Points to consider.
If I don’t manage up, will it contribute to team dysfunction and low-morale?
How can I better influence my impact.
The importance of my relationship with my boss.
3 ways I can manage up more effectively.
What is managing up?
In my experience, managing up is hugely underrated. Often, people leaders spend the majority of their time managing their team and very little time managing their leader.
As a people leader, you play a huge role in surfacing challenges, problems, successes, and everything in between to your boss. Given the layers and structure of most organisations, your leader isn't on the front line with you, seeing what you see. They lack the insight, context, and story behind what is happening day to day.
This only compounds the further up the organisation you go. The next layer has less context, the layer above even less, and things become increasingly murky. It is when things become murky that problems start to emerge.
From a strategy and change-management perspective, leaders can end up rolling out initiatives that create significant shifts in how teams operate, while viewing the impact as relatively minor because they're making decisions based on the information available to them.
People get overlooked for promotions because their good work isn't visible. Staffing gets reduced because forecasting is based on numbers without the nuance of changing responsibilities and evolving workloads. Teams take on more work without additional support. Trust erodes. Engagement drops. People leave. Employee survey scores decline. Glassdoor takes another hit.
It becomes a vicious cycle.
Your boss needs to be your number one relationship within the organisation. They have a huge influence on your experience at work, your autonomy, your ability to get things done, and ultimately your success.
If you don't learn how they operate and what good looks like from their perspective, you'll often find yourself falling short and feeling frustrated.
3 easy wins.
1. Make their priorities your priorities.
Most of us simply tell our boss what we are working on or where we need their help.
The most impactful leaders do something different. They ask questions to understand what their boss is being measured on and then frame their work through that lens.
Ask yourself:
What does success look like for my boss?
If you don't know, ask.
"I've been thinking about my impact and was curious about your goals and priorities for the team this year. My understanding is that one of the biggest focuses is increasing customer satisfaction from 80% to 85%. Is there anything else I should be doubling down on, or anything you're focused on that I could help drive from my side?"
Simple question. Massive value.
2. No surprises.
If your boss hears about a major escalation or sensitive situation from someone above them, before hearing it from you, it reflects badly on them. It makes it look like their house isn't in order.
On the other hand, if the same situation comes up and they can immediately respond because you've already briefed them, you look great and so do they.
What does this look like in practice? Mostly common sense.
An employee is rude to a customer, and you're managing the fallout. Brief your leader.
"This happened. These are the actions I'm taking. This is the expected resolution timeline."
You don't need to tell your boss everything in real time. Less important items can wait until your next 1:1.
By leading this way, you'll build trust with your leader, and trust creates autonomy. Autonomy creates space. And that space allows you to lead more effectively.
3. Don’t be a “yes person”.
You might think your boss simply wants you to do what you're told. In some environments, that may even be true but that's not protecting your team, your customers, or your boss, from making a potentially poor decision - because nobody challenged the thinking.
A moment of candour:
Historically, a mid-level support team didn't have a formal working schedule for handling customer cases. A top-down
decision was made; in partnership with the forecasting team, to introduce scheduling.
The change was poorly received, and was eventually rolled back.
On reflection, there were absolutely things that could have been done differently from a change-management perspective but if I'm honest, I didn't push back hard enough at the time.
And that's the lesson.
Managing up isn't about saying no. It's about disagreeing in the right way.
Here's an example.
Opening: Establish you're aligned, not opposed.
"I want to make sure we get the best outcome here, and I'm supportive of the direction. Before we commit to rolling this out, I'd like to share some on-the-ground context that I think is worth factoring in because I want this to land well, not just go out."
The push back: Business case challenge.
"My question is whether the business value we're expecting from scheduling is proportionate to the disruption it will create.
Our senior analysts are some of our most invested and highest-performing individual contributors. Output variance isn't really the problem we're solving for.
I want to make sure we're clear on the specific behaviour or outcome this change is designed to address because if we can't explain it clearly, the team will ask that question and we won't have a strong answer."
The impact: Make it real.
"The risk I want to flag is trust erosion. This group responds well to autonomy. It's part of what keeps them engaged and performing. Introducing schedules without a clear rationale they can get behind may be interpreted as a signal that we don't trust them.
That's difficult to walk back. I've seen that dynamic before, and the cost in morale and retention was significantly higher than the problem we were trying to solve."
The Recommendation:
"I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying let's make sure the business case is strong enough to justify the disruption. And if it is, let's think carefully about how we bring the team along so this feels like a decision made with them in mind, not something being done to them. I'd rather get it right than get it fast."
Wording it this way keeps you firmly on the right side of the line. You're not blocking the decision. You're pressure-testing it. That's what good leaders do, and it's hard to argue against.
Now it’s your turn! If you got this far, thank you for reading this week’s newsletter. Consider contributing further to the community by adding your thoughts, examples or by engaging with our social media.