New managers spend a great deal of time thinking about how to manage their teams, and significantly less time thinking about how to manage their relationship with their own manager. This is understandable — the team relationship is more visible and more urgent — but it is a mistake. Your relationship with your manager shapes your access to resources, the clarity you have about priorities, the support you receive when things are difficult and the visibility your work gets in the broader organisation. Getting it right is not about flattery or politics — it is about creating the conditions in which you can actually do your job well.
1 Understand what your manager actually needs from you
The most common failure in managing up is assuming that what your manager needs from you is the same as what you need from them. It rarely is. Your manager has their own pressures, their own stakeholders, their own definition of success for your role — and the faster you understand that picture clearly, the more effectively you can operate within it. What does your manager care most about? What keeps them up at night? What would make them look good, and what would create problems for them? How do they prefer to receive information — detailed updates or headlines? In writing or in conversation?
This is not about subordinating your own judgement — it is about understanding the context in which your judgement needs to operate. A manager who understands their manager's priorities can make better decisions, allocate their own team's effort more effectively and avoid the frustrating experience of working hard on things that turn out not to matter to the people above them.
Early in your role, ask your manager directly: 'What does success look like for this team from your perspective in the next six months? What would most concern you about how I'm approaching the role?' These two questions give you the core of what you need to know and signal that you are taking the relationship seriously. The answers will not always be what you expected, and that is the point.
2 Keep your manager appropriately informed — without over-reporting
One of the most valuable things you can do for your manager is ensure they are never surprised by something that affects their work. Problems that reach your manager via someone else, issues that escalate without warning, decisions that turn out to have consequences your manager was not aware of — all of these erode trust and create friction that is difficult to recover from. Regular, proactive communication about what is going well, what is not and what you are doing about it is the foundation of a strong managing-up relationship.
The key word is "appropriate." Over-reporting — bringing every minor issue, seeking approval for decisions you have the authority to make yourself, creating more work than you save — is as damaging as under-reporting. Your manager's time is limited, and they need you to exercise judgement about what requires their attention and what does not. Getting that calibration right takes time, but the direction of error to avoid in the early period is under-reporting rather than over.
Agree with your manager early on what kind of communication cadence and format they prefer. Some managers want a brief weekly written update; others prefer to cover things in a regular one-to-one; some want to be contacted immediately when something significant happens. Do not assume — ask. Then deliver consistently within the agreed format, and adjust over time as you get a better read of what actually serves them.
Building effective working relationships — with your team, your peers and your own manager — is covered in the LeadWise Emerging Leaders Program, with practical frameworks for managing upward and sideways as well as down.
Explore the program — €2993 Bring solutions, not just problems
There is an important distinction between the kind of manager who identifies problems and the kind who identifies problems and comes with a view on how to address them. The first requires their manager to do additional thinking every time something goes wrong; the second is demonstrably easier to manage and demonstrably more useful to the organisation. New managers who develop the habit of arriving at escalation conversations with a proposed path forward — "Here is the issue, here is how I'm thinking about it, here is what I'd like your input on" — are much easier to manage than those who present problems and wait.
This does not mean you must always have the answer. Some problems genuinely require your manager's judgement or resources before you can identify a path. But the discipline of thinking through your own perspective before escalating — of not using your manager as the first-level thinking mechanism — both serves the relationship and develops your own problem-solving capability faster.
Before bringing a problem to your manager, ask yourself: what do I think the right response is here, and what specifically do I need from them — information, a decision, resources, support? Framing your escalation around those two things — your assessment and your specific ask — takes a minute of preparation and transforms the quality of the conversation. Your manager gets a partner rather than a problem to solve.
4 Be honest about what you do not know
The temptation to project confidence, especially in the early months of a management role, is strong. You do not want to seem underprepared or uncertain. But a manager who projects false confidence makes poor decisions — because they do not ask for help when they need it — and erodes trust when the gap between their apparent certainty and the reality becomes visible. Honest acknowledgement of what you do not know, combined with a clear plan for how you are going to find out, is more confidence-inspiring than bluffing.
This applies both to the content of your work and to your own development. Being candid about where you are finding the transition to management difficult, what skills you are actively working to develop and what support would be most useful is not a sign of weakness — it is the kind of self-awareness and openness to feedback that makes good managers. And it gives your own manager the information they need to actually support your development rather than guessing at what you need.
If you do not know something your manager asks about, the right response is: 'I don't know — I'll find out by [specific time] and come back to you.' Never give a confident answer you are not sure of, and never let uncertainty lead to silence. The combination of honesty about not knowing and a specific commitment to find out is the professional response that preserves credibility.
5 Raise disagreements directly and privately
You will not always agree with your manager. Good managers do not expect you to, and they do not want you to — a team of people who simply agree with everything their manager says makes poor decisions and misses important considerations. What matters is how you handle disagreement: raising it directly and privately, with a clear rationale, is professional and constructive. Expressing it to other people, behaving as though you disagree without saying so directly, or undermining decisions you have committed to implementing are all significantly more damaging to both the relationship and the organisation.
If you disagree with a direction, say so — clearly, with your reasoning — and give your manager the opportunity to address your concern or explain their thinking. If you still disagree after that conversation, you have a choice: commit fully to implementing the direction, or escalate the disagreement to a level where it can be resolved. What you should not do is half-implement decisions you disagree with, or invest energy in demonstrating that you were right rather than making the decision work.
When raising a disagreement with your manager, lead with curiosity before advocacy: 'Can I check my understanding of the reasoning here? I want to make sure I'm seeing what you're seeing before I share my concern.' This framing often resolves disagreements that are actually misunderstandings, and when a genuine disagreement remains, it ensures you are disagreeing with the actual reasoning rather than your own assumption of it.
The bottom line
Managing your relationship with your own manager is not a political exercise — it is a practical one. The quality of that relationship determines how much clarity you have about what matters, how much support you receive when things are difficult, how much autonomy you are given as your track record develops and how visible your team's work is in the wider organisation. All of those things affect your ability to do your job well.
The habits that make it work — understanding what your manager actually needs, keeping them appropriately informed, bringing solutions rather than just problems, being honest about uncertainty and raising disagreements directly — are the same habits that make you a good manager to your own team. The relationship is different in structure, but the underlying requirements of professionalism and trust are identical.