Stop Assuming, Start Asking: How to Build Trust in Every Direction
Listen to the entire episode to learn more about managing in all directions.
Listen to the full episode →When people become managers, they get plenty of advice about how to run their team (including from me). What gets much less attention is how to manage up to their own boss or across to the peers they need but don't have formal influence over. Kristen Harcourt, an executive coach who has spent almost 20 years working with leaders around the world, says that gap is where careers stall and projects quietly fail.
Managing down, up, and across are three different skill sets, and most of us only ever get coached on one of them. Here's what Kristen taught me about the other two.
How to Manage Up Without Feeling Like a Burden
A lot of people avoid telling their boss they're overwhelmed because it feels like adding to someone else's plate. Kristen's reframe: think about what you want from your own direct reports. You'd want them to come to you before they hit a wall, not after. Your boss wants the same thing from you.
She notes that the delivery matters as much as the message. Notice your boss's personality and their bandwidth in the moment, then come to the conversation with a proposed solution instead of just a problem. Something like: "Here's what's going on, here's how I'd suggest we handle it, what do you think?" That single shift, from complaint to proposal, changes how the whole conversation lands.
Ask for What You Need (And You’ll Probably Get It)
Kristen has coached leaders for a decade, and one pattern keeps showing up: the pressure to skip vacation or never say no rarely comes from the boss. It's something people put on themselves. That doesn't mean the organization's culture and pace don't matter, they do. But you also have agency here. Ask directly for what you need and the answer is almost always the opposite of what you feared.
Curiosity Beats Assumptions Every Time When Managing Across
Managing peers is a different game entirely. There's no formal authority, so trust has to be built deliberately. Kristen's advice: ask more questions about what your peers' teams are actually dealing with instead of assuming you already know.
Kristen shared a story about a company rolling out a new system that kept meeting resistance. The assumption by leadership was change fatigue. The real issue, once someone finally asked, was that past rollouts had ignored the frontline team's input entirely, and this team was bracing for the same thing. Once they were asked what would actually work, adoption skyrocketed.
When a Teammate Is Drowning
Cross-functional leadership adds another wrinkle: people who report to you but work under someone else’ direction for a project. If one of them tells you they're maxed out, Kristen's advice depends on the relationship and the person's capacity. Where there's trust, coach them to have the conversation with their project lead, even offer to role-play it with them. That builds their skill and your relationship at once.
But if someone is truly burned out and doesn't have the bandwidth to advocate for themselves, it's fair to step in, not to take over, but to flag what you're observing so that project lead can help. The goal isn't to make the call for them. It's to make sure someone is watching out for them.
Managing down will always take the most day-to-day energy, but managing up and across is what determines how far your influence actually reaches. A few minutes of real curiosity with a peer, and a proposed solution instead of a problem for your boss, go a long way.
Keep up with Kristen Harcourt
Website: https://kristenharcourt.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristenharcourt/
Email: kristen@kristenharcourt.com
The Modern Manager is a leadership podcast for rockstar managers who want to close the gap between knowing what good management is and actually doing it.
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