Remember when you first accepted a role of managing direct reports? To know that your decisions had such impact on their satisfaction with the workplace and on the organization’s satisfaction with them was quite daunting. Maybe it still is. It’s easy to feel the weight of responsibility of managing down.
Managing up can also feel quite heavy. You’re responsible to channel the observations, insights, and desires of your team to the larger organization to help senior leaders make decisions for the good of the company.
But it can be easy to overlook the importance of your relationships with your peers – those who report to the same boss you do. Patrick Lencioni calls these people your “first team.” The strength of support you’re able to foster among those peers can directly affect how well you can serve those who report to you and how well you can defend and support your ideas to those above you in the organization.
When you feel like you’re competing, the more likely it is that you’ll find friction in your efforts. But the clearer it is to your peers that you’re all working toward the same goals, the better you’ll be able to support each other.
If you’d like a thinking partner to explore how you can strengthen your horizontal relationships with your peers, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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