How to Build a Story Around Data

In today’s charged political atmosphere, media fact-checks are abundant. And they’ve led to a phrase that is admirably accurate yet often frustrating: “this requires context.” 

The term is a shorthand for the idea that one data point, or one assertion, isn’t enough to explain what’s going on in a situation. And though your association’s board meetings may not be as fraught as a circa-2024 political campaign, it’s just as essential for leaders to think about the context they provide around the information they’re sharing.

To put it more directly: Leaders need to be good storytellers. That’s one takeaway I had after working on a feature on storytelling around data for the latest set of Associations Now Deep Dives. As facilitator and former association professional Jeffrey Cufaude explained, the charts and graphs that are at the core of the typical association board book won’t tell the full story and are prone to interpretation bias. And in polarized times, the risk of misinterpretation is more pronounced.

“I find that people are not as self-aware as I think they once were, or they’re a little more hardened about the lenses or filters through which they’re running data to make meaning from it,” he says. “What I’ve seen from a facilitation standpoint is either an unwillingness or a difficulty in accepting or appreciating a story that doesn’t align with the story they’re telling themselves.”

So a leader’s job is twofold: Not only do they have to present a story around the data they’re sharing, they have to surface the kinds of misinterpretations that others might be making around it. 

In the Deep Dive, Association of Technology Leaders in Independent Schools executive director Christina Lewellen explained how she addresses that challenge by presenting data in the context of the association’s roots and core principles. Emphasizing the common ground—the association’s origin story—can help fend off misinterpretation.

It can also help to get a sense of where people aren’t confident in the numbers. In board meetings, Cufaude might solicit input about how people feel about what they see in the numbers they’re reading: “I bring it to bear when we talk about strategic planning,” he says. “If the organization is going to be interpreting data, it’s useful to tell people the confidence levels they have for that interpretation. ‘We’re 75 percent sure that this data means this for our profession.’”

As Cufaude notes in the article, leaders do well to acknowledge the range of voices in the room when talking through data. A North American board member may have a different take on a trend line, or its importance, than somebody in Europe. The same can be true for generational differences, or ethnic and racial differences.

That doesn’t mean that a story needs to be tailored for every person in the room. But leaders need to have a sense of what the context of information is for a variety of stakeholders. And Cufaude notes that leaders aren’t immune to bias either. 

“What I think about is, is your message going to resonate with your different stakeholder groups and the cultures that are represented in them,” he says. “Use whatever language is going to work to get people to broaden out those filters.”