If you’ve ever felt like your manager doesn’t really know what you do, or watched someone else get credit for work you led, or found yourself anxious before a performance review because you’re not sure what your manager actually thinks of you, that experience is more common than you’d think. And most of it can be changed.
Managing up is the skill that sits in the gap between doing good work and being recognised for it. It’s about building an effective working relationship with the people above you, keeping them informed in the right ways, understanding what they need, and making your contributions visible without having to shout about them.
It matters more than many people realise. Research from Culture Amp shows that employees who work under high-performing leaders are 4.5 times more likely to be high performers themselves, and a key factor in that relationship is upward communication, not just downward. Yet only 23% of employees say they feel informed about their company’s goals, which means most people are working without a clear picture of what their manager is trying to achieve.
For women in particular, the stakes are higher. Social psychology research shows that in mixed-gender groups, women receive and claim less credit for joint work, and the McKinsey and LeanIn Women in the Workplace 2025 report found that women receive less sponsorship and manager advocacy than men at every level. When your manager doesn’t have a clear picture of what you’re doing and what you’re capable of, it can affect the opportunities that come your way.
Managing up is how you can take control of your career without needing to be pushy or political.
Contents
- What managing up actually means
- Tip 1: Understand your manager before you try to manage up
- Tip 2: Keep your manager informed without them having to ask
- Tip 3: Make your work visible in the right ways
- Tip 4: Build a relationship, not just a reporting line
- Tip 5: Be a problem-solver, not just a problem-reporter
- Tip 6: Manage expectations actively
What managing up actually means
Managing up means taking ownership of the relationship with your manager rather than waiting passively for direction, feedback, and recognition to come to you. Most people default to a reactive stance, they do their work, hope it’s noticed, and wait to be told what’s next. The people who build strong working relationships with their managers, and get recognised and advocated for as a result, do the opposite.
Mary Abbajay, author of Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed with Any Type of Boss, puts it well: “If we reframe followership from a power construct into a relational construct, we open up a wide world of choice and agency. In a relationship, everybody has agency.”
Your relationship with your manager is two-directional, and the effort you put into it has a direct bearing on how well it functions, how visible your work is, and how supported you feel. The people who get ahead are rarely just the best performers working in their own silo, they’re the people whose managers understand what they do, trust them, and advocate for them when it matters.
Tip 1. Understand your manager before you try to manage up
The most effective managing up starts with understanding who you’re working with. Your manager has their own pressures, priorities, and communication preferences, and the more clearly you understand those, the more effectively you can work with them.
Learn how they like to receive information. Some managers want a quick Slack or Teams message, others prefer a structured email. Some like to be across the detail and others want a headline and a recommendation. If you don’t know, ask directly so that you can communicate in the best way to meet your manager’s preferred style. Read more about email communication in Your Emails Are Undermining Your Authority (Here’s How to Fix Them)
Understand what they’re measured on. Your manager has their own goals and KPIs, and their performance is partly shaped by yours. When you understand what success looks like for them, you can align your work to support it more deliberately.
Know their pressure points. Every manager has areas of the business they worry about, projects that keep them up at night, and stakeholders they need to keep happy. Knowing where those are means you can flag things proactively rather than leaving them to find out at the wrong moment.
Notice their communication style. Are they direct and fast-paced, or considered and methodical? Do they process information quickly in conversation, or do they prefer to read something first? Adapting your communication style to theirs, rather than expecting them to adjust to you, makes everything easier.
Tip 2. Keep your manager informed without them having to ask
One of the most straightforward and underused managing up tools is a regular written update to your manager, a concise, consistent email or message that keeps them updated across your work without requiring them to ask.
From a manager’s perspective, a regular written update from a direct report gives them the information needed to do their own job well. A manager overseeing a team or department needs to understand what’s on track, what’s at risk, where there are blockers, what support is needed, and how projects are progressing across the whole function. When their direct reports share this proactively, they can prioritise their time, advocate for the team effectively, and make better decisions. When they don’t, they’re working with an incomplete picture, and that affects everyone.
A weekly wrap-up doesn’t need to be long. Three to five bullet points covering what you’ve completed, what you’re focused on this week, anything blocked or at risk, and any decisions you need from them. Send this consistently on the same day each week, either Friday afternoon or Monday morning and you will be actively keeping your manager updated on your work.
The people who are doing this tend to stand out more and become a go-to when new projects or responsibilities arise. This is because they’ve made themselves easy to manage and easy to advocate for. When your manager is asked about your work in a leadership meeting, they have the information to represent you well.
For a broader look at how visibility and career tracking read The #1 Simple Thing You Should Be Doing To Get A Promotion.
Tip 3. Make your work visible in the right ways
Good work that no one knows about won’t lead to the promotion or payrise you are hoping for. This isn’t just a cynical view, research consistently shows that female workers are praised and recognised less frequently than their male colleagues, and in collaborative work settings, women tend to both receive and claim less credit. Taking intiative to communicate your work, and managing up will address this bias.
Share your wins in context. When you complete something significant, tell your manager briefly and frame it around impact rather than effort. “I closed the [client] contract today, which gets us to 80% of the quarterly target” is more useful to them than “I’ve been working really hard on the client proposal.”
Track your work over time. Keep a running record of your accomplishments, projects you’ve led, problems you’ve solved, and results you’ve contributed to. This is your evidence base for performance reviews, promotion conversations, and any moment when you need to make the case for yourself. Most people can’t remember what they achieved six months ago without notes, so your manager definitely won’t either – especially if they manage multiple people. The Peer Suite Career Wins Tracker in the Members Library is a good tool for this.
Connect your work to business outcomes. Whenever possible, quantify what you’ve done. How much time did the new process save? What was the revenue impact? How many people were affected? Numbers make contributions concrete with clear business impact and will work better for you than qualitative descriptions of the work completed.
Don’t let your work disappear into group credit. If you led something or made a critical contribution to a team outcome, make sure that’s visible. You can do this without diminishing others or being seen as someone who is not a team player. Simply being specific about your role is enough, for example “I led the analysis that shaped the recommendation”.
Tip 4. Build a relationship, not just a reporting line
Managing up is easier when the relationship between yourself and your manager(s) is genuinely strong and there are a few simple ways to build the relationship.
Use your one-to-ones well. Most people show up to one-to-ones without an agenda and end up using the time reactively, working through whatever their manager raises rather than driving the conversation themselves. If you come prepared with a short agenda covering what you’re working on, where you need input, and anything you want to discuss about your development, you’ll get far more out of the time and your manager will notice that you take ownership of it. For practical questions to use in these conversations, the Coffee Meeting Guide and Conversation Starters in the Members Library is a good starting point.
Ask for feedback before the formal review. Don’t wait for the annual or quarterly review to find out how your work is being perceived. Ask your manager directly, “Is there anything you’d like me to do differently?” or “How am I coming across in the leadership team meetings?” Most managers find it easier to give feedback when it’s asked for directly, and you get the information with plenty of time to act on it before year end.
Show interest in the wider business. Ask questions about strategy, about challenges in other parts of the organisation, about decisions being made above your level. This signals to your manager (and also other colleagues) that you’re thinking beyond your immediate remit and are interested in the bigger picture. Over time, it means your manager sees you as someone with leadership potential, not just someone who executes their current role.
Be reliable. If you say you’ll do something, do it, and if something changes, flag it early. The trust that builds over time through consistent follow-through is what makes your manager comfortable advocating for you when it comes to taking on new responsibilities, getting a promotion or a pay rise.
Tip 5. Be a problem-solver, not just a problem-reporter
A quick way to build credibility with your manager is to bring solutions, not just problems. When something goes wrong, or you’re facing a challenge, the instinct is often to escalate immediately. But arriving with “here’s a problem” and nothing else puts the entire burden on your manager.
Arriving with “here’s a problem, here’s how I’m thinking about it, and here are two options I see” is much better approach. It shows initiative, demonstrates your thinking, and makes your manager’s job easier. By coming with solutions, you are also showing that you have leadership potential.
Tip 6. Manage expectations actively
A lot of the frustration that builds in manager-employee relationships comes down to mismatched expectations. Your manager expects something by Thursday, and you’re planning to deliver it Monday. Your manager thinks the project is on track, and you’ve been struggling with a blocker for three days.
This gap in expectations may not be your fault, you may have a bad manager who doesn’t communicate well. But unfortunately, you have to work around that and help close the gaps.
Scope creep and timeline changes. If something is going to take longer than agreed communicate this early. A heads-up a week before a deadline is inconvenient, but a solution might be able to made, support added, or an extended deadline given. Missing the deadline with no warning creates a lack of trust, and most managers would far rather have the conversation early.
Ask clarifying questions upfront. Before starting a significant piece of work, make sure you understand the brief clearly. What does good look like? What’s the deadline? Who needs to be involved? What level of detail is expected? Getting these wrong and having to redo work is frustrating for both parties.
Be honest about capacity. If your plate is full and something new lands on it, say so. For example, “I can take this on, can we talk about what I should deprioritise?” Most managers don’t have full visibility of everything their direct reports are working on, and they can only help you if they know what’s there.
Close the loop. Most people are good at flagging issues and starting work but less consistent about letting their manager know when things are resolved, completed, or have landed well. Making a habit of closing loops, whether that’s confirming a task is done, sharing how a project was received, or following up on a risk that turned out to be fine, builds a picture of someone who is organised, reliable, and on top of their work. It’s a small behaviour with a disproportionate effect on how you’re perceived over time.
The managers who advocate for their direct reports are almost always the ones who feel well-informed, well-supported, and confident in what that person is doing. There are just a few simple shifts you can make to effectively manage up and help your manager advocate for you – communicate regularly and clearly, proactively share your work, reliably follow through, and invest in the relationship.
If you’re not sure where to start, the weekly update email is the single most practical first step.
For more on building a career with intention and getting the recognition your work deserves, read The 4×6 Method: Your Strategic Roadmap To Career Acceleration and How I Increased My Salary By 75% In 2.5 Years.
Continue Reading
- The #1 Simple Thing You Should Be Doing To Get A Promotion Why tracking your accomplishments consistently is the career move most people overlook
- How I Increased My Salary By 75% In 2.5 Years A practical look at what it actually takes to increase your earnings significantly
- Your Emails Are Undermining Your Authority (Here’s How To Fix Them) How to communicate with more authority and credibility in writing
- The Relationship Management Hack That Changed How I Network How to build and maintain the professional relationships that shape your career
- The 4×6 Method: Your Strategic Roadmap To Career Acceleration A structured framework for thinking about where you’re going and how to get there
Dive Deeper in the Members Library
Want practical tools to support your career visibility and development? Peer Suite members get exclusive access to the resource library, including:
- Own Your Year-End Review: Position Yourself for What You Want This practical webinar walks you through exactly how to prepare for your review, build a compelling case for yourself, and have the conversation with confidence.
- Professional Email Templates Collection templates for every professional scenario, including the weekly update email
- Coffee Meeting Guide and Conversation Starters practical questions to use in one-to-ones and stakeholder meetings
Plus workshops, guides, and tools to help you navigate every stage of your career.
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