The three layers that turn correct data into a decision.
If you’ve ever been right about a recommendation and still not sounded like the leader you already are, this is for you.
You’re not alone in that.
I heard it again recently, and not from an engineer. From the CEO of a tech organization that funds founders.
We were at a women in leadership conference. She’d just given the keynote, on something totally unrelated. On a break, I told her what I do. That I help engineers speak so their ideas land the way normal conversation lands.
She laughed. And the look on her face was priceless, because I get that exact look over and over. It’s the look of someone recognizing something they’ve been chewing on for years.
Then she said it. The tech founders she works with are brilliant, and they’re fluent in their data, and they still need to partner with someone who can communicate and present for them. Because most of them don’t know how to say it in a way that lands.
She saw it immediately.
So do I. Because I sit in meetings and watch it happen. An engineer starts talking, and here come the standards and the data. I’ll be honest, I sometimes catch myself thinking, okay, could you just get to the point? Why are we doing this? And then I watch leadership glaze over. It happens regularly. The numbers all check. The logic holds. And the one thing that would get people moving never gets said.
Most technical experts aren’t bad communicators, by the way. They’re fluent. They present all the time. They just leave out the part the room came for.
You Were Never Trained To Move The Room
Think about how a technical presentation usually goes. Data first. Then the problem, laid out carefully. Then the solution, with the reasoning behind it.
That structure is solid. It’s also incomplete. It’s missing the one thing that actually moves the room.
Before I tell you what’s missing, let me explain why you do it this way.
Throughout university, you were trained to give presentations and reports based on the data and on scientific principles. There was a very specific format, a very specific structure, and you always reported that way.
But nowhere in those reports did you ever have to get people to make a decision. Nowhere did you have to move the room. Nowhere did you have to talk to people who didn’t share your technical expertise, or even care about it the way your professors did.
You were never taught to move the room. You were taught to present your data.
And there’s research on this. A Penn State study looked at the gap between how engineering department heads and how industry rate a graduate’s communication. Over half of the department heads said their graduates communicated well. Only 9% of the people in industry agreed. Same engineers. Two very different grades.
It’s not a talent gap. It’s a training gap. The professor grades the assignment. The manager grades whether it produced a decision. And you were never trained in the way you now need to speak.
More Detail Won’t Save It
Here’s the instinct, and I’ve felt it. If they didn’t get it, I didn’t explain it well enough. So I explain harder. More data. More diagrams. One more slide.
That instinct is wrong, and the evidence isn’t subtle.
A 2014 study in the Journal of Product Innovation Management followed 113 startups to the same wall: when a founder couldn’t make people want the thing, more marketing and more product development did not cover for it. You can’t fix a communication gap by building better. Better logic doesn’t result in action.
Now, I know you’re probably not a tech founder. But this isn’t a founder problem, it’s a leadership presentation problem. Every time you need someone to act, you’re in the same spot they are.
Whether you’re pitching a project idea to a new client, making your case inside your own organization, or trying to get someone to act on a reliability recommendation. Same room, same job: get a person to decide.
And every time you try to fix it by adding more detail, nothing moves. If the handoff is broken, the quality on the other side of it never lands.
Results, Story, Data: In That Order
Here’s the frame I teach now. Hold all three at once, and build them in this order.
Results come first. Results aren’t more data. They’re what changed, for whom, and by how much, framed so the person deciding can make the call. This is the hard part. When you hand over the results, do they make the decision-maker more confident, more certain that moving forward is right? Relieved, even? That’s the test.
Story comes next. Story takes it into practical terms, an experience they may already have. It can be a true story, or it can be a metaphor. Either way, it connects the technical thing to something people can relate to, and it lets you share technical information with people who aren’t technical. Not decoration, not spin, not “the fluff for the non-technical people.” Story is what carries the results and the data into a human being who has to act on them.
Data comes last, and you already have it. You need good quality data, but you don’t need more of it. You need the one piece of information that actually moves the decision. Not everything you’ve got. A clear summary of the key pieces, shown visually, in a way that helps people see the point you’re making.
Results alone are a claim with no proof. Story alone is a lovely feeling that dissolves the second somebody asks a hard question. Data alone is a fact. To move a group of people, you need all three built into your presentation.
Pull the story out and the data just sits there, correct and lifeless, and nobody moves. That’s a thousand meeting rooms a week. The engineer is accurate. The room is unmoved.
Here’s how it plays out in a real situation. A few years back, I worked with a program manager who walked into leadership reviews with his data clean and complete. Every time, the same thing. The leaders nodded, and the decisions got made without him.
He regularly presented to two VPs. One decided based on results and action. The other made decisions based on human motivation. Data held him back with both.
So we changed how he presented. We minimized the data, led with results, and gave it a story. He started to land the room.
Nothing about his work changed. The handoff did.
Start With The Intention
So how do you know which results, which story and which data you actually need before you walk in?
I set the intention first. What is it that I want these people to think, feel and do? That one question decides what results, what story and what data I need to share with the people in the room.
I go deeper into this inside the SHIFT model, but this is really where I start.
One Thing To Do This Week
Pick one presentation already on your calendar. Not a big one. An ordinary one where you’ve got something to say.
Then build it in this order.
Step one: what is the result you need them to see? What changed, for whom, and by how much.
Step two: what is the story that brings that result to life? A real one from the work, or a metaphor that makes it land.
Step three: what are the one to three data points that support the result and the story? One to three, maximum.
Result, story, and just enough data to back both up. Do that, and you’ll land far better in the room.
Imagine walking into your next leadership review with the same data you’ve always had. This time you open with what changed. You give them a picture they recognize. You show just enough numbers to prove it. Nobody glazes over. The room decides, and you’re in it when they do.
And if you’re struggling with it, this is exactly the work I do. Book a coffee chat with me, and we’ll work through one of your real conversations together, so it lands with the people you’re talking to: https://www.engineeringbetterconversations.com/schedule/coffee-chat-with-nancy