[justanotherjoe]

I think advocating is impossible to be done by managers effectively. There're just so many dimensions involved and it's genuinely non-trivial. The best workplace is where the employees advocate for each other. Because everyone notices different things about others, but they often just keep it to themselves. They assume just because it is revealed to them it must be obvious to others as well. Not so.

And advocating for yourself is just doomed to fail. But that doesn't mean you don't have a voice. You do, for others; due to the nature of how advocating works.

[ajb257]

"Advocating" isn't necessarily just praising their team. Managers end up in rooms that their reports don't, so the manager needs to effectively represent the team's interests in those forums.

For example, if a manager is in a project allocation meeting and sees a project that would help their reports reach their career goals, the manager should be "advocating" for the project to be assigned to their team.