How to Manage Up at Work: What High Performers Do Differently
I spent most of my career actively avoiding office politics.
For a long time I put managing up in the same category. It felt transactional. Performative. The kind of thing people did when they weren't good enough to get ahead on merit alone.
Then I spent nearly two decades recruiting senior HR professionals across Asia.
And I started noticing a pattern that changed how I thought about it entirely.
The professionals who made it from HR Manager to HR Director and eventually to VP and Chief People Officer, weren't always the most technically skilled people I interviewed. Some of the most capable HR practitioners I've ever spoken to are still sitting in the same level of role they were in eight years ago.
What separated the ones who broke through wasn't talent.
It was how they managed their relationship with the person above them.
Not through flattery. Not through politics. But by genuinely understanding what their leader needed and going and solving it before anyone had to ask.
According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace report, managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement. The relationship you have with your manager shapes almost everything about your experience at work your visibility, your development, and ultimately where your career goes next.
Most professionals treat that relationship as something that happens to them.
The ones who progress treat it as something they actively shape.
What Managing Up Actually Means and Why Most People Get It Wrong
Let me be clear about what I'm not talking about.
I'm not talking about agreeing with everything your boss says or making yourself visible at the expense of the people around you. I've seen that version of managing up play out throughout my career and it almost always ends badly, for the individual, for the team, and for the culture.
What I am talking about is taking ownership of the most important professional relationship you have rather than leaving it entirely to chance.
Your manager is carrying more than you can see. According to Culture Amp research, only 62% of managers say their workload feels reasonable. They're managing upwards themselves, navigating competing priorities, and trying to keep their team moving in the right direction simultaneously.
Most employees wait to be told what matters most.
The professionals who manage up well figure it out and then go and solve it.
How to Manage Up at Work: Understand What Your Manager Actually Needs From You
One of the clearest signals I look for when interviewing HR professionals is how well they understand the person above them.
I ask them about the HR strategy. They usually answer well. Then I ask what's most important to their HR Director right now and what they've personally contributed to that. The ones who answer that second question fluently are almost always the ones progressing. The ones who struggle, even if technically excellent tend to have a pattern of sideways moves. Same level, different company, repeat.
It's not a coincidence.
For HR professionals specifically, this goes one level deeper. Your manager doesn't just need you to understand their priorities. They need you to be close enough to the business to bring them intelligence they can't easily access themselves. What's really going on in the leadership team. Where the friction is. What the business is worried about hasn't made it into the official narrative yet.
The HR professionals who accelerate their careers aren't just good at HR. They're the ones their VP turns to because they know what's actually happening in the business and bring that back in a way that keeps their leader informed, prepared and never caught off guard.
Start by getting clear on two questions and making sure your answers and your manager's actually align.
What does success look like for me in this role? And what does success look like for my manager right now?
If you don't know the answer to both, ask in your next one-on-one. Then keep asking. Business priorities shift. What your manager is accountable for this quarter may look very different from six months ago.
How to Communicate With Your Manager in a Way That Builds Trust
In nearly two decades of recruiting, one of the clearest differences I see between professionals who progress and those who plateau is how deliberately they communicate upwards.
Never let your manager be surprised. The single thing that frustrates managers most isn't missed deadlines or difficult problems, it's finding out about them too late. The moment you sense something is going off track, say something. Protecting your manager from uncomfortable information isn't a kindness. It's a liability.
Calibrate to their style. Some managers want to be across everything. Others want headlines only. Observe what works rather than defaulting to your own preference. If your manager is highly involved, stay a few steps ahead. If they're more hands-off, focus your time together on the challenges where you genuinely need their support.
Separate your requests from your updates. Burying an ask inside a general update almost always means it gets missed. Requests need their own format, shorter, clearer, and explicit about exactly what you need.
How to Make Your Impact Visible Without Selling Yourself
I want to come back to a candidate I placed early in my career, an HR Manager whose story has stayed with me.
His VP of HR had a persistent problem. Turnover in the Head of HR role in the Philippines office. The CEO was unhappy. Nobody had a clear answer for why it kept happening.
This HR Manager volunteered to fly out and find out.
Nobody asked him to. It wasn't his responsibility. But he understood this was the thing keeping his VP up at night and he went and solved it.
What he found was a Director who was deeply difficult to work with. He came back with a clear diagnosis and a proposed path forward. His VP started coaching the Director and based entirely on the proactiveness he'd shown, asked this HR Manager to step in as Interim Head of HR. To business partner the Director, get him onside, and train his permanent replacement.
That one decision changed the trajectory of his career.
He didn't do it to be seen. He did it because he understood what mattered most to the person above him.
That's what making your impact visible looks like at this level. Not self-promotion. Results your manager couldn't have achieved without you.
Connect your work to outcomes, not activities. There's a significant difference between telling your manager you launched a new onboarding programme and telling them it reduced time-to-competency by 20%. One is an update. The other is a business result.
Share what your manager can't see. You're closer to the work, the team and the friction that never makes it into the weekly report. Sharing that perspective clearly and without drama positions you as someone whose view is worth seeking out.
When Managing Up Isn't Enough and What to Do Next
Managing up works when the relationship is fundamentally viable.
But not every manager is the right person. Throughout my career I've worked with candidates who were stuck not because they weren't good enough, but because they were working for someone who felt threatened by strong performers. Who wanted agreement rather than challenge.
You can still do exceptional work in that environment. Strong performance creates credibility with the wider organisation credibility that eventually exists independently of what one manager thinks of you.
But there's a limit to how long that remains sustainable.
Know when the ceiling is fixed. Some managers will never create the conditions for your progression. If you've managed the relationship thoughtfully, delivered the results, and nothing has changed, that's information worth acting on.
Build relationships beyond your manager. The professionals who navigate difficult managers most effectively haven't put all their eggs in one basket. They have sponsors in the organisation, people who advocate for them when they're not in the room.
Know when to leave. Staying under an impossible manager until they drain the confidence out of you is not a strategy.
Conclusion
After nearly two decades of placing senior leaders across Asia, the professionals who make it from Manager to Director to VP aren't always the most technically skilled people I've interviewed.
They're the ones who understood that their relationship with the person above them wasn't something that happened to them.
It was something they actively shaped.
If you found this useful, you may also find these helpful. The Mid-Career Plateau: Why Your Career Has Stalled and What to Do Next explores what happens when progression slows. How to Ask for a Promotion and Actually Get One covers how to make the business case for your next step. And 7 Ways to Build Career Visibility Without Bragging helps you get visibility with the leadership team
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