Managing Up: The Leadership Skill Growing Teams Must Learn
As a business grows, work doesn’t just increase, it fundamentally changes.
What works in a small business with two or three employees begins to break once the team grows to ten, fifteen, or more people. New layers appear. Managers are added. Feedback starts coming from multiple directions.
Suddenly, even successful businesses feel harder to operate.
This isn’t a motivation problem. It isn’t a performance problem, and it isn’t because people forgot how to do their jobs.
It’s because the business outgrew the way work and feedback move through the organization.
Why Growing Teams Feel Overwhelmed (Even When Business Is Doing Well)
In early-stage businesses, roles are simple:
One person asks
One person does
Priorities are clear because there’s only one voice giving direction. As teams grow, employees and middle managers begin receiving:
Requests from multiple leaders
Feedback from different levels of the organization
Conflicting priorities with no clear filter
Deadlines without visibility into tradeoffs
This creates:
Decision fatigue
Longer working hours
Slower execution
Stress that leaders often can’t see anymore
This is usually labeled as overwhelm, but overwhelm isn’t the root cause.
This is a capacity and communication breakdown that happens naturally when a company scales without updating how decisions and feedback flow.
The Skill Growing Companies Rarely Teach: Managing Up
Most businesses invest in leadership development for senior leaders, and skip the skills employees and middle managers need once hierarchy appears.
That’s where managing up comes in.
Managing up is often misunderstood as:
Pushing back
Saying no
Complaining
Being difficult
That framing is wrong, and damaging.
Managing up is a communication skill, not a power move.
It allows employees and managers who are closer to the work to help leaders make better, more informed decisions as the business grows.
What Managing Up Actually Is (and What It Is Not)
Managing up is NOT:
Saying no to leadership
Resisting direction
Creating conflict
Playing politics
Managing up IS:
Synthesizing incoming requests and feedback
Clarifying priorities and tradeoffs
Making thoughtful recommendations
Communicating capacity clearly
In growing organizations, leaders lose direct visibility into how much effort work actually takes. Managing up fills that visibility gap.
The Managing Up Framework for Growing Teams
This framework comes directly from working with scaling businesses, middle managers, and leadership teams across industries.
Step 1: Capture Everything
Create one central place to log:
Requests
Feedback
Ideas
Deadlines
For each item, document:
Who asked for it
What was requested
The expected outcome
The expected timeline
This is not a to-do list, it’s a visibility and prioritization tool.
Step 2: Pause Before Executing
Do not immediately say yes. Do not commit to timelines in the moment.
Pausing:
Removes emotional reactions
Prevents accidental overcommitment
Creates space for better decision-making
This step alone dramatically reduces burnout in growing teams.
Step 3: Analyze Capacity and Tradeoffs
Before escalating, ask:
What am I already working on?
What would need to move for this to happen?
Am I the right person for this work?
Is the requested timeline realistic?
Some requests can move forward immediately, others require prioritization support.
Step 4: Bring Recommendations to Your Manager
Managing up is not bringing problems, it’s bringing options.
Use language like:
“Based on everything coming at me right now, here’s how I recommend prioritizing. Can we talk it through?”
This allows managers to:
See the full picture
Make informed tradeoffs
Advocate upward with context
Step 5: Align and Execute
After the conversation, there should be:
One clear direction
Agreed priorities
Clear ownership for each item
Alignment reduces confusion and dramatically improves execution speed.
Why Managing Up Strengthens Middle Management
In growing companies, middle managers often feel stuck:
Responsible for results
But missing visibility into feedback
Unable to protect team capacity
Managing up fixes this. When employees manage up effectively:
Managers regain visibility
Managers can advocate to senior leaders
Team capacity is protected
Accountability becomes clear
Managing up does not bypass managers, it empowers them.
Silent Martyrs Damage Culture (Even When Intentions Are Good)
Many employees believe that staying quiet and “just handling it” is the professional thing to do.
It’s not.
Silent martyrdom:
Leads to burnout
Slows execution
Creates resentment
Erodes trust
Leaders don’t need silent suffering. They need clear thinkers who can communicate constraints, priorities, and recommendations.
Managing Up Is How Growing Businesses Scale Without Chaos
Managing up isn’t about control, it’s about information flow.
It helps growing businesses:
Reduce burnout
Improve decision quality
Increase execution speed
Build trust across leadership layers
As organizations scale, managing up must become a standard operating behavior, not an informal coping mechanism.
In the next blog, we’ll cover the other side of this equation: what business owners and senior leaders must change so managing up actually works.
