What Your Manager Won't Tell You: The Art of Managing Up with Wes Kao (Cofounder of Maven & altMBA)

Chat with Wes Kao (Cofounder of Maven & altMBA)

Welcome to this week’s free article of Level Up: Your source for executive insights, high performance habits, and specific career growth actions.

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Ethan’s next live Career Talk with Q&A is on “How to Implement New Work Habits” (October 9). Newsletter paid subscribers, RSVP here.

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Wes Kao — is an entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and advisor. She co-founded Maven (a platform for live online courses; raised $25M from First Round & Andreessen Horowitz), co-founded the altMBA with bestselling author Seth Godin, and advised CEOs of Section (Professor Scott Galloway), Outlier (co-founder of Masterclass), and Morning Brew on go-to-market, positioning, and growth.

​Now Wes works with founders and senior leaders via 1:1 executive coaching, typically in areas like setting a high bar of excellence, leveling up your strategic communication, and managing lean teams with ambitious goals.

In our fireside chat, Wes and Jason Yoong (my Operating Partner) discuss:

1. ​Key principles when managing up.

2. Observing, understanding, and building trust with your manager (including insecure managers).

3. ​Fin​​esse when managing up to intense senior executives.

4. Handling unreasonable expectations.

5. And what Wes learned from Seth Godin.

Watch on YouTube.

Takeaways

1. Managers WANT YOU to manage up to them and it creates a virtuous cycle. You manage up, your manager believes in you more, your manager gives you more autonomy, you get more leeway to make an impact, your manager sees the impact, and they give you more autonomy.

2. The best operators do not just ask their manager…instead, they OBSERVE them and pattern match. Many managers are unable to clearly articulate exactly how they want to be managed up to. Thus, do not rely solely on your manager. Three clues to look for:

   1. What are the questions that my manager usually asks me when I bring up an idea or challenge?

   2. What are the questions that my manager asks other people?

   3. How does my manager present their own ideas? This will tell you what they value.

3. Turn a yellow spot into the sun—there are always ways to bring excitement and energy to elevate your work. Understand how your work drives value and identify how you can elevate it in the eyes of the rest of the company. You can make something boring into something exciting (e.g. Simplehuman turned trash cans into an iPhone-like product).

4. Get to the point as fast as possible when communicating with C-level executives. Wasting 3-minutes on background or pleasantries will frustrate busy executives. View presentations as two-way guided conversations (not one-way TED Talk speeches) with the goal either to get buy-in or poke holes to make a better decision and align on next steps. Also, do not feel like you need to finish your full message/spiel before taking the win and just moving on.

5. Managers, use TACS when giving feedback. Tactical, Actionable, Concrete, and Specific.

6. “To increase my standards”—the biggest thing Wes learned from Seth Godin. For 3 years, Seth tore Wes’ work to shreds and set unreasonably high expectations. That taught her how to reframe the problem to meet the standards (it’s the leader’s responsibility to constantly break frames).

   1. Note: Your skills, background, and experience become less important as you advance in your career. Rather, your judgment and ability to set high standards for yourself and other people become more important—this is what makes a senior leader a force multiplier.

Thank you Wes! Follow her on LinkedIn and subscribe to her newsletter for high-performers (highly recommended).

Wes also teaches a very popular Maven course on “Executive Communication & Influence for Senior ICs and Managers” and contact her here if you want 1:1 executive coaching.

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Other popular fireside chats you may like

1. Career from Engineer to CEO & EVP with Ethan Evans & Ameesh Paleja

2. Dissecting Amazon Leadership Principles (LPs) for Amazonians & Non-Amazonians with Ethan Evans & David Anderson

3. Be a High-Value Connector & Networker with Jason Yoong & Andrew Yeung

4. How to Influence Without Authority with Jason Yoong & Irina Stanescu

5. What a Series B Co-Founder looks for in their Leadership Team with Jason Yoong & Dee Murthy

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Connect With Ethan & Jason

• Follow Ethan on LinkedIn.

• Get Ethan’s career advice on YouTube.

• Connect with Jason (Ethan’s operating partner) on LinkedIn.

• Learn more about Ethan’s live online courses and on-demand courses.

• Contact us for corporate training, speaking, podcast appearances, and more.

Many subscribers expense this newsletter to their Learning & Development budget, use this email template to send to your manager.

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