Stop Repeating Yourself in Meetings

Learn why clarity beats repetition every time.

Jacqueline Twillie
October 20, 2025

In partnership with

Get Your Ideas Approved

Someone just got their mediocre idea
approved. Yours is still stuck.

THE

STRATEGY

Resilient Leaders
Jacqueline V. Twillie, MBA

Same meeting. Same decision-makers. You've been refining your pitch for three months. They threw together a deck last week.

They got a yes. You're still waiting.

This isn't about who has the better idea.

What's Actually Happening

Your brain has done the work. You see the connection between your idea and what the company needs. It's obvious to you.

But when you present, the decision-maker's prefrontal cortex is doing something different. It's trying to bridge the gap between what you're saying and what they already care about. That takes effort. Extra cognitive load. And when the brain works that hard, it defaults to no.

You're not a bad presenter. You're making their brain work too hard.

The person who got approved? They started with the problem the decision-maker was already trying to solve. Their brain didn't have to work to figure out why it mattered. It just had to figure out how to solve it.

That shift from "Should I care?" to "How do we do this?" is the difference between approval and another round of revisions.

I Keep Seeing This Pattern

Smart people come to me for communication strategy. Senior analysts. Directors. People who know their stuff cold.

They're not struggling because they lack presence or polish. They struggle because somewhere between their brain and the room, the connection breaks.

They understand the problem deeply. But they can't prove it in the way decision-makers need to see it.

Business schools don't teach this. You learn frameworks and models. You don't learn how to structure your thinking so someone else can follow your logic and take action on it.

That muscle exists. You just haven't trained it for how organizations actually make decisions.

What Changed When I Figured This Out

I used to think influence was about confidence and persuasion. Be compelling enough, and people will listen.

Then I watched really smart people repeat themselves in meetings. Same points, different words. Louder. Slower. With more data.

Nothing changed.

What I realized: They were answering their own question, not the one in the room.

Leaders who get approval do something different. They prove they've thought past the surface. They describe the problem with enough detail that you trust they can deliver the solution. They show you the right mix of data and context. Not everything they know. Just enough to move you from skeptical to ready.

And they know something about timing. They read the room. They know that what worked last month doesn't work today because priorities shift. Budgets get cut. Leaders leave. Markets move.

I built LATTE to make this repeatable: Look, Anticipate, Think, Talk, Evaluate.

Why Office Politics Keep Tripping You Up

In my lightning lesson, people always react when I say how much politics factor into decisions.

But here's what I mean by politics. Your CFO is under pressure to cut costs by 15%. Your VP just lost two people on her team and can't backfill. The person you're presenting to got burned on a similar project last year and is still hearing about it.

These aren't peripheral details. This is the context your idea lives in.

When I say separate facts from feelings, I mean this: You feel frustrated that your idea keeps getting delayed. That's real. But the fact is your CFO's mandate matters more than your frustration.

The LATTE Matrix walks you through Look and Anticipate so you can see what's actually driving decisions, not what you wish was driving them.

That's not manipulation. It's just being realistic about how people work.

Two Things You Believe
That Aren't True

You think if you're confident and persuasive enough, your idea will land.

What actually works: Clarity plus data. Not passion. Not persistence. Structure.

You think if you repeat it enough times, eventually they'll get it.

What actually happens: You train them to tune you out. Reframing through analysis gets approval. Repetition gets you a reputation for not listening.

The Neuroscience Behind This

When you present an idea that doesn't connect to existing business priorities, you're asking the brain to do extra work. The prefrontal cortex has to work harder to bridge the gap between what you're saying and what they already care about. This creates cognitive load, and the brain's default response to cognitive load is resistance.

When you lead with the business problem and connect your solution directly to existing priorities, you're activating the brain's pattern recognition system. The decision-maker's brain says "I already know this matters" and shifts from evaluation mode to problem-solving mode. That's when you get approval.

What You're Walking Into

My free lightning lesson is 30 minutes. I'm teaching you Look and Anticipate, the first two steps of LATTE.

You'll learn how to start your next conversation with the business problem they're already trying to solve. Not your solution dressed up differently. The actual core problem.

This applies when you're presenting to senior leadership, negotiating for resources, trying to get buy-in on a project, reframing something that got rejected, or communicating up during a reorganization.

The psychology underneath this: Cognitive reframing. You're learning to see how decision-makers filter everything through their priorities. Not yours. Not the company's official strategy. Theirs.

Three Phrases You'll Learn

"To confirm alignment, is [key metric or goal] still the top priority this quarter?"

This checks whether what you think matters still matters. Priorities change faster than people announce them.

"If we achieve [specific outcome] by [timeline], would that move us closer to your business objective?"

This connects your idea directly to something they're already measured on.

"Which risk matters most to address first, [option A], [option B], or [option C], so we can move forward confidently?"

This gives them control and gets you out of analysis paralysis.

Your Idea Is Good. Your Approach Isn't.

Most professionals believe good ideas speak for themselves.

They don't.

That's why someone else's half-baked idea gains traction while yours stalls.

If you feel overlooked or dismissed even when your idea clearly has value, here's the reframe you need: Identify the business problem. Go through the five steps of the LATTE Matrix. Speak in metrics that are fact-based.

What You Need to Unlearn

The biggest thing I want you to unlearn about influence: It's not about selling harder.

Overselling and overexplaining, speaking in loops and circles, gets people in trouble.

You need a formula. The LATTE formula combines the right mix of data, separates people from the problem, and speaks to the solution in concrete, concise steps.

And because organizations are dynamic, markets change, conditions change, that your information does have to be fluid and it has to change as the conditions that influence that data change. You can't stay committed to one area just as businesses can't just stay focused on one thing. It has to be dynamic and responsive.

You're watching your ideas die while others get approved with half the effort.

That ends when you learn the structure that connects what you know to what decision-makers need to hear.

This quarter's priorities won't be the same next quarter. If your idea matters, the time to get it approved is now.

Resilient Leaders
Jacqueline V. Twillie, MBA

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