5 Ways To Manage Up, Better
For experienced and emerging leaders
Whether you’re an experienced leader or someone moving into leadership for the first time, managing upwards is critical.
Managing up is more than delivering what you need to. Developing and maintaining an open, productive, and respectful relationship can be just as important.
It's natural to assume that your boss will lead the way in shaping the relationship that exists between you. It’s likely you want to be respectful or perhaps there’s a clear hierarchy in your organisation.
But the relationship with your boss isn’t one-directional. There are two of you and you are both responsible for creating a relationship that enables you each to succeed.
That means that if you want to get what you need out of the relationship, being active and not passive in shaping it is key.
The challenge is that the opportunities to do that aren’t as frequent as you might like to think. Information exchange aside, if your primary conversations take place at a monthly one-to-one that's just 12 dedicated times a year. Being intentional and focused is essential.
To help you bring more of that into the relationship with your boss, here are five things to explore.
Meantime, if you haven’t already, I’d love it if you hit the button below.
Reflect: Being a ‘high performer’ and being ‘easy to manage’ don't always go hand in hand. In fact, leading top performers can often provide a significant (albeit different) challenge.
Take a moment and reflect.
What is it like for others to work with you?
What do you want your boss to say about you?
What one thing could you do today to make it easier for them?
Help: Leading up isn’t (always) about making your boss's life easier. But there will be opportunities that are mutually well-serving. Think about what strengths you bring to the relationship and where you can be a source of genuine help.
What unique perspectives do you have that could be of value?
What opportunities do you see that they don’t?
What are they working on that you can ease the pressure by taking the lead with?
Share: The best relationships happen when you understand each other. You can make this easier by sharing your preferences and asking the same of them.
Tools such as Everything DiSC offer comparison options to identify where two people talk the same language and where you don't. That can be a great way to accelerate new relationships and open up new conversations in established partnerships.
How would you describe your boss’s style and preferences?
How would you describe your style and preferences?
What potential and what risks does this combination present when working together?
What your boss says and does can also give you clues about how they like to work and what matters to them. Pay attention and you’ll start to identify how you can adapt your style to give them what they need.
Lead: You may value a one-on-one that’s focused entirely on delivery, or perhaps you prefer a conversation that’s centered around relationship building; with time discussing outside pursuits or family life. What your boss is looking for is unlikely to be exactly the same.
If driven entirely by your boss, what would a one-to-one focus on?
What do you want your one-to-one to look like?
What would a meeting that met both of your needs look like?
What can you do in your next meeting to actively create that?
Read: For ideas to experiment with, this curated list of 30 tips from First Round Review is as good as you’ll get.
Which two tips resonated with you the closest?
What will you experiment with?
When’s your next best opportunity to do it?
Last week’s issue: Read The Honeymoon Is Over if you’re six months into your new job.
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