My boss wants me to speak up more. But I just don't know yet how it all works in the AVP meetings. What I'm supposed to say and when. I'm just a few months into this new promotion, but I better step it up quickly or I'll be shuffled to the back.
This scenario is one I see time and again in my coaching calls. Newly promoted leaders, recognized for their expertise and impact, suddenly go quiet when they reach a new level.
Their abilities and capabilities are drowned out by their imposter, warning them that at any minute the rest of the group will find out what a hack they are. So they upskill, eager to learn, to prove themselves worthy of this promotion. They take leadership courses and watch YouTube videos to level up their communications skills. But the training just creates more noise, more confusion.
It's easy to see how. Most communication training focuses on methods for owning the room and influencing others based on external cues: proper body language, persuasive slide decks, modulating tone of voice.
What's not so easy to see among all that chaos is how these methods actually get in the way. The very methods intended to help are harming instead. The harder we try to look polished, act composed, or project confidence, the less likely we are to actually embody confidence. And it's human nature to be wary of things trying to disguise themselves. Faking it feels wrong on both sides of the human equation.
The problem with polish
My newly promoted client came to me exhausted from trying so many different techniques. She was told to speak up more, but that simply added empty words to already empty meetings. She was told to sit in the "right" seat at the table to be seen as more powerful, but then she just felt like a prop in a play. She was told to formulate and speak her ideas in a specific pattern (something about up, down, forward?), but that script felt hollow and her ideas were forgotten.
These all reminded me of what actually gets people to lean in and listen.
What my client needed wasn't another technique. She needed permission to stop performing and get curious instead.
We can spot performers a mile away. It's in our nature. That primal drive to constantly scan the environment, looking for anything suspicious, has stayed with us over thousands of years. Now it's just used car salespeople and clickbait headlines instead of saber-tooth tigers.
When we put on an act, people sense it. They lean back, knowing something's not quite right, wondering what that performer is trying to get from them.
Jonah Berger calls this reactance in his book The Catalyst. The harder we push, the more people pull away. It's not stubbornness. It's human nature.
Performing also has a tendency to feed our imposter. It gets louder the more we fake it. But the imposter isn't all bad.
A new approach
Adam Grant suggests the imposter is actually a force we can use for good. In Think Again, he calls out three benefits: it can motivate us to work harder, smarter, and learn better. He also reminds us that arrogance, often seen as the evil opposite of the imposter, can get in the way of making smart decisions. When we get too comfortable with our expertise, we develop blind spots, overlooking important information and making assumptions that can get us in trouble.
Grant suggests we aim for confident humility: having faith in our capability while appreciating that we may not have the right solution, or even be addressing the right problem.
Enter curiosity.
Whenever we enter new situations, it's natural to have questions. Of course we don't know what's going on. How could we? We've only seen this from the outside looking in. And now that we're on the inside, everything looks completely different. Human dynamics can only truly be experienced once we're among them.
Those questions we have as we come into new spaces might actually spark innovations and improvements. It's the beginner's mindset, which Grant argues is a key asset for creating positive impact.
What would it look like to remind ourselves of our own unique expertise before we enter those rooms? We can also bring forward that faith in our capability to figure things out, to learn.
Those who lean into confident humility enter important rooms with a composure that welcomes conversation through curiosity. They have insights and ideas to share. They invite others to voice concerns, challenges, and comments without feeling the need to defend those ideas. Their curiosity does more for their credibility than any polished performance ever could.
When we come into conversations curious, eager to learn more about the situation and the people in the room, those very same people become eager to listen and collaborate.
Daniel Pink calls this attunement in his bestseller To Sell Is Human. And to his overarching point, we are all selling in our daily lives. Think of how we try to sell our family on what's for dinner. We're attempting to move them toward a decision. At work, we're doing the same thing. So whether it's dinner plans or deposit products, attunement is a key aspect of moving our ideas forward.
Attunement is a full third of Pink's framework, alongside Buoyancy and Clarity. That's how important curiosity is compared to putting on an act. What does attunement actually look like? It's getting curious about what really matters to the people in the room. Most people stop at connecting their idea to the corporate goals. Those are table stakes. What effective leaders do is dig deeper, finding out what really matters beyond the corporate goals. Perhaps one vice president is concerned about his team's resources being hijacked. Maybe another VP is worried about her budget line items. Getting attuned to the people in the room allows us to connect our ideas more effectively and thoughtfully to what matters to them. So that when we DO speak up, our ideas carry weight rather than just create noise.
There's an unexpected side effect I see when my clients lean into their curiosity. Their imposter suddenly shuts up. Their nerves settle down. The spotlight feels less like it's on them and more on the other person. They've regained their composure without having to think about it.
For my client, a lifelong learner, curiosity came naturally. She simply needed permission to use it. She trusted her capabilities. She had plenty of figuring-it-out experiences to draw from. So as she walked to her next big meeting, she took a deep breath, opened the door, and spoke up when the moment was right.
Later I asked her how she knew what to say and when.
She doesn't remember, she said. She was too busy asking questions.
