Welcome to Work Tip Wednesday, where every Wednesday I get ready and talk about career, leadership and a piece of advice I've learned working for some of the world's biggest brands.
I have sat in thousands of meetings across my career, and it astounds me how often the same handful of phrases undercut otherwise smart people. Two of them are so common that almost every professional under VP uses them without noticing. They do not sound bad on their own. They land badly in aggregate, because they signal hesitation in rooms where confidence is the currency.
The good news is that both are easy to swap. Below are the two phrases I want you to cancel from your meetings this week, the alternative language I actually use in their place, and a bonus move that turns any clean update into one people remember.
The Real Challenge
In senior rooms, confidence is often communicated through clean delivery and conviction. The people at the top of the table are not louder or more aggressive than everyone else. They are clearer. They make a recommendation, they invite engagement on their terms, and they do not pre-emptively disqualify their own ideas.
Most early-career and mid-career professionals were never taught this directly. They were taught to be modest, to soften, to make sure everyone followed along. Those habits are kindness in a 1:1. In a leadership setting, they cost you perceived seniority every time you open your mouth. Here are the three shifts that change it.
1. Cancel "Does That Make Sense?"
"Does that make sense?" is the most common closer in the corporate playbook, and it is doing the opposite of what most people think it is doing.
On the surface, it sounds humble. It sounds like you are inviting the room in. In practice, it signals uncertainty about your own point. The subtext your audience hears is, "I am not sure my idea landed, so I am checking." That single phrase can flip a room's read of you from confident to tentative in three seconds.
If you have the tendency to close a point with a question, borrow one of these three instead:
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"Is that clear?" Direct and confident. Presumes the idea was delivered well.
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"I'll pause here for questions." Signals composure and invites dialogue on your terms.
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"What questions do you have?" Presumes the idea landed and opens space for engagement without softening your conclusion.
The shift is small. The perception change is not. Try one of them in your next meeting and watch how differently the room responds.
2. Cancel Self-Deprecation
Somewhere along the way we were told to be modest. Many of us heard that lesson and turned it into a habit of disqualifying ourselves before we open our mouths.
Watch for the usual suspects:
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"This is probably a dumb idea, but..."
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"I'm not the expert here..."
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"Sorry, this might not make sense..."
These are not charming in leadership settings. They tell the room to discount your idea before anyone has had a chance to evaluate it objectively. By the time you actually share the recommendation, half the room has lowered its expectations and the other half has stopped listening.
In senior rooms, confidence is communicated through clean delivery and conviction. Do not doubt yourself out loud. State the idea. Let the room decide.
If you catch yourself reaching for a softener, swap it for a direct opener: "Here is what I would do," "My recommendation is," or simply lead with the idea itself. The first time you say "I think we should restructure the launch" without a preamble, you will feel exposed. Within a week, it will feel like the only way to start.
3. Anchor the Point With a Short Story
The fastest way to take a strong point and make it unforgettable is to anchor it in one specific, 30-second story.
Humans are wired for narrative. We forget bullet points in hours. We carry stories for years. The communicators who get the room to act are the ones who pair every recommendation with one concrete moment: a customer who said a specific thing, a team member who hit a specific wall, a number with a name behind it.
When I bring a strategic recommendation to my CEO, I almost always anchor it in a short story before I share the data. "Last month a mom in San Diego told our retail partner she switched to us because she could not figure out the competitor's fold in the parking lot." That sentence does more work than three slides of consumer research. It is concrete. It is human. It is repeatable in the next meeting he walks into, which means the recommendation travels with him.
This is the move that separates good communicators from the ones people quote back to themselves later. Strong communicators do not use stories to entertain. They use them strategically.
The Bottom Line
Executive communication is not about adding more polish. It is about removing the small habits that undercut you and replacing them with the small habits that compound in your favor. Cancel "Does that make sense?" Cancel self-deprecation. Anchor every recommendation with one short story.
Practice the three shifts on every meeting for one week. The shift in how the room reads you happens faster than you think.
