Leadership
How Supportive Leaders Approach Emotional Conversations (via HBR)
- Avoid dismissive phrasing, minimization, negation, prescribing solutions, and toxic positivity.
- Validate their experience.
- Seek to understand.
- Guide emotional and physical support.
- Offer specific support.
- Invite perspective instead of prescribing a solution.
- Acknowledge and appreciate them.
Managing up
How to Sell Your Ideas up the Chain of Command (via HBR)
- Understand your manager’s insecurities. Even experts lack confidence in their ability to lead. Support your peers to show you’re a giver rather than a taker. Approach them privately. Articulate how your suggestion links back to company goals/values.
- Avoid mixing the benefits of an action with the risk of inaction. Do one or the other, but not both. Before you do, understand whether your manager is promotion-focused or prevention-focused.
- Make implementation easy. Most managers look at (1) cost to implement, (2) how easy it will be to get help for it, (3) whether it’s worth it in terms of time/energy/political capital.
- Ask your colleagues for input. Doing so builds allies and stronger ideas. Having an idea come from multiple people makes it sound more “real.”