Two people in a corporate environment can give executives a presentation on a very similar topic, but if one person knows how to shape it into a story, that person is going to stand out quite a bit more. Using a framework like this will help you transition from someone who is sharing their work to someone who is showing up as a leader, who knows how to take a room full of executives on a powerful journey that will leave them feeling impressed, invested, and excited. Welcome to the art of speaking up, a podcast that helps professional women access the limitless potential that lies within them. I'm your host, Jessica Gase, and my mission is to help you find that spark inside you that has the power to transform your career in ways you may not have thought possible. I'm so excited that you're here and now onto the show. Welcome to the Art of Speaking Up podcast. I am so excited about today's episode because I am going to be teaching you about one of my absolute favorite topics and that is executive communication. Today, I'm going to help you get really good at presenting your work to an executive audience. The reason that I want to help you get good at it is because those presentations that you give to more senior level audiences have a huge impact on your reputation, on how quickly you get promoted within your organization, and on the overall trajectory of your career. The more that you can impress executives when you're in the room with them, the faster you will develop a reputation that gets you promoted. Today, I'm going to be teaching you a key skill that will help you impress executives when you're presenting your work to them and that is the skill of storytelling. This is one of the most important things to get good at if you want to experience meaningful growth in a corporate environment. In today's episode, you're going to learn the difference between sharing information versus telling a story and then you're going to learn one of my signature frameworks for translating your work into a powerful story that will resonate with executives and have them walking away from your presentation, feeling impressed by you and excited about what they're going to hear from you next. Now, the best way for me to teach you the difference between sharing information versus telling a story is through a thought exercise. I want you to imagine that you have the day off and you get to choose between two agendas for how you will spend your day off. Both agendas involve you going on three different rides. So, let me walk you through agenda A and then I'll walk you through agenda B and then I want you to choose which one is more appealing to you. So, here's agenda A. You will be going to a local carnival and at that carnival, you're going to go on three different rides. First, you're going to go on the spinny ride where you get into the thing that spins around. Then you're going to go on the carnivals haunted house ride and then finally, you're going to go on the roller coaster. That is agenda A. Then you have agenda B. For agenda B, you are going to be going to Disneyland. First, you're going to ride the Alice in Wonderland teacups. Then you're going to ride the haunted mansion. And then finally, you're going to hop over to Disney California Adventure Land and you're going to ride the IncrediCoster. And for those of you who don't know about the IncrediCoster, it's a roller coaster that is based on the Incredibles animated movies. So, which agenda do you prefer? Agenda A at the carnival or agenda B at Disneyland? Now, me for sure, I'm choosing agenda B. I used to work at Disney. I love Disneyland. And I think most people would choose agenda B and we know this because Disneyland gets far more traffic and is far more successful than a local carnival. Now, what's really interesting about these two agendas that I offer you is that both agendas had the same types of rides. Both agendas had a spinning ride, some sort of haunted house themed ride and a roller coaster. But what was different about the Disneyland rides is that each of those rides also had a story telling component. When you go on the teacups at Disneyland, you're not just on a spinny carnival ride. You're in the story of Alice in Wonderland and you're at the Mad Hatter Tea Party. Similarly, when you go on the haunted mansion, you're not just in a haunted house ride. There's an entire story around it where you go into the elevator room and the scary man comes over the loudspeaker, saying that there's only one way out and that way is through the haunted mansion. And so, you're not just in this ride, you're in a story. And same with the final ride, the roller coaster. And because these rides at Disneyland connect back to a story, it makes our enjoyment of them much deeper. When you go on rides at Disneyland, you remember them. They really make an imprint on you because of that storytelling component. We just don't have that same level of nostalgia and that same level of joy and investment when we go on generic carnival rides. This illustrates the power of telling a story. The ride itself could be exactly the same. But when you add a story, it becomes more powerful and more memorable because it takes the participant on an emotional journey. That is exactly how I want you to think of sharing your work with executives. When you don't translate it into a story and you're just walking them through the information, you're taking them on a carnival ride. It's simple, it's basic, it's not super memorable. But when you weave it together and tell a story around it, you're taking them on a Disneyland ride. It's an emotional journey, it's memorable, it's exciting, it's nostalgic, they want to go on the ride again. And just like in this example that I gave you, the ride could be exactly the same and it's just adding a story to the ride that makes it more appealing. Similarly, two people in a corporate environment can give executives a presentation on a very similar topic. But if one person knows how to shape it into a story, that person is going to stand out and impress them quite a bit more. That is what I'm teaching you how to do in today's episode. I want your executive presentations to feel like a Disneyland ride and not a carnival ride. So today I'm going to be teaching you one of my signature frameworks that will help you learn to do this. The framework is called, here's why, here's what, here's how. This is a framework that I have created and you are going to use it to structure your next executive presentation. The different parts of this framework correspond to the different sections of your presentation. So what I'm going to be doing for the remainder of today's episode is I'm going to walk you through this framework piece by piece. I'm going to teach you what each piece is, how you will use it in your presentation and why it will resonate with an executive audience. So to refresh your memory, the framework is, here's why, here's what, here's how. And I'm going to start by diving into the first part of the framework, which is, here's why. During the here's why portion of your presentation, you will be introducing the topic of your presentation and more importantly, you will be answering the question of, here's why this is exciting. And your talking points could literally be, today I'm going to be walking you through blank. Here's why we're excited about this. And then you would follow with one or two slides that share the high level reason why everyone in the room should be excited about this topic. So if you work on marketing, the here's why probably has to do with helping your company acquire new customers and grow sales. If you work on product, your here's why might connect back to helping your company retain loyal customers and get people to keep coming back. So whatever your topic is, you want to open your presentation with, here's why this is exciting. The reason this is so powerful is because the thing that executives care about most is driving [BLANK_AUDIO]
results for the business. So when you open your presentation by telling them, here's why this is driving results for the business, they're going to be immediately interested, and it is going to cue them to pay attention. It also positions you in a really favorable light, because what you're communicating to your audience is that you understand the bigger picture. And they like that, because what executives want most is to find people in the organization who get it, and who understand the bigger picture, and who understand how to make them the executive more successful. So when you open with, here's why, and you spend one or two slides talking about, here's why this is exciting for the business, your executives are going to be thinking, ooh, this looks important, this looks interesting, she gets this, I wonder what she's going to share. Next, now after you've covered, here's why, then you're going to move into here's what. This section of your presentation is also going to be on the shorter side, so I want you to imagine between one and three slides, maybe a little bit more, but not much more. And in here's what, you are going to be talking about what obstacles you had to solve to bring your work to life. So your talking points to kick off this section could literally be, here's what we had to solve in order to make this happen. And in this section of your presentation, you are setting the scene and laying the groundwork of some of the obstacles that your company was facing. This is super important. It's very easy to forget that in the work that you are doing, you are overcoming big obstacles. If you are a marketer, you are overcoming the obstacle of how do we make our company's message and product stand out. If you are an operator, you are overcoming the obstacle of how do we implement our processes more efficiently. If you are a product designer, you are overcoming the obstacle of how do we balance what the customers want with the constraints of how our product is built. In whatever work you do, you are constantly overcoming obstacles. And the problem is because you are so used to doing that every single day, you don't even realize all of the brilliant obstacles that you are overcoming. And so what happens is you present your work to executives as if it's easy, as if it just happened, as if it just got created. And you miss the chance to tell the story of all of the challenges that you overcame. So before you even get into the meat of what it is you created, I want you to set the scene through the Here's What section. And I want you to tell your audience, Here's what we had to solve in order to create this. And then I want you to spend one or two or three slides telling them the story of some of the obstacles that presented themselves at the outset of your work. These obstacles can include changing market dynamics. They can include constraints that you are facing. So for example, maybe you had a limited budget, or maybe your company wasn't operating at full capacity head count wise. I really want you to think about what were the different challenges that were present as we delved into this work. The Here's What section is incredibly important because it positions you as the brilliant problem solver that you are. One of the ways that we impress executives and we show them that we are ready for leadership is by telling them the story of the problems that we know how to solve. When we show our executives, obstacles, and challenges and problems that inform the work that we do, all of a sudden they see us as a valuable asset within the organization because their thought process, as we're sharing the obstacles, is, oh, yikes. Oh, that looks messy. And even though those are negative thoughts, those are positive thoughts. When they think, oh, yikes, that looks messy. And then later in the presentation, we show them how we solved it. Then they think, oh, fugh, woo, I'm glad we have her. This is really good stuff. So we actually want them to have that moment of thinking yikes, this is messy because that's what's going to help us get credit for then solving those obstacles. So in summary, the second section of your presentation is going to be Here's What. And this is where you're going to say, here's what we had to solve in order to create this. So hyper speed recap. We've covered here's why, AKA, here's why this is exciting. We've covered here's what, AKA, here's what we had to solve in order to achieve this. And then you're going to get into here's how. Here's how we solved it. So I'm going to take a quick break. And when I come back from the break, we're going to get into the here's how. If you want to learn how to articulate yourself in a way that is crisp, clear and persuasive, I want to invite you to download my free worksheet that will help you learn to speak like a leader. The worksheet is called five must know phrases to help you sound like a leader. And this worksheet is going to walk you through five different phrases that you will want to use to stand out and impress people in a corporate environment. For each phrase, I share specific examples of what it looks like. And I even share mindset shifts to help you feel confident inside so you're not afraid to use these phrases when the opportunity presents itself. To grab this free worksheet, click the link in the show notes or go to
[email protected]/frazes. And now back to the episode. (bell dings) Okay, so we've covered here's why and we've also covered here's what. Now I'm going to talk about here's how. When you get to here's how, you're going to say, here's how we solved this. This is going to be one of the longer, meteor sections of your presentation. This is where you're going to walk through the core work that you did, what you built, what you created, what you worked on. Now one thing that I'll share that I think will be helpful to you is most people jump right into this. They jump into, here's what I worked on, here's what I did, here's what I built. They skip, here's why, and here's what. So they skip talking about why it's exciting and what obstacles were being faced. But when you have talked about those things, you have laid the perfect groundwork to now get into your deliverable in a way that's going to be more compelling to your audience. Because first, with the here's why, you got them excited and you got them thinking, oh, this is real work that is helping the business. I am interested. And then when you covered here's what and you talked about the obstacles, you raised the stakes and you got your audience thinking, oh, yikes, this is messy, there's some issues here. But then when you get into the here's how and you show them, here's how we overcame the obstacles and here's what we built as a result, then they start thinking, oh, wow, not only is this helping the business, but she overcame all of these obstacles in order to create this outcome. This is extremely important because now your audience isn't just seeing your work, they're seeing the leadership that you brought to the work. They're seeing that you understand the bigger goals of the business and you know how to solve tough problems. If we don't cover the here's why and the here's what before we get into the here's how, our audience won't see us as a leader because they have no way of understanding the sophistication of the obstacles that we had to overcome and they also haven't been told the story of why our work is valuable and exciting for the organization. So they're just seeing a bunch of information without any context, it's exactly the same as the carnival ride. You're on a ride that's spinning, but like you're not gonna remember that as much as you would remember the teacups because who really cares about the spinny ride? We care so much more when we can see the full story. So I want you to think about it as the here's how section is your core presentation. This is the place where you're talking about all the stuff you built and everything you worked on, but because you opened with here's why it's exciting and here's what we had to overcome, you are now placing it within a larger context that helps your executive audience see the value of the work and see the impact of your leadership. And I wanna loop back to something.
that I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode. I talked about how executives only see you when they're in the room with you. They don't see you answering emails in the evening. They don't see you cranking out deliverables between meetings. They don't see any of that. So if you don't tell them this story, they literally have no way of coming up with this story on their own. Their understanding of the value of your work can only come from the way that you talk about your work. So if you don't tell the story, they will have no story. That's why this framework is so important. Now one thing that you need to know about this framework is that this is a circular framework. It goes in a loop. So if you look at the framework, here's why, here's what, here's how. The framework doesn't end. At here's how it loops back to the beginning and it revisits the here's why. So after you've covered your here's how section and you've walked your audience through your deliverable and explained how you overcame the obstacles to create that deliverable, you're going to revisit the here's why, but in a slightly different way. So remember, here's why refers to here's why this is exciting. And when you used it at the beginning, you shared the high level business reasons why your work is exciting. Now that you've arrived at the end of your presentation, you're going to revisit here's why this is exciting, but you're going to share it at a more detailed level. Now that you've covered all of the work that you've done, your audience has an understanding of what you've been working on, which means you can now go deeper and talk about the impact at a more detailed granular level. So you're going to end your presentation with another section that's probably going to be two to four pages and you're going to introduce that section by saying now that I've walked you through the core deliverable, here's why we're excited about the implications. And then you're going to spend two to four slides getting into the specifics of the wins that you have accomplished. Do I really want you to sit down and ask yourself what are all of the positive side effects that came from this piece of work? Did you generate insights that your company will use going forward? Did you establish a new cross functional process for working with a team? Did you achieve a KPI that your team hasn't hit before? I really want you to go through it with a fine tooth comb and think of every positive thing that is resulting from the work and I want you to walk your audience through each one of those. This ends your presentation with a powerful cadence of you sharing wins one after the other. I almost want you to think about it as you're ending your presentation with this rhythm that sounds like this and each of those is a win. So you're saying, "Hey, here's why we're excited about the implications. This worked it this. It also helped us do this. And it helped us do this." And this creates this moment for your audience where they're like, "Dang! Not only did she overcome all these obstacles and get this done, but look at all the good things that are happening as a result. And because you've taken them on this full complete journey, these wins that you share at the end carry more weight than any other part of your presentation because you have completely earned the trust and credibility from your audience. You have showed them the obstacle. You have showed them your ability to overcome it. They trust you. They've seen that the work is real and substantive. This is your moment to shine. This is the moment where you can highlight your wins and they will be credible and legitimate and believable because of all of the substance that you've already shared with your audience. So you really want to seize this opportunity to revisit the "Here's why." Tell your audience, "Here's why we're excited about where this work is taking us so that they get that full view into the benefits of your leadership." Doing a framework like this will help you transition from someone who is sharing their work to someone who is showing up as a leader, who knows how to take a room full of executives on a powerful journey that will leave them feeling impressed, invested and excited. This truly makes the difference between just working hard and then working hard and getting credit for it and getting promoted within your organization. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. I had a ton of fun recording this and if you found this helpful and you're really wanting to up-level your executive communication, I want to invite you to come work with me inside of my program, the Art of Speaking Up Academy. This program is where I support you with two important goals. Number one, I help you build confidence because you need to have confidence to command a room in this way. And number two, I teach you the foundations of executive presence and executive communication so that you have the tools you need to impress and resonate with an executive audience, communicating in a way that is confident and impressive and super effective is a skill you can learn. And that is what I teach you inside of my program. To learn more about the Art of Speaking Up Academy and to get the latest on when a spot is opening up, click the link in the show notes and add yourself to the wait list. Thank you again so much for tuning in to today's episode and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye!
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