers?’ (2017) and ‘Help! I Need to Master Critical Conversations’ (2018), available from Amazon.