Managing Up

1Stop Complaining and Start Winning – Managing Up Is the Key to Your Success

“Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices…Needless to say, this is far less satisfying than nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.”

—Barbara Brown Taylor

Let's be clear: Managing up is not about brownnosing, sucking up, or becoming a sycophant. Managing up is about consciously and deliberatively developing and maintaining effective relationships with supervisors, bosses, and other people above you in the chain of command. It is a deliberate effort to increase cooperation and collaboration in a relationship between individuals who often have different perspectives and uneven power levels. It is about consciously working with your boss to obtain the best possible results for you, your boss, and the organization.

Managing up is about you taking charge of your workplace experience. Here's why it's the key to your success.

Your Boss Matters

As much as we would love to believe that the work world is a meritocracy, where just being great at your job is all you need to succeed, reality tells a different story. The real (and inconvenient) truth is that your boss has a great deal of influence over your career success and trajectory. Your relationship with her, and her experience with you, will determine the kinds of opportunities that come your way in your organization. Establishing strong, productive working relationships ...