Melody Wilding: How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It’s by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you’re not.

I’m Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor and award winning executive coach. Get ready and let’s put psychology to work for you.

This week marks one month since my new book, managing Up How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge was released into the World and what a month it has been. On the surface, it’s been incredibly successful. The book hit number one bestseller on Amazon, I’ve done hundreds of media appearances, from Bloomberg News, fast Company Financial Times, CNBC, Harvard Business Review Daily Mail, the list goes on. The book has dozens and dozens of positive reviews so far from readers who are finding the scripts and strategies invaluable to earning respect and recognition at work.

Marie said, managing up by Melody Wilding is an essential read for professionals at all levels who want to effectively navigate workplace dynamics, build confidence, expand influence, and achieve career success.

And Jamie added, must read. If you have ever struggled understanding your manager or leadership team and you want to learn how to influence decisions and make a greater impact, this book is for you. Melody offers scripts and tips to help you get what you need from those in charge. She’s the queen of turning insight into action and helping you teach people how to treat you and offers a refreshing perspective that challenges the outdated notions of managing up as mere flattery or ingratiation. This is a resource you want to keep handy so you come back to it again and again. I truly wish this book existed 20 years ago. So thank you, Jamie, Murray, all of you who have left reviews.

All of this has been wonderful. It’s been thrilling. The best part of writing a book is getting to see and hear firsthand how it makes a difference for people. So thank you. If you have sent me a note or a message if you have left, review, because everyone means the world and it helps the book reach more people.

But what you haven’t seen, and what I haven’t really talked about is the struggle behind it all. The moments I almost quit, the times I questioned everything. The days I spent staring at a blank document on my computer, wondering if I was just wasting my time. So today to celebrate one month of managing up being out in the world, I’ve decided to share a segment from the virtual launch party.

And in this conversation with my co-coach, Wendy Cary, I open up about things I have rarely discussed. I share some of the behind the scenes stories I’ve never told about how the book came to be, including the job loss that actually became the foundation for the book. You’re going to hear the inside scoop of the one star reviews of my first book, Trust Yourself, that completely changed how I wrote this new book.

And you’re going to discover the beta reader feedback that led me to completely throw out several versions of the manuscript of managing up and hundreds of thousands of words, and how I’ve rebounded from that setback.

I have to confess though, I almost didn’t host this virtual launch party in the first place. I almost didn’t record this segment you’re about to hear from. Even though I am someone who spends my career online and on stages as a speaker and author, a podcaster, the irony is that I am actually terrible at sharing things about myself, because if I’m honest, it makes me very uncomfortable. I tend to be someone who keeps personal stuff tucked away because I don’t think it’s interesting.

I tell myself the story that no one cares or there’s not much value to it. That my so-called struggles are so mundane, they’re so simple because the vast majority of my life is spent behind my computer, so who cares? Why is that interesting? Today I am challenging myself because I think too many of us are guilty of the same mistake.

We judge our own worth by someone else’s highlight reel. We see the finished product, the buzz, and we assume it was a straight line to get there. It never is not even close. I know you are pursuing your own big goals and that there are probably self-imposed ceilings that come with that too. Maybe you are hesitating to ask for that promotion because you’ve convinced yourself that you still need one more certification first. Or maybe you’re putting off pitching a new direction or idea because you think who would listen to me?

I want you to know that the path is rarely as smooth as it appears to be from the outside looking in. As I’m sharing this segment today, I am trying to practice what I preach and a key skill we teach in my resilient program, the importance of expanding your capacity for discomfort, building your distress tolerance.

In the workplace, that might mean being able to sit with uncomfortable feedback without shutting down. Staying calm when a client changes a deadline, yet again, delivering hard news to a stakeholder rather than sugarcoating it, asking a question when you don’t understand something instead of just nodding along.

In my case today, distress tolerance is about letting you see beyond the polished. Expert facade and giving you a glimpse into the messy process behind the results, and pushing myself to do things that frankly make my heart race a little, even when there’s no actual external pressure forcing me to do this.

I’m sharing this with you anyway, knowing that some people may just click off or skip this episode, I’m okay with that because I’ve already heard from so many of you who were there in real time who shared how helpful this was for them.

So here it is a glimpse behind the curtain of what it really took to bring managing up into the world. I hope this reminds you that struggle, messiness, doubts they are part of any worthwhile journey and ultimately make the celebration so sweet.

Wendy Cary: What else can we expect in managing up? Yeah. What, what else is in there? What gems have you included for us?

Melody Wilding: Yes. I mean, that, that was just the first two pages of the book. Mm-hmm. So this is really meant to be a guide, a very, very practical handbook for you getting the recognition, the respect, the pay that you deserve without resorting to becoming someone you’re not.

And I think that last part is very important because when many of us hear the word managing up, actually, I would love to know for, for those of you before, before you started reading this book, before you came here tonight, what do you think manage up managing up meant? Just type a few words in the chat, like, what is your association with it?

I would love to hear, this is always a fun exercise. Most of the time what we hear is suck up, right? Being a people pleaser, just ingratiating myself to my manager being manipulative, catering to the boss, Miguel said. Dora said, making my boss’s job easier, right? It’s very other focused and I think this is a really important mindset shift for, for everyone here today, is that really managing up when done well is actually not something you do for your boss’s benefit.

It’s actually not about your boss at all. It’s something you do for yourself at the end of the day to make your own job life easier to create the conditions for your success. And what I went through painstaking lengths to do, and we can talk about this, is number one, I didn’t just want this to be a guide to dealing with different types of difficult bosses.

I didn’t want it to be filled with vague platitudes because I, you could get that in an article online. I wanted to make sure that the book was really chalk with word for word scripts. Many of you here have worked with us in resilient or in other programs, and the thing you told us over and over and over again is I really appreciate when you give me specific language or when you edit that email for me or gimme feedback on how to make that slide more influential.

We heard that again and again. I really took that to heart with this book to make sure. It had lots of fill in the blanks templates that of course, in typical melody fashion, had lots of research weaved in, but with step-by-step practical strategies you could use. Because the other thing that we’ve heard from many of you who we’ve worked with is that the reason you, you come to work with us is that I do have a therapeutic background.

I teaching behavior at the graduate level. I’m going on my 10th year there. I can’t believe it. But what I noticed is that there, there was a gap out there. There was no real world modern playbook for this skillset that focused on applying psychology in the workplace that will, that came at it from that perspective.

Yet now more than ever, yes, AI can do a lot, but work is all about people and especially the higher you go, the more important. It, it becomes to be able to navigate power dynamics. Someone was saying in here, who was saying it, Lara was saying, influencing others through understanding and authenticity. I think that’s such a great definition.

and that’s the most valuable skill we can have yet no one ever teaches that. And so the book is really based around these 10 key conversations You need to have to manage up effectively to get what you need from the people in charge, the exact things to say and do, when to navigate those tricky moments.

Wendy Cary: Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I love the fact that you, you know, put everything around conversations and, and the scripts because you are a true wordsmith. You are so good at words, and, and I see that again and again and again in resilient how. People feel like almost they’re freed because they have the words to say now.

Otherwise they were, they were stuck right where they were. Yeah. So I love that you took that approach.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And, and that’s the thing, right? That even these scripts are our starting point. They’re to get us out of the hump of overthinking and feeling paralyzed by how to approach it. And when you have a starting point, when you have a way to conceptualize, like, how, what should I roughly say?

How should I approach this? That’s when you can adapt it to yourself. So, yeah.

Wendy Cary: Yeah. Yeah. Well done. All right. Well I wanna, I wanna find out a little bit about, you know, because you started managing up within a year of when Trust yourself came out. Mm-hmm. So I’m sure you got some feedback and a lot of authors.

Say that their second book is really a reaction to what they learned from their readers in the first book. Yeah. So what came out for you? What surprising pattern was there? What, what stood out to you from that feedback to really say, okay, this is, this should be in a book.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Well, I’ll, I’ll separate this because there were, there were patterns I observed in people’s needs and behaviors.

And then there was feedback I received about trust yourself specifically. So I’ll address both of those. And you know, if we, sometimes it’s hard to put us back in, put ourselves back in time, especially over the last five years. But if you think about 2021, you know, a lot was still changing back then.

Right? We trust yourself came out in the thick of the pandemic. I could not do any in-person events around the book and. Also how people were relating to work and feeling about work was still in flux a lot. We were in the middle of the great resignation and you know, all the buzzword terms that came out of that.

But I think a lot of it goes back to some of those stats I mentioned when I read that part of out of the introduction is that people felt like their careers were out of their control. Like so much was just happening to them. They were at the whim of everything that was happening around them. And because so many people had shifted to fully remote or hybrid, at that point there was also a lot more overthinking interactions, taking things personally, because we had less, we had less organic interactions with people.

All of a sudden you were questioning why did my boss use a period instead of an exclamation point, or why have they taken four hours to get back to me? And your mind starts to go wild. It starts to fill in the blank when that happens. I don’t know if anybody has done that here. And so what I would hear again and again after trust yourself was that people would say, I love the book.

I feel more confident in myself. But the area where I still have the most trouble applying this is with people that have higher authority than me, or people who I perceive as being more dominant. aggressive, kind of have more of that executive presence in me, is when they would get intimidated and a lot of this would fall apart.

And so I heard that again and again. And when you, when something’s a pattern, you should pay attention. And what I realized from that was, okay, trust yourself was really about mastering one side of the equation. It was about kind of the internal psychology piece, getting a handle on. Your own insecurities and doubts.

And so managing up kind of became the, the natural extension of, alright, what, now if I trust myself, what now? How do I translate that confidence to my interactions with other people? And it’s really meant to represent that missing piece. How do you, yes. How do you manage your own psychology, but also how do you influence the psychology of others?

And that’s really what managing up is all about. And what’s is interesting is, at first, I, I felt a little, like the books were very disjointed. I felt at first, I kind of knew intuitively some sort of connection was there, but it was very murky to me. And what I’ve come to realize is that, that at the end of the day, they’re both about having more power than you realize and having.

Agency, whether with trust yourself, you’re facing internal doubts, you know, internal resistance or you’re facing external situations and difficulties and changes. You don’t have to be just a passive recipient of that. You can actively shape what’s happening both within and around you. So that was the, that was kind of the where people were at piece.

But then with the actual book, and you won’t hurt my feelings if you, if you say this in the chat, again, the number one piece of critical feedback I would hear about Trust Yourself was Great book, really dense, a really dense book. And what they meant by that was there was a lot to do in the book. And so when I wrote Trust Yourself, I wrote it because I wanted it to be more like a workbook.

Yeah. And it turns out that in some ways that actually worked against people getting the results that I hoped for. Because what would happen is that everyone’s really busy and we may have the best intentions to wanna work through the exercises at the end of the chapter or whatever the reflect on questions that I had in a certain part of the book.

But then life gets in the way. And so, again and again, people would tell me I loved it. I got through, you know, the first three, three chapters, it gave me so much to think about that I needed to take a break or I wanted to put aside time to do that exercise and I just never did. And time would pass and they wouldn’t actually come to it.

So a big change that I was very conscious about with managing up was that I wanted to deliberately make it something that you could consume more easily and you could implement a immediately without having to sit down and. carve out a lot of time to, to journal or reflect, just tweaks you could make to what you’re already doing and something you could keep on your desk as a reference and what’s connected with that.

I would actually love to hear how many of you, are listening to the book or will be listening to the book on audio. You can just type me in the chat, because this totally took me by surprise as well. When I wrote Trust Yourself. I really did not consider that today. The vast majority of people consume books digitally, whether it’s eBooks or it’s audio.

yeah, it’s about a third. It’s about pretty evenly split between all the formats for, for trust yourself. And that workbook style really does not translate to the digital format as well. And so for managing up, I, again, I wanted to make sure that this is something you could listen to in your car. You can pick up things on the go, and especially because there’s a lot of scripts, you can not only absorb it while you’re doing other things, but you can also hear how I’m saying things and delivering things.

And that actually adds to some of the experience.

Wendy Cary: Oh, I’ll have to keep that in mind and, and get it in Audible myself. I love that there’s so much that can be communicated just through, inflection and tone. Yeah. So it exactly. We can see how that would be really, really beneficial for a book with a ton of scripts in it.

Melody Wilding: Yes. 100%.

Wendy Cary: Yeah. yeah. So much of, of today is. Is quick and on the go and listening to short bits of things or watching a short bit. So the fact that you’re making it so, flexible for modern consumers is fantastic.

Melody Wilding: Yeah,

Wendy Cary: exactly. Yeah. Awesome. so you mentioned, that people could say in the, in the chat Yeah.

About some difficult feedback you might have gotten. So that kind of gets me into the next question. What is some of the most difficult feedback that you got and yeah, how did it shape what, what you did with managing up?

Melody Wilding: Yeah. I’m gonna take this a slightly different direction and also let me add, if you have questions that you want me or both Wendy and myself to answer, please go ahead and put them in the chat.

We wanna make sure, we can get to those as well. but so trust yourself was really about this idea of being a sensitive striver, being a deep thinking and feeling high achiever. What, what can you do to manage yourself better in your career so that you can take advantage of the upsides of what that trait has to offer and mitigate some of the downsides?

And I think the thing that I started to hear that concerned me, I don’t know if it was necessarily tough feedback, but that concerned me, is that I noticed people starting to use sensitivity as an excuse for what they couldn’t do. Mm-hmm. They would say things. Yeah. And Wendy, you can, you can also comment on this as well, ’cause I know we’ve both gone off on, on rants about this, but they would say things like, well, you know, I’m a sensitive striver so I can’t handle difficult conversations, or I can’t handle that extra stress and.

That is completely missing the point of what it means to be a sensitive striver. We say this in resilient a lot. Those of you who are in this round of the program, we’ve said this numerous times, you know, please don’t use being a sensitive striver against yourself. That’s like saying I’m left-handed. And then using that against yourself to say, well, I can’t write things because I’m left-handed.

You would not say that You adapt, you get a different pair of scissors. You position yourself so you can write differently, right? It is a, it is self-awareness and gives you information about yourself to make changes, but it shouldn’t prevent you from doing anything. And it’s actually the opposite because your emotional intelligence, if you are someone who is a sensitive striver, you are very perceptive.

You understand people’s needs. You can read between the lines. You notice subtleties changes in people’s body language or how they’ve react differently when you use different messaging. That can be your competitive advantage, especially when it comes to managing up to influencing and persuading others if you leverage it correctly.

And so that, that was something I ho hope to respond to in managing up, is that sensitivity should not be a reason to avoid challenging situations. It’s exactly what gives you the ability to anticipate concerns, to, make sure that you’re addressing someone’s fears behind their resistance, because you can empathize with what they really want.

You can build relationships in a way that other people may not be able to. So, Wendy, I don’t know if you wanna add to that in any way.

Wendy Cary: Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s about knowing who you are accepting. Who you are. You know, you have stronger emotions, but you also have a lot of perceptiveness. So it, it may be slightly different than how other colleagues experience their world, but, they’re all different from each other too.

Yeah. So it’s about under understanding, accepting and, and learning how to work with your specific uniqueness. Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s all that’s about. It’s not about, you know, accommodating some weakness that you have ’cause you don’t have one.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Well, and actually it’s better. Right. It’s better to spend more time leaning into your strengths and instead, instead of spending time trying to patch all these different weaknesses.

Yeah.

Wendy Cary: Right, right.

Melody Wilding: So-called, yeah.

Wendy Cary: And I think that’s what managing up gets to a lot is, is leveraging our strengths in order to have these conversations, these tough conversations a lot of times with our managers, with other people that are peers with our manager or skip levels and maybe even using them across as well.

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Wendy Cary: Yeah. So, zooming out a little bit and, and looking back at, at both of these books, what seems really obvious about that connection between the books that maybe you didn’t see at first?

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Yeah. I think it comes back to that idea of reclaiming agency, and that’s, that’s something I hope you take away from this book is that yes, it’s about this skillset of managing up and communicating more effectively and all of that, but really at the end of the day, it’s about feeling more in control in a world and a time where that is being challenged, right?

Or sometimes actively feeling like it’s being taken away from you. And so if trust yourself is about reclaiming agency from your internal saboteurs, right? The, the voices that tell you you’re not good enough, that you need to, people please, in order for people to like you and be worthy, it’s, and if, if managing up is about reclaiming agency and external situations with the people within the system around you, that’s, that’s what all of this comes back to, is.

Having, you know, my program is called Resilient for a reason, because you’re going to, you’re an imperfect person who is going to be in imperfect situations, dealing with imperfect people. And it’s not about if you face struggles again internally or externally, but how do you deal with them? And, that I think is the, is the thread between the two.

And also the idea that you can do the internal work, but then managing up is kind of the, the response to how do you project this outwardly to other people.

Wendy Cary: Yeah, yeah. And, and I know hearing from graduates are resilient or as they’re about to graduate from resilient, that, that that’s the next challenge for them.

They’ve finally learned to feel calm and in control at work. but there’s, there’s like you said, these outside forces and they’re, Yeah. And they also feel some freedom to make some choices for themselves and they aren’t sure what those choices are. And without managing up, they don’t get those opportunities they’re looking for.

They’re looking for some sort of change in their career. Yeah. It’s not happening. And so managing up is the solution. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I wanna get a little bit deeper here with you. A lot of authors talk about the dark night of the soul moment while writing. What was your dark night of the soul moment and how did you push through it?

Melody Wilding: how much time do we have? This could be a very long launch party. ’cause there are many, there are many. Again, I, I mentioned the book took me three and a half years to complete, which it, it feels like it went very quickly at times and very slowly at others. And I am not exaggerating when I say that.

I wrote several entire drafts that then were more or less just thrown in the trash that were kind of put somewhere and we started fresh, and every time I brought it to my publisher, they would say it’s, it’s good. It’s, it’s just not there yet. We’re, we’re, we’re just, it’s missing something and you’ll get there.

And it was, it was a huge punch to the gut every time because you just, you spend hours and hours working on this. Banging your head against a wall to try to make these concepts work together. And it makes you question, do, should I even be doing this? Do I even have anything valuable to say? And there were many times, especially in the beginning of running the book, where I seriously considered going back to my publisher and saying, you know what?

I can’t write this book after all. and my, my agent is here. And I don’t think she would’ve allowed me to do that. But, there were many times I seriously thought about it and had to push through that. the real turning point came when definitely I would say probably two years into writing the book.

we had sort of a come to Jesus conversation with my editor at the time, and she very, in the most supporting, loving way possible, pointed out something that I could not see because I was way too close to it. And she said, you know, something I noticed is that. Yeah, all of this comes back to different conversations, like different conversations that you’re having.

So what if we framed the book and the chapters around that? And I feel like the other people who were on the call said they saw my face go white. And it was that night. I, I had an as existential crisis. and I just remember thinking, I, I can’t believe I’m going to start over again. I’m going to start over again.

But I knew, I knew deep down, like when she said that, I think it struck me so much. ’cause I knew she was right. I knew she had put her finger on what needed to happen. and it was, that was the big turning point. It was extremely painful rewriting it yet again. But once I had the container. For the mess message.

Once I had sort of the unifying concept, and then even more once I nailed down the format for each chapter, so many of you also, some feedback you’ve given about trust yourself is that you actually like how each chapter had specific sections. And so I wanted to do that again. And so in this book, every chapter has a story that illustrates the situation.

We have specific strategies for navigating that conversation. And then there’s also sections on what to do beyond the conversation and what to do when, which covers sort of specific problems or roadblocks that may come out. And for me, just with the way my brain works, it was almost like once I had that framework, then it was easier, you know, it’s a little like Tetris, then the information can slot into place a little bit more.

You, you knew where things had to go. So that, that was a big, that was a big part of it.

Wendy Cary: Awesome. Oh my goodness. I can imagine how gut wrenching that would’ve been to get that feedback several times that, that it just wasn’t hitting the mark. And, the doubts that you probably felt about yourself, your, your abilities as a writer, your, abilities, even, even as a coach, you know?

Melody Wilding: Yes. You’re, you’re exactly right. And also, Wendy, I think, if we can, we’ll get to some of the questions in the chat in a moment, but you’re exactly right, because of course, you, you question yourself like, I’m, I’m only human. I’m a sensitive striver as well. And so, yeah, of course that sent me into a tail split spin.

And I think now also I had a different flavor of imposter syndrome, which was not just. Who am I to write this book, but even more so do I have something different to offer? Because there’s so much out there, like, could you just get this from chat GPT? Why do I need to write a book on it? And so that was sort of a different flavor of imposter syndrome.

Like who am I to add to the noise? Do I actually have anything special or unique enough, let alone yes. Am I the person to write this? And, you know, realizing I have to, you know, we teach what we most need to learn and I have to come back to my own tools all the time. and realizing that we are coaching people through this every single day.

And, you know, I was thinking of the analogy like, a, a coach in sports isn’t the player on, on the field, right? But they still, they’re still an expert in the game. And, you know, that that was sort of what I had to ground myself in, is that my unique spin. Is coming from coaching thousands of people through these things, but also coming at it from the human behavior, that psychological lens, bringing that to it.

so yes, so I think with that, Wendy, if it’s good with you. so David asked, he said, melody, you have so much going on with your programs like Resilient, the LinkedIn learning courses, speaking engagements must have been a challenge, ongoing challenge to find the focus time needed to write these, get the ideas on paper, and then revise.

Can you share what worked for you and to find that focus time? It is a huge, a huge challenge, and I will say my secret weapon is having great people around me. I have. A amazing team that makes everything work behind the scenes. So Rebecca and her team are making sure all the content is going up and the website machine and everything is working, and that you all are getting your details for resilient and your emails in the right time.

And of course, having Wendy in Resilient has been a godsend and it allows me to focus on what I do best, which is show up and coach within the program. And so, and even on the home front, my husband and I have a lot of support home, at home as well, and in, in our personal lives. And all of that allows me to be much more focused, especially during this period where I was writing the book.

And frankly, I’ve had to make some really hard trade-offs. I have, I have actually at this point, I have totally stopped doing one-on-one coaching. I’ve done one-on-one coaching up to this point for 13 years. And it was, it’s a identity shift. It’s really hard to let go of doing what you know for so long.

But I’ve, I’ve had to make tough trade-offs around that. And the way I work is I, and you know, I’m in a different position where I have more control over my time and schedule versus the average person. And so the way I tried to set up my time, especially with the book, was I would do sort of, on days I would have kind of performance days and then writing days.

And so I would have days where I have back to back to back literally 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM calls, coaching calls, podcasts, calls with the team. And so I am just in that mode. And then the next day I would have all day to write and I have to turn off my email and I. It’s, it’s a very painful process to, to write.

but that was, that was just how I made the time. I tried to focus on one chapter at a time. Also try to think of them as longer blog posts, which would help my mind. It would make it less daunting. and also knowing that the best writing happens in revision. So that is, that was true with trust yourself.

That was beyond true with this book, that the first drafts were not good. Were really not good. But it’s through the revision process that everything, it starts to come out. And even with writing the book, I have support from a amazing developmental editor who worked with me on trust herself as well. I think Julie is here somewhere.

Yes. There she is. Hi Julie. yes. She is my secret weapon writing these books and just having her, if I didn’t have Julie, to spend hours talking through. These concepts with me, I, this book would not exist. I would get in my way. I would not know what was important enough to include. So knowing myself enough to know I can’t be left totally to my own devices ’cause I, I will get things done, but I will spin a lot on the way there.

And so having Julie to be my thought partner and help structure my thinking and challenge my thinking will, is just invaluable. So. Alright. Yeah.

Wendy Cary: I remember, I remember you rescheduling some of our meetings so that you could have them on your meetings days. That’s instead of, of a writing day and reorganizing all of that.

That’s right. And and many times when you’re like, oh my gosh, it’s been back to back today. My voice is going. Could you kind of talk a little bit more during resilience today?

Melody Wilding: Today is one of those days. Yes, yes. Yeah. And you know, I just, I also had to get a lot better at saying no. Saying no to as, again, as much as it hurts me, people that would email from colleges and say, I would love to talk to you about my career path, and I would have to say no, or certain people asking me to come on podcast or do I don’t know, you know, summits or, or things like that.

Just being, having, I don’t wanna say higher standards, but having a higher bar for myself of what I said yes to not taking coffee chats, you know, when I was really heads down on writing the book, I wasn’t really building relationships. And then after the book was done, I changed my focus. Um mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay. I wanna make sure we get to this question. ’cause Greg, thank you Greg. He asked about what is the shocking termination story and Jamison asked and how did you bounce back? Okay. So I was gonna, Wendy had asked me to prepare a question about. A time where I completely failed at managing up. And what was the unexpected lesson that I learned that shaped the book.

And, it’s that. So about, yeah. When I started coaching over a decade ago now, and this, this story is in chapter one of the book, I was very unceremoniously laid off. My role was eliminated and the worst part was that it felt like it completely and totally came out of the blue. It completely and totally blindsided me.

I logged onto the call in the morning, not thinking twice, and it was a different person on the phone, not my manager like I expected it to be. And the person said, your role is terminated immediately. Your benefits will be ceasing and we’ve already cut your access off. And I was just. Totally, totally blindsided.

That’s the best word for it. And I shouldn’t have been. And that’s the thing. I had had good performance reviews. I thought I had a very close or strong relationship with my manager. But when I looked back on it, I made a couple mistakes. number one, I had been hired to work on, basically a pet project of my manager.

Something that she had been given a little bit of leeway to run with it, but it was outside the company’s core offering. And so there wasn’t a lot of support for it outside of her. And, I didn’t, I had misgivings about that, but I never had the courage to speak up about it or voice my concerns or really dig into where are we going with this?

What are we trying to accomplish? And. And so I wasn’t aligned with her really. I was sort of just kind of blindly thought, I guess I’ll do what I think I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what I’m actually supposed to do. but I never managed up in having the tougher feedback conversations about, I don’t think this is working.

I didn’t do that soon enough. I wasn’t aligned with her, I wasn’t aligned with the organization writ large because this project was totally over here and everybody else was running this way. And I had no other advocates in the book. So this would be the alignment conversation in the book, the feedback conversation and the networking conversation.

And so when the company reevaluated, I had no one that was willing to fight to keep me. And that was a really hard lesson. In the end, it all worked out because it was the, it was the catalyst for going full-time into my business. So we wouldn’t be here today, but. I think what, why it shaped the book is because managing up is not just, again, it’s not just making your boss’s life easier.

It’s not just making things comfortable for them or getting along with them. Sometimes it is about disagreeing well and diplomatically. Bringing those things up, talking about the hard things before they come back to bite you. Like they came back to bite me. Surfacing those concerns, asking clarifying questions, sometimes pushing back, there’s a whole chapter on the boundaries conversation.

And yeah, I think that was a very painful lesson. But, you know, you, you can’t just nod and smile that will only get you so far. You have to be able to thoughtfully challenge the people around you. Yeah. let’s see. Okay. I wanna try to answer one more question at least. Mina was asking, I think I answered this, but how long did it take you to write the book, do the research?

Can you speak about the book process and defining your one key idea? Yeah, so Mina, I’ll mentioned some things I, I didn’t quite talk about, but the, the research process took a long time. I would say at least six months, if not more. I had conversations, I mean, I surveyed about 12,000 people to understand what does managing up mean to you?

Why is it important? What do you wanna get from this? And then I had conversations one-on-one conversations with many of you who are here. So thank you for taking the time to do that. and so all of that took all of that, took a lot of time, as did we then went through and we drew out key themes. we did a little qualitative research to draw out key themes from all of those areas.

A lot of the quotes, actually, all of the quotes you see at the beginning of the chapters. Of each book. There’s little, like, thought bubbles. Those are all directly drawn from the survey responses. And so those might actually be your words. but that took a long time and doing the research, can you speak about the book Defining your One key idea?

Yeah. I was really resistant to calling the book Managing Up. At First I wanted, actually, would you all like to hear the other titles that before we landed on Managing Up Julie’s laughing. Okay, so I’m gonna put these in the chat. This is gonna be fun. Okay, so first, where was Lisa? Where’d she go? There she is.

Okay. She’s laughing too. All right, so first it was called Like A Boss, the Definitive Guide to Managing Up. Okay. That, that one was good. I like that one. Okay. Then they, they gradually got worse for a while and this was my fault. okay. So we went from like a boss. Two authentic influence, build visibility, achieve positive power, and take control of your career, which none of that says anything.

So, and then we went to teach people how to treat you, which is a core concept behind the book, but teach people how to treat you. 10 conversations to manage up and across for influence at work. And then we went to managing up and across, getting what you want from people you can’t control. And then finally, after years, we landed on the title we have today, which is Managing Up How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.

And we pretty pretty methodically went through surveying my audience, testing different groups of people, people who were familiar with my work, who weren’t familiar with my work. We did a lot to, to land on this title and there’s so much that goes into it. You have to think about how it look on the book cover, right?

What do people want? does it have keywords for Amazon and other online retailers? There’s so much that goes into a title.

Virginia asked, will you have a Managing Up workshop or course, Virginia?

Yes, it is. It is in the works. So if you would like more details about the Managing Up course, send you a private message with your email and we’ll make sure we get you the details about that. But it’s, it’s coming. Amy was asking, what advice do you have for the federal workforce facing termination without cause? How can we keep moving forward to fulfill our missions despite constant harassment? How do we remain resilient and figure out next steps? Amy, it’s interesting you asked this. Before this call, Wendy and I were just on a coaching call for, Resilient, and we have at least two, we have several people I believe, that are in the federal government right now and facing a lot of upheaval and constant change to, to put it, to put it lightly. here’s what I would say to two things. I think the networking chapter and the quitting conversation are very important for you.

So those are two of the chapters later in the book. And I should say that the book is organized so that the conversations and the chapters build on one another. So we start out with alignment styles, talk about ownership, boundaries, feedback, and then we get to the later conversations that are about visibility, advancement, networking, money, and then finally quitting.

Because despite your best efforts, you just, you may be in an environment where it is not a good fit for you. But Amy, the, the first thing I would say for people in the federal workforce is that now is the time to be reaching out to your connections. Because everyone knows what is happening, right?

Everyone knows what is happening in the federal government. This is the time to rekindle those relationships with, with a person you met at a conference, the, old boss you used to work with that now moved into, you know, the, the private sector because people are going to be willing to support you.

And now is the time to be reaching out to say, I would love to reconnect. We can talk about what I’ve been up to. I would love to hear about what you’ve been up to. But that is going to be, especially in this job market, we’ve seen this again and again with our clients, is that LinkedIn easy apply is only gonna get you so far.

You really need to build relationships to get referrals, and that’s going to be the most important resource you have. And then in terms of the, the quitting conversation, again, it’s a, it’s a little hectic right now, but you were saying how to remain resilient and figure out next steps. you have to, like, you still wanna think about doing a good enough job in your role so that you have accomplishments to report on and something I talk about in the visibility conversation chapter, seven, six or seven.While you have access, while you have access to your reports and figures and budgets and things like that, now is the time that you should be updating your resume, that and your LinkedIn, that you should be writing stories about your accomplishments before you lose access to those things.

Because, again, that’s what is going to set you apart in this market is having measurable accomplishments to point to, not just responsibilities, not just, I did X, Y, Z, but X, Y, Z resulted in this for the organization. Wendy, anything you wanna add?

Wendy Cary: oh goodness. Take good care of yourself. You know, it’s really, really stressful right now. A lot of reorganization happening, and so in order to be resilient, you need to take care of yourself. And if you don’t, you’ll just be too stressed out and not be able to think ahead of what’s going on for you right now.

So build that, build that resilience by managing your emotions, regulating your nervous system, and making sure that you have not just the network, but the support in your life from loved ones, close people who, who can support you through this experience.It’s a devastating experience for so many.

So that support is really, really important at this point. Yeah,

Melody Wilding: 100%. Yeah. Okay. I am loving all these messages. Thank you so much to all of you who have left your review and to each and every one of you for being here tonight. It has meant. The world to be able to just spend this evening with you.

So where is my husband? Do you wanna come in here? Okay. He’s coming. So we’re just gonna do a quick toast. Give us half a second. Okay. He’s grabbing the champagne. Yeah. And also, Amy, we have some other former and current federal employees in the chat here who are saying, take care of yourself.

Be mindful not to go down with the ship. Yeah. Okay. Do you wanna come in here? Okay. Thank you so much everyone, for being here tonight for celebrating this day with me. It means so, so much. So, cheers. Thank you everybody. Woo. Thank you. All right. Have a good night everyone.

Take care of yourselves. Thank you again, and enjoy the book. Happy reading, everybody. Bye everyone.

Bye everybody. Thanks for tuning in to today’s episode of psychology at work. If you enjoyed the show, I’d be so grateful if you could take just a minute to rate and review wherever you are listening. It’s how we reach more professionals just like you. And if you’d like to see even more content on how to feel more self assured, grounded, and in control of your emotions and reactions at work, follow me on LinkedIn or head to the links in the show notes.