The Words You Choose Will Define Your Leadership: A Conversation With Margaret Aitken

What Your Silence Actually Communicates (And It's Worse Than You Think)

You're in a crisis. A merger. A restructuring. A pivot. Maybe a scandal. There's a lot you can't say yet. So you decide to say nothing.

The moment you go silent, your people don't stop thinking. They start imagining. And nine times out of ten, the story they create in their heads is worse than the truth you're holding back.

This is the paradox of leadership communication that most leaders never learn until it costs them something valuable.

Meet Margaret aitken

Margaret Aitken spent a decade as press secretary to then-U.S. Senator Joe Biden. Before that, she volunteered on his campaign. She's since become a corporate communications advisor to companies navigating massive transformation—healthcare organizations, Fortune 500 firms, and startups in the midst of figuring out who they are.

And here's what she's learned: the way you communicate doesn't just describe your leadership. It is your leadership.

One story crystallizes this better than any theory.

The CEO Nobody Expected to Succeed

There was a company in crisis. Years of instability. A succession of failed leaders. Each one had left the team more demoralized than the last. Then a new CEO came in—someone with no experience in the industry, stepping into organized chaos.

By all logic, he should have failed.

Instead, he did something radical: he told the truth about what he didn't know.

"Look, I don't know everything yet. I want to rebuild this company deliberately and slowly. And my promise to you is that I'm going to be transparent. You're going to be involved. When I find things that aren't working, I'm going to tell you. When I make mistakes, I'm going to tell you."

He built a single, consistent narrative—we are rebuilding together—and held it through every decision. Not a new story for each crisis. Not a pivot in messaging when things got hard. One throughline: honesty, involvement, shared purpose.

By the end of that year, they'd lost fewer people than the previous three years combined. Engagement scores went up.

Margaret was stunned. She'd expected the opposite.

What she realized was this: in times of uncertainty, people don't need perfect information. They need proof that their leader is still in the room with them. That there's an adult in the situation. That they're not alone trying to make sense of chaos.

The CEO's narrative did that.

Why the Best Leaders Sound Like Themselves

Here's the mistake most organizations make: they hire a communications professional, and that person writes a speech or a mission statement that sounds beautiful, polished, and completely inauthentic.

Margaret experienced this directly. She worked with a CEO whose leadership style was tactical, grounded, practical. The previous CEO had been far more emotive and warm. When Margaret made the mistake of writing for the new guy using the old guy's voice, the speech landed flat.

It was well-written. The messaging was right. But it didn't sound like him.

So nobody believed it.

This is the paradox: you can craft the perfect narrative, but if it doesn't match the person delivering it, your team will feel the contradiction before their brain can articulate it. They'll sense that something is off. And they'll trust you less.

Margaret learned this from Joe Biden, who had an almost supernatural ability to make people feel seen and heard. Not through grand gestures. Through genuine presence and language that matched where people actually lived.

When Margaret was young and trying to impress Biden, she wrote a press release with a line about a "cadre of concerned citizens"—fancy alliteration, right? Biden crossed it out and wrote "group of people."

The lesson stuck with her: connection isn't about impressive language. It's about reaching someone's heart where they are.

The Narrative That Holds Everything Together

Imagine a large healthcare organization with 30,000 employees. Frontline workers deal with patient crises and safety issues. Office staff manage regulatory and financial challenges. Nobody knows what everyone else is dealing with.

They're all touching different parts of the elephant.

A good leader's job isn't to manage all those parts separately. It's to describe the entire elephant—the jungle around it—and then show how each person's work connects to something larger.

That's organizational narrative.

It's the difference between "we need to cut costs" and "we're facing regulatory headwinds that threaten our ability to care for patients, so here's how your role in cost management keeps us serving people who can't pay."

One is a directive. One is a story that makes people want to be part of something.

Margaret works with leaders to excavate this story. And it's almost never the obvious one. She'll ask a question five different ways until the real answer surfaces—the thing that actually matters to the leader, not the thing that sounds good in a board meeting.

She asked an entrepreneur why she started her company about transportation for kids. The first answer was business-school perfect: market analysis, identified gap, solution architecture.

But after pushing deeper, the real answer emerged: "I'm a working mom, and I'm tired of asking for favors I can't return. I want my kids to get where they need to go safely."

That's not a business pitch. That's a human story. And when Margaret told her this was the narrative she should lead with, suddenly the entire company made sense differently.

Because we don't connect with market solutions. We connect with people.

What Happens When You Fill the Silence

One of Margaret's core pieces of advice sits at the intersection of authenticity and pragmatism:

When you're in a transition and you can't say everything, say something.

Specifically, talk about what isn't changing. Talk about your values. Talk about who you are as a leader and what matters to you. Don't leave people to fill the blanks with their fears.

This isn't revolutionary. It's neuroscience. Humans are hardwired to create stories. In the absence of information, they'll manufacture certainty—and it will almost always be darker than reality.

The alternative? Transparency about what you can share, clarity about your commitments, and consistent communication even when you're not announcing anything new.

That consistency itself becomes the message: I'm here, I'm paying attention, I'm in this with you.

The Thread That Runs Through Everything

One of Margaret's clients led with a simple word that appeared in nearly every communication: "dear."

"Our dear children." "Dear colleagues." "Dear community."

That single word changed how people experienced the narrative. It created a feeling of warmth, protection, and purpose that no amount of mission-statement wordsmithing could achieve.

This is the power Margaret talks about: with a single word, you can unite people. With a single word, you can divide them.

The best leaders understand this. They don't just speak. They choose their words like they're building architecture—each one load-bearing, each one intentional.

Your Next Step

If you're leading through change, leading across generations, or simply trying to move people from one place to another, here's what matters:

First: Get clear on your authentic narrative. Not the story you think you should tell. The story that's actually true for you. Your origin. Your values. Your "why."

Second: Find the human connection. Don't lead with the business case. Lead with the person who will be affected by the decision. Make it real. Make it relatable.

Third: Say something rather than nothing. In times of uncertainty, your consistency matters more than your perfection. Your presence matters more than having all the answers.

Fourth: Check the match between message and messenger. If you're saying something that doesn't sound like you, people will feel it. Go back and find the language that's actually yours.

And if you're struggling to find that language, if you can't quite articulate your narrative in a way that feels true—that's not a weakness. That's where a good communications strategist comes in.

Because the words you choose will define your leadership. Choose them like they matter.

More From Margaret aitken

Margaret Aitken is a communications strategist and writer who works with executive teams and organizations navigating transformation. Her clients include healthcare systems, Fortune 500 companies, and mission-driven organizations.

For a decade, she served as press secretary to U.S. Senator Joe Biden, where she learned firsthand the power of authentic communication and genuine human connection.

These days, she also writes regularly on Substack, exploring themes of resilience, leadership, vulnerability, and the small moments that shape us. Her writing is raw, honest, and deeply human—exactly the kind of communication she advocates for in the boardroom.

If you're leading through change, you need to read her work.

Continue the Conversation

Every episode of Step Wise starts with one question: what does wisdom actually look like when you're in the middle of it?

This one's about words. About storytelling. About how the narratives leaders tell don't just describe reality—they create it.

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