As a manager, your job extends beyond your own team—you’re also responsible for how your team connects to the rest of the organization. That means managing up (with your own manager and senior leadership) and managing across (with peers in product, design, operations, and other engineering teams).

This isn’t just about keeping others informed. It’s about advocating for your team, aligning priorities, and ensuring your people have what they need to succeed. Without this skill, your team risks being misunderstood, under-resourced, or excluded from key decisions. With it, you become a trusted partner—someone who creates clarity, earns influence, and amplifies their team’s impact.

Why Managing Up and Across Matters

You represent your team.
To leadership and peers, you are your team. The way you communicate, escalate, and collaborate shapes how others perceive your engineers. If you’re reliable, constructive, and clear, your team will be seen that way too.

Alignment prevents waste.
Most breakdowns in organizations aren’t caused by bad code—they come from misalignment. Two teams build overlapping features, priorities diverge, or decisions get stuck. Managing up and across keeps everyone rowing in the same direction.

Advocacy unlocks resources.
Your team depends on you to make their needs visible—whether that’s more headcount, better tooling, or time to refactor. Strong upward management ensures your team’s priorities are understood and supported.

It builds your influence.
Managing up and across is how you expand your impact. When leadership trusts your judgment and peers trust your collaboration, you gain the ability to shape bigger decisions that affect your team’s success.

Common Pitfalls

Only communicating when there’s a problem.
If your boss only hears from you during crises, you’ll become associated with bad news. Instead, create a regular rhythm of communication—share progress, wins, and lessons learned. That way, when you raise a risk, it’s seen as credible, not reactive.

Overloading leaders with detail.
Engineering instincts push you toward completeness—but your audience doesn’t need every ticket or stack trace. Focus on what matters: what’s going well, what’s at risk, and what you need from them. Distill the noise into signal.

Competing instead of collaborating.
When resources are tight, it’s easy to view peers as rivals. But collaboration beats competition every time. Build shared wins, give credit freely, and strengthen relationships before you need them. Peers who trust you will have your back when it counts.

Withholding bad news.
Hoping a problem will “fix itself” rarely works. Escalate early, with context and a plan. Leaders don’t expect perfection—they expect awareness and honesty. Transparency builds credibility.

Practical Ways to Manage Up and Across

Communicate upward with clarity.
When updating leadership, answer three questions: What’s going well? What’s at risk? What do you need from them? Keep it crisp and outcome-oriented.

Instead of: “We closed 12 tickets this sprint.”
Try: “The onboarding flow is on track for next week. The only risk is API stability—we’re adding tests but may need infra support if it persists.”

That’s the difference between reporting activity and demonstrating leadership.

Build peer relationships proactively.
Don’t wait for friction to connect with peers. Schedule short check-ins to align priorities and share context. Ask:

• “What are your top priorities this quarter?”

• “Where do we have dependencies?”

• “How can we make collaboration smoother?”

Strong peer relationships turn potential conflicts into partnerships.

Escalate early and constructively.
Escalation isn’t failure—it’s leadership. Frame risks clearly and calmly: what’s happening, what you’re doing about it, and where you need help. It’s how you keep surprises off the table and show you’re in control.

Advocate for your team.
Your team doesn’t sit in leadership meetings—you do. Tie your requests to business outcomes. Instead of “We’re understaffed,” say “Adding one engineer to onboarding could accelerate release by three weeks, directly impacting churn goals.” Clear, data-driven advocacy earns respect.

Share credit generously.
When things go well, spotlight your team. “Sarah’s refactor cut response times by 30%” builds far more trust than “I pushed the team to deliver.” The more credit you give away, the stronger your credibility becomes.

3 Things You Can Practice This Week

1. Send a concise weekly update to your manager.
Summarize what’s going well, what’s at risk, and what you need. Keep it to one short paragraph. See how it changes the tone of your 1:1s—less status-checking, more problem-solving.

2. Schedule one peer check-in.
Pick a product, design, or engineering peer and align on priorities. Listen more than you talk. Afterwards, follow up on one small change that makes collaboration easier.

3. Advocate publicly for someone on your team.
In your next cross-functional meeting, highlight a contribution from one of your engineers and connect it to impact. You’ll boost their confidence and show others that your team delivers.

Final Thought

Managing up and across isn’t politics—it’s leadership beyond your team’s borders. It’s how you align direction, earn trust, and create leverage for your people.

When you communicate clearly, escalate early, and advocate consistently, you turn your local leadership into organizational influence. Your team sees you not just as their manager—but as their champion. And that’s when your leadership starts to scale.