Teach Up

I don’t like the term ‘managing up’.

It implies that you’re keeping key people in your organization at arm’s length, feeding them some vanilla version of your progress in order to avoid any questions or accountability.

I prefer the idea of ‘teaching up’.

Now it’s a front-foot perspective where you’re actively engaged and focused on keeping stakeholders educated and informed.

As a coaching community, we can no longer pine for the days where we ran everything and no-one asked questions. Those days are long gone, and they’re not coming back.

We must lean in to our new role as collaborators in a massive organization, with hundreds of staff, dozens of departments, and a multitude of business interests.

Any organization of size is going to frown upon one of its key people refusing to share pertinent information and willingly keeping everyone decision-makers in the dark.

How To Teach Up

A head coach who showed great skill at teaching those ‘above’ him was AC Milan legend Arrigo Sacchi.

Unlike many owner-coach relationships, Sacchi had a family like relationship with the club owner, Silvio Berluschoni. They admired each other and respected each other, but just like any family, things also got tense. However, the pair knew that they needed to act together in order to take AC Milan where they wanted to go.

In his book, The Immortals, Sacchi tells a story that captures his skill at teaching his bosses, rather than managing his bosses.

After a league game in Italy, Berluschoni and managing director Adriano Galliani visited the locker room.

As the pair stood with Sacchi discussing the game, Angelo Colombo, Milan’s team-first midfielder walked past. Sacchi proceeded to congratulate Colombo on his performance, to the complete disbelief of Galliani.

“But he didn’t touch the ball,” scoffed Galliani. “Yes, but thanks to his movement, lots of his teammates were able to do important things,” retorted Sacchi.

Galliani’s comment was rooted in the fact he’d never seen the game played the way Sacchi liked it played. His brand of attacking football had never been seen before in Italy. Inspired by the Dutch methodology, Sacchi’s style required a lot of running, aggressive defense, and all eleven players to fully synchronize their movement. By contrast, the Italian style tended to be slower, more passive, and less fluid.

But rather than roll his eyes and tell Adriano Galliani that he “doesn’t get it”, Sacchi chose to communicate what he looked for in a successful performance, and how the parts all fit together.

It doesn’t say so in the book, but my guess is the next time Galliani saw Milan play, he watched the game in a different way — a way more aligned with what Sacchi was envisioning.

Being a craftsperson means coming up with new ideas and being brave enough to bring them to life. But alongside your ability to implement new ideas is a responsibility to teach them to others — especially to those that are higher-up in your organization.

Cody’s Notes

• By willingly being engaged in open communication with higher-ups, you can develop greater trust and transparency. Often, this can result in more patience when things aren’t going to plan.

• An easy way to start is to send a weekly summary that shows all of your thinking that went into key decisions that were made.

• To consider yourself a good communicator, you need to be able to understand and communicate with administrators in your organization.

• Don’t roll your eyes and get frustrated that they “don’t get it”, use your words and teach them.

• In turn, ask them to teach you about what’s important to them in their role. This will help you understand how they’re being incentivized, which often helps explain the decisions they make.

• Consider how long you spend thinking about how to implement your ideas with your players, and how little time you spend thinking about how to explain them to others.