Managing Up: A Skill Set That Matters Now

Are you skilled at managing up? If your talents are lacking when it comes to managing and dealing with the people above you in the organizational hierarchy, you can find yourself mired in some unpleasant and career-harming situations. Maybe you’re frustrated by a micromanaging supervisor or feeling marginalized by them. Maybe you feel constantly in the dark about your manager’s expectations, or you’re tired of absorbing an outsize number of shocks for your team. Any of these can be a warning signal that you need to work on effective upward communication and leadership.

It’s an important set of skills right now. With some organizations using artificial intelligence to eliminate middle layers of management, the ability to manage up has become even more vital to your career — and your organization’s success. Leaders above are often unaware of what they don’t know, and they might be misled by AI.

If you want to strengthen your ability to lead up, you need to know how to assess your skills — and bolster them.

We define effective managing up, or upward leadership as “listening to those higher in rank and influencing them to assist you and your team to better embody the organization’s values and fulfill its mission, strategy, and goals.”1 Successful upward leaders create sustainable wins for the boss, team, and organization.

Notice that this definition starts with listening. Just because someone wrote down the organization’s values, mission, strategy, and goals on ever-available, wallet-sized notecards or displayed them in a flashy PowerPoint graphic does not ensure that everyone will interpret the ideas in a similar and synergistic fashion. The written word is not enough. Understanding the nuances of interpretation requires active listening for unstated sentiments.

Leading up also, of course, involves influencing. Effective upward leaders establish connections, circumvent problems, and convince those in power to embrace opportunities, innovations, and novel insights. But assisting is equally important. Think of an NBA assist wizard like LeBron James who knows when and where to deliver the ball to other players so they can score. Assisting requires proper alignment between team members, knowledge of who is in position to score, and a willingness to let others shine.

Three Roles You Play While Managing Up

Based on surveys of thousands of employees and hundreds of interviews with midlevel managers, we discerned that people leading up assume three interrelated roles:

Buffer. The buffer dampens frustrations from above (and below), absorbing complaints, gripes, annoyances, and, potentially, offensive remarks. Successful buffers actively listen for underlying (often unstated) sentiments and seek understanding of key (but often vague) goals to protect others from irrelevant or unintended messages.

Translator. The translator receives information, directives, and perspectives from above (and below). Then they convey the meaning in the language of the audiences at those levels, minimizing potential misunderstanding while respecting the sensibilities of the audience.

Advocate. The advocate seeks to persuade or dissuade others in positions above (or below) their own. This could mean sharing differing opinions, arguing for a new direction, or pushing back on a new idea or policy.2

It’s not enough to be skilled at one of these roles. Artfully leading upward requires an integration of all three. For example, advocates must translate a pushback comment into a language understood by others while buffering away minor issues. Likewise, a buffer must act as a translator when anticipating how pushback language might be misinterpreted by people above. The translation may, in turn, result in advocating for a change in the directive’s wording to increase the odds of acceptance.

There is no magic formula to determine the right balance, because it will vary with each situation. However, leaning too heavily into one role usually signals problems. If you, as a leader, spend most of your time buffering employees from verbal storms from on high, then it might be time to augment your role as an advocate.

Leading upward does not come naturally to most people. In fact, in his 2001 book, Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win, Wharton professor Michael Useem suggested that just one-third of managerial employees had the necessary skills and desire to do so.3 But you can rewrite your own story by properly assessing your upward leadership talents and then strategically applying them.

Assess Your Ability to Manage Up

The best way to improve your upward leadership acumen starts with assessing your current talent level. These three questions can help you judge.

What role do you primarily perform when you are most frustrated? Aggravation, frustration, and irritation go with any job but can also signal role imbalance. For example, if you feel micromanaged, you may be overplaying the buffer role and not voicing concerns (the advocate role) about optimizing your own working environment.

What role do you primarily perform when you are in a state of flow? In his seminal 2008 book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes flow as “a sense that one’s skills are adequate to cope with challenges at hand. … Concentration is so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant.”4 Ideally, your state of flow involves the skillful and seamless fulfillment of all three roles. But that mastery rarely happens, because we all have a tendency to lean too heavily on a role or skill that comes naturally to us. For example, selling or advocating may be your “happy place,” but leaning on that ability alone will not allow you to excel at upward leadership. For that, you’ll need to master the skills of buffering and translating.

Are you equally comfortable performing these roles in both directions (upward and downward)? Many people selectively employ their buffering, advocating, and translating skills when communicating with people at higher authority levels. This might be healthy in some cases, but it could also be a red flag, revealing that you lack a healthy relationship with those in power and are unwilling to engage in candid, if sometimes difficult, conversations.

Build Three Key Skills to Manage Up Better

Once you’ve thought through your role tendencies, it is time to build your buffering, translating, and advocating skills.

Buffering

Buffering skills and sensibilities are largely self-taught. Take cues from politicians, coaches, or leaders you admire. Watch successful leaders during press conferences. Some of them ignore the passion of the critic, others deflect unpleasant issues, and some selectively listen for words that they can turn to their advantage. Building up this emotional thick skin takes time and perspective.

Alida Al-Saadi, a former senior executive at Korn Ferry and Accenture, shared this incident: “A manager repeatedly pushed me to be ‘more concise,’ despite being famously long-winded himself. At first it felt unfair. Eventually I understood that thick skin isn’t arguing the irony; it’s hearing what someone needs from you and deciding, deliberately, how to strategically adjust.”5 In short, buffering her reactions and deferring the debate about the accuracy of his critique enhanced their working relationship.

However, buffering does not mean just passively absorbing blows. After all, a shock absorber can only absorb so many shocks before the source of the trouble has to be addressed. Good buffers learn to have productive conversations with their superiors by identifying key issues and rephrasing concerns that might be red flags for their team. Skilled buffers actively listen to engage in productive conversations that support team motivation and performance. This means tuning your antenna to what’s not being said and homing in on ideas that need further development.

Translating

Turning your own or your team’s reactions, concerns, or feelings into words that a superior can understand may be all it takes to shift that leader’s position, tweak an idea, or change a disagreeable behavior; it’s one step short of advocacy. This requires an underappreciated ability to convey emotional reactions in a respectful manner.

For example, sometimes employees who first hear about a major organizational change react with colorful and offensive language.6 In those cases, effective leaders accurately relay those sentiments to the higher-ups without sharing personal invectives. A descriptive statement like, “They weren’t very happy” or “They expressed their displeasure in strong language” allows for further discussion that focuses on the substantive issues driving the reactions.

Building your translating skills sometimes means learning new vocabulary. That’s because you should shift your reporting from a direct to an indirect approach for more contentious issues. Directly pushing back with a comment like “I disagree” isn’t always the best option. An indirect and often more effective approach could be to say, “If someone were to play devil’s advocate, they might say …” or “Is there another way to look at this issue?” These phrases distance the pushback in a manner that does not directly challenge the egos of the people above.

Advocating

Speaking up for your team, say, by nudging superiors in a different direction represents the most challenging role. What are the best ways to do it? For starters, link to the superior’s underlying motivations, sensibilities, and mental framework. Successful upward leaders frame their team’s reaction to an idea or policy change by first acknowledging the positive intentions of the idea or policy before sharing the team’s suggested tweaks.

They also provide evidence that their superiors find credible. Different supervisors value different kinds of evidence to arrive at conclusions. Some put more faith in statistics, AI projections, or models, while others trust case studies, expert advice, personal testimonies, or historical analogies.

Finally, sense when to back off. Some leaders mistakenly expect quick or even instantaneous agreement from their superiors after proposing initiatives, program tweaks, personnel changes, or innovative suggestions. However, persuasion often requires patience and a willingness to back off at the right time to allow others time to shift the tumblers in their minds before locking something new in place. Pushing too hard or too soon can close the door on any new ideas.

Habits of Successful Upward Leaders

Skill-building sets the stage, but successful upward leaders also use the following strategies regularly to maximize their performance and help their organizations thrive.

Actively build a relationship of candor and trust with people above you in the hierarchy.

Do you reflexively assume that you are fully trusted by those above? A misreading of interpersonal dynamics can prove to be frustrating, befuddling, and problematic, and can introduce relationship troubles: You might excessively buffer the superior from challenges you face in your department (unwarranted buffering), be overly candid about your own reactions or your employees’ outbursts (unedited translating), or offer unwelcome advice (inappropriate advocating). Instead, consider taking the following actions to establish an empowering relationship of trust.

Take the first step. Ideally, superiors would seek out and build robust, healthy relationships with direct reports. But in our research, we’ve found that to be more the exception than the rule. Consequently, leaders in subordinate positions must often take active steps to build strong, candid relationships.7 Sometimes that requires the assertiveness and subtlety of a mixed martial arts fighter like Ronda Rousey. Yes, subtlety: Rousey was able to persuade the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White, to create a women’s division — even though he had publicly declared that he’d never do it. She took the first step by requesting a 15-minute meeting with Dana, seeking career advice, and then effectively advocated for her idea. The meeting morphed into a 45-minute discussion and resulted in the new UFC women’s division.8

Mind the cadence and robustness of meetings with your supervisors. Your investment in establishing a relationship with superiors can dwindle away without routine and robust communications. The communication cadence needs to keep pace with the fast-changing organizational dynamics. And discussions need to be robust enough to allow the relationship to emerge beyond a position-to-position discussion to more of a person-to-person dialogue. Ideally, that means regularly scheduled face-to-face discussions with your boss, plus skip-level meetings with other people above you in the hierarchy. Advocating for such a time commitment may require some lobbying, but it will spawn benefits by minimizing disconnects and maximizing organizational alignment.9

Avoid assuming that what worked with one supervisor will work with another. Just because a previous supervisor trusted you to be a great buffer, translator, or advocate, it doesn’t mean a different person in the organization will. While working with various people in the hierarchy above you, you must seek out signals about what problems you can handle on your own without reporting above (buffering). Additionally, you need to search for cues about what issues are off-limits when considering offering unsolicited advice (buffering and advocacy). Your supervisor might welcome tweaks to organizational strategy, but those higher up may not be as open to the pushback.

Adopt an educational mindset.

George Reed served as a dean at the University of Colorado — Colorado Springs and an instructor at the U.S. Army War College. He smilingly reminded us, “I’ve had to educate more than a few new chancellors and commanders in my career.”10 When someone new assumed command, Reed started from zero by providing background about his department or division and then sought to earn trust with the newcomer to buffer, advocate, and translate as he saw fit.

Emotionally, this may seem like going backward, but it is essential to establishing a productive working relationship. Sometimes a well-selected list of “10 things everybody should know about our department” does the trick and starts an illuminating educational discussion.11

Take the following actions to bolster your educational mindset.

Assess the risks of advocacy. Deciding how and when to advocate revolves around the question “How open will my superior be to my influence attempt?” Correcting a client’s misspelled name on a pending document typically would be zero risk. On the other hand, drawing your supervisor’s attention to an annoying personal habit of theirs, such as always being late to meetings, would be a higher risk (as outlined in the table below).

Issues can shift from one column to the other, depending on the particular supervisor-report relationship and the organizational culture. Your goal over time, of course, is to move as many issues as possible to the second column.

As a relationship matures, people learn to better identify others’ touchy subjects and anticipate their likely responses to a direct style of advocacy. A high-quality relationship between leaders allows a high degree of candor and a high volume of advocacy.

But lower-quality relationships or newer ones often improve with the deft use of more indirect advocacy and thoughtful translation.

Regardless of relational quality, a strong mutual commitment to shared values allows for more direct advocacy. For example, on a construction site or factory floor that has a strong safety culture, candid advocacy about potential safety concerns can be successful regardless of rank or relationship status.

Reserve private conversations for more delicate matters. Unfortunately, not all leaders welcome pushback in public forums. Advocating for a shift or a tweak to superiors’ pet project in front of a group will often shut down further discussion because it may threaten the leader’s ego.

For example, consider a supervisor who occasionally launches into an annoying behavior like overselling initiatives to others and not allowing time for further discourse. Enlightening the supervisor about this off-putting tendency should usually be reserved for private, one-on-one, ego-protecting conversations. Discussions like these are particularly tricky because selling may be the supervisor’s forte. Often, someone’s greatest ability has an unrecognized downside that needs to be throttled back in certain situations or offset with other skills.

Routinely rebalance your upward leadership role profile.

Your upward leadership role profile should not be static. Ideally, relationships between leaders at different levels improve, and their mutual commitment to shared values evolves. Consequently, the amount of energy devoted to the roles of buffer, translator, and advocate will become more balanced and shift away from more dysfunctional allocations, like excessive advocacy or heavy buffering. Consider the following tactics when periodically rebalancing your profile:

Reflect on how your allocation maximizes both your professional fulfillment and organizational contribution. The ideal allocation of the roles you play depends on your specific situation, goals, and the managerial style of your supervisor. Ask yourself, “What is the optimal percentage of my energy that should be devoted to buffering, translating, and advocating to optimize my growth and organizational performance?”

As a general rule, aim to build relational trust so that the percentage of your time devoted to buffering decreases to 10%-20% while advocating and translating (40%-45% each) assume more predominant roles. This type of allocation maximizes professional development and organizational growth but leaves enough time for you to serve as a proper shock absorber for the inevitable miscues, frustrations, and rumors that occur.

Test and recalibrate. Shifting your role balance requires courage, particularly when everything seems to be going well. And, as with any new skill, both mastering and feeling comfortable with it will require some practice. For example, making the conscious effort to advocate more or throttling back can be unsettling; monitoring results allows you to tweak both the skills and the balance between the three key roles. Other people on your team may notice your behavior change as well. If questioned, you could say, “I’m experimenting with a different approach to exert influence.”

Entertain other opportunities. Our multiyear research consistently revealed that employees’ relationships with their direct supervisor greatly influence their level of job satisfaction, engagement, and productivity.12 So, assuming that you’ve tried the strategies above and your role profile as a buffer, translator, and advocate continues to be unfulfilling, it may be time to look for other job opportunities that will allow you to flourish. After all, successful upward leadership requires superiors who are also willing to change.

Leading upward represents one of the most significant and least appreciated talents you can master. It requires courage tempered with discretion, thoughtful advocacy coupled with inquisitive listening, and an eagerness to debate peppered with a zeal to engage in calculated silences.

Practicing when and how to use these polarized aptitudes allows leaders to seamlessly integrate the roles of buffer, translator, and advocate. Learning to do so may not bring many accolades or trophies attesting to your “upward leadership excellence.” But mastering upward leadership will, at the very least, ensure career fulfillment and, at the very best, organizational excellence. Think of midlevel leaders you know who rose through the ranks or ensured great outcomes for their teams: Most have mastered the difficult art form of respectfully and resolutely leading up. And perhaps improving your own upper leadership acumen will spur you to further cultivate a climate within your own team that encourages upward leadership, improving employee engagement and work outcomes.13