Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor. I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm

specializing in helping leaders and organizations crack their activation codes, finding the simple

tweaks to enhance both performance and employee engagement. In my work, I get to spend time with

lots of different leadership teams, different companies, industries, and levels.

And recently it occurred to me that whether I'm dealing with a team of frontline leaders or

a team of executives, everyone has a boss who, in some way, intimidates them. I've heard

frontline managers and senior vice presidents all say at some point a version of, but I can't do that.

We all have that experience sometimes of knowing what we need to do, but feeling like we're

missing something, like key information or permission or funding. And so we throw up our hands

and say, well, I guess that won't get done. Today's episode is going to be a little bit of

tough love, because the truth is this feeling of disempowerment is resonating with you, then it is

time for you to start managing up. It's scary to think about, but managing up is an important part of

everyone's job. So let's talk about how to make it a little less scary and a little more

doable. Start by taking accountability for managing up. So I've been working lately with a sales

team in a tech organization. They're going through some big changes and I'm helping the leaders

build up that change capability. In a recent conversation, I asked the participants what

was holding them back from making progress with their teams. And one responded, well, honestly,

we just don't understand the rationale behind so many of these decisions that we're now supposed

to explain to our teams. So I looked around the room and I saw lots of heads bobbing up and down. This seemed pretty

clearly to be an issue for a number of participants. So I said, well, have you asked your leaders for

more clarity? And then there was laughter, which caught me off guard as this was not designed to be a

comedic moment. But the laughing was coming from their discomfort with the idea of asking.

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