There’s a concept I first learned about from Wes Kao, who is a brilliant marketing executive and entrepreneur. She has what she calls “spiky points of view.” A spiky point of view is exactly what it sounds like – it’s a perspective that has some edge to it. It’s a belief you feel strongly about and are willing to advocate for, even when others might disagree. It’s not a universally accepted truth or a feel-good platitude that everyone can nod along to. It’s a position that requires you to take a stand, to draw a line in the sand, to say “this is what I believe, and here’s why,” even if you don’t like it. 

And right now, especially in this market, and the roller coaster that is today’s workplace, we could use a lot more spiky points of view. We’re drowning in corporate speak and diplomatic non-answers,(which I recently did an entire podcast episode about, by the way—decoding what so many of those phrases really mean).

But more than that, I’ve come to feel a duty to tell you the truth. Not the watered-down version. Not the polite version. Not the sanitized-for-LinkedIn version. But the truth you’d get if we were talking behind closed doors. The truth that doesn’t come up in all-hands meetings, or company newsletters, or feel-good team culture decks. The version you hear when the Zoom call ends, someone closes the door, and finally—finally—someone levels with you.

The truth is, we love to romanticize work. We post about bringing our whole selves to the office and doing meaningful work and leading with empathy—and yes, all of it is wonderful, it’s ideal we’re all working towards. But there’s also the pragmatic reality. There becomes this cognitive dissonance, this disconnect between what we want to believe work SHOULD be, what we know it COULD be, and what it actually is.

You’re told to “take initiative,” but when you speak up in a meeting, you’re met with blank stares—or worse, you get pulled aside and told you came on too strong.

You’re encouraged to “bring your full self to work,” but the moment you express frustration or set a boundary, you feel like you’re being labeled “difficult” or “not a team player.”

You’re praised for being collaborative, for being the one who always steps up to help—but you start to notice that you’re the one absorbing the chaos while others get the credit.

You get feedback like “just keep doing what you’re doing”—but then someone else gets tapped for the high-visibility project and you’re left wondering what you missed.

There are hidden rules, unspoken expectations, and unwritten norms at every level of every organization. Tough personalities to navigate. Mixed signals to decode. Moments where you’re expected to read between the lines—but no one ever told you how. 

It can feel like everyone else got the memo on how work really works… like they took some secret class that you missed…and you’re just trying to piece it together as you go.

This is a big reason why I created my new program, Speak Like a Senior Leader™. Because You can be the smartest, most competent person in the room. You can be doing the work of someone two levels up.  You can be well-liked, highly rated, and absolutely indispensable behind the scenes.

But if how you present yourself doesn’t match the level you’re operating at—if you’re knowledgeable but it’s not coming across—you fall into what I call the gravitas gap.

That gap is what holds people back from the roles, raises, and recognition they’ve earned.
And the longer it goes unaddressed, the more it compounds.

Speak Like a Senior Leader™ is designed to help you close that gap for good. Inside, I’ll teach you my full SPEAK System—a proven framework I’ve used to coach leaders at Google, Amazon, Pfizer, and more to communicate with more polish, authority, and influence. How to present your ideas concisely and with clarity, how to handle curveball questions without rambling, how to flex your style so your message actually lands with different personalities.
How to finally get credit for the value you bring—without sounding fake, salesy, or pushy.

And if you’re at all interested in Speak Like a Senior Leader™, you need to know—we are coming down to the line. We had such an overwhelming response during the VIP waitlist period that we’re now down to just a few spots left. And if you’re listening to this in real time, doors close Friday, July 25th at 11:59pm ET. And we likely won’t run another cohort until 2026.

So if you’ve been on the fence, now’s the time to make your move. Head to https://speaklikeaseniorleader.com to grab your spot. 

That also brings us to our focus for today’s episode…my spiky POVs, specifically on workplace politics. It’s a topic I come back to often because it shapes so much of what determines how far you’ll go in your career. It’s not always fair, and it’s certainly not always rational. But it is real.

When I say workplace politics, the definition I’m using is… The unspoken and often informal dynamics of power, perception, and influence that shape how decisions get made, who gets heard, and whose ideas move forward. It involves everything from navigating relationships, managing perceptions, and positioning yourself.

I’ve worked with incredibly smart, capable professionals—people who do excellent work—but they still struggle to gain traction or earn trust from those above AND across from them. Mostly because they’re overlooking or not managing the optics that surround their communication. They assume that quality and effort should speak for themselves. And in a perfect world, maybe they would.

But in the world we actually live in, people are busy, distracted, and trying to protect their own reputations. And they often assess your readiness not just by what you say, but by how you carry yourself, when you speak up, what you leave out, and how your message makes them feel, who else you are associated with, who else is behind your idea or can lend credence to it. 

Alright, I have 4 spiky point of views I want to share with you today.  #1 is.. claiming you are above office politics isn’t noble, it’s naive. 

The word “politics” makes a lot of us cringe. We think of slimy manipulation, shallow showboating, backstabbing, just stepping over everyone to get ahead. If you consider yourself someone who is a deep thinkers and prides themselves on being someone of high integrity, your instinct is often to say: “I want no part of that. I don’t want to be one of THOSE people.” 

It feels principled. BUT there’s two important things to realize here. First politics will happen whether you choose to participate or not. Think of it this way: politics isn’t something that happens TO organizations – it IS organizations. Anytime you have humans working together in a system with limited resources and competing priorities, you have politics. This goes for your business unit, your team, the parent teacher association, your family community, even your family or friend group. In your family,there’s dynamics for things like who is “in charge” of decisions for aging parents, which sibling gets listened to the most, how holidays and responsibilities get divided. In your friend group – who organizes things, and whose preferences get prioritized, who the unspoken leader or influencer in the group

So you can hear, politics are NOT a bug, it’s a feature of human nature. 

Your brain is constantly making snap judgments about who to trust, who has power, who’s safe to disagree with. These aren’t conscious calculations – they’re happening automatically, below your awareness. When you walk into a meeting, within milliseconds your brain is running rapid-fire assessments. Who’s the alpha here? Who’s an ally? Who might challenge me? Who will be on board with my idea? Who is paying attention vs checked out? The amygdala, the fear center, is constantly scanning for social threats. So your brain developed exquisite sensitivity to social hierarchies and group dynamics. 

Your prefrontal cortex – the rational part of your brain – can override these ancient programs, for sure. But when you say “I don’t do politics,” you’re essentially telling your rational brain to ignore what your survival brain is alerting you to. 

This is why “opting out” doesn’t work. You can’t opt out of having a human brain. You can only choose whether to understand what it’s telling you and respond to it thoughtfully, or pretend these dynamics don’t exist while they shape every interaction around you. When you say “I’m above all those games,” what you’re really saying is “I’m going to pretend these invisible influence networks don’t exist.” But they’re operating whether you acknowledge them or not. 

Which brings me to spiky POV #2. You can be respected for your ethics and respected for your edge. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Again, politics themselves are completely neutral. They are just the mechanics of how decisions get made when humans work together in systems. It’s influence, persuasion, coalition-building. The moral weight comes from HOW you use these tools and WHAT you’re trying to achieve.

It’s kind of like money – you can use your wealth to fund a scholarship or to illegally bribe someone. The money itself isn’t good or bad — it’s a neutral tool. It’s how you use it, and the intent behind it, that determines the outcome. Political skills are the same way: they can be used to manipulate and exclude, or drive positive change, which I’ll talk about in a bit. It’s all in how you choose to apply them.

Destructive politics looks like: spreading rumors to damage a someone’s reputation, taking credit for others’ work, withholding information, creating unnecessary conflict as a distraction or to put a wedge between people.

Productive politics looks like: building relationships before you need them, understanding what motivates different stakeholders so you can frame your ideas in ways that resonate, creating advocates for your ideas, timing when you raise concerns or propose new initiatives, and knowing how to package your expertise in ways that make leaders feel smart for listening to you.

When you research your audience before a big presentation, when you schedule a difficult conversation for when your boss is in a good mood, when you invite the skeptic to coffee to understand their concerns before the team meeting… all of that is playing politics. But is it smarmy or underhanded? Not at all! 

The cruel irony is that by trying to stay “above” politics, you often end up enabling the exact behaviors you despise. The people who are manipulative and self-serving? They love it when ethical, competent people remove themselves from the influence game. It makes their job easier. 

Because what happens when good people opt out? Who’s left making the decisions? Who gets the resources? Who shapes the culture? When you refuse to play, you’re not preserving some moral high ground – you’re handing control to people who have no problem stepping over others to get what they want.

So the harsh truth is that your passivity is a choice that has consequences. Your good intentions don’t matter if you can’t get them implemented. Your brilliant ideas don’t help anyone if they die in meetings. Your ethical standards don’t protect your team if you can’t influence the people making decisions that affect them. If you really consider yourself a virtuous person, then you truly care about doing what’s right for your team, customers, the company. You’re using your knowledge of human psychology to take action in a way that’ good for THEM and you can do it with a clean conscience. 

The world doesn’t need more ethical people sitting on the sidelines feeling pure. It needs ethical people in positions of influence, making decisions, shaping outcomes.

And that brings me to my final spiky pov – you have to play the game to change the game. This is by the far the one I’ve gotten the most pushback for online and has ruffled the most feathers. When you learn the rules of workplace politics, you can then use your influence to make things better. When you have more sway…When you have decision-makers in your corner… When you know how to present your thinking in a way that lands with power and polish…so much possibility opens up. 

And yes, of course you are the beneficiary of a lot of this. And that’s worth celebrating. We’ve seen our clients use the tools we teach inside Speak Like a Senior Leader™ to be tapped for leading multi-million dollar projects, skip level promotions, and surprise 6 figure bonuses tapped for surprise 6-figure bonuses. They’ve negotiated 4-day workweeks and fully remote roles at companies that “don’t allow” it.

But here’s what’s even more meaningful to them — and probably to you too. When they gain influence, they don’t just change their careers. They change the careers of everyone around them. This is what people miss when they criticize “playing politics.” They think it’s about climbing ladders and accumulating power for its own sake. But real influence isn’t a trophy you collect – it’s the leverage you have to create a ripple effect for everyone around you. 

When you have influence, you can:

• Hire the diverse candidates who keep getting overlooked because you can override the “culture fit” objections
• Push through the safety improvements that have been ignored because you know how to make them a priority
• Protect your team from layoffs because you understand how to position them as indispensable
• Get resources for the projects that actually matter instead of watching budgets go to whoever has the best PowerPoint skills
• Change policies that are harming people because you know how to build coalitions and time your proposals right
• Champion the quiet performers who do great work but don’t self-promote

Without influence, you’re just someone with good intentions and no power to act on them.When you refuse to develop political skills, you’re not just limiting yourself. You’re limiting everyone who could benefit from having someone like you in a position of power.

Here’s the part that really gets me: The people who need advocates the most – the ones who don’t naturally play political games, who don’t come from privileged backgrounds, who don’t have built-in networks – they’re counting on ethical people to gain influence and use it wisely.

Now, to be clear: I wish the system didn’t require any of this. I wish brilliant, hard-working people were automatically rewarded. I wish empathy and ethics were the default leadership traits that rose to the top.

But we don’t work in that world — not yet. So yes, learn the game. Get good at it. Then use your seat at the table to make sure other people get chairs too. 

My final spiky POV on workplace politics… your EQ gives you an advantage. 

Maybe you tell yourself you’re “too sensitive” for office politics. You absorb everyone’s stress. You pick up on tension in meetings that others seem oblivious to. You lie awake replaying conversations, wondering if you said the wrong thing. You think this makes you weak, unsuited to be someone who is influential. 

You’ve got it completely backwards. It is your biggest leg up. 

While others are bulldozing through conversations, missing crucial social cues, and wondering why their great ideas keep getting shot down, you’re reading the room like a master.

You can sense when someone’s really saying “no” even when their words say “maybe.” You notice when the quiet person in the corner has something important to add. You pick up on the underlying tensions that are actually driving the conflict, not just the surface-level disagreements everyone else is arguing about.

This isn’t a liability, This is Emotional intelligence. And it’s exactly what effective influence requires.

Let me tell you about Georgia. She’d just been promoted from overseeing one analytics team to running the entire analytics function. Her team had doubled overnight, and so had her stakeholders. She was walking into a hornet’s nest – multiple departments with urgent requests, frustrated that projects weren’t moving fast enough, all looking to her to fix everything immediately.

Georgia’s first instinct was to panic. How could she tell all these demanding stakeholders that their timelines were unrealistic without destroying relationships before she’d even built them? Her sensitivity was screaming at her about all the ways this could go wrong.

Georgia decided to do something that seemed counterintuitive to everyone around her: instead of immediately presenting solutions, she went on a listening tour. Not making promises, not committing to timelines, just deeply hearing people out.

Georgia used her emotional intelligence to craft responses that addressed both the stated need and the emotional need. To the marketing director: “I can see how important it is for you to show quick turnaround to leadership. While we work on the full reporting solution, what if we create a simple weekly update you can forward up immediately?” To the operations manager: “It sounds like you want to feel more proactive about potential issues. Let’s talk about which early warning indicators would give you the most confidence.”

People didn’t just feel heard – they felt understood. Georgia wasn’t being manipulative; she was being genuinely responsive to what motivated each stakeholder. Her sensitivity helped her see that behind every demanding request was a person trying to solve a problem or avoid a pain point.

Consider how your sensitivity can become your strategic advantage:

You sense resistance before it becomes opposition. While others are surprised by pushback, you can feel when someone’s not really on board and address their concerns before they become roadblocks.

You understand what people need to feel comfortable saying yes. Some people need data, others need reassurance, others need to feel like it was their idea. Your emotional radar helps you customize your approach.

You can read the real dynamics in the room. You know who the actual decision-maker is, even when they’re not the one talking. You sense when there’s a conversation happening beneath the conversation.

You recognize when timing is off. You feel when someone’s stressed, distracted, or not in the right headspace to hear your proposal. Instead of pushing through, you can wait for a better moment.

Your empathy helps you find win-win solutions that others miss. Because you understand what truly matters to different stakeholders, you can craft approaches that meet multiple needs simultaneously.

So no more apologizing for being someone who is aware, who is processing everything more deeply. It’s time to make that work FOR you instead of against you. 

Alright let’s review my 4 spiky povs on workplace politics:
1. Claiming you’re above politics isn’t noble, it’s naive

2. You can be respected for your ethics and respected for your edge. They’re not mutually exclusive.
3. You have to play the game to change the game.
4. Your EQ gives you am advantage.  

Now you may not agree with me on all or any of these. That’s okay. I get that these are things you may not want to hear. But I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t say them. And maybe these are making you sit up, maybe these perspectives feel like a call to action and the nudge you’ve been needing to step up in a bigger way. 

Because deep down, you know that continuing to stay in your head, waiting to be “ready,” overthinking your every word, or hoping someone finally sees your potential… isn’t going to cut it. Not at your level. Not in this market.

This is exactly what we go much deeper into inside Speak Like a Senior Leader. Doors for the inaugural round are open RIGHT NOW but only until Friday July 25th. After that, the next cohort won’t be until 2026. 

Speak Like a Senior Leader™ is a complete 12-week coaching program for mid-to-senior level professionals who are ready to go from being seen as smart, reliable executors…
👉 to strategic voices who get invited into key conversations, trusted with bigger decisions, and compensated accordingly.

This is your chance to go: 

❌ FROM: Rehearsing your presentation 47 times in the mirror, then still stumbling when the CFO asks a question

✔️ TO: Delivering crisp responses  that make everyone think, “Now that was great.”

❌ FROM: Writing emails that sit in people’s inboxes for days while you send increasingly desperate follow-ups 

✔️ TO: Getting “Yes, let’s move forward” replies within hours

❌FROM: Listening to your boss awkwardly say your peer is getting the promotion you wanted and you’ll be reporting to them now 

✔️TO: Being the one who gets tapped on the shoulder and asked, “Are you ready to take on more responsibility?”

We would love to see you inside. So head to the show notes or https://speaklikeaseniorleader.com to grab your spot now. 

THat’s all for today and I’ll catch you in the next episode!