Tips and Tricks for Managing Up

Managing Up is an important skill to develop – it will help you to succeed in whatever role you fulfil. 

Here are a few tips and tricks for Managing Up.

Know her priorities and goals. This helps you tailor the information you share during meetings and conversations. And when you can assist her in accomplishing goals, you are demonstrating you are dependable and that you take initiative.

Anticipate her needs. The more you anticipate the needs of your manager and demonstrate your understanding of them, the more confidence and influence you will build.

Talk like her. Use the language and terms that she often uses and focus on the topics that are most important to her.

Don’t bring her any surprises. No one likes surprises, especially the negative ones. Proactively keep her updated with current news that is significant to her success.

Understand her strengths and weaknesses. You want to be able to close the gap of her weaknesses, and leverage and learn from her strengths. It will also help you to anticipate how she will act in certain situations. For instance, if she is highly goal driven and you bring her a roadblock to accomplishing a goal, she will want to know when and how you will get around it.

Offer solutions. Managers don’t want to hear all the problems you have. Rather, they want to hear the various solutions you can offer to a problem.  Make sure that you have your own opinion on which one would be the best alternative. This demonstrates that you have carefully thought through the situation and didn’t jump to your first idea.

Whatever the challenge you are having, make sure you keep communications open. 

N.B. why do we always talk about managers as “he” or “him”?  I have deliberately used “she” and “her” in this post to challenge assumption that your manager must be a man! Years ago, I heard Tom Peters (author of “In search of Excellence”) do this and I was very impressed.

What to find out more? Contact me to discuss how I can help you!

Interested in this issue? Having challenges managing up? Contact me – I can help!