Managing Up, Down, and Sideways: Real Talk on Stakeholder Juggling

As you grow in your career, one skill becomes more important than any certification or framework: Stakeholder management.

And not just managing "up" to your boss. You've got to manage:

🔼 Up: Senior leaders, execs, sponsors

🔽 Down: Your team, direct reports, interns

↔️ Sideways: Peers, cross-functional partners, dotted-line stakeholders

Each group speaks a different "language":

• Leaders want outcomes and ROI

• Teams want clarity and trust

• Peers want collaboration, not competition

Here's what's worked for me (and some hard lessons I've learned the messy way):

✴️ Tailor your communication

One-size-fits-all updates won't work. What excites your VP might bore your engineering team. I learned this after watching engineers' eyes glaze over during a presentation full of revenue projections, while separately watching executives check their phones when I went too deep into technical details. Now I prepare different versions of the same update - executive summaries focused on business impact, team discussions centered on interesting challenges, and peer conversations highlighting shared dependencies.

✴️ Align on goals early

Misaligned goals = friction later. Say it early, say it often. I once spent three months driving a technical migration only to discover my VP expected different outcomes than what my team was delivering. Now I create explicit alignment documents that connect team objectives to department goals to company priorities, and review them regularly with all stakeholders.

✴️ Respect everyone's time

Especially your peers. No one wants meetings that should have been Slack messages. I've found that earning trust from busy cross-functional partners starts with respecting their calendars. Before sending a meeting invite, I always ask: "Could this be an email? A 15-minute call? A shared document with comments?" This approach has transformed my reputation from "meeting creator" to "problem solver."

✴️ Listen more than you speak

Especially when managing sideways. Influence comes from empathy. Without formal authority over peers, genuine curiosity and attentive listening have become my most powerful tools. Taking notes during conversations and acknowledging concerns before presenting solutions has helped me build coalitions across teams even during high-pressure projects.

👉 And when in doubt: Be the glue. Be the one who keeps things moving even when org charts don't align. Some of my proudest moments weren't about my individual contributions, but about facilitating progress when accountability was unclear. Creating shared documentation, establishing communication channels, and volunteering to track cross-team dependencies has repeatedly helped teams navigate organizational complexity.

Real leadership isn't just about managing "resources" - it's about juggling relationships without dropping trust.

I've found that trust compounds over time but breaks in an instant. Each interaction either makes future collaboration easier or harder. The most successful leaders I've worked with maintain trust in all three directions simultaneously, creating what one of my mentors called "a sphere of influence" rather than just a position in a hierarchy.

So here's my question: Which of the three is the hardest to manage for you - Up, Down, or Sideways? And why?

#Leadership #CareerAdvice #StakeholderManagement #SoftSkills #TeamDynamics #WorkplaceWisdom #WednesdayWisdom