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Managing Up |Leila’s House of Corrections

Do you bombard your manager with questions the minute she walks in the door? Managing up is the ability to understand and appreciate your manager's roles, responsibilities and stresses. Find out how to balance that with getting the help you need.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

Speaker: Leila Bulling Towne, Executive Coach, The Bulling Towne Group

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Tags: Video, Corporate Communications, Marketing, best practices, manager, responsibility, questions, help, support, stress, managing

 
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    JO BO

    12/19/08 | Report as spam

    RE: Managing Up |Leila?s House of Corrections

    Boy Leila I wish I would have seen your video on this topic before I did what I did. I bombarded my manager with problems one day as soon as she came in the door one day. Instead of the listening ear I expected I was blasted with anger and frustration including having the F word yelled at me twice. This led to a later meeting with the big boss and he commenced to pick up where she left off. Even though I was on line with the reasons for the problems, I suffered beratement from them in front of my peers because of the way I handled it. I had to resign from all the damage that was done.

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Managing Up |Leila’s House of Corrections

Do you bombard your manager with questions the minute she walks in the door? Managing up is the ability to understand and appreciate your manager's roles, responsibilities and stresses. Find out how to balance that with getting the help you need.

If you have questions or suggestions for future video topics, Leila wants to hear from you.

As a manager, when you need help from YOUR manager, do you rush into her office the moment she opens her door? Do you bombard her with questions, details, and requests? If so, it s time to step back and think strategically about how to work with her.  Come on managers, it s time to learn how to manage up. 

Knowing how and when to manage up is an essential skill for any employee, regardless of his level in a company. Managing up is the ability to understand and appreciate your manager s role, responsibilities, and stresses and balance that with the help and support you need to get YOUR job done well.

Here are 3 practical tips on how to manage up in the right way. You can call them the 3 R s.

Tip 1: Have RESPECT

You re not in your manager s shoes, so you don t know all the pressures she is under. You don t even know all the projects on her plate. Therefore, develop an appreciation for her role and responsibilities. Start every encounter with her in a polite and non-judgmental way. Ambushing her, sending repeat requests for information, and saying,  Why haven t you gotten back to me?!  are all contrary to how you should behave.

Tip 2: Be RELEVANT

Make it easy for your manager to give you what you need. Be relevant in your request. Provide ONLY the pertinent information and explain how the help you need connects to the bigger picture. KEEP IT SHORT! She doesn t have time to connect all the dots do it for her!

Tip 3: Be REALISTIC

Ground your requests in realism. Are you asking for a reasonable amount of resources?  Are you being pragmatic when you ask for new laptops for your ENTIRE sales team or a 25% raise? What is your manager likely to approve or agree to?

If you try to influence your manager and you don t see immediate results, don t give up. Be resilient. Try again.

If you manage up gracefully and strategically, you will become the employee your manager depends on in a crisis because your requests are respectful, relevant, and realistic.