Maya knew her data better than anyone in the room. She understood the nuances of her methodology, could explain problems, and track her data source.
In meetings with leadership, she noticed they often seemed confused or impatient, asking her to get to the point, or asking for clarification on a term. People would try to patiently listen to the details and lose track of why any of it mattered. Her presentations never contributed to any meaningful decisions from leadership.
She trusted her own expertise, but she couldn't figure out how to get the non-technical leadership team to trust it too.
The answer became clear in the first session, during the first troubleshooting of a recent presentation.
Her speech therapist analyzed her ineffective communication habits: Maya had a habit of starting with generically framed facts, not specific context needed to understand the problem. She would start with imprecision that immediately caused misunderstandings about what was actually happening and what she needed from her listeners. By the time she got to her actual point, the listener was still thinking about the first irrelevant thing she said.
She was giving people the wrong path to follow at the start of every explanation, then expecting them to arrive at another destination she had in mind. This was like telling people the wrong destination, and putting in a completely different location into a GPS.
The work focused on one main communication habit: lead with the specific thing you want from your listener. For every explanation, every update, every recommendation, she needed to give one clear direction from the first sentence. Then, and only then, the supporting detail that makes it stick.
From there, Maya worked on relevance: cutting the information that didn't serve the main message. She had to resist the temptation to be comprehensive and focus on clarity.
It clicked in that first role play. Maya heard the feedback from her speech therapist about the different ways her first sentence could be interpreted, and realised she was leading her listeners down the wrong path. She started seeing the moments when misunderstandings build.
Maya felt confident in how she presented to leadership after the changes she made.
Starting with the point of what needed to change internally or from leadership requests. Relevant explanation of why the problem occurred. Her suggestions from her experience. Now she has credibility earned through useful information presented clearly.
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