You are doing well in your role. Your technical knowledge is strong. You are dependable. Your manager sees potential.
Brenda de Jong-Pauley, MA
Director, The English Center
Published September 2026
Then comes the feedback:
“If you want to move to the next level, you need to work on your communication.”
This is common advice. It is also frustratingly vague.
What exactly are you supposed to work on?
Do you talk too much—or too little? Are your explanations unclear? Do you need to sound more confident, listen better, handle disagreement differently, or become more concise?
“Communication skills” is not one skill. It is an umbrella term for many different behaviors. Unless you identify which of those behaviors is creating a problem, it is difficult to improve.
The useful question is not:
How do I become a better communicator?
It is:
What does better communication need to look like in my role?
A useful way to answer that question is to look for unnecessary listener effort. Where are people having to search for your point, interpret your meaning, or translate your message into something useful?
If your manager says you need to improve your communication, resist the temptation to respond with:
“Okay, I’ll work on that.”
Instead, get specific. You might ask:
These questions turn a broad judgment into observable behavior.
That matters because “needs stronger communication skills” can mean many different things.
This could mean that your listener has trouble identifying your main point.
Perhaps you:
If this is the issue, the skills to work on may include clear thinking, structure, precise language, concision, listening, pronunciation, prosody, and audience awareness.
A useful habit is to ask yourself:
What is the one thing I want this person to understand?
Then make sure that message is easy to find.
Sometimes the problem is not that your ideas are unclear. It is that the listener has to work too hard to get to them.
You may:
This is especially noticeable in meetings with senior colleagues, where time and attention are limited.
Concision does not mean saying as little as possible. It means giving the listener enough information without making them sort through the rest.
Try:
Headline → essential support → stop
If more detail is needed, the listener can ask for it.
Our post about concision explains how you can say more, with less.
This feedback is often misunderstood.
Your manager may not be asking you to feel more confident. They may be reacting to signals in your communication.
For example:
“I don’t know, but maybe we could possibly…”
creates a very different impression from:
“I recommend option B.”
Other confidence signals include:
Confidence may be an internal feeling, but other people perceive it through observable behavior. You can communicate confidence even when you do not yet feel completely confident.
You can work on those behaviors directly.
This does not necessarily mean you need to talk more. It may mean that your ideas are not visible enough.
You may be waiting until you are completely certain before contributing, speaking only when directly invited, or letting other people frame the discussion before you enter it.
At more senior levels, people are often expected to contribute judgment, not simply information.
That might mean saying:
Speaking up is not about dominating the room. It is about making your thinking available when it can help the group.
This usually does not mean using bigger words. Nor does it necessarily mean that your strategic thinking is weak. The problem may be how you communicate that thinking.
Less senior communication often stays close to activities, details, and processes. Senior or strategic communication tends to focus more on:
Compare:
“I spoke to the supplier, reviewed the schedule, and checked with operations.”
with:
“We can still meet the deadline, but only if we approve the supplier change today.”
The first tells us what you did. The second tells us what it means.
Similarly, instead of saying:
“We had three calls with the client and changed the timeline twice.”
try:
“The client has changed scope twice, which now puts the launch date at risk.”
Then go another level:
“We need a scope decision this week, or we should reset the launch date.”
As people move into leadership, they are increasingly expected to interpret information rather than simply report it.
Strategic communication answers questions such as:
“Executive presence” is often the label people use when several communication issues appear together.
It is also a phrase that can sound impressive while telling you very little. Rather than treating executive presence as something mysterious or innate, it is more useful to break it into observable behaviors.
At The English Center, we look at five broad areas:
The point is not to imitate a stereotypical executive. It is to make your communication easier to trust, follow, and act on. You can read more in our article: What is Executive Presence?
This often means you are communicating the same way with everyone.
But different listeners need different things:
Good communicators do not simply ask:
What do I want to say?
They also ask:
What does this person need from me?
That is audience awareness, and it becomes increasingly important as your responsibilities grow.
Sometimes communication feedback appears only when there is tension.
Perhaps you communicate well when everyone agrees but become too blunt, too passive, too defensive, or too accommodating when the stakes rise.
You may need to work on:
Strong communication is not demonstrated only in presentations and meetings. It is often most visible when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
People rarely receive this feedback in such direct words. Instead, they may hear:
Listening is not passive.
Active listeners try to understand the message before constructing their response. They notice what has actually been asked, what has not been said, and what matters most to the speaker.
Listening makes almost every other communication skill better. If you listen poorly, even a beautifully structured response may be the wrong response.
This usually does not mean you need to become more entertaining.
In professional communication, storytelling means helping people understand what happened, why it mattered, what you did, and what they should take from it.
This matters in:
A good professional story has a point. Without one, it is simply chronology.
If you're serious about improving this skill, our Business Storytelling Coaching Course is perfect for you.
This feedback needs careful diagnosis.
The issue may be language, but it may also be delivery.
For professionals who use English as an additional language, managers sometimes use vague expressions such as “be clearer,” “improve your English,” or “work on your accent” when what they are actually experiencing is increased listener effort.
Possible causes include:
A strong accent is not automatically a problem.
The useful question is:
Which features of my speech are making listeners work harder than necessary?
That is much more specific—and much more trainable—than simply trying to “lose your accent.”
Our blog post, Why You're Hard to Understand in English and How to Fix It, goes into more detail on the subject.
These different communication problems have something important in common: the listener is being asked to do work that the speaker could have done.
Strong communication removes as much of that unnecessary work as possible.
If you have been told to “work on your communication,” start here.
Do people struggle to find my point?
Focus on clarity, structure, and headline-first communication.
Do I regularly get told I talk too much?
Focus on concision, listening, and selecting relevant details.
Do I know my subject but sound uncertain?
Focus on confidence signals, hedging, pace, and vocal delivery.
Do I contribute information but rarely make recommendations?
Focus on judgment, headline-first communication, and strategic framing.
Are my ideas largely invisible in meetings?
Focus on speaking up, making concise contributions, and communicating with conviction.
Do people react badly to my directness?
Focus on diplomacy, audience awareness, and interpersonal intelligence.
Do I avoid difficult conversations?
Focus on assertiveness, boundaries, and difficult-conversation skills.
Do I explain well to experts but lose everyone else?
Focus on audience calibration and simplifying without oversimplifying.
Do listeners frequently ask me to repeat myself?
Identify whether the cause is volume, pace, articulation, pronunciation, phrasing, terminology, or audio quality before deciding what to practice.
Do I answer thoroughly but somehow still miss the point?
Focus on active listening.
Once you understand what the feedback means, turn it into something you can practice.
This creates a practical development cycle: example, diagnosis, practice, and feedback.
Managers can help by making communication feedback more specific.
Instead of:
“You need better communication skills.”
Try:
“In senior meetings, you often give us the background before the recommendation. I want you to lead with the recommendation and then give us the two or three facts that support it.”
Instead of:
“You need more presence.”
Try:
“You know the subject, but you soften your recommendations so much that people aren’t sure what you actually think.”
Instead of:
“Be clearer.”
Try:
“When you explain technical issues to clients, you include details they don’t need. Start with the business impact and add technical detail only if they ask.”
That kind of feedback gives someone something specific to practice.
You do not have to become louder, more extroverted, more polished, more charismatic, or less yourself.
Communication is a collection of skills. Some may already be strengths. Others may be limiting your impact.
The goal is not to transform your personality. It is to identify where your listener is working too hard, where your message is losing force, and which specific behaviors will make you easier to understand, trust, and work with.
So, the next time someone tells you:
“You need to work on your communication,”
do not stop at the label. Ask:
“What would better communication look like?”
That is where useful development begins.
If you have received vague feedback about your communication and are unsure what to work on, a targeted communication assessment can help identify the specific behaviors affecting your impact.
So, do you need to work on your communication skills at work? Our spoken business English training is tailored to your needs and goals by a native-speaker trainer.
You can work with an experienced English trainer online or at one of our locations:
Amsterdam (near Vondelpark or Central Station)
Amstelveen (easy parking, quiet setting)
The Hague (Zuid-Holland’s choice for English training)
Hoofddorp (close to Schiphol, central, accessible, modern)
Prefer a virtual course? Contact us about English Center courses online
About the author:
Brenda de Jong-Pauley is the founder of The English Center in the Netherlands, where she has worked with international professionals since 2009. Originally from the United States, she lives and works in the Netherlands, supporting professionals in developing clear, confident English for real business situations.
Brenda holds a Master’s degree in Psychology (focused on persuasive communication) and a Bachelor’s in Education. She specializes in high-level business communication and spoken English.
Edited by A. Roberts, Trainer with The English Center. She holds a BA in English Literature.
The English Center is a CEDEO-recognized training provider, working with professionals and teams from international and Dutch companies and municipalities.
