Communicating Earned Certainty: Leadership Lessons from the FBI to the Boardroom with MK Palmore

The Command-and-Control model is failing today’s leaders. In a fast-paced, high-stakes environment, brute force and rigid hierarchies don't build accountability—they build fear. But what if you could trade that friction for speed, trust, and real impact?

In this episode, we sit down with MK Palmore to explore the radical shift from "manager" to "influencer." We’re moving past the theory to bring you practical, repeatable communication strategies that help your team move faster with less anxiety.

We’re breaking down how to:

• Stop dictating, start translating: Convert complex risks (like cybersecurity) into business-critical language.
• Build the "Trust Tax" buffer: Learn why preparing your team for change is the fastest way to earn their ownership.
• Master the "Earned Certainty" model: How to hold authority while remaining open to being wrong.
• Hire for resilience: Why you should walk away from any candidate who can’t describe a genuine failure.

If you’re ready to stop focusing on your personal achievements and start mastering the art of helping others excel, this conversation is for you.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Humans Matter

Dr. Leah OH 0:00

Welcome back to the Communicative Leader. I'm your host, Dr. Leah O. We often talk about the map and practice of leadership, and today's guest has spent over 30 years navigating some of the most complex maps imaginable. Joining us is MK Palmore, the founder and CEO of Apogee Global RMS. MK's career spans the U.S. Marine Corps, the FBI, and executive leadership roles at Google and Palo Alto Networks. He is an expert at translating technical risk and operational resilience into a language that actually moves people, priorities, and budgets, right? The things that matter. Today we're diving into how leaders can communicate with clarity under pressure and why the human layer is the most critical component of any cybersecurity or talent strategy. Hello and welcome to the Communicative Leader, hosted by me, Dr. Leah O'Millian Hodges. My friends call me Dr. O. I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert. On the Communicative Leader, we're working to make your work life what you want it to be. MK, thank you so much for joining us today for sharing your expertise, sharing your time.

Command To Collaboration Mindset Shift

Dr. Leah OH 1:16

And I know that your background in the Marine Corps and the FBI, it's rooted in environments with really clear hierarchies, very clear command structures. And now you're advising leaders on a more people-centered approach. And I'm wondering, MK, what do you see? What is the biggest communication shift a leader has to make when they're moving from that kind of traditional command and control mindset to one of influence and collaboration?

MK Palmore 1:41

Yeah. So what first of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and your audience about this topic. Leadership continues to be a bit of a passion topic for me, and it's the thing that I feel as though as a discipline, I'm most interested in seeing people excel and change their mindsets around. So the the answer to your question, I think, is twofold. There's a couple of things that need to happen. First of all, people-centered leadership requires that you begin to think about everyone other than yourself. It requires a refocus from the internal mindset, the things where some leaders may gravitate towards. What can I accomplish in this role? What can I get done in this role? And shifting that both word and mindset around who can I help during the course of this interaction? Can I help my people grow? Can I help the team members that are assigned to this particular assignment knock it out of the park? Who can I position in front of leadership to make sure that the next opportunity for leadership within our team or our organization that they get a sharp look at or elevate their posture and position? And what what it may feel at first is though you're doing something that is not necessarily in alignment with your own needs as a person and leader, but at the same time, that refocus to others actually gets back to you in dividends in ways that you can't really imagine. And so when you turn the focus to others, how they can excel, how you can get in, get them in front of the client, customer, get them in front of management, you actually begin to look even more exceptional as a leader, believe it or not, because you're seen as someone who can curate and pull together a team and develop a team where excellence becomes the norm. And you always get, from a dividend standpoint, a bit of the accolades that go with the success of a team like that. So changing the focus, changing the words mentally makes all the difference in the work.

Dr. Leah OH 3:38

That was such a beautiful response, MK. And I love it, it was so holistic, right? Because I think traditionally a lot of folks, I mean, there are some benefits with titled leadership positions from financial incentives to status and to power. And that is a lot of I me, my, right? And so when we're thinking about this shift to more people center, like you said, when we're putting ourselves in the backseat in a way, that can be really challenging. But I love that you talked about how those rewards, those accolades, if you're doing this correctly, you're you're still going to shine.

MK Palmore 4:12

Absolutely. Absolutely. Everyone, it's the, you know, the old adage that a rising tide lifts all boats. There's really some truth, there's really some truth to that. And who wants to come across anyway as the single, you know, singular point of failure in a team environment? Like everyone should not be relying on the leader to do everything in a team environment. And there should be folks for whom you can count on to take on certain responsibilities. It makes the overall team stronger if you can disperse the work like that. And everyone gets an opportunity to shine and potentially do what they do best.

Dr. Leah OH 4:44

Exactly. Exactly.

Practice Communication Until It Clicks

Dr. Leah OH 4:46

And so let's dive more into communication. And I know that you've led in the Marines at the FBI, environments where communication really is a matter of life and of safety. And I'm wondering, MK, what is one discipline execution habit for communication that civilian leaders often overlook? They're not even mindful of.

MK Palmore 5:06

I will tell you the one thing about communicating, I think this may be overly simplistic, but it rings true and will ring true for everyone. Do as much of it as you possibly can. And here's what I mean by that. Take advantage of every opportunity to brief folks on status updates on your projects. Look for opportunities to get in front of audiences and provide thought leadership and evangelize the aspects of what it is that you're doing as a team or as an organization for which people might be interested in. Talk about your own personal journey on opportunities where you get a chance to do that. The more you can do of it, it's an iterative process. The more that you can do of it, the better you ultimately will become. Some folks operate, and I've seen speakers like this, communicators, at an extremely high level. Not only are they expert communicators, but they can weave together themes that they bring up throughout their talk. When you see someone hit on all cylinders like that, that comes from practice. That comes from multiple iterations of that particular story, of that particular opportunity for them to identify thematically something that resonates with people. And then finding ways through storytelling to bring those themes in and out of a conversation that they may be having. And if you think of it like a conversation, every audience that you're engaged in, you're not up there just to identify what's on the PowerPoint and go bullet by bullet. You're there to communicate, which means two-way communication. You have to be open to the possibility that someone may want to contribute a thought or an idea. And you have to leave space and timing as you're talking to audiences and people for people to feel comfortable to jump in and initiate that communication. Nothing, you know, people may think of it as an interruption, but I would tell you like my sweet spot is groups of you know, fifth, 15 to 20 people in a setting where people feel comfortable enough to actually jump in and say, something that you just said stuck with me. And here is my thought about what you just said, so that you can get into a conversation rather than just speaking at people.

unknown 7:19

Yeah.

MK Palmore 7:19

So take advantage of every opportunity that you get to talk.

Dr. Leah OH 7:22

And I love that. And I love that, you know, when you think of it as a communicate as a practice, I think of it as a muscle, right? The more time we spend working on this muscle, training this muscle, whether it is the verbal communication, the act of listening, being mindful of our nonverbals, the stronger it is, right? We're not even thinking about it. We're not struggling, we're not shaking when we're doing it. We have developed that muscle.

MK Palmore 7:46

Absolutely. It's the whole Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 iterations, which which brings you to a level of excellence that you then can both continue to develop but feel comfortable that you are showing some relative expertise.

Dr. Leah OH 8:01

Exactly.

Earned Certainty And Owning Mistakes

Dr. Leah OH 8:02

And so, okay, now let's talk about certainty. And this is earn certainty. This is a word that you talk about, an idea. So, in a world where leaders often feel pressured to have all of the answers immediately, how do you define the difference between earn certainty and then overpromising?

MK Palmore 8:21

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think that confidence, which I equate to certainty, is developed through the understanding, and this may be counterintuitive to people, the understanding that you could be wrong. And so there's nothing wrong with certainty because by providing certainty, it gives other folks clear focus on how to execute their responsibilities. You have to be open to the possibility that a decision that was made one or two cycles ago could have been the wrong decision. And you have to have some critical decision points to recognize that and to be able to shift and adjust to a new focus of effort or a change in what it is that you embarked upon in order to accommodate the changing landscape. So with certainty comes a certain amount of leeway that you have to keep in order to be able to recognize when what you thought was going to happen isn't actually panning out in the way that you planned it to. So it's again counterintuitive, but I think certainty is the point at execution where you recognize that you could have taken a different path and you choose to move along that move along.

Dr. Leah OH 9:24

Yeah. And I think there's such powerful lesson in leaders being able to communicate that and then seeing the trickle down with psychological safety when other team members recognize I I put this effort in, I did my homework, but this still, you know, it panned out differently than I expected. So we're not hiding mistakes. We're not not we don't even have to celebrate them, but we're acknowledging them so that we can make a better plan to move forward.

MK Palmore 9:51

Yeah. And and if you create the the appropriate environment within your team where folks feel comfortable recognizing where they've come up short, you can actually move faster through getting to success by allowing folks the the grace and the ability to raise their hand and say, hey, you know what, this didn't pan out exactly the way I expected. Let me take another shot at this.

Dr. Leah OH 10:10

Yeah.

MK Palmore 10:11

And see if we can't get closer to execution on

Unclear Change Creates A Trust Tax

MK Palmore 10:14

it.

Dr. Leah OH 10:14

Yeah, exactly. And and that kind of is a nice segue into our next question. And I know that a lot of times in the communicative leader, we we talk about the silent taxes that are paid in organizations. And we know a big one is when leaders lack clarity, then there's a really large risk of being misunderstood and all of the complications that stem from that. So, MK, I'm wondering in your work with Fortune 500 boards, where do you see this tax being paid most heavily? This idea of lack of clarity when it comes to risk and budget.

MK Palmore 10:47

I think that where I've seen this materialize is in changes that aren't communicated in an appropriate fashion. I can't tell you the number of time times a change has been dictated, in my experience in the Fortune 500 world, where that change has been dictated and the audience or team hasn't been prepared for this change. And what happens is that the word comes out, the leader dictates it to you. The leader may even give it to you in a sense that, hey, which is wrong, by the way. They may even say, This isn't my decision, this has come down from the top, here's what's happening. And the the minute they say this isn't my decision or I had nothing to do with this, they essentially have divested themselves from the actual incorporation or embodiment of the messaging that they're offering to you. And that creates such disruption at the team level. The number of times I've heard that have been too numerous to mention. And then the number of times that I will see folks walk away from that engagement and reach out to people for whom they trust and say, hey, do you believe what they just said or pretty disruptive? And they don't voice these concerns in the context of the meeting because they the environment hasn't been created for them to be able to voice those levels of trust. And this affects all kinds of things like budgetary process, you know, the the standing up of new teams, the identification of new leadership for new responsibilities, all kinds of things that I've seen basically communicated in a fashion that hasn't brought the team along in the process. And when you do that, when you when you dictate changes that represent to the team hard right or left turns without prepping them for it, it can be fairly disruptive in terms of being able to see people then adjust and dive in.

Dr. Leah OH 12:28

Yeah, right. Because there's so much sense making. Like you're saying, we're we're making these back channel conversations, these calls to try and understand this. So that takes away from the productivity, which is very obvious and immediate, but then we're thinking about trust. We're thinking about these long-term implications.

MK Palmore 12:45

Absolutely. And then I mean you you nailed it with the comment about trust. Trust is is everything. And in a team environment, if you can create a sense of trust that teammates feel comfortable, making sure that you know they they they keep the the leader in check, so to speak, that to let the leader know that, hey, I'm feel I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable about what we're experiencing. That kind of feedback should be welcome because then the leader knows maybe I need to overcommunicate or communicate more on what it is that we're experiencing. Because if you're feeling disruption at the highest level, if if if the SVPs are feeling disruption, guess what? At the worker level is tight amount to it, it's a tidal wave that they're experiencing. Even a little disruption, if it isn't communicated appropriately to each level of the organization, it essentially increases in its exponential impact the lower you go in the organization.

Translate Technical Risk Into Action

Dr. Leah OH 13:35

Exactly. And let's kind of continue that idea in thinking about, you know, moving from technical to tactical. And I know a lot of folks, especially those who are technical experts, they kind of struggle to move from data to narrative. So, MK, when you're doing your advising, you know, how do you coach your leaders, your clients to translate, you know, whether it is a cyber risk or some other high-level technical data into operational resilience. It'll actually move employees and a board to act.

MK Palmore 14:09

Yeah, a couple of things. One is technical leaders need to adopt the language of risk management, which isn't a natural thing for them to do all of the time, especially if they're deeply technical. They feel that by explaining the technical concepts or the background behind the tech is enough to drive folks to act. That's not the right terminology. Most business leaders don't come from technical backgrounds. They come from operational backgrounds. And you need to explain to them the probability and impact of a situation and what that's going to do to business operations in order to drive them to make decisions about things. And so the first thing is an adoption of the right terminology. And again, that's the language of risk and risk management. The second thing I would tell technical leaders to do is to adopt a mindset of storytelling. They need to be expert communicators. I can't tell you the number of technical leaders I've come across who are outstanding technologists. In other words, it's clear that they have a command of the technical aspects of what they're doing. But what they have is an inability to then translate that technology to something that makes sense to the layman or layperson.

Dr. Leah OH 15:16

Yeah.

MK Palmore 15:17

Because that's really the vast majority of people are not technically oriented. And so those oftentimes are the ones that need to be convinced to offer budget, to offer resources and personnel, to basically say, I understand what you're identifying as a potential threat to the organization, or something for which if we make an investment, we can actually reduce our overall risk to the enterprise. You need to become a storyteller, which means that you need to work on your communication skills and get away from just identifying technology or saying buzzwords that they think will automatically convey information.

Dr. Leah OH 15:53

Yeah. And so my next question, when I was getting prepared for our conversation, was about emotional intelligence and risk. And in our in your previous response, you were bringing up storytelling. So have you found is that the best way to kind of balance this technical gravity when we have a crisis or an emergent situation with emotional intelligence so that individuals are hearing what they need to hear in a way that is accurate?

Calm Authority With Quick Check-Ins

Dr. Leah OH 16:20

Like they're interpreting what we need them to walk away with.

MK Palmore 16:23

The best thing that you can do as a leader is develop a way of delivering focused communications during moments of crisis. Those focused communications will provide clarity to the team in terms of what your expectations are, what we need to all do in order to get to the next phase, which is some amount of how do we get back in a resilient fashion to operational capacity. And in doing so, you also need to deliver that in as calm a manner as you can. Because things like uncertainty, fear, and doubt actually matriculate or are passed on to team members. If the leader is showing their sense of or a lack of clarity, that kind of uncertainty passes on the team members and it makes them less capable of doing the job that you expect for them to do. And so what what I noticed in throughout my career is that I had developed over time, didn't come immediately, an ability to really get hyper-focused and sharpened around times that required it. Speak calmly, deliver the information that's necessary. And believe it or not, in doing that, you actually will move faster through the crisis or scenario than you would otherwise.

Dr. Leah OH 17:32

Yeah, and that's that's not easy to do. I was a public information officer in healthcare before I shifted into academia. And I remember our first big crisis, I had to record a message on a a standard line. People could call in. I had to record, I'm not joking, maybe five times because my voice, I'm like, I am going to freak everyone out. This is not calm. This is not confident that we got there. Because I'm like, this is going to be contagious. I am doing the exact opposite of what I am intending to do. Right. So good on you. It I mean, it takes it takes a lot of practice.

MK Palmore 18:05

It takes a lot of practice. And folks who come from backgrounds similar to mine will probably say to you that, you know, it these aren't wanted circumstances. But if you're in enough crisis, if you're in enough crises, in enough crisis scenarios, you tend to understand what's coming. And if you can calm, calm yourself and think more clearly through how you're going to bring everyone else through a a particular crisis, things tend to go much better.

Dr. Leah OH 18:32

Exactly. And so let's continue with that the crisis scenario. So I'm wondering, you know, when we're communicating with conviction and we're bringing in our emotional intelligence, how do we maintain our authority in a crisis without losing that human layer that helps to build trust with the team and our other stakeholders?

MK Palmore 18:51

Aaron Powell Yeah, I think the best thing that you can do is check in with your team members from time to time. You know, especially in a moment of crisis, people aren't typically bringing their fears, concerns to light because they recognize it's probably not the time to do that. But as a as a leader, it's incumbent upon you to essentially check in on your people. And you can do that in lots of different ways. You can do it individually, you can do it collectively, but you have to let them know and understand that from an EQ standpoint that you're tapped into the fact that everyone's under a stressful moment. And that stress can impact people in different ways in different parts of the organization. And just even a 30-second check-in. Hey, how are you doing with this? You know, do you have help handling your other responsibilities? Are you okay with how we're proceeding here? Asking very simple questions, you'd be surprised people will give you, you know, the honest feedback that they need. You know, maybe the question is, you know, you ask a team member, hey, how are you doing with this? Are you okay? We're gonna be working some extra time on this. Maybe they've responded to you and say, hey, you know what, I got some, you know, child care needs I need to take care of before I before I go full tilt on this. And you and your response should be, okay, we'll go, you know, take the time to make sure you get that handled because we're gonna need you back here, you know, in in good order to help us get through this thing. In other words, I need take the time to do what you need to do, but also I need your skill set. I need what it is that you bring to the table that's gonna overall help the team to get there. But give them the space to give you that so that they don't feel the stress of I have to go hide that there's something that I need to go take care of before we all dive in on this thing. So just checking in with the team members can be helpful.

Dr. Leah OH 20:26

Yeah. And when you were um giving us that thoughtful response, I was thinking about the power of helping people feel seen, especially in those challenging times. It's one of those where you can say it's hard because it's hard, not because you're doing it wrong, right? Like that can go a really long way.

MK Palmore 20:44

I like that. Yeah.

Hiring Red Flags Under Pressure

Dr. Leah OH 20:45

So, MK, let's talk about recruiting for trust. And so when you're helping organizations and you're doing this executive search for high trust roles, what is a number one communication red flag that you see that might indicate that this person might struggle under pressure?

MK Palmore 21:02

You know what the number one red flag for me is? Someone who can't tell you about a failure of theirs. We ask these, we ask these questions in interviewing all of the time. We ask it in this way, though, typically. We say something akin to tell us about a time that you missed the mark on a project. And the people will figure out some way to diminish the fact that they maybe miss the mark on something. In other words, they'll turn the question, what's what's the thing about you that that needs to change? The response to that is, oh, I work too hard. You know, they always take it and twist it into something that something that's actually kind of a little bit of a positive.

Dr. Leah OH 21:35

Just too diligent.

MK Palmore 21:36

Yeah. I I I I'm I'm a I'm a per I'm a perfectionist, you know, which is I'm a perfectionist, and that just, you know, that means I take a lot of time in doing what you know what? Tell me about a time that you absolutely dropped the ball. And I'm gonna give you the space to tell me what you learned from it. But if you can't tell me about a time where you failed, that's a red flag to me because that means you don't. Have a reflective nature and you don't feel comfortable talking about your failures, that's a sign of someone who I think could end up could end up being a possible big big failure for you in terms of the recruiting effort. So we spend a little bit of extra time making sure that we understand both what makes you up is the failures, believe it or not. You know, what makes you who you are is what you've learned from those situations where you've come up short. And we want to make sure that people have spent the time and in a reflective sense understanding the impact of their situations on their lives and then what they've taken away from those. That's an important component, especially at the high, high executive levels.

Dr. Leah OH 22:40

Yeah, exactly. That's interesting. Even when I was coaching youth soccer, I tell the kid, winning's easy, but like what are we learning when we're losing? Like this is the hard part, and this is what's going to help us get better. You know, you don't even care, but it's important.

MK Palmore 22:54

You won't even remember all of the victories, right? And what you learn from a victory because the victory seemed like it was given to you at in the in the in the look back and hindsight over we were supposed to win that. But in a failure, you have an opportunity to identify where you could have stepped in in a different way and achieved a different outcome.

Dr. Leah OH 23:16

Exactly.

Advice On People And Promotions

Dr. Leah OH 23:17

Well, MK, I have two final questions for you. These work together, and this is the way we end all episodes of the communicative leader. And so the first part is thinking about our title leader leaders out there, you know, our managers, directors, C-suite, executives. So what is the advice or challenge or tip you want to leave them? And then the second part is for our employees across industries and across ranks. What's the challenge, tip, or advice?

MK Palmore 23:43

Yeah. So for the um, for the leaders, my my advice to them is to focus on focus on the people. And in doing that, you will accomplish the mission. You will accomplish the big tasks that's been handed to you and your team, focus on developing your people, making sure that they have what they need in order to excel and grow. And in doing that, in pouring into them and nurturing, you will naturally accomplish the things that you're trying to accomplish. For the folks at the other levels out there, my encouraging, my encouragement to them is nothing happens overnight. One of the things that I've seen, especially in the technology space, is this expectation of systematic growth and development or progressing, if you will, across promotions and layers of an organization. There's an expectation, especially in the big firms, that people expect like every two years to be promoted or something like that. I think that an organization should take note if they uh determine within a workforce that there's an expectation among people that they're going to be promoted sequentially like that, like every two years or on some kind of cycle. And I think that that's an identification of maybe a cultural problem that needs a deeper inspection and interrogation because promotion should come with merit, and that merit should be the product of real productivity and real impactful productivity. And if we don't have a way to measure that, there shouldn't be an expectation of people promoting up the chain.

Dr. Leah OH 25:10

Yeah, I really I love that perspective. And it's not something I don't think we talk about that enough or think about it enough. They had this this picture of a corporate ladder in my mind when you're saying that. And you're right, people seem to think I'm on this wrong, I'm gonna go to the next and then the next. And certainly they might do that. But if that if we're being promoted based on that productivity and output, then we need the time to be in that role, learn that role, make an meaningful impact before moving to the next step. Yeah. Thank you, MK. That was really insightful. I really enjoyed our conversation. I have all of these notes I've written down here. I this is a conversation I'll return to, and I know it'll be really helpful for our listeners.

MK Palmore 25:55

I really appreciate you having me on. I enjoy the conversation as well. Thank you.

Dr. Leah OH 25:59

All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose. I'm looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the Communicative Leader.