How to Give Feedback Like an Executive

 

The worst feedback I have ever gotten wasn't the harsh one. It was the vague unhelpful feedback I couldn’t use.   “You need to be more strategic.” “Try to be more concise.” “I’d like to see you take more ownership.” “Your executive presence needs work.”   These sentences sound like real feedback, but they leave people with one very important question: What exactly am I supposed to do differently?   This is where a lot of otherwise strong leaders miss the mark with their feedback.   They know something needs to change, but they don’t want to sound too aggressive with their team.   So they soften the message, add caveats, bury the point between compliments, or describe the problem so broadly that their team member walks away without understanding what actually needs to change.   Then three weeks later, the same behavior shows up again. And everyone is frustrated.   Giving executive-level feedback is not about becoming more harsh. It’s about becoming clearer and more useful.   Your job is not simply to tell your team how you feel about their performance. Your job is to help them understand the gap, why it matters, and how to exercise better judgment the next time.   Because the goal of feedback is not to make someone more dependent on your judgment. It’s to improve theirs.   When the wrong feedback doesn’t land I learned this firsthand when I was a VP and gave one of my team members responsibility for managing several outside vendors.   I wanted her to show more ownership, so I gave her the room to lead those relationships.   A few weeks later, I realized she had the responsibility on paper, but she wasn’t really leading. The vendors’ team would make a recommendation and she would immediately agree.   No real questioning. No pressure testing or pushing back. No discussion about whether their recommendation actually made sense for our business.   That approach caused problems. The deliverables we were getting back were all wrong and I had to give tons of feedback.   I can see where she was coming from.   These were expensive experts we hired because they knew their stuff, so she assumed they know best. But they didn’t know our business the way she did and that was the distinction she needed to understand.   Her job wasn’t to know more than the vendors. Her job was to take their expertise and decide what would actually work for us.   Sometimes that meant saying yes. Sometimes it meant challenging their thinking. And sometimes it meant saying no.   The easy (and almost automatic) response would have been: “From now on, run their recommendations by me before you approve anything.”   That would have solved the immediate problem and made my life easier.   It also would have taken the ownership straight back from my team member and that is not good leadership.   Instead, I gave her the feedback, then used the latest vendor recommendation as a coaching opportunity.   What did she think we should do differently? Where did she see potential problems? What would she push back on?   We worked through the decision together, and then she went back to lead the relationship herself.   That is the balance executive feedback needs to create: Support the person without taking the responsibility away from them.   Here’s how you can start practicing that approach as a leader.

The 4-Part Executive Feedback Framework When you need to give someone meaningful feedback, build the conversation around four things: Behavior → Impact → Standard → Next Move   Here’s how it works.   1. Behavior: Tell them what actually happened Start with what you observed. Not your interpretation, their personality label, or judgment about who they are.   The behavior.   Compare: “You need to show more ownership.”   with: “In the last few vendor conversations, they made recommendations and you accepted them without questioning whether they were the right fit for our business.”   The second version gives your team member something they can actually examine.   This is important because often vague feedback creates defensiveness. Specific feedback creates a conversation.   If I tell you: “You need to be more confident.”   you might think: I was confident.   Now we’re arguing about perception.   But if I say: “When the VP challenged your recommendation, you immediately backed away from it and started listing other possibilities instead of explaining why you believed your original recommendation was still the strongest option.”   Now we have something concrete to work with.   Before you give feedback, ask yourself: What did I actually see or hear?   If your answer contains words like strategic, confident, difficult, passive, senior, or executive presence, you probably haven’t reached the behavior yet.   2. Impact: Explain why it matters This is the part that turns criticism into useful feedback. People are much more likely to change when they understand the consequence of what they’re doing.   In the vendor example, the issue wasn’t simply that I wanted my team member to push back more.   The real issue was that if she automatically accepted every recommendation, the vendors were effectively setting the direction and then spending hours and our hard earned dollars creating work that didn’t align with our goals.   That is an expensive mistake.   So once you share what you’ve observed, make it clear why it matters.   Not: “You talk too much in meetings.”   But: “When your answer takes five minutes before you get to the recommendation, senior leaders have to work to find your point. That can make a strong idea appear less clear and less strategic than it actually is.”   Or instead of: “You need to be more proactive.”   Try: “When I have to follow up several times before an issue moves forward, I can’t confidently give you larger pieces of work because I still need to stay involved to make sure they get completed.”   Use this question: What does this behavior make harder, slower, riskier, or less effective?   That is usually the impact you need to explain.     3. Standard: Show them what better looks like This is the piece leaders skip constantly. I know most of my managers did and it was frustrating.   They explain what went wrong. Then expect the person to magically know what “right” looks like.   In my team member’s case, “push back more” wouldn’t have been enough.   The real standard was: I want you to exercise your judgment so we make the most of the vendor’s expertise to achieve our goals. So for example, when they suggested we do [x] and we know it’s something our clients are not interested in, we should have pushed back by explaining how it won’t work for us. Then you could ask for a different approach that fits our goals.   That is much more useful than simply telling someone to “take ownership.” The same applies to other feedback.   Instead of: “Be more strategic.”   Try: “For your next leadership update, I want you to start with the business implication and your recommendation. Use the project details only to support those two points. Let me share my last presentation as an example”.   Instead of: “Take more ownership.”   Try: “When you bring me a problem, I want you to also bring your recommendation for how we should handle it. I’m happy to pressure-test the decision with you, but I don’t want to make the first call for you.”   That is coachable. That is measurable.   And that gives your team member a fair opportunity to improve.   Ask: If they took my feedback perfectly, what would I actually see them doing differently?   Then show them how to do that.   4. Next Move: Put ownership back where it belongs Good feedback should not end with a monologue. Once you’ve explained the behavior, impact, and standard, your team member needs to own what happens next.   Ask: “What are you taking away from this?” “What will you do differently next time?” “What support do you need from me?”   Or, as I did with my team member, use a real situation and ask them to apply the new standard immediately.   What do you think about this recommendation now? Where would you challenge it? What would you do differently?   This is not a quiz to see whether they were listening, it tells you whether their thinking actually changed. And whether your feedback was helpful.   And this is where as managers, we have to resist a very tempting move: Taking the work back.   You can coach. You can provide examples. You can pressure-test their thinking.   But if your response to every mistake is to insert yourself into the decision, you may fix the work but you will train your team to keep bringing work back to you. And you will take away their opportunity to grow.   Executive leadership requires being able to say: “I’m here to help you succeed, and this is still yours to fix.”   This is also the skill that will eventually help you manage managers.   What Executive Feedback Sounds Like Let’s put the whole thing together. Imagine someone on your team is consistently giving overly detailed updates to senior leadership.   The vague version: “I think you need to work on being more concise and strategic in executive meetings.”   It’s not wrong, but it’s not particularly useful. Now apply the framework:   Behavior “In the last two leadership meetings, you spent most of your update walking through project details before getting to your recommendation.”   Impact “The result is that the most important part of your thinking was buried, and senior leaders had to work to understand what you need from them. They lost trust and attention, which is why it didn’t land.”   Standard “Going forward, I want you to lead with the business implication and your recommendation, then use only the details needed to support them. let me share the template I use, it’s called BIR (Bottom line, Insight, Request).   Next Move “For your next update, send me your opening three sentences beforehand. I’ll give you feedback, and after that I want you to practice doing it independently.”   This kind of feedback is so much clearer, and it protects the relationship without protecting the person from the truth. And it gives them something they can actually improve.   Clear Feedback Protects Performance I know this is easier said then done. When you are staring at your team member and need to deliver feedback you know they won’t like… it’s easier to try and soften the blow.   A lot of managers believe they are protecting their people by toning down difficult feedback. But vague feedback isn’t kind to the person receiving it either.   They know something is wrong. They just don’t know exactly what.   So they start guessing.   Was my boss unhappy with the presentation? Do they think I’m not ready? Was it one bad meeting? Is this becoming a bigger issue?   Clear feedback removes that uncertainty.   It says: Here is what I observed. Here is why it matters. Here is what needs to change. And here is how we move forward.   You can say all of that with empathy and warmth, and you can say it while making it very clear that you believe in the person.   But you still have to say it.   Because protecting someone from a difficult message today can easily become the reason they don’t improve tomorrow. And that is not fair to them, and not fair to you.

Your Next Steps Before your next difficult feedback conversation, take five minutes and write down four answers: BEHAVIOR: What specifically did I observe? IMPACT: Why does it matter? STANDARD: What would better look like? NEXT MOVE: What do I need this person to do differently now?   Then run two final checks: Could this person walk out of the conversation and accurately explain what they need to change?   And: Am I helping them improve their judgment, or am I quietly taking the responsibility back?   If the answer to the first is no, your feedback probably isn’t clear enough. If the answer to the second is yes, you may be solving the immediate problem at the expense of their growth.   Don’t make people decode what you mean.   Say what needs to change, explain why it matters, show them what better looks like, and let them own the next move.   That’s how executives give feedback that actually improves performance.

The mindset shift from proving yourself to leading

 

Something I’ve learned after 20 years in corporate: You can be the most qualified person in the room and still act like you’re auditioning.   Trying to prove you’re smart. Or that you’re prepared. That your idea is right and you belong in the room.   For high achievers, this instinct makes perfect sense.   A lot of your career was built by proving yourself. You got the promotion because you delivered. You earned more responsibility because you knew your stuff. You built credibility by showing people they could count on you.   So when the stakes get higher, you do what has always worked: You try even harder to prove your value.   And that’s exactly where the problem starts.   Because at senior levels, people don’t need you to constantly demonstrate how capable you are. They need you to use that capability to lead.   I remember what proving mode felt like earlier in my own career.   I could walk into an important meeting completely prepared. I knew the material, had thought through the recommendation, and knew what I wanted to say.   Then something small would happen.   Someone would start looking at their phone. A senior leader would interrupt me. The room would seem distracted. Maybe someone would challenge a point I thought was obvious.   And suddenly, instead of focusing on the conversation, part of my brain would start thinking: This isn’t landing. Something is going wrong. They don’t understand!   So I would try to fix it. Usually by talking more and trying to explain.   I’d add context, another example, more evidence, another explanation of why my recommendation made sense. And somewhere in my head, I could often tell I was making it worse.   The issue wasn’t preparation. It was insecurity.   Something had disrupted my carefully laid-out plan, and without realizing it, I had stopped trying to lead the conversation and started trying to prove that I deserved to be leading it.   That showed up as giving way too much information, despite clearly noticing leaders lose attention.   Arguing over what happened instead of explaining the value of my solution. Defending my conclusions with the first sign of pushback, instead of being open to a conversation.   None of these behaviors scream leadership. In fact they may be sending the opposite signal.   If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation I want to help you understand what was happening (hello fight or flight) and what to do instead.

What Changes When You Stop Proving and Start Leading 1. You stop trying to have all the answers When you’re proving yourself, not knowing can feel dangerous.   So you prepare for every possible question. You answer even when you’re not completely sure. And when someone challenges your thinking, your instinct may be to immediately defend it.   Because being wrong can feel like evidence that maybe you’re not ready.   But the problems get more complex as you move up. The information becomes less complete. And many executive decisions do not come with one obviously correct answer.   Leadership is not pretending you know.   It’s being able to say: “Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know yet, and here’s my recommendation based on the information we have.”   And sometimes: “That’s a good point. I’m changing my view.”   Your credibility does not come from being right every time. It comes from demonstrating sound judgment about what to do next.   2. You stop using the room to demonstrate how much you know This is one of the easiest places to spot the proving mindset. Someone asks you a question and you give them the complete history. The context. The research. The seven things your team considered. The work that went into the recommendation.   You’re trying to show that you’ve done your homework. But while you’re proving how much you know, the room is waiting for the answer. Often by looking at their phone or laptop.   The leadership question is different: What does this room need from me right now?   Maybe they need a recommendation. Maybe they need a decision. Maybe they need you to surface a risk nobody is discussing. Maybe they need you to simplify a problem that has become unnecessarily complicated.   Your preparation still matters. But the purpose of all that preparation is not to display how through you are.   It’s to make a better decision. Collectively.   It’s okay to give context when context is required, but don’t share a TED talk centered around how much work went into your idea.   3. You stop treating disagreement like a threat If part of your identity is tied to proving that you belong, disagreement can become personal very quickly.   You suggest a strategy. Someone pushes back. And suddenly you’re not just discussing the strategy anymore. You’re defending your competence.   That’s when people start explaining more, repeating the same argument in three different ways, or doing the opposite and backing away from their recommendation too quickly because they don’t want to look difficult.   Neither is leadership.   Executives have to be able to sit inside disagreement without immediately needing to win it or escape it.   Sometimes you should defend your recommendation. Sometimes you should ask another question. Sometimes you should change your mind.   The point is that your response should be driven by: “What will get us to the best decision?”   Not: “What will make me look right?”   Great leaders know when to stand up for their idea, when to disagree, and when to stand down.   4. You stop waiting for someone to validate that you’re ready The proving mindset also shows up outside the meeting room.   You wait until you’ve checked every box before asking for the bigger opportunity. You want someone else to tell you you’re ready before you put yourself forward. You want enough evidence that taking the risk no longer feels risky.   These thoughts come from insecurity. You don’t trust yourself, so you want others to validate your readiness. That is clearly not leadership.   I am not saying you need to believe you are the best thing since sliced bread and walk into every room declaring that. I am saying leadership is partly about trusting yourself, even when you don’t have external validation.   Not because you are vain, because you believe you can figure things out.   You shift the question in your head from: “How do I prove to them that I’m ready?”   to: “How would I act at that level if I believed I was ready?”   And then starting to practice it.   The Executive Skill Nobody Talks About: Recovering in the Moment There is one part of this that I think gets overlooked.   You are not going to eliminate proving mode completely. Something will still trigger it.   You’ll get interrupted. Someone will challenge you. You’ll lose the room for a moment. You’ll hear yourself rambling and realize you’ve gone much further into the details than you intended.   The executive skill is not never getting knocked off course.   It’s recognizing it quickly enough to recover.   I was teaching this inside Success Builders recently because people often assume that once they start rambling or lose the thread, they have to somehow push through and finish.   You don’t. You can stop.   You can literally say: “You know what? I think I’m getting too far into the details. Let me reframe this.”   Or: “I think we moved past the main point too quickly. Let me go back for a second.”   Or simply: “Let me simplify this.”   Then get back on track with leading, not proving.   That ability to catch yourself and recalibrate is executive presence in practice. Not perfection. Good judgment in the moment.

Your Next Steps The next time you walk into a high-stakes conversation, don’t just prepare the content. Take two minutes and answer these three questions:   1. What outcome does this situation need? What needs to be decided, clarified, challenged, or moved forward?   2. What does this group need from me? A recommendation? Direction? A question? Expertise? Calm? A decision?   3. What am I tempted to prove? That I’m smart? That I’m right? That I did the work? That I deserve to be here? That I have all the answers?   And if you catch yourself slipping into proving mode once the meeting starts, don’t keep digging.   Stop. Reframe. Then return your attention to the room.   Because once you can see what you’re trying to prove, you can choose not to organize your behavior around it.

The career ceiling you create by staying in your lane

 

Your job description might be the thing keeping you from VP.   I know it might be confusing, but senior executive roles require to step out of your lane, not stay in it.   Early in your career, staying in your lane is good advice.   Own your responsibilities. Deliver great work. Don’t step on toes. Build credibility by becoming exceptional at what you were hired to do. And it works. Until the rules change, and it doesn’t.   Because the higher you go, the less the business cares where your function ends.   A Director can be responsible for Marketing, Product, Finance, Engineering, or Operations. A VP is responsible for whether the business succeeds.   That sounds obvious, but it requires a very different way of operating.   One of the biggest shifts I had to make as I moved into executive roles was realizing that being accountable for a function didn’t mean I could think only about that function.   If the business had a growth problem, I couldn’t stop at, “Marketing delivered the leads.”   If customers weren’t adopting the product, it didn’t matter whether the root cause technically belonged to Product, Sales, Customer Success, or Marketing.   If something important was broken, “That’s not my area” was not an executive answer.   I had to understand enough of the entire business to see how the pieces connected, challenge decisions outside my immediate expertise, and help solve problems that didn’t fit neatly inside my org chart. And this is where a lot of talented Directors accidentally create their own ceiling.   They become exceptional functional leaders. Then wonder why nobody sees them as enterprise leaders.

The 4 Signs You’re Still Leading From Inside Your Lane You don’t need to start running everybody else’s function.   But if you want to move into an executive role, you do need to show that your thinking extends beyond your own.   Here’s where the gap usually shows up.   1. You only contribute when the conversation reaches your function Picture an executive meeting. The first 20 minutes are about revenue. Then Product. Then customer retention. Finally, the discussion reaches your area and suddenly you have a lot to say.   You know the details. You understand the problems. You have recommendations. Then the conversation moves on, and so do you.   That may make you an excellent functional leader. It does not necessarily make you look like an executive.   Senior leaders don’t need deep expertise in every function.   But they do need an enterprise point of view on the major decisions facing the business.   You don’t need to pretend you know more about Finance than the CFO. You do need to be able to ask:   What does this mean for the business? How does this decision affect growth? What might it do to the customer? What downstream problem could we be creating? What tradeoff are we making?   Executives bring their expertise into the room. They don’t stay trapped inside their lane.   The test Think about your last few senior-level meetings.   When the conversation moved outside your direct responsibilities, did you stay engaged in the business problem?   Or did you mentally wait until it became relevant to you again?   If you want broader scope, start demonstrating broader curiosity.   2. You solve the part of the problem that belongs to you This one is sneaky because it looks like accountability.   Let’s say customers are struggling during onboarding.   You own Customer Success, so you improve the materials, add check-ins, train the team and create better processes.   All good ideas.   But what if the real problem starts three steps earlier?   Sales is promising something the product can’t deliver.   Now you can spend the next year becoming incredibly good at managing the consequences of someone else’s problem. Or you can follow the problem to its source.   That is what executives do.   They don’t ask: “Which part of this belongs to me?”   They ask: “What is actually causing the business outcome?”   Sometimes the answer will sit inside your team. Sometimes it won’t.   Your job isn’t to take over another function or point out all of their mistakes. Your job is to make sure the real problem gets solved.   The test Look at one of the biggest problems you’re working on right now.   Are you solving the entire problem? Or just the piece that landed inside your organization?   That distinction matters more as your scope grows. You don’t get executive credit for optimizing your function while the business outcome deteriorates.   3. You optimize for your team instead of the business This is where enterprise leadership gets uncomfortable.   A strong functional leader advocates for their organization. More headcount. More budget. More visibility. More resources.   An executive has to be willing to ask whether those resources should go somewhere else. Maybe your team could use three additional people.   But another part of the business has an opportunity that could generate significantly more revenue.   Maybe your initiative would improve your function’s performance. But it would create friction for customers or slow down another strategic priority.   Maybe your team hit its targets. But the company missed the outcome those targets were supposed to support.   At executive level, winning cannot simply mean: “My organization did well.”   It has to mean: “The business did well.”   And sometimes that requires making decisions your own team won’t love.   That’s a very different identity.   You stop being primarily the representative of your function in the business. You become a representative of the business who happens to lead a function.   The test When your team’s interests conflict with the company’s priorities, which one wins?   If the answer is automatically your team, you may still be thinking like a functional leader. Enterprise leaders can advocate hard for their people and still make the call that is best for the business.   4. You let cross-functional problems stay unresolved when no one is clearly in charge There’s a phrase that can kill executive perception very quickly: “I already told them.”   I told Sales. I raised it with Product. I sent Finance the numbers. I asked Operations to fix it.   All of that may be true.   But if the business outcome is still at risk, telling someone wasn’t the job.   Creating movement was.   Executives understand that accountability and authority are not always perfectly aligned.   Cross-functional work is messy precisely because no one person controls every part of it. That’s where executive behavior matters most.   You may not own the other team. You may not control their priorities. You may not get to make the final decision.   But you can still bring people together, clarify the stakes, surface the tradeoffs, propose a path, escalate appropriately, and keep the work moving until there is resolution.   This is one of the biggest differences between owning a task and owning an outcome.   A task ends when you complete your part. An outcome ends when the result changes.   The test Think about the last cross-functional initiative that got stuck.   Did your responsibility end when you handed off your piece? Or did you help create enough alignment and momentum to move the outcome forward?   That’s the kind of ownership senior leaders notice.   But doesn’t this mean stepping on people’s toes? It doesn’t have to. And this is where ambitious leaders sometimes overcorrect.   Operating beyond your lane does not mean acting like you know how to run everyone else’s function. It means thinking beyond the boundaries of your own.   There’s a big difference between: “Here’s what Product needs to do.”   and: “I think we may have a product issue contributing to churn. Can we look at the data together?”   Between: “Sales is causing this problem.”   and: “We’re seeing a pattern between what customers expect at close and what happens during implementation. I think we need to look at the handoff.”   Between inserting yourself into someone else’s job and bringing an enterprise perspective to a shared business problem.   The goal isn’t to become territorial in a bigger territory. It’s to stop thinking territorially altogether.

Your Next Steps Choose one meaningful business problem you’re currently working on and zoom out.   Ask yourself: What outcome are we actually trying to create? Where is the real constraint, even if it sits outside my function? What other parts of the business does this affect? What perspective, question, or recommendation could I contribute beyond my immediate responsibilities?   Then act on one of those answers. Because the org chart may define what you’re accountable for.   It should not define the limits of your leadership.

The 5-step framework for commercial storytelling

 

Sitting in both sides of the room, as an aspiring executive and as a VP, taught me the fastest way to lose an executive audience is to start by explaining the work.   “We’ve spent the last quarter redesigning the process…” “We interviewed 20 customers…” “We’ve been working with Product and Operations…” “We created a new framework…”   You are confident this information is useful, but the truth is none of it answers the question senior leaders are secretly asking: Why should I care?   At Director level, you often know more about your work than anyone else in the room. You understand the history, the complexity, the dependencies, the research, the effort it took to get here.   So when it’s time to present an idea, you naturally explain all of that. But executives don’t need a guided tour of your work. They need the business story.   What is happening? Why does it matter? What do you think it means? What should we do? What changes if we act?   That’s commercial storytelling in a nutshell. And no, I don’t mean turning your strategy presentation into a TED Talk.   I mean taking everything you know and translating it into a story about the business, not the work.   The same idea can sound tactical or strategic depending on how you frame it.   You can walk someone through six months of excellent work and get a polite: “Thanks for the update.”   Or you can take the exact same work, connect it to a meaningful business problem and show leaders what decision needs to be made. Suddenly, the room wants to talk.   The quality of the work didn’t change. The story did.   The Difference a Commercial Story Can Make I saw this firsthand while coaching a product marketer who needed to present her sales enablement strategy for the next quarter to the executive team.   Her first deck was thorough. Very thorough. It explained product marketing. It explained sales enablement. It included a lot of information, ideas, and possibilities.   There was just one problem: It wasn’t really about the business.   Sales enablement had become clunky. Sales wasn’t happy. And leadership wasn’t asking for a lesson on what Product Marketing could theoretically do.   They already knew there was a problem. They wanted to know what was wrong, what we were going to do about it, and what would change as a result.   So we rebuilt the story.   We started by acknowledging the problem: our current sales enablement wasn’t giving Sales what they needed, and that was making it harder for them to move deals forward quickly.   Then, instead of guessing at the cause, we surveyed the Sales team anonymously. That gave us real evidence about what was working, what wasn’t, and where the biggest gaps were.   From there, we recommended five priorities we could realistically deliver that quarter, plus three additional opportunities if time and resources allowed.   And we tied the plan back to the outcome that mattered: stronger adoption of marketing materials and better support for Sales to close more deals, faster.   Same function. Same quarter. Same strategist. Completely different presentation.   And the executive conversation went very well because we stopped explaining sales enablement and started telling the business story.

The 5-Part Commercial Story Framework Here’s the framework I want you to use the next time you need executive buy-in: Problem → Stakes → Insight → Recommendation → Outcome   1. Problem: What is happening in the business? Don’t start with your project. Start with the reason the project deserves to exist.   In our example, the weak version was essentially: “We need a new sales enablement strategy for next quarter.”   Technically true. Commercially weak. It describes the work, not the business problem.   The stronger version was: “Sales isn’t getting the support it needs from our current enablement approach, and that’s creating friction in how quickly and effectively they can move deals forward.”   Now I know why we’re having the conversation.   Before you prepare your next presentation, make sure you answer: What is happening in the business that makes this conversation necessary?   If your first answer is about what your team has been doing, you haven’t found it yet.   Side note: This part can be painful because you need to admit there is a problem and it likely happened on your watch. Do it anyway. It’s how you put the business above your pride and show executive maturity.   2. Stakes: Why does it matter? A problem becomes commercially important when you connect it to consequences.   Revenue. Growth. Customer retention. Cost. Speed. Risk. Productivity. Market position.   This is where many smart leaders stop too early.   “Sales isn’t happy with the materials.” “Our process is manual.” “Customers are confused.” “Employees are frustrated.”   These are all true, but senior leaders still need to know: So what?   For our sales enablement example, the real stakes were bigger than whether Sales liked the materials. If sellers couldn’t easily find or use what Marketing created, we were making it harder for them to move deals forward and close business efficiently.   You don’t always need a perfect dollar amount. But you do need to connect the issue to something the business values.   Use this question: If we do nothing, what does this cost, delay, threaten, or prevent?   That is where the commercial story starts getting weight.   3. Insight: What do you think is really going on? This is the piece that separates reporting from executive thinking. Anyone can surface information, but senior leaders add value by interpreting it.   What pattern do you see? What do you believe is causing the problem? What are people misdiagnosing? What does the evidence actually tell you?   In our case, we decided not to guess.   We sent an anonymous survey to the Sales team and asked what they actually needed, what was missing, what was working, and what wasn’t.   That mattered because an insight isn’t your opinion dressed up in executive language. It’s your interpretation of what the evidence means.   The survey helped us separate what was already working from the three gaps that actually mattered.   Now we weren’t presenting a wishlist. We had a point of view grounded in what the business needed.   Before you present, ask: What do I interpert that isn’t obvious from the data alone?   That answer is often where your executive value lives.   4. Recommendation: What should we do? If I had to put a number on it, I would say this is where a surprising amount of executive communication falls apart.   You do the first 3 steps well enough and then end with: “What does everyone think?”   Usually because you want to be collaborative and make sure you listen to other people’s opinions. And sometimes that is exactly the right question. But if you’ve been asked to lead the work, senior leaders usually expect you to have a point of view. So give them one.   In our case, we recommended five priorities we believed we could realistically deliver that quarter, plus three additional opportunities if time, headcount, and speed allowed.   That prioritization piece was important.   We weren’t showing leadership everything Product Marketing could do. We were telling them what we believed mattered most now, with the resources we had, and in line with what Sales needed most.   We named the tradeoff (what we won’t be able to deliver) and explained why we were choosing these initiatives over others. Strong recommendations don’t pretend there is no downside. They show that you’ve considered it.   Use this question: If the decision were mine, what would I do and why?   You can still invite discussion. But give people something worth reacting to first.   5. Outcome: What changes if we act? The last step is closing the loop. This is an underrated executive skill that I teach my executive clients and the entrepreneurs I work with.   Show them the promised land. If leadership says yes, what happens?   Not: “We’ll have a much better sales enablement program.”   That tells me what you’re building. It still doesn’t tell me why the business should care.   In our case, the goal was better adoption and use of marketing materials so Sales had stronger support to move more deals forward, faster. Where possible, we also estimated the expected business impact.   Your ending should answer: What business outcome becomes possible if we do this?   That is where an initiative becomes an investment and earns it’s place.   Explaining The Work vs. Telling a Business Story Most executive communication problems are not solved by using bigger words or swapping “sorry” with “thank you”. They are solved by changing your thinking, and using communication to translate your ideas into executive language.   Here’s a side by side example to make it easy to compare:   Explaining the work “We’ve spent the last quarter reviewing our sales enablement approach, gathering feedback, evaluating our existing materials, and identifying opportunities to improve how Product Marketing supports Sales.”   This is a great way to explain the work, but it is missing the commercial relevancy that makes it interesting for the leadership team. And it it is not showing your strategic thinking.   Telling the business story “Our current sales enablement approach is making it harder for Sales to quickly find and use the support they need to move deals forward. Feedback from the team showed three clear gaps in what we provide today. I recommend we focus on five priorities this quarter that address those gaps, with the goal of increasing adoption of our materials and helping Sales close more deals, faster. We’ll know this was a success by [desired result/metric]”.   Same work. Completely different conversation. That’s commercial storytelling.   The Skill Isn’t Just Storytelling. It’s Translation. This is why I think “communication skills” undersells what’s happening here. You don’t necessarily need prettier slides. You don’t need to become more charismatic. And you certainly don’t need to turn every presentation into a dramatic narrative arc.   You need to translate: Activity → Impact Information → Implication Functional problem → Business problem Idea → Decision   Your expertise lives in the details. Your executive value comes from knowing which details matter and what they mean for the business.

Your Next Steps The next time you have an important presentation, proposal, update, or email, give yourself ten minutes before you start building slides. Use this as your 10-Minute Commercial Storytelling Prep:   1. PROBLEM: Why are we having this conversation now? 2. STAKES: What does this cost, delay, threaten, or prevent? 3. INSIGHT: What does the evidence tell me that isn’t immediately obvious? 4. RECOMMENDATION: What specifically am I asking us to do, and what am I choosing not to do? 5. OUTCOME: What measurable business result should improve?   Then write your story based on these. Do not open the deck yet.   Because once you start inside PowerPoint, it is incredibly easy to fall back into chronology: Here’s what we did. Here’s what we learned. Here’s everything you might possibly need to know.   Build the business story first. Then use the work, data, and details to support it.   And before you walk into the room, run one final test: If I had only 60 seconds with the CEO, could I explain why this matters, what I believe, what I recommend, and what changes if we act?   If not, you probably haven’t found the story yet. Stop explaining the work. Tell the business story.