How to Manage Up So Your Boss Removes Obstacles Not Adds Them

Think about how your managers bring you work. Some arrive at your door asking you to make the call, set the direction, and resolve the ambiguity. Others arrive with a proposed way forward and a simple question: any red flags before I proceed?

The difference between those two habits is the difference between a management layer that adds to your load and one that removes it. And most GMs are unintentionally training the first kind.

The pattern that makes you the bottleneck

When a manager waits for you to give a clear brief before they move, every ambiguous project routes through you. You become the clarity department for the whole business. It feels like being in control. It is actually a cap on how fast your organisation can move, because nothing progresses faster than you can personally get to it.

The manager is not being lazy. They have usually learned that this is what you want. If asking you first is always safe, and moving without you sometimes gets corrected, a sensible person asks first every time.

What good looks like

The managers who help you most do not seek clarity. They propose it. Instead of "can we discuss the project parameters?" they come with a position:

"Based on our market position and the goals we agreed, I plan to focus on revenue growth over cost reduction, target a third-quarter launch to get ahead of competitors, and pilot with our top customers first. Unless you see a red flag, I will move forward on that basis."

One version adds to your mental load and waits. The other reduces it and moves. The second manager still gives you the chance to steer, but the default is progress, not a queue outside your office.

How to grow more of it

You get more of this by rewarding it and less of it by rescuing. When a manager brings you a decision they could have proposed, resist solving it. Ask what they would do, and why. When they bring you a well-reasoned proposal, back it, even if it is not exactly how you would have done it. People take ownership when ownership is safe.

Then make it explicit. Tell your managers you would rather see a considered proposal with a couple of assumptions than a request for a briefing. Tell them that being slightly bold and mostly right is worth more to you than being cautious and always waiting.

Do this consistently and the flow of small decisions upward slows to the ones that genuinely need you. That is decision velocity across your whole layer, and hours back in your own week. Here is how I build this with management teams.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.