Why communicating differently with different people is not a lack of authenticity.
By Jeremy Edmonson | Forge Axis
There is a criticism that gets thrown at leaders who are skilled communicators. The accusation is that adjusting how you speak to different people means you are being fake. That you are putting on a performance. That the real version of you would just say the same thing the same way to everyone and let them figure out how to receive it.
I disagree with that completely, and I have spent nearly two decades in high-stakes environments to back it up.
Communicating differently with different individuals is not a character flaw. It is one of the most precise skills in leadership. It requires you to pay attention, to understand what drives the person in front of you, and to care enough about the outcome to deliver a message in a way they can actually receive. That is not manipulation. That is the work.
Knowing Your People Is Non-Negotiable
Early in my career as a Patrol Sergeant, I led a team of 11 people with 11 completely different personalities. Some would call me out directly when they thought I was wrong. Some went quiet when they were frustrated and you had to read it in their posture before you heard it in their words. Some were hard rule followers. Some were comfortable operating in the gray. Left to their own devices, similar personalities would naturally cluster. That is human nature. It is also a problem if you let it run unchecked.
I wanted a team that was close across those divides, not just within their comfort zones. I wanted people who had each other's backs regardless of personality. Building that required daily attention. Every detail. Every word spoken. Every reaction in a room. Followership is not built in a single conversation or a strong speech. It is built across hundreds of small interactions that either tell people you see them or tell them you do not.*
Patrick Lencioni identifies the absence of trust as the base dysfunction from which all team failure flows.** That trust does not come from a team-building exercise. It comes from a leader who is consistent, present, and genuinely invested in the people they lead. My investment was real. I was open about my own mistakes. I was connected to each person individually. That authenticity is what made the adaptive communication work. Without it, people would have seen through it immediately.
Tactical Communication Is Not One-Size-Fits-All
The team members who would call me out were one of my most valuable assets. I leaned into them. When someone is comfortable enough to challenge you, they are also going to tell you when you are making a mistake before it becomes a real problem. A few brains working together will always outperform one. I never saw that as a threat to my authority. I saw it as a resource.
The quiet ones required a different approach. I did not try to draw them out by putting them on the spot in a group setting. Instead, I tasked them with running trainings and preparing debriefs for high-stress calls. I paired them with outgoing teammates. I built small working groups that intentionally crossed personality lines, placing people with teammates who sat outside their normal comfort zones. Over time, those quiet team members developed confidence they did not have when they arrived. That was the goal. Not compliance. Growth.
Some people needed firm feedback delivered directly. Some needed the same message wrapped differently so their ego did not shut down before the information could land. Recognizing which situation you are in and adjusting accordingly is not dishonesty. It is diplomacy. And diplomacy is a skill that leaders at every level need to develop, whether you are leading down the chain, across it, or up it.
Leading up the chain requires its own discipline. Your supervisors have blind spots too. They have egos. They have pressure coming from above them that you may not fully see. Getting a message to land with someone above you in the chain requires the same study and intentionality that leading your own team does. The leaders who cannot figure that out tend to either stay silent when they should speak or deliver the message so bluntly that it triggers defensiveness instead of reflection. Neither one serves the organization.
Calm Is a Leadership Decision
One thing I was deliberate about regardless of the individual I was leading was consistency under pressure. My team always knew what to expect from me when things got hard. Not in the sense that our tactics were rigid, because we adapted constantly to what each situation demanded. But in terms of how I would show up, they knew. I would be there. I would structure the chaos. And I would be the calmest person in the room.
Calm breeds calm. Commander Sid Heal spent decades commanding tactical operations and understood this operationally: in a crisis, people do not rise to the occasion. They fall to the level of their conditioning.* The conditioning I was building in my team every day, through every debrief, every training, every micro-interaction, was showing up in those high-pressure moments. The predictability of my leadership under stress was not an accident. It was the product of intentional, consistent behavior over time.
Motivation Is Everything
There is a version of adaptive communication that is genuinely unethical. It is when you use the skill to serve yourself, to manage people for your own advancement, to protect your position at the expense of theirs. I have seen that version of leadership and it is easy to spot because the motivation underneath it is wrong.
My motivation was never about getting ahead. Everything I did was because it was the right thing to do for the people I was responsible for. I wanted my team to perform at a high level so they could succeed. Go home safe. Learn to lead. The influence I built, the positions I won, the decorations I received and the followership I earned were byproducts of that investment, not the goal. That distinction matters more than people realize, because the people you lead can feel it. They know whether you are in it for them or for yourself. You cannot fake that over the long term, and you should not try.
Leadership has to be intentional. Every communication decision, every adaptation, every pairing, every assigned debrief, every moment of staying calm when everything was moving fast, those were not accidents. But the reason they were ethical is because the person driving all of it was genuinely trying to build people, not a reputation. A leaders success should truly be a biproduct of their mission to make everyone around them successful.
Adjust how you communicate. Study your people. Speak differently to different individuals. Do it because you care about whether the message lands and whether they grow from it.
That is not fake. That is the job.
Jeremy Edmonson is a leadership consultant and the founder of Forge Axis Leadership Consulting. He spent nearly two decades in law enforcement, including roles as a Sergeant and SWAT team leader, and holds an MBA with a leadership focus and a BA in Psychology.
* Heal, S. (2006). Sound Doctrine: A Tactical Primer. CLEARS. Commander Heal served over 30 years with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department and commanded some of the most complex tactical operations in California law enforcement history.
** Lencioni, P. (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass. Lencioni's foundational work identifies absence of trust as the base dysfunction from which all team failure flows, and positions vulnerability-based trust as the only durable solution