You keep mentioning the thing nobody's noticed
Readtime: 3 minutes
A few years ago I was talking to another non-executive director and executive coach. I told her I was younger than most people moving into this type of work from an executive career.
Which was true. But I was 44, so not exactly fresh off the block.
She hadn't asked my age, and I doubt she'd even thought about it.
It wasn't a one-off. When I first started my business I did it a lot, and nobody else ever mentioned it. The only person who kept bringing up my age was me.
Getting in first
I didn't realise it at the time, but I now think I know what I was doing. If I named it first, it couldn't be used against me. I was pre-empting a judgement I thought someone was about to make.
The trouble is that it doesn't work like that.
Before I said anything, the other person had been thinking about the conversation we were having. After I said it, they were thinking about my age. I hadn't pre-empted the judgement, I'd given it to them.
The senior version
I assumed this was something you grow out of. It isn't.
It turns up as the disclaimer at the top of a presentation:
"I'm not the CFO, but..."
"I haven't been in this seat long, so..."
"This is a bit rough, I only pulled it together last night..."
It turns up in other situations too:
"We're probably not the biggest firm you're talking to", to a client.
"I know you all think I'm the cautious one", to a leadership team.
"I know I've not been as visible as I'd have liked this year", at a town hall.
It sounds like humility, and sometimes it is. More often, I think, it's the same thing I was doing. Naming what you think is a weakness before anyone else can.
I read a lot of stakeholder feedback for my executive coaching clients, and there's a pattern. Most clients have one thing they're worried people think about them. Quite often, it's nowhere in the feedback at all. They're managing an impression that nobody is forming.
At a senior level it has a bigger cost, because people are more influenced by what you say. If you flag something, they're more likely to remember it, or believe it. Your audience hadn't been wondering whether you understood the numbers until you told them you might not. Now it's the lens they'll watch the whole presentation through.
If a number gets challenged, the room already has its explanation, and it's the one you gave them. If the numbers hold up, you don't get the credit either, because you told them not to expect it. You've spent the first 30 seconds making sure they trust you a bit less than they did when you walked in.
There's a version of this for teams too. A leader who keeps apologising for the same thing defines how everyone else sees their team. The classic is the Risk leader who introduces their own function as "the department of no". It gets a laugh, but it strengthens the perception, even in highly commercial Risk functions.
When I stopped
At some point I stopped mentioning my age and nothing happened. Nobody noticed the absence, because nobody had noticed its presence.
There are times when naming a gap is the right call. A useful test is whether the other person needs the information, or whether you need the reassurance.
So here's a question for this week. What do you keep explaining that nobody actually asked about?
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
P.S. The book I'm writing, Outsized Leadership, is about what distinctive leaders understand about themselves, including the things they've stopped apologising for. If you'd like to follow along behind the scenes, you can join the Inner Circle here.