Make Your Boss Look Good

Ambitious bosses know they can’t rise alone. They need people who tighten their ideas and catch the blind spots they can’t see. They look for colleagues who stretch their thinking.

So when I say “make your boss look good,” I am not talking about being an office sidekick who laughs at every joke or agrees by default. That’s not the kind of loyalty I mean.

When you become the person who sharpens an ambitious boss, something shifts. Their rise creates room for you to grow. When they move ahead, they open doors for you.

I learned this early in my career. I had barely five or six years of experience when a project manager pulled me into a project no one else wanted to touch. In the managers’ meeting, it was one of those agenda items that everyone hoped someone else would pick up. My manager was the only one who saw a chance to prove himself.

On the very first project call, our US counterpart politely announced our failure before we had even started. According to him, we would try, stumble, complain and eventually hand the project back. The team on the other side had its own internal politics, and the project had landed with us because of it. I started the work already frustrated.

When I talked to my manager with all this noise swirling around, he brushed it aside. He said he would handle the politics. My job was to understand the work and do it well. So I buried myself in the details. I mapped what was missing, what was unclear, what needed fixing. Two days later we walked into the next call with a plan so tight the other side blinked in surprise. Their attitude changed. Support came. And we delivered.

My manager looked good. His peers noticed. His bosses noticed. And he didn’t forget who helped him shine. He put my name forward for my first onsite. Then a longer one. He became a mentor. He shaped my career in ways I couldn’t have on my own.

The second lesson arrived almost twenty years later during an e governance consulting project for the Government of India. The Limited Liability Partnership Act had just been signed, and the minister had already promised in the parliament that the system would go live in three months. An impossible timelines were set.

An MNC quoted a high fee, negotiations stalled, and the IAS officer leading the project was growing impatient. He was ambitious and wanted to prove himself. He knew exactly what he needed to deliver and by when.

We decided to stop waiting. We worked with NIC. We drafted forms, notified them, sketched out a good enough system and stitched everything together with the kind of hours that make weeks blur into each other. Weekends, late nights, long conversations that stretched beyond dinner.

And on the final day, around eleven in the night, we registered the first LLP. The officer looked good in front of everyone who mattered. And because he looked good, he wrote me a commendation letter that extended my consulting opportunity for another five years. That letter also strengthened the way I saw myself.

That is why I tell people to look for bosses who are building something and who know their success depends on their teams. Work with them. Challenge them. Make them look good. You are not reducing yourself. You are choosing a path that moves you forward faster.

This blog post led to lot of questions on LinkedIn, so I expanded the post here - Your Career Rises Faster When You Work With an Ambitious Boss