Executive Communication

"It’s often more effective to speak their language and demonstrate how my proposal will help them reach their goals, not mine, because stakeholders are focused on their own problems and are more receptive to proposals that address what’s already top of mind for them."

"I seek various points in meetings to synthesize the conversation to make various people feel heard and to ensure that everyone is following along and on the same page. I can surface any misunderstandings quickly and bring people back to the crux of the issue so we can make progress. This also helps me secure progressive alignment, which de-risks the decision-making process."

"The trick to sharing bad news effectively is to imagine being on the other side of the table. What would you want to know if you were in charge? If you’re like most people, you’d want to know everything, as soon as possible, plus exactly how to best move forward. So start there."

"More than that, I’d encourage you to lean into it: “This project failed. Let me tell you what happened, what we’ve learned, and what we’re recommending as next steps.” Leaders respect people who are clear-headed, up-front, and take responsibility."

"But make no mistake, when this happens, it is your fault. You have to sit down and ask questions from a place of humility to hear what they took away from what you said. Take full responsibility for any discrepancy from what you intended and make corrections with your entire audience."

"Presence is a combination of verbal cues, body language, and mindset. One of the actions you can take to improve your presence is to stop saying “sorry” when it’s not warranted."

"Good storytelling means you present a narrative that resonates with your audience. Focus on why stakeholders should care about the idea. For example, prioritizing a recommendation feature will improve conversion or changing the sprint process will free up time to reduce tech debt."

"While presenting the pros and cons between two priorities, I’d somehow always end up committing to doing *both*, and in less time than I had planned. As you’d expect, this usually went … badly. I’d burn myself out or, worse, burn out my team."

"Framing your tradeoff in terms of company goals means that they won’t have to do that same thing in their own heads. It reassures them that you’re making the best global prioritization decision for the company instead of a locally optimal decision for your team."

"To convince ourselves, and then the execs, we pulled together evidence of this idea working in other fields, including double-blind studies, experiment design, and other online review systems. This evidence became the key to influencing our team and others to take the leap. And it proved to be a huge success."

"I immediately start sending a regular (weekly) written update on observations, personal areas of focus, and kudos that allows you to scale leadership visibility in an async way. This is a great way for new leaders to quickly get visibility and build trust (which is much harder to do in a remote world)."

"When your execs tell you that your ideas aren’t “actionable”, dig further. Why not? What would make them more actionable? Why do they think this? When they share ideas that are too blue-sky, what can you do to make them more concrete?"

"As Barbara says, “you think from the bottom up, but you present from the top-down.” Save your audience time and effort by just telling them what you’ve concluded."