You might have heard of managing up and managing down. Simply put, unless you own and run the company, you have to manage up to someone. Even most CEOs answer to a board. And, in contrast, if you have any direct reports, you have to manage down. Typically, managing down refers to how you guide, support, and communicate with your team, but there are times when you don’t want to manage down.
A hypothetical example I frequently use is of a sales team manager telling his team that upper management has decided that no one will have corporate cards for expenses anymore and the team can do the paperwork for an advance or spend their own money, file an expense report, and get reimbursed. The manager wants to make it clear he or she isn’t the source of this likely unpopular news, so it’s stated this came from above. That’s managing down in a bad way. Just own it. No excuses, no passing the blame. Why is this a big deal? When everything comes from above, your team will feel helpless and disconnected while you look powerless. When you present everything as a mandate from above, it’s a morale killer. And you’re not their leader. You’re just the conduit. The reason your team feels helpless when news is managed down like this is they know voicing their opinions is pointless. If you deliver and own the news, you can at least hear their concerns. Most people just want to be heard.
Here’s a true story relayed to me years ago: a manager called a whole team meeting and delivered a firm demand that all tasks have to be updated in the project management system within 30 minutes of being completed. Fair enough. But then the manager unfortunately kept talking.
“I was in a meeting, and I was clearly the lowest person there and they were asking questions and I couldn’t answer them. This is unacceptable. I demand you . . .”
First, if you want to, for some reason, say you were the most junior team member in attendance, go ahead, but exercise some word choice. “Lowest?” You’re letting your team know exactly what you think of them. Yup, even lower. Workplace hierarchy is about who owns which responsibilities, not who ranks above whom.
Second, and worse, the manager made it clear the meeting and directive were more about them than the process. “I, I, I, I . . .” Here’s how it should have gone: “Going forward, the project management system must be updated immediately after completing a task. No exceptions. The reason is a task completion update triggers the next step in the process. When we wait or forget, we are creating unnecessary delays. This is very important because we’re leaving efficiency on the table and impacting other people’s work. So, when you finish a task, please immediately update the project management system. Any questions?”
Both examples above share the same failure: making it about the messenger instead of the message. The rewrite of the second example takes managing down out of the equation and makes it just about the message. It states what and why.
Being a manager isn’t about being in charge. It’s about being a leader. Being the boss, giving orders, is easy. Being a leader is work. It requires real skill and it requires being intentional. It also requires ownership. When you have to set standards or deliver news, own it. Your whole team will be stronger when you do.
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