How to Manage Up Top Google Hit - Really About Command and Control?

If you Google "how to manage up" you will see that a post I did last year tops the page. I get hundreds of hits each week from this Google search phrase.

What this indicates to me is that people are struggling with how to deal with their bosses. Would your employees feel the need to Google "how to manage up?"

I will be doing a two day training session in Istanbul in November on the topic of managing up. The company I am doing this course for was very specific - this is the topic they most need and have requests for. It surprised me that they got requests for this topic from employees because I think that many employees talk to their outside networks about their frustrations before mentioning anything to internal resources. Perhaps they collected the information in a needs assessment survey.

If the demand for training on how to manage up is high, then I worry that relationships between managers and team members are not where they need to be. With open and connecting relationships, the concerns of how to manage up should be lower.

Or perhaps it is that we are still in a command and control paradigm and we don't know how to give feedback or offer suggestions to those who are higher on the org chart than we are. Again, this indicates a less than optimal relationship.

Let's stick with this idea of command and control for a moment, as I think we still struggle to transform our workplaces and often half-heartedly venture into the world of participation under the umbrella of engagement programs. I came across this PhD dissertation from Robert Levine at Boston College that sought to measure the connection between employee ownership, employee participation, and outcomes such as organizational identity, organizational commitment, reciprocity towards co-workers, trust towards managers, and reciprocity towards one's managers (he put these outcome under the heading of social capital). Levine found that participation practices increase positive outcomes to a point but then had the opposite effect. Here is a quote from the abstract:

"Higher levels of participation are initially associated with increased levels of these outcomes, but at some point the relationship reverses, and further increases in participation become associated with lower levels of these outcomes. However, within employee owned companies the effects of participation are linear and positive with respect to organizational commitment and trust in managers."

And this is what I mean by half-heartedly. Employees will go along with, and perhaps even enjoy, participation efforts, but if you continually ask them for more job ownership and accountability but don't give them real ownership/a skin in the game/meaningful influence, the employee value proposition will break down (value derived from the job for the efforts expended). If what is at the core of your orgnaization's mindset and values is based in command and control, will the partnership between managers and employees ever really flourish?

Getting back to managing up. If one employee wants to learn to manage up, this might be more about the employee and not a broader problem. If many employees want to learn how to manage up, then this indicates to me that there may be a systemic problem with the relationships between managers and team members rooted in an old and outdated command and control mentality. Thoughts?

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