Managing Up Is a Bridge Worth Building

Let’s name it. The term “managing up” makes many leaders squirm. It sounds slippery, like it’s about playing a game rather than doing good work. And depending on your professional baggage, it might conjure memories of performative praise, constant head-nodding, or colleagues who seemed to spend more time building political capital than building teams.

But if you’re in a leadership role anywhere beneath the top seat, you are managing up already, whether you call it that or not.

And when done well, managing up is not about flattery or approval-seeking. It’s a core leadership skill. It’s about alignment. It’s about shared clarity. It’s about helping the people above you succeed in ways that enable your team and the whole organization to thrive.

Here’s the reframing: managing up is not a power play. It’s a clarity practice. And learning to do it well is what separates competent managers from truly strategic leaders.

Passive Leadership Doesn’t Scale

When we don’t manage up intentionally, we tend to manage around. That might look like translating unclear direction into rushed action, or holding onto feedback because we’re not sure how it will land. Or worse, nodding along in agreement while planning to course-correct later when no one’s watching.

This kind of passivity often stems from discomfort with hierarchy. And that’s fair. A lot of professionals have been trained (formally or informally) to avoid looking like they’re challenging authority. But silence and obedience aren’t neutral. They create ambiguity for teams and decision-makers alike.

Imagine this: a vice president casually mentions wanting to “think bigger” in the next fiscal year. A mid-level leader, wanting to be helpful, immediately shifts their team’s planning documents toward expansion. No clarification. No discussion. A few weeks later, the VP is confused about why the team has suddenly gone off-script. Resources are misaligned, timelines are crunched, and the trust? A little bit dented.

Managing up would have meant asking, “When you say ‘think bigger,’ are you envisioning new programs, deeper impact, or something else?” That simple act of clarifying could have saved weeks of misalignment.

When leaders don’t ask, translate, or push back, the cost is real. Projects stall, priorities drift, and teams begin to feel like they’re paddling without a rudder. Managing up is how you reset the compass.

What Managing Up Actually Looks Like

If you strip away the reputation, managing up is about assuming the role your senior leader needs, not just the role listed in your job description. That might sound like extra work. But in reality, it’s about leaning into the posture that helps the entire system function more effectively.

Think of it in three roles:

The Clarifier

This leader brings specificity to ambiguity. They ask the uncomfortable but necessary questions, like:

• What does success look like for this?

• Is this a top-three priority, or a nice-to-have?

• How does this fit into our current bandwidth?

Clarifiers don’t challenge authority. They support it by ensuring everyone is on the same page - giving the senior leader the gift of being understood.

The Translator

Translators sit between strategy and execution. They make sure messaging aligns with what teams can actually do. They help anticipate how a message from above will land and adjust communication to reduce confusion or unintended friction.

If the senior leader says, “We need to be agile,” which triggers panic among directors interpreting it as “cut everything,” the translator steps in and contextualizes. They might say, “Here’s how I’d explain this shift to our staff. Does that feel aligned with what you meant?”

The Challenger

Sometimes, the most helpful thing a leader can do is speak up. Not rudely. Not recklessly. But with the kind of thoughtful candor that earns long-term trust. Challengers ask hard questions when others stay quiet. They surface risks, name elephants, and offer a respectful “no” when alignment truly isn’t there.

The key is not living in any one of these postures full-time. Strategic leaders know how to read the moment. Sometimes your senior leader needs clarity. Other times, they need a mirror. The art is in discerning which one to bring forward and when.

Supporting Without Shrinking

Let’s pause here. Because managing up without losing yourself is not always simple. Especially if you’ve been socialized, trained, or rewarded for deference.

There’s a difference between being supportive and being silent. Between being adaptive and being invisible. And a lot of leaders, especially those navigating dominant culture spaces from the margins, carry extra risk when they speak up or push back.

So let’s be clear. Managing up should never mean contorting yourself or abandoning your values. It should mean making sure you’re being the kind of partner your senior leader actually needs, and helping them be better too.

Support without shrinking looks like:

• Offering a competing recommendation when it’s rooted in better outcomes

• Asking for clarification when direction is vague

• Giving honest feedback when something isn’t landing

• Saying “I need to name a concern before we move forward” without apology

You’re not undercutting your leader when you do these things. You’re building trust through truth.

Buffer, Bridge, or Boldly Escalate? Know When and How to Act

There’s no script for every situation. But here’s a quick mental model you can use when you’re unsure what managing up looks like in a specific moment.

Ask yourself:

• Is this a misunderstanding, or a deeper misalignment?

• Does this need translation or open discussion?

• Who will feel the impact of this most if I stay silent?

Let’s say your senior leader gives direction in a well-intentioned meeting but is poorly received by the team. You’re watching morale dip in real time. In your next meeting you could do one of the following: 

If it’s a misunderstanding, you might ask for clarification and help everyone reframe.

If it’s a misalignment, you might surface it gently: “I think there may be a disconnect in how this was heard. Can we talk through how this aligns with what we’ve been saying over the past month?”

And if it’s causing real damage, you may need to escalate. That doesn’t mean tattling. It means saying, “I want to be transparent about what I’m seeing and what I think might help us move forward with less resistance.”

When you know how to shift between buffering, bridging, and bold escalation, you become a stabilizer. Not someone who just absorbs tension, but someone who helps resolve it.

Say This, Not That: Language That Builds Trust Upward

Here’s the good news. You don’t have to have a script for every difficult conversation. But a few well-crafted phrases can help you manage up with clarity and care.

Try:

• “Before I move forward, I’d love to make sure we’re fully aligned on priorities.”

• “Here’s how I think this might be interpreted by the team. Want to check that together?”

• “Would it be helpful if I flagged what I think might get in the way of smooth execution?”

• “I want to make sure I’m representing your intent accurately when I pass this along. Here’s how I plan to frame it.”

• “Can I offer a perspective on how this is being experienced? I think it might help.”

Avoid anything that sounds like passive resistance (“Well, if that’s what you want…”) or vague disagreement (“I just feel like this might not work”). Keep it grounded in outcomes, shared goals, and care for the work.

Try This: A Thought Partnership Inventory

Grab a piece of paper, your notes app, or the back of your notebook from that last leadership retreat.

Reflect on the following:

What are your senior leaders’ current top priorities?

What patterns have you noticed in what they tend to miss or overlook?

Where have you held back from offering a dissenting view?

What’s one decision or conversation this month that would benefit from more clarity or upstream support?

Treat this as leadership prep, not critique. You’re not listing complaints. You’re mapping opportunities for partnership.

Managing Up is Strategic Leadership, Not Organizational Flattery

Let’s stop pretending that managing up is some sort of extracurricular. It’s leadership. Especially in systems where complexity, speed, and ambiguity are the norm.

When you manage up with intention, you create clarity for your team, build trust across reporting lines, and model the kind of communication that turns hierarchy into alignment.

It’s not about being political. It’s about being useful.

So the next time someone rolls their eyes at the idea of managing up, feel free to gently reframe. You’re not kissing up. You’re leading sideways and upward with just as much purpose as you lead downward.

And that’s the kind of leadership that moves organizations forward.