How do you sway senior stakeholders who outrank you?

This is a classic case of ‘influencing upwards’. Therefore, the key is to have an ‘armoury’ of influencing styles. Senior managers often do not like subordinates disagree with them in public forums - so the best influencing styles tend to be to manage ‘pre meeting’ or ‘in the corridor’ discussions gaining pre alignment on key topics. Senior managers also tend to lean on experience and gut more than junior managers and hence it is critical to provide numbers and perspective to help senior managers agree with your proposals. Finally, senior managers would like to get multiple perspectives before deciding. So, try and get multiple scenarios and provide the pros and cons to help the manager make an informed decision.

Besides what @NeilGeorge mentions, I believe having done your homework, knowing to whom you talk and knowing where they are heading helps to create empathy to choose the right tone even if you do not agree with them. Nobody likes to be exposed in public, but respectfully challenging the status quo is healthy and important for organisations.

1, Find a point or fact that you both agree on 2, They don't always know what you know, summarise the situation 3, Explain the consequence/risk of not making a change 4, Offer at least 1 solution (Bonus if it has a way of getting a quick win as part of the solution). 5, de-risk the decision-making for them.

One of the ways to develop trust and a healthy rapport with leaders is to objectively present scenarios keeping the consumer or the customer at the center Ultimately - the organization and it's leaders - senior mid or junior wants to win with the consumer and talking the consumer langauge can bring objectivity to our approach ultimately garnering long lasting trust!

Communicate with them in the channel they prefer to be communicated with. (email / face to face over a coffee etc.) Communicate with their style, if they are direct and to the point then do the same. If they like stories and more detailed explanations, then do that). - Learn the DISC model - (Which is about communication, NOT personality) btw.) Will take you about 10 minutes to grasp the essentials on some youtube video.

Always use logic - yes. But don't overload them. Help them make a decision by understanding the consequence/outcome of making the decision vs not making the decision. The higher up the org chart, the higher the risk comes with each big decision.

I would be careful here. If you have explained clearly what the risks are of no action vs action on a specific thing, that should be enough. They might not have time to listen to your storytelling or it might not be their way of absorbing information.

Pre-plan what those objections might be. Oftentimes the objections aren't personal against you, it might be because they don't have time or want to make the decision right now, but helping them overcome their objections will get you faster to a yes!

In my opinion Aligment and Buy in from each and every one on the team is a pre requisite before rolling out a plan , a manager who takes his teams opinion while building an action plan is successful in the planned outcomes , any objections by the team has to be dealt in a rational manner , not let ego in between , only when team is aligned and convinced will there be total involvement and a 100% success in execution.