Transcription
Most professionals don't realize that the way they present is quietly signaling that they're not ready for leadership. Their slides will look polished, but they always fail the one test that will matter most to executives.
As an executive, I spent years presenting directly to senior leadership and billionaire decision makers. I learned fast that in executive rooms, every word you say is a signal that you're either a leader or your support. So, in this video, I'm going to show you the most effective way to communicate with executives so you deliver the maximum value, build real authority at work, and you'll save yourself time in the process, too.
To begin, I will show you the biggest mistake that smart professionals make that will expose them as not being leadership ready. So, when you're dealing with senior leaders, you want to appear thorough by proving that you've done the work. And you definitely don't want to be exposed if they ask a question and you've not got the answer to it.
So, you probably make the mistake that I see most professionals making. You cram in charts, summaries, projections, data tables, icons, fancy diagrams, and then you wrap all of this up inside a McKenzie style template. But polished, slick looking slide decks and detailed reports have a big problem. They don't signal leadership ready. They signal employee because they tell executives that you're focused on the information but not the decisions. And when executives see that, they're not thinking, "Wow, what a great job you've done over here." They're thinking, "If you can't decide what matters, then why should we trust you to lead?"
But as I'm about to show you, there is a better way. It's going to keep executives locked in from the first sentence and instantly positions you as the strategic thinker in the room, not just the person who did all the work. So, now I'm going to show you my system. It's the same one that got my clients results like this. And there's only five steps to it. It's really easy, right?
So, step one is to take your slide deck or your report and all of this stuff here, like the introduction and the agenda and the timelines. Just delete it. You're not going to need this. All this does is makes your audience wonder when you're going to get to the point. And this is going to wreck your credibility and it's going to make executives stop listening.
And once you've done that, now you can do step two. And this is going to boost an executive's confidence that you can lead in seconds because it proves you're already thinking at an executive level. So your goal here is to instantly grab their attention and to tell them what they're about to learn and why it's important to them. And all of that needs to be achieved in a single sentence. And that might sound difficult to do, but it's actually really easy because what you're going to do is you're going to make a hook.
Now, this is what movies and TV shows and even YouTube videos do to get your attention right at the start. And if you do this right, it's going to make leaders sit up and actually listen to you. And I'll show you how you can make your own hook, right? So, you just pick something that your audience cares about. I like to use a planner like this one. It lists all the sorts of executive level benefits. So, I just pick the most relevant and then all you have to do is throw that in a sentence like this. We have the opportunity to outcome they want by specific action. I'm going to explain. And this is what it looks like when you fill it in. We've got the opportunity to increase recurring revenue by 15%, adding 9 million to the bottom line by fixing the three points in our funnel where buyers drop off. And that is so much better than hello. In this session, we're going to talk about the sales funnel and our conversion rates followed by 10 minutes of preamble.
And there's loads of different templated hooks you can use for all sorts of different situations. If you want this toolkit, I'll leave it in a link in the description below. You can download it for free. It's got checklists and guidance through executive communications and it's full of inspirational examples that you can just copy and paste. It's what I turn to every time I have to write another meeting for the board or something like that. Right?
So, step three, and this is going to raise how senior leaders perceive you because you're going to show them that you're someone who can drive the business forward. And I'm going to show you how to do that with storytelling. Now, before you close this video in rage and tell me that executives don't want narrative, they want data. Then you're correct and you're still going to give them everything they need. You're just changing the way that it's framed so that executives instantly recognize the strategic value in what you're doing. And I know it works because it's the same thing I've taught 70,000 other professionals and it's why I've won awards at the executive level and why I'm trusted with multi-million dollar decisions.
So, there was this time that I did a project for a chain of fitness centers and I couldn't get the leadership team to listen to me. No matter how many charts or reports I brought to solve their problems, they just would ignore them and then would continue to pressure me to find a solution. So the next time I went to them, I only presented what I thought was the key to getting the outcome. I cut the slide deck down from 25 to just four slides. And then in the next meeting, they came to a decision really quickly, praised me for how innovative the solution was, and this massively boosted their trust in me. The crazy thing was, it was just the exact same thing I'd been telling them for weeks. Only this time, I'd framed it differently. And I learned that it isn't narrative or data that executives want. What they want is tangible business outcomes. And I'll show you how you can provide those outcomes by using a narrative arc.
So this is the story structure that every story uses, whether it's going to be Lord of the Rings or K-pop demon hunters or your next executive communication. And it's got four parts. Once you've got their attention from the hook, then the next part is what everyone gets wrong because this is where you provide the information. And most people's instinct is to provide the executives with as many details as possible. But I want you to fight that instinct because the goal of this section is actually to build up to a key message that you're trying to share. And when you overload executives with details, you're not really building toward anything because you've got no direction you're heading in. And then this is going to lead to the audience wondering why any of this matters and then they tune out. And when that happens, it exposes you as someone who isn't strategic or leadership ready.
So what should you do instead? Well, let me show you. Here's what I do. First, I choose two or three big messages that guide the audience towards the key insight that I'm trying to share. Let's use the fitness center as an example. So the hook that I gave them was by the end of the year you're going to lose $1.2 million unless you take action right now. Think about how you reacted to that. You've immediately got questions, right? Like why are they going to lose money? What's causing it? Can they do anything to stop it? Why is the timing so urgent? And that is exactly the point because a strong hook will create questions that executives want answers to. So now you don't need to throw all the details at them because you're not sure exactly what they want. Your job is now to just provide answers to the questions that you've set up with the hook. And what this is going to do is it's going to make them more engaged. And this is going to position you as strategic. And that's exactly what I've done here. I didn't give loads of details like customer lifetime value, membership churn rates, customer acquisition costs. All I did was provide three insights that just answered the obvious questions that I set up with the hook. So the hook said that they're going to lose all this money. So I just showed them that customer satisfaction is down. This led to more cancellations and they're also getting fewer new joiners.
And once you've answered the questions, now you're ready for step four. And this step is going to help you avoid the reputation damage that comes from presenting information without any insight. So step four now you provide the executives with the key recommendation or the solution of the outcome and there's two parts to it. First is the specific action that you then back up with a reason and the second thing is the result or benefit of taking that action. So normally I refer to the list from the template which again I'll leave in the description for you if you want it and I just pick the most relevant benefits and then I combine it with one of the templates from the idea bank. So for the fitness centers, I said that there's two things that they need to fix, which was the action that they need to take. I then explained that these two things are the things that customers who left complained about the most. So that's my reason for why I recommend these actions. And then I just explained the benefits that they'd get.
And now this is what brings you to step five. And this is where you share the immediate next actions because you always want to leave a meeting with momentum. And this storytelling structure is not going to work just for slides. It can also work for reports, pitches, emails, uh project updates, or any sort of communication you would do in a corporate workplace. But whilst this template does work really well, you'll elevate your work from informative to decision driving by using strategic thinking, too.
So now go and watch this video before your next meeting and I'll show you the strategic thinking pattern that puts you on the fast track for bigger opportunities.