Bringing Up the Boss: Practical Lessons for New Managers

Managing is hard. Managing for the first time is even harder.

New startups come on the scene filled with incredible young people. These start-ups grow, the team expands, and those young people all of a sudden have the responsibility of a team under them. Just a few years prior, these folks were barely able to support themselves in their crazy, ever-changing company. Now, as “managers,” they are expected―often without any direction or manager role models―to know how to develop, coach, structure work, review, and set expectations for a whole bunch of new, incredible young people.

First-timers want to quickly learn what it takes to be a successful manager―like they learned how to program, how to design, how to operate―and put those learnings into practice. But what does it mean to manage, and how do you teach someone to be a good manager?

Enter Rachel Pacheco, an expert at helping startups solve their people and culture challenges. Pacheco, former Chief People Officer at Oxeon and a founding member of the executive team of the JPMorgan Chase Institute, conducts research on management at the Wharton School and works with CEOs and their managers to build the skills necessary to navigate a rapidly-scaling organization. In this book, Pacheco shares these skills, along with cutting-edge research, data, anecdotes, how-to exercises, helpful tools, templates, and more, to help overwhelmed employees become expert managers.

Bringing Up the Boss provides a roadmap for managers of time- and cash-strapped startups, as well as any other manager looking to hone their craft.

Readers will learn:

• How to recruit and run an effective team
• How to motivate and direct team members
• How to have difficult but necessary conversations with team members
• How to avoid micromanaging
• How to hone an individual’s skills
• How to build an inclusive, diverse community
• How to manage across multiple geographies and in a virtual setting
• How to set clear expectations
• How to give critical and constructive feedback
• How to navigate the relationship with their own boss

Bringing Up the Boss effectively shortcuts years of training, mentoring, and experience required to develop a manager by focusing on the key components of what makes a manager great.

About the Author

Dr. Rachel Pacheco, PhD is an award winning author and management professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. A former Chief People Officer, Rachel serves on the board of directors and board of advisors for numerous start-ups and high growth organizations. Prior to her role at Georgetown, Rachel was on the faculty of the Management Department at the Wharton School, and was a founding faculty member of the Entrepreneurship Education Program at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dimensions: 15.88 x 2.08 x 23.65 cm