Manage Up, Manage Down, Manage All Around

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned was debunking the myth that management is primarily ‘managing down’. i.e a team of eight reporting to one individual, and that person is the only one responsible for managing.

Learning about: ‘Managing Up’ and ‘Managing All Around’, profoundly impacted the way I approached my work week.

Let’s break each of these down:

Managing Down

Congratulations, you’ve been promoted and given the privilege of leading serving a team. Yes, I said serving… because that’s exactly what it is. As a manager, your primary role and responsibility is to manage your team effectively to produce the best results possible. Proven by great leaders throughout history, when you ‘flip the pyramid’ and place yourself in a position to “serve” not to “manage”, you will produce the best results.

It may seem counterintuitive and paradoxical, but it’s true.

Think back to the best managers you’ve had:

They weren’t the ones yelling, stomping and screaming

They weren’t the ones using passive aggressive language when communicating

They were the ones that listened

They were the ones that took the time to understand you and offered the support that you needed to succeed.

We’ve all heard the quote:

“People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.”

Why is that true? The manager is the one responsible for shaping the employees view of the organization: You can reinforce it or destroy it.

If you are a manager; don’t be the reason someone quits. Adopt servant leadership, flip the pyramid and become effective at Managing Down.

Managing Up

I remember when this term was unfamiliar to me. It almost doesn’t make sense right….

“Uhhh excuse me? Manage up? No.... I just turn up and do my job so I can go home.”

Early my in career, that was my approach too. The truth is, the reason most managers have micromanagement tendencies and '‘get all up your business’ is because they legitimately don’t know the answers to the questions they’re asking.

Or said another way, the more you communicate, the more autonomy you have:

So what’s the lesson learned here? The more I over-communicate to my upline communicating progress, success, failure etc. The more autonomy is given in return.

“It is pardonable to be defeated, but never to be surprised.”
-Frederick the Great

Examples:

• If your manager knows you’re going to be late they won’t ask where you are

• If they know you’re falling behind on your number for the month but you’re working on a plan to get there they won’t ask for an end of day update

My CEO had this rule:

“If I’m asking the question, you’re already behind.”

So find out what matters to your boss, communicate it often and watch how ‘managing up’ restricts the constant need for them to ‘manage down’.

Managing All Around

There are few things more empowering than peer accountability in the workplace. It’s one thing when your manager asks you to do something (but they ask you to do stuff all the time so it’s easy to shrug that off right) but when there’s accountability at the PEER level. Now that’s a game changer.

No one likes letting the team down, or being the low performer, or at the bottom of the group.

A manager knows that a new hire will benchmark themselves to the lowest performer in the team; so a culture of team accountability, peer competition and encouragement is a powerful thing.

How is this displayed in practical terms? Well, gossip is common one. This is something that’s near impossible for a manager to shut down. They’re just not in the same circles and in the same room, so the narrative of the team is determined by the members within the team not anyone else.

Effective ‘managing all around’ is not waiting to be told by your boss to shut down gossip, but taking responsibility for your part to create a better work environment by taking charge without permission.

So what’s the benefit in all of this for you?

I have this mantra (that I’m sure was stolen from somewhere) leadership is taking charge without waiting for the promotion with the fancy title, the swanky office and bigger salary. So if your boss has an open manager role, they are going to look across the team and choose the person who is CURRENTLY exhibiting those activities as a part of their daily work not the one that has the POTENTIAL to grow into them.

What’s currently in your purview that you can change for the better without negatively impacting your current role. Last year it took 100% of your capacity to do your job, this is year maybe it’s 90%. What are you doing with that extra 10%.

Use it to manage all around.

Thanks for reading,
Matt T