The communication advice senior women keep getting, and why it's making things worse

The standard communication advice for senior women follows a very predictable script. Speak up in meetings. Be more assertive. Project confidence. Take up more space. And I understand where it comes from. Women have historically been talked over, interrupted, ignored. The instinct to say "use your voice more" makes sense. But here's what I've observed, and this is important, when senior women follow that advice without the underlying skills to back it up, it often backfires. They get labelled aggressive rather than assertive. They talk more but land less. They perform confidence rather than embody it. The problem isn't the intention behind the advice. The problem is that it skips several steps. So today I want to go back to those steps. The ones that actually build communication power at senior levels. And none of them are about talking more. www.clareallen.com