Senior Leaders, Here's How to Articulate Your Contributions

By Jeff Su

Categories: Product, Startup

Summary

As you rise in seniority, articulating your impact becomes more challenging, but a few simple shifts in how you talk about your results - like using 'we' over 'me' and highlighting strategic tradeoffs - can make your leadership clear without overshadowing your team.

Key Takeaways

1. Use 'we' instead of 'me' to highlight your team's contributions while clarifying your leadership role.
2. Speak to the scale and complexity of your impact, not just the outputs, to signal executive-level contributions.
3. Explain your strategic thinking and decision-making process to demonstrate your judgment, not just your results.
4. Avoid both downplaying your role ('my team did all the work') and overstating it ('I turned the department around'), which can undermine trust.
5. Visibility is part of the job at senior levels, so focus on articulating your impact clearly without making it all about you.
6. Shift your language to use verbs like 'directed', 'secured buy-in', and 'influenced thinking' to signal executive-level contributions.

Topics

• Personal Branding
• Leadership Communication
• Career Development
• Startup Scaling
• Senior Management

Transcript Excerpt

The more senior you become, the harder it gets to talk about your own impact. And if you get it wrong, it can stall your career. See, at junior levels, it's simple. You built the model. You closed the deal. You wrote the code. But as a senior leader, your team does the execution. So, when someone asks, "What have you accomplished lately?" It can feel awkward and some leaders deflect. They say, "Well, my team did all the work. I just got out of the way." It sounds humble, but it makes decision ma...