Bringing Up the Boss

Practical Lessons for New Managers

Rachel Pacheco
©2021 by Rachel Pacheco
Adapted by permission of BenBella Books, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-9532-9501-9
Estimated reading time of summary: 7 minutes

Key Takeaways
• Successful managers understand how to manage individuals, teams, and themselves.
• Managing individuals requires a focus on employee performance, motivation, and meaning. Good
managers set clear performance expectations for team members and then offer constructive feed-
back to change or reinforce behaviors. They understand what motivates each employee and work
with employees to create meaningful goals.
• Managing a team requires skill at all stages of the employee lifecycle. To reduce bias in hiring, skilled
managers create structured interview processes and use them consistently for every candidate.
They also develop standard onboarding processes. Whether an employee decides to quit, is ter-
minated for poor performance, or laid off, great managers handle these transitions with care and
strong communication.
• To maximize team performance, managers create norms and promote an atmosphere of psycholog-
ical safety. They recognize the value of task conflict, while striving to minimize relationship conflict
and process conflict.
• An important part of managing oneself is also “managing up.” This involves demonstrating confi-
dence, anticipating your boss’s needs, and taking on work without being asked. Managing yourself
also means having clear goals about your own professional development.

Overview
When people are promoted to management positions, they may be unprepared to take on this new
type of role in the workplace. In Bringing Up the Boss, Rachel Pacheco provides helpful advice for indi-
viduals who find themselves in this situation. She offers lessons learned as well as tools for becoming a
great manager—whether managing individuals, teams, or oneself.
Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 1
Bringing Up the Boss Rachel Pacheco

Part I: Managing an Individual

Performance
As a manager, you’re responsible for managing the performance of all your employees—both the poor
performers and the stars. Good managers convey clear expectations for each individual. Many new
managers avoid setting expectations, however, because they fear being seen as a micromanager.

When you set clear expectations, you answer four questions for employees:

1. What’s the objective?

2. What does “good” look like?
3. What’s the desired timing?
4. What are some examples, if possible?
Great managers also provide individuals with frequent feedback that’s constructive and well-structured.
Good feedback is data-driven and aims to change or reinforce a behavior. It’s also kind, since it should
come from a desire to help a person improve.

When you provide feedback, try to illustrate how your employee’s behavior impacts you, your team, or
your customers. This will help the person understand why the feedback is important. In addition, pro-
vide a clear illustration of how your employee can change the behavior in question.

Feedback is a two-way street. As a result, managers must also be great at receiving feedback from
their workers. Be sure to ask for feedback, listen, and be thankful. Integrate upward feedback into your
employees’ formal review processes.

When it comes to professional development, push your employees to take responsibility for achieving
their own goals. A one-size-fits-all development plan simply won’t work. Individual development plans
motivate people to examine and cultivate their development at the capability level.

Coaching is another way to guide employees to greater self-awareness. When you act in a coaching role,
focus on asking open-ended questions and ask them one at a time. Examples of coaching questions
include, “What concerns you about this situation?” “What’s your ideal outcome?” “What would be an
alternative way to approach this that you haven’t considered?”

If an individual needs to change his or her behavior, a performance improvement plan (PIP) can be
valuable. A PIP offers a set of clear and structured actions, and should never come as a surprise to an
employee. A well-constructed PIP has three sections: (1) three to four areas of improvement, (2) an
action plan for improvement with three to five activities, and (3) a clear timeline for check-ins.

Motivation
If you understand what motivates each of your employees, it will be easier to identify the best ways to
incent people and structure their work. Most individuals are motivated by either achievement, power,
or affiliation. Since employees aren’t motivated by the same things, you must take a tailored approach.

As a manager, you need to help your people create goals that will be motivating to them and use those
goals effectively. Great goals are challenging but not unattainable. They’re also specific, clear, time-
bound, and include feedback mechanisms.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 2
Bringing Up the Boss Rachel Pacheco

A common misconception is that monetary compensation is the best way to motivate employees.
Research has found, however, that this isn’t always the case. People care a great deal about what their
peers earn and whether their own pay seems fair.

Employees tend to be more comfortable with compensation decisions if they understand how you
arrived at the decisions. You may want to develop a compensation philosophy that outlines the
principles you use when making compensation decisions and how those principles align with the orga-
nizational culture.

As you consider advancing employees within the organization, Pacheco recommends using the follow-
ing promotion equation:

Performance + Better Than Peers + Available Role = Promotion

Performance means that the individual has shown outstanding work in his or her current role. Better
than peers means that the individual is more skilled in the role than his or her colleagues. Available role
means a position with new responsibilities is open. Communicate this equation to your employees and
utilize it during annual or biannual promotion cycles.

Keep in mind that learning is one of the best motivators. Commit to giving your people challenging
work that enables them to learn. Lateral moves within an organization generate significant amounts of
learning.

Meaning
You can make work meaningful for team members by structuring and framing tasks. Five design choices
are important when structuring work: (1) skill variety, (2) task identity, (3) task significance, (4) auton-
omy, and (5) feedback.

Job crafting is the notion of reframing a job. Ask employees to identify their current tasks and group
them based on where they spend the most time. Then ask them to create an “after” diagram that illus-
trates how they’d prefer to spend their time. This exercise can uncover opportunities to make people’s
jobs more meaningful to them.

Although you should encourage employees to share their emotions, it’s important to recognize that
emotional contagion can impact a team’s mood and performance. Emotional contagion occurs when
either negative or positive emotions spread rapidly through a group.

Great managers overcommunicate and set clear communication expectations. They explain what they’ll
communicate to employees, as well as what they won’t communicate. They also inform individuals
about information that they’ll passively convey, if employees ask for it. Consider sending out a weekly
email with significant news for the week, as well as a senior team meeting output report. Remember to
repeatedly ask employees whether they need further clarification or additional questions.

As you help employees with their quest for meaning, you may want to ask “beautiful questions” that
encourage people to explore change and to be more vulnerable. An example of this type of question is
“What did you learn about yourself over the last year that you didn’t know before?” Beautiful questions
can be particularly useful at the beginning of the year or during times of transition.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 3
Bringing Up the Boss Rachel Pacheco

Part II: Managing a Team

Hiring and Firing
One of the most important ways that managers add value is by recruiting new employees. This means
creating an interview process that’s positive for everyone involved and also identifies the best candidates
for the job. It’s critical to use an interview process that’s structured, free of bias, and used consistently for
every candidate. You must identify the key capabilities for each job, create interview guides, and collect
feedback in a structured way.

Affinity bias is a problem in interviewing. People subconsciously lean toward hiring individuals who look
and act like them. Even with a structured interview process, this can still be problematic. One solution is
to use behavioral questions that delve into how an applicant handled different work situations.

Once you’ve identified great candidates and they’ve accepted the job offers, it’s time for onboarding.
This also must be done consistently and with care. Create a checklist with tasks that must be completed
one week before a new hire starts, on the first day, during the first week, and during the first month. Give
new hires a work project immediately with a completion date that’s two weeks out.

Unfortunately, not all your team members will stay with the team. This may occur because people decide
to quit, they aren’t performing well, or the organization has a layoff. In all cases, you must know how to
manage when employees leave and remember that communication is important. If you need to fire an
employee, it shouldn’t be a surprise, and you should be very clear when delivering the news. Kindness
and empathy are also best practices.

Team Dynamics
Great teams are based on a strong foundation of norms and psychological safety. Norms define how
a team operates. As a manager, you must define the team norms, such as preferred methods for
communication, decision-making processes, and team roles. When teams have an atmosphere of psy-
chological safety, employees feel that they can take risks without negative consequences. Be sure that
every employee has a voice.

Groupthink dynamics often make it difficult for people to express opinions, especially if those views
are contrary to the majority. Managers must encourage employees to speak up and to speak out. For
example, during decision making, appoint a devil’s advocate. It’s also important to reward dissent.

Many people dislike conflict, but conflict can be productive and reduce groupthink. There are three
types of conflict:

1. Relationship conflict is destructive for teams.

2. Task conflict can help improve team performance by reexamining how work gets done.
3. Process conflict, while necessary, can be frustrating and can also lead to relationship conflict.
Meetings consume a significant amount of work time, so great managers focus on improving the effec-
tiveness of these gatherings. Think carefully about the invitees, insist on an agenda, assign roles, and
avoid multitasking during meetings. After meetings are over, provide concise updates to team members
who didn’t attend. Review your standing meetings periodically and decide if all are essential. You also
may want to disinvite people who aren’t needed and adjust the meeting length as appropriate.

Business Book Summaries® • Copyright © 2022 EBSCO Information Services • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 4
Bringing Up the Boss Rachel Pacheco

Part III: Managing Yourself

As a manager, you must lead your team, but you must also “manage up.” When it comes to managing
employees, vulnerability can be powerful. Vulnerable leaders are comfortable showing that they don’t
have all the answers all the time. This builds trust between managers and teams. Bear in mind, however,
that vulnerability is only powerful when paired with competence.

Managing up means demonstrating confidence, anticipating your boss’s needs, and taking on work
without being asked. You must ensure that your manager has the information needed to succeed in his
or her role. Proactively provide updates and offer solutions to problems.

There may be times when you receive unsolicited job offers from different companies. This may prompt
you to explore three potential outcomes: (1) modifying elements of your current role and staying with
your firm, (2) taking the new job, or (3) looking for a completely different job at a different company.

Before making any decisions, it’s important to set an intention about what you’re looking for in your
work. If you decide to pursue a job outside your company, reach out to friends and ask them to intro-
duce you to people in their networks who would be willing to share their perspectives with you. If you
decide to stay with your current company, consider whether you could use “job crafting” to modify your
role and make it more satisfying.

About the Author

Rachel Pacheco has long helped start-ups solve their people and culture challenges. She’s on the
board of advisors for numerous start-ups, primarily in the digital health and wellness space. Previously,
Pacheco was on the executive teams of a healthcare venture fund and advisory firm and a big data
start-up incubated within JP Morgan Chase. Pacheco conducts research on management—specifically
on power and conflict—at The Wharton School. She’s a member of the founding faculty of the Entrepre-
neurship in Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Purchase the Book

Copyright of Business Book Summaries, Business Book Review, and BusinessSummaries is property of EBSCO Information Services and its content may not be 5
copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email summaries for individual use. Business Book Summaries® is a service of EBSCO Information Services. For more information, to subscribe, or to send us
feedback, visit www.ebscohost.com
www.ebscohost.com.. EBSCO Information Services, 10 Estes Street, Ipswich, MA 01938 USA
Copyright of Bringing Up the Boss is the property of Great Neck Publishing and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use. For reprints and permission requests, contact
[email protected].