A Leadership Communication Workshop with Crina Ancuta, MD

Leadership Advisor and Executive Coach

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. If you remember one thing about communicating with your top leadership, that is it.

In our latest Boardroom Series session, executive coach Crina Ancuta, MD led WIL members through one of the most practical and most personal skills a senior professional can build: how to communicate with a board and a C suite in a way that actually lands. This was not a session about scripts or corporate polish. It was about leading from integrity, regulating your own nervous system, and learning to read the people across the table so your message moves them rather than meets resistance.

Below is a full recap of the session, the frameworks Crina shared, the DISC leadership model she uses with her clients and boards, and the questions our members raised at the end. Whether you joined us live or are catching the recording, save this. It is a working guide you can return to before your next high-stakes conversation.

Start From Service, Not From the Power Battle

Crina opened with a reframe that set the tone for everything that followed. Influencing the board, she said, only works when you come from a place of service rather than winning. When your intention is to lead for the bigger good, to bring your company the strongest solutions and the clearest direction, doors open differently. The energy you carry into the room is felt before a single word is spoken.

She drew on one of her favorite thinkers, organizational psychologist Adam Grant, who argues that the most meaningful way to succeed is to help others succeed. From that, Crina offered a single guiding question to carry into every board interaction: How can I help the board succeed?

She was honest about her own younger self, who used to judge senior leaders as not having the right reasons or the right means behind their decisions. Maturity, she reflected, is recognizing the gift of being in a company whose values resonate with yours, and understanding that leadership is a reciprocal relationship. You work hard and deserve recognition, and at the same time, the people steering the company carry enormous responsibility, including the responsibility of paying every salary on the books, whether that is ten people or a hundred thousand. Help them drive the strategy. And if the values no longer align, be bold enough to go on your own journey, because the world needs powerful leaders who change it.

You Can Only Be as Good as Your Nervous System Is Regulated

Crina ran a simple exercise. Imagine your CEO or C-suite leader walks into your office unannounced and asks, “What do you recommend in this case”? She asked members to notice what happens inside them in that instant. Is it apprehension? Frustration that they are asking so soon? Anger and the urge to prove how hard you have been working? Or is it curiosity and presence?

In that moment, if you are not calm and have not trained yourself to see every interaction with curiosity, there is still a lot of inner work to be done.

That instinctive reaction, she explained, is your default neural pathway firing. The answer that arrives in a split second comes from that old wiring. Her antidote is deceptively simple and worth practicing until it becomes automatic:

• Never jump to respond. Take a breath first, even in a fast-paced environment.

• Use that pause to choose. In that split second of calm, decide whether you need to ask a clarifying question to buy thinking time, or whether you already have the answer and can deliver it with presence.

The breath is not a delay tactic. It is the difference between reacting from your nervous system and responding from your judgment.

How Executive Leaders Actually Think

Crina shared a story from early in her career, when a senior leader told her bluntly: Honey, do not waste my time. I want this short. It stung, and it did not help build an open relationship. But it taught her something real. The harshness was not the point. The reality was. Senior leaders are under immense pressure and juggling an enormous number of priorities. They do not have time, and your job is to support them so they can support you.

What this means in practice:

• They think in big, key priorities and in optimizing time.

• The most evolved among them are highly adaptable and can listen, but only for a few minutes.

• You need to arrive clear, focused, and succinct, which requires real preparation.

Crina was firm on the prep phase. She would never walk into an intentional interaction with a C-suite leader without knowing exactly what they need, what their priorities are, whether it is the right time, how much time they have, and exactly what she wants to get from the conversation. Preparation is what lets you be succinct without being shallow.

Flip Your Structure: Lead With the Recommendation

Here, Crina delivered the part that many of us get wrong. Our instinct, especially for lawyers and analytical professionals, is to build the case first: the facts, the background, the evidence, the data, the story, then the analysis, and finally the recommendation. At the board level, that order works against you.

Drawing on recent thinking from the top consulting firms, she laid out the structure that senior leaders actually want:

• The recommendation first. This is what I am suggesting, and this is where I want to take the business. Show them where you want to take them.

• The business impact. Boards exist to deliver the top line and the bottom line, and the best ones also lead for people. State the impact clearly.

• The risks and your mitigation plan. Leading with integrity does not mean hiding risk. Your strength shows in naming the risks and explaining how you will manage them, backed by evidence.

• A clear ask. Be explicit about what you want from them: a decision, guidance, or alignment. When everyone is aligned, you can move at pace.

You show your strength by highlighting the risks and how you will mitigate them, not by covering them.

Reading the Room: The DISC Leadership Profiles

There are hundreds of personality frameworks, from Color to Hogan to the Leadership Circle to the Enneagram. Crina favors DISC for its simplicity and the insight it provides into how a team will behave under both normal conditions and stress. She uses a DISC leadership profile with all her clients and with the boards she works with.

A crucial caveat she stressed: at the top, leaders often do not show their raw profile. They have evolved. They keep their strengths but refine their communication, softening the edges and deploying their strong energy only where it counts. Most people also carry one dominant style plus two or three secondary ones. The goal is not to label people but to begin scanning what they communicate, moving from self-awareness to awareness of others.

The four profiles at a glance:

A quick summary: Ds want results and decisions. Is want vision, energy, and relationships. Ss want stability and collaboration. Cs want logic and evidence.

Know Your Own Blind Spots

Every profile carries a hidden blind spot. A driven leader can move too fast and miss important details, and may read as aggressive to a steady colleague. An influential leader can be too inspirational, lack consistency, and struggle to follow through. The value of knowing your own profile is that you can start addressing your blind spots or build the right balance into the team around you.

Crina invited members to map their own environment. Your CFO may be a blue. Your ethics and compliance officer almost certainly is. Your chief people officer may be a green. Your founder or board chair may be a visionary yellow. Once you can see the room, you can adapt to it. Then turn the lens inward and ask what you tend to overuse:

• Too much detail, or too much speed?

• Too much caution, or too much passion?

• Too much data, too much harmony, or too much control?

Each of these becomes a trigger when you communicate with someone of the opposite style. When two opposing profiles meet without enough introspection, both nervous systems read the other as a threat, and that is where communication ends. This is why the work starts with us.

We are like a gem that wants to become a diamond. We have to be brave enough to look inside, accept who we are, and start polishing.

From the Floor: Members’ Questions

Is passion a weakness?

One member shared a raw and recent experience. Competing at a competition, she gave the best presentation she could, and the judges signaled that her passion did not serve her in that context. It hurt, she admitted, because passion is the edge she values most in herself. Her question: Where is the line between adapting to the audience and changing yourself so much that you lose your authentic voice?

Crina’s answer was generous. The feedback was not personal; it was relevant to that audience. We always have a choice, and when our core strengths are completely at odds with what an environment needs, that may simply be the wrong environment. Pick your battles. Passion is a phenomenal gift, so seek out the teams and contexts where it is exactly what is needed. The same presentation, delivered in ten years to a tougher room, can carry a sparkle of that passion without leading with it. You do not have to amputate who you are. You learn when to turn the volume up and when to turn it down.

Even the best music will not be appealing if the volume is shaking the walls when the moment calls for calm.

What if I freeze in the room?

Another member spoke vulnerably about losing her words around C-suite leaders, sometimes going quiet because she is unsure what to say or how to pitch it to their level. Crina met this with genuine warmth, noting that she has practiced being comfortable in large rooms for decades and is still doing so. Life keeps bringing bigger rooms so we can keep learning that we are enough exactly as we are.

Her practical guidance: prepare, research who will be there and what they care about, and go in with an open heart and genuine curiosity. Everyone likes a good question and likes to share about themselves, so connect at the human level first. She pointed to one of her young clients, who rose quickly at one of the world’s biggest banks precisely by leading with people skills in an environment known for its sharp edges. And then the philosophical anchor she returns to herself:

Just because you are there, you were meant to be there. There is a reason that trust was placed in you. We always learn in discomfort, and in time, we notice we have become more skilled.

Your Homework

Crina left members with an exercise. Take a single message you need to deliver to one of your most challenging leaders, and rehearse how you would shape it for each personality. How would you say it to a red CEO who wants the bottom line? How would you frame it for a CHRO or chief people officer? How would you open the same project with a visionary yellow founder or board chair? The content stays true. The delivery adapts.

Three things to carry forward

• Lead from service. Ask how you can help the board succeed, and let integrity set your energy in the room.

• Regulate before you respond. The breath buys you the choice between reacting and leading.

• Structure for them, not for you. Recommendation, business impact, risk and mitigation, then a clear ask, adapted to the profile in front of you.

Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind. That is what you need to deliver, and that is what you need to ask for.

Want to Go Deeper?

Crina offered members a DISC leadership review, a full personalized report you can use to understand your own communication style and how to adapt it across your direct reports and your board. If you would like to dive into your profile, reach out to arrange a session.

Thank you to Crina Ancuta for a generous and practical session, and to everyone who joined the Boardroom Series. Trust who you are and adapt your communication to your style.

*Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash