Do you unintentionally sound less confident in those executive leadership team meetings, even when you know exactly what you're talking about?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the number one ranked business communication podcast, where we help high performing introvert leaders and that includes you social introverts.
We help you turn your ideas into influence and improve business outcomes, because being brilliant does not automatically make you influential.
I am your host, Laura Camacho, your career accelerator, executive presence strategist and godmother.
And everyone needs an executive presence godmother, right?
By the end of this short episode, you will know how small phrases like just a thought I could be wrong quietly weaken leadership perception, unless you're the CEO.
So it's not straightforward.
Why over explaining creates cognitive load and reduces executive impact.
And finally, simple communication shifts that help your ideas sound more clear, stronger and more promotable.
So you may not be old enough to know this, but Michael Jackson that we're hearing about a lot these days because of his movie, he spoke very softly in interviews, almost fragile, sometimes very breathy, very gentle, very quiet.
Yet nobody on earth doubted his talent, his influence, his skill, his creativity, his authority.
So, on the one hand, in these interviews he wasn't trying to prove that he had any of these qualities.
That was self-evident.
But on the other hand, he didn't sound like you would expect him to.
But when he stepped on stage, he suddenly became larger than life, magnetic.
You can't take your eyes off of him.
And by the way, I cannot wait to see the movie.
I haven't seen it yet.
But that contrast is fascinating because it reveals something most of us misunderstand about confidence.
And that's this.
Confidence is contextual.
So performance confidence is not the same as executive presence.
And that's why you can have confidence in your ability to operate and execute and not necessarily have that same confidence in a board meeting.
And that matters because in the workplace, people don't just evaluate your capabilities.
They evaluate the signal that your communication sends about your capability.
That's why I'm beginning to mention executive codes.
That's what I think they are.
And here's an uncomfortable truth.
A lot of highly intelligent people, highly educated professionals, accidentally communicate uncertainty when what they really are is thoughtful.
And being thoughtful is a good thing, but this is an important distinction.
Executives are not reading anyone's minds.
They don't evaluate your internal confidence with a thermometer.
They're just looking at your communication signal.
And there's three ways that high performers, especially analytical, technical people, unintentionally weaken their executive signal.
And the number one is hedging too much.
And I know why you do this because you're trying to sound collaborative careful nuanced intelligent, not sound like you know it all.
So instead of saying well, this is the best option, you might say oh, I could be wrong, but maybe we should consider, or this might not make sense, or just a thought.
Now ironically, The smarter you are, the more likely you are to hedge, because intelligent people are more aware of complexity.
And your background may enable you to see layers of complexity that other people either don't see or are not taking the time to see.
So here's the problem.
Excessive hedging makes people focus on your uncertainty instead of your insight.
So you're trying not to sound arrogant.
I don't want you to sound arrogant, but you do need to be directionally accurate.
I think focusing on that directionality is going to help you.
And then all of this changes if you're the CEO, because when you're the CEO, that's a separate problem that we'll go into in a separate podcast.
But instead of saying oh, I might be wrong, I think it's much stronger to say based on the data I've seen or based on the data we have right now, my recommendation is ABC.
See the difference?
Same intelligence, but a different signal.
Now, the second way people dilute their executive influence is over explaining.
And that's because we love context, right?
And because context helps what you're going to say make sense.
And so you want people to understand the full picture.
Perhaps you want them to understand how you came to this recommendation.
You didn't just pull it out of a hat.
But there was a process along the way and many variables involved.
And there's reasoning and background and processes and risk.
But here's the thing, that senior leaders... are drowning in information already.
When your answer takes too long to land or too much trouble to understand, people unconsciously assume one of two things.
Either you're being unclear or you lack confidence in your own conclusion.
Because clear leaders simplify.
They do not download every thought in their brains.
And I know a lot of you are thinking, Laura, You're asking too much.
My brain goes too fast.
And I get that.
But there are ways to train your brain to slow down and to filter out.
Remember, I think it was last week, I did an episode on curation, like curation is key.
So, instead of walking people through every single detail, start with the conclusion bottom line up front.
For example, the biggest risk we're seeing is timing and I recommend that we move before next quarter starts.
And then if needed, add supporting detail.
And remember, people can always ask questions.
But that structure, the bottom line, and then supporting evidence that communicates confidence because it reduces cognitive load.
It's a little bit counterintuitive, but the easier you are to understand, the more people like you and trust you and think you're brilliant.
All right, so the third bad habit is asking for permission to have an opinion.
This does not affect all of you, but it is huge.
If you hear someone say oh, this might be a stupid idea, or I'm not the expert here, but you've probably already thought about that.
Most of the time you should not say that.
You don't want to pre-reject yourself before the room has even had a chance to evaluate your idea.
When this is not true is when you are the most senior person in the room.
See, things change according to the hierarchy and the status of the people in the room.
And that's something that almost nobody talks about.
But that is actually true key information you need to have before developing your strategy of how to speak up in a meeting.
If you are not the most senior person in the room, you certainly don't want to minimize your contribution before speaking, because then they're going to subconsciously downgrade the value of whatever else you say.
So this is key.
Leadership communication is not about sounding perfect.
Now, a lot of you have told me, yes, I'm getting better at just saying the thing.
It's better to get it out imperfectly than to remain silent.
So keep doing that.
You want to be useful, helpful.
That's what trusted leaders do.
They help people think more clearly.
They reduce ambiguity.
They make decisions easier.
And that, folks, is a tangible material business value.
And this is where we circle back to Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson, he didn't need a loud voice.
He didn't have to just be this very strong, powerful speaker.
And the counterpart would be maybe you.
In the corporate world, your expertise may be invisible unless your communication signals massive confidence clearly, especially in senior leadership meetings or when decisions are moving quickly.
So your goal is not to become more loud.
It's not to be more aggressive or fake being an extroverted.
It's simply to remove anything that accidentally communicates self-doubt.
So here's your 1% shift for today.
Before your next important meeting, listen for these three phrases.
I could be wrong.
Just a thought.
This may not make sense.
If you hear other people saying that, I want you to take a cold hard look at that and see what it does to what they're saying, in view of their place in the hierarchy in the meeting.
What I think is a sure sentence starter for you is this is my recommendation, because here's my recommendation and this is why
That gives your ideas stronger framing from the get-go.
So when your communication is easier to trust, you become easier to promote.
So if this episode has resonated with you, I highly recommend that you grab the access to my executive presence scorecard, which I haven't mentioned in a while.
There's a link in the show notes.
It's an assessment to help you identify exactly where your communication is.
May be unintentionally weak.
In any case, have a glorious day and I will catch you on the next episode.
