122. How to Present to Executives Without Drowning Them in Detail
Psychology at Work | Career Success, Leadership, Communication Skills
Host Melody Wilding interviews Raji, a senior data engineering manager at Adobe, about her journey in transforming her executive communicati
Key takeaways
- Raji reduced presentation preparation time from five hours to just 45 minutes using new frameworks.
- Technical experts often fail by answering technical questions instead of addressing the underlying business motive.
Main topics
- Executive communication
- Technical leadership
Notable quotes
Technical excellence is not enough anymore.
Conclusion
The episode provides actionable strategies for technical professionals
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) To kick us off some big time-sensitive news, doors for the final Speak Like a Senior Leader cohort of 2026 are closing very soon on September 28th. So head to speaklikeaseniorleader.com or the link in the show notes to get the details and grab your spot. You'll overhaul how you're perceived from someone who is great at execution but not ready for the next level to instead come across with such clarity, and confidence that leaders say, we need more of them. This is eight weeks of best-in-class hands-on coaching and training that includes weekly live workshops, daily written coaching opportunities, skill drill practice exercises, and much more. And inside, you don't just get frameworks and tactics. You do get those. But even better, you are coached through applying it to your situation. So you communicate with a level of crisp precision and presence that gets you handed dream opportunities before you ever ask. Again, doors are closing very soon for the rest of this year and well into 2027. So get the details, grab your spot. The link is speaklikeaseniorleader.com or head to the show notes. Speaker 1 (1:18) How do you become fully confident and in control of your emotions and experience at work? It's by mastering your own psychology and that of others. On this show, we decode the science of success, exploring how to get out of your own way and advance your career to new levels without becoming someone you're not. I'm Melody Wilding, bestselling author, human behavior professor, and award-winning executive coach. Get ready and let's put psychology to work for you. Speaker 1 (1:51) Q4 is right around the corner, which means you are heading into the highest pressure, most consequential stretch of the year. I'm talking about budget reviews, planning meetings, year-end performance evaluations. Each one of those conversations is a chance to influence the projects you're on, the resources, the access you get, even how you position yourself for opportunities into next year. All of this means you are getting more face time and contact. than usual with decision makers. And I know if you're listening, you want to make sure your communication and how you're showing up is on point, that your ability to articulate what you have delivered to defend your recommendations, to make your case, that all of that has to be at its absolute best. Because let's face it, with executives, you've got what, maybe five minutes, probably less, to make a compelling point before they just tune out or write you off as rambling. And I also know that you are someone who is aware, perceptive, you care about your performance. So it's understandable if the nerves creep in and you start getting in your own head. You may be mid-slide and you start worrying. Are they impressed? Are they bored? Skeptical? Am I emphasizing the wrong things? Should I keep going or should I just shut up and stop talking? My guest today knows exactly what that is like. Raji is a Speak Like a Senior Leader alum and a senior manager at Adobe, where her work powers products that are used by millions of people. She's a deep technical expert with a 20-plus year track record, and her strategy for convincing stakeholders around her was probably a little like yours. Give more detail, show more diagrams, pile on more proof that she is smart and competent. And Raji was exhausting herself, spending four, five hours prepping, agonizing over small details of her deck, mapping out entire systems to try to make her ideas bulletproof so they would be immune to criticism, only for leaders to politely say that her approach was pretty dense. In this conversation, Raji breaks down how she went from over-explaining all the technical details to packaging her ideas in language that executives could act on. She dives into so much, including the number one communication skill that ended years of confusing feedback she was getting. You have great content, but it's the wrong packaging. She talks about the mistake technical experts make when the stakeholder asks for something impossible. How to talk about your accomplishments so leadership hears valuable contribution, not bragging. You'll hear how she leveraged Speak Like a Senior Leader to cut her prep time per meeting down to just 45 minutes so that she could reclaim 20-plus hours back a month for promotable strategic work. You'll hear how stakeholders went from being confused to telling her this is exactly what we need and started looping her in on decisions she had been left out of. And even how her VP gave her a recommendation that opened a door for a potential hiring manager. None of this came from luck or some innate charismatic personality. It came from learning the science of influential communication and then practicing it. with feedback and coaching until it became second nature. That's exactly what we do inside Speak Like a Senior Leader. Doors close for all of 2026 on Monday, September 28th. That is just a few days at the time this is being released. And we will not be opening up enrollment publicly again for at least six months. So this is your chance to get the coaching, the training you need to transform how you are perceived. from someone who is great at execution, but not yet ready for the next level, to instead come across with such clarity and confidence, leaders say, we need more of them. Go to speaklikeaseniorleader.com to get the details and secure your spot. Link is also in the show notes. All right, with that, let's get into my conversation with Raji. Raji, thank you for being here with me. I'm so glad to have you on the show. Thank you, Melody, for having me on this show. I'm very excited to talk to you today. Yeah. So first, before we dive into your experience and speak like a senior leader, tell us a little bit about yourself. So a brief introduction about me. Speaker 2 (6:30) My name is Rajira Guraman. I have been in the data industry for 20 plus years as a data engineering manager. Currently, I'm being a senior data engineering manager at Adobe, leading architecture for products used by millions of users. That's Photoshop. And pretty excited. I have a very long work history, both here in the United States and in India. And I have spent much of my time like holding this hard skill in technical leadership, translating complex situations into workable solutions that is sustainable. That's a little brief intro about myself. Speaker 1 (7:04) Oh, fantastic. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, too. I mean, what a what a cool impact to work on literally a product that is a cornerstone of so many people's lives and livelihoods. That's so. That's so neat to just think about the ripple effects of your work. So, okay. Now, you were saying you have been a deeply technical person for a long time. What was going on for you in your career or frustrations you were feeling when you first joined Speak Like a Senior Leader? What was happening for you at work that made you think communication and especially executive level communication, that's something I need help with? Absolutely. That's a wonderful Speaker 2 (7:49) question to start this podcast. So for 20 plus years, I built my career on being a technical authority in my space, the data engineering space. I've won different hats, been a leader all through my life, right from the beginning of my career. And I could architect solutions that at petabyte scale, large teams like in eBay, I was managing the risk of decision science, data engineering team, mentor teams like, you know, motivate people. deliver complex results. But when I joined my recent company, something really shifted. My manager had a very different working style than what I had been used to. Because usually I am a very proactive person and I take ownership and this was slightly different. And instead of thinking, maybe I need to communicate differently, I started thinking, why isn't it working? Because usually it just takes three months for me. To work with any new managers, they understand my working style. They appreciate what I bring to the table and all that. But this was different. I started feeling super frustrated. But more than that, I felt I was stuck. I didn't know what to do, right? So I was like, let me search through. And that's how I found you in Spotify. And because my realization was technical excellence is not enough anymore. And I needed help, true help. And I searched so many resources, like books. I went to a few other folks to understand, but nothing helped. The speech system has been helping me for the last three months. So that's how I stumbled upon you. Speaker 1 (9:22) Fantastic. And it only works if you do. And so the implementation and the application is key, which I'm excited to get into because you are an action taker through and through, which I love and I respect. So I do, for the person listening to this, I think they can relate to that where... There's a change. You have to work with a different stakeholder or a new leader. And then all of a sudden it you have this expectation and you start with excitement a lot of the time. Oh, OK, great. Fresh start. But then the rubber starts hitting the road and you start hitting tension or conflict or just like you're talking at each other or past each other. Right. And then we can get into this space that it sounds like you caught yourself right there. But a lot of people get into that, you know, I'm dealing