There was a moment early in my career that changed the way I saw working on a team and being a leader.
It was my first day at a new job. My boss sat me down and said, “There are four things you’re responsible and accountable for here. Be on time. Keep and manage your word. Look for what is wanted and needed. And manage up.”
At the time, I nodded, said yes, and thought, “Got it. Easy.”
It wasn’t.
1. Be on Time
I understood this intellectually. But living it was another story. I was often rushing, sliding into meetings late, poorly planning, thinking my value would outweigh my tardiness. It didn’t. Being late sent a message I didn’t intend, that my time mattered more than others’. I learned the hard way: When you’re on time, your integrity speaks before you do.
2. Keep and Manage Your Word I understood this one. But I had a hidden agenda. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be seen as capable and valuable. So, I said yes to everything. I negotiated nothing… until I was overwhelmed and buried.
And that meant I was constantly breaking my word.
I believed saying no would make me look weak or difficult. But over time, I learned that real integrity doesn’t mean always saying yes. It means being honest about your capacity. It means negotiating, or renegotiating, when circumstances change. It means making promises you can keep, keeping the ones you make and cleaning up the mess you create when you don’t.
Saying no, I discovered, is not a failure. It’s actually one of the clearest expressions of integrity, responsibility, and accountability.
3. Look for What Is Wanted and Needed This one fundamentally changed how I thought. My boss challenged me to stop waiting for direction and instead ask, “What’s wanted and needed right now? And now? And now?” He told me to block 15–30 minutes in my calendar every day to think. Strategically. Critically. To sit quietly, reflect, and ask:
- What are the top 1–2 priorities that will move the needle?
- Why are those the priorities?
- What might I be missing?
- What’s working, what’s not?
- Will my actions lead me to my desired outcome and results?
This wasn’t just about solving problems. It was about developing the kind of thinking that separates managers from leaders. It was about becoming someone who anticipates, prioritizes, and initiates without waiting to be told. This is a vital discipline for anyone in a leadership role. So do you have strategic thinking time blocked in your calendar?
In my experience coaching thousands of people over decades, your honest answer is likely no. If that’s true, make the simple shift today. Get your team to do the same today.
4. Manage Up
This one was the hardest for me to understand at the time. What did it mean to “manage up”? My boss used to say, “Think about what’s on my plate. Where can you reduce my pain? Where can you make my life easier?” At first, I thought it meant doing more work, impressing him, or proving myself. But over time, I saw it differently.
Managing up means:
- Being prepared for every meeting, not to focus the conversation on the past, but to move it forward into the future.
- Thinking like an owner, not a task taker.
- Anticipating your manager’s pressure points before they show up.
- Be willing to bring ideas, not just problems.
- Offering solutions that align with your managers priorities.
- Communicating in a way that reduces their decision fatigue—not adds to it. (And by the way, every time you drop the ball, delay, or fail to follow through, consider this: you’re not just missing a deadline. You’re adding to your manager’s mental load. Their fatigue grows when they have to track your promises for you.)It’s not about people-pleasing. It’s about value creation. It’s about being strategic in how you support the person above you without giving up your integrity or boundaries.
Managing up is not about pleasing people. It’s about creating value. It’s about understanding your role in the bigger picture and making strategic contributions that free your manager to lead.
There’s a dangerous myth in the workplace: “I have all the responsibility, but none of the authority.”
But here’s what I learned: I had full authority to manage the integrity of my role. Not the title. Not the hierarchy. Not the org chart. Me. I had the authority to own my commitments, speak up when priorities conflicted, ask for understanding, and renegotiate when something wasn’t working. That authority didn’t need to be granted, it was already mine. It came with responsibility.
And if I didn’t own that, who was going to? If I didn’t protect my time, speak with candor, and ensure I was aligned with what actually mattered, I would keep waiting for someone else to fix it, to guide me, to “understand” how overloaded I was.
But leadership doesn’t sit around waiting to be understood. Leadership starts by managing your own agreements, your own communication, your own integrity regardless of your position. That’s when I stopped just reporting to my boss and started becoming someone he could count on to think like a peer, to manage up.
The Leadership Lesson
These four nonnegotiable standards weren’t about compliance. They were a crash course on day one of my job in how to lead myself.
They taught me:
- That leadership starts with how you show up.
- That integrity isn’t perfection, it’s ownership.
- That adding value means thinking ahead, not waiting for tasks.
- And that managing up is one of the most underdeveloped leadership muscles in most companies today.
In the next article, we’ll take this further and unpack what it really means to build capacity, deliver value, and stop hiding behind busyness.
Your Execution Challenge
Put these into practice immediately. Not someday. Not next quarter. Now:
- Be ruthless with time. Show up on time. End on time. Respect others’ time as fiercely as your own. Be the example for this one and others will follow.
- Audit your commitments. Where are you stretched too thin or making silent promises you can’t keep? Clean it up, no excuses, no delay.
- Schedule 15–30 minutes of strategic thinking daily. Block it. Sit still. Ask: “What’s wanted and needed right now?” Then act on it.
- Manage up with intention. Arrive at your next meeting prepared to move the conversation forward, not rehash the past or dump problems.
- Lead with solutions. Ask yourself: “What could I do this week to reduce my manager’s pressure or pain?”
Leadership doesn’t start when you’re handed a team. It starts the moment you take full ownership of your commitments. And it expands exponentially when you learn to lead upward.