Managing Up to Prevent Burnout and Exhaustion

It’s October. Fourth Quarter. The final months of a crazy 2025. 



In our coaching engagements, executive leadership retreats, high potential workshops and programs, we are hearing from those leaders a sense of EXHAUSTION. And when we dig deeper, we are hearing this is caused by uncertainty in the market, ambiguous goals, and indecisiveness on priorities.

While these are symptoms, the underlying diagnosis is a lack of alignment between bosses and direct reports. The lack of discussion and agreement on the viewpoint of the market, the clarity of the goals, and the debate of priorities is creating chaos: rework, late hours, poor results, and employee disengagement. This breakdown in communication is accelerating feelings of frustration in the workplace.

And many of the leaders we are working with feel paralyzed. They want to be able to bring solutions to their boss and streamline everyday work to help control the chaos. But they don’t always recognize what they really need is help with a critical leadership skill: managing up.

Managing up is about proactively working to build a positive, productive relationship with your manager and aligning on common expectations. These common expectations lead to achieving the best results for you, your boss, and the organization.
Here are five key strategies to improve your ability to manage up and minimize your sense of exhaustion:

• Align on Priorities and Goals: Understand what success looks like for your boss and the organization. Align your work and focus your efforts on projects and tasks that directly support key objectives and metrics. Meet weekly to review these priorities and goals to ensure they haven’t changed.
• Establish a Communication Cadence: Just-in-time communication, drive-bye chats, and “only when needed” meetings lead to confusion and chaos caused by a focus on the “priority/goal of the moment.” We find the bosses and direct reports with consistent weekly one-hour touch base meetings create an aligned, prioritized, and balance workload.
• Talk About the Future, not About the Past: Think ahead to actions you plan to take in the next few weeks, and discuss these with your boss in your weekly one-on-one. A proactive discussion lets you work through potential problems or roadblocks, and agreeing on solutions. This minimizes rework by no longer “assuming” you are on the same page.
• Be a Solutions-Oriented Partner: When you bring an issue or problem to your manager, always accompany it with one or more suggested solutions. This demonstrates initiative, critical thinking, and reliability, positioning you as a helpful partner rather than just a bearer of bad news.
• Embrace Feedback: Invest in your working, two-way relationship with your boss. Recognize where you can improve your performance and proactively ask for feedback and recommendations. Provide both complementary and constructive feedback to your boss. Feedback helps everyone succeed. And it builds trust.

The rhythm of regular, structured communication is the heart of managing up. And we think that those discussions need to be weekly to be truly effective. We’ve seen this firsthand with our coaching clients who implement this simple step of weekly one-on-ones. They ALWAYS report decreased workload and stronger team results.