So you've made it to senior leadership.
Yay.
Have you noticed, though, that feedback has gotten quieter instead of clearer?
Welcome back to Speak Up.
The podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts who have learned that being brilliant does not automatically make you influential.
If you're already respected but starting to sense that your visibility doesn't quite match your capability, you are in the right place.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator and executive presence strategist.
And in today's episode you'll discover why honest feedback declines at senior levels and what that silence really signals.
And how being labeled operationally excellent can quietly limit your advancement.
And finally, practical ways to recalibrate your executive presence so that your influence expands beyond the room you're in.
So there's this strange shift that happens when you get to a certain point in senior leadership.
And what's really weird is that my clients never bring this to me, but I see it.
It's like the higher you go up, the quieter it gets.
You know, the meetings are smoother.
The pushback is softer and feedback. was more polite and less quantity.
In fact, I pointed this out in my book, The Practical Guide to Effective Communication, and that was written a few years ago.
I didn't have all the experience I have now.
I saw this thing.
That happens that you stop getting feedback at a.
Just two weeks ago, a vice president of a major global company told me he was still unclear about what his boss wanted from him.
And this is a VP that is super likable, charismatic, and a really solid communicator.
So today I'm going to explore why senior leaders stop getting honest feedback and how that silence can reshape your career and what to do about it.
Last year I was working with a managing director we'll call him Doug, highly respected, you know, very consistent, strong operator, great performance metrics.
And yet he came to me after being passed over for VP role.
He genuinely believed he was in line for not that he thought it was a maybe.
He said that there had never been concerns brought to him about his preparedness for being a vice president.
He thought he was well positioned.
And this is what happened.
I mean, he had not been given hard feedback for a while.
And he thought that meant he was doing well.
And at a certain level, he was doing well.
He was making his boss look amazing.
There was nothing wrong with his work at all.
In fact, it was exceptionally good.
Oh, and also his team, no personality issues with his team.
Very happy, highly respected him.
All the meetings he was in, very efficient.
And he was considered strong dependable, operationally excellent, which is all good, but it's not an enterprise leader.
It's not shaping the direction of your company which, after a certain number of years in your company, if you're ambitious, that should be something that you are seen as.
That should be something that's associated with your name.
So this is a typical case of a high performer well-liked, highly respected, But he was categorized not where he wanted to be.
That led to a plateau in his career.
So I just want you to be aware of this, that if you're not getting honest feedback, if you're getting feedback, that's painful, that might be a good thing.
And if you're not, you just need to be aware of this.
His case is not unusual.
Feedback declines.
Not because leaders improve so dramatically, but there's a psychological distance.
People start telling you more what they think you want to hear.
Let's say you're a senior director, your boss is the vice president, or you're a vice president and your boss is C-suite.
Those people are super busy and they're stressed out and they know you're capable, right?
They know you are extremely capable.
That's how you got to where you are.
So I don't really feel the need to let you know, or they probably haven't even thought about it.
I don't think it's like this malicious intent ever, although it could be, but I don't think so.
It's just that you're making them look good.
It's very comfortable for a lot of people.
And so why rock the boat, right?
That's the assumptions probably of the people above you.
Doug said that since he had gotten that rejection for this position, he had doubled down on his execution.
Of course he did.
That's what his career is built on.
And he was really good at it.
You know, our default when we don't get honest friction is to double down on our strengths.
I do it, you do it.
It's just a logical response.
And that's what comes easy to us.
But if you want to be a senior senior, senior leader, you need to get out of the operational excellence and you need to show that you're cross-functionally solid.
It is false to think that your senior, senior manager is preparing you for the succession plan.
I mean, in a lot of cases, yes, but definitely not every case.
Remember, the higher you go up, the harder it is to reach the next level.
There's more competition, higher expectations, a lot more ambiguity, to be quite frank.
And so thinking that your great results are sufficient is not cutting the mustard.
And also, I know a lot of you hate the idea of playing politics.
One little takeaway is to reframe politics as relationships and understand that If you're not getting enough feedback, or if you're not getting any or very little, that's not good.
Don't think that it's neutral and don't think that it's positive.
That no news is good news is not true in this situation.
So knowing that the people that could be giving you feedback aren't because they don't think it's necessary is means that even just asking for feedback is probably not going to get you anywhere, or at least not very far.
So what I would suggest is that you need to think about how you're being perceived and who is perceiving you like.
What are your strengths?
How are you known in the company, right?
Because all our messaging that I'm teaching you about executive presence and all these skills, that all adds up to a perception of you in the company.
You need to make sure that you are speaking up, and you need to be speaking up about things that are not in your lane.
And you need to be making suggestions about cross-functional movement or things that are not in your, And that is going to help you also.
In Doug's case.
He had a great opportunity for external visibility and we drilled down on that and it was massively successful.
And that gained him new career doors like almost immediately.
It was quite magical right, because the guy is very smart, very accomplished.
He just had the wrong reputation for being the solid operator in his company.
So You need to become more strategic.
You want to think about creative ways to change the perceptions of your capability, right?
The main message for you today is that if you're not getting feedback, it's not a good thing.
And being isolated or insulated is It may feel nice, but it's not good.
And you want to manage how the power flows to you.
So if you're a senior director or VP track leader and your performance is good, obviously you wouldn't be listening to this.
But if the opportunities don't feel like they're there or they feel misaligned, could be that your executive presence is not giving the right signal.
The perceptions are not there.
The strategic visibility is not there.
If that is something that you would like to improve or recalibrate how you're perceived.
That's why I have the Executive Presence Mastery System.
There's a link in the first paragraph of the show notes so you can set up time and we can see if that would be a logical and powerful next step for you.
So don't plateau if you don't want to.
There's no need to.
Have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
