Speak Up: Develop Your Executive Presence & Leadership Communication Style

Are you Director or Above Who Wants Faster Promotions, More Influence, and Stronger Executive Presence?

Book a confidential Executive Presence Strategy Call to discover the communication patterns that help high performers get seen as senior leaders.
👉 Book Your Executive Strategy Call here.

Have you ever been asked for your opinion in an executive meeting, only to have your brain freeze—even though you knew exactly what you wanted to say five minutes earlier?

You’ve delivered the results. You know the business. Your team already sees you as a confident, capable leader. But in high-stakes executive meetings, you may find yourself second-guessing your recommendations, retreating when challenged, or thinking of the perfect response only after the meeting ends.

The problem is bigger than one uncomfortable moment. Senior leaders are forming opinions about your readiness for the next level based on how they experience your leadership when the pressure is on. And if they aren’t seeing your strategic thinking, excellent work alone may not be enough to convince them you’re ready for VP.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

🥶Why freezing in executive meetings doesn’t mean you can’t think on your feet—and the belief that could be making the problem worse

📖How to prepare for high-stakes conversations without trying to anticipate every possible question or having every answer

💰How to communicate your recommendations, handle pushback, and give senior leadership consistent evidence that you can lead at the next level.

Play this episode to learn how to stop disappearing when the stakes are high and start showing senior leadership the confident, strategic, VP-ready leader you already know you can be.

So look, if you find yourself freezing when a senior leader puts you on the spot—even though you know your business, you’ve delivered the results, and five minutes later you know exactly what you should have said—that’s not something you want to keep hoping will fix itself.

If Senior Director, VP, or C-suite is your goal, you don’t want excellent work happening behind the scenes while your executive presence is holding you back in the rooms that matter most.

That’s exactly why I created Executive Presence Mastery. It gives you the one-on-one guidance you need to communicate your thinking clearly, handle pushback with confidence, and show up like a senior leader—without becoming an extrovert, dominating meetings, or trying to prepare for every possible question.

If this episode felt a little too familiar, go to the show notes, click here, and book a confidential Executive Presence Strategy Call with me.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.

Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.

Topics covered in this episode:
Executive presence for introverted leaders
How to stop freezing in executive meetings
Thinking on your feet under pressure
Communicating confidently with senior leadership
How to handle pushback from executives
Building confidence in high-stakes meetings
Showing strategic thinking at the executive level
Preparing for executive meetings without overpreparing
Moving from Director to VP
How to demonstrate VP readiness
Becoming more visible to senior leadership
Avoiding the “invisible overperformer” trap
Speaking with confidence when you don’t have all the answers
Building a reputation as a senior leader
Executive communication skills for high-performing introvert

Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.

Many accomplished leaders tell the kind of story that leaves the audience checking their latest Slack message or maybe their upcoming Amazon delivery.

What if your story doesn't need more polish?

What if they need to feel less finished?

In this episode of Speak Up: Develop Your Executive Presence, Laura Camacho reveals an unexpected storytelling lesson from Spencer Pratt: the most influential stories invite people into what happens next.

Using Spencer and Heidi Montag’s experience after losing their home in the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire, Laura breaks down how leaders can create more compelling stories without manufacturing drama, oversharing, or sacrificing executive presence.

In today's episode you’ll learn the following from a legit reality tv star:

🔥How to identify the exact moment of change that creates tension and immediately pulls people into your story.

1️⃣Why one concrete, memorable detail can communicate the stakes more powerfully than polished corporate language.

🧩How to leave the right part of your story unresolved so your audience understands the role they can play in moving the outcome forward.

Play the episode to learn how to turn your leadership stories from polished summaries into compelling narratives that give people a reason to listen, believe, and act.

An unfinished story with a meaningful role for the audience can create action.

And action is where storytelling becomes influence.

Access the Executive Presence Scorecard assessment here.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.

Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.

Topics covered in this episode:
Why polished leadership stories can feel boring
How to create stakes and suspense in business storytelling
Using moments of change to begin a compelling story
Concrete details that make leadership stories memorable
Turning audiences from passive listeners into participants
Using unfinished stories to motivate action
Executive storytelling for influence and engagement
How to tell concise, memorable stories at work
Executive presence for introvert leaders

Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.

Today you can actually learn how to know if your executive influence is where you think it is. Listen today to learn this life changing skill.

Under pressure, it’s easy to slip into a reactive, defensive, or judgmental mindset. But the questions you ask yourself and others can determine how your team responds, how much information people are willing to share, and whether you make decisions from curiosity or judgment.

In this episode of the Speak Up podcast, Laura welcomes Marilee Adams, CEO of the Inquiry Institute, to explore how leaders can use questions to improve their communication, executive presence, decision-making, and relationships.

In today’s episode you’ll discover:

💡Why powerful inquiry actually begins with the questions you silently ask yourself—and how changing those questions can change how you show up as a leader

🔎How to recognize when you’ve slipped into a “judger” mindset and intentionally shift back into a curious, open-minded “learner” mindset.

🎯The exact question you need to ask yourself to help you design better questions that invite conversation instead of triggering defensiveness.

Play the episode to discover how asking better questions can help you stay present under pressure, empower the people around you, and become a more effective leader.

Access the Executive Presence Scorecard assessment here.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

About our guest:
Meet Marilee Adams, an award-winning author, leadership expert, and pioneer of inquiry-based coaching. Through her work as founder and CEO of The Inquiry Institute, Adams has helped leaders, coaches, and organizations transform how they think, decide, and lead.

To uncover her proven approach, readers can turn to her bestselling book, Change Your Questions, Change Your Life, Fifth Edition. With more than half a million copies sold in twenty-two languages, this refreshed edition shows how a simple shift in questioning can unlock clarity, confidence, and lasting results, at work and at home.

The book is a powerful fable that follows Ben Knight on a transformative journey, guided by fourteen practical tools for Question Thinking. Along the way, readers learn to use the Choice Map, a powerful visual tool that reveals how everyday questions shape our mindset.

The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.

Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.

Topics covered in this episode:
Executive presence and leadership communication
How leaders can ask better questions
Learner mindset vs. judger mindset
Building trust and psychological safety on teams
Getting employees to tell leaders the truth
Emotional self-regulation for leaders
Communicating and influencing under pressure
Handling difficult questions in high-stakes meetings
Using curiosity to improve leadership and decision-making
How executive leaders build influence and trust
Preparing for board meetings and executive presentations
Active listening and understanding others
Avoiding defensive communication as a leader
Asking questions that empower employees and teams
Improving executive decision-making through better questions
Executive presence during conflict and tension
How leadership behavior affects employee communication
Developing emotional and social intelligence as a leader

Are you Director or Above Who Wants Faster Promotions, More Influence, and Stronger Executive Presence?

Book a confidential Executive Presence Strategy Call to discover the communication patterns that help high performers get seen as senior leaders.
👉 Book Your Executive Strategy Call here

If you’re highly respected everywhere else, but one relationship at work has you second-guessing everything you say and do, your expertise may not be the problem.

You can have decades of experience, a strong track record, and complete confidence in your expertise—and still find yourself struggling with a boss whose expectations and communication style seem impossible to read.

You give more context, and they think you're overexplaining. You ask for guidance, and they question your independence. You make a recommendation, and it barely seems to land.

In this episode, you'll discover:

🧩Why trying harder to prove your competence can unintentionally decrease your boss's confidence in your leadership.

🔬How to identify what your boss actually needs to experience from you to build trust, from greater autonomy and speed to clearer, more concise recommendations.

🤸🏿‍♂️How to adapt your communication without shrinking yourself, abandoning your expertise, or becoming a more cautious version of the leader you were hired to be.

Play the episode to learn how to stop managing your boss's reactions and start communicating your expertise in a way that builds trust, confidence, and stronger leadership relationships.

If you find yourself stuck in that one leadership relationship you just can't seem to get right—your boss, a senior executive, or a critical stakeholder—and it's gotten to the point where you're replaying meetings, second-guessing emails, and wondering why 20 years of experience suddenly don't seem to be enough, you don't have to spend the next six months walking on eggshells.

Because the harder you try to prove your competence by explaining more, checking more, or preparing more, the more you can accidentally reinforce the very perception you're trying to change.

That's exactly why I created the Executive Presence Mastery System. We help accomplished leaders understand what's really happening in these high-stakes relationships, identify what the other person needs to experience in order to trust their leadership, and communicate their expertise with greater clarity, confidence, and authority—without becoming a smaller version of themselves.

If this episode felt a little too familiar, click here and book a discovery call with me. We'll talk about what's happening in your specific situation and whether the Executive Presence Mastery System can help you become the trusted, influential leader you know you're capable of being.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.

Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.

Topics covered in this episode include:
Navigating difficult relationships with your boss or senior leaders
Why highly experienced executives can suddenly lose confidence at work
How communication style affects executive presence and leadership perception
Balancing independence with asking for guidance in a new role
How overexplaining can unintentionally undermine leadership credibility
Adapting to a boss who wants concise, recommendation-first communication
Building trust with senior executives and critical stakeholders
Managing conflicting or confusing leadership feedback
Communicating expertise with clarity, confidence, and authority
Avoiding the cycle of overthinking, second-guessing, and walking on eggshells
Understanding what senior leaders need to experience to trust your leadership
Protecting your professional reputation when a key relationship breaks down
Knowing when to adapt your leadership style—and when a workplace relationship may be unsalvageable
Using executive presence to increase influence, visibility, and strategic credibility

Know Your Own Executive Presence Strengths & Opportunities:
Click here to pinpoint the specific area in your executive presence that’s keeping you invisible to senior leadership and guarantees you stay working hard as a pack mule who never gets promoted.

Are you waiting until your performance review to make the case for a bigger 2027 raise? By then, the decision may already be taking shape.

With merit raises making a comeback and average performance-based increases expected to hover around 3.5%, organizations have more reason to differentiate between their highest-value leaders and everyone else. For directors, VPs, and executive-track leaders, getting more isn't simply about working harder or compiling a longer list of accomplishments. It's about making your strategic value unmistakably clear to the people making compensation decisions.

By the end of this episode, you'll know how to:

🎯Shift from reporting activity to communicating enterprise-level impact that senior executives understand and remember.

🧩Build a simple impact portfolio and compensation narrative that gives your manager compelling evidence to advocate for you.

🧲Use your 1:1s and relationships across the organization to calibrate your value, strengthen your executive reputation, and build advocates before compensation decisions are made.

Play the episode now to learn the four moves you can start making today to position yourself for more than the average 2027 merit raise—and make your strategic value impossible to overlook.

Doing exceptional work and being perceived as an exceptionally valuable executive are not always the same thing. Access the Executive Presence Scorecard assessment here.

To learn more visit www.speakupwithlaura.com. New Speak Up podcast episodes come out every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday early in the morning.

The Speak Up Podcast helps high-performing professionals develop executive presence through strategic communication, executive confidence, and leadership influence. Each episode provides practical strategies to help you speak up in meetings, communicate with senior leaders, present ideas with clarity, build executive visibility, strengthen your leadership presence, influence without authority, stop overexplaining, answer difficult questions with confidence, and become a trusted executive leader.

Whether you're preparing for your next Vice President promotion or looking to communicate with greater credibility and gravitas, you'll learn actionable executive communication skills that accelerate career growth.

Topics covered in this episode:
2027 merit raise and salary increase projections
How to get more than the average 3.5% merit raise
How to ask for a bigger raise at work
Salary negotiation strategies for high performers
How to document your accomplishments and business impact
How executive presence affects compensation and career advancement
How to position yourself for a higher performance rating
What to do before annual performance and compensation reviews
How to advocate for your value with your manager
Strategies to increase your salary without changing jobs