Managing Up vs. Managing Down

There’s a skill that separates good leaders from truly effective ones. It has nothing to do with charisma, intelligence, or how large their team is. It’s the ability to lead in both directions: up and down.

Managing down is the part most people recognize. It’s building teams, aligning goals, providing feedback, creating a safe culture where people can perform. It’s what most leadership books focus on.

But managing up is just as critical. It means understanding how to navigate expectations from above, how to align your initiatives with broader strategic goals, how to communicate with clarity and intention. It’s not politics, it’s responsibility.

Early in my career, I thought that leading a team well was enough. But I quickly realized that if I couldn’t bring my team’s reality into conversations at the top, if I couldn’t translate boardroom decisions into something actionable and inspiring for the people doing the work, I was only doing half the job.

I’ve worked in companies where managers lived in the middle, unprotected from above, untrusted from below. That’s not leadership. That’s survival.

The leaders I admire most are the ones who earn the confidence of both sides. They act as a conduit, not a blocker. They don’t insulate their teams from reality, they give them the tools to face it. And they don’t simply execute what they’re told, they interpret, adapt, and sometimes challenge.

When you manage up and down well, you become more than a manager. You become a force multiplier. You create trust in both directions. You build cohesion in spaces that are usually disconnected.

Leadership isn’t about being in the middle. It’s about making the middle work.