The Life-Changing Magic of Managing Up: A Summary
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey of exploring the five key strategies of the Life-Changing Magic of Managing Up. Each of these strategies come from my direct lived experience, and I wanted to share them in hopes it would spark conversations, ideas, and be useful to you as you grow and develop both as a leader and as a team member.
In the spirit of putting it all together, I wanted to write one final post to encapsulate every strategy, and as I got to writing and thinking, I realized that a picture can be worth a thousand words. So I put together the diagram below to help jog your memory on each of the five strategies.
Respond. Recall that there are implied messages in responsiveness- the sooner you reply to a message or a request, the more importance you are attributing to it. You don’t need to reply instantly all the time, and you don’t need to have a full answer, either. As you build your habit of responding quickly, you will build the trust of your leader(s).
Close Loops. Leaders are busy, and may not even remember asking you to do something in the first place. Becoming an expert at closing loops, and communicating that something is done will help you become a person your boss can count on.
Send Status Reports. They don’t have to be long or fancy, but providing your leader insight into what you’ve done, how you’re currently doing, and what you are going to tackle next is a powerful and thoughtful way to let your leader(s) know exactly what you are up to.
Keep Your Commitments. When done well, this strategy builds on each of the ones before. The main idea here is to minimize surprises, and ensure your leaders can trust that when you say you’ll do something, it will get done.
Dedicate Yourself to Their Success. Perhaps counter-intuitive at first, but a powerful strategy that will help you become a go-to person in your leaders’ eyes. Asking what you can do to help, volunteering for opportunities, bringing solutions to problems and engaging fully in all you do are great ways to dedicate yourself to ensuring the success of your team and your team’s leaders.
I hope that you’ve found something useful within this blog series, and that you can use these strategies to spark some magic in your relationships at work. I’ve found them each to be game-changers in my own professional career, and in sharing them with you, I hope to widely spread the life-changing magic of managing up!
Final Challenge: Leave a Comment
Tell me what you think! You’ve seen every strategy, and maybe even tried out one or two of them.... How did it go? What do you think? Drop a comment on my blog page and let me know your thoughts and reactions!