My final foray, at least for the time being, into professional development was Badowski’s Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship with Those Above You, and if I’m completely honest it’s the only one I should have read.
I enjoyed the “theory” and the “professional opinions” in the Harvard Business Review compilations I read, Managing Up (The 20-Minute Manager Series) and HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across, but neither of them had the wit, the humor or the charm of this book. Seriously, there is something to be said about reading a book that could be an incredibly boring (or pedantic) subject that makes you laugh out loud or giggle to yourself on public transportation. They all provide great advice, but this book offered the advice through the art of storytelling and not the other way around.
Let’s get the basics out of the way; I was not an English, Communications or Journalism major. A lot of the English grammar terms I know I learned while taking Spanish because I apparently didn’t pay attention in high school English class. (They taught us that right?) What little editing I do know I’ve picked up on my own, learned in a really intensive copy editing class or am schooled in on a regular basis by the amazing editor at work. What’s great is that, none of this keeps me from wishing to copy edit books, like the one above, or to organize and copy edit the internet, but that is an entirely different world.
If you follow the blog you’re aware I’ve been having a mini-professional identity crisis. Earlier this week I wrote about 
I wanted to look into the idea of “managing up” because every job I’ve held my direct manager has gone out for maternity or medical leave and this has thrown me into a different management structure than what I was used to. And then when my manager has returned it was yet another adjustment.
When I first received a request from the publisher, Ten Speed Press, to look at this book I was a bit hesitant. The primary reasons was that I’m not looking for a new job.