Welcome to Season 3 of the Next Peak Podcast, where we help you redefine what success looks like for you and share strategies, tools, and stories to help you climb your next peak.
Most of us think about leadership, and we only think about the team that we lead, but that is a very short-sighted view of leadership. Most leaders are in middle management; they still have a boss and often lead a team. They have peers that are other managers and can influence them and their boss by learning how to lead up.
In today's episode, Dr. Parker Houston gives us nine tips to LEAD UP. These tips will help our team and us to expand our influence and lead up in our organization.
- The most difficult person you ever will lead is yourself. So lead yourself exceptionally.
- Learn your boss's likes and dislikes. Write them down.
- Manage your mood because your mood follows you into the workplace, and it affects your career.
- Be prepared every time you take your boss's time. Learn how to get to the point in the conversation by writing it down and being succinct and clear.
- Identify solutions, not problems. Bring three possible solutions to your boss or your leader.
- Never bash your boss. Refuse to gossip or receive gossip.
- Lighten your leader's load. Taking things off their plate will gain influence and rapport.
- Become a go-to player; finding a way to deliver results consistently will ever get you noticed faster.
- Never stop growing yourself. Having experience is not something that will automatically gain skill. You've got to keep stretching yourself.
Tips for getting along with a challenging boss:
- Find ways to compensate for their weaknesses. Don't say anything about it, but if they're disorganized, help them be organized.
- Affirm them publicly for things you genuinely think they do well.
- Commit to serving them, no matter what.
- Identify their strengths and what they do well.
- Learn their likes and dislikes.
- Invest in your relationship, make reoccurring deposits
- Refuse to gossip.
If you got something out of today's episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend and leave us a review. You can find us on www.nextpeakpodcast.com. If you want to connect with Dr. Parker Houston, you can find him at www.leadyoufirst.com. Sign up for his weekly blog to receive some research-based tools that will help you transform your work and your life.
Until next week, keep climbing your next peak.