Written by JoyGenea Schumer with support from ChatGPT
Improve Your Leadership Communication with This One Simple Tool: “What Is the Next Best Step?”
In fast-moving environments, leaders are constantly thinking about what to do next, but often, they forget to say it out loud.
That small communication gap can lead to confusion, fear, or even turnover among great employees.
The truth is leadership isn’t just about making smart decisions. It’s about helping others see the path forward clearly enough to walk it with you.
The simplest way to do that? Ask and answer one question consistently:
“What is the next best step?”
This question brings focus, alignment, and confidence, especially when times are uncertain or change feels constant. Let me share a story of how one of my clients used this idea to transform her leadership communication and her team culture.
A Leadership Lesson from the Field
Let me share a recent story from a client. In her country, they got a new president last year, and that president started to place large tariffs on supplies that her company uses to make their products. The CFO was very clear on how this was going to affect the company. She was scrambling in two directions. How to adjust their product to keep it near its price point and maintain quality and what in research and development could be rushed to market that used different supplies.
Her company has risen to the challenge and is more than surviving; they are thriving and having one of their best years. Revenue is up and costs are down.
In the middle of all of that, at one of our meetings, she shared an email she had received from the HR department. It was the notes from an exit interview with an employee. This employee was leaving because they were so scared of losing their job due to the higher cost of supplies, which was keeping them up at night. This was the fourth person this week to find another job for similar reasons.
She looked at me and said, “What am I supposed to do about this? I’m saving the company so nobody has to lose their job, and they’re leaving anyway!”
The Communication Blind Spot
One of her greatest strengths as a leader comes from her ADHD: she can pivot like no one else. But when she gets hyper-focused, she tends to pull inward, working fast, thinking deep, and unintentionally shutting others out.
In her super focused state, she wouldn’t take time to communicate what the plan was. Not only would she not communicate it, she would get agitated when people asked. They knew she was under a lot of pressure, so they just stopped asking and just did what they were told when she gave them direction on the next action they needed to take.
The HR email gave us a chance to debrief on how the process was going so far and what she might see as some opportunities for her growth. Communication was at the top of the list. She had been operating this one way her whole life and it has made her successful in her career, but she could see how it was now holding her back adding more stress to the people around her. She was winning, but at what cost.
It was time to level-up and learn new skills in communication.
How to Improve Communication Quickly and Effectively
Here’s the tool we started using and it’s one I share with every leader I coach:
Ask yourself, “What is the next best step?” and then say the answer out loud or write it down.
Share it with your leadership team. Share it with the people you supervise. Share it even when you’re not 100% certain.
This one question turns inner clarity into outer confidence.
Most leaders are already asking themselves this question. The breakdown happens when they forget to share their answer regularly, at least once a week.
10 Ways to Frame “The Next Best Step”
Here are ten ways to express your answer to this question so it resonates with your team and builds alignment:
- The Prioritization Frame
“Our next best step is to focus on the one thing that will have the biggest impact this week.” - The Progress Frame
“The next best step builds on what we’ve already done, here’s how we keep the momentum going.” - The Learning Frame
“The next best step is to test this idea and learn what works before we scale.” - The Stabilization Frame
“Before we move forward, the next best step is to stabilize what’s already working.” - The Communication Frame
“The next best step is to make sure everyone understands where we’re headed and why.” - The Empowerment Frame
“The next best step is to delegate ownership of this part, here’s who will lead and how we’ll support them.” - The Clarity Frame
“The next best step is to define what success looks like before we act.” - The Alignment Frame
“The next best step is to make sure our actions match our values and goals.” - The Celebration Frame
“The next best step is to recognize what we’ve accomplished so far before we push ahead.” - The Future-Casting Frame
“If we look three months ahead, what do we want to have accomplished? The next best step is what moves us closer to that vision.”
Bringing It All Together: Leading Through Clarity and Connection
When my client began using this simple question and sharing her answer consistently, her leadership changed.
Her team relaxed. Communication improved. People stopped guessing and started engaging. The fear that had caused four resignations turned into shared confidence about the future.
That’s the power of clarity and communication. It doesn’t just keep people informed, it keeps them connected.
Leadership Reflection Prompt
Take five minutes this week and ask yourself:
“What is the next best step for us right now and why?”
Then, share your answer using one of the framing styles above.
You’ll be amazed at how quickly trust, focus, and alignment start to grow.
I would love to hear about your results.
Being an unconventional or neurodiverse leader opens up new learning opportunities each day. Because we are so well tuned into our strengths we have lots of areas for growth. It’s kind of exciting if you frame it the right way for yourself.
What’s the next best step for me?
Speaking. It’s time to do more engagements talking with people about leadership and unconventional styles. I believe it is going to be one of the most important tools as we move into an AI world.
JoyGenea Schumer
Unconventional Leadership and International Neurodiveristy Coach
Video Transcription:
Being a different thinker and a leader creates always opportunities for growth, change, and advancement. You just gotta be open to them.
So this week what I wanna talk about, and what I wrote my article about this week, was entirely improving your leadership communication with this simple, one tool. And it is a question, actually, and it is the question, “What is the next best step?”
Sometimes leaders, rarely do I see this, but every once in a while, they can freeze under a question they’ve never seen before in our life: “I don’t wanna screw this up, hmm.”
Simply asking, “What is the next best step?” can help you get out of freeze and get your brain going on creating a solution, cause you’re asking a question. Your brain likes when you ask a question. It helps take us out of fight, fight, freeze, that, and move us into another spot.
In the article, I talk about a business owner that I’ve been working with that, um, this year her government got a new leader, and that leader, um, a bunch of new tariffs came on, and it happened to be on a lot of supplies that they used to create their product.
And what was incredible was how quickly she just saw that as a creative advantage to, to lead differently, and, and really stepped up for all of that.
That said, during the process, and I, I go into more detail in, in the article, she talks, what she didn’t do was talk, actually. She did not share with people what she was thinking, what she was planning on doing. She just started delegating things out and giving people tasks, which was great.
Um, at this point, though, she had recognized HR had informed her that people were starting to leave because they were scared. And why they were so scared is, there wasn’t communication explaining what was happening, and so they weren’t sure if the company was gonna survive, if their jobs were good. People get scared, and as leaders it’s really important that we learn how to communicate what’s happening, or what we can communicate, to bring that fear down and to enroll them in the change that’s happening ahead.
And that, that’s really what we focused on, and that’s where that question, “What is the next best step?” can be so helpful in the process.
Because really they’re asking, “What are we gonna do?” and your response is, “Well, here’s what the next step is.”
And it doesn’t have to be a long step, and at times you do need to paint the picture way out there and then bring them back and be like, “We’re just gonna do this one step next. Don’t worry about it, we’ve got the big picture. Here’s the next best step we’re gonna take.”
There are a couple other ways you might communicate that.
“So before we move forward, the next step is to stabilize where we’re already at. That would look like this.”
Or clarity: “The next best step is to define what success looks like before we act on it. Let’s not make a lot of really quick reactions and responses to, to this change in the market. That’s all that is. Let’s instead take a step back. What, what could be our next best steps? Let’s explore that a little bit more. Let’s work together to find that.”
Um, a Celebration frame around, “What’s the next step?” might just be, “The next step is to recognize that we’ve accomplished so much so far. Before we push ahead, let’s take a moment to celebrate the transition, the change, what we’ve already accomplished.”
So as leaders, don’t forget you are also, when I use that term “leading your own life,” you are the leader of your own life.
And are you communicating that to the people around you? And are you making sure to enroll them in the future that you’re building?
I promise you, enrolling people in your future is probably one of the greatest boosts you can make to your goals.
And sometimes it might come from people in a manner that’s, they’re not absolutely supportive. I actually find that to be very motivational.
Sometimes when the people around me are like, “Oh, you can’t do that,” or, “How are you gonna do that?” that just makes my brain go, “Oh yeah. Now game on. Like now, I just wanna demonstrate this is so able to happen. I get you don’t have the picture for it. I do. I’m gonna make that happen.”
You are an incredible leader of others and your own life, and it is important.
This question can really simplify your communication and improve your communication easily. That’s why I put it out there.
That’s why it works really well with people with ADHD, dyslexia, autism, those neurodiversity, those different thinking brains.
It’s a really simple question that, as you answer it, you can enroll other people. You can communicate with other people about that.
I am JoyGenea. I am so glad you were here. I’m an incredible coach that works for unconventional leaders and international individuals that have a neurodiversity and are in a professional field.
So glad you stopped by. I would love to see your comments. I would love to hear how you implement this into your environment and what kind of results you get.
Thank you so much. Bye now.