Leading from the Midde

This has been one of the toughest posts to write and it’s been a journey finishing it. For starters, I’ve heard “lead from where you are” for years. I’ve been told to remember and “manage up” when the situation calls for it. For real, I’ve even coached about the power of doing it. But, honestly, I don’t think I ever stopped to reflect on if I did it, how I did it, or even if I was still doing it. And just as importantly, I never stopped to acknowledge how I was feeling about the whole thing. Spoiler, yeah I was totally doing it AND no, I never really stopped to deal with any of the feelings. That’s why this one was a challenge to put down on digital paper.

What I Mean by Managing Up

Managing up or Leading from the Middle is all about staying focused on the mission and vision and working to get there, regardless of positional authority. It’s about providing guidance, insight, and leadership, even when you aren’t “in charge.” And doing all of that while not just navigating some intense emotional responses, whether you notice them or not, but leveraging them to make you an even better leader.

It’s Not Going Rogue

Seriously, I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to think about whether I was going rogue or making a reasoned decision in the moment. Even if that action was completely aligned to the organization mission, vision, and goals. While I was doing it, I just knew whatever managing up move I was making needed to happen. Now. And I didn’t really have time to think about getting “permission.” I had a solid grasp that what I was about to do was best for kids, teachers and staff, families and the school. I also had this blind faith that at least most of the team was with me on the move. But afterward, even when things turned out great, I’d get those pangs of regret that I was “that guy” who didn’t play along. That I was not “trusting the process” like I was constantly asking everyone else to do. And I’m nothing if not a team player and a self defined pathological optimist. Neither of those traits helped much in the cold light of explaining my actions to supervisors. Turns out I was managing up and leading from the middle even though it always stressed me out

Intellectually, managing up isn’t about going rogue or playing politics. It’s about influence, alignment, and protecting the vision and mission from inaction. And, I struggled to think of examples of when I did this…until I wasn’t struggling and example after example rolled onto the page.

It’s About Urgency

When I see someone just waiting to act, especially on a campus or in a school system, I’m reminded of what a colleague would say when she ran into hesitation. If she felt like a person wasn’t doing enough or dragging their feet she would drop this bomb of a line on them:

“That’s ok. It’s just another day kids won’t learn.”

The first time she said it, my eyebrows raised all on their own and all I could say was WWOOOOOWWWWW. Harsh, but right on target. We can talk all day about getting ready, preparing the way, or making sure everything is perfectly aligned. But at the end of the day, are the kids, and the organizations that work for those kids, doing all they can, the best way they can, and with the urgency they deserve? Take in another step, what’s our role when we’re part of that organization and we’re seeing inaction and hesitation right in front of our own eyes?

I’ve been on the other side of things too when someone thought I was being too slow to react. As a campus leader, when someone blindsided me with their “initiative,” it could be a complete shock to the system. If they were way off the mark with their action, it stung, because I realized I hadn’t done a good enough job sharing what our mission and vision really were or what the process was that was actually addressing that. And honestly, even when they were on target, I could still feel the frustration. I wanted to be out in front of whatever it was not because I wanted the credit for anything but to make sure it didn’t die on the vine and get shut down by someone up or down the chain of command. I felt that I could have provided cover with the higher-ups. I could have helped with the messaging giving context to adjustment and framing it in the overall end goal we were all committed to. Instead, it often meant extra work “selling” the decision up the chain, even if the results were worth it. (Especially when the results were worth it!)

The Emotional Side of Things

Everything I’ve talked about so far is really the intellectual side of the notion of leading up. I started this post by saying that this was one of the most difficult ones to write. I also foreshadowed something about emotions back up there in the intro. Writing this post has given me an opportunity to look back and reflect on the emotional toll that “leading up” can take on you.

To be real, Fear. Was. Huge.

Fear of failing the kids.

Fear of letting down the boss that I was trying to manage.

Fear of letting down my team.

Fear of letting down people that had put their trust in me.

You get the message. But there was also something deeper I was struggling. It was feeling duplicitous, two faced, or seeming disingenuous. Here I was preaching about trusting the process…then seemingly ditching the process. And if trust is what everything hinges on, this could have been the absolute destroyer of that trust.

The Upside of Downer Emotions

So if those emotions I was feeling were so difficult, why did I bother to keep doing it and to continue to this day? Because there are lessons to learn and leverage in those feelings and emotions.

Yes, I felt terrified of failure. But that terror kept me focused on making sure things got done correctly. I had to fine tune exactly what we wanted to accomplish. I was also hyper aware of avoiding easy mistakes, unforced errors. And, it made me so much more empathetic to those who were in it with me. I knew some form of the same fear that I was asking others to face. That empathy, as I reflect, was the most important, oddly positive, feature of the negative emotion.

The duplicity I would also feel similarly had a purpose. I was forced to look acutely at the process I was preaching. If fear made me look deeply at the what, this feeling focused my reflection on the how and why. Why was there a need to deviate? What new information led me to the shift? How are we doing what we’re doing? Answering those questions helped me frame any new move or shift in terms of “course correction” or an “edit and not a revision.” To those that were the cool ones in the organization, I got to say from my soul, “New stuff has, you know, come to light, man” and mean it!

Those negative and complicated emotions are going to be there as you manage up. How you use them is the key. Ignore them and you miss an opportunity to enhance your leadership. 

Tactical Considerations of Managing and Leading Up

Chances are, you’re doing some version of managing/leading up. Here are a couple of lessons to keep in mind as you do the work.

Looking back, on both sides of my experiences of “leading up”, just a little heads-up would have gone a long way. I was doing a lot of thinking about my own thinking and forgetting to make that invisible process more visible to the team. When I was in the middle, letting my bosses know I was going to try something out, even in broad strokes, would have helped clear a path. And when I was the one blindsided as the leader being led, the same thing would have given me time to process and internalize. So here’s a bonus lesson: giving a quick preview can spare you a longer repair session later. (giving a 30 second update can save you a 30 minute clean up)

The next time you’re in a tight spot, when you’re stuck between taking action or letting something you see isn’t working play out, use the mission and vision of the organization as your decision making filter. The time to manage up comes when you have the perspective that others might not. Remember that you are where the rubber hits the road. Would you just sit back and wait another day with kids not learning? This is the time to act with urgency in the face of complacency.

Urgency isn’t the enemy. Complacency, comfortable compliance, is. This is the time to adapt and act. Ask questions. Get some context. Connect to the mission.

And remember to try to give at least a courtesy call about your move when you can. Do a little “think aloud” with people to give some insight into all the invisible thinking you’ve been doing.

Keep in Mind

Your “leading up“ could get all levels of an organization in a twist. You might sound as if you’re trying to undermine authority or ditch the chain of command. You might come across as saying follow your bliss, man, that rules are just arbitrary constructs.

You’re not.

Everyone in an organization has an obligation to serve, in any way they can, to meet the overarching mission and vision of the organization. We may not have formal authority or the title where we are in that organization but we still are part of an organic whole with a mission and a vision that we’ve committed to. Sitting back and waiting for someone else to figure it out always feels so much safer. But, like a mentor said to me, if not us who and if not now, when?

Why Those Emotions Matter Most

Let’s take a moment and talk one more time about emotions and feelings. If this is where you start to fade, give me a couple more paragraphs. Trust the process here.

Feeling the tension? Good. Feeling those emotions start to rise? Better.

The emotions are normal. They’re informative and actually make you a more authentic leader when you acknowledge and leverage them.

Hear me on this, I’m not suggesting that you “feel terrible and do it anyways.” I still have a reputation with some that I just bulldoze and go rogue whenever the mood suits me. And that still bugs me (a little, depends on the person). This is one of the big reasons this post was so difficult to write, it brought all those emotions right back up to the surface. Managing up can be challenging and uncomfortable and I struggled with emotions more than the actual doing.

What I learned, and I’m passing on, is to integrate those heavy and complicated feelings into how you lead. They’re going to be there so you might as well make them work for you.

Leadership is both science and art, intellectual and emotional.

Use both.

(Totally Optional) Reflection Time:

When have you “led up” and not realized it?

What emotions show up for you when you take the initiative without “permission?”

How could you make your invisible thinking more visible to others this week?

A few days after posting, I reflected on how we find that next leadership/motivation gear as we make a leading from the middle move. I recorded a short video here about it:

Connections to Previous Posts:

Take a look at Acting Amoeba and Talking Railroad for some more about navigating the technical side of Managing Up.

Take a look at Gears are Neat. Mobiles tell the Truth for more about the interconnectedness of systems.