Anticipating your boss' needs

I once had a manager who used to say that the best way to grow in your career is to make your boss' work irrelevant.

(He also used to say we'd only appreciate that once we managed people ourselves, which I found to be true.)

I got reminded of this story from a fellow reader of this newsletter, Chris, who shared this career tip:

Here's the logic behind this:

The main role of a manager is to make sure everyone on their team is working on the right things.

If everyone does the right work at the right time, the manager doesn't need to do anything.

So, why do managers exist? For a few reasons:

• No team is perfect, people need training, feedback, and, sometimes, to be fired

• The team's work needs to be coordinated, and it's the manager's job to make sure it is

• What the "right thing at the right time" is keeps changing – and the organization needs someone to reprioritize everyone's work

So yeah, companies need managers… But the paradox is that the less you need yours, the higher your chances to be promoted to be one of them.

That's right, it wouldn't make much sense to promote someone to a Manager if they constantly need managerial oversight.

(And the same logic holds true as you rise higher and higher, by the way.)

Wanna grow in your career?

Make sure your boss doesn't need to manage you much, if at all. That's the first takeaway here.

But what does that mean in practice?

Well, the first thing is to be competent at your job. But that's table stakes.

Another good thing is to do the "coordination" work yourself. Instead of having your manager look at everyone's work to see if it's all going to a cohesive place, you can align your work with other people's work yourself.

Many people would include that into the "being competent" skillset, anyway.

But the biggest takeaway for me is this: ANTICIPATE YOUR BOSS' NEEDS.

Remember the whole "things keep changing" truism?

Well, one thing great professionals do that the average person doesn't is to be AWARE of what's changing… Of what's gonna be needed tomorrow, next week, even next month… And proactively do the things that need to be done before your boss tells you to do it.

This can mean many things, depending on your job, but asking yourself this question helps:

"What will my boss need to do soon that I can put on my plate right now?"

You can't do everything – some things require their skills, connections, or even job title to be done.

But can you do some of those things? If so, do it.

Not only will you be their best team member, but you're also proving yourself to be capable of doing their job (or at least a good chunk of it).

This helps with promotions and salary raises. It also helps you gain visibility in your company.

So, a quick "call to action" for you:

List 3 things your boss will need to do, or likely ask someone on your team to do in the next two weeks. Then see if you could do any of them.

If so, do it. Or do a first version of it at least.

You'll see the good it does when you see the look of relief on your boss' face.

And if you turn it into a habit, you'll soon be the star of your team.

Keep working smarter.