Strategic Communication for Leaders: Stop Hedging, Start Leading

SPEAKER_00: Hey there, I'm Jill Griffin, and this is the Career Refresh. Today I'm talking about something that I see with leaders regardless of their industry, tenure, or title. And it shows up in ordinary moments a meeting, a presentation, a Slack message, an email. We're talking about strategic communication, but the specific part I want to talk about around strategic communication is the signal of uncertainty when you have none.

But you're still signaling uncertainty and what to do about it. This episode is for everyone in the room, the person working on this pattern, the people around them, the people who are watching this pattern happen, and what to do about when they see this happen. All right, let's dig in. So what I see is often gender normative towards females, but gentlemen, hang in here because there's a role for you to play here too.

And these are learned patterns, right? Which the good news is it means they can also be unlearned. And I'm gonna give you some examples. The first is when you're speaking and at the end you say something like, Does that make sense?

At the end of a statement, you're it comes off as if you're seeking permission. It um that may not be what's actually happening, but that's what it looks like. You're that question looks like you're checking for understanding. And it can function as a request for approval.

If you end a point or start a point with, well, I think perhaps maybe you're hedging. I once worked for a CEO, and I can't use the exact language they used, but if you started a sentence with I think, they would basically tell you in no uncertain terms that I'm not paying you to think. I'm paying you to tell me what you know and what you believe. Now it's semantics, right?

On the word think, but the idea is are you coming across powerfully in your strategic communication or are you hedging? And that also leads to uncertainty and language. It signals that you might be preparing to walk something back if someone doesn't agree with you. Um it again, it's just, it's like there's a wobble in it.

I also see it in upspeak when we're asking a question, depending on the dynamics we're in. We're gonna get into dynamics and the potential power structural dynamics that are going on. But I see it in upspeak where you're asking a question that's like, hey, so we need to do this, but is it okay if we do that? And you're going in up speak.

Um, that also could be a mixture of requests for approval. Am I okay? Right? Making sure that you're softening the ask a little bit.

The other way I see it is when you over-explain a decision that doesn't need explaining. You are defending yourself. You're um, maybe the challenge actually hasn't happened, but you're expecting it. That explanation of you keep talking and giving so much detail is actually for you, not for them.

I'm gonna guess if you are in the workplace in 2026, you are navigating a system where when women communicate with authority, it gets read differently. It's real, it's documented, it's not perception or a sensitivity issue. The research on this is consistent. Women who speak with authority, it often gets coded as aggression, abrasiveness, difficult.

Uh, she may be called the B-word, right? And in the same situation, when men speak this way, their language is coded as confidence and competent. So the system is real, right? And as a human who's potentially working in the workplace, I want you to be aware of it.

And how do you want to navigate this, right? So making yourself smaller is not the strategy. It also costs you more than it protects you. In addition to gender, it can also show up if you are, let's say, the new person or the entry-level person, and there's a power dynamic.

What we see consistently happening again if you are a female or a historically marginalized voice, is that in order to survive, in order to not get called aggressive or abrasive, that you have to change your language and use some of these learned patterns. Precision communication is one of your solutions moving forward, right? This is about as you're practicing how to unlearn these patterns. Can you go with shorter sentences, using fewer qualifiers, more direction?

When your language matches your thinking, people tend to stop second guessing your authority because you maybe have stopped second guessing your authority within the structure of the room. This is where I often talk about around job interviews, but it also is for really any important meeting about being ready and prepared. Preparedness is you got to know your material. You need to know what you're talking about, the data, the situation, the circumstances, the marketplace conditions.

Great. You also need to be ready. And the ready part is preparing your mindset. Who's in the room?

Who may be challenging? Who is going to maybe be an ally in the room? Who do I want to make sure I have eye contact with and win over? What are the three points that I'm making?

Also thinking through, which I think is a really good one. If you know that you are confident and you're concerned that it might be labeled as aggressive, or you're confident, but there's still an area or two in which you want feedback, how you structure it. So setting up the conversation at the start of your input by saying, hey, listen, we're going to review these pieces today. This is where we're clear.

There's an area where I want the feedback in the room. Um, I want your brain trust. I want your wisdom on these areas and telling them what those areas are so that, yes, you are confident, but you're also letting them know where you are looking for input. That is one of the ways also within strategic conversation and communication that you can set the situation up so that people can hear you.

Okay, for the leaders in the room, I want to talk to everyone else here. If you're a leader, any leader, you're watching this happen, you're seeing this with your teammates or someone on your team in one-on-ones, in team dynamics, you have a role here too. The first thing I want you to do is understand that this hedging language, whether it continues to happen, you have a role in helping it stop. The person has to work on their own language, maybe with a coach or get media trained or get confidence training.

But you as a leader, when someone is qualifying the points they're making in the room and they're they're justifying the substance of what they're saying, that's a signal to you as a leader. If someone overexplains or um no one interrupts them and says, I got it, you've totally made your point. I'm with you, right? Just something like that lets the person know they've made their point.

What I often find is that's happening because when they're presenting and when you're up, sometimes it's hard to be in the moment of speaking, but also be reading the body language in the room. So a lot of times when we do this too, is does that land, does that make sense? Is because I'm not seeing the verbal cues or the visual cues that I need in order to know that my situation is land, and God forbid, so I need to also double check in and make sure. So if you're seeing someone do that, yep, totally get it.

We're with you. We see this. That's what active support looks like. That's what being an ally looks like.

Also, if an idea is said by one person and then picked up by someone else, you as a leader in a room, making sure that you attribute that idea to the person who came up with it. Yes, thank you for sharing, Jill. Sarah actually mentioned that before. Full stop.

You repeat it if it gets talked over. But that crediting and making sure that person who actually had the idea is called out. You know, meetings have a very short half-life, but when you're able to call it out, they're going to remember that. When you start to hear a lot of qualifiers or someone who is um buried in their points and keeps going on, I've used this before too.

I get it. You know what? I'm going to stop you here. I totally hear what you're saying.

Actually, saying back to them, you know what, what I hear you saying is X. You're not translating, right? You're amplifying those particular points that they're making. And as I always talk about, part of your leadership is to amplify and to create the capacity for others.

So creating conditions for direct communication. If your team culture rewards this over-explanation, people are going to start to tend to feel defeated, especially when someone challenges it. And as you as a leader, you're going to need to start addressing that. If someone says after speaking, hey, does that make sense?

After a statement that clearly was coherent, again, the reflection here is to tell them the point landed and move forward. This is your position as a leader in the room. And if you are identifying as a male, we really need your voice here, right? Because again, being able to say very specifically that we get it, we hear you.

I get it. You're making sense, right? I got it. I'm with you.

Let's move on. I want to get back to what Jill said, right? And naming those things, especially as a male voice in the room, it's really important. The goal here, again, is that we're not managing this colleague's communication, but we're finding the way to stop the um friction that's happening because it's ultimately not working.

All right. So if you're the person that you find yourself doing this, I'm going to give you the language patterns and then also what you could say instead and practice. Look, you're not going to fix all of these, but awareness precedes change. It's going to take time for you to fix all of these.

So we're not tackling every one of them this week. We're just creating awareness. What I want you to do is notice the pattern, maybe do a reflection, a little communication audit at the end of the day. I want you to notice the pattern that is in your speech and then just take a pause and be like, okay, if I would go back into that situation, how would I want to say it differently?

Right. I'm a big pen to paper person in this case because I do think and I've seen the research where when you're writing, there is something about the brain doesn't really understand that time, space, continuum. And when you write down, here's what I'd say again, the next time you're going to be put in that situation. And I guarantee you there will be a next time you are going to be able to pull up that sentence and have that memory ready for you.

So that's what we're doing. All right. Ready for the language patterns? Here's the first one.

The first one is the qualifier before a point of view. It's the, I think, I just maybe we could, you've doing this before you've made a point. This is the you're you're softening it. And this is the example I told you that my former CEO said that I don't care what you think.

I want to know what you believe and I want to know what you know. So practice that language instead of saying, I think, saying, Well, here's what I understand, or here's what I know, or the research shows, right? Other ways of grounding into the point of view without being in that place of softening. The next is the permission that we seek at the end of the statement.

Does that make sense? Are you tracking? Is that okay? That kind of language again often comes with up speak too.

You've made the statement, you're now asking for a blessing. So when you've said something and no one is giving you any sort of visual cues or uh or oral cues, they're not saying anything. Something simple as, uh, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Anyone have any thoughts or comments they want to add?

Right? That gives them an opportunity to say, you know what, I actually disagree with you, Jill. I don't, I don't actually think that that's the way we should move forward. Great.

Now let's have a conversation about it, versus you asking for their blessing when I don't really think you need to ask people for their blessings. Okay, the next one is the overall explanation. You've already decided, you've already made it clear, but then you keep going, adding context, adding more rationale, anticipating pushback that maybe doesn't actually come. So what you want to do there is you want to pause and think through, okay, in this moment, what are the points that they need?

What do I need decisions on? What do I need feedback on, right? That's again the structure of the meeting. You might say, we're gonna review these three points, and where I need feedback from you, and I need your great brains on it, are these two points.

You're saying that in advance, and that's a way that you can break that pattern. All right, pattern number four, you're hedging on direction. You've softened the instruction until it kind of becomes almost optional. I also see a lot of um when the dynamics in an organization get a little wonky, or I even see this with parents doing this with children, right?

Um, it might be helpful to, well, if you have a chance, could you, right? Instead of saying that report, we're gonna need it done by Friday, there's we're not saying be a jerk, right? But like there's this idea of like, do you think you could get that done by Friday? Well, the person may have a lot on their plate.

Great. Then the conversation becomes listen, this report we're gonna need done by Friday. What do you have going on this week? And is that possible?

It's a very different energy in that than do you think you could? Or it might be helpful too, right? Again, that hedging direction. And the last one is the minimizing language.

Just a thought. Um, I don't want to overstep. Um, you're starting to pre-apologize for things that the other person hasn't necessarily had an a reaction to. So where you want to think about that is just not going with that language of minimizing, just saying it.

One moment, finding the pattern, being real with it, and trying to do it as soon as possible. So if you reflect on your day, what happened actually today? Do you need to reflect on it? Again, if you are a leader or a colleague and you're seeing this that's happening, really finding the place where can you run an audit on yourself too, right?

Looking for moments where your response to someone could be more supportive to try to break some of these patterns and really look to shape culture that is more accepting and more um strategic in its communication. Strategic communication is a skill and it is developed. The first step is recognition. It is being ready, it is being prepared, but really making sure that you are finding a pattern that makes it clear that there is a different choice.

And if you're seeing this happen, how you can support the people on your team and around you so that this behavior stops. All right, friends, as always, I love to hear from you. So tell me what you think. Send me an email at hello at JillGrif and Coaching.

com. And as always, pause, think about your communication, do a communication audit, set yourself up well for the meeting. What do you need to say? What do they need to hear?

What are the decisions that need to be made? And always, always, always be kind. All right, I'll see you next week.