Managing up can be challenging. Failure to meet your boss’s informational needs can lead to bad decisions and frustrating interactions. Learn how to manage up more effectively.

Sometimes it’s harder to manage your boss than it is to manage your team. All senior stakeholders can prove challenging to control. Fail to do so, and they run off with harebrained ideas or half-baked truths that take you days to fix.

But if you invest the time and thought in managing up, you can turn your senior stakeholders into your greatest allies and one of the best assets on your team. It all boils down to expectations and managing them appropriately.

Your boss or senior stakeholder has a lot on their plate. They’re managing you and all your colleagues, as well as the stakeholders above them. When they’re pulled in a million different directions, they get precious little time to engage with the work you’re doing. When they do engage, they have limited opportunity to dig into the situation before offering their assistance. In their efforts to assist you, when they make decisions based on a cursory understanding of the situation, things are bound to go awry.

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