reading The Unwritten Rules of Managing Up by Dana Brownlee

Posted on January 19, 2024 Updated on January 20, 2024

One of my colleagues / friends / mentors / confidants recommended this book to me. Steve Lem is serving as Interim Associate Dean during my first year as Dean in a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Steve and I don’t just do our work; we also have meta conversations about leadership strategies, interpersonal dynamics, and how we can help our entire university to work more effectively in the ways we approach our own roles and help our office to function better. So when he talked about this book, I put it on my list of things to check out.

Steve said some of the terms in the book might seem a little cutesy, but the ideas are solid. I’m a fan of not taking ourselves too seriously, so I’m cool with the cutesy.

Today is a snow day and I decided to use the morning to go through my inbox (which occasionally is a hydra with multiplying heads; I used “schedule send” so almost everything I’m sending this morning will go out at 4:00pm so I won’t get more emails back while I’m in the midst of cleaning that inbox out….thank you to whoever taught me that trick….).

I’ll be using the afternoon to work on my own research. I’m in a heavy-work period right now so I will do either research or drafting a promotion letter this evening. Don’t worry. I’ll also take breaks, do a workout, goof off. It’s Friday, after all, and a snow day. I will find ways to play!

In the midst of all that, as I have a food break (pancakes with strawberries! yum!), I opened the digital version of Brownlee’s book. It looks like it will be helpful for me to think about my own leadership style, and I think my end goals are to be a) thoughtful about ways I might want to adjust my style and b) more explicit about my style with others. I think identifying my leadership style more clearly, in practical ways, may be especially helpful for my chairs and for my immediate dean’s office team.

I won’t finish the book right now. But I’ll chip away over time.

***

Take away 1–the book has advice to offer me not just as a leader but also as a subordinate

My immediate boss is the provost, and I’m lucky because she’s a strong and effective leader. The book offers advice for working well with strong leaders, and it all seems smart. The original is way better than my paraphrases, but I’m not going to extensively quote, so check out the actual book if you want better quality.

• build trust relationships
• be easy, not a pain
• do super good work in whatever role you occupy
• figure out how your boss likes to communicate and adapt to that
• be honest and brave when talking to your boss, but do so in the right time and place and using appropriate rhetoric
• anticipate and prevent problems
• do stuff to lessen the boss’s workload…and take on jobs that no one else wants or is willing to do

Take away 2–framing and communication are everything

Any kind of “us vs. them” framework in the workplace leads to poorer relations and less effectiveness. I say that regularly in my current leadership role. I get frustrated when colleagues approach challenges as if we are playing a game of Risk, building empires and toppling opponents. I’m more of a fan of identifying a challenge and seeing ourselves as partners on addressing the challenge. That doesn’t mean we will agree or see things in exactly the same way, but it does mean we will listen to one another and do the best we can to move forward in smart ways, even if not everyone’s needs/wants are 100% met.

Brownlee also writes about how easily unspoken expectations can result in problems. If we want certain behaviors, we need to make expectations explicit, not hope people can figure them out on their own. I think I am usually good about this one, but I sometimes assume others are on the same page or assume that I understand others’ expectations. Occasional miscommunications might be unavoidable, but I think the idea is to minimize these unnecessary conflicts as much as we can.

Take away 3–the “difficult boss” behaviors I am most prone to

Okay, I’m going to start off by actually identifying the “difficult boss” behaviors that I am not likely to exhibit. It’s so easy to be hard on ourselves, to see all our areas for growth without noticing the things we excel at.

I am not: overly temperamental; sneaky; a proponent of busy work; resistant to change; self-absorbed; competitive with others (except when I play board games!); chaos-inducing; negative or pessimistic; full of unreasonable expectations of others; a shit-stirrer; incompetent; a micro manager; or disempowering.

Guess what? I went down the whole list and decided I don’t fit any of the “difficult boss” types! Hahahaha. But now I’m gonna give all of us a dose of reality.

I do have areas for growth I am super aware of, and I think they fit in Brownlee’s “difficult” categories in ways that might not always be obvious:

• I sometimes overwork.
  
  I do this behavior less than in the past, but “overwork” can also mean that I’m doing others’ work for them, not delegating enough, not communicating enough with others about what needs to be done, not organizing responsibilities among my team members in a clear and explicit way, and so forth. I don’t completely suck, but this one is an ongoing area of growth, for sure.
  
• I am still learning how things work at my university.
  
  I don’t think I’m “incompetent” at all, but I am regularly aware of policies, procedures, past practices, and so on that I don’t know as well as I would like. I also am constantly learning more about the thirteen departments and thirty+ major programs my college, and I don’t know all the faculty and staff in my college, which makes me sad, but I don’t know how to correct that one.
  
• I sometimes struggle with my emotional attachment to my work.
  
  My work role is part of my identity. Education matters deeply to me, and I care (too much at times) about what others think of me, so sometimes I have trouble shutting off the spiraling voices in my head. I also internalize others’ emotions in ways that can be a form of self-sabotage instead of a tool that can help me be a thoughtful responder to people and situations. But I am way better at focusing on doing good work and letting things go than I used to be. So yay for gradual improvement!
  
  My interim associate dean has been super helpful in his feedback to various situations that have arisen (he has regularly said after a challenging meeting, “That went great! We are doing things we have never done, and that conversation really moved things forward”; that commentary helps my framing a lot), and he also models a separation between his work life and his emotional state. That’s one of the ways he’s been a mentor to me!
  
  I also appreciate the Brene Brown approach: Pay attention to what a select few people think of me, the very few people I can rely on to give me honest feedback. And then, when I know better, I do better.
  
• I am sometimes overwhelmed with the volume of work.
  
  This one seems related to all three points above. And I am also doing my best to approach work in organized ways so I don’t lose track of things. That’s an ongoing project.
  
• I sometimes undervalue my own judgment or opinion.
  
  I came back and edited this post to add this area for growth because I was thinking about it this past week. If others have set something up in a certain way or pitch a certain preference, I tend to accept it, downplaying a part of me that might see a better way to do things. This attribute is sometimes helpful for collaboration, for prioritizing what really needs attention, and for being a low maintenance person who doesn’t create work for others.
  
  However. I’m in my role for a reason. I need to take ownership of decisions in my area, and, as long as I’m being smart and thoughtful and making sure I have the relevant info, I need to assert my opinion so we do things well as often as possible.
  
  I’m also going to add that these areas for growth are very particular to me. Other people could struggle with the exact opposite things. Often it’s about striking a balance, using my default habits in moderate ways that are helpful to me, my colleagues, and my university….but not taking my habits to extremes that are detrimental.

I gotta end here and get to my research. My pancakes and strawberries are long gone. But I’m reading ahead a bit (I’ve only read the Intro and Chapter One! yikes), and I like what I see. “Managing up” isn’t about who controls whom; it’s more about being aware of styles so we can work better as a team within existing hierarchies. I like that. As someone in a middle management position, I really like that.