I once worked with a leader who was completely frustrated. He had an important new initiative that made perfect sense to him, and he couldn’t understand why his team wasn’t getting behind it. He had the numbers, the projections, the charts, and enough evidence to make what he thought was an airtight case. Yet every time he presented the plan, he walked away feeling like he had somehow lost the room.
So he did what many of us do when we’re struggling to convince others: he gave them even more information. Instead of creating clarity, he could almost see his team moving further away.
During one of our conversations, I asked him, “What do you actually want them to understand?” He immediately started explaining the data again, so I stopped him and asked the question one more time. What did he want them to understand?
That was when the conversation changed. What he really wanted his team to see wasn’t a percentage or projection. Their customers were changing, and if the company continued serving them the way it always had, eventually those customers were going to go somewhere else. The initiative wasn’t change for the sake of change, it was about remaining relevant to the people the organization existed to serve.
The numbers had been telling him something important all along. He just hadn’t connected the dots for his team. And that is the heart of data storytelling.
Data Isn’t the Story
When people hear the phrase data storytelling, they sometimes assume we’re talking about making charts more attractive or finding an entertaining way to present statistics. But data storytelling isn’t about decorating numbers with a good story. It’s the bridge between what the numbers say and what people need to understand about them.
Imagine I tell you customer retention dropped eight percent last year. You have a fact, but you don’t know whether eight percent is alarming or expected, which customers are leaving, or why. Now imagine I tell you that most of that decline came from customers who had been with the company for five years or longer, and they’re increasingly moving to a competitor offering a service we’ve been slow to provide. Suddenly, that eight percent is a warning about our relationship with some of our most loyal customers.
Good data storytelling doesn’t manipulate evidence to fit the story we want to tell, it helps the audience understand the story the evidence is already telling us.
Your Audience Is Thinking, “So What?”
Every time you put a number on a screen, there is a question hanging silently in the room: So what?
Revenue increased 11 percent. Employee turnover decreased six percent. Website conversions moved from 3.1 to 4.4 percent. Those numbers may be important, but their importance probably isn’t obvious to everyone listening.
Before I put a statistic in a presentation, I like to imagine someone in the audience looking at me and asking, “Okay, LaQuita. So what?” If I can’t answer them, the number probably isn’t ready for the slide yet. The presenter may have spent weeks studying reports and watching a trend develop, but the audience hasn’t lived with that information. We can’t assume they see what we see.
One of the simplest data storytelling techniques is to answer three questions: What happened? Why does it matter? What happens next?
If employee turnover decreased six percent, don’t stop there. Maybe a new manager-development program contributed to the decrease, which means there may be a case for expanding it. Now you’ve given the audience more than a statistic, you’ve given them an actionable insight.
Don’t Make Your Audience Find the Story
My years as an actor taught me something about attention that I’ve carried into my work as a communication coach. When you’re watching a well-directed movie, you rarely think about where the director wants you to look. You simply look there.
The camera moves closer. The background falls out of focus. We cut from a wide shot to someone’s face at exactly the moment their expression matters. A good director has an entire set available, but that doesn’t mean everything belongs in the frame at once. The director makes choices because our attention is part of the story.
Presenting data requires the same discipline. Your spreadsheet may contain 200 data points, just as a movie set may contain hundreds of things the camera could show us. That doesn’t mean they all belong in the shot. If one number changes the conversation, give it the close-up. If another provides useful context but isn’t central to the message, let it stay in the background.
Your job is to decide where the camera points.
How to Tell a Better Data Story
You don’t need to become a data scientist to become a better data storyteller. You need to become more intentional about what you’re asking your audience to see, understand, and ultimately do. Before your next data-heavy presentation, walk through these five steps.
Start With the Decision, Not the Spreadsheet
Before opening PowerPoint, complete this sentence: “When I’m finished, I want my audience to understand ______ and do ______.”
Maybe you need leadership to approve an investment, managers to change a process, or employees to understand why a new initiative matters. Once you know the destination, choose the data that helps your audience get there. The data should support the conversation you’re trying to have, not determine it.
Find the Number That Changes the Conversation
When everything is emphasized, nothing feels important. Ask yourself, “If my audience remembers only one number tomorrow morning, which one needs to survive?”
It might be the drop that breaks a five-year pattern or the customer segment responsible for most of your growth. Once you’ve found it, build around it. Think of that number as the lead actor. Supporting data has a role to play, but it doesn’t need to fight for the close-up. If you can’t choose one number, that’s often a sign that you haven’t found your story yet.
Give Your Numbers Something to Stand Next To
Numbers become meaningful through comparison. Saying customer satisfaction is 82 percent sounds positive, but is it? Ask, “Compared with what?”
If sales increased 12 percent in a market that grew only three percent, say that. Now the audience understands the significance instead of having to guess. Useful context might be last year’s result, an industry benchmark, a competitor, or the goal you were trying to reach.
Tell People Where to Look
Don’t put a complicated chart on the screen and patiently walk through every data point. Give your audience a destination first. You might say, “There are three things happening on this chart, but I want you to focus on one,” or, “Don’t focus on the total yet. Look at who’s driving it.”
Then give people a moment to look before continuing. Research into narrative visualization has explored this same idea, showing how visual structure and narrative techniques can help guide an audience through data rather than leaving them to make sense of everything on their own. This is the practical side of deciding where the camera points. You’re directing attention toward the information that matters instead of making your audience hunt for it.
Don’t End on the Chart
A chart may be evidence, but it isn’t a conclusion. Once you’ve shown people what happened, ask, “Because we now know this, what needs to happen next?”
If long-term customer retention has dropped sharply, perhaps the next step is talking with those customers. If one sales region is dramatically outperforming the others, perhaps it’s time to find out what that team is doing differently. The strongest data stories don’t end with people thinking, “That’s interesting.” They end with people understanding what needs to happen next.
The Number Isn’t What They’ll Remember
I think back to that leader who couldn’t understand why his team wasn’t embracing the change he was proposing. His problem was never a lack of evidence. He was asking his team to sort through the numbers and discover for themselves the message he already understood.
Once he started helping people see what those numbers meant for their customers, their work, and the future of the organization, the conversation changed. The data hadn’t changed, but the way people understood it had.
That’s the distinction I want leaders to remember about data storytelling. Great data storytellers understand that their job isn’t to make people stare harder at the numbers. It’s to decide what belongs in the frame, point the camera toward what matters, and give people enough context to understand what they’re seeing.
Weeks from now, your audience may not remember the percentage on slide seven. But they can remember what it meant, why it mattered, and, most importantly, what they decided to do because of it.
Your data already has a story. The question is whether your audience can see it. Our Storytelling Coaching helps you turn complex information, insights, and ideas into clear, compelling stories that people understand, remember, and act on. Ready to make your message mean more? Explore Storytelling Coaching
