> I am a technical manager and currently in a leadership role. My manager who is an executive, keeps telling me“ don’t talk like an engineer, talk like a leader

> I am a technical manager and currently in a leadership role. My manager who is an executive, keeps telling me“ don’t talk like an engineer, talk like a leader” when I go to him for any people or operational Issues. What does your manager say that means? This strikes me as the 'critical thinking skills' of management -- nobody knows what the phrase really means, and if they did they wouldn't want it. It is every manager's job is to provide clarity to their directs, even executives. At a first brush, your job is to speak like both a leader and an engineer. You lead engineers, after all. That means connecting the engineering, the "how", with the business results, the "why." One of your team's goals might be to reduce AWS costs, by tweaking Java GC parameters. Going deeper, you might consider personality traits. The DISC model of personality divides humanity into four categories: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientious. To keep it brief, we generally perceive high D personalities as 'leaders' and high C personalities as 'engineers.' Talking like a leader in this context means demanding results, and making decisions under uncertainty, while an engineer is more likely to ask for more time or more data, obsess over quality beyond what the customer needs or expects, and avoid talking to people. High D communications tend to be brief, while high C communications may be overly detailed. More pessimistically, perhaps your exec simply means to stop talking about technology they don't understand, and have no interest in understanding. If this is the case, you should consider whether an executive responsible for a technical team is sustainable. Certainly some amount of simplifying explanations can be expected of middle management, but this is a two way street and some efforts should be made to understand the tools used to solve your business problems.