Speaking Their Language
How L&D Can Communicate Effectively with Senior Leadership
I've lost count of conversations where colleagues have told me they feel frustrated when presenting to senior leadership. Our lovingly crafted presentations about learning engagement scores and knowledge retention metrics are met with glazed eyes, polite nods, and then awkward questions about "business impact" that we struggle to answer convincingly. The problem isn't that we lack expertise; it's that we're speaking the wrong language entirely.
The fundamental disconnect isn't about competence; it's about audience. We've become so fluent in the language of learning that we've forgotten our senior leaders speak an entirely different dialect: the language of business performance.
The Translation Challenge
Whilst we naturally focus on learning science, engagement rates, and the elegant design of interventions, senior leaders operate in a different universe of concerns. They're not evaluating whether our training programme was well-liked or technically sophisticated. They're asking whether it moved the needle on the metrics that keep them awake at night: revenue protection, compliance risk reduction, operational efficiency, or whatever strategic priority is currently demanding their attention.
This isn't because they don't value learning, it's because they're accountable for outcomes that extend far beyond our function. When the CEO faces the board, they're not reporting on course completion rates. They're explaining why performance targets were or weren't met, and they need to understand how every departmental investment contributed to that story.
The most effective colleagues I know have learned to translate our work into business language. Instead of saying "we achieved 87% completion rates with 4.2 satisfaction scores," they say "our intervention reduced safety incidents by 23%, saving an estimated £180,000 in potential claims and maintaining our insurance premium rates." Same programme, different language, entirely different reception.
The Money Conversation
Here's where many of us stumble: discussing finances. I often hear complaints about budget constraints, procurement delays, or financial approvals being held up. The uncomfortable truth is that these barriers often exist because we haven't demonstrated fiscal competence.
Senior leaders need to trust us with money before they'll give us more of it. This means becoming fluent in basic financial concepts that govern how businesses operate. Understanding the difference between CAPEX (capital expenditure for long-term assets) and OPEX (operational expenditure for day-to-day running costs) isn't academic; it's essential for positioning our requests appropriately.
A learning management system might be CAPEX if it's a significant infrastructure investment, whilst ongoing training delivery is typically OPEX. Knowing this distinction helps us frame proposals in ways that align with budgeting cycles and financial planning. More importantly, it signals that we understand how businesses actually work.
The key is developing relationships with finance colleagues who can help us understand our organisation's specific financial context. Don't guess about fiscal terminology or make assumptions about budgeting processes. Ask questions, learn the systems, and demonstrate that we can think beyond learning outcomes to business outcomes.
Understanding the Pressure Cooker
Senior leadership teams operate under pressures that most of us never see. They answer to boards, investors, regulators, and stakeholders whose expectations shape every decision. A chief executive backed by venture capital faces entirely different pressures than one answerable to pension fund investors. The former needs rapid, measurable growth to satisfy investors looking for quick returns; the latter requires steady, sustainable progress that protects long-term value.
These seemingly abstract financial arrangements directly impact what businesses ask of us. A company under pressure for rapid growth might need training that accelerates time-to-productivity for new hires. An organisation focused on long-term stability might prioritise leadership development that builds sustainable capability over time.
Research by Cascio and Boudreau (2011) demonstrates that understanding these contextual pressures significantly improves the strategic relevance of our interventions. When we understand what success looks like from a senior leader's perspective, we can design and communicate about learning in ways that directly support their objectives.
Building Our Strategic Communication Toolkit
Effective communication with senior leadership requires shifting from feature-focused to outcome-focused language. Instead of describing what our programme does, articulate what it achieves in terms that matter to business performance. Use their metrics, their timelines, and their success criteria.
This doesn't mean abandoning our learning expertise; it means translating that expertise into business impact. We need to develop the ability to trace clear connections between learning interventions and performance outcomes, acknowledging the complexity whilst maintaining credibility about what we can and cannot measure.
Note: This touches on our past topics of correlation and causation, as well as statistics and credibility of reporting.
The Career Investment
Mastering these communication skills serves a dual purpose. Not only does it make us more effective in our current roles, but it prepares us for senior leadership positions ourselves. If you aspire to become a head of L&D or chief learning officer, you'll need these same capabilities to succeed at board level.
I get to work with senior leaders not because of some technical ability, but because I learned to speak ‘business language’ fluently while maintaining my learning expertise. I work to demonstrate that investment in people development directly serves organisational objectives, making the function indispensable rather than optional.
Senior leadership communication isn't about compromising our professional values; it's about expanding our influence to create more effective learning environments that genuinely improve performance. When we speak their language, they're more likely to invest in ours.
References
Cascio, W. F., & Boudreau, J. W. (2011). Investing in People: Financial Impact of Human Resource Initiatives. 2nd ed. FT Press.