579: How to Pitch Your Manager, with Tom Henschel

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2022

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Henschel: The Look & Sound of Leadership Tom Henschel of Essential Communications grooms senior leaders and executive teams. As an internationally recognized expert in the field of workplace communications and self-presentation, he has helped thousands of leaders achieve excellence through his work as an executive coach and his top-rated podcast, The Look & Sound of Leadership. In this conversation, Tom and I explore the sometimes awkward moment of needing to get buy-in from your manager on a next step, proposal, or funding. We detail three considerations and how attention to them can help you frame this conversation better. Plus, we share tactics such as making the business case, telling a story, and past interactions — in order to help you get forward movement. Key Points Three lenses of consideration are helpful when considering how to pitch you manager: purpose, preference, and protocol. When framing your purpose in making a pitch, it’s helpful to be able to change altitude. Consider “clicking out” on a map to frame the bigger picture. To be purposeful, make sure you are making the business case for whatever you are pitching. Anger and emotion can be sentinels that you might not have moved past thinking about it personally or framed the business context fully. Consider past interactions with your manager on how they prefer to receive information. The way you pitch them should begin with their preferences, not yours. Get intel in advance from other stakeholders, if practical. They can help you see the variables that might be clouding your judgement if you’re too close to the situation. Clearly frame the problem and examples of it. Consider strutting your pitch in the framework of The Want, The Obstacle, and The Resolution (see PDF below). Resources Mentioned Storytelling: A Three-Part Model by Tom Henschel (PDF download) Related Episodes How to Start Managing Up, with Tom Henschel (episode 433) The Way to Influence Executives, with Nancy Duarte (episode 450) The Way to Make Sense to Others, with Tom Henschel (episode 518) Discover More Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The time has come to ask for approval, or funding, or to green light a new way of doing things.
0:07.0	When it's time for a conversation like that, this episode will help you get into the right mindset.
0:13.0	Tom Henshel returns to be our guide on how to pitch your manager.
0:18.0	This is Coaching for Leaders Episode 579.
0:22.0	Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.
0:31.0	Greetings to you from Orange County, California.
0:34.0	This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stahovjak.
0:38.0	Leaders aren't born, they're made.
0:41.0	And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations.
0:46.0	I've had it happen so many times over the years, and especially in the recent past,
0:51.0	where our members, our listeners have asked me for a perspective on how do I have a conversation
0:57.0	when I need to pitch my manager on something new, or maybe a new way of doing business,
1:02.0	or maybe restructuring something, or changing someone's role.
1:06.0	Insert situation here, but I think many of us have had situations where we've needed to pitch someone else on making the case for a change.
1:15.0	It is, of course, the work of leadership for all of us to do that on some regular basis.
1:22.0	And yet, it is a conversation many of us struggle with to approach in a helpful, effective way,
1:28.0	in a way that's most likely to lead us to the outcome we want.
1:32.0	Today, I'm so glad to welcome back my dear friend and talented executive coach Tom Henshel,
1:37.0	who's going to help us to think about how we can approach a situation when we are trying to pitch our manager.
1:43.0	Tom is from essential communications and he grooms senior leaders and executive teams.
1:49.0	He's an internationally recognized expert in the field of workplace communication and self-presentation,
1:54.0	and he's helped thousands of leaders achieve excellence through his work as an executive coach,
	...

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