Managing Up in the One-on-One
Hopefully, you have the kind of manager who is actively engaging you in your One-on-Ones every week and not the kind who awkwardly starts with, “So, what have you got for me this week?” or the kind who shrugs off all their own responsibility and wishes you would just “own the conversation” so they don’t have to figure out what it means to be a good manager. But if you happen to be in the crowd with the latter, here’s a little tool that can help BOTH of you strengthen your working relationship while also allowing you to leverage what you can out of the partnership even with a manager who is trying their darndest to be hands off.
Most of us desire growth and development along our career journeys. We want to understand what makes us successful and how to improve when we know we’ve not performed up to expectations or potential. And when you have a great manager, they will be able to partner with you to work through these desires and progressions. When you don’t, you’ll have to take up the torch for the both of you with the goal of sharing the load a bit more as you continue. The trick here is for you to be able to uncover your own desires and needs at work, and to be able to articulate them in such a way as to engage your manager in a partnership to accomplish your goals.
I encourage you to read each of the posts in the One-on-One series from the perspective of a manager. This will help you understand what each is meant to accomplish. You will be playing both sides for a while, and gaining this context will help.
Then, if you have a manager who says “This meeting’s for you,” or “I don’t have an agenda,” or “What have you got for me this week?,” you have the ability to own the agenda and this is a great example of managing up. And if you don’t have a manager who can go through this exercise with you, you can always find a buddy or walk through it yourself. I call this the Rubber Ducky One-on-One. Check it out for more self-management advice.
Here are the Questions with links to the managerial content for context as well as some alternate ways to ask some of the questions to keep it fresh:
If you’re going through this with your manager:
Be acutely aware of tasks and status requests your manager is going to want specific follow up on, and maybe lead with that, or nod to and then say, “but I have a couple other things I want to go through first.” Over time, you can come up with a plan to remove task-talk from your One-on-One all together. This could be through emailing a daily or weekly status update or through connecting asynchronously on Slack or another internal chat medium.
Now, for a while, this might feel really awkward asking and answering the question for yourself. It will take some creativity, but it might go something like this.
For What did you Love?
I noticed myself really enjoying this part of my job this week. What can I do to get more opportunities to explore responsibilities or opportunities like this in the future?
For What was Frustrating?
I was very frustrated by X, Y, or Z this week, how do you think I can better handle this situation? OR, I noticed an area for improvement this week, here’s what I saw, and here’s how I think we can do better. Can I lead this?
For What are you Learning?
I am interested in learning more about this topic and I’d like to sign up for a webinar or conference. What are my options?
For What do You Need?
Here’s how else I could really use your support or recommendations.
For What Else?
And also… this is where you can mention things that don’t fit in the other boxes, a time off request for instance or a red flag you’ve noticed that no one else is speaking up about.
And if needed… Now for the tasks you asked me to follow up on, here’s the status.
This may be a rough go at first, because while many managers will say they wished their employee would own the conversation, even they don’t know what that looks like. You’re just there opening your whole self up, and they expected a task list and progress report. So you may have to ease into this new format.
Maybe pick a question a week, and eventually start doubling up, and gaining ground. Or, if you’re comfortable, propose this question/answer format to your manager so they can lead the conversation, but the focus is still on your growth and development.
No matter which method you choose, I highly recommend recapping via email when you’re through. Send a quick note to your manager detailing any outcomes, decisions, agreements to partner, and requests for help. This will be instrumental in having successful performance reviews later if your manager never quite picks up on how to partner with you. It will provide a paper trail of evidence where you noted areas you needed assistance and you documented specific requests for help. If those are never followed through with, and something is touched on in your performance review, you can show how you recognized the issue, requested assistance, and were not given the tools you needed to be successful.
Regardless of the level of success you achieve with your manager, this exercise is still an excellent one for you to learn more about yourself and show yourself some genuine care. Your challenge will be learning how to lean into the opportunities for follow up when no one else is prioritizing it. So make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people in your life who genuinely care about you and will help you along the way inside and outside of work.
Follow my entire One-on-One Series for more!
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