有效管理者还明白，上级也是人，有他自己取得有效性的方式。他会努力去找到这些方式——可能只是某些做法和习惯，但它们切实存在。
大家只要稍加观察就会发现，按照获取信息的方式，人显然可以分为两类：“善读者”和“善听者” （只有极少数人例外，他们通过谈话获取信息，就好像带着心理雷达，边说边观察别人的反应。美国总统富兰克林·罗斯福和林登·约翰逊，还有英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔就是这种类型）。二者兼备的人很少——刑辩律师通常必须二者兼备。对着善读者侃侃而谈，通常是浪费时间，因为这种人只有先看过材料才听得进去。同样，给善听者呈递上洋洋洒洒的报告，也是浪费时间，因为这种人只有听人说话才能弄清到底是怎么回事。
有些人需要别人把信息浓缩成一页纸，艾森豪威尔总统就必须这样才能做决策。有些人需要了解整个思考过程的来龙去脉，因此需要提方案的人细细汇报，他们才能弄清个中缘由。有些人喜欢图表，事无巨细，哪怕报告长达60页也不要紧。有些人希望及早参与，以便为最终决策做好准备。有些人在时机“成熟”之前，什么信息也不愿意听。如此等等，不一而足。
要想了解上级的长处并使其富有成效，需要做出的改变通常是“方式”，而不是“内容” 。汇报如果涉及多个相关的领域，那么要改变的是陈述顺序，而不是区分轻重对错。如果上级的长处在于政治能力出众，而政治能力又跟这个职位有很强的相关性，那么汇报时就要把政治因素放在最前面讲，这样才便于他把握事态，发挥长处去推动新的政策。
观察别人，我们都是“专家”，我们认识别人比他们认识自己要清楚得多，因此让上级有效是相当容易的，但这必须建立在上级的长处及其擅长的事情之上，通过发挥他们的长处把他们的短处变得无关紧要。管理者要取得有效性，很少有什么事的作用大过发挥上级的长处。
The effective executive also knows that the boss, being human, has his own ways of being effective. He looks for these ways. They may be only manners and habits, but they are facts.
It is, I submit, fairly obvious to anyone who has ever looked that people are either “readers” or “listeners” (excepting only the very small group who get their information through talking, and by watching with a form of psychic radar the reactions of the people they talk to; both President Franklin Roosevelt and President Lyndon Johnson belong in this category, as apparently did Winston Churchill). People who are both readers and listeners—trial lawyers have to be both, as a rule—are exceptions. It is generally a waste of time to talk to a reader. He only listens after he has read. It is equally a waste of time to submit a voluminous report to a listener. He can only grasp what it is all about through the spoken word.
Some people need to have things summed up for them in one page. (President Eisenhower needed this to be able to act.) Others need to be able to follow the thought processes of the man who makes the recommendation and therefore require a big report before anything becomes meaningful to them. Some superiors want to see sixty pages of figures on everything. Some want to be in at the early stages so that they can prepare them selves for the eventual decision. Others do not want even to hear about the matter until it is “ripe,” and so on.
The adaptation needed to think through the strengths of the boss and to try to make them productive always affects the “how” rather than the “what.” It concerns the order in which different areas, all of them relevant, are presented, rather than what is important or right. If the superior’s strength lies in his politicalability in a job in which political ability is truly relevant, then one presents to him first the political aspect of a situation. This enables him to grasp what the issue is all about and to put his strength effectively behind a new policy.
All of us are “experts” on other people and see them much more clearly than they see themselves. To make the boss effective is therefore usually fairly easy. But it requires focus on his strengths and on what he can do. It requires building on strength to make weaknesses irrelevant. Few things make an executive as effective as building on the strengths of his superior.
