In order to be a high performer in today's workplace, you need to get really good at managing your boss.

That means YOU need to take responsibility for your conduct and your role in every single management relationship with every single boss. That means YOU need to take charge and start managing every single boss, no matter who they might be on any piece of work on any given day.

If you are looking for advice about how to manage your boss, there are zillions of so-called experts.

The old-fashioned approach to boss-managing was this: You cater to your boss and follow him or her up the organizational ladder. This approach is the most useless nowadays, because it's stuck in the outmoded view that supervisory relationships are simple, fixed, long-term and hierarchical. Whereas in fact, most supervisory relationships nowadays are complex, shifting, short-term and transactional.

Here's another approach. The cynical approach to boss-managing is this: You play the system and you manipulate your boss(es) in order to meet your own personal and career needs, squeezing out as much benefit for you as you possibly can in exchange for the least effort on your part. This approach feels sleazy for a reason. And it almost never pays off in the end.

Then, of course, there is another approach to boss-managing, which I call the "problem boss" category of boss-managing. How do you deal with an incompetent boss? How do you deal with a bullying boss? How do you deal with a boss who tries to steal credit for your hard work? That's a subject of its own.

But now there is a new fangled approach to boss-managing. It's called the partnership model. The idea is that you should approach your boss as if the two of you were partners trying to accomplish a shared goal. The only problem with the "partnership" approach is that, in its very concept, it fails to contend with the true importance of the power differential in a "boss" relationship. The fact of the power differential in a "boss" relationship just cannot be set aside. It is the essence of the relationship. It's what makes the relationship different from others.

At the end of the day, what really matters in your relationship WITH YOUR BOSS is whether you are working effectively together to get a bunch of work done very well very fast all day long, minimizing errors and waste, while maximizing productivity and quality. This involves a lot of day-to-day tactical challenges, every one of which is tangled up in the power dynamics of this person being your boss. Being effective in this complex situation requires a highly-engaged approach to managing your relationships with every single "boss" every single day.