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.

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 conversation. I hadn’t thought about it in my context ‘til you were a mirror and played it back to me. So yeah, I do. And every situation is different. I think you know that as a coach and my guess is your listeners probably already accept that as a premise that no two things are the same. No two human beings are the same. And all of this should be taken in style to taste and if it’s helpful, take it as a framework, but I’ll use the book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There as a start to when you get to a certain level and mostly you’re working with I’m going to guess emerging leaders and leaders, and I’m working with emerging leaders and leaders.

The people that you’re talking to in your company managing up are very successful people and what they’ve done has worked for them. And the reasons they say no or intransigent or don’t listen is because they’ve been successful. And so you have to find different ways to reach them. And it’s not a game. They’re not even mechanisms. I guess it’s psychology or sociology perhaps. But what’s in it for them? Why do they care? Why should they care? Money is not an issue for them. They already make money. A reach to the company isn’t an issue. They already have the reach. Like what is it for that person you’re trying to move? So I think what’s in it for them, if I have to have a tagline for step one of the methodology would be, why does the person I’m trying to influence care and I need to craft a message to that.

Yeah. It’s like any marketing. You need to talk to the audience and find their buttons.

Let me give you an example of that. We’re trying to get a top boss to stopping a micromanager and to stop being a supersized individual contributor. And his version to me is this is my brilliance. This is what I do. Like GSD, pardon the parlance, getting shit done is what I do. I’m amazing at it. And his staff wasn’t able to, I wasn’t able to get him off the spot because the reality is he does add a lot of value there. But where we got progress in the discussion was, with him, it was, he’s very proud of his team. And so we had a very soulful conversation in my office, not on his, by the way, to talk about we’re stunting growth. Like no one’s saying you’re not good at this, but you’re stunting growth. Think about where you were at this time and to get him to think about his team and that people you love, you’re hurting them, you’re stunting them. And so he hadn’t taken that. He hadn’t thought about it from that perspective.

It's real and that you really have to figure out what the person cares about, what could move them. But number one is what's in it for them.
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Okay. So when you know that, what do you do then?

Well, I think preferred cadence is important if you’re managing up. Let’s say you’re briefing your boss. I deal with busy a lot in terms of trying to account for busy for increasingly successful people ascending. And you run into, I brought 10 things to Steve and honestly the meeting went 15 minutes. He was busy, he was distracted. And so if it’s working fine, keep doing that. But a lot of times it’s not. And that’s how it ends up centrally in our coaching session. I’ll ask probative questions around how often are you briefing Steve? Well, I do it once a week. How many things are on your list? 15. How many do you normally get to like seven, but thin, we don’t cover them well at all. What if you, for an example, again, back to preferred cadence, how often, what if you met with him every day for 15 minutes and only brought him two things?

That alone doesn’t crack the code. There’s different variations of that theme. It could be the boss doesn’t like it that quick, that he or she wants a thorough briefing on one, or I want to cover 15, like you’ll give it to me. But there’s also, boss, I really need you to stop. I need your feet to stop, and I need you to look at me, and I’m gonna stand in front of the door until you listen to me. But cadence can really help improve digestibility based on how your boss needs it and how the people above you need it.

Be flexible on how often you give it to them, how much you give them at that.
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Yeah, I personally experienced this because my staff, they produce social media posts and articles and videos and sometimes they send me 10 at a time and I look at my Slack, I say, okay, I’m not touching this because I’m not going to get through it. So I keep pushing it back and I ask them only send me one or two and then I can quickly look at it and then it’s done. Don’t send it 10 at the same time.

Yeah.

It’s the wrong cadence for me.

James Clear in Atomic Habits, which is a really good book, talks about the enemy of priority one and two is three, four, five, six through 10. And so I think that’s so true. And so, in that briefing space, it might be too much for your boss to digest. Let’s pare it down. It’s not always that it could be variations of that. Like I said before, but let’s start messing around with cadence. How often do we meet? How much we brief on? Do we send Steve 10 things or one thing? Listen to them. Hopefully I’m not getting the too much. Well, let’s talk about preferred channel. So, that’s where I was going with that is, I’m not an email person. If you say that to me, we’re going to have discussions.

I don’t think that’s an option, but the reality is some people respond better on text than email, or you can get to the top of their list on text or they’re phone people, or my 21 year old daughter said, anybody knows they want to get ahold of me is going to FaceTime me, which I did not know by the way, because apparently only old people leave voicemails. I didn’t know that. So I’m listening really carefully, or watching carefully for what’s going better in terms of how often I brief you, how much I brief and then what’s your channel. Is it a memo? Is it a verbal conference call or a video call? Is it some combination? More times than not if I’m managing up, I need to not bend to their will, but I need to adjust to their style. So I’ve sent them email after email, Steve, they don’t get back to me. Okay, how do you do when you walk in his or her office? Fine. Then let’s do that ‘cause we got to make something stick.

It is interesting. It’s also generational thing. I had someone on my podcast who said that the silent generation was all about, I think they were all about in person and then the boomers were the phone and the Gen Xs were about email. And then the Gen Z is about, I don’t know, text. And now they have this messaging app for the Gen Alpha. So it’s fascinating.

I have all the leverage I need in this world in terms of I don’t really need your money. Like I like the work and I want the money, but I don’t need it. I’m usually the coach or the boss. But that said, he or she who has the most ways to communicate wins. If you can’t get a hold of me, you’re not trying because I will adjust however you communicate. I will adjust to that because I want smoother communication, better flow. You don’t have to adjust to me. I’ll adjust to you because I want my life to go better.

Okay, I’m making a note of this. The one who has the most weight to communicate wins. That’s huge. Okay, so let’s go on. You have figured out their message that they need to hear, their preferred cadence, the preferred channel. What’s that?

Well, we talked a little bit about this, how to prioritize what to bring to the boss. I mentioned before as a primer, oftentimes, the enemy of priority one and two, which are the really big things you need to get done this week or today. The enemy is three, four, five and six and down the list. So let’s prioritize what we bring to our boss. We’re storytelling, too. Stories that, like for example, even a paper in college where you have like way too many topics in there, not sure what the takeaway is. What I’d like you to think about is when I walk out of that briefing, what did they take away? It’s less important what I think I said and way more important what stuck with my boss. So prioritize what you bring to them. And again, to the previous points, how and when, how much and when, prioritize.

Yeah. And busy bosses, they have so many decisions to make every day and they burn out. They hit decision fatigue probably by lunchtime. So the first thing you want to do then is give them 10 things to think about. They probably are going to shut down and not think about even one.

The irony is a lot of times when you’re talking to your client, I guess I’m asking you if this is true for you. For me, it’s true where they’re telling me what they did and I’m like, it’s pretty good. That should have worked. And we presented to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury and they go, that was perfect. You did a great job. Like how’d it go? It didn’t work at all. Like, okay, let’s regather. We got to figure out what’s going to stick because like going away and not getting this done is not a thing. So, making it more convenient is probably the fifth part of the model, if you will, or the mechanism is. In the ideal, and I’d say most cases inside the norm where you don’t have aberrant behavior from people above you, where it’s like you just cannot get to them at all. Normally it’s well-intentioned people that just don’t have time and you’re battling real busy. Make it convenient.

Can you check with somebody’s executive assistant to find out when they’re walking from one side of the building to the other and walk with them and brief them? I have walked with many, a boss with a folder in my hand under my arm, and briefed them, and got exactly the answer I needed. I mean, I’m being mostly facetious, a little bit serious about this, but not in a stalking way. But you can wait for your boss to come back to the parking lot and walk back to the office with him or her. You can potentially find out where they eat, what their path is again, check with their executive assistant to find out when they might have a free five minutes. I don’t hate an Uber ride. I mean, you’re not going to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco with your boss, but many times they’re going cross town. There’s no reason in the world, say for $25 back for an Uber or Lyft ride, you can’t ride in the car with your boss. So if you can make it convenient when you really have to have it, because what I don’t want to hear is I can’t get to my boss. Okay. It’s 10 different ways to get your boss in front of us. And we’ll figure this out.

Yeah. It’s a good point.

I’ve been as far, this is a little bit extreme. I’ve said this before. I said in my previous career, it didn’t go amazing when a governor staffer said to me, I can’t get to the governor’s chief of staff. I know I promised your guys this thing in the meeting, but I can’t get to her. And 40-something year old little fierier version of me said something like, are you kidding me? Do you know where she eats? Do you know where she works out? Do you know what flight she’s on? Do you know what parking spot? Do you know where her next meeting is? Stop telling me you can’t, you can. I don’t give it the same way now, but I feel the same way.

Yeah, you have to want it bad enough and then you figure it out.

Well said.

Okay, so that’s a great way to manage up. So figure out what is their favorite radio station, WIFM, what is their preferred cadence, whether it’s once a day, once a week, once a month, how do you apportion the material for decisions? Time of day, possibly also.

Favorite channel.

Is it phone? Is it Zoom? Is it in person? Is it text? Whatever it is, and then prioritize. So you can’t just give them all the stuff. You have to make the decisions that you can on your own and forget other people to make smaller decisions and bring the big one and then make it convenient. This is huge. Yeah, be creative, make it convenient. That’s awesome. So let’s talk about a little bit your experience as the managing partner of this lobby firm. What did you find, as a leader, the most important thing for a great employer to do?

Yeah, I don’t think it’s endemic to lobbying or specific to lobbying. I just happened to be running a lobbying and at times, a law firm. Also, I think it translates to most businesses, frankly, I just happened to be in that business, like I said. I think it’s in the soulful space. Forgive me if I’ve said that twice already. I think being a great human is a probably 90% of the way toward being a great employer. The rest is laws and I’m in California and we got a lot of them. So there’s definitely skill to go with a soulful and the caring, but I think that’s the first thing. I mean, I’ve said before in a staff meeting, I’m like, swearing and vulgarity is definitely not my thing, especially in the workspace, but you guys, it’s okay to give a shit. It’s okay to care about your clients. Okay to care about each other.

My favorite part, and I think this is what migrated me toward being a business coach, is I love being centrally involved with people's careers and especially when they come to get it and they're motivated and they're dedicating themselves to…
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So you have 6,000 employees or 60,000 employees in your company, but your team’s not bad. It’s okay to give a shit and care a lot and invest and not manage all your time. Again, forgive my vulgarity. It’s mostly just for the phrase, but I think a little bit of caring and a little bit of humanity goes a really long way. And there’s a lot of good product out there. I mean, what does Good to Great say? The who before the what. The people before the product. For me, that’s the most important thing is an employer, first and foremost, to your question.

How much of that can be learned? So, some of us have higher emotional intelligence than others. To what degree is it nature versus nurture?

Well, the nurture is normally mentoring because what I hear is, you mentioned the generational thing. I actually hear it exactly that way. It’s like, well, coming up, they didn’t explain the “Why” to me. They just told me, Steve, can you just do it? Because I said so. And you’re like, yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. I’ll do it. Mostly yes, sir. Back then, I’ll do it. Did it work? Yeah, but to 60% fidelity, it’s amazing if you could explain to your really smart employees, even if it’s no, and you’re overruling them, if you could explain it to them, I think that would be amazing. I think things like that are really, really helpful. And yeah, in my head, in terms of old school versus new school, I mean, you can tell people if you want, or we can inform people. People say really smart things too, especially different generations and benefiting from diversity as an example.

Yeah, but I mean, let’s say if I’m a leader and I’m high IQ, but maybe lower than average EQ, what can I do to improve my EQ?

Yeah. To me, it’s in the space of coaching motivation and coaching drive. It’s really hard to do that, but I’ve seen some success. I mean, I’d say I have more limited success when they’re lower IQ and dug in, but when they’re open-minded and humility opens up like so many things, when you get them to understand the impact you can have on somebody’s life, that by doing that you’re taking somebody’s best opportunity, that you’re the mentor now. The power of your voice, like what a compliment explained means to somebody. It’s one thing to say you did really well, but if you say this is what you did that really helped me and the team.

You can at times get people to understand this is the highest, best use of your skillset.
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I’m like, I’ve never been in this position. It’s not the same thing. I mean, I’d say there’s some level of success and when they show up, one thing I know coming from politics and big business, now to being a business coach, is one of my requisites is I will not have no know-it-alls and no a-holes. I’m not doing that anymore. I’ve already done that in politics and big business.  You know who never calls a business coach? Know-it-alls and a-holes. So people that show up are motivated, humble professionals. So we have a shot. Like you want to have a shot at that point because they’re showing up for some reason. If you knew it all, you wouldn’t talk to Steve or me, but it’s not my favorite. It’s not my favorite when, like, I heard a phrase this morning from a sales director who told me that his boss uses a phrase of I’m going to bring in the hammer and he uses it a lot. And I go, what does that mean? He goes, fire people. He goes, what do you think of that? I go, I freaking hate it. I hate it. Does it work? He goes, a couple of folks, maybe arguably, but the other ones are like either have a half foot out the door, they’re kind of cowering. I go, does it embarrass you as a director? He goes, It totally does.

Yeah. Driven people are not motivated by the hammer.

I mean, really rare.

A lot of people want to inspire the ones that are A-players that are really coachable and who have the drive and they just need a little bit of love. So that’s a good segue to my next question. How would you describe your coaching philosophy?

I think it’s an opportunity, it’s a place, it creates a safe forum for mostly successful, humble, driven people to discuss the things that are most salient and poignant to them in a safe environment. Everything I do individually is governed by confidentiality. If I’m in a group, I ask for sanctity of the conversations. I mean, I would like confidentiality, but if there’s 25 people in a room, you can’t always 100% get it, so I ask for sanctity. But I want them to understand I deal in trust, and I’m here because I care. I rarely take on a project or a person that I don’t think is really trying to do better, and that lights me up, so it changes my posture. Having a safe place for people to discuss the matters that are most important to them at work and a lot of times it gets into personal because it’s stress and it’s kids and it’s money and things like that.

Part of my philosophy is also humility. I’m hunting for it. I’m also hunting for lack of it because when I get humility, I’m humble too. I say things all the time like I never thought about it that way. I say sorry too. I said sorry last week. Somebody cancelled on me right as I was sitting down in my chair and I’d rushed to get there and it had happened before. And when the person’s assistant called me and told me the reason, I kinda didn’t listen. I went me first and I was like, okay, I appreciate it, but it’s the third time, I’m probably gonna charge a cancellation fee. And then about an hour later, I started getting those beads of sweat on my forehead and I was like, I just realized what she was telling me. It was an emergency.

And I called back and I freaking apologized and she was like, Mr. Warner. I’m like, I was trying to figure out what I could have done different. I’m like, you couldn’t have done anything different. You called me respectfully and it wasn’t horrible. I didn’t like lose my temper, but I just said, I apologize. I really do. And she said, I really appreciate it. It really means a lot. I want to be around humble, successful people. You do not have it all figured out, so I want it to be a safe forum.

Humility matters a lot. And then I think, also, part of the philosophy is, if you’re working with really smart people, it’s rarely,
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Let me hear it. Let me hear it next month too. ‘Cause I pick up things, like an example of fresh eyes and philosophy is an executive telling me the board is asking us question over question over question about all these budget asks we’re making. And the year before, they hadn’t asked any questions and he got exactly zero. This year they had a lot of questions and he was going for big money and I said, aren’t they saying yes, not no? And I don’t normally say things that completely flip the conversation on its head, but he goes, they are. That was the value of fresh eyes. And that is part of the philosophy is I do not take the position that my clients are in deficit. A lot of times they’re not. I’m expensive too. And sometimes they’ll hire me for deficit when like you want me to assess and get fresh eyes. But mostly it’s like, hey, I’m here to see if I could see something in nooks and crannies. And sometimes I do. So I think that’s part of the philosophy as well.

Love it. Talking about questions, what do you think is the most important question an entrepreneur should ask themselves?

I’m stealing from Good to Great again, because I love it. I mean, it’s probably proven to be one of the best business books, but what’s your genius? They describe it as your hedgehog, which to me is like a little bit of a weird word. I have to look it up on Google what hedgehog means, but the confluence of what you love the most and what you think are uniquely best out in the world. What is that? Can you sell that? Can you make that stick and then go do it? But I think that’s the question you need to ask yourself is, do I do something better or best and do I happen to love it? ‘Cause if you do, it’s game on.

Yeah. That’s powerful. When you love it, it delivers value and makes money. If you can do all three, then you got it made, basically.

Yeah. I think the second time I’ve quoted by 21-year-old daughter, Alex, but she was saying to me, she’s a junior at University of Tennessee. She’s an advertising major. And she’s like, I don’t know about sales. I don’t know if I want to like sit around and call people all day on something. I was like, you ever felt really strongly about something and felt like you really had something to offer? And she had one job actually at a boutique that she really liked and she won a bunch of sales contests because they had really cool stuff to sell. I love selling my coaching products. I love it. I’m passionate about it. I’m good at matching up with people who are like, Oh, I actually need that. That’d be amazing. Yeah. I mean, I think if you can get in that spot where you love somebody, you know damn well, you’re really good at it. You got a real shot as an entrepreneur.

Yeah. I often talk about this. I read a quote many years ago from an author who talked about sales and the mindset of sales. And he said that I can sell someone on a product or service to the degree that I believe in it. If I’m a 100% sure that it’s going to help that person, then I can close the sale at 100% certainty. And I find this to also be true and maybe not scientifically, but definitely experientially.

Yeah. It’s not for you, you’re the host. I’m not the host, but I think your question, but I am a geek of a coach and we’re having this amazing coaches quarter. You could tweak that question just as easily for sales because I would have the same answer. What does anybody go into sales with? What’s the most important question somebody in sales should ask? I might have the same answer. What is your company best at? And then I’d probably take the way you said it from the author, which is like, what do you really feel strongly about? And you know they’re going to love it. Like go sell that. You don’t have to own the company. Go sell that. What do you see? How good you are at it?

Yeah, that’s a great thought to have. That’s awesome. So if people would like to learn more about your philosophy, how you coach, maybe reach out to you, get in touch with you, they have a question. Where can they find you?

That’s nice of you. Thank you very much. My website is nickwarnerconsulting.com. Warner like Warner brothers. And my podcast is called Together at the Top. And I interview people from all different industries. And I’m trying to actually focus on different stage of career also, and not just interview people at the top, but interview, I mean, some of my clients in particular, like 35, 42, and I’m like, wow, they’re not running things yet, but they are really making things happen in a way that I want to put voice to. So I’m getting more and more excited about bringing in some, it’s not always younger, but like middle stage career, but really killing it for middle stage career, hearing their thoughts.

So you like to work with people who are already successful and they have the hunger to take it to the next level?

I like motivated professionals at all levels. I mean, I’m not inexpensive, so that probably tilts me toward the middle and up, but I make room for sometimes the people don’t know their lower fee, I just send them a lower bill. And like some of these young people light me up, Steve, honestly, and I want what they have. I want to understand their pressures or technology, their verbiage or phrases, how they think about things. Like I read in the Wall Street Journal, I read trends, but I want to know it from them too.

So I want to be of service to people. So I definitely leave space in my calendar and my body for helping people that earn in. Like there was a kid at the gym, they hired him for sales and I didn’t mean to notice him, but like from the first day, he always had his tie and then really quickly he was in a corner, he was in an office selling and I like slowly but surely kind of like put myself in front of him and one day he goes, man, I would love to hire you someday. I go, let’s start next week because I can’t afford you. I go, I assure you, you can’t. And we’ve been working on it for about three years and he lights me up. I don’t know, he pays me some nominal amount, but it’s not nominal to him. I work with emerging leaders and leaders up to the CEO level, but I also love to work, not down. It’s not down in humanity, just maybe down in price and age.

Okay, awesome. So if you listen to this, you just learned that you get a chance if you’re a kind of person that inspires Nick, then reach out to him and he might take you on as an apprentice. So, Nick, thank you for coming and sharing your wisdom. So, Nick Warner, a seasoned business coach, former entrepreneur and managing partner of a big lobby firm, successful lobby firm. If you enjoyed this show, then don’t forget to hit subscribe on YouTube and follow us on LinkedIn and give us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are. And stay tuned because every week we get a great entrepreneur or subject matter expert who shares their special framework with us. So thanks for coming and thanks for listening.