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.

On the last episode, you got an exclusive peek into the first five of 10 essential conversations inside my new book, Managing Up How to Get What You Need From the people in Charge. We talked about alignment. How do I know which tasks are most crucial to focus on? Styles. How can I work with different personalities?

Ownership. What can I do to present and go after my ideas without overstepping? Boundaries. What do I say when my manager dumps yet another task on my plate? And feedback. How do I voice my opinion and deliver criticism up the chain of command?

In this episode, we’re diving in to the more advanced conversations that build on these first fiveand ones that put you on the path to landing the six figure salary bump dream project or flexibility you’ve been eyeing and deserve because once you’ve mastered the first five conversations, you’re ready to expand your influence with your boss and beyond across the organization.

These next five are about strategically positioning yourself for bigger opportunities, how to build the right relationships before you need them. Make your work visible without seeming boastful. Position yourself for advancement in a way that feels natural. How to navigate compensation discussions with confidence. And yes, even how to leave your role professionally when it’s time. We are down to the final days to pre order your copy of the book and get instant access to a bundle of over $400 worth of bonuses. Keep in mind these disappear once the book is out. These go poof on March 4th, 2025.

So make sure you head to managingup.com pre order your copy of the book there, and then fill out the form on that page to get your bonus bundle that includesthe on demand Pushback and Protect Your Time training. This is going to help you get back two to three hours. I tell you exactly what to say and do when your boss challenges your boundaries that will actually make them respect you more. You also get access to the Promotion Playbook Masterclass, a three part video series that is going to help you negotiate for the projects, the flexibility, the compensation that you deserve.

And then last get access to chapter cheatsheets. This is your implementation reference guide. It has ready to use scripts, key takeaways and action steps, key concepts from every chapter in the book. So again, head to managingup. com, preorder your copy there, fill out the form on the page. And once we verify your preorder, you will instant access to that bonus bundle.

But remember you have to do that before the book is officially out. So before March 4th, 2025. Enjoy the segment and the final half of the framework to help you operate from a place of personal power, even without positional power, let’s dive in. Okay, we are at a turning point with the conversations now. Number six, where you’re not just trying to improve the day to day, you’re actively creating more of your future. The networking conversation starts to set the stage for everything else that comes next that we’re going to talk about.

And this is important because power in the workplace, it’s not just about your title. It depends on your social capital. Who else trusts you? Who looks to you? How much information and resources do you have access to? We hear a lot about external networking when we’re job searching, at events, on LinkedIn, but we don’t often talk a lot about internal networking. And when you do this, you need to focus on three groups of people.

Connecting with decision makers, people who control resources, opportunities, connecting with powerful peers, people who are rising stars in the organization and will become decision makers. And behind the scenes operators, people who actually make things happen. Executive assistant, HR, IT, those types of folks.

Now, when it comes to building your internal network, there’s a little bit of an art to this, and so much of it hinges on what I call the info ask. The info ask. This is about asking for information before you ever ask for something more tangible or significant. Career sponsorship, money, whatever it is.

So an info ask could be best practices, insights into how a certain approval process goes, vendor recommendations. And so an information ask is like dipping your toe in before you just like dive in with a bigger request. You signal you value that person’s expertise, you genuinely want to learn from them, and you have a built in reason to follow up and let them know how you used that information and people love nothing more than that. And so this also that helps you keep your relationships warm and in a world where everyone is overwhelmed or starved for attention, simply remembering what matters to someone like that VP is going to run a marathon or certain person is having a child soon, just checking in, offering a helpful resource and encouraging word, sometimes that’s much more important than having some sort of grand gesture.

Visibility. So the relationships you build through networking, then create organic opportunities for visibility. Yet, you know, going back to early on, I mentioned that the fact that these are conversations is also about capitalizing on the everyday moments we have.

And that’s very true here. So the next time a senior leader asks you like, Hey, what have you been up to? What’s going on lately? I want you to have ready your pocket update. You’re not just going to say like, yeah, it’s been okay. Yeah. Busy starts in the new year.

Your pocket update is a crisp 30, 60 seconds story that showcases something you’ve done recently. Okay. So you can add value. You can enhance your reputation through that one conversation.

And this also extends to your one on ones with your manager. Don’t just simply run through your to do list and status updates. Use the time to highlight wins, milestones that matter to them, the ones they can share.

They can like plug and play. They can copy and paste out of your one on one agenda and send that to their own manager. The last thing I want to mention here is a secret of many, many top performers. They nominate themselves for visibility opportunities. They are not waiting passively by for special programs, awards, speaking opportunities.

They are seeking out, they are raising their hands, they put themselves in the running so that they are top of mind when they say, Oh, we have that, you know, rising stars program. Oh, Jim mentioned he would be interested in more professional development like that. Let’s, let’s tap him. Now visibility naturally leads into the advancement conversation.

This is all about positioning yourself for what you want next, whether that is a formal promotion, but maybe it’s something else. A stretch project, you want to manage a bigger scope. You want to make a lateral move. Maybe you want to design a role that doesn’t exist yet. We’ve seen that a lot over the last year or so. Now, when it comes to the advancement conversation, please, please, please do not fall into the performance review paradox. Do not wait until your performance review to say that you’re interested in growing. Instead, when your boss mentions a new project, tie it to your future goals.

Oh, that’s really, it’s really exciting to hear we’re getting into that space. I would actually love to lead something like that someday. Or after you complete a major project. Highlight what it taught you about leading a team or organizing different stakeholders. That way, when you do have the formal conversation about advancement, it feels more like a logical step because you’ve planted the seeds along the way, rather than it just coming out of the blue, taking your manager by surprise and saying, I can’t make this decision now. I wish I knew about this six months ago. Your goal with the advancement conversation is to land on specifics, ideally to almost develop a checklist of sorts, like experiences you need to gain metrics you need to hit to get to the next level. And that becomes your plan that you work against. And more importantly, that makes it a bit harder for your manager to keep moving the goalposts, because you have something that’s documented that you’re working against.

And you can say, actually back in January, we talked about how XYZ would be needed to grow my team to this level. Has that changed? Can you help me understand why that is? You also have to put yourself out of a job. You have to make yourself dispensable. This is like a mind bender for some people. And what I mean here is that you can’t advance if you’re the only person that can do what you do.

Who has ever been in this position? Yeah, Kimberly was saying, yes, being indispensable is a trap, 100%.

So now is the time, like now you don’t have to identify a successor tomorrow, start thinking about it, start documenting your processes, how you do things, cross train colleagues, because you don’t want to get in this trap where you want to move on, and they say, well, we can’t, who’s going to do your job?

Naturally, when you take on more responsibility, you want the paycheck that comes with that, right? This conversation can be very loaded. It can be very nerve wracking, but I want you to look at it this way. If we don’t have the money conversation, there are surveys that show you can miss out on as much as $600, 000 to $1 million in earnings over the course of your career if you fail to negotiate.

That’s a lot of money. So, I hope you would say it’s worth it. It’s worth the temporary discomfort to have the money conversation to actually change your future that significantly.

A big mistake people make here is that when they have the money conversation, they focus only on their past value. They focus only on the things they’ve done so far. But when it comes to asking for more, your boss needs to make a case of their own chain of command, how and why paying you more will produce more value for the company. So once you are paid more, what else will you be able to do and achieve? What you’ve already done is great. That shows. Your known quantity gives you credibility, but what else will you do if we give you 10, 20, 50, 100 K more?

Humans are also hardwired for fairness and reciprocity, which means if someone gives us something, we want to give them something back. So this is why framing the compensation discussion around alignment, around reflecting your current responsibilities, using that type of language that speaks to fairness is so important because you’re not just asking more for the sake of it because you want more because you feel entitled to more. You’re simply pointing out that your pay should match the new level you’re operating that that that would only be fair.

And sometimes listen, sometimes money isn’t on the table. But that doesn’t mean you’re at a dead end. You can get creative. I have seen everything from more stock options, a change to your bonus structure. We’ve seen people get a stipend to redo their home office. You can get really creative with this. And then finally, we have the quitting conversation because it may seem ironic that this has to do with managing up. But even when you have one foot out of the door, it still matters. Because how you exit a role is often just as important as how you perform in it, because it’s how you’ll be remembered. When I was researching the book, I came across a stat that said that up to 70 percent of people land a job through their network at some point. And nearly 30 percent of people boomerang, they come back to their previous company within just about a year of quitting. I thought that was pretty shocking. 30 percent of people.

Even if you’re getting out of a toxic environment, that wasn’t good with good for you.

The quitting conversation is not the time to have the feedback conversation. So the quitting conversation, your responses should be forward looking. They should be focused on your own growth and development. It’s been an honor to work here with such a dedicated and talented team, and I’m ready for a new challenge now. Just keep it future focused.

You also want to be involved in the sequence of who knows what, when about when you’re leaving and why. You want to be a part of that narrative, so, you have oversight and you can control it to a certain extent. And remember this, if an exit interview is included as part of your process, you are not obligated to do that. You can decline it, especially if you’re not in the right headspace to do so.

Okay, so there you have it. Those are our ten conversations. So I would love to hear in the chat, just type a number in here. Which of these intrigued you? The most. Which of these 10 intrigued you the most?

Sierra said the styles conversation. Andrea said boundaries. Interesting, I love this. Wow, I’m, I’m surprised, actually. I really, would have thought a lot of people would have said 1 through 5, but many of you are saying some of the later ones. So interesting. I love to see it.

Deborah was saying that boundaries one is the hardest. Jennifer said all of them. I need to practice all of them. Yeah.

And you know, keep in mind that in real life, these are not distinct, perfect boxes or sequences that there’s a lot of overlap. You can imagine how even the advancement and the money conversation may happen at once, for example, or visibility and networking can go hand in hand.

So, the world is not as, clean as we would like it to be. Oh, Amanda said, I feel so invigorated from this. I’m so happy. And speaking of feeling invigorated, everything, everything we talked about today comes back to this idea that you can operate from a place of personal power, even without positional power.

Okay. You can operate from a place of personal power, even if you don’t have positional power, if you don’t have a title.

That’s the entire reason why I wrote managing up. Is because I was sick and tired of seeing smart, hardworking, dedicated people like every single one of you, feeling like they had to change to be successful or just that they were going to be powerless to what was happening around them. And blaming themselves for their tendency to overthink, thinking that, well, it’s just me, it’s just a character flaw I have. I can’t do anything about this.

So today, as I said, you got the road map, right? I gave you those 10 conversations. We talked about some of the highlights from each, but the book is really your step by step by step implementation guide. So if you, if you found what we went over today, even just moderately helpful, I mean, the book is going to supercharge that a thousand percent.

So if you want to, we talk a lot about workplace politics, dealing with a micromanager. The entire book is about earning the autonomy, authority, and freedom you want and feeling a sense of control and confidence at work.

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.