Managing Up

If your notions of how to get along with your boss stopped at the admiring-the-family-photos-on-the-credenza stage, here’s how to move it along. Michael Dobson and Deborah Singer Dobson advance kissing-up to a new, practical level, as they straightforwardly explain their boss-wrangling concepts. You can read the brief chapters in bite-size chunks and each one ends with a worksheet. While these concepts about understanding your boss and playing to the boss’s priorities are not particularly innovative, they are useful and accessible. The Dobsons wrote their book as much for the folks in the cubicles as for the fellow in the office with his feet on the desk. Reading this book won’t change your boss’s personality - but it might blunt his pitchfork. getabstract.com recommends it to staffers who want to get ahead by getting along with the boss, the gatekeeper to the top. And if that takes a little manipulation, well, hey, it’s business.