Managing Up: The Course

Your boss doesn't know what you do. Not fully. Start Here, plus 7 short lessons on how to work with your boss without losing yourself.

Who it's for

Your team delivers. Your work is strong. And the people above your boss couldn't describe what you do. When the next role opens, you aren't in the conversation. Not because the work wasn't good. Because nobody gave your boss the language to make the case.

Managing up isn't politics. It isn't agreeing with everything, and it isn't self-promotion. It's translation: learning how your boss takes in information, and giving them your work in a form they can use and repeat when you're not in the room. This course is for directors, VPs and senior managers who want to get that right, including anyone with a new boss.

How it works

Every module follows the same rhythm.

Watch the lesson. About 11 to 17 minutes, one practice from the field guide, taught slide by slide.

Do the work. The lesson pauses for that practice's section of the Managing Up Workbook. Do it online, or print the PDF if you think better on paper. Then run one 48-hour experiment with your real boss.

Press play for the close. How to read what happened, and the 30-day build that makes it stick.

Start where your diagnostic points you. Every module is open from day one.

Start Here: The Translation Problem

Reading Your Boss: Learn How They Process
The Strategic Narrative: Three Sentences They Can Repeat
The Friday Update: Visible Without Being Asked
The Sponsor Map: Known Beyond One Boss
Pushing Back Without Pushing Away: Disagree, Then Commit
Building the Practice: Patterns, Seams and the Audit
Your Boss's Modes and the First 90 Days

After Module 7, a final section pulls your work into Your Managing Up, One Page.

Your Boss's Modes

26 modes you'll meet above you, from the Flamethrower to the Ghost to the Understudy. Each one has a short video and a one-page card: how the mode shows up, and what changes in how you work with it. Read a mode, not a person. Go back to it whenever the boss in front of you changes.

What's included

The Managing Up Workbook online, with your answers saved
Your Boss’s Modes: 26 short videos, each with a card
10 PDFs to print and write on: Start Here, the 5 practices, the seams and the audit, your boss's modes and the first 90 days, the practices, and Your Managing Up, One Page
Go further: free exercises from The Right Altitude, linked from every module
Your place saved in every lesson, on any device

Already enrolled? Open your course.

Give your boss the language. Start with the boss you have right now.

Want to talk it through with me first?