The Lost Art of Upward Management
What is Upward Management?
Upward management refers to effectively managing your relationships and communications with superiors in a way that benefits both parties.
It means clearly understanding what your leader needs and expects from you. It's influencing them positively while also deriving maximum support to accomplish your own objectives.
Upward management enables you to better align your goals with those of the organization's.
With good upward management, you showcase how your work ladders up to strategic priorities.
As a result, you gain support for the projects, resources, and advancement opportunities you desire.
How to Cultivate Upward Management
There are several key ways to cultivate effective upward management skills:
Listen and understand first: Regularly communicate with leaders about their goals, challenges, work style and expectations of you. Pay attention to their priorities and pressures.
Proactively inform and influence: Provide status updates before being asked. Frame your insights and proposals in terms of organizational objectives to showcase relevance.
Know decision makers’ preferences: Learn whether they prefer email, short phone calls or in-person dialogue. Tailor your communications accordingly for optimal effectiveness.
Ask for advice: Leaders often enjoy mentoring talent. Seeking counsel makes them more personally invested in you. Acting on their advice also shows you respect their wisdom.
Express gratitude: Recognize contributions your superiors have made to your career. People need appreciation as much as they need air.
The Advantages of Upward Management
While time and energy intensive, intentional upward management generates tremendous advantages:
Leaders advocate for your advancement when they respect you and find you reliable.
You gain early visibility into changing priorities when you’re plugged into management’s perspective. This allows you to proactively shift work to stay aligned.
Executives are more receptive to your ideas when you understand their objectives and constraints. This makes it easier to sell ideas up the ladder.
Managers will entrust you with desirable assignments, budget for key projects, and open doors to career-elevating opportunities.
In today’s fast-paced business climate, leaders barely have enough time for their own work - let alone to monitor yours closely.
Make it easier for them to support you by mastering the lost art of upward management. While challenging, nothing accelerates high achievement like effective upward management.
If you’d like some help embedding this in your team, do get in touch.