02Corporate Tips

Learn Storytelling, Part 2: Your Minutes With Leadership

You might get 2 to 10 minutes with your director or VP. A protocol for giving them what they need and getting what you need.

Oct 15, 20263 min readCorporate Tip #25
Original post on LinkedIn

You might get 2–10 minutes with your director or VP. Once a week. Once a month. Maybe once a quarter.

Used well, those minutes can fast-track your career. They did mine.

Most people spend them reciting a laundry list of everything they did, diving into minutiae only their team cares about, and trying to prove how smart they are.

Reality check: leaders don't need proof you're smart and detailed. They need to know where business-critical work stands, what's at risk, and what's next.

In Tip #24, we covered telling your story in standups. This one covers telling it to leadership.

Your goal is simple:

  1. Give them what they need to know

  2. Get what you need from them

I didn't think of it that way until my current manager shared it with me.

Giving them what they need: the protocol

  • 1️⃣ Agenda (15 seconds): where you're going

  • 2️⃣ Context (1 minute max): the project and what it drives for the business

  • 3️⃣ Status (3–4 minutes):

  • Net-new impact since last time, framed as outcomes, not tasks ("cut token spend 30%," not "built token tracking")

  • What's blocked or at risk, with mitigations and ETAs. Build your ask into the mitigation ("unblocked by Friday if we get Legal's sign-off this week")

  • What's in progress, with ETAs

What you need from them

  • Recognition of what you and your team delivered, so your story reaches the promo room
  • Help on blockers only they can clear
  • Decisions on trade-offs when risks threaten timelines

How to level it up

  • Read the room. Meet often or only have 2 minutes? Skip context. If they care most about risk, lead with it.

  • Rank your open work by severity:

  • 🔴 Blocked: mitigation and ETA

  • 🟡 At risk: what could slip

  • 🟢 On track: one line

🔹 Adapt. Don't have what they ask for? Commit to a follow-up by tomorrow morning, then deliver. If they want a different format, use it next time.

I ran a version of this with a VP who has since retired. It earned me a reputation as a serious executor, not an amateur, and fast-tracked me from junior to senior engineer early in my career.

Got two to ten minutes? Make every one count.

Your turn: What's your go-to move for leadership updates? Tell me on LinkedIn (link below).

Behind the post

If you remember one line from this post, make it this: build your ask into the mitigation. "We're blocked on Legal" is a complaint. "We're unblocked by Friday if we get Legal's sign-off this week" is a plan with a lever only the leader can pull. Leaders like being handed levers.

A few practical notes:

  • Bring a one-pager, even if you never share it. Writing it forces the ranking: what's red, what's yellow, what can be one line.
  • Lead with what changed. Leaders remember deltas, not inventories.
  • Close the loop in writing. A three-line recap after the meeting (decisions, owners, dates) is how your update becomes their talking points.

This builds on Corporate Tip #24, which covers the same storytelling in your day-to-day standups.