You are the most prepared person in the room.
You have done the analysis or have considered every angle. Likewise, you know the data better than anyone sitting at that table. And when it is your turn to speak, you walk the room through all of it. The context. The research. The options. The trade-offs. Every piece of evidence that supports why your conclusion is the right one.
And then someone else states the conclusion. Briefly. Directly. Without all the buildup.
And the room moves with them.
If that has happened to you more than once, the problem is not your expertise. The problem is that you are still performing expertise in a room that has moved on to evaluating something else entirely
Belonging to a Room and Leading the Room Are Not the Same Thing
Earlier in your career, showing your work was exactly the right move. It was how you earned credibility. Also, it was how you signalled that your recommendations were grounded in real analysis rather than assumption. It was how you proved you deserved to be there.
And it worked. It got you into the rooms you are now sitting in.
But here is what changes at the senior level. Nobody in that room is still asking whether you belong there. That question has been answered. What they are now asking is something different.
Can you lead this room?
“Belonging to a room and leading the room are two completely different things.”
Belonging requires showing your work. Leading requires showing your conviction. And those two things demand completely opposite communication styles.
The woman who walks in and walks the room through her analysis is demonstrating expertise. The woman who walks in and opens with a clear, direct recommendation is demonstrating leadership. Both women may have done exactly the same preparation. But only one of them is signalling that she is ready to lead.
Two Scenarios, One Room, Very Different Outcomes
Adaeze walks through two versions of the same meeting in this episode, and the contrast makes the point sharply.
In the first, a senior woman presents her work thoroughly. She covers the background, the data, the options she considered, and the reasoning behind each one. It is comprehensive and correct. But by the time she arrives at her recommendation, the room has been sitting in options for ten minutes. Someone else jumps in to make the call. The moment passes. She contributed information but did not lead the decision.
In the second version, the same woman opens with her recommendation immediately. One sentence. Clear and direct. She then offers the supporting analysis for those who want it. But the framing is completely different. She came in with a position. She owns it. The room responds to her as the person driving the decision rather than informing it.
Same preparation. Same expertise. Completely different signal.
The shift is not about what you know. It is about how you enter the room.
This episode is one of the most direct and immediately actionable things Adaeze has put out.
Listen to the full episode of Lunch with Leaders here.
Over-Explaining Is Not a Knowledge Problem
This is the part that is uncomfortable to sit with.
Over-explaining at the senior level is not a sign that you lack confidence in the subject matter. You know the subject matter deeply. It is a sign of something more specific.
It is a lack of trust in your own conviction.
“Every caveat is a crack in your authority.”
In addition, every time you add “but of course there are other ways to look at this,” you are stepping back from your own recommendation. Every qualifier softens the position you are trying to hold. Every hedge signals to the room that you are not fully behind what you just said.
And decision-makers read that signal immediately. Not as thoroughness. As uncertainty. Not as intellectual humility. As an unwillingness to own a position.
At the senior level, your expertise is assumed. The people evaluating you for the next role are not asking whether you can do the analysis. They are asking whether you can be trusted to set a direction and hold it. Whether you will lead when the data is incomplete. Whether you will own a decision even when the room is not immediately aligned.
Caveats and qualifiers do not answer those questions in the way you intend them to. They raise doubts where you are trying to build confidence.
The Habit Was Useful Once. It Is Working Against You Now.
The reason over-explaining is so persistent is that it was genuinely rewarded earlier in your career. You built your reputation by being thorough. By not overstating your conclusions. By showing that you had considered multiple perspectives before committing to a position.
Those habits did not appear from nowhere. They were responses to real environments where you had to earn your right to be heard. Where showing your work was the price of being taken seriously.
But the price has changed. And you are still paying the old one.
The senior women who advance are not the ones who out-analyse everyone in the room. They are the ones who have learned to trust their own conclusions enough to lead with them. Who have made the internal shift from proving their worth to owning their authority.
Leaders Are Chosen for Conviction, Not Knowledge
“Leaders are not chosen for what they know. They’re chosen for their conviction.”
That is a hard sentence to absorb when you have spent your career building expertise as your primary currency. But it is accurate.
At the senior level, the field is full of knowledgeable people. Knowledge is the baseline, not the differentiator. What separates the people who get chosen to lead from the people who get recognised as excellent contributors is something less tangible and more powerful.
It is the willingness to take a position. To say this is the direction or hold that position when the room pushes back, not because you are inflexible, but because you have done the thinking and you trust it. Also, to update your position when genuinely new information emerges, not when the room goes quiet or someone senior looks uncertain.
That is conviction. And it is a learnable skill. But it starts with a decision to stop hiding your judgment behind your data.
The One-Sentence Challenge
Adaeze ends this episode with a challenge that is simple to understand and harder to execute than it sounds.
Before your next high-stakes meeting, write this down:
My recommendation is ______.
Fill it in completely. Make it specific. Make it a real position, not a range of options dressed up as a recommendation. Then practise saying it out loud until the discomfort fades.
When it is your turn to speak in that meeting, open with that sentence. Not the context or the background or the analysis that supports it. The recommendation itself, stated clearly, in the first breath.
What follows can include your reasoning. You can offer the data for anyone who wants to go deeper. But you lead with where you have landed, not with how you got there.
That is the shift. One sentence. One meeting. One deliberate choice to trust your own conclusion enough to put it first.
“Every caveat is a crack in your authority.”
The inverse is also true. Every time you lead with conviction, you build it.
Ready to Take the Leadership Edge Diagnostic?
After you listen to this episode, Adaeze has created a resource specifically for senior women in STEM who want to understand exactly where the gap is between how they are showing up and how leaders are being evaluated.
Listen to the episode and access the Leadership Edge Diagnostic here.
The Shift That Changes Everything
You have already done the hard part, built the expertise. In fact, you earned the room. You have the track record that proves you can deliver.
The only thing standing between where you are and where you are going is a communication habit that served you once and is limiting you now.
Stop walking into rooms to inform them. Walk in to lead them.
State the recommendation. Hold the position. Trust the conviction that your years of experience have built in you. And watch how differently the room responds when you stop asking for permission to own the space you have already earned.
Start with this episode and hear Adaeze walk through this shift in the direct, no-filler way that she does it best.
Listen to Stop Over-Explaining and Start Leading With Conviction on Lunch with Leaders now.
