Your Job Is Helping to Meet Business Needs – How Can You Best Align with Leadership’s Vision

When you’re focusing on doing a good job, it’s easy to get lost in projects and daily responsibilities.

To succeed in your career, you should prioritize having a strong relationship with your boss and other company leaders. Make sure to distinguish alignment from leadership and schmoozing. People who “manage up” are focused on working hard to earn trust. They are gaining new skills and volunteering for projects where they can make an impact. This puts them in a position to earn incentives and advancement opportunities.

Below are a few tips on doing a great job while helping your company’s leadership meet larger objectives.

Consider Culture and Style

To align with your leaders, you must determine what specific results matter to them. Start by paying attention to what your boss cares about daily. Consider their management style and the best ways of approaching them. Some bosses like to hear ideas on improving efficiency, while others want results. Some bosses are passionate about getting the small details correct. Others are more concerned about the big picture.

Once you’ve figured out what matters to your boss and other leaders, incorporate that into your work habits and interactions.

Regularly Meet with Your Boss

Good communication is vital to aligning with leadership, and occasional brief meetings with your supervisor can keep you and your boss on the same page.

Get the most from these meetings by coming with a relaxed agenda. Review your recently finished projects or tasks. Discuss assignments and objectives for the near future. Ask if any adjustments need to be made to ongoing tasks.

Try to keep focused on the work during these meetings. Do not let these interactions be all about you or your boss. Use these meetings to learn about the challenges the company is facing and the projects that are important to leadership. These conversations are also an excellent way to discover additional contributing ways.

Speak to What Leadership Wants to Achieve

Good leaders are always open to new ideas, and they’re more prone to consider a suggestion they if know the potential positive impacts on their priorities.

When looking to present suggestions or ideas, come to the conversation with specific facts and numbers that show how your idea can positively impact productivity or revenue. If you need to determine the impact, search for academic studies on the idea’s success or ones like it.

Become a Subject Expert

You can make yourself indispensable to leadership by becoming an expert in one specific area of your job. Try to become a go-to source for using a particular tool or software program. Once you’ve got one specialty, don’t stop there. Increase your value by adding and using more unique skills in various projects. Showing your unique value will make you a critical team member vital to organizational success.

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