Managing Up
Insights from Chiefs of Staff
Much advice on managing up is a list of tips. But in reality there’s no formula: what works for one person may not work for another. And tips only get you so far if the underlying relationship isn’t healthy.
Leading from behind suits my leadership style, and I’ve done so throughout my career, in the corporate, public, and charity sectors. I’m a four-time chief of staff (I’ve done the role for two CTOs, a CPO, and a President), and I’ve been in CoS roles for nearly a decade.
As a seasoned CoS, I trained upcoming chiefs in On Deck’s chief of staff academy (now closed), a fellowship training program for people in a chief of staff role,* and one of the modules I delivered was on managing up.
And I’ve recently led a forum on the topic for the Chief of Staff Network. The Network is a community for chiefs of staff, designed to help members grow through connection, learning, and shared experience.
Together we explored two things:
- what managing up means,
- the conditions that need to be in place so you can manage up effectively
What ‘managing up’ is and is not
According to Dana Rousmaniere, managing up is simply “being the most effective employee you can be, creating value for your manager and your company.” But that definition describes the result, not the activity — it tells me nothing about what to do or how to do it.
Gabarro and Kotter get closer, defining it as:
“consciously working with your superior to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss, and the company.”
Critically, as Vivian Mason explains, managing up “is not telling your manager what to do (manage your manager), judging their behavior or skills, or undermining their authority. It’s definitely not about becoming the ‘teacher’s pet,’ where you’re excessively nice or always saying ‘yes’ just to score personal benefits.”
For me, ‘managing up’ means consciously and deliberately working to make your relationship with your boss more effective, so that both of you can do your best work: continuously looking for ways to cultivate the most effective working relationship possible.
In practice, managing up often involves:
- Understanding your boss’s priorities and style. Learn what they care about, the pressures they face, and how they like to receive different types of information (eg email, WhatsApp, or Teams).
- Communicating proactively. Give updates before they ask, flag problems early, and bring options/solutions along with the problem.
In other words, make their job easier: anticipate needs, don’t create surprises, and simplify decisions. - Clarifying expectations. Clarify goals, deadlines, and what ‘good’ looks like. Get clarity on how to disagree, and be clear when workloads or priorities conflict.
- Being clear on what you need to succeed. Ask for feedback, resources, decisions, or support in a way that also fits your boss’s preferences.
These habits help, but they only work when the relationship underneath is sound, which is where our discussion in the forum went.
Creating the right conditions
In the forum, I asked the chiefs of staff what enables them to manage up effectively. And what emerged from our discussion was striking.
Reflecting on different answers, people suddenly realised that the conditions for managing up are the same as for a healthy, positive working environment or relationship.
In particular, they stressed developing:
- Psychological safety
- Openness
- Transparency
- Relationships
- Trust
So if you’re wondering ‘how do I manage up effectively?’ the answers from the forum suggest working on these things.
Empathy: the key enabler
But, as the more junior partner, how do you build those conditions with a boss?
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For me, it starts with empathy.
Ed Batista, an executive coach, stresses the importance of empathy as an underpinning for managing up effectively. And, drawing on research, he sets out four attributes of effective empathy:
- The ability to see the world as another person sees it.
- The ability to suspend judgment.
- The ability to understand another person’s feelings.
- The ability to communicate this understanding, which is essential “if empathy is to be felt.”*
Managing up means developing empathy for someone with more power than you, which can be harder. Thankfully, Ed has some great advice on how to develop empathy:
“The process of learning to be empathetic begins with increased self-awareness of how we interact with others, which requires us to slow down, to develop better listening skills, and to heighten our sensitivity to emotional cues — our own and those of others.”
How I see it
Managing up isn’t a bag of tricks. It’s the ongoing work of intentionally building a relationship in which both you and your boss can do your best work. And that begins with empathy.
Reading list
Thanks to running L&D sessions on the topic of managing up, I’ve read a lot about it and pulled together a reading list. And I’m sharing that list in this post, because I’ve long believed that making things open makes things better.
Start here
- Managing Your Boss, by John Gabarro and John Kotter.
If you read just one thing on the topic of managing up, make it this.
Practical guides
- Is managing up a bad thing?, Lara Hogan
- How to manage up effectively, Lara Hogan
- Managing up: Lessons from scaling teams at Karma and Lyft
- Managing up: The Do’s and Don’ts and Why it’s important for success, Sam Milbrath
- What everyone should know about managing up, by Dana Rousmaniere, HBR
- 15 principles for managing up
- Managing up, by Rands*
- Managing your manager
- How to give a senior leader feedback without getting fired
- A Tactical Guide to Managing Up: 30 tips from the smartest people we know, First round review
- Career Tip — Managing Up, by Ernest Mueller
Watch
- Managing Up in Hybrid Work Environments, video chat between Jean Hsu, VP engineering, and Nadia De Ala, Founder of Real You Leadership
Longer read
More on the chief of staff role
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