GUEST POST: UP-DOWN-UP DIRECTIONS OF MANAGEMENT
Careers are primarily formed in three long arcs:
-
Learning.
-
Managing.
-
Leading.
In each phase, how you work with your manager and team will change.
As a new employee in the workforce, you’re in the learning phase. You will be responsible for managing up to your manager, and they will have the most direct influence on your direction, growth, and opportunities. This phase can last from a few to many years.
Once you cross the threshold of being a manager yourself, you start to manage down and up at the same time. This arc can last a long time, on the order of decades. This arc is challenging because you will lead your team as well as manage up to your own manager.
Once you reach Director and above, you start a new career arc into leadership. You will still have a large personal workload, but now you’re leading an organization with trusted managers to lean on and support you. In this phase, you will start to lead and principally manage up to the VPs and CxOs above you, and you will do a lot more managing up than managing down.
Takeaway: Understand what your manager and your team need at each phase of your career. This will help you manage up and down appropriately, and help you succeed and grow at a faster rate.
NOTE: This is an excerpt of this deep dive article. To keep reading the entire article jump over the LEVEL UP by Ethan Evans: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/p/up-down-up-directions-of-management
ABOUT LUKE
Luke Congdon is a career product manager living and working in Silicon Valley since 2000. His areas of focus include enterprise software, virtualization, cloud computing, and AI/ML. He has built and brought numerous products to market including start-up MVPs and billion-dollar product lines. Luke currently lives in San Francisco. To contact, connect via luke@lukecongdon.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecongdon/.