Frances Milliken, Elizabeth Morrison and Patricia Hewlin published an exploratory study of employee silence in 2003. It was built on interviews with 40 full-time employees, whom they found through part-time MBA management classes. They worked in consulting and financial services as well as in new media, pharmaceuticals and advertising. Thirty-four of the 40 said that “on at least one occasion, they had felt unable to raise an issue or concern to their bosses even though they felt the issue was important.”
The issue people most often kept to themselves was a colleague’s or a supervisor’s competence or performance. The reason they gave most often was the fear of being labeled or seen negatively. The labels they mentioned were “troublemaker,” “tattletale” and “complainer.”
It’s a small study, and it’s more than twenty years old. Everyone in it was taking MBA classes, and it’s about speaking up in general rather than feedback to a boss in particular. So it tells you how common it is to stay quiet, not how often speaking up goes well. But it does point at the real problem. A lot of the advice on how to give feedback to your boss is about sounding polite. The people in that study weren’t worried about sounding rude, though. They were worried about what saying it would cost them.
So this post starts there, with how to tell whether it’s safe to say this to this particular person. From there it covers how to ask before you say it and what to say about five common behaviors. It ends with what to do when it lands badly, and with the cases where the right move is not to say it at all.
Is this about how your boss behaves, or about a decision they made?
Work out which kind of problem you have before anything else, because the two need different conversations. Feedback is about behavior: something your boss does to you or around you, and keeps doing. A disagreement is about a decision: something they chose that you think is wrong.
Here’s how the two get tangled. Say your manager moves your product launch back three weeks. The launch is yours, but you find out at the company all-hands, along with everyone else. You may think the new date is a mistake, and that’s a disagreement with a decision. But you’d also rather not learn about changes to your own project from a slide in a meeting. That’s a behavior, and it’s the kind of thing this post is about.
If you raise both in one conversation, the decision usually wins. Your boss defends the new date because that’s the part that feels like a challenge, so the point about how you found out gets lost. It can even sound as if you’re only complaining about the all-hands because you didn’t like the date.
So split them. If it’s the decision that bothers you, our guide to pushing back on your manager’s idea covers that conversation. The behavior might also be part of a bigger pattern in how your boss works, such as micromanaging or disappearing for weeks. If so, managing up has a playbook for each type. What follows is for the behavior on its own.
How do you read the risk before you say anything?
The people in Milliken’s study were afraid of being labeled a troublemaker, and that fear isn’t irrational. Some bosses do treat feedback as a challenge, and some remember it at review time. Jim Detert and Ethan Burris looked at why people hold back in a 2016 Harvard Business Review article. Detert’s own summary of it puts the answer in one sentence: “Chances are good that your employees are withholding valuable intelligence from you for two key reasons: a fear of consequences and a sense of futility.” They were writing for managers, but the two reasons describe the two ways this can go wrong for you. You say it and pay for it, or you say it and nothing changes.
A quick read of the person before you speak helps with both. It isn’t a validated test. It’s a judgment aid built from that research and from ordinary sense about how people take criticism, and only you can fill it in. These are the things to look at.
Start with how your boss has taken small unwelcome news. Go back to the last time you flagged a risk or asked a question that showed a gap in their plan, or corrected a number they’d used. Did they thank you, shrug, or go cold for a day? That’s the closest preview you’ll get of how they’ll take feedback about themselves. Noticing that kind of reaction and remembering it is part of emotional intelligence. How they take disagreement with their decisions is a separate signal. The push-back guide’s read on your manager covers it, including what happened to the last person who challenged them.
Next, ask whether they’ve ever asked for feedback, or asked how something they did came across. A boss who has asked has, in effect, invited you. A boss who never has may still welcome it. But you’d be the first, and you won’t know until you try.
After that, look at what you have at stake. Who writes your review or has a say in it? Is a promotion case, a probation period or a bonus decision coming up in the next couple of months? The closer you are to one of those, the more a bad reaction costs you.
Your standing matters too. Someone with a long, solid track record can say more than someone three months into the job. So can someone whose work is actually being held up, compared with someone who finds a habit irritating. Be honest with yourself about which one you are.
Finally, ask whether your boss knows they’re doing it. Most of the behaviors later in this post are things people do without noticing, like cutting meetings short when they’re busy. Those are the easiest to raise, because you’re telling them something new. A behavior that looks deliberate is a different conversation, and often not one to have head-on.
Your answers point to one of four verdicts:
| Verdict | When your read looks like this | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Say it directly | They’ve taken small bad news well, your work is affected, nothing big rides on the next few months, and they probably don’t know they’re doing it | Ask permission and have the conversation, using the words in the five situations below |
| Say it lighter, or in writing | Mixed signals: they took one correction well and bristled at another, they’ve never asked for feedback, or a review is close | Make a smaller request, framed as an offer or a question, or send a short version they can read in their own time |
| Route it elsewhere first | They’ve reacted badly to small news before, the behavior looks deliberate, or your standing is thin | Talk to a mentor, a trusted peer or your skip-level before you talk to your boss |
| Wait | You’re angry, a review decision is days away, or it has happened once | Write down what happened and when, and look at it again in a week or two |
Here’s how the read plays out in one illustrative case. Henrietta is a senior analyst at a logistics company, three years in with a good record. Her manager, Lionel, sends every document she writes back with “let’s discuss” and no comments. The discussion then gets pushed back a week. Lionel took it well last month when she corrected a figure in his board pack, which is a good sign. But he has never asked her for feedback, and her promotion case goes to calibration in six weeks. Both of those point the other way. The habit is costing her a week on every document, and it’s almost certainly a habit rather than a tactic.
That reads as “say it lighter.” So Henrietta skips the full feedback conversation for now and makes one small offer in her next 1:1: “Would it help if I put the two decisions I need from you at the top of each document, so you can just answer those?” It fixes most of the problem and costs Lionel nothing. It also doesn’t ask him to hear criticism six weeks before her calibration, so the fuller conversation can wait until after.
Why ask permission first, and how do you do it?
Once you’ve decided to say it, don’t open with the feedback itself. Ask first whether they’re open to hearing some.
That can feel like unnecessary politeness, but it does three useful things. It lets your boss choose to listen, which is very different from being cornered. Someone who has said “sure, go ahead” is already partly with you. It also means the conversation isn’t an ambush. That matters more with someone senior, because a person who feels ambushed by a junior colleague tends to defend their position rather than listen. Last, it gives you a first read of how this is going to go before you’ve said anything you can’t take back.
How you ask depends on where you are. If you have a regular 1:1, ask near the start whether they’d be open to some feedback. Name the topic in a few words, such as “about how the Q3 review went.” Those few words matter, because “can I give you some feedback?” with nothing after it makes many people expect the worst.
If you don’t have a 1:1 or it keeps getting canceled, send a short message asking for fifteen minutes. Say what it’s about, and don’t make it mysterious. A message that says only “can we talk?” leaves your boss guessing all afternoon.
Sometimes the moment is right after a meeting. If so, wait until everyone else has left and ask for two minutes. Say nothing while the rest of the team is still in the room.
Whichever way you ask, listen to the answer. If it’s yes, go straight to the specific thing without a long run-up. If it’s “not now,” treat that as a real answer and agree on a time today or tomorrow. Don’t let it drop, because dropping it tells both of you it wasn’t important. If it’s no, stop and don’t push through. The same goes if the tone says no even though the words say yes. Say something like “No problem, it’ll keep,” and go back to your risk read, because you’ve just learned something about this person.
One caution: asking permission doesn’t make feedback safe. It’s easy to use it as polite cover for an ambush: you ask “can I share something?” and then deliver a list of grievances. The opener only works if the next sentence is about one specific thing they’ll recognize.
How do you give feedback to your boss about five common behaviors?
Once you have permission, the conversation itself has a simple shape. It’s the same whether the problem is canceled meetings or a rewritten proposal. But each part is adjusted for the fact that this person is senior to you and probably has a say in your review.
First, say plainly what happened as something you both saw. Don’t add your theory of why they did it. A senior person will find a theory about their motives easy to dispute. Once they’re disputing it, the behavior itself is off the table.
Second, describe the effect on the work rather than on you. “I felt undermined” asks your boss to manage your feelings, and some bosses will hear that as your problem to solve. “The client got the old pricing” is a problem for both of you, and nobody has to agree about feelings to want it fixed.
Third, make a request that makes things easier or cheaper for them rather than harder. That could be a shorter meeting or a standing format, or a one-line note that saves them explaining something twice. The easier it is to grant, the less it feels like a demand from below.
What’s missing is any statement of what you’ll do if nothing changes. If you’ve used the DESC script with a peer or a vendor, this is the step you leave out going upward. Telling the person who writes your review what you’ll do next if they don’t change sounds like an ultimatum, however calmly you say it. You can still decide privately what you’ll do, and the last two sections of this post help with that.
All of this is constructive feedback aimed up instead of down. The five situations below are illustrative composites, so the names and details are made up. Two are walked through in full with the reply you’re likely to get, and the rest are shorter.
Sometimes the person can only be reached in writing because they’re remote or in another time zone. The shape stays the same, but two things change. The permission step becomes a short message, and the whole thing should get shorter. Our post on disagreeing in writing explains why a written message lands differently from a spoken one.
When your boss presents your work to their own boss
Fergus, your manager, took the customer churn analysis you built to his VP last week. His summary called it “the team’s analysis,” which is fair enough. But when the VP asked how the model treated seasonal customers, Fergus said he’d find out. He came back to you and passed your answer on two days later. Nobody did anything wrong on purpose, since Fergus was probably just keeping his summary short.
The part worth raising isn’t the credit, even if that stings. It’s what happened to the work: questions about the model now take two days and a go-between, and the VP doesn’t know who to ask. So after asking whether he’s open to some feedback on how the analysis went up, lead with that: “When the VP asked about seasonal customers, the answer took two days because it had to come through you, and I don’t think she knows I built the model.”
The request you make next saves him a job: “Next time something of mine goes up, could you mention that I built it, so questions about the method can come straight to me?” He gives up nothing, and he stops relaying questions he can’t answer.
This conversation is about one presentation, and you have it in private with your own manager. If it keeps happening or looks deliberate, the section on the credit-taking boss in our managing up guide covers that pattern. It also includes ways to make your work visible yourself.
When your 1:1s keep getting canceled or cut short
Margot is an engineering manager with nine people reporting to her, and your weekly 1:1 is the first thing to go when her day fills up. Five of the last seven were canceled or cut to ten minutes, usually with a message that morning saying something came up. She isn’t avoiding you, though. She’s busy, and a 1:1 with someone who seems fine is the easiest thing in her calendar to move. But two decisions on the payments migration have been waiting on her for three weeks. Last week you made one of them yourself and then had to undo it.
The awkward part is that you need a 1:1 to talk about the 1:1s. So ask for one by message, and say what it’s for: “Could we keep Thursday’s 1:1, even if it’s only fifteen minutes? I’d like to give you a bit of feedback about our 1:1s.” Saying what it’s about up front means she isn’t guessing, and it makes this particular meeting harder to cancel.
Once you’re in the room, start with what’s been happening in numbers and without adjectives: “Of our last seven 1:1s, five were canceled or cut short, mostly on the day.” That sentence describes her calendar, not her character. “You never make time for me” would ask her to defend herself, but “five of seven” asks her to look.
Next comes what it’s done to the work, which is the part she’ll care about: “Two decisions on the payments migration have been waiting on you, and last week I made one on my own that we had to undo.” This is where a complaint turns into a problem she owns too, because an undone decision costs her team time.
Now make the request, and ask for less of her time rather than more so it’s easier to protect: “Would a fixed twenty minutes first thing on Thursdays be easier to keep? When it does have to go, could I send you a written update with the decisions I need and you reply by end of day?” A short, early slot is less likely to get eaten by the day. The written fallback means a cancellation no longer leaves decisions stuck, so canceling costs her less as well.
She’ll probably say something like: “It’s been a crazy few weeks. It’s not personal.” That’s very likely true, and it’s worth saying so rather than arguing. But you can point out that your request was built for exactly that: “I know, and I’m not taking it personally. That’s why I’m asking for less time, not more. Twenty minutes on Thursdays, and the written version when that falls through.” Stop there, because another reason now would only give her something new to respond to. The request is already as small as it can be.
When your boss rewrites your work without telling you
A lot of people never raise this one because they can already hear the answer: “It’s quicker if I just fix it.” Wendell runs marketing at a software company, and he’s probably right that it’s quicker for him. Your last three customer proposals went out with changes he made after you sent them to him. You only found out when a client quoted back a line you hadn’t written. On the last one you answered a pricing question from your own draft, which wasn’t the version the client had.
The way through is to agree with the part he’d defend. He’s allowed to change your work, because he’s your manager and his edits may well be better. What you want is to know what changed and why. After asking whether he’s open to some feedback on the proposals, say it in that order: “You should change whatever needs changing. What’s been hard is not knowing what went out. On the last proposal I answered the client’s pricing question from my draft, and it wasn’t the version they had.”
Frame the request around saving him effort: “Could you copy me on the version that goes out, with a line on the biggest change? If I can see what you change, I’ll start writing them closer to that and there’ll be less for you to fix.” That last part is why he’ll say yes, because he gets fewer rewrites. You also finally learn the standard he’s been holding the proposals to.
When your boss corrects you in front of the team
Nadine is a sales director, and every Monday you present the pipeline numbers to her team of twelve account executives. Three times in the last month, she has stopped you mid-presentation to correct a figure. Twice she was right, but the third time the number had changed because of a new definition of a qualified deal that nobody had told you about. Each time, the meeting spent ten minutes on the correction instead of the deals. Since then, two of the reps have started checking your numbers with Nadine before they use them.
Timing is the whole point here. Don’t raise it in the meeting, and don’t raise it straight after while you’re still annoyed. Wait for your next 1:1 or ask for ten minutes later in the week. When you get the time, ask first whether she’s open to some feedback about the Monday meetings.
Describe what happened without saying she shouldn’t have corrected you, because twice she was right: “Three times this month the pipeline numbers got corrected in the Monday meeting. Since then, a couple of the reps have been checking figures with you before they use them.” The second sentence is the effect on the work. She’ll feel it because it means more questions landing on her.
The request moves where the correction happens, not whether it happens: “Could you send me anything you spot before Monday, or catch me straight after? I’d rather fix the deck before it reaches the team.”
Her first reply may well be: “If the numbers are wrong in that meeting, I have to say so. People make calls off that deck.” Your first line hasn’t worked, because she heard “don’t correct me in public,” which isn’t what you asked. So agree with her and narrow the request: “You’re right, and I don’t want wrong numbers in front of the team either. What I’m asking is to hear it first when you can. If you spot something on Sunday night or Monday morning, message me and I’ll fix it before the meeting. If it only turns up in the room, say it there.” Now she keeps what she cares about, which is accurate numbers in front of her team. Most of the corrections that could have come earlier now will.
If your boss talks over you rather than corrects you, the same timing applies. The request is simply to let you finish your point before they come in. If you’d like to hear how that second line sounds before Monday, you can practice it with Merlin and ask it to push back the way Nadine did.
When priorities change mid-week and nobody says what drops
Celia is your product lead, and she often adds something new on a Wednesday. That’s part of her job. The trouble is that she doesn’t say what should drop to make room, so you try to do everything. The Friday release slips, and on Friday she’s surprised that it slipped.
Keep the feedback on how the change reaches you: “The last two times something new came in mid-week, the Friday release slipped, and I don’t think either of us expected it to.” Make the request as cheap for her as you can: “When something new comes in, could you tell me what drops? Or I’ll send you my guess straight away, and you just say yes or swap it.” The second option means all she has to do is reply with a word.
Stay on that side of the line, because whether the new priority is the right call is a separate question. If you think it isn’t, that’s a disagreement with a decision. It belongs in the push-back conversation, not this one. Mixing the two would turn feedback about communication into an argument about the roadmap.
What if the person is a director, a founder or your boss’s boss?
Everything so far assumes you’re talking to your own manager. When the person is more senior and not your manager, a few things change.
You aren’t part of their week, so there’s no 1:1 to use. They don’t owe you a reply either, and they may barely know your name. Your own manager is also exposed in a way they aren’t when you talk to them directly. If a director hears criticism from someone on your manager’s team, your manager may be the one who gets asked about it. That could happen before you’ve said a word to them.
So the bar is higher. You need a better reason to be the one raising it, which usually means the behavior has affected your work directly. You need a concrete example, not a general impression. The timing has to be right too, because you may only get one try.
Getting the first conversation is the hard part, and the easiest route is usually the natural one. If you already present to this person or sit in their meetings, ask for ten minutes about one specific thing and say what it is. “Could I have ten minutes this week? It’s about how the last two launch reviews ran from my side” is far easier to agree to than a vague request for time. The few minutes right after a meeting can also work while the thing is fresh, as long as you ask for two minutes and keep it to two.
The distance is shorter in a small company where the founder still works closely with everyone, and all of this is easier. But a founder still hears a lot of opinions, so a specific example will stand out where a general one won’t.
Before any of that, think about whether your own manager should hear it first. Going around them can leave them surprised and exposed, and it may cost you their trust. That’s a judgment call rather than a rule. Even so, in many cases the safer start is telling your manager what you plan to raise and why. If the behavior involves your manager too, or you can’t tell how to read the situation, a mentor outside your reporting line is a good first conversation. They can tell you whether you’ve read it right, and whether you’re the right person to say it.
What do you do when it lands badly?
Even with a careful read and good words, some of these conversations go badly. This is what to do, in the order you’re likely to need it. The examples are illustrative.
In the room
The two reactions to be ready for in the moment are defensiveness and suspicion.
Your boss may get defensive and come back with a list of reasons or a “well, your own work has…” in return. If so, don’t argue the point again. You won’t win it in that moment, and every extra round makes the argument bigger and your request smaller in their memory. Thank them for hearing you out, say your one request once more in the same words, and stop: “Thanks for listening. All I’m asking for is the twenty minutes on Thursdays.” After that, move on or end the meeting.
If they ask “who put you up to this?” or suspect others are behind it, answer plainly and don’t name anyone: “Nobody. It’s something I’ve noticed myself, and I wanted to raise it with you directly.” Bringing others in turns feedback into a group complaint even if they agree with you, and a group complaint is much harder for a boss to hear. But pay attention to the question, because a boss who goes looking for the source of feedback is telling you how safe it is to give. That belongs in your risk read next time.
Later the same day
Sometimes the problem is the delivery. Maybe you said it too sharply or in a rush, or you said three things when you meant to say one. If so, send a short repair message the same day. Own the way you said it, but don’t take back what you said. If you do, you’re back where you started with the problem still there. The structure is simple: name what went wrong in the delivery, restate the one point, and make it easy to reply.
A message to Margot from earlier might read: “I raised the 1:1s badly this morning. I was sharper than I meant to be, and I’m sorry for that. The request still stands: twenty minutes on Thursdays, with a written update when it can’t happen. Happy to talk it through whenever suits you.” The apology is real, and it covers only the delivery.
The next 48 hours
Silence or a cooler tone is common after feedback, and it doesn’t always mean what it feels like. Senior people often need a day or two to come round to something, and some never say “you were right.” They just change. So wait. Don’t chase for a response or ask whether they’re upset with you. Instead, have one normal, useful exchange with them. Send the update you’d have sent anyway or answer a question well. How they respond to that tells you more than the silence does. If you want to see it from their side, our post on receiving feedback with a growth mindset describes that first defensive reaction from the receiver’s end.
The next two weeks
The hardest outcome is the boss who agrees with you and then changes nothing. They said yes to the twenty minutes, and two weeks later the 1:1s are being canceled again. This is where Detert and Burris’s second reason sets in: a sense of futility. Futility was the third most-mentioned reason for staying quiet in Milliken’s interviews, raised by 25% of the people they spoke to. Once you believe nothing will change, you stop saying anything. That means the behavior is likely to stay as it is.
So follow up once about the behavior itself, and be specific: “We agreed on twenty minutes on Thursdays, and three of the last four have still been canceled. Is Thursday the wrong slot, or is something else getting in the way?” The question at the end matters because it treats the lapse as a problem to solve together rather than a broken promise. It may also turn up a real reason, such as a standing meeting that keeps landing on top of yours.
That’s roughly how it went with Margot in the illustrative version. The Thursday slot held for three weeks, until a reorganization landed and the cancellations came back. The follow-up got a sincere apology and a new slot that held for about two weeks. Decisions get made faster now, mostly because the written fallback stuck. But the 1:1s themselves are still hit and miss.
If you’ve followed up once and nothing has changed, stop raising it with your boss. A third round is likely to cost you more than it gets you, so the next step depends on what’s going on. Take it to a mentor if you want help deciding what it means. Take it to your skip-level if the behavior is holding up the work and your boss knows you’ve raised it. Go to HR straight away if the reaction to your feedback has turned into retaliation, such as being dropped from projects or marked down for speaking up.
When should you not give your boss feedback at all?
Every section so far has assumed you should say something. Sometimes you shouldn’t, and the risk read earlier was built partly to tell you when. If your honest answer there was “wait” or “route it elsewhere first,” this is what that verdict was for.
Don’t give feedback on a one-off. Say your boss snapped at you once on a bad day or canceled one 1:1. There’s no pattern yet, so raising it makes a single slip sound like a habit. Let it go, or ask a question instead if it’s still bothering you: “Everything all right? Yesterday’s meeting felt rushed.”
Don’t give it while you’re angry. If it happened this morning and you’re still furious, whatever you say will come out sharper than you mean it. Your boss will then respond to the anger rather than the point. Write down what happened, with the date, and look at it again in a few days. If it still matters then, it will still be worth saying.
Don’t treat bullying, discrimination, harassment or retaliation as a feedback conversation. These aren’t habits to be improved with a well-worded request. Go to HR or your company’s formal process, and keep a written record of what happened and when. Nothing in this post is meant for them.
Think hard before giving feedback to a boss who has already shown that they punish people for challenging them, especially if your standing is low. No script protects you from someone who retaliates. In that situation a feedback conversation can cost you more than it gains. So the realistic options are different ones. You could get a mentor’s view or talk to your skip-level. You could move to another team, or in the end you could leave. If you’re working out what to do with a boss who won’t change, our guide to growing your career without becoming a manager takes the longer view.
Finally, don’t use feedback for a decision. If what’s bothering you is a choice your boss made, the feedback shape won’t fit. The sorting question at the start of this post sends you to the push-back guide instead.
You can make an honest read and a careful opener and find the right words, and the outcome still isn’t fully yours. Some bosses hear it, thank you and change. Some thank you and don’t. Some say nothing and change quietly months later, and you never find out whether your conversation had anything to do with it.
Practice the conversation before you have it
A lot of the risk in these conversations sits in the first thirty seconds: the permission opener and the sentence after it. That’s also the part you can practice. If you say both out loud a few times before the real conversation, you’ll hear where the opener sounds like an accusation. You’ll also hear where the first sentence runs to three when it should be one.
Merlin runs natively in Slack and Microsoft Teams, so you can rehearse where you already work. Merlin plays your boss and gives you the reply you’re dreading. When you start the coaching yourself, it’s private to you. Only coaching your company formally assigns produces anything for HR, and that’s a session summary and your engagement level, never the details of what you practiced. So you can rehearse feedback for your boss without any of it reaching your boss. If you’d like to see where your feedback skills stand first, the constructive feedback assessment takes about five minutes.
Rehearse your opener with Merlin before you ask your boss for those two minutes.