Managing Up, Managing Down: A Middle Manager's Balancing Act

Stepping into a middle management role is a wild experience. One minute you're deep in product reviews with your team, and the next you're sitting in a room where decisions are made that make zero sense to the people doing the actual work.

Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever felt torn between protecting your team and surviving the influence plays above, you’re not alone. Here's a mindset that’s helped me—and maybe it'll help you too:

Lead Down with Heart

Your team is your real power.

These are the folks in the trenches—building, testing, fixing, growing. They’re not just “resources,” they’re real people with hopes, frustrations, and ideas. They deserve empathy, clarity, and support.

When you lead downwards:

• Be human.
• Be present.
• Protect their focus.
• Translate chaos from the top into clarity below.

Invest in your team. That’s your legacy.

Deal Up with Clarity and Boundaries

Now here’s the trickier part: dealing with higher-ups.

This is where decisions might start to feel... detached from reality. Priorities shift. Agendas enter the chat. Sometimes it’s about optics, not outcomes. It can feel personal, especially if you’ve spent years building something only to watch someone new try to "redefine" it overnight.

But here’s the move:

Don’t take it personally. Don’t fight every battle. Just focus on the truth, and let your work speak.

When managing up:

• Be respectful, but firm.
• Speak in outcomes, not emotions.
• Ask for context, not permission.
• Know when to push, and when to step aside.

You’re not there to win every argument—you’re there to represent the product, the users, and the truth as you see it.

The Balancing Act

Here’s the model I follow:

✨ Lead down with heart. Deal up with clarity. ✨

Empathy at the bottom. Detachment at the top.

Not cold detachment—just enough emotional distance that you don’t burn out trying to fix things outside your control.

This lets you:

• Protect your energy.
• Stay outcome-focused.
• Earn trust from your team and respect from above.

This mindset won’t make you invincible—but it will keep you sane, effective, and rooted in what actually matters: building great things with good people.

If you’re climbing the ladder and trying to stay grounded while navigating messy org charts and random reorgs, remember: you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.

Ideally, Here's what I found useful resource worth watching from Apple. How they have Direct Responsibility Individuals (DRI) model avoid the chaos leading UP. Link

Stay focused. Stay real. Keep shipping.