Managing up is a concept that might sound a bit ambiguous at first, but it’s really just about making work better for both you and your boss. In this article, we’ll explore practical ways to manage up, including why it’s important, how to align your work with your manager’s goals, and ways to make everyday interactions, like meetings, more effective.
We’ll also touch on communication styles, emotional awareness, and creating a supportive team culture. The focus is on building a relationship that’s not just about getting the job done, but doing it in a way that makes work smoother, more productive, and more enjoyable for everyone involved. Whether you have a new boss or have been with the same manager for years, managing up can be a game-changer in how you navigate your work life.
What Is Managing Up
According to Harvard Business Review, managing up is all about being the kind of employee who makes their management team’s life easier, while also adding value to the whole team. It’s not about controlling your manager or trying to “fix” them. Instead, managing up is about getting to know what your management team’s needs, how they prefer to work, and what their goals are, so you can adjust your approach to make both of your jobs easier. It’s a way to build a better working relationship where everyone wins.
Managing up is all about understanding your management team’s strengths, weaknesses, and working style, and then adapting how you communicate and collaborate to fit their needs. So, what is managing up, exactly? It means figuring out how your boss prefers to work. If they like short email updates instead of long meetings, managing up means giving them those quick summaries. If they prefer detailed reports, then you make sure the details are covered. The goal is to align with your management team’s preferences, saving time, reducing stress, and showing that you respect their way of doing things—all while making teamwork smoother and more effective.
But what is managing up beyond just making your boss happy? It’s a strategy that benefits the entire team and organization. When you take initiative to ensure your work meets your management team’s goals, it means fewer hiccups and more efficiency for everyone involved. Your management team can focus on bigger tasks, knowing that you’ve got the smaller details handled. Managing up isn’t just good for your boss—it’s a win-win skill that helps you grow in your career, strengthens your relationships at work, and makes the whole team function better.
To summarize:
Managing up isn’t about:
- Going over your manager’s head just to get your ideas heard
- Trying to take control and manage your boss
- Changing who your manager is or trying to “fix” them
- Judging or evaluating your manager’s abilities or their way of doing things
Instead, managing up is about:
- Understanding what your boss wants to achieve and helping make that happen
- Building a positive, productive relationship with them
- Figuring out how they like to communicate and work, and adjusting your style to fit
- Clearly expressing how you work best and your own communication preferences
- Anticipating what they need before they even ask for it
The key to managing up is understanding. It’s all about knowing what your management team’s goals are and how they like to work. When you get a good sense of what they’re aiming for and how they operate, you can build a solid relationship that works well for both of you—and even helps the whole team do better.
How do you manage up?
Supporting your manager effectively can make a big difference not just for them, but for the whole team. Here are practical ways to enhance your manager’s effectiveness by taking on extra tasks, anticipating their needs, and leveraging tools like Krisp to improve everyday workflows. Whether it’s making meetings more efficient or aligning with their goals, these steps help create a supportive, productive environment that benefits everyone.
1. Contribute Manager’s Effectiveness Using Krisp
Overall manager effectiveness involves leading a team, achieving results, and fostering a positive work environment. To enhance your manager’s effectiveness, focus on making their job easier and helping them meet their goals. This might include taking on extra tasks, offering solutions, proactively sharing useful information or even making meetings more efficient.It’s about being a reliable support system that allows your manager to focus on strategic priorities.
Using tools like Krisp, an AI meeting assistant, can further support your manager. Krisp helps by managing routine tasks such as taking meeting notes and summarizing key points, enabling your manager to focus on what matters most. It also enhances 1-on-1 meetings by providing action items and context from previous discussions, creating continuity and ensuring nothing is missed. By leveraging these features, you contribute to a more productive and cohesive team environment.
Key Features:
- Filters out background noise, ensuring clear and focused audio recordings.
- Isolates the speaker’s voice, eliminating unwanted background voices from the recording.
- Removes echoes, delivering crisp and clear audio that is easier to transcribe.
- Works seamlessly with various meeting apps.
- Maintains natural voice quality, crucial for accurate note-taking.
- Automatically generate and share discussion points, meeting summaries, and action items with other participants, ensuring everyone stays informed and aligned
- Easily connect Krisp with your Google or Outlook calendar to automate note-taking and sharing. Calendar access also enables automatic speaker identification, leading to more accurate transcripts.
2. Be Goal-Oriented
To really understand your manager’s goals and priorities, it’s not just about listening to what they say. You need to grasp their strategic direction and understand the challenges they’re dealing with. Managers usually have personal goals, like hitting certain metrics or finishing projects, as well as bigger team or company-level goals that drive overall success.
To get a better handle on these, have direct conversations with your manager—ask questions to clarify what they expect. Also, pay attention to what they focus on in meetings, what seems to stress them out, and what they celebrate.
Noticing these patterns will help you figure out what matters most to them, and that can help you anticipate their needs better. Once you understand their priorities, try to align your work accordingly. This might mean prioritizing certain projects, building skills that help with team goals, or tailoring your communication to highlight how your work supports key objectives.
For example, if your manager is focused on improving efficiency, look for ways to streamline processes, reduce bottlenecks, or come up with ideas to make things run more smoothly. Aligning your work with your manager’s goals not only helps achieve team targets but also shows that you’re proactive, engaged, and ready to contribute to the team’s success.
3. Communicate Effectively
Communicating effectively with your manager is all about adapting to their communication style and preferences. Every manager has their own way of processing information and keeping up with updates, so figuring out how they like to receive and share info can really improve your working relationship. Some managers prefer detailed email updates because it gives them time to read, think, and respond when it suits them.
Others might like quick face-to-face check-ins or informal chats, especially if they value direct interaction and real-time updates. Pay attention to how your manager usually communicates—whether they lean towards formal reports or more impromptu conversations—and adjust your approach so they feel informed and supported.
It’s also important to make sure your communication is clear, concise, and focused on solutions. Managers are often juggling a lot, so it helps to get straight to the point. Share the key details without overwhelming them with too much extra info. When you bring up challenges or problems, try to focus on potential solutions instead of just the issue itself.
This shows that you’re proactive and helps your manager make decisions more easily. By adapting your style and keeping your communication clear and useful, you make their job easier, build a stronger working relationship, and show that you’re a valuable, reliable team member.
Communicating effectively using Krisp AI meeting notes help you capture the essential details of a meeting in a structured way. When using Krisp, focus on summarizing key points, decisions, and action items. This clarity helps ensure everyone understands what was discussed and what their responsibilities are, without sifting through unnecessary details. Accurate summarization also makes follow-up actions easier for your manager and team.
4. Be Emotionally Supportive
Emotional awareness is key when managing up because it helps you handle the complexities of your relationship with your manager with empathy and sensitivity. By understanding your manager’s emotional state, you can adapt your communication and approach to make interactions more effective.
For instance, if you notice your manager is stressed or frustrated, it’s probably best to hold off on introducing new ideas or making requests that aren’t urgent. Instead, showing empathy by offering assistance or choosing a better time to discuss things demonstrates that you genuinely care about their well-being, which strengthens your working relationship.
It’s also important to recognize your own emotions and how they influence your behavior. Working closely with a manager can be challenging at times, and being aware of your feelings helps you manage them effectively so they don’t impact your communication negatively. When you stay composed during hectic situations, it sets a positive example and builds trust, showing your manager that you’re reliable under pressure. This kind of emotional control leads to better teamwork and a more productive dynamic between you and your boss.
Remember, emotional awareness allows you to see beyond what your manager is asking for and understand their underlying motivations and needs. By picking up on these signals, you can provide more meaningful support that aligns with their goals. This means you’re better able to anticipate their needs, adjust to changes, and contribute to shared objectives.
5. Foster a Culture of Knowledge Sharing
If you find yourself in a spot where your technical skills are stronger than your manager’s, it’s actually a great chance to make a big difference for the team. Managers often come from different backgrounds, so they might not always be up to speed on the latest tools or technologies. If you’ve got hands-on experience with something useful, why not take the lead and share it?
You could set up some one-on-one sessions to walk them through new software, put together some easy-to-follow documentation, or even do a quick demo to show how a tool could make things easier. The important part is to approach it like a team effort—focus on how building these skills helps everyone rather than making it feel like you’re pointing out their gaps.
By helping your manager pick up new skills, you’re helping create a culture where everyone is growing and learning together. It also makes the team work better as a whole since you and your manager will be on the same page with important tools for managing projects, analyzing data, or whatever else comes up. This kind of support can prevent misunderstandings and keep everything moving smoothly.
Plus, offering to help your manager build a stronger relationship, showing that you’re not just doing your job but are also looking out for the team. If you do it with respect and understanding, it’s a win-win—you help your manager grow, and you come across as a proactive, supportive teammate who’s ready to contribute beyond just your own tasks.
How Can You Practice It?
Before you start diving into “managing up” or building any soft skill, it’s really worth taking a moment to reflect on how you and your manager work together. Developing these kinds of skills takes time and some real thought, and understanding where you both align or differ is key. Ask yourself some questions about how you and your manager operate, like:
- How do your communication styles compare?
- Are your work styles similar, or do you approach tasks differently?
- Do you have the same priorities, or do you notice some differences?
- When are each of you at your most productive during the day?
- How do you both prefer to give and receive feedback?
Take note of where your similarities and differences lie. These “ways of working” can really shape your dynamic, so it’s worth understanding them. Once you’ve got a good sense of this, you can think about strategies to make your relationship more positive and beneficial for both of you.
For instance, let’s say you notice your manager is always swamped with meetings from Monday through Wednesday, but your one-on-one is set for Tuesday because that’s what worked for you. Once you see how busy those days are for your manager, you could suggest shifting your one-on-one to a less hectic day. It’s a small tweak, but it can make a big difference in terms of improving communication and reducing stress for both of you.
The goal here is to look at how your manager prefers to work and where it might clash or align with how you like to work. From there, figure out adjustments that make things easier for everyone. It’s all about finding those little changes that can help build a smoother, more effective working relationship.
Why is managing up important?
When done right, managing up makes life easier for both you and your manager. It’s all about figuring out the best way to communicate, showing that you care about the work, and hitting performance targets—all of which definitely get noticed. Managing up can be especially important when you’ve got a new manager or you’ve moved to a different team. When you start off by actively working on your relationship with your manager, it helps set a positive tone from the beginning, making the transition smoother for everyone involved.
If you’re working with a boss you’ve been with for a while, managing up can help refresh that relationship too. It doesn’t always have to be about starting over; it can be about making things even better. Set a few goals around managing up to focus on in your next one-on-one—maybe you talk more about your communication styles, learn something personal about them, or ask what their own development goals are. Even small actions like these can go a long way toward improving the relationship.
The bottom line is that managing up isn’t just about making your job easier—it also shows you’re invested in the bigger picture. When you actively work on improving how you and your manager work together, it helps create a better environment for the whole team. It’s a two-way street, and with a little intention, you can make a real impact on how effectively you collaborate.
