Leading Up & Managing Your ManagerDisagreeing with your manager in public, in private, or not at all: which actually serves you?
Twenty-four items — five managing-up situations and 19 behavioural statements — measure whether you influence upward in your manager's terms, keep them ahead of problems, own your part in a strained relationship and negotiate workload openly. Four banded competencies and a growth plan come back in about 20 minutes.
Push back publicly, absorb silently or wait: all three backfire
The five situations are the ones everyone with a manager recognises. You disagree with a direction they have set and you have good reasons. They are extremely busy and you need decisions and support from them to do your job. Something in your area is going wrong, you do not yet know how badly, and they dislike surprises. The relationship is strained, you feel they are difficult, and you want to improve it. The options include raising it in the team meeting for the record, complying quietly, going over their head, and waiting for certainty before saying anything.
Options are weighted against public research on upward influence by understanding a manager's goals and constraints and framing the case in their terms, on the no-surprises relationship and proactive disclosure, on making it easy for a busy manager through specific asks and recommendations, on owning the part of a strained relationship within your control, and on making trade-offs visible when negotiating workload. Each weight carries a written rationale. The bank is original AssessAll work; no managing-up book or vendor framework is named. The 19 behavioural statements ask what you actually do, and reverse-keyed items reduce the value of a diplomatic self-report.
The report bands Stakeholder Influence, Stakeholder Communication, Self-Awareness and Negotiation & Value beneath a 0–100 score, each with a coaching interpretation for the relationship you have now. A narrative generated from your own responses says which upward habit serves you and which is quietly costing you influence. The growth plan is built from the lowest competencies and proposes specific practices — a one-line early-warning format, a recommendation-first ask, a trade-off statement for the next workload conversation — and the item review explains every weight so you can see what waiting for certainty would have cost.
What you walk away with
Stakeholder Influence, Stakeholder Communication, Self-Awareness and Negotiation & Value each land in Emerging, Developing, Strong or Exceptional beneath your 0–100 score. The bars show whether you influence well but disclose late, or communicate constantly and never make a case.
Each band carries a coaching paragraph about what it does in practice: how Developing on Stakeholder Communication handles a problem of unknown size with a surprise-averse manager, what Strong on Self-Awareness does first in a strained relationship.
Built from your lowest competencies, the plan proposes concrete habits — an early-warning message format, a way to bring a recommendation rather than a question, a trade-off sentence for when another commitment lands — sized for the next one-to-one rather than a career change.
The item review shows your choice, the evidence-favoured option and the rationale for each weight across all 24 items. Where you complied quietly, the explanation shows what the influence research says silence teaches a manager about your judgement.
Inside your report
Illustrative sample — your report is generated from your own responses.
Assembled from your lowest competencies, in order — not a generic checklist.
Every competency this test declares, scored from the items tagged to it — so the shape is yours, not a template.
Built for
- Individual contributors and first-line managers who feel unheard by their manager
- New joiners and recently promoted staff working out how a new manager operates
- Anyone in a strained reporting relationship who wants to change the part they control
- Graduate programmes and early-career cohorts building professional habits early
Your manager is the most important stakeholder you have. Measure how you manage them.
Twenty-four items in about 20 minutes, then four banded competencies, a narrative and a growth plan delivered immediately.
₹649 (incl. GST) · assessment and full report, nothing further to pay
Frequently asked questions
How you handle the relationship that shapes your working life most: influencing upward by understanding your manager's world, keeping them ahead of problems, owning your part in a strained dynamic and negotiating workload and priorities openly. Four competencies — Stakeholder Influence, Stakeholder Communication, Self-Awareness and Negotiation & Value — are measured through five situations and 19 behavioural statements. It suits individual contributors, first-line managers and anyone with a new or difficult manager.
No. Each option is weighted against published research on upward influence, disclosure and negotiation, with a written rationale per weight, and complying quietly is scored below making a private, well-framed case. Public confrontation and going over your manager's head score lower still. Reverse-keyed behavioural statements make a uniformly diplomatic self-report read as inconsistent rather than as a high band, so answering honestly produces the more useful report.
About 14 to 20 minutes within a 20-minute window. You receive a 0–100 score with its band, four banded competencies with coaching interpretations, a radar, a narrative generated from your own responses, a strengths-and-development summary, a growth plan built from your lowest competencies and a full item review with the evidence behind each weight. The report is complete on delivery and there is nothing further to unlock.
Most people use the growth plan privately as a set of habits for the next month of one-to-ones and retake after six months to compare. Some share the strengths-and-development summary with their manager as the basis for a conversation about how they prefer to be kept informed. Graduate programmes and early-career cohorts sit it together to build professional habits early. It is a development battery, not a judgement of anyone's manager.
Yes. The situations are universal — a disagreement, a busy manager, an emerging problem, a strained relationship — and the research base is international. Norms of hierarchy differ, and the interpretations note how a band reads in more or less formal settings. Professionals in India, the Gulf, Europe, Southeast Asia and North America sit the same items. It is priced in INR and USD, and the price on this page is the full price.
Each battery takes one management capability — delegation, coaching, conflict, influence, decision-making, change — and measures it through situational judgement scored against published evidence, with a competency profile, coaching interpretations and a prioritised growth plan. For the level-by-level readiness verdicts, see Leadership & Management Premium.
See the leadership catalogue →Methodology: Original AssessAll scenarios and items operationalising public, well-established constructs of managing up: upward influence by understanding the manager's goals and constraints and framing the case in their terms, privately; the no-surprises relationship and proactive disclosure; making it easy for a busy manager through specific, well-framed asks and recommendations; owning one's own contribution to a strained relationship (the part within one's control); and making trade-offs visible when negotiating workload and priorities. Situational-judgement scoring is literature-keyed with a documented per-option rationale citing the evidence for each weight. Generic public constructs only; no trademarked instrument names or vendor-coined vocabulary, and no items copied or paraphrased from any branded assessment.