Why being understood matters more than being right
When I was starting out at Microsoft, I nearly derailed my first executive presentation over the word “avatar.”
We were building virtual world software, and I used “avatar” the way the industry did. The VP stopped me, insisting it wasn’t the right term based on its dictionary definition. I pushed back, stating it was accepted industry usage, and asked to move forward. He agreed, but became distant for the rest of the presentation.
Afterward, my boss’s boss pulled me aside. “If the VP wants to talk about a word, that’s what you talk about.” I was never invited to present to that VP again.
I was two years out of university. It was a painful lesson.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in executive communication over the years, and I’ve been on both sides of that table long enough to understand why they happen. Before I was someone people presented to, I was terrified of the same thing. When I started at Adobe, my director was in San Jose while I was in Seattle. I’d see him present to the broader organization occasionally, but the first time he called me directly, I nearly froze. He just had a question about something, but I picked up the phone, heard his voice, and thought: “I’m talking to the director.” It felt enormous and scary.
I also know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that anxiety. A few years later at Adobe, I was now a Director. A team that joined my organization set up a meeting to introduce themselves when I visited their office. I came to the conference room expecting to sit around the table and talk. Instead, I walked in to find a polished deck waiting for me, the whole team lined up, ready to present. It was the first time anyone had ever built a slide deck just for me. I felt guilty, honestly, because it was obvious they’d spent serious time on it, and I had just breezed in thinking we’d hang out. I understood immediately why they’d done it. But I also wanted to tell them: I’m just Kevin. You don’t have to do this.
The key: Executives are just people with different responsibilities. The anxiety you feel walking into that room is completely understandable, and mostly unnecessary.
What I learned the hard way from that Microsoft VP is that when you speak to executives, every word carries weight. The core tension is that you are closer to the work than they are. You’re the expert in your domain. But that doesn’t make you the expert in the room. You’re there because the thing you’re working on matters to them, not necessarily in the way it matters to you. Executives have the broader business context. You have the deeper technical context. They’re optimizing for risk, clarity, and decision making, not technical elegance.
Executives aren’t there to hear your whole presentation. They’re there to get something specific, and that something is usually part of a much larger set of conversations they’re having. If you give them a complete tour of your work and none of it is what they came for, they’ll interrupt you. Or they’ll check email. Or they’ll leave. Not out of disrespect, but because they have other things to do, and this meeting didn’t give them what they needed.
A framework: the four C’s
Before any executive communication, whether it’s a meeting, an email, or a Slack message, run through four questions.
Clarity. Are you using language that cannot be misinterpreted? Not your team’s language, not industry jargon. Plain language. Define terms the moment you use them, or don’t use them at all.
Context. Have you situated your topic inside the broader business picture, as best you understand it? You won’t have all their context. That’s fine. Show that you’re thinking past the narrow scope of your project. The executive you’re talking to is probably thinking about two other projects and how yours intersects with them. Meet them there as best as you can.
Consequence. Have you made it clear what happens if a decision is made or not made? Don’t assume the stakes are obvious. Say something like: “If we get the help we need, I’d put our odds of delivering on time at 70%. Without it, 30%.” That gives them something to act on. They’re not going to intuit the downstream implications of your team’s situation. You have to surface them.
Control. Are you demonstrating command of your subject, including its risks and trade-offs? Executives have usually been where you are. They can tell when someone is leaving something out, whether intentionally or because they haven’t thought it through. Either reading is bad for you.
If you skip answering one of these four questions, they’ll go hunting for the answer. That’s when the interruptions start and when you lose control of the room.
Calibrating your technical level
One common challenge in executive settings is explaining topics at the right level of technical detail for your audience. This challenge is called technical calibration: making sure your explanations match what your audience understands and needs, not just what is technically accurate.
Overexplaining occurs when you dive deeply into technical details with an audience that lacks the same technical background or expertise. For example, if you are a developer or a frontline engineering manager presenting to a mixed-background group, most will not be technical. If you go straight to implementation specifics without first gauging your audience’s familiarity, you risk losing them. I have seen this happen when I wanted to give team members exposure to the executive team. Despite my advice to focus on the business context, they presented too much technical detail. As a result, my peers disengaged—not out of disrespect, but because the level of information wasn’t appropriate for them. It can be tough to watch, especially knowing how much effort goes into preparing.
Under-explaining happens when you assume the audience shares your technical context and use unexplained terms or reference internal systems without clarification. Under-explaining can make your message opaque to executives, even if they don’t say so. Executives may not interrupt to ask, but will quietly disengage if they can’t follow the discussion. Clear technical calibration helps prevent this by defining terms and providing just enough context.
To technically calibrate, start by identifying your audience’s background and what matters to them. Focus your explanation on three areas: business impact, customer impact, and risk. These areas matter most to executives. Lead with what changes, who is affected, and what costs or risks are involved. Offer more technical details if requested, but always start with a clear context relevant to your audience’s familiarity.
Here’s something worth understanding about the translation problem. As a CTO, my job is to make complex technical realities legible to people who don’t live in technology. My peers on the executive team understand the broad strokes of engineering, but they’re not going to track a detailed architectural discussion, nor should they. I continuously hear fairly complicated things from people on my team, figure out what’s actually important in a business context, and translate them for my peers. That skill didn’t come naturally. I developed it by presenting to executives over the years and paying attention to what landed and what didn’t.
If you’re looking to move into senior technical leadership, this is not optional. The ability to translate your domain for non-technical peers is one of the most critical skills you can develop. In the first years of my career, I thought being technically correct was sufficient. What I eventually learned is that clarity and alignment matter more than precision. You can be right about everything and still fail to move anything if the people you’re talking to can’t follow you.
How to handle the room
A few more things worth knowing.
Lead with the conclusion. In written communication, especially, I see people bury the point. They walk me through everything that happened before telling me why they’re writing. Put the conclusion first. We have this problem. Here’s what I need. The background can follow, if I need it.
Plan to use half your time. If you’re given an hour, prepare for thirty minutes. You will get interrupted. Questions will go deep. Tangents will happen. If you’re done in half an hour and could have taken an hour, that’s a great outcome. It means you were clear and direct, leaving room for the conversation to go where it needed to. The executives you are presenting to will appreciate your brevity if it gives them time back in their day.
Say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is harder than it sounds. You’re in front of people who matter, and someone asks a question you can’t answer. The instinct is to approximate, to say it’s going pretty well, to give them something. Resist that. If you guess and you’re wrong, the next time they hear about your project from someone with the real information, they’ll wonder whether you were confused or covering something up. It’s more important for you to protect your credibility than your ego. If you don’t have an answer, commit to providing one as soon as possible after the meeting.
Treat interruptions as signals. If someone goes deep on something you considered minor, or starts a side conversation with the person next to them, that’s not a sign things are going badly. Something you said connected to a concern you’re not aware of. Stay with it. Follow it. Don’t try to reroute back to your slides. I’ve made this mistake. The executives started talking among themselves because something I’d said triggered a prior discussion. At a certain point, I was just standing at the front of the room waiting. I tried to bring them back because I was worried about running out of time. They didn’t have it. We ran out of time anyway. The deck got a “just send it over, sorry we ran out of time.” That is a common outcome from one of these meetings. Remember: your job in the room isn’t to get through your material at all costs—it’s to meet executives where they are and help them move things forward. If you do that, you’ve succeeded, even if the meeting doesn’t go as planned.
Executive brevity isn’t disinterest. Senior leaders in large companies can spend eight hours in meetings a day. They get direct because directness is how you survive that schedule. If they’re short with you, it probably just means they’re operating efficiently. Don’t confuse it with dismissal.
The view from the other side
Now that I’m regularly on the other side of these conversations, I recognize pretty quickly when someone is protecting their ego instead of informing me. When they get defensive about a challenge, when they oversell, when they’re more focused on how they look than on what I actually need to understand. And I recognize the opposite, too. When someone says, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out,” I trust them more, not less. When someone slows down and clarifies rather than powering through, I appreciate it.
What executives want from anyone presenting to them is to help them understand something so they can make a good decision. That’s it. You are not there to demonstrate your expertise. They already assume you have it. That’s why you’re in the room. You’re there to enable good decisions for the people you’re talking to.
Every word should either reduce ambiguity, increase alignment, or surface risk. Remember, every executive conversation is a chance to build trust and influence outcomes. Treat each as an opportunity to connect, learn, and shape direction.
Ask yourself one question before every executive interaction: Am I optimizing to be right, or am I optimizing to be understood?
The answer should always be the latter.
To hear an extended discussion of this topic, please listen to my recent podcast episode: Talking to Executives: That’s Not a Derailment, That’s the Meeting.
