Managing Up
Working with your manager on purpose: keeping them informed, raising risks early, disagreeing well, and asking for the support and growth you need.
Overview
Managing up means working with your manager deliberately, so that both of you, and the team, get better results. It is not flattery or politics. In their 1980 Harvard Business Review article, John Gabarro and John Kotter described it as consciously working with your boss to get the best results for you, your boss and the company. The idea rests on a simple fact: you depend on your manager for context, priorities and support, and your manager depends on you for information and results.
Interviewers ask about managing up to see how you handle that relationship. They listen for whether you keep your manager informed without drowning them, whether bad news reaches them from you first, whether you can disagree respectfully and then commit, and whether you take charge of your own growth instead of waiting for it.
- Information — A regular, short update in the form the manager prefers — Updates only when asked
- Bad news — Raised early, from you, with options — The manager hears it from someone else
- Disagreement — Private, evidence-based, then commits to the decision — Public pushback, or quiet non-compliance
- Adapting — Learns how the manager likes to work and adjusts — One style for everyone
- Growth — Asks for criteria and feedback, builds the case over time — Waits to be noticed
Every story and sample line on this page is fiction, written as an example.
What you will be able to do
- Describe an update habit that keeps your manager informed at the right level.
- Decide what to handle yourself, what to mention and what to escalate at once.
- Tell a story about disagreeing with your manager and then committing.
- Explain how you get support from a busy or hands-off manager.
- Ask for growth or promotion with evidence instead of tenure.
Interview questions
- How do you keep your manager informed without over-communicating?
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager.
- How do you work with a manager who is busy or hands-off?
- How do you tell your manager about a mistake or bad news?
- How do you ask your manager for a promotion or more scope?
- What does managing up look like as a senior or staff engineer?
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