Ep 99: Managing Up: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches You

Ep 99: Managing Up: The Leadership Skill Nobody Teaches You

From The Unlock Lab by Tosca DiMatteo

June 2, 2026 · 18 min · Season 1 · Episode 103

About this episode

This episode discusses the importance of managing up as a leadership skill that is often overlooked and not taught.

Managing up is one of the most important skill sets you can develop as a leader, and almost nobody teaches it. You don't take a class on this in school and you likely are not mentored around how to do it. With the prevalent ‘power over’ approach to leadership that runs rampant today, we are trained to simply do what we’re told. It may sound counter intuitive, but to be a great steward of yourself, your team, your projects and your goals, you have to be a steward of clear communication and expectation setting. Here's where I want to slow it down. Before you get to the how of managing expectations, whether that's above you, below you, across from you, etc., you have to do the deeper work of understanding that you need to put yourself at the same level as everyone else. Despite what the hierarchy may say, nobody is above you and nobody is below you. Not in terms of you being an equal human to everybody else. Period. Point blank. We've been trained not just to say ‘yes’, but to defer. We’ve been trained to get it done at all costs at any cost. And of course, we’ve been trained usually to do things the way our manager likes, or the way the template dictates, and are not encouraged to…

People in this episode

Host: Tosca DiMatteo

Topics covered

  • leadership
  • managing up
  • communication
  • expectation setting
  • team dynamics

Keywords

  • managing up
  • leadership skills
  • communication
  • expectations
  • team management
  • hierarchy
  • deconditioning

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