Abstract
Everyone expects a boss to manage their subordinates – manager is usually in their job description after all. But this unidirectional paradigm of management is changing, as evidenced by significant popular interest in managing your boss (MYB). An internet search of MYB brings over five million hits, and Managing Your Boss (Gabarro and Kotter, 1980) is one of the most highly accessed Harvard Business Review articles of all time. However MYB remains ill-understood. While practitioner advice is plentiful, empirical research is scant. Academic topics like followership, Leader-Member Exchange, influence tactics, impression management, voice, and informal learning provide pieces of the MYB puzzle. However, none of these offer a coherent or systematic understanding of MYB. Therefore, using a qualitative methodology with 129 reports of boss-subordinate experiences from the subordinate's perspective and 65 from the boss's, this study develops a process model and theory of MYB. The presented MYB model has a number of critical components. First, subordinates use numerous, interrelated, positive, and equivocal behaviors when managing a boss. Second, to determine which behaviors to employ, subordinates often consider multiple stakeholders and use a variety of learning strategies ranging from understanding the boss to trial and error. Third, while well-executed MYB generally leads to positive outcomes, there are a few negative outcomes for managing well, and there are situations where moderators cause well-executed MYB to not result in positive outcomes. Researchers can use this model to better understand MYB and related concepts, while subordinates can use it to work more effectively with their bosses.