Practical Communication: Delivering Your Message With the Bottom-Line Approach

Emily Sander shares a practical tip for communicating with busy executives: start with the bottom line first, then give a little necessary context, and invite questions if needed. Using the iceberg metaphor, Emily Sander explains that a Chief of Staff usually knows much more than they should share up front, and most conversations only need the essentials to help leaders make quick decisions.

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Who Am I?
If we haven’t met before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want.

Time Stamps:
00:25 The Bottom Line Tip

01:32 Bring the Decision Forward

02:35 Iceberg Communication Model

04:12 Resist Showing Your Work

05:03 Reverse Engineer the Details

06:29 When Longer Talks Matter

Transcript

0:06

Welcome back to Leveraging Leadership, where we unpack the art of business leadership. I'm your host, Emily Sander, chief of staff to an executive leadership coach. This show is all about finding your points of greatest influence and leveraging them to better serve those around you.

The Bottom Line Tip

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Here is one practical and tactical tip to communicate more effectively with your principal. So if you're a chief of staff and you're communicating with your principal, especially if the principal is, "Go, go, go. I've got 47 things I'm doing. Get to the point," here's the tip. Start with the bottom line. Start with the punchline, and then provide a little bit of context, not a lot, just a little, and then say, "I'm happy to discuss anything further." Okay. So one of the things that I did as chief of staff, and I see a lot of other people doing as chief of staff, is they want to explain their answer. And at first, that sounds like, "Uh-huh, yeah, Emily, like I do wanna explain my answer. That seems pretty reasonable and pretty valid." And it is, but oftentimes the person you're speaking with doesn't need to know all the puts and takes, all the, "I sent this email and then they sent this back, and then I sent the other one, and they sent this back," or, "I was talking with so-and-so over here, and then talking with so-and-so over there, and then I was... waited a week." It's like they don't need to know the kind of back

Bring the Decision Forward

emily-sander_1_06-23-2026_124646 1:32

and forth. They need to know we have a decision to make on, on X, Y, and Z. That's the bottom line. Like I'm, I'm bringing you a decision. I've done everything I possibly can to have the team come to a conclusion. I've done anything I possibly can to gather more information so the team can be more informed or you can be more informed, but at this point, it requires a decision from you, so we need a decision on this X, Y, and Z. Here's some relevant, helpful content that... content and context that I know you often ask for and I know that you need to know. So maybe you don't always ask for this piece of information, but in this particular case, you're gonna need to know to make a good decision. So I'm giving a little bit of context there, but then I'm gonna pause and say, "Let me know what you wanna hear more on," or, "Let me know what questions you have," or, "Let me know what other information would be helpful," or, "Let me know your thoughts on this so far," or, "I'm happy to go in further. Let me know your initial thoughts." Anything like that.

Iceberg Communication Model

emily-sander_1_06-23-2026_124646 2:35

So you're starting with the bottom line, you're adding a little bit of context, not the whole thing, and then you're giving an open-ended question or comment saying, you know, "I'm happy to talk about this more." So another way to think about that is, uh, the iceberg metaphor or the iceberg visual. So if you're saying the tip of the iceberg, so the part of the iceberg that is above the waterline, y- you probably know much, much, much, much more than that which represents the bottom part of the ar- iceberg underneath the waterline. So you know more, and a lot of people wanna say all the stuff and things that I know. "I've been doing all this stuff. I've been running around like crazy. This has been my past two to three weeks have been nothing but trying to solve this problem for you, and here's all the context and puts and takes," and he said, she said type of back and forth. No, no, no. You're gonna feel like I'm just skimming the surface. I'm just saying a tiny bit of information, and I have all of this information, and that's probably where you need to be most of the time. Or, and/or that's probably where you wanna start with, and then if it's like, okay, this requires a more fulsome conversation, then you can certainly get into that, and you're prepared and you're ready to go. Most of the conversations won't go f- full iceberg, so to say. It won't be like, "Let me talk about all the facets and all the angles and all the permutations and combinations of this iceberg." It might be a little bit under the waterline. It might be this particular spot of the iceberg under the waterline. Maybe it's like this spot over here, another situation, but it's usually not the whole hulking thing at once. So just keep that visual in mind if that

Resist Showing Your Work

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helps you. It would often feel like I was giving kind of incomplete information in a sense, where I'm like, "You don't know all this stuff and things." Like, sometimes it was incomplete information, but more so I think, now that I'm saying it out loud, more so it was, "I want to show you all of my work." I want to just, like, a math, I wanna show you how I got to this answer, and this has been the story of my life for the last two to three weeks, and so I wanna share that with you. And in reality, sometimes it's just your job to do your job, to do all the stuff and things, to do it behind the scenes, and to produce a very concise, relevant, informative statement, question, decision to your principal, and that's your job. Your job is to do the iceberg, but also just give the tip of the iceberg when you're talking

Reverse Engineer the Details

emily-sander_1_06-23-2026_124646 5:03

to someone. So this can be in so many different permutations and situations, but the, the tip is the, the strategy here is to start with the bottom line. So don't build, build, build, build, build. Just start with the bottom line. Then you might reverse engineer into a little bit of the context, and then open it up for further dialogue if needed. If they're like, "I trust you, good to go, I'm deciding we go that way," cool. That might be a quick decision your boss can make because you have done all of the work you've done beforehand. So don't take the shortness of exchange as in, "Oh, it wasn't very meaningful." Like, no, no, no, that could've been the most helpful, meaningful thing you could've done in that exchange with your principal. So that's just a, a practical, tactical tip that, um, I certainly had to work on when I was chief of staff, and I have seen this a whole bunch in different chiefs of staff who are trying to communicate effectively, and they're also trying to kind of show their value in what they're doing and what they're up to, 'cause people don't really know what a chief of staff is up to, so they go into this, like, almost p- panic explaining and panic rambling about all the stuff that happened to show all the hard work th- that they or the team has been doing, which in a sense is good, but also you gotta pick your time and place with that. So on the whole I would say be shorter rather than longer in y- in your kind of walk and talks when you're, like, going throughout the day, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-boom.

When Longer Talks Matter

emily-sander_1_06-23-2026_124646 6:29

If you're having a conversation around, "Hey, how is the chief of staff role working? How do we wanna structure that? Where do we see the most value? Hey, you've been in this chief of staff role for a year now. Let's talk about that." Those are different conversations. Those require different things, uh, to be brought to the table. But in the kind of quick, quick back and forth, day to day, week to week type of dialogue you have with your principal or perhaps with other executives on the team, sometimes starting with the bottom line, just get to it. Like, what is the thing? Okay, that's the thing. Give me a little more context, little more reminders. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nope, I remember talking to her. That was a month ago, but because you said that little bit of context, I remember it now. Got it. I'm locked in, and now I can move forward. So just, I would use this framework Pro-- I would, mm, I would say most of the time, most of the time, I know that's a generality, but I would say most of the time tend toward this type of exchange and dialogue, and then know that sometimes a much longer, lengthier, detailed explanation and conversation is warranted. All right. Let me know how that tip works for you this week, and I will catch you next week on Leveraging Leadership.

7:42

This episode is brought to you by Next Level Coaching. If you or anyone you know would like to learn more about executive leadership coaching, please visit www.next level Coach.