The usual advice on how to present a recommendation to leadership is about the meeting. Put your answer first, keep it short and rehearse until you could do it in half the time. That advice is sound, but it covers the smallest part of the job, because a recommendation is a request for a decision and the meeting is only one step in it. In my view most of the work happens in the weeks before it, when you decide what you’re asking for and which options to show. The rest happens in the days after, because the answer you get is often “not yet” rather than yes or no.
So this guide follows the decision in order, and it starts with what you’re asking leaders to decide, then the options you looked at and turned down. Next come the risks you own, the memo that carries your case and who should see it before the meeting. The last parts cover the room itself and what to do with “not yet”, which the usual advice skips. This is advice from one person, so where research backs a point I’ll name the source. Where it doesn’t, I’ll tell you it’s my judgment.
How do you present a recommendation to leadership, and what are you asking them to decide?
Start by checking that you’re bringing a recommendation at all. A status update tells leaders where something stands, while a brainstorm asks them to think with you. A recommendation asks a named person to choose something. It might be a budget or a hire, a change to a process, or stopping a project that isn’t working. Presenting it draws on the same communication skills at work as any other conversation. The difference is that this conversation has to end in a decision.
It also helps to know what this guide isn’t. If you need a talk track for the twenty minutes themselves, the section on the room points you to guides on delivery. If you’re reporting progress rather than asking for something, you want a guide to communicating your impact instead. A request for your own raise or promotion is a personal ask, which is a different conversation. The section on “not yet” explains how it differs.
A decision ask is something one person can say yes to, and it has three parts. There’s a decider, meaning the person whose yes makes it happen. There’s a size, meaning how much money or how many people or weeks. The third part is the date by which the decision has to be made, along with the reason for that date. Say a support lead wants two more people for the weekend shift. The decider is the COO, because the budget sits with her. The size is two hires, and the date is the end of the month, because that’s when next quarter’s hiring plan closes. If any of the three parts is missing, leaders can agree with you and still not decide anything.
That’s also why an ask framed “for visibility” or “for input” tends to get a pleasant meeting and no decision. Nobody in the room has been asked to do anything, so the safe move for everyone is to nod and ask a question or two before moving to the next item. You leave feeling it went well, and a month later nothing has changed. If you do want input, say which decision the input is for and when you’ll come back for it.
Our guide to improving your written communication covers why the ask goes near the top of anything you send. Here the point is what the ask contains, so run one test on it before you book the meeting. Could your sponsor repeat the ask to a leader who missed the meeting without looking at your notes? They’d need to say who decides, how big it is and by when. If all they could say is “it’s about the weekend staffing thing”, the ask isn’t finished. A sponsor who can repeat it can also defend it in conversations you won’t be part of.
Why should you show the options you rejected?
My advice is to show leaders the options you turned down, and not only the one you picked. A recommendation reads as a choice when leaders can see the other options you looked at and why you ruled them out. When they can’t see them, it reads as a verdict. People respond to a verdict by testing it, and they test it with whatever alternatives come to mind in the moment. That’s my judgment rather than a finding. I don’t know of any study that shows options plus a recommendation get approved more often. But showing the options does change what the meeting is about. Leaders spend the time weighing your reasons instead of inventing alternatives. It’s ordinary decision making, done where the people who own the decision can see it.
Why is a menu of one risky?
When leaders see a single option, they don’t simply accept or reject it but start building the alternatives themselves. Someone asks whether you’ve thought about using an agency instead, and someone else asks why you don’t just wait a quarter. Each of those is a fair question, but they’re being asked in the meeting by people who have spent far less time on the problem than you have. So the room ends up designing options from scratch, with less information than you had, and your recommendation becomes one idea among several half-formed ones.
Research on advice gives a reason to expect this, though it comes from a very different setting. Ilan Yaniv’s 2004 study of how people receive advice found that people gave their own opinion more weight than an advisor’s. People who knew more discounted the advice more. The further the advice sat from their first opinion, the less weight they gave it. Using the advice still made their answers more accurate, though not by as much as it could have. These were lab tasks where people made numeric estimates with one advisor, so they don’t tell us anything direct about leadership meetings.
But I’d draw one inference from them. Senior leaders know a lot and usually arrive with a view, so a recommendation that lands far from that view is likely to be discounted. That’s a reason to start from what they already believe and show the steps from there to your answer. The options you rejected are those steps.
Decision research has also looked at how managers frame a problem in the first place. Paul Nutt’s 1993 study examined 163 decisions in organizations and identified four ways managers went about framing them. He judged each one by whether it was adopted, by its merit and by its duration. The abstract doesn’t say how many of those managers looked at only one option, so I won’t give you a figure for it.
How many options should you show, and which ones?
My advice is two to four real options. That range is my judgment, and no study fixes the number. With fewer than two you’re back to a menu of one. With more than four the room starts comparing options against each other instead of deciding. Each comparison opens another conversation, and the meeting ends with a request to narrow the list.
Two kinds of option should almost always be on that list. The first is doing nothing, which isn’t a straw man you put up to knock down. Doing nothing has its own cost, and that cost has its own date. If the weekend shift stays short, response times may keep slipping and someone on the team may quit by spring. Put that in the same terms as the other options so leaders can compare like with like. Sometimes doing nothing really is the best choice, and if you’ve costed it honestly, you’ll be the first to see that.
The second is a smaller version of what you want. It tests the idea at lower cost, and it can be undone if it doesn’t work. A smaller version gives a cautious leader a way to say yes without betting the whole amount. It also gives you something to offer if the full ask gets a “not yet”.
Any other options should be the ones a sharp skeptic would raise. If you leave out the obvious alternative, someone will bring it up in the meeting, and you’ll be defending a gap instead of a choice.
What does a table of killed options look like?
Here’s an illustrative example, which is a composite made up for this guide. Every figure in it is invented. There’s one more thing to know before you read it. I built Risely, and it’s one of the options in the table. So read this as an example of the method and not as my verdict on the options.
Laura is head of people at a logistics company with about 900 staff and around 80 first-line managers. Most of those managers were promoted from the warehouse floor or from specialist roles, and nobody taught them how to manage. Last year 11 of the 40 people who left named their manager in the exit interview. Laura wants the leadership team to invest in developing those managers, and she needs a decision before next year’s budget is set. She laid out her options like this.
| Option | What it would get you | Why Laura killed or kept it | What would make her revisit it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do nothing | No new spending and no time away from the job. Managers keep learning by doing, as they do now. | Killed. The cost still arrives, only more slowly. If last year repeats, another 11 or so leavers will name their manager. | A hiring freeze that means very few new managers next year. Or exit interviews that stop naming managers. |
| External human coaches for the 12 most senior managers | Real depth. A good coach can work through a messy situation over months and push back in ways a program can’t. | Killed for now. It’s the strongest help per person, but it reaches the wrong people. The exit interviews point at first-line managers, and they would get nothing. | Evidence that the problem sits with senior managers. Or a senior hire who needs close support in their first year. |
| A classroom training program for all first-line managers | A shared cohort and a common language. Managers meet peers from other sites who face the same problems. | Killed. Managers would get two good days of material. But the hard conversations come weeks later on a night shift, with nobody to ask. | Managers saying they want time with peers more than help in the moment. |
| AI coaching for every first-line manager, starting with one region for a quarter | Each manager can talk a real situation through with a coach before it happens. They can do it at any hour, in tools they already use. | Kept and recommended. It reaches the managers the exit interviews point at, when they need help. Its main risk is that managers try it once and stop. It also only knows what they choose to tell it. | Low use after the first quarter. Or managers saying the situations they face need a person. |
The AI coaching option in her table is Risely, and it has to earn its row the same way the others do. Laura’s reason for keeping it is about reach and timing. The exit interviews point at first-line managers. Their hardest moments come weeks after any course, often on a night shift. So she favors the option that reaches those managers at that moment. That reasoning only holds if managers actually use the coach, which is why low use is both her main risk and her reason to revisit. A leader who doubts the option will attack exactly that link, so it’s the one she has to be ready to defend. If you want to see what the option involves, managers talk a situation through with an AI coach called Merlin inside Slack or Microsoft Teams. If you’re weighing the classroom row, our comparison of live training and AI coaching sets out where each one fits. If you work in HR or L&D and you’re making this exact case, our business case builder can help you write it up for your leadership team.
But the product isn’t the point of the example. The point is how each kill is worded, because every one does three things. First it names the reason. A stated reason gives leaders something specific to disagree with, which is far better than a vague sense that you didn’t like the option. Second, it concedes what the rejected option does well. Human coaching really is deeper, and a classroom cohort really does bring managers together. Saying so shows you weighed each option fairly, and it means the leader who likes that option doesn’t feel dismissed. Last, it says what evidence would reopen the option. That turns a flat no into “not under these conditions”. Anyone who disagrees can now argue with evidence instead of arguing with you.
The recommended row gets exactly the same columns, including its own risk and its own reason to revisit. If your favorite option is the only row without a weakness, leaders will assume you hid it. They’ll go looking, and they’ll trust the rest of the table less.
Laura’s table isn’t perfect either. Her case against the human coaches rests on the exit interviews, and those only hear from people who left. Two or three senior managers could be causing problems that never show up in that data. A skeptic would be right to ask about it. She’s right about where most of the visible damage is, but she may be wrong to treat the senior managers as fine.
Why should you recommend only one option?
Once the options are on the table, recommend one of them. Say it as a choice among the options you’ve just shown. Give the reason it beats the others, and say what would change your mind. Laura might name the usage level below which she’d switch to the classroom program. A condition like that shows you’ve thought past your own answer, and it gives the skeptic something specific to test.
It’s tempting to recommend two options and let leaders pick, because it feels respectful, but it hands the decision back to the room. Making the call was the job you were asked to do. If two options really are that close, say so and say what would break the tie. If the tie can’t be broken in time, name the one you’d choose anyway.
There’s a useful test for whether you’re ready. Jeff Bezos described one in his 2017 letter to shareholders, which is dated 18 April 2018. Amazon replaced slide presentations with six-page memos that are read silently at the start of meetings. Bezos wrote that great memos are “written and re-written” and “shared with colleagues who are asked to improve the work.” After that they’re set aside for a couple of days and edited again with a fresh mind. He added that a good six-page memo “might take a week or more.” You don’t need six pages, but try writing out each option you ruled out and why in full sentences. If you can’t, the meeting is where your unfinished thinking will show.
Which risks do you own, and which do you name?
Every recommendation carries risks, and they come in two kinds. Some are yours to own, which means you’ll track them and watch for the first sign that they’re happening. You’ll also set a date when you’d stop if that sign shows up. One such risk for Laura is that managers try the coach once and then ignore it, and that one is hers. Her signal is how many managers are still using it after six weeks, and her stop date is the end of the quarter. A signal and a date matter because they tell leaders you’ll catch the problem early. They also tell leaders when they’ll hear about it, so nobody has to chase you for news.
Other risks aren’t yours to manage, so you name them and hand them to the person who owns them. If a reorganization next spring could change who manages whom, that risk belongs to the COO. Laura can’t stop a reorganization, but the COO can plan around one. A risk that nobody owns tends to get noticed only once it has already happened, which is why naming the owner is part of naming the risk.
Name the risks leaders will find anyway, and name them before they find them. It costs you one sentence to raise a risk yourself, but defending one that a leader found on their own costs much more, because now the question is why you didn’t mention it. A risk section that lists only small risks has the same problem. Leaders know that any real plan has a real downside, so a list of minor ones reads as if you’re hiding the big one.
You can’t name every risk, though. A leader who sees the business from a different seat will spot one you missed, and that’s part of why they’re in the room. When it happens, say the risk is new to you and say how you’d check it. Don’t pretend you’d already thought of it. Leaders can usually tell when someone is improvising, and a bluff on one risk makes them doubt the risks you did list. Admitting the gap does the opposite, because it shows your list is honest about where it stops.
What goes in an executive recommendation memo?
An executive recommendation memo is the written version of everything above. It can be read before the meeting or in the first minutes of it. Either way it should make sense to someone who never hears you speak. That makes it a test of your written communication, because you won’t be there to explain what you meant. The parts come in a set order, and each one is there for a reason.
It opens with a short line on what the memo is for. The decision you need comes straight after, along with who makes it, because a busy reader may stop after two lines. Those two lines should still tell them what they’re being asked.
Next comes the situation and what changed, because leaders will ask “why now?” if you don’t answer it. A problem that has existed for three years needs a reason it can’t wait a fourth. For Laura it might be a new site opening next year with a dozen new managers.
The options come next, along with the one you recommend. This is a short version of the table, with one or two lines per option, and the full table can go in an appendix if leaders like detail. The recommendation sits at the end of this part so the reader has seen the alternatives first.
After that come the risks, split into the ones you own and the ones you’re handing on. Give the first signal you’ll watch for each one you own.
The memo ends with the cost and the date. Cost means money, people and time stated plainly. The date is when the decision is needed and what happens if it slips. Once the decision is made, the memo becomes the record of it. That record is what a decision log is for.
Where these memo methods come from
A few well-known methods sit behind this kind of memo. Each one is often quoted a little differently from what its source says.
The phrase “bottom line up front” appears in the Army’s writing standard. The 2013 edition of Army Regulation 25-50 asks for “putting the main point at the beginning of the correspondence (bottom line up front)”. The 2002 edition asks for the main point at the beginning but doesn’t use the phrase. I couldn’t trace where the phrase was first used, so I won’t say the Army coined it. Even the Army’s memo format doesn’t put the recommendation literally first. The body opens with a short purpose sentence, and the recommendation or main point comes next. The same regulation also has a “THRU” memo. It routes a memo through other people and gives them a chance to comment, especially when their comment could affect the action. That’s a routing format and not pre-wiring, but it rests on a similar idea.
Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle dates from 1987. Her idea is that your thinking is easiest to follow when your ideas are grouped under a single point at the top of a pyramid. Her own term for framing the reader’s question is SCQ, which stands for Situation, Complication and Question. You’ll often see it written as SCQA with an Answer added. That’s a later adaptation rather than her own label.
The Amazon memo is the third, and its real lesson is the one in the options section above. Writing the memo is how you find out whether your thinking is finished.
Who should see your recommendation before the meeting?
If you’ve read our guide to getting buy-in from peers, you’ll know the idea of a pre-wire before a group decision. Pre-wiring with senior leaders is a different job. A peer can agree to back you, but a senior leader can’t be recruited like that. They may change your recommendation, and they often know things you don’t. So the aim isn’t to win their vote. It’s to learn what they already think and what their objection will be while you can still do something about it.
I should be clear about the evidence here. In my judgment most of a decision is settled before the meeting, but I can’t point to research that shows it. Pre-wiring is practitioner craft, and I couldn’t find a primary source on it that I could read. So treat what follows as advice rather than evidence.
Start with your own manager or sponsor, because they’ll have to stand behind the recommendation in rooms you’re not in. If they hear it for the first time in the meeting, they can’t defend it, and they may not want to either. Sometimes your sponsor is the obstacle. Going around them is then a judgment call you have to weigh, and it costs something whichever way you go. This is the order I’d use after your sponsor, and it’s my judgment too.
| Leader | What you want from them | What you do with the answer |
|---|---|---|
| Your sponsor or manager | Whether they’ll stand behind it, and what they expect the decider to object to | Fix what they spot before anyone else sees it |
| The decider | Their view of the problem before they’ve seen your answer, and what would make them say no | Change the order of the options so you start where they are. If they favor an option you rejected, walk them through your reasons. |
| The leader whose budget or team it touches | The cost to them that you can’t see from where you sit | Add that cost to your table. If it changes the answer, change the recommendation. |
| The skeptic | Their strongest objection in their own words | Test it against your reasons for rejecting each option. If a reason doesn’t hold, fix it. If it holds, change nothing and be ready to say why. |
| The leader with the most information | A fact you don’t have | Change the recommendation if the fact changes it. Credit them in the meeting either way. |
Put this table next to Laura’s and you’ll see they’re the same work from two sides. In my view the skeptic’s objection will most likely be about an option you turned down. When Laura talks to the COO, the question she should expect is “why not just coach the 12 senior managers?” So the pre-wire is largely a test of your reasons for ruling options out. If they survive one skeptical conversation, they have a much better chance in the room.
Sometimes a leader’s input will change your recommendation. When that happens, update it and tell everyone who saw the earlier version. Don’t quietly swap the new version in. Leaders compare notes, and a change they find on their own looks like a change you hoped they’d miss.
Pre-wiring has real limits. Done carelessly it looks like lobbying, especially to anyone who wasn’t asked. Previews also leak, so assume anything you say one to one may be repeated. If several leaders have heard it privately, the people who haven’t may feel the meeting was decided without them. One way to soften that is to say in the meeting who you spoke to beforehand and what changed as a result.
What is the room for?
If you’ve done the groundwork, the meeting isn’t where you persuade people. It’s where the decision gets confirmed and where you find the objections you couldn’t reach beforehand. The room still tests your oral communication, but mostly through the questions. Expect five kinds.
The first is a question about a fact you should have had. Admit you don’t have it, then say exactly when you’ll have it and who you’ll send it to, because a firm day keeps the decision moving and guessing does far more damage than admitting a gap. If the missing fact would change the recommendation, say that too and offer to hold the decision until you have it. Say the CFO asks Laura how many of last year’s 11 leavers worked nights. She doesn’t know. So she says she’ll pull it from the HR records by Thursday and send it to everyone in the room. A small gap handled that way costs her very little, because the leaders can see she’ll close it.
The second is about an option you rejected, and this is where the table pays off. You already know why you ruled it out, what it does well and what would bring it back. Say those three things briefly, and don’t defend that choice harder than the evidence allows. When the COO asks Laura why she isn’t coaching the 12 senior managers, she can grant that coaches give the most depth per person. Then she explains that the exit interviews point at first-line managers. Last, she says what would bring the option back, which is evidence that the trouble sits higher up. That answer is short because the thinking was done when she built the table.
The third is about a risk you’ve already named. Point back to what you said, then give the signal you’re watching and the date you’d stop. The question is usually a check that you meant it. If someone asks Laura whether managers will really keep using the coach, she doesn’t need a new argument. She points to the six-week usage number she’s tracking and the end-of-quarter date when she’d stop. A risk that comes back with its signal and its date already attached shows leaders you planned for it.
The fourth comes from a leader you didn’t pre-wire. Their objection may be new, and it may be good, so treat it as information rather than an attack. If it changes something, say so in the room. If you can’t tell yet, offer to follow up with them before the decision is final. A site director Laura didn’t speak to might say night-shift managers have no spare minute for coaching of any kind. That could be true, and it goes to the heart of her main risk. So the honest move is to say it’s a fair point and ask whether one night-shift team could be part of the first quarter’s test.
The fifth is “what if we wait?” That’s the do-nothing option in a new form, and you’ve already costed it. Say what waiting costs and by when. For Laura, waiting means another budget year before anything changes for the first-line managers. If last year repeats, another 11 or so leavers will name their manager in the meantime. If waiting really is cheaper, you’ll know it and you should say so.
Close by stating the decision back to the room with an owner and a date, and send it in writing the same day. Leaders can leave the same meeting with slightly different ideas of what was agreed. A written summary is how you find that out before it matters.
Some things the room needs aren’t covered here. If leaders want the conclusion before anything else, our guide to putting the bottom line first shows how to open. Our separate guide covers slides and presentation delivery. If nerves are the problem, start with how to calm your nerves before a presentation.
What do you do when leadership says “not yet”?
“Not yet” sounds like an answer, but it usually leaves the decision open. It’s tempting to hear it as a soft no and give up, or as a soft yes and wait. Both are mistakes, because “not yet” comes in at least four kinds and each needs a different response.
The first kind is “not this quarter”, which is about timing. Leaders may agree with you and still have no budget or attention to spare right now. Your job is to find out what the timing depends on, such as a budget cycle or another project finishing.
The second is “not this option”, where leaders accept the problem but want a different answer. Maybe they prefer an option you dropped, or one you didn’t consider. This is good news, because the problem is now agreed, so go back to your table and work the new option through the same columns.
The third is “not without more evidence”, which means leaders have named a gap. Get it named precisely, in terms of what evidence would be enough and by when. “Come back with more data” isn’t a condition you can meet. “Show us what the outages cost last quarter” is.
The fourth is “not from you” or “not with that owner”. Sometimes leaders like the idea but don’t think you’re the right person to run it, or think it belongs in another team. This one is hard to hear, but it can be the most fixable because you can propose a different owner and still get the problem solved.
Whatever the kind, don’t leave the meeting without three things. You need the condition that would turn it into a yes, an owner for meeting it and a date to come back. The next two weeks then follow a simple order.
Write those three things down on the same day and send them to the decider. Ask them to correct anything you’ve got wrong. Use the first week to close whatever gap was named or to rework the option if the answer was “not this option”. Also add the decision to a log so the option stays alive in writing and doesn’t depend on anyone’s memory. Use the second week to look for a smaller step that can be undone. A reversible decision is much easier for a cautious leader to approve. When you go back, lead with what has changed.
There are two things to avoid. Don’t re-pitch the same deck with more conviction, because nothing in it has changed, and leaders will notice. Don’t go around the decider to someone more senior either. You might win once, but you’ll have made an enemy of the person you need for the next ten decisions.
This is different from hearing “not yet” on a personal ask. Our guide to asking for what you want at work covers that case, where the decision is about you. Here the decision belongs to other people and affects their budgets and teams. So you have less right to push, but more room to change the shape of the ask.
The second illustrative example is again a composite with invented figures. Daniel is an engineering manager at a software company. He asked leadership to fund a rewrite of the billing service, with four engineers for two quarters. The service had caused three outages that quarter. He was right that it was fragile, but he’d pre-wired the CTO and skipped the CFO, and he’d put the cost of the outages at a round figure he couldn’t support. The answer was “not without more evidence”, and it came from the CFO.
Daniel spent the next two weeks pulling the incident records. The outages were real and costly, but the cost was smaller than he’d claimed. He also found that two of the three outages came from one part of the service, the code that generates invoices. So he went back with a smaller ask. He wanted one engineer for one quarter to move invoice generation onto a new system, with a review at the end. That smaller step was approved, but the full rewrite wasn’t, and the CFO told him it might not be next year either.
Daniel got something real, but not what he asked for. Part of it came from his own work and part from a CFO with a fair objection. Some “not yet” answers are simply the end, though. When the condition keeps moving each time you meet it, the honest reading is no.
When should you not bring a recommendation at all?
Everything above assumes a recommendation is the right thing to bring, but sometimes it isn’t.
You may not have enough facts. If you’d be guessing at the options or their costs, a recommendation will fall apart at the first hard question. Bring the problem instead, along with a plan for finding out what you need to know, and say when you’ll be back. In my view a recommendation that falls apart costs you more than arriving without one. Leaders will remember it when you bring the next one. A clear problem with a plan to investigate is something they can back today.
The decision may already be made. If you’re being asked to present so that leaders can ratify something they’ve settled, no amount of pre-wiring will change the answer. The honest move is to say what you would have done differently and then help make the decision work. Pre-wiring helps while a leader’s view is still forming, and here nothing is forming any more. Putting your view on record is still worth doing. It shows you thought it through, and it costs the decision nothing. Then helping it work keeps your credibility for the next decision, which may still be open.
The decision may not be theirs to make. If the real decider is the board, a regulator or another part of the business, a recommendation to this group goes nowhere. Find out who decides and start there. A group that can’t approve the decision can only pass it upward, and it may be changed on the way without you there to explain it. This group may still be worth briefing, though, because they may be the people who carry it to the real decider.
There may be a live incident. When something has gone badly wrong right now, leaders need the bottom line first and fast. Options and their trade-offs can come later, once things are stable. In a crisis leaders are choosing what to do in the next hour, and a careful set of options slows that down. Keep a note of the options you saw anyway. The review afterward will ask what else could have been done, and that’s when they’re useful.
The leader may want a menu. Some leaders want to see the options laid out evenly so they can choose themselves. To that leader a single recommendation reads as pressure, and it can count against you. Your sponsor can usually tell you which kind of leader you’re dealing with. The work doesn’t change much for that leader. You still look at the same options and test them the same way. The difference is that you lay them out evenly and keep your own choice ready in case they ask for it.
Last, you can do all of this well and still lose. You can show your options, pre-wire every leader and handle the room calmly. The decision may still turn on something you can’t see, like a budget conversation above you or a plan nobody has announced. My judgment is that the work in this guide improves your chances, though that’s judgment rather than a finding. But the outcome is still partly out of your hands, and sometimes you won’t find out why.
Run the hardest question past a skeptic first
Two parts of this are worth saying out loud before the day. One is the ask itself, in a single sentence with the decider, the size and the date. The other is the hardest question you expect, which will most likely be about an option you rejected. It’s one thing to write down why you dropped an option. Saying it calmly to someone who disagrees is harder.
Merlin can play the skeptic. You play yourself, make the ask and then take the question about the option you ruled out. Merlin pushes back the way a doubtful leader might, so you can hear how your answer sounds before it matters. You can do this in Slack or Microsoft Teams, because Merlin runs natively in both. If you’re using Merlin on your own, your conversations are private and your organization doesn’t see them. If your company assigned a coaching plan, it gets session summaries and engagement data, but never what you actually said.
Practice your recommendation with Merlin before you walk into the room.