Managing Upwards: Working Effectively with Senior Stakeholders
How to communicate clearly, manage expectations, and build productive relationships with senior colleagues
Reflection: Which senior stakeholder relationship currently feels easiest, and which feels hardest? Why?
Why this matters
Marketing rarely works in isolation. Much of the role involves influencing people with different priorities, time pressures, and definitions of success. HBR’s recent guidance describes managing up as proactively building a productive, mutually beneficial relationship with your boss through understanding priorities, tailoring updates, and balancing their needs with your own.
Key point: Managing upwards is not politics in a grubby suit. It is part of doing your job well.
Session aims
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
Understand what managing upwards actually involves
Recognise what senior stakeholders usually care about
Communicate in a clearer, more useful way
Manage expectations before problems grow
Build trust, credibility, and better working relationships upwards
What managing upwards really means
Managing upwards means working intentionally with people above you so that expectations, priorities, communication and decisions are clearer. HBR frames it as a career-long practice, especially around alignment on goals and differences in working style.
Key point: The goal is not to please senior stakeholders blindly. The goal is to work with them productively.
Let’s anchor the session
“Showing courage to speak up and skilfully influencing others to gain buy in.” CIPD.
Why this matters: Managing upwards is not only about keeping people informed. It is also about influencing, challenging constructively, and helping better decisions happen.
Model: the power-interest grid
PMI’s power-interest grid is useful because it helps you classify stakeholders by the power they hold and the level of interest they have, then tailor communication accordingly. High-power, high-interest stakeholders need careful expectation management. High-power, low-interest stakeholders usually need concise, selective communication rather than a flood of detail.
Marketing application: Not every senior stakeholder needs the same update, the same level of detail, or the same conversation.
Understand the senior stakeholder reality
Senior colleagues are often balancing multiple priorities, limited time, risk, ambiguity, and competing stakeholder pressures. McKinsey’s leadership guidance emphasises the need to listen to stakeholders, define goals clearly, and communicate simply and proactively.
In practice, senior stakeholders often want to know what: Matters, has changed, the risk is, decision is needed, you recommend next
Start with alignment
HBR’s managing up guidance argues that one of the first essential conversations is alignment: getting clear on what success looks like, what matters most, and where time and energy should go.
Useful alignment questions:
What does success look like here?
What matters most to you on this project?
What do you most want to avoid?
How would you like updates?
When do you want problems escalated?
Then understand working style
The same HBR guidance distinguishes between alignment and style. Alignment is about what you are trying to achieve. Style is about how you work together, including pace, detail, communication preferences and decision style.
Reflection: Do you know whether your senior stakeholder prefers a short verbal summary, a written note, a dashboard, a pre-read, or a quick recommendation with options?
Use a simple communication structure
HBR’s Matt Abrahams recommends packaging messages in a clear, concise, logical manner using the structure “What, So What, Now What”.
Marketing example:
What: Campaign lead quality is down 18% this month –
So what: Sales acceptance has fallen, so volume is hiding a quality problem
- Now what: We should narrow targeting, revise the offer, and review the landing page this week
Speak in business language
Senior stakeholders may not care deeply about channel detail unless it affects commercial outcomes, risk, timing, customer impact, or strategic priorities. McKinsey’s communication guidance stresses defining goals, distilling meaning, and giving people what they need when they need it.
This means translating:
Clicks into demand quality
; Reach into relevant audience exposure;
Engagement into signal of intent
; Campaign performance into commercial implication
Manage expectations early
Much upward frustration comes from false assumptions, unclear ownership, or surprises that arrived too late. McKinsey’s work on board and CEO collaboration highlights that frequent, concise communication and transparency improve support, role clarity and quicker responses to change.
Practical rules: No surprises if they can be avoided, raise risks early, clarify trade-offs and signal when timing, cost, scope or performance is shifting
Build buy-in, not just permission
HBR’s stakeholder buy-in guidance highlights that having a good idea is not enough if you do not know how to advance it across the organisation.
Useful questions:
Who needs to support this?
Who could block it?
Who needs early involvement?
Whose priorities are affected?
What matters to each of them?
Upward influence model
Use this five-part approach:
Clarify the goal
– Map the stakeholders
– Understand their priorities –
Tailor your message –
Make the ask clear
This combines the logic of power-interest mapping, buy-in strategy, and concise communication structure.
Key point: Influence is usually stronger when it is prepared, not improvised.
Disagree well
Managing upwards does not mean nodding enthusiastically while internally combusting. CIPD’s guidance on professional courage and influence stresses the courage to challenge decisions and actions, speak up when something is not right, and build relationships that make positive outcomes more likely.
A useful approach is:
Acknowledge the goal
State the concern clearly
Support it with evidence
Offer an alternative or option
Meetings with senior stakeholders
In meetings, usefulness matters more than airtime. Senior stakeholders are more likely to value colleagues who are prepared, concise, evidence-led and solution-oriented. McKinsey’s leadership guidance emphasises clear, simple, frequent communication and creating openings for dialogue.
Practical tips:
Lead with the point
Use evidence, not a scenic route
State the implication
Recommend a next step
Be ready for questions
Written updates that work
PMI’s stakeholder management guidance suggests communication should be tailored to stakeholder power and interest, while McKinsey’s collaboration research points to frequent, concise updates as more effective than vague or overloaded communication.
A strong update usually includes:
What has happened
What matters now
Any risks or blockers
Decision needed
Recommended action
Marketing example: campaign underperformance
A weak upward update sounds like:
Engagement is a bit down and we are looking into it
A stronger upward update sounds like:
Lead volume is steady but qualified lead quality is down 22%. Sales acceptance has slipped for two weeks. The likely causes are broader targeting and a weaker offer. I recommend tightening audience criteria and pausing one ad set today.
This reflects clearer alignment, business framing and “What, So What, Now What” thinking.
Common mistakes to avoid
Over-explaining before making the point –
Assuming alignment without checking
– Using marketing jargon instead of business meaning –
Escalating too late
– Raising problems without options
– Treating all senior stakeholders the same
– Mistaking silence for agreement
HBR’s managing up guidance and McKinsey’s communication research both point to the risks of unclear expectations, weak alignment and insufficiently clear communication.
Practical activity
Choose one senior stakeholder you work with regularly and answer:
What matters most to them?
How much power and interest do they have?
What does success look like from their point of view?
How do they prefer communication?
What do I need to update them on more clearly?
Where do I need more courage, clarity or consistency?
Key takeaway
Managing upwards is not about flattery or politics. It is about clarity, expectation management, influence and trust. The more you understand senior stakeholder priorities, tailor your communication, and raise issues with candour and structure, the more productive those relationships become. That is good for you, good for your work, and usually good for the wider business too.
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