If you’ve hit the breakdown point with a stakeholder and it feels like.

You just.

Can’t.

Step 1: Break the me vs you dynamic

“Our teams have different priorities.
That’s what makes this hard.”

This is my go-to phrase to get the tension out. It’s light. It takes it to the structural level, and away from the personal which is why it works. It’s kind of like saying: “hey this sucks a bit and it’s not our fault”.

Step 2: Get inside their world

My flow for this is usually:

1. What actually matters to your team right now?

2. What does success look like for you on this?

3. Where’s the pressure coming from on your side?

4. Is there anything you’re worried about personally that’s making this hard?

You’ll learn interesting things like:

• There’s a hidden constraint they never bought up

• Their priorities are pretty different to what the Q1 deck says

• They’ve committed to something they’re scared to walk back

• The resistance isn’t coming from them. It’s two levels up.

• Assumptions that might not be true

• An agenda behind the agenda

It’s not about bending to that team or person.

So often we jump straight to persuading. It’s smarter to understand their world first. You’ll have better intel, and they’ll be less defensive going into the next part.

Step 3: Get on the same side

This is both literal and metaphorical.

Literally sit on the same side of the table.

A forensic psychologist explains in this pod episode (great listen btw!).

We naturally default to sitting directly across the table (180°), but that creates more guardedness because the eye contact gets intense and the table itself is a physical barrier. Sitting on the same side, or in a V-shape, moves it away from this power-based hierarchical relationship, to “We’re in this together, what is it we’re trying to solve?”.

And it’s also a mindset.

Really try to imagine you’re on the side side, the same team. If you wind things back, at some point, you have a shared goal (even if it’s - we don’t wanna work weekends for this stupid project.)

It’s not me vs you. It’s us together vs the problem on the other side.

Reflect their situation back

“Yep, I’m hearing you need X because of Y.
We’re stuck on this part ____. “

They won’t hear you, until they feel heard.

Share your team’s perspective

“I want to share what’s going on on our end as well, it’s relevant to how we solve this.” or
“Thank you for sharing this. I’ll share the honest picture from our side...”

Talk through your team’s priorities, capacity constraints, needs.

Explore the problem together

“What if we looked at it like this…?”
”What does a version of this look like that does work for your team? Here’s a version that could work for mine…”

This opens the conversation up so you can look at the problem together, instead of from opposite sides.

Sometimes you’ll find ways around it that you hadn’t thought about before. Sometimes you’ll find your stakeholder isn’t the same type of empathetic collaborator you are …

(Side-note: patronising co-workers can go to hell 😛 but we’ll take the high road and assume they’re not trying to be patronising, they’re under pressure).

What to do when they won’t come to the party?

Your stakeholder gives you nothing to work with. Now what?

So many factors come into play.

How aligned is it to the project outcomes? Is this actually within your team’s scope? Does the ask have broad stakeholder support, or mainly their team pushing? What’s the long-term cost, to the relationship and the business, of saying yes vs. no?

Here’s a story of when this happened to me

I was a mid-level marketer working with a stakeholder on a joint initiative between Marketing, Policy, Comms and a few other teams.

Their team wanted double the events we’d scoped. We wanted to do even less events than on the current plan. I tried to find common ground - maybe we could do a few more, maybe we could delay to a later quarter when our team had more capacity, maybe we could…

It didn’t work. It escalated.

The problem turned out to be part of a much bigger structural problem. Teams feeling Marketing was a bottleneck for events in general. Marketing feeling we were viewed as a glorified events agency, when our actual OKRs were far greater (revenue targets, product launches, multi-million dollar campaigns). Plus, we had standards for what a ‘good’ event meant.

Months (years?) of meetings. Many layers of stakeholders later (the right people need to get involved). And what came out was an option we hadn’t really considered at the start. Stephen Covey calls this the third alternative. He wrote a book on it.

Our third alternative was a way to make other teams (semi)self-sufficient in running lighter-touch events. Removing Marketing from the logistics and reputational accountability, but with touch-points in place for brand safety.

This isn’t to say there’s always a third alternative. Often it is compromise or standing ground or saying no.

This is to say:

If you’ve tried ✅ talking through constraints, ✅ framing it to the neutral company goals and shared project outcomes, ✅ changing the ask in some way, and you’re still at an impasse…

It needs to go up.

In my experience, most persistent cross-functional problems can’t actually be solved laterally.

Step 4: Name the impasse, escalate collaboratively

“Sounds like we’re both working with genuine constraints that aren’t going away. Who else needs to be in this conversation so we can move forward?”

“Feels like we’ve hit the limit of what we can sort out between us. How do you want to approach the next step to bring [your manager, their manager] in?”

I got exhausted writing this. So if you’re dealing with cross-functional situations right now, you’re probably very tired.

It’s bloody hard. My heart is with you.

Love Soph ✌🏼

Wrap emails. Showcase presentations. Opinions in meetings not because they add anything, but because speaking is its own form of being seen.

We have to. We know visibility works and invisibility doesn’t.

The more parcels we push, the noisier it all gets, so the more we share. And collectively we’re just making each other busier.

This is partly why a lot of us hate it. It’s all a bit samey. A bit desperate.

But there’s a better way to think about it.

Visibility has two layers

Most advice assumes your problem lies only in your communication. But visibility has two layers:

The work layer: Are you working on things worth talking about?
The communication layer: Are you sharing the impact in a way that lands?

If you don’t believe you’re doing impactful work, it’s harder to want to talk about it. You can’t polish a turd.

So let’s start there.

The Work Layer: Are you working on things worth talking about?

You’ll hear:

Be explicit with your manager. Tell them:
“I want to get exposure to X”. ”How can I be involved in Y”.

It’s not bad advice, but it can backfire early-career. There’s a whole archetype of the ambitious junior who chases big shiny things but neglects the grunt work. You don’t want that reputation.

You earn the interesting work by doing your core work reliably first.

I feel like you get that.

So, here are 4 other things that help.

1. Be dialed in to problems

Pay attention to what keeps coming up. What’s the org struggling with? What does your manager return to in 1:1s? What are senior leaders repeatedly bringing up? This is about awareness beyond your level. It gives you context. It doesn’t mean you go solve those problems. It means you understand why certain things matter, so your work isn’t disconnected from reality.

About once a quarter, helps to ask your manager:

✅ "What do you see as the biggest problem our team is trying to solve right now?"

You’re not always working on the biggest problem but talking to your manager about it elevates you to a thought partner who thinks at their level.

2. Have smart prioritisation conversations

In my experience, the priority list we set at the start of the quarter was rarely the exact same as what mattered by the end. Your manager doesn’t want you working on unimportant things but companies are chaotic and if you’re not proactive, it’ll happen. The move is to bring your current priorities to your manager and invite them to react - not wait for them to redirect you.

✅ Here are my top 3 priorities right now. Does that still feel right given what’s changed?

When something new lands - which it will - name the trade-off rather than just absorbing it:

✅ I can take that on. That means X moves to next month. Is that the right call?

Managing priorities well, can open you up to new opportunities:

✅ I’ve been noticing X getting a lot of attention. I had an idea for where I can help - can I run it past you?

3. Do unglamorous but high-visibility work

The question isn’t whether the work itself sounds impressive. It’s whether it puts you close to people who matter. Proximity to decision-makers. High stakes for someone senior. Cross-functional exposure.

For example:

No one wanted to work on B2B events at Google. Not when there were Pixel campaigns with multi-million dollar budgets and celebrity activations.

I always died a little inside when I got tapped for another one. But every time - briefing meetings, sitting in rehearsal rooms jamming on speeches, helping leaders feel prepped and look good on stage - those projects put me in rooms with people I wouldn’t have been in otherwise.

The events I never wanted to do were the ones that got me promoted.

Look for things like:

• Prepping briefing notes or talking points for leadership

• The weekly report that goes to all XFN stakeholders

• Anything with an external moment - a client presentation, a panel, a keynote

• The schedule & briefing pack for an exec site visit

• Analysis a senior leader relies on to make decisions

• Supporting a launch in a smaller but important market

• Big problems that need urgent fixes

4. Attach yourself to something big, even in a small way

What’s the smallest piece of a high-profile project that makes sense for you to own?

For example:

In 2011, the only thing anyone was talking about at work was Google+ (lol). I worked in Ads marketing, which had nothing to do with it. I pitched a tiny piece to own - partnering with a radio station to do video “hangouts” with artists they already had in the studio. We only did two of them. But the idea got picked up by the CMO and shared at a global all-hands and became one of the highest visibility moments of my early career.

Good work that nobody knows about is just... work.

Which brings us to Part 2.

The Communication Layer: Are you sharing the impact in a way that lands?

This is about context. Helping decision-makers connect your effort to company performance. Specific tactics coming in Part 2 - see you in a couple of weeks.

Love Soph ✌🏼

You’re planning your one big summer trip for the year.

Friend of a friend says: “Albanian Riviera. Go there.”

WDYT? Are you ready to drop $5k and book? How confident are you?

-

Imagine instead they say:

“Assuming you want water because… summer, and 10 days max because… job. Based on these criteria: insane beaches, good food/culture, under $100/day - Albanian Riviera hits all three plus it’s blowing up on 2026 trend lists (might get overrun soon). Trade-off: no direct flights which sucks but you do get layover in Rome…”

Now we’re talking.

Show your working

I’m oversimplifying to make a point but:

Early-career: “What should we do?”
Levelling up: “Here’s what I recommend we should do”

Managers approve big, potentially costly decisions all day (like you deciding where to spend your only summer holiday). They need to feel confident in your judgment.

The easiest way to build that confidence (especially when you’re newer)?

Show your working.

When you base decisions on clear criteria instead of gut feel or personal preference, you demonstrate critical thinking.

And that’s what makes them see you as strategic.

There are different ways to “show your working” - these aren’t steps, more like options. Pick 1-2 that work for your scenario.

1. Share your assumptions

Fastest way to catch any misalignment up front.

Example:

✅ You: “I’m working with the assumption they need to pull the numbers daily, so recommend a live dashboard. I’ll walk you through the plan. Time to build: 3 weeks.”

Your Manager: “Oh they don’t need numbers daily. A monthly email is fine.”

You: 😅

Different assumptions = wildly different conclusions. If your manager can actually unlock more budget, or if timing is tighter than you thought, you might suggest a completely different option.

2. Show what you considered (and cut)

I love this one. Surprisingly effective for how easy it is. Show what else you looked at and why you ruled it out.

Example:

🚫 “We should build in-house”

✅ “We should build in-house. To get to that recommendation I looked at three different approaches:

• Option A (outsource completely) - ruled out because we’d lose control over quality

• Option B (build in-house) - my recommendation because it gives us flexibility long-term

• Option C (hybrid) - interesting but adds too much coordination overhead for our team size”

3. Use a decision matrix

For bigger decisions where you’re comparing multiple options, try a decision matrix. These are good because they break down the attributes you’re evaluating, in a single snapshot. You can condense 3 weeks of critical thinking into 30 seconds for your leader!

✅ “My strong recommendation is Creator B.

As you can see:
All Creators are a good content fit for us. I’m optimising for Brand Safety, which we agreed is more important than Reach right now. Creator A: most reach, but risky. Creator B hits the mark. Let me know if brand safety isn’t actually such an problem though.”

Common attributes to optimise for:

• Speed/timeline

• Cost/budget

• Quality/performance

• Team capacity/complexity

• Risk level/brand safety

• Long-term flexibility

4. Present the downsides

Show you’ve thought through the risks, trade-offs, and unknowns.

Example:

✅ “Main risk is that Tool A takes a month longer for team training, but it saves us $20K/year toward our budget goal.”

✅ “The one thing I haven’t validated yet is whether it can pull the social data. Will ask Max in Analytics this week - any other suggestions?”

It builds trust because it shows honesty and that you’re thinking ahead.

5. Explain the ‘why’

Sometimes it’s as simple as just laying out your rationale - the why - in a few bullets, using data and evidence as much as you can.

Example:

✅ “My recommendation is we launch without the bonus offer.

Here’s how I got there:

• Last quarter’s A/B test: only 3% lift, not worth the margin hit

• Pricing research shows bonuses signal desperation

• Easier to add one on later, than pull one back.”

Keen to hear your perspective too - is this aligned with what you’ve seen?

Why “showing your working” works

You’re reducing your manager’s decision fatigue while sharpening your own critical thinking process. People start trusting you more because you’ve shown them you:

• Solve the right problem

• Consider multiple angles

• Are honest about downsides

• Don’t hide what you don’t know

There’s a lot more to strategic influence - understanding what matters to different people, asking pre-align questions, using social proof. We’ll dig into those soon.

Love Soph ✌🏼

Hiii. This edition is a collab with Alex from Still Wandering. We both care deeply about helping young people make sense of their careers, and as a millennial creating for Gen Z, I love working directly with people in that audience to expand my perspective. Thanks for reading 💙

We know how this sounds.

We know how tired you are of being told to be grateful when rent takes 60% of your salary. We know about the group chats where you screenshot job listings that require five years of experience for entry-level positions. We know you’re sick of boomer LinkedIn posts about how loyalty and hard work got them to the top, when they were hired with a handshake and promoted by just showing up for twenty years.

This isn’t that. We’re trying to make the opposite point.

Gen Z has been dealt an objectively terrible hand. You’re competing against algorithms designed by the smartest engineers in the world whose singular goal is capturing your attention. Scott Galloway points out that for the first time in American history, thirty-year-olds aren’t doing as well economically as their parents were at thirty. In London, the average house price is £523,000 while the median salary is £44,370. Even with a 10% deposit, you’d need to save nearly £9,000 per year just for the deposit alone. After tax, that’s most of your disposable income for six years, assuming prices don’t increase and you can save that much while paying rent.

You’re the guinea pigs for remote work, gig economy precarity, AI replacing entry-level roles and social media destroying privacy during your most formative years.

Previous generations had to deal with one or two of these things. You’re navigating all of them simultaneously while being told you’re entitled for wanting what your parents had by default.

So yes, the hand is shit. Which is exactly why you need more appreciation.

If appreciation is the antidote to resentment and toxicity, and your generation has more reasons for resentment than any recent cohort, then you need more antidote. The maths is simple.

We watched Timm Chiusano’s (excellent) TED talk last week.

He talks about being ‘addicted to appreciation’ - finding something worth noticing even on his worst days in corporate America.

His framework helped us see something we’ve been circling around for months while talking to hundreds of people about career confusion. The epidemic of meaninglessness that Gen Z faces at work isn’t just about broken systems or terrible deals. It’s about how you navigate those systems while they’re still broken. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: you’re going to spend years in jobs that feel hollow while you figure out what you’re building towards.

The previous generation’s deal made this easier to stomach. A linear career at a large corporation came with a pension that would fund retirement, a salary that could buy property, and confidence that thirty years of showing up meant security. When the bargain delivers, appreciation comes more naturally.

Millennials are living through the collapse of that deal while trying to hold Gen Z teams together.

They’re squeezed between their own career uncertainty and upper management demanding results. And Gen Z is entering a system where the deal barely exists at all. The corporate job you take at twenty-five will look completely different in five years, or won’t exist.

And you can see this happening in real time. Previous generations had maybe three or four points of comparison for their careers: immediate family, close friends, possibly neighbours. You have thousands. Every morning you wake up to Instagram stories of people who seem to have figured it out, LinkedIn posts about twenty-three-year-olds launching startups, TikToks explaining how someone made £10k in a month doing something you’ve never heard of.

Professional success operates like beauty. There’s always a perfect version just out of reach, and social media makes sure you see it constantly. But you cannot build a meaningful career waiting for the perfect opportunity to find you.

You’re told to do what you love. Fine. But first, try to learn to love what you do.

Appreciation vs Gratitude

Timm’s framework centres on a distinction that few people recognise: appreciation and gratitude are not the same thing.

Gratitude is transactional. You receive something, then you feel grateful for it. Your manager gives you positive feedback and you’re grateful, you get a bonus and you’re grateful, the company pays for your training course and you’re grateful. The external world has to give you something worth being grateful for before the feeling shows up.

Appreciation works differently. It’s “the act of noticing and valuing the good in our worlds” regardless of what you’re receiving.

In Timm’s case, he’d just endured eight hours of contentious meetings with pending layoffs looming overhead. Walking home late, checking an email from his boss that said “be prepared for tomorrow’s meeting to suck,” he found himself thinking about a manhole cover. Not in some forced gratitude exercise way, but genuinely curious about why manhole covers are circles instead of squares, wondering if they’re made in India. He found something worth noticing even when everything around him was collapsing.

When you’re building a career in a broken system, this distinction becomes critical because most jobs won’t give you much to be grateful for. You’ll spend years in roles that feel meaningless, working for managers who don’t see your potential, in companies that view you as replaceable. Waiting for external validation to fuel you means you’ll be waiting a very long time. Appreciation allows you to find energy and curiosity even when the system around you is demonstrably unfair, which matters when hollow experiences make up most of your twenties.

Why Gen Z needs this more than anyone

The comparison trap has always existed, but Gen Z faces it at a scale that’s truly unprecedented. Previous generations had maybe three or four reference points for what a successful career looked like, while Gen Z has thousands that update hourly in their pocket.

The person launching a startup at twenty-three doesn’t post about the two years they spent learning to code while working retail, and the one making £10k a month doesn’t mention the eighteen months they made nothing. You see the outcome but never the process, which creates a distorted sense of what progress looks like and how long it takes.

Cynicism has become the default posture, partly because it’s safer than admitting you care about something that might not work out. If you’re cynical about everything, nothing can disappoint you, but cynicism also prevents you from extracting value from the experiences you’re having right now.

You’re going to spend years in situations that feel hollow because figuring out what you’re building towards takes time. The question is whether you waste those years being resentful about how unfair it all is, or whether you learn to appreciate your way through them. This is a totally fair pragmatic navigation of a broken system. You didn’t design it and you’re not responsible for fixing it, but you are responsible for deciding how you move through it while you’re building something better.

Training your attention on what’s worth appreciating

So how do you do that exactly? Here’s a list of practical ways to start.

1. The fascinating mess of group dynamics

Your workplace is a live anthropological study of human behaviour. Watch a collection of people attempt to work towards a common goal while also fighting for their own career progression - it’s a fascinating education in power, persuasion, empathy, ethics. The person who talks the most in meetings almost never has the most influence. I (Soph) have learned more about communication from interacting with people at work than from any course. Approach it like you’re taking field notes.

2. Appreciate people when they don’t expect it

If you think someone did something great, take the 20 seconds to tell them. Especially when there’s no reason to. Not “thank you” because they helped you (though you should do that too), but noticing the effort they didn’t have to give. The way they stood up for someone in a meeting or shared learnings on a project that had nothing to do with you. Tell them not just “good job” but specifically why it was good. People assume someone else will tell them but you’d be surprised how rarely they do.

3. Curiosity as your advantage

“What’s their backstory?” is an incredibly useful question to ask yourself when someone frustrates or confuses you. Instead of getting mad, get genuinely curious first (you can still get mad later). Wonder: What else is going on for them? What pressure does their manager has\ve them under? What are they optimizing for that’s different to what I am? Curiosity doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but it helps you manage your response to it. And this is something you can completely control.

It’s for more than just dealing with difficult people too. There’s a clear pattern I (Soph) have observed over two decades: young people who ask questions compulsively, who are desperately curious about others’ experiences and stories - they’re always the ones who end up (1) abnormally successful at a young age and (2) universally loved. True influence comes from being both interested in other people and interesting yourself. Most people try too hard on the latter.

4. Everyone’s too worried about themselves to worry about you

Sounds depressing but it’s actually liberating. No one’s paying that much attention to you because they’re pretty consumed by their own insecurities and pressures. Appreciate this invisibility - it’s permission to experiment without judgment. Did you know your manager might be as nervous in your 1:1 as you are? The presentation you’re stressed about.... half the room is thinking about lunch. Everyone’s performing confidence while feeling uncertain. So you can experiment. Make mistakes. The judgement you feel is mostly in your head.

5. Shared irreverence as a survival tool

The ability to laugh at work’s ridiculousness might be what saves you. Someone says something unintentionally funny in a meeting that gets memed into a team slogan and eventually ends up on laptop stickers. The way you catch your coworker’s eye when someone says “let’s pop that in the parking lot” for the third time in ten minutes. You don’t even know it’s happening at the time, but when you’re retelling stories later, you realise these irreverent moments created the connections that made the whole thing bearable.

6. What your worst experiences teach you

Listen to any leader on a podcast - the stories they tell are always about when things went wrong and how they turned it around. The times you really mess up and want to die in a hole end up being your biggest growth moments, the ones you actually remember decades later. The hardest projects forge the strongest professional friendships. Maybe it’s the trauma bonding - the way you drag each other out of the trenches when no one else is coming to help. Your worst manager is a clear case study in what you never want to become. The real question in all of these moments is: what can I take from this for me?

7. Some things have actually gotten better

We’re trending towards it being uncool to email people on weekends. It’s fairly normalised to take a “personal day” for your mental health. Five years ago, your options were to pretend you’re sick or use annual leave. Now you can tell the truth. You just … need a day. That’s progress we shouldn’t take for granted. Some things are getting better. Not everything. Not fast enough. But some things.

It’s worth noticing.

Appreciation is the skill that lets you hold both truths at once

Gen Z’s cynicism about work is justified. The system is objectively worse than what previous generations had. Appreciation is the skill that lets you hold both truths at once - “this is unfair” and “I can still extract something valuable from it”. The unfairness doesn’t go away, but spending years resenting every moment means you miss the learning, the relationships, the curiosity that could have been building while you were busy being bitter.

When we say you need to learn to love what you do, we don’t mean loving emails and inane hallway chats and forced fun-facts. We mean love what you’re getting from the experience, even while the work itself might feel hollow. The hard work, the mistakes, the bad managers, the meaningless projects… are all feeding into you. What you take out of these experiences shapes you as a person and your career. This is what you can control.

The generation that masters this - staying present enough to notice what’s worth noticing, curious enough to learn from people others write off, grounded enough to find meaning in imperfect conditions - will be the one that changes things. Because change requires enough optimism to believe it’s possible and enough realism to know it won’t be easy.

Love Soph & Alex

1. Communicating about work

2. Communicating about how we communicate

Spending time on number two is very unlocking.

Communicating about how we communicate

You’ll see this show up in your work in two ways:

1. In the moment

Setting the frame or context before you dive in. Here’s what I’m going to do, now this is me doing it.

Example: In a meeting “We’ve got 15mins together, I’m going walk you though 1,2,3, interrupt me with questions as we go”. In a doc, it’s the little “How to use this doc” section you sometimes see at the top.

2. In the relationship

Creating space or dedicated sessions to talk about how you work with the people you interact with a lot.

Example: Things like How We Work sessions, deeper repair/reset style 1:1s, and personal user manuals.

Thousands of people downloaded that How We Work guide and the number one question I got back was “Can I run this as a group thing?”.

Short answer: for sure.

For my own team though, I liked adapting it using user manuals, because they gave us something concrete to share live and build team norms around (a lot of the prompts are the same).

What’s a Personal User Manual?

You’ve probably seen these popping up – “how to work with me” docs, operating manuals, read-mes. The idea is: if you want people to communicate with you in a better way, show them what “better” looks like.

It’s usually a short doc or set of slides you share with people you work with. If someone scanned it for a few minutes before a meeting with you, they’d have a much better sense of how to work with you.

They can feel a bit self-indulgent, but they’re also really useful when working across countries or with departments you’ve never collaborated with before (I found them helpful when working with Eng for example).

What makes them work (and not):

• The point isn’t to tell people how they must work with you or for everyone to make a 10-page manual.

• The value is in reading each other’s manuals, learning how people are different, and flexing your style a little.

• They’re especially helpful when leaders and senior people have them, because it can feel daunting to communicate with them and some guidance lowers the barrier (esp for more junior levels).

Used well, they take away some of the guesswork and friction in how we interact. Used badly, they become another “me first” document that nobody looks at.

Inspiration:

I’ve been collecting examples that people publish publicly and put together a simple guide you can use. This is also an excellent post by ex-Facebook design lead Julie.

I kinda love the “Things I do that may annoy you” section in Kevin’s:

IMO they work best as a team ritual

Where user manuals shine is as a team activity, not as solo documents sitting in a folder somewhere.

Here’s a session I used to love running with my team (usually ~90 mins).

1. Before the session

• Explain the ‘why’ of the session and how user manuals help.

• Ask everyone to make one, give some guidance and what that can look like

• One page / handful of slides is enough

2. In the session (live sharing)

• Each person takes about 10 minutes to walk through their manual.

• Creates a safer space for people to share things they don’t usually say out loud, and helps everyone understand the “why” behind each other’s behaviour.

• Practical stuff comes out too like “What’s the best way to get your attention if something’s urgent?” or “Are there times when you’d rather I didn’t desk pop-in?”

3. Then you can move into how you work as a team

• We’d often then talk about team norms and build out a light doc.

  Everything from expectations on response times, how we share feedback, how we say “no”, what “urgent” actually means, whether it’s okay to decline meetings, whether it’s okay to have a haircut during work hours (yes), etc.

• And energy mapping with calendars.

  Best time for big team meetings, 1:1s, focus time, school pick‑ups, proper breaks etc. Not trying to engineer the perfect schedule, just trying to get a bit more honest about how everyone works so the rhythm of the team feels easier.

Love Soph x

PS - If you want to get a lil’ crazy… Manager Feedback GPTs

Here’s an example of someone uploading their boss’s user manual (plus other stuff) to ChatGPT and getting it to be their first round of feedback before taking work to the real person. If anyone’s tried this please LMK!

I’d just asked James, a new connection from Engineering, what he was working on. He laughed and went on to say:

“One of the most important products that Eng works on out of Sydney is Chrome. As you know, there’s a huge global push to make Google’s design more beautiful. But we can’t risk the #1 thing people love about Chrome - speed. My team’s leading the effort to test how the redesign affects performance, like how people use the buttons”.

The first line about drop-shadows is the zoomed-in view.

Most of us stay stuck there. But no one really understands (or even cares 🤔 about) the details of your work. They care about how it connects to things that are relevant to them.

Everyone’s working at different altitudes

Consider this dynamic:

You need to translate between these two worlds. That’s the skill that changes how people see you. Your promotability depends on it.

It shows up in almost everything you do - performance reviews, presenting your work, casual conversations, leading meetings and especially when talking to senior leaders.

The 4Rs: What leaders actually care about

They’re usually thinking about some form of these things:

1. Revenue/Growth

• Getting new customers

• Making more money from existing customers

• Launching new products or markets

2. Risk

• Compliance and legal protection

• Keeping operations stable

• Avoiding major mistakes

3. Resources/Efficiency

• Doing more with the same team

• Reducing costs

• Working faster

4. Reputation

• Protecting brand trust with customers

• Managing the company’s image with media / partners

Sure, your company has a set of OKRs/goals but they usually sit fairly meaninglessly in a spreadsheet. Looking at what you work on and connecting it up to the 4Rs helps to make sense of it. You need to build your zoom out/zoom in muscle.

Here’s a real life example

• Soph (me): L4 Product Marketing Manager

• Project: Launching ‘Getting Aussie Business Online’ (lol it was 2011…)

• My piece: Running events, supporting Comms team on press

Let’s look at two different versions of me presenting to the full Australian Marketing team.

Why SOPH B’s structure works better:

• Starts with why it matters / the problem (Reputation)

• Connects to strategic goal

• What we did and the impact

• Zooms into execution + real example

Magic Patterns connect your work to what matters

Memorising a few of these ‘Magic Patterns’ has been a game changer for me.

1. “Let me start with why this matters, then I’ll get into the details...

Good for: All-purpose pattern for setting context from the start eg talking to senior leaders, your manager, presentations, one-pagers.

- - - -

2. “Zooming out. We’re trying to [strategic outcome]. To get there I recommend we…”

God for: Putting forward your ideas and opinions so they land better, speaking up in meetings, pushing back on priorities that don’t make sense.

- - - -

3. “As you know, we are [company priority]. The piece I’m leading is...”

Good for: Round-the-room shares in meetings, casual “what are you working on?” conversations, connecting your work to big important things.

Alt: “As you know, we’re trying to solve [big problem]. I’m helping with that by...”

- - - -

4. “We needed to [outcome]. Here’s what we did, and the impact it had.”

Good for: Project wraps, talking about contributions and achievements, performance review snippets.

Example:

- - - -

Love and impact

Soph ✌🏼

If you can’t stop spiralling, start here

Nothing anyone says will make that stomach-sick feeling go away, but these reframes might help:

Handled well, a mistake can actually build trust.

I’ve had reports make serious mistakes, and walk away more respected because of how they owned it. Accountability under pressure shows maturity. Same thing happens with brands: well-handled complaints can turn into loyalty moments. It’s called the Service Recovery Paradox.

Mistakes are how systems get better.

A lot of the processes at companies are built from people making mistakes. Companies need safeguards against human error because it’s so… human. There is a world in which what you just did and how you’re going to handle it next actually means you’re part of the solution, making the system stronger.

Other people’s mistakes are worse than yours.

Spend 5 minutes reading this X thread and feel micro-comforted you’re not alone.

Next: wrap your arms around the problem

1. Get your heart rate down

If you have panic-brain, the fastest, science-backed way to get your heart rate down is to get outside, move your body and/or breathe. The rest of this only works if you can think clearly.

2. Problem first, feelings later

You’ll want to explain, justify, defend. Right now though, focus on fixing the problem. There’ll be time for explaining all the detail later. Your credibility depends on showing accountability and action.

Figure out:

• What happened? (and if relevant, why)

• What needs fixing? (bullet point specific actions to take)

• Who’s impacted?

• Is this getting worse quickly, or do I have time to work on it? If it’s actively breaking, stop it, tell people, get help. If not, take an hour to build a plan first.

3. Hustle on hidden solutions

Sometimes the situation is, “what’s done is done.” Sometimes you have options.

I once spent $15k on event printing, then realised the URL was wrong. Instead of accepting we’d have to reprint (which we didn’t have time or budget for), I got to the right people in Engineering, found a backend solution I didn’t know existed, wrote the email my manager had to send to a VP to escalate the approval, and got it fixed.

Often a 3 internal week process, takes 3 hrs if you can get to the right person. “Impossible” turns into “well, technically it is possible if you do xyz…”.

Push harder on:

• What’s the constraint, really? (Budget? Time? Technical? Sometimes it’s not what you think. Gather all intel).

• Who else might have solved this before? (Internally, externally).

• Don’t be afraid to interrupt people or have tough conversations to get help.

4. Own it and communicate

Don’t downplay it. Don’t dump it. Just calmly state the facts and your plan.

Notice what’s NOT there:

🚫 “I thought someone else was handling it...”
🚫 “I was never trained on this...”
🚫 “The system was confusing...”

Even if those things are true, lead with ownership first, you can explain more detail once it’s fixed.

5. Make the whole system better

Don’t just fix the mistake. Fix what let the mistake happen in the first place.

A senior leader I worked with at Google shared her story of working as a brand manager in FMCG. She’d approved beautiful new packaging for their biggest hair care product. Then, after bulk production, they realised the bottles were missing one small thing: the words “shampoo” or “conditioner.”

Once that first problem was fixed, she led an internal team to redesign the entire approval process so it couldn’t happen again.

✅ A checklist. A review step. A process tweak. Whatever reduces the risk for you, and the next person.

✅ If it involves others, start a doc, get the input and buy-in you need. Advocate for the change.

Tech teams have a culture around the ‘blameless postmortem’ . I love the vibe - unemotional, focused on finding the root cause and then suggesting a change. Channel this energy.

This is the difference between (a) making a mistake and (b) making a mistake then showing leadership. I’d promote the second person.

6. Move on

Don’t over-apologise. You apologised once, you fixed it, now let go. Continuing to bring it up makes everyone uncomfortable and keeps you stuck in “person who made that mistake” mode.

Last: You’re not the mistake

You’re a person who made one, and handled it with grace. Listen to any leader tell their growth story - there’s always a time they really screwed up and recovered. This is your time. You’ll probably be telling this story on a podcast one day.

Love Soph ✌🏼

P.S one more thing: don’t catastrophize. Part of maturing at work is learning to tell the difference between a crisis and an inconvenience. If you’re not sure which this is, it’s probably smaller than it feels right now. If you’re spiralling over something small, the framework above still works, just at 10% intensity. Quick acknowledgment, quick fix, done.

Yesmaxing in a work context (I’ve decided) means optimising your chances of getting a yes, by framing your ask the right way. This post is about influence. It’s not about making wild demands of your company (which I know you wouldn’t do ❤️‍🔥).

Quick story

In 2017, a project I led for Google Play got nominated for seven Cannes Lions. I'd never been nominated before (and haven't been since) so I was desperate to go.

Getting individual trips funded (as a pretty average-performing L5) wasn’t the norm at Google, but my boss at the time (legend) coached me on how to pitch it.

1. Who are the decision makers?
   

   (a) His boss (aka AU Marketing Head)
   (b) Her boss (aka APAC Marketing Head)

2. What would make this a win for them?

   
   (a) AU Marketing Head ✅ My success was team success was her success too. She should be on stage picking up those awards too. Pitch it as you both go on the trip together.

   (b) APAC Marketing Head ✅ Representing APAC’s work on a global stage to industry and Google global leaders, planting the seed for future funding, doing a share-back to inspire other APAC teams to push creative and innovative work.

My default would’ve been to say: 🚫 "This will mean so much to me, it’s great for my career and visibility… the project nearly killed me, I led us through so many roadblocks to get it live, it hit targets, maybe I could pay half of it myself…. ”

“Nobody does anything unless they see what's in it for them” — Chris Voss

I find this quote reductive and don’t fully agree. But in context (from Never Split The Difference by FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss) it drills home a key principle. The idea that in a negotiation, a win-win isn't actually about meeting in the middle (or “splitting the difference”). It’s about understanding the other person’s perspective, motivations, needs and using that understanding to influence them.

Voss calls it ‘tactical empathy’. It sounds a bit manipulative, but empathy is such a sick muscle to build in communication.

“It's not what you say, it's what the other person hears”

Communication happens on the receiver's side. It's not what you say, it's what they hear. Framing it around the benefit to them first helps their mind stay open to your ask. Here’s how that looks for some common work use-cases.

You want your company to pay for a course

Default:

🚫 “There’s a course I really want to take, can I expense it?”

Win-win framing:

✅ “I know we're trying to lift our campaign performance and our team’s getting feedback we need to be more strategic. Here's a strategy course that comes recommended. Can we talk about what it would take for the company to cover the cost? The frameworks I share back with the team should help our next plan cycle”.

You want to work on different projects

Default:

🚫 “I’m not feeling excited by my projects. I’d love to work on something more interesting.”

Win-win framing:

✅ "I've been thinking a lot about our 2025 plan and where I can add most value. I've noticed the checkout flow keeps coming up in our retros as a pain point. I'd love to take that on - it aligns with the UX skills we talked about in my last career 1:1 that I wanted to develop. I love obsessing over that kind of problem-solving project and I know I can make it big for our team. Is that something you're open to talking about?”

You’re trying to get another team to do something

Default:

🚫 “My team needs this done by end of month, can your team prioritise it?”

Win-win framing:

✅ "I know your team’s focused on Brand Loyalty. We’re fixing a payment bug that’s causing ~30% of online complaints. If your team can revamp the landing page copy by EOW, we should be able to cut complaints and it’ll help your Brand goal. Then we can both claim the victory on our performance reviews 😛"

You've been shadow promoted

AKA given more responsibility without the title or compensation (fwiw I think this practice sucks when companies do it intentionally, but have also seen it happen fairly unintentionally too).

Default:

🚫 “This is unfair…”

Win-win framing:

✅ “I'm grateful I'm being recognised by leadership and being trusted with more responsibility. I’ve been happy to step up. I’m committed, I want to keep delivering at this level. To make that sustainable I want to talk about formalizing this with the right title and compensation. Having the ‘Senior’ title makes it easier for me to lead our clients. It's also something that's important to me on a personal career level.

How do you find the win-win?

There's probably a fancy framework for this, but I always found the best way was to get my notebook, go sit somewhere that wasn't my desk, think about the other person, then ask myself these. Talking to people close to them helps too.

• What would make this easy for them to say yes to?

• What would make this good for them?

• What would make it hard?

Lead with the good. Be ready to address the bad.

Good luck

Soph ✌🏼

PS - Had I been pitching my Cannes trip in 2025, there’s no way it would’ve been approved. Reading the room, I wouldn’t even have asked. Expense policies have changed. It was a privilege to work at a company that could say yes to something like that. Every situation has its own constraints — no amount of framing guarantees a win. But it usually gives you a better shot.

PPS - The end of the story was… the trip got approved, the campaign won a bunch of Lions, but I wasn't there to collect them on stage. I ended up deciding not to go on the trip and had a baby instead. Arguably, a better kind of prize.

Every speaking coach tells you the same thing: “record yourself presenting and watch it back”. It's good advice. But you never really do it. You're trying to survive a full-time job. Also:

Some things you might actually do...

A speaking coach will also tell you the biggest mistake people make is that they prepare for a big presentation, it goes well, then they don't do it again for months (years!) and the progress is lost.

Muscle memory and reps. Doing things daily, weekly.

Doing (action) = confidence (feeling).

A list of low-effort things use all the time to get better👇🏼

1. Send voice msgs to friends, listen back

You’ll notice really interesting things like:

• That painful pause when you were trying to find the right words... doesn’t actually sound that long in reality.

• Maybe you overuse certain (umm) words that you don’t (like) like.

• The one I picked up from listening to my own VMs is how often I rush one sentence into the next because I think what I’ve just said isn’t interesting. It’s like I talk with no full stops. I’m working on the pause!

2. Do doc/slide walk-throughs with Loom

Instead of emailing people for feedback and input, I genuinely noticed a lift in my speaking confidence when I started recording Loom walk-throughs instead.

• It’s such a natural, low-stakes environment for practicing (replicates the feeling of presenting on a video call without the pressure).

• It’s just you and your doc. You can show your face (or not).

• You can put speaker notes on the screen like this👇🏼

• The reason it works is that it's something you end up doing regularly (it's such an good way to share a lot of context quickly, so it sort of just becomes part of your workflow). And because it's regular, presenting feels more natural.

• Main ways I use Loom are: (1) feedback, (2) delegating and (3) shortening/ eliminating meetings (ICYMI, free guide to Running Better Meetings).

3. Do weird mouth exercises

I do these before big presentations and recording all my IG/TT videos.

Especially #1 👇🏼

@prestonchinspeaks3 exercises to improve your voice and be more expressive. If you’re not mindful of this, you will bore your audience with your monotone and mumbling. And if you want more in-depth speaking lessons and practice, click the link in my profile bio and navigate to the Community section in order to join my free Impromptu Speakers Community.

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4. Give the adrenaline somewhere to go

You shake because your body’s making adrenaline. Give it somewhere to go.
Personally I find a room, jump up and down on the spot for a few mins, then do big shoulder rolls and windmill arms.

@askvinhThe most common question I get on social media about public speaking and communication skills is... How do I reduce the nerves when I'm talking to others? You have to first understand that when you're in a high stakes situation, such as a job interview, or speaking in front of a group of people, nervousness leads to your body shaking, which leads to a shaky voice. But nervousness comes from a build up of adrenaline because your body is preparing for fight or flight. That's why I always recommend BEFORE engaging in any high stakes situation, release the excess adrenaline through Wif Hof breathing, star jumps, pushups or a brisk walk. By doing this, when you enter the high stake situation , you are way less likely to shake because you've removed that adrenaline from your body! Let me know if this helps!

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5. Talk to the room, before you talk to the room

If you’re presenting to a room of people, mingle before you start. Talk to a few people in the audience first.

There’s a lot of science behind why this works (shifts your focus from inwards to outwards, reduces the spotlight effect etc.) but it also helps you use those people as anchor points for eye contact and engagement when you’re actually talking.

Works just as well for smaller meetings too. Small talk before you present is smart (not a time-waster).

6. Do a (subtle) physiological sigh

I use this one the most. If you’re sitting in a meeting, heart racing while you wait your turn to talk, do this: two short inhales through the nose, one long exhale out the mouth. Repeat a few times. It’s one of the fastest ways to calm your nervous system and steady your voice.

7. Exposure therapy (like spiders)

Proving that even the most talented and outwardly confident people struggle, a (high-performing) Google teammate explained how she used exposure therapy principles to overcome her phobia of public speaking.

If someone’s afraid of spiders, the first step isn’t putting them in a room with a tarantula (you can actually do significant psychological damage by jumping straight to the scary thing). Instead, it’s showing them a sketch of a spider. Then a photo. Then a spider in a glass box. You work your way up.

She did the same with speaking. She built a spreadsheet and tracked every small rep:

• Speaking in a 5-person meeting with one slide

• Asking a question in a company town hall

• Presenting in a bigger team meeting, etc.

Only only once her body stopped reacting to those did she move to harder things.

​

We're all WIP (I def am)

Soph ✌🏼

​

This week I come to you with a single recommendation. My (possibly premature) favourite podcast episode of 2025.

Listen (Spotify, Apple, Youtube)

Why I’m recommending this

Everyone thinks they’re bad at tough conversations, but tough conversations are just… tough.

It’s not you, it’s the conversation.

I cannot express enough how helpful it is to have someone explain them to you, and give you natural ways to start and navigate them.

👉🏼 If you’re early career: there's stuff for you on peer and stakeholder conversations, plus how to ask for feedback that’s actually helpful and honest.

👉🏼 If you’re a manager: honestly, all of it.

Bookmark this for later

After I listened to it, I found myself wanting to write down every single phrase Alisa used.

I’ve pulled them out and dropped them below for you to reference later (but def listen to the ep itself, then these will actually stick in your brain).

General Principles

• Start with your intention. [Why am I bringing this up?]

• Lead with care. Show that your goal is to help, not hurt.

• Normalise discomfort. Acknowledge that the topic is hard, but necessary.

• Don’t spring it on them. Give context before diving into feedback or bad news.

1. Starting a Feedback Conversation

“This might be a little awkward or uncomfortable, but I care about your growth and I think it’s important we talk about this.”

“I want to give you some feedback because I think it will help you grow.”

2. If the Person Is Likely to Get Defensive

“I want to share something that may be hard to hear, and I totally understand if it doesn’t feel great in the moment. I’m sharing this because I want to help you succeed here.”

3. When You’ve Been Avoiding the Conversation

“I’ve been sitting on something I want to talk to you about because I wasn’t sure how to bring it up… but I don’t want to let it fester or affect our relationship.”

4. Delivering Feedback to a High Performer

“You’re doing really well in so many areas. And I also want to share something I’ve noticed that could help you be even more effective.”

5. Reframing Feedback as Coaching

“Can I put on my coaching hat for a second?”

6. When You’re Not Sure You’re Right

“This is just my perspective, I may be wrong, and I’m open to being wrong, but here’s what I’m noticing.”

7. Discussing a Missed Promotion

“I know you were hoping for a promotion, and I want to talk about what happened and where we go from here.”

8. Letting Someone Go

“This is one of the hardest things I have to do as a manager.”

9. Requesting Feedback About Yourself

“I want to get better at X. Is there anything I’m doing that’s getting in the way?”

One last thing...

@stuffkarensaysGetting feedback from your millennial manager after confronting a coworker. #corporate #corporatelife #worklife #wfhlife #workhumor #workjokes #corporatemillennial #millennialmanagers #feedback

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Soph ✌🏼

Last edition, we covered how to ask for the inputs you need. Now for the art of the follow-up….

If you're reading this Substack, I already feel you’re not the type of person that does this.

You’ve probably had it done to you though.

And it probably made you feel mildly (or very) annoyed. It’s giving “I don’t care enough about this or you, to write a less lazy email”.

Following up is part of the job, but it gets tricky when you know everyone's plates are so damn full. Especially when they're more senior than you.

​

Here’s what has worked for me:

1. Add something new

It makes you sound thoughtful and strategic.

✅ Progress made on your side

✅ Why their input matters (no one is immune to a little ego boost)

✅ A new constraint or time update

Examples:

• “Thanks again - we’ve cracked the first half of the deck, looking good. Can you review Slide 5-9 this week so we can finalise for exec review?”

• “Appreciate your eyes on this - your take from the Research side will make sure it’s grounded in reality. Tagged where I’m stuck.”

• “Once you’ve signed off, it goes to legal, they usually need 5 business days. If we’re aiming to launch next Fri, need your feedback by EOD tomorrow.”

2. Use momentum words

It makes it feel like shared progress, not personal pressure.

✅ To keep this moving…

✅ Once you’ve weighed in…

✅ So we can wrap this up

Examples:

• “This is the last open thread before we route for review — to keep this moving, can you review by EOD?”

• “Once I have your input, I’ll finalise and move it to sign-off.”

• “Since we’re both on the hook for Friday’s demo, flagging this so we can wrap it up in time.”

3. Change the channel

f you’ve nudged 1-2 times and get silence, try a new channel.

• Move from email to Slack

• Check their calendar, pick a good time for them, try a walk-by

Example:

• “I know you get a lot of emails. I sent a note last week on reviewing the project plan by Fri. Would it help if I summarise it here instead?

For senior leaders, the nudge can go via someone else (EA or one of their direct reports)BUT write the message for them, so it's a simple 'forward' on.

Example (Slack to your manager):

“I’ve nudged James twice re: the onboarding deck — no response yet.

If you think it’s worth pinging him, here’s a quick draft you could forward:

‘Hi James, looping back on the onboarding deck Soph mentioned. She’s ready to finalise, your input in the People section would help close it out. Let her know if you’d like to weigh in, or if she should move forward without.”

4. Read the room

If someone’s clearly underwater or dealing with something urgent, don’t barrel ahead with your standard follow-up.

• Acknowledge it

• Rescope the ask to make it easier

Examples:

• “I know you’re slammed with the product launch this week. When things settle, would love your input on the pricing model"

• “Narrowing the ask: can you review this section only? That’s the key piece before we move.”

• “If this is better redirected to someone else, happy to do that, LMK who’d be best to pick it up.”

Recapping Don’ts & Dos

Closing thought

Most people aren’t annoyed by a polite follow-up. If something has been sitting in my inbox and I know I have been meaning to reply, it can actually be helpful. It doesn’t need to be perfect if you get the tone right.

(I’d cut the ! and the ‘just’s though 😚)

Stay iconic

Soph ✌🏼

I loved this question from Jess:

How do you ask for stuff from stakeholders, peers and senior folks? (when you’re younger almost everyone is a senior folk…).

First things first, don't feel bad about it. Try this reframe.

🚫 I need something from you.

✅ I've thought about how I can make this convenient for you.

✅ I'm valuing your perspective and I want it included.

1. Get clear on what you need first

Stop and ask yourself:

• What do I want from this specific person?

• Why does this matter now?

• What’s the risk if I miss their input?

• Why would they care about this?

  ​

Real example:

“Hey Anya

I’m leading this deck that feeds into the Q2 GTM plan and ties to your team’s goal on improving churn.

Request: I’d love your input across the deck, especially on whether it reflects the insights you shared in the meeting last week, and anything key I’ve missed from a customer perspective.​- Specifically, Slides 3 and 5 are most important- I’ve highlighted the sections I’m unsure about.

​​Timing: Please have feedback in by Fri 5pm. Aiming to send it for final review on Mon 6/7. If we miss this, final sign-off gets pushed and we delay launch by 2 weeks. TYSM.”

If you’re not sure what kind of input you need, say that.

Example:

✅ “I’m still refining the structure of the onboarding flow. At this stage, I'm looking for your initial reaction and if any anything jumps out that's off eg flow, clarity, tone. I'll loop back with more specific questions in the next stage”

2. Give context & share stage

The mistake I see all the time is this:

🚫 “Would love your feedback on this!"[as the only instruction]

“Feedback” can mean 100 things. I don’t want to rewrite your deck if it’s due tomorrow. I want to be helpful.

Give the right amount of context for the person and situation:

✅ “This deck is going to senior leadership. It’s 70% baked—what I need is gut-check on Slide 4 (too detailed?) and whether the main message lands"

What people usually want to know:

• What’s fixed vs still changeable?

• What kind of input do you need? 3 bullets? 3 pages?

• What parts do you want feedback on? Specific questions?

• Any other useful context (audience, priority level etc)

  ​

Even with casual asks to peers or friends, a request with context is going to get you a faster and more useful response. A friend send me this last week:

3. Your poor planning ≠ their problem

Almost any ask is ok if you plan ahead and give people enough time. When you build a rep as a time-respecter, watch 👀 how willing people are to do stuff for you.

It’s mind-blowing.‍

(Reality is, last-minute asks and forgetting things is all part of the game. See my tip at the end 👇🏼)

​

🚫 Don’t: Give fake deadlines eg ”can I get this EOD?” when that’s only serving you.

✅ Do: Get into the habit of giving people a quick heads-up as soon as you know you have a feeling you'll want their input.

Example:

“I’m pulling together a deck that feeds into the marketing plan (due in 3 weeks). I’ll send you the topline draft by Fri. Your review and comments will be valuable. Would it help if I pre-block 20 mins in your calendar that day to review?”

4. Use the right channel (for them, not you)

For VPs and execs, check with their admin / your manager. For most people, you can ask them direct.

Next time you send someone something, follow up with:

“btw - was this the best channel for this? if not, where you would have preferred to get it. was it the right amount of context? what did you need more/less of?

Super rough guide (use your judgement 🙏🏼)

Tips:

💥 For people I interact with a lot (daily, weekly) I love doing a full How We Work session.

💥 For VPs and execs, sometimes the right channel is via someone else (like their chief of staff or your manager). If so, draft the request for them, so it’s easy for them to forward on.

5. Don’t seed annoying seed gratitude

The fastest way to make someone feel burdened?

Tell them you’re a burden.

“Sorry to be a pain, but can I ask you to review…”
“I know this is annoying, but can you take a look?”

Seeding gratitude and collaboration:

✅ “Your POV on this will be value because [reason]…”

✅ ”Thanks your input at this milestone - this will help me course correct..”

✅ “If you can review the below and LMK what I’m missing, i’ll make sure it’s updated..”

When you pre-apologise, you’re seeding the idea that you/your request is a nuisance. You’re saying “please view this as annoying”. It’s only annoying if it’s unclear or last minute.

So about last minute asks...

6. What to do when it is last minute?

🚫 You’ll be tempted to make up an excuse. But, people are smart and they can generally smell it.

I’ve always had success by being open about it (everyone struggles to keep on top of the hundreds of tiny things they’re doing, people get it).

Instead try:

✅ “I meant to send this on Tuesday and didn’t . Updating my workflow to avoid last-minute asks like this.​”

✅ “If you can help today, it means we log the ticket and launch on time. I’ve done XYZ to make it quicker on your end.​”

✅ “Totally get that this is a late ask and it messes with your day. If it’s not doable, I understand — just let me know either way. Thank you so much.”

Love you

Soph

The most helpful thing I’ve found to feel more confident at work is having a handful of go-to phrases that feel natural to say and clear for the other person to understand.

I started making a list for you guys and realised…. ah wow I use these way more than I thought.

Here's my 18 favourite.

These are NOT-AI-GENERATED phrases that I genuinely use all the time.

I’ve picked them up over a 20-year career and through studying (and interviewing!) some of the best communication experts in the world: Jefferson Fisher, Wes Kao, Kate Mason.

They cover

• Meetings

• Presenting

• Disagreeing & pushing back

• Problems & tense conversations

• Feedback

How to use this?

• Use this link for the full bank

• Or download the PDF (auto downloads upon click)

• I suggest rewriting them to feel natural to you

• You can ask your AI to remember them too and use them in responses (prompt at the bottom of this email.)

Here's a sample

The table function in my email platform sucks, so I won’t include all 18, but here's a sample 👀. Again, get the full bank here (bookmark it).

AI Prompt

I want you to remember a set of workplace communication phrases I find helpful. When we’re working together—especially if I ask for help drafting messages, emails, or talking points—I’d like you to use these phrases when relevant. You don’t need to force them in, but feel free to suggest them when they fit the tone or situation. Here’s the full list of phrases, grouped by category: .
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Good to be back

Soph ✌🏼

How do you influence people at work when you’re more junior and have no formal authority? Get inside people’s heads 🧠.

Influencing peers, stakeholders, clients—this isn’t just the domain of senior leaders—it’s something you can get good at from year 1.

It’s also easier than you think.

❌ TRAP: We make assumptions about why people act a certain way.

❌ TRAP: There are always invisible agendas at play that make decisions people make confusing on the surface.

✅ WIN: Think about influence as an always-on thing. It starts earlyyyy (not just in the meeting room when you’re trying to get a ‘yes’ on something).

Nemawashi 根回し — hallways over boardrooms

My strategist friend JC introduced me to this concept (he’s an epic follow if you want to learn to be more strategic btw).

The original literal meaning of Nemawashi: the practice of carefully digging around a tree's roots, in preparation for transplanting, to give it the best chance of becoming established in the new location.

I love a bit of behind-the-scenes influencing. OK, let’s get inside people’s heads…

Without even talking to them

👉🏼 What do they spend time on?

👉🏼 What do they get worked up or emotional about?

👉🏼 How is their success measured?

👉🏼 What are they into outside of work (interests etc.)?

For general chats (or start of the year, new relationship etc.)

Ask open ended questions:

👉🏼 What do you personally think our biggest opportunity is as a company right now? People usually answer through the lens of what's important to them/their team or a skill / strength they have. Ask some probing questions and read b/w the lines.

👉🏼 What’s our biggest threat or problem? You’ll hear what they’re nervous about, risks for their team etc.

👉🏼 If you were in my position, where would you focus your energy? You’ll see what they think you should be doing or where they think you’re lacking.

You can even get suuuper specific

For example:

👉🏼 Who approves this stuff on your side?

👉🏼 What’s the hardest part of doing that [thing/task] you have to do?

👉🏼 Can you show me how you actually use this [thing/doc] I send you each week? This’ll help me make it better for you.

👉🏼 What does your manager think about this?

Pre-align if you’re trying to get a ‘yes’ in a big meeting

👉🏼 What’s your biggest priority when it comes to [topic of the pitch]? Helps you understand their POV and you can try to lead your pitch with what matters / benefit to them.

👉🏼 Here’s what I’m planning to present/propose. What’s going to make this hard/ not work? Surface objections early so you can address them before/in the meeting.

👉🏼 What would need to be true for you to feel confident backing this? Similar to the ‘magic question’ in negotiation. Gets them to define their criteria for a ‘yes,’ giving you a roadmap for how to position your pitch.

👉🏼 How do you think others in the room will react to this? Helps you anticipate pushback and identify allies.

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Downside?

Aligning with people behind the scenes takes a lot of time. So use it strategically for the stuff that matters.

Love and marriage

Soph ✌🏼

Tell me if you see yourself in this story:

Esther, a kind and well-liked teammate, is often praised for her high levels of emotional intelligence (EI), particularly her empathy, positive outlook, and calm demeanour. Esther indeed counts EI as one of her strengths. It’s strange, though — she’s starting to feel stuck in her career, not progressing as fast as she expected she would. So much for emotional intelligence, she’s starting to think.

The trap Esther (and those praising her) is in:

Defining emotional intelligence much too narrowly — focusing only on Esther’s sociability, sensitivity, and likability, they’re missing critical elements of emotional intelligence that could make her a better leader: giving feedback, the courage to ruffle feathers, the creativity to think outside the box.

The above (from this HBR article, well worth the 6min read!) breaks down what Emotional Intelligence actually is.

12 elements...which do you need to work on?

If your emotional intelligence is uneven, it'll start to hold you back.

Speaking from personal experience, this happened to me.

I was an individual contributor, getting ‘exceeds expectations’ on my performance reviews, but getting lapped by a few of my peers who were being promoted to manager roles.

I remember the exact moment I changed.

A peer on my team had been missing deadlines on a shared project for months, they were minor tasks, but it was adding up. I avoided saying anything because I didn’t want conflict. It only made things worse.

Eventually, I sat down with them and asked two questions:

1. What’s making it hard for you to hit our milestones?

2. How can I help get us back on track?

Here’s why it worked:
❌ “Why” can feel accusatory. (“why didn’t you meet the deadline?”)
✅ “What” and “How” feel less personal, more situational (shit happens)

‍How to give feedback to a peer

Let’s say your peer dropped the ball on their part of the project.

Try this:
‍✅ “I saw we missed our deadline for first draft of the deck.” Context
✅ “What got in the way on your side?”, “How do you want to make sure we're not missing future milestones?” What / How
✅ "Totally understand, here's what made it hard on my side ..." Impacts
✅ “Should we make a shared timeline for the next phase so we stay aligned? Does that work for you? Anything you want to change” Solution

‍You can’t skip this step

It starts with a mindset shift 🧠

• Move from short-term “I want everyone to like me today” to longer-term “I want to be seen as a leader.”

• If you're more inclined to influence, you will want to give that difficult feedback or raise that unpopular opinion.

• Tough convos get waaay easier the more you practice them.

No 'whys' baby!

Soph ✌🏻

I remember coming back to Google after a year of maternity leave and noticing that one Marketing sub-team, in particular, was smashing it—epic TV campaigns, hitting all their goals, and they were all suspiciously… happy.

I had to ask: “What’s going on here?”

The answer: “We have a new manager, and they’re really good at saying ‘no’ to things”.

Creating space for great things, means saying no to a lot of good things.

Here’s the catch: it’s not just your manager’s job to push back and protect the focus of the team.

It’s your job too.

Even if I’m young and pretty junior?

Especially then.

Learning to say ‘no’ is a core skill

Your actual job—like core job—is to prioritise your work (continuously) to help the company focus on the important stuff.‍

But also, like...screw the company, this is so you don’t get overloaded and burn out.

Internalise this:

You might know better than your manager‍

The secret here is, you’re often better placed to make decisions about what you/the team should and shouldn’t do.‍

Why?

You know how long stuff actually takes.

Speaking as a manager here, when we stop being hands-on with the tools and tasks, we quickly lose touch with reality and how much time + effort things really take.

So YOU have critical information your manager doesn’t have.

How to say ‘no’ (without your manager hating you)

Wes Kao—entrepreneur & executive coach—shared this brilliant 1 min script for her favourite way to say no.

That last part is important btw. Your manager may in fact think differently, as they are closer to the conversations happening at a senior leadership level.

Watchouts

• Be prepared for your manager to want details around why a task takes that long (be realistic with your estimates).

• Be respectful. You know the details of the task, but they might have a clearer understanding of the company's problems and priorities. Share your POV, they're probably gonna have the final say.

Why culling tasks is actually so hard

• It’s not just that you don’t like awkward conversations with your manager.

• Our 🧠 is actually hardwired to acquire and keep things (not cull them). A psychologist at the University of Michigan calls it ‘acquisitiveness'.

• Recommend listening to the ​whole Hidden Brain ep​—it’s 👌🏼.

Welcome to the jungle,

Soph ✌🏼

‍

I got this question from a mentee this week:

"How do I position myself as an expert on LinkedIn when I'm just starting out in my career and I don't feel like an expert at all?"

Such a good question.

Here's a simple list of simple-ish things you can do to start showcasing your expertise, even when you're not actually an expert yet.

Lowest-hanging fruit (20 min/wk)

Sorry, I hate that expression 🍒

• Follow 3-5 experts in your field on LinkedIn.

• Write one thoughtful comment a day that adds your perspective or a new insight (“Great post!” won’t do it).

• If you’re feeling it, ​give your profile a glow-up​.

Build a public-facing collection of how you think about stuff (1-5 hr/wk)

• This can be your newsletter (e.g., Substack, Beehive) or LinkedIn 1:1:1 method: 1 post/week, on 1 platform, for 1 year.

• Look for opportunities to repurpose that content, e.g., on your company blog/socials or guest posts for people you follow.

• At some point (if your company's cool with it), you can consider opinion pieces and media interviews too.

Make a pact with yourself to not sound like everyone else

• The hardest part of all this is that everyone’s following an identical playbook.

• Keep a list (personal promise) of how you’re never going to post.

• My list includes: avoiding "Broetry" and starting posts with “Was so great to be part of blah last night” or “So humbled to be invited to speak at blah.”

Steal these format ideas and make them your own

*Examples below are clickable. 💁🏼

1. Go to industry events, recap learnings, and tag the speakers.

2. Curate a long list of helpful resources for other professionals at your level in your field.

Another mentee (👋🏼 ​Noah​) does this well with his monthly newsletter that rounds up events and job opportunities for recent grads like him.

3. Share your process or method for something you’re good at in your job. (Even if you may not feel like an expert in your industry yet, you’re an expert at some part of your day-to-day job.)

4. Tell behind-the-scenes stories.

5. Curate and summarise existing content to save other people time.

6. Share advice you have for people who are a couple of steps behind you in the journey.

@yassi_x_Early career advice from a 23-yr-old consultant 🥸 #consulting #careeradvice #firstjob #corporate #corporatedadvice #jobadvice #mbb #big4 #postgrad

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7. Ask people for a recommendation/advice.

8. Link stuff to pop culture.

9. Share test & learn stuff.

10. Do breakdowns of players in your field and why you think they’re winning.

11. Find and tell historical stories related to your industry using the format: “Here’s how [famous person] did [thing].”

12. If you really wanna go for it, share DIMLs (Day In My Life) as a [your job]. H/t to Workbaby community member ✨​Mel​✨ for this one.

@thomasyoheiBack again with a DIML! ✨🕺 #sydney #consulting #dayinthelife #managementconsulting #sydneylife #fitness #gym #workout #skincare #fitnessmotivation #fit #motivation #selfcare #training #health #healthylifestyle #lifestyle #gymlife #mentalhealth #sport #balancedlifestyle #healthy #exercise #fitnessjourney #fashion #wellness

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13. Don't know what to write about? Try the One Person, One Problem, One Solution method. ​This TikTok explains it​.

@lo_silverthis hack never misses 😳 instead of casting a wide net out to a huge group of people… …decide who *exactly* you want to attract & what their problem is using this structure in your content does exactly that in your videos, i want you to address: ☝🏽person ☝🏽problem ☝🏽solution be as direct as possible - there’s no room for confusion. by doing this, i make my content my ideal client magnet 🧲 #tiktokhacks #socialmediamarketing #socialmediamarketingtip #contentcreatortips #onlinecoaching

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PS. Is there a *right* way to humblebrag? IMO... yes.

‍Share your achievement in a way that can help other people reach the same achievement.

Or just lean into the brag!

One last thing…

@kick.it.forwardDo you hate linkedin? #linkedin #funny #sketch #aus #Melbourne #perth

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Embarking on a new journey​ with Olivia,

Soph ✌🏼

I’ve sat through a lot of personal branding workshops.

Most follow this pattern:

• Do values exercise 👉🏼 Find your top 5 values

• Write your brand positioning statement

• Create content themes

• Post some shit #YouGotThis #Winning

A simpler (IMO, better) approach is:

1. Who are you?

2. What do you want to be known for?

3. How are you gonna do that?

To help you get there, here's...

1. The ‘You-est’ You

There’s def validity in those ‘values’ exercises. The problem is that you end up with a list of words that sound similar to everyone else in the room: “Authenticity, Integrity, Honesty…”—and it fails the “so what?” test.

Professional Creators say that the best ‘brands’ are just “you pushed out into the world”.

The closer you get to your true character vs a persona you create, the easier it'll be.

Questions to try:

• What childhood traits still define me today? (Hint💡ask your fam)

• What filter or lens do I use for difficult life decisions?

• Which commonly cited values don't gel with me?

Soph's example:

2. But Whyyyy

You won’t be motivated to put in the effort until you’re clear on the payoff. Why do you even want to build your brand?

• Grow cred and network for your next role?

• Pivot careers?

• Establish yourself in a new company?

• Be perceived as a future leader by your current leaders?

Soph's example:

3. Pick Two Things

Professional Creators try to get super sharp on what they want to be known for.

The reality is, that most of us aren’t going for that level of brand association or maybe we just don’t know what we want to be known for (🙋🏼 me for most of my career).

Instead, with your ‘why’ in mind, pick a theme/thing in each of these 👇🏼

A) Prove your expertise [show competence]

Pick one area within your current field/domain or where you’re trying to get to. For example, “growth marketing” or even more specifically, “new-school growth marketing for scale-ups.”

• What’s something you find easy that other people find hard?

• What’s something that people come to you for help on?

• What expertise do you want recruiters glean from your profile?

B) Learn in the open [show humility]

Pick something you’re on a journey with and document it. Take people with you. The best advice I got when starting my TikTok was:

“People don’t want to learn from 20 year veterans, they want to learn from someone who's a few steps ahead of them, because that person knows how it feels.”

Soph's example:

⚡I'll be sharing tactical steps for communicating your (A) Expertise and (B) Journey themes in upcoming newsletters.

4. Brand Vibe

This is my fav part. Reflect on everything you've written down in the previous points, plus:

• What feeling do you want people to be left with?

• How does your approach differ?

• What conventional wisdom do you challenge?

• Who don’t you want to sound like?

• The “Is / Isn’t” table is helpful for tone of voice

Soph's example:

I just work here,

Soph ✌🏼

I’ve never posted on LinkedIn.

That probably makes me unqualified to teach you about personal branding (feel free to unsubscribe now 😝).

But, personal branding is more than just LinkedIn (and, so you know I’m not totally useless, I did grow a TikTok profile from 0 to 45K in a few months).

Because I’ve neglected personal branding a bit in my career (and yep, I do regret it), I’m going hard on researching and experimenting now.

I consumed 100hrs of personal branding advice so you don’t have to.

Join me in the learning journey and we’ll grow our personal brands together💁🏼.

I’ve always believed you live and die by your reputation.

Your reputation is shaped by two things:

1. What other people think and share about you

2. What you think and share about yourself

Personal branding is the tool you have to craft both those things and I’ll be going deep on it over the next month in this newsletter.

It's consistently a ‘Top 3’ topic I get asked about, so you prob don’t need convincing, but…

Is your 'brand' really that important?

Seth Godin nails it:

If Nike announced a hotel, you’d have a pretty good idea of what that would be. If Hyatt announced a shoe, you wouldn’t.

You already have some form of ‘brand’ that people associate with you (whether you like that brand is another story).

Your personal brand makes it easier or harder for you to do what you’re trying to do.

It’s your intangible perceived value. And it's important to be intentional about crafting and communicating it:

• internally within your company, and

• externally or publicly (the part I neglected)

Build brand equity in yourself and grow it over time.

Your next job likely won’t come from submitting (your AI-crafted) resume to a faceless portal.

You’ll have better luck with a strong online presence and network of people who know your brand.

And it’s not just about landing your next job, it’s about people in your existing company having a fuller picture of your work, your opinions, your humanness.

Ok where to start?

Start with jealousy.

I’ve taken multiple personal branding workshops and would always get stuck on crafting the perfect brand mission statement or nailing the exact 3 words I wanted to be known for.

Instead, start by getting inspo from other people and looking for patterns in:

• Why you’re drawn to them

• What they share that informs your perception

This isn’t about copying someone’s brand ⚠️
Big red flag 🔻 nope🔻 to that.

Personal Brand 101 is that it needs to be (a) totally authentic to you and (b) distinguished.

We’ll get into all this in upcoming editions, but for now, it just helps to suss the vibes.

Start A Swipe File

A swipe file is a collection of best-in-class advertising examples that copywriters and creatives use for inspiration.

I adapted the concept for my own (scrappy) referencing:

The pattern I observed is:

• Smart + Cool + Humble kept coming up.

• When someone had the first 2, but not ‘Humble’, it jarred for me.

• Did this help me start to define my own brand? Yes.

Start one for yourself

• Research people you’re drawn to

• What about their vibe do you like / not like? Why?

• What stuff do they talk about? Themes / content categories?

• What are their extracurriculars (stuff they do outside their core job)?

• Where do they share? What formats do you like? Bookmark posts

• ​Adapt this template​ if you want (keep it v.simple!)

Oki byeeeeee

Soph ✌🏼

Advice a mentor once gave me:

• Work relationships have a massive impact on your happiness and your ability to do you job.

• Both people have to take responsibility for co-creating the relationship.

CO-CREATING THE RELATIONSHIP 🤯

Man I love that.

So, I created a relationship ritual. At the start of every new and important relationship, I’d run a “How We Work” session.

What’s a “How We Work”?

A conversation (usually 60-90mins) dedicated entirely to communicating about how you’re going to communicate.

• So much of our experience with people comes down to dozens of micro-interactions each day.

• Before you get into the fray of the work itself, talk about how you’re going to do the work.

• Big personality differences means both people need to flex.

• Small annoyances can end up totally derailing things.

Who should I do one with?

Anyone you interact with often (e.g. daily/weekly) where the relationship significantly impacts the way you do your job. Specifically:

• VIP relationships (e.g. manager, important coworkers, key cross-functional stakeholders)

• People on priority projects (e.g. agencies, external partners).

When should I do it?

Ideally when you’re kicking things off, but you can also use it to reset a relationship and get it back on track if things get wonky. Try saying:

• New relationship: “Something I like to do when I start working with people is dedicate a whole meeting to communicating about how we communicate — would you be up for that?”

• Existing relationship: “I’m working on the way I collaborate with people. There’s something I’ve been looking at called a “How We Work” session where we dedicate a whole meeting to talking about how we work (styles, preferences, channels) instead of talking about the work itself. Would you be up for that?

How to run a “How We Work”

I’ve been obsessed with optimising the format, researching how experts do it. Different for different contexts, but this structure is my fav so far (credit to this award-winning, best-selling expert).

1. Get their buy-in to do it

2. Expand and adapt the big questions below

3. Share the questions ahead of time so they can prep (and you should too!)

1. “What’s your best?”

Tell me about you at your best: What conditions are in place? When do you feel in flow? What gives you energy? How do you like to be recognised?

👉🏼 This uncovers their strengths and how they see themselves contributing to the team/project.

2. “How do you like to work?”

Go deep on the details. Different for every contexts but for e.g:

• Work style (want the details / don’t want the details, action-oriented / idea-oriented etc.)

• Channels & use cases (which to use for what - chat, email, meeting, desk chat etc.)

• Day/week planning (best time for different things - meetings vs focus time etc.)

• How do you want me to: Keep you updated on projects? Get in touch if I need an urgent response? Format a specific document etc.

👉🏼 Reveals their like/dislikes, helps you avoid misunderstandings and friction.

3. “What do you value in a report/ teammate/ partner?”

Tell me about some of your favourite people to work with — what do you like about the way they work?

👉🏼 Helps you understand what they expect from people and how to vibe.

4. “What don’t you value in report/ teammate/ partner?”

Tell about the stuff that hasn’t worked for you (without naming names): What are the behaviours that frustrate, annoy, disappoint you? What makes your life hard?

👉🏼 Uncovers their pain points, helps you know what not to do

5. “How should we fix it when things go wrong?”

How should we disagree with each other? How should we raise problems? How should we give each other feedback? What should we do if the vibe just gets a bit weird?

👉🏼 Makes it sooooo much easier to deal when things go wrong (and they will).