“Managing Up” - Manipulation Mind Trap or Fundamental Workplace Skill?
The challenge to fix your boss does not empower anyone
Welcome to Manic Idea Monday 💡! Each week, I’m unpacking some workplace ideas that might leave us dropping our jaws, maybe scratching our heads, but definitely making us think.
Get ready for a fast-paced start to your week with some truly unexpected twists and turns that will leave you asking, “They did what now?”
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There’s a familiar piece of advice that’s been passed around in workplaces like it’s gospel and etched into stone tablets: manage up. The idea is simple enough. Learn how to work with your boss in such a way that you can influence their decisions, anticipate their next move, smooth over any issues, and make your life easier. Sounds reasonable, right? But in a toxic environment, “managing up” isn’t a strategy for success. It’s just emotional labor in disguise.
According to a 2022 Gallup study, "burnout" is a leading factor for employee disengagement, with 76% of employees citing work-related stress as a primary factor, especially in environments with poor leadership. This reinforces how unhealthy power dynamics like "managing up" can be detrimental to employees’ mental and physical well-being.
Sadly, I was one of those statistics and there was no managing my way up. I only found relief when I managed my way right out the door.
In any healthy workplace, your boss is there to support you, not make your job harder. But in a toxic or dismissive one? They’re more like the person who throws gasoline on the fire just for fun and then watches everyone scramble to put it out while the entire organization is burning to the ground.
“Managing up” assumes that by being a model employee you can fix a broken system. I hate to break it to you, but you probably can’t.
You're playing a game of Jenga where one wrong move and the entire tower comes crashing down. Except in this version, the emotional stakes are much higher. It’s your mental and physical well-being teetering on the edge. One slip could send everything spiraling right off the proverbial conference table.
I am not a fan of the concept of “managing up” because it’s all just an illusion. A delicate façade that makes you believe you have the power to fix the chaos, when in reality, you’re just trying to keep everything from falling apart on the daily. In the end, you’re not really in control of anything, not even your boss.
Dealing with the incompetence
Here’s the story about a real-life managing up situation with a supervisor who made every day feel like a hostage negotiation. I wasn’t even one of her direct reports. Yet, this control freak wanted everyone to jump whenever she asked, no matter the task or who they were.
And when the inevitable pushback came from other departments like the accounting office, she didn’t just accept it. Oh no. She wasn’t about to let it go. Before anyone knew what was happening, she called checkmate.
Say it with me now, “She did what now?!?
In this particular case, the accounting manager had set clear boundaries about some processes that everyone needed to get on board with to follow to the letter. But instead of being supported for doing the right thing, she got her hand slapped. The solution? The supervisor from my department went to her boss, who then escalated it to the accounting manager’s boss.
The result?
The accounting manager was instructed to call the supervisor in our department to get her “input and feedback” on the situation. Essentially, she was reprimanded for enforcing the rules, while the supervisor was rewarded for undermining them. And the absurdity of it all went completely unnoticed.
This is hardly what I would call “managing up.” This is managing incompetence and rewarding bad behavior.
The supervisor manipulated the system to avoid accountability and pushed the responsibility onto others. And in doing so, she further entrenched the toxic dynamic. What’s worse? Everyone else was left to pick up the pieces, while the incompetent leader sailed through unscathed.
Say it again with me now, “She did what now?!?
What was really going on here?
She was playing manage up to perfection except it wasn’t about solutions or efficiency. It was to keep her position intact by putting everyone else through the emotional ringer. Her boss, meanwhile, did what every toxic leader does: they let their underling off the hook and forced everyone else to clean up the mess.
So instead of focusing on following the policies set forth by the accounting office, precious time was wasted on sheer nonsense. For anyone on the receiving end of this, managing up feels more like doing emotional labor for your boss’s incompetence.
I had a friend and colleague who thought this whole concept was ludicrous. She used to say, “It’s not my job to do my boss’s job for them. If that’s the case, then they should be paying me for that role—not my boss.”
It’s like being asked to clean up after someone who makes messes all day and then getting blamed for not cleaning up fast enough. You’re stuck in a cycle that no amount of boundary-setting or sweet-talking will fix. No one wins. Except, of course, the boss.
The unsung burden
Let’s talk about unpaid labor involved in this dynamic. It’s about managing their moods, their egos, and their inability to actually lead. It’s an emotional drag on you as an employee, yet it's disguised as a strategy for “success.” It’s like being asked to not just show up to work, but also to invest every ounce of your energy into making sure your boss’s fragile sense of self-esteem stays intact.
That might sound a bit dramatic. But when you’re in a toxic environment, it’s often exactly how it feels. Meanwhile, you're left trying to do your job, your boss’s job, and the emotional work of maintaining a charade of everything being fine. It’s exhausting.
The kicker? It’s not even a fair trade. You get all the stress without the leadership support you actually need—let alone any extra pay for basically being an on-call personal assistant. Unless you’re working for Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt and even then…, I’m not sure it’s worth it.
So where’s the incentive? When you’re managing up, you’re doing a job that isn’t even yours.
Another fun twist on power dynamics
I’m going to tap into my inner Golden Girl - remember Sophia? Picture this: a boss who’s determined to control every scrap of information, because why would they want to share knowledge with you? Those types aren’t interested in helping you do your job better. They want to keep you in the dark and maintain control.
In my case, I realized early on that this particular boss didn’t want to share anything. Not even the bare minimum that would help me succeed in my role. Oftentimes, I found out from students about policy changes. Let that sink in. So, like any rational person, I started developing my own “underground network” to find out what I needed.
Doing my job became less about the actual work and more about maneuvering through a maze of hoarded information meant to keep the power dynamic intact. This is why organizations get bogged down in mediocrity and struggle to innovate. It’s impossible when employees aren’t given updates needed to do their work and you can forget about that whole going above and beyond thing to make a real impact.
Now, imagine someone who doesn’t have a network. They’re stuck and forced to play a game they don’t even have the rules for. Someone who doesn’t have the experience or connections to find out what they need on their own. They don’t have the luxury of getting the information they need without having to go through hoops just to be able to do their job.
No one wants to walk into that everyday.
This is another example of managing up in action. Instead of creating collaboration or transparency, your boss’s refusal to share changes just forces you to jump through emotional hoops to prove you’re worth their attention. And when you can’t manage that? You’re left with nothing but frustration.
Why managing up isn’t always the solution
In a healthy work environment, finding ways to work together with your boss, aligning goals, and getting the support you need is a natural give and take. But in a toxic one, this becomes nothing more than a way of shifting the responsibility for bad leadership onto the employees. In both examples, no one gets ahead. Instead, the problematic boss or supervisor gets to stay comfortably in their role, doing the minimum while employees bear the brunt of it all.
When you’re stuck in these situations, the last thing you need is another layer of advice telling you to “manage up” or “set better boundaries.”
It’s like being asked to walk a high wire in roller skates, blindfolded, and without a safety net. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing good is going to come of that. What does work, when anything does, is documenting everything, finding allies, and, ultimately, preparing an exit strategy.
Because in these organizations, nothing is going to change unless the system changes. And you can’t manage up your way out of that.
A completely inflexible and unreasonable boss isn’t suddenly going to transform into a supportive leader just because you set boundaries and bend over backward to anticipate their every need. It’s not going to happen. A leader who doesn’t care about you won’t start just because you assert yourself.
At the end of the day, you’re not the problem. It’s the institution. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is take a step back and realize that “managing up” isn’t a strategy for survival. It’s a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.
“Incompetence knows no boundaries. It has no sense of personal limitations and simply marches on.” — Steve Maraboli
© 2025 Bette A. Ludwig: All rights reserved
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Great perspective, Bette, especially for a toxic environment. Managing up shouldn’t be a drag. It shouldn’t be an afterthought either. In non toxic, but competitive environments, from my experience, promotions at the senior levels are based on how much comfort you can provide to your boss followed by job competence. The higher you are, the more important it is to keep the peace in and the noise out. If you are able to do this consistently and make your boss look good, your promotion is almost always guaranteed. You need to learn how to do this the right way without selling your soul or your values. It isn’t bad politics, it is excellent control over your moves!
Happy Monday, Bette! As I’m reading this, I’m just wondering why all companies aren’t relentlessly focused on increasing employee production.
Then I remember what one of my marketing instructors told me during undergrad. He said when he was a consultant, he would meet with potential client and tell them. “I will tell you what I think the problem is. Are you okay with hearing that YOU are the problem?” I think this is why the efforts to increase employee productivity only go so far. Because as soon as someone above the employee has to change their behavior to improve the behavior of a worker, then the process breaks down. It’s the whole ‘are you willing to hear that you may be the problem’ all over again.
Most managers are not.