Episode 165 - You Know the Answer, So Start Sounding Like It

You can know your project, understand the data, and have the right answer, yet still make leadership doubt you. In this episode, Steve and Jake break down how passive language, hedging, weak tone, and overexplaining destroy credibility. They show you how to communicate decisions, problems, and recommendations with clarity and authority. Not theory. Practical, tactical advice you can use in your next meeting, email, or executive update.

Key Topics Covered:
• Why technically strong engineers plateau because they communicate without confidence
• How phrases like “I think,” “maybe,” and “this might be dumb” weaken your authority
• Why answering with a questioning tone makes leaders doubt your command of the work
• How excessive context buries the decision and exhausts the listener
• Why executives need the conclusion before the supporting explanation
• How concise communication improves trust, visibility, and decision-making
• When detailed context is valuable and when it becomes a distraction
• Why collective intelligence matters more than being the person who knows everything
• How strong communicators advance faster than isolated technical experts
• Why listening closely to the question changes the quality of your response

Actionable Steps:
• Remove unnecessary hedging from your next project update
• State the decision, result, or problem in the first sentence
• Follow your conclusion with no more than two or three supporting bullets
• Put detailed background in an attachment or below a clear summary
• Separate what happened from why it happened
• Answer the exact question before adding context
• Pause after giving the direct answer instead of filling the silence
• Practice replacing passive phrases with clear, factual statements
• Use AI to rewrite your updates in a more assertive executive style, then study the wording
• Review important emails from the recipient’s perspective before sending them

Who This Episode Is For:
• Engineers who know their work but struggle to sound confident
• Individual contributors who feel overlooked despite strong execution
• Technical experts whose careers have started to plateau
• New leaders who need to communicate decisions with authority
• Engineers who overexplain because they want everyone to understand their reasoning

Why It Matters:
Your work cannot create career momentum if people do not trust your delivery. Visibility is not enough. Leadership must hear clarity, ownership, and command when you speak. Strong communication turns technical knowledge into confidence, faster decisions, and greater responsibility. 

Where to Listen:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Or wherever you get your podcasts

Share:
If this episode hit home, send it to someone. The Impactful Engineer grows by word of mouth, just like the best careers do.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

We are here to bring you guidance and stretch ideas and the tools to help you become an impactful engineer.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Engineers don't fail because they lack technical skill. They fail because they never learn how to lead, communicate, and take ownership. This is the Impactful Engineer. We give you the blueprint for career excellence and not textbook answers. I'm Steve Maxie, a senior manager in product development, and I'm here with my brother Jake, owner and principal engineer at NLS Engineering. If you're done with the status quo and ready to take control of your career, then you're listening to the right show. Hello, Jacob.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Hello, sir.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Doing good, man.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Excellent. Just excellent.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

The same stuff that I do every day.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Yeah. Work.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Work. Business. Let's go. Let's go. Well, you know, it's summertime and it's around 4th of July. You know, it's a little bit after. So we've been, you know, doing the vacation thing and and uh having it, having fun, uh taking time off, hanging out with family. More so than I normally do. Because I get plenty of family time too.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Because it's basically all I do is work and hang out with family.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Work and family.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

That's it. Yep. Family and work. But it's been just a little more skewed towards relaxation and hanging out, which I'm fine. I'm fine with that. Just gain some pounds, you know, like just getting a little heavier, getting a little rounder in the gut momentarily.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

It's a short season of family, you know?

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah. If if I'm not focused on work, then I like to relax and play. And then part of relaxing and playing is eating a bunch of nice food. So really it's committing to the business that makes me be fit most of the time. Because I do not just, I mean, I'm typing. I can't just slam potato chips while I'm typing.

SPEAKER_02 2:06

So the new fad diet that's going to sweep the nation is going to be just work hard.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Just have a thousand million emails that you have to review and SOPs you got to put together and onboarding packages and hiring new people and reviewing end-to-day reports and designing and doing all of it. Customer success, customer coordination, customer. Yeah. It's like, oh man, who you know, the little the little Monday morning meetings or whatever you're doing, like a staffing meeting, and you got little names like, oh, this person's doing my name's on every single row of a thousand. Oh, I wonder who's doing that today. Oh, that'd be Jake. That would be me. Who dropped the ball here? Oh, that would be me. We need to have a uh we need to have a uh project debrief on this one. So I'll just, you know, think about it in my head and we're done. Let's schedule that one. Okay, right now we'll do better next time. But we'll do that. Okay, great.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Yep. Drop that down.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah, jot that down.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Awesome. Well, um I have a little topic to talk about. Um, first I can just uh go into our episode types real quick. First is our standard episode type, me and you, or you or I. Either or. We'll get on here, present a topic uh that we want to introduce, and we'll go through the why and the how around that concept and give some tips to inspire some action.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

There you go.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Yeah. And uh our other major type is having a guest on. And uh we have one coming in a couple weeks. So that's getting set up here pretty soon, and I'm really looking forward to that one as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

And she's gonna be a really great guest.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Oh, yeah. Yep. So basically, we bring in an expert in a particular field, share their perspective, mindset, some actionable tips around their area of genius, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

So because 165 episodes in, you don't want to listen to us anymore. Although, I do remember the the line that I really like. It's that we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught. And I really liked that one when I heard it. So yeah. Yeah, we'll just keep reminding people and ourselves as we talk about it, right? We're like, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:32

You know, that that's one of the biggest benefits of doing the podcast is we remind ourselves a lot of the things that that help, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Dude, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

I'm in the middle of a of you know how many things I would drop or just miscommunicate or like not be the best that it could be if I wasn't so practiced and in dishing it out every week, man. Or like, because I'm subconsciously looking for topics too as I work. And it's like, oh yeah, that that's super important. Like, this is why this turned out this way. This is why I have the reaction from the client right now telling me about how much they appreciate the steps I took and the ease at which they could make their decision. I'm like, yes, that's because I deployed the stuff that I talk about, you know, very clear, concise, with solutions ahead of time and a decision to be made, and that's it. And it's very clear. And it's like, okay, cool. So, like, yeah, it's it's fun.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah, and it's it's kind of interesting because that actually plays into this topic uh that that I'd like to talk about because it's a multifaceted reminder of like a lot of the different things that we talk about, but kind of packaging it in it maybe in a different perspective, or maybe even the same perspective. Who knows? We'll find out.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

But uh well, for someone listening, it'll be different, maybe. Yeah, maybe that's when it really sinks in. Yeah. Yeah. If you can think of the same thing with five different frames, then you can choose the one that works for the moment you're in, which it's helpful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

Yeah. So, anyways, um earlier this week, I noticed a few things um, you know, around the office that were happening, and and that's that's kind of where I'm pulling this from, is that we will have like a um a big meeting, right? And people are asking the engineers about their projects. And the engineers will have all the the knowledge and you know the data for their projects, you know, the wins, the losses, and you know, what's going on and the timelines and all that good stuff. But when they speak back to whoever's asking them a question, they use a very passive language, you know, they they use uh um tones of voice that that um makes the like the executive teams and the leaders that are around the table like think that they just don't know what they're talking about. Not that they don't know, they do. They are actually well versed in in everything that they they're talking about, but because of the way and uh they're saying things and then the words that they're they're choosing to communicate, um, that perspective is different than than what you're um hoping for, right? And so that's that's really what I want to talk about is is how can you change your communication? How can you think about like your delivery um to make sure that people know that you're confident in what you're talking about and have the authority of the subject matter? So um, first is passive language, right? A lot of people, and and I am very guilty of this. So this is like you know, the the pot call calling the kettle black kind of thing, is a reminder to yourself, exactly. Yeah, is saying like I think a lot, right? Oh, I think that's uh you know, this and this and that, or or oh yeah, you know, we should do this, and you know, that kind of language.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

It's like, no, no, it's be like or like hedging too, like you can just spew anxiousness and and like doubt if you try to hedge before you try to set everybody up exactly, yeah. Like, oh you know what this might be dumb, but it's like okay, you've lost everybody and they think you don't know anything.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

All the confidence is gone, it's gone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you know, changing um your oh and the other thing is like the tone, right? It's like real soft, or like they're it's almost like a question is their response, more than than an assertive, like you know, um response at all. It's just yeah, you know, they're like, oh, you know, I think it's this, or you know, something like that. It's like, no, dude, you're you just lost it right there. Um, so changing your response to be like, hey, this is going to be done at this time, or this happened, uh, and we are countering that with these other action items. Or, you know, this person, uh, I'm expecting uh a delivery from them at this time, and that's when this will happen. You know, like be very direct and authoritative, authoritative in your response. And that um inspires a lot of confidence in whoever's listening to your response.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah. You know, I used to do that a lot in certain situations. Bring all the context. It even bleeds into my email writing as well, where it's much more important to be even shorter and more concise and just factual, data-driven communication. And that was a big deal for me a while ago.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Now I've got it down, but it would bring unsolicitated or unsolicited, that's the right word, uh, responses that had nothing to do with what I was trying to convey or what I was trying to get back because I had lost them in this context string that was enormous.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

So try not to do that either.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Yeah, and and I I want to give a couple tactics here. Um, because this is not easy. I mean, I'm still trying to get over this habit, right? Um, I'm pretty bad about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

You know where it comes from for me is that I just want them to know where I'm coming from at all times.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Yeah, and instead of people don't give a shit. That's this that's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Well, they don't give a shit, plus you gotta think about how they're engaging with the content. Whether you're speaking to them in a room or you're writing an email, you've gotta think about putting yourself on the receiving end of what you're delivering and erase what you would think you would want from yourself and look at what uh if you were super busy and you had this three-minute window to come in, hear what this other person had to say, and then make a very important decision, you'd want it to just be short, just the facts, very confident that other person had spent 17,000 hours thinking about what they're gonna deliver to you, and that it was already polished.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

If they start going into contextualizing and hedging and explaining and blah blah blah, then you lose that confidence for that little window that you're gonna listen. So so that's where that comes from for me.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Yeah, on on email list or on emailing uh uh responses, um what helps me the most is just using bolted lists after like the the actual uh response, right? So I'll be like, this happened, blah blah blah. And then I'll put a bulleted list underneath it and be like, um, you know, pulling the timeline in by X because by doing this, you know, that uh and I'll add a couple of supporting bullets, like maybe two, maybe three at the most, just to support that statement. But the statement is front and center of what I want to communicate.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

The fatigue, too. That's why that works for you. The fatigue of the person engaging. So, like my framework for making a decision and rec and presenting it slash recording it per email is to tell them what we're doing up front, just like you said. We are going to replace the service entrance.

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

If you don't replace the service entrance, that is an option, but you risk maybe, maybe, you know, just two more, three more words. Okay, so maybe a maybe a sentence. And then I say, so so that's the thing. Choose it, I recommend you replace it. Here's the other option I don't recommend. That's the top of the email. And then I love to just say, if you want to read more detail, because you need more context behind this, read on. And then I go in and I explain. So the decisions up front, they can choose to fatigue themselves. And actually, by being prepared and prompted to say, you can read on, here's the details, they'll be more engaged to pay attention instead of starting with all the detail, yeah. No actions or decisions, and they have to weed their way through. That's when the fatigue starts happening.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, yeah. Think of like uh um articles and stuff, right? What's the most effective way to write an article? Have an abstract up front.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Yeah, it's the whole summary thing up front. You know what I mean? Executive summary and abstract, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

And so uh another strategy I like doing on emails specifically is I will have that aspect, that abstract, the that short little summary, you know, couple bulleted lists, whatever it is, in the email itself. And I was like, if you know, see attached for data or more detail, right? And then in the attachment, so it's not actually in a long email, it's it's a file that has the more strung out data. That way, when they're like, you know, pounding through their emails, that email is very short, concise, and then they get all the critical information that they need, and they don't choose to read the wrong information and get the wrong idea. It's like that's the information I want them to read, and then if they want more, they can open up the attachment and be more specific about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Yep. And I and since we're on the topic of emails, I have found that you can get someone's attention real quick if it's a big, gnarly, hairy problem that you're going to be making a recommendation on and it costs a ton. I've seen most people, and I've done this too, start with the justification first and try to build up to this big decision so that it's a softer blow. But like we're talking about, you're seeing all this fatigue, and they just want to know the and you're gonna you're gonna make them even more stressed out by the time they read the answer. Yeah. It'll be it'll have the opposite effect. You just tell them, hey, we've discovered that this needs to happen. Our recommendation is this, and it's gonna cost you a million bucks. And then they're like, wow, this email is really important because there's a million dollar cost item here. Let me read the rest of this with intent and purpose, right? Instead of starting out with, oh, you know, possibly we could have found this thing, and you know, we would have brought it up earlier, but you know, we we hadn't, you know, the drawings weren't in yet, and then the vendor was a little late on the and then you're you're you they lost and they're pissed off and they're going, what is this person trying to say? And then you hit them with the cost, and they're like, Oh, you know, I hate this person. It's like you built them up to be angry, you know. Like hit them, hit them with the facts up front, decisions up front.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah, yeah. And and kind of um circling back a little bit on the the verbal side of things, um a good tactic is is write how you would respond now in like Chat GPT or or whatever AI platform, and then say reword all of these bullets to um you know, assertive executive summary or something like that, right? Just play around with it. And then once you get responses um that have the language that you're looking for that is very confidence inspiring, grab those key words out of those responses and then just start practicing in your day-to-day using those words, right? Yeah, like changing the the tonality of of how you respond to people, like just practice over and over and over. Um, that's what's helped me the most is doing things like that. Um, still not the best at it, but you know, um you gotta you gotta start because you're not going to advance in your career very far if you're going to be passive all the time.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yep. Sorry to tie that to the career there.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

This will be damaging if you don't learn to see up front, speak with confidence.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Yeah, I I've seen fantastic engineers plateau very early because they cannot communicate appropriately. And then I've seen engineers who are relatively new in their career move very, very fast through the ranks because leadership loves the way that they execute and loves the way that they communicate and um that execution to them. You know, you could you can literally do the same thing, but if you communicate it shitty, you're going nowhere. And if you communicate it effectively, you're going all the places.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Yeah, and I don't even know if people still think this way, but I experienced it um in my early in my career. The reason that happens, from my point of view, okay, is that knowledge is a shared resource and that one single person doesn't make all of the decisions or have all of the experience to make the right decision. So if someone new comes in and they know how to utilize the collective intelligence and experience of the people around them and speaks confidently when making decisions, they're gonna move up fast. The most experienced, siloed engineer could then take that person that moved up really fast, grill them about a whole bunch of technical shit that they think is important, and they'll fail miserably. And then they'll use that as justification for why did this person move up so fast? Why are they near my pay rate already? They don't know anything that I know. It's because it's not about one person knowing everything. It's about who can use the collective intelligence and experience of the company and point it in the right direction and make the company money. That's what it's about.

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Yeah. And who's visible doing it?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

And then, yes, if you do that without any visibility, then no one knows to promote you, sure. So then you have to advocate for yourself and do all the other shit that we talk about for 165 episodes. But yeah, I just I wanted to make that point. I've seen that. I don't know if anybody still kind of feels that way. I think, you know, lately it's before I started the business, it was pretty well collective. Um, but I've been in places where the there's the knowledge holder and and they're the most important. And how dare anybody uh that has less knowledge be anywhere near their prestige, you know? Um definitely not that way. Has never been that way, but sometimes it's been um prioritized because uh, in my honest opinion, I they didn't know what they were doing.

unknown 20:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

And that's uh I know that's arrogant, but uh there's just proof. I've seen it, it's just proof. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:33

So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

What were we talking about?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

No, we're just talking about um how to think about and change your delivery in communication so people are confident that you have the authority about what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah, there's there's a lot, there's a lot to it. Think about think about your audience too and the purpose of when you why are you opening your mouth?

SPEAKER_03 21:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Um, because there are times when you need to provide more context uh and and maybe start talking about the journey and the process. Uh if you're doing some sort of lessons learned thing, it's a good idea to get into the weeds. So so there's there's uh brainstorming, uh doing some research, trying to figure out the best idea, trying to lay out all ideas on the table to figure out the best idea, that's a good time to go into the weeds. Um and it's about setting it too. You gotta set the stage for people.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Yeah, and and listen to how the question's being asked, right? If they're going, hey, what happened? They're asking for a what happened, not why. Right? Like, hey, it was delayed a week. If they go, hey, why was this delayed a week, you can give a nice concise answer. If they go, hey, can you break down for me so I can fully understand why this was delayed? Guess what? That opens the door for a more detailed explanation.

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Bam. I appreciate when I ask what happened to get a response that is exactly that. What happened? We did not purchase the right breaker for the application. And therefore, see how we go like, and therefore, you gotta stop before the solve. Well, well, you could you could follow up with a solve, but I was like, I caught myself there, and therefore, no, there is no and therefore. What happened?

SPEAKER_02 22:52

Gotcha, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

We ordered the wrong thing. Yep. And then you sit there and you s and you be silent. What are we doing about it? Okay, cool. And therefore, I've already released the problem. Yes, the product that's the product that's gonna work. We've already called the distribution center. We can return uh free shipping, whatever, you know, we can get most of it back. The new piece will be here in a week. We've already let them the other people know that this delay is happening. They've told me that it doesn't change the schedule. We can get in all that stuff, but the what is you know, what happened is first.

SPEAKER_02 23:34

And simple as that. Just listen to the question and give the response for that question and be concise and have authority.