Managing Up: How to Work Effectively with Your Department Chair
Your Chair Isn't the Enemy
You need protected time for a new research project. You want to shift your clinical schedule. You think the division's hiring priorities are wrong. And the person who controls all of these decisions is your department chair.
Most faculty I coach treat this relationship as something that happens to them. They wait to be noticed. They hope the chair will intuit their needs. Or they avoid the relationship entirely, interacting only when summoned.
That's a mistake. Your relationship with your chair is one of the most consequential professional relationships you have. And like any relationship, it works better when you actively manage it.
Understand What They're Dealing With
Before you walk into your chair's office with a request, take five minutes to think about their world. Department chairs in academic medicine are managing competing pressures that would overwhelm most people: clinical revenue targets, faculty recruitment and retention, accreditation requirements, hospital administration demands, and their own career aspirations. All at once.
John Gabarro and John Kotter wrote about this decades ago in their classic Harvard Business Review article "Managing Your Boss." Their central insight still holds: managing up isn't manipulation. It's recognizing that your leader has constraints, pressures, and a communication style that you need to understand if you want to be effective.
When you understand your chair's priorities, your requests land differently. "I'd like protected time" is easy to ignore. "I have an R01 submission that aligns with the department's strategic plan, and here's what I need to make it competitive" is a conversation your chair actually wants to have.
Three Things That Work
Lead with their priorities, not yours. Frame every request in terms of what it does for the department, the division, or the mission. This isn't cynical. It's how organizations work. If your goal and the department's goal overlap, say so explicitly. Make the alignment obvious.
Be predictable and low-maintenance. Chairs deal with dozens of faculty, and the ones who get the most latitude are often the ones who require the least crisis management. Meet your deadlines. Respond to emails. Show up prepared for meetings. It sounds basic, but reliability is rare enough that it becomes a competitive advantage.
Bring solutions, not just problems. Anyone can identify what's broken. The faculty member who says "Here's what I've noticed, here's what I think we should do, and here's what I need from you to make it work" is the one who earns trust and influence over time.
When You Disagree
There will be times when your chair makes a decision you think is wrong. Maybe it's a resource allocation that shortchanges your group. Maybe it's a policy change that creates more work for no clear reason.
You can push back. But how you do it matters enormously.
Be direct and private. Don't build a coalition of disgruntled colleagues before you've had the conversation yourself. Don't send a frustrated email late at night. Request a meeting. State your concern clearly. Propose an alternative. And if the answer is still no, accept it with professionalism. You can disagree and still maintain the relationship.
This is what executive coach Marshall Goldsmith calls "disagreeing without being disagreeable." In his book What Got You Here Won't Get You There, he points out that the habits that made you successful as an individual contributor—fierce independence, relentless drive, always being right—can actually undermine you when you need to work within a power structure.
The Relationship Is the Strategy
Managing up isn't about performing loyalty or playing politics. It's about building a genuine working relationship with someone whose decisions directly affect your career. That takes intentionality, empathy, and the occasional uncomfortable conversation.
The faculty members who thrive in academic medicine aren't just excellent clinicians or prolific researchers. They're people who know how to work within the system—and with the people who run it.
Learn about how coaching for departments can support leadership development across your team.
