Is Your Data Failing - or Is the Storyline Floundering?

Think like a Director: What Martin Scorsese can teach leaders about persuasion

 

You walk into a room you need to persuade.

You have the evidence.

The charts are accurate.

The recommendation is sensible.

You’ve done the analysis, anticipated the questions and perhaps added another three slides to make absolutely certain the case is watertight.

Your delivery is confident.

But as you wrap up, you sense it.

The room is strangely unmoved.

So what do we tend to do?

Add more evidence.

Another graph. Another statistic. Another explanation of the methodology.

And still, the room seems to be slipping away.

What if the data isn’t the problem?

What if it's your storyline that's floundering?

 

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Getting the Balance Right

 

I think we may be missing something important here.

As leaders, we are frequently encouraged to become better analysts and clearer communicators. Far fewer of us are encouraged to become more creative communicators.

Yet persuasion needs both.

We need reason, evidence and credibility. We need an argument capable of surviving scrutiny.

But people do not absorb information like analytical machines.

We notice some things and miss others. We anticipate. We interpret. We look for cause and consequence. We identify with people and experiences. And, consciously or not, we are asking:

Why does this matter to me?

Why should my team - or the community - care?

 

Persuasion is both art and science

This is where the science becomes interesting.

Research into narrative persuasion uses the term transportation to describe what happens when we become mentally drawn into a story.

We stop standing outside the information simply assessing it. For a moment, we enter its world. We picture what is happening. We anticipate what might happen next.

Then there is identification.

We see the situation through another person’s eyes. We recognise something of ourselves, our concerns or our aspirations in their experience.

These are not tricks.

They are part of the way human beings make meaning.

And they help explain why a story, a vivid example or a carefully chosen scene can sometimes reach an audience in a way another bullet point cannot.

But there is an important caveat.

Storytelling cannot rescue a weak argument.

Story is not a substitute for substance.

It helps people encounter the substance differently.

And this is where I think leaders can learn something from master directors.

What would Scorsese direct us to notice?

 

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What if Scorsese were your coach?

 

Imagine Martin Scorsese sitting beside you as you prepare your next board presentation, strategy update or case for change.

It sounds slightly absurd.

Which is precisely why I like the exercise.

Scorsese has spent a lifetime thinking about how an audience experiences a story: where it begins, whose point of view we inhabit, what is revealed, what is withheld, where the pace shifts and what gets left on the cutting-room floor.

Those are creative choices.

But they are also choices about attention.

A director cannot give equal weight to everything.

Neither can a leader.

So I doubt his first question would be:

Have you included all the information?

He might be more interested in:

• Where does this story really begin?
• What does the audience need to see first?
• Where is the tension - and how can it propel the story?
• What belongs in the foreground?
• Whose experience allows us to understand what is at stake?
• What can be cut?
• Where should the pace change?
• And what do you want us to be left thinking about at the end?

I suggest these are surprisingly useful questions for anyone trying to make a persuasive case.

They also change the way we think about constructing a presentation.

Instead of asking, What information do I need to include?, we begin asking, What experience do I need to create for this audience?

And that changes where we begin.

The next directorial tip determines where you end up. 

 

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Don’t show us the footage in the order you collected it

 

Many presentations feel less like a tightly directed film script and more like footage shown in the order in which it was collected.

A leader might begin with background.

Then methodology.

Then six months of activity.

Then the findings.

Then perhaps, somewhere around slide 27, we finally reach the thing that really matters.

It is logical from the presenter’s point of view.

But it is not necessarily compelling from the audience’s.

 

A director thinks differently.

They choose the moment that draws us into the story.

Consider the difference between:

"Today I’ll take you through the results of our six-month customer experience review."

And:

"Last month, one of our longest-standing customers said something that stopped me in my stride: “Working with you has become much harder than it needs to be.” Our last six months of data suggest she is not alone."

Now I want to know more.

The data hasn’t changed.

But its meaning has moved into the foreground.

We have a person.

A problem.

A tension.

A question that needs resolving.

Now the analysis has somewhere to go.

 

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Creativity does not diminish credibility

 

This, for me, is the bigger leadership point.

I sometimes see highly accomplished leaders become strangely cautious when I invite them to experiment with the way they communicate.

Story can feel too theatrical.

Metaphor too decorative.

Suspense too manipulative.

A vivid opening somehow less serious than a conventional one.

So they retreat to information and predictable presentation formats.

But creativity does not mean embellishing the truth.

It means helping people see it.

A creative communicator notices the tension.

Chooses what deserves emphasis.

Connects abstract consequences with human experience.

Creates contrast between where we are and where we could be.

And gives the audience enough imaginative material to picture what the future might actually look and feel like.

That is not embellishment for the sake of it.

It is part of the craft of persuasion.

 

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Take-away: Try directing the story

 

Before your next high-stakes communication, I’d experiment with five questions.

1. Find the central point

What is the one thing your audience absolutely needs to understand?

Not the eight findings.

Not everything you discovered.

The central point.

If they remember one idea tomorrow morning, what must it be?

 

2. Reveal the tension

Stories move because something is unresolved.

Something has changed.

Something isn’t working.

Two priorities are colliding.

An opportunity is opening.

A risk is approaching.

Ask:

What tension already exists inside my data?

You do not need to manufacture drama.

Very often, the tension is already there. You simply haven’t named it.

 

3. Humanise the consequence

Who experiences this?

A customer?

An employee?

A manager trying to implement the strategy?

A community?

Numbers tell us scale.

Human experience helps us understand consequence.

Use both.

 

4. Create the picture

Directors think in images.

Leaders can too.

What scene, example, contrast or analogy would help the audience see what you mean?

Instead of telling us collaboration between two divisions is poor, take us briefly into the Monday morning meeting where the consequences become visible.

Instead of describing the desired culture in six abstract nouns, show us what one meeting would sound and feel like if that culture actually existed.

Move from abstraction to scene.

 

5. Direct the ending

Don’t simply arrive at your final slide.

Decide where you want to leave us.

What should we now understand?

What should feel possible?

What choice has become clearer?

What action follows?

Directors know that endings matter because they continue to reverberate after the screen goes dark.

Leadership communication is no different.

 

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Every leader needs to sit in the director’s chair

 

Persuasion asks more of us than presenting good evidence well.

It asks us to shape attention, reveal what matters and help people see why it matters.

That means making choices about where to begin, what to foreground, what to leave out, and what we want the audience to understand, feel or see differently by the end.

So perhaps the question is:

What would change if you approached your next important communication not just as a presenter - but as a director?

Until next time,

Veronica

©️ 2026 Veronica Allardice, Founder Theatre of Leadership™️

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