How to manage your manager
Why "managing up" is a skill you should aim to master and how to get started
Hey everyone, this is Shahzad — I write weekly notes about Product Management, Growth, and career. Mostly to reflect on my own learning journey and hopefully to pay it forward. If you find this note useful, consider subscribing and sharing with a friend.
Time commitment: ~5 minute read
A reader messaged me last week and asked me how they could get better at working with their manager. After a long conversation, I realized this might be a useful topic to write about and share. Learning how to manage up is critical to your career growth. Believe it or not, no matter how “junior” you might be, it’s actually a bad thing when all you’re doing is asking your manager what to do and then doing it really well. Before we get into specific things that you can do to get better at managing up, it’s important to highlight what your manager’s core job is:
To be a steward of the business: first and foremost, your manager is a steward of the business and its customers. They may be a few layers removed, but generally speaking the things they work with you on are in service of maintaining a healthy business for your company.
To provide context and unblock you: they need to give you the necessary context and take actions needed to unblock you to drive impact in your role.
To coach you: they should coach you in improving both the hard and soft skills appropriate for your level of seniority.
To develop your career: they should be a sounding board and advocate for your career goals inside the company.
Note that the above doesn’t include making you happy, getting you promoted or a raise, figuring out your work life balance, or solving problems for you. These things are not in the job description of your manager. These are your job. Managing up effectively helps you unlock these things and more. Here are a few tactical things to practice if you’re working on managing up:
Recommend, then ask.
I wrote an entire note on owning your recommendation in any sort of leadership review or presentation. That advice applies here as well. When you’re sharing a problem with your manager — always recommend a potential solution, then ask what they’d like to do. When you come with a question, make sure it comes with your answer. Aim to validate or invalidate your recommendation and then make the ask for more guidance.
What this unlocks: Your manager sees you as a strategic advisor and a mature thought partner.
Connect your priorities to theirs.
Ask your manager what’s top of mind for them. Spend a few minutes in ongoing 1:1 conversations on this question. Once you know their priorities, map your own priorities to them and make sure that there is a clear connection. Not everything has to always be perfectly connected, but if you’re consistently seeing no connection week over week, it’s time to bring this up to ensure you’re focused on the most important work.
What this unlocks: Assuming your manager is doing something similar with their manager, your work will clearly start to ladder up to top priority work. That’s a win for your career growth and the opportunities that opens up for you in the future.
Make your manager’s job easier.
Believe it or not, your job is to also unblock your manager and make their day-to-day easier. Yes, this sounds a bit reductive, but it’s very true. You want to be on the low end of the “I give my manager a headache” spectrum. Aim to clearly understand points of friction in your manager’s priorities and lean in to solve them. If you’re unsure what these might be — ask them directly where they need additional help and how you can be that help.
What this unlocks: You learn what’s important to your manager and in turn, how to operate at their level. This is usually a prerequisite to a promotion.
Always be feeding.
Just like you need context to do your job effectively, your manager needs a stream of information to stay on track and deliver impact. Feed them that information. This is not a nudge to flood your manager with every detail. Rather, identify things that you feel they need to know and share this information fast. Is there misalignment that could lead to something being off track soon? Is a key senior stakeholder unhappy with a decision that was made? Let them know so they can proactively address versus having to react.
What this unlocks: A deep partnership between you and your manager. This usually leads to your manager being your biggest advocate in the rooms where it matters most.
Just do it.
There will be times where your manager asks you to look into something or take care of an issue. Document it, keep your manager in the loop, get it done, and follow up. Do this every time and do it really well. Getting stuff done and getting it done with “low drama” is table stakes, yet something people struggle to actually do. If you don’t have the greatest track record of doing this, master it before you consider anything else related to “managing up.”
What this unlocks: The reputation of someone who gets stuff done, can be trusted to take on more responsibility, and frankly, someone the company wants to keep happy.
Managing up is a critical ingredient to career growth and learning how to scale your impact. Doing it well starts to unlock a lot of value for your career and development. Think about the above guidance as scaffolding to start building this muscle. Please feel free to send me feedback or questions!
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