Today’s episode is short, sweet, and a little more on the personal side. And it is for you if you have ever felt like you are on the outside of all of those unwritten rules about how to carry yourself, present your ideas, and influence the people around you. Like everyone else seemed to absorb all of those things naturally while you were heads down and busy, actually doing your job.

And I wanted to share this now because the doors for my program Speak Like Senior Leader, they close tomorrow, Friday, May 15th if you are listening to this at the time it airs.

So as part of that, I have been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking about why I do this work. People ask me all of the time, how do you put yourself out there to promote this program? You seem so confident about it, and the honest answer is that it’s easier, it’s not always easy, but it is easier when you are sharing something with the world and inviting them into an experience that you are not only incredibly proud of, but that you also know is desperately needed. And you have also seen over and over again that it gets real life-changing results for people.

Just to give you an example, over the last eight to 12 weeks, we have had people and speak like a senior leader who have gotten major promotions, who have landed director level roles. They have been named to global leadership positions. They have been invited into strategic planning with their C-Suite.

They’ve been asked to co-chair industry panels. They have been personally selected by the executive committee. They’ve been named defacto for big initiatives. They’ve achieved awards earning the highest possible performance scores. That is all why I do this. It is not just to teach some clever scripts or frameworks for you to memorize for your next presentation.

This is a fundamental overhaul of how you communicate and how you see yourself as a high value contributor to the point where that confidence, that sense of self-assuredness, that weaves through every message you send, every call you dial into every conversation you have with someone who has power over your future. It changes how people experience you. It changes how you experience yourself.

Now, maybe all of this feels a bit aspirational right now, a bit far off. Because you have been told, you may have heard this many times, you need more executive presence. We need to see you operate at a higher level. Your communication needs more polish, be more strategic.

And somewhere in the back of your mind, maybe in the front of your mind, actually, you have thought I have zero idea. What you mean by that? I do not know how to do it. I don’t know why I can’t figure this out. And then you have wondered, well, maybe I need an MBA. Maybe I need better connections, a different personality. I need to change jobs where there’s not so many politics. And spoiler alert, there are politics everywhere. You encounter the same thing wherever you go. And here’s the thing, you would never say any of this out loud. Because admitting you don’t know how to do these things is almost like admitting you don’t belong.

And you have worked way too hard for way too long to let anyone think that. So instead, you just carry around this low grade confusion like a secret. You are performing and proving your competence on the outside, you are contributing. You are going above and beyond while feeling totally lost on the inside about how to communicate with that it factor, that seems to be so second nature to other people.

And underneath all of that confusion is this even heavier layer and it is guilt. I should know this by now. I’ve been doing this work for 10, 15, 20 years. Why do I still feel like I have to try so hard to get my point across? I’ve read the books, I’ve watched the people around me.

I’ve tried to pick it up on my own. Why does everyone else seem so articulate and why do I feel like I’m still winging it half the time after all of these years? Maybe if I had figured it out sooner, I wouldn’t have lost that opportunity. Maybe if I had just said that thing differently in the meeting, things would’ve gone another way.

I would’ve gotten that promotion. And this brings me to the number one truth about influence, I had to learn the hard way. And it is this, you cannot move forward while you are still busy beating yourself up for not being further along. The weight I’ve been talking about. I know it very well. I know how it feels like you are carrying around this heavy backpack and you’ve gotten so used to wearing it that you’ve almost forgotten it’s there because it’s always been there.

I relate to all of this because I grew up in a pretty blue collar household in an otherwise well off wealthy neighborhood and school system. Neither of my parents graduated college or had what I would jokingly call a real job. They own their own businesses, so I had very little exposure to the traditional corporate world growing up, I didn’t understand or know any of the lingo.

I didn’t really know job titles. For a long time, I didn’t even know that people came home from work at five o’clock because my family’s hours were completely different. I had no real conception or understanding of salaries. What did people make? What was a good salary? I didn’t understand any of that until well after college, which honestly feels a little bit embarrassing and vulnerable to say. And I want to be very clear, i’m incredibly grateful for my background. My family knows that through and through I would not be as driven as entrepreneurial. I would probably not have this company if I didn’t have that upbringing. That foundation shaped everything about my work, my values, and what I’ve built with my own career. But I also can’t lie, it did leave me feeling like I was at a bit of a disadvantage when I did enter my career.

I didn’t have country club connections. Nobody’s cousin got me a job. I didn’t have mentors pulling me aside and telling me, here’s how you articulate yourself. Here’s how you read a room. Here’s how to position your ideas, so they are well received. I felt like I was just plopped into the workplace one day, and I would look around and I would wonder, how does everyone else seem to know exactly what to say and how to say it?

And for a long time I felt like an imposter because I was making up the language, the vernacular as I went along. And maybe you can relate, especially if you were the first in your family to have a career or a job like you do to get paid as much as you do. And when that’s true, it can feel like there’s this extra expectation that you have to live up to and you’re constantly worried that you’re failing it.

And the tricky thing is these feelings don’t just poof, go away, once you reach a certain level. Sometimes it gets worse and it gets more intense as you rise because then the voice in your head gets louder. It says, okay, now there is really no excuse for why you don’t know this by now. Why you can’t get your thoughts across clearly.

Only now the stakes are higher. The margin for error is much smaller. There are more eyes on you. The gap between how capable you are and how you are coming across it starts to not only feel frustrating, but almost shameful. That guilt turns into shame.

Now, personally, everything I know about influence, power, how to earn credibility with people in charge, I had to decode that myself. First as a psychology researcher, then as a therapist, and now through over 15 years of coaching top performers. And that background in human behavior and neuroscience is exactly why I can tell you that you not only have full permission to set down all of this guilt and shame. You have to. If you ever want to master this skillset. Because it will continue to hamstring you until you do so. I really wanna drive this home with some research, especially for my fellow psychology nerds who are listening. There was a 2014 study, it was called Social Emotions and Cognition, Shame, Guilt, and Working Memory.

And here’s what it found. Shame impairs working memory, which is the exact system you use for thinking, speaking, decision making, keeping your ideas on track. It’s what allows you to organize your thoughts, mid-sentence to articulate a complex idea. And researchers found people experiencing shame, perform worse on cognitive tasks and have reduced attention.

Translation, when you are caught in shame, part of your brain is busy monitoring threat. What’s wrong with me? Are people not going to like me? Am I going to fail? And that leaves you with almost no mental bandwidth to do anything else. And what’s more is that same study found that shame drives avoidance and withdrawal, not communication.

So if you are stuck in one of those self-critical guilt trips. You will speak up less, you will hedge more. You will soften your language and avoid visibility. Not good.

There was another 2024 study in Frontiers of Psychology, one of the top journals out there, and they found that self-critical thinking automatically generates emotions. Like shame, sadness, anger, it suppresses positive emotions, curiosity, confidence, which are required for learning and problem solving. So it narrows your attention. It shuts down your ability to perform. So to sum all of this up, when you are marinating in those thoughts, like, I should know this by now, why can’t I get this right?

What is wrong with me? Your brain’s resources are getting redirected towards protection and survival, not toward absorbing new information, being present and reading the moment, not towards doing something differently. The kind of creative, confident risk taking that executive level communication requires.

So, in other words, the guilt is neurologically incompatible with the very growth you are trying to achieve. You cannot shame yourself into becoming a better communicator. The brain does not work that way. And yet that’s exactly why so many high-achieving, deeply capable people, maybe even you, that’s what they are doing.

They are dragging years of accumulated self-criticism into every conversation, every presentation, and then wondering why it’s still feels so hard, why they still freeze and overexplain. It is not a skill gap in those moments. It’s your nervous system has been put on the defensive. So this is exactly why you have got to set down the guilt before you can move forward.

The guilt is understandable. I get it. Every single bit of it makes complete sense given maybe what you came from, what you have been through, how hard you have been trying. But that guilt is not motivating you or making you any better. It’s the backpack you keep strapping on every morning that’s making the climb harder than it needs to be. It is dragging you down. You cannot become a masterful communicator from a place of self punishment. You can only do that from a place of permission. Permission to not have things fully figured out, yet permission to be exactly where you are today. Permission to start now. Not wish you had started at the beginning of your career. Not,

I’m gonna wait till the next performance review. Now. You get to start now. You have to start now. There’s that quote, yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today, I think it’s Mother Theresa. That could not be more true, especially here. We tend to get so caught up also and how other people perceive us.

When my manager will think, how will customers or clients see me? Am I coming across the way that execs expect? So much so that we forget to ask an entirely different question. Why does this matter to me to pursue? Think about what it would feel like to walk into your performance review in a few months and not just wish, hope, and pray it goes well, but know you have already framed your contributions in a way that makes a bonus or a comp adjustment pretty much in the bag.

To sit across from your manager and feel the difference in yourself between defending your value and feeling confident that you know you are setting yourself up for different opportunities.

To leave a feedback conversation, feeling like you said what you needed to say clearly without wasting a single word. Think about what it would feel like to stop replaying conversations, to stop lying awake, ruminating about what you should have said differently. That internal transformation, the change in the way you carry yourself when you know you can trust your own voice, that ripples out into everything else you do.

We see this all the time and Speak Like a Senior Leader in ways that go far beyond people’s direct roles. We have had clients who get accepted to speak at major conferences they would’ve never submitted to before. Others who get elected Vp or president of their professional organizations, people who start showing up differently in their communities, their relationships.

And this is the one that gets me the most. Clients who come to us and talk about what it means for their families. What it means to model for their kids, how to advocate for what you want, that you don’t have to shrink or wait to be chosen or hope that someone notices how hard you have been working. That’s the true ripple effect of all of this doesn’t stay at the office. It becomes part of who you are, how you see yourself, how you show up, what you believe you are capable of asking for and receiving through the rest of your career in life.

Your next promotion, compensation, your ability to shape the direction of your team and your organization, your level of professional satisfaction and happiness, all of it hinges on how well you communicate your value, and project the kind of authority that makes other people want to invest in you. Not someday, right now.

This is learnable. You are not too far gone. You have not missed your window. The people we have watched transform Inside Speak Like a Senior Leader, they are just like you. They are deeply capable, deeply experienced, but they have been carrying years of guilt and confusion. But they decided now was the time to finally get out of their own way and get what they needed.

So if you want to be like them, if you want to learn more about Speak Like a Senior Leader, remember doors close tomorrow at the time this is airing, Friday, May 15th, 11:59 PM. Make sure you head to speak like a senior leader.com or head to the link in the show notes. We would love to see you inside.