Pete Mockaitis
Melody, welcome back.

Melody Wilding
Thanks for having me again. So great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, it is great to be chatting with you from the fine state of New Jersey, which we discussed is lovely.

Melody Wilding
That’s right. Beautiful state, very misunderstood, but we love our Jersey.

Pete Mockaitis
Lovely. Well, let’s talk about managing up. We haven’t discussed this issue in quite some time and I think it is so vitally important. Can you share with us maybe an extra surprising or counterintuitive discovery you’ve made as you researched this managing up stuff?

Melody Wilding
Well, I think, just like New Jersey, managing up is very misunderstood, and even when I began writing the book, I was resistant to the idea of calling it managing up and even zeroing in on that concept. I wanted to talk more about influence and persuasion, how do you build respect and recognition. And my publisher had to keep nudging me that, “Yeah, what you’re talking about is the skill set of managing up.”

And I think my resistance came, and what I’ve heard from many other people, is from these misconceptions we have. These old images of managing up from the ‘80s, the ‘90s, the person being the suck-up and running around with their boss’s coffee order. And who wants to do that? No one wants to compromise who they are or feel like they’re ingratiating themselves to the people around them. So, it’s no wonder why we resist this concept.

But what I know now, having done this work and researched this subject is that managing up is not something you do for your boss’s benefit at all. It’s really something you do for yourself to make your own work life, your own career, much easier, less stressful and on your own terms.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, I dig that a lot. And while we’re talking about misconceptions, let’s clear them up, I recall, I think I was reading a piece by, Paul Graham, the Y Combinator guy, made a statement along the lines of “Professional managers are amongst the finest liars there are.” And folks are like, “Whoa, that’s some strong language. What do you mean?”

He’s like, “Ah, perhaps I should say, they are adept at managing up,” which sort of imply, well, more than imply, that managing up involves telling the folks above you a little bit of what they want to hear, and massaging their perceptions and expectations, and it really made it sound quite like it’s the art of deception in the professional, acceptable way that we can courteously do so in proper modern times,” Melody. So, have you picked up on those perceptions and how do you address that?

Melody Wilding
I think, again, that’s the older school way of thinking about it. And what I would argue is it’s less about massaging and contorting yourself to someone else’s perceptions and more about tweaking, or in the book I call it flexing, your approach so that your message is actually getting through to the people who need to hear it the most.

That may mean you do need to tweak how you present something, or the type of language you use so that it’s more resonant with the other person, but I don’t think, wholesale, it means that you have to change who you are or what you’re trying to say, because this book is really all about, “How do you have the tough conversations with your manager? How do you push back on extra work or give them tough feedback up the chain of command?”

That’s what managing up really is. It’s having those difficult conversations, sometimes having the courage to say what needs to be said, but doing so in a tactful diplomatic manner that actually earns you trust instead of just turning into a professional people-pleaser.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, could you share with us a nice story that inspires or brings this together in terms of what’s really at stake if we master this skillset?

Melody Wilding
Yes, I think the book actually starts with one of my personal stories which was a time I failed to manage up, and I think it’s a lesson in multiple ways. So, before I went full-time into my current business, I was working at a health care company, and I loved that job. I loved my boss. What I didn’t realize at the time that I saw in hindsight was that I had been hired to work on really a pet project of my managers that was kind of outside of the rest of the company’s scope, and my manager had been given a bit of budget and, unbeknownst to me, some timeline to see if this was viable or not.

And so, that was my first fail, was really not getting on the same page with my manager about “What was the context that this project came up in? What are the expectations? Who else needs to be bought in and on board with this?” And long story short, let’s flash forward, I ended up being laid off. My role was eliminated, and it felt like a shock to me, and it shouldn’t have.

And that is what’s at stake. That’s a very extreme example of what happens when you don’t manage up well, but I was really sideswiped because I hadn’t aligned with my manager. I didn’t have other advocates in the organization who were willing to fight for me and keep me because managing up has to go beyond your boss.

Do not make your manager your single point of failure. You might not get along with them very well despite all of your efforts. Who is leading you may change on a moment’s notice, so you need to make sure you have those other allies as well. And all of that was a very cautionary tale, but I think that’s what’s at stake, whether, again, in my case, it was extreme. I lost my role.

But every day, people feel like they’re overlooked for promotions and opportunities, it may go to someone else who seems less experienced, or we get into these minor frustrations that we end up taking personally, “You know, why does my boss cut me off? They never even allow me to hear my idea out,” or, “Why are they micromanaging me and on top of me about everything?” And so much of this can be solved by learning some key skills.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, tell us, you lay out 10 key conversations for managing up well, which I love. And so, we’ve got alignment, styles, ownership, boundaries, feedback, networking, visibility, advancement, money, and quitting. So, I really dig this because I just love a framework and a set of distinctions and a delineation of categories that just helps make sense of the whole universe of managing up conversations. It feels like, “Yeah, that’s a pretty fine job of summing them up.”

So, I suppose I’m curious, do you have a gauge for what percent of folks ever actually proactively say, “Hey, I’d like to have a conversation about some of the fundamental ways we work and communicate with each other, and what would be best for both of us”? In a way, that almost seems like among the most foundational things one might do in the world of managing up. Is that fair? And how often is that happening?

Melody Wilding
It’s definitely fair. It’s very true, that it is so fundamental that, I think, we sometimes assume it. We assume that this has happened and we overlook it because of that. So, to your point, I would say maybe 10% of people are having those types of explicit conversations about how they work together with their manager, and that is a huge, huge opportunity.

Because if you are in that small minority of people who are doing this, you’re not only going to stand out as someone who is thoughtful, conscientious, you’re driven, you’re taking initiative, but you’re going to have intel and build rapport and trust much more quickly than anyone else.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. I agree, and I’ve experienced it on both sides of the table. Because it’s rare, it feels very special, like, “Oh, wow, this person, I like them. They’re on top of things.” And I think it’s hard for that to go poorly. Maybe if you ask at just like the worst possible time, like, “Hey, that’s like the definition of a non-urgent situation and we’re in the midst of something on fire right now.” So, maybe that that’s one way it could go poorly. But tell us your take on that in terms of to what extent do managers welcome these discussions because I think there’s a bit of reluctance on the part of some folks to initiate?

Melody Wilding
There definitely is, yeah. And when I have this conversation with people, in the book, we’re talking about really the styles conversation, and that’s when we talk about how, “How do we work together? How do we communicate? What are your preferences? What are mine?” And going back to what I said a moment ago, when you understand the context of who your boss is, and also what your defaults are, you stop taking things so personally because you understand, “Oh, this is their style. This is their way of approaching and processing information.”

“And so, if they send a period instead of an exclamation point, I don’t need to make that mean that I’m getting fired, or they hate me, or they’re against me and they favorite somebody else.” We can be much more diplomatic and make those tweaks to how we communicate.

Melody Wilding
And in my experience, people are reluctant, yes, to bring this up, but when they do, their manager is overjoyed. And, of course, you need to bring this up in a tactful way. So, what I suggest is that you present it to your boss and say something along the lines where you show why this is in their benefit, to say, “I’m really committed to us being able to reach our goals together this year.”

Or, “I want to make sure that you can get the best performance out of me possible, that our work flows more smoothly, whatever it is. And to get there, what I would love to do is understand a bit more about how you work and how I can communicate with you better to get you the information you need. Does that sound good?”

And you can start by asking certain questions of your manager, whether it’s, “If I have to get certain updates to you, what format is best? Do you want those in Teams, in email? Should I present a slide deck? Do you prefer bullet points or should I do narratives?”

Understanding some of those preferences, when you are asking your manager questions, gives you opportunities to then say, “Great. Thank you so much for sharing that. From my standpoint, here’s what would be helpful. If you have feedback for me, take me aside after a meeting, or if you notice that I’m not being as concise as I could be in a presentation, shoot me a quick message on Teams so I can adjust on the fly.”

All of us have different preferences around that, but it turns it into more of a two-way street where, yes, you’re understanding what your manager wants, but you’re also finding opportunities to assert, or at least put on the table, “Here’s what I would like. Is that something that we can find a middle ground on together?”

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds great, yes. And as you say it, and I’m imagining the scene, that seems pleasant and welcome to hear such things. And I want to dive deep on a couple of these. I don’t think we could do all 10 in our time together, but one with regard to boundaries. I remember when I was reading through this, I recall a conversation I had with my friend, Kelsey. We were catching up at a wedding. It had been a long time.

And she was telling me all of, like, the cool things she was doing with, like, go to an Ironman Triathlon, and this and that. I was like, “Wait a minute. I’m sorry. Don’t you work in consulting?” And she’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “How on earth are you finding the time to have all of these adventures and do all of these things when I recall my days of consulting were so brutal with regard to the hours of the travel and the unexpectedness of things?”

And she was like, “Oh, well, you know, I just kind of talked to my boss and said, ‘Well, hey, here’s what’s going on, here’s the nights I’m not available, and here’s the thing…” She just sort of laid it out in terms of what’s up, in terms of, “I’m going to over-deliver on these key metrics and expectations, and these are the nights I will not be available to be doing things.”

And I was like, “And they went for that?” My mouth dropped, I was like, “You can do that? That’s possible? Even in client services? Wow.” And so, I was struck at just what a managing-up boundary conversation can do for transforming a life into being sustainable and enjoyable in what can be demanding fields.

So, lay it on us, Melody, if we want to establish boundaries but we’re a little scared and we think that we might misstep, or seem like we’re not a team player, or we’re lazy, or we’re not really committed, or any of these other negative associations we fear, how do we play the boundary-setting conversation game?

Melody Wilding
Well, that’s the tension with it, right? We need to protect our well-being, but we also don’t want to look like a slacker, so we have to find that balance there. And the thing with the boundaries-conversation is that “no” may be a complete sentence in many areas of life, but at work it doesn’t go over so well if you just say, “No, I’m not going to do that,” or “I don’t want to do that,” right? It’s going to hurt your reputation for you to say that so you need to be more thoughtful about how you approach it.

And what I think is so telling about what your friend did is it sounds like she was assessing, what I call in the book, your pushback power. And your pushback power is the invisible leverage you do or don’t have to push back, to say no. And we all fall somewhere on the spectrum, higher to lower. Your pushback power is higher if you have more positional authority.

If you’re more seasoned, tenured in your career, you have more credibility behind you, you are a high performer, or you offer a very specialized skillset that people may be more willing to make accommodations for because it could be hard to replace you. And even things like the strength of your relationship with your boss, how you build trust and rapport, your boss’s values, the state of the organization.

If the team is in free fall, in crisis, it’s going to be harder to say, “I can’t pitch in this weekend,” or, “I can’t take on more of this project for a colleague who just left,” versus if you’re in a time of stability, it might be a little more receptive to that. So, taking into account that pushback power allows you to gauge “How directly or assertively can I say no? And how frequently can I say no?”

And it sounds like your friend did that with her manager. Because she was higher in pushback power, she was able to say, “I have these commitments, and so can we find a solution to work my workload around these commitments that I have?”

Now, for those of us that may be medium to lower in pushback power, there’s a number of different things you can do. One of my favorite approaches that I talk about is called the trade-off approach, and this is great because it allows you to set up binary options. So, you may say, “Okay, thank you for sharing that, you know, Y has come down as an important priority from the leadership team. A few weeks ago, we had talked about that you wanted me to focus on X.”

“And so, if X is truly still a priority, how would you like me to reprioritize to make room for Y? Or what would you like me to slow down on? What would you like us to delegate or temporarily deprioritize in order to make that possible?” And the beauty of this is that you are setting the parameters. You are setting the decision options, subtly saying, “Both of these cannot happen at the same time. Which one would you like to choose?”

But ultimately, you’re approaching it more as a problem-solving conversation instead of just dumping a problem back in your boss’s lap to say, “I don’t know. I can’t do it, so figure out someone else to get it done.” You’re approaching it more as a collaboration, which that person will appreciate, and the ultimate authority is back in their hands.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think that’s really handy because I think without the conversation, we can just assume, “Oh, I have to continue doing all the things we’ve ever discussed, as well as this new thing, and that’s just that,” and that is a dangerous, untenable place to live. So that’s handy with regard to the conversation. I’m curious, when it comes to increasing our pushback power over time, let’s discuss.

So, one of the levers is just the strength and quality of our relationship. Another is how special and wonderful and high-performing we are. Any others and what are the quickest, easiest ways to boost these so that we are growing in pushback power over time?

Melody Wilding
Well, let’s talk about the performance piece and building rapport and trust with your manager. There’s a conversation that comes before boundaries, and that’s called the ownership conversation. And that’s important here because the ownership conversation is all about looking for where can you take initiative of projects or problems you want to solve and run with, but by doing that really add value or solve an issue that’s a pain point for your manager, your team, the organization.

And when you do that, you build, you add to the pushback power you have because you’ve enhanced your value, you’ve shown you’re a problem solver, and that’s really valuable. So, the ownership conversation is all about “How do I not only spot those opportunities, but capitalize on them in a way that’s not going to step on the toes of other people around us?” Because that would backfire, of course.

And a lot of it comes down to choosing the right problem to start. And so, I talk about how there’s five worthwhile areas to look at. And a few of those may be bottlenecks. So, are there inefficiencies or broken processes, for example, that are slowing everyone down, including you, that if solved would make everybody’s lives much less stressful and easier?

Neglected needs is also a great place to look. What are the topics or agenda items that keep going to the bottom of the pile or keep rolling over month to month, quarter to quarter, that no one seems to have the time to get around to, but says, “Wouldn’t it be great? Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that? Or we really need to get to that”? Could you be the one to carry that torch forward?

And another one that I think can be easier to spot is feedback patterns. What are you hearing again and again from fellow team members, clients, your vendors, that if you took action on to make better, would add value to everyone else?

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. All right. Well, could you give us a story of this ownership in action? Because I think you’re really keying in on something in terms of differentiating and growing a career, because it’s quite possible to go years at a time in reactive mode of doing whatever somebody asks for, or seems to be perilously on fire.

It’s hard to be distinctive in such a place, as opposed to, with ownership, it’s like, “Oh, you know, that’s a fantastic result. Yeah, that was, really, I’m the person behind that.” That’s hugely awesome. So, could you give us a story about ownership in action?

Melody Wilding
Sure, I have two that come to mind, if that’s okay. So, the first one is, I had a client about a year ago, who, his organization was acquiring a new one and he worked on the legal side of this. And so, because of that, when they acquired this new organization, all of his colleagues were running in the direction of all of the new opportunities that were created by this acquisition and trying to capitalize on that, chasing shiny objects, everyone was trying to meet with the three key leaders.

And what he saw was that that change actually created this vacuum where he could step in, and that no one was tackling, there was a neglected need, in other words, with due diligence matters of closing everything that had to do with that transaction, you know, wrapping up all of the contracts, dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s to make sure the merger was complete.

And so, he said, “You know what? I’m actually going to zig while everybody else is zagging.” And he carved out that niche for himself as being the person who was buttoning up the deal, so to speak, which gave him a lot of exposure to not only he became a close confidant to his manager, but also his skip level, his boss’s boss, and some other key C-suite leaders in the organization who really cared about this going correctly, and who knew, “We have to get these compliance matters correct.”

And for him, that allowed him to build those relationships. He was seen as more of a partner to those people. And flash forward about a year later, he was actually promoted to partner because of that work that played a huge instrumental role. So, that’s one example that comes to mind of looking for opportunities that other people may be missing.

And then the other quick story I’ll share has to do with another client who, after the pandemic, was really interested in getting mental health days going for the organization, making sure that the team had time for development and rest, and weren’t just go, go, go, go, go all the time. And why this was ownership is because she had to create buy-in for this idea. This wasn’t something that others had thought of. This was something she was innovating from the ground up and had to push through.

And so, a couple things that she did really excellently was she came with proposals in hand, and so when she would have meetings with some of the key stakeholders and decision makers, she would come with a one-pager with talking points that they could use, just ready-made. She made their job easy, took the cognitive load off of them, and she proposed small steps.

So, in the book, I talk about this as the foot-in-the-door technique in psychology, where you propose, whether it’s a pilot project or a test or rolling something out to just a small sample. The people around you want to mitigate risk and potential exposure or failure. So, if you could say, “Let’s start with a mental health day and then we can actually roll that out to have these once a quarter and have more events around this.”

She just started with, “Let’s have this one day,” and that was easier for people to get on board with. And, eventually, she was successful in making it something bigger but I thought that was a great example of planting seeds, taking it step by step, and getting small agreements that lead to bigger ones.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s a really cool thing to take ownership of because, well, one, that’s just great for everybody, and two, boy, I sure would like that person in my organization, it’s like, “Oh, this is the person who got us all the mental health days. I want to do them favors whenever possible.”

Melody Wilding
Yes, great point. And that speaks to this idea of looking for triple wins. Is something going to be a win for you in terms of you’ll enjoy the work, it will add to your own credibility? Is it a win for your manager? Will it make them look good or advance their priorities? And, third, is it a win for the team or your organization as a whole?

Like you said, your colleagues are certainly going to love you, but, you know, at the end of the day, for everyone’s productivity, sustainability in their roles and long term the results of the organization, it was huge from that respect, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell us, within these 10 key conversations, could we pick perhaps one or two that seem to be super transformative and yet pretty easy to do? Any of your favorite tips here?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about visibility, if that’s good with you. Yeah, I think this is one that people know they need to do, but don’t quite know how to approach because it feels daunting. It feels daunting to feel like, “Ugh, I spend so much time working. Now you’re telling me I have to advertise that work as well and I have to bring more attention to it?”

And in some ways, yes, because we can expect our work to speak for itself. It’s not going to do that. We need to be the advocate for it. But there are some pretty simple, easy ways to build visibility into just the day-to-day of how you work instead of making it extra effort, and I think that’s the win-win. One way you can do this is by restructuring your one-on-ones.

So, I highly recommend that you start all of your one-on-ones with your manager with wins. And you can call it wins, you can call it progress or milestones or achievements, whatever language feels best to you, but the point of that is to not just dive into status updates of, “Oh, here’s where this project is. Here’s where this is. This is what’s coming up.”

But to more so utilize that time to show your manager, “Yes, here’s what we’ve done, but here’s what it means. Here’s the outcome, the results. Here’s also visibility into how I thought about solving a problem, the considerations that I made, or the people I talked to.” And all of that shows them, yes, you are actually getting things done. It gives them more insight into you operating at a more strategic, perhaps even higher level. And it also gives them information that they need to run up their own chain of command.

And so, it’s not really self-promotion to just puff yourself up. We really need to think about it more as, “I’m giving my boss the data they need to advocate for me, to advocate for the rest of the team, to have resources, opportunities, decision-making power at higher levels.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s excellent. And often, when we take ourselves out of the equation, there’s less self-consciousness, and it’s like, “Oh, this is this is handy. Like, if I were leading this organization, I would probably want to know about the skills, this asset, this resource, this person has in the mix to be deployed when useful and necessary. Otherwise, everyone just misses out.” And how about advancement?

Melody Wilding
Advancement, yes. And thank you for that great segue because visibility and advancement go hand in hand, right? And you can start to see how these conversations build on each other, intersect, because once people know more about what you’re achieving and know more about you, well, then you’re in a position to do bigger things.

And why I say that term “do bigger things” is because advancement doesn’t always have to be a promotion. It can be that you want to grow your scope, or the budget that you oversee, you want to go from two to four people on your team, or you want to work on a stretch project, or something that’s completely different from your current skillset.

For example, right now I have a lot of clients who are asking for stretch projects in AI, because that’s really important to them to learn and they know it will be a value-add to the organization. So, think more broadly about what advancement could mean, but also think about starting much earlier than you think you might need to.

Because I see way too many people get caught in the performance review paradox where they keep their head down, they think they’re sending signals to their manager about what they want and where they want to go, only for their performance review to arrive and no promotion, no salary increases, no being named to that committee. It seems to pass them by.

And that’s often because we either haven’t been explicit enough about what we want or we’ve waited too long to bring that conversation up, and your manager has already had to allocate headcount or resources or make those decisions. They were made months ago. So, this may mean starting three to six months in advance to plant those seeds.

Let’s say you did hit a big milestone. You may say, “This was such a valuable experience. I really loved getting to interact with these clients or that stakeholder or use this skill. I would love to do more of that. Do you think there’s an opportunity in the coming months?”

And so, you start to get that out there. You may even have more of a formal conversation with your manager to say, “In the next year, I would love to double the size of my team,” or, “I would love to move from manager to director level. What would you need to see to be comfortable with that change?”

And that allows you to surface objections because your manager may say, “Well, you’re not ready for that,” or, “We need to have these other people on this committee bought into this, so I need to rope other people in.” And it allows you to contract so that you can understand, “All right, by June, you need to see this. By December, you need to see that.”

And you can work against that and have follow-ups to say, “All right, I did what we discussed. Are we still on track here? Has anything else come up? Would anything else prevent us from making that decision at that point?” And so, it has advancement top of mind for you and your manager, and it prevents some of moving that goalpost that can happen.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, beautiful. Well, Melody, tell me, any other final tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Melody Wilding
Let’s talk about, briefly, the money conversation because if you have advanced and you’re taking on more, you probably want the salary that comes along with that. Money can also be very loaded and very sensitive, something many of us are not taught how to discuss in our personal lives, let alone in the workplace.

And one of the big mistakes or missteps I see people make here is that they focus way too much on what they’ve done already and not enough on what they can do in the future if they were given more money to do it, and that’s very important. You need to think about, “What’s the potential ROI if the organization gives me five, ten, fifty thousand more dollars, what else would I be able to do? Does it serve bigger clients, manage a bigger team?”

You need to paint that future so that your manager, again, see a theme here, can make a case to their own leadership about, “Why should we give this person more money?” It’s not enough that you want it or you feel you deserve it. That may be true and there needs to be a business case there. So that, combined with, instead of just saying, “I deserve this. I work really hard,” approach it from the standpoint of fairness.

We humans, we are wired for reciprocity. We want to make sure that people feel like they are being treated fairly or correctly. And so, if you can use language around that to say, “I want to make sure that my compensation matches the level that I’m performing at or is commensurate with the amount of value I’m bringing to the organization.” If you can use that sort of language, it makes it feel less like this request that you’re demanding, and again more like a trade.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. Well, thank you. Well, now, could you share with us a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Melody Wilding
In the book, I actually cite some of this research around micro-yeses. And so, if you can get a micro-yes, let’s say you have to give someone feedback, and instead of just diving into, “So, in that last meeting, I felt like you talked over me,” ask for permission first. Get a micro-yes, “Will now be a good time to talk?” “Yes, sure.” “Okay, I’d love to chat about that client meeting. Is that good with you?” “Yes, sure.” Get those micro yeses along the way so someone is a bit more bought in and not as surprised by what’s coming next.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Melody Wilding
Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. Fantastic book, as well as their other book, Thanks for the Feedback. Both amazing books that really break down the nuances, the anatomy of how to have these difficult conversations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool?

Melody Wilding
I am a huge Oura user, so I have my Oura ring on here.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah. Mine is on my charger.

Melody Wilding
Yes, I probably have to charge mine today, too. But I’ve had it for years, and I just, especially since they have added the heart rate monitoring throughout the day, it is so helpful for me to see what spikes my stress when I go into restorative time. It’s just helped me manage my own schedule and my own energy much better.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Melody Wilding
I am a go-to-the-gym-first-thing-in-the-morning person.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you hear them quote it back to you often?

Melody Wilding
“You teach people how to treat you.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Melody Wilding
ManagingUp.com is where you can find all the information about the book. You can connect with me as well there, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Melody Wilding
Start today with having the alignment conversation, and that is a really simple entry point to begin managing up, to ask your boss, “What would success look like for you in the next three months? What does great performance look like in this role? Or, what metrics does your boss discuss with you?” Start there, and I think that’s going to establish a basis of trust and give you a lot of insight that will be really valuable.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Melody, beautiful. Thank you.

Melody Wilding
Thank you.