Middle-management brings you into contact with a lot of people - some below you in the company's hierarchy, others higher up. Your role demands that you lead and look after those within your remit, to support, to delegate when necessary, to keep your corner of the company running as smoothly as can be; that's all in the manager's job description. But what about those who manage above you? You might not be leading them, yet you need to be able to work with them, to ensure that their requirements of your department are achievable, and to clarify your team's position in schedules and budgets.

Unfortunately, you can't necessarily rely on senior managers understanding your team's position as well as you do. Nor can you always expect sympathy: they have a whole organisation to look after, with a number of departments just like your own. You need to stand up for your department - but if that sounds aggressive, it shouldn't. Your approach should be assertive, but also understanding of the wider picture, clear in its intents and statements, open and proactive. Keeping a positive relationship between yourself and your seniors, and between your department and the business as a whole, needs care and no little practice. It's a skill known as managing upwards.

Self-awareness

A vital first step to developing that positive relationship is to make sure you fully understand your own position. What is your department currently doing successfully? How much scope do they have for taking on more work, and what kind of work? What has been achievable in the past, and what has not? And just as you need to be familiar with your department's capabilities and limitations, so you should be aware of your own personal strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures. You need to consider past discussions, what's been expected of you and how you've reacted; you'll be building on an existing relationship, whether positive or negative, and by understanding what's happened in the past you can move the situation to one that's more balanced and advantageous to all concerned. What's more, you'll also be able to pick up on the likely behaviour of your managers.

Cooperation

Knowing how to understand and predict that behaviour can smooth the way considerably. After all, you're ultimately on the same side - this isn't a contest between rivals, or even a negotiation between separate companies, you and your senior managers are (presumably) both looking towards the same aim. Therefore, the positive relationship would be a cooperative one; but working together won't always come naturally. After all, you may be aiming towards the same overarching purpose, but your individual responsibilities will be quite different.

Understanding those responsibilities, and the priorities they bring, is essential. Having identified what is of the most importance to senior managers, you can more easily illustrate the value of your own department's work, and its role in the wider growth of the company. Successful cooperation is all about knowing the other's needs as well as you know your own; if you're able to adapt your approach in expectation of what will be asked of you, then there'll be less disruption if you accept, and less conflict if you don't.

Be assertive

There will still be times, though, when all your efforts to cooperate and work together towards the wider aim won't succeed, and the demands being placed upon you and your team are clearly greater than you can manage. As we said earlier, this isn't a matter of being aggressive; be aware of your own situation and that of those above you. With this knowledge backing you up, you'll find it much easier to say no when you need to, and you can be more confident that your managers will respect your reasons.

Asserting yourself may not always mean dealing with unreasonable demands. There'll be many times when you have to approach those managers with your own requests or some bad news. You might also need to delegate upwards, to pass on a task which needs a higher level of seniority than your own. In such cases, having confidence in your position is a must, as is having confidence in yourself and your own ability. Of course, this might not always be easy, and it's natural to fear for the impact on your department (or, indeed, your career). But with the assuredness that comes with knowing that you're working for the good of all concerned, you can reasonably expect that your managers will work with you and not against you.

Managing upwards can be every bit as important as managing downwards, as you provide a key link in the organisation, connecting your department and the work they do to senior management and from there to the wider organisation. It's an important skill, and there are significant benefits to be had in mastering it - and a short training course could certainly prove useful here. And it's a skill that can help you take control of your position within the company, and of your relationship with those above and below; it's a skill that can only bring benefits to yourself and to the organisation as a whole.