How to Talk About Yourself Without Talking About Yourself: A Leadership Communication Strategy That Actually Works
Learn how empathetic leaders can build authentic authority and executive presence by focusing on impact instead of self-promotion
The Question That Makes Most Leaders Freeze
When someone asks you, "What do you do?", what do you say?
If you're like me (and most empathetic leaders I work with), you feel anywhere from panicked to confused when you think about talking about yourself or "promoting" your work.
But here's what I know: you have a singular perspective that's your secret weapon. That's how you access your expertise—it's at the intersection of your unique lived experience, personal values, and professional impact.
The Executive Presence Trap That's Keeping You Stuck
This week I worked with a client who's a Director at a tech company. She was struggling with finding her own version of "executive presence," "visibility," and "managing up"—all these corporate buzzwords that made no sense to her intrinsically.
She was spending all her energy focusing on feedback like "do I sound confident?" which:
Diluted her natural presence
Splintered her attention
Deferred her authentic authority
This is SO COMMON in most top-down hierarchical organizations right now.
The Leadership Communication Breakthrough: Focus on Impact, Not Perception
Instead of pushing and proving in our session, we edited, distilled, and simplified her focus.
Because leadership communication equals concise clarity.
This helped her get crystal clear on:
Her vision for her own career
Her vision for her team within the organization
How to access that clarity when put on the spot with senior stakeholders
We practiced this approach in our coaching session, so when she was randomly questioned by senior leaders, she was ready.
The Transformation: From Self-Doubt to Authentic Authority
Getting clear on her unique impact, skill set, values, perspective, and vision increased her:
Innate authority
Hormonal confidence
True presence (not executive presence)
Natural empathy
These were the exact qualities she'd been working so hard to project before (and it wasn't working).
The results? She texted me that she was feeling that confidence, getting great feedback, and influencing with authentic authority.
In our Signal chat she said: "Thank you for helping me find my voice. I knew it was there, I just didn't know how to access it with senior leaders. Now I do and it's changing everything."
The Strategy: How to Promote Yourself Without Talking About Yourself
So how did we achieve this transformation? I helped her focus on:
Her impact on the organization
Her team's success
Her users (she's an expert in user experience)
This approach triggered her natural authority because we helped her promote herself and her team by NOT talking about herself.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Instead of generic self-promotion, she talked about:
Creating a consistent experience across the entire organization because it's better for customers
The impact of embedding her team everywhere to create more clarity and ease for cross-functional teams
For me, I do this by focusing on my vision of co-creating cultures where more voices are heard and where more types of people are leading. When presenting to a global advertising firm last week, I focused on helping each person feel creative and capable of communicating their vision and value.
Your Turn: Finding Your Leadership Communication Focus
Reflection questions for empathetic leaders:
What's the impact of your work?
How can you center that impact as a focal point when speaking?
How does your work make others' lives better?
Remember: focusing on your impact is always more powerful than focusing on how you're perceived (which is out of your control anyway).
The Empathetic Leadership Advantage
This approach works because it leverages what empathetic leaders do naturally—care about others and create positive change. When you speak from this place of service and impact, you:
Sound more confident because you're comfortable
Access your natural expertise
Build authentic authority
Create genuine connection with your audience
Take Action: Transform Your Leadership Communication
I created a free tool to help you find that internal focus as an empathetic leader. It’s called the Empathetic Leader’s Toolkit and you can download it here.
I'm Lee, and I've spent the past 10+ years helping empathetic leaders liberate their voices from anxiety, overthinking, and toxic workplace cultures. If you're ready to transform your leadership presence without losing what makes you exceptional, learn more about this work here.
