Managing up is the practice of intentionally shaping your relationship with your manager rather than passively experiencing it. It is one of the most valuable and least taught career skills — and it is especially important when your manager is difficult, because in that situation the relationship will not improve on its own.

What Managing Up Actually Means

Managing up is not manipulation, and it is not sycophancy. It is understanding what your manager needs — the pressures they are under, the problems they are trying to solve, their preferred communication style, their values and priorities — and adapting your approach to work effectively within that reality.

That does not mean pretending you do not have your own needs or priorities. It means meeting your manager where they are rather than requiring them to meet you where you are, which is unlikely to happen.

Start by Understanding What Your Manager Actually Cares About

Before you can manage up effectively, you need an accurate picture of what your manager is dealing with. Some questions worth thinking through:

• What are the biggest pressures on my manager right now — from their own manager, from the business, from the team?

• What does success look like for them in their role?

• What problems do they most want their team to solve so they do not have to?

• What communication style do they respond to best — detailed or headline, written or verbal, scheduled or real-time?

Use Blomma to build out this picture explicitly. The more accurately you understand your manager’s reality, the better equipped you are to navigate it.

With a Difficult Manager: Name the Specific Problem

“Difficult manager” covers a wide range of situations. The response depends significantly on what kind of difficult you are dealing with:

• Micromanager: Give more information proactively than they need to feel comfortable. Reduce their anxiety by making your work visible before they ask to see it.

• Conflict-avoidant: You will need to bring things to them explicitly and create safe conditions for honest conversation, rather than waiting for them to raise issues.

• Credit-taker: Document your contributions proactively. Copy relevant stakeholders on significant updates. Build relationships with people beyond your manager who can see your work.

• Inconsistent: Find ways to get things in writing. Confirm decisions in follow-up emails. Create your own clarity when theirs is absent.

• Abrasive: Depersonalize where possible. Focus on the content of feedback, not the delivery. And consider whether the environment is actually sustainable.

Communicate in Their Language, Not Yours

The most common managing up mistake is communicating the way that makes sense to you rather than the way that makes sense to your manager. Some managers want detailed updates; others want headlines. Some want to be included early in the thinking; others want to see a complete proposal. Some prefer email; others prefer a quick conversation.

Observe how your manager communicates with the people they work with best — and adapt accordingly.

Know the Limits

Managing up has limits. There are managers whose behaviour is genuinely not your responsibility to fix: those who are abusive, those who are systematically undermining you, those whose behaviour crosses ethical lines. In those situations, the right interventions involve HR, escalation, or departure — not more sophisticated managing up.

Blomma can help you think through where you are in this spectrum: is this a manageable situation with a difficult person, or is it a genuinely broken one?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it possible to manage up without your manager knowing?

The most effective managing up is not covert. It is a thoughtful adaptation to the reality of the relationship. Most good managers, if they could observe it, would respond positively to someone who genuinely tries to understand and work with their pressures rather than against them.

What if my manager does not seem interested in my success?

Managers who are indifferent to their people’s development are more common than they should be. The response is usually to create your own visibility with people beyond your manager, find advocates elsewhere in the organization, and assess honestly whether this environment has a future for you.

Can managing up repair a relationship that has already gone wrong?

Sometimes. If the deterioration was driven by misunderstanding, poor communication, or a specific incident, intentional managing up can rebuild trust over time. If the dynamic is more fundamental — a genuine personality clash or a manager who has made up their mind about you — the window for repair is narrower.

How do I manage up with a manager who is new and still finding their feet?

Be a reliable source of context about how the team works, what has been tried before, and what the stakeholder landscape looks like. New managers value people who make their orientation easier without being threatening. That investment tends to pay back significantly.

Should I bring up managing up tactics directly with my manager?

Not by name — that is likely to feel strange. But the underlying conversation — “I want to make sure I am working in the way that is most useful for you, can we talk about how you prefer to communicate and be updated?” — is entirely reasonable and often very well received.