Managing up is just as important as managing down

While managers are primarily responsible for managing their employees, it is clear that the relationship they have with their own boss is often an indicator of their overall success and happiness.

According to the Harvard Business Review, in fact, studies show that employee engagement is tightly correlated with the overall effectiveness of their direct supervisor and improving this metric leads to increased customer satisfaction, revenue, and even happier employees.

While not every boss is a shining example of management, deploying a strategy of ‘managing up’ will allow an employee to make the best of any relationship to improve their situation. Forbes Magazine explains two main principles behind managing up: communicating correctly and learning their agenda.

To communicate clearly with a boss, it is crucial to determine their communication style and how they prefer to interact with others. Introverted and extroverted leaders, for example, will approach these things very differently from one another. An introverted leader will generally prefer reading material ahead of time and planning in advance for meetings or statements while an extrovert will likely respond off-the-cuff and enjoy talking through an issue rather than analyzing it on their own.

Knowing the boss’s agenda is incredibly important because it can allow an employee to help them meet their goals or solve a problem. The agenda can be discussed formally during a planning session or more informally as the two are getting to know one another. This behavior shows a boss that not only are you interested in taking care of your own business and the company, but also satisfying their needs.

In addition to establishing this initial foundation, Business News Daily suggests a few best practices to keep things moving in the right direction such as providing regular feedback and updates to ensure the boss knows things are running smoothly. Similarly, bring leadership behaviors to the forefront by utilizing the team to deliver solutions to problems and add value to the business rather than just highlighting issues for the boss to worry about fixing on their own.