Why You Can't Explain What You Do (And It's Costing You Everything)

Have you ever come out of an interview thinking, I didn't say half of what I meant to say? Or looked at someone else's LinkedIn profile and thought, how do they make themselves sound so impressive when I know for a fact I've done more?

This week I'm talking about what I call the articulation gap, and I want to be clear from the start that it isn't imposter syndrome. It's something different, and in some ways a bigger problem, because it isn't about doubting your ability. It's about knowing exactly what you're capable of and simply not having the words for it when someone asks.

I trace where this comes from, because it isn't a personal failing. Sector culture that treats self-promotion as faintly wrong. Years of leading teams where the instinct is always "we" rather than "I," which is generous and true and completely unhelpful when someone's trying to work out what you specifically brought. What I call the compression problem, where decades of complex, skilled work get squeezed into labels like "stakeholder management" and "strategic leadership," accurate labels that could belong to almost anyone. And the modesty reflex that a lot of us, especially in the UK, especially in this sector, were taught early: safer to understate, safer to say "I contributed" than "I led."

The video gives you the reframe I actually use. You are not talking about yourself. You are giving someone the information they need to make a decision. And it gives you the exercise that makes the difference between a claim and evidence: not "I'm experienced in change management," but the specific restructure, the specific pressure, the specific thing that would have gone wrong if you hadn't got it right. That's the version that lands.

This matters beyond interviews. When capable people can't name what they bring, the wrong people get promoted, and the ones with the real substance stay quiet. Being able to describe your value properly isn't vanity. It's how you get to keep doing work that matters.

Watch the full video about it here: