7 story techniques to convince your boss of anything
How to manage up, manage across, and grow your influence using storytelling
I convinced my boss to make me the VP of Marketing once, which sounds like more of a bait-and-switch than it really was. Realistically, hopefully, I was doing a good enough job leading a marketing team of 15 people for a high-growth tech startup. I was reporting to the CEO—my boss—with no other layers of marketing expertise between me and him (save for the occasional business book we would read).
I convinced him by writing a VP of Marketing job description, getting him to agree to the areas I was excelling and the areas I was deficient, and then I bridged all the gaps, objectively and with hard facts, so that there was nothing else to do but give me the title I predestined.
Voila! Simple(?) as that.
Bosses, CEOs, managers, teammates … everyone needs a little convincing sometimes. We know that being a creative storyteller has bookoo benefits for your work output and problem solving, but it also makes a big difference for increasing your influence. Story techniques can help you pitch an idea, land a deal, communicate with clarity, simplify some data, and so much more. We’ve written before about how to pull the signal from the noise; once you have your signal, now it’s time to tell people about it.
So how do you get heads nodding and rubber stamps stamping?
Here are seven techniques I’ve used over the years—and one I’ve always wanted to—that helped me tell stories that communicate ideas and get people on my side.
7 story techniques for managing up
1 - The executive summary
Ah, the Rolls Royce of leadership documents.
At its most basic, the executive summary is a tl;dr for rich people. Should the C-suite take time to read the entirety of an important document? Yes. Yes, they should. But important documents are legion in business, and there is only so much reading an executive can do while multitasking during a Zoom call.
If you’re sharing something with a boss or with a busy senior leader, always create a summary.
This summary can be:
A one-pager at the front of a Google Doc
A one-slide summary ahead of a full presentation
A simple Slack message that links to a doc with the full context
The Slack message has become a particularly common way to summarize since so many leaders spend so much time in Slack (or Teams) every day. The format for an effective Slack summary looks like this:
Here’s the background of why I did what I did—conducted research, ran a project, created a brief, etc. I’ve outlined the biggest learnings in the bullet points below. Now I’d like to make an ask or recommendation for you to review and comment, to make a decision, to advise, etc.
2 - The Minto Pyramid
Piggybacking on the executive summary, the Minto pyramid also reinforces a “just the facts” approach to its storytelling. Pioneered by Barbara Minto, a consultant and author who specializes in executive communication, the pyramid suggests that you tell your story backward, starting with the conclusion before you get to any of the arguments or data.
“Capture your audience's attention early on by first telling them the main takeaway, message, recommendation or simply your conclusion. This may be the opposite to how we've been taught to communicate but it's more efficient, especially in writing and with audiences who have limited time or attention.
“This principle is also called BLUF – "bottom line up front". It originated in the military but is now widely used in the business world.”
This differs from the executive summary in that the Minto Pyramid proposes a way to construct your entire document or story, whereas the executive summary is a bespoke add-on to the main document.
3 - The full-sentence slide deck
For every slide deck that makes complete sense and you totally get it, there are a dozen other slide decks that are confusing as all get out. Why? Well, a lot of slide decks are made with the intention of someone talking over each slide. Others are made with such ardent shorthand that they lack a clear thesis.
Because of this, the most effective slide decks I’ve ever seen are those that use complete sentences as the titles of each individual slide in the deck.
Seems counterintuitive? Seems abhorrent to your design friends? Maybe so, but having full sentences—or at least full, explanatory phrases—makes your slide deck legible to someone who doesn’t have the luxury of your voiceover or who simply wants to grok the full story quickly and easily.
Bonus: This approach also helps the slides creator because it forces them to put together a cohesive story from slide-to-slide, and it focuses the content of each slide under a single sentence or phrase.
4 - The voice note (or Loom video)
One of the reasons why podcasts are so popular is because you feel a close, human connection to the voice you’re hearing. It’s a biological instinct; voice adds warmth and personality to our words. So it makes sense to use this to your advantage with your storytelling strategies.
At work, this may mean recording a Slack audio note rather than sending a long text message.
Or, even better, you can record a Loom (with or without video of you) that talks over your slides or your screenshare to add even more context to the story you’re telling.
5 - The operating manual
One of my favorite team rituals when I started a new job was creating “operating manuals” for myself and everyone on the team. These manuals would be simple questionnaires about how you prefer feedback, what makes ideal 1:1s, and the goals and work that matter most to you.
Oh how nice to have seen this from everyone on the C-suite, too. Alas, I wasn’t always as successful in getting all executives to create their own operating manuals. In the cases when I did know someone’s preferred ways to communicate, it made my storytelling all the more successful.
If I had a teammate who preferred written, asynchronous communication, I could put together my proposals and ideas into Google Docs and know that they would gladly read and review. If I had a teammate who preferred live brainstorms, I could come prepared with a storytelling slide or two to frame our discussion.
Operating manuals vary widely, but some of the questions I’ve used in the past include:
How do you like feedback - Slack, email, in person, etc.?
How do you like feedback - routine like in 1:1s, or as-it-happens?
How do you prefer to receive recognition - public or private?
What are your preferred communication channels and how often do you check them?
What makes 1:1s the most valuable for you?
What are your goals for this year? And for the next 3 months?
What do you need from your manager?
From your team?
From your peers?
Outside the team?
6 - The infographic
We don’t talk too much about visual storytelling in our Kumbaya newsletter, but that’s not because visual storytelling lacks value. (It’s because we lack design skills.)
Introducing charts and graphs and visuals into your stories can really drive home your point, especially when you’re talking to people who are scanning your documents rather than reading intensively. A well-placed graphic can do the heavy lifting for hundreds of written words. The ones I like to use most include:
Bar charts and line graphs, assuming the trend is up-and-to-the-right (e.g. reach, traffic, growth)
Pie charts, particularly when making a comparison and yours is the biggest slice of the pie (e.g. brand awareness, share of voice)
2x2 matrices, which are the gold standards of business graphics. The more of your stories you cram into grids with two clearly-stated axes, the faster you will become a Senior Vice President.
Here’s an example 2x2 matrix from consultant David A. Fields:
7 - The before and after
Very often, you’ll be painting a picture of a future ideal state for your brand or your product, either because you’re reporting on progress-to-date or you’re projecting where your great ideas will take the company in the future.
This clear delineation between before and after is best expressed in quantifiable terms. There is always a number somewhere, no matter how intangible your work. Finding this number and then showing the jump from then to now is like catnip for executive presentations.
Pro tip: Talk in terms of percentage change if the numbers are small. For instance, if you are growing the number of media mentions from 12 to 18 in the course of a quarter, you can instead say that you’re increasing by 50%. If you had 50 social media mentions and now you have 100, you just 2x’ed your growth.
What have you found to be most effective with your storytelling at work?
I’d love to learn your tips. The seven tactics listed above are some of the ones that have worked best for me over the years, but I’m sure there are many, many more ways to build your influence through stories at work. Let me know in the comments or hit reply to get in touch with us!
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Love this! My rule of thumb for emailing or slacking execs is to format and synthesize the info in a way that they can scroll through quickly on their way to the airport and easily respond. If it doesn't pass the "airport Uber" test I keep condensing/simplifying.