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Managing Up: The Research on How the Relationship With Your Executive Actually Forms.
Updated: Sep 22
The phrase arrives in your first week, usually from someone kind. You should really learn to manage up. They say it as though it were a single skill, like touch typing, and then they walk off to a meeting and you are left holding a phrase with no instructions attached to it.
I wrote about managing up in 2023, and I still think the lines in that post are the right ones. What I did not have then was the evidence underneath them, and when I went looking for it this year I found something better than a list of tips. There is a whole body of research on the relationship between a person and the executive they work with. It has been running since the 1970s, it has been measured in tens of thousands of working pairs, and it says something quite specific: the relationship is not issued to you along with the job title; it is built, and built faster than anyone warns you, and it is built out of a small number of things you can actually do something about.
What you will get out of this
Why the relationship you have with your executive is a different thing from the job you were hired to do, and why both of you are probably rating it differently
The study that measured what a new working pair expected of each other in their first five days, and how long those expectations were still visible
Which upward influence tactics travel and which quietly cost you, from a field study that asked the boss as well as the person
The awkward finding about flattery, which is not that it fails
What asking for feedback actually buys you, which is not what the advice says it buys you
Why going first is only rewarded under two conditions, and how to meet both
The expectations nobody says out loud, and the one page that surfaces them
The upward check: a tool that takes what you are about to ask for and tells you how to put it
My seven lines from 2023, each with the evidence that backs it
The Managing Up Pages: three pages for the relationship you are actually in
What the relationship turns out to be
Start with the thing that surprised me most, because it reframes everything after it.
When researchers measure the relationship between a manager and the person who reports to them, they ask both people. And the two answers only moderately agree. That comes from a meta-analysis of the whole field published in 1997, and it has been replicated since. You and your executive are both walking around with a view of how the relationship is going, and those views are related without being the same view.
That matters more than it sounds. A 2023 meta-analysis looked specifically at what happens when the two people agree about the relationship rather than merely both rating it highly. Where boss and report saw it the same way, the relationship related more strongly to task performance and to the extra, unasked-for work people do for each other. Being on the same page was doing work of its own, separately from the relationship being good.
So the first move in managing up is not the one everybody reaches for; rather than working on the impression you make, work on finding out what the other person thinks is going on.
Here is the rest of what the research says the relationship is.
It is related to almost everything you care about. The 1997 meta-analysis found it related to job performance, satisfaction with supervision, overall satisfaction, commitment, role conflict, how clear the role felt and whether people intend to leave. Note the one that is missing: it was not significantly related to whether people actually left, only to whether they intended to.
It is mostly shaped from the other side. The largest meta-analysis of what builds these relationships covered 247 studies and 290 samples, looking at twenty-one things that might build the relationship and sixteen things it might affect. Leader variables explained the most variance. Read that carefully, because it cuts both ways: a great deal of this is about them, which is freeing, and the part that is about you is therefore worth spending properly.
It is uneven inside a team, by design. Managers do not form the same relationship with everyone; the research calls this differentiation and treats it as normal rather than scandalous. A 2018 review found that generally the less the relationships vary across a team, or the further a person's own relationship sits above the team average, the better the outcomes look, with a long list of conditions attached.
It pays out in the work people do for each other. A meta-analysis across fifty samples and 9,324 people found a moderately strong link between the relationship and the citizenship behaviours people perform, and the link was stronger for behaviours aimed at a person than for behaviours aimed at the organisation.
It is not the same as feeling supported by the company. A 1997 study found that support from the organisation and the relationship with the boss have different antecedents and different effects. They are two accounts, and they are kept separately.
Try this. Write down, in one sentence, what you think your executive would say about how well the two of you work together. Then write the sentence you would say. If those two sentences are not close, you have found the thing worth spending a conversation on, and it is not a performance conversation.
The research behind this section
Gerstner and Day (1997) meta-analysed the leader-member exchange literature and found significant relationships between the quality of the relationship and job performance, satisfaction with supervision, overall satisfaction, commitment, role conflict, role clearness, member competence and turnover intentions, found that the relationship with actual turnover was not significant, and found that leader and member perceptions of the same relationship were only moderately related. Dulebohn, Bommer, Liden, Brouer and Ferris (2012) meta-analysed 247 studies containing 290 samples, covering 21 antecedents and 16 consequences, and found that while leader behaviours and perceptions, follower characteristics, interpersonal relationship characteristics and contextual variables were all significant groups of antecedents, leader variables explained the most variance in relationship quality. Yuan, Sun, Effinger and Zhang (2023) meta-analysed agreement between leaders and members about their relationship and found that at higher levels of agreement the relationship was more strongly related to followers' task performance and organisational citizenship behaviours, and that agreement varied with national culture and with relationship tenure. Ilies, Nahrgang and Morgeson (2007) meta-analysed 50 independent samples totalling 9,324 people and found a moderately strong positive relationship of .37 between relationship quality and citizenship behaviours, with a stronger link for behaviours targeted at individuals (.38) than at the organisation (.31). Martin, Guillaume, Thomas, Lee and Epitropaki (2016) meta-analysed the relationship between exchange quality and a multi-dimensional model of work performance covering task, citizenship and counterproductive behaviour. Martin, Thomas, Legood and Dello Russo (2018) reviewed the concept of differentiation across a team, proposed three properties of the resulting pattern, and concluded that generally the lower the within-team variation, or the more a member's relationship sits above the team mean, the better the work outcomes, subject to many moderators. Rockstuhl, Dulebohn, Ang and Shore (2012) meta-analysed 282 independent samples totalling 68,587 people across 23 countries and found that relationships with citizenship behaviour, justice perceptions, job satisfaction, turnover intentions and trust in the leader were stronger in horizontal-individualistic contexts than in vertical-collectivistic ones, while task performance, organisational commitment and transformational leadership links were unaffected by culture. Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) set out the relationship-based approach to leadership and traced its development through four stages of theory and investigation. Wayne, Shore and Liden (1997) tested a model of both perceived organisational support and the leader relationship and found that the two have unique antecedents and are differentially related to outcomes. Erdogan and Bauer (2010) examined differentiated exchanges within work groups and the buffering role of justice perceptions. Yu, Matta and Cornfield (2018) examined whether differentiation is beneficial or detrimental for group outcomes. Yamaura and colleagues (2026) reviewed evidence suggesting that very high relationship quality may produce diminishing returns, as a counterweight to the general finding that more is better.
It forms faster than anyone tells you
In 1993 a group of researchers did something very simple and slightly alarming. They found 166 people who had only days earlier been hired, and their new supervisors, and they measured what each one expected of the other within the first five days. Then they came back at two weeks, at six weeks, and at six months.
The expectations measured in those first five days predicted the quality of the relationship at two weeks and at six weeks. What the new person expected of their leader was still predicting the relationship at six months.
Five days into the job, before either of them had done anything much at all.
Two other things came out of that study and both are worth keeping. Perceived similarity and liking, from both sides, predicted the relationship at most points. Demographic similarity did not; it had no significant effect on how the relationship developed. And the new person's performance ratings turned out to be relatively less important than the affective variables. Early on, how you seem matters more than how you are doing, because there is not yet very much doing to go on.
A 2009 study followed 330 new pairs through their first eight weeks with growth-curve modelling and filled in the next part. At the initial interaction, personality was doing the work; the member's extraversion and the leader's agreeableness shaped the first rating. After that, performance took over, and it was the performance of both people that shaped how the relationship developed. So the personality effect is a starting position rather than a destiny, and the thing that moves you off it is the work.
There is a third piece that matters for anyone who has ever started a role into a mess. A study of 248 new hires found that a good relationship with the manager softened the effect of expectations that had not been met, without erasing it. The relationship is load-bearing in exactly the situation where you most need something to bear a load.
The first week is not a warm-up; it is the week in which the two of you quietly decide what this is going to be.
None of this means you have missed your chance if you are three years in. Relationships are measured over time and they move. It does mean that the standard advice, which is to keep your head down at first and prove yourself later, is the opposite of what the evidence suggests. The expectations conversation belongs at the front.
Try this. If you are new, book twenty minutes in the first fortnight and ask three questions: what does a good week look like to you, what do you want to hear from me without having to ask, and what is the thing you would rather I never surprised you with. If you are not new, book the same twenty minutes anyway and call it a reset. Nobody has ever objected to being asked those.
The research behind this section
Liden, Wayne and Stilwell (1993) followed 166 newly hired employees and their immediate supervisors over the first six months, found that leader and member expectations of each other assessed in the first five days of the dyad predicted relationship quality at two weeks and at six weeks, found that member expectations of leaders also predicted relationship quality at six months, found that perceived similarity and liking from both perspectives predicted quality at most time periods, found that demographic similarity had no significant effect on development, and found that subordinate performance ratings were relatively less important in prediction than the affective variables. Nahrgang, Morgeson and Ilies (2009) used a longitudinal design and growth-curve modelling across 330 dyads to examine development from the initial interaction through the first eight weeks, found that leaders form differentiated exchanges with members, and found that team member extraversion and leader agreeableness influenced ratings of relationship quality at the initial interaction whereas leader and member performance influenced the development of the relationship over time. Major, Kozlowski, Chao and Gardner (1995) collected data from 248 new hires before entry and about four weeks after entry and found that met expectations, the leader relationship and the team relationship were all significant predictors of organisational commitment, turnover intention and job satisfaction, and that favourable role development relationships with supervisors or work groups ameliorated the negative effects of unmet expectations. Bauer and Green (1996) conducted a longitudinal test of relationship development. Cropanzano, Dasborough and Weiss (2017) proposed that high-quality relationships progress through role taking, role making and role routinisation, and that emotions are relevant at each stage.
The tactics people reach for, and the ones that travel
Now to the part everybody actually wants, which is what to do in the room.
There is a taxonomy for this, and it has been stable since 1980, when researchers content-analysed 370 influence attempts described by 165 managers and sorted them into eight dimensions: assertiveness, ingratiation, rationality, sanctions, exchange, upward appeals, blocking and coalitions. Later work tidied the names and added a few. What has been done since is the useful bit: people have measured which ones work, and crucially, which ones work upward, which is not the same question.
In 1992 a field study asked about each manager's use of nine tactics, and did not only ask the manager. It asked their subordinates, their peers and their boss. The most effective were rational persuasion, inspirational appeal and consultation. The least effective were pressure, coalition and legitimating, which is the one that means invoking the rules. And then the finding that should be on a poster somewhere: ingratiation and exchange were moderately effective for influencing subordinates and peers, and were not effective for influencing superiors.
That is the sentence I would give to anyone who has been told to charm their executive. The charm is doing something; what it is not doing is moving a decision upward.
A 2017 meta-analysis across forty-nine samples and 8,987 people put eleven tactics through the same test. Rational persuasion, inspirational appeal, apprising, collaboration, ingratiation and consultation all came out positive; pressure came out negative. One tactic held a stable positive relationship with both the task outcomes and the relationship outcomes, regardless of every moderator they tested, and it was rational persuasion.
Which is a slightly unglamorous answer. The thing that works upward is a reason.
An earlier meta-analysis had found ingratiation and rationality both positive for work outcomes, so this is not a literature that says flattery does nothing. It says something more precise, and a 1996 meta-analysis of ingratiation specifically is where the precision lives. Ingratiation had a small positive effect on performance evaluations and a significantly stronger positive effect on liking. It made people like you. It barely moved what they wrote down about you. And the effect was moderated by the tactic used, by how transparent it was, by the direction of the attempt, by whether the person judging was the target or merely watching, and by the setting.
Transparency is the word to hold on to. Three recent studies say the same thing from different directions.
A 2025 set of three field studies found the relationship between a newcomer's ingratiation and the quality of the relationship followed an inverted U. A bit of it raised the chance the supervisor read it as relationship-building. As it became more blatant, supervisors started looking for hidden motives, and the curve came back down.
A 2025 paper separated excessive ingratiation from what the authors called seamless ingratiation across two experiments and a ten-week weekly survey. Excessive ingratiation triggered supervisor embarrassment and made them avoid the interaction. Seamless ingratiation produced pride and more information sharing.
And a 2007 study found that where supervisors perceived more ingratiation from someone, they rated that person lower on interpersonal facilitation, which is the part of performance that is about working well with people. The same study found that people high in political skill were less likely to have the identical behaviour read as manipulation.
Flattery is a poor strategy for a subtler reason than nobody falling for it; it moves how much you are liked rather than what gets decided.
There is one more result in this pile that sharpens all of it, from a 1997 study of 247 subordinate and manager pairs. Reasoning, assertiveness and favour rendering were positively related to how managers saw the person's interpersonal skills, how much they liked them, and how similar they felt to them. Bargaining and self-promotion were negatively related to all three. And there was no support for a direct line from any tactic to the actual human resources decisions. The tactics work on perceptions, and perceptions work on decisions, which is a longer and more honest chain than the advice usually admits.
There is a cost on the other side too. A study of seventy-five professionals over two working weeks found that using ingratiation aimed at a supervisor depleted their self-control resources across the day, and that the depletion was associated with later deviant behaviour; self-promotion did not have the same effect. Performing warmth you do not feel is work, and the work comes out of the same tank as everything else.
Try this. Take the next thing you plan to raise with your executive and write the first sentence you were going to say. If that sentence is about how you feel, how hard you have worked, or how much you appreciate them, rewrite it as a reason: here is the situation, here is what I think we should do, here is why. Keep the warmth in the second sentence, where it is not carrying the argument.
The research behind this section
Kipnis, Schmidt and Wilkinson (1980) content-analysed 370 influence tactics described by 165 lower-level managers and identified eight dimensions of influence: assertiveness, ingratiation, rationality, sanctions, exchange, upward appeals, blocking and coalitions, and found that the frequency of each dimension related to the relative power of the parties and the reasons for exercising influence. Yukl and Falbe (1990) replicated and extended that work using both agent and target reports and found that consultation and rational persuasion were the tactics used most frequently regardless of the direction of influence. Yukl and Tracey (1992) conducted a field study measuring nine influence tactics with questionnaires completed by the subordinates, peers and boss of each manager, found that the most effective tactics were rational persuasion, inspirational appeal and consultation, found that the least effective were pressure, coalition and legitimating, and found that ingratiation and exchange were moderately effective for influencing subordinates and peers but were not effective for influencing superiors. Lee, Han, Cheong, Kim and Yun (2017) meta-analysed eleven influence tactics across 49 independent samples totalling 8,987 people, found positive relationships with outcomes for rational persuasion, inspirational appeal, apprising, collaboration, ingratiation and consultation and a negative relationship for pressure, and found that rational persuasion was the only tactic which held stable positive relationships with both task-oriented and relations-oriented outcomes regardless of moderating factors. Higgins, Judge and Ferris (2003) meta-analysed influence tactics and work outcomes and found that ingratiation and rationality have positive effects, with other tactics having significant effects in certain situations. Falbe and Yukl (1992) examined the consequences of using single tactics and combinations. Gordon (1996) meta-analysed research on ingratiation and found a small positive effect on performance evaluations and a significantly stronger positive effect on judgements of interpersonal attraction, qualified by moderators including the specific tactic used, the perceived transparency of the ingratiation, the direction of the influence attempt, whether perceivers were targets or observers, the gender of the perceiver, and the setting. Wayne, Liden, Graf and Ferris (1997) collected data from 247 subordinates and their managers and found that reasoning, assertiveness and favour rendering were positively related to managers' perceptions of interpersonal skills, liking and similarity while bargaining and self-promotion were negatively related, and found no support for direct relationships between influence tactics and the human resources decisions themselves. Wang and colleagues (2025) tested a dual-pathway attribution model across three field studies and found an inverted U-shaped relationship between newcomer ingratiation and relationship quality, with surface-level inference raising relationship-building attributions and blatant ingratiation prompting deeper scrutiny of hidden motives. Wu and colleagues (2025) distinguished excessive from seamless ingratiation across two experiments and a ten-week multisource weekly survey and found that excessive ingratiation triggered supervisors' embarrassment and interaction avoidance while seamless ingratiation evoked pride and information sharing. Treadway, Ferris, Duke, Adams and Thatcher (2007) found that when subordinates were perceived by their supervisors to engage in more ingratiation they were rated lower on interpersonal facilitation, and that subordinates high in political skill were less likely to have their ingratiation perceived as a manipulative influence attempt. Vonk (1998) documented the slime effect, in which behaviour that is likeable towards superiors and not towards subordinates is viewed with suspicion and dislike. Eastman (1994) found that the attribution of motive, rather than the behaviour itself, was related to supervisory decisions on employee outcomes. Klotz and colleagues (2018) followed 75 professionals over two working weeks and found that the daily use of supervisor-focused ingratiation, but not self-promotion, depleted self-control resources, and that the depletion was positively associated with employee deviance, more strongly among those low in political skill. Kim, LePine, Zhang and Baer (2022) found that the effects of ingratiation depend on how much a person ingratiates relative to their teammates. Thacker and Wayne (1995) examined the relationship between upward influence tactics and promotability. Judge and Bretz (1994) examined political influence behaviour and career success. Bolino, Kacmar, Turnley and Gilstrap (2008) reviewed impression management research across individual and organisational levels.
Asking, and what asking actually does
My 2023 post said feedback is your friend, be direct, embrace criticism, say thank you, show progress, check in regularly. I still think that is right. The research on feedback seeking is unusually large, and it complicates the advice in three useful places.
The first complication. A meta-analysis covering thirty years of work found that the link between seeking feedback and performance was small, which is not the same as absent and is a long way from the size the advice implies. Which means the reason to ask is not that asking will make you better at the job by some mechanical route. The reason to ask lives elsewhere, and we will get to it.
The second complication. The same meta-analysis found that the relationship between uncertainty and seeking feedback was negative. The people who feel least sure are the people who ask least, which is precisely backwards from how the advice is usually written, and probably familiar to anyone who has sat on a question for a fortnight because asking it felt like an admission.
The third complication. What predicted asking was a learning orientation, a tendency to seek feedback generally, frequent positive feedback, high self-esteem, a transformational leader and a high-quality relationship with the boss. Longer tenure, longer time in the job and greater age all predicted asking less. So the conditions that make asking feel safe are largely the conditions you have already got or have not, which is why the advice to simply ask more tends to bounce off the people who need it.
Here is where the useful part starts.
A pair of studies in 1992 found that people seek less feedback when they are being observed, which makes sense; asking in public has a price. But the second study found that when a person already has a strong performance history, seeking feedback improves observers' impressions of their characteristics and their potential. The same act, read two ways, depending on what the room already believes about you.
A 2010 study using scenarios sharpened that considerably. Managers attributed average performers' feedback seeking significantly less to wanting to improve than they did superior performers' seeking. And managers who believe ability is fixed read frequent asking as impression management rather than development.
Put those together and you get the real finding, which is not in any of the advice columns. Asking for feedback is never a neutral act of self-improvement; it is a signal, and the meaning of the signal is set by what the other person already thinks about your work and about whether people can change.
That is a reason to ask differently rather than a reason to stop. Ask about a specific piece of work rather than about yourself. Ask in a way that shows the thinking you have already done. And take the small number of chances you get to be seen asking in front of people who rate you.
The advice says ask for feedback to get better. The research says ask for feedback because of what the asking says about you, and then get better on your own time.
There is one live disagreement in this literature and you should see both halves of it. A 2017 study asked whether more feedback seeking is always better and found that the relationship with the boss moderates the answer. A 2021 field study across a range of organisations found employees reported an average of 3.8 feedback conversations in three weeks, found that more feedback went with better outcomes, and found no sign of a downward trend even at the highest frequency. The field data says more; the relationship data says it depends on who you are asking. Both were done properly, and I would not pretend they have been reconciled.
Try this. Replace "how am I doing?" with a sentence that has a piece of work in it and a position in it. "I sent the board paper in the format we agreed. I think the risks section is the weakest part and I would cut it to half a page. Would you agree?" That version asks for feedback and demonstrates judgement at the same time, which is the combination the research says gets read well.
The research behind this section
Anseel, Beatty, Shen, Lievens and Sackett (2015) meta-analysed thirty years of research on feedback-seeking behaviour, found that organisational tenure, job tenure and age were negatively related to seeking, found that learning and performance goal orientation, external feedback propensity, frequent positive feedback, high self-esteem, a transformational leadership style and a high-quality relationship were positively associated with seeking, found that challenging dominant views the relationship between uncertainty and seeking was negative, found that the relationship between seeking and performance was small, and found that inquiry and monitoring are not interchangeable tactics. Ashford and Cummings (1983) introduced feedback seeking as an individual resource and a personal strategy for creating information. Ashford, Blatt and VandeWalle (2003) reviewed two decades of the literature and organised it around instrumental, ego-based and image-based motives. Ashford, De Stobbeleir and Nujella (2016) updated that review, positioning feedback seeking in relation to proactivity, impression management and individual adjustment, and reviewing both the benefits and the potential costs. Ashford and Northcraft (1992) reported two studies and found that people seek less feedback when being observed and respond to situational norms about the appropriate frequency of seeking, and found that where an individual has a superior performance history, seeking enhances observers' impressions of the seeker's personal characteristics and performance potential. De Stobbeleir, Ashford and de Luque (2010) used a scenario methodology and found that managers attributed average performers' feedback seeking significantly less to performance-enhancement motives than superior performers' seeking, and found that managers holding a fixed view of ability attributed frequent feedback seeking significantly more to impression-management motives. Morrison and Bies (1991) set out how impression management shapes when, from whom and how individuals ask for feedback. Lam, Peng, Wong and Lau (2017) examined whether more feedback seeking is always better and found that the quality of the leader relationship moderates the answer. Mertens, Schollaert and Anseel (2021) surveyed employees across a range of organisations, found that employees reported on average 3.8 feedback conversations in three weeks, found support for more feedback being better with no indication of a downward trend at the highest frequency, and suggested the leader relationship as a mediating mechanism. Dahling and Whitaker (2016) found that an image-enhancement motive translated into greater feedback seeking and better task performance ratings only for employees high in political skill. Vancouver and Morrison (1995) examined how the attributes of a potential source affect who people ask. Mertens, Fitriastuti, Rys and Schollaert (2024) found that supervisors' own downward feedback seeking correlated with subordinates' use of upward ingratiation rather than sincere upward feedback. Ashford (1986) set out the resources perspective on feedback seeking in individual adaptation. Moss, Valenzi and Taggart (2003) developed a taxonomy of feedback management behaviours covering seeking, mitigating and avoiding.
Going first, and the two conditions on it
My 2023 post said be proactive, anticipate needs, do not wait around for instructions. The research agrees that proactivity is valuable and then adds a caveat large enough to change how you do it.
The caveat comes from a 2009 study with two samples: 103 managers rated by their supervisors, and 55 firefighters rated by their platoon supervisors. The researchers looked at four proactive behaviours, which were speaking up, selling an issue, taking charge and helping before being asked. Those behaviours had stronger relationships with supervisors' overall performance evaluations when the employee expressed strong prosocial values, or when the employee showed low negative affect.
In plain terms: the same helpful act gets more credit when the person doing it seems to be doing it for the team, and gets less credit when it arrives wrapped in frustration. Supervisors are running an attribution, whether they know it or not, and the attribution is about your motive.
Three other conditions decide how much of that credit arrives.
Whether your executive is proactive themselves. A 2012 study found that supervisors with proactive personalities were more likely to value and reward it in others, and, strikingly, that there was a cost for not taking charge when the supervisor was proactive. With a proactive boss, sitting tight is the risky option.
Whether you seem confident in the specific thing. A study of junior doctors and their supervisors found that engaging in proactive role behaviour while lacking confidence in that broader role meant supervisors gave less credit for it. Adaptive behaviour earned credit, and that credit was stronger for people who believed they could achieve the outcome.
Whether the room is safe to be wrong in. A study that surveyed ninety-four employees three times a day found that daily proactive behaviour raised perceived competence and end-of-day vitality, and also raised end-of-day anxiety, which then got in the way of switching off. The anxiety path only held where the supervisor was punitive about mistakes. Going first is energising in one kind of room and costly in another, and the difference is not in you.
A 2019 review of ninety-five articles gathered all of this under a phrase I like very much, which is wise proactivity. The factors that decide whether going first pays fall into three families: task and strategic ones such as judgement about the situation, social and relational ones such as having an open leader, and self-regulatory ones such as a learning orientation.
Try this. Next time you bring your executive something before they asked for it, add one clause about who it is for. "I redid the board pack running order so the finance section lands before people get tired" is the same work as "I redid the board pack running order", and it is the version that reads as prosocial rather than as restless.
The research behind this section
Grant, Parker and Collins (2009) drew on attribution theory and tested their hypotheses with 103 managers and their direct supervisors and with 55 firefighters and their platoon supervisors, and found that the proactive behaviours of voice, issue-selling, taking charge and anticipatory helping had stronger relationships with supervisors' performance evaluations when employees expressed strong prosocial values or low negative affect. Thomas, Whitman and Viswesvaran (2010) conducted a comparative meta-analysis of employee proactivity in organisations. Fuller and Marler (2009) meta-analysed the proactive personality literature. Fuller, Marler and Hester (2012) found that the relationship between proactive behaviour and performance ratings depended on the extent to which the supervisor valued proactivity, that supervisors with proactive personalities were more likely to value and reward subordinate proactive behaviour, and that there was a cost in the form of a lower performance rating for not taking charge among employees with proactive supervisors. Nguyen, Johnson, Collins and Parker (2017) studied junior doctors and their supervisors, found that adaptive role behaviours positively influenced supervisors' judgements of overall job performance with that relationship stronger for employees high in self-efficacy for achieving outcomes, and found that engaging in proactive role behaviours while lacking role-breadth self-efficacy resulted in supervisors giving less credit for those behaviours. Cangiano, Parker and Yeo (2019) sampled ninety-four employees three times a day for five to seven days and found that daily proactive behaviour enhanced end-of-work-day vitality through perceived competence and also generated anxiety at work which undermined detachment, with the second pathway holding only where the supervisor was perceived to be punitive about mistakes. Parker, Wang and Liao (2019) reviewed ninety-five articles and identified three categories of factors that shape whether proactivity is effective: task and strategic considerations such as situational judgement, social and relational considerations such as having an open leader, and self-regulatory considerations such as learning orientation. Grant and Ashford (2008) set out the dynamics of proactivity at work. Parker and Collins (2010) integrated and differentiated multiple proactive behaviours into a taxonomy. Chan (2006) found interactive effects of situational judgement effectiveness and proactive personality. Bolino, Valcea and Harvey (2010) examined the potentially negative implications of expecting employees to manage themselves. Belschak and Den Hartog (2010) distinguished pro-self, prosocial and pro-organisational foci of proactive behaviour. Lebel and Patil (2018) found that prosocial motivation kept employees proactive even where supervisors were perceived to discourage it. Xu, Loi and Chow (2023) found that taking charge related more strongly to promotability and visibility judgements among supervisors high in status-goal striving. Grant and Rothbard (2013) found that ambiguity strengthened the relationship between employees' values and their proactivity across a field study of 204 employees and a laboratory experiment with 232 participants.
The expectations nobody says out loud
My 2023 post had a line in it about setting clear expectations, and the research has more to say about that than about almost anything else here, because it has been measuring the absence of it for forty years.
Role ambiguity, which is the technical name for not knowing what is wanted, has been meta-analysed twice, once in 1985 and once in 2000 when a second team revisited the first one with more studies and better methods. The relationship with job performance is there, and it is the kind of finding that has survived being re-examined by people hoping to overturn it.
The relationship with your executive is one of the things that reduces it. The 1997 meta-analysis found that a better relationship went with a clearer sense of the role. Which produces a slightly circular but useful truth: the conversation about what is expected both requires the relationship and builds it.
There is a second literature here that almost nobody in our world knows about, and I think it should be better known. It is the research on what are called idiosyncratic deals, meaning the arrangements an individual negotiates for themselves that differ from the standard terms. These are neither favours nor secrets, but negotiated and known-about differences in how one person works. The research treats them as a normal feature of modern working life rather than as an exception, and there is a meta-analysis and review of where they help and where they cause trouble with the people who did not get one.
That framing is useful for our roles, because a great deal of what makes an assistant or a chief of staff effective is an arrangement that appears in nobody's job description: who sees the diary first, what you are allowed to decline on their behalf, which decisions you make without asking. Those are idiosyncratic deals whether or not anyone has called them that, and the research would say the risk is not having them; the risk is having them without anyone having said them out loud.
Try this. Write the three things you currently do on your executive's behalf that were never formally agreed. Then pick the one that would cause the most trouble if the two of you turned out to disagree about it, and put that one sentence in your next one-to-one as a check rather than as a request.
The research behind this section
Jackson and Schuler (1985) conducted the original meta-analysis and conceptual critique of research on role ambiguity and role conflict in work settings. Tubre and Collins (2000) revisited that analysis with additional studies and examined the relationship between role ambiguity, role conflict and job performance. Gerstner and Day (1997) found that the quality of the leader relationship was significantly related to how clear the role felt, among its correlates. Rousseau, Ho and Greenberg (2006) set out the concept of idiosyncratic deals, the individually negotiated terms that differ from the standard employment arrangement. Liao, Wayne and Rousseau (2016) conducted a qualitative and meta-analytical review of idiosyncratic deals in contemporary organisations, covering their antecedents, their consequences and the reactions of colleagues.
Questions, and the half everyone forgets
My 2023 post said questions and listening are the secret weapons, and that asking questions shows curiosity while listening builds trust. I want to give the listening half more room, because it has better evidence behind it than most people realise and it is the part that gets dropped first when the week gets heavy.
There is now a body of experimental work on high-quality listening, summarised in a 2022 review in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, which is about as mainstream as this field gets. The experiments do something clever: they manipulate the quality of the listening and then measure what happens to the speaker. A 2018 paper with a title I have thought about many times since, The Listener Sets the Tone, found effects on the speaker's attitudes. The listener is not a passive recipient of the conversation; the listener changes it while it is happening.
On the questions side, the relationship with your executive predicts whether you speak up at all. A meta-analysis across thirty-seven samples for voice, fifty-three for creativity and twenty-nine for innovative behaviour found the relationship predicted all three, and predicted creativity most strongly of the three. That is the mechanism by which a good relationship turns into better work rather than merely a nicer working life.
And there is a separate literature on how managers respond to being spoken to, which distinguishes challenging voice from supportive voice and finds the responses differ. Worth knowing before you decide which of the two you are about to do.
This is the point in the post where I would normally give you a script, and scripts do not survive contact with a real executive. So here is a tool instead.
Here is what it does. Put in what you are about to raise and how things stand between you, and it will tell you which way to put it, what the research says about that particular move, and what to set up before you open your mouth. It gives you a short note you can copy.
The research behind this section
Kluger and Itzchakov (2022) reviewed the evidence on high-quality listening at work in the Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. Itzchakov, DeMarree, Kluger and Turjeman-Levi (2018) found that high-quality listening influenced the speaker's attitudes. Itzchakov and Kluger (2017) described the listening circle as a tool for enhancing listening. Carnevale, Huang, Crede, Harms and Uhl-Bien (2017) meta-analysed the relationship between the quality of the leader relationship and employees' idea contribution across thirty-seven samples for voice, fifty-three for creativity and twenty-nine for innovative behaviour, found that the relationship positively predicted all three, and found it more strongly related to creativity than to voice or innovative behaviour. Chamberlin, Newton and LePine (2017) meta-analysed voice and its promotive and prohibitive forms. Burris (2012) examined managerial responses to employee voice and distinguished the risks and rewards of challenging and supportive forms. Owens, Johnson and Mitchell (2013) examined expressed humility in organisations and its implications for performance and teams.
My seven lines, and what sits under each
The 2023 post finished with seven of them. Be a good listener, be proactive, be organised, be positive, be flexible, be solution-oriented, be honest. I stand by all seven, and every one of them has something underneath it that is more interesting than the line.
Be a good listener. The listening research says this is not passive. High-quality listening measurably changes the speaker, which means listening well is something you do to a conversation rather than something you refrain from doing.
Be proactive. True, with the condition from earlier attached: the credit depends on whether the motive reads as prosocial, and on whether your executive values proactivity themselves.
Be organised. The evidence for this one runs through the ambiguity research rather than through tidiness. Being organised is worth less than being clear about what is expected, and the second one is a conversation rather than a system.
Be positive. The research supports a narrower version of this than the phrase suggests. What predicted more credit for proactive work was low negative affect, which is not the same as cheerfulness and is a great deal easier to sustain. Nobody needs you to be delighted. It helps if the thing you bring does not arrive with an edge on it.
Be flexible. Adaptive behaviour earned credit from supervisors in the junior doctor study, and earned more of it from people who looked confident they could handle the outcome. Flexibility reads better when it does not read as being blown about.
Be solution-oriented. This is the best supported line of the seven. Rational persuasion is the upward tactic that survives every moderator anyone has tested. Bringing a reason and a proposal is not a personality trait; it is the mechanism.
Be honest. Self-promotion and bargaining were both negatively related to how managers saw people's interpersonal skills, their likeability and their similarity to themselves. The attribution of motive did more work than the behaviour itself. And the slime effect, which is a real term in a real journal, describes what happens when someone is charming upward and not charming downward: observers view it with suspicion and dislike. People notice, and the research says they hold it against the person doing it.
Where to start
If you take one thing from all of this, make it the first one, because it is the cheapest and the research is clearest on it: find out how your executive thinks the relationship is going, because their answer and yours are probably not the same answer, and the gap between them is where the useful conversation is.
After that, three moves in order.
Say the expectations out loud, including the ones that were never agreed and are now simply how you work. Lead with the reason rather than the relationship when you want something, and keep the warmth for the sentence after. And ask for feedback in a way that shows your judgement rather than your uncertainty, because the asking is being read either way.
I have put the three pages I would use into a download. There is an expectations page for the conversation you keep meaning to have, the upward note for the next thing you need to raise, and a quarterly review of the relationship itself, which is the one nobody does.
Managing up was never about managing anybody. It is a relationship with two people in it, both of whom are guessing at what the other one thinks, and almost everything that improves it comes from closing that gap on purpose rather than from being more impressive. The research has been saying so since before either of us started work.
Your ability to do this well sits inside what the Connected Leader Assessment calls Influence and Stakeholder Trust, which is the dimension that covers how you are read by the people whose decisions you shape. It is the least visible of the five and the one that most often decides whether the rest of your work lands, because judgement nobody trusts does not get used.
If you want to know where yours sits, the assessment takes about twelve minutes and gives you a read across all five dimensions rather than a score to feel something about. From there, the Irreplaceable Audit is the one that looks at the arrangements around you, including the undocumented ones this post has been talking about, and the Skill Sprints are where you work on a single dimension without having to take a course.
Stay savvy.
Meg ✌️
Free tools
The upward check, the interactive tool in this post, free
The Managing Up Pages, the download in this post, free
The Connected Leader Assessment, twelve minutes, free, with a read on Influence and Stakeholder Trust, the dimension this post sits in
The Irreplaceable Audit, forty-eight activities across four kinds of work, free, for showing your executive where your time really goes
P.S. Want to Go Deeper on Managing Up?
If this resonated and you want to go further, here is the evidence the piece is built on. These are the papers that shaped my thinking on how the working relationship with an executive forms, and what moves it, and they are well worth your time.
Every DOI below has been checked. Where I could not confirm a figure from the paper itself, I have left the figure out rather than guess.
📃 Gerstner and Day (1997) Meta-analysis of the leader relationship literature. Boss and report ratings of the same relationship agree only moderately. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.82.6.827
📃 Dulebohn and colleagues (2012) 247 studies, 290 samples, 21 antecedents and 16 consequences. Leader variables explained the most variance. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206311415280
📃 Martin and colleagues (2016) Meta-analysis of the relationship and performance across task, citizenship and counterproductive behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12100
📃 Rockstuhl and colleagues (2012) 282 samples, 68,587 people, 23 countries. Several links are stronger in Western settings than in collectivist ones. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029978
📃 Liden, Wayne and Stilwell (1993) 166 new hires. Expectations measured in the first five days still predicted the relationship at six months. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.78.4.662
📃 Nahrgang, Morgeson and Ilies (2009) 330 pairs over eight weeks. Personality shaped the first rating; performance shaped what happened next. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.09.002
📃 Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995) The relationship-based account of leadership, traced through twenty-five years of theory. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(95)90036-5
📃 Erdogan and Bauer (2010) Differentiated relationships within a work group, and the buffering role of justice perceptions. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020578
📃 Yu, Matta and Cornfield (2018) Whether differentiating relationships across a team helps or harms the group. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.1212
📃 Ilies, Nahrgang and Morgeson (2007) 50 samples, 9,324 people. The relationship predicts citizenship at .37, more for people than for the organisation. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.1.269
📃 Sparrowe and Liden (2005) Two routes to influence: the relationship with the boss and position in the wider network. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.50.4.505
📃 Chen, Lam and Zhong (2007) A new look at how the relationship relates to individual performance. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.1.202
📃 Kacmar and colleagues (2003) How often you communicate with your manager interacts with the quality of the relationship. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.4.764
📃 Eisenberger and colleagues (2002) Perceived supervisor support and how it feeds into perceived support from the organisation. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.565
📃 Bauer and colleagues (2007) Meta-analysis of newcomer adjustment during organisational socialisation. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.707
📃 Turban and Jones (1988) Types of supervisor and subordinate similarity, their effects, and the mechanisms behind them. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.73.2.228
📃 Kacmar and colleagues (2009) Actual similarity on the surface against perceived similarity underneath, and which one matters. https://doi.org/10.21818/001c.17263
📃 Higgins, Judge and Ferris (2003) Meta-analysis of influence tactics and work outcomes. Ingratiation and rationality both came out positive. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.181
📃 Yukl and Falbe (1990) Consultation and rational persuasion are the most used tactics whatever the direction of the attempt. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.2.132
📃 Falbe and Yukl (1992) The consequences for managers of using single influence tactics and combinations of them. https://doi.org/10.2307/256490
📃 Kipnis, Schmidt and Wilkinson (1980) The original taxonomy. 370 influence attempts sorted into eight dimensions. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.65.4.440
📃 Gordon (1996) Meta-analysis of ingratiation. Small effect on evaluations, stronger effect on liking, moderated by transparency. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.54
📃 Judge and Bretz (1994) Political influence behaviour and its relationship with career success. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639402000103
📃 Barrick, Shaffer and DeGrassi (2009) Meta-analysis of self-presentation and what interviewers and raters actually see. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016532
📃 Bolino, Long and Turnley (2016) Annual Review chapter on impression management in organisations: the critical questions and the answers so far. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062337
📃 Wayne and Liden (1995) Longitudinal study of the effects of impression management on performance ratings. https://doi.org/10.5465/256734
📃 Wayne and Ferris (1990) Influence tactics, affect and exchange quality inside supervisor and subordinate pairs. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.5.487
📃 Vonk (1998) The slime effect. Charm aimed upward and withheld downward is met with suspicion and dislike. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.4.849
📃 Rudman (1998) The costs and benefits of counterstereotypical self-promotion, and who pays them. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.3.629
📃 Thacker and Wayne (1995) Upward influence tactics and their relationship with being judged promotable. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639502100408
📃 Terpstra-Tong and Ralston (2002) A cross-national look at upward influence strategies and how they are judged. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1016299904532
📃 Anseel and colleagues (2015) Thirty years of feedback seeking meta-analysed. Uncertainty predicts less seeking, and the link to performance is small. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206313484521
📃 Ashford and Cummings (1983) The founding paper. Feedback treated as a resource individuals go and create for themselves. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(83)90156-3
📃 Ashford, De Stobbeleir and Nujella (2016) Annual Review update on feedback seeking, its benefits and its costs. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-041015-062314
📃 Ashford (1986) The resources perspective on feedback seeking during individual adaptation. https://doi.org/10.5465/256219
📃 Ashford and Northcraft (1992) People seek less feedback when watched, yet strong performers who seek it are judged more capable. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(92)90068-i
📃 Vancouver and Morrison (1995) How the attributes of a source shape who people choose to ask. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1995.1050
📃 Lam and colleagues (2017) Whether more feedback seeking is always better, and how the relationship with the boss moderates it. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206315581661
📃 Lam, Huang and Snape (2007) Feedback-seeking behaviour and the relationship with the boss, including supervisor attributions. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.24634440
📃 Thomas, Whitman and Viswesvaran (2010) Comparative meta-analysis of employee proactivity in organisations. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317910x502359
📃 Fuller and Marler (2009) Meta-analytic review of the proactive personality and what it predicts. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2009.05.008
📃 Grant and Ashford (2008) The dynamics of proactivity at work, and how proactive acts unfold over time. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.riob.2008.04.002
📃 Parker and Collins (2010) A taxonomy that separates the several different things people mean by proactive behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206308321554
📃 Grant, Parker and Collins (2009) Proactive work earns more credit when the person shows prosocial values or low negative affect. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2008.01128.x
📃 Chan (2006) Situational judgement and proactive personality interact; going first pays when the read is good. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.91.2.475
📃 Bolino, Valcea and Harvey (2010) The potentially negative implications of expecting people to manage themselves. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317910X493134
📃 Belschak and Den Hartog (2010) Proactive behaviour aimed at the self, at other people and at the organisation are three different things. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317909X439208
📃 Fuller and colleagues (2015) When leaders give credit for a follower's proactive behaviour, and when they do not. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714548235
📃 Tubre and Collins (2000) Meta-analysis revisiting role ambiguity, role conflict and job performance with better methods. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920630002600104
📃 Jackson and Schuler (1985) The original meta-analysis and critique of role ambiguity and role conflict at work. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(85)90020-2
📃 Rousseau, Ho and Greenberg (2006) Idiosyncratic deals: the terms an individual negotiates that differ from the standard arrangement. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2006.22527470
📃 Liao, Wayne and Rousseau (2016) Review and meta-analysis of idiosyncratic deals, their antecedents and how colleagues react to them. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1959
📃 Dirks and Ferrin (2002) Meta-analysis of trust in leadership and what it predicts. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.4.611
📃 Munyon and colleagues (2015) Meta-analysis of political skill and work outcomes. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12066
📃 Ferris and colleagues (2005) Development and validation of the political skill inventory. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206304271386
📃 Uhl-Bien and colleagues (2014) Followership theory: a review of the field and where it should go next. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007
📃 Carsten and colleagues (2010) A qualitative study of how people actually construct what it means to follow well. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2010.03.015
📃 Chamberlin, Newton and LePine (2017) Meta-analysis separating promotive voice from prohibitive voice and their different consequences. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12185
📃 Burris (2012) Managerial responses to employee voice differ for challenging and supportive forms. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2010.0562
📃 Kluger and Itzchakov (2022) Annual Review of the evidence on high-quality listening at work. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091013
📃 Itzchakov and colleagues (2018) The listener sets the tone. Listening quality changes the speaker, not only the listener. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217747874
📃 Itzchakov and Kluger (2017) The listening circle as a practical tool for improving how a group listens. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2017.05.005
📃 Podsakoff and colleagues (2009) Meta-analysis of the individual and organisational consequences of citizenship behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013079
📃 Owens, Johnson and Mitchell (2013) Expressed humility in organisations and what it does for performance and teams. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0795
📃 Wang and colleagues (2025) Three field studies. Newcomer ingratiation and the relationship follow an inverted U as it becomes blatant. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001292
📃 Wu and colleagues (2025) Excessive ingratiation embarrassed supervisors and made them avoid the person; seamless ingratiation did the opposite. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2843
📃 Kim and colleagues (2022) Ingratiation is judged relative to how much the rest of the team is doing it. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000852
📃 Treadway and colleagues (2007) Supervisors who saw more ingratiation rated the person lower on working well with others. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.92.3.848
📃 Long (2021) Whether ingratiation reads as tactical or authentic, and what each does to a supervisor's trust. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04251-3
📃 Yuan and colleagues (2023) Meta-analysis of agreement. Where both people see the relationship the same way, it predicts more. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001089
📃 Bauer and Green (1996) A longitudinal test of how the relationship between a manager and a new report develops. https://doi.org/10.2307/257068
📃 Major and colleagues (1995) 248 new hires. A good relationship softened the effect of expectations that were not met. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.80.3.418
📃 Wayne, Shore and Liden (1997) Support from the organisation and the relationship with the boss have different causes and different effects. https://doi.org/10.5465/257021
📃 Mertens and colleagues (2024) When supervisors ask for feedback, subordinates tend to answer with flattery rather than with feedback. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-07012-2
📃 Eastman (1994) Supervisors act on the motive they attribute to helpful behaviour, not on the behaviour itself. https://doi.org/10.2307/256678
📃 Martin and colleagues (2018) Critical review of what it means for relationships to vary across a team, and what that variation predicts. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2202
📃 Legood and colleagues (2021) Meta-analysis of trust as the mechanism between leadership and performance, across 185 studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432x.2020.1819241
📃 Carnevale and colleagues (2017) The relationship predicts voice, creativity and innovative behaviour, and predicts creativity most strongly. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12102
📃 Liao and colleagues (2019) An episodic view: what happens inside a single exchange between a manager and a report. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000371
📃 Yukl and Tracey (1992) Rated by subordinates, peers and the boss. Ingratiation and exchange were not effective upward. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.4.525
📃 Lee and colleagues (2017) Meta-analysis of eleven tactics, 49 samples, 8,987 people. Rational persuasion was the only stable winner. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2016.11.001
📃 Wayne and colleagues (1997) 247 pairs. Reasoning and favour rendering helped perceptions; bargaining and self-promotion hurt them. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1997.tb01491.x
📃 De Stobbeleir, Ashford and de Luque (2010) Managers read average performers' feedback seeking very differently from strong performers' seeking. https://doi.org/10.1348/096317909x479529
📃 Morrison and Bies (1991) How impression management shapes when, from whom and how people ask for feedback. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1991.4279472
📃 Ashford, Blatt and VandeWalle (2003) Two decades of feedback-seeking research organised around instrumental, ego and image motives. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-2063(03)00079-5
📃 Mertens, Schollaert and Anseel (2021) Field study across organisations. 3.8 feedback conversations in three weeks, and more was better. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12352
📃 Klotz and colleagues (2018) Daily ingratiation aimed at a supervisor depleted self-control; self-promotion did not. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000335
📃 Parker, Wang and Liao (2019) Ninety-five articles on when proactivity is wise, sorted into three families of conditions. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012218-015302
📃 Fuller, Marler and Hester (2012) Supervisors who are proactive themselves reward it more, and penalise its absence. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.1780
📃 Xu, Loi and Chow (2023) Taking charge helped promotability more with supervisors who were striving for status themselves. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000752
📃 Lebel and Patil (2018) Prosocial motivation kept people proactive even where the supervisor discouraged it. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000301
📃 Grant and Rothbard (2013) Ambiguity strengthens the link between what someone values and how proactive they are. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032873
📃 Dahling and Whitaker (2016) Seeking feedback to enhance your image improved ratings only for those high in political skill. https://doi.org/10.1080/08959285.2016.1148037
📃 Nguyen and colleagues (2017) Supervisors gave less credit for proactive behaviour when the person lacked confidence in the wider role. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12149
📃 Cangiano, Parker and Yeo (2019) Daily proactivity raised vitality and raised anxiety, the second only under a punitive supervisor. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2321
📃 Cable and Judge (2003) Which upward tactics managers reach for depends on their personality and their boss's style. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.183
📃 Epitropaki and Martin (2013) Upward tactics shift with the leader's style and with how scarce the resources around you are. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2012.11.007
📃 Bolino and colleagues (2008) A multi-level review of impression management motives and behaviours in organisations. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206308324325
📃 Peck and Levashina (2017) Meta-analysis of impression management in interviews and in job performance ratings. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00201
📃 Cropanzano, Dasborough and Weiss (2017) Relationships pass through role taking, role making and routinisation, with emotion at every stage. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0384
📃 Moss, Valenzi and Taggart (2003) A taxonomy of what people do about feedback when they are doing well and when they are not. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-2063_03_00022-9
📃 Yamaura and colleagues (2026) A review asking whether a very close relationship with the boss can have diminishing returns. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1722767
P.P.S. Why Do I Even Have the Nerve to Write This?
Fair question.
I am someone who has spent years working alongside remarkable executives, navigating chaos, translating vision into structure and figuring things out, sometimes beautifully and sometimes the very hard way. I have had the privilege of being the steady right hand to leaders who move fast, take risks and expect a lot. That environment has shaped me more than any classroom ever could.
I also happen to have an MBA, and I am studying psychology because people fascinate me. How we work. Why we disconnect. What actually holds us together when the pressure rises.
But really, none of that is the point.
I am here because I have lived the erosion and rebuilt from it. I have seen the cost of carrying too much and the relief that arrives when you finally stop disappearing inside your own competence.
So I share what I have learned in case it helps someone else. Take what is useful. Leave the rest. And remember this one truth that professionals like you often forget:
You are probably doing far better than you give yourself credit for.
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