Managing Up: A Field Guide

Close the Loop: The Guiding First Principle

If you accept that your #1 mission as an IC is to leave no one wondering, the primary muscle you'll flex while doing this is closing the loop for anything that feels incomplete or unfinished.

Repeat Backs

At the end of any meeting, it's easy for everyone to walk away assuming they're all on the same page. In decades of experience, that's not always the case — there's an easy, quick fix.

Before the meeting ends, check in by repeating back the key takeaways. They're usually:

• Your actions — what specifically will you do, by when?
• Your priorities
• Important decisions
• The order of operations in a critical path
  • This might sound like: "Amy, you'll set up the call for Monday. I'll prep the SOW to review by EOD today. Jared, you'll call their GC as they requested before we meet Monday."

SMART Goals

To set goals in a truly actionable manner, where ownership, details, and the deadline are clear.

Status Updates Bookend the Week

If you want to become your manager's MVP, bookend the week with your priorities and their status. Start the week by preemptively sharing your priorities — then close it out with a quick, written status readout. It can be as simple as:

Our Buddy Eisenhower

This is the exact Eisenhower Matrix I found back in 2012 that helped me stop being my own worst bottleneck — especially once paired with letting "good enough" be enough to ship, rather than trying to make things perfect before releasing them into the wild.

Communication Anchors / TL;DR

One of the easiest ways you can help others help you is by providing an anchor to your communication. Whether written or verbal, that takes two shapes:

What kind of input do you need?

• Brainstorm
• Opinion / Context
• Approval / Sign-off
• Just Listen
• Directive

How urgent and important is it? What's the deadline? Whether you use the P0–P4 scale, Urgent/Important, or simply "I need this by ___," this helps others prioritize your request among their other spinning plates. Optional: state the parent objective it's in service of.

Written — lead with the TL;DR:

Here's the pattern in practice — each message anchored with urgency and the ask up front, details tucked into the thread:

Proactive Solutioning

Having someone proactively suggest solutions feels like warm sun on a cold day to a manager. Your solution doesn't need to be perfect — it just gives them something to react to instead of starting from scratch. Even if you're only 1% confident it's right, offer it up.

A few ways to tee this up:

Documentation

If your manager hasn't already made one for your 1:1s, I strongly recommend creating a Google Doc, Notion page, or something similar where you keep all historic meeting notes.

The goal isn't documentation for documentation's sake — it's keeping a historic log of actions, decisions, progress against goals, and important notes from each meeting. That way, if either of you needs to confirm when something was due, or when a decision was made, it's all there in one easily searchable place.

Here's a template you can clone — just remember to always keep the most recent meeting at the top. 1:1 Notes Template →

Check it off!

The more organized you are, and the more you practice closing open loops for yourself, the more effective you will feel in your role.

However you stay organized, help yourself recognize and stack small wins by literally checking the box or saying "Done!" when something's complete. And even better — if anyone was waiting on you, send them a quick update to confirm it's done.

Earned, not given.

The worst thing you can do as an employee is ask for a raise or promotion without demonstrating any awareness of whether it has been earned. The best thing you can do is get crystal clear with your manager about how they perceive you to be doing in your role now, and then talk to them about what it will take to get to the next level, pay, role or title wise.

If you're not sure where to begin, try creating a bulleted list of all the core responsibilities of your role. (See the video below for a more detailed breakdown of this.) Then, share that list with your manager and talk about how you're doing in each of the areas. Aligning with your manager will give you a stronger understanding of where you stand today and where any areas for improvement currently exist.

As you make progress in those areas, talk to your manager about what they would like to see you do to take things to the next level/to earn a pay raise. Create a plan together in advance and show consistent, steady progress toward that goal.

Air Time Awareness

In group work, there are almost always one or two people whose voices dominate — often just from a lack of self-awareness, not asking whose voice hasn't been heard yet.

A few things to consider in group settings:

• How well am I listening to understand — versus waiting for my turn to speak?
• Am I approaching this as "us vs. them," or am I anchored to winning as a team?
• Are there voices or perspectives we haven't heard yet that could be valuable?
• If I find myself dominating a conversation, can I feel into why that's happening?
• How determined am I to be right, versus taking in other viewpoints?
• What, if anything, feels at risk if I don't "win"?
• How might I create space for other valuable perspectives to be shared?

Feedback & Conflict Avoidance

We all have blind spots, and most of us show up every day trying our best. Whether it's your manager or your team, when you spend ~40 hours a week with others, they'll often see parts of you more clearly than you can see yourself.

If you value growing and learning, one of the best things you can do is ask people you trust if they'd be willing to give you feedback.

Regardless of what role you play in the feedback process: many things can be true at once. Everyone's experience is valid, even when wildly different. Do not invalidate someone else's experience — validate what makes sense to you, and remember validating ≠ agreeing.