The Summons
Reading intent before the meeting
A calendar invite from your boss's boss lands in your inbox with no context. Your manager hasn't mentioned it. You have 48 hours to figure out whether this is an opportunity or a trap.
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Part of this story
The Skip-Level
→Your boss's boss wants a one-on-one. This is either a gift or a test. Learn to navigate the power dynamics above your manager without burning bridges below.
Part of the quest
Managing Up
→The most underrated workplace skill. From making your work visible to your manager, to pushing back on bad decisions and navigating your boss's boss — practice the conversations that shape how your career is seen from above.
What you'll learn from The Summons
This scenario focuses on Reading intent before the meeting — a critical skill inside the broader leadership domain. You'll face a decision where the instinctive response is often the wrong one. After you make your choice, you'll see exactly what happened in the other person's head and why it mattered. The scenario is part of The Skip-Level, a full interactive story inside the Managing Up quest.
Skills you'll build in Managing Up
More scenarios in this quest
You're sitting across from someone who controls your manager's future — and yours. They're being friendly. Every answer you give is being weighed against things you can't see.
The VP leans forward and asks what you really think about your manager's leadership. The honest answer and the safe answer are not the same — and they know it.
The meeting went well. Now the hard part — turning a good impression into something real without making your manager feel like you went around them.
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