Out Loud

Noticed · Day 1 / 7

The silence was never the story.

Your boss goes quiet and you fill it with the worst story. Here's the move that ends the guessing and gets your work seen.

D

Dana

Direct message

D

Dana 3 weeks ago

You're the right person for the Atlas project. Let's get it moving 🙌

Three weeks of heads-down work. Late nights. And from Dana: nothing. No feedback, no “nice one”, no check-in.

You've filled the silence with the worst story: you're behind, they're disappointed, you're not doing enough. You don't actually know any of that, and the not-knowing is what's draining you.

You open Slack to message Dana. What do you send?

Your turn

Go deeper

Managing up starts with a mindset flip: your boss's silence is almost never a verdict, it's just absence of information, usually about you as much as from them.

HBR, “Managing Your Boss” (Gabarro & Kotter), the classic on the boss relationship.

Next up. Day 2: what “good” even means to Dana, and why you've been guessing.

Continue to Day 2