Managing Upwards with Tact and Diplomacy: How to Succeed with Difficult Bosses & Become Resilient

“Their emotions and choices do not mean I have to experience them the way they do. Empathy isn’t about absorbing their storm but understanding it from a safe distance.” - Eric Charron

In this episode, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Eric Chiron, an experienced executive and the author of Have You Ever Had a Boss That..., a practical guide to managing upwards and succeeding in challenging workplace environments. With over 25 years of experience at companies like Microsoft and Capital One, Eric has identified nine archetypes of difficult managers and shared strategies to help us navigate these dynamics with skill and confidence.

Key Highlights:

1. Understanding the Nine Manager Archetypes:
   Eric broke down common types of challenging leaders and shared insights into “The Raw Nerve,” a volatile and impulsive manager who often disrupts long-term goals with snap decisions. He explained how emotional intelligence, diplomacy, and proactive preparation are key to managing these personalities effectively.
2. Setting Emotional Boundaries:
   One of the biggest lessons I took away from our conversation was how important it is to separate our emotions from our manager’s volatility. Eric emphasized cognitive empathy—being able to understand someone’s perspective without absorbing their emotional state—as a powerful tool for staying grounded.
3. Coping Strategies for Dysfunctional Workplaces:
   Eric shared actionable tools like cognitive reframing, managing personal triggers, and anticipating challenging behaviors. These strategies help us not only navigate tough situations but also build stronger professional relationships with our leaders.
4. Growing Your Manager:
   Eric also talked about turning managing upwards into a relational strategy. I loved how he reframed this idea as a way to create mutual success. By focusing on empathy and understanding, we can help our leaders evolve alongside us, fostering a more collaborative environment.

My Takeaways:

• Take a moment to pause and reflect before reacting to emotional triggers. This simple step can help us respond with clarity and composure.
• Practice cognitive empathy by asking yourself, “What might this person be going through?” It allows you to understand their motivations without taking on their emotions.
• Develop a clear communication strategy to address impulsive or counterproductive behavior in a diplomatic way.

Contact:
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericcharran/
Book:  Have You Ever Had a Boss That . . .: Succeeding in a Dysfunctional Workplace

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to Resilience
• 2:50 Meet Author Eric Chiron
• 20:52 Understanding Emotional Boundaries
• 34:29 Growing Your Manager
• 40:58 Book Release and Closing Thoughts

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being,

[0:14] and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Lim, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:36] Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I'm glad you could join me for another long-form discussion on this Monday. And today we are going to talk to an author who has just released his first book. Now, I want to pose a couple of questions to you. I mean, have you ever had a boss who's left you sort of befuddled, confused, frustrated, irritated? I mean, have you ever had a manager who's left you uncertain, who is constantly changing decisions based on the direction of the wind? I mean, if you're nodding your head yes right now, well, I think this episode is going to be for you because this is not a problem that just happens to you. It happens across the spectrum of businesses and branches. Well, today I'm joined by Eric Chiron. Now, he's an executive, and now he has that professional feather in his head and author. Eric's upcoming book, Have You Ever Had a Boss That? Dot, dot, dot. Well, it's a guide to managing upwards. It is being written to help you work more effectively, and he's identified nine different types of challenging managers, or what he calls archetypes.

[1:44] Now, Eric and I, in our conversation, we talk about how to build better relationships, how to manage upwards, pretty much. and prove your own professional resilience. And in our discussion, Eric also shares insights from his book, including how to approach difficult personalities, set emotional boundaries, and use emotional intelligence to find common ground. Now, the book is drawn from Eric's 25 years of experience as an executive in organizations such as Microsoft and Capital One. I found the book an insightful read. It was very practical and pragmatic because working in any environment, but we're always going to find personalities that we clash with that we don't find alignment with that we that don't resonate with us but still we need to find a way to cooperate and collaborate communicate because there's always going to be goals and tasks and objectives that we need to be able to move forward in collaboration with other people so at the heart of this book it's about resilience it's about diplomacy techniques

[2:46] and the ability to use empathy and emotional intelligence to manage upwards. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet author Eric Schultz.

[2:54] Music.

[3:09] Thanks for having me, Jason. Great to be here. Yeah, I guess we're reaching from Oslo to Philly today. Is that correct? That's correct, yeah. I recently enjoyed the early version of your book, so thank you for sending me a copy. And the name of that book is Have You Ever Had a Boss That... And it launches February 12th of 2025 this year. That's exactly right. I was wondering if we could kick off by you just briefly introducing who you are, And I'd also like to understand what's the reason or the need you had to write this very interesting book, actually. It was quite intriguing to go through the nine archetypes. Yeah, thanks, Jason. It was a it was definitely an adventure. And one of the great things about having the idea around this, I'll tell you exactly how it originated. But just by way of introduction, I've been around since, you know, maybe like 1999 in the tech industry. I started out as a consultant, a young 20-something, eager to climb the corporate ladder and buy nice cars and nice houses and things like that. And then along the way, I really found that the work became its own reward.

[4:19] But as I looked after career velocity and I joined a couple of big tech firms and kind of eschewed leadership deliberately for quite some time, I actually embraced it later in my career when I was incented by a manager, inspired is probably a better word, to say, listen, Eric, if you want to go fast, you've been going fast your entire career.

[4:40] But at some point, you have to pivot and realize you have to go far. And in order to go far, you need people. And so that's when I reluctantly transitioned into leadership. But I was later in my career, and I found out that I actually had a passion for servant leadership, as I call it, which is, you know, amplifying people, elevating people, accomplishing great things together. Um, but what I realized is I look back over my career, um, you know, managers have managers, leaders have leaders. And in some instances, those leaders have different sets of behaviors that are certainly helpful. Um, you know, I think every leader believes that they are helping their people and they're achieving great results. Um, but there are certain behaviors that were unhelpful. Uh, and some instances they were downright shocking, surprising. Um, they were, They were disruptive. They were just kind of out there. And in many instances, myself and my peers were shocked. We had spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure out how to understand how to deal with some of these behaviors correctly. And then I started to notice myself and my peers in a recent discussion we had dealing with a challenging manager that these archetypes kind of recur.

[5:56] These behaviors across different individuals, different industrial verticals, different companies, these behaviors were recurring to the point where the group of us that were kind of commiserating in a professional self-help therapy session, we were guessing what the actual behaviors were. And it went to the effect of like, hey, let me guess. This person said this and this next. And we're like, how did you know that? I've had a manager like that before. And so we began to kind of deconstruct, well, this type of behavior kind of espouses these other events. These things can happen. These are predictable. And so I began to think about how, well, it's no good if we're just kind of talking about this together. We kind of need to share this with people, not to create caricatures of leaders because they're on their own journey. They're learning and attempting to do the best that they can based on what's made them successful in the past. Their perception is that obviously needs to continue into the future. But that's kind of what inspired me to write the book. It was trying to help people understand that we can't vilify these behaviors. It's beginning to put a boundary around the behaviors and then potentially grow our managers by utilizing things like emotional intelligence, patience and tolerance.

[7:16] And then figuring out that many managers that have these unhelpful behaviors, if you ask them, they wouldn't want to exhibit these traits and these issues. So that's kind of what inspired me to write the book. And what I really liked about the book, I mean, I find it's sort of a minority when it comes to sort of managing books, you know, sort of the managerial type books, because a lot of times it's about how to lead people, how to manage people and such, how to motivate people. But this looks at it from sort of the bottom up, how to manage upwards. And as I read through the nine archetypes, as you said, they are archetypes. They're not caricatures of people, but they are archetypes where we can recognize certain character traits or behaviors or attitudes. And one of them that really rang out to me was something that you titled The Raw Nerve. I'm just going to sort of capture for people. The raw nerve is a volatile, impulsive leader archetype characterized by snap judgments, emotional reactivity, and a preference for instinctive decisions over thorough analysis. While capable of swift action, high pressure situations, this approach often undermines long term goals, disrupts team cohesion, and creates workplace anxiety. Now, all of them were very well articulated and they were very comprehensive, all the nine different types of architects. But this one, being sort of a sparring partner to a number of leaders myself.

[8:40] This one kind of resonated with me because I can see this in...

[8:48] A number of challenges that my clients talk about with their leaders. If we just dive into this one, if you don't mind, what strategy would you recommend for balancing sort of getting an employee to be more assertive, but also with diplomacy in dealing with this sort of raw, what you call it, sorry, the raw nerve when it comes to sort of impulsive decisions?

[9:09] Yeah. First, Jason, that was an amazing summary of that archetype. So I could tell that it really resonated with you. So thanks for that. But yeah, as I call out in the book, and with many of these archetypes, the challenge is as a person that's subjected to this type of behavior, first there's this feeling, this rising sense of injustice. I can't believe they just did that. Oh, they're going to do this again. I spent all this time preparing. I spent all this time in a book. And these stories that occur in the book are 100% genuine. I use different names and situations, but these all happen to me or people very close to me. So these are real. So in that instance, when you've come to a meeting and you've prepared a data-driven set of slides or a presentation, and your job is to convince not only that groom, that group, that leadership board that you're kind of presenting to of a specific course of action or an opinion driven by data and facts and well-researched activities, At least your manager, who's supposed to be in amplification, supposed to be on your side in that session, kind of says, I just watched the news last night and I heard that in a report that this particular thing happened. And as a result, I don't think we should do it. And you're like, so they're shot. Then there's that rising sense of injustice. How could you do this? Even if you disagreed with me, how could you just hold up right now to actually come out and just torpedo my initiative?

[10:38] The initiative we're supposed to be working on together and have been working on for weeks through weeks of careful preparation. And then that injustice actually ends up taking over your brain until you leave the meeting just puzzled and confused and upset, and you might go home early that day. So from a strategic perspective, the first is to realize that injustices are going to happen. You can't prevent them. The goal is to not necessarily bury your emotions or bury that feeling, but work through it and say, well, what do I have control of in spite of this? How can I predict this? How can I lead this off at the past? How can I prevent this from happening again? In some instances, that might mean that you're going to need to anticipate your raw nerve manager's reactions. What can I do ahead of this to prevent them from erupting and going rogue in the meeting? Obviously, the number one thing you can do is to show them and tell them, hey, this is what I need you to say. Here's how you can support this initiative. Here's how we can take a data-driven approach. And a data-driven approach is better than selecting anomalous news bites or things you read on Reddit that might contradict the very careful point that we've established. Thank them for the empowerment to actually make this recommendation. Without your support, I feel that we wouldn't have had the time and space to make this particular presentation or recommendation. Thank you for your empowerment, and I want to make sure that you and I are on the same side in this session.

[12:01] Even still, it might happen. And in that session, your job is to use, I love the word that you use, which is diplomacy, to kind of take the skirt around the shock and awe of the disagreement, despite your best laid plans of kind of priming that person and say things like, that's a great question. Let me take that head on. Or I can see how that might be a perception, but the data says this. And if I were behind your desk, I certainly would find that news information or soundbite or whatever you heard very disturbing. But let me tell you what our data shows and our research shows, because we can't get this decision wrong. If we make the wrong choice, these are the consequences. And so rather than snapping into a perception, let me show you what I've prepared. And you can kind of get the room back on track that way.

[12:47] Because what it sounds like to me, the first step is actual self-awareness and understanding your own triggers. If you have a very sort of raw nerve type of manager or leader, and he or she can trigger you so easily after, you know, you've planned and you've worked and you strategize, even at a tactical level to develop something. And then this person just kind of goes off. You know, psychological safety is sort of a kind of a trending thing. But if we look at the nuts and bolts of that, you know, psychological safety is about feeling valued, secured and connected with the team around us. And if a team member is unfortunately has sort of a raw nerve manager. How how can they deal? I know you've articulated to some extent, but are there more specific skills that we can talk about to deal with this sort of unpredictable, sort of emotionally reactive kind of person? Yeah. It's difficult because you don't want to turn into an amateur psychiatrist or psychologist or mental health professional. But I think understanding people's motivations and why they behave that way. And that's what I really thought a lot about in writing about many of these archetypes is what is the motivation?

[14:05] And a lot of times, these managers and these leaders have risen to a position of authority and influence because they've delivered great results or they have delivered the perception of great results. In many instances, they are going to double down on what they believe the behaviors are and the capabilities are that got them there. So a raw nerve manager might have had situations in which they appeared extremely decisive. They were instinctual. They assembled bits of information in the moment in a time of crisis when it was essentially required to do so, and they made the right call more so than they made the wrong call. And that was rewarded by the organization or by people that saw that happen. And now they believe that that is their competency, quickly assembling random bits of information and making a decision and charting and taking the hill. And the biggest challenge is the higher you go in an organization, the more you need data and you need careful introspection, you need the forecasting, you need the ability to understand the true scope of your decisions.

[15:12] This might be a raw nerve manager might be one person which has not made that maturation yet they have not uncovered the fact that snap judgments and decisions while it got me here is not what's going to get me there in terms of the scope of the job that they have and the scope of the job that they want in the future you as a employee or somebody that works for that manager you're armed with this knowledge of what their potential motivation might be, now has a vector in which you can influence this person. To say, listen, In the past, I think there are absolutely times where you can be a strong and rapid decision maker, and I've seen you do it, and it's fantastic.

[15:54] And I think now the scope of our decisions being what they are, I want to arm you with data so that when you make that snap decision, I want you to feel safe that it's the right one. So there are different diplomatic ways in which we can use these approach vectors to kind of just grow our managers. In some instances though as much as the advice has worked for me in the past and um there are times where it didn't work and then you as an employee have to figure out well you know what i don't actually i love the organization i love the job but this is not an environment in which i experience like you said psychological safety i need to i need to go look elsewhere yeah okay so it is about being cognizant of what is going on in sort of your own internal environment some of your self-talk, your mind talk. So I have another question. If we just sort of maybe take a broader scope, if one of these archetypical type of bosses read your book, how do you think they would react to their portrayal?

[16:55] I think here's how I hope that they would react. Okay. I hope that they would say, there's no way that's me. Is it? Do I do that? And as a leader myself, as an executive, as I'm writing these archetypes, I'm actually asking myself, I wrote, as I was writing it, I was asking myself, hey, maybe I do this a little bit. Maybe this is me. So I think that these archetypical managers, when they're reading the book, I imagine it's twofold. The first benefit I hope they get out of it is that they can actually recognize archetypes and how to develop and implement these coping strategies with their leadership. Because like I said, most managers have managers. Most leaders have leaders. And most leaders are also dealing with challenges and interacting with their leadership.

[17:40] What I also hope is at the same time, leaders that read this book are like, hmm, maybe I am in a tax sub. Maybe I do the old swoop and poop, and then I submerge for a while, and you never hear from me until right before the assignment is due or right before the meeting, and then I erupt and I come out from underneath the waters and say, that's all wrong. Redo that deck now work through the night to get it done and maybe that's not the way i want to be so my hope is as they read it they're like not only can i take away some valuable aspects of coping mechanisms that i can deal with my leadership but maybe i can actually introspectively look at this and be like hey you know what i do i do i tend to do some of these things and now i know that i should make my best effort to try to change because i know the archetypes as you described it wasn't it's not to sort of pigeonhole certain personalities but there are sort of a general description of how people are. And when I read through the nine archetypes, I recognized that some of the people that I know, they can actually fit into two or three of these archetypes. My question is, obviously, I would highly recommend someone reading the book if they want to learn to manage upwards, you know, for career advancement or whatever it is, diplomacy skills.

[18:53] But what is your recommendation, Eric, from your experience of how, An individual can deal with someone or a leader who has maybe multiple traits of these archetypes. Yeah it's really insightful jason that you bring that up because uh i think there is the tendency if you read through the book to assume that you can only be one of these and a manager fits into one archetype and that is absolutely false uh in fact the um the the reason why i wrote this book at this point in time in my career is because i encountered kind of like i don't know if you you or your listeners are star wars fans but it's like a virgins in the forest it's like a concentration of like the Anakin Skywalker of these archetypes. Like this individual had maybe four or five of them going on at the same time, which can be overwhelming. It can be challenging. It can be like, I got to get, it's hopeless. And so what's interesting is as much experience as you have, you are continually, you have to do a fair amount of self-awareness and self-regulation around how these things trigger you and how they make you feel.

[19:59] And so you have to begin by processing your own, you know, shock, awe, injustices, the sense of injustice, and then say, yes, this is unfair. But here's what I have the power to do. I have the power to implement a lot of these coping strategies and address these archetypes one at a time. And in many instances, it's what's the most disruptive one? What's the one that just sucks the energy out of me showing up to work every day? and then start to approach it in that way. I'm not saying that it's easy to prioritize. It's not easy. And again, I don't advocate anyone becoming like their own armchair psychiatrist, but really try to pick out the most counterintuitive or unhelpful behavior and then say, what can I do?

[20:47] How can I actually leverage some of the advice in this book towards this archetypical behavior? And then what do I do about the next one and the next one and the next one?

[20:56] Music.

[21:03] Have three key chapters at the end of the book and one of them is on resilience, building resilience and the heart, the core of this podcast is to understand how to build individual, team, organizational resilience and such. And you shared four techniques, recognizing shifting negative patterns of thinking patterns, cultivating a positive mental attitude, setting emotional boundaries and leveraging positivity for professional growth. If I could spend some time with you, if it's okay, Eric, to talking about setting emotional boundaries, because I think that's what pushes people over the cliff edge, right? They can lose it sometimes. I was wondering, first of all, if you could maybe define or operationally define from your experience what setting emotional boundaries is, and maybe we could explore to the things you've talked about, separate emotions and cognitive reframing. So maybe we could begin by just operationally define what you mean by setting emotional boundaries? Yeah, great, great question.

[22:07] Emotional boundaries to me, and again, I am not a mental health professional. I'm just somebody that's lived through these archetypes. There are people out there in the world that are experts at this. Professionally, however, I think we do have to have our own, you know, I think the best type of way to build resilience is to kind of be your own therapist. Certainly, I'm not advocating that people say that, oh, I'm my own therapist. I don't need therapy. That's not what I'm saying at all either. But in many instances, setting emotional boundaries is first realizing for me was realizing a fundamental truth, which is their emotions and their choices do not mean that I have to experience them the way that they're experiencing them. So a raw nerve manager that erupts in the meeting, my heart might quicken, my pulse might quicken, my mic starts sweating. But in many instances, that to me is like emotional contagion or transmission, right? It's I'm becoming upset because they're upset. And what I end up realizing, I ended up realizing that in a professional setting and maybe even a personal one, you don't actually have to mirror that person's emotions. You can respect and honor that they're going through that emotion and you can empathize with them. And I think empathy is a big theme throughout the entire book because it leads to understand it.

[23:26] So for me, it's emotional boundaries are realizing that one person's emotion does not necessarily have to be my emotions. And by doing so, I can actually begin to do some cognitive empathy associated with that individual. This person is upset. It could be for a number of reasons. Maybe if I can get to the core of why they're upset around a particular issue, a particular incident, is it professional in nature? Is it personal in nature? Is it a confluence of the two? whether or not it is leading with empathy saying that you appear really upset i can understand the reason why you're upset tell me why you're upset if you can't understand it i really want to make sure that i get your perspectives and understand your feelings around this because i think it's important and i value your perspectives um so emotional boundaries to me are respecting the fact that somebody's having an emotional response or a you know you're you're reacting to a um emotionally to a particular issue, and then saying, well.

[24:22] I don't have to be contaminated is the wrong word, but I don't have to have that transmission and embody that emotion. Once you have those emotional boundaries, you can then think reasonably about how to empathize and how to understand this individual. And that, to me, is what the core element of dealing with these archetypes are. And what I tried to do with each one is to kind of just say, well, here's what usually motivates this behavior, not prescriptively for everybody, but try to figure it out. Try to figure out what motivates this person, what's motivating this behavior, and then see if you can actually utilize that along with some of the coping techniques, the sexual boundaries, and then try to drive a productive relationship with your manager or leader. Yeah, I just want to go back because I think you made a very salient point when it comes to cognitive empathy just for the listeners who just to sort of uh delineate that you know the difference between cognitive and emotional empathy emotional empathy is when we try to relate to other people's emotions but the danger of that is this contagion or this transmission where we can start feeling what they feel and then we get lost in their subjective storm cognitive empathy is It's just that you're still present, but you're vigilant towards the contagion of that emotion that they're feeling. And for me, I think it was such a salient point. Cognitive empathy is about listening to viewpoints, opinions.

[25:50] And recording those, exploring what they have said, but trying to filter out the emotional empathy part. Is that what I understand? I just want to make sure we're on the same playing field here. You're exactly right. And it doesn't even have to be in explosive situations. I think early on in my career, and this is back in the early 2000s, it was all about what you knew. The more you knew, the more impressed people would be with you and the quicker you got, better assignments, better opportunities and so forth. It's no longer that way, nor should it ever have been in my opinion. It's all about how you learn. But in those early days, the more facts you knew when you're trying to talk to a leader or convince a leader or make a recommendation to a leader, the more you throw facts at them.

[26:38] So some instances, it's just like hitting a brick wall because your instinct is to realize that this leader is not buying what you're selling. But what you're selling is the absolute honest truth because you've done research, you have data. There have been instances where you might have had direct experience. This person is walking blindly towards a cliff, and you can see it, but they can't, and they want to keep walking. And that's how you might feel in that moment and you might get you know angst ridden or or challenged and i did this all the time and one of my very helpful managers i've had uh at the time said eric you know being right is 50 of the battle the other 50 is getting the other person that you're trying to convince to a place where they're willing to listen uh and what i realized is that people don't make logical choices on the average they make emotional ones and they seek reason to back it up.

[27:33] And that emotional anchor, regardless any amount of new data that comes in, that is in that controverts what they've already emotionally bound are emotionally bound to, they will actually get angry that you have that data that you're continuing to supply that data that you're not that they and they feel that you're not listening to them. So, empathy is a way for you to say, hey, if I was behind your desk, or if I was feeling what you're feeling, or if I was thinking what you're thinking, this is the way that I would approach it. But let me first make sure I understand your viewpoint. And the key is to get them to say, that's right. Not you're right, but that's right. Objectively, you got what my perception is. Once they feel that you understand their perception and their feelings then they are willing to have their mind changed but i literally jason in the early days i literally had to like sit on my hands like not not fooling you like in these meetings i had to sit on my hands so that i would not just erupt and even if i knew the answer to questions i had to pretend like i was thinking about it you know contemplating it because it's all an emotional journey you're making that person feel psychologically safe that a decision that they made was the wrong choice. And now they need to be willing to hear what you have to say. No amount of logic, reason, or data is going to convince somebody that they're wrong when they're not willing to be convinced.

[28:59] And I think you said it. I mean, if someone doesn't feel that they're being listened to, or that they have been heard or understood, then they will repeat and repeat and repeat. And as you said, we are emotional creatures and we use logic to justify those emotional choices, right? So separating emotions is understanding the distinction between emotional empathy and cognitive empathy. And cognitive empathy, as you've articulated, is about opinions and things. And it may be sitting on your hands because that might be a physical diplomatic technique not to explode or, you know, to get all riled up. I agree. Cognitive reframing or taking a perspective, a different perspective, what are some cognitive reframes that you have used that my listeners might think, oh, that's actually a pretty good idea. I should think about that or take that perspective.

[29:52] Yeah, it's a cognitive reframing is very, very difficult, but it's something that we try to teach our kids. Right. Like it's how do you think that person feels? What happens if you have to walk a mile in their shoes? It's very tough to put down the, oh, my goodness, I'm sitting on my hands and rocking back and forth because I can't believe that you're not listening. And I'm so right. You literally are walking towards a cliff, and I'm trying to prevent you from self-harm, and you are not interested in listening. Just getting over that, again, that sense of injustice or that sense of frustration, putting that down, and then saying, well, let me see what it's like to be them.

[30:28] I mean, it could start simply. What kind of day do you think they had before they came to this meeting? What do you think the – is there a sense of embarrassment? Like, how many people did they tell that this was the choice that they were making? How many people did they sell this to? And now here you come with a bunch of data that's absolutely right, telling them that they're wrong and they're going to have to roll it back with their peers. Maybe that's what they're dealing with. And so if you can put down the injustice or the disbelief that who wouldn't make this sensible choice, and then put yourself in their shoes and say, maybe they see it, but maybe they just can't figure out how to switch directions. And maybe I need to help them find a diplomatic way to switch directions that allows them to keep safe face, but make the right choice. Maybe that's how I actually get to changing minds. And so you can then start to say, listen, this was a sensible choice, a decision that you made. New data has risen. And I think through careful communication planning or pivoting, we can help shape the message so that they know we're moving forward. So there's different ways in which you can actually address what might be driving a person to kind of date their heels in or make that emotional choice. But cognitive reframing is essentially, to me, it's all about putting yourself in the other person's shoes right when you're in the height of like, I can't believe this is happening.

[31:58] That's almost a superpower, man. You have to be self-aware right in the moment to be able to do that. One of the most fascinating chapters I found was what you titled Growing Your Manager. And basically, it's the concept of managing upwards. I quoted from the book, you wrote, this modern empathy-driven approach transformed managing upward from a tactical exercise or a transactional exercise into a relational strategy centered on mutual success. Could you take a moment to elaborate and maybe expand on your idea there? Yeah.

[32:35] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the way that I think about this and then looking back on it through the lens of my career, at first it became like survival skills. How do I not get burned? How do I not get hurt? How do I climb and get opportunities in spite of these idiosyncratic, ridiculous, challenging behaviors? Again, that's me describing myself as a younger person and how I felt about it, an earlier career person. What I realized ultimately is organizations tend to want to reward results.

[33:14] Some of them reward busyness, which is how many bad employees stay in good jobs. However, ultimately, what you want to do is not to just survive and manage upwards necessarily. That's a good starting point. But you want to take that manager and together achieve great things that makes your manager succeed and makes you successful as well. So in the book, I talk about like skip level managers and having a conversation with your boss's boss, becoming a true partner and building a team so that you can achieve organizational results. That at the end of the quarter or at the end of the half or at the end of the year, people will be like, that team is fantastic. And that team delivered the results that we were looking for. It was transformational and it was amazing. So it goes beyond just surviving and then being less miserable in your day-to-day, although that is a worthy goal if you're in that place of pain. But then it's also figuring out, well, how do I actually take my manager and make them a partner, partner with my manager, so that we can achieve an outcome that is beneficial to the organization, to my manager, and to me as well. Thank you for that. I think it's so important. It's such a...

[34:30] Skill that all employees need. It's the ability to manage upwards because we have to be so cognizant, so aware of the language we choose, especially if these managers, him or her, whatever, fall into one of these archetypes or are a multiple representation of these archetypes. You know, it could almost be, if you put, you know, the skills for hostage negotiation, you could just flip the title here. It's the same skills. It is the same skills. My background is in clinical psychology and the cognitive science, and I can put psychotherapy to some extent or some sort of counseling because all the skills you talk about, these are skills that human beings need to communicate, to collaborate, to cooperate. And I think it's so well articulated in the way you've described them in the book. Just a shift. Again, respectfully of your time there, Eric. What did you learn about yourself at the end of writing this book or during this book? I know you've talked about a lot of your experiences over 20, 25 years. But what did you learn about yourself during the writing of this book?

[35:41] It was a great, great journey. I think that I learned that I'm at a point in my career, my professional experience, where I realized that I have a lot more to offer than just working in an organization, achieving results, having a great career, having a great time, building energy. All that stuff gets me out of bed in the morning. But I uncovered through the initial set of conversations that I had with myself and a couple of other of my vice presidents as we were talking at the time and commiserating that this is information that can help existing managers at our level, people that are at the C-level, or people that are just coming out of college or maybe in college and have no idea that this is what the professional world is like or working with people is like. And so I learned a lot about that. Hey, you know what? I've got a lot of great scars and challenges and places I've tripped, and I'd love to share those because I think that they can help people. The other thing I learned is, you know, I think every leader is like, you know, sometimes you look around, you're like, yeah, I'm a pretty good leader. You know, my team likes me. My quarterly or my annual employee satisfaction results came out, and nobody really flamed me. So I think I must be a good leader, right? And so writing this book, it's kind of like, you know, it's taking the time for what I learned is like in the sessions that I have with my teams and my organization.

[37:09] Am I providing enough? You mentioned the term earlier, psychological safety. Am I exhibiting in, I guess, unbenounced to me some of these archetypical behaviors? And how can I check that to make sure that I'm fully present and fully aware? And I'm not saying that this is all, it's not like a group therapy session. We're still there to do business to achieve results. In some instances, there are times where you absolutely have to deal with a person that's not performing or that needs to be coached or needs to be reported, right? You've coached them multiple times and they're just not delivering. So I'm not talking about a world in which we foster mediocrity or we foster inadequacy as part of this. But at the same time, we still need to understand, be empathetic, understand the motivations and coach and develop as best we can. And then look out for some of these archetypical behaviors in ourselves as leaders. That's the takeaway that I had. Yeah, I think it's very important what you're saying because, you know, performance, that can always be improved. Competency can always be improved. But for me, one thing that kind of resonated from reading your book, Eric, it was that a lot of the skills that you talk about are about psycho, social, emotional intelligence. For example, some college kid, they're just about to graduate from whatever.

[38:35] Bachelor's or master's degree, what have you. They really don't know what the corporate world is like. I think it's quite descriptive. It gets really relatable through each of the chapters. But it also talks about the importance, not just of performance, but of the ability to communicate, to collaborate, to cooperate, whether it's cognitive empathy, psychological safety, listening, active listening. And I think it's almost a manual to look at that because at the end of the day, you know, it's best to hire someone who has high psychosocial emotional intelligence and has maybe mediocre performance or competency because competencies can always be built. But psychosocial emotional intelligence, that takes a lot more effort. And this, for me, it was also a manual for that to be cognizant of maybe what are some of the social antennas I need to sort of lengthen.

[39:26] Yeah, Jason, that's such that's so insightful. So back in the early mid 2000s, companies I worked for, there was this concept of hiring the rock star. I even cringe at that term nowadays because people my age tend to use it. But the rock star was like we need this person that is the confluence of knowledge, managerial experience, direct experience in the challenges of the organization. And they are able to go on stage and put on a show and wow people and say good night and go trash a hotel room right like that's the concept of what the absolute and today i think people are still after the rock star even though we might not say that anymore but i would absolutely love somebody that has a lot of those psychosocial capabilities that you mentioned that is a mediocre performer than to try to have to manage a team of rock stars uh i fell into that uh as a manager i created a team of rock stars. We all had the same personality. We all had the same, we were outgoing. We, we, we could go speak at a conference, an industry conference. We could go talk to CEOs. We could talk to engineers.

[40:33] Um, but we all had the same blind spots. We all had the same, um, you know, challenges associated with making people feel safe and developing people, coaching people. Um, so the concept of the rock star to me is that I'd rather have people that are more emotionally aware, that are more, but are mediocre performers. And I would want to have a team full of rock stars all kind of just singing different songs together. I've done it, and it's challenging.

[40:58] Thank you for that. So your book, Have You Ever Had a Boss That... Launches February 12th of 2025, this year. Where can they pick up the book? Is it available in all formats?

[41:12] It's available in all formats. The book's going to go live on Amazon and a couple of other book storefronts on the 12th. So I'm looking forward to folks picking it up, reading it. Love to get feedback on the book. And I think one of the big things I wrote about is certainly a lot of the stories are corporate-based. But I held a number of part-time and full-time jobs while I was going through college, in which I worked at department stores and retail and landscaping jobs. These behaviors are part of that leadership stack as well right so i think that even though it is very corporate lens um i think that anybody that has had to report to a manager or a leader could actually benefit from this book and i'm looking forward to folks picking it up on the 12th and eric if someone wanted to reach out to you for your services or for your insights where would be the best place they could reach you, So I have socials, author Eric Chiron, C-H-A-R-R-A-N. So you can reach out to me there. I'm also on LinkedIn. If you look me up, Eric Chiron, C-H-A-R-R-A-N. And those are probably the best places that you can get me. Great. I'll make sure all those links are included in the show notes. Eric, thank you very much for your time today. It was a very insightful and eye-opening conversation. Jason, I love the discussion. Thanks so much. And I'm happy that you had a chance to read through the book and enjoy it.

[42:39] Well, folks, that was the interesting and articulate Eric Chiron. His book, Have You Ever Had a Boss That... succeeding in a dysfunctional workplace? Well, it launches in two days at the time of recording, which is February 12th, 2025. five. I found it to be a very interesting, intriguing read. For me, it was a practical and pragmatic handbook for anyone who's working in a team that at some level is dysfunctional. And on top of that, especially if there is a manager who fits into one of the nine archetypes, or maybe takes on a couple of these archetypes. And one of the ones we talked about was the raw nerve archetype. So the book is packed with actionable advice and insights to not only cope in a dysfunctional environment, but also to manage upwards. And managing upwards takes a whole different set of communication skills. We need to employ emotional intelligence, empathy, understanding. We need to use active listening. We need to be present with ourselves to understand what triggers us so we don't have a meltdown then and there with our manager.

[43:50] Managing upwards takes tact, it takes diplomacy, and at some level we need to be able to influence, to speak our minds, to speak clearly, and it's sometimes to diplomatically push back to challenge those who challenge us. And again, managing upwards is not something that is like a light switch, we just flip it on and we're good at it. It takes time to build and to become skilled and adept at communicating upwards.

[44:19] Eric, a personal thank you from me to you for a great conversation and an insightful conversation. So I appreciate your time and sharing your knowledge and experience. And thank you to you, dear listener, for showing up for another long form Monday discussion. I hope you found it interesting. If you found the content and the conversation of interest, or you know someone who might find it useful, please share with them. And if you find you have a free moment, just a moment, please take the time to rate and review the podcast. It helps me spread the word of It's an Inside Job. Well, folks, I will see you Friday for Bite Size Friday. But until then, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon.

[44:58] Music.