590: Does Your Leadership Communication Lack Executive Judgment? How to Fix It Right Now

Speaker A: So this is for those of you who know you're highly competent, but your communication is not creating the level of authority you know that you have earned. 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 after listening to this short episode, you'll know why highly intelligent professionals are often underestimated in executive level conversations. How worrying about sounding intelligent can actually make you sound less fast. How you can tell whether people see you as competent, but so competent at solving problems that they don't want to move you into senior leadership. Let's get into it. So if you ever left a meeting knowing that you were one of the most qualified people in the room on the topic, right? Nobody here is an egomaniac thinking that they know everything. But you can have expertise on, um, the topic at hand and feel like nobody's recognizing it. Your experience, you know your material, you've built your reputation by solving difficult problems, handling complexity. And yet when you get into the room that really matters to some executive meeting or board presentation or promotion interview, something happens. Maybe you over explain because you want everyone to understand the full details. Or maybe you overcorrect and say very little because you're afraid of rambling. And then you, in your head, being an overthinker, you replay the conversation. You're like, well, I know, I understand, understand this. So why didn't it come across that way? And I want you to know this is not about lacking intelligence. It is, that is, your intelligence is just not landing in a way that creates authority. You're just missing a skill set. That can be very frustrating because you built your career on being prepared, knowing the answer, solving the problems. And a lot of you I know wonder if you're not strategic enough, that you're more tactical. Or maybe you've been told you need to be more strategic and you're like, what does that mean? One client mentioned she was saying that she felt very competent, but she felt like people don't connect. Her communication style, it's not about speaking better so much as being seen as the leader that you already are, getting recognition for the level of competency and contribution that you're already delivering. And this is where a lot of high performers get stuck. Some get concerned and wrapped up into sounding intelligent. And then that can cause you to lose sight of the actual purpose of what you're trying to say. If you're monitoring yourself while you're speaking, you know, am I sounding smart? Do I sound executive? Am I saying enough? Then part of your brain is working on the communication piece, and the other part of your brain is grading your performance in real time. And that does not work well. Executives are not really looking for iq. They're looking for making better decisions. That's the shift. So it's not important to share everything, you know, it's to really be able to filter out what matters and what doesn't matter. And that's what I call judgment. And judgment is kind of a, uh, bad word these days. You don't want to be judgy, and people get in trouble for being perceived as judgmental. But this is executive judgment. And it's not a matter of being concise or not concise. Like, sometimes I think I give the impression that executive presence is just having the right quantity of words because I talk about rambling. Overspending inflates the value of a currency. But it's more than that, okay? It's knowing what, which are the risks that are most impactful, which are the trade offs that matter the most, and how today's decisions impact tomorrow's outcomes. And sometimes that may not be readily apparent to you or you may not know for sure, but that's something you want to work on. You want to understand how your recommendation supports the organization's vision and strategic priorities. That is what the people at the top are evaluating. They're never asking, I promise you, does this person know enough? They're asking, can this person help us make a good decision? And last week I was interviewing Tracy Nolan, and she's a chief officer of something at ah, Humana. You'll hear an episode from her later on. She said, if you're on the invite list for whatever meeting or presentation, you've already passed the competency test. You do not need to try to prove anything right? You need to just help people. What people want to see from you is, can you help us understand, where are we going? Can you connect all those details that you have to the bigger picture? That's why it's not just about brevity. You can be concise and still sound tactical. It's not just quantity. It's quality of what you say. You don't want to just get stuck with, am, uh, I saying too much or too little? But am I helping people understand what is most important? And what should happen next, that's the executive presence. When you can do that in a credible way, and then you are adding massive value. That's visible judgment. You see, when you give your audience, whoever it is, every detail and caveat, uh, and possible implication, it can be seen as a lack of prioritization. Not only do people experience that as a lack of leadership, but sometimes people think you don't care. I experienced that, and it made me very angry and frustrated. So that's why I am, um, sharing this with you. If you're known primarily as the problem solver, the one who fixes the issues, explains the numbers, and keeps things moving, that's good, right? That is definitely needed. The result of that is that they're going to give you more problems to solve because you're so good at it. Right? But that's not the same thing as getting more authority. If they're giving you more problems because you're so good at solving them, then you are the excellent executor, the one who executes the strategy, not the person who shapes it. And that's a different kind of career trap. And that can cause you to be overlooked. Not because you're failing. No, no, no. But because you're succeeding in a role that becomes difficult to replace and you're not adapting to the different communication operating systems at the different levels of the organization. All right, so what about clarity? You know, really, you want to think about translating complexity into clarity, but not just the issue itself. The clarity about how whatever it is you're talking about affects growth, market share, risk, customer satisfaction, profitability, talent retention, or whatever the strategic objective is that the business is pursuing. That's what you want to connect to. You want to help the decision makers understand what matters, why it matters, and what should happen next. Think about also seeing the path forward. If you solve a problem that someone has given you, there is no risk. This. Just get it done. But when you propose a path forward, when you propose something that's a little bit different as far as a different path to, uh, the company's objectives, that can feel risky. And that could be why some of you are holding yourselves back. At the end of the day, good communication is the reflection of powerful thinking, of getting to the essence of what is important. If people are underestimating you because your communication doesn't reflect your competence, it could be because you're being perceived as the expert problem solver and not the executive leader. You have to help them make that leap. And if you're happy being the technical expert, that's also fine. That's a perfectly valid and honorable career path. I want to warn those of you who are frustrated about not moving forward or not being perceived the way you think is accurate. This could be why. That's the whole reason why I created the Executive Presence Mastery System. We work on your real meetings, presentations, interviews, executive conversations. And it's not just the communication. It's how do you think about how to prepare them for a successful future. It's not about becoming someone else. It's about thinking and communication skills that will take you where you want to go. So if you're interested in that, there's a link in the top of the show notes. In any case, have a glorious day. Don't forget, summer camp starts very soon. If you want to get in on, say, a light version, it's a. It is a tactical program. It's about all the little details that make up Executive Presence. How you show up, how you present your ideas, 24 little lessons that you get in a private podcast series and I will talk to you later.