Overlooked Business Skills: Managing Up

There are a number of critical business skills that are all too often overlooked in school, training, and in practice. People know when others are good at their jobs, but often can not explain why. Each Monday I will tackle one of these skills. This week: Managing up.

Everyone can spot a good manager when they have one. Someone who gives support and guidance, but also enough room for someone to do their job. But what, in a manager's view, makes someone good to work with? Besides producing quality work, a manager is looking for a team member who is independent, but communicates risks, success, progress, and even tasks the manager when appropriate. Let's look at each of these traits individually:
Independent: A manager needs to know that their team members can be given instruction and that the work will be done with minimum oversight. So, when you get the assignment, ask questions to make sure you understand what your manager is looking for. Don't be afraid to ask about timeline, length, format, content, themes, and who to go to for more information. If you are clear on your assignment, but unclear how to accomplish it, do some research. Google, company intranet, coworkers, your network, are all places that you should research before reaching back to your manager for additional guidance. Make sure you have a rough draft and it looks like you have put some effort into it before you reach back so that your manager can give you more information and put you back on the right track, if needed.
Communication: Communicating progress comes pretty naturally to most of us. "You gave me 3 things to do this week, I'm done with 2 and plan to have a draft of the third to you tomorrow." However, managers are also looking for your insight on successes and risks, since you are closer to the actual work than they are. Managers want good news to deliver up their chain, so don't hold back if something is going well. And no manager wants to be surprised that something is going wrong. Maintain a list of risks, their impact, likelihood, and mitigation steps. Report on this list regularly--you'll looked plugged in, your manager will be prepared, and many risks can be headed off before they become issues just by letting the right people know about them.
Tasking up: This is a little tricky, but crucial to a strong working relationship with your manager. You need to task your manager when either you can't do your job without assistance or a risk can be averted with direct effort on their end. The key to tasking up is being results oriented and specific. When discussing challenges, adopt a collaborative to-do list approach. Outline the things that you can and will do, and areas that you can not influence. Usually your manager will volunteer. If they don't, ask politely for them to do a specific task. "OK, I'll work late tonight to get you a draft to review in the morning. Tom, can you talk to Vivian about the possibility of extending our deadline?" is appropriate; "I don't know how this is going to get done by 5pm" is not. Done correctly, a manager will not even realize that you are tasking them.