It can be tough for leaders to advise members of their team, because they can accidentally create too much pressure for a mentee to change and improve.
In today’s post, Pete offers a method for leaders to dial down the pressure and create a better environment for the mentee to listen and learn from the advice.
I want to give you a word of advice about giving a word of advice. I recently worked with a leader who had his eye on a mentee he believed could grow into a future leader for the organization. He had positioned her with a current client, giving her responsibility for leading a project and running key meetings. From a business development training and leadership communication standpoint, it was an important opportunity for her.
As he watched her lead, he noticed she was struggling to guide the conversation in a strong, confident way. She would lose track of what she was saying, restart sentences, and backtrack. From his perspective, this was diminishing how the client viewed her and, by extension, their firm.
When he talked to me about it, his language sounded like this: “She really needs to step up. This is really important. It’s just not going to work if she keeps doing it this way.” You can imagine how that kind of message might land. If he said, “You really need to step up,” or “I need you to step up,” it would increase her anxiety and undercut her confident presence.
That kind of pressure language often makes mentees more self-conscious, not more effective. It works against the goals of presence coaching, client engagement skills, and professional services communication.
We worked together to find a better approach. First, I asked him to spot something positive in her leadership presence. Then we reframed the conversation away from “need” and toward opportunity and clarity.
Instead of saying, “You need to step up,” we crafted something more like this: “There’s something I’m noticing in how you’re leading these meetings that I think is less than ideal from the client’s perspective. I don’t think they’re following you as well as they could, and I want to help you with that.”
Then we named one specific behavior: she wasn’t completing her sentences. So the advice became simple and actionable:
“Whenever you hit a bump in the road in one of your sentences, just stop. Think your sentence through. Then pick up where you left off and finish it. You don’t need to rewind or start over. Pay attention to what has already come out of your mouth, remember where you intended to go, give yourself a moment to think, and then continue forward.”
This kind of clear, behavior-based coaching aligns beautifully with presentation skills coaching, interview skills training for professionals, and client communication training. It gives the mentee something practical to do rather than a vague demand to “be better.”
He tried this approach with her—starting from something positive, then gently naming the problem, then offering a simple way to move past it. When he checked back with me, he said she was instantly better. Her presence felt stronger. Her communication was clearer. And the client could follow her more easily.
If you’re a leader, mentor, or coach, here’s what I recommend: before you point out a problem, help your mentee see something strong in themselves. Then invite them to adjust one concrete behavior that will improve their impact.
Avoid framing it as “you need to” or “I need you to.” Instead, position it as an opportunity to increase their effectiveness and results—to grow their confident presence, enhance their business speaking skills, and support their long-term success in AEC interview preparation, sales presentation coaching, or any high-stakes client setting.
Make them feel not like they are failing, but like they are capable of more. That shift in tone can change everything.
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