April 7, 2025 • 30 mins
Not every urgent request deserves immediate attention. In this episode, Kendall Berg breaks down the difference between urgency and importance—a crucial distinction that can save your career from constant stress and burnout. Using a four-quadrant framework, Kendall explains how to prioritize effectively while still delivering results that matter.
High-level thinking isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the key to career progression. Kendall shares how professionals can shift from task execution to strategic influence, making their work more valuable to executives. Learn how to prepare for meetings like a pro, communicate with impact, and avoid common pitfalls like defensiveness, overloading information, and ineffective multitasking.
🔥 In this episode, we discuss:
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What’s the real difference between urgency and importance? (And how to stop treating everything as a crisis)
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How can high-level thinking make you indispensable to executives?
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Why do so many professionals struggle with strategic communication?
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What’s the secret to asking better questions in meetings?
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How can automation be a game-changer for scaling work without burnout?
📌 Preorder the book: Secrets of the Career Game: 36 simple strategies to win in the workplace
⭐️Get our FREE Accomplishments Tracker: https://fabulous-butterfly-83716.myflodesk.com/n8yzvrtw9v
That Career Coach
Want to know more about Kendal Berg, that career coach?
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kendall Berg (00:00):
At some point in your career, it becomes really important to be able to separate that urgency from importance. There will be some things you are asked to do that are very urgent and not very important, and there are things you will be asked to do that are very important but maybe not very urgent. And there are sometimes you will be asked to do things that are both, and sometimes you will be asked to do things that are neither. Understanding the difference is critical because not everything needs to be urgent. I had an individual come on my podcast years ago and she said, you do not have to treat everything with the same level of urgency in which it is brought to you.
(00:37):
And what that means is if somebody pings you and says, hey, I need this right now, and after assessing its importance relative to your other tasks, it is not more important, it is okay to push back and say, hey, I'd be happy to get that to you. How's Friday sound? It is okay to take in an urgent request, assess it, and determine that it is in fact, not urgent. Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game. So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secrets, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing. On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtains and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster.
(01:24):
Today's episode might be my second most highly requested topic that we've ever covered. I cannot describe the sheer number of people who have sent me DMs, who have asked in coaching calls, who have sent me notes on Slack in my bootcamp program, who want to hear more about high level communication, strategic communication and executive presence and high level thinking. Today is going to be a deep dive into all of the things your boss tells you need to get better at, where you have no idea what that means. Okay, so I'm really excited about today's episode.
(02:02):
We're going to jump into a few things, both as the presenter and as a person ingesting information, how to show up with strong executive presence, and some of those tips and tricks that make that a little bit more tactical since I think it's generally more of a nebulous concept. So we'll start with high level thinking. So if you have ever heard the term see the forest for the trees, you've probably been told you need to work on your high level thinking. And I don't think that leaders oftentimes know how to clearly communicate what this means from a tactical perspective. What I see a lot of the time when I work with highly technical, highly tactical people is in order to get the work done, you have to be thinking, living, executing in the Municha. Right?
(02:50):
You have to understand from seed to sprout exactly what needs to happen. Oftentimes this includes a lot of data or analysis. Oftentimes this includes a lot of process points or process steps. This can include a lot of stakeholders, this can include a lot of tasks. And what happens is, as an individual, we are managing such a high mental load, meaning a laundry list of things that we need to tick off and make sure that we complete that when it comes time to then turn around and present that information to senior leaders. It's a little bit like drinking out of a fire hydrant. So I think the actual saying here, as an aside, is drinking out of the fire hose. But I had a boss once who said it was like drinking out of a fire hydrant. And I always liked that picture.
(03:33):
It's like some weird cartoon from the 90s that tells you exactly how they feel about getting too much information all at once. Great. Okay, jumping back in. So when we think of communicating to an executive, a lot of the time, especially if you're more junior or if you're in a more technical role, that could be a senior technical role. Right? Either of those situations, a lot of the time we come into those conversations automatically defensive. And I don't mean this in an argumentative, confrontational, aggressive, yelling kind of way. What I mean is because the people we are presenting to are more senior than usual and we likely don't have very often or very extensive exposure to those individuals.
(04:16):
When we go into meetings where we do have that visibility opportunity, we're really trying to make sure all of our T's are crossed and I's are dotted. And this means that we show up in a way where we are sharing everything we can possibly think of in hopes that we're convincing them that we know what we're doing. And that's what I mean by defensive is we come in not wanting feedback, not wanting their perspective because we so badly want to prove that we know how to do our job well. And like I said, I'm not talking language, I'm not talking volume, I'm not talking aggressive posture. You can be really nice and really smiley and still come across really defensive in a situation where we're providing too much information too quickly.
(04:59):
So when it comes to high level thinking, you have to understand why you're doing the work that you're doing. Now, this is going to sound really obvious and most people are going to go, well, I'm doing this analysis because my boss asked me to do this analysis. Or I run the financial report because it's my job to run the monthly financial report. I want you to think bigger. If you are a CEO running your company, why would you pay someone to do the work that you're doing? Why is that important to the CEO? And I hear all the time, people come to me and they're like, well, I'm a project manager. It's not like my project management skill is a skill that's like super important to the CEO. Yes, it is.
(05:40):
It's valuable because you are coordinating people that the CEO does not want to have to coordinate. You are managing to a budget that the CEO does not want to have to manage. You are ensuring things are getting delivered on a schedule with a bunch of different people. It's a little bit like herding white cats, right? I have a lot of respect for project managers. Don't come back and say, well, my project doesn't really help the CEO or my job doesn't really help the CEO. Everything you do helps the CEO or you shouldn't be doing it. Let that sit for just a second with you guys, okay? When we think of high level thinking, you have to understand how what you're doing is important to those executives. All right? I'm not just talking your direct boss. I'm talking leadership.
(06:20):
Right now, the CEO may not know you by name. They might not know the details of the work that you're doing, but you're clearly passionate about it. If you're going to fire hydrant at somebody, so why is it important? Why does the company need it? Now, I have worked in jobs where this is really obvious, right? If you work in finance, it's really obvious why you're important. You don't want the company to spend too much money. It's pretty obvious, right? If you're managing a project, it's so that you're delivering the scopes of work that are going to either retain clients, retain employees, deliver more volume, allow for product fulfillment, create new products, whatever it is, and the CEO doesn't have to manage all them. And you say you do it for them.
(06:59):
Sometimes it can be really obvious what your impact is, and sometimes it's less obvious. I worked with a process change manager at one point in my career and their whole job was to like document the processes. And at some point they're like, well, why would the CEO even care about. The CEO is never going to look at the processes. Yes, but because of you, the processes that are going to allow employees to become more efficient with a more consistent level of quality are being executed more often. Right? That's the process. So think about taking a step out of your role, looking at it from the thousand foot CEO view. Why are you doing what you're doing? This is true for every single piece of work you put out. Okay?
(07:32):
Now, sometimes the answer is, I don't think I should be doing this, but an executive asked for it and I'm doing it anyways. Sometimes that is the answer. Okay, let's all be honest. This is a safe space. This is a safe podcast episode, okay? Sometimes the answer is because somebody really important asked for it. I think it's dumb, but it's not up to me, okay? I have been there on a regular basis, okay? But a lot of the time, the things you're doing serve an important purpose, and it's understanding those is going to allow you to do that high level thinking. What it's also going to allow you to do is separate urgency from importance. So this is going to be a slight segue, but it is, my gosh, so critical. Okay? So critical.
(08:12):
A lot of the time it is important to treat things with a sense of urgency, meaning your boss pings you, they have a question, you want to respond relatively quickly. Especially in the era of teams and chats and text messaging and zoom calls and hey, do you have a sex? Okay, in that world, we treat a lot of things with a sense of urgency. At some point in your career, it becomes really important to be able to separate that urgency from importance. There will be some things you are asked to do that are very urgent and not very important. And there are things you will be asked to do that are very important, but maybe not very urgent. And there are. Sometimes you will be asked to do things that are both, and sometimes you will be asked to do things that are neither.
(08:56):
Understanding the difference is critical because not everything needs to be urgent. I had an individual come on my podcast years ago. I'd have to find the episode. I'll find it. We'll tag it in the show notes. I think it was Sam. Maybe it was Sam. No, it was Emily. Ha. I got it. There's an episode on my podcast years ago, and she said, you do not have to treat everything with the same level of urgency in which it is brought to you. And what that means is if somebody pings you and says Hey, I need this right now. And after assessing its importance relative to your other tasks, it is not more important. It is okay to push back and say, hey, I'd be happy to get that to you. How's Friday sound? How does next week sound? How does next month sound?
(09:44):
It is okay to take in an urgent request, assess it, and determine that it is in fact not urgent. If you have been eagerly awaiting the Secrets of the Career Game book, it is officially available for pre order. This book will go over 36 strategies for building success in your career and honestly is some of my best lessons, best templates and best ways for you to start to get the success and the progression in your career that you deserve. If you do pre order the book, make sure that you email a screenshot of your pre order to that careercoachmail.com in order to be added to our top secret community. In that community, you'll have access to me, as well as 2 live Q& A sessions.
(10:27):
When the book launches, you'll also get an extra early copy with the first chapter of the book for you to read ahead. Go to Amazon, Find Secrets of the career game 36 Strategies for your career. Go ahead, place your pre order and send us an email. Now. There is some nuance here. Your CEO phones you and says, hey, this is really important. I need answer by end of day. Who cares if it's actually important? It's important to the CEO. We're gonna go do it, right? Let's all use our logical thinking brains here. But you have all probably worked in that environment where your boss is constantly coming to you and saying, hey, I need this. Make sure that we get this out by end of day. Every Friday there's a fire drill. Every Monday there's a fire drill.
(11:04):
You're working every night, you're logging on weekends. And it's a consistent problem. It is because everything is being treated with urgency and not evaluated for importance. So I'll give you some examples in different parts of the business. Okay, so in marketing, hey, a PR email that went out that's getting published tomorrow has a typo in it. Urgent. Okay? High, high level of urgency. Hey, the campaign we have scheduled for Halloween, we need to rework branding. Important, not urgent, not time sensitive. Now, it still probably needs to get done far ahead of October. Right? But not the same level of urgency as the PR statement, but high level of importance. Hey, the boss wants to know how did the campaign last week perform? We need a percentage. In my opinion, probably medium importance, probably not urgent. Now you probably received it with urgency.
(12:03):
Hey, I need this number asap. Do you have it? And if you have it handy, sure. You say 7% and it was great. Okay. If you don't have it handy and you're working on the PR correction that needs to go out for tomorrow that is urgent and is important, you say, hey, I would love to get to that request. I am really in a fire drill that needs to get fixed today. Can I get you that number by end of day tomorrow? Is that okay? And they're going to say, sure, 99.9% of the time. Okay. Those are examples of urgency versus importance. I'll give you another one. In a different space, say you work in supply chain. Okay? A shipment went missing. Urgent and important. Okay? Over time, our loss percentage has been increasing. We need to find a way to fix it.
(12:48):
Very important, not as urgent. Your boss pings you and says, hey, how many iPhones do we have in warehouse A? Neither urgent nor important. And we can push back. Great. Learning to assess the difference between. This is the biggest shift that comes when you start moving into senior leadership. The average, I'm going to call them an order taker. Do not take this personally or be offended. Right? The average order taker, think intern, entry level, maybe senior entry level, doesn't have much leadership experience. Less than 5 years experience in the workforce. Okay? They are not going to be able to assess the difference between urgency and importance. Everything is going to be urgent. Everything's going to be important. Where you have problems is when people in that group don't treat anything as urgent. Separate issue, different podcast episode. Okay?
(13:33):
When you start to become a manager, if you are treating everything as urgent and important, you are going to burn yourself and your team out, full stop. You must learn to assess at that level what is important and what is not, what is urgent and what is not so that you can shield, protect, guide and have a vision for your team. This is why so many people have a hard time getting to director. Because they're managing work. They're getting a lot of work done. Everything is urgent. Everything is important. There's no clarity. There's no prioritization. There's no vision. There's no strategy. That is a manager's job. A director is leading an organization. A director is making decisions that will determine the importance of different things a team is working on. They are leading a group. Okay?
(14:16):
So as you want to progress your career, developing this urgency versus importance is so, so key. Okay? So jumping back into high level thinking. If you understand how your work is important to the CEO and you understand the difference between urgency and importance, and you're working on important tasks and you're deprioritizing unimportant tasks and you're filling the urgency things with a timely manner. Okay? High level thinking is being able to put all of that together and determine a direction. People talk about strategy a lot. And when people talk about strategy, they make it seem like this like amazing, magical skill that like our CEO woke up one day and had a vision and we all. That's not the way it works. Right. People make strategies out to be way too complicated. In my opinion.
(15:03):
If you work in a strategy team, you probably find it darn near impossible to explain what your job is other than slide junkie in the nicest, most respectful way possible. I know because I've done those jobs. Okay? Strategy is a tactical thing that people overcomplicate. So if you're a high level thinker, you understand why what you do and your team does is important to the CEO. You understand the difference between urgency and importance. You need to have direction and you need to know how you're going to get there. Okay? So I'm going to use myself as a personal example. I run a team, not just that career coach, but in my corporate job, if you followed for a while, you know, Yes, I still have one. Yes, I really love it and that's why I do it.
(15:40):
My team is responsible for financial and operational initiatives that make the company better. Right? So we run a budget, we run vendor relationships, we make sure that we're doing special projects that are making the team more efficient, that are making our finances more efficient. Things like that. Okay. When I joined that team, we had a great team in place and everything was unbelievably manual. Now I understand why this function is important to leadership. It's important to leadership because we have to be able to scale our business without scaling our finances. Right? We need to be able to grow faster than we spend money and we need to be able to do that in a way that makes our employees more efficient. Okay? That's super obvious to me. That's what's important to the CEO. That's why the team exists. Right?
(16:25):
Then I started seeing all these urgent things. Every renewal was urgent. Every financial purchase order that was created was urgent. Every budget request was urgent. And I'm like, no, some of these things are super important. We're not doing urgency. We created an intake process. We created. I'm going to get into the weeds. You get it? We started separating what was actually urgent, what was actually important from everything else that was coming in that was flooding the index. And the direction that we created was automation. And what I mean by automation is we cannot throw people at a growing problem. We need to streamline the problem itself. And so what my team did is we came into a team that was doing things very manual, very well, but very manual.
(17:04):
And we said, where are all the areas where we can bring in technology, we can bring in solutions, we can bring in automation, we can bring in workflows, we can bring in tracking, and we can decrease effort required? In the 14 years that I've managed this team, four years I've managed this team, There we go. Even Kendall has, like, verbal typos. Check that out. We have quadrupled, not joking, 4x the amount of volume my team manages, 4x the budget, 4x number of invoices, 4x number of purchase orders, X number of special projects, X. And I have increased the size of that team by two people because were automating almost as fast as were growing. That is direction. And what that automation then allows me to do is deprioritize other things people think are important.
(17:50):
Like, well, oh, it's really important to get this manual report out. Well, we've actually already automated that report in this dashboard that you can go self service. Great, deprioritized, Great. Completed. Or hey, we need you to run this really complex manual report. We can get to a similar answer using some of the things we've automated. Why don't we focus our attention there? Deprioritized request. Right? It allows you to push back in healthy, engaging, collaborative ways. We'll have a whole separate podcast episode on that, I promise. Okay. But you have to have a vision. When you don't have a vision, you are not high level thinking. You are unable to connect your work to the CEO and you are unable to provide direction to your team. Okay? High level thinking does not mean that you don't know how to do the work.
(18:33):
It does not mean that you don't know how to solve the problem. It does not mean that you don't know the data. It means that you're thinking about it in terms of the company in a particular direction with a high value of importance. Okay, Making a triangle. Make a triangle. All right, so once you have high level thinking and you have this strategy, you have this direction your team is running, well, you understand why it's important to leadership, then we have to communicate it. And this is where strategic communication Comes in. I started this episode talking about how we go into meetings with executives and a lot of the time we come across defensive. We want to tell them everything. Here's everything I've ever done and why. The answer is four. Okay. I see it all the time.
(19:14):
When you are communicating to an executive and in a second we're going to get to when somebody is presenting to you, which is slightly different skill set. When you are presenting to senior leadership, you need to not only understand how your job is important to the CEO, you need to understand what they care about, what is important to them that they think is important to the CEO. So if you're talking to senior leadership in technology, they care about customer experience, product, and do they have enough money? Probably. Okay. If you're talking to somebody in marketing, they care about sales, they care about campaigns and click rates, they care about reach. Right. If you're talking to somebody in sales, they pretty much only care about sales, it's pretty much probably it. Okay.
(19:57):
Understand what is important to the leadership to whom you are communicating, and then connect that with your high level thinking of why is your team important? Where do those two things intersect? They must intersect or there's no reason for you to be presenting to that person. Right? Let's all be honest. If you are working on an operational solution and you are presenting it to the head of legal, it must have regulatory or legal implications or there's no reason for you to be presenting the clo. Great. So what are you doing? How does it connect to what's important to them? You must start there and you must think about this before the meeting. I cannot stress that enough. Do not walk into that meeting blind. Be like, yo, Steve, what are we talking about today? Do not do that to a senior leader. Be prepared.
(20:46):
Okay, I can't sing. And for everyone who is listening to this, safety of their eardrums, I will never do that again, but thank you so much for that. You have to understand why what you are doing is important to them. And you have to anticipate what type of questions they're going to ask about it. Now we live in a modern world. You can ask chat GBT for all I care. All right? I have done this before. I have a lot of clients who do this. If you are walking into a meeting and you're like, I don't know what's important to them? Chat GPT it. What would be the 10 most important things to a chief technology officer? What would be the 10 most important things to a director in operations? What would Be the five most important things to a chief legal officer.
(21:23):
Ask them. ChatGPT is da bomb. All right? Or proclivity or whatever you want to use. It's a prompt engine. Okay. You can also ask ChatGPT what would be the top five questions on this topic that somebody in this position would ask. And it's going to come up with stuff. It's so cool. Okay, this is my. I am not sponsored by Chat gbt. I wish I was Microsoft. If you hear this and you want to sponsor a podcast, throw my name in the ring. Okay? You can ask Chat GPT if you are struggling with this exercise. If you are presenting to a net new audience, get their background off LinkedIn, load it into ChatGPT. How would this type of person respond to this type of proposal? What types of questions would they ask? ChatGPT is going to come up with some stuff.
(22:07):
Maybe it's not 100, but it's going to get you started. It's going to get you thinking right now, if you present to executive leaders all the time, no, you don't have to do this before every single meeting because there's going to be a lot of overlap. So same types of problems going to the same types of people. They're asking the same types of questions. You get more familiar with it. But if you are someone who never presents to senior leadership and you are going to do a big presentation to senior leadership, do some homework, do some prep work, do a dry run, do not show up in that meeting and look at your slides for the very first time, Please don't. Okay? I have presented to senior leaders almost my entire career, and I'll be honest with you, I've always kind of winged it.
(22:44):
I know this whole episode goes contrary to that. I've always kind of walked in and sat with them and been like, yo, Joe, this is what's important to you. Here's what I'm working on. What do you want to do? And I will tell you. When I was more junior, I was the fire hydrant. Way too much information, way too quickly, way difficult for them to make a decision, right? As I got more senior, I refined that. But presentation is not my struggle, right? If communication and strategic communication, presentation, storytelling, if that is your struggle, if that's the area you need to improve in the most, do some fricking homework. Don't expect to just wake up tomorrow and you're like, I am now the best at this. No, that's not how it works. I practiced in.
(23:24):
There was a conference room in a company that I worked for. I had a coworker who I really liked. He and I were good friends. We got along really great. Both. I would argue very quick on the uptake, and he and I would lock ourselves in a conference room and I would present to him, hey, this is what I'm planning to present. What questions do you think they're going to ask? And he would give me ideas and vice versa. He'd go, this is what I'm going to present. What would you want to ask? These are my questions. Awesome. And then we're prepped to have answers to those questions. Now, they may not ask them, but we've done some grunt work. Now, you don't necessarily have to get a peer. You can use ChatGPT. Isn't this great?
(23:53):
But even as somebody who is pretty confident, walking into most meetings is comfortable, kind of winging it even. I have done a lot of prep work before really big meetings, for really big presentations, before speaking engagements. You should do the same thing, invest in yourself before. So when it comes to strategic communication, you need to understand what you are doing. Why is it important to the CEO? What do they care about? And how does that connect to what you're proposing? What types of questions are they going to ask? And then most importantly, you must set context. Set context, please, at the start of a meeting. Big mistake more junior people make is they jump straight into the data. Thank you guys for joining the meeting. I want to tell you all about it. And we're gone and we have lost literally everyone.
(24:40):
You are going to start your meeting with context setting. What is the problem statement we are trying to solve? What's the problem we're all facing? Because if you're trying to do something, it's because something's not working. Very rarely do we look at a perfect process and go, man, I really want to throw up some changes there. No. Okay, you're solving a problem. What is that problem? What are the impacts of that problem? What are you proposing? What does that proposal solve? And how. And then what do you need from the executive team to get that going? That's how you're every. Almost every presentation deck should be structured exactly like this. I have a whole separate podcast episode on storytelling. I have a YouTube video about how to make a presentation in storytelling sides. You're welcome to go watch those if you want more details.
(25:23):
But the high level for this podcast is you must set the context. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the impact of that problem? And what are we proposing everything starts there. Then if they have questions, you can go into the weeds. You can provide that supporting data. But don't start with I ran analysis where I looked at 82 different problems across the firm. We identified 17 as the biggest problems. Then of those 17 problems, we met with every senior leader and it turns out that this is the problem everybody would like to get fixed most. So based on this problem, we've really done some analysis on the amount of time that it takes. We have a proposal.
(25:55):
Nobody knows what you're talking about versus if I go in and I say we have a problem at this firm of having inconsistent messaging. This is what goes internally to our employees and externally to our clients. The impact of this is disconnects throughout the business. What I'm proposing is a standardization of the way that we communicate with consistent branding that can be used by all of our internally facing partners and our externally facing partners in order to ensure consistent messaging across both. Then we go into what we're trying to do that is so much easier to follow. They understand the problem, they understand the impact, they understand what you're trying to do. Great. Now take them into the weeds. Don't go in defensive. Don't go in trying to prove that you know everything. Go instead with context.
(26:42):
Okay, so we've talked a little bit about high level thinking. We've talked a little bit about strategic communication. The other piece of strategic communication is when you are a consumer of information. So if you are not the one presenting, usually one of three things happens. One, we are doing other work and we're not paying attention. I see you, I've been you, I do it all the time. I'm not even gonna lie. Okay. If it is something where somebody more senior than you is presenting, you should probably be paying attention. If it is something that's gonna directly impact your job, you should probably be paying attention. If it's just a meeting to have a meeting, no judgment for me. If you're like being extra productive, okay. Second thing that happens is we want to tear that thing apart.
(27:20):
The proposal is coming from somebody we don't like, or it's coming about a topic that we think we own, and it's coming from somebody who's not in our team who thinks they own it, or there's some type of friction and we're like, man, I don't want to do this. And we're trying to tear it apart. If you are in that situation, one, you need to create some emotional distance for yourself. Take a step back Take a breath, do some ohms, listen to some headspace. I don't care. You need a breather, right? You do not need to be as emotionally connected to your job. There's a separate podcast episode on that too. Okay. In that situation, your goal is not to make them look stupid and your goal is not to tear down their idea.
(27:53):
What your goal is to share your risks and concerns within the context of what they're proposing so that they've been heard and documented and allow them the opportunity to present their idea to other people who may feel similarly. Those need to be your two goals. Now, what that looks like in a meeting is you may ask questions. Hey, it's an interesting idea. How would it work in this situation where you don't think it Right. I love that you're bringing this concept to the team. You know, it's interesting because I feel like my team does a lot of what you're describing. I'd love to know what are the pain points that led you to get involved. Great. Did your team drop something that then led to this whole drama? We should probably figure that out. We should probably figured it out offline. But that's separate.
(28:34):
Okay. And then we say, you know, I appreciate the proposal. There are a couple risks that I see with this risk. One, is this risk. Two, is this risk? Three, is this. Now, obviously this decision is going to impact teams more broadly than just myself and you. I'd love to get the team's thoughts, but I wanted to make sure I put it out there, as I do see some of these risks potentially becoming future problems. It's a very respectful way to share your concerns. Don't go, you stole my idea. That's my work. That's dumb. I don't like it. Don't do any of that. Don't be that person. Okay? We all grownups. And if you are going to be that person, don't tell anybody you listen to my podcast.
(29:12):
The third thing that I see happen when you are ingesting information is you think it's a good idea. And so you don't ask any questions. You don't probe. Every senior executive is going to probe. They are going to ask questions, they're going to ask for follow ups. They're going to need additional details. They're going to want to know how things go. If you're having a hard time thinking of questions, chatgpt to the rescue again. Okay, but you need to be asking things. Executive presence, this nebulous term that everybody needs to work on that every executive talks about is not just about high level thinking. It's not just about strategic communication, showing up to these meetings confident, knowing what you're talking about. It's about asking the right questions.
(29:51):
Because if you ask something that somebody else more senior in the meeting is like, man, that's a really good question. You have now gone up a notch in their perception of you. Right? Or you ask a really good question that disproves the whole idea we all thought was a great idea. Or you ask a question that proves why it's a great idea and everybody feels comfortable and gets on board. Asking questions is so important. Now. This does not mean you have to ask 100 every meeting. Don't be that dude. All right? But come prepared with things you want to know and it's okay to say in the meeting. Oh, I'm so glad you touched on that. That was one of the questions I had when I pre read your materials because how this would impact. I love that you already thought about that.
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That's fine too, right? But you need to contribute your ideas. So hopefully you guys found today's episode helpful. I tried to give some tactical tips of how to do these things, some tools like ChatGPT that you can use to supplement it. If you like today's episode, go ahead and give us five stars. Leave any questions or comments that you have for us below. Otherwise, tune in next week for another amazing episode and we'll see you back here on Secrets of the Career Game.
At some point in your career, it becomes really important to be able to separate that urgency from importance. There will be some things you are asked to do that are very urgent and not very important, and there are things you will be asked to do that are very important but maybe not very urgent. And there are sometimes you will be asked to do things that are both, and sometimes you will be asked to do things that are neither. Understanding the difference is critical because not everything needs to be urgent. I had an individual come on my podcast years ago and she said, you do not have to treat everything with the same level of urgency in which it is brought to you.
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And what that means is if somebody pings you and says, hey, I need this right now, and after assessing its importance relative to your other tasks, it is not more important, it is okay to push back and say, hey, I'd be happy to get that to you. How's Friday sound? It is okay to take in an urgent request, assess it, and determine that it is in fact, not urgent. Welcome back to this episode of Secrets of the Career Game. So many people are trying to navigate a corporate world that is laden with secrets, cleverly hidden and unspoken rules to a game that most employees don't even know that they're playing. On this podcast, we try to give you a peek behind the curtains and some tips and tricks to ultimately make you successful in your career and help you progress a little bit faster.
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Today's episode might be my second most highly requested topic that we've ever covered. I cannot describe the sheer number of people who have sent me DMs, who have asked in coaching calls, who have sent me notes on Slack in my bootcamp program, who want to hear more about high level communication, strategic communication and executive presence and high level thinking. Today is going to be a deep dive into all of the things your boss tells you need to get better at, where you have no idea what that means. Okay, so I'm really excited about today's episode.
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We're going to jump into a few things, both as the presenter and as a person ingesting information, how to show up with strong executive presence, and some of those tips and tricks that make that a little bit more tactical since I think it's generally more of a nebulous concept. So we'll start with high level thinking. So if you have ever heard the term see the forest for the trees, you've probably been told you need to work on your high level thinking. And I don't think that leaders oftentimes know how to clearly communicate what this means from a tactical perspective. What I see a lot of the time when I work with highly technical, highly tactical people is in order to get the work done, you have to be thinking, living, executing in the Municha. Right?
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You have to understand from seed to sprout exactly what needs to happen. Oftentimes this includes a lot of data or analysis. Oftentimes this includes a lot of process points or process steps. This can include a lot of stakeholders, this can include a lot of tasks. And what happens is, as an individual, we are managing such a high mental load, meaning a laundry list of things that we need to tick off and make sure that we complete that when it comes time to then turn around and present that information to senior leaders. It's a little bit like drinking out of a fire hydrant. So I think the actual saying here, as an aside, is drinking out of the fire hose. But I had a boss once who said it was like drinking out of a fire hydrant. And I always liked that picture.
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It's like some weird cartoon from the 90s that tells you exactly how they feel about getting too much information all at once. Great. Okay, jumping back in. So when we think of communicating to an executive, a lot of the time, especially if you're more junior or if you're in a more technical role, that could be a senior technical role. Right? Either of those situations, a lot of the time we come into those conversations automatically defensive. And I don't mean this in an argumentative, confrontational, aggressive, yelling kind of way. What I mean is because the people we are presenting to are more senior than usual and we likely don't have very often or very extensive exposure to those individuals.
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When we go into meetings where we do have that visibility opportunity, we're really trying to make sure all of our T's are crossed and I's are dotted. And this means that we show up in a way where we are sharing everything we can possibly think of in hopes that we're convincing them that we know what we're doing. And that's what I mean by defensive is we come in not wanting feedback, not wanting their perspective because we so badly want to prove that we know how to do our job well. And like I said, I'm not talking language, I'm not talking volume, I'm not talking aggressive posture. You can be really nice and really smiley and still come across really defensive in a situation where we're providing too much information too quickly.
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So when it comes to high level thinking, you have to understand why you're doing the work that you're doing. Now, this is going to sound really obvious and most people are going to go, well, I'm doing this analysis because my boss asked me to do this analysis. Or I run the financial report because it's my job to run the monthly financial report. I want you to think bigger. If you are a CEO running your company, why would you pay someone to do the work that you're doing? Why is that important to the CEO? And I hear all the time, people come to me and they're like, well, I'm a project manager. It's not like my project management skill is a skill that's like super important to the CEO. Yes, it is.
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It's valuable because you are coordinating people that the CEO does not want to have to coordinate. You are managing to a budget that the CEO does not want to have to manage. You are ensuring things are getting delivered on a schedule with a bunch of different people. It's a little bit like herding white cats, right? I have a lot of respect for project managers. Don't come back and say, well, my project doesn't really help the CEO or my job doesn't really help the CEO. Everything you do helps the CEO or you shouldn't be doing it. Let that sit for just a second with you guys, okay? When we think of high level thinking, you have to understand how what you're doing is important to those executives. All right? I'm not just talking your direct boss. I'm talking leadership.
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Right now, the CEO may not know you by name. They might not know the details of the work that you're doing, but you're clearly passionate about it. If you're going to fire hydrant at somebody, so why is it important? Why does the company need it? Now, I have worked in jobs where this is really obvious, right? If you work in finance, it's really obvious why you're important. You don't want the company to spend too much money. It's pretty obvious, right? If you're managing a project, it's so that you're delivering the scopes of work that are going to either retain clients, retain employees, deliver more volume, allow for product fulfillment, create new products, whatever it is, and the CEO doesn't have to manage all them. And you say you do it for them.
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Sometimes it can be really obvious what your impact is, and sometimes it's less obvious. I worked with a process change manager at one point in my career and their whole job was to like document the processes. And at some point they're like, well, why would the CEO even care about. The CEO is never going to look at the processes. Yes, but because of you, the processes that are going to allow employees to become more efficient with a more consistent level of quality are being executed more often. Right? That's the process. So think about taking a step out of your role, looking at it from the thousand foot CEO view. Why are you doing what you're doing? This is true for every single piece of work you put out. Okay?
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Now, sometimes the answer is, I don't think I should be doing this, but an executive asked for it and I'm doing it anyways. Sometimes that is the answer. Okay, let's all be honest. This is a safe space. This is a safe podcast episode, okay? Sometimes the answer is because somebody really important asked for it. I think it's dumb, but it's not up to me, okay? I have been there on a regular basis, okay? But a lot of the time, the things you're doing serve an important purpose, and it's understanding those is going to allow you to do that high level thinking. What it's also going to allow you to do is separate urgency from importance. So this is going to be a slight segue, but it is, my gosh, so critical. Okay? So critical.
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A lot of the time it is important to treat things with a sense of urgency, meaning your boss pings you, they have a question, you want to respond relatively quickly. Especially in the era of teams and chats and text messaging and zoom calls and hey, do you have a sex? Okay, in that world, we treat a lot of things with a sense of urgency. At some point in your career, it becomes really important to be able to separate that urgency from importance. There will be some things you are asked to do that are very urgent and not very important. And there are things you will be asked to do that are very important, but maybe not very urgent. And there are. Sometimes you will be asked to do things that are both, and sometimes you will be asked to do things that are neither.
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Understanding the difference is critical because not everything needs to be urgent. I had an individual come on my podcast years ago. I'd have to find the episode. I'll find it. We'll tag it in the show notes. I think it was Sam. Maybe it was Sam. No, it was Emily. Ha. I got it. There's an episode on my podcast years ago, and she said, you do not have to treat everything with the same level of urgency in which it is brought to you. And what that means is if somebody pings you and says Hey, I need this right now. And after assessing its importance relative to your other tasks, it is not more important. It is okay to push back and say, hey, I'd be happy to get that to you. How's Friday sound? How does next week sound? How does next month sound?
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It is okay to take in an urgent request, assess it, and determine that it is in fact not urgent. If you have been eagerly awaiting the Secrets of the Career Game book, it is officially available for pre order. This book will go over 36 strategies for building success in your career and honestly is some of my best lessons, best templates and best ways for you to start to get the success and the progression in your career that you deserve. If you do pre order the book, make sure that you email a screenshot of your pre order to that careercoachmail.com in order to be added to our top secret community. In that community, you'll have access to me, as well as 2 live Q& A sessions.
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When the book launches, you'll also get an extra early copy with the first chapter of the book for you to read ahead. Go to Amazon, Find Secrets of the career game 36 Strategies for your career. Go ahead, place your pre order and send us an email. Now. There is some nuance here. Your CEO phones you and says, hey, this is really important. I need answer by end of day. Who cares if it's actually important? It's important to the CEO. We're gonna go do it, right? Let's all use our logical thinking brains here. But you have all probably worked in that environment where your boss is constantly coming to you and saying, hey, I need this. Make sure that we get this out by end of day. Every Friday there's a fire drill. Every Monday there's a fire drill.
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You're working every night, you're logging on weekends. And it's a consistent problem. It is because everything is being treated with urgency and not evaluated for importance. So I'll give you some examples in different parts of the business. Okay, so in marketing, hey, a PR email that went out that's getting published tomorrow has a typo in it. Urgent. Okay? High, high level of urgency. Hey, the campaign we have scheduled for Halloween, we need to rework branding. Important, not urgent, not time sensitive. Now, it still probably needs to get done far ahead of October. Right? But not the same level of urgency as the PR statement, but high level of importance. Hey, the boss wants to know how did the campaign last week perform? We need a percentage. In my opinion, probably medium importance, probably not urgent. Now you probably received it with urgency.
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Hey, I need this number asap. Do you have it? And if you have it handy, sure. You say 7% and it was great. Okay. If you don't have it handy and you're working on the PR correction that needs to go out for tomorrow that is urgent and is important, you say, hey, I would love to get to that request. I am really in a fire drill that needs to get fixed today. Can I get you that number by end of day tomorrow? Is that okay? And they're going to say, sure, 99.9% of the time. Okay. Those are examples of urgency versus importance. I'll give you another one. In a different space, say you work in supply chain. Okay? A shipment went missing. Urgent and important. Okay? Over time, our loss percentage has been increasing. We need to find a way to fix it.
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Very important, not as urgent. Your boss pings you and says, hey, how many iPhones do we have in warehouse A? Neither urgent nor important. And we can push back. Great. Learning to assess the difference between. This is the biggest shift that comes when you start moving into senior leadership. The average, I'm going to call them an order taker. Do not take this personally or be offended. Right? The average order taker, think intern, entry level, maybe senior entry level, doesn't have much leadership experience. Less than 5 years experience in the workforce. Okay? They are not going to be able to assess the difference between urgency and importance. Everything is going to be urgent. Everything's going to be important. Where you have problems is when people in that group don't treat anything as urgent. Separate issue, different podcast episode. Okay?
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When you start to become a manager, if you are treating everything as urgent and important, you are going to burn yourself and your team out, full stop. You must learn to assess at that level what is important and what is not, what is urgent and what is not so that you can shield, protect, guide and have a vision for your team. This is why so many people have a hard time getting to director. Because they're managing work. They're getting a lot of work done. Everything is urgent. Everything is important. There's no clarity. There's no prioritization. There's no vision. There's no strategy. That is a manager's job. A director is leading an organization. A director is making decisions that will determine the importance of different things a team is working on. They are leading a group. Okay?
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So as you want to progress your career, developing this urgency versus importance is so, so key. Okay? So jumping back into high level thinking. If you understand how your work is important to the CEO and you understand the difference between urgency and importance, and you're working on important tasks and you're deprioritizing unimportant tasks and you're filling the urgency things with a timely manner. Okay? High level thinking is being able to put all of that together and determine a direction. People talk about strategy a lot. And when people talk about strategy, they make it seem like this like amazing, magical skill that like our CEO woke up one day and had a vision and we all. That's not the way it works. Right. People make strategies out to be way too complicated. In my opinion.
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If you work in a strategy team, you probably find it darn near impossible to explain what your job is other than slide junkie in the nicest, most respectful way possible. I know because I've done those jobs. Okay? Strategy is a tactical thing that people overcomplicate. So if you're a high level thinker, you understand why what you do and your team does is important to the CEO. You understand the difference between urgency and importance. You need to have direction and you need to know how you're going to get there. Okay? So I'm going to use myself as a personal example. I run a team, not just that career coach, but in my corporate job, if you followed for a while, you know, Yes, I still have one. Yes, I really love it and that's why I do it.
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My team is responsible for financial and operational initiatives that make the company better. Right? So we run a budget, we run vendor relationships, we make sure that we're doing special projects that are making the team more efficient, that are making our finances more efficient. Things like that. Okay. When I joined that team, we had a great team in place and everything was unbelievably manual. Now I understand why this function is important to leadership. It's important to leadership because we have to be able to scale our business without scaling our finances. Right? We need to be able to grow faster than we spend money and we need to be able to do that in a way that makes our employees more efficient. Okay? That's super obvious to me. That's what's important to the CEO. That's why the team exists. Right?
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Then I started seeing all these urgent things. Every renewal was urgent. Every financial purchase order that was created was urgent. Every budget request was urgent. And I'm like, no, some of these things are super important. We're not doing urgency. We created an intake process. We created. I'm going to get into the weeds. You get it? We started separating what was actually urgent, what was actually important from everything else that was coming in that was flooding the index. And the direction that we created was automation. And what I mean by automation is we cannot throw people at a growing problem. We need to streamline the problem itself. And so what my team did is we came into a team that was doing things very manual, very well, but very manual.
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And we said, where are all the areas where we can bring in technology, we can bring in solutions, we can bring in automation, we can bring in workflows, we can bring in tracking, and we can decrease effort required? In the 14 years that I've managed this team, four years I've managed this team, There we go. Even Kendall has, like, verbal typos. Check that out. We have quadrupled, not joking, 4x the amount of volume my team manages, 4x the budget, 4x number of invoices, 4x number of purchase orders, X number of special projects, X. And I have increased the size of that team by two people because were automating almost as fast as were growing. That is direction. And what that automation then allows me to do is deprioritize other things people think are important.
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Like, well, oh, it's really important to get this manual report out. Well, we've actually already automated that report in this dashboard that you can go self service. Great, deprioritized, Great. Completed. Or hey, we need you to run this really complex manual report. We can get to a similar answer using some of the things we've automated. Why don't we focus our attention there? Deprioritized request. Right? It allows you to push back in healthy, engaging, collaborative ways. We'll have a whole separate podcast episode on that, I promise. Okay. But you have to have a vision. When you don't have a vision, you are not high level thinking. You are unable to connect your work to the CEO and you are unable to provide direction to your team. Okay? High level thinking does not mean that you don't know how to do the work.
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It does not mean that you don't know how to solve the problem. It does not mean that you don't know the data. It means that you're thinking about it in terms of the company in a particular direction with a high value of importance. Okay, Making a triangle. Make a triangle. All right, so once you have high level thinking and you have this strategy, you have this direction your team is running, well, you understand why it's important to leadership, then we have to communicate it. And this is where strategic communication Comes in. I started this episode talking about how we go into meetings with executives and a lot of the time we come across defensive. We want to tell them everything. Here's everything I've ever done and why. The answer is four. Okay. I see it all the time.
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When you are communicating to an executive and in a second we're going to get to when somebody is presenting to you, which is slightly different skill set. When you are presenting to senior leadership, you need to not only understand how your job is important to the CEO, you need to understand what they care about, what is important to them that they think is important to the CEO. So if you're talking to senior leadership in technology, they care about customer experience, product, and do they have enough money? Probably. Okay. If you're talking to somebody in marketing, they care about sales, they care about campaigns and click rates, they care about reach. Right. If you're talking to somebody in sales, they pretty much only care about sales, it's pretty much probably it. Okay.
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Understand what is important to the leadership to whom you are communicating, and then connect that with your high level thinking of why is your team important? Where do those two things intersect? They must intersect or there's no reason for you to be presenting to that person. Right? Let's all be honest. If you are working on an operational solution and you are presenting it to the head of legal, it must have regulatory or legal implications or there's no reason for you to be presenting the clo. Great. So what are you doing? How does it connect to what's important to them? You must start there and you must think about this before the meeting. I cannot stress that enough. Do not walk into that meeting blind. Be like, yo, Steve, what are we talking about today? Do not do that to a senior leader. Be prepared.
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Okay, I can't sing. And for everyone who is listening to this, safety of their eardrums, I will never do that again, but thank you so much for that. You have to understand why what you are doing is important to them. And you have to anticipate what type of questions they're going to ask about it. Now we live in a modern world. You can ask chat GBT for all I care. All right? I have done this before. I have a lot of clients who do this. If you are walking into a meeting and you're like, I don't know what's important to them? Chat GPT it. What would be the 10 most important things to a chief technology officer? What would be the 10 most important things to a director in operations? What would Be the five most important things to a chief legal officer.
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Ask them. ChatGPT is da bomb. All right? Or proclivity or whatever you want to use. It's a prompt engine. Okay. You can also ask ChatGPT what would be the top five questions on this topic that somebody in this position would ask. And it's going to come up with stuff. It's so cool. Okay, this is my. I am not sponsored by Chat gbt. I wish I was Microsoft. If you hear this and you want to sponsor a podcast, throw my name in the ring. Okay? You can ask Chat GPT if you are struggling with this exercise. If you are presenting to a net new audience, get their background off LinkedIn, load it into ChatGPT. How would this type of person respond to this type of proposal? What types of questions would they ask? ChatGPT is going to come up with some stuff.
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Maybe it's not 100, but it's going to get you started. It's going to get you thinking right now, if you present to executive leaders all the time, no, you don't have to do this before every single meeting because there's going to be a lot of overlap. So same types of problems going to the same types of people. They're asking the same types of questions. You get more familiar with it. But if you are someone who never presents to senior leadership and you are going to do a big presentation to senior leadership, do some homework, do some prep work, do a dry run, do not show up in that meeting and look at your slides for the very first time, Please don't. Okay? I have presented to senior leaders almost my entire career, and I'll be honest with you, I've always kind of winged it.
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I know this whole episode goes contrary to that. I've always kind of walked in and sat with them and been like, yo, Joe, this is what's important to you. Here's what I'm working on. What do you want to do? And I will tell you. When I was more junior, I was the fire hydrant. Way too much information, way too quickly, way difficult for them to make a decision, right? As I got more senior, I refined that. But presentation is not my struggle, right? If communication and strategic communication, presentation, storytelling, if that is your struggle, if that's the area you need to improve in the most, do some fricking homework. Don't expect to just wake up tomorrow and you're like, I am now the best at this. No, that's not how it works. I practiced in.
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There was a conference room in a company that I worked for. I had a coworker who I really liked. He and I were good friends. We got along really great. Both. I would argue very quick on the uptake, and he and I would lock ourselves in a conference room and I would present to him, hey, this is what I'm planning to present. What questions do you think they're going to ask? And he would give me ideas and vice versa. He'd go, this is what I'm going to present. What would you want to ask? These are my questions. Awesome. And then we're prepped to have answers to those questions. Now, they may not ask them, but we've done some grunt work. Now, you don't necessarily have to get a peer. You can use ChatGPT. Isn't this great?
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But even as somebody who is pretty confident, walking into most meetings is comfortable, kind of winging it even. I have done a lot of prep work before really big meetings, for really big presentations, before speaking engagements. You should do the same thing, invest in yourself before. So when it comes to strategic communication, you need to understand what you are doing. Why is it important to the CEO? What do they care about? And how does that connect to what you're proposing? What types of questions are they going to ask? And then most importantly, you must set context. Set context, please, at the start of a meeting. Big mistake more junior people make is they jump straight into the data. Thank you guys for joining the meeting. I want to tell you all about it. And we're gone and we have lost literally everyone.
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You are going to start your meeting with context setting. What is the problem statement we are trying to solve? What's the problem we're all facing? Because if you're trying to do something, it's because something's not working. Very rarely do we look at a perfect process and go, man, I really want to throw up some changes there. No. Okay, you're solving a problem. What is that problem? What are the impacts of that problem? What are you proposing? What does that proposal solve? And how. And then what do you need from the executive team to get that going? That's how you're every. Almost every presentation deck should be structured exactly like this. I have a whole separate podcast episode on storytelling. I have a YouTube video about how to make a presentation in storytelling sides. You're welcome to go watch those if you want more details.
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But the high level for this podcast is you must set the context. What is the problem we're trying to solve? What is the impact of that problem? And what are we proposing everything starts there. Then if they have questions, you can go into the weeds. You can provide that supporting data. But don't start with I ran analysis where I looked at 82 different problems across the firm. We identified 17 as the biggest problems. Then of those 17 problems, we met with every senior leader and it turns out that this is the problem everybody would like to get fixed most. So based on this problem, we've really done some analysis on the amount of time that it takes. We have a proposal.
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Nobody knows what you're talking about versus if I go in and I say we have a problem at this firm of having inconsistent messaging. This is what goes internally to our employees and externally to our clients. The impact of this is disconnects throughout the business. What I'm proposing is a standardization of the way that we communicate with consistent branding that can be used by all of our internally facing partners and our externally facing partners in order to ensure consistent messaging across both. Then we go into what we're trying to do that is so much easier to follow. They understand the problem, they understand the impact, they understand what you're trying to do. Great. Now take them into the weeds. Don't go in defensive. Don't go in trying to prove that you know everything. Go instead with context.
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Okay, so we've talked a little bit about high level thinking. We've talked a little bit about strategic communication. The other piece of strategic communication is when you are a consumer of information. So if you are not the one presenting, usually one of three things happens. One, we are doing other work and we're not paying attention. I see you, I've been you, I do it all the time. I'm not even gonna lie. Okay. If it is something where somebody more senior than you is presenting, you should probably be paying attention. If it is something that's gonna directly impact your job, you should probably be paying attention. If it's just a meeting to have a meeting, no judgment for me. If you're like being extra productive, okay. Second thing that happens is we want to tear that thing apart.
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The proposal is coming from somebody we don't like, or it's coming about a topic that we think we own, and it's coming from somebody who's not in our team who thinks they own it, or there's some type of friction and we're like, man, I don't want to do this. And we're trying to tear it apart. If you are in that situation, one, you need to create some emotional distance for yourself. Take a step back Take a breath, do some ohms, listen to some headspace. I don't care. You need a breather, right? You do not need to be as emotionally connected to your job. There's a separate podcast episode on that too. Okay. In that situation, your goal is not to make them look stupid and your goal is not to tear down their idea.
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What your goal is to share your risks and concerns within the context of what they're proposing so that they've been heard and documented and allow them the opportunity to present their idea to other people who may feel similarly. Those need to be your two goals. Now, what that looks like in a meeting is you may ask questions. Hey, it's an interesting idea. How would it work in this situation where you don't think it Right. I love that you're bringing this concept to the team. You know, it's interesting because I feel like my team does a lot of what you're describing. I'd love to know what are the pain points that led you to get involved. Great. Did your team drop something that then led to this whole drama? We should probably figure that out. We should probably figured it out offline. But that's separate.
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Okay. And then we say, you know, I appreciate the proposal. There are a couple risks that I see with this risk. One, is this risk. Two, is this risk? Three, is this. Now, obviously this decision is going to impact teams more broadly than just myself and you. I'd love to get the team's thoughts, but I wanted to make sure I put it out there, as I do see some of these risks potentially becoming future problems. It's a very respectful way to share your concerns. Don't go, you stole my idea. That's my work. That's dumb. I don't like it. Don't do any of that. Don't be that person. Okay? We all grownups. And if you are going to be that person, don't tell anybody you listen to my podcast.
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The third thing that I see happen when you are ingesting information is you think it's a good idea. And so you don't ask any questions. You don't probe. Every senior executive is going to probe. They are going to ask questions, they're going to ask for follow ups. They're going to need additional details. They're going to want to know how things go. If you're having a hard time thinking of questions, chatgpt to the rescue again. Okay, but you need to be asking things. Executive presence, this nebulous term that everybody needs to work on that every executive talks about is not just about high level thinking. It's not just about strategic communication, showing up to these meetings confident, knowing what you're talking about. It's about asking the right questions.
(29:51):
Because if you ask something that somebody else more senior in the meeting is like, man, that's a really good question. You have now gone up a notch in their perception of you. Right? Or you ask a really good question that disproves the whole idea we all thought was a great idea. Or you ask a question that proves why it's a great idea and everybody feels comfortable and gets on board. Asking questions is so important. Now. This does not mean you have to ask 100 every meeting. Don't be that dude. All right? But come prepared with things you want to know and it's okay to say in the meeting. Oh, I'm so glad you touched on that. That was one of the questions I had when I pre read your materials because how this would impact. I love that you already thought about that.
(30:27):
That's fine too, right? But you need to contribute your ideas. So hopefully you guys found today's episode helpful. I tried to give some tactical tips of how to do these things, some tools like ChatGPT that you can use to supplement it. If you like today's episode, go ahead and give us five stars. Leave any questions or comments that you have for us below. Otherwise, tune in next week for another amazing episode and we'll see you back here on Secrets of the Career Game.
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