Managing up: Why it’s toxic and why you shouldn’t do it?

Many career experts endorse “managing up” as some “winning” practice for both career stability and advancement. It has been dubbed a prominent solution for maintaining an effective and productive relationship with your supervisor. Harvard Business Review defines, “managing up as being the most effective employee you can be and creating value for your boss and your company.” Managing in a traditional sense typically involves a downward flow of communication — for example from the executive level to middle management. Organizational theory suggests that managing upward is equally as important to an individual’s career.

We all know people management is incredibly hard, and many managers today are overworked, burnout, and forced to deal with the competing demands of managing people and executing projects on very strict timelines. Managing people is grossly overwhelming, and most managers are ill-equipped to deal with the complexities of managing people, their personalities, and their varying work ethics because well, people are complex too. I can acknowledge that management is hard — but I can also recognize that having a good manager is the key difference between an empowering and toxic workplace Most importantly — we have all heard the popular phrase — “people, don’t leave jobs — they leave managers.” For this reason, this is why we need better…