I've had a lot of managers who I didn't work well with. But often, it was a thing that I could fix in myself. And figuring out how to make those relationships work well is critical to unlocking the trust and ownership you need to be a very successful EM.

So, to keep it short, this is my three step process to run through for managing up:

1. Put yourself in their shoes. Like really. What are their pressures, their challenges, their constraints. Ask them about these things.
2. Now look at your team. What role might they play in those pressures, those challenges, the constraints? If you're unsure, ask! But intuiting is better.
3. How can you, as that team's manager, consistently ease the pressure, reduce the challenges, and work around the constraints?

Take anything from step 3 and make it a regular habit. It might not be your favorite work, but it's work that should help the organization as a whole. The key to it is that every team is a little different, so each team's managing up responsibilities are a little different. Doing what another team is doing is a good start, but not the end result. Also, these things change over time as projects change. What you were doing last month might not be needed this month, or might need even more detail.

Examples of what this has looked like for me:

• Keeping a spreadsheet of all devs with a TL;DR of our last 1:1 and status of their project work
• Regularly pulling together OKR metrics and proxies from our work to show impact and progress
• Maintaining an active gantt roadmap chart
• Talking through specific high importance PRs

Some of these were due to managers who had micro-management tendencies and wanted to get in the weeds, some due to managers who were distant and needed to show that they still knew what was going on. It was often low value work, but it unlocks the high value work down the line when you have karma you want to burn on an idea.

Also it doesn't always work! Sometimes teams are just in a bad place no matter what.