The ability to influence isn’t about manipulation; it’s the superpower of Business Emotional Intelligence that allows a leader to transform a brilliant idea in their head into a shared mission in the hearts of their team. It’s the difference between a visionary and a lone voice shouting into the void. This power rests on three pillars. Let’s explore each with a dose of humor, examining what soaring success and spectacular failure look like in the modern workplace.

1. Clear Thinking & Articulation: The “What”

This is the foundation. If your brain is a tangled ball of yarn, your message will be too.

Failure: The Jargon Jamboree
Meet Brenda, a mid-level manager tasked with launching a new customer outreach initiative. In the kickoff meeting, she stands before her team, beaming with confidence, and declares: “Okay, team, we’re going to leverage a synergistic, paradigm-shifting approach to optimize our B2C touchpoints. We’ll utilize a best-of-breed platform to ideate, then socialize the concept for buy-in, ensuring we’re all rowing in the same direction. We need to circle back, drill down, and ping-pong some ideas to move the needle. So, who’s ready to action this?”

The room is silent, save for the faint sound of brain cells short-circuiting. Her team leaves the meeting utterly paralyzed. Does “leveraging a touchpoint” mean calling people? Emailing? Sending a carrier pigeon? The project is doomed from the start, not because the idea is bad, but because it was drowned in a vat of meaningless buzzwords. Brenda didn’t articulate a thought; she recited a corporate word salad.

Success: The “Cookie” Clarity
Contrast this with a contemporary master of clarity: Stewart Butterfield, the co-founder of Slack. When launching the now-ubiquitous platform, he didn’t call it a “cloud-based, multi-channel collaborative ecosystem for synergistic workflow management.” He famously described the problem it solved in a way anyone could understand: work communication was broken. Email was a messy “everything bucket,” and ideas got lost. He articulated Slack’s purpose with stunning simplicity: “It’s a searchable log of all your team’s communication.” He used clear, concrete language. Everyone instantly got the what and the why. The clear thought led to a clear message, which led to a multi-billion dollar acquisition.

2. Structuring Thoughts: The “How”

This is about architecture. A clear message must be packaged in a structure that captures attention, holds it, and, most crucially, sticks.

Failure: The Data Dump of Doom
Imagine Phil, an eager analyst, has discovered a critical flaw in the company’s login process causing a 30% drop-off in users. He scheduled 15 minutes with the head of product. He arrives, opens a spreadsheet with 47 tabs, and begins: “So, in Q2, our KPIs for user acquisition, which you’ll see on tab 4, graph B, were trending positively, but if we cross-reference that with the session duration metrics—hold on, let me find that—ah, yes, tab 17… and if we apply a regression analysis to the cohort data…” Two minutes in, the product head’s eyes have glazed over. Phil has all the right information, but he’s structured it like a labyrinth. He never leads with the punchline. The meeting ends with a polite “Thanks, Phil, send me the deck,” and the login flow remains inactive for another six months.

Success: The “Pizza” Proposition
A successful example of structuring a message comes from a now-legendary startup tactic. A young product manager needed to convince her skeptical engineering team to prioritize a new feature she believed was vital. She knew engineers appreciate logic, efficiency, and… pizza.

She didn’t start with specs. She started with a story: “Imagine a user, Sarah. She’s hungry, she opens our app to order a pizza, but the menu takes forever to load. She gets frustrated and closes it. We just lost a customer.” (Attention-Getting). She then showed one simple slide: a graph with a single, stark red line plummeting, labeled “User Drop-off vs. Load Time.” (Attention-Holding). Finally, she delivered the memorable clincher. She said, “Fixing this load time issue isn’t a feature. It’s literally saving pizzas. Every second we shave off, we save 1,000 pizzas a month from being abandoned. Let’s go save some pizza.” The structure (Story -> Data -> Memorable Metaphor) was flawless. The team not only prioritized the fix but started referring to performance optimizations as “pizza saves.”

3. Impactful Delivery: The “Feeling”

This isn’t magic. It’s the passion, authenticity, and energy that turns a memo into a movement.

Failure: The Motivational Monotone
Picture a company-wide rally. The CEO, David, walks on stage to unveil the new, exciting company vision. The content is good. The slides are beautiful. But David delivers the speech like he’s reading a EULA – end user license agreement. Arms stiff, voice a flat, robotic drone: “We are… excited… to embark on this… new journey… together. Synergy… innovation… market leadership… blah.” He mispronounces the new slogan. He stares at the teleprompter like it’s holding his family hostage. The audience feels nothing but the overwhelming desire to check their phones. His delivery has actively sucked the energy out of the room. The vision is dead on arrival.

Success: The Authentic Airtime
For a masterclass in delivery, look no further than Apple events. While Tim Cook has his own style, he learned from the modern archetype: Steve Jobs. When Jobs introduced the iPod, he didn’t just list specs. He built drama. “What’s an iPod?” he asked, pausing for effect. He held the device reverently. His voice was full of genuine wonder. “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The message was simple, but the delivery—the showmanship, the confidence, the palpable belief in the product—made it iconic. It wasn’t a presentation; it was a performance that made you feel the revolution. You didn’t just want the specs; you wanted the future he was making you believe in.

In the end, influence is the bridge between a leader’s intellect and their team’s action. Mastering these three components—clear content, clever structure, and compelling delivery—ensures that when you ask your team to cross that bridge, they won’t just follow; they’ll sprint.

About Author

Fay Niewiadomski

I awaken leaders to purposefully discern the best way forward, with such clarity, that they find within themselves the courage, wisdom, and compassion to do what they never dared to do before.

I’ve been privileged to work closely with C-level officers, presidents, ministers, global chairpersons, diplomats, board members, senior business and political leaders, and their teams to successfully navigate complex, high-stakes situations and make sound business and personal decisions resulting in profound and lasting change.

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