It takes a great deal of bravery to stand-up to out enemies, but even more to stand up to our bosses! –Anonymous.

For ongoing career growth and momentum how your boss perceives you and the impression of their boss (your skip boss) about your abilities to show continued growth go a long way in how your actual growth manifests in your current role. Although these perceptions are shaped mostly by how you deliver on your assignments and how you take on critical initiatives that are important to not only these two gate-keepers of your career, but also to the company, overall, you still have the ability and the obligation to shape them to do justice to your own career growth and success.

Two recent examples of my clients stand out in stark contrast with typical perceptions bosses hold about their direct reports and especially of their star players. Both of these clients are super stars—actually, rock stars—in how they have delivered, consistently exceeding targets and even expectations. Both enjoy VP-level roles in highly branded technology companies and both have rapidly risen in their careers, often surpassing their male counterparts.

This topic is not about perceptions bosses hold just in connection with senior or executive-level team members that report to them; rather it is a about the pervasive misperception bosses hold about their direct reports despite stark evidence to the contrary about how these star players perform and deliver. It is also not about gender biases and discrimination. Rather, it is about boss-subordinate relationship based on misguided perceptions. Such super achievers suffer this indignity regardless of the level at which they are stationed: From individual contributors, to CTOs, to VP-level leaders, and everyone in-between.

What vitiates these star players’ contributions is how their bosses try to fit what they stand for in the prevailing paradigms of their organizations and how their own flawed and mistaken perspective can undermine avenues by which these star players can continue to add value to what is in the overall interest of the company. Their parochial view of what these stars should be focusing on—rather than supporting them for a broader cause in what they do—often undermines their own leadership in how they are able to influence creating outcomes for the greater good of the company, their team, and the stars in question. Overall, it is a bad deal for everyone!

Let us take a concrete example: A senior player in a company that is growing at 20% Y-Y, even at its current double-digit billion-dollar ARR, is in need of more customer-friendly solutions that are well integrated for ease-of-use. The company also has myriad acquired products, not all integrated as a coherent solution, which has translated into a slowing growth rate, despite the fact that it still sustains that 20% CAGR. My client has made significant contributions in the company’s recent releases that have integrated many disparate platforms and technologies to bring relevance and coherence to the company’s oft-confusing offerings—much more still remains to be done.

A recent breakthrough in-house platform and solution that my client was yet again responsible for releasing on time and on target helped the company shore up some of its momentum back. This is the third time in succession that she has come through in a clutch and delivered to keep the company’s growth rate on track.

Yet, despite this stellar success her boss decided to have a “candid” chat with her about her leadership gaps and how she needed to focus on these blind spots for her to continue on her growth path. In a recent conversation with her he made it clear that unless she ramped up her ability to dig deeper into the technical details of all the products she oversees and is able to show technical leadership in her work she may be limiting her future growth because the company puts a premium on “technical horsepower.”

My client is not in a product creation role—rather she is in an engineering leadership role where her team makes things that work together; things that either come through acquisitions or ones that are released by the development teams. (So, in a way, she is like that BASF spot on TV: We do not make better chemicals; we make better chemistry!). So, for her to study these solutions in details is not something that is productive for her to spend her time on when she can devote that time more productively on how these products come together as integrated solutions that customers love. Here the focus in not on component excellence, but on creating a total solution that is compelling and customer-friendly. Besides, digging into technical details of individual component solutions bores her! He further cautioned her that because of this limitation her future career opportunities might also limit her growth.

Disheartened by this “chat” with her boss, despite her stellar successes, we decided to brainstorm about how to counter this perception and to get her boss back on track for her ongoing growth. After some back-and-forth we came with a model of her leadership that clearly defined what her core strengths were and how working on them to further her growth would make her even more effective a leader to shepherd still-pending initiatives that were critical to the ongoing success of the company, especially in view of the fragmented product offerings that needed to be integrated and made meaningful and whole to the customers struggling with them.

In this argument we clearly presented to the boss how investing time understanding the technical details of the product was misguided because what mattered to the customers—and the company—was how these products came together in a seamless way to deliver integrated customer solutions in a timely way, not how well each component was sub-optimized (a’ la the BASF way!).

In a follow-up meeting with her boss she presented this model with a cogent argument about how prioritizing execution of these myriad components was more valuable to the company than their individual optimization by understanding their guts. How getting these integrated solutions in customers’ hands was more important than merely tweaking their component parts. It took some time in this discussion for the boss to come to grips with this counter argument, but as the meeting progressed he saw the light in her argument and decided to elevate her role to give her a large initiative that afforded her the biggest yet opportunity (nearly tripling her team size) to attack this integration initiative. The thrust of the argument was: Customer is more important than the boss!

The thrust of the argument was: Customer is more important than the boss!

So, what are the lessons from this episode? Here is my take:

1. When your boss takes a view of your capabilities that is counter to your own view and how that delivers value to the customers and your company, do not immediately despair and surrender yourself to their point of view or the course of action that your boss recommends.
2. Take an objective view of what the boss is suggesting and calibrate that against your own successes and re-frame that suggestion in light of your achievements and core strengths. Showing how the customers, market, and the company will benefit from it more.
3. Develop an argument that starts with the customer benefit—and the company benefit—and fortify that argument with some factual data that is impregnable.
4. Develop a line of argument based on how pursuing a skill that is not your core strength would make you less effective in your ongoing role and would detract from delivering customer and company value.
5. Just because your boss has a misguided view of your leadership strengths and wants you to apply them in a different direction do not plan to quit your job to find another one. You’ll be carrying your burdens with you to the new job. Instead, learn how to re-establish your value by changing perceptions of what is important and what counts in the ultimate analysis. Learn how to marshal a winning point of view. And, win!

Not all bosses are receptive to their reports’ challenging their views and perceptions. But, unless you believe in your own value and learn how to articulate that, despite other views you will always have someone questioning what you really stand for!

Good luck!