how do I get better at data storytelling?
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to communicating effectively with data. You can improve your charts, strengthen your narrative, get better at understanding your audience, or sharpen your presentation skills. But you probably don’t need to work on all of those things right now. A useful question to ask yourself is:
What skill would make the biggest difference in my work today?
We found ourselves thinking about this recently as we looked back across 100 episodes of the storytelling with data podcast. Rather than simply asking our team to pick their favorite episodes, we asked them, “When would you recommend this episode to someone?”
The answers revealed five different areas to focus on, depending on what you’re trying to improve right now.
1. Learn: build your foundation
Maybe you’re relatively new to data storytelling. You know you want to communicate more effectively, but you’re still figuring out what “good” looks like. At this stage, focus on the fundamentals: choosing appropriate charts, reducing clutter, using color intentionally, directing attention, and making your message clear.
Don’t wait until you feel like you know enough to start creating. In one of our early podcast episodes, Andy Cotgreave offers advice we still come back to: create, create, create. Practice gives you a way to discover what you don’t know yet. Your early work might make you cringe later—and that’s evidence that you’re improving.
Here are the podcasts episodes that we recommend at this stage:
2. Create: turn information into a story
Once you can make a decent graph, you might be wondering, “How do I turn a collection of graphs into something people want to pay attention to?” This stage is where you start thinking more about narrative, structure, tension, flow, and the human element of your communication.
It also means getting comfortable with iteration. Your first attempt doesn’t have to be your final one. One of our favorite metaphors from the podcast comes from Cole’s son Avery, who described an early draft as a “sloppy copy.” Data stories need sloppy copies, too. Get the ideas out, move them around, test them, get feedback, and refine.
Here are the podcasts episodes that we recommend at this stage:
3. Strategize: make smarter choices
Knowing how to create an effective data story doesn’t automatically tell you what story you should tell. At this stage, the questions get bigger: What does my audience need? What should I show? What can I leave out? What decision am I trying to enable? How should I adapt when I have limited time, space, or resources?
This is also where slowing down can help you move faster. Before jumping into an analysis, ask questions. Before presenting everything you found, consider what your audience needs to know.
Here are the podcasts episodes that we recommend at this stage:
4. Influence: move people toward action
Now that you’ve made your data understandable, the next stage you might be working on is to increase your influence on your audience. Your audience gets the data perfectly well; they just aren’t doing anything about it.
Influence requires us to think beyond the graph itself. We have to consider how people interpret information, what they care about, what might make them resistant, and what will help them feel confident taking the next step. It’s especially valuable to get feedback at this stage. The work makes perfect sense to you because you created it. Seeing it through someone else’s eyes can reveal assumptions, confusion, or unintended interpretations you would never catch on your own.
Here are the podcasts episodes that we recommend at this stage:
5. Present: deliver with confidence
Finally, your slides are solid, your story is clear, your recommendation makes sense, but you need to get better at delivering it. This stage is about enhancing your presentation skills. Cole makes a strong case for practicing saying your story out loud. Stand up. Think about your posture. These small changes in how you deliver your message can shift how both you and your audience experience it.
Here are the podcasts episodes that we recommend at this stage:
You don’t have to improve everything at once
Circling back to where we started, don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to improve everything at once. Focus on the skill that will make the biggest difference in your work right now. These five areas aren’t necessarily a linear progression. You might be highly skilled at creating graphs but uncomfortable presenting them. Or perhaps you’re a confident presenter who needs to become more strategic about what you show.
So instead of asking, How do I get better at data storytelling? try making the question smaller:
What skill would make the biggest difference in my work today?
Start there by diving into the playlist that’s most useful to you right now. Also, we often publish new podcast episodes, and you can follow the show on your favorite podcast player so you never miss an episode: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or on the web.
