Much is made of the ignominious leader who is appointed over a competing candidate, only to bring that same opponent into their leadership team (see Obama and Hillary).  Or the intelligent, quietly confident tech visionary who invites dissenting opinions, and pushes for character, hyper-competent teams that disagree, and then coalesce around a group decision (see Shopify mantra).

But make no mistake dear reader, these are political manoeuvres at heart, and virtue signals at best.  Your average corporate leader has the confidence of a shellfish recently submerged in a boiling pot of water.  And your job as their employee and future successor is to encourage them in the futile pursuit of their corporate journey to get out of the cauldron of burning mess they call their current role, and settle into the next raging tirefire that will be their next role.

And how does one do this you ask?  Why, by managing upwards of course. 

You’re number one priority as a corporate stooge is not your job or your team, your customers or your results, but your boss.   Different bosses value different things, but primarily you can assume that they are concerned with the same thing – their boss.  Hire people who can do the job for you, thereby you set it and forget it, and focus on the tier above and all of the unrelenting drama that comes with it.

Availability, subservience, preparedness, enthusiasm, and charm/personality, are all useful skills.  Challenging, disagreeing, and worst of all, self importance, are to be avoided even in the most dire of circumstances.

You can’t mope either – yes you disagree with the decision, yes you think you’re boss is making a huge mistake and will cost you countless wasted hours, but as many of my colleagues do effortlessly and continuously, learn to nod visibly. 

And in your spare time focus on what they could do better to make their boss’ life better through them – bring those ideas to team meetings and informal discussions or slack messages in a very passive manner.  I’m a tech team when considering in leadership activities for fiscal planning, a thoughtful soul added something like ‘One option could be to articulate our investments, IP, and strategy for AI’. 

Seems obvious, but the individual was thinking outside of a narrow box and earned some brownie points in the process.