How to Escalate Well
An effective escalation will boost your credibility and leadership potential. Here's how to do it effectively and avoid hurting relationships.
Hi! I'm Yue. Chief Product Officer turned Career Coach. My personal mission is to support more women and minorities in ascending to the C-suite.
(When Hitting a Wall, Teddy the Corgi)
When I was a PM Lead, one of my VPs told me:
“I would much prefer you escalate quickly and effectively so I can help you resolve it, than to spend the next two weeks “figuring it out”. Escalating well is a mark of strong leadership.”
It was one of those statements where once you hear it, it makes total sense. And it stuck with me ever since. When I faced challenges at work, in the back of my head, I constantly weighed whether it was more effective to try to resolve on my own or to escalate well.
Common Misconceptions about Escalations
Escalation is not a bad word.
Sometimes when I tell someone that we should escalate, whether in a professional work setting or as a coach, it’s as if I said a bad word. The other party has a visceral negative reaction to the suggestion. It evokes a set of emotions associated with the “I’m going to tell the teacher about you” phase of our childhood. And for many of us, it was unpleasant.
It is an emotion we need to learn to overcome and reframe. Escalations are necessary for effective decision-making, particularly in larger organizations.
Escalation will not ruin your relationships.
Some people fear that when they escalate a disagreement or conflict the other party will be upset. This may be true in some cases. However, more commonly, the other party also wants the issue resolved. Perhaps you’ve been putting meetings on the calendar to discuss getting help. Perhaps you’ve been distracting their team members from their current work. Perhaps they’ve already heard the argument five times in the last two weeks. They may be as tired of the lack of direction as you are and want a resolution and to move forward.
There is a good way and a bad way to do an escalation. A good escalation done well will actually improve relationships — they will come to trust you as an effective and compassionate leader who focuses on getting work done and presenting all sides of an issue to find the best path forward.
Escalation is not a sign of failure or lack of capability.
Some people fear that if they escalate an issue, they will get dinged for not being able to resolve it on their own. Yes, this may happen if the issue you’re escalating is clearly within your scope and level to resolve. However, many high performers, particularly those growing in scope at larger companies, will inevitably run into conflicts that are very inefficient for them to try and resolve alone. This is because it will simply take too long and too much effort for them to build the power, credibility, and influence to resolve the conflict. Instead, it is much more efficient to escalate to someone who already has the power and influence and move the team forward.
What do I Escalate?
Here are some common scenarios in which a well-done escalation is much more effective than weeks of back and forth:
You need to borrow resources from another team. The other team’s manager/leader does not want to lend the resource as it’ll impact their goals and priorities
You and another team both want to make a change to a particular product surface or customer experience but in different conflicting ways
You have multiple teams and leaders (more senior than you) asking for the same resource and you cannot easily find alignment
You and another team are serving the same end customer, and want to make conflicting changes to their experience
You’ll be able to resolve versions of each of these without an escalation. However, there are times when you need support. This usually happens when there are people involved who are multiple levels above you, there are too many differing parties, or the changes have an outsized impact on strategy or customer experience. Being able to effectively judge when to do an escalation is the sign of a mature leader.
Steps of an Effective Escalation
Get buy-in for an escalation from the other side. Don’t want to ruin relationships and want to build trust with your peers? Make sure they know how and when you plan to do an escalation and how to get involved. Discuss and draft the tradeoffs and options together. Consult with them on who needs to be informed. Give them time to do 1-1s with their managers. Involve your stakeholders and make it as much their escalation as yours. Sometimes, this step of actually writing down each team’s perspectives resolves the issue and an escalation becomes unnecessary.
Identify the decision maker: Together with the other team’s leaders, identify and agree on who can break the tie. This is usually the place in the org chart where your lines meet but can be another senior individual. Agree on a decision-maker is critical to the decision landing well. Don’t skip this step.
Set the context and options: This is the core of the content. In a document or presentation, outline why a conflict exists — what are each team’s goals? What are they currently working on? What is creating the conflict? Then, propose options. Consider whether there’s an option for both team’s needs to be met, or neither. Consider whether there are degrees of meeting one team’s needs. This is a great place for collaboration and drafting the context and options with all the teams involved.
Clarify the tradeoffs: Articulate the trade-offs. How will goals be impacted? How will team morale be impacted? What type of precedent does this set for future decisions like this or collaboration between teams?
Highlight the recommendation from each party: Note which option each team prefers and why.
Who, When, Where: Identify a recommended approach for making this trade-off. Do you expect the decision-maker to simply email back their decision? Does it require a meeting in the next week? Who will be at the meeting?
Follow up with stakeholders: Once a decision is made, each team needs to then go back and ensure everyone understands the outcome. Don’t skip this part. Communicating a decision to the team and partner teams is as important as having the decision made.
Document and share decisions and rationale: Make sure the decision lives somewhere outside of someone’s inbox or a fleeting meeting. Write it down, perhaps at the top of the escalation document where the options and tradeoffs were written.
An escalation is an effective influence tool. It provides you with a method to influence outcomes that you do not have decision-making power over. It can be surprising how much work a well-done escalation is, but it is worth the effort. An effective escalation will save you, your team, and your partner teams hours of meetings and debate, and increase your personal brand as an effective leader in the organization.