Proving yourself without overstepping: Managing up early in your career

By Toni Frana, Career Expert for Zety.com 

You’ve landed your first job and are excited to begin your career. You are looking forward to making a good impression and showing how capable you are, but you don’t want to be micromanaged. This is where effectively managing up can make a significant difference in your career.

When you manage up, you make a commitment to learn and understand your manager’s goals, communication style, and priorities, giving you the tools and information you need to help them succeed while also growing autonomy in your own role. Learning to manage up helps you build credibility and trust and reduces micromanagement while setting yourself up for long-term career success. 

Why Managing Up Matters Early in Your Career

Early career professionals often focus on “doing the work” which is the right idea, but not at the expense of paying attention to relationship dynamics. Building relationships is an integral part of your job and career development. As a student, you were graded on your assignments and exams, but in the workforce, managers evaluate other skills like initiative, reliability, and communication. 

Employers are very interested in these skills, as they directly impact the people dynamics at an organization. Zety.com, a go to source for resume templates, analyzed user data to uncover why this matters. By managing up, it shows others you are a mature and self-aware person. Your boss knows they can trust you and the work you do. Other benefits include: 

• Gaining more freedom and trust faster
• Being viewed as proactive and not passive
• Reducing frustration and misunderstanding 

Some people are uncomfortable managing up because they feel like it is a way to tell your boss what to do. That’s not true, in fact, managing up isn’t about control at all. It’s about collaboration and coming to a shared understanding to reach important goals and objectives. 

Here are 5 steps to help you incorporate this practice into your professional life: 

Step 1: Understand Your Manager’s Goals and Working Style 

With any new relationship, initially it’s about getting to know one another, and at work, it isn’t any different. In fact, it is a critical piece of the puzzle. As you start a new role, you want to be proactively communicating with your boss and your team. You want to learn what your manager’s goals and working style are. In other words, what will success look like for your manager? To uncover this, there are a few key questions you can consider asking your manger: 

• What’s most important to you in this role or project?
• How would you like me to communicate milestones with you? 
• What are your top priorities for the team this quarter?

Hopefully you have a consistent cadence of meeting with your manager so you can revisit these questions as projects and goals shift. As part of your interactions with your manager, you should pay attention to how he or she communicates with you and the team. Do you find updates are brief, or is reporting very detailed? Is your manager someone who likes spontaneous or scheduled meetings? 

Knowing the above will help you match your manager’s style while staying authentic to yourself. As you show your ability to adapt and be flexible, you are also demonstrating your emotional intelligence which is a sought after skill in today’s professional world. 

A new hire who notices their manager asks detailed questions in meetings and sends very detailed communication as well, can respond to their manager’s request for information in the same way. Rather than providing brief summaries, anticipate the type of questions your manager may ask, and be proactive about answering them early and often. Think about and anticipate what your manager may need before they ask you, and you will impress your manager and others on the team. 

Step 2: Establish Credibility and Reliability Early

Building credibility is more than being competent, building credibility also takes consistency. 

Some helpful ways to establish yourself as a credible employee:

• Meet deadlines and follow through on small commitments
• Ask clarifying questions early to avoid rework later
• Take accountability and own any mistakes and show how you’ll prevent them next time

Also, being proactive and updating your boss ahead of them asking for anything will reduce the urge for micromanagement. Furthermore, and over time, these habits signal that you are a dependable person and don’t need to be checked on constantly. 

Step 3: Demonstrate You Can Work Autonomously 

Autonomy doesn’t mean you don’t need or want oversight, rather, it helps your manager free up some of their time when they are clear that you can handle the tasks and priorities at hand. 

When aiming for more autonomy, you could say something like: “I’ve handled similar reports before, would you be comfortable if I work on this one from start to finish? I’ll reach out ahead of the deadline with any questions or issues I’m unsure of.” 

If you’ve already been working to build your relationship with your manager, making a request like this will help to gradually widen the scope of the work you do, while not moving too far too fast. 

Step 4: Managing Micromanagement

Always assume good intent if you are being micromanaged. Many times a manager is curious about how things are going and they are hoping for high-quality output, not trying to control what you do and how you do it. 

Taking care to use language that works to build trust rather than responding defensively when you feel you are being micromanged is helpful. For example, if you have a weekly report due, and your manager is checking in for information more frequently, you could simply ask: Would it be helpful if I shared updates twice a week instead of on Fridays so you can see how things are going? It’s possible your manager is being asked for information from their own manager, and tweaking the process for your weekly report to a twice weekly reporting structure would make a big difference. 

It’s easy to get defensive when you feel like someone is looking over your shoulder and micromanaging you. Try to focus on results and accountability, rather than someone’s personal preference. It’s also helpful to take a pause when you notice yourself getting tense or frustrated about micromanagement and really evaluate what led to the feeling. Recognizing what triggers your frustration will help you manage it as you continue to grow in your career. 

Step 5: Keep Communication Transparent and Upward 

Proactive and ongoing communication is a key measure of success in any job, especially when trying to manage up. It isn’t something that you do once and move on. This is something that you want to continually be practicing throughout your career. As has been mentioned, regular check-ins are an important part of this. Make sure these are scheduled regularly so you have an opportunity to clarify expectations, share wins, and identify challenges on an ongoing basis. 

These check-ins also help you both align on goals, and allow you to use the time to demonstrate your strategic thinking beyond your role. The more you are able to show your manager you see the big picture, the more your manager will trust your judgement. 

Managing up early on in your career means understanding your boss, working to earn trust, and communicating proactively and strategically. Mastering this skill early will help accelerate your career growth, too. It’s how interns become full-time hires and entry-level employees become leaders. When you learn to do this, you really set yourself apart as someone who is ready for growth!