🎒 Microlesson

🪞 Reflect

Have you ever felt like your manager was a mystery? Have you ever been confused by decisions they made and actions they took that impacted your work?

💡 Concept

If you’ve ever felt that way, it might be time to consider managing up.

Managing up is the process of gaining a deeper understanding of your manager’s goals, their motivators, and their working styles and using this awareness to improve personal, team, and business outcomes. Aspects to learn about your manager include the following:

• Communication preferences. How does your manager prefer to communicate, and how do they expect to stay in the loop? How can you adjust your communication practices to keep them better informed?

• Pet peeves. What frustrates your manager? How can those situations be avoided?

• Goals. What short-term and long-term goals does your manager have? How does your or your team’s performance impact these goals? How can you increase your impact on them?

• Motivators. What drives your manager to accomplish their tasks every day?

• Schedule. What does your manager spend their time doing? What do they wish they could be working on instead? How might you help them reallocate their time?

• Challenges. What are their biggest challenges right now, and what can you do to help solve or alleviate them?

The more you learn about your manager, the easier it will be to deliver demonstrable value to them by focusing your efforts on what matters most.

So how do you manage up when you work remotely?

If you work in a remote or hybrid team, you may not have as many chances to learn about your manager as you would if you were working in the same physical location. Make sure to take advantage of any synchronous time with your manager to learn more about them by proactively adding discussion questions to your agenda.

Review any asynchronous communication exchanges, including Slack conversations, emails, written documentation, and comments, to glean additional insights into how your manager operates.

And finally, use any opportunity you find to visibly demonstrate to your manager that you are not just thinking about your own work, but also thinking about how you can make their work easier.

🎬 Take Action

• Improve your ability to self-manage—which includes proactive problem-solving and communication—in a distributed environment.

• Review past async communication with your manager to discover possible insight into any of the aspects listed earlier in this lesson.

• Identify organization or team goals (such as OKRs or KPIs) that your manager is responsible for.

• Send proactive async updates to your manager on your work priorities, progress, and blockers.

• Read your manager’s readme, if applicable.

• In 1:1s with your manager, add time to the agenda to ask questions that go beyond your immediate tasks or projects, such as:

  • What are the biggest priorities you’re working on right now?

  • What are the biggest challenges you’re facing?

  • How does the work I do impact or help your priorities or challenges?

  • How can I increase this impact?

  • What do you wish you could spend more time doing? How can I help you do that?

✅ Check In

🧠 Keep Learning

Learn more about how to self-manage as a remote worker in our Remote Work Certification program.

🎁 Learn with your team!

Refer our weekly microlessons to your team members to learn as a group! Just follow the instructions in the section below to get started.