Getting Beyond Feedback

“Feedback is a gift” is an expression with the right intention but maybe too passive of an outcome. Because when we receive gifts, we accept them but we don’t really take an action because of them. If you hear “feedback is an insight,” it should signal more of a data point that you’ll do something with.

The end of June marks the midpoint for the calendar year. And it is often a time for those feedback insights to happen. Feedback itself has become more on-going and real-time for most employees. People managers don’t wait for a mid-year point to tell you how you’re doing. But it is still the time that companies calibrate development and advancement and capture more standardized inputs from people managers.

And with that in mind, it’s a good time to take stock of feedback and what you’re doing to get beyond it.

People managers who leverage feedback for coaching tend to give someone real-time feedback around a specific situation to illustrate a better way to resolve something or to reinforce an approach that worked well. This is mostly a great thing because it’s easier to hear feedback when the timing is current. And it’s easier to improve a skill or approach when the setting and the topic are specific.

But the more general impression of you and your brand within an organization can get lost. You get less feedback on personal brand unless you ask for it specifically. And you should ask for it – once or twice a year.

How do you ask?

Brand feedback and impressions are less about a specific moment and more about impressions that have settled in over time. In talent reviews, people leaders talk about impressions. They use specific examples to validate or to diffuse impressions that have taken hold.

And you gain those insights by asking for them.

Some people managers offer it without prompting. But if you don’t know the impression of your brand within your team or organization, you should ask for it. Because while feedback may not have been shared, the impressions are always there.

Here’s what you want to know.

Baseline of your brand: You should know how your manager describes your brand. “If someone asked you to describe me, what are the three attributes that come to mind or that you might have shared?” If you work for a people manager who has been great with feedback overall, share back the general impressions that they’ve given you over time. “At the start of the year, you told me my strengths were ___________. Has that stayed consistent or has anything changed?”

Reach of your brand: From internal peers, clients, or cross-functional teams, you should know how others describe your brand. Ask your manager, “How do others share impressions of me or describe my strengths and opportunities?” If your manager shares this, it’s likely to be consistent with how your name has come up in a talent discussion. Or if your manager doesn’t know, it tells you that they’re not promoting your brand or strengths within the organization.

Visibility of your brand: Do you know who your champions are within the organization and are you working to build them? You need to. Not overnight but certainly over time. Ask your manager, “As I work to grow within the company, who besides you should I consider a champion for my development?” If you don’t have champions beyond your manager, ask if it matters. Again, it’s not so much the answer itself but the insight it offers on the visibility of your brand today.

Once you have more general feedback or insights, what do you do with it? Hopefully, you feel terrific about the impact you’ve having and how you’re perceived within the organization. But if there are some unintended impressions, there are three steps that can move you beyond the feedback.

Understand the feedback: Always let feedback sit before you respond to it. Ask questions to understand it, not challenge it. Don’t jump in to debate it or solve it. Feedback rarely has an answer; it’s an insight. But you need to understand what’s behind it, what’s reinforcing it and how consistent it is.

If you want a manager or leader to work with you to get beyond impressions, make it easy to give you feedback. If the feedback is current and specific, it’s easy to talk it through in the moment. If it’s broad and nuanced around impressions as noted above, you need time to absorb it. And if your manager is open to it, it may be best to hear it, understand it and then circle back to talk through what you’re going to try and do about it.

Improve the skill or behavior: While a manager owns the delivery of feedback, it is up to an individual to embrace it and think through how to move beyond it. A manager can be a great coach on how to strengthen a skill or modify a behavior. Sometimes, it may mean just more opportunities for people to experience you. The hardest part of working on feedback is to look ahead, not back. We all want to rehash what happened in hopes of someone seeing our perspective on it. But the reality is you’re not trying to reinforce your perspective…you’re trying to change someone else’s. Focus on the next experience.

Diffuse the impression: If all impressions take hold over time, resolving one and setting a new one also takes time. Be intentional about your efforts but give others a chance to experience a change and buy-in to a difference. It’s not trying harder one time; it’s always over time. Every situation is different, and timing can be as well. But at the right point, usually four to six months, you circle back and ask for feedback on the impressions that worried you. Your manager is the person to ask. But always ask for the impressions of others and whether you should talk to others to close the loop.

Feedback is both a gift and an insight. And the real value of feedback is what you do with it once you receive it.

If you’d like to talk about moving beyond feedback, join us for the coaching moments that follow the monthly newsletters.
June 23 at 11:30am
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Or if you’d like to understand more about how to get feedback on your brand, set up a verbal assessment where we gather the feedback and leverage it into a coaching engagement.
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We’re here when you need us!

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Also Read: When Feedback is a Setback

 

Leveraging AI as a Communicator

Last year, I wrote a newsletter called “Can Chat GPT write my speech?” And essentially, I said AI can get you to a first draft. Over the last year, as we’ve worked with it and seen others apply it to communication, I would say it’s gotten better than that. But I also agree with the stats that say AI gets things 70% right.

Because I see the 30% wrong almost every day. At this point, I’ve seen and edited hundreds of meetings, speeches and presentations built by an AI engine. Here’s what happens:

AI goes unchecked. At least once a week, I see copies of unchecked work. One presenter confused industries by misspelling the name of a company in AI. The insights were good on another industry, but it led the communicator down the wrong path with the prospect.

AI goes uncoached. I saw a keynote recently written for a top leader. An analogy was included that aligned to the content, but not to him. He’s telling a story about coaching 8-year-old girls in soccer. He doesn’t have an 8-year-old, he doesn’t even have a daughter. So, it wasn’t authentic to him.

If you check AI and coach AI, it can adjust. But if you think of AI as just getting things done faster, you will be the next victim of the 30%. And if you’re okay with 30% wrong, then this newsletter won’t be helpful to you. But if you believe, like I do, that communication should be memorable and repeatable, then you need to leverage AI as an innovation and still keep yourself front and center in your content.

These guidelines will help you develop a strong partnership with AI.

First structure. In our workshops, we talk about communication as a journey. The communicator should be leading the listener to a destination. AI cannot create the journey. But it can follow structure. In fact, it probably does. But if you aren’t setting the structure, you have no idea where AI got the structure it uses. In the SW&A toolkit, we call structure the storyline. And while we know data points and insights are helpful, it’s the structure that keeps the listener on the journey.

Second, language. It takes me 30 seconds or less to tell that a script, outline or email was written by AI. If the rest of us know it, why isn’t the communicator worried about that? AI is like leveraging an encyclopedia. It brings knowledge and insight quickly. But there’s nothing conversational about its output. You have to work with AI content to transfer it to your words and your language.

If you’re earnest about being believable as a communicator, AI can’t get you there. It doesn’t know you. Everyone else in the room does. And that’s why it isn’t believable. In fact, the rest of us would say it isn’t even your words. And aren’t you better than that?

Third, personalize it. As a communicator, you should be working for more than believable. You should be working toward engaging and empathetic.

What listeners love about a good communicator is when we spend 30 to 45 minutes listening to them, we feel like we get to know them through what they share and how they talk about a product, direction, or a strategy. AI can tighten a story or help you package it in a fun way. But don’t talk about coaching a girls’ soccer team if you don’t have a daughter. Personalizing content and being open and honest with audiences has always been hard work. And it will continue to be for those who want to be better than 70%.

The best way to leverage AI tools is as a great partner and tool that can enhance something or add something for you. It might be insights or case studies or background. It can save a lot of time and get you to a better product. But you have to put the YOU into communication every time.

We have been learning to integrate it and adapt it ourselves. And we’re feeling good about AI as a partner. But I’m not nearly as interested in helping AI become a good communicator as I am in helping each of you get there. And that’s why our efforts have been on coaching AI on storyline structure, so you can adjust the language and add the personalization to keep communication unique to you. And now, we’ve got the tool that can help you get beyond 70%.

We’ve launched the SW&A Digital Coach. It works in an app to leverage our toolkit for outlining content with an AI engine that guides you to craft a compelling message and the right flow of ideas to take a listener on a journey. And who wouldn’t want SW&A, and our language, guiding the outlining process?

Here’s how you can try it!

Former Students: On Your Own: If you’ve taken our storyline program and already worked with the SW&A methodology, it’s all yours. We’ll give you a link to the app, and you can build three outlines on us. If you love the tool, you can purchase more uses. If not, you got a lesson in AI as a communication partner. Sign up here.

Former Students: A Guided Tour: If you’re a former student, but sheepishly admit you don’t remember the storyline structure, you can take a quick refresher and learn the tool in a 90 min hosted webinar.

Team Workshop: If you haven’t worked with us but think we might be onto something, you can book a workshop for your team. We’ll incorporate the AI tool into an in-person or virtual program. And we’d be happy to do this for our former students as well! Sign up here.

The best part of all of this is learning to leverage AI in communication. But if you stop at 70% effective, you’ve missed the value. You’re working faster but you aren’t getting better results. In fact, from what we see, it may be getting worse. But if you learn to leverage AI as a partner, you can get to 100%—and that’s our standard for a great communicator!

Call us when you need us!

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Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

Your Authentic Presence

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We’ve wrapped up the research for our fifth book! Through interviews, focus groups and surveys, we’ve talked to hundreds of people who shared a current perspective about presence in today’s corporate setting.

Over 50% of respondents are working in companies with over 1,500 employees, and the majority of them are between 36-55 years old. The group was split between people who have experienced us in the last three years, people who experienced us more than three years ago, and 30% who have never worked with us at all.

And the unanimous perspective across all the inputs is…presence hasn’t gone away.

In fact, two in three respondents believe presence has grown in importance over the past five years.

Most of the people who gave input used the pandemic as an inflection point of change. It shifted how we work, it put looking out for people first and foremost, and it required all of us to see each other in a more holistic way.

Corporate norms changed, rules softened and guardrails widened. We began meetings by asking people if they were OK. We experienced our colleagues in vulnerable moments. Communication was often vulnerable and honest. And even though it’s a period that we’re glad to have behind us, the openness and vulnerability took hold. And it’s had a real impact on how we think about our expectations of presence.

While the book will provide a broader view of insights and consider the listeners’ perspective from different vantage points inside a company, here’s an overview of four themes we explored and what we learned.

IMPRESSIONS
Presence begins with impressions, and those impressions take shape for any communicator in a similar fashion. The statistics that suggest we can from 11 impressions in seven seconds still support how quickly we take someone in.

• Body Language: 36%
• Listener Engagement: 34%
• Voice Power: 30%

We talk about a communicator’s toolkit as the body, voice and listener, and as groups weighted the importance of each concept, the body was still the larger impression. But not nearly as much of the impression as it was been in the past. It dropped from 55% of an impression to 36%. Listener engagement was 34%, and the voice was 30%.

What’s different is the reduced number of situations where you can make a strong impression or reset a misinterpreted one. In-person meetings bring a strong advantage to a communicator over virtual meetings, and the hybrid meetings with people in a room and online are considered the most difficult to manage. The virtual and hybrid meetings were listed as the most challenging by all participants.

These inputs show up in current coaching sessions, and it’s put a heightened demand on coaching to diffuse impressions or find more intentional ways to set impressions as a virtual communicator.

ATTRIBUTES
The attributes of presence today look very similar to the attributes we began coaching more than thirty years ago. People want communicators to be confident and clear. They like conviction behind thoughts and a communicator who works to pull them into the conversation.

But when asked which group of attributes matter most, listeners are split between confidence and authenticity. And that means it isn’t enough to be confident and commanding from the front of the room. Listeners want less performance and more sincerity. They want a communicator to build trust, not just respect.

This has been building as an expectation, and it’s a hard one for communicators to consider because authenticity, like trust, builds over time not in a single meeting. But this sound bite shared by one listener says it all: Be the same person tomorrow that you are today.

SKEPTICISM
This theme may go hand in hand with what listeners describe as authenticity. There is more skepticism in most audiences and meetings, and it shows up in tougher questions. Listeners want more context with direction, and they want more than an email message as an explanation. In fact, communicators who are live or visible via video are twice as likely to be believed as a written note. “Talk to us frequently, tell us the truth, and admit your mistakes.”

Communicators say that they feel more challenged in settings. When they hit a skeptical listener, they feel defensive and need some guidance on managing through it. For some communicators, it’s getting comfortable with different perspectives in every setting. For others, it’s learning to hear it, acknowledge it and still move people beyond it.

Communicators feel the pressure to gain alignment. As one said: “Hearts and minds are still there as a focus, but the focus on outcomes has intensified.”

PERSONAL BRAND
Our 1:1 interviews went further in exploring how people think about presence related to their personal brand. And that’s what seems to bring authenticity into focus.

Personal brand is authenticity; it’s who you are and what you’re known for. It evolves over time, and if you’ve been intentional about it, it shifts from what you do to what you can do.

As we talked to individuals about their brand and their presence, it resonates that your brand is how people describe you when you’re not in the room. Brands take shape over time. Your presence is the experience of you in each and every moment.

And coaching someone to deliver on all of it is the focus on our fifth book.

Our observation is that people who have invested time in understanding and exemplifying their personal brand find it easier to bring authenticity to their presence. It’s broadened our coaching, and it’s all part of the communicator’s journey to presence.

We’ll share more as the book project continues.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Coming Full Circle: The Future of Executive Presence

 

Coming Full Circle

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If you receive newsletters and mailings from us routinely, then you know that we are well underway with a fifth book to reset our perspective on presence. The book begins with the concept of “coming full circle” and how we’ve evolved our approach to coaching it.

To be honest, I thought we needed to write the book because our concepts were set fifteen years ago through the eyes of communicators in high-profile, business settings. The insights for the first book came from senior leaders who defined the expectations of executive presence based on their experiences. And in today’s setting, that seemed too narrow of a lens.

We’ve redefined leadership in the last decade in terms of who leaders are and what we expect in how they lead. Every meeting is an opportunity for leadership, and every communicator can influence decisions. We’ve evolved work settings and stretched business norms to the point that guardrails seem less certain. And with so much shifting, evolving and resetting, we knew that we needed to understand how expectations of communicators have been impacted by that. Even with thirty years of experience as coaches, we told ourselves to listen and observe.

And we have listened through surveys, interviews and focus groups. We’ve observed virtual settings, in-person meetings and hybrid presentations. But we expanded the lens to not just observe the communicators, but to observe the listeners as well…what they take in and what they take away.

And here’s the bottom line:

Impressions have remained steadfast and universal. No matter who you are, where you’re from or what you do, people have expectations of communicators. And when you speak up, those expectations take shape as impressions. We’ve coached to impressions and expectations for three decades, and we continue to leverage that approach to strengthen your skills. We observe your style, and we note impressions. And almost as if working a puzzle, we focus on the origin of impressions. By helping a communicator adjust impressions of the voice and body, we can improve how someone sees them, hears them, and responds to them. It’s about intentional choices and helping a communicator feel effective to be effective. That all remains true.

But presence has evolved through a broader lens.

When you consider the listeners’ expectations, it’s less about “in this moment” and more about the consistency of impressions “in every moment.” Presence has moved beyond the pressure to show up well in high-visibility moments to the ability to prove out those impressions in every moment.

It started with the pandemic shutdown and the vulnerability we all expressed as people first and then leaders and managers second. Expectations shifted from confident to authentic and today, listeners want both. As we saw all elements reset from that point forward, the concept of presence became intertwined with personal brand.

Today, our research shows that while you might be a great presenter and communicator when the spotlight is on, listeners pay just as much attention to how you communicate in small settings and with all groups. That’s where authenticity and consistency take hold.

The full circle for us has been how we describe presence and coach someone to consider it.

We don’t just explore a communicator’s ability to engage and connect; we start with it. And our focus has evolved from guiding someone to a defined set of impressions to evolving someone from their own sense of authenticity. Those aren’t vastly different in how they’re coached. But they are different in how communicators feel about the journey. As one communicator recently shared: “I get it. It’s less about the performance and more about the impact.”

To us, presence is the convergence of two themes: intention and consistency.

You might think of those as expanding expectations, and in the short term, it’s true. It’s harder to deliver on both. But if you believe your presence is tied to who you are and how you want to influence, you’ll find that the broader lens on presence gets more aligned over time. It’s not a concept you turn on when it’s needed. It’s an impact that you take with you into every setting.

Communication becomes a continuous loop and a set of impressions that get validated over time. Presence is earned by a communicator when listeners feel it’s as much a part of who they are as how they communicate. And that’s how we’ve come full circle. So much so that our workshops start with engagement today and build the elements of presence around that full circle of connection. We start with the listener lens, and we raise the bar on not just presenting well but influencing consistently.

If you haven’t taken a presence workshop or been through a coaching session with us recently, maybe you should come full circle.

More to come in the months ahead as we share excerpts from the book.

We’re on a new journey! And I hope you’ll call us when you need us.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Strengthening the Impact of Leadership Teams

 

Strengthening the Impact of Leadership Teams

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If the focus of our work is any indication of a trend, one priority that we’ve seen across companies is the focus on top leadership. Specifically, on leadership teams. In fact, our work with senior teams has increased threefold. And as different development teams organize these programs, their objective is similar.

“We need to strengthen the consistency and impact of our leaders’ communications.”

Effective communication skills were identified as a strength or an area of improvement by mid-career. Many leaders have been coached, and most are pretty good communicators once they step up to a leadership role. But pretty good isn’t good enough when everything about the success or failure of a leadership team tethers back to communication.

Leadership isn’t just about a good strategy. It’s how effectively you paint the picture of the strategy and get others on board. That takes compelling communication.

Leadership isn’t just about navigating troubled waters. It’s how well you calm the waters and keep others moving forward. That takes compelling communication.

Leadership isn’t just your impact behind closed doors. It’s also your impact in the public eye and whether you’re liked, admired and trusted in high visibility moments. And that takes compelling communication as well.

And while senior leaders have always felt the pressure of impact, three variables have increased the pressure on and the complexity of their communication: Pace, Transparency and Trust.

PACE
Acceleration is a common term in every strategy and playbook. Leaders feel the impact of that increased pace on their ability to align an organization. It takes a while for messaging to take hold. You can say it once and repeat it a second time, but messaging gains buy-in over time as ideas are illustrated and validated. The faster pace of work has shortened the amount of time a leader has to establish buy-in.

Today, communication has to be compelling enough to be repeated by others so that it travels faster within an organization. Leaders have to hit the mark in a more compelling way, and they have to be in sync as a team so that messaging resonates timely and consistently with all audiences.

It isn’t easy. Companies may scale up in January and lay off in June. Messages can be contradictory and confusing because direction shifts and leadership teams aren’t always aligned on how to talk about it. Teams have to anticipate questions and align with each other on responses. We developed a workshop, Owning the Message, specifically focused on helping leaders align on messaging and handle questions and discussion that follows it.

TRANSPARENCY
Transparency is a great aspiration, but it creates risks in execution for leadership teams. When today’s leaders ran departments, they communicated openly and they shared their perspective as well as the company’s perspective. Sometimes, there was a little friction between the two, but leaders would say that’s how they built trust with their teams. Employees counted on them to share the message — and their opinion on it.

For senior teams, that approach is fraught with risk. When employees or external groups hear different views, it sounds like dissention. And it spreads like wildfire. Leaders say their perspective has been overshadowed by their responsibility to the company’s perspective. And some even say they’ve lost their voice in the pressure to align to one voice.

That’s true. Getting a senior team to one voice is more critical and challenging than it’s ever been. We work with teams to understand the impact of one voice and the risks of multiple ones. And we shift their thinking from being transparent to be authentic. Employees would say transparency and authenticity are one and the same. Leaders would say they are miles apart.

Our coaching helps a leadership team find their authentic voice. They can rarely be transparent about what they know until the company is ready to share it. But they can be authentic in how they communicate and present their voice in their communication style. And that’s why we developed, Finding Your Voice as a Leader, to help teams define their leadership brand and their authenticity within that brand.

TRUST
When a senior leader steps up to a new role, they ask: How do I establish trust with this group? And the reality is: over time. You can establish good intent, clarity, warmth, confidence and many other attributes. But trust has to be earned. And that takes time.

Today’s leadership teams struggle with getting to trust quickly. Many have changed the frequency of interaction and the cadence of being together. They don’t have as many opportunities for informal connection. Or they may not reach out to each other enough for input, advice or just commiserating.

Ask any leader how they manage communication as a team, and they will say trust is the added element that helps them align on messaging, consistency and a single voice. It takes time to trust a process and to trust your colleagues to follow it. It’s the most critical variable to work on. In our programs, we focus on building trust and making sure teams are working toward it as part of their contract with each other.

>Download an overview of our Strengthening Leadership Teams programs

Solving for these variables has been the focus of our work in helping current leadership teams strengthen communication. And this year, we’ve added these elements into our leadership programs for tomorrow’s leaders because they will face the same pressures.

Investing in the development of leadership teams is a smart priority. When they work together on challenges of pace and transparency, they build trust. And when leaders trust each other, they communicate as a team and lead companies to great outcomes.

We’re excited about new challenges and opportunities in 2026. And we’re ready to help your teams work together to strengthen the impact of communication.

So, call us when you need us.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Raising the Bar on Your Influence & Impact

 

THE GRINCH – GETTING BEYOND POOR IMPRESSIONS

Every Who at Who, Inc. loved giving presentations a lot,
But the Grinch, who worked in the north wing, Did not!
The Grinch hated meetings, no matter the season,
Though he didn’t know why, we know just what was the reason!

It wasn’t that his head wasn’t screwed on just right,
And it wasn’t at all that his shoes were too tight.
At SW&A we think that the most likely reason of all,
Was his impression and impact weren’t working at all.

Whatever the reason, his tie or his shoes,
He had a good deal of trouble connecting with all of the Whos.
Staring down from his desk with a sour, Grinchy frown,
He knew no one listened – not a single person in the town.

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice-cold from the snow,
Sat puzzling and puzzling, “Why was this so?”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore,
Till the Grinch thought of something, he hadn’t before.

“Maybe making a point ” he thought, “isn’t just what you say.”
“ Maybe my presence and expression could improve right away. “
He googled best resources which led him to us
And we coached him to open up and stop making such a fuss.

And what happened then? Well…at Who, Inc. they say,
The Grinch’s engagement improved threefold that day!
He added intention to thoughts and better thoughts to his intention
And as a result, all the Who’s paid attention.

And from then on, he wowed every person like you and me!
And the Grinch, he Himself! Is now a VP!

Happy Holidays from SW&A!

SELF-REFLECTION: Raising the Bar on Your Influence & Impact

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2026 promises to be a year focused on momentum and outcomes. We see efforts around AI multiplying, and expectations around pace accelerating. In every corporate strategy, we hear transform, pivot, accelerate, and disrupt. Every message is energized like we’re competing in the great race to reach better outcomes and growth.

And it’s why as you set goals for the new year and evaluate individuals and teams, you’d be smart to evaluate yourself as well. Because whether you’re a senior leader, a seasoned manager, or an individual contributor, your ability to influence and impact is dependent on and rooted in the ability to communicate effectively. In fact, as you consider the year ahead, ask yourself what would change if your skills as a communicator shifted from competent to compelling?

Everything!

And that’s why we believe raising the bar on your own skills should be a top priority. Here’s how we evaluate and guide a competent communicator to become a compelling one.

INSIGHTS VS. OUTCOMES

If you’ve worked with SW&A, you know the storyline framework. And we’ve coached you to use insights to shift perspectives and gain alignment with listeners before positioning options and a recommendation. But the blind spot we continue to see is defining value from a listener’s perspective. Some of this comes through in a message, but it’s also about learning how to define value from the perspective of different audiences.

Consider your role in communicating outcomes.

Senior Leaders:
Senior leaders say it’s easiest to align value for internal audiences and harder to position value with external ones. To gain traction beneath outcomes, you’ll have to bring messaging close together for audiences from the inside looking out and outside looking in to buy into results. For many leaders, it’s less about getting it right the first time and more about staying consistent every time.

Raise the bar this year by setting the direction so clearly that you can stay consistent with the big goals as you move through the year. It’s how you avoid confusion with too many redirects and gain believability and memorability to outcomes.

Seasoned Managers:
We describe you as “the mighty middle,” and you will feel it in the year ahead. You sit at the intersection of big goals about where the company is headed and the work required to get there. In every communication, you need to connect the dots between them. If your senior leaders communicate direction effectively, it will sound so clear that the path feels defined. It isn’t. For your team, the path ahead will be full of dead ends and potholes. They will have to reset, restart and sometimes totally turn around. If your communication focuses only on the work of your team, it can feel like they’re floundering when what they’re really doing is resetting against bigger goals.

Raise the bar on yourself by learning to connect specific actions to bigger outcomes. Set a repeatable structure for communicating progress, setbacks and continuous learning so the group feels intention to their efforts.

Individual Contributor:
Whether you’re delivering presentations or collaborating through discussion, connect your thoughts to a bigger picture, whether it’s an overall strategy or work by other team members. Be the communicator who is valued for connecting ideas that help any group move forward. Focus less on talking about why things won’t work. Focus more on ideas to get beyond hurdles.
Raise the bar on how you listen and how you contribute.

COMFORTABLE VS. INVESTED

This is about raising the bar on how people experience you. A lot has changed about how we work and formats we use for communication. But the power of impressions has stayed constant. And your presence is the foundational tool that differentiates you as a communicator. So, what’s the difference between being comfortable versus invested? It comes down to body language. When I see you as comfortable, you seem experienced. When I see you as invested, you seem inspiring.

Consider how your style conveys inspiring.

Senior Leaders:
If you’d say most groups would describe you as comfortable, we’d say you’re relying on years of experience as a communicator. But it isn’t enough because it isn’t about you. It’s about everyone else. And every time you communicate, you need to be motivating enough that listeners will follow you, align with you, and maybe shift how they’re feeling because of you. Your style and presence can erase uncertainty with employees, investors, board members and every other audience you face.

If you’re asking your organization to move mountains, raise the bar on yourself by ensuring you know how to get physically and emotionally invested in every message you deliver.

Seasoned Managers:
Employees feel a difference in being told what to do and being inspired to do it. It has a lot to do with the conviction that comes through in how your manager communicates. Do you communicate in a way that says work is due by Friday? Or are you inspiring in a way that says that work is making a difference?

You are the connective tissue for your team, and you should raise the bar on how you illustrate conviction before you ask them to move the needle on what they’re delivering.

Individual Contributor:
All companies are assessing how to use resources differently and who to keep on teams as roles evolve. As an individual contributor, your direct manager knows your capabilities. Everyone else makes assumptions about capabilities based on how you show up in meetings. You can influence those impressions if you know enough about your personal presence to add intention to how people experience you.

Raise the bar on yourself by investing in work on personal presence to better understand impressions and choices.

IMPRESSIONS VS. IMPACT

Our beliefs and our coaching centers around the impact to listeners. A compelling communicator knows that and makes an intentional shift from focusing on themselves to focusing on listeners. Our coaching on presence starts with awareness, but it never ends there. It goes much further in helping someone explore their ability to impact others. It’s not an easy shift. It takes awareness, intention and practice. And it takes a little vulnerability to start the journey.

We measure impact by asking listeners for input on communicators. When we get inputs on how someone looked and sounded, we know that the listener is stuck on impressions. When we get inputs on actions that a listener plans to take as a result of the communicator, we know the communicator had real impact. Listeners don’t distinguish a communicator’s ability to impact based on their responsibility in a company. But as you think about yourself as the communicator, you might distinguish the risks you have in not delivering on this.

As a senior leader, if the year ahead is relying on your ability to inspire an entire organization toward bigger outcomes…your risks may be that employees who don’t feel inspired won’t deliver results.

As a seasoned manager, you will be the epicenter of things that have to be reset and reconsidered. If you can’t inspire…your risks may be employees who get defeated early and give up on the challenges ahead.

And as an individual contributor…your risk may be missed opportunity. As companies think differently and work differently, it will create more moments of visibility in meetings and discussions. Don’t miss your chance to be seen and heard as a voice that wants to be a part of the changes ahead.

It’s the right time to raise the bar on yourself as you raise the bar on an organization or a team.

Make this a priority for yourself, and we’ll ensure that you get there.

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Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

AI Stories in Sales: Is Your Team Ready for 2026?

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If your company runs on a calendar year, you’ve just entered the final quarter of the year. And if you’re in sales, that means about six weeks of selling time left. Some salespeople may still be selling fourth quarter deliverables. Most are selling into next year.

And someone in the sales organization is focused on the official launch of the new year.

They’re planning for the big sales kickoff, whether it’s in December or January. They’re building the sales toolkit for 2026. And if you’re in sales, you know how important that toolkit can be. It provides guidance on new products and tools, it provides packaging and messaging for new conversations, and it makes a big difference in how quickly you feel confident about the sales goals for the new year.

So, what’s new in that toolkit this year?

Every sales team that we’ve talked to says there’s an AI element.

• Whether they’re asking their sales team to position products that are AI enabled… they’ll need the tools to do it.
• Whether they’re asking their teams to illustrate internal efficiencies and innovation within the company…they’ll need the tools to do it.
• Or whether they want their sales team to illustrate AI capabilities in the sales process itself…they’ll need the tools to do it.

Some companies are leading with AI initiatives, and they put that toolkit in place last year. Others have the foundation of it but expect to expand it this year. And still others feel a little behind and rely too heavily on their product teams to cover it.

But they all agree: AI capabilities and proof points have entered the sales conversation.

As we’ve worked with sales teams, we’re seeing some early challenges that will have to be addressed.

Consistency – Because many capabilities are really still experiments, salespeople aren’t consistent in how they talk about AI. I don’t think you can blame them. They haven’t been given very robust tools to support this conversation. But if they aren’t consistent in what they say, your AI strategy isn’t very repeatable. And that creates an easy way for a competitor to take the lead.

Confidence – Chances are everyone within your team isn’t really using AI yet. It’s a learning curve in every organization. Some know it from their own personal experience. Others know it’s in a product, but they need a product person to explain it as part of the sale. And many say they’re waiting until it shows up in the toolkit. Confidence is a leading skill for sales teams. They sell what they know. And if you’re counting on them to position AI well, you need to build their confidence around it.

Proof points – Sales teams have always sold products and services without deep technical knowledge. They understand pain points and outcomes. And their ability to communicate pain points and align a product or service to challenges helps them build credibility around your outcomes. AI feels different. Today’s communication is deep in HOW and not very clear on outcomes. That leaves a sales team without great proof points.

There’s a communication theme to these challenges.

Throughout 2025, we worked on AI storylines and storytelling, and what we saw was a small group of people in a company tend to own the message. And they’ve assumed that others will pick it up. It doesn’t work out that way.

Clarity builds momentum in communication, not the grapevine.

It’s always easier to invest in momentum at your starting point than to reset messaging after confusion sets in.

If any of these challenges resonate with your group, here are few things that you should add to the 2026 toolkit:

First, an updated, go to market storyline. You may have several of them to address different verticals or customers. But if you’re introducing new concepts and capabilities, it all has to align to what you’re telling customers about your future state in the GTM storyline.

Nothing signals change and innovation more to a customer than the way you communicate with them. Whether AI is prominent as a new enabler and gamechanger in your products or simply a story that illustrates a future state, be sure your team has a compelling storyline that expands your GTM view this year.

Second, your story bank. Stories illustrate how you get to great outcomes. We see sales organizations lose opportunities because they don’t tell great stories.

The examples just aren’t compelling or repeatable because they’re focusing too much on how they solved something rather than setting up a need and an outcome. When we go into a sales organization and coach how to tell stories, it leads to repeatability.

Most companies are tentatively talking about AI outcomes right now. And yet sales teams will tell you customers buy outcomes. So, companies have to find a way to talk about product differences and paint a picture of a future state that customers can buy into.

For many sales kickoffs, we lead story workshops to show groups how to bring outcomes to life, especially at a time when those outcomes may still be tentative.

And third, strengthen personal confidence. For an experienced sales team, confidence comes with discussion, roleplays and a communication strategy to back up AI. For a less experienced team that may be trying to gain visibility and exposure to different levels within a prospect company. And they may need coaching on customer audiences and personal presence.

Sales success in 2026 isn’t just about communication, but communication may make a difference in how your team feels about the year ahead.

And I have a personal story that validates that:

After thirty years of coaching, you get to know industries pretty well. And one of those industries for SW&A has been Fintech. In fact, once we get to know leaders, we tend to follow them from one company to the next. And the concepts you read in this newsletter are concepts we’ve set many times for sales groups: set the storyline and build great stories as illustration.

This year, I got a call from a leader within the industry who had never worked with me. But he told me he felt like he knew me. Because he said I’ve heard your name time and time again when I’ve asked peers in the industry how they learned how to tell great stories.

In fact, he said, “You’ve now beat me three times.

I’ve competed against organizations that you supported, and those organizations have won contracts over me in three different situations. In each of them, I’m fairly confident I had the better product. I just didn’t have the better story. And I want to know how you do that.”

You can see why I love the story!

But I was the supporting role. It’s really a story about well-led sales organizations that had the right toolkit to bring pain points and outcomes to life.

In each instance, it was a leader who understood the impact of communication and the power it plays as a differentiator. We can help your team get there, and your 2026 sales kickoff is a great time to get started.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

Technology & Coaching: Friends or Foes?

As 2026 planning gets underway every department in an organization is talking about how technology, specifically AI, might improve processes, might drive efficiencies and ultimately might lead to better outcomes.

Learning and development is no exception. In fact, conversations about technology within learning started before COVID and really accelerated when all training switched to a virtual format. It’s led to a lot of learning in the last five years about what works and what doesn’t. And it creates the question that teams considering coaching need to consider:

Do technology and coaching go hand-in-hand or does the value of one negate the value of the other?

It’s a conversation and a perspective we’ve shared with many L&D groups, and with planning top of mind in the coming weeks, it seemed like a good time to share those insights.

Our work on AI storytelling has helped many leaders and companies build understanding of what AI actually is and how it will play out in different ways and across different processes. We think of it as selling to the outcome and painting a clear picture of the end result. That’s how you get people aligned for the effort and work that may be required to get there.

Technology in coaching is a similar comparison. If you think through the outcome you want coaching to deliver, you’ll make better decisions about how technology partners with coaching.

But that wasn’t the approach five years ago. When the outcome was about finding ways to keep people involved in learning, technology served its purpose well. Give employees access to a platform, and they can find resources and short-form courses on many different topics. But as development goals have reset, giving people access to learning doesn’t seem to be enough. And that’s why many organizations are rethinking how they leverage coaching and technology together.

While the big coaching platforms provide coaching to everyone, anywhere and at any time, it comes at a cost of continuity and expertise. When the priority is reaching everyone, technology wins. When the priority is getting results, the 1:1 relationship with a consistent coach is essential. And in most companies, it’s a combination of both objectives reached in different ways that seems to be the best choice.

Specific to communication coaching, technology is very limited. There are innovative AI tools in the market that are exploring ways to assess the habits of a speaker– the number of um’s, the pace of speech, eye movement, etc. But it can’t adjust the habits, and that leaves a communicator with awareness of bad habits but little direction on new ones. More importantly, the emerging tools leave out the most essential ingredient of effective communication, the listener.

Communication is about influence and impact and less about preset patterns of voice modulation. In fact, when coaching focuses only on patterns for a communicator, you’re training to a standardized model rather than someone’s unique skills and strengths. And while it may be efficient, you won’t get great adoption or outcomes. For the best results, coaches and technology need to work together.

Consider these three Cs that we use to blend technology into our practice:

CONFIDENCE – The starting point of measuring results is a participant’s own feeling of confidence and competence about a new skill. We use technology to measure a starting point and end point. Regardless of frequency of sessions or activities someone does through an app, if someone isn’t feeling more confident, they won’t invest the time to strengthen a skill. Technology can track that measure and encourage an individual to see progress.

The coach notices the nuances that technology misses. A participant may say they feel more confident, but a coach can read the non-verbals and the subtle input that suggests the competency isn’t coming through. Working together, technology can give a coach added insights to enrich the engagement.

CONSISTENCY – To develop an effective communicator, you focus less on the occasional home run and more on consistent base hits. That’s when you know that skills are being adopted and adapted into an individual’s approach. A coach hears the results of different settings but doesn’t always see the progress first-hand.

Technology can complete the picture. Video recordings of live events taken from the perspective of a listener can help us assess how the communicator came across and how the listener felt in response to the message. Over a series of recordings, we’re tracking more than the habits of a communicator. We’re getting to group response and engagement with a communicator.

COMMUNITY – Videotaping opens the door to the listeners’ perspective which is the most accurate measurement of ROI. A communicator needs a 360 view to continue to assess and understand impressions.

Over longer engagements with high-profile leaders, we build a feedback loop to capture impressions after high-visibility events. This allows us to blend response to the communicator’s style as well as effectiveness of a communicator’s message. And on all engagements, we can add a pre and post assessment to measure how a communicator’s community is feeling about impact and takeaways.

Again, technology helps us blend anecdotal feedback with measured and tracked impressions. The coach leads the engagement, and technology adds the supporting inputs to validate impact.

So…is technology a friend or foe of coaching?

I would say a great friend, as long as you leverage the strengths of both to better outcomes. AI itself has a great term for how to think about technology in coaching: human in the loop.

Essentially it means keep the coach front and center and focused on guiding adaptable changes for an individual. Leverage technology to track improvement or catch the lack of it across a coaching engagement.

If you’re considering the role of technology in your L&D plans, we’d love to help you consider how you balance efficiencies with outcomes. And specific to communication, how technology and coaches can work together to deliver an impressive ROI.

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Also Read: Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

 

Communicating the Value & Impact of AI

Everybody’s talking about it.

It’s been called the most significant technology advancement we will see in this decade. Some say in our lifetime. And with all the noise, buzz and focus, communication has become a critical tool in how companies position AI within their strategies.

It’s a different conversation at a dinner party than it is on a work team or in a boardroom. Personally, we’re having a lot of fun asking AI to plan vacations and solve our everyday problems. We’re all eager for our own personal agent. It seems like Siri’s distant cousin showed up and can do 10x more!

But in our work environment, it gets much more complex and a little less fun. In fact, most technologists say that how we’re experiencing AI as consumers is confusing what we can expect from AI in our workplace. And when it comes to telling the story of corporate AI, communication isn’t quite as clear or compelling.

We’ve had a front row seat over the last two years supporting many companies with AI communication. We’ve heard groups over promise AI outcomes and lose trust with their audiences. We’ve heard groups over explain AI applications and confuse audiences. And we’ve heard groups downplay AI and disappoint audiences.

Everyone is trying to sprint to early outcomes, but by technology standards, it will be more of a marathon to integrate AI throughout our world. That’s OK. But it does mean that communication will be a critical tool to help AI leaders and business leaders manage expectations, align strategies and bring each of their key audiences along on the journey.

It’s a great example of our storyline methodology because it requires a communicator to focus on audience perspectives, clear messaging and the ability to balance a future state with an actual one. The hype of AI got everyone’s attention as a consumer, but our interest and expectations as a business audience are not the same.

Here are our insights into some of the most critical groups in terms of expectations and how to deliver on them.

BOARD MEMBERS:

This audience starts with their responsibility. And related to AI, they sit somewhere between the intrigue of what you think you can do and the reality of how fast and how well you’re doing it. They are both an internal and external audience, meaning they learn from your internal teams, but they also bring insights from their own experiences. This audience can get ahead of you, behind you or opposed to you based on knowledge they get from outside the company.

Most boards went into last year with expectations around AI investment and measurement. Your goal at this point should be consistency in how you keep them updated. You should have a storyline in place that they’ve aligned to with views of activity, pace and expected outcomes. Keep them involved enough to understand the misses and resets, so they own the learnings with you. Don’t reset the storyline every time you talk to your Board. If they don’t know your AI strategy and progress at this point, you are misaligned. Solve for that by repositioning a high-level storyline – and putting an AI report in place that gives them an enterprise view of what you’re doing.

Missteps: Your efforts around AI will pull your technology leaders into the spotlight. While it’s a strategy for a company, it is a career-defining moment for people leading these efforts. Coach them now on the language of Boards. It’s a different audience for them, and if the Board doesn’t have confidence in your AI talent, you’ll struggle to keep them in step with a strategy.

INVESTORS:

This is the skeptical audience.

Consider them the most knowledgeable in terms of industry perspective and a broad view across your competitors and partners. They’ve heard the AI hype story for a while, and they read between the lines on what you plan to do and what you’re actually doing. Generally, they believe the early adopters will win by getting ahead of everyone else.

They’re tracking progress by digging in on AI investment and AI value. They agree there is potential for AI to transform companies, but most say they don’t truly see it yet. So, they drill down to get to the core elements of what you’re doing. If it’s a new audience for you, know your AI story. It needs to represent a forward view, a current focus and measurable results. All companies are testing how they will report progress in this area. Expect to be held to these measures and get clear on how to communicate about them.

Missteps: Winning at AI from an investor view is delivering customer outcomes. For many companies, a starting point was to talk about their internal outcomes as they learned AI. Companies considered these outcomes; investors consider it activity. Repeatedly, they call out that companies aren’t proving that customers are taking the journey with them. In some cases, this is a lack of good storytelling and knowing how to tell success stories from the customer’s perspective.

CUSTOMERS:

Customers are eager to hear about AI efforts. Like investors, they care less about what you’re proving internally and much more about outcomes for other customers.

They’re also focused on the role of data in this process. We’ve helped many companies illustrate the AI integration journey within a customer’s world, and it gets results. It shows understanding and effort to consider where they can expect the most value and steps toward better outcomes.

Your customers hope to learn from you and other partners, and it’s a great entry point to new relationships within a customer organization. We’re helping elevate and broaden these conversations, so sales teams can use AI to get visibility to other decision makers within companies.

Missteps: Some companies miss the mark by not building AI into their go-to-market message. They give the sales team “hand me downs” from how AI was communicated as a strategy. That breaks a golden rule: the customer comes first. Until it has value to me, I don’t really care what you’re doing to transform, improve or evolve your products and services. That’s your thought leadership and belongs at conferences, not in a sales opportunity.

EMPLOYEES:

For this group, the storyline around AI should be inspiring! We all believe that AI is going to have tremendous impact on our lives, and we want to be a part of it. Share the strategy, and all the good and bad that comes with it. Talk about learnings, failings and next steps.

This is a group that is counting on you to educate them. Whether they’re literally working with AI or two steps away from it right now, they care about it. And if they learn AI in your company, it’s a huge retention tool. Too many companies are putting it in a small, exclusive space, so they can go fast. It’s fine to corner off the work, but don’t corner off communication. It’s too big of an initiative and too central to where you’re heading. Brand the journey and make AI a tool of inclusion.

This is the audience that will build a ground swell around your efforts. Make it understandable to them, and they’ll talk about it and your work around it. They’re the best PR machine you have. They’ll share stories with friends, examples with neighbors and strengthen your brand with AI efforts.

Missteps: For this group, it’s less about missteps and more about no steps. Don’t just recycle content here. Build a journey around AI that is inspiring and includes the entire organization. Employees are a captive audience right now because they want to be involved. Keep them out of the mechanics and engage them in possibilities and opportunities in their work.

 

If you’re in a position to communicate about AI, we can help you balance a future view with a current one. While your audiences have different perspectives and expectations around this hot topic, your storyline has to get to outcomes. And we can help you do that.

Click here to schedule a call to talk more about this topic!

Also Read: Can ChatGPT Write My Speech?