Arjun was afraid of executives. He worried, obsessively, about what they thought about him and his every word—and as far as he could tell, they noticed. In any room with one or more of them, he fell stoney and silent. His face stayed flat, his lips grimaced giving the indistinct impression he felt displeased being there. His eyes slid up and away rather than meeting theirs, until they gave up trying to talk to him at all.

The pattern repeated in every executive interaction—and there were many, now as a manager of 20 engineers at the giant American tech firm where he worked from its Bangalore office. And the fear cost both sides: Arjun and the executives, who had done nothing to warrant his stoniness, had many failed conversations. His very job was to flag engineering problems to executives and help solve them, before production came to a standstill.

“You misread them,” said Jono, a friend from the Glossophobia workshop Arjun had joined on his manager’s insistence, after one too many complaints about his frostiness. “You resent them for nothing. They just want to learn from you.”

Jono was right, and the executives who complained said what irked them the most, beyond the lack of niceties, was the meetings stayed surface-level and tactical with no real problem-solving underneath.

So Arjun went to the workshop, held in a local library and attended by ten people, Jono among them. “Right,” said the host, a wiry woman in her 60s. “Hands up who’s afraid of public speaking?” All ten hands went up. “We’ll go ad hoc, straight in. Two minutes to jot down notes; then, each of you gets one minute on exactly why you fear sharing your ideas in public.”

Arjun groaned inwardly but complied. Several people shuddered as their turns arrived. He closed his eyes as his own approached; his heart thumped; his collar felt suddenly hot, and sweat ran down his back. “Arjun, you’re up.”

He climbed onto the podium.

“I cannot recall a time when I wasn’t afraid of strangers,” he said. “I’m fine with my own team. But with executives, I feel powerless—as if one wrong word will sink my ambitions. The sad truth is that fearing them is exactly what’s sinking me. I’m sure most of them are decent people. Treating them as tyrants is my own failure of judgment, and by now it’s the one I’m known for at work. I’d like very much to be cured of it.”

He faced the room having read from his notes. Nobody spoke, but Jono smiled and gave three small claps before folding his hands back in his lap. Everyone in the workshop—except the instructor, who gave him a C+ for his first public-speaking effort—agreed that our own judgment of an audience, more than anything else, ruins our delivery and attempts to connect with others, regardless of stature.

That was when the insight landed: his own fear eroded his career, not those with power over him. It was all him. That alone felt like progress.

The next day he promised to speak with executives before a meeting officially began. He still trembled inwardly, but started small, trusting that one small step might lead to a bigger one.

“How’s your day going so far?” he asked an American visitor to headquarters, in a blue button-down and pressed trousers. The man hesitated. Arjun waited, smiled a little, and held his gaze. “Not bad,” the executive said. “And you?” “Very well, thank you sir,” Arjun answered. “Very well indeed.”

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I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching 1:1’s and teams.

Note to readers: I wrote this essay as a free-flow last Wednesday evening, the day my oldest son returned to Cambridge, MA from Wisconsin for his sophomore year at Harvard.

I found a wee sock at eight o’clock this morning on the carpeted stairs in my Wisconsin home. It is a tiny relic from the era when either of his owner’s feet fit within a palm. Today, my sons possess sizable feet. My seventeen-year-old stands at six feet six inches. My 19-year-old, Nicholas, is six feet three. Their current socks could comfortably house this fossil three fold.

That this single wee sock survived 16 years, five houses, four states, and four moves is a mystery of domestic logistics and transit. That it chose to surface on the exact morning Nicholas flew 1,030 miles back to Cambridge for his sophomore year with the Harvard Crimson football team and his ongoing studies in Economics requires a simpler theory. It must have fallen from the volcanic laundry piles on the top floor as he packed, tumbling unnoticed into the departure mayhem.

Spotting it minutes after Nicholas rolled down the driveway toward Chicago’s O’ Hare Airport with his dad, the wee sock felt symbolic.

It summoned in me the early chaos: juggling motherhood and the rigid demands of my husband’s corporate job. Choosing independence of an LLC over the standard corporate slog brought my sons and I real freedom. In peak years, my independent earnings doubled an in-house salary for a journalist or professor. On average years, they yielded at least $30,000 more.

The financial autonomy and flexibility informed our perfect routine. We balanced three days of pre-school, college teaching, and reporting with two days of unscripted adventures. Motherhood did not dilute my creative impulses. Each pregnancy amplified it. And so I fused this creativity into my time with the boys. On our “off days” we reported stories as a team.

We visited local fire stations, trading home-baked cookies for tours of the trucks. We interviewed train drivers, truck drivers, and construction workers. Whatever fascinated them and captured their imaginations became our beat. We documented everything with photographs and a YouTube channel and the best adventures resulted into physical books. It was magic. A high-velocity blur in which missing socks went blissfully unnoticed.

Mothers I coach often wonder if they focused too heavily on work once their teenagers depart for university. I look back knowing professional growth, creativity, and maternity worked in tandem for me and my sons—and built on one another. I feel grateful to have ignored the conventional, binary wisdom that insists a woman cannot advance a career while enjoying and exploring with her young children. You can, in fact, do both.

Nicholas gave me a rolling hug this morning, a big footballer hug, before he left. That enduring closeness is the real milestone. My own entry into university took place in New Zealand, completely without financial or emotional safety nets. Breaking that generational cycle is the real progress.

The house is quieter now. But looking at the staircase, I feel lighter, and a little less forlorn from missing my first born son terribly. I am glad the wee sock dropped precisely where it did.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching 1:1’s and teams.

Plant the seed

Q3 and Q4 can strain our conversations. Sales teams chase quotas. Professors and teachers disappear into training and grading. Obligatory family gatherings dominate weekends. Coachees plead for ways to detangle from conversations eroding their time, focus, and energy. Many never learn the skill (I’ve discovered) because they assume honesty is impolite. It is not. The exit just needs structure.

Plant the seed of an exit, if time pressed, even at the front end. “I’m driving home; but I can listen for 15 minutes. Is that all right?” stays honest, bounded, and respectful on a phone call without cutting them off or dismissing.

We can frame the exit around the other person’s time. “I don’t want to hold you up” used alone can sound glib. Paired with something specific and sincere, a detail from what was just said, can sound considerate. “Well, I’ll let you pick up your daughter now. I can hear those sweet voices in the background.”

An executive I coach learned her best lessons on ending conversations from her time as an elementary school teacher. She lets her next meeting quietly join her video call in a waiting room, which rings a bell, helping the lingering guest understand it’s time to go. She introduces both to each other as a generous introduction, not an escape, and nobody seems bothered.

No apologies

Those who tend to please feel especially compelled to apologize for leaving. Resist. Your time is yours, and a conversation extending its natural end is not your problem. With someone you have just met, a single warm line suffices: lovely to have crossed paths, enjoy your evening. (The Queen, note, simply exited, without words or apology. I was too young to ask my Nan how her Queen exited. I can only imagine Queen Elizabeth let her smile and eye contact show the connection was real.)

Reading the room helps time the exit. If the conversation has turned serious, a brief acknowledgment first (that sounds hard, I’m glad you told me) lets you leave without dropping the person. A distraction helps too, such as someone new arriving, or the guest speaker arriving on stage finally, the call to board the plane. Naming the reason keeps it honest, less evasive.

Exits need not signal we’ll never reconnect. If genuine interest exists, declare it. “I’m fascinated with what you shared with me. Here’s how to contact me. Please connect with me so we can speak again.”

Conversations at the beginning and end need not contain the grandeur of a royal visit. It requires only what my grandmother received in those few minutes with the Queen: full attention, one true thing noticed, and a clean, kind and considerate close. Lock in, find that, and leave with the same grace you arrived with.

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I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching 1:1’s and teams.

Ms. Long is not alone. Managers everywhere describe similar one-on-ones turning into monologues (their monologue) and walk away drained and doubtful. Silence unsettles. It invites the listener to wonder if something is wrong with them or their leadership style, which sometimes is true, and sometimes is false.

Know too: causes for conversation disconnects are rarely singular and subdued responses may have nothing to do with you at all. The report may feel shy with everyone; carry trauma of their own, as a survivor of abusers who hurt them when and if they said something wrong. (A combative or interrogative communication style, whether perceived or real, may shut them down.)

Or cultural disconnects occur, like learned humility, a desire to play small and speak minimally about their work. Triggering happens a lot. I hear it constantly in coaching, and it may explain the silence in 1:1’s a little more than the leadership guides do, and with a little more humanity.

If the honest answer to the earlier questions is no throughout, the fix lies in what coaches call “compassionate accountability.” That means doing what Ms. Long tried: stating facts without judgment (“we’ve had three one-on-ones and no answers to any questions”) then naming plainly the virtues of their fuller disclosure: more support, knowledge of their aspirations, and even less overwork.

The pressure valve

Though tempting, it rarely helps to ask “why won’t you speak to me?”; the question tends to cause more clamming up.

Instead, ask actionable questions and modify your own communication style. Make any ask more concrete, for instance, one project update by end of day, in writing. Or hand the problem back. “What would make these conversations more even and fruitful?” Document the gap in writing, if it persists. Questions asked and requests for the intel in writing.

Silent conversation

Coaching has taught me a lot about one-sided conversations, and how to work within them.

I’ve learned, for instance, to ask a new and quiet coaching client gently: “How do you feel being here with me, today?” (Because many come to coaching because their leadership told them they needed it, which can cue feelings of unworthiness.)

Paired with promised confidentiality and silence to let the question sit, it tends to work; I’ve watched shoulders drop at the asking, before they speak a word. I’ve learned to name what I see rather than assume. “I noticed your shoulders relax with that question. What (if anything) let go?” I’ve learned to sit with whatever answer comes and with all emotions, not just happy or optimistic ones. If I sense anger, I ask about it, with blameless detachment. Sometimes, I ask outright: “Are we calling it?” And that too, shows and earns back respect.

Silence, in other words, is not something to manage away. Thinking and connecting, and even conversation can happen there, in a direct report or someone we care for deciding when they want to talk, before they’re ready to speak the words out loud.

Reader note: Name and details fictionalized in the opening story to report real stories and real struggles with conversations.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching 1:1’s and teams.

Seventy-nine percent of people report fearing public speaking more than they fear a shark attack, or death itself. Reflecting on this strange arithmetic staggers me: the human brain quietly concludes that a room of executives threatens us more than a Great White. And yet, which side of that statistic you sit on comes down to framing rather than fate.

So when the heart starts pounding before you present, rather than suppress the fear, interrogate it, gently and without judgment: what, precisely, am I afraid of? Say it in one sentence. Then rate it, not for how it feels, but for how likely that outcome is to be true.

Here’s what I’ve noticed, coaching people through this exact moment: almost no one is actually afraid of the audience. When I ask what happens next, after the imagined humiliation, they don’t describe scorn from the room. Their own inner judgment comes next, arriving right on cue, making them feel so small they can no longer continue. So self-imploding confidence and inner judgment becomes the real threat. Not the executives. Us.

Which reframes the math usefully. The worst plausible outcome is embarrassment in front of people with long memories, the shame that follows, and perhaps a career mildly re-routed. Even then: the sun rises the next day regardless. We can have our coffee, go about our day, and even find a better opportunity waiting somewhere just out of view.

If public humiliation and personal shame serve as the ceiling of your catastrophe, you are not in danger. You are overthinking though. And your inner Judge has, once again, mistaken a presentation for a predator. Which is, fortunately, an entirely coachable (and solvable) problem.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. (All of them now know their biggest shark is their own inner Judge.) I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching.

Nothing shuts down a conversation faster than thinly veiled judge-y questions pawned off as curiosity. And this one? No different. When feeling judged, we judge right back, because negative emotions have a contagion effect. And when we replace trust with judgment, the potential for deep, human conversation disappears.

Had Evelyn felt less stung by her mother’s words, she’d have learned Beijing’s media that week had banged on about Americans acting “reckless” amidst Covid with fewer limitations she experienced in China.

She’d also have learned her mother, on a super strict lockdown, had not left her home in days. Evelyn may have discovered, through reflective inquiry, her mother’s judgment, stemmed from envy and upset that her daughter in the U.S. had freedoms whilst she stayed latched up, like a hutched rabbit.

Feeling judged, misunderstood, and shamed shut Evelyn down, and invited not questions from Evelyn about her mother’s vanguish. Oblivious to the context, Evelyn replayed the annoying conversation over-and-over, late into the night, rendering her useless at work, where it felt equally as unpredictable.

Familiar? Perhaps so. Conversations fail like this every hour, minute, and day and all through aggressive listening.

What aggressive listening is

In communications coaching, aggressive listening is also called “ambushing” or “defensive listening”: listening with the goal of finding flaws or ammunition with which to attack the speaker. Active listening builds understanding. Aggressive listening erodes it, and shuts conversations down because nobody feels safe enough or inspired enough to continue. A few ways aggressive listening shows up:

Ambushing. Letting a story play out, then seizing on a minor misstatement to invalidate what the speaker said.

“You said you’d entered coaching without ever having received formal coaching, but you’d received mentoring. Isn’t that the same?”

Rebutting. Half-listening while assembling a counterargument — hearing only enough to win, not to understand.

Cross-examining. Pointed questions designed to trap rather than clarify.

“You just said you like to problem-solve. Why won’t you solve the problem you created?”

Re-living the past. Using a present complaint as a hook to drag up old failures.

“No wonder you’re struggling with finances, if you spend like that.”

Paraphrasing as a weapon. Summarizing and twisting someone’s wordsinto something unreasonable.

“You think we don’t vacation enough? So, I’m a terrible husband?”

Why it kills conversations

Aggressive listening leaves the other person feeling policed, not heard. When their own words become evidence for a pre-established theory, trust ends and aggressive listening compounds, from both sides. Depth becomes impossible in exchanges guarded like this.

Old resentment and unspoken wounds (from the workplace or from family life) make it worse. Being judged by someone whose own conduct was questionable turns judge-y conversations into a minefield.

Clients I coach describe this outrage precisely: a boss hands them a shit sandwich to solve, leaves them to it, then turns around and judges how they handled it. Evelyn’s version was familial: a mother and father who’d neglected her and her siblings horribly in her youth, leaving Evelyn to fend for herself and her younger siblings from age 10.

Hearing any concern for her wellbeing amid Covid-19 sounded “faux,” like window dressing, too little concern too late. Any judgment from the person who neglected her felt outrageous. Unresolved anger, layered onto the insulting questions, generated more rage, keeping her from wanting to call again for some time. A truly failed conversation, and yet it could have been so much lovelier, with some tools.

Remedies for Aggressive Listening

Awareness is the first step, and reading this far means it’s already underway. Beyond that:

Mirror before responding. Reflect back what you heard, neutrally, before reacting. I might have tried: “Sounds like you’re worried about how we’re spending time outside the house. Are you still worried?”

Set aside the feeling of being judged. This is hard. It starts with grace: tell yourself, it’s just a conversation. Scan your own body as you listen — what am I feeling, where did my mind just go — and come back. Five seconds might rescue the exchange.

Name the pattern. “It feels like my words triggered your worry.” Or: “I think I lost you there — let me explain what I meant.”

Listen more than you speak. Aim for 70/30. We all judge each other; slowing down just gives us a better chance of noticing it, and of seeing what the other person actually needs.

Ask for their version. “Tell me what you think happened — I don’t think we’re understanding each other.”

Ask, don’t assume. “What part of what I said made you doubt me?” Or: “Where did it sound like I needed rescuing? I promise I feel capable.”

Journal or work with a coach. Journal daily to clear worries or anything causing overthinking. Doing so makes it less likely to leak into the conversation in front of you.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist and Financial Times trained reporter who became a communications coach for leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a consult.

A transparent note to my readers:

I write my own drafts and generate my own ideas. Sometimes I write directly in Claude, my top-level editor, which I use in small ways: first, to clear the weeds, so I can re-compress further and rewrite anything that doesn’t sound like me; then, to proof for anything wonky. The final edit is always mine.

My Harvard student and oldest son, Nicholas, returned to Wisconsin today from a week traveling around Germany, Austria, and Poland. I’ve been nostalgic of my own self-funded travels: to Sydney, Australia, from New Zealand at nineteen. Then to Tokyo at twenty. Then to this country at twenty-six. All solo.

Nicholas went to Europe with his two best Wisconsin mates, aged 19, each funding his own way, Nicholas through his landscaping business. Last year, he and his best friend went to Italy at eighteen, also on their own dime, to steady themselves before college. Their Germany adventures, steep hikes, mis-advertised Airbnbs, unfriendly locals, taught the fortitude only travel can teach. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree. (You can read more of our Harvard Mum essay project here.)

The following essay captures a journey I took solo, around Nicholas’ age, from Christchurch, New Zealand, to Kodaira, on the outskirts of Tokyo, navigating Shinjuku Station along the way, with its 3.5 million daily commuters, then roughly the population of New Zealand. Looking back, it was presence and focus that got me through, and without mobile technology or a lick of Japanese language. (You can hear me read this essay on my Competency No 5 Show on Apple podcasts here.)

We care a lot less what others think of us when we move far from home — the farther the better, and especially where nobody knows us. Conversation and communication of every kind quickly improves. A life-changing commute I took at age twenty, in early August 1990, taught me this.

I traveled solo from Christchurch Airport to Narita. Narita to Shinjuku, Tokyo’s largest and busiest railway hub, handling up to 3.5 million passengers a day. I then traveled from Shinjuku to my friend Andy’s neighborhood on Tokyo’s outskirts, where I would stay until he left soon after for a teaching job in Taipei.

I left my motherland on a one-way ticket, self-funded through three part-time jobs while finishing my bachelor’s degree. I had no Japanese. I had plenty of ambition and a want to learn.

The first leg felt easy, though saying goodbye to my mother and sister at Christchurch Airport brought snivels. I held the lace handkerchief my mother had given me for the ten-hour flight. It smelled of South Canterbury lavender.

Narita to Shinjuku felt easy too. The signposts ran in English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese — Urdu too, possibly. Businessmen in crisp, tailored suits smiled and offered directions, unsolicited. I must have looked like I needed them.

At Shinjuku, things fell apart. The crowd overwhelmed. My backpack felt heavy. My legs wobbly. I hadn’t slept and had hardly eaten. The English signage seemed to have vanished. Andy’s instructions had been to call once I arrived, which meant finding a shop that sold phone cards, then finding a phone. This was 1990. No mobiles.

I managed it, and he picked up — though I’m still not sure why; he’d known only the day I might call, not the hour.

“Hey Debs! So glad you called. I was about to leave for work. How was the flight?”

I had to shout over the station noise to say I was fine. Tired, but fine. He gave me the one fact that mattered most and made me read it back until I had it written down correctly: Kodaira, his neighborhood train station in western Tokyo.

“K-O-D-A-I-R-A.”

“Yes!” He sounded triumphant. The train from Shinjuku, he guessed, would take about forty minutes. “Wait in the first café you find at the south exit of Kodaira station. Left or right won’t matter — I’ll find you at either, as long as it’s the first.” Genius, when you think about it. We had no mobiles.

I agreed and hung up. The call cost 500 yen — half of what the card held. I had no time to worry about the arithmetic, not in what was then the world’s most expensive city. I needed to find the train to Kodaira.

Intense memories come back to me both blurred and sharp at once. I don’t remember how I found a restroom or whether I sustained my hunger. I do remember the sea of people. I remember dark eyes, dark hair. I remember that nobody made eye contact — not once. I remember knowing that if I didn’t speak to a stranger, any stranger, I would not find the platform for a train station in his neighborhood Andy guessed was forty minutes away.

I’d written the station name in my journal, with a question mark beside it, in case my accent obstructed. I approached five or six people. I made eye contact first then gently smiled and shared the same lines: “My name is Debbi, from New Zealand. I need to get to Kodaira station. Can you show me which platform, please?”

An elderly man reading a newspaper over green tea looked promising. He waved me off. The person beside him shook his head. I went younger. Students.

One teenager, hazel-eyed, tried her English: “I helpu — you,” while her friends giggled behind their hands. I couldn’t make out what she meant. Another girl noticed my confusion.

“Are you lost? Can we help you?”

I told them my aspirations and traced my words in my journal with my finger. This worked!

“We show you,” said a third, with gusto. Yes, please.

The group grew as we walked — three, then five, then eight, then ten, in white knee socks, crisp white blouses, and blue blazers, possibly skipping school at nine in the morning. They walked me through the station, across several halls and down several flights of stairs, and delivered me, fifteen minutes later, to the right platform.

I thanked them with genuine relief and euphoria. I couldn’t believe we got there and pulled out some Buzz Bars — a New Zealand marshmallow sweet with honey inside — from my backpack. They were thrilled. The leader, whose English was best, asked if I had my ticket.

I did not. Some panic, though not the full kind. I opened my wallet and showed her the yen I’d converted from New Zealand dollars back in Christchurch. She waited for my nod, then sorted through it, bought the ticket, and walked me through the gates. I waved goodbye and waited where they’d told me to.

You might expect a city that size to move on without a backward glance. These high school girls didn't. There was a kind of sisterly loyalty in it — they wanted to see me safely onto the right train before they went on with their day. They waited until it arrived, and waved again as I boarded.

“Bye, Debbi-chan! Enjoy Kodaira!”

I reached for my mother’s handkerchief, waving back, elated and victorious, having just completed the first leg of an adventure that would last five years, and for now, with no Japanese language. Will, and trust in myself (and in good strangers) had officially saved my day.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. (In Japan, I went on to learn Japanese well enough to translate Japanese to English for a leading pharmaceutical firm.) I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for coaching.

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Most of us (in everyday conversation) pause for only a fraction of a second between one person finishing a thought and the next person jumping in.

Speakers in Western cultures like the U.S. are really bad at this. Research out of the University of Groningen found that once a silence in conversation hit four seconds, people got antsy. Another study of Japanese business meetings, by Dr. Haru Yamada, revealed silences of 8.2 seconds — nearly double the American tolerance — were met with full comfort.

Knowing when to hold our ideas and zip it gives us the upper hand: in sales deals, pay negotiations, presentations, and difficult conversations. A study in MIT Sloan found that extended silence of three seconds in negotiations significantly improved conditions for the person who initiates the silence and receiver, by shifting us from fixed thinking to reflection. Any breakthroughs in negotiations preceded silence, and without feelings of weirdness, proving silence can benefit and empower us all.

That line confirms what I’ve learned from coaching — especially in my efforts to certify as a Master Certified Coach. When we pour in constantly, we reduce space for either of us to reflect, go deep, keeping our conversations more surface.

And yet so many of us, including coaches, including me, feel uncomfortable with pause and silence and therefore compelled to fill it — with more questions, or by turning the conversation back to ourselves.

Reflect on what silence means

Silence becomes easier when we reconsider what silence actually says.

Silence may feel like it signals foreboding, displeasure, or awkwardness. Many people tell me so. I’d counter: it’s not a threat — unless your audience is an oppressor, a narcissist, or some other kind of bully or torturer, in which case, fair enough. Silence can feel ominous indeed.

Provided your audience is safe, silence need not feel like an obligation to fill. It isn’t a definite “no” to whatever you’ve just laid down. And it certainly does not waste time; on the contrary, silence saves time. We solve problems faster and connect better with others when we allow it.

From this angle, silence becomes space — for deeper thinking, for more honest and memorable responses, for a steadier, more even conversation, for better observation of what’s actually going on.

In most conversations, silence invites your courage, calm, and wisdom — if for no other reason than you’re the only one who doesn’t feel compelled to fill the room with utter twaddle.

Record yourself in conversation

I’ve not always been good with pause. My chattiness carries over, like an artifact, from growing up in New Zealand’s wilderness — until my mother’s two subsequent remarriages took us to Asia, where I lived for three years.

A school bus once came through my valley to take the farm kids to the nearest village, Pleasant Point Primary, where I first went to school. Any departure from the land meant social contact beyond my usual audience: my mother, my sister, the fantails, the mice, the bunnies, the sheep. Scarce social time meant I had to interact before we isolated again. Perhaps that novelty never wore off, even long after I moved to cities as huge as Tokyo and San Francisco.

I’m still chatty; but I’m now uber aware of when that’s so, which helps me curb the urge to talk. What cured me most was listening back to recorded coaching calls and my interviews as a reporter. The transcriptions revealed what percentage of the time I spoke, when, and why.

In coaching, you strive for a 70:30 ratio: if the coach speaks more than 30% of the time, they usually rushed and coached the problem more than the person, a cardinal sin in coaching. (In certifying as an MCC coach, even with several extended pauses of 1.5 minutes, my ICF assessors still said I could work more on pauses.)

I’ve seen the calm, joy, and deeper trust that silence brings. I’ve also seen when I don’t leave enough silence, my clients’ ideas stay partial instead of fully born, diluted instead of potent. The conversation splinters off in several directions instead of one steady one. Trust can drop.

Noticing this — without shame, blame, or self-judgment — helped me get comfortable with pause, because I’d absorbed its value in my bones, watching it play out in the people I coach.

Understand why we don’t pause

Reviewing my own recordings, I felt ashamed, then empowered, to pause more and longer. I discovered I talk more when I’m excited to share an idea, when I feel anxious, or when lonely. Sometimes we over talk because we haven’t interacted with anyone in a while. If that’s you, be kind to yourself, but also notice it’s shaping your conversations, and consider finding more company — working from a library or coffee shop for a bit of peripheral social contact.

Through this training, I’ve shifted from speaking 35–40% of a coaching call to as little as 11%. It feels remarkable — for me as a conversationalist, and for the clients I serve.

Read the cues

In my world — coaching and journalism — the opposite of pause is talking over, filling the space, sometimes interruption. Coaches working toward their MCC can cringe hearing themselves interrupt a client on tape. It feels minor to the client, maybe, but to me it always felt like failure.

Even so, conversation guides have shamed us for interrupting for centuries — because its very clunkiness derails the other person’s idea.

You can usually tell when someone isn’t finished. They avert eye contact. Their sentences trail off or lift into upspeak. We see tense body language. Eye contact becomes more direct as the thought lands. We see a body release and then a closing line like: “Well, that’s all I’ve got to say on that.” Noticing these changes helps us pause in conversation.

Aim for presence, reduce distractions

Resist the urge to fix. Trust that listening and asking short questions is your biggest gift. Marvel at what’s being shared, and how — feel honored that someone trusts you enough to share it at all. On a call, mute yourself for discipline. In person, something tactile — rubbing two fingers together, a small anchor — can do the same job.

Try this today

1. Time how long your silence lasts in the next conversation. One to three seconds becomes normal.

2. Ask yourself, without judgment: What made me speak then? What might help me pause a bit longer?

3. Challenge yourself to one one extra second in every conversation. Journal on what you notice.

4. Practice with friends and family first. Ask: “How was your day?” Zip it.

5. Play with warm tone, warm and tender eyes, gentle neutral expressions, and a non-rushed pace to the gentle query, because people tend to share more through signaling safety and slowed-down curiosity this way.

Coming up: I sat down with Dr. Haru Yamada, the author of Kiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening. That conversation comes next.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge, even on pausing a little longer.

The best training ground for ad hoc conversation is not an office, Toastmasters, or a conference hall. It is a Thailand beach — or anywhere you roam solo, far from home, and among strangers.

An impromptu exchange with an elderly Thai fisherman on a stretch of coast in southern Thailand, three decades ago, strengthened my skills as a conversationalist. He had just brought in his catch. I had enough Thai to say “hello.” And only because he smiled and beckoned, I joined him on a bench, in comfortable silence as the sky went magenta, then orange, then a color with no name. I heard sniffles and realized we both cried a little. No language could explain why the view moved us — only a mutual love of nature — and none was needed.

Those 15 minutes felt defining, because I was there alone and felt neither lonely nor apologetic. Accepting that moment came from practice: first as a child travelling in Asia, later as a single backpacker moving through Asia, and then later the US.

This Asia chapter came without a mobile phone, a GPS, or Google Translate — only a willingness to ask for directions, to join, or to ask questions. Losing the pack, (meaning other backpackers like me) and losing the language builds humility and comfort with ambiguity. Once you accept you cannot charm your way through a transaction with cleverness, you’re left with the basics: warmth, attention, trust, and patience. That’s the whole of the skill.

Refining my conversation skills started early with my New Zealand farm childhood, where a trip to the village counted as an event. Practice with strangers came with moving to Asia with my mum and stepdad, then back to New Zealand at eleven for boarding school while she stayed on in Malaysia. That year, flying alone with my older sister to visit her, I counted ten strangers I’d spoken with by the time we landed.

These language and confidence skills are worth relearning now. A curious number of capable people have gone quiet. Some began careers from a bedroom, studied over Zoom, and never picked up the free-flow office chatter that comes with the job.

Layoffs have left colleagues wary of saying anything that might be weaponized against them. Overwork has depleted energy for anything beyond the essential. The result: a lot of bright adults fretting over small talk.

And yet small talk, with strangers and colleagues alike, remains essential for most of us. Parents of young children already sense as much: if they want to see their child enter into a great college, they’d best become a good conversationalist, especially now with admissions asking for video introductions.

Emerging leaders know that the three minutes with leaders before a meeting starts becomes a chance to display confidence and agility — if they have the courage and skills for it. What follows are tips cultivated over years of travel, starting over, and decades as a journalist, where my livelihood depended on getting people to trust me enough to tell me everything.

It starts with a proper hello — delivered warmly not briskly, with eye contact held rather than glanced, and a distraction-free few seconds of actual attention. That last part matters more than people credit: nothing signals disdain faster than a greeting delivered while checking email, phone, or eyeing someone walking by.

From there, small talk extends when it’s specific rather than generic. Asking a remote colleague in New York how the air quality held up after the recent wildfire smoke lands better than an all-purpose “how are you.” See what happens when we ask the question light, open-ended, and a little self-revealing — offering up one’s own experience, say, of months of California haze, rather than merely soliciting the other person’s.

Commonality helps more than fancy words. Two colleagues grumbling about the return-to-office commute have more to work with than two colleagues trying to impress each other. I once bonded with a stranger at the gym over noticing she reads novels on the elliptical, and so do I. We laughed and called each other gym nerds.

Withholding judgment makes these connections possible. When a colleague says she’s delighted to return to the office while you dread it, get curious instead of wincing: “What’s the upside I’m missing?”

If you’re still feeling more fear than excitement about conversing, know that many hesitate with you. Of all the topics my coaching clients raise, connecting with strangers or esteemed audiences comes up most.

Avoid letting your inner Judge tell you otherwise, and avoid letting it exclude you for no good reason. Those born in foreign countries often worry their heritage disqualifies them from connecting at American gatherings. And yet when they share their intrigue with American culture, or their own culture in turn, knowledge passes both ways and connections form. Parents returning from parental leave often fret that colleagues without children will now find them dull — also, probably not true.

One final piece: get comfortable with silence. When we’re getting curious and connecting with others, efforts become dashed if we fill the space with chatter or redirect the sharing back to ourselves.

Asking someone, “What did you like best about your Fourth of July, now on your tenth year in the US, if I remember right?” and then pausing to let them reflect, invites something deeper. I learned this not only from training to become a Master Certified Coach — which resembled a PhD in active listening — but from that shared sunset with the elderly man on the beach in Thailand.

For parents wondering if their shy child will ever become more outgoing: know that your child is watching what you do around strangers. The habit of enjoying and inviting small talk, it seems, is heritable. My elder son, 19 and home from his first year at Harvard, upset a friend who got cross with him for separating from the group at a Milwaukee concert. He wanted to explore, he protested, meet new friends, and connect with old ones. He meant no offence — but he is his mother’s son, and loves good conversation, especially with strangers. I’m glad I’ve passed on this skill, and this love of adventure through people, to both my teen sons.

Small talk is badly named. There is nothing small about sitting with a stranger until the sky changes color, or about passing that instinct on to your children simply by living it in front of them. Talk to the stranger or the leader who seems out of reach. The rest follows.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge, even a bullying boss.

I wrote last month on a terrifying series of conversations with a well-revered British finance executive who hired me part-time as a contract writer and editor. On LinkedIn, where a colleague connected and introduced us, she claimed an “impeccable performance” rescuing banks in turmoil.

In our interviews, she was charming, delightful, and after five interviews and reviews of my writing, she gave me the job to help position the bank’s story well to stakeholders.

As soon as our work began, in every weekly one-on-one, she berated me for the full 45-minutes, hoping it would produce the best work of our careers, treating the two as cause and effect. They were not. In public, to the entire team and any all-hands meeting, she lifted me up, saying my storytelling skills will help redefine the company’s trajectory.

Amidst this shame-based leadership style, the opposite happened: I struggled to do my best work and stay present for my coaching clients outside of this small, but intense contract. I became insomniac and at times, I lost my confidence.

I tried boundaries, self-calming, and self-coaching techniques, and sustained the relationship for half a year before exiting amicably.

In this post, part II of the series, I share what helped me in hopes that professionals who encounter toxicity may feel less stuck. A note to readers: I have changed identifying details. I have not changed the communication tactics, the self-coaching tactics, or the learnings themselves. Part III will draw on research from other experts on managing these moments.

To show up less fearful, two important self-reminders helped: Remember my purpose in the relationship. Know I am safe.

Purpose meant returning to what had started the engagement — writing well on dry numbers and financial topics in ways readers can relate. The client’s CEO praised my writing, which helped restore that view. So did the LinkedIn posts I ghostwrote, which drew strong engagement, and the speeches I wrote for her, which won immense praise.

Safety required preparation. Before each meeting, I sought calm: standing under a tree, listening to the wind, which brought something only pause can bring: Perspective. This was a meeting — just a meeting — not one my older, wiser self would dwell on. I sang the New Zealand national anthem and looked at happy pictures of me and my teen sons.

Readers who, like me, have experienced childhood trauma, will recognize hostility can trigger PTSD symptoms. Accept, know, and prepare for this. I wrote three short sentences by hand in calligraphy before each call: I am loved. I am intelligent. I am safe. I repeated them as I logged on to meet the boss. Fear shifted to calm.

Conversations fail when the imbalance in our minds puts the authority figure above and us below. Re-engineer that picture by simply refusing to go quiet.

Having phrases ready helps. Dr. Ramani Durvasula, the clinical psychologist and author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, offered language I used as complaints about my work grew: “That’s not what happened.” “That’s different to my account.” “That’s an interesting take on the situation/that typo/that missing hyperlink in the first draft.” And then deflect: “Aside from that, how’s your day?” You’re neutralizing vs. bolstering the flame and establishing small boundaries.

Tense meetings with this boss followed a dire, predictable formula: An error she noticed, rage, disappointment, lost trust, terror for future errors destined to ruin her career. “Excellence” kept redefining itself. Venomous monologues invited no input.

To re-center, I mirrored back what I’d heard in ways coaches are trained to do: pick up the words laid down, braid them into a question or summary, ask what’s next. This coaching technique shortened meetings as nothing existed to add to. One error stayed one error. Or, her accusatory questions, when repeated back, sounded ridiculous, which took the wind out of her.

(The mechanics of active listening deserve more than a paragraph; I’ll take them up in a separate post.)

A Stoic question (how does this relate to the work? how does this help our shared goal? how does not yet securing the interview for next week help for tomorrow’s event?) shifts from personal attack to common ground and then action. (Raging wastes our time.) Stay present and use questions to dislodge vs. absorb the anger.

Even as a mental fitness practitioner, coach, and at times on beta blockers, I still felt anxious and at times terrified. When she ramped up, the raging felt all consuming.

Once insomnia and dread set in, I gave myself two more months, with a renewed purpose: to learn to stay present under immense pressure and to share the learnings with others.

My clients inspired this resolve. Many cannot simply leave a toxic boss, however severe. I reasoned if I wanted to be a credible coach, I owed them fresh exposure and lessons on weathering toxicity.

Being a writer with an investigative journalist’s view into where our conversations succeeded (and failed) amidst anger and gaslighting also inspired me and the guide I’m now writing: “Why Conversations Fail.”

I found courage and relief from finding the gift, opportunity, and knowledge in this trying situation, what Shirzad Chamine, my mentor/trainer and author of Positive Intelligence calls “The Sage Perspective.” I moved from victim to a curious anthropologist, observing an intriguing conversation without judgment, which required also practice in presence.

The attacks I weathered began in writing—stabbing insults in a Google doc or Slack—then escalated into speech in remote meetings and calls. My mutiny began in writing too.

The day I quit, I did so first as a comment via our shared Google doc where she’d ridiculed one word (“bleak”) I’d chosen to describe the struggling economy. She demanded to know how and why I could even think of this word in this context. (It was a favorite word, actually, one I’d used often when writing on earnings calls for the Financial Times). I picked it up:

“I’m not sure. But 10 edits to one page of writing tells us all we need to know. Let’s discuss, in our upcoming one-on-one next hour, how I can hand off and leave.”

That single line changed the voyage’s direction entirely. Our last meeting revealed a different woman. She purred, understood, and cared above all about appearances and how I’d explain my exit to the executives I was interviewing and writing on. She asked I say it this way: I was leaving to tend to my coaching business. That was not the whole truth, but fair. Executives I’d already interviewed wished me well. The CEO I’d written on even sent me flowers and a card.

Did I mind not telling the full story? Not really. The person who needed to know, knew. That sufficed and let me exit gracefully, sustain the relationship longer, and on empathy and gratitude rather than trust. I had learned a lot from this time.

My British boss had her own reckonings: fear of failure, exposure of her shortcomings, falling back through unemployment. I also suspected old trauma replayed itself in a genius mind, hijacking and compromising her better instincts.

A line from the late Iranian-French graphic novelist, author, and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi, who died in June, still resonates: “If these people scare you, look closer: They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories.”

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge, even a bullying boss.

Answering ad hoc questions in vague, convoluted ways can kill an interview, torpedo a first date, even start a fight with someone we love, because it frustrates and evades what they asked of us.

Most of us know this — and yet we forget. When the stakes feel high and our inner critics whisper a perfect answer and word choice exists, our performance pressure mounts, and down we tumble, like a rag doll who lost their footing on a hill.

John Sharma knew this about himself. Still, when interviewing for a senior director role at his firm, he answered in stuffy, tangled ways — corporate jargon, confused metaphors, circular ideas landing nowhere. Even the simplest question — What makes you the right fit for this job? — generated five minutes of rambling that truly answered nothing.

When he finally paused, he noticed the hiring manager’s pen was down. Notebook untouched. “Are you done?” she asked. “I am,” Sharma replied. And so was the interview. No solid answers followed, rendering him — to the very mentor who had championed him — a surprisingly useless candidate.

We see this everywhere, (not just in the story I fictionalized to show the pattern.) Politicians lose voter trust with indirect, evasive answers that yield no insight, thought, or substance. (In British English, we call this “twaddle.”)

In friendships and relationships, we fumble the questions that matter most. A vague answer to a lover’s question: Are you committed? tells the asker nothing good. Even teenagers who answer airy-fairy to a parent’s query about a failed exam or a wrecked car invite more punishment than honesty.

In every case, the conversation fails. The connection the question tried to open closes. No volley begins. The ball stays on the court of the wordy and evasive. Worse: the damage compounds. Humans stay dangerously judgmental and long-memoried once a pattern emerges. Answer poorly enough times and people view us as weak in our beliefs and values.

For Sharma, the cost was the promotion, until he turned his communication style around and got the next growth role. Asked what his interviewer/future boss had seen in him, she said: Confidence. Your answers were colorful, memorable, and helpful.

Colorful and memorable. Helpful. We’ve already written about how to ask questions in similar ways, even with context. In this piece — Part II — we’re going further: fresh mindset shifts and frameworks for answering even the hardest question convincingly, memorably, and in two minutes or less.

Reframe what the question is

Feeling less wobbly with a question requires quietening our inner critical mind. Here are three reframes.

Reset the see-saw.

If we succumb to self-doubt, we’ve imbalanced the power between the asker and receiver of the question, placing you at the bottom and they on top.

The asker does not yield all power to which you must succumb. You hold something they need too — the answer. Absorb that, and the volley starts naturally, moving from audition to conversation.

Ensure the ball you received is in.

Resist winging at every ball served, because some lousy serves run off court. My executives tell me wordy, confusing, vague, or weaponizing questions yield wordy, vague, frightened answers. Asking one clarifying question continues the volley, buys you time to think, understand, and signals you value the conversation enough to do so. (Weaponized questions deserve their own playbook — more on that soon.)

Resist stuffing too much in.

A good volley yields multiple questions, not just one. Answer just enough to sustain interest knowing more opportunities will come to expand.

Structure to stay crisp, clear, and memorable

Wordiness seems to tangle up executives the most with a question and answer volley, especially when the question itself invites broad terrain to cover and a want for specifics. Try these formats.

The Nano. Short answer, long answer

In meetings, an update request on a project launch can yield tangled descriptions of obstacles and mishaps, losing our annoyed audience. (They want to know: Are we moving or stalled? That’s it.) So, answer directly first.

The paragraph structure: Your deja-vu from high school English

Our high school teachers had it right with this structure, which works surprisingly well and neatly for polished, crisp answers.

Topic sentence: This is my main idea

Supporting key ideas: three or so supporting ideas, distinctive from one another, and showing a good range

So what: A sentence or two summarizing, reflecting, and moving the conversation forward

PREP: Your pressure-proof formula

When the question arrives fast and the room is watching, PREP (which stems from Toastmasters) keeps you from unraveling.

Point — lead with your answer, one sentence
Reason — one sentence on why
Example — a quick, concrete illustration
Point — land back on your original answer, with slightly more conviction

With this and all the frameworks, you can adjust the tone depending on your communication style. (Bravado for those impressed by such things. Humility for those who are not.) Also, two small, easy lessons from Harvard students (excellent conversationalists all around) and lovable executives I’ve coached:

Resist corporate twaddle, because it sounds awful and confuses. Say the asker’s name as they answer to signal respect, intimacy, and leadership presence.

Great answers, just like great questions, don’t come out great through the words and structure alone. We can learn a few things from journalists, lawyers, even professors, who field questions all day.

Look closely and you’ll see crossovers: Pausing and signaling even that you’re taking a moment to think. Measuring your pacing vs. rushing along like a racehorse to the end of the track.

We want to keep the tone consistent to our values. Performing a foreign or culturally-misaligned confidence style will seem borrowed; and the answer sound veneer. Rooms that reward swagger will require more bravado than people who are impressed more by grounded, thoughtful answers.

Which leads to the final, often unnoticed secret quality, all bearers of great answers possess in every room: Deep trust in themselves, and inner detachment from the outcome. Like a wise fisher person casts their fishing line out into the water, they trust that the first cast is good. They wait. And see what comes back.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge.

Reader note: Pseudonym and combined situations of clients’ stories has helped me write on a well-shared communication struggle without breaking confidentiality.

Jin Park was the golden child of Silicon Valley royalty: technically brilliant, architect of the firm’s most lucrative platforms, and fast-tracked for a senior directorship. But during a high-stakes meeting of corporate titans, the trajectory went awry.

Attempting to assert his point of view, Park launched into a rambling, context-heavy monologue, a verbal avalanche of every concern on his mind.

By the time he finally posed his big question, the room started to move on. When he protested he hadn’t been answered, a senior executive offered a brutal truth: “What was your question? I have absolutely no idea.”

The silence lasted a few polite moments, and then the room moved on to the next idea, this one executed with more precision and gusto, Park (alas) demoted to a footnote.

Brilliant introverts, technicians, and financiers are disproportionately prone to Park's problem. The software he had built generated billions in extra revenue. His executives knew, but soon forgot from the over-contextualized ramble he consistently offered them.

His logic: “I had a question. I didn’t know what exactly. I hoped that by clearing, I’d get there.”

And he did. Eventually. After losing his audience though, which happens daily for many of us, at work and at home.

The fix comes through three simple things: a framework, a mindset shift, and a clearer sense of one’s role—and what our audience wants. This post is the first of two parts. I’m beginning with the strategic question itself, and then moving to the strategic answer.

Part 1: How to ask a fantastic question

A well-crafted question is short, unambiguous, and opens the door versus closes it. A question (done well) can rescue a failing project, halt a rushed decision, or land a candidate the job.

More than a few of the leaders and executives I’ve coached report that the questions they bring to interviews matter as much as the answers they give.

A good question must signal the ability to synthesize, read the room, and resist the urge to over share, like an unleashed puppy in the woods.

Rules and a framework

A few simple rules I’ve seen can really help.

State the question first. Context follows — briefly.

Why Y over X? X constituted 50% of last year’s profits. Y… only 30%.

Apply a structure.

A three-prong structure delivers a thoughtful, pointed question in under 30 seconds, and includes small context.

• Question. Under ten words. No jargon.

• Context. One sentence on whatever thought prompted it.

• Stakes. One sentence on what goes wrong if this query goes unanswered.

A few ways to further sharpen your questions:

Bring data — without it, dissent sounds like posturing or noise more than genuine curiosity or concern. Challenge an assumption by using the speaker’s very own language: pick up the exact phrase, repeat it, then interrogate it. For instance, "The goal's to get them to say yes." A beat, then: "Is the only goal to hear that yes?"

And keep it to three sentences. If more is needed, the room will ask.

One further technique consultants like to employ is underused in everyday healthy debate and at work: the declarative opening. “I’m not fully convinced...” or “I’m questioning this figure...” or “that doesn’t sound quite right to me” plants a flag without requiring an apology for doing so. State the dissent, tell us why (within a whisker) and either offer to check it or trust that drawing our attention to what we see suffices. Stop there.

The Delivery

With effective questions, the ones that deepen the conversation and get the room to think differently, the words are only part of it. Watch skilled attorneys and veteran journalists or commentators (people whose livelihoods depend on the question) and we find patterns.

These skilled bearers of questions pause after asking, knowing silence becomes purposeful vs. awkward and that any pause beyond four seconds in conversation becomes memorable. Pause after a question also helps bring something helpful and rare: space for the room to ponder.

They stay curious more than combative. A perfectly worded question, delivered with condescension and dripping with judgment, kills any conversation we hoped to open.

And they let their body signal calm through steady eye contact, neutral or gentle expression, and open posture. They don’t perform. They question in service of the connection, work, and audience.

The framework and approaches above will not guarantee the perfect question nor rescue a conversation, relationship, or a career. But it will get the room to hear it.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained journalist who became a communications coach for foreign-born leaders at Fortune 500s and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge.

A few years ago, amidst COVID and a brisk coaching business, a revered British, London-based finance leader approached me via LinkedIn to help “tell the story” of her banking client amidst a major comeback.

A colleague referred us. Her profile read confidently. She mentioned “impeccable performance” and a track record of generating gangbuster profits nobody could poke a stick at.

In our first call, I found her creative, bold, and fearless. Intoxicated by her strong energy I accepted her offer to join her team, writing and editing like an Economist correspondent on the bank’s wins, people, and philanthropy. She also hired me to train her to write better; less stuffy corporate speak, more delightful prose. The 10-hour weekly contract would be remote, US $150 an hour, and a creative, meaningful contract alongside my coaching of 30 executives a week.

The wind and mood changed. In our first one-on-one, she tore me apart, which felt like an ambush in the woods. Diatribe replaced our earlier joyous brainstorms. When I submitted writing — written in the exact ways she had earlier admired, and ways I’d taught her and that she liked, insults reigned. She invited no defense. I was a punching bag for her rage and indignation.

The ambushes continued for six months. In group meetings, she hailed me as a leading writer who had lifted her own prose to stardom. In private, she dismantled me.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, the clinical psychologist and author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People, calls this pattern “love-bombing” and “sandbagging.” The labels fit precisely. When she praised me, my confidence soared. When she sandbagged, I imploded. In a thirty-minute meeting, I might speak five sentences.

Within a week, I became anxious, overthinking, insomniac. I recognized PTSD and reached into my medicine cabinet for beta-blockers — a prescription I’d not touched for five years. Two small pills an hour before our calls, washed down with cool Wisconsin well water, blocked the fight-or-flight and steadied me.

I knew why I needed those pills. The situation dredged up girlhood memories: a ranting, misogynistic stepfather; a volatile father who raged over trivialities — a kitchen cupboard left open, a university course in women’s studies, which he held responsible for civilizational decline. In this Zoom room, I felt trapped, but by a surprising oppressor.

My inner confusing logic was conflicted: This is wrong. I’ve done nothing to warrant it. Her rage is separate from me. And then: This contract’s an exciting win, great on my CV. I must stay. Stay neutral to subdue her.

That conviction (I needed this contract) — one my Inner Judge insisted was true — was not. When we feel fear of harm, falling back, damage to our reputation or disappointing others, our Inner Judge misassumes a lot about ourselves, the other person, and the entire situation. The contract was at an exciting, prominent place; but I did not need to destroy my mental health.

I also felt shame. A brain wired to see the good in people and my boundless hope and optimism blinded me. The anger had always been there. Even in our first get-to-know-each other meetings, she’d ranted with rage. A lighthearted sharing amidst those early conversations once shifted without warning; when I shared I deliberately set up my business not to overwork, she judged. “There’s only one way forward and it’s work!” she spat. I let the moment go; but remembered it, even if I didn’t trust it.

And I felt guilt. Fear of scorn kept me from asking questions. Errors crept into my writing, which grew meek vs. opinionated and strong as I absorbed the endless critique. So, a whole range of emotions hijacked my mind.

In the end, my body decided. Fatigue and dread bled into my coaching work. When she texted or Slacked mid-session, I lost focus wondering what she wanted. Even after disabling notifications, the next encounter induced dread and panic. Waking early, she was always the first thought.

Annie Duke, in Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, reminds us that successful people leave unmanageable situations all the time — turning back from summits and walking out of unworkable relationships at work and home. I found comfort in that. I also found, unexpectedly, that my empathy grew. Underneath the anger and control, I could see the finance genius: frightened, over her head, obsessed with her own risk of failure.

In the next instalment, I’ll share the communication tactics that helped me stay steady, speak my truth, and even restore acquaintance. Experts will weigh in on what is actually happening in those moments. This story, — with details altered for privacy — sets the scene. I hope it offers something to the many professionals who report high stress from combative communicators, and who, like me, took a while to know when to walk away.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge or the story you really want to write.

When you live abroad and say you’re from New Zealand to a new friend or curious stranger, a peculiar consistent thread appears in their response: Incredulousness that you’d want to leave. Judgment you’ve not returned, beyond visits.

Why depart from a South Pacific island nation with stunning landscapes, gentle people, and clean air, soil, and food? (They wonder.)

All true traits; yet the New Zealand I encountered did not feel like home.

My girlhood thoughts about New Zealand resembled the boyhood thoughts of the iconic Arnold Schwarzenegger when growing up in rural Austria. (And I may have his exact words wrong here): “The land is so beautiful; but it won’t hold me forever. I’m moving away to America.”

Though not famous (yet) nor a billionaire, I had the same exact feeling when rambling over the hills and through the woods of my South Canterbury, New Zealand youth. “I love this land.” I would hear. “But I will move far away, for a life more extraordinary.” I did not know what that life would be, but I knew anything super coming my way was contingent upon my leaving.

I’m not surprised I left New Zealand a few months shy of my 21st birthday, on a one-way ticket to Tokyo, Japan where I worked and lived for four years with small time in Singapore. Student poverty from my self-funded studies at Canterbury University convinced me (at the time) a round trip ticket was wasteful, $800 more expensive, and prosaic, and non-adventurous. (Figure out the departure once you’ve been there a while. Why over plan?)

My one-way ticket also felt symbolic for me to show vs. tell others I needed emotionally fortifying distance from: This is it. I’m out of here. I’ll come back for visits; otherwise, I’m, done.

I’ve navigated these retorts for almost 40 years now, less from Americans, but sometimes from Americans, and definitely from other cultures, especially overly traditional ones (and from men and women.) My answer to the latter (will I go back to live there) is “perhaps; but not likely.”

My truth (which I think vs. say to them) is: I’m ambitious and determined, terrified of mediocrity, or with living with regret. I’m also in awe of my family and relatively close to them; but both parents raised me to feel independent from them. I became super self sufficient from a young age and did not define myself (therefore) by the traditional roles of daughter. Their non-traditional parenting liberated me from that perspective and role.

Meanwhile, incuriosity from people with these judge-y-sounding, leading questions destroys any potentially “real” conversation. Nobody (or few) ask: What happened in New Zealand for me to leave? What was my girlhood like? The culture like? The economy? And why Asia vs. the UK, like most Kiwis, who receive work visas through the Commonwealth? Big chunks of my girlhood, some of which happened in Asia, not New Zealand, guided and trained me for much of what came next.

Because my mother re-married (twice), her marriages took me abroad with her to Brunei; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. ( I never lived in Malaysia but visited there often when at boarding school in New Zealand from aged 11. This experience, I’ll write on more, built on that earlier independence I spoke to. Nothing instills independence more than 8,209 miles separation from your mother at age 10-11 for three months at a time and unable to call her.)

Even when we lived together in Asia, I was largely independent and unattended, which brought immense creative freedom for creative problem solving and adventuring, all fueling my later solo ambitions and travels. I attended international schools with all international friends and was often the only white girl in several neighborhoods where I lived, which built a deep confidence with being the “only” one like me around. (From a personal brand perspective, I kind of liked it.)

That my mothers subsequent marriages were both to British men also invited in me an international, non-provincial perspective. As did the friendships I made at this time. At an American-run International School of Islamabad in Pakistan, I was exposed to an expatriate community of foreign children and parents from almost every single nation. Wherever I lived, I seemed to attract friendships with the daughters of ambassadors and diplomats whose mothers picked me as the chosen “main friend.”

On UNICEF day at the International School of Islamabad, we all piled into the auditorium with flags representing every single nation hanging from the walls. When the school principal called the name of each nation, children representing that land had to stand up. This was profoundly memorable for me—and immensely patriotic. When the man in the suit said “New Zealand” only my older sister and I stood up. I felt small, but then significant, and truly part of a global community.

This feeling fueled those earlier girlhood feelings of knowing and feeling I’d become part of something far bigger and far away. I felt this way especially at the top of a hill I’d climbed on our farm so I could look far out and over the valley. On UNICEF Day, in that school auditorium in Islamabad, everything felt intertwined and connected, like a tapestry I’d woven for an Afghanistan market.

The month of May closed yesterday here in the U.S.

I don’t know the exact day I arrived in the U.S. (by way of Tokyo) because I lost that passport. (Alas.) I know it occurred in May though because my first Green Card (which I never lost) tells me so, which makes last month my 30th year in the U.S.

I was aged 26 in May 1996 when I arrived in San Francisco with $10,000 US saved across three different jobs in my last year in Tokyo. My backpack I’d bought from an open-air market in Seoul, Korea had traveled with me through Thailand many times. To the U.S., I packed it with a few contents: books, clothes, my camera, negative files from my photography, and a small book of photography which I had collated at age 20 and packed in a first backpack when I left New Zealand for Japan. (I’ve documented my surroundings since my very first Kodak camera I received at age 9.)

You’ll hear from me often this year as I reflect on my 30th year in the U.S. and why I’m still in love with this nation I immediately called home. (The U.S. is the only country I’ve ever lived where I feel truly comfortable, unapologetic for my bold ideas, and able to fulfill my dreams and ambitions, which seem to intensify as I age.)

You’ll hear more of the friends who helped my survival here as a new immigrant, including my friends Kurt and his kind mother Dee Schumacher, who I essayed on here. Without them, I’d have not stayed long at all. I’m building out an essay collection I’ll publish, including essays I’ve seen published in Newsweek, the FT of London, the Japan Times, and Tokyo Journal, and in hopes only to document “her story” and inspire adventuring in others (and more in me, too.)

I began this essay with a promise to share what parts of me as a New Zealander have remained, which I’ve spoken of subtly throughout. I’ll stipulate them more now.

A love and curiosity for adventure and travel. New Zealanders are travelers and adventurers. New Zealand’s famously disgusting sandwich spread “Vegemite” integrated adventuring into their TV campaigns, insisting the vitamin B spread would fuel that energy. In the same way Americans map out their careers, Kiwis map out their travels, our OE’s (“overseas experiences”) which open doors for us and take us places, literally.

Defiance and ambition. It took spunk for me to leave to Japan; but I was one of tens of thousands of departing Kiwis escaping unemployment and a failing economy that year. I have New Zealand to thank for this feeling and lesson which has remained deep in my bones and helped me move often with my husband and sons within the U.S. for our careers and ambitions when local options oppress and limit us.

An international vs. insular mindset. We’re a small nation (3.8 million when I left at age 20 and now 5.5 million today). But we’re deeply dependent on the rest of the world and its tourism. We export much abroad, and with that, we feel informed of how nations must work well together to survive. 80% of my coaching clients I attract are foreign-born. My travels to Asia and being a New Zealander who welcomes outsiders so eagerly helps me find similarities in them vs. focusing on differences.

Casualness and humility. I’m confidently aware of my strengths; but you’d have to work hard for evidence of arrogance. This balance comes from New Zealand, an egalitarian country which coined the term “Tall Poppy syndrome” a mindset that shows and feels disdain for those who show off or talk endlessly about themselves, their successes, and accolades. Bragging does not go down well in NZ. In fact, few talk about successes or work at all. I’ve worked hard to retain some of this, without feeling confined.

Love for nature, the environment, and space. New Zealand gave me a love for open nature, which guided big decisions to move for opportunities in lesser populated states, like North Carolina, and now Wisconsin. My teen sons loved growing up with land to roam in, and found confidence from the independence. We’ve prospered and flourished from the lower cost of living.

Adamance for fresh, clean food. Marrying my husband (from Cajun country, Louisiana) reinforced my stubbornness with fresh, made-from-scratch baking and food. 30 years on, I still make my vinaigrettes, baking, and marinades from scratch vs. super processed food. I’m grateful I grew up in a country where these things did not proliferate. My sons learned to cook the same.

Frugality (or resourcefulness, sometimes both) New Zealand, like the U.S. , is full of pockets of isolated communities miles from a nearby store. This experience taught us to live with less, get resourceful, and be creative; life traits which allowed me to support myself as a single woman in famously expensive countries, including Tokyo, which at the time I lived there (from 1990) was the world’s most expensive city.

His quote helps me see: I’ve loved New Zealand from afar in ways I loved it as a girl. When I return to visit, the nature induces tears of joy. The people charm me. The food’s premium and delicious.

I do feel restless there though, in ways I’m not yet able to define and where writing more will help. This land where I’ve made home for 30 years is the one where I feel the least restless; and I connect that with a feeling I felt in San Francisco, right at the cusp of the dot-com boom 30 years ago: That anything feels possible. I feel just as charmed today as I did at age 26. A sign of a good marriage, I guess. Long may the feeling continue.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge or the essay you really want to write.

“The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.” —Stephen Fry, Writer and Actor

I align with Stephen’s sentiment here. Without genuine curiosity, conversations fail fast. Often used in passive aggressive ways to control, an absence of questions and interest can signal…well, disinterest and also indifference, ambivalence, even neglect and cruelty.

Passive listening hurts, distances, and feels different to distracted listening, which signals to the receiver you’re distracted, tasking, or deeply thinking, untangling from a tense moment or from our day. We write on this way of conversing and listening here.

What is Passive Listening?

Passive listening is low-engagement listening. The listener hears the words but contributes little responsive presence, curiosity, clarification, or acknowledgment. This in turn can signal a lack of interest and no want to learn nor hear more.

When we combine passive listening and incuriosity with power silence, we’ve the perfect recipe and conditions for conversational paralysis.

When I think of relationships where I feel most cautious, guarded, and selective with what I share, the conversationalist listens passively or brings the conversation back to themselves, and rarely asks questions on whatever I’ve laid down.

The incuriosity Stephen speaks to in his memoir, the Fry Collection, essentially keeps our friendships surface, even if that’s not their hope nor intent. Do I judge incuriosity? Perhaps a little, with an intent to bring us closer and make our conversations more efficient.

How Passive Listening can kill conversations

Passive listening often prevents the ball from going over the net in a tennis volley, because the receiver can feel neglected, unheard, and recoil. Psychologists find four main neuroscientific responses including:

• Social Pain Activation: The brain processes social rejection and emotional dismissal in the same regions as we do physical pain. We feel hurt beyond disappointment, which can create a flight-or-fight response.

• Loss of Validation: When our enthusiasm isn’t reciprocated, we question our own experiences, even feel silly for caring more than our receiver does about the topic.

• Burdensomeness: When not heard, we internalize their apathy and wonder if we did wrong to annoy them with our frivolous concerns or wants, which can lower self-esteem.

• Defensive Withdrawal: With the conversation failing and our vulnerability growing, we protect ourselves through quick pivots, like changing the subject or entirely shutting the conversation down.

Examples of passive listening in everyday conversation:

Person A: “I’ve been overwhelmed lately trying to manage everything.”

Person B: “Mm.” (The listener technically hears; but refuses to engage with the emotional content.)

Employee: “I suspect clients feel confused by our onboarding process.”

Manager: “Okay.” (The manager moves to the next item, not exploring, clarifying, nor responding to the direct report’s concern.)

Friend A: “Since moving here, I’ve felt nothing but overwhelm and loneliness.”

Friend B: “Yeah, transitions are hard.” (The generic response dismisses the speaker’s experience, invites no details and offers no solace.)

Partner A: “I feel like we barely talk anymore.”

Partner B: Nods silently. (No engagement for constructive conversation.)

Teen: “I don’t think engineering is what I want anymore.”

Parent: Cold silence. (The silence communicates disappointment, judgment or withdrawal.)

Employee: “Reading the feedback I’m not seen as “leadership-ready” surprised me.”

Manager: Long pause. “I’ve nothing further to say.” (With no conversation, we create emotional and informational vacuum.)

What’s the relationship cost of Passive Listening?

Passive listening can create rifts, misunderstandings, resentment, hurt, and obstruct personal, deeper conversations. With that, our relationships suffer and become distanced. Employees I’ve coached have left a job or team because their boss responded passively and with power silence to a vulnerable request for insights into promotions or for other vital help.

How to remedy passive listening?

To counter passive listening and the confusing conversations which ensue, we can reduce distractions, especially tech, which we wrote about here. We can empty our mind and prepare our mind to listen better, which we explore here. Also, we can:

Communicate the passiveness to reduce the risk of confusion, misjudgment, or upset. E.G. “I’m choosing silence because I’m stumped.” Or, “I genuinely don’t know what to say. I’m shocked.” Or, “I want to discuss your promotion; but the landscape’s so murky, I must stay mute. Can we regroup a month from now?”

Express our shortcomings. E.G. “I want to show excitement here, but I’m so awkward with celebrating. Know I’m happy for you, even if I don’t show it.”

Ask 1-2 questions. Meet incuriosity with curiosity. If a granddaughter shares her new bonus she received from her employer, offer “that’s wonderful” and ask her what helped her earn the extra? What did the bosses see?

Know that a little goes a long way. Often passive listeners worry that it would take long to explore a topic before them. Often, a simple retort suffices. “I’m sorry you’re lonely and overwhelmed. Know I’m here for you and you can navigate this.”

Like any cumbersome conversation pattern, self reflection on our passive listening can also help. Sometimes conversations fail because we’re too afraid to reveal our own ignorance, in which case, listening passively becomes safer than revealing we don’t understand the request or know what to do.

Also, resist assuming. A recent failed conversation with my dear husband triumphed after a minimal passive response to something exciting I shared. He responded: “good” which felt hurtful, given the short, colorful story.

Later, through curiosity, I found he was exhausted from a giant work fiasco and beyond capacity to listen or converse. Now I regret my cross journal entry about him that night. And yet now (through this failed conversation) I can notice more when and if he’s hurtfully passive. And ask: “Is this a bad time to briefly share something cool that happened?” Rarely is any failed conversation truly wasted.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge, including passive listening and power silence.

Working mothers (and dads at times) often ask me this when they see me with creative pursuits. The real question underneath: how do we not let motherhood and work obstruct our joy — whether that’s drawing, writing, or wispy moments in nature?

The truth? I don’t get to my art every day, but I try. I squeeze in a sketch or rock painting once I’ve packed the kitchen away — showered and swathed in my Japanese kimono robe, purple and black with cranes. With the space primed, I paint quietly and sip lavender and chamomile tea from Egyptian and Parisian flowers and buds.

Painting for even 15 minutes melts away my day. I focus on the colours and the design: an abstract botanical, butterfly, or portrait. Once done, I let it sit overnight. The next evening, I lacquer it with varnish — ten coats, one a day — until it’s done. Then I marvel that I made something so shiny and pretty, placing it by my bedside so it’s the last thing I see when I fall asleep and the first when I rise.

Creativity as a tool to navigate change

Pregnancy and early motherhood made me more potently creative — bizarre, given life became far more chaotic, manic, and wild. If you’ve had a baby, or helped care for one, or even a new puppy or pet, you’ll know the all-hands-on-deck feeling: something so frail, delicate, and sweet needs you for everything. Food. Water. Shelter. Love. Bathing. Air. Life. (Then I had the second. So all of this, times two.)

Once through the first weeks, I wanted my art and writing back — to stabilize.

I came to motherhood “late.” I married at 36 under a Pohutukawa tree in New Zealand, had Nicholas at 37 and Jackson at 39. My early quest for art emerged through twilight walks in Arizona with my American husband, Colby — gathering desert wildflowers on our trails, tucking them under the babies in the stroller. At home, I’d restore them in a glass of water on my kitchen windowsill. The botanicals called to me like a dear friend from my youth.

Come paint me. Screw the housework. Settle the sweet bebe. You earned this. Your sons want you to stay creative.

I believe this — then and now. Creativity hit hard in both pregnancies. I painted acrylics for both infant rooms — not exceptional, but Debbi originals — talking to my babies in the womb as I worked, telling them what I was creating, asking whether they liked the palette. I heard them say they were excited. That they couldn’t wait to see what I’d made.

In my second trimesters, I sketched ingredients and built self-published recipe books to gift my sons — wanting them to know what I savored while carrying them. Steaks with Jamie Oliver marinades, mango smoothies with fresh citrus from our garden.

I documented both pregnancies through photography too — I’d been a journalist with the Economist and trained in digital print media and street photography at UC Berkeley. I knew to get down low and close. To let the light tell the story.

From our Arizona base: twelve South American jungle hens, a chicken coop, a wild vegetable garden fueled by chicken poop and 45-degree sun. Our okra, planted to honor my husband’s Cajun Louisiana heritage, grew so enormous it bashed through the vegetable patch roof, like a triffid.

I built documentary books chronicling the big day — preparing for our sons like the Messiah or the Queen of England coming to our home. One must tell the story, out of respect, history, and her-story.

And then I wrote, as a writer must, amidst the biggest reinvention of my life: moving from non-mother to mother.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a chat about your biggest communications challenge, even defending others’ judgment in a conversation that failed.

“The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.” —Mark Twain

Mark Twain once said the happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest human gifts, and its happy delivery rarer still. He was reportedly reflecting on a meeting with the Emperor of Germany, who praised his books.

The unease Twain hinted at is still with us: Studies tell us around 70% of Americans struggle to receive a compliment. The number is likely higher in more reserved cultures placing a premium on humility, especially Europe, New Zealand, Australia, and throughout Asia, especially China.

As a communications coach, I find this fascinating and a little sad. When and how did humanity lose its way to feel so anxious to receive the kind, observant words from another?

I coach bright, accomplished leaders who visibly recoil at a compliment—on their English, their appearance, their work—even from people they trust, even from their own mother. When 360 feedback tells them they're bad at praising others, they simply agree.

The cognitive tangle

Neuroscience offers some explanations. People with low self-esteem experience praise as a direct contradiction of their self-image, and the mind resolves that conflict by rejecting the compliment. Imposter syndrome makes the praise feel unearned.

Cognitive dissonance makes it feel suspect—the brain concludes the words must be false rather than update its self-view. Self-verification theory pushes further: we want others to confirm what we already believe about ourselves, even when that belief is negative, so a compliment that contradicts it feels wrong, even threatening.

In coaching, I see this show up as recognizable patterns. Our struggles with compliments all tie to Saboteur interference with our lovely mind.

The hyper-rational mind finds compliments pointless—you’re paid to do good work, so why state the obvious? The hyper-achiever mind hears praise as a threat to ambition, a signal to stop pushing. The perfectionist mind, the Stickler, waves it off because something better exists, or hasn’t been reached yet.

And for many, it’s cultural: clients from post-Communist countries recall grandparents warning that visible success invited suspicion, even danger, which stimulates the hyper-vigilant mind, which (when paired with our inner Judge) can assume risk that simply isn’t there.

Clients from India and elsewhere in Asia describe something related but distinct: a fear that boasting, or even accepting praise too readily, reads as sacrilegious—a violation of humility as a near-spiritual value, not just a social one.

One Indian executive, a pharma leader, described visiting temples back home where visitors clean each other's shoes—a practice meant to equalize everyone present, regardless of status or wealth. Praise, in that context, can feel like its opposite: a claim to being above the group rather than within it.

This video by Brain Academy explains the neuroscience behind compliments.

Receiving better

A few honest questions can help: What did you learn growing up about praise? When did you last receive a compliment gracefully? When did you last give one, and how did that feel?

From there, the shift is less about technique and more about tolerance—noticing the discomfort without judging it, and resisting the urge to deflect. A simple “thank you,” followed by a pause instead of a rebuttal, does more to retrain the reflex than any clever reframe. Try new phrases: “I receive that.” “Thank you, I like it too.” And remember that rejecting a compliment rejects the other person’s judgment, too—their read on what’s admirable or well done. Said with real intent, that’s not a small thing to wave away.

It also helps to practice appreciation privately: noticing, in a journal or a quiet moment, what’s already right, without needing to change anything. I call this “pause to applause.” Sit with it. Notice what comes up—it’s often more than expected

Giving better

Giving compliments builds the same muscle as receiving them, and helps someone else’s day besides. If it feels awkward with people you know, start with strangers, as I outlined in this essay.

A few things separate a compliment that lands from one that doesn’t.

Specificity matters more than sentiment—”the scarf’s stunning, and the green matches your eyes” says more than “nice scarf.” Brevity works in its favor; a sentence or two is usually enough, though you can go further if someone’s clearly delighted. Naming impact deepens it—telling someone how their example changed your own behavior does more than admiration alone.

And curiosity often beats a flat statement: asking how someone managed a hard moment gracefully shows more attention than simply praising the outcome. If someone visibly recoils, it’s worth naming that gently—asking how they’re feeling, or clarifying your intent, rather than letting the moment sit awkwardly.

Need some help?

I’m an Economist-trained former reporter who became a communications coach for Fortune 500 foreign-born leaders and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a chat about your biggest communications challenge, even receiving and giving compliments.

The Harvard Mum essay project is my documentary essay series on immigrant motherhood, immigrant dreams, leadership, and all the deep lessons on staying calm and present as my oldest son joins the Harvard University class of 2029 this fall. He’s one of 3% to gain admittance and a rare Wisconsinite.

[Note to readers: My son requested that I write the Harvard Mum essay project as a mother, coach, and as a journalist to document our history and to inspire others to pursue their dreams.]

The actress got me thinking with this quote as I ponder on this chapter with my Harvard son, his second semester of his first year studies ending in May.

He’ll return to his Wisconsin home to remote, part-time financial analyst work, re-create his landscaping business, and reconnect with us, our dachshund, and the Wisconsin land. He looks forward most to the first morning walk with the puppy when the day is new for them both.

“We experience that together. And we see Wisconsin around us: Beautiful.”

Contagious positivity

Since winter break, so much has changed, with us both—and our relationship.

At home, I still miss his absence. Small visual prompts, like his bedroom restored, neat, but unchanged since his last sleep here flutters my tummy, but with no tears. The yearnings feel far less frequent and potent.

My first-born son leads the way: content and happy and fully adjusted to a life 13,000 miles away. His happiness, which we hear about often, has a contagion effect on my own.

He’s much to feel happy about. Spring semester has far less strenuous responsibilities compared with the manic 60+ hour weeks of the fall.

Early (5 a.m. wake) weight lifting is 90 minutes. His studies progress, and with some earned ‘A’ papers and a high GPA, which amazes and invigorates him.

He calls or connects daily; to hear our voices and without homesickness nor despair. He shares highlights and exciting guest speakers and random happenings on campus. He asks to see the puppy (Megatron, our Dachshund) and sounds content.

Extended family

That’s because his Harvard friends became his extended family, especially his football brothers. They practice, lift, play ball; study, eat, party, and vacation together, even to a friend’s home and the Bahamas over spring break.

He’s forged business connections, even at aged nineteen. Nicholas and those same six friends started a consulting business, Next Tier Athletes, helping recruit and support high school athletes with aspirations to enter an Ivy League university, through their sport. They have clients and aspirations and motivation to build it further.

This same tight group has become the “block” with whom he will live in a different student house for the remaining three years at Harvard. Finding that group to “block with” becomes competitive and awkward. Students can assume wrongly they’re in a group, and then find they’re not.

Deep connections, trust, and real conversation ensure your place in a block, not wealth or prestige of one’s parents. (A surprise to us both.) Nicholas’ block emerged from the same connected friends he turned to when his whole world turned upside down from moving far away from all he’d known. The shared burden and adversity united them.

Ambitious thinkers

Harvard’s exposure to bright, ambitious people with open minds and courage changes how you think about yourself and what’s possible, and in ways staying local cannot.

Economics students like Nicholas meet famous experts in their economics classes, like Jerome Powell, the 16th chair of the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke, the 14th chairman of the Federal Reserve. Q&As with consultants and analysts at the top finance houses fuel his ambitions, making him think bigger, brighter, and clearer on what he wants and what’s possible. His network grows through LinkedIn outreach and friends, many with super successful parents.

My business network has also extended this semester to my son. (A former MBA student and coaching client I’ve befriended connected with Nicholas and hired him as a research analyst.) Air Force clients, when visiting Boston, asked to meet Nicholas, to support him and learn how their teen, with Harvard aspirations, might also enter the world’s most famous institution.

Nicholas and I’ve grown closer. He sees the value in having me (a reinventress across multiple continents and industries) as his mum, which feels affirming and wonderful. Nothing feels broken, even the downturns in my careers, and he’s seen many.

And now my coaching business, Hanging Rock, has resurged after a very slow 2025, a 60% drop in business, I’m now close to capacity. Life (and our work) treats us both well. We’re rising together.

“Mum” to friend

I get to see my son stay resilient and self sufficient and adventure in ways I did in my youth. At age 20, I left New Zealand on a one-way ticket to Tokyo, Japan, and solo.

At age 18, Nicholas moved 13,000 miles away and from a Mid Western state with corn and soy fields around our neighborhood to an urban Cambridge, Massachusetts. He went from never sharing a room (nor needing to) to living in a dormitory with other dudes.

He no longer drives his truck. He must scooter across campus or subway. He took a night bus from Boston to New York to visit a friend. I see our shared love for change, resilience, and love for learning through our ambitions, travels, and people we meet.

A phone call

How are you, son?

Awesome, Mum. And you?

Awesome, too.

Clicks of his scooter on the cobblestone [as background noise for context)

What’s going on with Nicholas?

Heading back to my dorm. Just out of a two-hour lecture. Getting ready for my nap.

Fantastic. What did you learn?

Nothing super riveting, at least not today.

Pause. Comfortable pause.

Mum. You’ll never guess what happened last night.

What?

The dudes and I were walking to our dorms when some random guys with masks entered the courtyard from the street, and started chasing us.

Huh. What happened next?

It was hilarious. They were high, I guess, yelling at us. So we just ran. And ran. And because we’re fast, we out ran them. It was hilarious.

[My internal thoughts: My son could have gotten murdered.]

My words: Fit footballers can out run anyone.

Right?! [Laughter]. It was hilarious. Anyway, Mums. I’m back at the dorm. I’m going to nap now.

Fantastic. Enjoy that nap son.

Thanks Mum. Love you.

Love you too, son.

In my wallpapered study at the top of the house, between coaching calls, I often wonder how Nicholas starts his day. Is he done with lifting? Did he wake with ease? Was the cafeteria breakfast tolerable? Did he miss our coffee machine?

I feel guilty and indulgent having space when his dormitory limits privacy, has no bathroom, nor any running water at all. There’s no sink.

By mid-morning, I hear from him, without me asking. (Hoorah!) He shares to our family thread: lifting went well, he’s out of class, and where’s a video or pic of the puppy?

When I text later I’m walking the puppy, he calls pronto. The exultant joy that comes over you when your son calls from afar (and because he wants “to hear my voice”) is amazing. Five minutes, deeply connected, I feel wealth that is not material.

I’m learning, in this chapter of the Harvard Mum essay project, that effective communications with our grown children, especially once they move away for their dreams and ambitions, requires communications strategy. We have rhetorical decisions to make: whether we want to feel “let in” or not; whether we want to induce guilt that they must dutifully check in, given we’re investing $80,000 a year for this fabulous experience; whether we want to create the conditions where they “want” to check in. And we must choose to not feel forlorn, if they don’t. (Because real friends are like that when life gets hectic: unfazed; non-pressuring; non-demanding.)

To retain my son’s trust in me, I must also hold him as capable, competent, and resourceful, the very basis of International Coaching Federation-certified coaching.

The more present I am and the less I fuss or project, the more depth and contact I receive, especially when I ask with curiosity instead of agenda. Especially when I trust.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge.

Most of us would rather reorganize our sock drawer than tell a colleague their work has fallen short, or a spouse that they could lose some pounds, or that their teen’s career ideas are unfounded, even garbage.

Fear is the usual culprit: fear that criticism will be rejected, that a reputation will suffer, that the messenger will be blamed for the message and the receiver of serious eye rolls or stomping—or tears.

When tasked with giving tough feedback, coaching clients worry they’ll not sound fair nor balanced and get branded by those with long memories as a tyrant. Peculiar that those of us who grew from a mentor's blunt advice can't bring ourselves to give more of the same.

This reluctance is worth challenging, because the alternative — silence, or hedging, flowery, feedback saying nothing helps no one. A conversation is wasted and we sound pathetic and weak.

Fortunately, models for doing it well already exist, and not in leadership books. The true gems are on television cookery shows, in university seminar rooms and among coaches, because they’ve all had beaucoup practice, and beyond what executives will get in their career.

Compliment sparingly, and mean it

The infamous American "feedback sandwich" — praise, criticism, praise — has fallen out of favor for good reason: recipients find the positives eclipse the constructive criticism.

A better approach is a small, specific compliment, offered only where the audience actually needs one. Paul Hollywood, the Great British Bake Off judge, shows us how it’s done. He does not gush. He says: "I love the flavor" or "you've got uniformity, which I like to see" — brief, concrete, delivered with the tone and body language to match.

The lesson: praise that is vague or effusive reads as insincere and buries the point. A compliment should take one sentence, not a paragraph, and it should sound like something a person would actually say — "the crumbliest, butteri-est biscuit I've ever had," not "great job on this deliverable."

Move quickly to the critique

The real skill of Hollywood, who got his start at his father’s bakery, is the pivot: "I love the flavors, but it's certainly over-baked." Or, more gently, "it's lovely — I just question whether that's the best technique for this challenge?"

The structure translates directly into business settings or even tense feedback with someone we love. A manager might say the stunning graphics are getting buried by copy too jargon-heavy for the audience it needs to reach. ("Optimize solutions" will lose them.) Or that a presentation opened well but lost the thread soon after with mumbo-jumbo. We can tell the person we love that the dress/shirt/whole outfit is stunning, and suits them; but too formal and frilly for our dress-down moment and audience.

Then get specific

You then add supporting specifics. Academics get plenty of practice at this — I did too, first teaching writing and journalism, later business communication to MBA students. Specifics I gave them helped them still like me, learn from me, and stopped my students from tuning me and the syllabus out. I return to this structure: a topic sentence, supporting specifics, then a “so what” to close things.

Your reader must work too hard to get through this — and the clues aren’t hard to find. The sentences run past twenty words each. The paragraph sprawls twenty-five lines, a wall of text a reader gives up on before finishing. Passive voice and buried verbs make the tone stodgy and standoffish, when what you wanted was something lighter, more human. Trim those three habits and the paragraph starts to breathe. You’re close.

Signal intent, not judgment

Feedback lands only when the recipient believes it comes from goodwill, not your want to catch them out. We can name what is already working before naming what isn't — "you were aiming for X, Y and Z, and you very nearly got there."

We can phrase the ask as a shared goal rather than a verdict: not "fix this" but "in the spirit of serving the client better, what would it take to sharpen X?" If we see or hear an argument buried at the end, encourage a re-order. "That's a clear, well-written conclusion; bring that bad boy up." Or: “You’re really on your soap box now. If you want to persuade, stay this direct!”

Then stop talking

The most reliable feedback technique we use the least: asking the other person what they already know and listening.

The receiver of our critique knows exactly what works and doesn’t, if given room to say so.

Questions (asked with curiosity not a fix-it or directive) can draw this intel out: How do you think that landed? What would you change? Does studying anthropology take you where you want to be five years from now?

Asking and letting the other person talk more than the feedback giver builds accountability and invites reflection. Feedback shifts from a minefield to a float down the river, a conversation between two people who want the same outcome.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, and now coach Fortune 500 leaders—many foreign-born executives among them—on communication. I teach communications workshops on Maven. And you can book me for one-on-one coaching.

Without friendship, I can’t stay in any city nor in any land for too long. I know this about myself. Despite being independent, self sufficient, and resourceful—having started off life in the back blocks of New Zealand and traveled solo to new countries in my 20s—I need good people for friendship, camaraderie, and great conversation.

I learned this about myself especially when living in Tokyo, Japan 35+ years ago this year. I moved there on a one-way ticket from Christchurch, New Zealand, where I spent my teens and managed to gather my bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Canterbury University. I was age 20 and turned 21 a few months after arriving.

I had company when I first moved to Tokyo, which in 1990 was the world’s most expensive city. An immense real estate bubble and high population helped the city maintain that top ranking as a costly city for business and living for a decade. For a college-age New Zealander and with paltry sums saved, this felt immense, but not enough to deter me from my quest: starting my career as a journalist and learning the language.

My guy bestie at the time, Andy—my international politics classmate at Canterbury University—gave me lodging and a promised survival bootcamp.

He moved three weeks later to Taipei, where he taught English. I took over his job and apartment, part of the deal that had all started from a phone call from a pay phone in Tokyo to my Christchurch flat where I lived with two hippies, an accountant, and a gardener.

Andy kept true to his word. For three weeks, our survival bootcamp included: budget grocery shopping, which included eating lots of gohan, the famously splendid Japanese rice; riding the trains on off-peak times (even skirting without a ticket); and eating out at izakayas where Shōchū cost 800 yen and meals about 1,000 yen ($8-$10US at the time.)

We laughed. We explored. We rode bikes. It was wonderful.

Once Andy left, everything went terribly wrong.

His language school refused to hire me, upset that he’d left. The back-up art modeling job I’d thought I’d secured at a local art university evaporated as well. A Japanese recruiter in Christchurch had promised me the job was mine when I arrived. Not true. I’d need to wait three months.

Living alone and unemployed unsettled me. Long, unstructured days yawned ahead ominously. My pigeon Japanese prevented proper conversation with locals. I did not like that I bought food, cooked alone, and ate alone.

When I ate out for variety and the indirect company of strangers, tears built and my throat constricted as I watched from the window seat people hurrying by on their important missions or shepherding packages, elders, and children this way and that. I felt unwanted, unnecessary, and alone.

I had nowhere to be.
I had no one to contend with or integrate within my day.
I had no schedule nor job to go to.

Tears tumbled into my ramen bowl. I would hang my head with shame and pathetic-ness. And there were no phones, no Snapchat, no Facebook posts—this was 1990/1991. Without technology to connect us, solitude felt more empty and ominous.

Just me, my tears, my soaked napkin, and my self pity. And the meal I couldn’t finish because I was too bereft.

My apartment looked just as I had left it when I returned, because nobody else lived there, and I was too poor to have anyone help. I would crawl into my bed—a sad futon on a sad tatami mat floor—and cry myself to sleep.

After Andy left, I experienced solitude and depression for a full month, maybe more. I’m really not sure. I just know this time was dark and hard.

Looking back now, I see the peril and know it could have tipped into suicide or self harm. The loneliness and feelings of abandonment felt that compelling and strong.

With little money and no job nor schedule, I rode his bicycle all over—to cemeteries and parks, the only uncrowded places I could find. There I wrote in my journal and took selfies with my Pentax camera. (No digital cameras still in the early 90s.) Afterward, I would take more photos from my balcony, the cherry blossom and sunset in the distance.

I cried every day. I journaled every day. I read each day. I documented each day with a photo. Because I’d taken a picture (even if I wouldn’t see it until I had the negatives published), it counted as me being alive and present. The ritual kept me company and gave me hope.

And through the tears, I felt stronger and healing and the sadness and feelings of abandonment that had made me leave New Zealand in the first place started to distill and then leave.

Even then, part of me understood: nothing was broken. I needed to reach the bottom of my despair to pull myself back up.

I started pulling myself together. I returned to the art university, now with more self worth and resolve and asked to speak to someone new. I showed the contract that showed me I had work and demanded to know how such a miscommunication could occur. I’m a single young woman and the university owed me work for my safety.

A young Japanese woman with perfectly bobbed hair and a kind face and shiny patent shoes listened in the lobby. She introduced herself as a student and offered to translate for me and make a case. It worked. I started 10 days later. Knowing I would have structure again, and be around people, calmed me. Self advocacy and stranger kindness restored my strength.

Art modeling for sculpture students at a deluxe internationally-recognized art school paid good—very good. Three times as much an hour as I’d have made as an English teacher.

The students were fabulous. I modeled for 6-10 at a time. And I found the work calming, as I remember art modeling calming me as a student back home.

I received a beautiful kimono to wear in between sets and stood on a podium for 40 minutes at a time. When I’d break and slip back into my robe, a student would bring me green tea and cookies for sustenance.

I learned beginning Japanese in this time and restored my dignity. I felt respected and cared for.

With money coming in, I moved out of the lonely apartment and into a gaijin house—a dormitory with 12 beds, but enough. There I met Americans, Scots, Australians, and Greeks. I was no longer alone.

Around that time, I also heard again from Mr. Ohta, the Japanese attaché and recruiter in New Zealand who had first guided me toward the art school—and whose earlier miscommunications had contributed to my situation.

He tracked me down by calling the gaijin houses and asked how I was getting on. I told him I was fine. I did not express my frustration—it felt impolite—but I suspect he sensed it anyway.

And, to his credit, he tried to make things right.

He asked if I would be interested in teaching English privately, for high pay. A friend of his—a successful business owner—wanted lessons. Her name was Mrs. Yasuko Sakairi. She was a family friend, a best friend of his mother.

I called her that night.

A short, polite phone call established our language barriers and our will.

A phone call

Hello, I’m Debbi, Mr. Ohta’s friend from New Zealand.

Pause. Extended pause.

Herro. I am Yasuko Sakairi. Pause. Extended pause. Very nice to meet you.

And you!

Pause. More pause.

Yes. Tomorrow? English-y lesson. Ok?

Yes!

Ok! Time. 3 o’clock ok?

Yes! Lovely.

Very good. My driver come for you.

He has my address?

Yes!

Ok! See you.

That conversation launched our friendship, which would last the five years I lived in Japan.

Yasuko became my closest Japanese friend. I was now 21. She was 65. The age difference did not matter.

She was warm, funny, kind, and incredibly generous. Every Friday evening around 5, we kept our ritual. We would spend 90 minutes together where I taught her English and we practiced conversation, and then we would go out—to eat, to drink sake, to talk more.

She was elegant and strong-willed, always immaculately groomed—either in kimono or in Chanel. She had taken over her late husband’s packaging company as CEO and ran the business from a fancy neighborhood full time. She had a daughter; but they were not close.

Yasuko preferred the company of foreigners, found Japan insular, and kept a Shinto shrine in her home where she honored her husband daily.

As her English improved, so did my Japanese. When I shared experiences of discrimination, she took great offense and defended me fiercely, sometimes telling entire restaurants about it.

“Is this the Japan we’re proud of?” she’d say, sharing with others that I’d entered a train carriage on my way to visit her and several elder Japanese had left. “Outrageous.”

We drank a good bit together—always top shelf sake, because she insisted on paying. If I missed the train, she would insist I stay at her apartment.

One night, after a particularly big evening, she insisted (with me being tall and she smaller) I take her bed. She slept on her carpeted floor of her room on top of her New Zealand sheep skin rug.

“I love you like a daughter, Debbi-chan,” she said as she fell asleep. “If you marry one day, promise me you’ll invite me?”

Mrs. Sakairi’s loyalty only grew. She hosted a birthday party for me and ten friends of my choice each year, inviting us to order whatever we liked.

She taught me nuanced Japanese culture, like how to pour tea for one another, sit politely with our legs folded to the left, and the importance of having a “gift drawer” full of gifts to give people when they randomly arrived with one for you.

When I fell in love with a Japanese man and introduced them both, she was polite—but later, when I came to her in tears, she taught me a word: zurui—cunning, dishonest. She had seen it before I did.

When he called her home looking for me on the night I left, she lied. “Debbi wa kyō koko ni kimasen.” I’m not convinced he believed her; but he knew better than to push.

I later moved near Mount Fuji for work at a five-star wedding hotel, a full immersion in Japanese language and culture. Clad in a crimson kimono, I escorted wedding guests to their ceremony and banquet halls—work that was both demanding, immersive, and beautiful.

Every month, I returned to Tokyo to see Yasuko, riding the bullet train. I wanted to connect with her more deeply with my expansive Japanese while still giving her vital English conversation practice. She insisted I stay at her apartment—even when she was away.

On one visit, she was scouting properties in New Zealand and asked to meet my mother, who welcomed her in for tea and biscuits. And over that simple table, Mrs. Sakairi told her, “I love Debbi-chan. I love New Zealand.”

My mother was so charmed and brings up that moment often.

When I decided to move to the U.S., Mrs. Sakairi was heartbroken, but she understood that my ambitions and loneliness which never truly left me in Japan, a nation that did not at that time truly welcome foreign women, was the driver.

“I will miss you.”

“I will miss you too.”

We both cried.

At my farewell party, she told everyone I was her “best friend.”

Years later, from San Francisco, Ca., as I noticed my Japanese language was fading, I called her, and because I really missed her. Nobody was quite like Mrs. Sakairi.

A phone call

“Genki desu ka, Sakairi san? Debbi desu.”

“Genki! You?”

“I miss you.”

Silence. Then softly:

“I miss you too, Debbi-chan. Come back to Tokyo?”

Silence. Then softly:

“For a visit. But America is my new home.”

Silence. Then softly:

“I understand.”

Years later, when I married, I tried to find Mrs. Sakairi to invite her to our New Zealand wedding, knowing full well she would come.

With five moves and upheavals, her business card was gone. My online searches yielded nothing.

When I became a mother of my two sons, I tried once more. I tried remembering the neighborhood name. I typed in terms like “family-owned packaging company” and “Yasuko Sakairi and packaging company.”

Nothing.

I think of Mrs. Sakairi often. I believe she thinks of me too.

This year, my teen sons, my husband, and I will travel to Japan, and I hold quiet hope that I might find her or someone who once knew her.

She would be in her 90s now. I would love to hug her once more—and for her to meet my family, who will adore her and see her kindness and freedom and courage, just as I did.

In a city of millions, Yasuko was gifted at making you feel valid, lovable, and welcomed. She taught me that closeness between humans is possible when we love to learn and when we relinquish judgment. And that we do not always need shared language as the bridge.

Need some help?

I’m a former reporter for the Economist, FT, and Guardian, a Fortune 500 communications coach for foreign-born leaders, and a Master Certified Coach. I host communications workshops on Maven. Or book me for a discussion on your biggest communications challenge.