Still Hoping Your Boss Will Get-It? The Truth About Managing Up.
Photo by Dan Stephens on Unsplash
How often do you leave meetings hoping your executive leadership team understood what you were really trying to say? Could they read between the lines?
Like many leaders, you've perfected the professional dance - providing research, data, and carefully worded updates while crossing your fingers that your boss(es) will connect the dots. You're hoping the evidence speaks for itself.
Hope, while natural, isn't serving you as a leadership strategy. Hope is essential for vision, resilience, and persevering through uncertainty. But when it comes to critical communication with leadership, hope becomes a hiding place.
One client learned this the hard way. She spent an entire year preparing comprehensive, primary and secondary research for her executive team - meticulously documented, refined, and sent ahead. The decision they made? It was as if her research never existed. Why? Because she hoped they'd taken the time read it. She hoped they'd connect the dots. She never actually presented her perspective – she hoped her work would speak for itself.
And she’s not alone.
Why We Dance Instead of Deliver
The hesitation to speak truth (aka our perspective) to power is real. In coaching sessions, I hear:
“What if they think I’m overstepping or disruptive? What if they don’t agree? Or what if they know better?”
The assumptions that you’re overstepping, disruptive, or "they know better" are usually false. They're not as close to the data, the team, or the information. They can only make informed decisions based on what and HOW you provide it. (And if they disagree at first, good. This is a trust building opportunity to back up your point-of-view.)
Your proximity to the work IS your expertise. Yet many leaders wait until they have "nothing to lose" before being truly direct. One client shared an extreme example how her father became refreshingly truthful with leadership only when retiring after 30 years - suddenly free to speak the truth because "his days were numbered."
What if you didn't have to wait until retirement to feel confident sharing your essential perspective?
The Distillation Difference
Another client discovered her superpower: transforming complex situations into simple yes/no questions for senior leadership. Her secret? She trusted her expertise and the information she had to back her up. She also understood that withholding her perspective wasn't humility - it was failing to do the job she was hired for.
Managing up isn't about providing MORE information. It's about providing the RIGHT information in the RIGHT way:
Connect the dots, don't just share data
Make recommendations, not just observations
Present solutions, not just problems
Frame decisions simply when possible, Yes/No
Your Next Conversation
That disappointment when leadership doesn't act on your input? That pattern of feeling unheard? It often comes from providing information instead of presenting your perspective - a subtle but crucial difference.
Before your next interaction with leadership, recall a time you shared your perspective that was received well.
How did you benefit and how did they benefit?
What made it work?
How did it feel before and after?
What approach and strategies can you borrow from that experience?
Then schedule the meeting. Share your perspective directly. Because both you and your leadership deserve better than the exhausting dance of passive hopes and expectations.
Your leadership isn't looking for another data dump. They're looking for the expert perspective you already have.
Move from passively hoping they'll understand to ensuring they understand by speaking your truth to power.