The "Postman" vs. The "Professor": Why your communication is draining your team
The Trap of the "Busy" Communicator In my consulting work with multinational sites, I see two types of leaders who are drowning in "Effort" but losing their "Authority." On the surface, they look like opposites. In reality, they are both paying a heavy Ambiguity Tax.
The Two Extremes:
The Professor: You spend 45 minutes drafting the "perfect" instructional email. It’s dense, exhaustive, and covers every "what if."
The Result: You aren't being clear; you’re being a bottleneck. Your team becomes paralyzed, decoding your emails rather than doing the work. You’ve trained them to be dependent on your micro-input.
The Postman: You just "forward" emails from corporate or other departments with a "See below" or "FYI."
The Result: You are acting as an administrative pass-through. Without context or expectations, your team feels abandoned and spends hours guessing the priority. You are losing face because you aren't adding value—you’re just adding noise.
The High Cost of Being "Dispensable" Whether you are over-explaining or under-explaining, you are performing administrative labor with zero strategic ROI. If your only role is to pass on information or bury people in it, you are making yourself dispensable. In the CAPDA framework, we recognize that communication is the delivery vehicle for your Authentic Authority. If the vehicle is broken, your expertise never reaches the destination.
The CAPDA Shift: Transferring Certainty, Not Just Data High-authority communication isn't about the volume of words; it’s about the weight of the message. To move from a "Postman" to a "Consultant-Leader," your communication must hit three marks:
Strategic Context: Why are we doing this now? (The "Why")
Explicit Expectation: What does "done" look like? (The "What")
Command of Brevity: The fewest words to achieve the maximum result. (The "How Much")
Infographic comparing low-authority leadership communication (The Postman and The Professor) vs. high-authority CAPDA communication.
This week, audit your sent folder. Are you acting as an administrative assistant to your team, or are you providing the strategic architecture they need to execute?
If your team is wasting energy guessing what you want—or waiting for you to stop talking so they can start working—your communication is a liability, not an asset.
Ready to eliminate the Ambiguity Tax?
I help Directors and Strategic Leaders install the CAPDA framework to reclaim their time and drive team performance. If you’re ready to shift from "Busy" to "Authoritative," reach out. Let’s identify where your leadership influence is leaking.