Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace

the way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and

today we're talking about staying on track. I often feel unequal when I go into meetings Cheryl said to me.

She is a vice president of consumer products at a Hollywood studio

and she was getting feedback that when she spoke she was hard to follow

and appeared scattered in her thinking. I asked her to tell me more about

feeling unequal. She told me about meeting with the Division's two senior executives where she was

to present a product line strategy. Then suddenly she was telling me about a

meeting with Walmart executives in Bentonville, Arkansas. Those two meetings

didn't seem connected but I wasn't sure. Then she was telling me about

delegating a complex project to one of her direct reports and how she

manages that woman.

We were about seven minutes into her answer.

I called a timeout.

Cheryl, can you remember what I asked you originally?

After a second she said, you asked me about feeling unequal in meetings.

To be honest, I was surprised she remembered.

Great, I said, help me understand how delegating to Marsha is about feeling unequal in meetings.

She turned her eyes up to the ceiling and began to rewind her thinking.

She thought for quite a long time before she began to smile. She looked at me and nodded her head and said,

Okay, I give up, I have no idea how it relates. That's me being scattered, isn't it? Indeed it was. So I introduced a game I call,

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