How do you work with an ineffective manager?
About a month ago, I made a post here asking about if I should be micromanaging my manager. I got a lot of helpful feedback, including advice about “managing up,” which I’ve genuinely tried to apply.
Since then, I’ve started noticing a bigger issue: my manager either does not seem to care, or they genuinely do not understand how operations work within our company. Which is crazy because they have been working here longer.
I filled my coworker in on what I learned about managing up, so we repeatedly remind our manager about important issues, follow up on unresolved items, document concerns, and try to guide conversations toward solutions. But we keep getting the same result. Problems are either dropped entirely unless someone else keeps pushing them forward, or our manager acts as if this is the first time they’ve heard about the issue... even when we’ve discussed it multiple times before.
At this point, “managing up” feels I'm like doing another person’s job on top of my own responsibilities. I would like to add that we’re also a very small company with no HR department, so there is no formal escalation process. The only person above my manager is someone I already have regular 1:1 meetings with and I am considering bringing this up to them but I just don't know how.
So, my hesitation is how do you professionally tell upper leadership that your manager is not effectively managing operations or following through on responsibilities without sounding disrespectful, dramatic, or self-important? Would bringing this up make me look difficult?
I'm reaching a point where I want to leave because nothing seems to improve. If I left tomorrow, a significant amount of operational knowledge and day-to-day follow-through would disappear with me, and I think that’s part of why I’m feeling so burned out. I don’t have the capacity to continue absorbing responsibilities that should belong to someone else.