Why You Need to Practice 'Managing Up' with Your Boss

You’ve had enough of your manager making you feel like garbage, not communicating and treating you like their personal assistant while your development is overlooked, so now you’ve requested a meeting with HR.

Sound familiar?

This is one of the most common employee relations issues that comes up for me as an HR manager – while conflict is inevitable (and not actually a bad thing if handled correctly), there is one important and often overlooked approach that may solve or at least mitigate poor relations with your boss: managing up.

Managing up – while not literally about trying to manage your boss – is all about engaging proactively in your relationship with your supervisor(s) and establishing a pattern of communication that works well for all parties.

While it often lands on my desk when an employee is already feeling like they’re in crisis (unfortunately this is often the case in employee relations issues), managing up as a skill can be employed at all points during a professional relationship, including when you’re collaborating together well and generally get along.

Some practical advice that I regularly provide to staff members seeking my support:

• First, try to put yourself in your manager’s place to understand what’s impacting their behavior, e.g. time constraints, pressure from above, below, or outside the organization, project deadlines, their experience level in leadership.

  • While it may be uncomfortable to exercise empathy in this way if you already feel hurt by your manager, this remains indispensable as a first step.

• Get to know how your manager likes or needs to be communicated with, e.g. maybe they need in-person reminders about an email you sent, perhaps they need you to schedule time on their calendar each day and raise key issues with them at that time, or maybe they won’t be available until your weekly 1:1.

  • Very importantly, don’t allow your boss’ busy schedule or workload to be the reason that communication breaks down, e.g. if they frequently miss your 1:1, be sure to ask for a commitment to reschedule the next meeting; if this isn’t granted, be clear about how this may be interfering with your progress on a given assignment.

• On your part, you will be need to be proactive about communicating clearly, e.g. be up front about your workload, your ability to meet targets set, or where you don’t have the adequate skills or training, and if you’ve made a mistake, be transparent about the error before it becomes an issue and be prepared to find a solution.

• When it comes to triaging your work (or the team’s work), a very helpful way of managing up is to involve your boss in sorting out what gets prioritized, e.g. “I’m going to be available by email and for employees to drop by in person with questions until 1:00pm today, but then I’d like to spend the rest of the day working on the presentation. Will that work for you and the team?”

• Establishing a set of shared expectations with your manager is extremely important, so that there is a clear sense of what needs to be done and how success is mutually defined – this can help you and your manager understand what underperformance looks like as well.

• As a people manager, I personally advocate strongly for using Microsoft OneNote (or a similar platform) to document key points from 1:1s or other important meetings with my direct reports, which can then be used to create and/or reinforce mutual understanding.

  • If your manager is not doing something similar, I would encourage you to request it to be done or to perhaps offer to do the legwork on this yourself with the understanding that your manager will review, clarify, edit, and contribute as needed – this is just such a valuable tool to hold everyone accountable to expectations.

• It’s probably obvious, if you’ve read this far, that you need to be speaking up and asking plenty questions, i.e. clarifying expectations, specifying what training or other support you need, and seeking guidance on solutions to any given problem.

If the relationship has already soured significantly, there is a unresolvable clash of personalities, or your manager is being what could be considered abusive, there are still some options:

• You may need to consider setting your boundaries more assertively, e.g. indicating what you consider to be an unacceptable comment or behavior

• A good technique is to raise your hand in a stop sign, and while remaining calm and professional, saying something like, “I don’t consider that appropriate for a professional environment and I would like you to stop.”

• The immediately above technique can be helpful too if the comments or behavior is romantic or sexual in nature (NB: when it comes to sexual harassment one of the key definitions is that it is unwelcome, e.g. inappropriately touch).

• You may consider a transfer within the company or resign and find another employer, as maybe it’s just not worth the time or effort to work for someone toxic, which is very valid; but just ensure that you’ve exhausted all your options, especially before leaving the company, and that you’re making the best decision for you.

• If you do seek a transfer to another role or team at the same company, just be aware that you should approach any discussions with a department head or potential new boss like it’s a job interview, i.e. be diplomatic about where your skills lay and where you may be more of a strategic asset rather than trying to illustrate what a jerk your boss is. Putting yourself in the place of the person on the receiving end of your communication, you don’t want to come across overly negative or like you’re just jumping ship to get away from a bad situation (despite how you much you may feel justified in doing so).

• A further option usually engaged by senior leaders engaging in frequent or enduring conflict is a kind of conflict resolution called mediation where a neutral mediator (usually specially trained) facilitates a dialogue between the two parties, but that’s a little outside the scope of this blog post.

Your best option at any time is of course to seek guidance and support from your HR department – you may potentially engage some higher ups depending on how your company is structured, but just be aware of how senior leaders may be aligned in an organization, e.g. find out if there is a personal relationship or dotted line connect; to ensure the greatest confidentiality and impartiality, seek out HR first of all where possible.

As I’ve advised many times before, step into the process of managing up with an ‘experimental mindset’, i.e. you approach each potential improvement with a sense of curiosity despite not knowing what, if any, will be the outcomes.

While I can foresee that these approaches outlined above may not have much impact, I can’t imagine they would do any harm, and they may of course be wildly successful – but even if not, you will be equipping yourself with an extremely beneficial skillset which you can use throughout your career.

When you next start a working relationship with a new manager, establishing these practices form the outset will lay the foundations for a smoother collaboration.