Episode Description

You can do exceptional work — and still communicate it in a way that leadership barely notices.

In this episode of Leader on the Rise, Mim Abbey explores the hidden communication gap between professionals and senior leaders, and why the ability to position work strategically is one of the most important leadership skills in modern organizations.

This conversation breaks down how senior leaders actually process information, why most updates fail to land, and how rising leaders communicate in ways that create clarity, trust, and strategic visibility.

You'll learn practical frameworks for communicating with leadership more effectively, including how to lead with the headline, frame work in organizational terms, clarify decisions, and communicate trade-offs with maturity and credibility.

Drawing from cognitive psychology, executive communication research, and real-world leadership examples, this episode explains why communication quality often shapes advancement more than the work itself.

If you want your ideas, projects, and leadership thinking to carry more weight inside your organization, this episode will help you understand how senior leaders truly listen.

What You'll Learn

• Why leadership communication differs from execution communication
• How senior leaders process information under cognitive load
• The importance of leading with the headline
• Why concise communication signals authority
• How to position work strategically
• The role of organizational relevance in visibility
• Why explicit decision framing matters
• How to communicate trade-offs effectively
• The communication habits of rising leaders
• How to make leadership pay attention to your work

Featured Research & Insights

• George Miller's "Magical Number Seven" cognitive load research
• Executive communication studies from the University of Southern California
• Wharton School research on relevance framing and executive communication
• Daniel Kahneman's research on decision framing
• William McGuire's persuasion and credibility research on two-sided arguments
• Leadership communication research on concise messaging and executive perception

Why It Matters

Senior leaders operate under enormous cognitive load.

That means they are constantly filtering for:

• clarity
• relevance
• implications
• decisions
• risk

The professionals who rise are not always the ones doing the best work.

They are often the ones who communicate their work in ways leadership can process quickly and confidently.

Positioning your work is not about spin.

It's about helping leadership understand:

• what matters
• what changed
• what decision exists
• and why your thinking can be trusted