Managing Upwards

This workshop provides practical tools to build a more effective, collaborative relationship with your manager by understanding their preferences, aligning expectations, and communicating with clarity. Through reflective exercises, group discussions, and scenario-based practice, you will explore how to adapt your style and approach to make your value visible and anticipate what your manager needs to succeed.

The session focuses on strengthening trust, improving upward communication, and using simple frameworks to work more strategically and proactively with your manager. You will leave with a clearer sense of how to shape a high-value, low-friction partnership with your manager.

• Would you like to have a more mutually-beneficial relationship with your manager?
• Do you know what your manager needs and expects from you?
• Does your manager know what you need or expect from them?
• Would you like your manager to listen more carefully to – and respond positively to – your ideas and concerns about assignments, tasks, roles and responsibilities?

• Define what you can expect from your manager and what your manager expects from you
• Develop a strategy to develop a high-value, low-friction relationship with your manager
• Map your manager's working style, preferences, and pressures, and identify where your   own approach aligns or clashes
• Adapt your communication to suit your manager's style using structured and concise messaging

• Understanding the management relationship
• Defining mutual expectations
• Emphasizing your value
• Mapping your manager's preferences
• Evaluating management personas
• A strategy for communicating upwards