Melody Wilding: If you work in government education, international development, you already know the communication challenges you face. They are in a league of their own. You are operating in environments where resources are always stretched and scarce. Decisions move through layers and layers of approval, and the case for anything has to survive skepticism from multiple directions at once.

You are often not speaking to a single decision maker who has a clear bottom line. You’re navigating bureaucracies. You’re trying to move things forward in organizations that were not exactly designed for speed or risk taking. Maybe you’re a hospital administrator, you’re trying to get a new program funded by a board that’s really risk averse.

Maybe you are a university leader, you are trying to get faculty on board who have strong opinions, but no real incentive to change. Perhaps you are a nonprofit director. You’re trying to make the case for your initiative to a foundation, a government agency, a corporate sponsor, all in the same week.

Each of who needs to hear a completely different versions of why it matters for them, and layered on top of all of that is the way that you are expected to communicate in these environments is different than traditional corporate, too. If you’re too direct, you are seen as steamrolling the collaborative culture, everyone takes pride in.

If you’re too data heavy, you’re not paying attention to the mission and the vision. The tone framing, the level of formality that is all different. Yet almost none of the executive communication resources out there were written with you in mind or flex to your situation being in a non-corporate or non-tech.

Today’s guest, Roxanne has spent her career navigating exactly this terrain. She’s worked across government agencies, NGOs, private sector partners, international institutions. She came in to Speak Like a Senior Leader, feeling like there was this confusing and constant disconnect between the strength of her work and how it was being received and perceived with a wide range of people she was trying to influence, and she left having done something that doesn’t happen easily in her world.

She got buy-in for a first of its kind initiative that her organization had never attempted before, and it was a huge success. You will hear her big aha around why her ideas were hitting resistance with upper leadership and the easy adjustment she made once she saw it. You’ll hear how she learned to read what a stakeholder needs across wildly different sectors, cultures, institutional context.

She also shares the specific concept that helped her finally tell the story of her work, so the full magnitude of what she was driving became clear and felt. And how that helped quickly build trust and credibility with her new manager, so she started getting tapped for bigger opportunities and better work.

Doors for Speak Like a Senior Leader, close very soon, this Friday, May 15th, at the time this is being released, and if you’ve been thinking this program sounds great for people who actually are at big corporates and tech companies, but my world is different. If you’ve been thinking that, then good, you will be right at home.

Over 70% of our clients come from outside the tech and software world. So yes, we do work with leaders at Google, Adobe, Nvidia, PayPal, ZipRecruiter, but Speak Like a Senior Leader teaches you the communication system that gets you heard, trusted, and tapped for more regardless of what industry you are in.

We have professionals who are in pharmaceuticals, biotech, finance, banking, insurance education, from major universities to K 12 school systems, media, advertising, construction, manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, energy, utilities, sports. The list goes on and on. So regardless of whether your stakeholders are attending physicians, they are law partners, they are school superintendents, they are general state regulators, investors.

You’ll walk away communicating with the kind of authority that turns you into an influential voice, the one people seek out, listen to and open doors for. So head to speaklikeaseniorleader.com or the link in the show notes to grab your spot. And with that, let’s dive into my conversation with Roxanne.

Roxanne, I’m so excited for this conversation. This has been a very, very long time coming. We’ve had to get through multiple technical snafus to get here to this point of recording today. So thank you for coming on the show.

Roxanne: Absolutely.

Melody Wilding: start this conversation with you, sharing a little bit about yourself.

Roxanne: Sure. so Roxanne Ryan-Alozie and I am a mid to senior level person who’s been in the public sector really focused on serving individuals internationally as part of development informed policy. prior to that, I worked in consulting and financial services. So over 15 years in consulting and financial services. And then I found myself here and have loved the work. But like most people, I’m experiencing change. There’s political change, there’s economic change, there’s technological change. And so this course came at really the right time for me.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, and you’re referring to Speak Like a Senior Leader, which you just completed that last week. And when you came into the program, something you had said in your initial onboarding form to us was that you wanted to be seen as a must-have employee during all of this change and upheaval. So for you, why was communication such a big part of being that must-have type person?

Roxanne: Yeah, I think because like many people, you know, I went to business school, I think I got the message that it was really about technical skills, right? It was about how good you were at finance, how good you work strategy. But as I went through my career, I began to see that, more often, it was really about not just the technical skills, right? That’s kind of base camp, right? But that it really began to be around not really even just emotional intelligence, but political intelligence. And so, your ability to re, to be remembered, had less to do with, you know, kind of the core skills and more to do with that something extra. That ability to communicate, that ability to communicate up across. And you know, to be able to get your message across to the most senior leaders, whether that be in your organization or outside of your organization.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Which in your role is, is important because you’re walk working with a lot of external partners as well as internal and

I think a lot of people neglect that fact. We think of politics, or we think of our advancement success in our organization just solely as, oh, I need to manage up to my boss, or maybe my boss’s boss, if you’re a little more advanced. But there is this whole ecosystem of it’s people in your direct team, it’s vendors you have to work with, it’s partners. You have to get on board to push a certain initiative through, which is very true in the case of your work.

Roxanne: Yeah, and I think nowhere is that more clear than when you’re doing government work because you’re often trying to bring the private sector in. You may also be working with other US agencies. In my case, I’m also working with international government agencies. So you think about having calls at late at night in Asia or having calls first thing in the morning in Europe and really having to communicate across a variety of stakeholders, with completely different expectations. So I can talk with a NGOs I may be talking with private sector leaders, I may be talking with government leaders or, or bankers for development finance institutions. And then I’m also working institute in, within my own institution and with other US agencies. And it can be really difficult to get all of that right. specifically if you just are thinking. Well, I have a really great product or I have a really great initiative. Certainly it will just sell itself and it’s, it’s a little bit more sophisticated than that. It’s a lot more complex.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. Yeah. And to that point, Where did you feel like you needed to improve the most to actually master those complexities and position yourself as that must have person? What were some of the areas you most wanted to sharpen and hone?

Roxanne: I think it really hit in the book in the first chapter when you talked about really having alignment conversations. And I think sometimes when you have a conversation, whether it be with your manager or with someone else, you think you are selling it on the merits of the product or the initiative, but there’s like a disconnect. Or you make a presentation and the work is there and no one is saying that the caliber of the work is poor, the work is great, but there’s this kind of disconnect. And I wanted to understand what that disconnect was instead of filling it in with, I don’t know, my insecurities, or they don’t get it, or how come this is not happening? And one of the first things I realized was this whole concept of executive speak and really putting myself in the perspective of the other person. And the other different kinds of people I could work with, whether that be commanders, cheerleaders, caretakers, or controllers. It was really important for me to understand, better, oh, this is the kind of person I’m speaking to, therefore I need to make what I say more concise. I need to make it more actionable. I need to. You know, get rid of some of the detail and make it much more clear and palatable for my audience, knowing that they have other things on their plate. That, for me, was the the key thing that I needed to build out.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Yeah. And just going back to your particular situation where even trying to appeal to someone who is within the government structure, it has very different motivations than trying to appeal to someone who is in the private sector

Roxanne: That’s correct.

Melody Wilding: has other, motivations or incentives for why they might or might not want to work with you. So being able to flex to those things and also discern that, yeah, it’s not just about knowing the right words to say or the right intonation to have, it’s also being able to feel out some of these. Dynamics as well.

Roxanne: Yeah. I think it’s interesting. I’ve spent most of my career still in the private sector, some in, in government, and you know, maybe just about a little under a decade in, in government, and so. I would say the complexities in government are actually higher. Because these agencies have a number of different expectations, whereas, you know, when you’re in the private sector, it’s pretty clear you want to make money for shareholders in that regard. And it’s the extent to which, how does what you do drive that, whether it’s cutting costs or raising money or, strengthening operations or strengthening your go to market. It’s a lot clearer. Whereas there could be a number of other factors in government, even if all of those things are true. And so I think that’s why it’s less just about the intonation and it’s more about really sussing out all of the complexity. And I honestly, I, when I took, when I took the course and then particularly when I read the book, I thought, oh my gosh, where were you 10 years ago when I needed you so desperately. So it was, it, it’s been really helpful.

Melody Wilding: And you were mentioning, you’ve, you’ve read the book, you have followed my work. You have been in my other program, Resilient as well.

Roxanne: Right.

Melody Wilding: And you’ve, and clearly you are incredibly accomplished. You’re already mid to senior level. What attracted you to speak like a senior leader as a program then?

Roxanne: Well, I mean, in all honesty, it’s because I took the resilience course and the reason why I took the resilience course is because, I know we don’t like labels, but I’m a sensitive striver. I am that kind of person where, I work hard, I try to do really great work and I feel things deeply. And so one of the things I wanted to do with taking that course was do a better job of really understanding how I’m showing up and doing some work in terms of regulating myself.

And then, you know, then this book came out on managing up. And the book was about, okay, now that you’ve figured that out, now how do you develop that expertise to be able to understand the others in the room and not expect them to walk towards you, but to do a more effective job of walking towards them.

And that’s really what I found was so powerful about the book because. You just don’t get taught that in business school and you don’t get taught that in a lot of executive courses. And I think the book,

I think in my mind is a bit of a tour de force in that it really does an exceptional job of decoding and really democratizing what happens behind closed doors amongst executives, the way that they speak, the things that they get, that they say, so that you now know how to adjust yourself so that you can get the things that you want executed within your organization.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, you used the word democratize and I think that’s such an apropos, that’s such a perfect word for it, because. Part of my personal motivation behind doing this program, frankly, behind a lot of the work that I do, you know, we scratch our own itch and

Roxanne: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: Human behavior has just come from wanting to solve different challenges in my own life, and particularly this idea of wanting to decode influence has come because. I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I didn’t come from money. I don’t come from a family that had corporate jobs. My family has been business owners for a very long time, and so I never had anyone to sit me down and say, this is how the work world actually works. When someone says this, they really mean this. When you see these things happening around you, here’s what you should do next. Right? Some people get that. Quote, unquote education because of a family, they’re in a college they

Roxanne: No,

Melody Wilding: to just the network they’re a part of, and a lot of us don’t.

Roxanne: don’t.

Melody Wilding: you to say that this was kind of that peek, behind the curtain of

Roxanne: Absolutely.

Melody Wilding: What’s, here’s what’s actually happening. You know, I had someone else who I was talking to said it was like having the keys to the castle because I never had a leader who could be my mentor, who could tell me these things or show me these

Roxanne: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: So glad you said that because the program is so much more than just, here’s words to say when x happens.

Roxanne: I agree,

Melody Wilding: Yes. It’s fundamentally, as you were saying, being able to understand the politics around you to, be able to

and adaptable when situations happen, which, you know, I, I love AI, but unfortunately AI can’t be there with you in the meeting room.

Roxanne: Right.

Melody Wilding: It’d be very awkward for you to kind of take your phone out and ask ChatGPT what to say in that situation, right? We need to be

Roxanne: Right.

Melody Wilding: And think on our feet, which you have been able to, you’ve internalized this way of thinking, which makes, gives you that situational awareness.

Roxanne: Mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Roxanne: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. No, I think, yeah, I mean, I think I, I love the, the way that you said it, because I think for so many people. This is exactly the question they have. And so what off people often do is they fill in the blanks with why they are not where they want to be. And some of those very often what you fill in with is far from helpful, and as far from empowering.

Melody Wilding: Yep.

Roxanne: So you turbocharge that with AI and economic volatility and political volatility and other things. All of a sudden people are feeling helpless. And I think my goal was to take this book, to take their, the content that you provided and to really begin to put myself more in the driver’s seat and to be able to say, okay, I can’t control the outcome of every initiative or everything that I apply to, or everything that I’m working on, that, you know, I also didn’t get growing up or, you know, within the, as I rose in the corporate ladder, there were wonderful people who pulled me aside. But I think a lot of this is really just having people to really explain to you, okay, this is what that means. And you really do that in the book.

Melody Wilding: Yeah.

Roxanne: and it’s really eye-opening because there are times now when I’m in a meeting and I’m thinking, oh, wait a minute,

this is not landing.

Now I have more of a sense of, okay, here’s what I need to do.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Yes. And I wanna shift to talking about some of the great results you’ve had over the last three months, which has been just amazing to see. Especially when, we’re talking now at a time when government’s going through a lot of change. There’s

Roxanne: Yep.

Melody Wilding: of things happening and you had a big initiative that you were able to gain buy-in for.

Roxanne: Mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: Walk us through that. How did you do that differently? How did you approach it differently now than you might have in the past to put, to push it through and have that success?

Roxanne: Yeah, I think one of the big kind of takeaways for me was, just as I am nervous and feeling uncomfortable, others are feeling that way. and my leaders are feeling that way. So I think that’s the first thing to know, is that, I think the second thing to know in general is. The need to really understand how different people are communicating.

I’m a very open person. I wear my feelings on my sleeve. Not everyone is gonna be sharing, Hey, I’m feeling you know, this or that way about, the variety of things that are taking place And so one of the things I had the opportunity to do is really take a step back when things were not resonating. Read the book and then sometimes send you an email and say, Hey, wait a minute, this is how I’m showing up. How can I do this better? And I thought, oh, okay. I think I missed the way, what this person is saying behind what they’re saying. And that really helped me to understand people’s styles, understand the context better, and make the adjustments I think for a lot of time, for a lot of people. The expectation is that your leader is going to be coming to you and actually you have to go to them, right? You have to really be trying to lower the cognitive load of what they are absorbing as they’re facing a number of, different priorities and challenges that they’re facing. And so that was the biggest thing for me. I, the biggest takeaway for me was learning how to help others and, and particularly those who I work for and work with, how to lower the cognitive load from working with me. I tend to provide a lot of detail. I tend to be very wordy and very bo verbose, but many people, many senior leaders are commanders.

Melody Wilding: Hmm.

Roxanne: They tend to be succinct. They tend to be direct. they tend to want things provided that are more action oriented, and so I really needed to adjust my style, particularly at a time when, there’s a lot going on to just make it easier for them to interact with me.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Oh, there’s so much there. I wanna get into a few things that stand out to me. You were talking about depersonalizing their reactions, and

Roxanne: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: once you Can see clearly,

Roxanne: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: This is what’s happening. You were talking about that disconnect earlier. This is why i’m not getting through.

Roxanne: Yep,

Melody Wilding: you stop going down that rabbit hole of, maybe

Roxanne: that’s right.

Melody Wilding: For this. Maybe I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. ’cause no one can seem to understand it, which. which. Frees up more bandwidth, right? More literally cognitive bandwidth for you to also say, okay, what? what? else can I do here? ‘Cause you’re not wasting mental and emotional energy

Roxanne: I agree.

Melody Wilding: Up. You’re not leaking all of that energy everywhere. And just the act of, you could tell me if this is true, but I’m sure the act of having to sit with what you wanted to present, to think about how do I make this more concise? How do I package this differently so it does land with that person who’s more results oriented. It’s a great exercise for you to feel greater mastery over what you’re saying it

Roxanne: That’s right.

Melody Wilding: Regardless of the person on the other end.

Roxanne: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think that, you know, it’s one thing it, it’s kind of like being a teacher. I think it’s one thing to know the material yourself. I think it’s far more important to be able to communicate the material in a way that resonates for every different type of learner. And in some senses, when you are trying to sell your ideas, that’s what you’re doing. You have different kinds of learners. You have the controlling learner, you have the caretaker learner, you have the cheerleader learner, you have the commander learner. And it’s your job to be able to adjust and pivot your communication indication in ways and not just in a big presentation, but on one-on-ones in every interaction that helps you to build bridges. On the other side, and I just think that most of us don’t learn that skill and it’s an incredibly powerful one.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, I’m so, I love that. I love that idea of being able to, teacher of it is so, so important.

Roxanne: So, Roxanne, another concept from the Speak Like a Senior Leader program that you said was very helpful to you is this idea of scope and scale. So talk to me a little bit about how you have rolled out that concept in your work. What does that look like?

Yeah, I think a big part of it is being able to think about the, I think you call it the wow and how, right? It’s this idea of being able to really talk about what the potential impact would be. So being able to say that you could help lift millions of people through this kind of business or this, or supporting this kind of industry while creating jobs as as or bolstering, businesses in the US economy.

I think that can be really, really helpful, to

I think almost set the tone or really create a picture of what can happen, right? If you’re saying, okay, millions of people there and many, many businesses served here, or a whole industry served here, all of a sudden what it does is it creates a picture of a win-win that I think people find it a lot more easy to buy into, and I, I just did not communicate that way before.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And it’s so natural, right? Because we’re, we’re in the weeds of our work day to day. We’re trying to get things done, and so it’s very natural just to say, well, this is going to help of people and it’s going to advance our portfolio. We may leave it there, which is true, but that doesn’t speak to the magnitude of what you are accomplishing. So even those little indicators you were saying, this has the potential to help millions. people. That gives me an idea of the complexity of the projects that we’re talking about, for example, which is what we’re trying to signal to executives that you are not operating as an analyst who’s doing some, you know, moving numbers just around an Excel

spreadsheet for,

Roxanne: Right.

Melody Wilding: Your own kicks. This is actually something that has this downstream

Roxanne: Mm-hmm.

Melody Wilding: effect and those little scope and scale indicators are what help achieve that.

Roxanne: Absolutely. Yeah. I think, and it, it’s, I think one of the things I found really useful, whether it was in the book or in the course, was pushing us to really think about what the implications are of the work that we do when fully realized, because that’s when you get hired for a job, that’s why you do that job is because you’re hoping to do that larger thing. And then I think you, most of us get caught in the minutiae, of the day to day. And so what it did is, does is it lifts you back up and you start thinking, okay, what is the largest story that we need to be able to tell?

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Which I have to imagine is also very affirming to you to

Roxanne: Absolutely

Melody Wilding: oh, I’m, I’m doing something here. You know, I’m not, it, it, especially when you’re in the minutiae, you can

Roxanne: right.

Melody Wilding: of the bigger picture of your

Roxanne: Yeah, absolutely.

Melody Wilding: And when you, when you put yourself through the exercise of understanding what’s, what’s the downstream effect of this, it really connects you back to, oh yeah, thi this to a is why I wanted to do this job. This is what it’s all with about.

Roxanne: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I think it’s interesting to me because now I think it’s really helped me to see how to communicate that just going forward, in, in any role, right? To be able to, to, to take the work that you do and really do a much better job of connecting it to a longer story. And if you can’t, then you need to think if that’s the right way to be using your time. And then I think the other thing that I, I found really helpful in the book was this idea of really trying to clarify with your manager what’s or, or with whoever you work with, what is important to them so that you are spending your time in those places because I think also if we’re, if we’re honest, we have things that we like to do and so we do, we are prone to focus on those things. And I think you really spoke to really trying to have those conversations with whoever you work with. I mean, frankly, I found, I use this at, in my personal life with my spouse, where you thought, okay, what’s important to you? Oh, that’s important to you. Let’s do more of that. And it just makes things, I think, a lot smoother.

Melody Wilding: Yes, yes. Now, you did mention that you received some positive feedback from your new manager. Was that meaningful for you?

Roxanne: when you’re new to a job, I think we all feel a little uncomfortable, we’re always, you begin to feel a little insecure. I think what was exciting was this was a new initiative. It was something that my organization hadn’t done before, and. The goal was to communicate to another group and kind of sell the idea. and there are different kinds of, again, there’s stakeholders. There’s stakeholders who are controllers, there’s stakeholders who are caretakers, there’s stakeholders who are cheerleaders. And if you read the book, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. and what was nice about that was finally getting to the point where my written presentation, my language presentation, and my understanding of the context matched so that as I’m sitting in a room, it was resonating with various types of people that was really meaningful and that makes, it’s, I think it’s the gap between just having really good work, but having the work and the communication is where you can get the effective results. And that’s, that’s why that that feedback meant so much.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, as you were saying, you know, when you’re with a new manager, you’re feeling each

Roxanne: What.

Melody Wilding: You’re trying to figure out where you stand with each other, and we, of course, we’ve talked about this before. We don’t wanna be dependent on

Roxanne: Yeah.

Melody Wilding: validation, but it’s always amazing when they’re. When they give you that boost of

Roxanne: Yep.

Melody Wilding: already feel

Roxanne: Right.

Melody Wilding: ’cause it sounds like you were feeling more confident and surefooted in terms of how you were presenting this work and how

Roxanne: Yeah,

Melody Wilding: this,

this, large initiative forward and have that reflected back to you by

Roxanne: absolutely.

Melody Wilding: you respect and who you were building trust with.

Roxanne: Yeah, absolutely.

Melody Wilding: It’s further, confirmation you’re on the

Roxanne: Yes.

Melody Wilding: right

Roxanne: right?

Yeah. And I think what I think I love about it is the sense that these are now tools in my toolbox. And having those tools in your toolbox are things that you always wanna have that you can take with you. And I think Sometimes we get focused on the end, and I think now what I’ve become more focused on is the growth. And so this book, these courses have been really a mechanism to help me to grow and to, to really close growth gaps.

Melody Wilding: Roxanne, thank you so much for joining me today for

Roxanne: sure.

Melody Wilding: Your experiences. It means. Such a great deal. Uh, and I know this is really going to help others who are, you know, we have a lot of people who come and say, well, do these tools actually work if I’m not in a traditional

Roxanne: absolutely.

Melody Wilding: world?

Roxanne: Absolutely.

Melody Wilding: To hear your experiences from someone who is in the public sector, it is, it is so valuable for people out there who are second guessing whether this is even possible for them.

Roxanne: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I, I would absolutely say that it’s useful. I mean, there are use cases we haven’t even talked about, but I think if you’re private sector, whether you’re in government, whether you’re in in the non-for-profit space. The dynamics of human behavior are the same. And I found it really interesting that there were quotes that you had, used that I have heard throughout all of these spaces in my career. And they’re the same quotes. And I thought, oh, everyone is saying the same things. And so I thought, I think there’s really value in making that kind of investment in yourself to understand these. they’re not softer skills. I think they’re actually pretty important skills. they’re the, they’re maybe even the core skills, particularly once you get your foot in the door, you go beyond being, you arrive from mid-level, certainly to the executive level. I think once you wanna make those sorts of leaps, those skills become absolutely core. So yeah, absolutely, whether you’re in the public sector or private sector or government, or, an NGO, church, synagogue, all of the above. I think as long as you’re working with people, I think this will be useful.

Melody Wilding: Yes, to to all of that. Thank you. again. Appreciate you problem. Thank you Thank you for having me on.