636: Stop Making Executives Dig for Your Best Idea (DAY 2)

0:00If a senior leader has to excavate your recommendation from three minutes of context, your idea may be excellent, but it is not executive ready. This is day two of the SpeakUp and Executive Meetings Q4 Visibility Challenge. If you haven't heard it yet, make sure you listen to yesterday's episode. Yesterday, we practiced entering the conversation before overthinking Ken Silence U, which is what happens often. And today, we're making sure that senior leaders can find your point before they lose interest. Welcome back to SpeakUp, develop your Executive presence. I am Laura Kamacho, your magical Executive presence strategist and occasional godmother. And here is today's move. Begin with your headline, Recommendation or Conclusion. It sounds elementary, but it's not. It requires thinking.

1:02Highly conscientious leaders often want to demonstrate that they have done their homework. You want people to understand the history, the constraints, the analysis, the nuance, and everything that went into producing those amazing recommendations. So you may begin at the beginning and you take people on a full guided tour of your thinking when really they just want the final destination. Senior leaders are usually listening for four things. One, what do you want us to know? Number two, why does it matter? Three, what is your recommendation? And four, what decision do you need? Context is not the enemy. Unprioritized context is the enemy. Too much context is too much. Suppose someone has, are we on track for the launch? You could say, well, we met with the regional teams last week and they raised several concerns about training. So we reviewed the onboarding

2:04schedule with operations and two vendors still haven't confirmed. And all of that may be completely accurate, but the room is still wondering, are we on track or aren't we? How about this instead? We are at risk for two week delay. My recommendation is to launch the three ready regions and move the other two into phase two. Now the room knows exactly where you stand. You can add the two most important reasons afterwards. This matters because when executive is repeatedly have to look for your point for you, they may conclude that you have a hard time distinguishing what really matters and prioritizing even when your analysis is excellent. Here's a three part structure for you. What it is, why it matters, and what's the decision or the action? I'm going to repeat that one, two, three. What it is, why it matters, and what do you

3:08need? Like what decision or what action? Very simple. For example, customer complaints went up 18 percent after this policy change. The biggest driver is confusion during onboarding and I recommend revising the first three customer emails before we invest an additional support coverage. It's concise but it's not simplistic and that helps the room to think. If you need a starting phrase and I think those are so helpful, it helps your brain to complete the sentence in an intelligent and compelling way. My recommendation is blah blah blah. The most important thing to know is ABC. The decision we need today is blah blah blah. So your assignment is to choose one update you expect to give this week. Write the long version first if you need to or you can record yourself and then identify the one sentence senior leaders need before anything else. Here's the test. If you were

4:13interrupted after that first sentence, would the room still know your essential point? If not, your headline is not yet clear enough. After this meeting, notice what changes. Did anyone ask you to repeat your point or was it immediately understood? Did the conversation move more quickly towards a decision? Did someone use your language when summarizing the issue? Record your result in the executive meeting visibility guide, which is linked in all the show notes this week. This is not about talking less in order to occupy less space. It's about increasing the value of every second you occupy. Remember, communication is inflation is when you use too many words to make your point. Tomorrow will tackle the moment that causes many accomplished leaders to lose access to their best thinking and that's being challenged unexpectedly in front of senior people. You do not need

5:15to know everything, but you do know how to keep your brain functioning under pressure. I hope you have a great day that you're using these meeting tips to crush your executive meetings and I will catch everyone on the next episode.