CHAPTER 31

Communicating With Executive Leadership to Gain Buy-In

Dianna Booher

What’s the secret to getting buy-in from senior leaders? After more than 30 years of hearing leaders critique their briefers, I have a long list of dos and don’ts for HR professionals as they head into a meeting with executives—whether at their own organization, at a supplier’s site, or at an industry conference.

How often have you heard or even said things such as, “I never got a response to my email.” “They never followed through on my recommendation.” “I’d definitely like to have a seat at the table when that issue comes up next time!” You hear these common sentiments from those who’ve had their time in front of executive decision makers—and for some reason left disappointed and ultimately defeated.

Whether you’re delivering a formal presentation or just engaged in conversation around the conference table or in the hallway, consider what it takes to gain buy-in and get the go-ahead at the executive level.

Talk About ROI

Your sales team tends to focus on revenue because that’s what counts toward their commissions. Your marketing team focuses on growth because that’s easy to measure; they create a three-week campaign and count the leads and conversions. Your operations people count widgets produced per hour or the cost of rejects because of a quality defect.

But top executives concern themselves with expenses as well as revenue and growth. That ratio translates to overall profitability and the ROI. In fact, increased revenue and growth—with no control on related expenses—can drive an organization into bankruptcy!

So, if you are an HR partner who wants to speak the language of executives, you’ll need to be able to talk about profit margins on services provided, discuss overall head count cost compared with productivity, or relay the overall value in dealing with a strategic partner versus simply the cost. It’s all about the return on investment.

State the “So What?”

Some technical professionals are so steeped in their functional roles and related jargon that they expect the facts to speak for themselves. However, they rarely do. A savvy communicator adds the “so what” to the conversation. For example, “We’ve had a turnover rate of less than 2 percent during the last year, so what that means is we should be able to shave more than $XXX off our projected training costs.”

The formula is:

Turn Topics Into Persuasive Takeaways

Simplify any charts and graphs. Cut the verbiage. Executives have many problems and projects in their pipeline. They don’t have time to decipher the meaning of a slide with a heavy load of data. So, use a slide title that captures the key takeaway, not just a vague topic like “Staffing Costs.” It should state the point you’re making.

Ditto with graphics: Don’t dump all your related data into one slide. You’ll do far better to prepare three slides that make three key points than to make one complex slide that takes viewers three minutes to digest.

Have Data at Hand, But Never Depend on It

Executives expect you to have metrics to support what you say or recommend. But that doesn’t mean they always want to hear that data. Taking executives through all your evidence can try their patience. They consider it your job to draw and share conclusions from your research—they don’t want to hear a recount of your trouble in getting and validating the data.

Always have support for your recommendations, proposals, and opinions—but never expect data alone to build your case. Explain the impact. What’s the story you’re telling? What’s the long-term effect or the potential missed opportunity? How might this change policy? How might this budget decrease or increase affect employees or suppliers? How would this change alter the general public’s perception?

Add the human dimension—an analogy or a story that drives home the real impact on morale, productivity, retention, recruitment, or compliance.

Consider Timing

Even military generals try to avoid fighting on all fronts at once. If crises are occurring almost daily or weekly in your organization, consider the best time to approach the leadership team with your recommendations so you have their full attention. Remember, no matter how hungry people are, they’ll have difficulty thinking about a gourmet dinner with flames shooting up around their head.

Understand the Impact of Your Personal Presence

For more than three decades, I’ve polled large audiences about skills, traits, attitudes, and habits that, in their opinion, contribute to someone’s executive presence. During that same period, I’ve talked with client CEOs and senior executives who were sending team members to me for what they often referred to as “polish.”

All the characteristics they’ve mentioned through the years fall into these four buckets:

•  How someone looks (body language, dress, movement)

•  How someone talks (vocal qualities, word choices, speaking patterns)

•  How someone thinks (the ability to communicate clearly and persuasively under pressure)

•  How someone acts (character traits, values, skills, and general competence)

By the time someone reaches adulthood, their character, values, and competence are typically well established. So, they generally need to address only their body language and communication or “thinking” habits. Here are a few quick tips for transforming the visual (body language) and vocal aspects of presence:

•  Stand as tall as possible—as if you’re pushing your head through the ceiling.

•  Relax, but keep that “tall” posture; don’t be rigid.

•  Stop any random, jerky gestures. Use your hands naturally, but with purpose.

•  Gesture from your shoulder, not your elbow or wrist.

•  If there’s a group, select three or four people and have a conversation with them. (The rest of the audience will also feel connected and included.)

•  Slow your speech. Talking too fast conveys nervousness.

That’s it. Employing these few body language and vocal principles will make a dramatic difference in creating an impression of confident competence—exactly what you need when engaging with an executive team.

Present Your Ideas Concisely—Whether Speaking or Writing

Executives are impatient. If you can’t write your bottom-line message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour. So, make your bottom-line message your top-line message in emails, feasibility studies, proposals, and executive reports.

Think before you write—not as you write. Consider the readers’ interests: what they want to know, what they need to know, what they already know, and how they may react. Then include and organize the appropriate details accordingly. Never tell executives something they already know.

And when the situation calls for an oral presentation, prepare thoroughly. Deliver information or recommendations with confidence and credibility rather than in a monotone accompanied by nervous fidgeting.

In the past three decades of communication coaching, I keep hearing a few of the same complaints from executives about those who present to them—whether presenting status updates, budget requests, or employee survey results. Let’s look at these complaints more closely.

People Struggle to Get to the Point

Executives want to hear your point—fast. Not your topic, but your point. Don’t promise that you’re going to cover topics X, Y, and Z in the next 20 minutes. Take 30 to 60 seconds to state your case (debaters do this routinely). Then spend the rest of your time filling in the details.

Presenters, of course, wish executives had more patience. They’ve done the research and understand their subject or the problem to solve. So they feel constricted to have to “say it all” in a few short sentences. It feels far easier to add background, caveats, and data before presenting conclusions because they believe it will stave off potential challenges from opinionated listeners. But don’t be tempted to wade through the background before you give your conclusion. Start with your key message!

They Deliver Monologue

Many high-potential briefers receive a budget to fund research and work on a hot initiative. These smart people with great ideas polish their presentation to perfection. It’s their big chance for visibility across several functional areas of the organization. Their excitement feels palpable.

They plan 25 minutes of formal presentation to fill their 30-minute slot, leaving five minutes for questions. Then they’re surprised—and disappointed—at only polite applause at the end.

The problem? Executives expect a dialogue, not a monologue. In fact, some briefers get visibly ruffled when questions “interrupt” their flow. Big mistake. Plan to engage these strong executive personalities throughout your briefing—not just at the end in a Q&A session.

They Get Too Technical

The C-suite audience wants you to understand the technical details of your project or idea. They just don’t necessarily want to hear about it in detailed technicolor. In fact, they rarely want to hear the finer details (legal, compliance, and so forth) unless they are equally as specialized as you are.

If they ask you a technical question, however, you better be able to answer it accurately and convincingly. Try to fake it and chances are you’ll never make another presentation in the C-suite.

But senior leaders do expect you to have the skill to translate your technical expertise to a wider audience outside your specialized field. Yes, use your charts, graphs, KPIs, and flowcharts inside your department. But when you get to the C-suite, upgrade the language a few notches so that those outside your specialized field can understand what you’ve done, how it contributes to overall initiatives, and why it matters.

Take a Stand—While Listening to What Executives Say to You

Take a stand on important issues in your area of expertise. Your job in the executive suite is not simply to inform, but to persuade. But take care when and how you deliver a counterpunch: You’re loaded with information. So why not unload it on your executive team at every opportunity?

A persuasive communicator often mimics the role of narrator Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, hearing what the frivolity, leisurely pastimes, and disjointed conversations around him reveal about character and motivations. As one of these master listeners, you’ll at times find it advantageous to sit quietly at the periphery of a conversation, encouraging others to speak up with their opinions. These will become your data points for further strategizing about how to gain the support of your executive team—especially those members reluctant to engage.

Ask Tough Questions With Intention

Attorneys live by this axiom: “Don’t ask questions in court if you don’t already know the answers.” Weak corporate leaders model this same principle when they question staffers, intending to put them on the spot and embarrass them. But persuasive communicators often ask questions for better reasons: They want to open rather than close doors.

For example, they ask questions that lead their executive team to reflect, consider exceptions and cautions, and change course. Their questions surface limitations and identify additional opportunities, focusing on broader considerations. These tough questions may punch holes in impossible dreams, perplex the activist, prevent irreparable damage to reputation, reaffirm values, or challenge the research or conventional wisdom.

Persuasive HR leaders have become known for the hard questions they ask—the ones that can’t be answered quickly. Hard questions result in hard thinking and sometimes even harder work.

So, what’s the most valuable outcome of a tough question you can pose? An executive changes their mind and direction, drops opposition to your plans, and ultimately must approve of your approach, budget, and policy recommendation.

Answer Questions Directly

Don’t play dodge ball with vague generalities that confuse and do not amuse. Respond promptly to questions or requests—even if your response is simply to tell the executive that you don’t have an answer yet or can’t take the action immediately. Let them know when to expect your complete response.

Reframe Forced-Choice Questions to Refocus

The old “Have you stopped beating your spouse?” dilemma captures this problem well: “Yes or no?” Either way you answer, you’re in trouble.

During a meeting with your executive team, an off-base question may sound like:

•  “Can you or can you not get this new facility staffed by November 1?”

•  “Are you confident we can get this enterprise system installed for less than $100k?”

•  “Bottom line: Is Gary going to make it in this job, or should we be looking for his replacement?”

•  “Which is the best approach—delay until the bugs are worked out or take advantage of the discount that ends in two weeks?”

Of course, if you can give a clear-cut, confident response to such two-pronged questions, do it. The problem with these forced-choice responses is that you frequently aren’t comfortable or confident choosing either option A or option B as stated. Caveats come to mind and to your way of thinking, the “right” answer is neither choice.

Basically, you have four alternatives for clearly and correctly responding to forced-choice questions from the executive team:

•  Take your choice, … uh, their choice. When you come to the fork in the road, take a stand if you feel confident in your opinion. State whichever choice you believe to be right—the right date, the right amount, the right employee, the best approach. The executive will be pleased that you’re playing along. That is, as long as your response or opinion turns out to be correct. But if things turn out badly, you’ll lose credibility.

•  Reframe the question. That is, reframe the stated forced-choice question to fit the one you think is the right question for the situation, the most critical question, the most important question, or the most immediate question. Here’s an example: “In my opinion, what’s more important than full staffing by November 1 is finding the ideal engineering team. That search for engineers with X experience may take a while longer.”

•  Expand the forced-choice question to offer new ideas. The expanded option to the question “Can you or can you not get this new facility staffed by November 1?” might be this response: “I’m sure we could fill all the positions by November 1—with someone. But getting the right people in the best spot may take longer—up to six months. The job market now for….”

•  Ask for time to develop new options. Executives enjoy delays like they enjoy a root canal. So, you’ll need to sell it if you choose this approach. Try something like: “Neither of the options you mentioned sounds ideal. But if I could take a few days for research, I think I can bring you a better option to achieve our goal. Can you give me a week to find that best option?”

It takes confidence to spring yourself free from a forced-choice trap set by a misguided executive. But after developing and displaying that confidence, you’ll be glad you did.

Identify and Communicate a Common Purpose When Conflicts Arise

It’s natural for executive leaders from different departments or divisions to have their own approaches to projects and responsibilities. But when those approaches diverge, savvy leaders continue to keep their focus on what the parties have in common (such as reaching a common revenue goal, lowering the rejection rate on widgets, developing and promoting in-house talent, or recruiting star performers from a related industry).

How do you increase the buy-in to a shared purpose? Clearly state the mission and metrics. Repeat that vision often in multiple ways and formats. That common purpose has to be communicated—measured, praised, rewarded—continually.

Summarize Succinctly

At some point, great HR leaders have to pull all the skills we’ve discussed in this chapter together to master one additional skill: They have to be able to synthesize what they’ve heard so they can communicate clearly a summary of the key conclusions and recommendations to a broad audience—either your conclusions or those the entire group has developed during the discussion.

Suggest Next Steps and Provide a Leave-Behind

Never walk away from a conversation with executives without stating next actions explicitly—as you see them. Typically, it’s a great idea to provide the next steps in written form on a single page so the executives can delegate these implementation steps after deciding to move forward.

Final Thoughts

HR practitioners have a plethora of throwaway lines they hope will lead to a permanent seat around the executive conference table, including:

•  “The ROI exceeded our expectations.”

•  “The program was rejected because it didn’t seem to be a culture fit.”

•  “Our team will be digging into the analytics to map out the industry benchmarks.”

But to stand out as a great communicator, selecting the best words, approaches, and processes to gain executive buy-in can make a significant difference in how others judge your competence—not to mention how willing they are to trust you with their reputation and retirement funds! (Of course, you may not be literally responsible for setting up their 401(k) options.) But your input to the executive team can either send the organization into a tailspin thanks to policy recommendations that push top talent out the door—or put people on solid footing.

So, sure, run the analytics, do the interviews, and synthesize the research. But make sure you’re prepared to present what you know in a way that engages rather than enrages.

About the Author

Dianna Booher helps organizations communicate clearly and leaders expand their influence by a strong executive presence—and occasionally a published book. She’s the bestselling author of 49 books, which have been published in 62 foreign-language editions. Her latest books include Faster, Fewer, Better Emails; Communicate Like a Leader; Creating Personal Presence; What More Can I Say?; and Communicate With Confidence. Clients include more than a third of the Fortune 500. National media such as Good Morning America, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, BBC, FOX, CNN, and NPR have interviewed her on workplace communication. Among many other lists of leadership communication experts, Dianna’s name appears on Richtopia’s “Top 200 Most Influential Authors in the World” and on “Global Gurus Top 30 Communicators” (2012–2021). You can reach her at [email protected].

Recommended Resources

Booher, D. 2011. Creating Personal Presence. Look, Talk, Think, and Act Like a Leader. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Booher, D. 2015a. Communicate Like a Leader: Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire, and Get Things Done. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Booher, D. 2015b. What More Can I Say? Why Communication Fails and What to Do About It. New York: Penguin Random House.

Cialdini, R. 2006. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, rev. ed. New York: Harper Business.

Kouzes, J., and B. Posner. The Leadership Challenge, 6th ed. New York: Jossey-Bass.