Most of us have no problem recapping what we worked on over the year. Proving why it mattered is where the real opportunity is. In this final post of the advanced communication series, I share tips and real-world examples to help translate your work into clear business impact. It’s a practical skill that makes performance reviews stronger, exec conversations sharper, and your ideas far more likely to get a green light.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been sharing concepts from the 10-week advanced communication program I participated in recently. We covered how to stop the stories hijacking your confidence, and how to become a solution seeker when the pressure is on. Today’s post wraps up the series with how to speak the language of impact. Think of it as the difference between “I worked really hard this year” and actually being able to prove it which, as it turns out, is significantly more useful.
If you’re in the middle of end-of-year performance reviews right now, consider this your perfectly timed read. These tips will help you move beyond a list of activities and into language that clearly shows how you added value to the business. Your future self (and your manager) will thank you.
At its core, it’s the difference between describing what you did and explaining what actually changed because you did it. That second part is where most of us get stuck. It’s also the part your leadership team actually cares about.
How Executives Actually Think About Impact
Here’s a reframe that’s worth holding onto. When leaders evaluate your work, they’re typically thinking through one of three lenses: what business value was created, what risk was reduced or avoided, and what was accelerated (better speed to market, more efficiency, clearer decisions etc). That’s the mental checklist running in the background whenever you make an ask or share a result.
So the shift is this: stop leading with what you did, and start leading with what moved because of it.
A Four-Step Framework to Get There
Once you have the mindset, here’s how to put it into practice.
Step 1: Start with your goal or ask. Get clear and specific on what you’re proposing or what you’ve accomplished. Vague is the enemy here.
Step 2: Define how success is measured. If you don’t know what Key Performance Indicator (KPI) your executive or your area of the business is being tracked against, find out. Asking what does success look like and how is it measured? early is one of the best things to establish upfront.
Step 3: Quantify the impact. This is where you connect the dots. If you met a milestone, what did that actually mean? If you improved a process, by how much? Numbers give your work credibility and context.
Step 4: Where possible, assign a dollar value. Not every role makes this easy, but when you can tie your work to a revenue increase, cost savings, or efficiency gain, you’ve made the business case almost impossible to dismiss.
Three Real-World Examples
Here are a few real-world examples shared in the training to show what it looks like in practice.
Asking for headcount. A common ask might sound like: I need approval to add one resource to support our team’s expanded scope, estimated at $90K a year. While that’s clear and direct, it’s missing the quantified case. A stronger version adds extra context to support the ask. The team’s scope has grown 50% year over year, service requests have increased by 10 per month, and the internal SLA has already slipped from 90% to 70% (a measurable risk). Then you take it one step further: with the added resource, the estimated ROI from supporting that expanded scope is $500K annually, and the SLA returns to the expected standard. Now your boss has everything needed to assess the request and make an informed decision.
Performance review language. A global sales readiness program manager initially described her year as: “I led the global sales readiness program and exceeded all milestones.” With a bit more context, the story got stronger. She actually led four internal teams and 16 global field teams, delivered work three weeks early, and helped regions get to market faster, contributing to $450K above plan. She didn’t own the revenue, but her impact was clear, specific, and hard to miss. Apparently, she was promoted soon after!
Streamlining a process. When too many stakeholders slow things down, it’s easy to say “we need to streamline” and leave it at that. A stronger approach quantifies the problem first to signal why that impacts the business. For example, if stakeholders in client pitches grew from 10 to 25, the issue may be that it adds two weeks to get decisions made and roughly $50K in cost per client. Then get specific about the recommendation and the impact: reduce to 12 core stakeholders, add a weekly update for the rest which may result to up to $200K in annual savings. Now it’s a conversation people can clearly see the benefit and move on.
One Quick Gut Check
Take a project you’re currently working on and run through these questions:
What’s my goal or ask?
How is success measured?
What’s the quantified impact?
And if applicable, what’s the dollar value?
If any of those have gaps, that’s where to focus. That way you have the success metrics and clarity how to frame up the work that will demonstrate value to the business.
Wrapping Up
We’ve covered a lot of ground over these three posts. Interrupting the stories that undermine your confidence. Moving from problem to solution with clarity. And now, making the impact of your contributions visible and undeniable. These three skills together make for a noticeably stronger communicator and a much easier to get to a ‘yes’ and demonstrate your contributions.
If you have other tips for communicating with impact, please share below.
Thanks for reading and sharing! xx
