Telling stories as an Engineering Manager

If your communication isn't landing the way you want, start storytelling

The other day, I sent a message in my team’s slack channel:

“Congrats Joe on completing 3 years with the company!”

I expected a lot of reactions. Maybe some heartfelt messages, a few 🎉 emojis. Instead, I got a couple of 👍🏽 and a “Thanks!” from Joe himself. That was it.

It felt flat.

So when I sent the same message to the wider org, I changed it to:

Three years ago, Joe joined our team as a junior engineer. Since then, he’s led two major migrations, mentored new hires, and built tooling that saves us hours every week. His impact is everywhere. Congrats on 3 years, Joe. Our team is better because of you!

This time, the responses poured in. People shared their own stories about working with Joe. The thread was full of appreciation, inside jokes, and genuine engagement.

Why did the second message work? Because it was not just an announcement, it told a story. The story of Joe.

Stories Are Everywhere

When we hear the word story, we think of fairy tales, movies, or motivational keynotes. But actually stories are everywhere. You just need to look closer.

In fact, with the right words and structure, anything can become a story. Like my team member’s third anniversary.

Storytelling is nothing but framing information in a way that makes people feel what you want them to feel.

As an Engineering Manager, you need people to feel all the time. You need your team members to understand the importance of a feature. You need your stakeholders to co-operate about a feature miss. You want your leadership to care about a reportee’s career.

So communicate like you're telling a story. It’s not that hard.

Storytelling Basics

Not all stories need a superhero or have to follow the long and convoluted hero’s journey. They don’t have to start all the way from the beginning. In real life, nobody has time for that. You don’t want your audience to go, “Oh no, not again with your stories.”

A good story follows a simple pattern:

1. Premise – What’s the context? Why should people care?

2. Conflict – What’s the challenge? What’s at stake?

3. Resolution – How's the problem resolved? What the new state?

Hopefully, at the end there is some sort of transformation. The world is a better place or our hero is wiser.

If your communication isn’t landing, chances are you’re skipping one of these pieces.

Where Engineering Managers Can Tell Stories

You don’t need to turn every conversation into a TED Talk. But when the stakes are high, storytelling makes a lot of difference. Here are three critical areas:

1. Setting Team Goals

Most managers write goals like this:

• Objective: Improve code quality

• Key Result: Increase unit test coverage from 60% to 80%

Is it clear? Sure. Is it inspiring? Not at all.

Now, let’s add a story:

Last quarter, we had two major outages caused by untested edge cases. Each one took an entire day to debug and fix. Our customers, and our team, felt the pain.

This quarter, we’re making stability a priority. Our goal is to increase test coverage from 60% to 80%, so we can catch issues before they reach production. This means fewer late-night fire drills and more confidence in our releases.

Now the goal feels more important. There is a lot more context around it. People know what’s at stake. A good story also focuses on the right stakes. The ones that will matter for your audience.

2. Writing a Promotion Packet

A typical promotion write-up:

“Alexa is a genius. She built an awesome feature in short time. She helped her teammates. She wrote great documentation.”

This may look like a list of achievements. But they read like activities. It's what I call “the mall trip.” — “I went to the mall. I bought this. Then I ate that. Then I watched a movie. Finally, I took the taxi home.”

It lacks:

• Motivation - Why was this work important?

• Conflict - What challenges did Alexa overcome?

• Stakes - What would have happened if she hadn’t done this?

• Impact - What changed because of her work?

Now, let’s tell a story:

Alexa joined the team right after we lost a major customer. And another was on the verge of leaving. To regain trust, we needed a critical feature in two months.

Alexa built the feature ahead of schedule despite a hiccup with a dependency arriving late. And she did so while mentoring a junior engineer. A stakeholder said, “This wouldn't have been possible without Alexa's technical capabilities and her win-as-a-team attitude.”

The feature shipped on time with high-quality user documentation. The customer renewed their contract, saying, “I'm delighted” right after Alexa’s demo.

This version highlights the struggle, the stakes, and the outcome making Alexa’s impact undeniable. Of course you need factual data and more examples for a promo. But storytelling makes your boring list of “she dids” into something meaningful.

3. Announcing a Feature

This is how most people announce their features:

“We’ve added a bulk upload feature to the admin panel. Users can now upload up to 1,000 entries at once.”

Okay… but who cares?

Now, let’s tell a story:

For months, our customers have struggled with manually entering data one by one. It was slow, painful, and error-prone. We knew we had to fix this.

With the new bulk upload feature, they can now add up to 1,000 entries in seconds. One beta tester told us, ‘This will save me hours every week.’

See the difference? The second version makes readers feel the problem. This makes the solution appear more valuable.

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Wrapping It Up

As an Engineering Manager, you’re constantly selling ideas. You’re advocating for your team, explaining technical trade-offs, or aligning stakeholders.

A well-told story makes people listen. It makes your message stick. So start telling stories by

• Adding context. What problem are you solving?

• Highlighting the struggle and stakes, not just activities.

• Showing the before and after to make the impact clear.

Supplement your story with data. Numbers bring credibility, and stories bring emotion. So the next time you need to explain something, don’t just list facts. Tell a story.

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More Resources:

• In “Start right before you get eaten by a bear”

  Wes Kao
  talks about where to begin your story (hint: keep backstory minimal)

• A Senior Director at Google wrote “The Bunny Narrative For Tech Promo Cases”

• Storyworthy book by Matthew Dicks. Also podcast interview with

  Lenny Rachitsky
  .

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