How to Manage Up and Improve Your Career Development

Managing up involves developing an effective rapport and good working relationship with those in upper-management positions within your company, namely your direct managers. Managing up includes adapting to your boss’s decision-making and management styles while offering essential feedback that is respectful and mindful of company culture.

As an employee, managing up comes with numerous benefits that can affect your career trajectory:

1. 1. Improves employee engagement. Having a good relationship with your manager creates a better working environment, increasing your engagement and enhancing productivity, which can lead to higher job satisfaction.
2. 2. Improves their skills. Giving your manager feedback about their performance or communication, rather than internalizing frustrations, can help them improve and make your job easier. Ensure that the feedback is clear and constructive, and provide examples that highlight how their performance or behavior in certain areas adversely affects your ability to perform.
3. 3. Fosters good communication. When you understand your manager’s communication style, it becomes easier to decipher what they want. Managing up requires you to work on your own communication skills while also adapting to your boss’s management style.
4. 4. Increases chances of career development. Fostering an environment of open communication puts you in the best position to advance your career. If you share your desire to advance, your manager can develop a growth plan to help you achieve your goals. With good communication, they’ll be able to pinpoint your areas of improvement and set clear, measurable goals for you to accomplish as you move toward promotion.

Whether you have a great manager or a difficult boss, it’s important to do whatever you can to create a better relationship:

• Get to know your manager. Understanding your manager’s needs and how they convey them are essential to getting on the same page, which can make work more manageable. Develop a positive relationship by taking the extra steps to understand your manager’s goals and work style. What are their professional goals? What areas are they seeking to improve within their own position? Understanding your manager’s trajectory and goals can help you determine how to navigate the relationship and potentially use your strengths to help them achieve their goals. For example, if your manager needs help in an area where you excel, you can offer them tips and strategies for improvement, garnering goodwill and showcasing your ability to teach an important skill.
• Adapt to their needs. As a direct report, you’ll likely have your own specific projects to tackle, while your manager’s job is to juggle multiple projects at once, so your work may not always be the top priority. You’ll have to adjust accordingly to ensure you’re doing the best work you can without being too needy. Being adaptable is especially important when working with a new manager who may be overwhelmed with additional tasks.
• Set boundaries. Managing up doesn’t mean taking on every additional task that comes up in your daily work life. Set realistic expectations, and provide a healthy amount of ambition so that your manager recognizes your efforts without inviting them to take advantage of your eagerness to succeed. However, it’s also important not to overstep. Despite your responsibilities, you are still an employee who reports to someone above you, so you should always be respectful and mindful of that dynamic.
• Create solutions. If you come across a problem, consider a few potential solutions before bringing them to your manager. Bringing solutions to the table shows your ability to anticipate and present fixes independently, which is a highly valuable skill in most lines of work. Anticipating potential problems or being aware of how your manager resolves an issue can make you more adept and efficient at determining how to provide what is needed.
• Take responsibility. It may be tempting to blame your team members or unforeseen circumstances on why a task isn’t done (or done correctly), but managers care more about the bottom line than excuses. Avoid trying to blame others for when things go wrong, and instead, take control of the situation and work towards an acceptable solution.

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