The Counterparty You Did Not Choose

You had a strong year. Then you read your year-end review, and it describes someone slightly less than the person who did the work. Was your manager even paying attention?

That gap is easy to resent, and the resentment is fair. You shouldn’t have to manage the person who is meant to be managing you. The work should speak for itself.

Over the years I have watched the same pattern more than once. Two analysts join the same investment firm in the same year, equal in calibre and doing comparable work. One has a manager who puts their name in the rooms that matter. The other works with their head down, under a manager who does not. Five years on, their careers have separated in a way the work alone does not explain.

In markets, an uncovered stock can stay cheap for years. The fundamentals can be sound, but if no one is writing it up or putting it in front of buyers, it trades below fair value. Coverage is often what closes the gap. At work, your manager is your coverage.

Faced with this reality, people tend to go one of two ways. Some try harder to be liked. Others go quiet and trust that someone will eventually notice. Both are human, and both leave one of the most important relationships in your working life to look after itself.

There is a third way, which is to manage that relationship on purpose: be clearer about what you are doing, ask for what you need, and make sure your standing never rests on one person remembering to look.

You cannot diversify away your manager. You can stop relying on just one line of recognition.

This week’s ROE Letter opens ALIGN, a five-week series on working with the person you report to.

https://substack.com/@charmianlong

When your manager last missed work you were proud of, was it all theirs to see, or was some of it yours to show?