Your relationship with your boss may be one of the most consequential relationships in your working life. Yet most of us are expected to figure out how to navigate it on our own.
What happens when your boss avoids decisions? Micromanages everything? Makes a call you strongly disagree with? Or simply works in a way that clashes with yours?
In this episode of foHRsight, Naomi Titleman Colla speaks with Mohit Misra about managing up as a skill, and why employees have more agency in the relationship than they may realize.
Mohit introduces six common boss archetypes and his Triple M framework for understanding who you are working with, mapping your own needs against theirs, and making an intentional move rather than relying on assumptions. They also explore how to challenge a boss constructively, what to do when respect begins to erode, and why understanding the pressures your leader is facing can completely change the conversation.
They also look at what AI is doing to the traditional boss-employee power dynamic. When employees and leaders increasingly have access to the same information and tools, hierarchy alone creates less value. Transparency, judgment and honest conversation become even more important.
And for HR leaders in particular, Mohit leaves us with a challenge: are we coaching everyone else to embrace ambiguity while quietly expecting perfection from ourselves?
Resources Referenced
About Our Guest
Mohit Misra is a leadership advisor, coach and author with two decades of experience in senior talent roles at organizations including Novartis, Chemours and Bank of America. He works with CHROs and senior leaders on turning leadership strategy into action and is the author of Coaching Under Three Minutes and the forthcoming Managing Up.
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