How do I give difficult feedback to someone more senior than me?

Earn the right to raise it

With someone senior to you, the question that matters most usually isn’t whether you’re allowed to raise something. It’s what gives you a legitimate reason to. Standing with someone more senior than you tends to come from a narrower set of places than it does with a peer: the work in question is yours to deliver, you were asked, even loosely, for your view, or you’re holding information they don’t currently have and probably need.

Say your director agrees a plan with you in a one to one conversation, then presents a different version in the following team meeting without mentioning that anything has changed. You’re probably not in a position to comment on your director’s decision making style, and trying to would likely cost you more than it gains you. But you probably do have standing to raise which version your team should now be working to, because that’s your deliverable, and your team is depending on you to know the answer.

This distinction matters more here than it does laterally. With a peer, weak standing tends to read as overstepping. With someone senior, it can read as something closer to insubordination, and the two are not judged the same way. Before raising anything, it’s worth being able to finish the sentence “I’m raising this because” with something concrete: because it affects work I’m accountable for, because I was asked, or because I know something relevant that they don’t.

Root it in what you observed, not what you concluded

The gap between what you saw and what you’ve decided it means tends to widen the further up the hierarchy you’re speaking. “You keep changing your mind” is a verdict on someone’s character. “In our one to one on Tuesday we agreed to go with option two, and in Thursday’s meeting you presented option three without mentioning Tuesday’s conversation” is a description of two things that happened, in the order they happened, that a reasonable person could check against their own memory of events.

The BOOST model is a useful discipline here, precisely because its first move is to insist the observation stands on its own, before you get anywhere near the impact or the ask. With a senior person, that ordering does more work than it might elsewhere. An observation they can verify is something they can accept without it costing them anything. A conclusion about their behaviour is something they have to either agree with or defend against, and defending is the more likely of the two. It sits alongside the other models on the feedback models hub, if you want to see how it compares with the alternatives.

It’s worth noticing when what you’re describing as an observation is actually already an interpretation wearing an observation’s clothes. “You didn’t consider the team’s workload” is a conclusion. “The plan doesn’t mention the two projects already committed for that quarter” is an observation. The first invites your director to explain themselves. The second gives them something to check.

Frame it as information, not correction

The specific risk of feedback that travels upward isn’t usually that it sounds harsh. It’s that it can sound like an instruction from someone who isn’t in a position to give one. It’s worth being clear, at least to yourself, about which of a few different things you’re actually asking for, because they carry very different weight when the person on the other end outranks you.

You might simply want them to be aware of something: “I don’t know if you’d noticed, but the two versions are different, and the team has asked me which one to follow.” You might want their view: “I wasn’t sure how to read the change, is there something I’m missing?” Occasionally you might be stating a condition for your own work to proceed: “I can brief the team once I know which version is current.” What’s much harder to justify, from below, is proposing that they change how they operate. That’s not off limits forever, but it usually needs more standing than most single conversations can carry, and it’s rarely the first move. The AID model, which moves from action to impact before it gets anywhere near a request, is built on a similar discipline, spelling out what happened and why it matters before asking for anything at all.

Of these, the more modest versions do more work than they look like they should. Naming what you observed and asking a genuine question about it gives a senior person room to update their own account of events without having to concede a point to you first. That’s not a strategy for softening the truth. It’s a recognition that most of what needs to change upward changes because someone senior reconsiders, not because they’re told to.

Choose your moment and channel deliberately

Timing and setting carry more weight here than they do with a peer, because the cost of getting them wrong is higher. Raising a discrepancy in front of the same team meeting where it appeared is rarely worth the seeming win of correcting the record in the moment. It puts a senior person in a position where being seen to be wrong and being corrected happen at the same time and in front of the same audience, which tends to produce a defensive reaction rather than a considered one, whatever the substance of what you’ve said.

A short private conversation shortly afterwards, in person or by message depending on what’s normal between you, generally does more for the outcome than a public one, even though it can feel like it’s ceding ground. You’re not conceding anything by choosing a setting that makes it easier for the other person to hear you. You’re choosing the setting most likely to get you the outcome you actually want, which is usually clarity going forward rather than a correction on the record. The same thinking applies to what you do before and during the meeting itself, if that’s where the issue is likely to surface again.

What if it lands badly

Sometimes it will. A senior person might dismiss what you’ve raised, seem irritated by it, or simply not follow up. It’s worth listening for what’s underneath that reaction before deciding what it means. They may have information you don’t, may be under pressure you can’t see, or may genuinely not have registered the gap you noticed. Listening first doesn’t mean abandoning your own observation. It means checking it against theirs before deciding whether there’s still something worth raising.

If, having listened, the gap is still there, it’s reasonable to say so plainly: “I understand the plan changed for reasons I wasn’t part of. From where I sit, I still need to know which version to brief the team on.” That’s not pushing back on their authority. It’s naming what you still need in order to do your part of the work.

It’s also worth being honest that raising something upward carries a relational cost that raising it with a peer usually doesn’t. A senior person’s reaction to being told something they didn’t expect to hear may shape how they see you for longer than the conversation itself lasts, in ways that are rarely said out loud. That’s not a reason to stay silent. It’s a reason to be as careful with standing, observation, framing and timing as the earlier sections describe, because with someone senior, the quality of the delivery is doing more of the work than it would elsewhere. Much of what reduces unnecessary defensiveness in any direction, discussed in more detail in how to give feedback without making someone defensive, applies here too, just with less margin for error.

What does current research suggest?

Research on speaking up to people with authority consistently points to one thing above others: whether people raise concerns with a specific senior person depends heavily on how open they perceive that particular person to be, more so than on general policies about an open door. That perception seems to work through a felt sense of safety, a belief that raising something won’t cause personal harm, rather than through calculation alone. Interestingly, the effect isn’t even across everyone: it tends to be strongest for people already seen as strong performers, whose confidence and credibility may make it easier to speak up successfully when the signals suggest it’s welcome.

There’s also emerging evidence that behaviour intended to help a senior person, including simply adapting closely to their priorities and working style, can sometimes be read by that person as encroaching on their authority, particularly when the senior person holds strong views about hierarchy being something to be maintained. Under those conditions, the response can be subtle rather than confrontational: a quiet withdrawal of warmth or inclusion rather than an open conflict. Under other conditions, the same behaviour produces no such reaction at all. The honest reading of this line of research is that the risk in raising something upward is real but conditional, it depends heavily on who is sitting across from you, not a fixed cost that applies equally everywhere.

Five questions before you give feedback to someone more senior than you

Before deciding exactly what you are going to say, I would spend a few minutes on these five questions.

1. What gives me standing to raise this? Why are you the person to have this conversation, given they outrank you. If the only answer you can find is “because I think they got it wrong”, that’s unlikely to carry the conversation on its own. If it affects work you’re accountable for, something you were asked about, or information they don’t currently have, the basis is much clearer.
2. What have I actually observed? Separate what happened from what you’ve decided it means. You may need that interpretation later, but with someone senior in particular, presenting it as though it were simply what occurred is more likely to be heard as a judgement of them than a description of events.
3. Am I offering this as information, or dressing up an instruction as feedback? Notice whether what you’re about to say is really “here’s something you may not have seen” or “here’s what you should do differently”. The first is almost always available to you. The second usually needs more standing than a single conversation can provide.
4. Have I chosen a moment and setting that gives this the best chance of landing well? A public correction and a private conversation about the same observation can produce very different outcomes. With someone senior, the setting often matters as much as the wording.
5. Am I ready for this not to land the way I want it to? A senior person may dismiss what you’ve raised, seem irritated by it, or simply not respond the way you’d hoped. Deciding in advance how you’ll listen to their reaction, and not only how you’ll deliver your point, changes how the conversation is likely to go.

There is then one final practical decision: what do you actually want from this conversation? Awareness? Their perspective? A clearer sense of which version to follow? Knowing that before you begin can stop feedback aimed upward turning into a vague attempt to get someone senior to behave differently, which is rarely a battle worth choosing.

Conclusion

The more useful question is rarely “how do I tell someone senior what they’re doing wrong”. It’s closer to: what have I actually observed, why does it matter to work I’m responsible for, and what gives me standing to raise it at all. Feedback that travels upward well tends to share a few things: it’s built on something the other person can check rather than a conclusion they have to defend against, it’s offered as information rather than instruction, and it’s delivered at a time and in a setting that gives it the best chance of being heard rather than resisted. None of that removes the risk entirely. It does mean the risk is being taken deliberately, rather than by accident.

Three questions to reflect on

1. Where are you currently staying quiet with someone senior to you because raising it feels riskier than it’s worth?
2. If you raised it, could you describe what you observed without it becoming a verdict on their character or competence?
3. How would you want someone who reports to you to raise something similar with you?

If you would like to explore ways of structuring feedback, then my Feedback Model Hub may be worth exploring. Also explore giving feedback and managing upwards in more detail in my Leadership Library resources.

References

Detert, J.R. and Burris, E.R. (2007) ‘Leadership behavior and employee voice: is the door really open?’, Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), pp. 869–884. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.26279183.

Zheng, X. (2026) ‘When managing the boss at a cost: perceived threat to hierarchy and supervisor ostracism’, BMC Psychology, 14, article 1269. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05051-x.