A big part of middle leadership is being able to manage those above you as well as those below. But how can you ensure that your team’s concerns are listened to and you get the support you need? And how can you balance the priorities and interests of the different leaders above you?
The lowdown
In an ideal world, all managers and leaders would instinctively have the right level of oversight and engagement to make their teams feel appropriately seen and understood. In reality, alas, that is not always the case. And so there is value in mastering the subtle art of managing up.
It’s not about bossing your boss around, or currying favour for special treatment, but building a strong, collaborative relationship that benefits everyone, understanding your manager’s goals and priorities, and how your team’s work fits into that.
What we know about what works
Managing up can be a tricky business, explains Dr Helen Hughes, associate professor and behaviour lab director at the University of Leeds Business School. When done well, it can facilitate improved conversations, she says, but “done clumsily, it can be misperceived as arrogance”.
“It’s important to approach this kind of practice without too much cynicism,” she continues, “and with the aim of securing clarity and transparency, for example in communication or expectations”.
For instance, she says, you may feel that a project is progressing too slowly, or that you need something specific to happen to enable your work. When speaking to managers about it, making your assumptions and associated action clear is vital, such as stating: “I haven’t heard back from you on X, so I’ve taken (or haven’t taken) the following action…”
“It might be that you need to connect several of your seniors to enable this clarification, and that’s also OK,” Hughes says. “In each case, though, it is important that you act in a way that is transparent and has integrity; don’t play people off against one another, or try to manipulate interactions between seniors - the divide-and-conquer approach rarely works. Most people will appreciate you being explicit about your needs if you do so in a way that is straightforward and clear.
“Some people will not respond well to being managed by their subordinates, but others will appreciate your steer, and it is worth you getting to know the characters of those around you so that you can understand the difference,” she says.
Hughes also highlights some troubling research findings around gender bias in the process of managing up, in which male staff members can be perceived as “effective workers”, while women can be seen as “bossy or domineering”.
“This shouldn’t dissuade someone from doing it, but is worth thinking about and calling out double standards, if necessary,” she says.
You should also have a clear goal and strategy, she continues, so that you don’t inadvertently create more work for yourself. Likewise, it is important to make managing up as easy as possible: small nudges such as offering to arrange a meeting that you think needs to happen, or offering a summary of actions, “can help you manage up more easily”.
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“It comes back to attaining clarity and expectations,” Hughes continues. “It is easier to manage time and priorities if those you report to are clear about what is being asked of you by your collective seniors and thus how these tasks and priorities relate to one another.
“Ensuring this is visible to everyone can be helpful. If you need a meeting between different leaders to facilitate compromise, then you can help nudge the process by organising that.”
Finally, she concludes, ensure that “your team knows that you are an advocate for their needs and serve as a broker between them and the senior leadership team”.
Hughes adds: “You should tell your team how you are taking action to advocate for them - for example, that you will raise an issue at a forthcoming meeting with SLT - and then ensure you debrief and follow up on these things so your team doesn’t need to manage you!”
The experienced leader view
Jon Hutchinson is director of curriculum and teacher development at the Reach Foundation. He writes:
Managing up is the generally accepted euphemism in schools for telling your line manager that they’re being a plonker in a way that doesn’t get you fired.
As a middle leader, this can be particularly difficult as you have torn allegiances. Do you share in the collective responsibility of senior leadership, owning any directives made from above? Or are you there to represent and lobby for your team and area of responsibility?
The answer to both questions, unfortunately, is yes.
An often missed but important consideration about managing up is not what or how (although they are both important), but who. If you have a particular grievance - or some key advice - that senior leaders need to hear, don’t go over someone’s head unless absolutely necessary.
It’s important to respect the chain of command. Just as it would hugely undermine (and likely annoy) you if one of your team went to your headteacher with something that was bothering them, you should always raise issues first with your line manager.
Try and do this in a way that is constructive, by offering relevant context that senior leaders may not currently have, or providing judgements about the pros and cons of a proposed new initiative. Wait until you have collected a sufficient range of views and thought about how you will present a solution-focused pitch.
For example: “I know that you’re committed to launching instructional coaching next term, and I’m really excited about it. But I did want to let you know that some of the team are feeling apprehensive about this after bad experiences with judgemental lesson observations in the past. I think that there’s probably some more work to do in terms of putting people’s minds at ease about how low stakes this will be, and maybe think about making it optional in the first phase.”
Remember, too, that senior leaders are humans just like you. I remember complaining about a headteacher in the pub one Friday night before a more experienced colleague gently chastised me: “Remember that you’ve never sat in the chair, Jon.”
It put me back in my box, and rightly so. Senior leaders are trying to make the best decisions for the school with the information that they have available. It is your job to furnish them with relevant information to make those decisions, but remember that you don’t have to balance them with dozens of competing goals, requests and restrictions.
This means that you should always approach a moment of managing up with due humility and charity. A revolutionary zeal may play well with your team, but firing off emails to SLT every time you hear a gripe or grumble is unlikely to be effective or appreciated.
Instead, you’ll need to exercise judgement around what you can solve yourself, what can wait, what needs to be taken to your line manager and how it is presented.
