Have you ever had that awkward, uncomfortable feeling at work when you’re trying to feel someone out? Maybe it’s a new project lead you have to partner with. Maybe it’s a senior executive you don’t get much face time with, and suddenly you have to present your work to them. You need to make it compelling, but you’re not actually sure what they care about.

Or maybe it’s an interviewer where the stakes feel so high and you’re trying to frame what you have to offer in terms of what they are looking for, but you don’t have much context to go off of. Whatever the situation, one of the number one skills clients come to us wanting to master is how to get better at reading the room in real time.

How to adjust their message and what they have to offer on the fly, and do that smoothly without fumbling, bumbling, or that anxious guessing of, is this even going to land? You hear a lot of talk about reading the room being an executive level skill that you need to operate at these higher levels, but rarely do you actually get to peek inside how it’s done.

That’s why I’m excited to share this interview today with a client from our Speak Like a Senior Leader program, candice. Candice works in analytics at Google, so she is no stranger to working in a demanding environment with high expectations about how you present yourself and package your work. And what makes her story particularly relevant is that she has been in a season of growth, capitalizing on her over a decade of experience and her track record to pursue new roles both within Google and beyond with a bigger scope and global reach, all while navigating significant internal changes. A reorg, new leadership, taking a maternity leave, and coming back to new team dynamics and stakeholders.

In other words, she was thrown into new situations without much guidance, and she has had to build rapport, credibility, and trust quickly. In this episode, we talk about how she’s done that, including how she has learned to diagnose someone’s communication style in the first few minutes of interacting with them, the way she tailors the same achievement to different interviewers.

Why she got strong feedback. Literally those words in bold from recruiters after implementing these strategies and how being able to read the room in real time has translated to her getting buy-in faster across all of her projects.

As you’re listening to her story, I want you to be thinking about who is the person in your world that you struggle to read? Or who is that stakeholder that’s hard to influence? The leader whose priorities you can’t quite seem to figure out? Because what Candice shares today is not only about interviewing.

It’s about being able to walk into any situation, assess what people actually value, and position yourself accordingly. And being able to do that quickly and with confidence that you’re getting it right.

By the way, we have officially opened the doors for speak like a senior leader, but only for a very limited time, only until December 16th.

So now is the moment to secure your spot if you want to walk into the new year with a system to become a crisp, clear, confident communicator and be handed dream opportunities before you even ask for them. There is no better place. You can learn more and enroll at speak like a senior leader.com. And with that, let’s get into my conversation with Candice.

Candice, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I’m so happy to have you here and to talk about your experience and Speak Like a Senior Leader.

Oh yeah, definitely excited to chat with you.you know, not most of you won’t know, but you’ve been my longtime coach, so definitely excited to be part of the program.

Yes, you have had an exciting and eventful couple of months, so we’re going to hear much more about that. But for the person who is listening, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Yeah. Hi Candice Denic.I work at Google. I am in the analytics space, so I’ve been in the analytics space for over 11 years.I’ve seen the evolution of different businesses. Starting in e-commerce with some companies that have suffered from a lack of not being, you know, for lack of a better word, wrangling their data.

 and got my master’s in information systems after witnessing that. And then I’ve worked in, agency side and now pub side. On this side I write fiction as well.

Okay. That is so fascinating to me that you write fiction alongside working at Google. What kind of fiction do you write out of curiosity?

It’s interesting. It’s kind of like, it’s not fantasy. It’s more like mythology.

We’re going to have to talk separately about this because I know a big goal for you going into next year is to focus on your writing more as well. But as you were mentioning, we worked together for a long time. That was a while ago. And since then, you joined Speak Like a Senior Leader. So what was happening for you at the time in your work? What challenges were you facing that made you say, this program is the right fit for me right now?

For sure. So this year’s been a lot of transitions for me. I had a baby almost a, like, just about a year ago now. And so I had six months off after, and I came back to, you know, a new situation, like a lot going on at home. And then I came back to a reorg.so I had a whole new set of stakeholders. I had two sets of stakeholders that I’d never met before, a role that was changing and evolving stakeholders who didn’t understand the R&R for my role or their role. So there was just a lot of structure that I needed, and this program helped provide a lot of structure for me.

Communication wise, what did you feel you were up against with all of those different changes? Because for a lot of people listening, I think they can really relate to that. They have been going through org change after restructure. People are getting laid off, new people are coming in, layering is happening. They’re getting a new manager. For you, what was the most challenging part of all of that?

No, I think a few things, right? It’s, it had been almost like it had been seven months.I had one month off before, so like, it, it been over seven months since I had been in a corporate setting. I was aware of different communication styles, but I didn’t really have a framework, for how to diagnose different communication styles and tailor myself to that. Like I had a baseline understanding. I’d done like tons of personality tests, but, I think I needed a quick way to diagnose people’s, communication styles and tailor and tailor myself to that.

Was there a particular situation that made you think something needs to change here? I need to level up, or I really need to focus on communication as a skillset for myself?

Yeah, I think, you know, I just given the fact that I worked in a even more, matrixed environment than before. Like I’ve always worked in highly matrixed environments. I think you, I was sitting in some meetings, I, the way that I learn is by just writing everything down and collating it. So I remember every detail, but I’d be sitting in some meetings and I’d ask people say that like, like one person in particular, you know, bless his heart, but he would be like, you know, we talked about this, don’t you remember?

I’m like, yeah, of course, I remember. You know, like I, I think, you know, let’s lead with gu intent. So that’s when I realized that I needed to, have a better way of communicating that I knew something, I was laying context and that, you know, the, the goal was actually like to talk about X and not Y. 

Yeah. This is something we see a lot in Speak Like a Senior Leader, because our main focus of the program is helping people like you who are accomplished, they’re in demanding high pressure roles. They’re working with a lot of different stakeholders and personalities. The entire purpose of the program is to close what we call the gravitas gap, which is that space between what you know, your expertise, your intelligence, and how that may be perceived, or coming across to others. As well as being able to deal with some of those difficult situations, those dynamics that come up along the way, whether it’s with a colleague or a leader, where you feel micromanaged, you feel like someone is talking down to you, and our focus is always on, how do we help you feel grounded and feel most confident, like you can respond in a way that makes you proud regardless of the other person’s behavior. So, it’s interesting to hear what you are up against. I think a lot of people have had that one leader or that one colleague who they feel really stumped with how to deal with maybe even extremely frustrated and at their wits end with how to deal with.

Yeah, for sure.

Now, what drew you to Speak Like a Senior Leader specifically? What made you say, this is something I’m going to jump in and do?

 So a couple things. I think you’re really, really good at phrasing things. I think, you know, I, my style tends to be a bit more direct and I think you are very diplomat. You’re assertive, I think is the word you use, right? Like diplomatic, but direct. So I’ve sat in a lot of meetings, not only recently, but like in the past few years, and I’ve seen some that have gone really well and like the person always knew how to run a meeting efficiently, hit every stakeholder’s needs, like sitting in rooms with directors and above.

And I’ve sat in other meetings with other managers and the meetings have gone sideways. And so like I didn’t really have, again, like have a framework for like how to make sure it ran effectively. it felt like it was more hit or miss. And that was the other thing that drew me to Speak Like a Senior Leader.

 how to run effective presentations to get things done, build credibility, but also, you know, be assertive in diplomatic way. 

Yeah, 100%. I think you’re touching on something that a lot of people feel, which is. This fact that some people seem to have this magical aura about them. They just seem to know how to speak. They know how to respond off the cuff when they get a question out of the blue. Or when someone asks them a data point they don’t have, they don’t get flustered. They don’t seem to ramble. They know how to make something land so that executives actually follow along. And especially in an organization the size of Google’s, right? Making sure that your name is attached to your ideas as it flows through the rest of the organization, through different teams. That is so important, and I find it’s very tempting to think that, oh, those people have something I don’t. And so, something we’re always reinforcing in the program and teaching is really the frameworks, the tools, the structures that those people are using to make it seem so simple. Because what looks like just naturalness is often just internalized frameworks. And you have been someone who has been willing to see that, to study that, to experiment with that in meetings with different people to take risks in that way, and it’s been really fun to see you grow in that respect.

Is there something in the program, especially early on that made you think, oh, this is the reason why I joined. Was there something that was a real breakthrough for you? 

I think two things. So definitely the live sessions are really helpful. I think it’s really useful to hear through, to hear some of the other challenges that people are facing, like. I know there was a situation where somebody had a dotted line, but it wasn’t their dotted line, and they were trying to figure out how to navigate that.

Like that’s really brave, right? I think that’s something that everyone’s going to face at some point. So like learning how to deal with something before I have to deal with it is really helpful. But I think from your course in particular, I think learning the, the framework of the four personality types basically.

I took a lot of notes. It took me forever to get through that because I took like 14 pages of notes on that, the speak module. And so I think Commander, Caretaker,Cheerleader, and Controller. Yes. And so I think that was really, really helpful, just understanding like I’m a cheerleader, but I tend to, I also lean commander, right. But I work with like, depending on where I work, like I worked, when I was in product management, I worked with a lot of controllers, right? So I think understanding you know how to treat people, they wanna be treated, and like that, that that whole speak module is super helpful. 

Yeah, and what you’re referring to is the entire program is crafted around this idea of the Speak System, and that’s our five part roadmap. The first part of that acronym being S Shift Your Style, being able to work with different personalities. Because often what we perceive as difficult behavior often, nine times out of 10 comes down to a difference. Where someone like a controller may ask a lot of questions, and if we have more of a commander personality, we might think, why is this person belaboring this? We have moved past this. We made this decision. Why is this person slowing us down or so preoccupied with the minutiae. But to the controller, it’s completely different. They are trying to understand the ins and outs. They are trying to protect the quality of the situation. And when we can understand that, number one, it takes a lot of the annoyance out of the situation, having to deal with these people who are different than us. But number two, everything just goes a lot more smoothly. You’re getting buy-in more quickly. Your presentations are going better because you can craft your message in a way that actually speaks to them, connects with them. So do you have a real example of how you’ve been able to use those four Cs that we talk about to be able to adapt some of your communication, so it was more successful?

I think, you know, I’m on a, I did a road show of interviews recently since I was switching roles andyou know, you never know what it’s going to be like until you show up and meet the person. And so, just by looking to, by, even like in the first few minutes of the interview, like, was like assessing whether there was a warmup given Right, for the interview, like, or did the person wanna get straight to the points?

Right. That helped me figure out where on the matrix they lay, also the types of questions they were asking. And then, like, or not even that, it’s just like the follow up to my questions, right? Like people would be like, good job. Which, you know, doesn’t usually happen in interviews, but I, I had some people say that to me, so it’s like they were kind of invested in my experience and making me feel good.

So that helped me un understand like they had to lean more cheerleader versus some other people were lean, more commander. So like even pick, help me pick up on small Q to figure out how succinct or rambling, not rambling, but succinct or expansive my answer should be. 

What difference do you think that made, either in the interviews, which I wanna touch on a bit more in a moment, but either in those interviews or in presentations when you’ve been emailing people? What changes have you been able to see as a result of being able to flex more to other people’s styles?

I think,I’ve gotten faster responses. I mean, I think I’ve like always been very logical and structured in the emails I write and it’s driven me crazy when I, like 10 paragraphs and like the point isn’t laid anywhere. So like I, yeah. So I have been even more aware of not sending emails like that, but when I receive emails like that,I’ve been a bit, a bit more forgiving with that regard.

So I definitely think it helps, it helps work culture, work culture or just like understanding,to figure out other people’s styles when you receive like a 10 paragraph message and they’re asking you to do something and usually can something analytical. But even like, even beyond that, like I just start thinking of certain situations, Or things that I’ve witnessed, like I can see where the breakdown lay lies in some relationships at work by seeing the clash of personality styles and having like a manager, not understanding an IC style and frankly wasted potential.

So like I’m actually able to see things in real time and like, you know, I can’t go in and diagnose that, but like I can under, I can see why something’s happening as well. 

Yeah, and it’s such a powerful skill. I think this is what people mean when they say being able to read the room. That is this, it is that skillset of being able to decipher what’s going on. To read between the lines to understand what somebody else’s motivations values are. And throughout, I’ve been using words like flex, adapt, tweak, because we don’t want you to lose who you are, but we also want to make sure you’re actually getting through to the person you’re trying to communicate with, especially decision makers. And sometimes it’s just small changes. It’s a switch in wording that you use or how long you go on for your response. Those small shifts, as you were saying, they can really make the difference between that interviewer being able to picture you in the role and being able to say to themselves, this person gets this role. They understand it. Or even things like getting a response to an email in two days instead of two weeks, and all of that makes a huge difference in how quickly your projects move, how visible you are, and certainly in your case, being able to advance to some of those later rounds of interviews. So if it’s good with you, can we transition to talking about that a little bit? Because I think a lot of people would be interested in hearing your experience around actively pursuing new roles. How have you been changing your communication, been using the tools from the program in that experience?

And I’m asking because I think a number of people who are tuning into this, they may be in a similar position where they are either looking internally or externally. And often we get very nervous when it comes to translating or distilling down our value to someone in an interview doing that under that high pressure situation and in a concise way that projects that executive presence. So what has been successful for you? Because you’ve had many interviews and you have advanced to later rounds, even offer stages with some of them. So tell us your secrets.

 so,yeah, to exactly to what you were saying. So, leading with the bo bottom line up front.so giving a background of my, like giving a succinct two to three sentences of my experience, like, you know, of 11 years of experience focusing on my current experience and then saying like, okay, this is the high level,

 would you like me to go into more detail? And sometimes they do. Sometimes they say, let’s save this for,when we, I ask you specific questions. Checking in, I think,that’s definitely one of the, one of the skills you talk about during a presentation, like checking in to say like, okay, I’ll give you background context, or like, we’ll save questions for later or pause here for questions.

So like applying directly, applying that skill to interviews to make sure that, that we’re running that I’m, I’m just staying on time with whatever time goals I need to hit as well, or whatever sound blurbs I need.

Yeah. That’s fantastic. And I think you said in one of your responses to me that you had received some feedback after the interviews that your communication was stellar. So what do you think people are noticing in you now?

So, you know, like I’ve had recruiters write emails to me, like just checking in to see where I am in my process and like, you know, like we’ve had strong feedback and it was bolded, like about you. So. I think it comes back again to like recognizing, for example, that one of my interviewers was a cheerleader, right? And so tweaking to talk about like, you know, like one of the press questions was about process or like doing something about like, they didn’t say going above and beyond, but it, it was to that vein. And so basically I led with, I led with, you know, the pe like a people focus like, you know, like if soon best intense or I had to do this thing that, you know I shouldn’t have had to do, but you know, I sat with this person for like four hours over two days. So like, I led with, people focused impact because I realized a person was a cheerleader. Versus other interviews that, you know, were stats heavy. Like the person, like was probably commit like a controller, like they didn’t care about, like the people focused, like just kept it focused on, you know, statistics. 

Yeah, and that is such a great example of being able to take the same impact that you achieved and highlight different facets of it You can take the same experience and focus on what was the end result to the team, the impact on the team, or what was the impact to our metrics. And that lands totally differently with these different personalities. So again, being able to have that shortcut to be able to pivot in that moment is great and I’m so glad to hear that you have gotten that strong feedback along with it, which is wonderful. You were mentioning you really enjoyed the live calls in the program. What else have you found valuable, especially to achieve what you have?

Yeah, I think the message board, there’s like a live message board where people often post,the situations they’re run going through, or you can post your own question. So like outside of the calls, if you can’t make the calls, then you can post there. And I have definitely found it useful to go in and reply to some people. I guess, I know I’m very busy, but, I think I’ve seen people go through similar situations that I’ve faced in the past, and so like I definitely add my perspective and had people come in and add their perspective as well. So I like that it is crowds, it’s kind of like crowdsource advice, but it’s filtered, right? It’s not like asking the internet, what should I do in this situation? It’s like a very tailored group of people with you and Wendy to, you know, [indecipherable] and career coaches as well. So it’s, it’s, I think it’s highly tailored and very specific. And I, I, I like, yeah, I really like that. And even like going through and seeing something that other, some, someone else is going through to see like, okay, well, pattern matching, if I go through this in the future, I can probably use the solution.

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons we have the live communities, because we don’t want you to think of this as just a program with one live call that happens once per week. We want you to know and have so many ways to get the support you need. We really try to make sure that for someone like yourself that has a demanding role, has kids, has a life and interest outside of work, you know, certifications that you may be pursuing or volunteer work consulting on the side. We know you have a big life, so even if you can’t make the live calls, we have the private podcast with everything on replay. We have the community, the message board, as you were saying, where throughout the day you can come in throughout the week and in one business day, get in depth coaching from myself or my co-coach, Wendy. Whether you have had a situation come up and you say, Hey, this happened in a meeting, I was totally caught off guard. How do I deal with this? How do I rebound from this? Or you have something coming up that you want coaching on, we’re in there giving you in-depth tailored responses.

You also talked about the quality of the other people in there. That there are other mid and senior level professionals from all over the world who have been in your shoes and they can offer, hey, here’s what worked for me in this situation. Here’s what I have found useful. So yes, you’re getting that coaching from myself, from my team, but also the wisdom from the group as well, which can be so valuable when you hear directly from people who have been there.

One other thing we have heard is people love to read the feedback we give on other people’s skill drills.

So those are our practice exercises in the program. AndI think that’s been really fun to hear that people will read what one person submits and then look at the feedback, Wendy or I give that person. So you’re getting this other form of vicarious learning that you’re internalizing as well.

No, definitely. I actually really love that the sessions are recorded, but that it’s transcribed. So I’ve definitely used the find feature just to search for like a specific word that I was looking for to go back and grab stuff.

So what would you say are other opportunities that have opened up for you as a result of working on these skills? 

I think,you know, in the past, like I’ve, I’ve always been proactive, but I don’t think I’ve been very good about communicating that. Right. so now I think, like there was a session I just wrapped up, like the one-on-ones and like how to use your one-on-one effectively. And so I really like, you know, I would just show up with my bullets to say like, Hey, this is what I’m working on. Like, you know, I came up with this idea, I’m pitching it to the team to take this to the client.but I think now that now that I’ve done that session, I’m gonna structure my one-on-ones more effectively, to focus on, like, to just showcase strategy versus being like a summary. And so like a lot of this stuff is like, yeah, d once you say it.

But I think, what I really like about the program is that it distills a lot of wisdom that would take you a little like a while to like articulate, like, yes, you might know that, but it might take some time to art, articulate that. And I think, at least for me, I think it’s more effective in like all the sponsored, like the mentorship programs that we’ve had at work.

 Just because I don’t know if everyone has figured this out, even if they’re in mentorship positions. So I think it’s like. I think it’s, it’s, it’s good because it’s distills a lot, like basically decades or, I don’t know, like when we, when you add up our collective experience, hundreds of years of experience into the program length.

And so I think it’s ex acceleration in a short period of time and it’s, it’s super useful. And I really like the cross pollination as well, because we’re all in different industries. So like before I, I started working in big tech, like I didn’t know about frameworks, right? I don’t think people at smaller companies know about communication frameworks.

That’s something that one of my managers a couple years ago suggested that I started using. And so, like people now I think use frameworks, but there isn’t a library of frameworks, right? So I think that’s what I really like about this program. It like, it gives you essentially a library of frameworks to use.

 I’ve actually been doing a lot more reflection on why am I passionate about this work. And something that’s come up for me is that I grew up in a family that was pretty blue collar. My parents didn’t graduate from college, they didn’t have corporate jobs. They worked for themselves, and I really felt like I was dropped into the workplace without a playbook that everyone else seemed to have, that I was just absent on this day when they taught all these lessons. And because of that, it’s been very important for me to feel like here I am giving people this missing piece. And also, I spent a large part of my career in academia, in healthcare. Yes, I worked in corporate environments, but not somewhere like a Google, McKinsey, a PWC, where this type of communication, training, and focus. It tends to be baked into the culture where there is a emphasis on executive level communication, presence, packaging. And so it, it brings me a lot of joy and I’m very grateful to hear that you feel this program has delivered that to you, especially as someone who does work in big tech, where being able to package things is almost as important, if not just as important as the content itself.

No, definitely. I come from a very similar background too, right? My parents didn’t go to college. I like, they’re not from the us like, it’s like a very different business culture here. And like now I work in very distributed international teams where a lot can get lost in translation. And a lot of people still don’t have these, these, skills and like, don’t go looking for it. So I, I think it’s really valuable.

 And especially at your level as you are getting up into these upper echelons of the organization, you’re, you’re climbing the ranks, your success depends a lot less on the technical analytics skills. And I don’t wanna downplay that at all because of course you have to have that right, that mastery is a must. But as you are advancing through an organization, it becomes even more important for you as you have a bigger scope. You’re interacting with more people to focus on executive level communication more so than the technical skills, would you say that’s true?

Yes, I would say that,I’m actually noticing, like, again, as, as you mentioned, like as you climb the ranks, there’s more of a focus on executive presence and like being able to speak to clients, right? So like that actually is more important, that it becomes less about. I used to code every day before I came to Google. I don’t do that anymore. I can’t, right? Like, I’m supposed to be working, like speaking to clients and creating strategy for them. So it’s become, it’s even more important, I would say, especially now with AI. every, we all have access to the same information, right? Like we might not all know how to use it effectively, but we all have access to the same information.

So soft skills are really the differentiator. Like I mentioned before, I look around and I see like people in management and director positions who may not have learned that. So I think at the director level, I think they’ve learned that. But at a manager level, not as much. And so I think I, have seen situations that didn’t need that.

Like they could probably could have gone ave gone better, if people had access to information. So I, I definitely think soft skills are, are the future and they’re super important, more important in my opinion, than tech skills. 

All right, candice, let me ask you, would you recommend Speak Like a Senior Leader to someone else, and what would you tell them?

Absolutely. I think,you know, Melody is amazing. I’ve worked with her for many years.I have been able to pivot tricky situations by focusing on process, you know, and not people. And I think these skills that are in this course help a lot with that. I would also say that like some, I, like I, I haven’t seen communication courses, but some people are charging like insane amounts of courses online. 10k. I’m like, what are you selling? Like, they’re not for really providing any substance, but there’s a lot of substance here. And so I would highly recommend it if even only the o only thing you take away is the communication framework. Like that’s money well spent. 

Candice, thank you so, so much for joining me today. I am so happy we could have you here on the show. I am so proud of you and all of your progress. It has been incredible to watch, so thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Melody.