Have you ever wished you could get inside the mind of a high-level leader?

To really understand what they’re thinking when they read your Slack messages, listen to you present, or decide who gets more responsibility…?

Your communication—how you speak, how you write, how you show up in meetings—has a direct influence on how others see your potential. But most of us are never taught what senior leaders are actually looking for. What makes someone come across as “executive material” versus “not ready yet.”

That’s why I’m so excited for this conversation. Today, I’m sitting down with Alli Peck.

You might know her as @allifromcorporate on social media, where she’s built an audience of over a million followers by sharing refreshingly honest content about navigating the modern workplace. But why I wanted to have Alli on is because her resume goes far beyond viral videos.

Alli is a TEDx speaker, the author of Surviving Office Life, AND she currently leads a mechanical engineering team at a national security facility. So what you’re about to hear is not just another “hot take” on work culture from the sidelines or from an influencer who is totally removed from the day to day. Alli brings lived experience from all sides of the table – being a corporate employee, and now a decision maker who is calling the shots. 

And what I’ve always appreciated about Alli—and I think you will too—is that she’s no fluff, no nonsense. She’s not here to peddle motivational platitudes or overly idealistic advice. She’ll tell it like it is. She’ll say the quiet part out loud. 

The timing for this episode also couldn’t be better. If you’re listening to this the day it drops, then public enrollment is officially open for my brand new program: Speak Like a Senior Leader but only for a few more days! And the doors will not open again until the new year at the earliest. 

Speak Like a Senior Leader™ is designed to help you become a crisp, clear, confident communicator who gets handed bigger opportunities before you even ask for them.

Inside, I teach you my complete SPEAK System—the exact strategies and tactics I’ve used with clients at top companies like Google, Meta, Pfizer, Amazon, and more to help them land 6-figure promotions, lead billion-dollar initiatives, and finally get the recognition and respect their work deserves.

Over 12 weeks, we’ll cover how to:

• Think and speak on your feet in high-stakes meetings
• Structure your communication so your ideas land clearly and powerfully
• Disagree with leadership without being labeled “difficult”
• Share your wins without sounding like you’re bragging
• Read the room and influence across levels

Speak Like a Senior Leader™ will not be offered again until next year at the earliest. This is your chance to join the inaugural cohort and join for the lowest investment it will ever be.

You can get all the details and enroll at https://speaklikeaseniorleader.com

Alright, with that—let’s dive into today’s conversation. Here’s my interview with Alli Peck.

Melody Wilding: Alli, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Alli Peck: Yeah, I’m so excited about this.

Melody Wilding: Yes, I was recently on your show and now you’re here. So full circle and I am really excited to talk to you and why I, why I reached out to you and I mentioned to you is because you really. You have a trifecta that you bring to the table. You’ve been on all sides of the table.

You have been a corporate employee. You have, uh, built a very successful creator business now teaching other people how to be successful in the corporate world, particularly with job searching. And you are also now back in the corporate world, but in a different capacity. Now you are on the management and leadership side of the table.

So that was one real reason I wanted to talk to you and.

Let’s start with this because as someone who is now managing a team, what has shifted for you in terms of how you are evaluating people on some of these important workplace skills, especially communication?

Alli Peck: Yeah, great question and I, I like that you talked about like where I started and where I am now because it has shifted my perspective. I used to be an individual contributor and I feel like my perspective was. Maybe one foot outside my body, like what do I need to do today? What do I need to get done?

What’s on my to-do list?

Now that I’m a leader and I have a team of six people underneath me, I’m also hiring more people, I interact with lots of different senior leaders and other departments. My perspective has grown and so I think of the quote, um, it’s hard to see the forest when you’re in the trees.

I feel like I have learned how to zoom out and so, lately I’ve really been focusing on what is the bigger picture, and I can tell when I interact with individual contributors, sometimes people on my team, sometimes individual contributors, I’ll call them IC’s, on other teams, I can tell that they still have that shrunken perspective.

And so I really try to help people see the bigger picture and see how their role and the things that are on their to-do list fit into the larger picture or the mission of the company.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. So helpful and I hear that from a lot of managers and what I, what I wanna do today is kind of get inside your brain with,

when you say, I’m trying to get people to focus on the bigger picture, why is that important for you? What are you as a leader, a manager in your organization being evaluated against that, you need your people zooming out?

Alli Peck: Right. A lot of it comes down to KPIs, key performance Indicators, or OKRs. Other people call them objectives and key results similar. But there are things that I have been tasked with, goals that I have to have my team or you know, my department accomplish by a certain date. There’s certain success criteria that we’re measured against, and it’s quantitative. So it’s great, we know if we’ve, we’ve succeeded or failed. It’s very clear.

Um, and so I’m trying to help my team understand, how, why, why that matters. Um, and how, again, how their to-do list, the things that they’re working on on a daily basis, how they contribute to the larger picture. Because sometimes it’s really easy to forget, you know, we’re going to meetings, we’re answering emails, we’re walking to and from different facilities or different meeting rooms, and, um, the perspective is, is small sometimes. But if we can think of, okay, this thing I’m doing right now, or this project I’m working on, how does this contribute to my manager’s KPIs, my man or my departmental goals? Um, and also what happens when I help the company achieve that goal? Do we get a bonus? Do we get a shout out? Do we get, uh, you know, some people have like presidential awards, things like that. So. It also helps when there’s some, um, reward and motivation behind some of the things, but that’s, that’s some of the things we’ve been focusing on lately.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. And when in our conversation we’ve, we’ve chatted a few times and the, the number one thing I’ve been struck by in terms of how you approach managing your team is you, you are someone who, truly cares about growing your people. And we were talking about how in some of your, uh, staff meetings, you do like teaching components where you were teaching people to be more effective.

And I was like, we need every manager to be like you. That’s amazing that you actually take time out to do that and it’s, I can imagine it’s because it’s a win-win. It’s a win for them to have these skills. It’s a win for you to be able to reach your KPIs ’cause that’s what you’re being evaluated against.

But in terms of the win for them, I, you can tell me if this is true or not, but is there also a part to it where you are thinking about the future? You’re thinking about who, who might, in the people that I manage or people that are part of my projects who might be able to take on more responsibility or eventually be a successor, or there’s kind of this almost teaching people to think like you, to think like a leader and speak like a leader is, does that come into play?

Alli Peck: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I have my eyes and ears open at all times. Um, we do something called succession planning at work because people retire. People might win the lottery and quit quit the next day. Um, so I. I definitely keep my eyes open and I’m looking at who has leadership skills or who has that potential.

They might not need the leadership skills at that moment, but who has that deep within them that I can kind of dust off and uncover? Um, and I love that you mentioned my staff meetings. So we did a fun one this past week where I had my team of six mechanical engineers work together to try to guess how many times the average person blinks in a year.

And it sounds random. Um, I think these are called Fermi questions where there’s no real right answer or like, you know, they’re, you have to suppose or kind of name what your assumptions are, work through some basic math. Um, so I gave them four minutes. And so this team of six had to decide, okay, what assumptions are we gonna make?

Um, how are we gonna come up with the number of times people blink in a year? The average person. So they made an assumption at the beginning. A false assumption, a bad assumption that people blink once a second. And as soon as they said that out loud, I silently thought, oh, uhoh. So they ended up saying, 20 million times a year, somebody blinks.

The answer is between five and 7 million times. So they were way off and at the end I used that as a teaching moment and I said, look, you guys could have spent one minute timing each other, collecting some data. Let’s count how many times, you know, person A blinks in one minute. Okay, let’s use that instead of assuming.

So I used that as a teaching moment to talk about, you know, if you can collect any sort of data to help you make conclusions later on. Um, so that was kind of a, a little mini lesson that we did, but you’re absolutely right. I love, seeing people grow and helping them see kind of how growth can happen while you’re in a, a, a role rather than moving to another role where it has more responsibilities and then you’re forced to grow.

Um, but growing in your current role. So that was one example of something we did this week.

Melody Wilding: That’s brilliant. I love that I, that it’s such a, such a fun way to get into a really important concept, which is testing your assumptions, but also being clear about what those are. ’cause many of the times we’re just unconscious and just blurting out an opinion or moving forward with something, not articulating the logic that we took behind it.

And at those more elevated levels, that’s often what people are assessing for is that rationale that we went through.

Okay, so what makes you, what are some signals in the way someone communicates that does make you say, this person is someone who I would trust taking on more?

Alli Peck: Mm, that’s a really good question. The first thing that comes to mind is, um, stakeholder management. So if you are in any sort of project management, product management, program management, project coordinator role, you learn about stakeholder management. You learn about keeping people informed who have a stake in your project.

But if you’re an engineer, if you’re a developer, if you have some other role, you might not necessarily learn explicitly about stakeholder management. So I think every good engineer, you know, I’m in the engineering world, I think every good engineer should have a little bit of project manager in them. So I do teach that as well.

But when somebody can understand who the stakeholders are for the things that they’re working on and anticipate, what are they gonna wanna know? Are they gonna want an update every week, every month? What do they care about? What KPIs are they tracking that my project is contributing to? So I think it is a big sign of maturity, especially with communication and understanding of the big picture when an individual contributor will update somebody on progress before being asked. So the opposite of that is sometimes I have to go to somebody and say, Hey, can I get an update on this? They’ll go, oh yeah, okay, here’s an update. Or even worse, they’ll say, um, yeah, let me go gather some information for you. Like they don’t have it top of mind.

So I really appreciate when people know what I’m gonna ask and how often I’m gonna want an update. And you can also ask your manager. You can say, Hey, I know I’m working on this. Um, do you wanna be updated regularly? How regularly, what information do you care about? And then you can just put little reminders in your calendar, update Derek every other week. He wants to know the due date or any risks. Um, so that’s a, a big sign of maturity that I pay attention to.

Melody Wilding: Hmm. That’s great because I, I think it signals that. It’s systems level thinking.

Alli Peck: Right.

Melody Wilding: How does A connect to J and it’s situational awareness. So we have to understand the ecosystem that we’re operating in, not that individual contributor mindset of I am just in my silo. It affects me. Although I would argue even as an individual contributor, your work affects a lot of other people.

You still need to think this way. Um, and I mean, it seems so simple. Like go to your manager, ask them what type of cadence do you think this person would appreciate. But, more subtly that shows this political intelligence, it shows this acumen that you are even thinking about, okay, I understand that the stakeholders around me have different preferences and they may have different desires, and I need to find out that intel from the person that knows that the most, who is probably my manager, who cares about me being sensitive to these different dynamics.

Alli Peck: Yep. Absolutely.

Melody Wilding: Yeah. Does anything else make someone stand out to you in how they communicate?

Alli Peck: Um, yeah. Um. So, have you ever heard of BLUF, bottom line up front?

Melody Wilding: I have big fan.

Alli Peck: Big fan. Um. So the opposite of that would be, which is a big, it just drives me nuts, is when somebody starts talking to me and they don’t provide a lot of context and I have to kind of guess what they’re talking about or I have to wonder, okay, are they gonna give me like a punchline in a couple sentences from now?

Then I’m distracted wondering what they’re talking about or if I’m gonna get the information I need out of this monologue. So bottom line, up front, or BLUF is a really good practice to just have with all your communication. If somebody asks you a question, answer it in one sentence. The first sentence.

If they want more details, they can ask you for more details, or maybe they don’t need details and they’re really in a hurry about to run to a meeting and they only needed that one sentence. So, don’t bore people. Don’t give people too much detail. Give them less than you think they need and let them ask for more.

Melody Wilding: Yeah, and I can imagine, I, I’ve heard this with people that do tend to be thought, I work with people who are very thoughtful, like they wanna understand all the details and the intricacies and who was involved, but also very technical people who are naturally, just by the nature of their work, they are in the weeds.

And so it’s almost like you have to train yourself into this different mode of thinking, and it takes practice to distill it down. Like distill it down to its essence, if I only had 30 seconds to describe this to this person, what would I say? And that’s the only time I have.

And so I appreciate you saying that too, because I was talking with another, uh, senior leader, someone who’s in the C-suite of her organization, and she had told me they let go five people over the last year. Four of those were because of this communication snafu because mm-hmm. Yes, because she would say they couldn’t make a decision. They could not give us a recommendation. Even when we would eventually get to a point of asking them, okay, based on everything you shared, how should we move ahead? They would say, well, you know, this plan has this upside, this one has this downside. They wouldn’t just, and what’s her and her leadership team perceive that as is you are not doing your job. We hired you to make decisions about this and we need that direction from you. And yeah. I just wonder if you, that’s ever a pet peeve for you as well?

Alli Peck: it is. Um, I know some people at work that they. I don’t, I’m not sure if it’s imposter syndrome or if they are afraid of the consequences of choosing the wrong answer. But unlike college, you know, in, in high school and college, there was a right answer to all of our tests, our homework questions. You could circle the answer and it was, you know, the answer was 25 miles an hour or whatever.

At work, often we have to choose between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods. Or do we care about cost more or timeline more? You know, we have to pick what we care about most. And so if somebody asks you for a recommendation or a suggested next step, think about what you know, think about what they care about the most. Is it cost? Is it staying on schedule or is it quality? Whatever it may be, make your recommendation and make sure you can back it up and defend it. Almost like if you were on trial, picture yourself, on trial on the stand, and somebody’s grilling you and they said, you made this recommendation. What made you make that recommendation?

Make sure that you can back it up and defend it either based on data. Or based on some assumptions that you made that you maybe verified with some people that had more information than you. But make sure you can back up your recommendation and don’t be afraid to just, hey, this is my suggestion.

And oftentimes we are never working alone. You can bounce your idea off somebody. You can say, Hey, I’m gonna make this recommendation based on this. What do you think? And you might get more information, you might get a second opinion. So collect your data, make your recommendation, and just be able to defend it if needed.

Melody Wilding: Let’s talk about presenting, specifically because so much our communication is spent in meetings. It’s spent packaging up our knowledge and having to share it and present it with others. So for you, how do you either work with your team or coach your clients on presenting with more polish? What do you look for?

Alli Peck: Yeah, so this is a good one. Um, so if somebody’s gonna present something to a group of people, I, the, I think the worst thing they could do is, present the information to the group and then ask for questions. And a bunch of people have objections or questions that they haven’t thought of, and then they have to do more homework outside the meeting, schedule another meeting to address those questions. So what I coach people on is if you’re gonna have a meeting with 5 or 10 people and you’re gonna present an idea or make a recommendation like we’re talking about. Talk to each person individually, privately first and say, Hey, I know you’re coming to my meeting next week. Here’s my recommendation. I’m gonna make, what issues do you see with this? Or, what objections do you have? Or What questions do you have? If you do that with all 5 or 10 attendees before the meeting, your presentation can include, Hey, here’s some objections I’ve heard from this group previously. I’ve addressed them. Here’s how we can mitigate these risks or whatever it may be.

Um, otherwise, um, I’ll describe something that I call night barking. Otherwise, what can happen if you don’t do this? Um, so have you ever heard at night, uh, one dog in the neighborhood starts barking and then a, a neighboring dog will start barking also because that dog’s barking and then every, all the dogs in the neighborhood are barking.

So this is called night barking, but it can happen in a meeting too if you don’t talk to any of the meeting attendees about your idea. When you’re in the meeting and you present it, often what can happen is somebody will have an objection. And then another person can piggyback off of that and say, yeah, that’s a good point.

Also, we, it might not be a great idea because of this. And then everybody can chime in and say, and they’ll kind of shoot your idea down. But if you do what I’m suggesting and talk to everybody beforehand, get their objections, get their questions, their concerns, address ’em during the meeting. And you can keep it anonymous.

You can say, look, I spoke to all of you before this meeting. Here were some of your questions, and here’s what I have to say about those. You don’t have to say, you know, Rachel had this question, just keep it anonymous. That’ll make you look more professional. But if you can address that, you can save yourself a whole nother meeting later, potentially.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Night barking. I love that phrase. It’s so accurate. You’re right. It becomes this. This pile on effect and then all of a sudden you’re like, I feel like I’ve lost control of this situation. Uh, which is also not a good look.

But um, and I think if I put myself in the shoes of the person who’s listening, they might say, well, Ali Melody, yeah, that sounds great, but I don’t have time to do all of that.

And what I would say, I’m curious what your response would be, is that legwork? Yes, it does take extra effort. You can’t get around that. But it saves you, as you said, like it saves you an extra meeting.

It saves you from all the back and forth of now you’ve opened up this can of worms. People are concerned. You might have to meet with multiple stakeholders anyway. ’cause there’s this chain reaction of people being worried. And so it’s, yes, it’s a little bit of, it is a, it is a time investment, but there’s a disproportionate gain from a, from what you get from that. Would you

Alli Peck: Completely agree. And you, it also doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to schedule a 30 minute meeting with everybody. You can write one Slack message or one email. You can BCC everybody and so that they can’t reply all or see who’s on the distribution. And you can collect all your data with one email, put it in your presentation.

I mean, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. So, and I, you’re right, there’s a good return on investment of this because you could save yourself a meeting later, or you could save yourself the hassle of having to go back to the drawing board because everybody shot down your idea. And you gotta start from square one again.

Melody Wilding: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, okay. Night barking is a great one. Are there any other pet peeves or red flags in communication that as a manager, you think? I, I just wish people would stop doing this.

Alli Peck: Um, rambling. I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about this a couple minutes ago, but just, yeah, you seem kind of out of control when you, or maybe nervous when you are rambling on and on and on, giving too much information. They talk about this with, um, like polygraph tests or interrogations or, um, you know, criminal investigations, whether people are innocent or guilty.

It makes you look guilty when you ramble or give information that was not asked for. So, not that you’re innocent or guilty at work, but along those same lines, just, understanding what I, I think of it as like reverse engineering. Like if you have the head of project management in your meeting, if you have the head of finance in your meeting, if you have the head of product development in your meeting, know what those people care most about and address those things.

If you only talk about the things that you are working on that you care about, those people are naturally gonna have questions about, well, how much has it cost from the finance person. The product person, well, what can we see a roadmap for this? So I think that knowing, like being able to reverse engineer who is in your audience, what do they care most about, and just phrasing things through those lenses, people will trust you more to handle more responsibility.

They will, know that you see the bigger picture and they will feel cared about, and seen and, and heard, um, and they will want you on their projects. So that’s another one.

Melody Wilding: Yes, and I thank you for underscoring that point about trust, because when you can speak to someone in the language, they understand it shortcuts that. It, it maybe even subconsciously, it helps the other person know, oh, this person gets me. They understand my concerns, they’ve listened to me. They’re open to working with me on this, which is.

It just accelerates that rapport and like it or not, you know, building a positive perception in the workplace. Yes, it is about your talent and your smarts, but there is a likability and respect component that comes along with that too. And so again, it takes. Time and effort to train yourself into that lens.

I also think it’s good because it, it forces you to be agile to see if you have to, let’s say your, someone on your team is explaining an engineering project, they may, it’s good practice to have to see it through the engineering lens, through the product lens, through the finance lens, through the business development lens.

You, you’re getting that sort of multifaceted view of it as well.

Alli Peck: Yeah, and if you are unsure about what a finance person may care about or ask about, or a product person or a project management, you know, leader, you can just open up quickly, like open up the Chat GPT app on your phone and you can say, I work at this company, I’m working on this product. You know, if you’re allowed to say that to, um, an AI tool.

Um. You know, I’m having these people in my meetings, what questions might they ask? Or what things might they care about the most at this point in the products lifecycle and Chat GPT will give you a bunch of ideas. And you can say buzzwords like, Hey, head of project manager, I know that we have our scope here, but we’ve got a little scope creep coming like, you can use the language that that person uses and they will automatically go, okay, this, like you’re saying, this person gets me. They know what I care about. I can rest easy because somebody’s got my back in a different department.

Melody Wilding: Yes, yes. Now just switching gears a little bit, you have a program, it’s called Hire Horizon, and this is your program for jobs seekers in particular. Um, so I just wanna switch gears a little bit ’cause we’ve been talking about communication in when you are actively employed in your organization, advancing there. But you’re also coaching clients every day to help them build their credibility, put their best foot forward in interviews.

And so what are some of maybe the missteps you see there or the most common things you are coaching people on in your, so that they’re telling their story, they’re talking about their accomplishments in the most compelling way.

Alli Peck: Yeah, so I have some good news for you. I’m not gonna answer this question with anything new that I haven’t already just talked about. Whether you are happily employed and you’re gonna present in a meeting, or whether you are job searching and you’re about to answer an interviewer’s questions in an interview.

All my advice is the same. Understand what your interviewer cares about. Reverse engineer what you think they want to hear and say that as long as it’s true. Um, you know, show up on time.

Sometimes recruiters will get, like, prep you before an interview. Like, Hey, a, you’re gonna meet with the president today for your interview this is what they care about the most. Here’s what they may ask you. Love recruiters like that. But, and you can also ask a recruiter, Hey, I’m gonna meet with, um, looks like I’m interviewing with your head of operations. You know, what kind of things do they, what do you think they might ask me? Or what do they care about the most or what’s their biggest headache?

Also, when you’re in the interview, I, this is my favorite interview question to ask, and I ask it at the very beginning of an interview. Um, so what sorts of, um, issues are you having in your department? Or like, what are you struggling with the most that you’re hoping that hiring me might help with?

Whatever their answer is, frame all the rest of your answers through that lens. And then you’ll seem like the answer to their problems, the solution to the issues or the challenges they’ve been facing. Um, so yeah, know what your interviewer cares about.

And again, if you’re interviewing with somebody and you don’t know what they care about. Look ’em up on LinkedIn. Ask chat GBT. Hey, I’m interviewing for this role. Um, what sorts of things would this person care most about? What challenges might they face? Oh, they’re doing product development right now. I’ve done that at a previous company and we had some things we struggled with and I learned from those things. Let me tell this person. I can help ’em avoid these pitfalls if hired.

So the, that’s the kind of advice I give people. Um. The biggest downfall I see with people in interviews is they just talk about themselves. They only talk about their experience, their skills, but they forget that little piece, that little bridge of here’s how my skills and experience can help you solve your problems at your company.

And I have really read the job description and I have done a lot of these things, and here’s how my skills and experience make me a great fit for the role that I’m interviewing for.

Melody Wilding: Yes. Okay. Two things stand out to me there. Number one, you mentioned, straight up asking the recruiter, what does this person care about that I’m going to be meeting with? And why I wanna flag that is because, at least what I hear from people is, it’s almost like they’re saving. I know you live in Vegas, so this’ll be a good, maybe analogy like they’re saving their chips.

They think they can only contact the recruiter so many times before they become annoying. And they’re, they’re like, well, I don’t wanna blow one of my outreaches on asking that sort of question. But I think on the contrary, it makes you look more engaged. It looks like you’re taking it seriously and that you’re someone who does wanna walk into that room informed you don’t wanna waste the interviewer’s time.

Um, so it was one thing.

And then the second thing about. Solving their problem. Like, please, if you are listening and you are job searching, you really, really need to take this home. That job searching is a marketing exercise. And just like Ali was saying, like imagine if you know you’re, you’re shopping for, I don’t know, a new shampoo.

If all that company talks about is how great our shampoo is, and here, like, here’s why we’re so wonderful. You’re gonna be like, okay, and maybe I’ll buy it. But if they say, oh, we leave your hair so silky smooth, you can go six days without washing. That is solving your problem, what you care about. Yes, the product facilitates that, but it’s really about what you need and plugging into that.

And the job search is exactly the same. So I just, thank you for saying that. ’cause so many people get in their heads about I have to prove myself, I have to tell my story. I have to make my accomplishments really shiny. When it’s like you’re missing the point of no, you’re not being in service to them, and try and being very clear about how you solve their problems and putting them first in the way you answer and present everything.

Yeah. Any other thoughts on that? ’cause I, I feel very strongly about that too.

Alli Peck: No. And if you. Actually, yes, if you are listening to this and you’re like, okay, but how do I do that? A good exercise before an interview, and this might take you an hour, go through the job description before the interview. Maybe a couple days before the interview, and for every bullet point in the job description, write a little second bullet point about how your skills and experience have poised you to be able to do that responsibility in the future.

And a lot of people will say, well, I’m not able to, I haven’t done everything on a job description before. If somebody asks you in an interview, tell me about, um, any experience you’ve had with this. If you have never had experience with that, let’s say it’s, um, Tableau. You’re a data analyst, you’re interviewing for a data analysis position, and they need you to have the skilled Tableau on your in your repertoire, your toolbox. Um, if they ask you what experience do you have with Tableau, you can say not much. But I’m so excited that that was listed in the job description ’cause it’s a skill I’ve really been wanting to gain and I’m a very fast learner and um, so I was excited to see that this is on the job description.

Something like that. So go through the job description. Write down either if it’s something you are excited to grow in that area that you’ve never done before. Or, yes, I’ve done this before. Here’s how it went. Here’s what I learned. Here’s the tools that I used to do that. Then go to the next bullet point, and you don’t even have to have that piece of paper in front of you during the job interview, but just writing those things down.

Almost like a cheat sheet before you take an exam in school. You’ll remember. Okay. I remember this part of the job description. Yes, I’ve done that before. Or no, but I’m excited that was a part of that. ’cause that’s an area that I wanted to grow in.

Melody Wilding: Yes. And I think that brings us full circle back to this idea of positioning the way you communicate. The attitude, the mindset that you bring to the table can sometimes make a bigger difference. ’cause as you said earlier, the skills are teachable, but it’s, it’s really. Actually, lemme put it this way, some of the hard skills are teachable.

You can teach them one Tableau or another, they could take a two hour class and learn a software. But these kind of quote unquote softer skills, which are not soft at all, they’re, they’re everything. Those are the ones you are really looking for. As a leader, as a manager.

So Ali, thank you so much for giving us this inside view, inside your head and how you are evaluating people, how you are approaching your work.

Where can people find you and connect with you further? Where’s the best place?

Alli Peck: So it depends on what your favorite social media platform is. I am on everything. Um, I’m on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn Threads, Spotify, you name it, I’m there. So whatever your favorite platform is, you can find me. My username is Ali from Corporate Zero. And, I’m everywhere. Whether you’re looking for career advice, professional development tips, job search tips, um, free resources, just look me up and yeah, I’m there.

Melody Wilding: Thank you so much.

Alli Peck: Thank you.