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Why great leaders should want their teams to manage up
Teaching your team to manage up can give you greater insights, lead to better decision-making, and even boost retention. Here’s how leaders can foster a culture that encourages upward influence.
Picture it: you’re sitting in a team meeting, listening to one of your best employees dance around an issue. They hint at the problem and wait until the last five minutes to bring up something that should have been addressed weeks ago. Or maybe you’ve found yourself in a situation where a team member has been saying yes to every “urgent” request from departments and is now two weeks behind on your top priority project.
As a leader, these moments of seemingly unnecessary stress can be frustrating because you know your team can work together more effectively. You want them to speak up sooner, to come to you with solutions, and to push back when needed. In other words, you want them to manage up – to proactively partner with you as their leader to achieve better results.
The new meaning of “managing up”
Work today is simply too complex for any leader to have their arms around everything. Think about your own role. You’re probably juggling multiple high-stakes projects, each with its own web details and stakeholders. Your team members often have deeper expertise in certain areas than you do, and in a hybrid workplace, you can’t rely on getting information by walking the office floor.
That’s why, in my over a decade as an executive coach to leaders at companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon, I’ve observed that the best leaders don’t resist upward influence – they actively encourage it. As I discuss in my book, Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People in Charge, these leaders realize that they need their teams to be their eyes and ears on the ground. They need people who can filter the signal from the noise – and who know when to raise an issue and when to take ownership. They seek trusted advisors who can provide constructive feedback and recommendations.
This is a far cry from what managing up looked like 20 or 30 years ago, which often equated to memorizing your boss’s coffee order and laughing at the executives’ terrible jokes. Rather than surrounding themselves with suck-ups and sycophants, today’s leaders look for collaborators who understand their priorities and constraints well enough to work independently toward the right goals.
Teams who manage up effectively are more satisfied at work, perform at a higher level, and stay in their roles longer.
Why managing up is good for business
Many leaders I speak with worry about the perception encouraging their team to manage up may create. They tell me: “If I’m a good leader, shouldn’t I already know what my team needs? Won’t asking them to manage up to me make me seem incompetent?”
The data shows the opposite:
- After analyzing thousands of performance reviews and employee surveys, Google’s Project Oxygen found that the highest-performing managers were those who empowered their teams to think independently, challenge assumptions, and bring solutions to the table.
- A McKinsey study found that teams with strong upward communication are more likely to meet their financial targets because they are better at advocating for resources, spotting risks early, and aligning their work with company priorities.
- Reports show that managers have just as much of an impact on people’s mental health as their spouse, and even more of an impact than their doctor or therapist.
Teams who manage up effectively are more satisfied at work, perform at a higher level, and stay in their roles longer.
Teaching your team to manage up creates wins at every level. As a leader, you get clearer insight into what’s happening on your team and can make better decisions faster. Your team gets better at advocating for what they need – whether that’s resources, clarity, or support – and feels more in control of their careers. The organization benefits from better execution and stronger retention.
Creating a culture that supports upward influence
Optimize your one-on-ones
Most one-on-ones, if they happen at all, are rushed status updates or scattered conversations about the latest crisis. This is a missed opportunity for you and your team members to solve problems and grow.
Set the expectation that your direct report owns these meetings, not you. Let them know they should come prepared with an agenda and ready to lead the conversation. Here’s an effective structure:
- Start with wins. Have your team members open by sharing recent accomplishments. This provides visibility for their work and ensures you have examples to share up the chain of command with your leadership.
- Cover high-priority items. This includes updates on key projects, decisions they need from you, and challenges they want to discuss. Coach them to connect each item to the business impact.
- Reveal what’s top of mind for you. Upcoming meetings, organizational changes, or emerging trends. This gives employees the chance to raise concerns about competing priorities or volunteer for new opportunities.
- End with clear next steps. Have them document key decisions and action items to prevent confusion and create accountability.
Create a ‘Me Manual’
One of the most powerful ways to help your team manage up effectively is to give them a clear guide to working with you. I call this a ‘Me Manual’ – a simple document that outlines how you operate. You can include:
- Communication preferences, such as when to email versus when to schedule a meeting and how you like to give and receive feedback.
- Work habits, like whether you’re a morning person, the best times to reach you, and when you shouldn’t be interrupted.
- Decision-making style, including your desire for details and data.
- Quirks and pet peeves, such as people tending to play devil’s advocate or showing up unprepared.
Your Me Manual can save time and emotional energy for you and those you manage. When a team member knows you prefer bullet-point emails, for example, they won’t waste time crafting a lengthy response with lots of context.
You can also encourage your team members to share their own Me Manuals with you. This two-way exchange helps you better understand how each person works best and helps them to practice articulating their needs and preferences.
Create structured opportunities for your team to raise concerns and pushbacks. For instance, before launching any significant project or change, gather your team for a pre-mortem.
Invite constructive criticism
Create structured opportunities for your team to raise concerns and pushbacks. For instance, before launching any significant project or change, gather your team for a pre-mortem. Ask them to imagine it’s six months in the future and the initiative hasn’t worked. Try questions like:
- What resources would prevent this failure?
- Who needs to be involved that isn’t?
- What competing priorities might derail us?
- What information are we missing?
Model an openness to criticism in your daily interactions, too. When someone seems hesitant about a decision you’ve made, say, “You seem unsure about this approach. I’d value your perspective on what I might be missing.” Or when wrapping up a project, ask, “What could I have done differently as a leader to make this easier for you?”
When you create a culture where managing up is encouraged, you’re changing how power and influence flow through your organization and preparing members of your team for their own leadership journeys.
Melody Wilding is the author of Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge. For more than a decade as an award-winning executive coach, she’s helped top performers at the world’s most successful companies including Google, Amazon, and Meta get the recognition, respect, and pay they deserve.
Melody is a licensed social worker with a master’s degree from Columbia University. She is Professor of Human Behavior at Hunter College in New York and a former emotions researcher at Rutgers University. Learn more at https://managingup.com
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