The 10-80-10 Delegation Method

 

That’s how you stay in control without becoming the bottleneck.

The 10-80-10 Delegation Method The First 10%: Set the Direction Before Work Begins This is where a lot of delegation breaks.   Leaders think they are delegating because they assign the task. But handing off a task is not the same as transferring context.   If you say, “Can you take this?” and then disappear, you should not be surprised when the work comes back in a different direction than you expected.   Delegation fails when you hand off tasks without transferring context, then blame people for not reading your mind.   The first 10% is where you slow down enough to make the work clear before it begins.   This is where you define the outcome, explain why it matters, clarify the audience, name the tradeoffs, and set the decision boundaries.   Instead of saying: “Can you put together the deck?”   You might say: “We need this deck to help the leadership team decide whether to invest in this initiative next quarter. The goal is not to give them every detail. The goal is to make the tradeoff clear. I want you to show the business case, the risks, and your recommendation. Before you build the full deck, come back with the storyline and the key decision we need them to make.”   That is a very different handoff.   Now the person knows what they are solving for. They know what good looks like. They know where they have ownership and where they need input.   A strong first 10% should answer five questions: What outcome are we trying to create? Who is the audience or decision-maker? What does good look like? What constraints or tradeoffs should they consider? Where do they have decision rights, and where do they need to come back to you?   This is also where you can give examples.   Not to micromanage the exact output, but to calibrate the standard.   For example: “Here’s a deck that landed well with this audience before.” “Here’s the level of detail I’m expecting.” “Here’s what I don’t want this to become.” “Here’s the decision this work needs to support.”   And if the work is complex, don’t rely on a rushed Slack message and hope for the best.   Record a quick Loom walking through the context. Send a voice note explaining the business goal. Share a rough outline. Give them the strategic ingredients before you ask them to cook the meal.   This is the part many leaders skip because they are busy. Then they spend five times longer fixing the work later.   The first 10% is not extra work. It is how you prevent rework.   The Middle 80%: Let Your Team Own the Work This is the hard part for high achievers. Because once the work is in motion, you will see things you would do differently.   Someone will write a sentence you don’t love.   They will make a slide too complicated. They will miss a nuance. They will take longer than you would.   And every instinct in your body will want to jump in and fix it.   But this is the moment that matters. Because the middle 80% is where your team builds judgment.   If you take the work back every time it gets messy, you are not building leverage. You are building dependency.   That was the lesson my employee taught me.   Fixing the work is not the same as developing the person. If you want people to grow, they need feedback, not for you to rescue them.   That does not mean you stay completely out of it. This is where people misunderstand delegation.   You are not throwing the work over the wall and hoping for the best. That is not leadership. You still need checkpoints. But the checkpoints should force better thinking, not create more dependency.   I like to think about the middle 80% in three checkpoints.   Checkpoint 1: The Direction Check Before they go too far, ask them to bring you the outline, storyline, plan, or initial recommendation.   This is where you want to catch direction issues early. Not after they spent two weeks building the wrong thing.   The goal is to confirm they are solving the right problem. This is how you catch the big issues before they become expensive.   Checkpoint 2: The Decision Check The second checkpoint is about tradeoffs.   At this stage, you are not asking, “Did you do the task?” You are asking, “How are you thinking about the work?”   This is where you build judgment.   Ask: “What options did you consider?” “What did you rule out and why?” “What tradeoff are you making?” “Where do you need a decision from me?” “What would you recommend if I were not in the room?”   That last question is especially important.   Because if someone can only move when you tell them what to do, they are not building decision-making capacity.   The middle 80% is where people learn to think like owners. But they only learn that if you ask them to bring opinions, not just updates.   Checkpoint 3: The Risk Check The third checkpoint is about what could derail the work.   This is where you ask: “What could go wrong?” “Who needs to be aligned?” “Where might we get pushback?” “What are we underestimating?” “What would make this fail?”   This is where you help your team think beyond the task and start thinking about execution, influence, and risk.   That is the kind of thinking senior leaders notice. And it gives you visibility into the work without forcing you to become the person doing all the work.   Instead of saying, “Send it to me and I’ll clean it up,” you can say: “Bring me the recommendation and the tradeoffs you considered.” Or “Walk me through how you got there.”   This keeps you close enough to guide the work, without becoming the person who owns every detail.   Because if your team always waits for you to fix, approve, rewrite, or rescue the work, you are not leading through others yet. You are just doing lower-level tasks with an executive salary.   The Final 10%: Review for Judgment, Not Perfection The final 10% is where your leadership still matters. You are not abandoning the work. You are changing the altitude of your involvement.   At this stage, your job is not to rewrite every sentence or rebuild every slide. Your job is to pressure-test the thinking.   This is where you move from editing to elevating.   Editing says: “I would write this differently.”   Elevating says: “The recommendation is buried.” “The risk is not clear enough.” “The business case needs to be sharper.” “The story is too tactical for the room it is going into.”   The first makes your team frustrated. The other makes the team better.   When you review the final 10%, use a simple executive filter: Is the business question clear? Is the recommendation easy to understand? Will this land with the decision-maker? Does this solve the problem?   This is where your experience creates leverage.   You are not there to prove you could have done it better. You are there to make the work sharper, clearer, and more useful. That may still require edits. But the way you respond matters.   If you fix everything yourself, your team learns that your standard exists somewhere inside your head and the only way to reach it is to let you take over.   If you give clear feedback, they learn how to think at a higher level next time. Thats how you empower your people and scale the work, which the proof point senior executive look for when evaluating VPs.   Why This Matters for VP Readiness If every project still depends on your personal involvement, you may be seen as valuable, but not scalable.   At VP level, the surface area is too large for you to personally touch every decision, every project, and every deliverable.   You cannot be the smartest person in every room, the backup plan for every team problem, and the final editor of every important document.   Your value has to come from setting direction, building leaders, creating systems, making decisions, and raising the quality of thinking across the organization. That is the real promotion signal.   And this is why “it’s faster if I do it myself” is such a dangerous trap. It might be faster today.   But if you keep doing that, you are borrowing against your future capacity.   Eventually, the bill comes due. Usually in the form of burnout, team dependency and missed growth opportunities

Your Next Steps The next time you catch yourself thinking, “It’s just faster if I do it myself,” pause. Look at the project and run a quick 10-80-10 audit.   Start with the first 10%.   Before you hand off the work, ask yourself: Have I explained the business outcome? Have I clarified what good looks like? Have I given examples, a walkthrough, or enough context to calibrate the standard?   Then look at the middle 80%.   Ask: Am I letting them own the work, or am I stepping in every time it gets uncomfortable?   Then review the final 10%.   Ask: Am I giving feedback they can use to improve? Or am I training them to wait for me?   That is how you stop being the bottleneck. And that is how you start operating like someone who is ready for bigger scope.

How to Get Promoted When You Switch Jobs

 

Something shifted in the room when I said this: “If your resume says Director and the role says VP, most people will not do the imagination work for you.”   I was teaching a three-hour bonus workshop inside Success Builders called The VP Leap: How to Level Up to VP by Switching Companies, and I could feel the reaction immediately.   Not because it was shocking. Because it explained what so many people had already experienced.   These were smart, ambitious, high-performing leaders. The kind of people who had already led teams, owned big outcomes, influenced across the business, and operated at a level that often exceeded their title. And yet, when they thought about applying externally for VP roles, the same doubt showed up.   “Will they take me seriously if my title still says Director?” “Do I need to take another lateral move first?” “Am I being unrealistic?”   This is the part nobody tells you about senior-level career moves.   More often that you think the problem is not your experience. The issue is whether the market has enough context to understand your potential. And when your current title does not match the role you want next, context matters more than most people realize.   Because if you apply cold to a VP role with a Director title, you are asking a recruiter, hiring manager, or executive to connect a lot of dots in a very short amount of time.   This is why so many talented Directors apply to VP roles, hear nothing, and assume the silence means they aimed too high. So they shrink the goal.   They apply for another Director role. And they tell themselves, “I’ll make the leap next time.”   But that “next time” can quietly become another two, three, or five years.   I see this pattern all the time. And the people who break it usually do one thing differently: They stop waiting for the market to figure them out. They make their value obvious.   The Real Problem With Trying to Make a VP Leap Externally The traditional job search process is built for obvious matches.   Director applying to Director. VP applying to VP. Head of Marketing applying to Head of Marketing.   When the title, scope, and story all line up neatly, the market does not have to work very hard. But when your current title says one thing and your target role says something bigger, the burden of proof changes.   Now you have to make the case. Most people try to make that case by polishing their resume. That makes sense, but it is incomplete.   A better resume can help, but it cannot carry the full weight of a skip-level move. It cannot explain your judgment in a conversation. It cannot show how you think through trade-offs. It cannot build trust with someone who has never met you. And it cannot create access to opportunities that are never posted or are already being discussed quietly behind the scenes.   The real challenge is not just getting your materials ready. The real challenge is helping the right people understand why you are the right bet before your title becomes the filter.   That is the difference between a regular job search and a skip level VP leap.   A regular job search starts with applications. An external VP leap starts with positioning.   And this is not theory. This is the strategy that helped Jessica go from Director to VP in six months.   It helped Shauna go from Director to VP in 90 days. And it helped Jennifer, D.J, Samir and Nick do the same.   Different people. Different companies. Different paths.   But the pattern was the same: once they stopped relying on their current title to tell the whole story, they started creating better opportunities.   Inside the workshop, I taught a simple framework called POLO: Positioning. Offer. List. Outreach.   That is the heart of the strategy.   You need clear positioning so people understand where you fit. You need a strong offer so they understand why you are the right bet. You need a focused list so you are not networking randomly. And you need outreach that opens conversations before the formal hiring process reduces you to a title.   Let me show you how that works.

The POLO Framework In Action 1. Positioning: Know the VP Lane You Are Playing In The first thing we worked on in the workshop was positioning. This is where a lot of ambitious people make the same mistake. They try to stay open to everything because they do not want to close doors.   They say something like: “I’m open to VP Marketing, VP Strategy, Chief of Staff, Product Marketing, Partnerships, or anything where I can make a bigger impact.”   I understand the instinct. Flexibility feels safe. But at the executive level, broad positioning often creates more confusion than opportunity.   If someone cannot quickly understand where you fit, they cannot easily refer you. They cannot introduce you to the right person. They cannot hear about a role and immediately think, “This is exactly who they need.”   Your positioning has to make you stand out for something specific.   That does not mean you are only capable of one thing. It means you are choosing a lane so the market can understand your value.   In the workshop, I had everyone build what I call a VP Thesis. This is not a tagline. It is not a LinkedIn headline.   It is an internal strategy memo that helps you decide what roles to pursue, what opportunities to ignore, and what stories to lead with.   A strong VP Thesis answers a few simple questions: What VP lane are you targeting? What business problem are you best equipped to solve? What proof do you have that you can operate at that level?   Weak positioning sounds like: I’m looking for a VP Marketing role where I can use my background in growth, brand, product marketing, partnerships, and strategy.   There may be nothing wrong with that experience, but the message is too broad. It makes the listener do too much work.   Stronger positioning sounds like: I’m targeting VP Marketing roles where I can own pipeline and revenue outcomes for a B2B SaaS company that needs to improve conversion, efficiency, or expansion.   Your positioning should help people place you. If it does not, it is not working hard enough. 2. Offer: Turn Your Experience Into a Future Impact Pitch Once your positioning is clear, the next step is learning how to talk about your value in a way that resonates at the executive-level. This is where many strong Directors lose momentum.   They finally get in a conversation with a recruiter, senior leader, or potential referral partner, and when the person says, “Tell me about yourself,” they walk through their career history. They explain where they started, what they owned, what team they managed, what projects they led, and how they moved from one role to the next.   It is accurate. It is also usually not what they were asking for.   At the VP level, people are not listening for a full timeline. They are listening for judgment, scope, ownership, and repeatable impact.   They want to know: What problem do you solve? How do you think? Where do you create leverage? Why should I believe your success can translate here? That is why we build a Future Impact Pitch.   The pitch has four parts: Positioning: what you do best in business terms Proof: one story that shows scope, judgment, and outcomes Fit: why your strengths match the company’s current mandate Operating system: how you approach the work in a repeatable way   Here is a simple version: “The through-line in my work is building revenue systems that are measurable, repeatable, and not dependent on heroics. In my last role, we had strong marketing activity, but inconsistent pipeline quality, so I tightened our ICP, rebuilt the handoff with sales, and shifted spend toward the channels that were actually producing revenue. That improved conversion and gave leadership a clearer view of where growth was coming from. For a company trying to scale without wasting budget, that is exactly the kind of problem I know how to solve.”   That is only four sentences, but it does a lot.   It gives the listener a lane. It proves the lane with a real business problem. It shows judgment and decisions, not just activity. And it connects your experience to the kind of impact the company likely needs next.   This is the part people underestimate.   When you are trying to move from Director to VP, your story cannot just be a record of what you have done. It has to help people see what you can be trusted to own next. That is a very different conversation. 3. List: Strategic Networking That Opens Doors The list is the least glamorous part of the process, but it is an important one. Once you know your positioning and pitch, go to LinkedIn and build a list.   A company list: the companies you would want to work for, and you are uniquely positioned to help. And a people list: The people inside those companies who might hire you.   The company list should include organizations where your background makes strategic sense. If your strength is building scalable go-to-market systems, look for companies where growth is getting messy and the business needs more structure.   If your strength is operational transformation, look for companies dealing with complexity, inefficiency, or integration.   The people list should include leaders inside those companies who would be the ones hiring you. This list is your access to the hidden job market.   This matters because VP opportunities often do not work the way individual contributor or mid-level manager roles work.   By the time a VP role is posted, the company may already have a short list. Someone may have been referred.   A trusted leader may have already made an introduction.   If your entire strategy is “I’ll wait for the perfect posting and apply,” you are showing up late to a conversation that may have started months earlier.   That is why the external VP leap is not just a resume strategy. It is a positioning and access strategy. And this list is how you get access in advance. 4. Outreach: Create Conversations Before You Need the Job This is where the strategy becomes powerful. Most people only network when they need something, which is exactly why the outreach feels awkward.   They reach out and say some version of, “I’m looking for my next opportunity. Do you know of any openings?” The problem is not that the message is rude. It is that it asks too much, too soon.   If someone does not know you, they have very little reason to put their reputation on the line. And if they do not have an opening, the conversation ends before it starts.   Strategic outreach makes the first step smaller.   You are not asking them to solve your job search. You are opening a conversation around something relevant: their career path, a topic they have spoken about, a challenge you are studying, or a transition they have made that connects to your own goals.   A weak message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I’m exploring my next career move and would love to pick your brain about your leadership journey. Are you open to a call?”   A stronger message sounds like this: “Hi Sarah, I listened to your interview on leading through a turnaround, especially the part about resetting priorities without burning out the team. I’ve run into a similar challenge as I’ve taken on bigger scope, and I’d love to ask you 2–3 questions about how you made that shift. Would you be open to a quick 20-minute conversation in the next couple of weeks?”   That message works because it gives Sarah a reason to respond. It is specific. It is human. It shows you did your homework.   And it does not make her responsible for your job search five seconds after meeting you.   Then, if the conversation goes well, you can share what you are exploring. You can explain the kind of role you are targeting. You can make it easy for the other person to connect the dots between your experience and a possible opportunity.   This is how people begin to experience you before they ever lay eyes on your resume. And when an opportunity comes up, you are no longer a cold resume in a pile. You are a person they already understand.   That is the real advantage.

Your Next Steps Your title matters. I am not going to pretend it does not.   If you are a Director applying for VP roles, some people will overlook you. Some recruiters will filter you out. Some companies will decide they want someone who has already held the title. That is real.   But it is not the whole story.   Your current title is one data point. It is not your entire business case.   The mistake is letting that title decide the size of your next move before you have even made the case. If you are not ready for VP, close the gaps. Build the scope. Get the experience. Strengthen the proof.   But if you are ready, or close enough that the right role would stretch you in the right direction, do not assume a lateral move is your only option.   Follow the POLO framework. It generated dozens of VP promotions, including my own.

How to Become the Obvious Choice for VP in the Next 90 Days

 

 

The 90 Day Plan to Become the Obvious Choice for VP Most people think becoming VP-ready takes years. It doesn't have to. What takes years is doing great work while waiting for someone else to notice.   If I had 90 days to shift how senior leaders saw me, here is the exact action plan I would follow.   Step 1: The VP Mirror Before you do anything else, you need to stop guessing how you're perceived.   At senior levels, promotions are less about output and more about risk. Executives ask themselves whether promoting you feels safe, predictable, and aligned with the business.   The VP Mirror forces you to see yourself the way decision-makers see you, not the way your performance reviews read.   Run The Perception Audit Answer yes or no: Do I know who actually influences VP promotion decisions in my organization? Do I know what those people care about at the VP level? Can I clearly articulate how they currently describe me in one sentence? Does that description emphasize strategy, judgment, and outcomes, or execution and effort? If a VP role opened tomorrow, would they say "ready now" or "strong potential"?   If you answered "no" more than twice, you're not behind. You're operating without a mirror.   That's the fastest way to work hard and stay stuck.   Your Action: Write down: The 3-5 people who shape VP decisions What you believe each one would say about you today What you need them to say about you to be seen as ready   This becomes the baseline for everything else.   Step 2: The One-and-Done Visibility Plan Once people realize there's a perception gap, they usually jump straight to "I need more visibility" and try to be everywhere. That's a recipe for burnout.   Visibility is not about being louder or busier. It's about sending the right signal, consistently, at the right altitude with the right people.   Senior leaders don't notice who is everywhere. They notice who shows up talking about decisions, tradeoffs, and outcomes.   That's why I teach a one-signal-per-week visibility plan.   You invest your time in one action that gives you the right kind of exposure and doesn't burn you out.   What counts as a real visibility signal? A visibility signal answers one question for senior leaders: "Can I already imagine this person operating at the VP level?"   Examples: Presenting a recommendation instead of a status update Leading a cross-functional discussion tied to a business priority Reframing a problem leadership is already debating Sharing an executive update that answers questions before they are asked    Same work. Different altitude.   What doesn't work Speaking more without changing the substance Volunteering for extra work that stays invisible Being busy in the wrong rooms   Your Action: Plan the next four weeks of visibility. For each week, write: Where will I be visible? (email, meeting, 1:1, Slack) Who will see this? (manager, skip level, leadership team, cross-functional leaders) What do they need to see? (decision-making, strategy, business impact, influence)   This is what strategic visibility is all about.   Specific and targeted action that puts you in front of the right people and creates the right perception.   Inside my program we provide a quarterly visibility plan with weekly action items so you never have to wonder, "Am I doing enough?"   Step 3: The Sponsor Matrix Senior promotions are a team sport. They happen when someone senior is willing to bet on you.   Mentors advise. Supporters encourage. Sponsors advocate when you're not in the room.   Sponsorship does not come from coffee chats or long relationships alone. You may have a standing one-on-one with your cross-functional SVP, but that doesn't mean they'll go to bat for you. Sponsorship comes from shared wins at the right altitude, with the right stakeholders.   Identify Your Sponsor Matrix You don't need to be everyone's best friend. In fact, you probably shouldn't. What you need is to identify the three stakeholders beyond your manager who matter most for your promotion.   That list usually includes: Your skip level Senior leadership team members C-suite leaders Occasionally board members in smaller companies   Then ask: What do they care about right now? How does my work make their priorities easier to achieve? Where could a shared win naturally exist?   Your Action: Choose one person from your Sponsor Matrix and get on their calendar in the next 30 days with a value-led agenda.   Less "Let's catch up." More "Here's how this initiative can help move one of your priorities forward."   Step 4: The Reputation Ladder As you grow, your reputation must move up the ladder.   Most high performers are described like this: She gets things done. He's reliable. They execute really well.   That's not wrong. It's just not senior enough.   At the VP level, reputation sounds different: She's highly strategic. He can handle ambiguity. They make strong decisions under pressure.   The Reputation Ladder is about intentionally moving your narrative to the next rung. It's how you shape how people see you instead of letting them make their own assumptions.   A great example of executive narrative done well is the 60-second executive introduction formula.   It's how you go from: "Hey, I'm Maya, Director of Marketing at ACME."   To: "Hey, I'm Maya, Director of Marketing at ACME. My team and I are focused on aligning marketing and sales to accelerate revenue growth. Over the last eight months we've completely overhauled our positioning, a $1M initiative that's already helped us land two new logos with three more in the pipeline."   Same role. Very different signal.   Your Action: Write two short paragraphs: Paragraph 1: How you're typically described today Paragraph 2: How a VP-ready leader should be described   That gap shows you exactly what needs to change.   Step 5: The Promotion Case You won't see this listed as a requirement anywhere, but a promotion business case is non-negotiable. If you don't make the case for your promotion, no one else will do it for you.   A Promotion Case is not: A resume A performance review A list of past accomplishments   It is a future-focused argument for why the business benefits from you operating at the next level.   A strong Promotion Case answers: What scope am I already operating at? What problems do I own beyond my role? What decisions do I influence? What outcomes have changed because of my leadership? What additional value could I unlock at the next level?   This is not something you send cold. It's something you use to anchor conversations with your manager and sponsors.   Your Action: Start a win bank to track your scope, impact, and influence. Ask yourself: If I was promoted today, what would I do differently?   The answer is the beginning of your future-focused plan.   The 90-Day Execution Plan Here's how this actually turns into action.   Days 1-30 Complete the VP Mirror perception audit Draft your current vs. desired Reputation Ladder Identify your Sponsor Matrix   Days 31-60 Build and execute your One-and-Done Visibility Plan weekly Start creating shared wins with at least one sponsor Refine your executive narrative    Days 61-90 Synthesize everything into a Promotion Case Align with your manager on readiness and timing Strengthen advocacy behind the scenes   Copy-Paste Checklist: Are You VP-Ready?  I've completed a VP Mirror perception audit  I know who influences VP decisions and how I'm perceived  I have a 4-week visibility plan  I've defined my Sponsor Matrix  I've drafted my Reputation Ladder narrative  I've started a future-focused Promotion Case

Stop “updating” your VP. Start leading

Your weekly meeting with your manager is one of the most important perception-building moments you have.   At senior levels, your 1:1 is not just a place to keep your VP informed. It is one of the few recurring moments where they get to see how you think. How you prioritize. How you make decisions. How you manage risk. How you influence across the business. How you turn messy problems into forward motion.   In other words, your 1:1 is not just a meeting. It is a stage.   And every week, you are training your VP to see you either as the person who manages the work or the person who is ready to lead more of it.   That may sound subtle, but it is not. It is the difference between being seen as dependable and being seen as promotable.   The Biggest VP 1:1 Mistake: Bringing Updates Instead of Leadership Most high performers prepare for VP 1:1s the same way.   They make a list: What got done What is in progress What is delayed What they are waiting on What they are doing next   There’s nothing wrong with sharing that information. Your VP does need visibility. The problem is when routine updates take over the whole conversation.   Because updates answer one question: “What happened?”   Leadership answers a better question: “What does this mean, and what should we do next?”   That is the shift.   If all you bring to the meeting is information, your VP has to do the executive thinking for you. They have to find the pattern, identify the risk, connect it to the business, and decide where to lean in.   That may be fine earlier in your career. It is not enough when you want to be seen as ready for the next level.   The higher you go, the less valuable it is to simply report activity. Your value comes from creating clarity.   How Better Executive Communication Creates Promotion Visibility I saw this with one of my clients recently. She was already doing work beyond her scope, but her VP wasn’t seeing the full picture. Their 1:1s were productive, but too operational. She was giving thoughtful updates, yet the leadership behind those updates wasn’t landing.   So we changed the way she prepared.   Instead of walking in with a long list of progress notes, she started bringing the few things that showed her judgment: the outcome she was driving, the pattern she was noticing, the tradeoff she was weighing, and the ask that would help her move faster.   Within a few weeks, her VP commented on how much she was doing that he had never been aware of before. Two months later, he brought up preparing her for promotion.   Her work didn’t suddenly become more valuable. Her leadership became more visible.   That’s the point. Your VP cannot advocate for the version of you they cannot see.

What Your VP Actually Needs From Your 1:1 Your VP does not need every detail live in the meeting. They need signal. They need to know what matters, what changed, what decision needs to be made, what risk is emerging, where you need support, and what you are seeing that they may not be close enough to see.   This is the difference between walking in and saying: “Here’s what I’ve been working on.”   and walking in with: “Here’s what I’m driving, here’s what I’m seeing, and here’s how I recommend we move forward.”   One version makes you sound busy. The other makes you sound like a leader.   The 3-Part VP 1:1 Agenda for Promotion Readiness The good news is that a strategic 1:1 does not mean you need a 47 slide presentation. Please don’t. Your VP has suffered enough.   It just means you need to stop spending your most valuable visibility moment on information that could have been an email. But you do need to walk in with more than updates.   A simple way to do that is to prepare three things: The outcome The insight The leadership move   Here’s what that look like.   1. The outcome: connect your work to business impact Start with the most important result you are driving. Not every task. Not every meeting. Not every moving piece.   The outcome.   Try this: “The most important outcome I’m focused on right now is…”   This immediately anchors the conversation in impact instead of activity.   For example, instead of saying: “We’re still working on the onboarding project.”   You might say: “The outcome I’m driving is reducing onboarding friction before the Q3 expansion push.”   See the difference?   The first version tells your VP what you are working on. The second tells them why the work matters.   This is a small shift, but it changes the entire conversation. Now you are not just reporting on a project. You are connecting your work to a business result.   That is what makes you sound more senior. Not to mention, it’s an opportunity to share a win when you eventually drive the outcome you’ve been focusing on.   2. The insight: show how you think Next, bring one thing you are seeing that matters. This could be a pattern, a risk, a customer signal, a stakeholder issue, a tradeoff, or a blocker that is bigger than one task.   Try this: “What I’m seeing is…”   This is where your VP gets to see your judgment.   For example, instead of saying: “We met with Sales and CS this week.”   You might say: “What I’m seeing is that the real blocker is not the onboarding material. It’s unclear ownership between Sales and CS in the first 14 days.”   Again, totally different signal.   The first version reports activity. The second version interprets what the activity means.   Executives do not need you to prove that meetings happened. They need to know what you learned, what matters, and what requires attention.   This is where so many high performers undersell themselves. They are seeing the right things. They are connecting dots. They are spotting patterns. But they leave all of that thinking in their own head, then show up to leadership with the most basic version of the update.   That is a missed opportunity. If you are doing the thinking, let them see the thinking.   3. The leadership move: bring a recommendation, decision, or ask Finally, bring the recommendation, ask, or next move.   Try one of these: “My recommendation is…” “What I need from you is…” “The decision I’m making is…” “The tradeoff I’m weighing is…”   This is where you stop reporting and start leading.   For example, instead of ending with: “Let me know what you think.”   You might say: “My recommendation is to pilot one clear handoff owner for enterprise customers before we scale it across all segments.” Or: “What I need from you is air cover with Sales leadership so we can make this the default process for the pilot.”   That is a much stronger conversation.   You are not handing your VP a problem and waiting for them to solve it. You are bringing them your point of view, showing your reasoning, and making it easier for them to help you move the work forward.   That is executive communication.   How to Send Status Updates Without Wasting Your 1:1 To be clear, I am not saying you should stop updating your VP. They still need updates.   But routine updates do not need to take over your most valuable leadership conversation of the week.   Send the basic status information in advance by email. That way, your VP still has visibility into the work, but you are not spending your 1:1 reading them a status report they could have skimmed in two minutes.   Send the update before the meeting. Use your 1:1 to show your leadership. And by the way, you do not need to cover all three parts every single time. Focus on what matters most.

Your Next Steps Before your next VP 1:1, do two things. First, send the routine update in advance. That alone will make the meeting more useful.   Second, prepare three lines for the live conversation: “The outcome I’m driving is…” “What I’m seeing is…” “My recommendation / ask / next move is…”   This is how you stop walking into high-value conversations with low-value material.   Your VP 1:1 is not just a meeting. It is a repeated opportunity to shape how senior leaders see you.   Use it well, and you stop being seen only as the person who manages the work. You start being seen as the person who is ready to lead more of it.