Okay, but what about managing up?
Photo by Peter Fazekas.
In the before times, it was often someone at the back of the room. With a shy hand, hovering at shoulder-height. Unsure of whether the question even fit in the room. But unwilling to leave without an answer.
"What about for our own bosses? They're not here and haven't been through this training. Can you talk a bit about managing up?"
Followed by a sea of nods from the rest of the room.
These days, the question arrives via zoom chat and is followed by a sea of plus plus plus emojis. But the sentiment is the same.
What's to be done about the boss above me who doesn't know this stuff but needs to? How do I get them to show up for me so I can show up for my own team? Or, in the instances where a non-manager is asking the question - what's fair game to expect from my own boss? How do I know if I'm being reasonable?
The conventional wisdom
The conventional wisdom goes something like this. If it's not working out, you should quit. Get another job. Somewhere they appreciate you. There's a lot of places hiring right now. You can probably get a raise while you're at it.
Ok, cool. So you quit your job and found a new job. And the benefits are better and the salary is better and the wfh policy is better. But you're still carrying around the same question from your last role. And you're no closer to an answer. In fact, you might be further from one because the working relationship is brand new. And it's still got a lot of that "let's just see how it goes" energy.
So you wait. But while you wait, there's a set of things piling up where you need your boss. And that list is getting louder. And the missing tool in your toolkit is still missing. But the "quit your job" advice is off the table. You just did that. So you search up the conventional wisdom for people who don't want to quit their jobs.
And what you find amounts to turning yourself into human spackle. To get what you need from your boss, goes the advice, figure out how fill in their gaps. It would help a lot if you could need less. But if you can't, perhaps you can trick your boss into doing the thing you need.
Try dutifully ending every meeting by asking, "do you have any feedback for me?" Maybe you'll get lucky and they'll accidentally tell you how you're doing. Or give you some grand nugget that unlocks everything. Go ahead and pull together your priorities and review the list together. This will ensure you have a shared sense of the Most Important Things. And from there, maybe your boss will tell you which four to drop on the floor so you can stop working in the evenings. Or maybe they won't.
If you could trick bosses into being effective managers, the state of the modern workforce would look really different. Wouldn't it? Surely, every boss would have benefited from prior trickery. The most seasoned among them would be masterful, following years of subversive refinement. Except they aren't. Because it doesn't work that way. As any contractor will tell you, spackle can conceal cracks. But it's not a structural fix.
So it's not surprising that everyone has the same shy question. From brand-new, first-job-ever hires all the way up to seasoned-execs-reporting-to-the-CEO. We are all standing at the back of the room, hoping for an answer that makes any damn sense.
Can you talk about how to manage up?
It's a bit ridiculous, isn't it? If you order a dozen bagels and the bakery only hands you half a dozen, or none at all, or an uncooked lump of dough, the solution is not to manage up. In other situations where you're dealing with professionals, it feels completely reasonable to expect them to do their job. Not that you shouldn't be gracious with them, or understanding if there's some temporary issue. It's nice to be kind. But no one would expect you to keep going to the same bakery, week after week, picking up lumps of uncooked dough and trying to make the best of it.
Many leaders though, especially leaders of leaders, set that expectation regularly. That's not an uncooked lump of dough, that's my management style. The reason they get away with it, where your local baker might not, is power. Power to shape the nature of the work that happens in their organization around their own preferences. Power to protect themselves and their own lack of competence by calling it stylistic. And because the exercise of that power can materially change your experience and future and salary, you have a powerful incentive to try to make it work.
Every attempt to manage up starts as an unmet need. It starts from someone trying to make it work, and needing something from their boss that they aren't getting. If you're someone who feels a need to manage up, the work starts there. What is that need? Feedback. Validation. Opportunity. Space. Step one is to get clear on what you need to succeed. And step two is to ask for it directly until you get it. It's the only kind of managing up that works over the long run.
The fear
We know. It's scary. For some people it's scary to ask because vulnerability is uncomfortable. Because needing things is uncomfortable. Because it makes me feel like I'm not the carry-it-all, least-squeaky-wheel, High Potential Employee that I want to be.
And for others the fear is just that they already know the answer. They worry that even when they ask for what they need, they still won't get it.
It can be so scary that you would rather tie yourself up in knots. About whether your needs are valid or not. Whether you're being unreasonable and should just toughen up. We know - we've been there, too. Just so we're clear though:
it's reasonable to want a work environment where you can do great work, be recognized for it, and thrive
it's reasonable to expect regular (at least biweekly!) individual access to your boss to talk about your work, your growth, and the things getting in the way
it's reasonable to expect ongoing and constructive feedback on places where you've had positive or negative impacts on the team and the organization, delivered thoughtfully and without bullying or personal attacks
it's reasonable to want to know how you're measured, what the priorities are, and how your work will have impact in the organization
it's reasonable to expect to be treated respectfully and like an adult
If what you need most in the world is not to have any work while Mercury is in retrograde, we're not much help. Your boss may be on board or they may not, and we wish you luck. As far as we know, astrological symbols are not a protected labour class, even for Scorpios.
But most people we meet aren't asking for that. The things they need are more basic. Regular 1:1s. Useful feedback about their work. Clarity on what matters and how they're doing and what happens if they fail. They know they need these things. And they're afraid that if they ask for them, the answer might be no.
Yeah. It might be. But it might also be yes. Or it might be that your boss needs to go do some of their own training before they even know how to say yes. Maybe. But no matter what, you'll have your answer.
- Melissa and Johnathan