Assisting Upwards
One of the things I have encountered has been two broad types of managers: those that are great at managing up; and those that aren't.
There's a corollary: those great at managing up often don't seem to care that much for their direct reports except for "favorites"; those not great at managing up do seem to, at minimum, care for the craft.
On the one hand, for sanity, I prefer those who are craftspeople as managers; but for political protection and promotion, need someone good at managing up.
I have been reflecting on the degree to which I could have and should have done more so.
Things that could help (I try all of these, but there's always some resistance that I'm going to explore more)
- Create a presentation with their revue to amplify our work
- Be the person to send or present updates to the xfn executive team on a major initiative
- Offer to take point on making regular presentations at all-hands or key meetings
- Ask to be sponsored up higher for joint or 1:1 meeting with C-level
All of these I have definitely tried, even recently.
The challenge is the degree of dependency on buy-in.
Obviously, there's no point in doing anything one's direct manager doesn't support.
The hard part is when there isn't direct opposition, but not a heartfelt, "Yes, you're right, we need to do this; thanks for taking point."
One of my prior managers would point out that another group had more trust of the CEO than I did; but I pointed out that the field he is in appears more important to the CEO. And that our work overlaps, perhaps drives that work; we need to have that similar level of communication and engagement.
The thing I would do differently would be to share a prepared document with bullet points of next actions, and just ask: "Which one of these can we try next"?
Write down what's involved, the date, the key ideas, and then be done with it and go execute.
The best one of course is the one that gives you the most agency with optimistic buy-in and review for my manager.
One example would have been to present regularly at every or every-other strategy meeting which was a cross-functional meeting. That would be a place to talk about what we're working on and, always, to include the strategic importance of the work.
This basic story telling framework would have helped the situation by being a regular cadence of internal communication and gaining support.
In retrospect, I did frame that we should do something like this; but there wasn't total alignment on how and when to do it.
I probably should have just done it; so the next time I do something, I'm going to be much more prescriptive about finding ways to ensure visibility and have a "visibility mechanism" built in.
Meaning, a regular cadence and vetting process to get visibility.
The more visibility, in smaller bursts, the better.