Managing Up: Leading Your Relationship with Those Above You

Managing up — working effectively with your boss, CEO, or board — is an underrated leadership skill that shapes your effectiveness and impact. Here is what it involves.

What managing up means

Managing up means proactively working to build an effective, productive relationship with those above you — your manager, CEO, or board — rather than passively reacting to them. It is about understanding what they need, communicating well, and building a relationship that helps you do your job, helps them, and serves the business. Far from politics or sycophancy, good managing up is a legitimate and valuable skill: making the important relationship with those you report to work well, which materially affects a leader's effectiveness and impact.

Understand their priorities and style

A foundation of managing up is genuinely understanding those above you — their priorities, pressures, goals, and how they like to work and communicate. Understanding what matters to your boss or board, and adapting how you engage to work well with them, makes the relationship far more effective. Leaders who take the time to understand the priorities and preferences of those above them, and align and communicate accordingly, build stronger, more productive relationships than those who don't consider these things at all.

Communicate proactively

Managing up well means communicating proactively and effectively — keeping those above you appropriately informed, raising issues early, and giving them what they need to support you and the business, without surprises. Proactive, clear communication builds confidence and reduces friction; poor or reactive communication breeds distrust and frustration. Getting the communication right — proactive, honest, appropriately detailed, and no unpleasant surprises — is central to managing up, because much of the relationship runs on how well a leader keeps those above them informed and engaged.

Build trust and keep integrity

Ultimately managing up rests on building genuine trust and credibility — delivering reliably, being honest, and demonstrating competence and good faith — and doing all of it with integrity. Managing up is not about telling people what they want to hear or playing politics; it is about a genuine, honest, effective relationship built on trust. Leaders who manage up with integrity strengthen their effectiveness and standing; those who do it manipulatively undermine themselves. Doing it authentically and well is a valuable and legitimate leadership skill.

Frequently asked questions

What does managing up mean?

Working effectively and proactively with those above you — your boss, CEO, or board — to build a strong, productive relationship that helps you, them, and the business. It's a legitimate leadership skill, not politics: understanding their priorities, communicating well, and building genuine trust.

How do you manage up well?

Understand the priorities and working style of those above you, communicate proactively and honestly (no surprises), build genuine trust and credibility through reliable delivery, and do it all with integrity — making the important relationship with those you report to work well.

Related: Building Trust as a Leader · How a CEO Should Work With Their Board · Emotional Intelligence in Leadership