Episode 52: Stop Waiting for Clarity: How the Top 1% of Leaders Manage Up

Here is the complete verbatim transcript of the episode:
In this episode of *The High Performance Leader*, Jimmy Burroughes discusses a critical challenge faced by leaders: waiting for direction and clarity from overwhelmed superiors. He explains why passively seeking clarity or being paralyzed by ambiguity limits career growth, and instead reveals how the top 1% of leaders proactively manage up by leading with strategic assumptions. By reframing clarity as something you create rather than wait for, leaders can position themselves as strategic partners rather than task managers.

"Waiting for them to give you clarity isn't good leadership. In fact, it's actually a subtle form of you abdicating your responsibility."

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"Every time you interact with your boss, you're either positioning yourself as a task manager or as a strategic leader."

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"In today's business environment, the ability to create clarity from chaos isn't just a nice-to-have skill, it's probably the difference between being the next one promoted... or just being a task manager."

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Introduction

[00:00]

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to this episode of The High Performance Leader, the podcast for leaders working in complex, challenging environments, to gain insights and ideas which help you increase your impact without burning out, and to help you build a high-performance culture in your team. I'm your host, Jimmy Burroughes. And if you're new to The High Performance Leader, make sure you subscribe or follow so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes before you put down your device.

The Problem with Waiting for Direction

JIMMY: Welcome back. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about a topic that comes up quite frequently from Amplify Leadership workshops, which is, "How do I manage up? You know, I'm spending all my time trying to get clarity from my boss on what I should be doing and where I should be focusing, and they don't give it to me. And so, you know, if we just got strategy in place, or we just got the vision in place, that that would really help." And unfortunately, that's not how things work in reality.

[00:59] You know, picture this: your boss has just dropped a massive project in your lap with pretty vague direction and probably some fairly high stakes involved. And what most people I see do is one of these two things. They either frantically chase their boss for a clarity meeting, which sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't, or they sit paralyzed waiting for more details, hoping that they're going to get the clarity they need to move forward. And unfortunately, both these are fairly career-limiting.
Today I'm going to share with you what the top 1% of leaders do instead that's a little bit different, and it's going to challenge everything you think about managing up. So let's get into it.

The Reality of Overwhelmed Bosses

Here's a radical thought that might make you uncomfortable: your boss is also overwhelmed.
[01:43] They are working in an executive team or reporting into an executive team, they're running around between meetings, they've got hundreds of emails to deal with every day, and they're overwhelmed. They're struggling just as much as you are. And so you waiting for them to give you clarity isn't good leadership. In fact, it's actually a subtle form of you abdicating your responsibility. Your job is to make decisions and create clarity for those people who work for you. And in order to do that, you need to create clarity for yourself and not rely on your boss to do it for you.

Leading Through Strategic Assumptions

I see this playing out quite frequently in organizations. The leaders who rise the fastest aren't necessarily the ones who get everything done and execute perfectly.
[02:35] What they are are the ones who do something that might feel a little bit dangerous to you at first, but they lead through making strategic assumptions and sharing those assumptions with those people around them. Essentially testing the assumptions that they're planning to make before they get started.
And before I explain what that means in more detail, let me share something that might shift your entire perspective. Imagine that you're an overwhelmed executive with two senior managers reporting into you and they're both handling complex transformations. And the first manager keeps asking, you know, "What exactly do you want me to do? I need you to give me some clarity. I need to sit down with you and get some more information about this." As an exec, that's just adding more decisions to your plate, and that plate is already really full and it's probably spinning with lots of other plates that you're dealing with.
[03:17] The second walks in and says, "Based on what I know and the market conditions, I've made three key assumptions: We're prioritizing our revenue over cost reduction. We need to get this out within six months to beat our competitors. And we'll focus on our top 20% of customers first. I'm ready to move forward unless you see any red flags." Which one, as an exec, is going to make your job easier? Which one demonstrates somebody who's all over the strategy and thinking about it, thinking about business impact? And which one would you trust with bigger opportunities?

Strategic Leader vs. Task Manager

The most successful managers that I've worked with have discovered something powerful:
[04:02] When you present clear, thoughtful assumptions, you're not just making decisions easier for your boss, you're demonstrating your strategic value and your impact in every interaction. And here's the important part that most people miss: this isn't just about getting decisions made faster—yeah, it absolutely does that—but it's about shifting how your leader sees your potential. You know, the advice of "step up and be more strategic" is simply because your leader doesn't see how your impact and you are strategically managing value in the organization.
Every time you interact with your boss, you're either positioning yourself as a task manager or as a strategic leader. And so when you come with some assumptions that are logical and based on on the strategy, you're doing three really key things.
[04:54] Number one: you're demonstrating your ability to think strategically, as we've mentioned.
Number two: you're making their job easier for them. You're not asking them to do the complex thinking, you're saying, "Hey, based on this, this, and this, this is what I think, and what do you think as a result of that?" So you're giving them some clarity by narrowing the frame they need to try and examine the situation in, because you've already come up with some assumptions. And they can either challenge your assumptions and steer you in a new direction, or you're going to get the green flag and you're off.

Action Challenge

So here's the challenge: think about the biggest unclear initiative on your plate right now, the one that's keeping you up at night that you're worrying about. And instead of waiting for clarity with that,
[05:37] I want you to write down three assumptions that would move you forward if they were said if they were agreed to. But—and this is crucial—I want you to make them slightly uncomfortable. If your assumptions don't make you a little bit nervous to share, then you're probably not bold enough to demonstrate the strategic thinking that you need that your boss needs to see.
And here's what I know for sure: in today's business environment, the ability to create clarity from chaos isn't just a nice-to-have skill, it's probably the difference between being the next one promoted, the one who has the biggest impact, the one who can move forward and and deliver value, or just being a task manager who's busy checking things off a list and running round with their hair on fire.
[06:21] So if this episode sparked you in something in you, and you imagine what's possible when you master the full strategic leadership toolkit, send me a comment, send me what you're going to change, and I cannot wait to see and hear what you come up with. Speak soon.

ANNOUNCER: That's it for this week's episode of The High Performance Leader. If you enjoyed this episode, please drop a review on whichever platform you listened on. We really appreciate it, and it helps us to connect with new listeners. Also, if you haven't already, head to jblhighperformance.com and download a copy of my latest bestseller, *Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance*. It's the leader's playbook for building a high-performance culture, and it's packed with practical action tips to get you started. Stay tuned for next week's episode of game-changing insights and ideas on The High Performance Leader.