Everything You Wanted to Know About Managing Up and Were Too Embarrassed to Ask

We live in a business environment where we’re only preoccupied with learning management and how to manage subordinates and staff below us in the company. However, we rarely think about managing up our bosses, our managers, or even our teammates above us. Many think that the process of managing up only applies to big corporations and concerns only employees who want to understand how to deal with their managers who micromanage everything. Just like employees, managers are equally concerned about managing up and about learning different ways to avoid it. Whether you are an Optometrist a practice owner or an employee you will certainly find yourself in need to know about managing up to become a better manager, a better leader, or any individual performer who wants to increase his performance and get better chances to getting promoted.

When managing up employees do everything possible to make their managers’ management jobs easy. For employees, this is an important step to help their managers as well as their first step to start learning how to manage a team. The first thing that comes to mind in this concept is that employees have to facilitate communicating their problems and priorities reporting to their managers in order to get accurate feedback. They want to be coachable and ready to capture every advice their manager would deliver. They should not wait for their managers to teach them how to do things, however, they should know in advance what their manager expects to be done and pave the path to achieve and accomplish what’s needed to be done.

Employees need to show extreme ownership and extreme accountability when performing jobs in a way that exceeds their manager’s expectations. Moreover, they need to come up with the right metrics and KPIs for the job they are performing as well as create controls and checks to help their manager achieve their goals and not worry about following up on every little detail.

Employees who are excellent at managing up have integrity, are responsible, and instead of being reactive to their manager’s instructions and controls they are super proactive and go forward with what needs to be done. Knowing their manager’s personality and limits, they expect things to happen before happening and are ready to achieve goals and clear the path to achieve and reach those goals not only for their managers but their teammates too. Therefore the first step they make before their managers put controls and check is to align their goals with their manager, team, and company’s goals.

Great managers who learn about managing up, provide the right environment that allows employees to hold responsibility and be accountable for most of the tasks they do and gives them the total freedom to control and check their progress and performance without the need for micromanaging.