Want to Find Success? Learn How to Manage Up.

Forming a better relationship with your manager can have a big impact on your current job performance and future career growth. Here’s how to embrace the art of managing up.
Written by Adrienne Teeley
July 26, 2021Updated: July 28, 2021

It seems painfully obvious on the surface, but working well with your manager is key to unlocking professional success and career growth. Now for the less-obvious part. How can you play a role in building a better working relationship with your manager? 

The answer lies in managing up. The buzzy phrase is a bit misleading — those who manage up aren’t actually managing their higher-ups. Instead, they’re opening new lines of communication and gaining a better sense of their manager’s goals, then using that information to inform their own work. Put simply, it’s the act of treating your manager more like a teammate than a boss.

Jason Schieck, a product manager at Hyliion, equates it to a two-way street. Your manager likely helps you succeed and listens to what you need during one-on-ones. By returning the favor, employees can gain greater insight into how they can perform better.

“When you show that you care about more than just your own struggles at work, you demonstrate that you’re a team player and someone who can be counted on to provide an outsized impact in an organization,” Schieck said.

To unpack the art of managing up, Built In Austin spoke to Schieck to learn how he’s grown his skills in working with team leaders. He shared his best tips for forming stronger bonds with his managers — and how it’s paid off for him. 

 

Jason Schieck
Product Manager • Hyliion

Whats one strategy youve used to get to know your manager better and learn more about their priorities, goals and needs?

This may sound simple, but it all starts with asking the manager these questions at the outset of the management relationship. Just as you must learn a company’s goals, priorities and strategies when starting a new job, the same concept applies when starting a new relationship with a manager. It helps to frame these types of questions in terms of them being mutually beneficial: The better you understand your manager's needs, the better you can meet them.

Beyond conversational learning, it helps to observe their interactions with their own management. What you learn from these observations will help fill in any information gaps from your conversations, and help provide an unbiased and fully observed view on what matters most to them (assuming they also value the needs and wants of their own management).

 

Whats the most important lesson youve learned about managing up? How do you apply that lesson to your relationship with your manager?

The most important lesson that I’ve learned about managing up is that it isn’t about strategy, but respect. Managing up is simply another way of showing respect to someone. Respect is key to the foundation and development of any relationship, so by not managing up, I wouldn’t be doing my part to form the appropriate relationship.

This respect is really about the challenges that the manager above you faces, and showing due respect and appreciation for them. I apply that lesson to my relationship with my current manager, as I’ve done with my previous managers. Everybody’s job can be difficult, but managing personnel is the most difficult of them all (in my opinion, at least), so I try to make it a little bit easier for them by trying to anticipate their needs and wants.

Managing up is simply another way of showing respect to someone.”


How has managing up helped you improve your relationship with your boss and grow in your career? 

As I mentioned previously, I view it as a measure of respect and thus something critical to building and growing any relationship. When you show that you care about more than just your own struggles at work, you demonstrate that you’re a team player and someone who can be counted on to provide an outsized impact in an organization. The times that I’ve had former managers ask me to join them in new opportunities have come about, in part, because of my ability to manage up.

 

Hyliion designs and builds electric powertrain solutions for the commercial transportation industry. 

Jobs at Hyliion

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