Should Employees Focus On Making Their Manager's Look Good?

The common assumption in business has always been, "want to get ahead at your company? make your manager look good!" I have to be honest with you, when I hear this it crushes my soul. We spend more time working than doing anything else in our lives and telling people that their job is to make someone else look good is just sad. Now of course this very much used to be the way the business functioned. In fact, if you were to ask me 20 years ago what you could do to get ahead at work I'd give you that very same response, "make your manager look good," but we aren't living in 1995 anymore. It's no wonder that employees feel like cogs and that only 13% of employees around the world are engaged in their jobs. Today we are living in a world where the war for talent has never been more fierce.