Managing up is a key skill that provides a 4-way win. How? Done effectively, it helps your boss, you, the company, and your team.
What are the key steps to most effectively managing your boss?
- Know the Objectives
- Know the Players
- Develop Trust
- Excel in Your Job
- Communicate Effectively
- Anticipate
- Celebrate
Before getting into the details of each, it’s important to answer the question,
What is “Effectively Managing Up?”
It is the management and influencing of expectations of your superior while providing results that are beneficial to your manager, the company you and your subordinates. If it’s done well, it is mutually beneficial to both you and your boss.
It helps your boss because it:
- Makes their job easier and less stressful
- Can make them look good to their superiors, potentially helping their career
- Is in alignment with your boss’s and the company objectives
It helps you because it:
- Helps you reach the goals expected of you in the most positive way
- Is proactive and, therefore, less stressful for you
- Can help you develop deeper management skills through collaborating with your team and your boss
- Can help career progression; if you help make your manager’s job easier, the boss will recognize this. (This is the person who writes your formal review and he / she is the person who provides occasional informal feedback to other decision-makers in the organization. In many organizations, the boss is the primary determining factor in what direction a person’s career takes)
- Provides good mentorship for those you are leading, which can make you a stand-out as a leader of your team
And as we said at the start, it can also be beneficial to the organization, and your team.
Now let’s take a look at each step in more detail.
1) Know the objectives
If you’re trying to make your boss’s job easier, you can’t do it without knowing the end goal. What is it that the boss wants to accomplish? What is the company’s objective? What is “success” to the company? How does your boss’s role fit into that? How is your boss measured? What can you do to ensure that the results of how they’re measured look favorably on them? How can you position yourself to be most helpful in your boss obtaining their goals? How can your team assist in reaching these objectives?
Knowing the objectives of the organization and your boss is essential in managing up. Knowing he / she is being measured can give you more specific metrics, helping you reverse engineer how you can put your own skills to work to get them (and you) there.
2) Know the players
Who are the other key leaders they deal with in the company? Who are their peers and what sort of relationship do these peers have with your boss? How do these people communicate with your boss? How does your boss communicate with his / her superiors? How often do they communicate? Is your manager well respected by their peers? What’s their relationship like with their superiors? What might your boss’s superiors think are need areas for your manager?
The answers to these questions help paint a clearer picture as to the best ways for you to interact with and support your boss in getting them to their goals.
“I am convinced that knowledge is power – to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new obstacles, to make better decisions.”
Dr. Ben Carson
3) Develop trust with boss
We talked about the need for trust within a team in the post, “How to Build Trust as a Leader,”but building trust with your superior is key to you having the capability to help them meet their objectives.
People who don’t trust, tend to keep information close to the vest. They’re less likely to share important company dynamics that may be necessary.
Your boss must believe that you are on their side, through good and less-good results.
Do what you say, and say what you do.
In the way that works best for you, ensure that your manager knows that they have your support. And if they have your support, they should know that they have your team’s support.
Be transparent with your boss; this means sharing with them ideas and your strategy to move forward if they are interested. It means inviting them to a department meeting. Due to time constraints, they may not attend, but will likely be appreciative of the invitation.
4) Excel in your job
If you fully understand the objectives and have taken steps backward to develop an idea of the tasks and milestones you and your team need to reach which will get you there, then you know the efforts required to reach the goal. Ensure that you perform your job well. Remember, your objective in managing up is to make your boss’s job easier. It won’t make their job easier if they have questions regarding your abilities. And not doing the job well is one of the fastest ways of undermining the trust you’ve worked to build between you and your boss.
5) Communicate effectively
Does your boss know your strengths and how your thoughts on how those strengths can be utilized best? Do you know the areas in which your manager needs help?
Do you keep your manager well-informed? When they know what is going on, they are more comfortable. Communicating helps maintain their trust that you are on the same page.
Don’t assume. Explore.
Ask for a meeting where you can find out more about the way your manager likes to communicate. What methods work best for them? How often do they like to have check-ins? Understanding how they like to operate enables you to communicate with them in the way that reaches them best; it enables you to mirror their communication style. If he / she is highly energetic, they may react well to a matched level of energy. If they are quiet-spoken, they may interact better with someone who also is more quiet. Maybe not. Find out.
Certainly, understanding thought processes behind how your boss approaches situations and then how they communicate, can help you do a better job of communicating with them and providing what they need.
Myers-Briggs is an organization that’s developed a well-known psychological assessment which categorizes different personality preferences. Their tool, called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is based on the different preferences people have as they perceive the world and evaluate the information they receive.
One of the four focus areas within this tool is how people make decisions, and how this is done directly affects how they communicate.
Does an individual process information as more of a “thinker” or a “feeler?” (1)
Again, if you can understand how your boss, (as well as your own team members and other leaders within the organization) processes information, you can understand more about the information they need to reach decisions. You can also have a deeper understanding about they communicate because of the lens they’re using to assess the information they’ve received.
While you will have your own personality preferences, knowing your manager’s preferences opens up possibilities for you to be more in sync with how you communicate with them.
Find out more about this great assessment and what it can do for you and your team here.
What happens when you just don’t agree with your manager’s approach with you or other members of their team? Here’s where proactive communication just might be your best friend.
Having a conversation about differences in style and how you can work around these differences best can make your boss aware of something that they didn’t even know. Discussing can heighten their awareness for next time, and the possible solution might just be the best thing for everyone.
6) Anticipate and be prepared with solutions
If you’re clear on your boss’s and company’s objectives and you know the combination of strengths and weaknesses between you and your boss, a simple way to make your manager’s job easier is to anticipate obstacles to meeting the objectives and prepare solutions ahead of time. How?
Fully utilize your resources. Are there others in your organization that you can call on for their thoughts? What about others within your professional network, outside of your company? Are there professional associations that you can contact? The importance of your network – both inside your company and outside the company – cannot be overstated.
The point is, being proactive in anticipating problems and trying to either avoid them or solving them shows your manager that you’re willing to go the extra mile for them and for the cause. It can keep your boss from spending a lot of time in the “urgent/important” quadrant of Eisenhower’s Matrix, affording them more time in most productive quadrant II. (If you haven’t seen our post on Proactive Vs. Reactive Leadership, check it out! It explains Eisenhower’s Matrix in more detail.)
7) Celebrate
We’ve talked about the need to celebrate successes with your team in a previous post, but in managing up, it’s also important to celebrate your manager and their successes.
Find opportunities to share the successes of your leader – successes that he / she has reached, as well as the successes of your team under the guidance of your leader. Spread positive. It can only make your boss feel good and reinforce that you’re by their side.
These opportunities may include:
- touting your boss’s specific wins at one of your own team meetings, with or without your leader present. (Have you ever noticed that praise passed on by a third-party is even more rewarding? There’s a lot less chance of a questionable ulterior motive when it’s third-party praise. Also, it shows your team your support of your own leader.)
- Sharing specific successes of your boss with their peers or their leadership in either one-on-one or a group setting
Note: The key to this is that it must be genuine praise, not flattery. Praise comes from the heart, and it’s clear that it does. Flattery usually comes across as insincere, that’s given to get something in return. Flattery does nothing good; in fact, it can undermine trust.
Pitfalls of Managing Up
Many argue that managing up is false; it’s just a way of figuring out your boss so that you can get what you want. Well, yes, but no. The concept is not to be false. The idea is to learn the individual’s intent and style so that you can more effectively help them in reaching the goals, bringing you and your own team a level of success along the way. Think of it as influencing. Influencing up.
Here are the things to watch out for:
- Coming across as a manipulator- Your goal is to help your boss succeed, while making your own position (and those of your team) more fulfilling. It’s not about manipulating. It’s about facilitating efficient progress.
- Being perceived as a brown-noser- Brown-nosers are “yes men.” They’re in it for themselves first and appease their boss to make their own life easier. Managing up means progressing toward the company goals, while making your boss succeed along the way. And sometimes that means diplomatically holding your ground.
- Being two-faced- Managing up means providing support. The support shouldn’t wane when they’re not looking. Even if you could never be personal friends, professional support means sharing dissent with your boss alone, not with your team or others.
- Disregarding your own team- A key aspect of effectively managing up, is to maintain effective management of your own team in the process. Your boss needs the efforts of your entire team to reach their objectives; otherwise those jobs wouldn’t be necessary.
Effectively managing your leader can be highly beneficial to them, you, your team and the company. It requires exploring, appreciating, and truly utilizing the differences between you and your manager to reach a higher objective.
Managing up usually requires stretching – being open, utilizing resources, solving problems, communicating, accepting responsibility, facilitating progress, collaborating, and celebrating wins. Hmmm… sounds like leadership.
Managing up is work. It isn’t usually easy. But nothing worth doing usually is.
“You can lessen the chance that your boss will make bad decisions that adversely affect you and your career by managing your relationship with the boss. Keep the boss informed about what’s going on at work and never forget the pressure your boss is under. Honesty and reliability will win the hearts of most bosses.”
Jane Boucher, author of several books and professional speaker on professional and personal excellence
Source:
The Myers & Briggs Foundation. (2014). “Thinking or Feeling”. Retrieved Jan 28, 2020, from https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/thinking-or-feeling.htm?bhcp=1