"Managing up" refers to the practice of effectively communicating with and influencing your manager and other senior leaders. As a Change Manager, this is a critical skill for gaining support for your initiatives and advancing your career.
While the relationship between you, your manager and other senior stakeholders will be as unique as the people themselves, here are some quick pointers to help you establish the ability to work effectively with senior leaders.
Top Tips for Managing up as a new Change Manager
Understand Your Manager's Priorities: What are their goals and objectives? How can your work contribute to their success? For example, if your manager has been regularly emphasising the stakeholder experience in a particular department - start there by establishing relationships and doing some informal research.
Communicate Clearly and Concisely: Keep your manager informed of your progress, challenges, and successes. Be concise and to the point in your communications. If you're unsure of what your manager will be interested in knowing, try sending a regular email in brief bullet points that covers your key activities for the week. If they want to know more, they'll ask.
Provide Solutions, Not Just Problems: When you bring a problem to your manager, also suggest potential solutions. This can be as easy as a quick brainstorm, but it may take some work to clear your head first. If you're feeling anxious or worried about the problem, you may not be able to effectively analyse it until some detachment is achieved.
Be Proactive: Anticipate your manager's needs and take initiative. If your manager were building a brick wall, it might be useful to stand next to them and hand them the next brick. By thinking through your manager's key priorities, you may be able to find a way to simplify their process, or help out with their workload.
Be Respectful of Their Time: Schedule meetings efficiently and come prepared. If in doubt about how to prepare, review notes from previous sessions with your manager, and with any other senior leaders with whom they have regular dealings. Think about the hot topics of the week, and make notes about the status of your activities.
Seek Feedback Regularly: Ask your manager for feedback on your performance and identify areas for improvement. It's not always easy asking for honest feedback -and it's an art to choose which elements of feedback to take on board. It might help to keep in mind:
There's always room for improvement. Getting in the habit early in your career will help to 'de-sensitise' to hearing the specifics.
Unheard or unexplored feedback doesn't go away - listening to what people have to say may be enough to resolve any relationship tension and allow work to continue
Build Trust: Be reliable, honest, and transparent in your communications. There is a balance to be found in communicating with your manager. Pay attention to the cues and try to establish a rhythm of giving your manager the amount, frequency and type of communication they prioritise.
Present Data Effectively: Use data to support your recommendations and demonstrate the value of your work. Rumours often abound in change management so try to avoid assumptions and be specific. Where possible establish facts and stick to presenting those.
Say for example, you've heard that a stakeholder has concerns that the project will negatively impact a particular customer group. Before communicating this concern, establish the facts: who is the stakeholder, which customer group, what specific impact? Is it really a risk or just 'noise'? Once you've understood these facts, consider brainstorming with the stakeholder or a member of their team as to potential solutions.
Align with Their Style: Pay attention to your manager's communication style and adapt your approach accordingly. Some workplaces use the NLP categories of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic, other teams use Clifton Strengths, the DISC model, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. There are many tools to help you gauge and engage the style of others.
Be Patient: Building a strong relationship with your manager takes time. Allow the ebb and flow to occur and be ready to step up when your manager calls on you, even for small tasks. Establishing trust is a slow process of always being reliable and true to your word.
Agencia Change coaches new and established change practitioners to improve their practice of change management and change leadership. For more information, book a confidential intro session.
Wonderful information. Great points. Valuable information.