(00:00-00:28) Limor Bergman
What is the number one reason why people quit their job? I think it is because of their manager. And today we're going to talk about managing up and how to build an effective relationship with your manager, even if they are very different than you. Because you don't have to quit your job if you don't like your manager. You just need to know how to manage them and how to work effectively with them.

(00:36-00:57) Limor Bergman
Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of From a Woman to a Leader. My name is Limor Bergman-Gross, and I'm your host. And today I have the pleasure having leadership expert Daria Rudnik. Daria spent over 15 years coaching leaders and helping teams thrive.

(00:58-01:12) Limor Bergman
even through tough transformations. And she's going to share some tips about how to manage up effectively, set expectations and influence others without needing to shout in order to be heard.

(01:14-01:40) Limor Bergman
So if you're struggling with building effective relationships with your manager and you want to take your professional relationships to the next level, stick around and be sure to share this episode with anyone it might help. So let's dive right in. Hi, Daria. How are you? Hi, Halimar. Good to be here. Yeah, good.

(01:41-02:10) Limor Bergman
Great to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining. And we're going to talk about something that I think is very important, especially for women. It's about kind of managing upwards and building the relationships with your manager. And I guess the first question I would have for you is like, why is it important to build a relationship with your manager? Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I mean, I think it's a very important topic. I talk a lot with

(02:12-02:22) Daria Rudnik
With leaders, like female leaders, male leaders who are struggling to build a relationship with their boss. But to be honest, like your boss, your manager is your main stakeholder.

(02:23-02:42) Daria Rudnik
And whatever it is, you like working with this person or not, whenever this person is developing you or not, if you decide to be there and work with them, you need to build relationship with them. The worst mistake you can make is just kind of ignore and thinking, okay, I'm doing my job.

(02:42-03:00) Daria Rudnik
I have nothing to do with my boss. I'm just doing what I have to do, and I'm not going to build a relationship with them. That's not what you should be focusing on. You need to build relationships. And those relationships, you don't need to have a kind of personal liking to each other, but you need to have a good working relationship with this person.

(03:00-03:21) Daria Rudnik
And like, when I was thinking about this conversation, I was kind of like, there was a quote, you probably know that the quote says that I love you, not because of who you are, but because of who I am, what I am with you. Yeah. And that should be your mantra, working with your boss, because your boss will value you for how you help them achieve their goals.

(03:21-03:46) Limor Bergman
Yes, and I want to kind of repeat what you said about your boss will appreciate you for helping them reach their goals. And I think this is one of the common mistakes that many people do. They think about themselves rather than their manager. And I'm not saying you shouldn't think about yourself, but

(03:46-04:10) Limor Bergman
But the best way I found to build relationship with a boss, especially if they are very different than you and it's not very easy and straightforward, is about thinking about them and how you can help them achieve their goals. Yeah. You're building this ladder together. They climb up, you climb behind them. Oh, yeah. I like that. I like that analogy. Yeah. Yeah.

(04:10-04:31) Limor Bergman
And you mentioned your boss is like your main stakeholder, right? I mean, this is the person that can help you or destroy you. Yeah, or destroy you, I guess. Hopefully not destroy you, but can hurt you, I guess. Or to the very least, not help you. Mm-hmm.

(04:31-05:00) Limor Bergman
Yeah. So how do you actually approach building the relationship? And I would kind of, you know, be more specific even. How do you approach that when your manager is, you know, when it's not coming naturally? Because a lot of times we work with people that it's just, it's a click. Everything is smooth and easy and then you don't have to think about it much. But the difficult piece is when you're kind of stuck with

(05:00-05:28) Daria Rudnik
with that person, right? That person is your manager, but maybe they're very different than you. Like something is not working out. How do you approach that? That is actually a gift when you have to build relationship with someone who you don't have this click with. Because sometimes when you have a click and then when something goes wrong, you're going, okay, where did I lose this person? What could possibly go wrong? Because we had this click and we never thought and reflected on how we build this relationship. But

(05:29-05:47) Daria Rudnik
Relationships with your stakeholders at work is a strategic work. You need to invest and reflect and think about it and not just let it flow. You can have those kind of conversations with your peers, but your stakeholders, it's part of your job to think about how you build relationships with them.

(05:47-06:15) Daria Rudnik
First thing is you need to understand what kind of relationship you need to have with your boss. Because again, as I said, if it's some difficult person and they're not very open, they don't talk much, they don't share personal things, you know nothing about them. And maybe you don't need to know that about them. You probably don't need this kind of relationship with them. What you need is to be very clear on your goals, on their goals.

(06:15-06:30) Daria Rudnik
and how you can help, how your day-to-day tasks and objectives can support their goals. And that's what you need to focus on. And they would appreciate that because, again, as soon as they recognize that you're helping them reach their goals,

(06:30-06:57) Daria Rudnik
look good in front of their stakeholders. They'll listen to you and they'll start collaborating with you the way they can. So the first thing is identify the goals, manage your own expectations of how you want to develop those relationships and help them in any way you can. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it requires you to be curious about them. I think that the challenge is, at least for me, I mean, when I work with people that

(06:57-07:21) Limor Bergman
it wasn't the click. So there are not necessarily, by the way, it's a, it has to be a conflict or hostile relationship, but sometimes it's just, okay, that person is very different and I feel very distant from them. And it's very hard for me to connect and relate to them. And I think that like the first thing would be to try to figure out what is important for them and

(07:22-07:32) Limor Bergman
What is success for them? What they consider as success. And it can be very different than what you consider as a success. Yes, you're nodding.

(07:32-07:55) Limor Bergman
yeah that's right yeah okay so um let's let's kind of dive into to how you start doing that because obviously when you work with someone you don't know you need to be able to set expectations with them so how do you do that how do you start managing it's called managing up right to to be proactive and to start kind of working with them

(07:55-08:12) Daria Rudnik
The recent narrative is that your manager or your boss or your leader need to develop their employees, need to motivate them, provide them guidance and everything, which is great. And when leaders do that, that's amazing. What I wouldn't do is I wouldn't expect your manager to be that kind of leader.

(08:12-08:31) Daria Rudnik
Like, be your own, like, lead your own relationship with the boss. So if they don't come to you, if they don't reach out to you to discuss your goals, reach out to them and say, hey, can we talk about my goals? Do I understand you're right? These are my goals. Can you confirm my goals? Can you give feedback on what I'm doing? And

(08:33-09:02) Daria Rudnik
Try to make it a regular conversation. If they ask why you need that, explain why you need that because you want them to succeed. You want the organization to succeed. You want the team to be happy about you. You want to build a good relationship with everyone. And initiate those conversations. Initiate those one-to-ones if your manager doesn't do that. Initiate reflection sessions. Regularly ask for feedback requests as feedback from your manager the way they prefer to do it. If they like

(09:03-09:31) Daria Rudnik
Talking on the phone, call them. If they like emails, send them messages, send them emails. If they like one-to-one offline conversations, do that. I wanna share my personal story. Yeah, please do. So I had a very, very, very difficult boss. He was a CEO of a company. He was a new CEO. He was absolutely different. He came from like manufacturing. I was in like high tech.

(09:31-09:55) Daria Rudnik
and he had this manufacturing waterfall sort of thinking. And once he told me, you're not proactive or you're not initiative. How come? Like I came with the suggestions almost every time I talk to you. I always have some ideas. I mean, I am super initiative and proactive. And then we kept talking and what he said that,

(09:57-10:19) Daria Rudnik
You're not proactive and you're not initiative because there are people who send me weekly updates of how their week was with the results of the week. So what I thought initiative and what I thought of proactive and he thought of proactive were completely different things. And once we figured out, I started sending them these emails with my results of the week.

(10:19-10:45) Limor Bergman
And he was happy. That's a great story, Doria. And kind of I'm taking two things from what you just said. First of all, you said initiated initiatives. You repeated that word a lot. And I think it's super important because we tend to think that, okay, the manager is the one that is driving the relationship, but it doesn't mean that it has to be that way. And a lot of times our bosses, like they are very busy and busy.

(10:45-10:52) Limor Bergman
Or they may not just take the initiative. So nothing should stop you from taking the initiative.

(10:52-11:15) Limor Bergman
And clarify. Yeah, definitely. And I love what you shared in your story. This is exactly showing how it's important to, as much as possible, be curious about your manager, because your manager obviously thought that taking an initiative, at least for him, initiate was send me a weekly update.

(11:15-11:35) Limor Bergman
For you, initiate was something else, was coming up with ideas. And that's where the problems start, right? When each of you have a different way of looking into things, and when you're not aligned, that's where the frustration comes at both ends. That's an incredible story. And...

(11:36-12:03) Limor Bergman
And I wanted to ask you kind of, you know, if you can share anything about not just effectively communicate with your manager, but also how you can influence. And that especially, you know, when you work with a manager that may not maybe like the manager you shared in the story or someone else that they're not initially on the same page with you or understand or align with your perspective. Yeah.

(12:03-12:11) Daria Rudnik
Well, that is a great question. And it starts with what is influence and why do you want to influence this person?

(12:12-12:34) Daria Rudnik
Again, there's a lot of narrative going on, like stick to your agenda, be heard, speak up. The question is why? What do you want to get? What do you want to achieve from that? There's an example. There are lots of situations, especially when you grow high, high into this hierarchy. At some point, you might have a boss who has no idea what you're doing.

(12:34-12:54) Daria Rudnik
who doesn't understand your subject because you are the top expert in the organization in this area. And they might give some suggestions that you might think are stupid or irrelevant or risky or whatever you think. So what you need to do is, well, kind of educate them, explaining the things differently.

(12:54-13:22) Daria Rudnik
Not arguing, not like showing them how wrong they are, but kind of trying to explain your way of thinking and then show them the risks. So whenever your boss says something and you disagree with it, don't just say, no, I disagree. That's like, we don't do that. That's the wrong way of doing things. First of all, be curious again, like be curious why they came up with this decision. So there is some thinking behind that. Be curious about that thinking.

(13:24-13:50) Daria Rudnik
When you know that, identify the risks of their decision. Like here are some risks that I see from my experience and ask them whether they see those risks as high risks or they can live with those and that's not a problem. And then provide some suggestions and that's it. Like I wouldn't push further unless it's some really risky situation of millions of fines for the organization. But even in that case,

(13:50-14:18) Daria Rudnik
You can include some other people and share your thoughts with them and kind of have a broader perspective. But there is no need to win with conversation and your boss. You win only when your boss wins. Yeah, I think this is very powerful, Daria, what you mentioned. It reminds me of a great book I always recommend, How to Win Friends and Influence People, or maybe that's the vice versa.

(14:19-14:41) Limor Bergman
by Dale Carnegie. And Dale Carnegie talks about exactly what you mentioned about saving face, about not arguing, not getting into an argument, because this is where people are, ego is impacted, right? I mean, no one likes to be told you're wrong, right?

(14:42-15:11) Limor Bergman
I disagree. And depending on the culture. Some cultures, people may take it easier than others, but no one likes that. It's much better to be curious and to try to maybe challenge a little bit rather than telling someone they're wrong. What do you think about that? You're nodding. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned to me in our prequel that you can influence your manager and your team without being the loudest voice.

(15:11-15:39) Daria Rudnik
Which I love that. Yeah. And again, that's another, like everybody wants, how can I be heard? Yeah. And for some reason, people think that I can be heard only if they're very loud. Yeah. People come to meeting with, okay, I need to speak up. I need to say something. I need to start. I need to be the first one to say, or I need to be the last one to say. And there is kind of people thinking about when to say instead of what kind of value they want to bring. Yeah.

(15:39-16:00) Daria Rudnik
And those who think about the value, they, okay, I don't want to be there. Like, I don't want to do that. I just sit quiet and will not say like, I'll be quiet rather than being just loud. But there are many different ways of influencing people, talking to people, sharing your ideas and be heard. Like, for example, if you're invited to the meeting, you know, the agenda,

(16:01-16:31) Daria Rudnik
You reach out to the organizer and ask, how can I best support your agenda? And what do you expect me to share? What do you expect me to prepare? How do you want me to show up in this meeting? You can go to the stakeholders or decision makers who will be present at this meeting and tell them, here is the meeting. Here is what I want to share. What do you think about that? Ask for their feedback. Because, well, first of all, you get invaluable feedback. Second of all, you start building the relationship.

(16:31-16:56) Daria Rudnik
And third, when you come to the meeting, everyone knows that you're going to share something. And everyone knows that what you're going to share is valuable because they confirmed and they participated in creating this narrative that you want to talk. And that's how you build this visibility. Not by being loud, but building relationships and focusing on the value. And...

(16:57-17:18) Daria Rudnik
Yeah, speaking outside of the meeting as well. And if you miss the chance, and if you, for example, you miss the chance of talking at the meeting, you can always reach out to those people who were at this meeting and share something and discuss that after the meeting as well. So there's no rush of kind of speaking during the meeting. You can do it before me at the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting and in between the meetings as well.

(17:19-17:46) Limor Bergman
For sure. And I know that it's extremely difficult, especially it was for me. I mean, because it's hard for me to speak up, especially when everyone else is loud, right? Loud may not necessarily be on the voice itself, but it's like everyone is speaking and it's hard for me to chime in and say what I want to say. I think nowadays with Zoom, it becomes slightly easier just because you can raise hand or comment in the chat or

(17:46-18:00) Limor Bergman
I think what you mentioned, Daria, is very, very powerful. Like you can do your pre-work with the stakeholders. And even after the meeting, you don't have to do it during the meeting. And I want to highlight here another great book that you reminded me.

(18:01-18:27) Limor Bergman
I don't know if you heard of Robert Cialdini. He wrote the book Influence, which is like a bestseller. But he also wrote another book called Presuation. And it talks a lot of what you mentioned about you can actually influence people before you even had the conversation with them. So I recommend that book. Just thought about that. And you mentioned like the agenda.

(18:28-18:52) Daria Rudnik
And I want to go back to your manager, right? How do you influence the agenda? How do you drive the agenda with your manager when you're meeting with them? Well, that's tough. The managers I worked with were very high level thinkers. And what I needed from them is like kind of really specific feedback on some of the activities that we're doing.

(18:53-19:22) Daria Rudnik
And whenever we started this conversation, they kind of went to the clouds, thinking big, thinking broad. And my job was to kind of narrow them down and focus them on the questions that I had. So again, know your boss. Like, for example, the boss that I had, the CEO, I knew that if I need to talk specifically about something where I needed his thinking process, it's got to be an offline meeting. Like,

(19:22-19:33) Daria Rudnik
No way. Even COVID, no COVID, no matter what, it has to be an offline meeting, one-to-one. Because then he can focus on what I'm saying. He can think with me.

(19:34-19:58) Daria Rudnik
If there was this genuine update and I needed his yes or no, then it could be an online meeting. And I always kept the focus. What is my goal? What do I want to get from that meeting? And if I didn't get that, I sent an email update. Here's what we discussed. Here was another thing. So he can either reply to me in email or we schedule another meeting.

(19:58-20:21) Limor Bergman
So the main thing is keep your focus. Even if your boss goes somewhere away, always keep this focus and follow up. Definitely. And I think what you mentioned, Daria, about knowing the type of person and how they like to communicate is very, very, very important, right? The manager you mentioned you had.

(20:21-20:44) Limor Bergman
They like to have, if I understood correctly, like a face-to-face conversation rather than a virtual meeting. And that was the way to work with them, unless you had to summarize something. And also sharing summaries, I think it's very powerful because it helps remove any potential discrepancies in

(20:44-21:02) Limor Bergman
Maybe you are not really on the same page or understood something different. When you summarize it and you send it in a written way, then, well, they may say, no, that's not exactly what I meant. So that's a great way to make sure that you're on the same page. Everyone knows about follow-ups and agenda.

(21:02-21:31) Limor Bergman
But so rarely people do that. Always follow up with your boss. Always, always send a follow-up message. Yeah, I think that a lot of things we all know, right? We all know that we have to eat healthy. How many people do that? So it's like knowing that doesn't mean that we are doing that. And I think nowadays it becomes much easier with all the tools. So assuming you're meeting virtually, just use whatever tool you like to automatically summarize the meetings. And then you can...

(21:31-22:00) Limor Bergman
Take the AI summary and then modify it so it saves you tons of time. I think there are tools, so utilize tools. You don't have to write everything yourself, for sure. Yeah, and one strategy I like to do with handling agendas and stuff like that is to have a shared document where we both kind of write the agenda items so we can be prepared. It doesn't work with everyone because some people really are not very structured and don't like...

(22:01-22:27) Limor Bergman
processes, but with some that are more structured, I found that to be very helpful when you, and not just with your manager, by the way, also with people that you manage or peers, they have to be thoughtful about the agenda before you kind of train them to, okay, before meeting with me, there is a document. If you have something you want to share or talk about, put it into agenda, I'll do the same. It kind of helps, I think.

(22:28-22:54) Daria Rudnik
What are your thoughts? Have you used that? I mean, yeah. I rarely use like collaborative agenda. I usually state my points and send them out. And if you want to add something, just give it back to me and I'll update the agenda. I mean, if we implement this no agenda, no meeting rule, our life would be so much easier. Yeah. But I know it's hard. Yeah. Yeah.

(22:55-23:09) Limor Bergman
What else we didn't talk about? I think we didn't talk about handling major transformations and projects. And how do you kind of handle that? How did you manage that?

(23:10-23:39) Daria Rudnik
during a major transformational project to make sure it's successful? I have a story for that. Yeah. There was, like, I was working for a telecom startup, and we were growing rapidly, and then at some point, we had to kind of triple or even quadruple our production speed because there was lots of things going on. There was, like, this company was potentially to be, like, to be quiet with another company, and we wanted to gain some, like,

(23:39-24:03) Daria Rudnik
major clients with lots of going on. And it was basically the question of life or death for the organization. And we knew that the organization was not ready structurally and the processes within organizations were not supporting this huge goals that we had. So we need to somehow restructure the organization. And we started this conversation with the CEO about how to do that and

(24:04-24:33) Daria Rudnik
So what I did was I was listening to what he was thinking and I was asking questions so that he could clarify his thoughts on how he wants to approach that. And then we came to the idea that we need to have a flat organization, kind of remove some managerial layers and make this organization really, really flat. When I came back, when I came to the C-suite executives and told them about that, they said, you guys, you're crazy. That's never gonna work.

(24:33-25:03) Daria Rudnik
How are you going to manage all those people? How can you manage those operations? Like, we're not supporting that. If we're not supporting that, you're not, like, you cannot do that. So what we did was lots of conversations, one-to-one, and in the team, in the C-suite team, and C-suite plus CEO team, where we asked questions, and, like, we had a shared goal. We all agreed that we need to change. What we, like, didn't agree upon is how we need to change that.

(25:03-25:20) Daria Rudnik
So before we started this transformation project, we had a lot of conversations. And again, there were one-to-one conversations. There were conversations between the managers and the conversations of the whole, like with the CEO. And all of those conversations were different based on the people present there.

(25:20-25:43) Daria Rudnik
So when I had some one-to-one conversations, I was trying to understand what those people want, what they were afraid of, and how they can be secure in their status, their power, their performance will stay the same or better. When we had all the C-suite conversations without the CEO or

(25:45-25:57) Daria Rudnik
we kind of, okay, thought of the question that we have and want to ask to the CEO. And then we could have arguments there and kind of debates. But when we came to the CEO, it was never a debate.

(25:57-26:17) Daria Rudnik
It was always like people supporting each other and asking questions. But there was never, again, there was never an argument. There was never a debate because we wanted to be seen as a collaborative unit. And everyone wanted to be seen as they are providing value.

(26:17-26:43) Daria Rudnik
And by creating this atmosphere of those discussions where we all provide value and ask questions and try to mitigate the risks, we could reach out. We came to the decision that we then executed, which was kind of make the organization more flat, but not that radical as we thought it would be. So to sum it up, it was a lot of conversations, one-to-ones, C-suite and C-suite plus CEO. Yeah.

(26:44-27:10) Limor Bergman
Yeah. And I love that you mentioned like the conversations were different depending on the audience, right? I mean, this is, I think, something that is very difficult for people to adjust. So they are just themselves and they communicate the same way, no matter who is the person or people that they communicate with. And in order to be able to be a great communicator and influence people,

(27:10-27:38) Limor Bergman
you have to adjust your communication style based on the person or people that you're talking with, your style. As you said, right, with the C-suite you can argue, but not with the CEO. So it was like there was a culture of, it's okay to be maybe kind of heated conversation, but when the CEO was there, you needed to show support and collaboration. So it changed, right? And everyone kind of knew that. It was an unwritten code. Yeah.

(27:39-28:05) Daria Rudnik
Yeah. Yeah. This is very powerful. And I wanted to ask you before we end our conversation today, is there anything else that you would like to share on that topic that maybe I didn't ask? I think, again, coming back to what we started with, is there's a lot about being visible. There's a lot about being heard. There's a lot about leading and speaking up and being assertive. But I think there's not enough...

(28:05-28:34) Daria Rudnik
kind of call to being more supportive and listening to your boss and listening to your peers and collaborating. Because I think one person, however great leader they are, they cannot transform organization. They cannot create major change. They cannot innovate. Only collaborative teams can do that. And I truly believe that the era of heroic leadership is gone. And now is the time for empowered teams.

(28:34-28:58) Limor Bergman
but you need to learn how to be part of a team. Not a leader, but a good follower and a good team player. For sure, and this is very powerful. And I think that, personally, I talk a lot about it. I think two skills that are really important are empathy and active listening. To be able to really...

(29:00-29:21) Limor Bergman
We're the collaborative head, right? To look at people without judgment, to be empathetic, to try to understand them, to be curious. And those skills are really important and very powerful, in my opinion. Yeah, that's right. Thank you so much, Jaria. So before we end, share with our audience kind of what you do and how people can find you.

(29:22-29:47) Daria Rudnik
Well, thanks. It was a very interesting conversation. So what I do, basically, I work with leaders as a leadership coach and with teams as team coach and team architect, helping teams be more effective and engaged when they work together. And from my experience, teams can be twice and three times as productive as they used to be when they have really great teamwork. You can find me on LinkedIn or my website, which is daddyrudnik.com.

(29:48-30:02) Limor Bergman
Perfect. I will share your LinkedIn and website. Thank you so much, Daria, for being here today. It was wonderful speaking with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening to the episode with Daria. Before you go...

(30:03-30:32) Limor Bergman
Stick a little bit just to hear about next week episode. Before we do that, I want to ask you, have you ever felt completely stuck in a conversation? So trying to influence or trying to persuade someone and you just cannot get through that other person. I have been there for a long time. You know, I struggle to influence other people, especially people that were difficult or very, very different than me.

(30:33-30:52) Limor Bergman
And it took me some time to realize that it was because I was too focused on my own perspective and I wasn't taking the time to truly understand theirs. And it turns out that curiosity was the missing piece. And that's why I'm so excited to share with you that next week,

(30:53-31:16) Limor Bergman
I'm speaking with Julie Pham, and Julie is a TEDx speaker, and she's the founder of Curiosity Based. And Julie explains how we can make curiosity a powerful tool, and that can help us tackle difficult conversations and build stronger relationships. And I think this is one of the top skills that is so much needed today.

(31:17-31:41) Limor Bergman
So I want to encourage you to don't miss that conversation next week. Subscribe to my podcast to never miss an episode and tune into next week to discover how curiosity can unlock new ways to connect and influence. Thank you so much for listening and being with me here today. I hope you enjoyed the episode and I want to wish you a wonderful day.