What gets in the way of turning your ideas into reality at work? For many leaders, it’s not a shortage of insight, tools, or bandwidth – it’s the challenge of winning support from higher-ups. So how do you influence “up”?

From your perspective, you might see exactly what needs to change – whether it’s revamping a process, improving team morale, or proposing a new cross‑departmental project – but your boss isn’t persuaded. Yet. Maybe they’re skeptical, or they don’t see the value. What can you do when your boss blocks your progress?

You could adopt the “ask forgiveness later” approach (go ahead and act, and deal with pushback afterward), but that can damage trust and backfire. You could also hold back, but that means letting opportunities slip by and staying stuck in frustration. The better path is to influence “up” – to convince your boss that your proposal is one worth backing.

Here are five practical techniques to help you influence “up,” get aligned with your boss, and create more impact.

1) Tie your proposal to your leader’s priorities (and the company’s mission)

It’s much harder for someone to resist your idea when you show how it serves their goals – not just yours. If you can frame your proposal as something that helps your boss succeed, enhances their visibility, or advances the organization’s core aims, you dramatically increase your odds of gaining buy-in.

Before you approach your boss:

• Clarify what your boss is dialed in on – what matters to them.
• Understand your organization’s top strategic priorities.
• Map how your idea contributes to both.

Then, when you present your idea, underscore these connections.

Example: Suppose you want to overhaul your team’s customer feedback process to collect real‑time insights using a new tool. You notice that your boss is under pressure to improve customer retention and reduce churn. You might build the case like this:

• “This feedback tool will help us detect issues earlier and act faster, potentially boosting retention by X %.”
• “By improving our responsiveness, we’ll also reduce the number of escalations to senior leadership.”
• “This aligns directly with the company’s focus this year on strengthening customer loyalty and increasing customer lifetime value.”

Back those claims with data (benchmarks, pilot studies, or case studies) to solidify your proposal.

2) Weigh costs, risks, and benefits – and present clear trade‑offs

One of the biggest objections is risk: what could go wrong? Even if your idea maps well to strategic goals, decision-makers may balk if they perceive a downside. That’s why it’s essential to conduct a well‑reasoned risk/benefit analysis ahead of time, and discuss it transparently.

Lay out:

• Costs – time, money, resources, potential disruptions
• Risks – unintended consequences, stakeholder pushback
• Benefits – value, gains, mitigations

By showing that you’ve thought through the negatives and explaining how you’ll mitigate them, you build credibility and reduce pushback.

Example: Continuing our illustration about the customer feedback tool, you anticipate objections around data privacy or overwhelming feedback volume. You might approach this by:

• Acknowledging the risk that you’ll get too much feedback to manage.
• Describing your plan to filter incoming comments and use automation to triage.
• Explaining how negative feedback can still be an opportunity – that if you respond effectively, you show transparency and build trust with customers.

Framing it objectively, with facts, will make your boss more comfortable trusting your judgment.

3) Bring your boss in as a collaborator

Instead of arriving with a fully baked plan for your boss’s approval, leave some space for them to contribute. Invite them to help you solve the remaining unknowns. This turns the idea into a shared effort, deepens alignment, and reduces later resistance.

When you meet:

• Pose specific questions or options that you’re wrestling with.
• Ask for their perspective based on what has or hasn’t worked in their experience.
• Use their input to refine the plan further, as they’ll tend to support ideas they helped shape.

Example: On the topic of how to best implement the new feedback tool, you might say, “I think we should segment feedback by user persona before acting, but I’m not sure which personas to prioritize. From your experience, which group do you think offers the biggest upside if we solve their issues first?” The answers will help you adapt your approach – and also make your boss a stakeholder in the decision.

4) Use “unless directed otherwise” framing

If it’s difficult to get time with your boss to collaborate (or they’re generally difficult to collaborate with), you can subtly shift the momentum in your favor by seizing the initiative. Send a concise proposal email with a brief background followed by a line like:

“Unless directed otherwise, I plan to move forward with [this approach].”

This gives your boss freedom to push back, yet nudges them toward letting the project proceed by default.

Example: Applying this approach to the feedback tool, you could write:

“I’ve researched a compact feedback‑collection solution and believe it could help us act faster on customer complaints. Unless directed otherwise, I plan to launch a pilot with one product line next week. I’ll keep you updated on results.”

If your boss responds with corrections or caveats, you adapt. If they don’t respond in a reasonable timeframe, the silence functions as implicit approval. This shifts the burden of action – you’re not asking permission, you’re signaling intent.

5) Probe with curiosity when you hit resistance

Sometimes, your boss resists in ways that are opaque or rooted in deeper concerns. When you hit that barrier, shift from advocacy to inquiry: ask questions that help uncover hidden objections or open their thinking.

Examples:

• “What about this idea gives you pause?”
• “If we approached this differently, what would that look like?”
• “How do our competitors approach this issue?”

These questions do two things: they help you understand the root of resistance, and they invite your boss to reconsider their stance in a safe way. Sometimes the act of questioning is enough to nudge someone to revisit assumptions.

In one well-known example, Apple team members succeeded in swaying their notoriously difficult boss, Steve Jobs, by asking him strategic questions instead of confronting him head-on. Jobs had long held fast to the belief that Apple should never build a smartphone – until one day his team asked, “Do you think Microsoft might ever build one?” That single question played to Jobs’s competitive instincts, prompted him to re-evaluate his assumptions, and eventually paved the way for Apple to become one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Conclusion

By utilizing these five techniques for influencing “up” – aligning your proposal with leadership goals, laying out trade‑offs, engaging your boss as a collaborator, seizing the initiative, and probing with smart questions – you can influence up without overstepping. If your boss happens to flip your perspective instead, well, that builds mutual influence and opens the door to real partnership. Thus, when you employ these influencing “up” tactics, you simultaneously enhance your organizational impact, strengthen your value to the company, and build a better working relationship with your boss.

To dive deeper on the topic of influence, check out my June, 2022 blog post, “The Art and Science of Influence.” And if you need help influencing “up” – let’s connect!

Sources

Harvard Business Review: Persuading the Unpersuadable

Author’s Note: The underlying ideas in this blog post were originally published in March, 2022 in Harvard Business Review: 5 Ways to Influence Up in the Workplace (by David Robinson – yes, that’s me), and the original article was republished this month in Harvard Business Review’s Special Issue on “How to Build Your Influence” (Winter 2025).