Stop Managing Up and Start Showing Your Work

Do you find yourself struggling to manage up? Are you frustrated with the idea of managing your manager?

Building a strong, collaborative, and trusting relationship with your management is critical to career development and a healthy work life. However, we should not do this by managing up. Do it by showing your work. Let’s talk about what we get wrong when we try to manage up and how showing your work will lead to better results.

Don’t Manage Your Manager

It’s time to change our language around this critical career skill. Nobody expects you to manage your boss; ultimately, it doesn't make sense. It is not your job to manage your boss. Your job is about doing great work and ensuring people know what is happening. Let's review how managing up creates the wrong relationship dynamic and where we miss the point.

The Relationship Dynamic

We often don’t think about how much information our managers are working to keep track of daily. Many people mistakenly believe their managers should know what they are doing and working on. The reality is that your manager is keeping track of the work of everyone on their team, plus the tasks their manager has assigned them. Like you, they are also trying to navigate their careers and relationships with peers and managers. If, for example, your manager has 10 direct reports, then we are talking about a minimum of 10 projects and 10 careers for direct reports alone.  Add to that their 1-5 projects and their career.  We are discussing at least 25ish topics your manager juggles at any given time.  That is less than 2 hours a week per topic. This expands quickly as they move up the ladder to lead other managers.

“A dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement." — Seth Godin

In a managing up world, relationships between managers and reports often lack the communication necessary to create a high-functioning environment. We assume that our managers know things we haven’t shared, so they don’t have enough information to ensure the decisions they are involved with make sense. This leads to products making slow or backward progress, and ultimately, team members disengage.

We Are Missing the Point

Many people mistakenly believe that managing up is about sucking up or brown-nosing.  As we choose not to stoop to manipulation or flattery to get ahead, we also choose to stop short of sharing everything our managers need to support us fully. Since managers track a large amount of information, they often do not pay attention to what is not said. No news is good news, but is it?

Additionally, most people don’t have adequate one-on-one conversations with their managers. Many times, these conversations do not happen frequently enough, causing important topics to fade away or get superseded by the fire of the moment.  Or we don’t take time to plan what to share during a one-on-one, causing these conversations to devolve into scattershot updates, venting about issues, and other topics that happen to be front of mind that day.

The adage “Bring Solutions, not problems” that many people bring to the management table prevents some conversations from happening. Often, in this environment, people who are genuinely stuck and don’t know how to reason about a solution to their problem will silently suffer through it. There are problems that your manager is uniquely qualified for or has the connections required to get traction.  It is true that your manager doesn’t want to hear people complain about every problem and shouldn’t be providing detailed steps for every situation, but sometimes we need a little kickstart.

What you Should be Thinking About

We should start by understanding and building collaborative relationships with our leaders. This isn’t about flattery or manipulation; it is about sincerity, honesty, and making the right decisions. Being a key part of your manager’s success can significantly impact your career growth opportunities.

You can support your manager’s success by considering situations from their perspective. How can you help bring information and take on tasks to reduce their burden? Remember that our managers have a lot of information to keep track of and are focused on allocating attention and energy to the right places. Time is your manager's most precious resource; you should think about ways to help them make the most of it.

Given that more initiatives and people-related topics are going on than your manager can reasonably give productive attention to, they are focused on looking for trends, patterns, and commonalities across the team and business. You should consider sharing enough information to make this task easier. What does your manager need to know? What would you want to know if you were in their position? You could even look to take things off their plate.

"I believe that the more senior you become, the more you are brought in for your ideas rather than what you can do. Articulating how you think is probably more important than what you do." — Joanna Bloor

Assuming you also want to advance your career and believe you have more to offer your manager and the business. Ultimately, this means operating beyond your current assigned tasks and level. Decisions that affect your career are often made when you are not in the room. You should think about how you can prove your value and how ready you are for the next level to your manager.

You should be thinking about showing your work!

Show Your Work Instead

We are often expected to solve problems and complete work in our professional lives. Our managers seldom ask us to show our work, and many will not recognize that this is part of the job. However, as your career advances, you undoubtedly participate in more longer-term strategy discussions. These topics are more about sharing your thoughts and less about achieving a specific task.

Math Homework

Remember your school days? Your teachers likely often asked you to show your work. It was always important to share your steps for homework, especially math or science. Why did they do this? It wasn’t about getting the correct answer. They wanted you to show that you understand the thought process, how to break problems into smaller parts, and the fundamental problem being solved.

This same concept applies to work. Aim to demonstrate that you understand how the business operates and the problems that must be solved. You should show that you can help simplify the problem into parts that can be solved by the people and resources available.

Overcommunication

A quick word about communication: many people worry about their manager's time and are reluctant to share things their manager may not need to know. You probably think, “They are busy, and I don’t want to waste their time with this.”

There is no such thing as overcommunication. Stop and think about this for a bit. How often do you receive too much communication at work? Compare that to how frequently you hoped to receive more communication about something.

"Whether they read it or not, flood your [boss] with information that is documented — projections, evaluations, reports on progress, and status updates." — Bill Walsh - The Score Takes Care of Itself

You can’t always know what your manager wants to know or should know. Strive to ensure they are not surprised by something you could have given them a heads-up about. If you share too much information and your manager doesn’t want or need all of it, they will let you know.

Showing Your Work at Work

Communication is the focus when showing your work as part of your job. Share what is going on, both good and bad. While sharing what you have done is important, communicating what you think about what needs to be done is more impactful.

Showing your work is not helpful after the fact; once the project is complete, your only option is to react. Unlike your math homework, here you want to show your work before starting the problem and as you progress through it. Proactive and early communication allows everyone around you to respond to the options and contribute to the best possible solution.

Work to become familiar with your manager's strengths and blind spots. Adjust your communication to allow them to utilize their strengths and give them insight into things they may be overlooking.

Below is my three-step process for showing your work.

1. Share Your Plans

When you ask your managers questions, they will feel compelled to answer them. They are focused on making sure you are as productive as possible. High-impact employees on a growth trajectory do not ask permission to do their jobs. This means when you ask questions about what you should do, they will probably tell you. Avoid questions that start with:

Can I/we
Am I allowed to
Should I/we

Instead of asking if you should do what you know needs to be done, tell them what you plan to do and how you intend to work through the steps. A straightforward way to approach this is to start with the words “I plan to” or “I intend to.”

“Bringing your manager high-quality, well-defined problems is actually far more important than bringing them lovely but ultimately irrelevant updates about all the things you’ve already solved or easily can yourself.” — Saumil Mehta

When you share your plans, you give your manager an opportunity to help you make adjustments. Course correct beforehand instead of needing to redo work. You also help your manager know you are ready to own the project, allowing them to feel comfortable focusing their time and energy elsewhere.

Most importantly, “I plan to” tells your manager you will do this unless they give you a reason not to. This is their opportunity for feedback. You are not overstepping here; you are taking the initiative.

Here is an example:

Hey, manager, I plan to create a report about the number of defects our team is letting through. It seems like we have been letting more through recently, and it would be good to understand the scope. I will start by getting with the leads to understand what they track already, and then I will bring you an example of the report I want to build.

2. Share Your Progress

Step two is to update update update.  Proactively track topics to share about the project. Create a reminder to share your progress and important topics. These shares should happen in multiple ways. I recommend sharing using a text medium like email or direct message and using your voice in a one-on-one or team meeting.

Use the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) model for this communication to be considerate of your manager’s time and give them a choice about how much information they want to consume. This means starting with the main point and then following that with the details and extra information. Many people will only read the first 2 – 3 sentences of your message and then decide how much more they will consume.

When making a status update, think about these questions:
What is going well?
What is not going as expected?
Where could you use feedback?
What will you work on next? Remember, I plan to

3. Ask for Feedback

Step three is proactively sharing when you have completed the task/project. Check-in with your manager to see if they have any feedback about the outcome or how you could operate differently during the next project. As part of this communication, share your plans for what is next.

Wrap It Up

It’s time to stop thinking about managing up and start showing your work.  Realistically, you should not be expected to manage your manager. You should also not lean on flattery or manipulation to advance your career. Focus on building a collaborative, mutually beneficial work relationship with your boss. Do this by returning some school lessons; it is time to show your work.  Through proactive and comprehensive communication, show your manager that you fully understand the problem, how to get it done, and that you are ready to lead the way. Follow these three steps: 1. Share your plans with “I plan to”, 2. Share your progress by proactively sharing information about the project to help your manager fully understand the current status; 3. When you complete the project, ask for feedback and share what you will do next.

Check out these related posts to help round out some of the discussion:

Professional Relationships Drive Career Growth

Hey Boss, Feedback Please!

One-on-ones with My Manager are Kind of Terrible

If you want more help improving how to show your work, consider reaching out to me.