Managing up is how teams and leaders grow together
Managing up isn’t about kissing up. It’s about making it easier for leaders to lead—and for teams to do their best work.
If you’re good at your job, chances are you’ve already found yourself managing up. Maybe you don’t have direct reports yet, but you’re collaborating with or supporting someone above you—your manager, their manager, or someone higher up in the organization.
And here’s the thing: managing up is a sign of growth on both sides.
For you: It means you’ve built mastery in your role and are ready to operate at a higher level.
For your leader: It means the organization has grown enough that they now have a team to guide—and a new set of responsibilities to juggle.
Why no one gets taught this
Here’s the gap: nobody is trained to manage up.
Employees aren’t taught it when they onboard. Leaders aren’t taught how to teach it when they step into leadership roles. Everyone is just…figuring it out as they go.
It’s not that people don’t want to communicate well—they’ve just never been shown how.
I worked with one organization where a talented analyst started working directly with senior leadership. She was great at her job, but her updates were scattered—half in email, half in Slack, sometimes just mentioned in passing.
Once we introduced a clear, trained process for structured updates, everything changed. Leaders started praising her clarity, and projects stopped stalling.
When managing up goes right
When it works, everyone feels it:
Leaders focus on the business instead of getting stuck in the business.
Teams get their asks answered faster because they’re structured, clear, and easy to act on.
Trust builds because leaders see you know what you want, why you want it, and when you need it.
“I didn’t realize how much energy I was wasting trying to make sense of vague requests. Now I can actually think.”
—Founder, and maybe Future You
When it goes wrong
When managing up isn’t working, the opposite happens:
Projects bottleneck because decisions are delayed.
Leaders are interrupted constantly with half-formed questions.
Teams grow frustrated waiting for approvals.
At a fast-growing startup, I watched a founder spend hours every week answering the same questions in DMs, Slack threads, and random hallway conversations.
The issue wasn’t that the team was careless—they’d never been trained on where to look for answers first.
Once we built a central hub with resources for all the routine answers and created a structured process for new asks, everything shifted. Leaders stopped drowning in noise, and the team gained confidence in solving problems independently.
The framework for managing up
Managing up doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s about making your asks easy to respond to.
Rule #1: Nothing in the ask should be a surprise.
Start with email—not Slack, not a quick comment in the kitchen. For bigger asks, you need a permanent, structured place where information lives.
Here’s a simple framework:
What this is – clear and concise.
What I’m asking for – include a deadline.
My next steps – so they know what you’ll be doing while you wait.
EQ line – something like: “If you have any questions or need additional information, I’m happy to help.”
Managing up is a two-way street
Managing up only works if everyone agrees to one consistent way of working.
You might think you’re being flexible by letting everyone send asks in their own way—emails, Slack messages, hallway conversations—but what you’re really doing is creating extra work for yourself and your team. Your team will inevitably have to track you down when you don’t respond on time, you’ll feel guilty for not doing things when they’re needed, and the cycle will repeat.
Flexibility has its place, but consistency builds clarity.
Leaders, this is your part of the job:
Establish a standard process.
Train your team on how to use it.
Model it yourself so your team knows you mean it.
When everyone follows the same system, communication becomes smoother, updates stop getting lost, and you spend far less time chasing information across multiple channels.
Common pitfalls
Managing up often fails because of a few misconceptions:
“Processes = micromanagement.” They don’t. Clear processes don’t limit autonomy; they create clarity.
“If I send more updates, I’m managing up better.” Not true. More isn’t better—clear is better.
“No response means everything’s fine.” Silence isn’t alignment. Follow up respectfully.
At one client, a project lead initially misunderstood the structure as micromanagement. A few weeks later, she told me:
“This isn’t micromanaging—this is freedom. I know exactly what my founder needs, and he finally trusts me to deliver without constant check-ins.”
The founder dynamic
If you’re scaling a business, managing up is even more critical.
Early-stage founders unintentionally teach their teams to rely on them for every decision. Then, as the business grows, that reliance becomes a bottleneck.
I’ve seen this firsthand with founders who go from five-person teams to 50-person teams almost overnight. They struggle to shift out of “doer” mode, and their teams don’t know how to operate without constant sign-offs.
Training everyone on a clear, repeatable process early on smooths the transition and keeps growth from turning into chaos.
The business impact
Clear, structured communication isn’t just about making life easier. It drives results:
Faster decision-making → projects move forward.
Less wasted time → leaders stay focused on strategy.
Higher trust → teams feel empowered to act without hesitation.
Better retention → people thrive when they know how to succeed.
The bottom line? Managing up isn’t an overhead cost—it’s an efficiency multiplier. It gives everyone time back, and time is the one resource you can’t buy.
Start small
You don’t have to overhaul your entire workflow tomorrow. Start here:
Take one upcoming ask and send it as a structured email.
Schedule predictable weekly 1:1s with an open agenda.
Use early wins to reinforce the habit—celebrate the time saved and clarity gained.
One last thought
Managing up is a skill—and like any skill, it takes time, patience, and practice to master. But the payoff is huge.
When you make it easy for leaders to lead, everyone wins: leaders, teams, and the business as a whole.
