Disclaimer: Your Voice Matters, Even If It's Different from Mine
I’m a native English speaker. I’ve had theatre, improv, and acting training, and I’ve been paid to speak in front of crowds. I also have a lot of “natural confidence”, as people close to me might note in a less kind way 😉.
That background gives me a head start — one that not everyone has. But the point of this post isn’t to show you how I do it. It’s to share tools that you can use, from wherever you're starting.
You don’t need to be charismatic. You don’t need to be an extrovert. You just need to care about whether your message lands, and be willing to shape it so that it does.
Why Communication Tailoring Matters
You don’t speak just to transfer data — you speak to be understood and acted on.
We like to think that communication is about saying the right thing. It’s not. It’s about saying the right thing in a way the other person can hear.
You can be completely correct, technically flawless, and still leave people confused or disengaged. If your message doesn’t land, it doesn’t matter that you launched it.
Communicating well means understanding your audience — who they are, what they care about, and how they’re likely to receive what you’re saying.
Understand Your Audience
Not everyone in the room is listening for the same reason. Different roles have different priorities, languages, and mental filters. If you want to be understood, you need to account for that.
Here are some of the more common personas you might encounter, and what tends to motivate them:
Engineers
- Peer Engineer: Code clarity, shared ownership, maintainability
- Non-Peer Engineer: Engineers on other teams or stacks — e.g. app developers consuming your API. Care about integration boundaries, assumptions, and performance characteristics
- QA/Test Engineer: Reproducibility, edge cases, test coverage
- SRE/DevOps: Deployment safety, automation, observability, rollback paths
- Security Engineer: Risk exposure, threat modelling, data access
- Architect: Long-term thinking, scalability, alignment with standards
Technical (Non-Engineering)
- Tech Lead: Direction, trade-offs, feasibility, trust in decision-making
- Product Owner (PO): User value, roadmap alignment, scope risk
- Business Analyst (BA): Requirements clarity, edge case coverage, business logic
- Delivery Manager (DM): Delivery flow, dependencies, blockers
- UX/Designer: User impact, accessibility, fidelity to experience
Non-Technical
- HR / P&C: Wellbeing, headcount planning, hiring, diversity
- Finance: Budgeting, cost-benefit alignment, resource allocation
- Legal / Compliance: Data safety, regulatory fit, exposure risk
- Customer Support: Clarity of expected behaviour, known issues
- Sales / Marketing: Positioning, timelines, differentiators
Leadership
- Engineering Manager: Team health, unblockers, clarity, delivery visibility
- VP / CTO / CEO: Strategic outcomes, risk, investment return, public narrative
You’ll rarely speak to just one persona — and even when you do, that person might wear different hats depending on the context. More on that shortly.
Change Your Language, Not Your Integrity
Tailoring how you speak doesn’t mean not using your own words. It means choosing the version of the truth that’s useful to the person listening.
To do that, you’ve got a few tools you can use:
- Framing: What's the lens you're using to tell the story? Is it about risk, delivery, the user, the strategy?
- Abstraction: Zoom in for detail. Zoom out for clarity. Choose the right level for the listener.
- Language and Tone: Use words that land. You don’t have to speak in jargon, but you don’t have to oversimplify either. Adjust to the person, not the subject.
These are just techniques — and like any tool, they get sharper with practice.
Tailoring how you speak doesn’t mean not using your own words. It means choosing the version of the truth that’s useful to the person listening.
Zoom out or zoom in. Change the framing. Use simpler words if needed. But keep the message honest. Don’t pretend. Don’t spin. Just make it land.
You're not diluting your thinking — you’re translating it.
Active Listening & Real-Time Adapting
Talking isn’t the end of communication. It’s the middle.
Even when you’re the one speaking, the room is giving you feedback — through posture, silence, off-topic questions, or forced smiles. If you pay attention, you’ll notice when something isn’t landing.
That’s your cue to adapt.
Slow down. Zoom out. Reframe. Check in. You might say:
- "Let me take a step back."
- "That got a bit in the weeds — here’s the big picture."
- "Is that resonating?"
This isn’t backpedalling. It’s steering.
Real-World Complexity
People Wear Multiple Hats
Some people are technically trained but now work in product. Others have business cards that say 'VP' but still think like engineers. Their context shifts depending on the meeting, the moment, or what’s at stake.
So ask: What hat are they wearing right now?
You can acknowledge their depth without misjudging their role:
"I know you understand the technical side of this — but I’ll focus on the product impact, since I think that’s the call you’re making today."
Mixed Audiences Need Layered Communication
When you’re speaking to a mixed group — say, engineers, a product owner, and a VP — don’t try to hit everyone in the same breath. You’ll probably miss all of them.
Instead, layer it:
- Start with the shared goal or outcome
- Add quick, role-relevant context: tech, delivery, customer
- Leave space for follow-ups
You might even say aloud:
"Since we’ve got a mixed room, I’ll start with what this means for the customer, then touch briefly on the tech and timelines."
Tensions Between Roles
Sometimes people want different things. That’s normal. Don’t pretend it’s not happening.
Instead:
- Acknowledge the trade-off
- Re-center on the shared goal
- Offer a path forward or invite input
Example:
"There’s a trade-off here between speed and portability. I’ve gone for speed in this version, but happy to talk about what that might mean downstream."
Offering Help (Use Your Humans and Your Robots)
You don’t have to do this alone. Tailoring takes practice, and sometimes it helps to think out loud with someone who knows the players.
Ask a mentor:
- What hat is this person wearing in this meeting?
- What motivates them right now?
- What framing might resonate?
Or ask a model: Try something like:
"I have a meeting with X and I need to tell them about Y. They have this role in the company — what might be an effective way to communicate this, given their likely motivations?"
It’s not cheating. It’s rehearsal.
Final Takeaways
- Know who you're talking to — and why they’re listening
- Change the framing, not the truth
- Read the room, and steer when needed
- You don’t have to be impressive — you just have to land the message
That’s where communication starts to feel like leadership.