A frequent topic among many leaders and leadership circles is how to maximize your level of influence. How do you get the initiatives, projects, and priorities that you want approved actually approved? How come that guy over there always gets a yes while you seem stuck in the no-zone? You find your projects and ideas constantly getting deprioritized or misunderstood, and, let’s be honest, it’s frustrating.

As a leader of any company, organization, or department, one of the most important skills to learn is about what to communicate, when to communicate, and how to communicate (I know, I’m not telling you anything new here). This becomes increasingly complex because at every stage of leadership, it changes pretty dramatically based on what the group is optimizing for.

A helpful exercise to start with is who are you writing for (pick 1 audience), what information is important to them, and what level of granularity do they need. When communicating up or out, even though it’s opposed to what most studies state, many of us provide _too_ many details because we feel more information is critical to get our points, progress, or problems across to the reader.

Here’s a broad generalization of that exercise that you can use as a starter

For your peer team at a leadership level

Context needed: what problem is the work related to

Impact on them: what will the impact be on the company or organization as a whole

What information they need: what dependencies or needs do you have from their (or other) teams.

For your manager (this could be a board president or CEO)

Context needed: risks and general understanding of progress

Impact on them: How these risks might change priorities or plans that have been communicated previously

What information they need: how concerned or not concerned they need to be

For your team

Context needed: How their work fits in with other teams and the greater

Impact on them: what will the impact be on the company or organization as a whole? What do I need to do support-wise, resources-wise, or decisions-wise?

What information they need: what dependencies or needs do you have from their (or other) teams.

Let’s focus in on thinking through your manager at the executive level… in these communications, everyone is optimizing for time. This might sound silly, but focus on less words that mean more and are easily digestible in a glance. What do I need to do as the person reciving this update?

As you can see even from the brief mapping above, executive level communication should be more succint, concrete, and focused over some of the additional details, context, and information you may want to provide to your department or team. Now, this doesn’t mean this is all the information YOU have. You present the absolute most important pieces of information. If you’re presenting a new idea or initiative, it should be framed with a clear impact on the company or organization as a whole and framed in a way that focuses on what your CEO or Executive Director (or Board President in some circumstances) cares about. For example, we will move from X to Y by doing this.

If you’re providing a status update, keep it clear and actionable (see the template below).

Now, your influence won’t grow overnight, but gradually with more effective communications, your level of earned trust increases. You become a person who always has the information that’s needed, has thought about metrics or company impact, and projects that get green-lit are thoughtfully managed with clear and productive updates (a special note: this doesn’t mean every project has to be flawless, but there should be reasonable explanations and conversations around when work gets offtrack in order to get it back on track). Additionally, once how you communicate is more clear, you can focus on if you’re pitching the right kinds of ideas because getting your projects, ideas, and initiatives prioritized has 2 parts… part 1: are you communicating the idea effectively? And part 2: does what you’re communicating result in better/more company or organization-wide impact than the ideas and desires others are bringing to the table in the eyes of the company leader or leadership team?

Below are two templates you can use. One for mapping some details about who you’re communicating with and the second for the actual update to provide.

Mapping Your Audience

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Executive Communication Template

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