Most people think leadership means action. Fast action. Visible action. The movie WarGames is a warning label on that mindset. Matthew Broderick plays a teenage hacker who breaks into a computer system that controls America’s nuclear weapons. This story occurs during the 1980s, amid ongoing concern about global nuclear war. After Broderick’s character breaks in, he does what smart, curious people do: he pokes the system to see what it does. The problem is that the system is bigger than his understanding, and the consequences threaten the world. Everything cannot be controlled. Consequences can have devastating impacts. This is real life. You don’t get a redo when the thing you touched is money, reputation, careers, trust, or safety.

Here’s the point: some environments are designed to turn your input into escalation. You add one more detail. You send one more email. You “clarify” one more time. You try to win the argument. And the machine keeps spinning. In WarGames, the computer eventually runs the permutations and learns a brutal truth: there’s no winning move inside a losing game. The win condition is outside the game. The win condition is do nothing. Don’t feed the loop.

When a message really matters, clarity alone is not enough.

A board update, investor conversation, promotion discussion, strategic announcement, or difficult stakeholder message has to do more than sound polished. It has to connect with the people who need to understand it, trust it, and act on it.

That is the purpose of the Executive Clarity Intensive. Sessions are limited. Learn more here: https://www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com/pl/2148817141

In The Empire Strikes Back, from the original Star Wars trilogy, Yoda’s most famous quote gets treated like motivational poster fuel: “Do, or do not. There is no try.” Where this line fails is that people tend to remember and overemphasize the “Do” part. When people take that part (and that part only) to heart and go “do” things, things often go sideways. Too often, too many people ignore the most useful part of this quote: do not. “Do not” is a decision. “Try” is psychological cover. “Do not” is you choosing standards, choosing timing, choosing restraint. It’s you refusing to spend effort to impress people who don’t own your outcome.

This matters in crisis comms and high-stakes moments. When people feel heat, they start performing. More updates. More reassurance. More explanations. More visibility. That often makes it worse because it expands the blast radius. Your job is to achieve outcomes with credibility. To stabilize uncertain circumstances and systems as well as possible. That looks like this: get facts, name roles, limit spokespeople, and stop improvising in public. Silence, used correctly, is not cowardice. Silence is control.

Lesson from these movies: restraint is a skill. The strongest move is not always the loudest one. Sometimes the best path is Yoda’s “do not.” Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Decide what “winning” actually is, then stop touching the stove long enough to make the next move on purpose.

Executive Communication Advisory helps leaders turn high-stakes messages into clear, decision-ready communication. We work with senior leaders, founders, veteran executives, and high-potential professionals to sharpen the audience, stakes, structure, and next step before the message enters the room. The result is communication that builds trust, reduces confusion, and moves people toward the right decision or action. (www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com).

Way back in 2021/2022 (as everyone clawed their way out of the pandemic era, I was fortunate enough to collaborate on an article with Jessie Elisberg and Terra Katzback on the topic of informal learning networks. Our finished product was published in January 2022 issue of ATD (magazine for the Association for Talent Development) titled The Perks of Informal Learning Networks.

There is a lot of beneficial tips and perspectives you can likely can from our three page article. Best of all, you can read it for free on the “Publications” page of my website (www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com). One of my contributions was the sidebar on types of networks. Networks is a topic you can dive much deeper into to than merely brief introductions at events. Part of this information are types of networking you can be part of with people.

Depending on what you need to accomplish and with who, understanding these differences can save time, energy and headaches. Here’s the sidebar for your convenience!

Sidebar: Use the Appropriate Network to Fit The Need

All networks are not the same. Some are official and others are informal. Regardless of a network’s formality, their structures fit into one of two general shapes, as Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro discuss in their Harvard Business Review article “The Network Secrets of Great Change Agents”: cohesive and bridging.

In cohesive networks, a deeper level exists between members. That fosters higher levels of trust and confidence in people. Decisions and actions can occur more quickly with the increased level of familiarity between members.

Bridging networks typically span broader collections of people who are not as familiar with one another. What the network type lacks in intimacy, it makes up for in access to people with information, knowledge, and connections that are lacking in a cohesive network. There is also a higher likelihood of more objectivity and less groupthink among people with weaker personal ties.

The strength and advantages of these network types vary depending on the scenario. Your network’s shape will be largely defined by its purpose and the people in it. While informal learning networks tend toward a bridging model, if the network’s reason for being is of a sensitive nature, a cohesive one may be more appropriate.

In any communication, the most important person is you. Whatever role you have in this work—approval, creation, delivery, or all of it—clarity about how it benefits you is critical. You have to stop treating yourself like a background character in your own communication work.

This is where many executives and leaders get sideways. They build messages around everyone else first: the audience, the customer, the board, the team, the sponsor, the critic, or the person most likely to complain. Throw in other stakeholders, advocacy groups, politicians, and various “interested parties.” Those people may matter. But they do not matter more than the person accountable for the win condition. Do they matter more than you? If you are responsible for the outcome in some part or in totality, your interests, standards, risks, and objectives belong near the center of the work.

That leads to two uncomfortable questions:

If you are not communicating for your benefit in some meaningful way, who is the primary beneficiary of your work?

Why would you serve that person’s interests if doing so minimizes or eliminates your own?

This is usually the part where people start complaining, clutching pearls, or accusing the argument of promoting selfishness. Fine. Let’s deal with that directly. You should be selfish—at least enough to know what you are trying to get from a communication activity. Doing work that gives you no benefit, no protection, no leverage, no clarity, and no progress is not noble. It is a bad operating model.

Do the math. Add up the hours you work in a week: in the office, out of the office, answering messages, responding to emails, taking calls, thinking through problems, cleaning up ambiguity, and carrying decisions after everyone else has logged off. For executives and senior leaders, that number usually exceeds forty hours. Sometimes by a lot. For high-performing talent, the situation may not be much different.

So why should leaders and committed professionals not expect their communication to help them get what they want out of their work? That does not mean exploiting people. It means being honest about the exchange. Your communication should advance your organization, serve its audience, and move work forward. It should also protect and advance your legitimate interests.

There should be some element of self-interest in what you do. You should expect the same from your talent, especially if they are contributing to your goals. People do better work when they can see how the work benefits them, not only how it benefits an institution.

Self-interest is not evil. Pretending it does not exist is dangerous. In leadership, that pretense becomes borderline malpractice. Denying self-interest—or worse, manipulating people into hiding it—damages trust, weakens the work product, and drives away critical talent, customers, and partners.

Rarely will anyone achieve one hundred percent of their goal. Even C-suite leaders. This is even less likely for all contributors to a communication effort. For your top contributors, what matters is that they believe they are meaningfully recognized for their work in a way that advances their goals. The standard is simple for a leader: name the desired outcome, identify critical contributors, and make sure each person contributing to its success benefits from this work in a meaningful way.

For more on executive communication skills and advice, visit www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com.

“We’re a family here …” How many times have you heard a CEO or president say this about their workforce? Is it sincere—or a shortcut to extract extra, unpaid effort? Or worse?

Calling a workplace “a family” isn’t harmless culture talk. It’s often a rhetorical shortcut used to purchase loyalty without earning it - and it routinely creates confusion about expectations, obligation, and accountability.

Here’s the problem: families are bound by blood, marriage, or lifelong commitment. Employment is a voluntary, compensated agreement. When leaders blur that line, they create a false moral obligation - implying people should sacrifice, endure poor treatment, or accept vague promises because “that’s what family does.”

This language also ignores reality: not everyone has a positive experience with family. For some, “family” signals dysfunction, coercion, or control. Using the term at work is a gamble with meaning - and the leader doesn’t get to decide what it means for the listener.

Even when well-intended, the analogy does damage in three ways:

1. It misrepresents the deal. If compensation is exchanged for work, that relationship is fundamentally transactional. This isn’t cynical - it’s clarity.

2. It distorts expectations. “Family” language quietly suggests unlimited commitment, loyalty without boundaries, and forgiveness without accountability.

3. It undermines growth and mobility. Families are largely static hierarchies, changing mainly when people die, are born, or marry/adopt into the family. Organizations should offer opportunity, merit-based advancement, and clear paths - not implied permanence.

The deeper issue is credibility. If a leader is willing to promote something so obviously untrue, why should anyone trust that leader on compensation, promotions, performance standards, or career opportunity?

This reflects the concept of demonstrated unreliability, something I learned in the Navy. When someone engages in negative behavior without sincere remorse and accountability, they’re highly likely to repeat it. Equal or worse behaviors follow because the pattern has been rewarded. That pattern is expensive: it drives cynicism, attrition, and the quiet disengagement that kills execution.

What to do instead

If you need people to take specific actions - on a project, in a risky role, or on a long-term initiative - earn it with value and clarity, not deception. This also applies to partners and customers.

1. Treat people with dignity. Don’t ask for “family-level” sacrifice that masks unmet promises and denied opportunities “for the good of the family.”

2. Provide context and expectations. Make the exchange explicit: what you need, why it matters, what success looks like, and how it benefits them (compensation, scope, visibility, advancement, skill development, mission impact).

3. Protect trust as an asset. Character is not slogans. It’s the consistency between what leaders say and what leaders do. Guard your reputation.

Correcting “we’re a family” language isn’t complicated—but it does take discipline. Define real obligations, set clear expectations, and treat people as adults and professionals. Even when it’s well-intentioned, stop using this euphemism. Know what matters to your audiences. Communicate with character to build a durable foundation for execution and prosperity.

For more detail on Chad’s communication work with leaders and professionals, see www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com.

EXECUTIVE ASSESSMENT: Customers should never be asked to carry your company’s internal confusion. Executive communication requires containment: tell customers what affects outcomes, value, risk, timing, and next steps. Keep internal frustration, politics, and career uncertainty out of the room.

There is a difference between transparency and leakage.

Transparency helps a customer make a better decision.

Leakage makes a customer wonder whether your team is stable enough to trust.

If you lead people who work with customers, this distinction is not a soft-skill preference. It is a business control. Your team’s words either protect confidence or create doubt. There is very little neutral ground.

A customer conversation is not therapy. It is not a complaint channel. It is not a place for your employee to process frustration with leadership, compensation, workload, territory changes, reorgs, or career plans.

That does not mean people have to be fake.

It means they have to be professional.

The executive standard

Here is the standard I would set with any customer-facing team:

Customer conversations stay focused on outcomes, commitments, constraints, value, risk, and next steps. Internal drama stays internal.

That is not corporate spin.

That is trust protection.

When anyone - a rep, manager, consultant, or account lead vents to a customer, the customer does not experience “authenticity.” They experience instability. They start asking questions you did not intend to put on the table:

When anyone—a rep, manager, consultant, or account lead—vents to a customer, the customer doesn’t experience “authenticity.” They experience instability, and they start asking questions you didn’t intend to put on the table:

• Is this company divided?

• Is this person leaving?

• Is leadership hiding something?

• Will this affect service?

• Do I need a backup option?

You may think your employee was just being honest.

The customer hears risk.

Name the behavior plainly

Do not overcomplicate the coaching conversation. Say the thing directly.

“When you vent about internal decisions to a customer, you create uncertainty. They do not know what to believe. Then they start protecting themselves.”

That is the real impact.

Not hurt feelings. Not “tone.” Not some vague professionalism lecture.

Business impact.

Oversharing makes the company look divided. It makes the employee look unstable. It forces the customer to manage emotions that are not theirs to carry.

That is leakage.

And leaders correct leakage fast.

Give people replacement language

Most oversharing happens when someone feels cornered, frustrated, or too eager to build rapport through “real talk.”

Do not just tell people what not to say. Give them a better move.

Use this redirect:

“I can’t speak to internal details, but here’s what I can commit to…”

Then follow with:

1. The action

2. The owner

3. The date

4. The next step

Example:

“I can’t speak to internal planning details, but here’s what I can commit to: I’ll confirm the implementation timeline with our team by Thursday and send you the updated milestones before close of business.”

That is executive communication.

Clear. Bounded. Useful.

If someone does not know the answer, train this line:

“Let me confirm with the right people and come back with a reliable answer.”

That beats improvising. Every time.

Shooting from the hip may feel confident in the moment. It often creates clean-up work later.

Handle the job-search issue like an adult

This is where weak leaders get strange.

They either pretend people never look for other jobs, or they panic and make career ambition feel disloyal.

Neither response is useful.

Here is the mature standard:

“Your career plans are your business. But you do not signal instability to customers. You finish strong. You document clean handoffs. You do not recruit sympathy.”

That is fair.

People can have private career plans. They cannot turn customers into emotional hostages.

The customer relationship is a company asset. Your employee is a steward of that asset until the last day. That stewardship includes language discipline.

If someone is leaving, the message to customers should be controlled, coordinated, and focused on continuity.

Not drama.

Not hints.

Not “between us” conversations.

Be courteous. Be professional. Be contained.

What executives should inspect

If you want to know whether your team has this standard, do not wait for a crisis. Inspect the communication patterns now.

Ask:

• Do our people know what they are allowed to disclose?

• Do they know what must stay internal?

• Do they have approved language for uncertainty?

• Do managers correct customer-facing leakage quickly?

• Do we have a clean escalation path when the answer is unclear?

• Are we rewarding “relationship building” that is actually boundary failure?

That last one matters.

Some people confuse rapport with access. They think being “real” means giving the customer a backstage pass to every internal frustration.

No.

Rapport is not a license to bleed on the customer.

The leadership job

Your job is to build a team that stays steady under pressure.

That means three things:

1. Set the boundary. Customer conversations are for customer-relevant outcomes, not internal venting.

2. Give the script. People need replacement language before they are under pressure.

3. Correct fast. Leakage ignored becomes culture.

The Desired Outcome is simple:

Customers should experience competence and control from your team.

Not confusion.

Not anxiety.

Not emotional spillover.

If your people need a place to be unhappy, create an internal channel where that conversation belongs. Listen. Coach. Solve what you can. Set limits where needed.

But do not let customer trust become collateral damage for poor internal containment.

Executives protect confidence.

That starts with what your team is allowed to carry into engagements with customers.

For more on executive communication skills and advice, visit www.executivecommunicationadvisory.com.

This week we cover the last part of pre-flighting your communciation. Can you actually do the communciation and achieve success. We pressure-test your communication rto include outcome, your means (learn/partner/buy), your sponsor alignment, and the essentials—time, resources, budget, and go/no-go criteria—so you stop “hoping” your message works and start leading with a plan that can actually land. Execution puts fear in its box.

Yeah. Same. And here’s the thing — it usually wasn’t because you didn’t care. It was because you skipped a step. Pilots don’t just hop in a plane and hope it flies. They run a pre-flight check. Your communication deserves the same treatment — especially when real money, real relationships, or your reputation is on the line.

Curious for more from this kick-off for April’s sprint at “The Communication Edge” (www.thecommunicationedge.com) - “Preflight Your Communication”? Each week is a new batch of skills and strategies to avoid common pitfalls and tilt the odds of success in your favor before things go sideways. Next week’s focus is the people part of doing your preflight. The part where the money matters most.

Pre-Flight Your Communication: Stop “Hoping for the Best” in High-Stakes Conversations

Most communication failures don’t happen because someone is careless.

They happen because someone is trying to be helpful.

They want to please the boss. They want to please the customer. They want to be the hero who says “yes” and makes it happen.

And that’s exactly how people walk into avoidable problems with a smile on their face.

Here’s the question you should ask before your next high-stakes conversation:

Are you about to take off… or are you just hoping the plane works?

The pre-flight mindset (and why it matters)

In aviation, nobody with sound judgment jumps into a plane, fires it up, and hopes everything works out.

You inspect.

You check systems.

You catch the issue before the wheels leave the ground.

Communication works the same way.

Because when the stakes are high, a message isn’t “just a message.” It can hit:

• Your money

• Your reputation

• Your relationships

• Your career

If the conversation matters, you don’t “wing it.” You pre-flight it.

The hidden reason good people crash their communication

There’s a common failure pattern that shows up everywhere—from meetings to performance reviews to customer calls:

People move too fast because they’re trying to do the “right thing.”

They volunteer. They commit. They promise. They nod. They accept the tasking.

Then they realize—mid-flight—that the situation was unclear, the constraints were hidden, or the real objective was never defined.

That’s not incompetence.

That’s a lack of pre-flight.

And it’s expensive.

Communication has real costs

Every significant communication effort costs something. Usually more than you want to admit:

• Time

• Money

• Personal and professional capital

• Emotional bandwidth you don’t get back

So if you’re going to spend those resources, act like a professional.

Run the checklist first.

When you should pre-flight (and when you shouldn’t)

No, you don’t need a pre-flight for every casual hallway conversation.

The trigger is simple:

Significant impact.

Pre-flight your communication when people and/or money are meaningfully on the line.

That includes situations involving:

• Risk of loss

• Profit or improvement

• Resource allocation

• Retention (of clients, teammates, trust, or opportunities)

• Performance evaluations, promotions, compensation conversations

• Any conversation where the wrong message creates a cleanup operation

“Significant” depends on context, but the core doesn’t change: people and money show up on both sides of the equation.

More can be gained—or more can be lost.

That’s the point.

What a pre-flight actually gives you

A real pre-flight does one thing: it forces clarity before you spend the cost.

You should be able to answer, in plain language:

• What needs to be done

• For whom

• With whom

• And to achieve what

If any checkpoint is unclear, you catch it early—before the costs pile up.

Because in almost every case, it’s cheaper to adjust (or abandon) a bad plan early than it is to recover after damage is done.

Sound judgment looks like due diligence

Pre-flighting your communication demonstrates something many people claim to have—but rarely prove in real time:

Sound judgment.

It signals that you think ahead.

It shows that you’re not reckless with resources.

It reduces risk.

And when things go sideways (because sometimes they will), it minimizes the time, money, and pain involved.

So before your next high-stakes conversation, ask yourself:

Have I pre-flighted this communication… or am I about to take off hoping for the best?

If you want the simplest next step: write your BLUF in one sentence before you walk into the room. If you can’t do that, you’re not ready to take off.

Curious for more from this kick-off for April’s sprint at “The Communication Edge” (www.thecommunicationedge.com) - “Preflight Your Communication”? Each week is a new batch of skills and strategies to avoid common pitfalls and tilt the odds of success in your favor before things go sideways. Next week’s focus is the people part of doing your preflight. The part where the money matters most.

You can be disciplined, reliable, low-drama, and still get passed over—because corporate doesn’t just reward competence. It rewards perception, positioning, relationships, and your ability to translate your value in civilian language.

And the scariest part? The absence of feedback doesn’t mean you’re doing great. Sometimes it means you’re being tolerated… until you’re quietly eliminated.

If this hits, you’re not broken—you’re just running the wrong operating system.

For entrepreneurs, retention means keeping the customers you already have instead of constantly spending time and money to replace them. For employees, it helps to think of your employer as your customer—anyone paying you for your work and outcomes—and to make retaining that “customer” a priority. That’s why staying top-of-mind with the people who decide opportunities and job security matters: when promotions, projects, or cuts happen, the people remembered first often win.

And here’s the disruptor move: stop waiting for the pipeline to open. Whether it’s an open river or a reinforced steel pipe, your job is to get into the flow of opportunity—on purpose. I also share how AI can dramatically raise your odds of success with minimal time and expense, starting with one tool that changes everything: your personal “master prompt” so your AI outputs actually match who you are, what you want, and where you’re going.

Veterans will recognize a familiar pattern in Alysa Liu’s journey to Olympic gold in Milan: the willingness to step outside the expected pipeline, take a calculated pause, and return with a clearer identity and a stronger plan. Liu walked away from figure skating for two years, then came back and proved that the “standard path” is not the only path to elite performance. This webinar helps you do the same in your professional life. You will build a master prompt that makes AI work like a mission-ready teammate, so you can re-enter your next season with sharper direction, faster execution, and outcomes that match the level you are capable of.

In this episode, I break down 3 reasons preparation matters: it interrupts autopilot, it forces clarity on what you actually want, and it helps you recognize a hard truth about business and opportunity. Not everyone gets the same outcomes—and the people who prepare consistently stack the odds in their favor.

And if you’re a veteran, this matters in a different way. You’ve been trained to read environments for stability, risk, and security, and those instincts still apply when you’re choosing where to live and work. Economic decay often comes beforesocial and safety decay, and it rarely happens overnight. The best part is: now you have the freedom to choose with your eyes open. Don’t make it a vibe decision. Make it a facts decision. If you’re seeing the same pattern in your city, drop the city name in the comments.

That is why you should stay in “promotion mode,” not by being loud, but by being intentional: invest in your brand and visibility, work closely with your boss and decision-makers, contribute to the projects they care about, and communicate your impact in ways they can repeat and act on. Your coworkers can be great people, but they are also friendly rivals, so build advantages while still being the kind of teammate others want on the mission.

That is why you should stay in “promotion mode,” not by being loud, but by being intentional: invest in your brand and visibility, work closely with your boss and decision-makers, contribute to the projects they care about, and communicate your impact in ways they can repeat and act on. Your coworkers can be great people, but they are also friendly rivals, so build advantages while still being the kind of teammate others want on the mission.

The communication lesson is simple: lead with the outcome, then own the gap with grace. Great teams and great leaders minimize errors, maximize opportunities, and take responsibility when they do not finish the job. If you are paid for results, you do not get to rewrite reality after the fact. The silver medal is still an achievement, but gold belongs to the team that delivered when it mattered, and this time, that was the USA.[1]