Minal Nebhnani Coaching - Ummuted , Strategic Influence

The Seat Nobody Assigns You

Thu, 28 May 2026 14:07:12 -0600

(3 mins)

If people tell you about decisions after they're made, you're not influential yet.

Think about that for a second. Not because it's harsh, but because it's useful. There's a very specific kind of professional power that has nothing to do with your title, your tenure, or how hard you've worked. It's the kind where people loop you in before the decision. Where they send the message that says, "What do you think about this?" before they've made up their minds. That's not seniority, that's positioning - and it's completely learnable.

I want to introduce you to two people. Same company, same level, same team. Let's call them Priya and Marcus.

Priya is excellent at her job. She delivers. She meets her deadlines, she knows her stuff, and her manager will give her glowing reviews when requested. But when the leadership team sits down to talk strategy, Priya finds out what they decided in the all-hands meeting, same as everyone else.

Marcus, again, same role, same experience. But somehow he keeps ending up in conversations before decisions are finalized. People cc him on things and they grab him before a meeting to ask what he thinks. His colleagues say, "Let me check with Marcus." Not because Marcus is more senior, but because somewhere along the way, Marcus became the person people think of when they want to think better.

The difference between Priya and Marcus isn't talent or luck. It's that Marcus learned how to show up in the thinking, not just the doing.

Here's what most high performers misunderstand about influence. You think it's about having the right answer. So you focus on being thorough, being accurate, and being undeniably correct. And then you wait to be asked.

But influence doesn't work like a test where you raise your hand after you've solved it. It works more like a conversation and the people who shape decisions are the ones who are already in the conversation when the options are still forming.

You don't become the person people check with by having better answers. You become it by helping people think better before they decide.

That's the shift. From answer-giver to thinking partner. And it changes everything about how you show up - in meetings, in hallway conversations, in the two-line Slack message you send when you notice something before anyone else has.

So what does Marcus actually do differently? It comes down to three habits that are easy to miss because none of them are loud.

Speak in implications, not just opinions. There's a version of having a point of view that keeps you at the surface, "I think X is the better option." And then there's the version that earns you a seat: "If we go with X, it's likely to impact Y in this way, especially given where we're headed in Q3." One is a preference while the other is foresight. People don't consult preferences, they consult foresight.
Be early, not louder. The earlier you appear in the thinking process, the more your perspective shapes the outcome. Now, that doesn't mean forcing yourself into every conversation. It means noticing when something is still being figured out, and offering one or max two sentences before the options get locked in. Even a well-timed question at the right moment signals that you're paying attention at a different level than most.
Be the person who makes thinking easier, not more complicated. Ask the question no one has asked yet, name the tension in the room that everyone feels but no one is saying, or offer the reframe that gets things unstuck. When people walk away from a conversation with you feeling clearer, not just informed, but actually clearer or unstuck, they come back. Again and again and again.

Here's what this looks like in practice. Two versions of the same moment:

Stays invisible: "That sounds good to me. Whatever the team decides works."

Builds positioning: "One thing worth considering before we lock this in - if we go this route, it'll likely affect the timeline on the other project. Happy to think through it out loud if it’s useful."

Same meeting. Same 45 seconds. Completely different positioning. The second person just became someone worth checking with.

Priya, by the way, is a real type, not a cautionary tale. She's doing everything she was told to do - work hard, deliver results, not overstep. And for a long time that was enough, but at a certain level, the doing isn't what earns the seat. The thinking does.

The good news: this isn't a personality trait. You don't have to be naturally outspoken, politically savvy, or especially bold. You just have to start showing up one step earlier - in the forming phase, not just the deciding phase with one more implication attached to your point of view or with one question that makes the room go quiet in a good way.

That's what moves you from the person who executes decisions to the person who shapes them. And once people start checking with you before they decide, that reputation compounds fast. Influence isn't given. It's built, quietly, one well-timed thought at a time.

So here's my question for you this week: are you usually in the room when options are forming or when the decision's already been made? Reply and tell me. I read everything you share, and I'd genuinely love to know where you are right now.

Work with me

Ready to stop being kept in the loop and start shaping it?

Positioning, presence, and influence are exactly what I work on with

clients - and the shifts tend to happen faster than people expect.

Let's figure out what's keeping you one step removed

Book a 30-min free career strategy call here.

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Nobody Needs Your Explanation. They Need Your Conviction.

Thu, 21 May 2026 14:02:00 -0600

(3 mins)

You had thirty seconds. You used four minutes. And somewhere in minute two, you lost your audience.

You know the feeling. You walk into the room with a solid idea. You've thought it through from every angle for weeks. Late nights, iterations, more conversations and now you're here. And you're presenting. And you think it's going well...and then someone tilts their head or asks one question or just looks unconvinced and suddenly you're off like a horse at the Kentucky Derby, explaining. And then re-explaining. And then adding context no one asked for, walking through your entire thought process, preemptively defending objections that haven't even been raised yet.

By the time you're done, the idea is buried somewhere under a pile of words and all of your anxiety. The room has moved on and you're left feeling overwhelmed, defeated and wondering what the hell happened.

Here's what happened: you confused explanation with persuasion - and high performers do this constantly. Not because you don't know your stuff, but because you do. You honestly know too much. And when someone pushes back (even gently), all of that knowledge comes flooding out at once like a defense mechanism.

But here's the thing nobody tells you: the more you explain, the less confident you sound. Every extra sentence is an unconscious signal that you're not sure they believe you which then makes them less sure too. Over-explaining doesn't make your idea stronger. It makes you look like you're still convincing yourself.

I watched this play out with a client recently. She was pitching a process change to her leadership team, something she'd been researching for months. She knew it cold. And she walked in and proceeded to lay out every single data point, every caveat, every alternative she'd considered and ruled out. Fifteen minutes in, her manager interrupted her and said, "This is a lot. Can you give me the short version?"

She was devastated. She thought more information meant more credibility. It doesn't. It means more work for the listener and quite honestly, listeners don’t want more work, they want to be led to a decision clearly and with certainty.

So what does buy-in actually look like, if it's not a thorough explanation? It looks like confidence with just enough context; like leading with your recommendation, not your reasoning; like trusting that the people in the room are smart enough to ask if they want more.

Most people present ideas like a court case: evidence first, verdict at the end. But buy-in works the opposite way. Verdict first and evidence only if asked.

Hear the difference:

Before: "So I've been looking at the data, and I noticed that our turnaround time has been slipping. It went from 4 days to 7 over the last quarter, and I think part of that is related to the handoff process, but also possibly the review stage, so I wanted to walk through a few options I considered and explain why I landed where I did..."

After: "I'd recommend we change the handoff process. It's adding 3 days to our turnaround and I think we can cut that in half within a month. Happy to walk through the data if it'd be helpful."

Same idea, same research behind it, but completely different energy. One sounds like asking for permission while the other sounds like the decision has already been made - and is just offering the room the chance to agree.

So how do you get from verbally vomiting everything you know to certainty? Here are three things to try this week:

Lead with the ask, not the backstory. Before your next meeting, write down your recommendation in one sentence. That sentence goes first - not third, not last. If you can't say it in one sentence, you're not clear enough yet on what you actually want. Keep working on it.
Make context optional, not mandatory. After your recommendation, add: "Happy to walk through the details if useful." This does two things: it signals that you have the depth (the knowledge and the resources to back your recommendation), and it hands control to the other person. Most of the time they don’t want or need more information, simply offering is enough.
Treat pushback as a question, not a verdict. When someone challenges your idea, pause before you respond. Ask yourself, Are they asking for information or are they just thinking out loud? Most pushback is the latter in which case, there's nothing to defend. Just stay calm and steady. Breathe. That calm is what actually builds confidence in the room.

Buy-in isn't won in the explanation. It's won in the moment before you even start speaking - when you pause, breathe, smile and start calmly and confidently, with certainty.

My client went back the following week with the same idea, stripped down to three sentences. Her manager said yes in under two minutes. Nothing about the idea changed but everything about how she held it did.

Clarity is a leadership skill and the clearest person in the room rarely needs to say the most.

So here's my question for you this week: where are you over-explaining because you don't quite trust that the idea is enough - or that you are? And what are you going to do about it? Reply and tell me. I read every email that comes my way.

Work with me

If you're tired of leaving rooms feeling like you didn't land it...

This is exactly the kind of work I do with clients: how to show up with presence,

communicate with clarity, and get the outcomes you've actually earned. Let's talk.

Book a 30-min free career strategy call here.

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