Higher Learning: 8 Tips to Help You Manage Up

In an era when we’re all overloaded by work and messages, leaders can find themselves drowning in meetings, emails, social media messages, texts, voicemails and snail mail — all of which require their attention. When leaders are overextended and overscheduled, their tasks often get pushed to the back burner, buried or forgotten. 

If your boss’s workload or unresponsiveness is preventing you from delivering your own work product, it’s time for you to “manage up.” 

This concept refers to working with your manager and others who you report to and who you rely on to enhance the relationship and improve workflow and productivity. 

As a valued member of your company’s team, you must proactively address needs, provide friendly reminders, and offer suggestions when necessary. 

If you find that you cannot move forward with a project because it needs your report’s feedback and items are piling up, empower yourself to manage up. Here’s how:

1. Understand other people’s work habits and preferences. Find out when and how your boss and colleagues like to be approached. Do they prefer to review documents electronically or to have them printed and set on their desk? Do they like to receive documents as email attachments or have them posted in your collaborative cloud? Once you know their work preferences, you can elicit their feedback more effectively. 

2. Consider the timing of requests. When deadlines loom for big projects or our direct report is traveling for business and stuck in daily meetings, it’s probably not a good time to deliver a list of processes we would like to improve. Understand and communicate priority — and if it’s not urgent and can wait, know which things are better presented when you have scheduled a time to meet. 

3. Talk time. I’d be remiss if I took credit for the phrase “talk time.” In fact, it is Neen James, a productivity expert, who taught me the phrase nearly 15 years ago. At the time, I would say to people something like, “Please provide me with your feedback,” or to “Please give me your feedback by end-of-day on Monday.” Neither of these requests is specific enough.When managing up, we have to be clear about what we need and when we need it: “Please review the attached contract and provide me with your feedback by noon on Tuesday, Feb. 20. I will have it finalized and sent to the client by the deadline of 10 a.m., Wednesday, Feb. 21.”

4. Lighten the load. Another way to manage up is by offering to take on some of our direct report’s tasks that we know we can accomplish accurately and on time. This keeps the work flowing and gives us experience with new skills.

5. Anticipate needs. If you’ve delivered a report for your boss to review and it’s due to the client by a certain date, then follow up with him or her well before the deadline. Again, it’s about talking time, managing needs and expectations. Don’t be afraid to ask your boss how you can help him or her meet the deadline.

6. Stay positive. To manage up, we must be tactful and friendly when communicating with our bosses. A gentle reminder to review a proposal or an offer to call a client on the boss’s behalf might be all it takes to turn his or her attention to your issue.

7. Communicate regularly. To understand expectations and work together more efficiently, we need open dialogue. We should always keep our bosses apprised of project statuses before they ask. Doing so will save them time and prevent them from wondering what’s going on. Try to schedule a daily, five-minute check-in call or meeting. If your company uses tools such as Slack or Teams, you can post brief status updates for the boss and the team — whether the news is positive or negative. This makes everyone’s life easier and our days more productive. No one enjoys the element of surprise on the job.

8. Be proactive for the big picture. Managing up also means proactively approaching our employers with ideas to improve overall effectiveness. Our ideas might not always be utilized, but they will be appreciated.

For instance, a few years ago a member of the Furia Rubel marketing and PR team recommended that we switch from AOL instant messages to Slack for our internal messages. The change has reduced our internal email volume by 30 percent, created channels for collaboration and given us more flexibility to collaborate in real time with our clients and strategic partners. 

We all should remember that we were hired because our bosses saw us as assets for the team. When we manage up, we benefit too, because our relationships with our leaders affect our ability to do our jobs. Nine times out of 10, the boss will appreciate the gesture. 

As someone who has been managing a team of professionals for 17 years, I know that I appreciate it when members of our team manage up. And they’re quite good at it, too.

I wrote this article with inner-office relationships in mind, but these tips also apply to working with members of your team and with your clients. No matter whom we report to, we have to take the lead in our work — to show up, speak up and manage up.


photo credit: artpartner