4. What to Do When Your Boss Won’t Advocate for You

NICHOLAS PEARCE

HAVING A GREAT boss is a potentially life-changing gift. Having a bad boss can cause a lot of drama, headaches, and stress. While it’s easy to love the great bosses and flee the bad ones, there’s one kind of boss who is much less straightforward to navigate: the boss who doesn’t advocate for you. You might not even know that you have one. Most advocacy happens behind the scenes and in conversations to which you yourself are not privy. As the adage goes, 80% of what’s said about you is said when you’re not in the room. Nonadvocating bosses can refuse to bring up your name favorably in conversations about promotion. They can withhold critical developmental feedback and stunt your growth. And they can even overtly undermine you and attempt…

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Harvard Business Review Special Issues (Digital) - 1 Issue, Spring 2025

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