🥁 The OffBeat #81: Conducting Without a Baton

The art of managing up

This is The OffBeat, from jazz drummer, two-decade marketing leader, and mom of two Allison Stadd: music-inspired answers for your leadership challenges, like how to hire like Duke Ellington. Let’s make work a source of creativity, connection, and motivation again.

Every other edition of The OffBeat is a think piece structured like a jam session in jazz (naming the tune—a punchy idea; soloing—exploring different takes on a central theme; outro—a thought-provoking closer).

Let’s talk about managing up.

First of all, what is it?

Managing up is the art of proactively influencing your boss to create the most effective working relationship for both of you.

And what does “proactively influencing” your boss mean? It means, first, understanding your leader’s goals, priorities, and working style; and then, strategically adapting your approach based on that understanding to help both of you succeed.

Your boss may be the conductor in your workplace, but a great musician (that’s you) still anticipates changes and subtly guides the energy of the group.

In other words, you may not hold the baton, but you can—and frankly, have a responsibility to—influence the sound of the team.

There are a few things that have tripped me up in the past as I learned how to manage up:

1. Discomfort with pushing back, for fear of coming across like a complainer

2. Anxiety around asking for support, lest I blow my Superwoman cover of being able to do everything perfectly at all times

3. Mistaken belief that time alone, instead of time plus emotionally intelligent direct communication, would cement a strong working relationship

Do any of those resonate? Here’s what may help.

First, to manage up effectively, you need to grasp your boss’s logistical and communicative working style.

Through observation or explicit inquiry over a few months of working together, find out:

• When do they prefer text vs. email vs. Slack vs. phone call vs. Zoom? (For example, I’ve worked for leaders that invariably want to hop on a quick 1-1 phone call to debrief after big meetings, and others who want to spend as little time talking live as possible)

• What are their meeting preferences? Are pre-reads a must; do they want to do the Amazon-style-silent-memo-reading to kick off a session, are they maniacal about starting and ending on time; do they have any pet peeves around slides? (E.g. A former boss had a major hang-up around what he called “hanging chads” in slide headlines, i.e. a single word on its own line)

• Do they have any tells you can use to discern their vibe around something, in writing or during meetings? (Like certain phrases or facial expressions that indicate where they’re at)

• Are there any questions they always ask that you can anticipate? (For instance, a leader I admire always prompts people bringing him a recommendation to also argue the theoretical opposite side of their stance in order to provide a complete strategic picture)

Second, you need to be crystal clear on the goals for which your leader’s on the hook.

How is their success measured? That’s going to directly determine their priorities, which should directly dictate yours.

Then third, you need to approach your leader through the lens of all those learnings.

A quick aside: Considering the musical angle of leadership challenges is useful in part because it jogs your brain into thinking differently. Using this weird, unexpected metaphor of music refracts your thoughts, bending them in a new direction to consider a clean angle.

There are three key ways music can be a helpful frame of reference for managing up, a.k.a. conducting without a baton:

1) Frame concerns, recommendations, and requests from the perspective of what’s best for the entire band

You’re a leader yourself so you already know this: it’s not personal, it’s business. That phrase is annoying but it’s true. Every leader has a responsibility to think big picture and make decisions based on what’s best for the company, not for anyone personally.

So frame your communication through that lens. Explain why the thing you want makes sense for the broader organization.

2) Push back on change resistance by matching their tempo

Met friction when proposing change? Instead of pushing harder, getting passive aggressive, or bagging it, match your leader’s tempo.

Do they move super-quickly and not want to be slowed down by the inertia of change? Propose a short-term, quick-to-implement experiment instead of a permanent commitment.

Do they work methodically, resistant to the unknown of the new? Introduce a small adjustment, build momentum, and let success make the case for a bigger shift.

3) Recognize it’s ultimately the conductor’s prerogative to shape the group’s music

The boss is the boss (including when that’s you). Whatever your agenda is in a particular managing-up moment—advocating for incremental resources, countering a strategic direction—know that at some point the leader will make a call and you’ll all need to move on.

Here’s the key: if you embody that mindset going into your interactions with your leader, that inherent respect will shine through and contribute to building trust.

In her book Ask a Manager, Alison Green encourages people to frame their relationship with their boss as though they’re a consultant and their boss is their client. They may not be your peer, but they’re also not your parent; you are independently offering your services and are ultimately free to part ways.

Thinking of your boss like your client makes music-inspired managing up, as framed above, more straightforward. For any client, of course you’d strive to understand their preferences and priorities, and it would be a no-brainer to then tailor your approach using that knowledge.

If you’ve had any major managing-up mishaps or triumphs, I’d love to hear.

Have a great week,

Allison

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