Offer Boldly, Hold Lightly | Salvatore Manzi

Three words carry more weight than their size suggests. "In my opinion."

A client told me once that those three words were part of why she liked working together. She said that when I say them, they let her disagree with me. Nothing about my conviction had changed. The conversation had simply stayed open.

Think about the last person who told you something as though it were already settled. Notice your reaction in that moment.

A hand turning a single dial on a panel of dials in a conference room

The puzzle nobody explains

A friend called last month with something he could not solve. Conversations with his partner kept ending before he was finished. He would say what he thought. Her face would go still. The space between them would go quiet and he would sit there running the tape back, hunting for the moment it turned.

From where he sat, he was thinking out loud. From where she sat, a directive had been handed down.

He has one dial setting. Every sentence arrives sounding like a verdict.

Someone has probably gone quiet on you at some point, and you never found out why.

The paradox

Think of what you say as an offer. In improv, you walk in and say "Grandpa, the lake is frozen," and you have handed your partner a lake, a season, and a family. Their only job is to pick it up and build.

The alternative is called blocking, and it is the fastest way to kill a scene.

Conviction and openness look like opposites in the moment. Leaders are told to be decisive. They are told to be collaborative. Almost nobody explains how both exist in the same sentence.

Offer Boldly means showing up authentically, earnestly, unapologetically. Say the thing. Whole thought, no shrinking.

Hold Lightly means offering it as a statement, an idea, a complete thought, and staying open to the conversation if it does not make sense to someone, or if they can show you where it is wrong.

Holding both at once is where the work turns into artistry.

Eliminate the Mitigate

Softeners have their place. They express real uncertainty and they cushion hard truths. Used out of habit, they dilute conviction. This is why my book gives Eliminate the Mitigate as a confidence strategy.

But, if hedges cost you, how do three words like "in my opinion" land? Here's an example:

"I think maybe we should probably wait."

"In my opinion, we should wait."

Hedges work on the claim. They shrink what you are saying. "In my opinion" works on the claim's status. It leaves the message at full strength and tells everyone what kind of message you just handed them.

Which one do you most often use?

What the room is actually scoring

Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff published a study in 2009 tracking how influence gets assigned in small groups. Dominant, confident people gained influence at a steady clip. Their confidence had almost no relationship to whether they were any good at the task. The room reads conviction as competence, and it reads it fast.

That is the case for offering boldly. It is also the trap underneath my friend's puzzle.

Bold becomes a liability when it's the only dial setting that messages are offered.

Holding lightly can look like varying the dial from claim to claim, updating claims in real time. It's not a dramatic reversal in front of the room. It is a series of one-degree corrections, made out loud, while you are still talking.

Conviction opens the door. Curiosity keeps it open.

Knowing when

There is an old song about a card player that gets this exactly right. Knowing when to hold. Knowing when to fold. Knowing when to walk away… The dial moves with the room.

Offer more boldly when:

You are the newest or quietest voice, and nobody knows yet what you think
The group is stalled and somebody has to put a stake in the ground
You hold information the others do not
The cost of silence runs higher than the cost of being wrong

Hold more lightly when:

Your title means your thinking out loud lands as direction
The decision belongs to the other person
You are standing outside your own expertise
The relationship will outlast this one question

Same person. Same conviction. Different dial setting.

This is a presence skill

This skill lives in the Presence pillar of Clear and Compelling.

Presence gets confused with performance. With charisma. With extraverted overtures, taking up more room than the moment asks for, a voice carrying vibrato it did not need.

Presence is quieter than all of that. You are fully here, and the room can still reach you.

Try this

Name the dial out loud. In your next meeting, attach a confidence level to each claim. "High confidence on the timeline. Medium on the budget. Low on how legal reads this." Thirty seconds, and you sound like someone who measures.
Three seconds of quiet. After you make your point, stop and watch one face before you continue.
Two lines before the meeting. Write "the offer I am making is ___" and "the part I am holding lightly is ___." It separates your position from your identity before the room does it for you.
One degree, out loud. Once this week, fold something you just heard into your position without abandoning it. "That changes the timing for me, and the direction still holds."

The point

Say it like it matters. Hold it like the conversation is still happening.

Book and coach

Clear and Compelling releases October 13 from Morgan James Publishing. The Presence pillar is Part Four.

Communication strategies to help you lead with care and accountability

Order from Your Local Bookstore

@ClearandCompelling #ClearandCompelling