289: Learn How to Manage Up with Nick Warner

https://youtu.be/rRK1UIE-9nQ Nick Warner, seasoned business coach and host of the Together at the Top podcast, is on a mission to help leaders and emerging professionals align their values, careers, and impact. We explore Nick’s Managing Up Framework: What’s in it for them, Preferred Cadence, Preferred Channel, Prioritize, and Make It Convenient. Nick explains how to adapt communication to busy executives, navigate different leadership styles, and influence without authority. He also shares the mindset shifts needed to coach effectively, why humility is non-negotiable, and how soulful leadership fuels high-performing teams. --- Learn How to Manage Up from Nick Warner Good day, dear listeners, Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and I'm excited to have today on the show, Nick Warner, who is a seasoned business coach with over 4,000 sessions under his belt, but he also was the managing partner of a lobbying firm in California for a couple of decades before that. So, lots to bring to the show. Nick, welcome. Thank you for having me, Steve. I really appreciate it. Well, it's great to have you. You've got some good information and a great career and lots of experience. So let's dive in. My favorite question for guests is, what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing to manifest it in your practice? Yeah, great question. My personal “Why,” I hope this doesn't sound cheesy, this is a second career for me, is I really want to help people. I want to help them find the highest level of confluence of what they want in their life, in their career or their companies. So I'm really motivated by helping. I'm not sure I knew that until I got a little bit further into it and it started to like affect my soul, a more scientific way to say it. You realize it's their families and their stress environments and their kids' college accounts, and you may end up mattering in their lives. So, I really enjoy helping people in that regard. Yeah, I mean, coaching is a high leverage activity. You touch people who are multipliers, especially when you're in business coaching and that's a pretty awesome aspect of it. So if I multiply the 4,000 with the number of people touched, it's probably more like 50,000 something. It's funny you say it that way because when I was an employer directly, I would think about my staff of 25 times and I'm making this up a little bit like an average family of four and I would think of it in my sphere of responsibility was 100 people. So if I have an agency, I have a public sector agency where there's a thousand people that working in it, there's four, they have different titles, but essentially vice presidents. And I urge them to think about 4,000 people. There are very small number of us in this room and we can really impact people's lives. So yeah, I use that same similar multiplier when I think about it. Yeah. That's pretty awesome. You're probably undercharging for your coaching, talking about this. I doubt it. Some might disagree. All right, so let's switch gears and let's talk about your framework, because that's also pretty interesting. You developed a framework about something that a lot of us struggle with. I no longer struggle with it because I don't have anyone that I report to other than my wife. But I know that when I was working for big companies, it was very hard to manage up to get your bosses to actually not complicate your life and not want to second guess you and to exert your influence when you didn't have authority for it. So what is that process? What is that framework, The Managing Up Framework? Can you walk us through please? Yeah, for sure. I want to thank you too, because when you asked me the question about, do I have a framework? I said, no. And then you asked me to just talk about it. And when you played it back to me, I realized I do have a framework. So, I appreciate it. You actually really helped me a lot in my conversa...