Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Leading Up

I read this article on Yahoo News. The content itself is not extraordinary, but I find the following passage quite interesting:

Abrams, 40, is the ultimate example of what can happen to the office busybody. After years of peppering his bosses with memos and suggestions about what MSNBC could do better, they finally said, "OK, you try it."

In probably all of John C. Maxwell's book you'll find him saying that leadership is influence. And like he writes in his book 360-degree Leader, the act of leadership includes influencing your boss. Another business reading on the topic is "Managing Your Boss", a classic  Harvard Business Review article by Gabarro and Kotter.
"Leading up" (Maxwell's term) is something that not a lot of business people appreciate. We often find it easier to criticize our bosses than to help them. It is indeed much easier to vent than to think and offer solution. But as the Yahoo article shows, leading up can mean a very successful career.

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