Upward feedback—  feedback for your boss, manager, or fellow leaders in more senior positions— is a crucial leadership skill for anyone looking to improve workplace collaboration and communication. So how do you speak up without clamming up? How do you tell people what they need to know without derailing progress or hurting morale?

Consider Their Preferences

Effective communication includes understanding how to adapt your approach. Before giving upward feedback, consider your boss’s feedback style and preferences. How do they give feedback? When do they prefer to meet? How often do they like to check in? While perfection isn’t the goal, making an effort to give feedback that resonates with your manager can improve the working relationship.

Aim for Direct, Not Blunt

If you find direct upward communication scary or intimidating, grounding yourself may help. If you worry about hurt feelings, or de-railed work makes you hold back, you may be conflating bluntness with directness.

Not all direct communication is blunt, and not all blunt feedback is direct.

• “You have a communication problem”: That’s definitely blunt, but it doesn’t point directly to any issue, outcome, or solution. 
• “I notice your updates on this account are delayed – has something changed?”: That’s direct. It’s clear what you notice, and what you need to know. But there’s nothing blunt about your feedback.

Tact and tone make a big difference. When your goal is tactful neutrality rather than blunt, brutal honesty, giving more direct upward feedback likely feels more feasible. It’s also important to remember that feedback is rarely criticism. Your goal is giving your manager clear, helpful insights they can use to improve. More likely than not, they’ll be thankful for your input, especially if it’s thoughtfully prepared and presented. 

Make a Plan

Planning your upward feedback is a lot simpler when you know what works. For most upper-level managers, feedback that works is measurable, consistent, and actionable. Developing a template or framework for upward feedback is a big help.
Need a starting point? We’ve adapted this upward feedback plan from Mirorly to provide a few ways to give managers and top-level leaders meaningful upward feedback:

Scoring from a Range 

Scoring from a range (e.g. 1-4) means you can readily gauge improvement over time. You could score your boss or manager from within a range of criteria (e.g. 1 – Rarely True, 2 – Sometimes True 3 – Often True 4 – Almost Always True) on items like these: 

• When my manager makes a decision that affects my work, I understand their reasoning and their conclusion.
• They make decisions at the right pace. They neither contribute to backlogs nor miss important details.
• Autonomy is respected and allowed. My decisions aren’t reversed or contradicted without my knowledge.
• When we disagree, they are principled and respectful; it doesn’t cost me afterward.
• My manager takes my concerns seriously and doesn’t dismiss or deflect them.
• They ask for and accept my honest feedback regularly. 

Multiple Choice 

Multiple choice allows for specificity: one of the drivers of effective feedback. Here’s an example of how to provide direct feedback to your manager using a multiple choice framework. 

If I had something hard to tell my boss about their leadership, the most honest expectation of what would happen is…

— They’d take it well. They’d sit with it, and I’d see real change.

— They’d take it well in the moment, but nothing much would change.

— They’d seem to take it well, but the working relationship would cool or become tense.

— They’d push back hard or get defensive.

— I wouldn’t risk saying it in the first place.

Open-Ended

Open-ended upward feedback lets leaders provide detailed context for constructive, evaluative, or appreciative feedback they share with their bosses and managers. These can be statements you elaborate on, or open-ended questions, like these.  [Under each open-ended item, it’s good to elaborate with more detailed information and examples.]

• [Name] has done something concrete in the last six months to grow my career — beyond just my current job.
• When I make a mistake, [Name] has  my back. They don’t avoid me or quietly distance themselves.
• What’s one thing your boss does that you’d want them to keep doing — and one thing you wish you could ask them to stop?

Sharpen Your Skills

The more you know about feedback, the more natural it will feel to share it with your manager, fellow leaders, and everyone else. Once you have a plan in mind, book some time with your manager to discuss it. Try out your framework, and see how it goes. Be sure to include follow-up, to keep your feedback exchange consistent. The more you practice, the sharper your skills. The sharper your feedback skills, the better your results.

Feedback Is a Skill. Keep Sharpening It.

Giving upward feedback gets easier the more you understand the dynamics behind it,  why it feels risky, what makes it land, and how to make it a regular part of how you lead.

If this resonated with you, take the conversation further. Listen to Conversations That Work, a Willow North podcast for honest dialogue on leadership communication, feedback culture, and the moments that shape how teams work together.