Melody Wilding
Author of MANAGING UP & TRUST YOURSELF | Award-Winning Executive Coach | Professor of Human Behavior | Keynote Speaker
Managing Up
Episode Summary
Tune in to this live recording of the Keep Leading!® podcast, where I sit down with Melody Wilding, an acclaimed author and professor of human behavior, to uncover game-changing strategies from her book, “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.”
Discover how to build emotional intelligence, relational capital, and negotiation skills to thrive in your career. Melody shares invaluable insights for reclaiming control and achieving the recognition you deserve. Ideal for professionals at all levels, this episode serves as your guide to navigating office politics and excelling in remote work. Don’t miss it!
Stay inspired, stay motivated, and Keep Leading!®
Keep Leading!® Live
Keep Leading!® Video Shorts
About Melody Wilding
Melody Wilding is the author of “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge.” For over a decade, she has assisted intelligent, thoughtful top performers in the world’s most successful companies—including Google, JP Morgan, and Verizon—achieve the recognition, respect, and pay they deserve.
She is a licensed social worker with a master’s degree from Columbia University, a professor of human behavior at Hunter College in New York City, and a former emotions researcher at Rutgers University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and numerous other respected publications.
She regularly contributes to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and CNBC. Melody is also the author of “Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work.”
Website
https://melodywilding.com
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/melodywilding/
Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/melodywilding/
Leadership Quote
“The most powerful leadership tool you have is your own example.” – John Wooden
Subscribe, share, and review on Apple Podcasts!
https://bit.ly/4kPBcZo
Subscribe, share, and review on Spotify
https://spoti.fi/4iOFzlB
Full Episode Transcripts and Detailed Guest Information
www.KeepLeadingPodcast.com
Keep Leading LIVE (Live Recordings of the Keep Leading!® Podcast)
www.KeepLeadingLive.com
Connect with Eddie Turner
Website: https://www.eddieturnerllc.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddieturner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eddieturnerjr
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eddieturnerllc
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eddieturnerjr/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/EddieTurnerJr
LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eddie-turner-llc
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@eddieturnerllc
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/eddieturner.bsky.social
Agent: https://gray-miller-agency.webflow.io/roster/eddie-turner
100 Coaches Agency: https://www.100coaches.com/coaches/profiles/eddie-turner/
About the Keep Leading!® Podcast
The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host, Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe about their journeys to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques, and insights.
Share the Inspiration
Inspired by what you hear? Share the episode with your network and help spread the message of empowerment and leadership. Use the hashtag #KeepLeadingPodcast and join the community of listeners who are dedicated to continuous growth and leadership excellence.
Transcript
Eddie Turner
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading podcast. This is another live broadcast where I, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Accelerator, am here to help introduce you to leadership development and insight through this Keep Leading program. I work with emerging and experienced leaders who want to have an exponential impact on the people, processes, and profits at the places that they have purview. And I do that through executive coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking. My goal here is to help you stay inspired, stay motivated, so you can keep leading. I am broadcasting today on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. So I encourage you to hit that share button so that your colleagues can be able to watch this broadcast if not joining us live by being able to watch it later on as it will remain in their feed. This will also be a normal podcast that you can download wherever you download your podcast. And if you’re downloading from Spotify, you get the video as well as the audio. If you want to be a part of our conversation, join us. That’s the benefit of the live program. You can leave us a comment, tell us where you’re from. You can ask my guest a question live. And certainly, you can also use the emoticons for some folks who can’t interact with words, they use the emoticons and we appreciate that as well. If you are not already following my guest, I’m going to encourage you to do so. Follow her on all her social media profiles, which I’ll be sharing at the end of the show.
On this live recording, I am beyond excited to welcome back a guest that I’ve had before. On this broadcast of the Keep Leading podcast, I have with me Melody Wilding. Melody Wilding is the acclaimed author and professor of human behavior who’s just written a game-changing book entitled *Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge*. Now, why did I invite Melody Wilding? I invited Melody Wilding because of her extensive experience working with great companies like Google, JP Morgan, Verizon, and she’s also a licensed social worker with a master’s degree from Columbia University. And she is a professor at Hunter College. You’ve seen her work in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review. In fact, I think she had the top article not too long ago in Harvard Business Review. And also the Washington Post and many other respected outlets. And she is also a contributor on CNBC, Forbes, and Fast Company. In short, she’s everywhere. But right now, I have her right here. So Melody, welcome to the show and thank you for coming back.
Melody Wilding
Oh, Eddie, I’m so happy to be with you again. I always love our conversations. You were on my podcast recently, so this is just such a treat to be back.
Eddie Turner
Oh, indeed, indeed, indeed. I enjoyed the opportunity to be on your podcast episode number 19, *How to Seize Opportunities at Work Without Stepping on Toes*. So if you haven’t listened to the Psychology at Work podcast, I definitely encourage you ladies and gentlemen to subscribe to that. And then while you’re doing that, please check out episode number 19. And I also, I say she’s my return guest, one of the few people I’ve had because when *Trust Yourself* was released, Melody was a guest on the Keep Leading podcast. She was guest number 112. So, Melody, I’d be remiss also by not mentioning that the person who told me about you was Fred Amador. He says, you got to, he went to your program. He says, you got to invite her on your show and interview her. So I want to give a nod to Fred as well. So now, please, Melody, tell us about *Managing Up*.
Melody Wilding
Yes, well, Eddie, you were mentioning that I came back on or I came on the show for the first time a few years ago when *Trust Yourself* came out. And that book came out during the thick of the pandemic. We all remember what was happening then. We had the great resignation. A lot of us were rethinking our approach to work. There was also a lot of change. And we also all know that pace has kept up. There I have clients who have gone through three, four reorgs in just a year or two and they’re shifting priorities every single day. And so I was noticing people felt like they were at the whim of everything that was happening around them. They were just being jerked around by all of these changes, the different personalities. They didn’t feel like they were in the driver’s seat or feel in control of their careers. And there’s some interesting research to back this up that since the pandemic, the number of people that feel helpless, that feel out of control in terms of their career trajectory, their relationships, it has doubled. And so that huge impetus for this book is I believe you can have or you can operate rather from a position of personal power at work even when you don’t have positional power. And that’s what *Managing Up* is all about. Is helping you get the recognition, the respect, the compensation that you deserve.
Eddie Turner
Very interesting. And I love this phrase “positional power” and you address this a lot in your book. This book, before I get, I want to dig into that a little bit, but before I do, I must say that for those who are watching this, others will hear it in the audio version. If you’re watching this, you see I have the book on the screen, *Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge*. If you were to go to Amazon and try to buy this book right now, there’s something interesting you’d find. In your cart, it would say, hey, you might also want to get *Trust Yourself*, her first book. But this book and Melody’s work is so powerful and impactful that the other book it recommends, it’s being recommended right next to Mel Robbins. How about that, Melody Wilding? That’s how amazing your book is.
Melody Wilding
Well, that makes my day to see. And it’s so interesting because yes, this is a book on it is a book about the tactics. There’s tons of in-depth scripts. I mean dozens and dozens of scripts and tactical strategies for influencing, for persuading other people, for building that relationship with your manager and other higher-ups. But the deeper message of the book is that you teach people how to treat you at work. And so I wonder if that’s why Mel Robbins’ book is being recommended alongside of it. I’ll take that, by the way. That’s awesome. But it’s really so much deeper than just I think we think of managing up as this kind of something you do earlier in your career and you grow out of it. But fundamentally, this is about reclaiming a sense of agency at work and really shaping the perception around you, the dynamics around you, the opportunities you have and not just letting that happen, but you being more of an active agent in all of that.
Eddie Turner
Now let’s pull those together then. Being an active agent, using your positional power or not relinquishing, however that you want to put that together. Tell us more how we do that in this Managing Up process.
Melody Wilding
Yes. Yes, so the book is based around these 10 conversations for managing up because what I noticed is when whenever I would ask people about this skill set or what they had been told about it, you would get these very fragmented, pithy one-liners about be proactive, come with solutions, not problems. And managing up is so much more robust and in-depth than that. And it really spans everything from how do you get on the same page with your manager to make sure you’re working on the most meaningful, promotable work all the way to how are you advocating for your advancement and your compensation in that organization. And even the last conversation in the book is the quitting conversation because even when we are exiting an organization or a team or a certain responsibility, we still need to be managing our relationships and our perceptions. And so that’s where these 10 conversations came about. And the first five are the most foundational. I can talk about those in a minute. But they create the groundwork and they lay the foundation for the later five conversations. So we have to start out with things like the alignment conversation, the styles conversation, ownership, boundaries, feedback. We need all of that to build trust, rapport, to understand what makes the people tick around us so we can make our proposals and ideas more persuasive that resonates with them. And then once we do that, then we can get to some more of the advanced things like networking, visibility, advancement, money. And so that’s really the framework. And I think it also helps people realize, okay, where do I need to focus first? Am I more in a stage with my manager or in the organization where I need to have the ownership conversation? That’s what I need to focus on right now. Or boundaries is a really big thing for me because we just laid off a couple thousand people and now I’m doing three folks’ jobs where before I was doing just my own. And so it also helps you pinpoint with more precision, where are you and exactly how do you need to manage up to get the best and maximum results.
Eddie Turner
Yes, and given what’s unfolding in the world around us at this time, your book, much like your first book, came out precisely when the world needed it. I believe that this is going to be the answer for a lot of people in the midst of what’s unfolding. And this idea that you have written it in the style of a conversation, it becomes very apparent in the book. Both in how you’ve named the chapters, but also in how you conduct the conversation throughout your authorship. And I love the sections as you have there. You call it “steal the scripts.” So you then after you’ve explained to the reader what should be the case through real-life stories and through your research, you say, hey, I’m not going to leave you alone. Here’s what you can say exactly. So I love that section.
Melody Wilding
Yes, and that I rewrote the book actually three times because it took a lot to get down to that level of specificity. And I think that’s what people want now. Theory is only helpful to an extent, right? It’s easy to say, okay, have the alignment conversation with your manager. Get on the same page. But there’s a lot of nuance in what questions you ask, how you ask them. And even something like, let’s take feedback again. When should you give feedback versus when should you hold back? Should you wait 24 hours? Should you not? There’s all of these nuances. And I also find now we are all so overloaded. And there’s also a lot of hesitancy to have these conversations. And so having those really specific scripts and phrasing, and I give lots of options in the book because you can then adapt it to your style and your voice. But at least it gives you a starting point. So you get over that hump, that fear of, okay, that sounds good, but I don’t know what to say or how to say it. Now you have a guide.
Eddie Turner
You have a guide and that’s why I love that you included that. Especially as you mentioned here this idea that is happening, many people because of the displacements are not just doing their job anymore. They’re now doing their job, someone else’s, and in some cases, two someone else’s jobs. You talk about the fact that that may lead some people to want a job change altogether or at a minimum, hey, I’m going to do all this. Can I get a title change? Can I get a promotion? Can I get more compensation? Walk through your advice that you provide to people in the book who find themselves in that situation.
Melody Wilding
Yes. Well, I also wanted to add yes, we’re all doing the job of multiple people now. But also, managing up has to extend beyond our direct supervisor. That is the environment where most of the people listening to this will be operating in is highly matrixed. You have dotted lines. You may have project leads. You may have interactions where you have to manage up to someone at a client or a vendor or a regulatory partner, for example. And so I think we also need to expand our thinking and our conception of what it even means to manage up because you put yourself in a precarious position when you are only focused on your direct supervisor. And that actually leads into the advancement conversation because you want to make sure you have those other allies, those other advocates. You need to understand and be talking to people about how does the promotion process work here? Or when you were able to get a stretch assignment, how did you pitch that? Who did you have to talk to? Who had to be on board? You have to understand the political landscape and do a bit of that research before you just come out and say, I want this thing. You have to know the details of where you’re operating. So that’s one thing. And then second, actually, this is how the conversation can start to interweave and we can loop back to these. But if you haven’t had the alignment or the styles conversation at least in some form, it’s going to be hard to have the advancement conversation because alignment helps you understand what’s important to my manager or the organization. So then I can tie how I want to advance to those objectives. And then also the styles conversation helps you then frame it in terms of wording and terminology in a way that will resonate with them more. So we can loop back to that. But probably the biggest mistake I see people make when it comes to advancement is that they do not start early enough. They assume that their work is going to speak for itself and the rewards will come, people will see it. And so it is important to be having the visibility conversation, but it’s also important to be making your ambitions and your aspirations known early on because your manager needs to be factoring that into leveling conversations and resource planning and budgeting. And if they are not aware, those decisions may be made without you. And if you wait until your performance review conversation, that ship has likely sailed. That is not the time to bring up, well, I would like a promotion. Your manager cannot make that type of decision on the spot there. And so whenever you want to start, add about three or six months ahead of that. And just like you were saying, a big part of the advancement conversation is planting seeds is starting with, let’s say you have a big win where a project goes well. In your next one-on-one, you can just subtly and very gently bring that up and say, I loved working on this initiative. It was really fun to get to work on the strategic planning side or get to partner with this other department. That’s something I would love to do more of in the future. So you’re just planting the seed about things you would like. That way when you have, yeah, when you have the formal advancement conversation, you can say, all right, we’re mid-year right now. By the beginning of next year, I would love to move from a, let’s say director to a VP or from a manager to a senior manager level. What would you need to see to make that possible or to be comfortable with moving me to that next level? And so that way you’re starting to surface objections, you’re starting to contract around what exactly does your manager need to see? So you have more of a plan to work against.
Eddie Turner
Beautiful. Thank you for that strategy. That’ll be helpful to many people, no doubt. And you highlighted the idea that managing up doesn’t just involve your direct manager, but also skip level. We have to take those relationships into consideration. When you’re talking about this managing up and involving people outside of your layer of management, you’re talking about promotional conversations or even conversations of navigating other departments in your existing organization. Sometimes the fear that people have is, wow, I don’t want to make my direct manager upset, but I need advice from other managers. Or I don’t want them to think I’m disloyal, but I would like to explore other opportunities in the organization. Do I tell this manager first, then go ask these others or should I go directly to these others? What have you seen?
Melody Wilding
Well, there’s going to be nuance here depending on the culture that you’re in. I have plenty of folks that I work with where that sort of cross-pollination or talking to other leaders is encouraged and is institutionalized into the culture. So it depends, but I hear that type of hesitation all of the time. And actually in the first chapter on alignment, I talk about skip level conversations in particular where you are talking to your manager’s manager. And how do you do that without making your direct manager feel excluded out of the process? So in most cases, I will say you at least you want to give your direct manager a heads up. But you want to frame it in how you speaking to their boss is a win-win. And so you may say like, I’m interested in getting a broader understanding of what we’re working on right now and some of the things that are being discussed at the leadership level. Would you be open to me grabbing 20 minutes with your boss to talk about this? Or you can start smaller. You can say, do you think your leader would be open to joining one of our one-on-ones or even one of our team meetings? So it feels less threatening that you’re meeting with this person one-on-one without your manager being there. That can be sort of a softer sell, a gentler way that still gives you exposure to that person, the ability for them to know your name, for you to ask them questions, but it’s a little less threatening.
Eddie Turner
All right. Thank you for that. Well, I am talking to the amazing Melody Wilding. She’s the author of *Managing Up* and *Trust Yourself*. And before I take this pause, I want to acknowledge that Fred Amador actually did join and he is also sending you an emoticon. I don’t think you see it on your side, but I want to let you know that. So thank you Fred for being a part of our session today.
Well, let me acknowledge the sponsor of the Keep Leading podcast. If a single employee’s indecision can cost an organization $10,000 to a million dollars, imagine the potential financial impact when more individuals are added to this indecision equation. It can spiral out of control quickly. The solution? Decision X. It’s a bespoke on-demand service designed to help your leaders overcome indecision and move forward with their work. Visit Papion MDC and discover how you can help your team get unstuck, shift perspective, and advance today. That’s Papion MDC, my friends in Canada. And then also a reminder that the Keep Leading podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network. Together, we’re turning up the volume on business. So visit c-suite.com or wherever you download your podcast to be able to listen to this and other business-related podcasts.
I’m enjoying my conversation with Melody Wilding, the author of *Managing Up*. So, Melody, one of the things that you talk about in your book that I really thought was important is you highlighted toward the end there this idea about the visibility conversation. And the idea that your good work doesn’t just speak for itself, which too many people think is the case or they’re just afraid of coming across as being a person who’s bragging. I don’t want to be a self-promoter. Talk about the advice that you give people in the book when it comes to the importance of self-promotion.
Melody Wilding
Yeah. Yeah, this is a controversial one because a lot of people I work with will say, like I said before, I want my work to speak for itself. I’m introverted. I want to be more behind the scenes. But here’s the thing. I want to challenge you to rethink self-promotion more rather less as selfishly bragging. That’s not what you’re doing here. Instead, you are just giving fact-based reporting about what you and your team are accomplishing. And that is actually a duty that you have in your role because the people above you, even across from you, they need to understand what’s happening at your level, the milestones that you’re getting, the skills you and your team have in order to make the most informed decision. So when you don’t speak up about those things, you’re actually withholding information that they need. So that’s the first thing. And then the second is that so much of good self-promotion or being visible, it comes down to stronger storytelling. And there’s so many simple frameworks for that. I mentioned a couple in the book. One of them, my favorite, again, very simple, but it helps you conceptualize and be more organized and concise when you are trying to be visible is problem, action, solution. And you can do this in a way that adds value to others. Like let’s say you speak up in a meeting and you share an anecdote about how your team redid some process. You could say, actually, we have some experience with this. Here was the situation. We had clients where renewals were falling through the cracks. That’s the problem. Then you describe what was the action that you took. And so we named a point person who rejiggered X, Y, and Z. And then the solution, what was the result of that? And so you are subtly self-promoting, you’re also promoting your team, we’ll get to that, but you’re also giving value to other people through kind of this teachable moment. So again, it becomes this win-win opportunity.
Eddie Turner
What’s the danger if I don’t do that, Melody?
Melody Wilding
The danger if you don’t do that, you will be overlooked. Everyone is so busy right now. I think the one of the stats I came across in the book was that the average person gets 120 new emails a day, the average person. So think about an executive or a higher-level leader in an organization, probably double or triple that. And then you have Slack messages and meetings and it we are just inundated. And so if we are not being intentional about putting our results in front of someone, then we’re going to be looked over, right? Our work cannot speak for itself. And also we want to make sure our managers are equipped to advocate for us at the higher leadership levels. And so you want to essentially hand your manager, hey, here are some of the milestones we’re getting so that when you have that budget discussion, you have a way to justify that yes, we need this head count. We need this software, whatever it is. So you want to make sure you’re doing that because ultimately it makes you and your team more successful.
Eddie Turner
Absolutely. Thank you. And one other danger I’ve seen from my female executive clients is the idea that sometimes the other danger is that people will take credit for your work if you don’t speak up and advocate for yourself. Hey, listen, I’m excited to see that Hung Yock Chapman has joined us from Thailand. Thank you. And talk about self-promotion. I’m going to promote for her because she just wrapped up an amazing week. She’s the president of the International Coaching Federation and they did a phenomenal job. Their leadership team there and she led the charge of celebrating International Coaching Week there where she brought together four different chapters there in Asia and they just did fantastic work celebrating the power of coaching. So thank you for joining us live, Hung Yock. We are so happy to have you.
Well, Melody, I wanted to also highlight another point that you brought up in your book is the most effective way to have the money conversation. So once you’ve taken the steps to make sure you’re seeing you wanted to ask for a promotion, you don’t want to let your work go unnoticed, how do I ask for what I deserve?
Melody Wilding
Yes. Yes, when it comes to the money conversation, this is pretty loaded, right? Because we don’t want to come off as entitled or ungrateful. Sometimes we may not have as much visibility into what’s happening financially for the team or the organization. So it can even be a bit tricky to gauge this. And there’s many different pointers and kind of subtleties to look for to assess that in that chapter. But again, I’ll talk about some of the pitfalls that I see happen the most with this. And by and far with the money conversation is that people focus too much on the past and using what they have already accomplished to justify a pay raise. Instead of focusing, yes, past accomplishments do suggest future results, right? But you also need to future pace. You also need to project and help your manager create the case that if I am promoted to this next level and given the compensation that comes along with it, then that will mean it opens up these opportunities. It means that I will have the ability to oversee bigger accounts, for example, that will have a bigger ROI for the organization. So you have to talk about the future ROI as well. It’s the past, but it’s also the future and what you will be capable of going forward. And then the second thing on that is I don’t think anybody goes to their boss and says, you know, I’ve been doing this job. I deserve a raise. That may be true. You may and I would say I’m sure there are a lot of people listening who are undercompensated and very deserving of that, but that is not going to be a convincing case. It is much better to use language that is grounded in fairness. And so what I mean is using phrases like, I would like to discuss adjusting my compensation to reflect my current level of performance. That is totally different than saying, I’ve worked hard, I deserve it. It’s more so coming from this frame of we’re righting the scales, right? And as humans, we are much more disposed to wanting to do that. We want things to feel fair for the other person. So if you can use language around adjustment, I want to make sure it’s reflective or we’re in sync with market rates, that my compensation is commensurate with my colleagues, whatever it is, that language is going to go over much better.
Eddie Turner
Thank you for that. We appreciate you sharing that, Melody. Very helpful to a lot of our audience. And yes, Hung Yock, you’re quite welcome. We appreciate your acknowledgement there as well and again being a part of our live discussion.
Melody, what is the most important message you want those who have joined us and who will hear the podcast replay later to take away from our conversation?
Melody Wilding
Yeah. Two things I mentioned earlier. That idea of you have more power than you think. You can have and operate from a position of personal power even when you don’t have positional power. And you teach people how to treat you. If you are advocating for yourself, if you stand behind your ideas diplomatically and tactfully, then other people respond to that and they see you as leadership material. And that was something we talked a lot about on when you came on my show on the episode of the podcast. And I just think that is such a powerful message for people to realize that we can shape the dynamics around us and how people perceive us.
Eddie Turner
Excellent. And what is the favorite piece of leadership advice you’ve received or your favorite quote that you use that helps you to keep leading?
Melody Wilding
Oh, let’s see. What is the phrase that never be the smartest person in the room? I had a manager say that to me earlier on in my career and that has stuck with me ever since. So I try to make sure I am constantly surrounding myself with people that are wiser, smarter, more experienced than I am and just soaking in that wisdom.
Eddie Turner
Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to encourage you to visit Melodywilding.com, connect with her on social media. Get your copy of *Managing Up* and *Trust Yourself*. Melody, thank you so much again for being a guest on the Keep Leading podcast.
Melody Wilding
It was my pleasure. Thank you so much, Eddie.
Eddie Turner
And thank you for joining. That concludes this episode of the Keep Leading podcast everyone where we learned today about the power and how to manage up from Melody Wilding. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Accelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our position or our title. Leadership is an action. Leadership is an activity. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment that we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do.