A Practical Guide to Being Better Than Your Boss

A Practical Guide to Being Better Than Yur Boss Time and time again, weve heard successful people make an interesting claim hiring employees who are smarter than you is a great business practice. Heres Phil Libin, co-founder and CEO of Evernote Hiring people smarter than yourself is the long-term answer to your micromanagement problem. I take it very seriously, and I encourage all of my directreports to apply it to their direct reports, all the way down the organization to the most junior levels. This is hard to do, and were certainly not perfect at executing the rule allthe time, but we come pretty close.AndRyan Blair, author of Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain It is my goal to be in awe of every person I hire. I want to see traits in her or him that are more dynamic or more positive than my own abilities in that area, because I know that simply by working with that person, I will be able to g row and the company will prosper, thanks to this continuous reach for improvement.But while experts are extolling the virtues of hiring people who are better than their anfhreres, employees are often grumbling about the very same thing. How many times have we heard friends, relatives, coworkers, or ourselves complain about incompetent leaders and managers. Employees, by and large, still ascribe to a traditionally hierarchical approach to the workplace we want our bosses to be smarter than us if they arent, their leadership is illegitimate, and we feel they should be removed from their positions.Employees its time we readjust our thinking. If were smarter than our bosses, then, by most accounts, our bosses are actually doing something right. With that, I offer three tips for employees who find that they are smarter than their bosses, with the hopes that theyll stop complaining and start seeing the benefits of their situations.Oh, and if our CEO, Miles, is reading this these totally are not culled from personal experience. Youre somehow both the best CEO ever and the smartest guy in the room. Please dont fire me.1. Realize that They Made the Right DecisionAccording to Blair, the semi-legendary Bill Gates makes a habit of hiring people who are smarter than he is.Libin jokes that, thanks to his hiring practices, hes the dumbest person at Evernote and maybe thats exactly why his company was Inc.s Company of the Year in 2011.The point is if your boss hired you, and you are smarter than they are, then your boss made the right decision. You may be smarter, but your boss clearly knows how to manage. Take your bosss willingness to hire a smarter subordinate as a sign of your bosss strong management practices.And if your boss didnt hire a smarter employee on purpose? If your boss still manages you poorly and tries to assert dominance? Recognize that you may be in a position to change that.2. Flaunt What Youve GotYour boss hired a smarter employee because they saw your potential. They saw the talent you could bring to the table. Dont go hiding your light under a bushel, then.It can be tempting to downplay your skills. You dont want to seem like youre challenging the bosss authority. However, downplaying your skills is exactly what the boss doesnt want you to do. Smarter employees are good for the company show off your skills and watch your employer grow.3. Learn from Each OtherOf course, while youre busy showing off your skills, dont let it all go to your head. You may be smarter than your boss with respect to the job that you do, but a boss who knows to hire smarter employees is a boss who knows how to manage a workplace. Youre great at what you do and, chances are, your boss is great at what they do.So learn from your boss see the way they manage people who are smarter than them watch how they lead a group of people who excel in the very fields that the boss fails. Use these lessons to inform your own habits as an employee. You may be a boss one day, and you can draw from your own bosses best practices. And even if you never are in charge of a team, youll still be working with other people all your life, both in and out of the office. You wont always be the smartest person in the room.And, of course, a great boss knows to learn from their employees as well. As Libin says, I interact with roughly 30 Evernote people on a daily basis, and I can say without hesitation that they all do their jobs better than I could hope to. Every time we have a discussion about work, I learn something.Of course, when all is said and done, some bosses who hire smarter employeesareincompetent. If your boss really is terrible well, thats a much sadder story for another day.