Job loss, awkward boundaries, and the art of saying no without burning bridges. These are real Qs from listeners like you. Andrea takes the mic to answer communication and career questions with hard-hitting advice and tips you can use today.

We cover 5 questions:

1️⃣ How do you reposition your brand when people have already decided who you are?
2️⃣ What’s the best way to talk about getting fired or laid off?
3️⃣ How do you say no to a request without burning bridges?
4️⃣ How do you disagree with someone without sounding disagreeable?
5️⃣ Where’s the line between being authentic and being strategic?

CONNECT WITH ANDREA🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
✉️ Andrea’s Email Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/
🟣 Talk About Talk on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503
🟢 Talk About Talk on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369
📺 Talk About Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube

TRANSCRIPTIONWhat’s the best way to frame a job transition that was not in your control? How can I say no to requests without hurting the relationship or collaboration opportunities in the future? Where is the line between being an authentic communicator and being a strategic communicator? I am very excited about this episode.

Five Communication Challenges Every Leader Faces I’m going to answer for you five real questions from a few of the incredible leaders that I coach. We’re gonna cover how to upgrade your reputation or your professional identity in the eyes of others that you’ve been working with for a long time. We’re also gonna cover how to talk about your career when you get laid off or even fired.

Then we’re gonna cover how to say no to requests without burning bridges and, similarly, how to disagree with others without sounding disagreeable. And last, we’re gonna cover the important question of how to navigate the fine line between authentic communication and strategic communication.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious leaders and aspiring leaders to communicate with confidence and credibility so they can achieve their career goals. You can learn more about me and about what we do at Talk About Talk if you go to the website.

It’s TalkAboutTalk.com. I really hope you’ll check it out. We’ve got the archive of this podcast there, plus lots of free resources and information about the keynote speaking, the corporate workshops, the master classes, the online courses, and the private coaching that I do. Okay, let’s get into this.

How to Reinvent Your Professional Brand The first question that I’m gonna read for you is from a master class client of mine named Laureen. Laureen, thank you for your question. Here’s what she asked. She said, “Let’s say you’ve been in a business for a few years, and while you’re successful, you notice that your potential is being defined by a role that you were in when you first joined, or by a specialized skill set that you realize is actually limiting your future.

What is your advice for repositioning yourself or changing the perception of your brand with the people who have already decided where you fit and who you are?” Great question, Laureen. Thank you. This question is really about updating or upgrading your identity or your personal brand in the eyes of others.

It’s about reinvention. In my mind, you have three options here, Laureen. The first is to reinforce your new and improved identity every way you can. Create a list of the different ways that you can reinforce your new positioning. These can be direct or explicit, and you can directly use your words to tell people about your new skills, your new expertise, and your passions.

Of course, and you had to know this was coming, you can do this through your self-introduction. Your self-introduction is the most direct way that you have to reinforce your professional identity. These are your words from you about you. So when you introduce yourself, tell people what your expertise, your skills, and your passions are.

Use your filter and tell them what the words are. Be direct. You can also be a little bit less direct. Maybe you can start sharing information, re-sharing some articles that you might have read on LinkedIn or commenting on others. Make it clear that you have an interest, expertise, and a passion in this new area.

So it’s about consistently communicating directly and indirectly about this new expertise or level of skill that you have. That’s my first suggestion. My second suggestion, Laureen, is that you formalize your new skill set in some way that is formal. Like, for example, taking some training, earning some credentials, maybe even joining an association.

This is about formalizing your new skills. The third and last suggestion that I have for you is something that probably crossed your mind, and it’s to leave. So this would be the last resort, I’m gonna say. It seems rather dramatic, but sometimes the easiest way to change and improve your brand is to have some kind of significant catalyst, like leaving an organization and starting somewhere else. So those are my three answers for you, Laureen, and we’re gonna move on now.

Framing a Job Transition with Confidence Question number two, this question is: Thinking about all of the recent layoffs across industries, people whose roles were impacted still face bias when they’re looking for a new job. Even when we know that mass layoffs were triggered by a volatile economy, over-hiring in tech, etc.

The question is, what’s the best way to frame a job transition that was not in your control? Another fantastic question. I really love this question. This is one of the most common questions that I get about how to create a narrative that is true and optimized, and the stakes are high. You’re looking for a new job.

Whether you were laid off or fired, your narrative is in your control. So my suggestion is that there are two things to think about. There’s the what and the how. Okay? So the what is labeling what happened, and then the how is how you communicate it. Let’s dig into these a little bit separately. First, the what.

Labeling what happened. While I am not a fan of scripts, this is where you can memorize a sentence or a phrase that is true, valid, and optimized for your context, and this will serve you well. You could label the departure in a way that is true. So if you were laid off, you could say that you were downsized, you could say that the role was eliminated as part of a restructuring, or you could say that the position, or maybe even the department, was cut.

On the other hand, if you were fired, my suggestion is keep it brief. You could say, “I was let go.” This is simple, neutral, and it doesn’t overexplain anything. Or you could say, “The expectations and my work style just were not aligned.” Even something like, “I can take ownership of some of it, and here’s what I would do differently.”

So there’s the labeling it. That’s the what. Now the how to communicate it. I do have a few general principles to share with you. First, keep it brief. Do not dwell. The longer you explain, the worse it sounds. One or two clean sentences at the most, and then pivot to what you’re looking for next.

Secondly, do not trash your employer. Never ever do this. Even if they were awful, it only reflects on you. And last, and this is big, focus on learning. This experience was a catalyst that really made me think about what my values are and what my skills are, and now I’m really excited about moving on to a new opportunity where I can really focus on these skills and passions of mine. You see how much better that sounds? So focus on your learning. Okay, let’s move on to question number three.

How to Say No Without Burning Bridges Question number three is from Jennifer, a longtime client of mine that has actually become a friend. Jennifer asks, “How can I say no to requests without hurting the relationship or collaboration opportunities in the future?”

Great question, Jennifer. I have three specific suggestions for you. My first suggestion is to decline the request in terms of a boundary or a rule that you set for yourself. “I’m not doing that right now. I am focusing on this other thing.” As opposed to saying, for example, “Sorry, I have to say no because of,” and then filling in the line with whatever the excuse is.

This just begs for negotiation. And I’m gonna get a little bit personal here with this one. I have a lot of people who ask me for a lot of favors in my role as an executive communication coach, and I typically do say yes, but recently I’ve been writing a book. And so it’s actually pretty easy. I have this boundary or this rule of a certain number of hours that I need to spend every day and every week on my book, or I know that it’s not gonna get written.

And so I tell people, “I am declining all of whatever it is that they’re asking at this point because I’m singularly focusing on my book. This is what I have to do to get this out the door to the publisher on time. I’m really sorry.” So set a boundary or a rule for yourself and make it clear. That’s my first suggestion.

My second suggestion for you is to decline the task, not the person. So what does that mean? “That doesn’t work for me right now,” lands differently than, “I can’t help you.” The idea here is to keep the door open by making it clear that your no, your decline, is about the specific task, not about the person.

And then my third suggestion, Jennifer, is just to work on softening the blow. There are a few ways that you can do this. For example, you could offer to help the person with a small part of the task. Like if they ask you to create a document, maybe you could say, “I can’t create it, but I could review it for you after you’re done.”

You could also give them a timeline. You could say, “I am really gonna be hunkering down on my book until the end of October, so maybe you could circle back to me in November.” This is about softening the blow and making sure that they know that saying no today doesn’t mean no forever. I hope that helps, Jennifer.

How to Disagree Without Sounding Disagreeable Okay, moving on to the next question. Question number four. Whoo, this is going fast. All right. Vivian asks, “How can I disagree with others’ perspectives without sounding defensive and disagreeable?” I love this, Vivian. How do I disagree without sounding disagreeable? So this is when there may be a sense of conflict, and I have three suggestions for you.

The first is slow down, take a breath, and remind yourself to lead with curiosity, not correction. You’re not correcting the person; you’re simply curious. This is about taking advantage of a real power pause; a calm, measured pace signals confidence and credibility. You are in control of your emotions, and this pause is a habit that you can build up with practice.

Trust me, I’ve been doing this myself. The power pause is real. Put a smile on your face, maybe tilt your head, take a breath, and remind yourself, “I’m curious.” You can even nod when they start talking just to show that you are open-minded and listening. And remind yourself of your objective when you pause.

How much does this really matter? Does it matter if I agree or disagree? And then instead of saying, “I disagree,” say something like, “Help me understand your thinking on this.” This disarms the defensiveness before it even starts, both their defensiveness and yours. My second suggestion for you is to focus on the dynamic, not on the disagreement.

Or to put it another way, focus on the situation, not the person. This one is gold. You can signal that you are in problem-solving mode by starting by articulating what you agree with first. Take a step back and label it. Then find the sliver of truth in their view and say it out loud. And by the way, this is not weakness.

Rather, this is credibility. Let them know that you’ve heard them. Then chances are they’ll wanna hear you, too. This is about reciprocity. So that’s my second suggestion. Focus on the situation, not the person, and look for the commonality that you share before you go any further. My third and last suggestion is probably the easiest thing to do, and this is about watching your language.

So, for example, I encourage you to use first person. This is I language, even we language. Not second person, not you, not you’re wrong. Saying something like, “I see this differently,” that’s a position, right? You’re focusing on the situation. “You’re missing the point,” that’s an attack, a personal attack. One invites dialogue and the other invites a fight.

Secondly, I encourage you to avoid the but. Instead, you could do like improv actors and say, “Yes, and…” You could also just pause and make your point separately, like, “That’s a fair way to look at it. Here’s where I land differently.” So those are my three ways that you can disagree without sounding disagreeable.

Authentic vs. Strategic Communication Now let’s move on to the last question, question number five. This one is from Angela, and it is a fantastic question. This is why I saved it for last. The question is: Where is the line between being an authentic communicator and being a strategic communicator? How should we think about that balance, especially when the stakes are high?

The easiest way to answer this question is to define the words that we’re using here. The first word is authentic. Think of authenticity as being true, valid, and not misrepresenting yourself. The second term is strategic. I encourage you to think of being strategic as being disciplined, disciplined about what you say and how much you share.

Now, there’s a third term that I want to introduce here. Beyond authenticity and strategic, I want you to think about the word transparency. Transparency as in how much you filter. This goes back to strategic. You are strategically filtering how much you share. Here’s how I encourage you to think about this.

First, you are always authentic. In every context, you are valid and true, and you are not misrepresenting yourself. And secondly, you are strategically filtering what you share. You are self-aware enough to know what your thoughts and your feelings and your opinions are, but you are strategic about how much you are sharing.

You are never fully transparent. Angela, I hope that helps. This is really, really important. And again, I think it’s most easily understood by thinking about the definitions. What does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to be strategic? And what does it mean to be transparent? And understanding and distinguishing between those three terms.

Okay. That’s it for this Q&A episode. I want to say thank you very much to the five of you for asking such fantastic questions. And to you, the listener, I hope that you found this Q&A episode helpful. If yes, I’m gonna ask you to please leave us a rating or a review on whatever podcast platform you’re on.

This helps us be discovered by other listeners. Thank you so much for listening, and talk soon.

The post Q&A: Andrea Answers Clients’ QUESTIONS (ep.218) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Career communication skills, interview mistakes, salary negotiation, and personal branding are all areas where small shifts create noticeable results. The frustrating part is that most people don’t know what they’re getting wrong, and by the time they figure it out, the job offer is already gone.

Emily Durham, known as Emily the Recruiter, is a recruiter-turned-career coach and author of Clock In: No BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career Without Losing Your Mind. She has spent years on the other side of the hiring table and brings that insider perspective to every piece of advice she gives.

You’ll learn why confident communicators slow down instead of speeding up; what 80% of interview candidates get wrong about how much to say; how to answer the strengths and weaknesses questions without sounding like everyone else; when to bring up salary before you even get on the phone; and why audacity is what executive presence is made of.

CONNECT WITH EMILY 🌐 Website: EmilyDurham.org
📸 Instagram: Instagram.com/Emily.The.Recruiter

RESOURCES Emily’s book Clock In: No BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career Without Losing Your Mind – https://amzn.to/4gmfMTP* * Emily’s podcast: Clock In – https://emilydurham.org/podcast

TRANSCRIPTIONEmily Durham: People I like super, super admire at work, they’re okay with silence. They don’t need to fill silence. They make an ask, and they sit there quietly. So learning how to slow down and be the person to sit in the quiet, like that’s the power move.

Andrea Wojnicki: That was Emily Durham, also known as Emily the Recruiter and author of this book called Clock In: No BS Advice for Getting Ahead in Your Career Without Losing Your Mind.

Don’t you love it? In this episode of the Talk About Talk podcast, we’re gonna talk about how to use your communication skills at work so you can get ahead in your career. After I introduce Emily, we’re gonna get right into the interview, and then at the end, as always, I’m gonna summarize with three main points that I wanna reinforce for you, so you do not need to take notes.

You’re welcome. Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk.

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m your communication coach. I founded Talk About Talk to help you and other leaders learn to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can get ahead in your career. You can learn more about what we do at Talk About Talk if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com. It’s all there.

About the Guest: Emily Durham (“Emily the Recruiter”) Okay, I’m gonna introduce Emily now. I’m gonna actually read her bio from the back of her book. Emily Durham, better known as Emily the Recruiter, is a recruiter turned career coach and content creator. On her popular social media accounts and her podcast called Clock In, she gives real-world advice to help people thrive in their careers. She lives in Toronto. Here we go.

Thank you so much for being here today, Emily, to speak with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about how to communicate at work.

ED: Thank you for having me. There’s one thing I’m excited to talk about, and it’s everything. I am so excited for us to jump into it all. So thank you for having me.

AW: My pleasure. I wanna start big picture, if you don’t mind, Emily. I know you have opinions and advice and suggestions for us in terms of job interviews and salary negotiations and being with difficult people, and all of these very specific things, but I wanna start broad. What do you think the most important communication skills are for us to acquire in terms of advancing our careers and succeeding at work?

Why Pacing, Pausing, and Precision Matter ED: It’s an incredible question. I really think the most important communication skills are the slightly counterintuitive ones, so pacing and then pausing. People talk about this all the time, but you can really tell how experienced someone is by how they are physically, like, you know, pacing out the words that they’re using.

So if you’re a super confident communicator, chances are you’re giving yourself the space to speak slowly, and that automatically communicates that sense of authority. But what you’ll really notice, at least the people I, like, super, super admire at work, they’re okay with silence. They don’t need to fill silence.

They make an ask, and they sit there quietly. So learning how to slow down and be the person to sit in the quiet, like, that’s the power move.

AW: I agree. I agree, Emily. The power pause is powerful. And in my experience, interestingly, I would say the junior folks that come to me for communication skills coaching are really focused on speaking up.

They actually wanna fill the silence, right? And then as they become more senior, they’re asking for me advice on how to communicate with precision and brevity and clarity. It’s a real interesting transformation. So I think my next question for you is: what other communication skills do you see evolve as people become more senior, from being a junior to middle manager to a senior leader?

ED: It’s so interesting ’cause I think the more junior you are, naturally you feel like your place at work, or even in your personal life, is to prove that you know something. And we’ve all been there. You’re, like, 20 in a brand-new job, and it feels like you need to prove that you’ve earned your spot in this room.

So oftentimes the communication skills people are working on is the baseline, like how do I communicate what I’m working on? How do I make sure other people hear me, that they aren’t speaking over me? And all of that is really meaningful, but sometimes that trickles into us over-explaining, over-communicating to really assert that we deserve to be in the room.

But really, like echoing kind of your client and what you hear is the more senior someone gets, it becomes less about what to say and more about how to say it. ‘Cause at that point, you know what you’re supposed to say. People should know your worth. You know what you have to advocate for at work, but it’s more about how you’re communicating it.

Little things I think of, especially early in my career, the sorries before you ask a question, “Oh, sorry, can I do this?” It’s second nature. It feels like we’re just kind of cementing: do I deserve a seat at this table? 10 years into your career, 15 years in, I have no time for the sorries, but I want coaching on how to sound not like a great middle manager, but exactly like a great CEO, and being a bit more direct, having that same audacity the successful people do.

So I really see it shift from what to how the more you grow in your career, but we all inevitably have to go through that icky early phase of what the heck am I doing here?

AW: I love the word audacity. You used the word; I love that word. That, that’s like synonymous with executive, this all elusive executive presence that so many folks are aspiring to.

But I wanna back up to even before you get the job, talking about the job interview. So I know a lot of people that come to you, and definitely people that come to me are seeking help; not everyone, but a significant proportion are seeking help when they are in job transition. So they’re either actively interviewing for jobs, or they’re planning to in the future.

How to Stand Out Without Talking Too Much Let’s start with what common mistakes do people make when they’re in this job interview process?

ED: Oh my gosh. There’s quite a few, but the most common, which if I had to put a percentage to it, I’m talking 80% of interviews, the candidates either spoke too much or not enough. Which I know sounds like, you know, “How am I supposed to get it right?”

It’s actually pretty easy once you know what they’re looking for. When it comes to the early parts of the interview, you’re always going to be asked, “Introduce yourself. Why are you looking for this job? Talk to me about the icebreakers.” Where people go wrong is they feel the need to explain everything.

They’re thinking that this is a confessional instead of a sales pitch, and it’s a sales pitch. So when your answer is extending for any of your questions, whether it’s introductions or, like, the meat and potatoes, if it’s more than two minutes, people have tuned out. You’ve lost them. So keeping things more succinct, and it’s important to practice that.

We’re not inherently able to self-correct in those moments of anxiety. But the other part of it is you’re not saying enough. If someone asks you at the beginning of the interview, “How are you?” and your response is, “I’m good. You?” Well, you’re giving them nothing to work with. You’re not helping your case by creating a personable relationship with this individual interviewing you.

So it’s really about striking that balance, and it comes down to practice. So practicing answering questions on your own, recording yourself answering those common interview questions, even striking up small talk with a barista at your local coffee shop so you get into the habit of what crisp communication sounds and feels like.

I would say those are the big boys. Heavy on the talking too much, though. That happens all the time.

AW: Yeah. So I learned when I was an undergraduate student from a career education session that I went to one of the career counselors told the audience, including myself, that the less you talk during an interview and the more airtime you give to the interviewer, the more likely you are to get the job.

So in my mind, I started playing this game, but I think it’s really important that people understand this might be true, but you can take it too far, right? Like, you don’t wanna be short, and you don’t wanna be, like, evasive, evading, not answering questions. So one line that I coach my clients on is I say, “You know, you’re asking me what are my strengths.

I’ve got this one, this one, and this one. I’m, I’m happy to elaborate on any of them. In summary, these are my three strengths.” Like, whatever the question is, the line that is magical is, “Happy to elaborate.” What do you think of that?

ED: I like that a lot, ’cause I think a lot of people are scared, and what I hear so much from folks is they’re scared that if they don’t say everything up front, the next candidate who does is getting the job.

But I really think that’s where this mindset shift comes in. The interview isn’t exclusively about making sure you hit every single list of wishes on their job description. It’s about seeing, can I work with you? And we’ve all worked with someone who is really unclear with how they communicate or really long-winded, and those are hard people to work with.

That’s just the truth. So the communication is a skill in and of itself, so I love having that opener to say, you know, “If I need to go deeper on any of this, you let me know.” It also puts that recruiter in the driver’s seat, so they’ll tell you, “Hey, we gotta go left, we gotta go right,” instead of that just being the burden that you carry.

But it really is a middle road we have to walk.

AW: So putting the interviewer in the driver’s seat, I love that because you’re communicating respect. Like, you are driving this interview. I’m happy to elaborate on any of these things, or y- of course, you can ask me other questions, right? And you’re being respectful, and you’re being very clear and direct about that.

So this question, though, about what are your strengths, I get a lot of questions, and I have opinions, but I would love to hear your guidance on the two questions that you’re sure to get. What are your strengths? And then also, what are your weaknesses or the things that you’re working on, right? If you can share with us your guidance on how to answer both of those questions, I know you’d be helping a lot of people.

ED: Of course. I will say, God, am I ever over these questions. Like, so 101. They’re really, really flat. I think if we could evolve into a world where we’re not asking these, the world would be maybe just 2% better. What I want to urge people not to do, please resist and fight that urge to go to your AI platform of choice and say, “How am I supposed to answer these questions?”

The problem with resumes today is everyone’s resume looks and sounds the same ’cause AI is writing it. So the resume inherently is starting to lose value. As people start to lean on AI for their interviews, the same thing’s going to happen. The best thing you can do is be you and stand out with your unique perspective, ’cause if you sound like Suzy and Bobby and Joe, well, then you’re not standing out.

So resist that urge. As far as the strengths go, don’t be scared to boast. You don’t need to use we language the entire time. You’re allowed to talk about you. If it feels uncomfortable, focus on a specific example. The best way to do this, look at the job description. What’s clearly one of the two or three core skills they’re looking for?

And say, if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable, “You know, my peers have often applauded me on,” or, “I’ve really succeeded at work on these three.” So it kind of takes you out of the aren’t I fabulous and says, “Well, other people think I’m fabulous.” And then if you’re really nervous, give an example. Like, “Here’s a really great example of when this happened.”

On the weaknesses, God, I hate this question. I think the best formula for this is answering, like, semi-honestly with a solution. Don’t do the basic, “You know, I’m a perfectionist,” ’cause those are the things that everybody, like.

AW: That’s what AI will tell you. They’ll say either, “I’m a perfectionist,” or, “I’m a workaholic,” right?

ED: Yeah, or, “I care too much about my work.” Spare me, right? So be honest. For me, data and analytics is not something I’m naturally incredible at. That’s just the truth. It’s also the truth that it’s a very important part of the work that I do. So when I would answer these questions, I’m saying something like, “To be honest, data and analytics doesn’t come naturally to me, but here’s what I do to make sure I stay on top of it,” and then I share a win.

So you’re always sandwiching it with, “Here’s what I’m not naturally inclined at, here’s what I do to bridge the gap, and here’s proof that I’m really quite good at it instead.”

AW: Beautiful. Okay. So let’s shift gears a little bit to salary negotiations, but starting in the context of in the job interview.

When should you bring it up if they haven’t? And when they do, what do you say? And maybe even, I know I’ve heard you talk about this when I saw you live, how do you prepare for this conversation and this topic on kinda this taboo topic of salary negotiations?

Confident Salary Conversations Start with Preparation ED: Definitely, and I hate that it’s still so taboo.

I thought with us, you know, having so many conversations online about this, but there’s still fear, and it’s natural. The second you start job hunting or entertaining interviews, that’s a good time to benchmark what you’re worth. So you’re going to go to a website like PayScale or Glassdoor, just see what the general salary range is for your ideal job in your city specifically.

And then be honest with yourself. Where am I? Am I low, mid-band? It’s always a good idea whenever you’re moving roles that you should be getting a bump above 5%. That’s just my belief. Well above 5% on the base pay, ’cause oftentimes you can actually acquire a 5% bump if you stay in your job while maintaining job security.

So above that is what we’re targeting. You get to decide what that range is. As far as when you ask, I’m audacious. I think ask before you get on the phone, honey. Time is money. Why would I get on the phone for a job that I know doesn’t have budget? It’s okay for you to reach out and say, “Happy to chat.

Thanks for reaching out. Do you happen to have the range of salary for this position?” That’s a great place. But if you’re already on the phone and you want to proactively ask the recruiter, leave it for the end. Don’t say, you know, “What are you gonna pay me?” Keep it simple. “Have you guys landed on the salary range for this role?

Are you able to share?” Simple as that. Oftentimes, though, as we know, what happens is the recruiter ends up asking you, and you feel a little bit backed into a corner. You have two options. Option number one is you go to that recruiter and say, “Actually, are you able to share the range? I love just getting a flavor of that before I share my, my, uh, kind of desires.”

AW: Yeah. Or you can basically, I asked you first.

ED: Yes. You sh- I’ll show you your, me, I’ll show … What was that, what’s that saying? I’ll show you mine- I’ll show you- … if you show

AW: me yours. Yeah.

ED: Like, that’s the only way. Or what you can offer is the lower end that you’re willing to accept. And the reason I like offering the lower end is you frame it like, based on where I’m at in my current role and external market, I’d be looking to start at a range somewhere near $80,000 a year.

The reason I like that is you’ve inflated your lower end, of course, but you’re able to bump it up as the process goes on. You’re not saying, oh, 80 to 90,000, ’cause now you’ve capped yourself. Um, but I’m a big believer in put it back on them. You’re trying to sell to me just as much as I’m trying to sell to you.

AW: I think that that’s so helpful. I know that the listeners who are on the job market or planning to be so will appreciate that very much. I love this idea of giving, like, a bottom line. Like, the lowest that I would consider, depending on the job, right? Like, you kinda leave it like, this depends on other parts of compensation, right?

What the benefits are, what the job description is, and on and on. This conversation is just beginning. Here’s kinda the bottom line. Um, I love that.

ED: It just gives us flexibility. We just… Sometimes you need space, and the more you learn about a job, you’re like, “Whoa, this is way bigger than they said it was gonna be.”

Suddenly, December doesn’t seem fair.

AW: So what about if you’re already employed, and it’s been a while, and maybe, I don’t know, you find out that a friend of yours who works for a different company doing a similar job is getting paid more. Whatever the catalyst is, how do you broach that with your current manager in your current job?

ED: It’s a really good idea to root these conversations in data, not necessarily personal experience. So I personally like to avoid saying, “This person said this,” or, “I know someone doing this.” Focus more on market data. Book a 15-minute meeting or tack this on to your one-on-one with your boss. You always start with thank yous.

“Thank you so much for the opportunity. I love growing here.” We butter them up, and then we have that direct call to action, which is, “I’ve loved how much my role has evolved,” or, “I’ve loved,” insert this thing you’ve loved about your job. Based on how much my job has expanded and the fact that the market has continued to inflate, is there an opportunity for us to look at my salary, and what would that process look like?”

The reason it works when you ask it as a question is it’s no longer this kind of demand. It’s collaborative. So your boss is buying in. They get to say, “Here’s the process. We get to do this.” Maybe the outcome is you need some more performance metrics to be hit, but now you’re having that conversation.

What I caution people, though, against is if you start hearing things like, “Yeah, you know, we’ll talk about it next review season, and th-,” and it’s starting to kind of be this thing that exists in a very distant and murky future, and it doesn’t matter how many times you ask, you’re not getting clarity, that’s often a sign you’re not gonna get what you deserve here.

Handling Toxic People Without Losing Your Professionalism AW: Hmm. So when we are at work, speaking of taboo topics, there inevitably there are people who are difficult people, whether it’s your manager or your peers. I’m curious, maybe you can start general and give some specific examples of when there’s someone at work who’s making things difficult for us; what do you suggest we do?

ED: Oh, as much as I would love to be like, “We’re gonna send them nasty letters to their home,” um, unfortunately, we do have to play within the rules. I like to anchor this in one very real truth that I will never forget my dad told me when I had a manager for years who must have aged me by 10. You know, happy people and people who are good at their jobs are not the people making your life hell, and that’s just the truth.

So really rooting yourself in that is a little bit more liberating. But if you’ve got a toxic coworker, it’s really different from a toxic boss. A toxic boss, I would argue, you can create boundaries around so that you have distance; you are practicing grounding exercises so you don’t let them drive you crazy.

But oftentimes you can’t change your boss, and your boss is your biggest advocate. So that’s one where we sometimes need to make the decision, can I live with this or can I not? When it comes to your peers, there’s a few little, like, tricks I enjoy keeping up my sleeve. The first is we never engage with gossip, ever.

Doesn’t matter how good it feels. If they’re gossiping with you at work, I promise they’re gossiping about you. So learning how to deflect with a positive gossip response is ideal.

AW: I think it’s also easy to get sucked into gossiping about the person who’s toxic with other people, right? So because it’s validating, like, “I noticed this.

You noticed this, too?” Right? So I actually tell my clients to explicitly say if, especially if they’re escalating a situation that’s gone, like, past whatever the boundaries are, to say, “The purpose of this conversation is not to gossip. I’m validating. Have you noticed this? Thank you. End of discussion, ’cause I’m doing something about it,” right?

ED: Love that. Well, I think that’s the healthiest way to do it so that you don’t get caught in the loop of now you’re just on the other end. And I think what people sometimes don’t realize is regardless of why you’re in that cycle, if word gets back to HR or to leadership, you are still being seen as gossiping, regardless of whether or not you’re entitled to.

So I big cosign, big plus one. But even just the power of that, like, positive gossip response can shut things down when you’re a little uncomfy. Someone says, “Did you hear about Susie? She did blah, blah, blah.” You say, “Oh, no, I, I didn’t hear about that, but I did see her report, and it looked great.” Like, respond with something, “Oh, no, I, I don’t pay attention to that, but here’s this great thing that I did see,” is a great way to deflect and condition people out of behaving in this way with you.

But really, when it comes down to toxic people, it’s really about shutting down and not engaging. It’s about them saying that snarky comment. This might be argumentative, but I’m a big believer in just like letting them sit in it, sit in it. Or, “I don’t understand. What does that mean?” Like, “Explain to me what that means.”

And you really have to gauge how safe you feel based on your work environment, but it’s all about boundaries. I think you can work more with, uh, your coworkers. When it’s your boss, that’s a tough sell

AW: That’s a tough one. But back to the sit in it, one of the best responses that I heard long before I was doing communication skills coaching, that someone told me that I tried, and it is just beautiful, is just ask the person to repeat themselves.

If they say something egregious, say, “Pardon me?” And it doesn’t have to be like, “What did you say?” Right? It could just be like, “Pardon?”

ED: Pretend you didn’t hear.

AW: And then when they, when they repeat themselves, and everyone turns their head and says, “What?” Right? Or they’ll say, “Oh, well, what I meant was,” right? And there you go.

ED: And who knows? Yeah. We’re assuming benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was a poor choice of words. But sometimes just letting people know that you hear them, but that you’re above responding can be enough. And if it’s not, that’s when we start documenting, and that’s when we seek support.

Like, you are not meant to untoxicify the people around you, right? Sometimes we need to call in the big guns, which is, is getting that support which you deserve.

AW: Yeah. I mean, we could, we could go on and on about this. I tell people, especially as they become more senior in their career, part of their job becomes dealing with difficult people.

When you’re more junior in your career, your boss is looking over your shoulder, right? Making sure that you are acquiring the technical skills, doing the right things, giving check marks, guiding you. If something or someone gets in your way, they’ll deal with it. As you get more senior, that becomes part of your job.

ED: You’re the protector, not the protected, and it’s… That- that’s a really big shift, and I think especially as women at work, there is a different layer of how you’re perceived the more senior you become, and the more effectively you communicate and show up for work. It’s… That’s a whole, that’s a whole other can of worms.

How Visibility and Likability Shape Career Growth AW: Well, let’s open the can of worms called personal branding, ’cause how you’re perceived at work is all about personal branding. I was thrilled when I heard you speak and when I looked at the table of contents of your book and read it, that you have a whole chapter dedicated to personal branding. And as I said before we pressed record, even more thrilled about your, like, yes, that is your personal brand.

Can you share with the listeners your take on personal branding when it comes to our careers, and I guess some of the best practices for how to effectively manage your personal brand?

ED: I really see personal brand as something that has a bad brand. I think people hear personal branding and they think of a very dated career concept.

But the truth is, you know, if you think of having a personal brand or if you don’t think of having a personal brand, you still have a personal brand. Your personal brand is what people think of when they think of you. It’s really as simple as that, and it’s a combination of you being good at the work you do and how you make other people feel.

It’s really as simple as that. I don’t believe that you need to be the most innovative, sharpest, top-of-the-class individual, ’cause I’m not, in order to have an impactful personal brand. And really, if the secrets to work success, which in my perspective, these are the secrets, is likability and visibility.

How you get there is with a really good brand. And I think if you can focus on having a really high say to do ratio, meaning everything I say I’m going to deliver on, I do exactly how I said I would, and I really make you feel like you’re in the room when I talk to you, that’s really all you need to do, and it doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.

AW: Yeah. So you made this comment about, you know, personal branding may have a branding problem. Do you think that Generation Z or, like, the new generation is a little more open to it? ‘Cause I kinda get the impression in the folks that I’m talking to that personal branding brand is starting to evolve and improve, and people are talking about strategically managing their personal brand.

Do you see that? What, what do you see about, like, the generation differences?

ED: I think the motivation behind personal branding is really different for Gen Z. I think Gen Z has really grown into a career without rose-colored glasses on. They are not disillusioned by the idea that working hard gets you the great lifetime career, that you’re, you know, it’s we operate within a meritocracy.

Like, they don’t exist within the same confines that millennials did really. And I think where Gen Z has a unique lens is they are interested in personal brand, but not just for their nine-to-five job. Where I see Gen Z’s careers evolving is kind of the polar opposite of where millennials did, where myself as a millennial, we were raised with, “You’re gonna have a great nine-to-five.

You’re gonna hustle.” There was this hustle culture. Whereas Gen Z has now shifted to say, “I don’t trust the nine-to-five job to fulfill all of my financial needs. I don’t trust they won’t lay me off, ’cause I’ve seen them do it. Instead, I’m gonna have more of a portfolio career,” meaning I’ve got my hands in a couple of pots.

And their brand is something that unites all of those. So I do see Gen Z investing heavy in their brand, for example, on socials, use of LinkedIn. There– I literally watched a Gen Z intern two days ago when I was having a meeting, um, at one of my offices, and I saw a Gen Z student walk in with a printed resume to go to the security desk and was like, “I’m gonna hand this in, ’cause no one’s responding to my emails.”

That’s a kickass personal brand. So I think they’re still engaged with branding, but their why is a little bit different. They’re just a fascinating generation.

AW: They are. There is such hope for the future, I think.

ED: I love them. Yeah. I love Gen Z so much.

AW: Yeah, yeah. So we were talking before about being in job transition and interviewing and so on.

In terms of your personal brand, how can we talk about or I guess, narrate career transitions or, in particular, setbacks or gaps? How do we make that, turn that into part of our brand?

ED: A lot of it is just understanding sales fundamentals. Uh, you know, you don’t go to McDonald’s and expect to hear them talk about the nutritional value of what you’re purchasing.

That’s not what you went to McDonald’s for. But if they started off by saying, “Well, we’re budget. You… We’re really good at this, but we’re not great on vitamin B and vitamin D and really high in saturated fat,” you might walk away being like, “I don’t wanna eat from these people.” But they’re packaging it as, “Oh my gosh, this is delicious.

What a treat. It’s quick, convenience.” You need to think of sales and marketing fundamentals as you think of yourself, and the fundamentals are you talk about the stuff you have, and you paint pictures around the stuff you don’t. So if you’re in career transition or you’ve had gaps on your resume, I’m a believer in lead with the stuff you have, the legacy work that has worked.

You can address very simply without apology what that gap is. I’m transitioning careers because I was laid off. I’ve been focused on family for the last little bit. And then include what you’ve learned. And in that process of, you know, family care, I became really incredible at my time management. It really put into perspective the work that matters for me.

That’s why I’m focusing on working at a company that gives back to their communities. Like, there’s always a spin. You just have to find your spin and get ahead of it before they can kind of paint their own negative picture based on bias.

AW: I love it, Emily. So we create our narrative. We don’t let someone else create the narrative for us.

Confidence, Curiosity, and Communicating with Audacity Love it. Can I ask you the three rapid-fire questions now?

ED: I would love nothing more. I’m so excited.

AW: Okay. Question number one: are you an introvert or an extrovert?

ED: Oh, I’m a big fat extrovert. Big fat extrovert.

AW: Do you use that insight about yourself to manage your day or your week in any specific way?

ED: I would say yes, but on a very subconscious level. It’s not until I, like, come home and talk to my partner, and he’s like, “You have been out 12 days in a row,” and I’m like, “Yeah, isn’t it great?” That I realize that this is just the routine that I’ve built. But work-wise, definitely. I make sure I have a meeting or something in person with people at least twice a week. Otherwise, I start to feel a little cuckoo.

AW: Oh, I’m so with you.

ED: Yeah. Are you the same, extrovert?

AW: 100%. Really? And I’ve retaken the test. I’m still an off-the-charts extrovert.

ED: I was gonna say, if I took the test one more time, they would be like, “We need something new. You are existing in a new, a new pathway.”

AW: Yeah. That’s funny. Okay, question number two: what are your communication pet peeves?

ED: Apologizing for taking up space, so lots of sorries, lots of I don’t knows, that self-deprecating language. Doesn’t peeve me as much as it just makes me sad. I want you to believe in yourself as much as you deserve. And this is maybe, like, a little bit of a hot take.

I think overactive listening is a communication thing that we need to take a peek at. When someone is so actively listening to the point where you have a hard time continuing to speak ’cause they’re like, “Mm-hmm, yep, oh, uh-huh,” and it’s so over-exaggerated. Of course, there’s layers to this and, A, we’re told that this is great communication, and B, how we define and reward communication is inherently rooted in bias.

But I think, like, you can really tell when someone’s been told, “You need to overpay attention and overly actively listen,” uh, that it actually feels a little bit disconnected. So that’s one that I always think keep an eye out for. Like, it’s, it’s okay for you not to be an overly active listener if that’s what’s authentic to you. That’s fine.

AW: Well, speaking of authentic, I was just gonna say, you can, in an authentic and engaged way, truly deepen your listening, or you can try to inauthentically signal that you’re listening, and those are two very, very different things, right?

ED: Yes. Like, are you trying to listen, or are you trying to make it look like you’re listening? Cause there’s a difference.

AW: Exactly. Okay. Question number three: Is there a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending lately?

ED: You know what? I have one that I have been recommending. It is so offside from the world that I operate within, but I will tell you why I love it. The show, it’s a podcast, it’s called This Podcast Will Kill You, and it’s an epidemiology podcast, which is essentially the study of infectious disease.

I’ve been listening to these two fabulous doctors; they’re both named Erin, and they are infectious disease doctors. And they, in each episode, break down the history of given disease or vaccine and then talk about the mar- modern implications in the medicine space. And the reason I have been recommending it is, A, it’s freaking fascinating, and B, I think it’s such a great accidental story about innovation and how powerful accidents are.

Almost every single vaccine or medical breakthrough, to some extent, had some kind of unfortunate mishap that brought us there, whether it be it was intended for A and it was used for B, or it was supposed to launch here and it didn’t. And I think just the context of how many mistakes actually have landed us in meaningful positions, and the importance of educating ourselves on history and the way the world operates, and also celebrating two incredible women in STEM that host the show.

I freaking love it. I’ve been listening, I think, six-plus years. Oh, really? My most listened to by far. Oh my gosh, it is my most listened-to podcast by far. By far. Wow. Okay. It’s incredible.

AW: I will put a link to that, uh, show in the show notes. Before I let you go, Emily, I just wanna know, do you have any last words for the Talk About Talk podcast listeners in terms of, I guess, optimizing their communication at work so that they can advance their careers?

ED: I would say, A, keep listening to this show because it’s a mini practice that you implement every single week that is essentially upskilling you while you’re living your life. But the biggest thing in the world is start learning to trust yourself, and it’s not always about saying the perfect thing. It’s trusting that you will say something.

Sometimes something is better than the perfect thing, and getting really bold with practicing striking up conversations with strangers and small talking in your personal life naturally extends into your professional life. So try to do one bold thing a week, whether it’s going on a friendship blind first date or chatting up that person at your local flower shop.

That can be really, really helpful for your career on a, a meaningful level.

AW: I love it. Thank you so much, Emily, for sharing your time and your insights with me and the Talk About Talk listeners. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.

ED: Thank you.

Three Career Communication Lessons from Emily Durham AW: Isn’t she great? Emily, I just love your positive energy.

Okay. Now, as promised, and as always, I’m gonna summarize with three of the key learnings that I wanna reinforce for you, just briefly.

Slow Down and Embrace the Power PauseThe first one was Emily’s point about the power in your communication at work comes from pacing and pausing. Her point is that confident communicators speak slowly, and they tolerate silence. They don’t rush to fill the space. It’s true. The pause really is powerful, so think power pause.
Keep Your Interview Answers ConciseThe second point is that when folks are answering questions in job interviews, the most common failure may be on length, either rambling and speaking for way too long or cutting yourself short, so then being evasive and not answering the question.

You wanna reach that happy medium, and my suggestion, and Emily agreed, is to provide a concise answer and then say, “Happy to elaborate.”

Lead with AudacityThe third point that I wanna reinforce with you is Emily’s word that I just love. The word is audacity. Audacity as in being direct. When I’m coaching folks, they often ask me how they can achieve the all-elusive executive presence.

When Emily used this word audacity, it crossed my mind that maybe this can inspire you to communicate with confidence, being a little bit more direct, and truly developing either leadership presence or executive presence. Maybe lean into this word. I’m gonna try and do the same. Let’s all try to be a little more audacious.

Okay. That’s it for this episode of the Talk About Talk podcast. I hope you enjoyed yourself and learned as much as I did. I also hope that you will subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you’re on. And if you have a moment, please leave us a rating or review so you can help us be discovered by more listeners.

Thanks again, and talk soon.

The post Emily the Recruiter on CLOCKING IN & Communicating at Work (ep. 217) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Professional identity, authenticity, and bias at work are more complicated than we like to admit. The challenge isn’t just about confidence or self-expression. For many people, managing what they reveal at work is a carefully strategized survival decision.

Organizational behaviour researcher Dr. Sonia Kang joins Andrea to share what the research says about identity at work, resume whitening, psychological safety, and the double bind ambitious women face in leadership.

You will learn why “bring your whole self to work” places an unfair burden on individuals rather than organizations; what resume whitening is and what audit studies reveal about hiring bias; why ambiguity is where bias thrives and how structure reduces it; and how leaders can design processes that give everyone a fair shot.

Sonia holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion and is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour and HR Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

CONNECT WITH SONIA🔗 LinkedIn: Sonia-Kang.com
🎓 University of Toronto Research Profile: Discover.Research.UToronto.ca/3195-Sonia-Kang

RESOURCES* New York Times – The Hour Between Babe and Hag: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/women-men-work.html?eafs_enabled=false * The ‘Busted’ Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/busted/id1588965394

TRANSCRIPTIONSonia Kang: Anytime where it’s unclear what the process is for a promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that’s where you can see bias in people’s individual idea of fit, let’s say, come through.

Andrea Wojnicki: That was Professor Sonia Kang, Professor of Organizational Behavior and HR Management at the University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management.

I met Sonia a few months ago when we were both teaching in an executive education program there at the University of Toronto. We hit it off, and here we are.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your communication coach. I coach ambitious executives like you through the Talk About Talk podcast to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals.

Sound good? You can learn more about me and about Talk About Talk if you go to talkabouttalk.com.

In this episode, you’re gonna hear my conversation with Sonia, where we talk about identity at work. Everything from the distinction between authenticity, transparency, and bringing your whole self to work, to her fascinating research on resume whitening, to psychological safety, and the leadership tightrope that ambitious women are forced to balance. At the end, as always, I’m gonna summarize with three key learnings so you don’t have to take notes.

About the Guest: Dr. Sonia Kang, Expert in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion Now, let me introduce our guest. Dr. Sonia Kang holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and she’s a professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the University of Toronto, where she’s also the academic director at the Institute for Gender and the Economy, or GATE.

Sonia earned a PhD in social psychology from the University of Toronto, and she completed a CCHRC post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. Here we go. Thank you so much, Sonia, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about our identity at work.

SK: Thanks so much for having me on.

AW: So your work focuses on identity and inclusion in organizations. I would love to start here with identity and authenticity and transparency and professionalism. What do you think about the idea of bringing your whole self?

Why Bringing Your Whole Self to Work Isn’t Always Safe SK: So I think that in theory it’s a nice idea, right? Like, everyone wants to feel like they can be authentic.

They wanna feel like they don’t have to change who they are at work. But in reality, it’s, I think, overly simplistic to think that everyone can bring their whole identity to work. Some people can, for sure, right? And that is gonna be the people who are kind of part of the dominant culture and who, like, really feel, like, safe within a space.

But if you’re someone who’s from a group where you may have traditionally experienced discrimination or stigma at work, bringing yourself to work is, A, harder, and B, maybe not a good idea, right? So if you’re thinking about this in terms of, like, strategy, if you’re from a group where you have consistently experienced discrimination based on some part of your identity, like, bringing your whole self to work might not make sense for you, right?

And so strategically, it might make more sense to conceal parts of your identity or kind of downplay them just to get through the day. And so I think the goal of bringing your whole self to work is a good one, but it’s not really like an individual-level goal. It’s more of an organizational level goal, where organizations need to create the conditions in which that can actually happen for everyone.

AW: I love that you brought that up right out of the gate. It’s not all on the individual. Organizations need to create a culture, and we can get into psychological safety, uh, later, but create an environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. So something that I sometimes share with my clients, Sonia, is I wouldn’t share my whole self anywhere, never mind at work, because you’d think I was crazy.

We have multiple identities, multiple roles, so we’re already filtering some of who we are and what we’re thinking and what we’re saying. What advice do you have for leaders who may be leading diverse teams or people who are A visible minority where they experience discrimination? What advice do you give them, I guess, in both of those contexts for the dos and the don’ts?

Why Structure Matters More Than “Fit” SK: Yeah. I think like one of the big things is making sure that you’re not making authenticity or, you know, like sharing things about your personal life or like bringing your whole self to work, making that kind of like a performance requirement, which can often happen when people start talking about fit.

Fit, I find, is really just like coded language for, “Are you like me? Are you like the other people who are here?” And so this happens a lot with I think when people are first entering into organizations, right? So when you’re doing like interviews, when you’re trying to like assess whether someone’s gonna like work with your group.

I think so much of that is based on personality, someone’s interests, and so that fit is really a proxy for similarity, right? And so that also carries forward often into performance evaluations, like who gets promoted, who gets really great assignments. And so I think like my advice would be to try to make sure that you’re not including something like that into your assessments of who will be best for whatever the opportunity might be.

Concretely, I think that means that you have to have a really like detailed idea of what your assessments will be based on, right? Because anytime you have like ambiguity, that’s where bias really thrives. So anytime where it’s unclear, you know, like what the process is for a promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that’s where you can see bias in people’s individual like idea of fit, let’s say, come through.

And so the more structure you have in terms of like what I’m actually gonna be assessing, the better, ’cause then you can stick to that in the same way for everyone.

AW: So in other words, ambiguity is where bias thrives. I love that. You’re gonna be quoted on that. I had an experience when I was in my 20s where I was in the final round of interviews for a big job that I ended up getting, but in the last interview, the senior vice president who was interviewing me said, “Andrea, I have one last question.

On Friday night when we’re all going out for drinks, are you gonna join us?” And in my head I was like, wow, so he’s literally asking me, “Are you one of the guys?” Oh yeah, are you one of the guys? And I was, I said, “Of course,” right? And then afterwards I was like, yeah, that’s about as close as you can come to saying, are you gonna fit?

Are you gonna make sure that you fit in with this crew?

SK: I also think, like generationally, that’s not of so much interest anymore. Like, I think that that idea of like you wanna spend all your time at work and like hang out with your work friends and just like that’s your life, I think is much less common now, particularly with the generations who are just like entering the workplace now and probably within the next five, 10 years.

Like, I don’t think that’s gonna be such a big focus. And so it’s good to get in the habit now, I think, of eliminating that kind of fit stuff from our kind of assessment of people and their performance at work.

AW: Yeah. I think about that conversation back then, and it… You know, if you, if you… Speaking of thought bubbles, if you could have read my thought bubble, I was like, “Did you just say that?”

SK: Yeah. Right? Yeah. So- And also, like, I don’t wanna hang out with you, like, outside of work, you know?

W: I’m like, there’s- Yeah, I was like, maybe, maybe once or twice, but really? Yeah. Come on. Yeah.

SK: Exactly. Yeah. And like, not everyone can say that. People are gonna feel like they have to go every single time, and they have to be there, and that could be true, right?

Like, it could be like, again, like a lot of the responses that we see are strategic. It’s like, I know what’s gonna happen if I don’t do this. I feel forced to do this, but I’m gonna do it. And so that’s where that individual, like the kind of like onus on individuals becomes so hard to bear, and that’s where you see people like burn out and leave and try to, you know, like a lot of like mental health issues come up with that.

Creating a Culture Where People Feel Safe to Speak Up AW: So I think, I feel like this is a nice segue to the conversation about psychological safety, ’cause one of the components or elements of psychological safety is actually diversity, and celebrating diversity and creating an inclusive environment where people believe it’s safe to say risky things or do risky things, bring up issues, admit to challenges that they’re having, all of that.

So in this context of building on this idea of fit and diversity and then all of this research about how psychologically safe cultures are the highest performing cultures or teams, how can leaders encourage themselves to create and then sustain a truly psychologically safe and inclusive culture?

SK: People in those positions kind of, like, need to pay attention to the cost of disclosure, right? So, like, if you want people to disclose anything, right? So, like, whether that’s based on their identity, whether it’s based on, in the true, like, psych safety research, you know, like things that are going on that need to be fixed or mistakes that they’re making, you really need to diagnose, like, what’s going on when someone actually discloses.

Like, what is that process like, right? So is it, like, awkward? Do they really feel like they’re putting themselves on the line? Do you respond right away? Like, the worst thing I think is, like, having a culture where people are bringing things forward, but then, like, nothing happens with it, right? And so I think for psychological safety, like what happens before, so like is it super stressful?

Are people having to, like, work themselves up to say something? And then what happens after? Like are you actually following up on it, and does something actually change tangibly? I think those two parts around the disclosure are so important for leaders to pay attention to. Even like in parenting, right?

Like you want your kids to tell you stuff, for sure. But like my son tells me this, like I’m a big, like reactor, right? Like happy, like all kinds of emotions, I’m just like all in on it. And so sometimes he’ll say to me like, “Can you… I’m gonna tell you this thing, but like you can’t react to it.”

AW: Good for him.

SK: Yeah, I know, it’s great. Like he’s 11. He gets it. So I have to, like, train myself to, like, downregulate that, like, emotional display, I guess, right? And so it’s not gonna be the same obviously with someone who works, like a direct report or something like that. But again, it’s like paying attention to the things that might prevent them from telling you what you want them to tell them, and then also afterwards, like how do you react to that information and what do you actually do, right?

Like what… How do you actually implement something that’s gonna help them or change something for them? Or is it the case that they just wanted you to listen, right? And like they want you to acknowledge that like, that’s a hard situation. Let’s try and think of some ways that you can deal with it yourself, right?

So like sometimes it’s up to you to solve a problem, but sometimes it’s really like scaffolding, and they’re just coming to you for support.

AW: I remember hearing Amy Edmondson say that when someone comes to you, and I like how you said this, with a disclosure, the best way to respond is, “Thank you for telling me.

Please tell me more.” And I’m imagining even as a parent, right, when your, your child tells you something, “Mom, I messed up. Guess what happened?” And you’re thinking, “Oh my gosh,” like, “What are we gonna…” Right? Instead, “Thank you for telling me. Keep going. Tell me more.” Right? In the moment it’s really hard, but really effective.

SK: Yeah. And even like I think that sometimes is much more effective even than asking questions, because it leaves it more… Like sometimes, of course, questions are important because you need to, you know, like figure something out, figure some specific thing out that’s gonna help you to like understand it better.

But a lot of just like listening and letting people talk about the parts of the problem that are most important to them or that are most important for them to solve is really important in terms of like- tailoring your response to what’s actually gonna help them.

When People Feel They Have to Hide Parts of Their Identity AW: So continuing with this theme of disclosure and bringing it back a little bit more to the theme of identity, some of your most fascinating research that I uncovered focuses on resume whitening and self-editing.

Can you share with the listeners a summary of what you did in your research and what the findings were?

SK: Yeah, absolutely. So I really like you said earlier, where you were talking about filtering, right? And, like, you’re always filtering parts of your identity, and you’re not just, like, putting it out, all out there all the time.

So resume whitening is like that, except it is another type of individual response that is, like, forced on people when there’s a broken system. So specifically in the work that I’ve done on resume whitening, we look at situations where people will conceal or downplay cues that might reveal that they’re not white.

And so this could be like they might use an initial instead of a first name that’s like culturally linked. They might take off experiences that are for particular racial groups. So like an example of this is someone who was in one of our studies, won an extremely prestigious scholarship that was just for Black students, and took that off of the resume because that would show that they were not white, even though it’s like very competitive, like extremely prestigious, well-known.

They were like, “This signal is gonna hurt me more than it’s gonna help me.” So it’s those types of things that people are kind of either downplaying, which is, you know, like if you were part of, let’s say, Muslim Students Association, you might take out the Muslim and just put like Students Association, or concealing entirely, which is just removing it.

So that’s resume whitening. And what we find in our work is that when people are applying for jobs, there tends to be some element of the filtering that you’re talking about that is specific to these types of racial cues. In our sample, about a third of participants said that they had whitened their resumes previously, and I think it’s probably more common than that, right?

Like this is the number of people who told us about it, but you can imagine that there’s like some degree of this for all kinds of different identities, right? It could be like a gender thing. It could be about disability, right? If you’ve taken time off of work for something. And so we found that people knew about resume whitening and were engaging in this activity.

Then we wanted to know does it actually make a difference in terms of whether or not they get a callback for an interview. So we did something called an audit study, which is weirdly named. Basically, it means that we sent out resumes in a bunch of different areas across the US. Some of them were whitened, some of them had the racial cues that existed previously, and we did this with Black, white, and Asian applicants What we found was that when the resume just included all of the racial information, the highest rate of callbacks came for the white applicants, and there was a decrease for Asian applicants, and then an even bigger decrease for Black applicants.

Specifically, Black applicants were two to two and a half times less likely to get a callback than a white applicant. When you whiten, those differences disappear because, again, these are equivalent resumes. But I think the most, like, striking thing about this work is that we also sent out resumes. There was another variable where we sent out resumes to companies that either had diversity statements or did not.

This work is now, like, 10 years old, right? So this is before a time like now. Well, actually, now we’re in a different time entirely. Yeah. But there was a period of time where-

AW: The pendulum has swung, Sonia …

SK: Yeah, we’re like, maybe we’re back to this time. So there was a time where all companies had diversity statements, if you remember.

Like, it was just, like, part of the performance, right? Like, they all said that, like, “We value diversity, and we want everyone to apply.” So when we did this work, it was during a period where not all companies had this, right? So we sent out the resumes to companies that do have those kinds of statements and companies that didn’t.

So what was really striking there is that applicants really paid attention to those diversity statements. At the time, like, these were seen as genuine, right? And so it was a signal to them like, “Hey, you can bring your whole self to work. You can be yourself. You don’t need to whiten.” And applicants didn’t.

They were more transparent. But it backfired because those companies were no less likely to discriminate than companies that didn’t even mention diversity at all. So they were actually opening applicants up to more discrimination because they were sending the signal like, “You know, it’s cool. You can be yourself.”

AW: Be your whole true self.

SK: Yeah. But there was no actual change in terms of what their process was. Um, and so then they ended up experiencing more discrimination because they were transparent. Now, I think, you know, like, we’re back, so, like, the pendulum has swung back, right? And we’re now in a period where organizations are kind of scaling back on diversity inclusion language.

Less so in Canada, obviously. But it would be interesting, I think, to, like, see how that works now after a period of time where it was ubiquitous, and I think, like, companies did a lot in order to change their processes and, like, you know, it would be interesting to redo it now and see how things, uh, stand in terms of the comparison to the original.

AW: What do you say then to people who are in one of these visible minority groups? Given this information, this is valid scholarly research showing that there is a negative impact for them to not whiten their resume. Do you say, “If you have to whiten it, whiten it?”

SK: So people do ask this question, and I think, like with everything else, I think that there is a pressure to navigate a system where there is discrimination, right? And so if you experiment with your resume and you find that you’re getting more callbacks by whitening, and this is, like, strategically advantageous to you ’cause you need a job, then yeah, like unfortunately, it’s your choice. Obviously, I’m not gonna say, like, everyone should do this, but if it’s something that you wanna do and it makes sense for you, then I think people are gonna experiment in all kinds of different ways on their resumes, right?

With how they’re presenting themselves, or, like, even in interviews, right? Like, the kinds of things that you talk about, like experimenting, I think, is good to kind of figure out, like, where you’re getting the best feedback or, like, where your value, I guess, is, like, landing in the best way possible. But I also just, like, hate that people have to ask that question because it’s really, like, an organizational issue that there is room for bias anyway, right, at that stage.

Especially now, like, I think that there is a lot that can be done to kind of like, you know, like skills-based testing or other types of ways of making assessments. So that’s what I would say, but again, like, I just hate that people have to ask that question in the first place.

AW: Yeah. You’re reminding me of a workshop that I coached a couple years ago where a young Asian woman of childbearing age brought this question up explicitly.

She said, “I have so many things going against me right now, and I feel like I need to misrepresent myself.” And I love the way you answered that. Unfortunately, it is a bit of a numbers game. If you’re gonna get a job, you kinda have to play the game. And one thing that I said to her was, “It’s not that you’re not a great mom, and it’s not that you’re not a wonderful member of the Asian community.

You show up as your best self, and eventually you’re gonna get promoted, and I know that you’re gonna end up changing the culture wherever you are to make it more inclusive.” And she’s like, “Yes, that’s the plan.”

SK: Yeah. Um, again, like also generationally, right? Like, I think looking better because younger generations are less likely to whiten their names, like use an Anglicized name, especially in like bigger cities, right?

So like Toronto, like Vancouver, it’s gonna be a different story than, let’s say, like Edmonton or Calgary for a number of different reasons. But I think this is much more something that earlier generations of immigrants were doing, less so as we move down to like second generation, third generation.

They’ll keep their names, and I think because of that, there’s more familiarity around how to pronounce names and like, “Oh, I’ve seen this kind of name before.” And so hopefully, like that will also play a role ’cause I think some of the, like, issue with resume whitening is even just like a fluency thing.

It’s like I don’t know how to say this name. Like, I… We talked to a hiring manager who, like told us straight up, like, “When I see a name that I can’t pronounce,” like, “there’s so many other people, so I don’t wanna basically, like, hurt this person’s feelings by saying their name wrong, and so I’ll just, like, go to someone else.”

And it’s like, “Okay, you know how you’re hurting their feelings is, like by not hiring them.” So I think as people become more familiar with names from the groups that are, like, there’s higher levels in the population, I think that also helps as well; that familiarity piece is important.

AW: Yeah. That’s true. I’ve noticed people avoid saying my last name. They sometimes will call me Andrea or Dr. Andrea. Before we get into, uh, one of my favorite topics that, that I can’t wait to hear your perspective on in terms of ambitious women and the leadership tightrope that they’re forced to balance on, I just wanna ask you about ageism.

Have you done any research similarly in terms of identity related to ageism?

SK: Yeah. So actually, some of my, like during my PhD, I did a lot of work on ageism. Ageism is a really interesting case because it is much more acceptable than other types of discrimination. So whereas in, like, a movie, let’s say, right, like it’s much less likely now that you would see, like overtly racist or sexist content.

Like you do still, but not as much. But like there’s still this kind of like social, like acceptability of ageism. And so that’s a unique case because you’re coming up against… Like with racism or sexism or, uh, ableism, I think there’s like more of an understanding, like these things are bad and we should try and like minimize them, whereas with ageism it’s like I don’t know.

It’s, people still think it’s acceptable. They think it’s funny. Like, it’s a whole different type of discrimination.

AW: I hadn’t thought of that, Sonia, but you know what you’re making me think is, ironically, it may be the last ism to go in terms of being socially acceptable or unacceptable, and ironically, it’s going to affect everyone because you’re gonna get older, right?

SK: Absolutely. And there’s work on, you know, like gendered ageism, for example. So, like, women will experience ageism much more negatively like men. As they get older, people are like, “Oh, they’re so wise, and they have all this experience.” You know, whereas women, it’s much more likely that the stereotype will lead people to think that an older woman’s incompetent or won’t be able to, like, put in the time that’s necessary ’cause she’ll be tired.

And you know, there’s a lot of gendered and intersectional effects of all of these different types of stigma, but I think ageism is particularly like, you know, for gender, there’s a much greater penalty for older women.

Structural Solutions for Gender Bias at Work AW: There was a great article, you probably read it a couple of years ago in The New York Times, called The Moment I Went from Babe to Hag.

SK: Oh, wow. No, I didn’t read that.

AW: Yeah. I mean, I’ll find a link to it, and I’ll send it to you, and I’m also gonna put it in the show notes. It basically illustrates exactly that point. And that is a beautiful segue to this other tightrope that women are forced to navigate. So my female clients, the ambitious women that I coach, often bring up this impossible balancing act that they have to navigate, where if they show that they are caring, then people think they maybe that they’re a lovable fool, right?

Versus if they are more focused or direct in their leadership style, people think they’re a jerk. So what do you think about that?

SK: Okay. So this is a classic double bind. There’s so much research showing that women experience exactly what you’re talking about. There’s this, like, push and pull between competence and warmth.

So if you’re too competent, people think that you aren’t warm enough. If you’re too warm, people think you’re not competent. And it’s a very fine line. It’s not only the case that there are these stereotypes and expectations for women, but also the kind of leeway that women are given to deviate from those is so much smaller than what is afforded to men.

So men can display, like, a huge array of different behaviors and still be judged as competent, whereas for women, it’s, like, so narrow. You make one mistake, you have to prove yourself all over again. So in some of the work that I’ve done with my former PhD student, Dr. Joyce Hu, who’s now at UCLA, we look at coming up with more structural solutions to that, so it’s not up to women to, like, kind of walk that tightrope.

So as an example of that, one of the studies that we did looked at promotion processes. And so historically, women are much less likely to apply for promotions than men. And we looked at how that works, and everything in life, basically, you have to do something to be considered for a promotion. So we call this an opt-in in behavioral science and life in general, where just basically, like, you know, if you’re sitting at your desk and you know about this promotion opportunity, but you don’t tell someone you’re interested in it, you don’t apply, you’re not gonna get it So we looked at that and we thought, like, this is a place where stereotypes might be impacting women and preventing them from applying because they know, like, if you put yourself forward, people might think, like, oh, like, you’re so into yourself, you think you’re good enough to apply for this specific thing.

AW: Yeah. Who do you think you are?

SK: Yeah. Who do you think you are? You’re gonna get, like, dinged on warmth. There’s so much that’s going into that for women, whereas for men, and there’s research on this, where men will look at an opportunity like that and just be like, “Yeah, for sure.” So let’s say this isn’t what the research is exactly, but I’ll make it simpler.

So let’s say there’s, like, 10 criteria that are needed for a promotion. Women need to see seven, eight, nine before they even consider, like, signing up. Sometimes it’s like you need 10 of those to say yes, whereas for men, at, like, three or four, you’re like, “Yeah.” They’re like, “Put me in.” Like, “This is for me.

I can figure out the rest. Like, it’s fine.” So we wanted to kind of undo some of that so that it wasn’t, um, kind of on women to decide whether they’re gonna put themselves forward in that very fraught kind of social context. So we switched up the way that the promotion system worked to be an opt-out. So basically, everyone who was past a particular threshold that we decided on beforehand of performance would be considered for this competitive process, but they always maintain the ability to opt out.

And so what we find is that when it’s the traditional kind of opt-in system, 75% of men choose to compete under those situations, circumstances, whereas only 25% of women will put themselves forward. But under an opt-out, that completely eliminates that gap. We’re now, you know, 75% of women, 75% of men are staying in the competition when they are kind of put there because they’ve been told, like, “You’re at the threshold.

You’re good.” That takes away that idea of I’m worried that people are gonna think that I think I’m better than I am, or whatever it might be that’s preventing women fr- to put themselves forward. So that’s an example of, like, a structural type of solution. We’ve also done this with hiring, with, um, job language, job ad language.

So we worked with a company who they were having a hard time hiring women for this entry-level position, which on its surface it wasn’t obvious, like, why women weren’t applying for this job. And so basically what we did is we looked at the job advertisement, and we were like, “Whoa. The way that this is written is, like, you wanna hire a man,” right?

There’s, like, the language in this job advertisement is signaling that this is a job for, you know, men to apply for, basically. And there’s lots of work on this looking at gendered language. So, you know, like, gendered language might be things like competence or brilliance or, like, rock star or, like, competitive, like, assertive, right?

Like, where it seems like these are neutral, but those types of things are much more likely to be associated with men, and men are allowed to be those things much more than women. So we took that job ad, and we changed it to make it gender neutral, and we were able to increase the number of both women and men who applied to the position, so it became more inclusive overall.

And I think that’s really important because it also speaks to… Like, we’ve been t- talking about generational stuff a bunch here, but I think it also, like, speaks to the changes in how people approaching work, right? Like, no one really wants to be that, like, hyper-masculine ideal of the ideal worker anymore.

Like, people want a more balanced kind of like… A job where you’re not, like, sleeping under your desk and, like, showering in the bathroom sink is, like, not appealing to people as much anymore. Um, and so taking gender out of that job ad helped them to diversify not only the applicant pool, but then also who got hired into the position as well.

AW: I love how we’ve gone full circle now, and we started talking about the individuals who are experiencing this, and you shifted it to at an institutional level: here are the things that you can do. You change it to opt out, and you watch the language. Words matter. This reminds me also of an incredible woman.

If you haven’t met her, I hope you listen to this podcast episode. I interviewed Michelle Budria, who’s the past CEO, recently retired, of McDonald’s Canada, and she said that when she got promoted to a certain level, one of her very insightful male managers said to her, “Michelle, you’ve now reached senior management.

You can start being your true self.” And she’s like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “I know that you aren’t the way you present yourself.” And so she let herself be the more kind and nurturing human that she is, and she came up with this kind of mantra or saying that she would say to people, which is, “Do not mistake my kindness for weakness.”

And I was like, “Wow.” I did some research. I checked it out online. Apparently, the person that said that first was Al Capone, the mobster. Yeah. He meant it very differently from how she meant it. He meant, “You better be kind to me or respect me, or I might kill you.” She just meant, “I’m gonna get business results, you watch and see,” right?

Final Reflections on Identity, Inclusion, and Career Growth Love it. Okay, I wanna ask you the three rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

SK: Sure.

AW: Okay. I know you’re big on psychology. I can’t wait to hear about this- what you say about this. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

SK: Okay, so definitely an extrovert. However, as a caveat, I do have introverted tendencies, so I need a lot of recharge time, I think, right?

Like, in any social situation, like, I’m not a true extrovert in the sense that, like, I come out of that and I’m, like, so energized and I’m just like, “Let’s go to the next one.” Like, I need, like, a cool-down period, and I do, you know, enjoy kind of a lot of activities that are more… I mean, I think it’s part of the job, right?

You know, like, being an academic, I think it’s a lot of introspection, a lot of, like, paying attention to your thoughts, like, communicating them. And so definitely I would say I’m an extrovert, but maybe, like, a little bit of introversion there from time to time.

AW: You’re on the scale closer to extrovert, but you may be an ambivert, right? Like an extrovert-leaning ambivert.

SK: Yeah. So my husband is actually a… He’s also on faculty at Rotman, and he’s a personality psychologist, and so when I say stuff like this, he’s like, “No,” like, “you’re an extrovert.” So that’s the professional opinion.

AW: That’s gotta be fascinating living with a personality expert.

SK: Exactly, yeah.

AW: Next question is, what are your communication pet peeves?

SK: Okay. So this is a big one for me. It’s fluency. So I work on my s- work on this a lot with my students, is like, if you are communicating something in too complicated of a way, people aren’t gonna look at that and be like, “Wow, this is really complicated,” like, “I better work really hard to understand it.”

They’re gonna be like, “This is dumb,” like, “I don’t even know what this means.” Like, they’re gonna dismiss it. And so I think so much of communication is clarity and saying less. So, like, one of my favorite things to do with my students’ papers is just to, like, cut. And so they learn over time, I think, that, like you can communicate something once.

You don’t need to say, like, “In other words, blah, blah, blah,” or have, like, a lot of different types of, like, phrasing that sets something up. Like, it’s just, like, say what you wanna say and just be clear. And I think that’s even more so as people’s attention spans for information goes down. You have to be able to say something meaningful in a concise way.

It’s not about, like, saying nothing, right? It’s just put these ideas out there. It’s, like, very strategic communication to communicate a complex idea in the least number of words possible.

AW: So are you a fan of the TLDR?

SK: I love TLDR.

AW: I thought you might.

SK: I think, like, everything should be a TLDR.

AW: Yeah.

SK: Absolutely. This is especially the case if you’re asking people for things. Like, I get a lot of emails of people asking me for something where it’s, like, this much information, and I’m literally like, “What do you want?” You know? So, like, definitely TLDR.

AW: Yeah. Uh, so last rapid-fire question. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately?

SK: My favorite podcast is always The Daily, which is The New York Times podcast. I really love it ’cause they go in depth on one particular topic every day. So they kinda pick out and curate, like, what’s important, and I just really like the reporting on it. And then I’ll also plug Gates Podcast. So I’m the director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman.

We have a podcast called Busted, where each episode we bust a myth about gender and the economy. So we have episodes on things like entrepreneurship, where the myth is, like, you know, there’s a particular way that an entrepreneurship or an entrepreneur is supposed to look and act. And we show that that’s not the case, that so much of entrepreneurship is actually about, like, community building and connecting with people and lifting people up.

And, you know, it’s not just this idea of, like, you’re a tech bro who’s, like, trying to make a billion dollars. So in each of the episodes, we try to bust a myth like that. So I’ll plug that. I think, you know, that’s a podcast that people who like your show would probably be interested in as well.

AW: And I will put a link to that in the show notes. Sonia, is there anything else you want to add to share with the listeners about managing our identities at work?

SK: I think I would say that there is a lot of pressure, I think, to be yourself, but it’s hard because your whole life is about discovering who you are, right? And so it’s not like you have this crystallized idea at any given time, and I think that that’s okay.

And so being flexible and understanding, like, yourself slowly over time, that’s all I would say about that is, like, don’t kind of feel like you need to be a particular thing consistently all the time. Experiment and kind of find out what feels best to you.

AW: I love that. In the work that I do, we talk about your personal brand not only can, but should evolve over time.

SK: Yes, exactly.

AW: Thank you so much, Sonya, for sharing your insights and your time with me and the Talk About Talk listeners. It was a really fun conversation. Thank you.

SK: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me on.

AW: Thanks again so much to Dr. Sonia Kang for sharing her time and her expertise with us. In particular, I loved how she answered each of the questions from the perspective of the individual and also the institution.

It’s not all on the individuals, is it? Now I’m gonna share with you, as I promised, three of my favorite points from this interview that I really wanna reinforce with you. The first is that bringing your whole self to work may be an aspirational goal, but it is not equally safe or realistic for everyone.

Organizations need to create the conditions for authenticity rather than putting that burden on the individuals. Secondly, resume whitening shows how people from marginalized groups often adapt strategically to biased systems, which highlights that the real problem, again, is organizational processes, not individual choices.

And last, I told Sonya that she’d be quoted on this point: ambiguity is where bias thrives. So leaders should reduce subjectivity in hiring, promotions, and performance reviews, all of it, by using clearer and more structured criteria, and be careful of the words that they use. That’s it for this episode of the Talk About Talk podcast.

Before you go, please leave us a rating or a review on whatever podcast platform you’re on, and make sure while you’re there that you follow and subscribe. Talk soon.

The post Managing Your WORK IDENTITY: Authenticity, Bias, & Resume Whitening with Professor Sonia Kang (ep. 216) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Cross-cultural communication is challenging. The difficulty is rarely about your accent or your vocabulary. It’s the noise in your head telling you you’re not enough, not clear enough, not confident enough.

Cultural intelligence (CQ) coach and bestselling author Victoria Rennoldson joins Andrea to share strategies for communicating with confidence across cultures, navigating imposter syndrome, and making sure your ideas get heard.

You will learn why confidence is a practice, not a feeling; the 3 strategies for moving through imposter syndrome (including why “said is better than perfect” is a game-changer); how to own your accent as part of your personal brand; and how leaders can design meetings so every voice is heard.

Victoria also shares her 4 pillars of effective global communication: confidence, clarity, challenging conversations, and connection.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA🔗 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/victoria-rennoldson
📖 Read Become a Global Leader: https://amzn.to/4xj0oO6
🎧 Listen to Victoria’s Podcast: https://culturecuppa.com/podcast/

TRANSCRIPTIONVictoria Rennoldson: Ultimately, communication is about talking human to human, understanding each other, being able to engage and lean into conversations. And so for me, that is the ultimate one that we all need as global leaders, wherever we are on that stage of career journey right now.

Andrea Wojnicki: That was Victoria Rennoldson, a communication coach who specializes in cultural intelligence.

Lately it seems like I’ve had a lot of questions from Talk About Talk podcast listeners and from my coaching and workshop clients about things like accents and communicating at work across different cultures. That is why I thought we should invite Victoria here today. Before we get into this, let me introduce myself.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your communication coach. I coach ambitious executives like you through the Talk About Talk podcast to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals. Sound good? You can learn more about me and about Talk About Talk if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com.

About the Guest: Global Leadership Coach Victoria Rennoldson Okay. Victoria Rennoldson is a global leadership coach, speaker, best-selling author, and podcast host who specializes in communication confidence and cultural intelligence. She helps current and emerging leaders increase their influence, visibility, and impact as they step into bigger roles internationally and across cultures.

Here we go. Thank you so much, Victoria, for being here today to talk to me and the Talk About Talk listeners about communicating across cultures.

VR: I’m so excited to be here, so thank you so much for welcoming me on the show. Thanks, Andrea.

AW: I’m really excited to hear your take on communicating across cultures, both at the individual level and at the group level.

But let’s start at the individual level. Many of the Talk About Talk listeners that I coach are ambitious professionals, and some of them, many of them, in fact, work in cultures that feel unfamiliar to them, or they’re communicating in a language that’s not their first language. So I wanted to start there. What general advice do you have for these folks?

VR: So I think, you know, this is a lot of the work that I do, working with individuals and teams across cultures, helping them to navigate what goes on within the team, but also within the organization. And the first thing that I would say is that there’s a lot of noise that happens up here, so there’s a lot of thinking that goes on, right?

So, you know, I often work with individuals who are saying to me things like, “You know, I’m worrying about getting it right. I’m thinking about how can I get it clear, but b- by the time I work that out, like, the conversation’s kinda moved on.” And the most common one that I hear, actually, is, “I have imposter syndrome.

I sit in the room, I sit in the meeting, whether that’s virtual or in person, and I just feel like I’m not at the same level as everybody else. I can’t express it in the same way. I’m not nuanced enough in the way that I can say it.”

AW: So hang on. Can I just rewind a little bit? I think in my mind at least you’ve just done is articulated three legitimate and significant pain points that many folks experience, right?

It’s “I’m gonna mess up”, “I’m gonna do a faux pas.” It’s “I can’t keep up ’cause it’s not my first language,” or it’s just, “I don’t have the confidence to speak up.” And each one of those is very significant.

VR: Absolutely, and it makes it very noisy, right? So you’re trying to, you know, individuals who are trying to do their best job to either they’re aspiring leaders or maybe they’re already there, but they’ve got all this noise going on inside their head.

And this is not great because that’s what it is happening. It’s creating the pause between the thinking, the clarity, and them being able to express it, and that often comes across to others in the room as, well; they’re a bit quiet, or they’re just kind of often very reflective, or they’re not really contributing to the conversation in the same way.

But this could be a massive misunderstanding and actually a downplaying of what an individual’s talents are about. So this is obviously really important. What people have to understand is, how do I step through that? If somebody’s listening to this, going, “Wow, yep, that’s what I’m feeling, that’s what I’m thinking,” I hear a lot about this imposter syndrome, and I don’t doubt for a minute it’s real.

It’s absolutely real. And syndrome makes it also sound like it’s very negative, like something we’re suffering from.

AW: Yeah, a disease. Yeah.

VR: A disease. Exactly. Exactly. But instead, if we reframe it and then talk instead about, you know, I’m feeling like an imposter in this moment, then it kind of recognizes that you’re gonna get through this, that there are gonna be ways through.

Three Mindset Shifts for Speaking Up with Confidence And I basically have three strategies to really help people think about this.

AW: Beautiful.

VR: I know you love three. Yeah. So three, absolutely three strategies. And so the first one of these is said is better than perfect. So, to all those people who are worrying, am I gonna say it in the right way? Or actually, even, is it the right thing to say in this moment?

In some situations, it’s better to get it out than to leave it unsaid. Silence is also a communication strategy, so we really have to recognize that sometimes we just need to say it, even if we don’t have all the perfect words to kind of say it in the way we’d ideally like to. So that’s the first one.

Said is better than perfect. The second one is really about conversation, not performance. And the reason I talk about this is that I really feel like sometimes people put that pressure on, “I need to be speaking at this level,” whether that means associated with their job title or the aspirational kind of promotional level they’re going for.

But this idea of, “I have to perform, I have to be speaking like this,” just creates too much pressure, extra pressure. So I break it down and say, look at some of the really successful speakers out there, some of the successful leaders. Actually, they could be talking on a stage to thousands of people and be very conversational in the way they’re coming across.

So don’t put that extra pressure on. Don’t see it as you’re trying to act as if you’re something and speak as if you’re at this kind of level. Just get the words out. Treat it like a conversation, no matter who’s in the room. So that’s the second one, conversation, not performance. And then the third one is your communication makes your visibility.

So often the people that I’m working with are aiming to some sort of goal. They’re aiming towards a promotion to a senior leadership level. And so what we have to recognize is it doesn’t matter how talented you are in your work, it doesn’t matter how smart you are, unless you communicate that, unless people see that, and you make it visible, then that cannot be recognized and acknowledged.

So connecting– I’m often doing work with people, helping us connect it to their goal, what is it they’re trying to achieve, and their communication will make that visibility.

AW: That’s right. So I’ve heard this beautiful quote, I don’t know who it’s attributed to, but, “You must speak for your work. Your work does not speak for itself.”

And I heard a very wise person say that, “If you don’t talk about your work, you may as well have not done it.” So early in our careers- We have someone looking over our shoulder, making sure we’re doing the work, and giving us credit for the work, right? And then when we get more senior, I think it becomes even more important. Do you agree?

VR: Absolutely that. And I regularly have conversations with people who say, “I know I’m doing great work. I do believe in what I do, but I think it should speak for itself.” And the reality is, and this is another cultural lens, it depends on the context. So I find that I’m often working with people from a variety of cultures, some from South America, some from Asia, some from other parts of Europe.

But primarily they’re working in contexts that are influenced by North American, UK styles, which tend to be more focused on actually you do need to make that work visible. To be acknowledged for it, you don’t need to just do the work, you actually need to make it visible as well. So that’s an adjustment because people worry about, “Am I gonna come across as too confident, too arrogant even, by just talking about myself all the time?” And this is quite a big difference, I think, culturally in style.

AW: This is something actually that I wanted to double down on with you, Victoria, because I get this question often too. So this topic of various communication, I guess, expectations or norms across cultures, specifically the extent to which we promote ourselves, is a question that I also often get from my clients.

For example, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but within North America, there’s a big difference between the stereotype of the typical female Canadian. So Canadians are known as being kind of less dominant than Americans. This is a stereotype, but it, the stereotype exists, right? The Canadians versus Americans, and also women versus men.

So a female Canadian could walk into a room that’s maybe primarily American men Again, I’m not discriminating, but I am playing with the stereotypes here, and they’re like, “How do I overcome that, you know, be a good girl and do the work and don’t talk about your work that’s going on inside my head when I know that I need to speak for my work in order to be recognized?” How do you deal with all that? Can you unpack that?

Understanding Different Communication Styles and Expectations VR: Yeah. So the first thing is actually awareness, and you’re right. There are lots of stereotypes out there, but then there is also very good research which sits behind cultural intelligence. So in the work that I do, I use a particular model which has 10 different behavioral preferences where we can really analyze how individuals and teams communicate, behave, interact, show up at work.

And this is really helpful because this gives us a language to describe differences in approaches. And some of the things you’ve just talked about there might be differences in approach around individualism and collectivism. So what that means, very briefly, is whether you’re more focused on the self and talking about yourself, or you’re more likely to consider yourself part of the group and talk about, say, group goals, group achievements.

So that’s one dimension. Another dimension might be at play here, which is about how directly you communicate, whether you’re somebody who really likes to communicate directly and be very brief and to the point, both for positive and negative messages, or whether, actually, you’re more indirect. And actually, that’s a very big one across some of the cultures I work with.

And then there is expressiveness. How expressive is somebody? For some cultures, I’ve worked a lot with Japanese clients in the past, it is much better to be very neutral, to come across as professional, so not very strong emotional expression, either for positive or negative communication. Whereas I’ve worked a lot with Brazilians, and for them it’s really important to be expressive, to show your passion, your commitment, your warmth, and really show personality.

So you can see these are just a few of the dimensions. I mentioned there are 10 altogether. We’re not gonna go through all of those, but you can understand, therefore, what’s at play here. So awareness is absolutely the starting point. For somebody who’s listening and thinking, “Yeah, I recognize this,” recognize it, yes, it’s who you are, but it doesn’t define you.

So you have the absolute ability to adapt, but that is a choice. And, like, bring it back to the original conversation. It’s not just our national culture that shapes who we are; it’s our gender, our lived experience. What sector do we work in? Like, I’ve worked with engineers, and I’ve worked with people in the advertising industry, like, completely different cultural norms.

So we are shaped a lot by multitudes of our cultural background. We’re not just about national culture. So the point is, yes, start with awareness, but then you’ve gotta get into what we call CQ strategy or culture intelligence strategies, and this is where we really need to play with this and test. We’re not trying to change who we are, but we’re trying to adapt and see what might work better for our goals.

AW: In my personal branding language that I use when I’m coaching clients, I call it filtering. You’re always your true self, but you will filter what parts of yourself you wanna share depending on the person and the context that you’re in. So thinking about the culture in terms of, like you said, like the national culture, the industry culture, the corporate culture, even your team culture, plus your own propensities, thinking about what parts of you you wanna share.

And maybe that maybe generally you’re a shy person, but you know, you do have some great thoughts, so you would filter, filter out the shyness and bring up the great points that you have in a meeting. Is that kind of an example?

Plan, Practice, Reflect, and Improve VR: So I think it kind of breaks down into three parts when it comes to the strategies.

One is planning. So, actually recognizing most people are not naturally confident from the day they’re born. Like, it doesn’t matter how they come across; they’re not often like that. There are very few like that. Most people work on confidence. That’s why it’s one of the pillars in my work, in the book that I wrote.

It’s really important to recognize confidence is a practice, it’s an action, it’s not just what you feel.

AW: It’s a skill you can learn, right?

VR: That’s it. That is it, Andrea. So, like for me, this is something we have to understand. We have to do the work. We have to work on confidence, and there are various things that I do in my work to do that.

But includes recognizing actually what are you great at? Like not being shy about that, really recognizing your talent, the value that you bring. So, really kind of focusing on this and then connecting and planning to the goal. Why is it you would communicate? Why would you speak up? What is it you’re trying to achieve here?

And planning for that clarity, if that is something you worry about, like really thinking about how you’re gonna come across and get your ideas clear in that particular meeting, for example. Then the second part is the awareness, recognizing in the moment what’s going on. Not just speaking or getting kind of caught up in the di- the monologue in your head, but really thinking about like, “Okay, let me respond to what’s going on here.

Let me see if I try this out, will this work?” And again, not letting the perfectionism get in the way. And then, very importantly, is what happens afterwards. Doing a review, thinking about, okay, what did land well, maybe what didn’t go so well. Not to beat yourself up about it, but actually to kinda go, “Well, what would I do differently next time?

What am I gonna try?” And this is where it gets very powerful. ‘Cause if you can treat it like a series of experiments, then this is where you kinda don’t get too hung up on getting it perfect. It’s really about this series of testing that you’re doing.

AW: I love that, Victoria. I don’t, I don’t hear that a lot.

And to the listeners out there, it might sound like common sense, but it is not common. So what we’re talking about here is doing a disciplined review after you’ve been in a meeting and asking yourself what went well, and perhaps more importantly, what didn’t, and objectively speaking, what am I gonna do next time?

Most people don’t do this. It is pretty easy, right, Victoria? I mean, it’s not hard to do, but most people don’t do it.

VR: Well, this is the thing I find, Andrea, is that people are busy. Of course, they are. Like, it’s really easy to go straight from one thing to the other. But the reality is nothing changes unless we put the little pause in somewhere.

And it doesn’t have to be straight after meeting. It just has to be at some point, I would advise within 24 hours, otherwise we tend to forget. But just have a place, like whether it’s your notebook, on your kind of phone, make a note, but just capture it really quickly as you’re going through the day. It doesn’t have to be big or anything dramatic, but it is noticing, and so that you can do something different with it next time.

AW: I think that this advice, Victoria, is gold. So whether it’s in a notebook or in a list on your phone, tracking your effectiveness in meetings, your communication skills, writing down and recording what you did well and what you wanna do better next time. One thing that I’ve heard from a couple of my clients is that, yes, it’s easy to do. It’s also true that most of us don’t do it, but knowing that it’s gonna give me a competitive advantage, I think, is what motivates some folks that I’ve worked with to make that extra effort.

Why Your Accent Is an Asset, Not a Liability I would love to ask you a specific question that I get all the time, and it’s about people’s accents. So we all have an accent, it’s just that it becomes more salient when we’re in with a group where ours is more unique, right? And so people will often ask me, “How can I erase my accent, Andrea? Can you help me erase my accent? And can you help me be more comprehensible to the people that I’m communicating with?” That’s a big ask that, that I hear frequently.

VR: I can imagine. Yeah. And it’s something that I get asked about as well. I’m sure.

AW: I’m sure. Yeah.

VR: And I have a really specific point of view on this.

AW: Okay.

VR: So this comes up quite a lot, and actually interestingly, I’ve heard it quite a lot recently in the last sort of year or so, connected to people who have been job searching, and being told, “The reason you’re not getting through the interviews is because of your accent.” And it makes me mad. It makes me really mad because here’s the thing, I’ve been running this business now for 11 years, and in all that time, I have probably only met maybe one or two people maximum where their accent meant that I found it very difficult to understand them.

That means I had to listen incredibly carefully to what they said. So my question always is, is this person clear? So can I understand them without having to really listen super carefully, and are they comprehensible? For the vast majority of people, that answer is yes. They are clear, they are comprehensible in the accent. The concern, where it comes from, the concern they’re really raising is, I sound different to other people.

Is that a problem? Now, obviously, context is everything. If you are the only person with an accent in a very uniform, very kind of homogenous environment, then of course you’re gonna notice that. You’re gonna worry about that, maybe. But there is the thing, like accents are often part of our personality.

It’s part of who we are, and you could live in a country for many, many years, decades in fact, and still hold that accent and that be part of who you are. Does that make you less of a communicator or a speaker? No. And the point I would come to is this is connected again to confidence. It’s often connected to ” Am I clear enough?”

But that is less to do with the accent, the pronunciation, and much more to do with can you express those points? Can you frame the way you’re speaking so that people– it lands, that people understand your messages? And that’s when, like people say that to me, that’s the space I’m focusing on, confidence and clarity.

AW: Beautiful. I am delighted, Victoria, that your answer aligns with what I say. As long as your words are understandable, comprehensible by other folks, don’t worry about it. They will register that you have an accent, and in fact, back to personal branding, you can make it part of your brand. Listen, I have global experience, or I have a different global perspective, and these are things that people are seeking, right?

As they ascend the leadership ladder, they’re looking for people with global perspective. So maybe you can actually use your accent as evidence of that global perspective. The other thing that I often will suggest to people if they’re worried about People understanding them because of their accent is for them to slow down

VR: Absolutely. Yeah, slowing down is gonna help. It’s also gonna help because it gives you time to think what comes next, how can I start this thought and express it kind of well. But for sure, slowing down helps you; it helps the other person. But the key thing as well is to recognize that communication comes in lots of forms.

So yes, the spoken form we’ve mostly talked about here today, but there are lots of other ways as well to express your ideas, to contribute ideas. And if I flip it, you know, thinking about leaders with maybe lots of people on their team with different accents, different cultures, often you have to be quite creative about thinking about how do you encourage that contribution and get people talking.

How Leaders Can Ensure Every Voice Is Heard AW: Let’s dive in there. So we’ve covered the individual level. Let’s shift to the group level. You are a manager or one of the leaders on a team, right? With people that come with a variety of personalities, of course, and cultural contexts. How do you make sure that everyone’s voice is heard?

VR: I mean, that’s a big question as well, because I’m sure there are people listening to this who’ve been in meetings where they feel like they’re hearing from the same voices time and time again, and there are just some people who are just not speaking up.

And I’ve also had, you know, conversations with leaders where they’re saying, “Well, you know, I’ve spoken to that person individually, and I’ve said to them, ‘You know, we wanna hear from you. Please just, you know, say what you think.'” But here’s the thing, and this comes back to cultural context. For some people, just inviting them to unmute and speak up, or even in the same s- space, like even if you’re all in the same room, you know, just saying, “Well, just speak up and say what you think,” like a lot of people find that quite tricky for a variety of reasons It might be that, again, they’re processing.

They’re needing to think about what they’re gonna say. Maybe they have confidence challenges about, you know, as we’ve spoken about earlier today, like really, how do I come across in the way that I want to? It could be just because, actually, again, they’re collectivists, coming back to the cultural language we were using earlier.

Like, they just prefer sometimes to talk in smaller groups to get a sense of where everybody else is at before they express their point of view. So, as a leader, let’s get really practical about this. Like, how do we really encourage people? Because ultimately, we do want to have that richness and diversity of the voices and perspectives.

That’s where the innovation comes from. It really comes down to being really deliberate and, you know, really thinking about what I call 360 communication, what happens before, what happens during the meeting, and what happens afterwards. And that includes things like thinking about how people are contributing anonymously, perhaps even to things like word clouds or polls, and all the exciting tools that are out there to use for this purpose. It might be about getting some asynchronous contribution going on, so that means obviously getting contributions before you even turn up in the room. And again, that gives somebody maybe confidence to express their views, what they’re thinking.

But also, I always say that the meeting doesn’t finish when the time is up. Also, what happens afterwards? So if you’re not hearing the richness of the ideas and contributions from everyone, go have a conversation. Work out what they do think. Now, clearly this is coming with an assumption that you’ve got the luxury of time, and that’s not gonna be possible for everything, right?

I do get that. I really get that. But I think it’s about designing, really designing good conversations, designing the communication. And then on the flip of this, if people are listening to this and English is your first language, you have that privilege of that, you have the privilege of being in the dominant culture of the group, just be super aware of how you’re speaking.

Are you speaking too fast? Are you making jokes and using humor in a way that might not be understood by everybody there? Are you using idioms even, like, that just are not understood? We have to be quite conscious of this when we’ve got a very diverse, multilingual, multicultural group.

AW: I think about this when I’m writing my email newsletter.

Sometimes I’ll start to think about a metaphor or an idiom, and I’ll be like, “Ooh, that’s not gonna land with some of my audience.” So that, that’s a fantastic point. I hadn’t thought of that.

The Four Pillars of Global Communication Excellence I’ve got one more question for you, Victoria, before we get to the three rapid-fire questions, and it’s a doozy. I’m gonna warn you, I would love to hear what you believe makes someone a truly effective global communicator.

VR: I mean, I think for me, having done a lot of the research around the book that I wrote last year, Become a Global Leader, for me, I summarize it and focus it in on the four pillars that I think are really important. Each individual, each collective will need that in different combinations, just like when you’re mixing paints, depending on who they are and where they are in their career.

But basically, very simply, those four are confidence, which we’ve touched on many times today; clarity, not only in your thinking, but in the way that you communicate; challenging conversations, knowing how to navigate those. Again, that can be quite complex culturally. And then finally, connection. Ultimately, communication is about talking human to human, understanding each other, being able to engage and lean into conversations.

And so for me, that is the ultimate one that we all need as global leaders, wherever we are on that stage of career journey right now.

AW: That is a beautiful list, and I love the alliteration. All right, are you ready for the three rapid-fire questions?

VR: Absolutely.

AW: Okay. Question number one: Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

VR: So I’m gonna cheat on this one. I’m an ambivert. I used to be… Used to think I was totally extrovert until COVID, and then I realized I’m much more introvert than I kind of anticipated. So I do have, like, moments of both.

AW: Got it. Okay I’m really curious about this one for you as a communication coach. What are your communication pet peeves?

VR: So this one’s a big one, and I think it also ties into our cultural conversation today. It’s when somebody calls me by the name that I’m not. So I’m a Victoria. I’m never a Vicky, and yet it’s surprisingly interesting how many times people do say to me, “Vicky,” without permission, without asking.

AW: What?

VR: Exactly, right? I,

AW: I can’t even… So I wouldn’t have even gone with Vicky. I would’ve gone with Tori ’cause I, I have many friends that are Victoria, and they go by Tori. But I would never shorten someone’s name without their permission. Is that, does that happen a lot?

VR: Surprisingly, yeah. And it always shocks me.

And I think, to be honest with you, the other person is doing it because they wanna connect. They think that that’s being kind of connective. But when I translate this as well culturally, you know, how often have we turned up to a meeting and not really been entirely sure how to pronounce somebody’s name?

My advice is just ask. Just say at the beginning, “Could you give me some guidance? How could I say your name correctly?” or, “How can I pronounce your name correctly?” That is so appreciated. And never, never shorten anybody’s name without permission. Our name is our identity. It’s who we are ultimately. And so I think this deeply matters in a time where, you know, we might be just on virtual calls a lot of the day.

So actually, our names are super important to us. So yeah, like I think this is why it’s my pet peeve and why I think it’s really important in the context of this conversation.

AW: Yeah. I just wanna double down on this for a minute ’cause I, I, I totally agree with you that our name is a very significant part of our identity.

One last question. Is there a book or a podcast, Victoria, that you find yourself recommending to people lately?

VR: The one I was listening to, um, a lot recently is called New Ideas, Big Thinkers. And it’s not about communication ex- exactly, but it’s more about the ideas in the world today. So it talks a lot about human connection.

I’ve just been recently listening to an episode about, um, our aging brain and can we stop that? And I just love being kind of inspired and listening to different ideas, and some of them are sometimes connected to the, what I’m doing in my world, in my work, and other times it’s just about, actually, this is kind of interesting to learn about and important to know.

So I do recommend that one, and I find it absolutely fascinating. Um, really, really good one to follow.

AW: I have not heard of that one, but I will definitely add it to my queue. Before we go, I just wanna ask you one more time, Victoria, do you have any advice for listeners who struggle across cultural contexts, whether they’re the person leading the meeting or more likely they’re the person that maybe feels like an outsider, or they feel like they’re not part of the group?

How can they improve their communication and their presence in this context?

VR: It comes down to, if I think about everything we’ve talked about here, recognizing you’re there for a reason. You’re there because you have points of view, ideas, perspectives that are different, and that’s going to ultimately be really great benefit to not only the team, but to the organization.

But unless you say it, unless it is said, and the leader, for example, invites you to say it, unless this happens, those ideas are silent and nothing changes. And remember, silence is a communication strategy as well. So I really encourage people to move through that silence, to really think about- Said is better than perfect.

That it is really about the conversation and not the performance, and that there is a real goal to communication, which is about the visibility. This is where I’d like to sort of leave the ideas with your listeners.

AW: It’s a beautiful, powerful, and important message. Thank you so much, Victoria.

VR: Thank you, Andrea. I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.

Three Key Takeaways for Communicating Across Cultures AW: Thanks again to Victoria. Don’t you just love her accent? I guess I should have said that to her directly, but she has a beautiful voice, doesn’t she? Okay. Now I’m going to briefly share three points that I want to reinforce from this episode. The first is the power of focusing on the before, the during, and the after.

If you’re the meeting leader, before the meeting, you might wanna plan how you’re gonna make everyone feel included and provide them with different ways of participating during the meeting. And then after the meeting, you can follow up with those who didn’t. As an individual contributor, I encourage you to plan what you’re gonna say, especially for those high-stakes meetings.

And then after the meeting, Victoria and I had a great conversation about this, consider your follow-up. We recognize that you are very busy, but having the discipline to take a few minutes after the meeting’s over to debrief with yourself what went well and how can you improve next time. This can become your strategic competitive advantage.

So really focus on the before, the during, and the after. The second thing that I want to reinforce is I want to encourage you to think about your brand, your personal brand, and your identity. And yes, your name and your accent are both significant elements of your brand, so own it. And third and last, Victoria said this several times, and I love it.

She said, “Said is better than perfect.” I’ll say that again. “Said is better than perfect.” If you are one of those folks who struggles to speak up in meetings, I want you to make this part of your mantra. And that is it for this episode. If you’re not already subscribed, please hit subscribe now on whatever platform you’re on, and that way you won’t miss any more communication skills coaching from me.

Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post Communicating Across CULTURES with CQ expert Victoria Rennoldson (ep.215) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Leadership blockers, hidden beliefs, and the stories we tell ourselves, these are the forces quietly shaping how you lead, and most leaders never examine them.

Executive coach and author Muriel M. Wilkins joins Andrea to discuss her new book, Leadership Unblocked, and the seven hidden beliefs that can sabotage even the most successful leaders:

I need to be involved
I know I’m right
I cannot make a mistake
I need it done now
If I can do it, you can do it
I can’t say no
I don’t belong here

You will learn the difference between habitual behaviors and the beliefs driving them, why self-awareness is the first step to unblocking yourself, and the three questions to ask whenever you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or like things are harder than they should be. Muriel also opens up about her own experience with toxic productivity and what it took to loosen her grip on an identity that was no longer serving her.

CONNECT WITH MURIEL🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murielwilkins/
🌐 Website: https://www.murielwilkins.com/
📖 Read Leadership Unblocked: https://amzn.to/3Ro0hQB
🎧 Listen to Muriel’s podcast, Coaching Real Leaders: CoachingRealLeaders.com
📖 Own the Room by Amy Jen Su and Muriel M. Wilkins – https://amzn.to/4datrLD

TRANSCRIPTIONMuriel M. Wilkins: So many things are out of our control, and it’s okay. That’s life. You know, that’s life. I can’t drive the weather story today, you know? But I can drive the story I tell myself about the weather. That’s the difference, and how I drive that story about the weather will change how I experience it without the weather changing.

Andrea Wojnicki: That was Muriel Wilkins, author of Leadership Unblocked. I recently attended a book talk where I saw Muriel talk about her new book, and I decided right there and then that I need to get her on the Talk About Talk podcast. Her book is called Leadership Unblocked. In this book, she shares seven hidden blockers or hidden beliefs that can sabotage your success as a leader.

In the conversation that you’re about to hear, you’re gonna learn how to identify your blockers and what to do about them.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

Let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk. I coach ambitious leaders and aspiring leaders to communicate with confidence and credibility so they can make an impact and achieve their career goals.

Please check out the website at talkabouttalk.com to learn more about everything we do. That’s TalkAboutTalk.com.

The Hidden Beliefs That Sabotage Leadership Success Before we get into the interview with Muriel, I want to share the seven blockers with you. So here’s what I want you to do. If you can, close your eyes. Not if you’re driving, obviously, or even if you’re walking, but the point is, I encourage you to take a breath and focus. I’m gonna read the seven blockers.

These are beliefs that you might have, and some of them might be strong beliefs, and some might be things that come up for you a lot. So as I read them, I want you to compare them to each other and ask yourself, “Does this resonate for me?” I can tell you for myself that many of these blockers personally resonate.

Okay. The first blocker is, I need to be involved. Number two: I know I’m right. Number three: I cannot make a mistake. Number four: I need it done now. Number five: If I can do it, you can do it. Number six: I can’t say no. And number seven: I don’t belong here. That’s it. That’s the seven. You can find them listed in the show notes. I encourage you to take a look at them there.

About the Guest: Executive Coach and Leadership Expert Muriel Wilkins Now, let me introduce Muriel. Muriel M. Wilkins is the founder and CEO of the leadership advisory firm Paravis Partners. She’s a sought-after, trusted advisor and executive coach to high-performing C-suite and senior executives who turn to her for help in navigating their most complex challenges with clarity and confidence.

She’s the co-author of another book called Own the Room, and now the more recently published Leadership Unblocked. She holds an undergraduate degree from Georgetown University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Here’s Muriel. Thank you, Muriel, so much for being here to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about Leadership Unblocked.

MW: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here with you.

Why Successful Behaviors Can Become Leadership Liabilities AW: So as I was reading your book and listening to you speak, it occurred to me that each of these blockers can be seen as strengths, but also as weaknesses or as blocks. So right out of the gates, I want to ask you what I think might be a tough question. How can an individual, a leader, tell the difference between what might be a useful habit for them in the past that’s helped them succeed and a belief that has now become a liability or a blocker?

MW: Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, I think that’s the question, right? You have to first pause and ask yourself, “Is this being helpful to me in this context, or is it hindering me?” That’s how you figure it out. But in order to be able to figure that out, you have to be aware of what these beliefs might be. And I do think there’s a difference between, you know, habitual beliefs and habitual behaviors.

Most of us tend to focus on habitual behaviors, which is what we do. So if I interrupt, for example, that is a behavior, it’s an action, and it might be quite habitual. But what drives that behavior is a belief. Underlying it is a belief. So in order to even change, uh, or move on, or adapt from a habitual behavior that might not be serving you well, you would be well-served to look at what is the belief that might be driving it, and that, in fact, what is probably a habitual belief that I wouldn’t say is a liability, it’s just more that it’s not helping you in this particular moment.

AW: So let’s use that one as an example. Imagine, and I coach plenty of folks that tell me that they really want to cut down on interrupting, especially when they are promoted into the most senior leadership positions. They want to make sure that their team feels safe to share their ideas, and they’re not going to be cut off by their boss, and so on.

So imagine you have a behavior like interrupting that you want to change. You start to ask yourself What belief is causing me to do this? Can you kinda peel the onion on what that would look like?

MW: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so when I coach clients, and they are like, “Yeah, I kinda would need to tone it down with the interrupting,” maybe that came up in their feedback, it’s something that they wanna change.

Also, I’ll say like, think about, you know, the last time that you interrupted in a meeting, what was going through your mind at that time, right? Like, what were you thinking or assuming either about yourself or the other person or about the situation? And it might take, you know, more to kinda like peel the onion around that, but eventually they typically get to something like, “Well, I already knew what the answer was,” right?

“So why did we need to keep going around and around and around? I know what the answer is.” Or it might be, “I just need it to get done.” And so there’s a level of urgency that they are prioritizing over the conversation. So that saying, “I need it done now,” which is one of the seven hidden blockers and beliefs that I explore in the book, and the other is, “I know the answer” or “I know I’m right,” those are beliefs.

They’re the narrative that we tell ourselves about the situation that at times are helpful. You know, there are times when you have to say, “I, I know the answer. Let’s go.” And then there are other times where it runs counter to what you’re trying to do, i.e., if you’re trying to build a conversation where everyone else is speaking up and you kind of want them to come up the ans- with the answer, well, then having in the back of your mind, “I know the answer.

I know the answer. I know the answer,” and leading with that doesn’t necessarily help. So this is much more around what are the beliefs that you’re leading with, rather than, you know, you shouldn’t have these beliefs ever.

AW: So as you’re describing that, Muriel, I was thinking two things. I was thinking this takes an exceptional level of self-awareness, right?

Thinking almost like premeditating what the words are gonna be or what the behavioral response is gonna be, and then forcing yourself to pause and think about what’s motivating it. That takes incredible self-control and self-awareness. The other thing that I’m thinking, I’ve got the list of the seven blockers in front of me, and when you read them on a piece of paper, you kinda think, “Yeah, okay.”

But when I hear you describe them, and certainly when I read them in the book, I was like, “Oh, she’s talking to me.” Ah. ‘Cause I know all of those things I do and have done.

MW: As do I.

The Seven Patterns That Keep Leaders Stuck AW: Yeah. So even the way you’ve worded them, like I know they come from your real experience in coaching individual executives.

So, of the seven, what are the two or three most common hidden blockers that you see? Yeah, the ones that most people probably experience and should tone down

MW: To be honest, like, uh, uh, the seven are the ones that are most common in my experience, right? I looked at a sample of 300 leaders that I had worked with over the span of the past 20 years, cross-sectors, cross-gender, cross a lot of things, and tried to identify, number one, where were there common beliefs that got in the way of these leaders being able to lead in a sustainable way, lead at scale, or lead in a way that didn’t really drive a lot of the frustration and complexity that they were feeling.

And so the number one question was, were there any commonalities? And what I found is, yes, there were commonalities. And then I looked at, okay, well, which ones are the most popular ones? Which ones tend to come up more frequently? And the seven that I offer are the ones. Now, I did not rank them based on the seven.

I will say that folks sort of see themselves similar to the way that you have, that there’s a number of them that resonate, you know, f- with them. I think that, you know, certainly the one that seems most familiar to people is the, “I need it done now,” right? Because they’re constantly feeling this level of urgency, this level of needing to be productive, and essentially is what leads to really feeling burnout, right?

I think these days, ’cause it’s all very contextual, often. So these days, what I’m finding a lot of is, you know, people are experiencing or, or calling what they’re experiencing, you know, complex. Like, if I read one more post where it’s like dealing with complexity and uncertainty.

AW: Yeah. What’s not complex or uncertain?

MW: Exactly, and complex is as complex as we make it. You know, I mean, that’s the way I think about it. And so in with that ecosystem and the way that sort of people are experiencing a lot of things right now, everything from the economy to geopolitical to AI, right? It just feels like, “Oh my God, this is overwhelming.”

What I’m finding is that the belief of “I can’t make a mistake” is coming up a lot, right? So when we’re faced with uncertainty, the belief of “I can’t make a mistake” actually pops its head up for very good reason. It’s trying to protect us, and it doesn’t necessarily serve us when you’re in a leadership capacity because part of what you’re doing as leading is trying to move forward in the face of uncertainty.

So it’s all very contextual. Uh, bringing it back to your original question, it’d be hard for me to say these are them because it’s very dynamic based on what you’re facing, the situation, the people, and even the macro context.

How “I Can’t Make a Mistake” Creates Analysis Paralysis AW: So that’s fair. And my next question was going to be which one or more of these do folks struggle with when they’ve identified it?

But you were just talking about in the context when the stakes are high, which seems to be always nowadays, right? The I can’t make a mistake. I can just imagine listeners being like, “Yeah, like every day, every decision that I make, I can’t make a mistake.” And so let’s just drill down on that one for a minute.

What do the behaviors look like that come out of “I can’t make a mistake”?

MW: Oh, boy. So, lack of making decisions, okay? Procrastinating, a level of perfectionism, meaning to the nth degree of trying to get things right, trying to gather information, and becoming caught up in analysis paralysis, creating bottlenecks, and really just moving initiatives forward.

What else do you want? I mean, those are the symptoms, and we’ve all experienced them, either ourselves or at the, you know, the mercy of being led or with peers who are experiencing this, or sometimes even direct reports, right? Those are the ones that tend to come up.

AW: So imagine I am or you are this leader.

You know the stakes are high. You know you have a tendency to be blocked by, “I need to get it right. I need to make the perfect decision every time.” You know that that may lead to analysis paralysis. How do you get out of that box?

MW: Yeah, I mean, the first is deciding, do you want a different outcome, right?

Because if you’re happy in analysis paralysis, then go forward, right? Keep believing, “I can’t make a mistake.” It’s serving you very well because it’s meeting your desired outcome. If your desired outcome if a client comes to me, or I’m working with somebody, and they’re like, “I really wanna be able to drive this to the end zone, this project that we have, or this decision that we need to make, and I feel like I can’t make a mistake,” those two don’t add up.

They’re not in alignment. The belief is not in alignment with the direct outcome, with the desired outcome. So how do you work through that? The first part is identifying, are the assumptions that I’m making about myself, about others, about the situation. In this case, it’s this, maybe the situation, I can’t make a mistake about the situation, to what extent is that getting in the way of the desired outcome of the goal, right?

And if it is hindering it, then you have to identify, okay, that’s the unblocking piece of it. How do I reframe the belief so that it is more aligned or increases the probability that I get to that goal, which is around making the decision? And so maybe the reframe is something like, “I’m trying to make the most efficient decision possible,” right?

Our goal is efficiency, not failure-proof. Or we will make a decision based on mistakes that we could live with, right? What is the level of risk associated? You know, We can’t make mistakes on things that are high risk, and we have wiggle room on things that are lower risk, and that’s what’s driving us.

So you could pick a plethora of reframes, and it’s very important that I don’t feed my clients what the reframe is. They need to own it because it has to be real for them, and it’s not something that they make up. But it’s something that they can hold while understanding that there might be other situations where the I can’t make a mistake belief is absolutely on point, right?

I mean, if you’re a surgeon, I want you to have the belief I can’t make a mistake. You know?

I mean, yes. Um, and I also don’t want you if, you know, depending on the type of surgeon you are, if I’m lying there on the table and it’s an emergency, at some point you’ve gotta put a stake in the ground around what are you doing, right? You can’t get into analysis paralysis either. So it’s both/and around those beliefs, and that really is the key.

The key is understanding that it’s not black or white. It’s not like I have to operate in this narrow set of beliefs. It’s understanding that there’s a whole range of them, and your ability to deal with more complex situations is when you can have both be true at the same time. I can’t make a mistake, and I have to move forward, so what’s the path for that?

Questions That Help You Reframe Limiting Beliefs AW: Yeah. So I guess, thinking about these blockers can feel overwhelming, but you’re offering, first of all, a categorization of the blockers, and if someone chooses to be self-aware enough to question their behaviors and then question their underlying assumptions, what the blockers might be in the context.

So this is the other thing, right? Like, it’s drilling down or focusing and then expanding their view to, okay, what’s going on in this context? Are we really under the gun, or is it okay for us to wait another week to make this decision? So it’s about self-awareness. It’s being acutely aware of the environment and the context, and wow.

MW: Yeah. I mean, in a way, like, I think that this is what being mindful is.

AW: Right.

MW: Right?

AW: And strategic.

MW: I also think-

AW: And strategic,

MW: Yeah … and strategic. Here’s the thing. We do it all… You t- you brought up the word strategic, and we do it all the time when it comes to our businesses and organizations, right? Right.

Every year, we go through, or whatever, every couple years, we go through a strategic planning process, and we ask ourselves, “What do we believe about this organization, where it’s going, the economy?” Those are all assumptions. They’re beliefs. They might be informed beliefs, but they are beliefs, and if you change the assumption, then it might change what your strategy is, right?

It might change what your business model ends up being and what actions you take as an organization. So the same thing holds true for us as individuals. We know how to do it. We just don’t apply it to ourselves. And so in a sense, like, what I see with the leaders I work with is once they understand the model and that they actually are applying it in other places, and it’s a matter of applying it for themselves, it’s actually not that overwhelming.

And they actually then see the power in it, that it helps facilitate a lot of the difficulties that they go through. It enables them to flow with the challenges that they face with a lot more ease rather than, you know, this angst and this frustration and this stress, and as you said, this feeling overwhelmedness.

I think in a big piece of this, and it’s why I ended up writing the book, what I have found is that, you know, and I work with people who are really high performers, very successful. Quite frankly, they wouldn’t need to do anything differently, and they’d be fine, but they’re just feeling this level of stress and angst and frustration, again, this weight that they’re carrying.

And what I find is that when I talk to them about this or when I coach them through this, it’s not even they’re like, “Oh my gosh, I could never do this.” It’s more that, “Oh, I didn’t even know that was at my disposal.” Right? Like, “I didn’t even recognize this was a tool for me. I was stopping at my actions. I really wasn’t questioning the internal operating system.”

And so even once they discover it, they’re like, “Oh, here is another asset that I can leverage that was really just something that was untested,” and they weren’t even aware that it was there.

AW: So it’s empowering. I love it. You’ve turned what they’re thinking is a liability in terms of their behavior or the weightiness of the context i- into something that’s more empowering. And again, I think the categorization of the blockers is it unleashes the opportunity.

MW: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I mean, and that’s the whole point, right? Like, I was like, if I can give people a little… You know, it’s like if you go to a restaurant, and if they don’t show you a menu.

AW: Yeah.

MW: And they’re like, “Well, what do you want?” Yeah. You’re like, “Well, I don’t- Yeah … I don’t really know.” Yeah. “I don’t even know what’s available to me.” And so the seven was more to say, “Hey, here, here is your menu,” but the work actually is in getting into the practice of identifying them for your own when you are in situations where you feel stuck or when you’re going into a high-stakes situation.

You don’t need to do this all the time. And know that it’s at your disposal if something is high stakes, if you’re feeling stuck, if you’re feeling like things are harder than what they ought to be, which is typically the case with my clients. Then it’s like, okay, like, take a couple minutes to think through how you’re thinking about this, rather than go straight to, “What do I do?”

AW: Right. And this is like a Framework or a recipe that can empower. I’m thinking when I do workshops on dealing with difficult people or in particularly challenging context, and I have this, like, escalation sequence and, and people come out of th- those workshops or those sessions saying, “I feel so empowered now and such a reduced level of stress because I have a playbook.”

So that’s really what this… It’s almost like a playbook. When things are feeling weighty, or you’re stuck, take a moment, take a breath, ask yourself, “What am I doing, and why am I doing it, and which of these seven may inform?”

MW: Even at the most basic level, like I’m a big tell me one thing that you can do, right?

At the basic level, if the only thing you did is ask yourself these three questions when you’re feeling stuck, or when you’re feeling challenged, or when you just feel that dissonance, like, “Ugh, this isn’t going the way that I think it should be going.” If you just ask yourself, what is it that I’m assuming about myself in this situation?

What is it that I’m assuming about the other or others, if there are other people involved? What is it that I’m assuming about the situation or about the context? That’s even just a start. That is what increases the, like, “Oh, I become aware even of these thoughts.” And then over time, then you can go on to step number two, which is in what way are those assumptions actually helping me right now, or are they hindering me?

And what that does, you know, I love that you used the word empowering, is gives you a choice. Then you can make a choice, like I said before. If the I can’t make a mistake belief is helping you, right, you love staying in analysis paralysis, then go for it. You don’t need to change a thing, right? But if it’s not, then you have choice, and that’s what we all want. You know, that’s what agency is.

Are You Driving the Story—or Is the Story Driving You? AW: So in a lot of my work, Muriel, I’m focusing on communication skills, but specifically helping people get clarity on their personal brand or their professional identity. Not their personal brand like social media influencer, but more on what is my specific professional identity.

And when I looked at these blockers, I was thinking some of them might become associated with, or they might be associated with a, like, a part of my identity. Like, I am a perfectionist, or I am the one that gets things done, right? Or she’s, she’s the pace-setting leader. So, do you have any comments about how these blockers may be tied to identity?

MW: Oh my gosh. How much time do we have? They, they are so tied to identity, right? In what way? They are tied to identity because the reason why these beliefs are even around, and even why, say, hidden, okay, they’re kinda lurking, not in a negative way. They’re lurking because they have actually served you. It’s what have helped you be successful.

And so to me, when I think about identity, identity is actually made up of anything that you are attached to, okay? If somebody were to ask me, “Well, what’s your identity?” I mean, as I mature, I think, I am loosening my grip on identity, right? But if I were to really s- or I, I don’t hold it tightly. I know what my identity is.

I understand that I have to define it for others for them to understand. But for myself, like back in the day, if I were like, “This is what I identify with,” it’s because I have this attachment to it, and what is that attachment for? That attachment is because it’s what has helped me be successful in the context that I was in.

So let’s put that in practical terms. I’ll use myself for an example, right? Like, one of the hidden blockers that I’ve had to work with for myself, and it pops up every now and then, it popped up last week, actually, but I was very aware of it, is the I need it done now, okay? Now, why is that one of my hidden blockers?

Well, for a very long period of time, I was rewarded for how fast I could get things done at a great capacity. Like, literally my superpower, my identity, right, my personal brand was I could crank through things and do them well.

AW: I think you shared this at Rotman, right?

MW: I had this, like, capacity to just crank through things, and I thought everybody else was like this.

And so, you know, I remember one person was like, “No, girl, that’s you.” Right? Like, “That is your superpower.” So as a superpower, I identified with it very strongly, and it became part of my operating model, and then it was hard to let go of it because it’s what had made me a part of what had made me successful, right?

Made me feel worthy, made me feel needed, made me feel safe, right? If I could get things done, then I would feel okay. But then there became a point where it didn’t serve me, okay? In terms of the impact that it would have on other people that I worked with, the impact that it would have even on my own sense of how I felt because the frustration when things weren’t getting done on my time.

And so when it started becoming toxic productivity, then it wasn’t serving the folks that I was leading or myself well. And so part of it is detaching, not so much from the belief, quite frankly, but detaching from the story that we have about the belief, which is the identity, right? And the story I had was, “I will only be successful if I get things done right away, urgently,” which is why the, “I need it done now” was sort of leading my life in so many ways.

AW: So in my work, I talk a lot about feeling empowered to control your narrative, and I wonder if you experienced that when you went through this evolution, if you wanna call it that, from being the person that gets it done and gets it done fast to being the person who’s creating a bigger impact, for example.

And were you consciously creating a narrative, like, to yourself in terms of your self-talk, but also in terms of with others, sharing, like, what you represent, what your identity is, what your brand is?

MW: Yeah, I mean, I think the number one story that I had to change was not to other people, it was to myself.

Right? And that didn’t happen, you know, overnight. It’s still happening. I, I believe that you’re always… You know, this is my own opinion, but I think part of life is continuing to shape what your story is, you know? And understand that it’s a story, so it can be shaped. And I think the flip was, you know, for me, is don’t let the story drive you.

Let you drive the story. And that’s the difference. And, it’s that moment of being able to catch yourself, is the story driving me, or am I driving the story? Because I can drive the story, you know? And it doesn’t solve the world’s problems. It doesn’t solve, you know, change everything else around you.

The workload did not go away, right? But the way that I experienced the workload and the way I experienced myself changed, which then creates a different type of leadership approach and way of being in those work situations, right? So fundamentally, I think when you are a leader, and even beyond leading, quite frankly, you have an opportunity to drive the story about yourself.

But too many people focus on what is the story that I’m saying about myself out there, and they’re not focused on what is the story they’re saying about themselves to themselves every single day. So start with you. Start with you. Um, and that’s always, to me, the basic before you start thinking about what’s the story out there.

AW: Mariel, you just dropped, like, three bombs that are gonna end up in my book. Ugh. I was like, “Keep going, girl.”

MW: Oh my God. Oh, I love it.

AW: The story doesn’t drive you drive the story. Oh my God. I am-

MW: Yeah, I mean, look, it’s one of the few things we have in our control. Like, so many things are out of our control, and it’s okay.

That’s life. You know? That’s life. I can’t drive the weather story today, you know? But I can drive the story I tell myself about the weather. That’s the difference, okay? And how I drive that story about the weather will change how I experience it, without the weather changing.

AW: That’s right. So it’s just simply taking control of the things that you can.

MW: Taking control and taking responsibility. And from my perspective, I feel like that is the thin line between approaching things in a mature way versus not. You know, I’m not talking about maturity in terms of do you tell bad jokes, do you da da da da. I’m talking about maturity in terms of your ability to deal with the complexity and the uncertainty and the lack of control that we do have out there by taking more control, simplifying, and responsibility for the way that you experience it.

Because if you can do that, then others will experience you differently as well.

AW: Oh, so well put. And that goes right back to the what are your assumptions about yourself? What are your assumptions about the other person? What are your assumptions about the context? Having the self-control, the self-regulation, the self-awareness to stop in the moment and ask yourself those questions.

I… Muriel, this, this is absolutely gold. I wanna remind the listeners that in the show notes for this episode, we’ve listed the seven blockers and also a link to your book, and I strongly encourage all leaders and aspiring leaders to read this book.

Agency, Self-Awareness, and Leading with Intention Can I ask you the three rapid-fire questions now?

MW: Sure. Absolutely. I’m ready.

AW: First question, I’m actually not sure what you’re gonna say here. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

MW: I am an introvert.

AW: Oh, are you?

MW: I am. I am. I, um, you know, although I have my thing about introvert, extrovert, and ’cause I actually think they’re learned behaviors versus identities. I, I don’t think they’re identities.

I think they are learned behaviors. So I have learned to extrovert, but I have very strong introvert energy in terms of where I feel, where I have preference in terms of how I interact with others, and where I get my energy from.

AW: Okay. Got it. So in other words, you’re great on stage, you’re fine behind a mic, but you refuel in solitude?

MW: Absolutely. Absolutely. I refuel in solitude or in very small numbers, and large numbers are in controlled spaces. There’s a level of control, which, you know, again, there’s… and you hear me sort of hesitating around this ’cause I think I’ve loosened my grip around introversion, extroversion, and I actually feel right now I have range between the two pretty fluidly.

But what it took was, uh, unpacking some of the stories I was telling myself, and in what way was I fulfilling some needs by trying to create this, like, introversion, extroversion, right? And so that’s why I think once I was able to understand those and loosen the grip a little bit, then it, I kinda created more fluidity between the two.

AW: So I do ask the question as a dichotomy to be provocative. The truth is, it’s a continuum, and most of us are in the middle as an ambivert. But it’s always fascinating to hear people’s take on it. So the next question is, what are your communication pet peeves? What drives you crazy?

MW: What really drives me crazy, I have to be honest, is when somebody makes believe that they’re listening to you and interested in what you’re saying, and it’s very clear that they’re not, uh, because their whole body language is either moving on to the next thing or they recenter the conversation on themselves very, very quickly.

And so it’s not even about the interest. I just find that, you know, conversation, communication is one of the very few real points of connection that we have with other people in terms of it being, and an opportunity for it to be bidirectional. And so when I find that you have this opportunity to actually connect over dialogue and conversation and communication, and it ends up being very unilateral, that’s a bit of a pet peeve for me.

I hold communication with a high degree of responsibility and stewardship, and so when I find that others aren’t doing the same… I’m okay with others not doing the same actually, if that’s their intent. It’s more when it’s veiled, like, “No, actually I’m really interested,” and I’m like, “No, you’re not.”

AW: I feel like this could be a whole other conversation.

So I say there’s actually four levels of listening. Most people say it’s passive versus active, and I say there’s not listening at all. That’s like when someone says Muriel? And you go, “What?” Like you weren’t listening, right? So that’s not listening. And then there’s passive listening, which I think is what you’re describing.

It’s pretending to listen, but you’re really not. You’re thinking about what you wanna say and how you’re gonna get your point in. There’s active listening, which is checking out the person’s body language and their tone and listening to the message, and then there’s this generative listening, which actually takes a lot of focus.

It can be exhausting, but it’s when you really… So this is what the level that I think I listen at when I’m interviewing someone, ’cause I’m really listening to their words, and I think that I, like I’m searching for the question that I can ask them. And I know effective leaders are often at this collaborative or generative level.

But the reason I’m sharing this model with you is I tell my clients that it’s not that your goal is to always be at that level. Your objective is to be conscious or self-aware of where you are on that hierarchy and why.

MW: And then just be, just have alignment. I mean, really what I’m getting at is my pet peeve is the lack of alignment, right?

Like, I don’t have a problem with people not listening at that highest order. Just don’t make believe that you are, but where you actually want to be is passive, right? So I know for me, if I want to listen to somebody, like at a higher level than passive, and I’m doing something, I’m, you know, texting. You know, my kids always say, “Mommy, why can’t you, like, listen and text at the same time?”

I’m like, “I just can’t.” But I will say, “Give me a second ’cause I want to be able to pay full attention to you. Give me a second to let me finish this.” And then there are people, quite frankly, I mean, to be honest, I don’t want to listen to them, you know? And I’ll be like, “Mm, okay, we’re going to have a real quick transactional conversation,” and then I’m moving on.

But I’m not going to sit here and try to like, “No, please, I want to hear. I want to set up,” or I want, you know, “Give me 30 minutes of your time or an hour where we can get together.” Mm-mm. Nope. Just tell me what you need. Let’s make it transactional, and that’s it. And it’s okay. So be clear about what it is that you want, and then act accordingly.

AW: You sound very self-aware, Muriel. Okay, the third and last question is, is there a podcast and/or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately, other than yours, which I’m recommending?

MW: You know, I mean, I’ll, I’ll say sort of a podcast that I listen to on repeat pretty much, like if you were to look at my Spotify or Apple iTunes and see which one…

iTunes, I’ve just dated myself. Um, see which podcast is sort of top for like my repeat, it’s Esther Perel’s, You Know, Where Shall We Begin? Because I was inspired by that podcast when I started my podcast, Coaching Real Leaders, where I do live coaching sessions. And I just find that, first of all, I’m a little bit of a, what do I like to say?

I like to like listen in on other people’s conversations. Maybe I’m nosy. I love reality TV. I’m a voyeur. I’ve always had been. I’d get in trouble when I was younger ’cause I was nosy, but I’m like, “No, I’m just curious.”

AW: Okay, there you go. You’re controlling the narrative. I’m not nosy. I’m curious.

MW: It’s a thin line. It’s a thin line. And more importantly, I find that I’m intrigued by the relational aspects and what I pick up from her conversations and how that carries over into the workplace. And so it’s just a, you know, I, I, I enjoy it. I enjoy her line of questioning. I enjoy people’s stories. I love hearing about people’s stories, and so I will find myself oftentimes, like, clicking a share link and sending it to a friend or sometimes even, you know, a colleague or somebody that I coach. Yeah.

AW: Yeah, me too. Me too. Esther is so wise. Isn’t she just so wise? So thank you for sharing your wise words, Muriel. I wanna ask you if you have any last advice that you wanna share with people about leadership unblocked and the seven blockers.

MW: Look, I think we talked about it a little bit, but I think people have way more in control than they give themselves credit for, and that they realize.

And when you can recognize that, a large part of that starts with the story that you tell yourself about yourself. It kind of unblocks you from, uh, staying stuck and s- feeling like you’re not empowered and feeling like you don’t have choice, and moves you to a place where you have more agency around not only how you wanna lead, but also how you wanna live.

AW: Beautifully put. It’s empowering. We do have agency. Thank you so much, Muriel. I think I can’t wait to go through this book again. I’m gonna read it again.

MW: And I can’t wait to go through your book.

AW: Yeah. Well, that’ll be a year from now. But thank you so much for your time. I just wanna say thank you so much, Muriel, for sharing your time and your insights with the Talk About Talk listeners and me. It was even more fun than I expected. Thank you.

MW: Thank you. Thank you so much.

The post LEADERSHIP Unblocked: The 7 Beliefs Sabotaging Your Abilities with Muriel Wilkins (ep. 214) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence

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What if the biggest limit on your leadership isn’t your skills or your strategy… but how you THINK?

Harvard Business School emeritus professor Gerald Zaltman joins Andrea to discuss his latest book, Dare to Think Differently, and the six research-based techniques that help you tap into the creative power of your subconscious mind.

Gerald’s work spans cognitive neuroscience, art therapy, and linguistics. His insights are as relevant for leaders navigating complex decisions as they are for anyone trying to have a real conversation across a divide.

We cover the six qualities of an open mind, including serious playfulness, befriending ignorance, and asking the right discovery questions, plus why imagination may be the most underused leadership skill, and how humility, courage, and discipline work together to make real thinking possible.

6 WAYS TO THINK DIFFERENTLY1. Serious playfulness. 2. Befriending ignorance. 3. Asking the right discovery questions. 4. Chasing your curiosity. 5. Panoramic thinking. 6. Using the “voyager outlook.”

CONNECT WITH GERALD🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerald-zaltman-112634162/
📖 Read Dare to Think Differently: https://amzn.to/4emjID5

BOOKED MENTIONED📖 Consilience by Edward O. Wilson – https://amzn.to/49vQPRq
📖 An Immense World by Ed Yong – https://amzn.to/42z9054

TRANSCRIPTIONGerald Zaltman: An adaptive mindset means you have to be willing to reflect on how you’re thinking and assess its suitability to the current situation, and that’s what I mean by an open mind.

Andrea Wojnicki: That was Harvard Business School Emeritus Professor Gerald Zaltman. I am really excited about this episode. The truth is, I’m excited about every episode of Talk About Talk for a variety of reasons.

For this episode in particular, I’m excited to introduce you to one of my favorite people on this planet. If you haven’t met him before, Gerald Zaltman is one of the wisest and most generous folks that you will ever meet. I’m sure you’ll agree after you’re done listening to this episode.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your executive communication coach. My goal with this podcast is to coach you to improve your confidence and your credibility at work so you can achieve your career goals. You can learn more about me and what we do at TalkAboutTalk if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com.

Daring to Think Differently in a Rapidly Changing World Okay. As a leader, you may have noticed how open-mindedness creates exceptional decision-making, but how exactly do you ensure that you have an open mind? Great question. This episode is gonna challenge you to think about how you think. It will encourage you to think twice about your own thought patterns, about your assumptions, about your biases.

This episode may even dare you to think differently, which happens to be the name of Gerald’s latest book, Dare to Think Differently. When I learned recently that Gerald was writing another book, I scooped it up right away, devoured it, and then I contacted him to set up an interview, and here we are, finally.

Instead of summarizing this episode with three insights like I typically do at the end, instead, I’m gonna challenge you to consider each of the six research-based techniques that will help you tap into the creative power of the subconscious. Yes, there are six. In our conversation, Gerald and I go through each of these six, and you can also reference them in the Talk About Talk podcast show notes on whatever podcast platform you’re on.

Again, my challenge to you is to consider which one or two of these six techniques you’re gonna commit to try experimenting with to cultivate your own open mind.

About the Guest: Harvard Professor and Thinking Expert Gerald Zaltman Let me tell you a little bit about Gerald now, and then we’ll get into this. Gerry, or Gerald Zaltman, is an emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School.

Decades ago, I had the great privilege of learning directly from him in seminars, and then he served on my dissertation committee. Gerald also served as an executive committee member of Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative. You’re gonna see that this is a theme with Gerald, interfaculty, cross-disciplinary thinking.

Over his career, Gerald pioneered the use of tools and insights from cognitive neuroscience, art therapy, and linguistics to understand subconscious customer thoughts and feelings. He’s a co-founder and senior partner in the research-based consulting firm of Olson Zaltman Associates, or OZA, whose clients include some of the world’s most respected firms and brands.

Here we go. Thank you so much, Gerald, for joining us here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about thinking about our thinking.

GZ: Well, I’m delighted to be here, and I’ve been looking forward to this, uh, ever since you raised the possibility. I’ve always enjoyed our conversations, in particular your questions. They always make me think and often differently as well.

AW: Thank you so much for saying that, Gerald. That really means a lot. Okay, here’s the first question. It’s really the origin story for the book. What made you want to write this book? What was the problem that you are trying to solve? Is it related to AI? Is it related to the polarization of our society? What’s the origin story here?

GZ: The book was conceived after I had been spending a lot of time investigating why it is that people, even within the same family, same workspace, people who would otherwise be very close friends or had been close friends, suddenly found themselves not talking with one another or speaking to one another.

And that’s because certain topics, uh, arose that were highly politicized. And to hold a contrary position or even a position that you’re actively thinking about was received as a very concerning character flaw by others. And I was experiencing that toward others, even in my family, you know. And we were becoming what I, I thought of as a family of strangers, just socially.

There were certain topics that were off limits, and they were growing in number, and the consequences of putting them within the limits of a conversation were increasingly painful. And as I was working on that, I wrote a, a paper on that. I realized that ultimately, what I was addressing there are contrasting, even clashing, not thinking styles, but clashing thoughts.

And I felt that there was some other problem operating. And the problem that I found operating to produce that was also the problem I was finding in companies with executives, that there were pockets of thinking that were considered, and, and ways of thinking that were considered, in effect, sacred, and that needed some investigation.

And so I decided to follow my favorite tool, the one that I find suits me best when I’m pondering, trying to understand the origins and nature of a problem, and that was with ZMet. And I began, uh, with a team of people doing ZMet interviews with executives on how they approach messy or difficult problems, which were the ones that were often very divisive within a firm.

And eventually, I thought, since I’m working so hard on this, I might as well turn it into a book, which I find a very effective device for disciplining yourself and forcing yourself to understand what you don’t yet understand, to identify that. So that’s kind of a long story to the origins of the book, but that’s pretty much how it began.

AW: I remember having conversations in your office, Gerald, about the fact that you would encourage me to think about something and then not worry if I can’t solve it, and walk away and work on other things, and my brain would be non-consciously focusing on whatever that problem was. And also, directly related to what you just said, you encouraged me to write as a way of thinking.

Don’t wait until you have all the answers to start writing, and I found that to be so true, especially now I’m writing a book and I’m introducing the readers to some processes that I coach people on, and actually, as I’m writing the book, I’m coming up with better processes, right?

GZ: The book is better because of my having that very same style of writing. It’s a way of interrogating yourself, and you can be unforgiving and not suffer as a result. So just a very productive, uh, device.

AW: So it’s about being open-minded. Back to the executives that you mentioned you’re thinking about, uh, when you were doing the ZMed as well. You’re, you said it was a problem you first noticed with your family, and then business executives were also experiencing the same thing, or you diagnosed the same thing.

And in my experience, executives and leaders often believe that they already are good thinkers. And actually, in fact, many of them are what we would call, like, good thinkers, smart people. I realize I’m opening a can of worms here, Gerald.

Open-Mindedness Requires Rethinking Your Own Thinking GZ: I think most people are pretty good thinkers. I mean, most of, most people have. They’re not in jail, they’re not having problems with drugs or, you know, whatever.

They’re navigating a complicated world successfully, and actually more than that. They’re often making major contributions. So the thinking is fine. The problem is the environment in which their thinking no longer is. If you go to the… Or let me back up a step. Thinking is something that is highly personal.

I mean, it’s an expression of who you are. You don’t think of it always in that way, but it is. So when I get that criticism for something I’ve written, you know, I do take it personally. I also know enough to realize I shouldn’t, and probably a lot of other people would have the same response, so I’ll act on that feedback.

But the difficulty is that if you read the World Economic Forum’s publications, is the world is changing rapidly. The environment in which we practice our thinking is not stable. It’s changing at a very high rate. The different sectors where this change takes place are connected, so it’s kind of like COVID, you know?

It can spread. A problem in agriculture can, uh, have a major impact on transportation or broadcast media. It’s just a networked world, and it’s a rapidly changing world. And we consequently need to have an adaptive mindset to adjust our thinking in that world. An adaptive mindset means you have to be willing to reflect on how you’re thinking and assess its suitability to the current situation, and that’s what I mean by an open mind.

Am I thinking properly for this context? And often the answer is no, or some change is needed, and you have to improve how you think. But you’ve got to be willing to not treat your default thinking process as sacred. It’s not. The world doesn’t care much about that, and that’s not gonna change to protect my sacred way of thinking.

That’s what I mean, you have to be open-minded. You have to be willing to think about your own thinking, not to mention someone else’s.

AW: So as I was preparing for this interview, Jerry, I was thinking about the context of AI and how myself and a lot of my clients are trying to use AI to, actually, to improve our thinking, but just generally to improve our communication, using it as a, a productive tool.

And yet, myself and most of the people that I talk to don’t wanna use it to generate ideas before they’ve generated their own ideas, at least because they don’t want it to bias their thinking. That’s exactly one of the thoughts that I, that I had. It’s like AI will bias our thinking. And then it did occur to me as I was going through your book, that our own brains are biased, right?

And so this is more than just having a growth mindset. This is about really being conscious of how we’re thinking in the context.

GZ: I think it’s strange. Bias gets a bad reputation. You know, there are clearly instances where that’s deserved, but in most cases, you can’t get by without bias. Bias is what makes you unique and uniquely successful in a particular category of issues.

You don’t wanna give those up, and you can afford to be biased if you’re always willing to assess your own thinking and whether or not a certain preference in thinking has outlived its usefulness. But to know what you were saying, it was today, and I’m trying to think of the source. I put it aside to read this evening, and I’ll look for it and send it to you.

But it was an evaluation of executives in terms of how good they were or how effective they are in being a partner to AI, a collaborator where they have… And they had these criteria for assessing a really good collaborator. And most of the executives, no matter what the level was, scored rather poorly on this evaluation.

They’re not good partners with AI, which is just a very interesting, uh, commentary on how effective we are in using whatever it is that AI might be able to give us.

AW: So, back to the, the benefits of, uh, these executives and leaders thinking about their thinking, right? Understanding maybe what their default patterns are and the risks of not doing so, which we can also get into.

I would love it, Gerald, if you could briefly list and summarize the six specific ways that you outline in your book, the specific qualities of an open mind, because I feel like this is gonna help us get some traction here. People say, ” Okay, it’s more than just having an open mind. What is it really?”

The Research Behind Open-Minded Thinking GZ: Not everyone practiced all six of those, but across a set of interviews, all six came up, each about as prominent as the other in total, and they also exist not in a sequence.

And this is where writing a book is very frustrating because a book is linear, and these qualities of mind are anything but linear. It is a system. But nevertheless, I’ll start with, uh, the first one, which is serious playfulness. Many decisions, uh, really have serious consequences, not just in profit sense, but, you know, human impact.

And that can cause people to be fairly reluctant to be bold, to take bold action, because there’s a number of people, and you don’t maybe know who will be hurt, could be hurt in some fashion. But that somberness, especially if it is concerned with meeting my profit goals or sales goals for the period that can really inhibit you, it, from trying something different, thinking differently, and acting differently.

So you need to introduce a kind of playfulness. And I have to admit, and I won’t spend this much time on the others, but I have to admit, that was a sober experience for me as a young man. I was working on some consumer economics, it, uh, teaching tools for high school students, and there was a school for the blind and the visually impaired nearby where I was working on this project, and they had expressed an interest to have someone come over and use the teaching module that I was developing for their students.

And that was great. I went over for two days, spent two days, and I was thinking I was probably selected because I’m so empathetic. I can relate to people and understand, you know. So I mean, I was getting kind of a big head. And within the first half hour, um, of my glowing about my empathic abilities, someone came into the meeting with a blindfold and asked me if I would mind being blindfolded.

And I remember thinking I would mind. You know, I get claustrophobia. I don’t… But of course, I said, “No, you know, you can do it.” And I was blindfolded for two hours, and we continued the discussion. I had to navigate my way to the cafeteria and around to the restroom, all of that stuff within two hours.

And after two hours, the blindfold was removed. And I, I learned later that two hours is about the period of time a sighted person can be suddenly blindfolded without freaking out. And I could get that, but it had such a huge impact on me in terms of expanding my capacity to empathize, to identify with the students and the staff in that program.

I consider that act, that putting a blindfold on a visitor or consultant, to be an act of playfulness. It was a way of introducing an element in a safe way that I needed to have exposure to, but in a controlled, you know, reasonable dose. And that has always stuck with me. So I was delighted when I saw this quality appearing so often and, uh, just spontaneously with, uh, executives.

AW: Can you share any other examples that come to mind, Jerry, of, um, executives who benefited from serious playfulness? I’m curious. Is it typically role-playing?

GZ: It should be role-playing. My favorite personally is in a classroom or in a business meeting to have… This is when I try to teach people about mental models, and you have this construct connecting to that construct, and people are sitting there get, you know, shaking their head, they understand what the constructs are.

Until you say, “Okay, you are going to be the variable or construct extravagant, and you over here are going to be the construct, uh, frugal,” which happen to be connected. They interact. And I said, “Go ahead and have a go.” And I’ll usually appoint someone to take notes, to monitor and interpret what’s going on.

But the frugal and extravagant need to have a conversation. They do in real life in our heads as we go through that. That is a very effective device for having people understand there’s a lot more richness to the ideas that we have than what might be on a questionnaire or in an interview. That is the– Especially as these ideas share differences and similarities.

W: Yeah. So much of our thinking is just surface-level, right? Serious playfulness is one way to get deeper. I guess all of these qualities are, though.

GZ: And it’s not that you have to have an immediate change as a result of the intervention or that exercise. It’s more just to kinda get people to realize there’s more in their mind, that even they are…

Or more in other people’s minds than they allow for. I also like to make use of what I call the clairvoyant and, uh, wizard. You might have gone through that where I have people role-play each of those. Oh, that’s an effective device. Just trying to think of some other, you know, other easy, easy examples that people can imitate.

AW: So Gerald, one thing that I’m thinking here is that this is like next level, uh, adoption of various roles that sometimes people assign in meetings. Like, you be the devil’s advocate, you be the customer advocate. This is like next level of that, right?

GZ: Right. You wanna push them a little bit beyond that so their own thinking has to imagine, and I can’t understate the role of imagination in all of this.

And once you unleash the power of imagining, which I define as picturing that which is missing, you unlock a whole lot of good things. Imagination is probably the most frequent term in the book. I distinguish it from creativity also.

Why Creativity Begins with Curiosity, Playfulness, and Not Knowing AW: So we’ve got serious playfulness, and this next one I feel like is, it may be a trigger for a lot of executives who may describe themselves and be described as others as someone who has authority and insight. The second technique for adopting an open mind is befriending ignorance.

GZ: That’s possibly the toughest one. I, I’m not sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we could rank these that would be the toughest one because, well, for the obvious reason. You, you’re being paid because you know something, uh, I mean, to put it in a somewhat exaggerated way.

But have you ever seen… I thought about this the other day. I’ve never seen on a resume expertise in befriending ignorance. I mean, that’s probably the last thing you would ever list as an attribute, a quality. And it’s probably the first thing you’d notice if you were reviewing a resume, and I’ll wager your curiosity would go through the roof, and you’d wanna have that person in to do that.

But in any event, ignorance is something bad. I mean, the label, you’re ignorant, or that’s ignorant, is about as pejorative as you can get in the, in the scheme of things. But where else do new ideas come from? I’m trying to think of some major innovation that didn’t have its origin in things that weren’t known.

And if you’re going to be imaginative, it’s a term we throw around a lot, but if you’re going to be imaginative, and you think of it as picturing that which is missing, it really is picturing that of which you are ignorant. Uh, you don’t know it exists, or maybe no one else does.

AW: It, uh, reminds me of when you were training me on the ZMET technique, simply instead of asking a scripted question or assuming that I knew something and trying to lead the conversation, the technique of repeating the word– the person’s words back to them, encouraging them to elaborate, that I think that may be a way of befriending ignorance.

GZ: You know, I mean, it certainly is a way of defining the interviewer’s ignorance because you don’t really know what the person means by guilt, or fun. Those things have so many different meanings, and that’s a good way to get them to handle your or, you know, my ignorance.

AW: But that is different from – I have the list in front of me on my screen here.

The next quality of an open mind is asking the right discovery question. So repeating the person’s words back to them is a discovery question, but that’s not what you mean by that, right?

GZ: I hadn’t thought about that, actually. I think that would be a discovery, uh, question because you’re discovering or asking them to help you discover what they mean, and that helps them discover what they really mean by that term.

AW: That’s true.

The Power of Better Questions and Chasing Curiosity GZ: This is actually one of the most fascinating… I owe someone a chapter on this. Where do questions come from? Well, they come from what you don’t know, which is a good starting point. But I can’t find anything in the literature that talks about the cognitive origin of questions, where they– Literally, what’s the neuropathology of, uh, of a question.

We know a lot about answers, but not a lot about questions. And breakthrough questions are questions that historically, a good friend of mine is working on this, a colleague is pointing out, is in science, the person who comes up with a breakthrough question, a powerful question that threatens to, you know, could change a whole field, is generally ostracized in various ways, some conspicuous, some not.

And for a while, people who were advocating what turned out to be breakthrough questions have a difficult social life and professional life. But where do your questions come from? We know about answers, but it’s hard to justify, hard to come up with a history of a question. And yet, without them, you won’t have answers. You can’t have an answer.

AW: We hear when people are talking about a phenomenon where there’s some skill or expertise associated with it that like, “I’m so ignorant about this that I don’t even know what questions to ask,” right?

GZ: Yeah. That’s a good phrase. I mean a good observation. I mean, not having a question is sort of the worst case of being ignorant.

AW: So, I’m thinking about the context, Gerald, of innovation here, right? And how the incumbent, who you would’ve assumed would’ve come up with an innovation, often doesn’t because they’re not, I’m gonna use the word biased again, I’m not sure that’s the right word, but they’re biased by what they’ve already done and what they already know, versus this brand new company comes in and they’re solving for something else.

They’re asking different questions, and then that innovation catapults the existing innovation from the incumbent company that everybody thought was on, on a trajectory of a success, right?

GZ: I think a question is a focusing device, and it’s a way of determining where your resources should be allocated to answer this question.

And here’s where these things become synergistic, because you wouldn’t have a question if there was an answer readily available. And so a question is at the same time not only a neat device for focusing where you’re going to go, but it’s also an acknowledgement of what you don’t know and what your colleagues or others don’t know.

So it’s a very powerful device. I think other things being equal, which they aren’t, I would always prefer a really solid question to a really solid answer because the solid question has potential. A solid answer- However important it is, has a more preordained or future is not as interesting as an unaddressed question.

AW: I feel like this is one of the qualities that you’ve outlined here. Uh, they’re all relevant, but I feel like leaders and business executives maybe can particularly get traction on this one, asking the right discovery questions, right? Like we, we hear this sort of cliche advice that as you become more senior, you should be listening more and talking less and asking questions.

So before we go to the next one, I just wanna ask you if you can elaborate a little bit, Gerald, on what do you mean by the right discovery questions? Is there, is there, I don’t know, like some sort of list of criteria of what makes a discovery question correct or right?

GZ: I don’t think there is an arbitrary set of criteria or an even a single criterion that makes it right.

But the right question is not the wrong question. It’s the question that survives all the wrong ones, uh, and remains on the table. And so it’s the question that is evaluated in terms of whether its potential answer or answers, even if those are not clear, but you imagine this is where, again, imagination comes in.

Yeah. This question, if we pursued it, there are many more opportunities, as I would view it. You know, the different answers that might come in, a richer context to play in than is another question. And so I say that’s the right question, but it’s also right in another way, and that is it has to have a caffeine element.

It has to wake people up, and it has to be a question that makes everyone think, “Why didn’t I think of that?” And that is, I think, a constructive wake-up call to, to everyone who thinks that way. I often have, you know, had that experience with colleagues. They’ll have a question, and that’s, “Damn, I should have thought of that myself, and I didn’t. Why not?” I think there’s a, there’s this element that makes it right socially or communally in a sense.

AW: So simply put, it could be that the right discovery questions are the ones that make an impact, where impact is defined as making… I love, I love your caffeine-charged, uh, metaphor there, Gerald, but it’s about making people think differently and think about something in a new way.

GZ: Yeah.

AW: Is thinking differently.

GZ: It, it, um… That’s right. It’s a surprise, actually.

AW: Yeah.

GZ: Um, right. That’s why I attach the word discovery to it.

AW: So the next quality of an open mind is chasing your curiosity. I know none of the words here are accidental, so why are we chasing our curiosity, and how is that different from befriending ignorance?

GZ: Remember, these are, um, a system of things. They’re more than cousins to one another. They’re siblings in effect, and it’s hard to have one without the other is one of the big lessons that I learned from these interviews. But curiosity is actually on the decline in the United States, at least. I’ve seen published reports that measures curiosity, and that’s, uh, something that, that is apparently declining, and the decline begins somewhere around the fifth or sixth grade, according to some sources.

So it occurs fairly early in life, and regardless of when it occurs, there’s a social contagion for it. And I worry about that, that colleagues aren’t sufficiently curious. There are times when I think I’m not, you know, sufficiently curious. I read very broadly, and I get frustrated, but I don’t pursue every lead I can’t that I find interesting.

But chasing curiosity, it is meant to convey the fact that it’s elusive. It escapes us, and it’s partly because we don’t want to admit we don’t know the thing that we’re now curious about or that we don’t know how to interrogate with a question. Curiosity, if we ever caught the creature, what, what do we do with it?

And that’s another problem. But I think curiosity, I think of it, I don’t know if I use this phrase in the book, but it’s the itch that you have to scratch, and it’s something that’s in a s- like that, it’s fairly visceral. You’ve got to feel it in a visceral way that would make you want to pursue it when everyone else is telling you that’s a dead end, it’s a blind alley, it’s, you know, that’s not something that a junior faculty member or an assistant branch manager would do or propose, and so forth.

All those things are encouraging people to stay put, not to be pursuing their curiosity.

AW: You’re reminding me, Gerald, of an interview that I recently conducted with Michelle Budria, who started working the front cash at McDonald’s and worked her way up to CEO of McDonald’s Canada, and she worked in different countries in all different functions.

But she shared with me some of what the factors that she believes built her success, and one of them was an insatiable curiosity, constantly asking her managers, “Why are they doing this this way? Why aren’t they doing it that way?” And she said at one point, one of her managers actually said, “Fine, I’m gonna give you this project.

Run with it and show us.” And so she had, and has still, a genuine curiosity. She’s constantly looking for feedback, but also external to what she’s doing. She’s curious about why things run the way they run, why they are doing things the way they’re doing them, and this fueled her success. Yeah. Yeah. You’re not surprised.

GZ: Yeah. Yeah, that’s… And chasing it, it also has, you have this relationship with it whereby it’s a bit elusive, maybe very elusive, but it’s yours to chase. You’re responsible. You’ve gotta catch it, and you don’t know even what it’s going to be, you know, when you finally get to it or catch up with it. You know, so there’s a relationship that takes a, a kind of, uh, dedication and a sort of mental endurance to– the conditioning to go after.

AW: So, back to the point I made before about the every word here matters, it’s not an accident that it’s chasing your curiosity, not just chasing curiosity for the sake of curiosity’s sake.

GZ: Uh, yeah. Actually, just to kind of underscore that, I don’t wanna be chasing someone else’s curiosity. I wanna be chasing mine.

I’m gonna run faster. I’m gonna feel better catching it if I, you know, if I can catch up with it. Being told what to do is something I’ve always resisted.

Panoramic Thinking: Seeing Connections Others Miss AW: Okay, the next quality of an open mind is… Well, like you said, they’re all related. Uh, and I do want you to share why there’s an octopus on the front of the book, which relates to how these qualities are all related to each other. But can you describe panoramic thinking?

GZ: Yeah. There’s another word for it that doesn’t quite work for me, and that is multidisciplinary, and that has some obvious meanings and, you know, it’s, and it’s structured in an academic sort of way. But panoramic thinking is more than being multidisciplinary. It’s looking in diverse and seemingly unrelated fields that no one has ever thought would converge.

My best current example, recent example, of all things, there is a phenomena out in space, very distant space, with this kind of like a cloud of things that they can’t quite capture or they couldn’t quite capture. And now, in a way which I’ve not yet found out, someone figured out that there was something in the design, nature’s design of the eye of a lobster, that provided a solution so that they found a camera that could take a picture there.

And someone saw that the cloudy situation that, that was giving them trouble, part of what they also wanted to study, was comparable to the cloudy situation lobsters find themselves in two hundred feet or a hundred feet deep in the water, the deep water lobsters. And that the solution that nature provided with their vision may have relevance for that other one. That’s the last thing I would have, you know, thought about, but that’s panoramic thinking.

[00:40:31] AW: I remember when I was your student, Gerald, and you encouraged me to read in depth the academic research on gift giving, ’cause I was studying word of mouth and why people give recommendations or warnings about products and services that they’d experienced to their friends and family, and how to think about it, and kind of what mechanisms were at work.

And you suggested along this vein of panoramic thinking. Now, certainly it’s not like interstellar phenomenon, and you know, the lobster’s eye, but the insights from the research that I did on gift giving certainly illuminated the phenomenon of word of mouth. So why, why do we give, how do we give, how do we feel about it when someone rejects our word of mouth, or they tell us that we’re not right? All of these things made a big difference in my understanding of the phenomenon.

GZ: If you were to look in the bibliography of Dare to Think Differently, and just kind of run down, looking at the titles of journals and books that are used to elaborate on or justify or give evidence for what managers are doing, you’ll find that there’s a very broad and extensive academic literature supporting what these guys were discovering on their own.

And I used it to kind of give the managers, you know, a little more grounding and validation for what they were sharing with me. But they didn’t know that. They don’t know that. But take a look at the bibliography. You know, you’ll see it.

AW: I have, and I will look again. Speaking of bibliographies, this reminds me of another book that I read when I was taking one of your classes when I was a doctoral student, Gerald, and that was the book Consilience. Do you remember that?

GZ: It was E. O. Wilson, right? That’s right.

AW: E. O. Wilson. Yeah.

GZ: Yeah.

AW: And I think that book, the, the thesis of that book is about panoramic thinking. Would you agree?

GZ: Absolutely. Yeah.

AW: Yeah. See, you made a, you made a huge impact on me, Gerald. You, you definitely impacted how I think. Okay, the sixth and last quality of an open mind is, and again, I wanna remind everyone that these are in no particular order, right? They’re certainly not a sequence, but the last one we’re talking about here is using a voyager outlook.

GZ: That’s, um, kind of my way of, of framing ambiguity, and you can see how it would fit with the others. But what’s a, what is a voyager? And I’m thinking of a voyager more in the, like the fifteenth, sixteenth century, even earlier than that, the Norsemen, and so forth.

There is a willingness to go out to the unknown, to space that they’re ignorant about. I mean, the maps all had, at that time, in the early, early days, there be monsters. You know, there was a line drawn, and after that, no one knew what was there, but they, you know, guessed that there’d be monsters out there.

I think managers, executives, but not them alone, really don’t like ambiguity, and I’ll comment on intelligence in a second. And, I don’t blame them. I don’t want to have something… We can all empathize with that. But if you’re not chasing curiosity into the unknown, if you’re not discovering what you don’t know, that is literally how you define the unknown, the lobster eye, for example, you’re gonna get stuck.

And you’re just not gonna grow as a person or as a company. And I talk about it, my alternative to that was embracing ambiguity. That’s like, you know, embracing a leper. People wouldn’t– people were reluctant to do that. But it takes that kind of spirit to do all the other qualities in the, uh, of an open mind.

AW: So I love that you re-framed or chose a term for this last quality of an open mind to make it sound more positive, like something we can strive for as opposed to something that we’re avoiding, right? Using a voyager outlook is something we would strive for versus we would avoid ambiguity. And you use the word spirit.

So, back to something you said at the beginning, executives wanna be seen as intelligent, right? They wanna be seen as having insight, authority, and experience. And yet, at the same time, befriending ignorance, asking questions, chasing their curiosity, using panoramic thinking, and thinking like a voyager. Uh, this seems like it could be contradicting.

I know it doesn’t have to be, but if, if you could share some, I think, advice, yes, Jerry, prescription for these leaders on how to think differently and benefit from this way of thinking in a way that isn’t gonna sacrifice their credibility.

GZ: You know, after I developed Z Met, I encountered or discovered why it works.

It wasn’t beforehand. It’s, uh, even to this day, new things are coming to my mind to show that it has even more support as a basic method. But I, in moments of honesty, I, I didn’t know all that when I was, yeah, developing it. But one of the things that’s very important, every manager shares with all the staff that they work with, senior to them, junior to them, is that the mind works on the basis of analogy.

And there are excellent treatises on this, you know, by really thoughtful people, that memory itself is organized analogically. We have memory files of potential analogous things to use when we encounter, uh, ambiguity, or we encounter something we don’t know, we can retrieve. What’s it like? I mean, that’s the first– You have three questions.

What is it? What is it like? That’s when you begin to make progress. It’s maybe it’s like a lobster. I don’t know. Making that up. And then what of it? What do you do with it? But what’s it like? It’s a fundamental question when we’re making sense of a problem. Where else have we seen it? And so on. And I think that if a manager sort of not just worries about what something is and what do you do about it, but understands first what is it like, where else has this happened, they’ll come up with many more solutions or things to adapt or alter.

And that’s where metaphor comes in, because metaphor is really the language of analogies, analogical thinking. And so I think they should leverage what they have naturally, which is the ability to think in terms of analogy. And a lot of problems will look a lot more trackable and solvable if they indulge in that.

And that’s a kind of a natural thing, and they can leverage their colleagues and help them get them to participate. That’s a big lesson, and I think that intelligence is the ability to make sense of ambiguity. It’s not a paper-and-pencil test. It’s, uh, the ability to clarify what is amiss, you know, chaos. And using analogy is what a wise person does.

AW: So I’m trying to read the minds of the listeners here, and I can imagine they’re thinking that this is very compelling thesis, and I want to dare myself to think differently. So what are some specific, I was gonna say almost physical things? So asking questions seems like the low-hanging fruit.

What are some things that they can do themselves, and also to encourage people in their organization so that they can really get some scale on the benefits of thinking differently?

GZ: I think I would resort to finding examples of serious play. A play gives everyone a degree of license that they don’t ordinarily have, and that’s very free, uh, and important, but is serious.

You know, there’s a problem to be solved, and that’s where the clairvoyant and the wizard come in And I would ask first, I use those guys all the time, what would I have to fix? That’s the wizard. You know, if we went down this road, the clairvoyant is someone who sees the future. Okay, what do I anticipate is going to happen?

And the two guys get together, people get together. There’s an issue of gender with that. I use it with my MBA class a lot. A clairvoyant apparently has feminine qualities and a wizard, masculine qualities.

AW: That’s also true of a lot of archetypes, right?

GZ: Uh, but I would, I would make serious use of those characters and other devices for serious play, ro- you know, role-playing.

Humility, Courage, and Discipline: Final Lessons on Thinking Differently AW: Okay. You know, I’m gonna try this even within Talk About Talk, a very small organization. I’m gonna try serious playfulness, assigning the wizard and the clairvoyant, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll report back to you. Can I ask you the three rapid-fire questions now, Sherry?

GZ: Okay.

AW: I know I’ve asked you these questions before in the past when I interviewed you. We’ll see if it’s changed. Question number one: Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

GZ: Uh, introvert.

AW: Do you know what you said one time when I asked you that question? You said, “Can I just be a vert?” Okay. You’re an introvert.

GZ: It shows you how, it shows you how retiring I am.

AW: Yeah.

GZ: Yeah.

AW: It’s supposed to be rapid fire, Andrea. Okay. Okay, question number two: What are your communication pet peeves?

GZ: A dry mouth, looking out at an audience if I’m the communicator. I, I really don’t like those situations. A third would be, I guess, I’m not very forgiving for someone who can’t hold my attention.

So if I leave a speaking engagement, and I have a lot of ideas to pursue, it’s usually because I wasn’t paying attention or they didn’t hold my attention, not that they gave it to me, so that’s not a good sign.

AW: I remember, I know this is not very rapid fire, but I do remember in your office we were talking about how some of the academic presentations that you and I attended together weren’t always that interesting.

You told me, or you encouraged me to watch their presentation techniques, their communication, uh, and maybe learn that if I wasn’t gonna learn the material that they were presenting. Okay, question number three: I’m really curious about this one, given how broadly and extensively you read. Is there a book that you’ve read or a podcast that you’ve listened to that you find yourself recommending a lot lately?

GZ: Yes. There is. Ed Yong, and it’s all about other forms of life here on Earth and how amazingly sophisticated they are and how extraordinarily developed one or another is with various senses and other capacities, and it’s a very humbling read. I think humans are really pretty impoverished in a sensory sense compared to almost any of these creatures.

He goes through spiders, frogs, and bats. It’s become a classic book, I think.

AW: I will definitely read it based on that recommendation, Sherry. And it reminds me of, I think, a theme of this conversation, which is really about humility. I’m curious if you agree with that, and maybe you can share your, your final thoughts with the Talk About Talk listeners about daring themselves to think differently.

GZ: You’ll see in the book frequently I’ll mention together the need for humility. That is always the first one. The courage, courage is another one, and discipline. It’s hard work. It takes discipline. It requires being bold, you know, being censored in some sense in various ways, making other people uncomfortable, not deliberately, but just inadvertently.

And humility, which is you have to see yourself as someone with so much to learn. There’s no space for arrogance.

AW: I love that. It’s a beautiful place to end, Gerald. Especially listeners know that I’m a huge fan of the power of three. So, in addition to all of the inspiring insights that you shared, I guess if we can all take away an even increased respect for humility, courage, and discipline, and doing our best to succeed on all of those dimensions. Thank you so much, Gerald. I really enjoyed this conversation

The post Dare to THINK DIFFERENTLY with Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman (ep. 213) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Are your presentations always falling flat?

I’m breaking down the 7 most common presentation mistakes leaders make and exactly what to do instead.

Whether you’re presenting to your board, your team, or a room full of strangers, these mistakes are probably showing up in your work right now. The good news? Every single one of them is fixable.

We cover everything from the prep mistakes that undermine your message before you even open your mouth, to the delivery habits that quietly erode your authority on stage. Including what to do when someone asks you a question you can’t answer.

If you want to walk into your next presentation with more confidence, more clarity, and more impact, you need to avoid these mistakes.

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki:

Your audience is probably full of busy people with many, many distractions in their heads. If you can get them to pay attention and internalize one main message, then that is a huge accomplishment. How are your presentation skills? In this episode, you’re going to learn the top seven presentation mistakes, and importantly, specific advice on how you can avoid or correct these mistakes so you can deliver truly impactful presentations at work.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious leaders and aspiring leaders to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals.

You can learn more about what we do at Talk About Talk if you go to talkabouttalk.com. You’ll find plenty of free resources there, plus information about my keynote speaking, corporate workshops, small group master classes, online courses, and more. I also have a free biweekly email newsletter where you can sign up to get free communication skills coaching from me every two weeks in your inbox.

Okay, let’s get into this.

Mistakes #1 and #2: No Roadmap and No Audience Insight The top seven presentation mistakes and how to correct these mistakes to ensure that you deliver impactful presentations at work. Mistake number one is not providing a roadmap. Have you ever been sitting in a meeting or maybe in an audience when someone stands up to give a presentation and they start talking, and you have absolutely no idea where they’re headed?

That is what I’m talking about here. Big mistake. Have you ever pressed play on a podcast episode without knowing what it’s about? No way. Exactly. Instead, here’s what you should do. Start with the headline, then tell them what you’re gonna present. Here’s the thing about business communication that we all need to remember, and this goes beyond presentations.

Even in things like commenting in a meeting or even writing emails, suspense is way overrated in business communication. You need to get to the point. You need to start with the headline. In the context of a presentation, provide a roadmap. For example, you could say, “I’m gonna summarize our Q2 financials and then highlight three key insights that we need to focus on to improve our results in Q3.”

Or you could say something like, “I’m gonna share with you seven common presentation mistakes and tips for what you can do instead.” Do you see what I did there? Do you get the idea? Sharing your headline and then providing a roadmap helps your audience understand why they should pay attention. It also shows respect for your audience, which leads me to the second mistake.

Mistake number two is not understanding your audience. By now, we all know that understanding your audience is critical to capturing their attention. Maybe you’re teaching a workshop, so you ask the workshop organizer, “Who’s gonna be in the audience? How many people will be in the room? What career stage are they at?

Are they junior, mid-career, or are they senior leaders, or is it a mix? How old are they? Does this audience skew male or skew female, or is it mixed?” Here’s the thing about this list. These are demographics, and that’s table stakes. You need to go deep on your audience if you wanna make an impact. Do they care about your topic?

How much do they know about your topic? What do they care about? The more you know about what they know and what they care about, the more your message will resonate. Beyond these psychographic dimensions, it’ll also help if you understand exactly what’s going on in the moment for these people in your audience.

What time of day is your presentation? Are they hungry? Are they tired? Will they be rushing in after fighting in morning rush hour traffic? Or are you presenting at 11:30 AM, when all they can think about is what they’re having for lunch? The other question is, who’s presenting before you, and what’s happening after your time on the agenda?

You get the idea. The more you understand about your audience, yes, their demographics, but also what they know, what they care about, and how they’re feeling in the context of your presentation, this will all help you immensely. Okay. So we’ve covered mistake number one, not providing a roadmap or context for your audience, and mistake number two, not understanding your audience.

Mistakes #3 and #4: Trying to Say Too Much and Being Generic Mistake number three is trying to say too much. Instead, you need to focus. Focus on one key point. Your audience is probably full of busy people with many, many distractions in their heads. If you can get them to pay attention and internalize one main message, then that is a huge accomplishment. So ask yourself, “What’s my one main point here?”

And then focus all your content around that one point. This is also a great way to help you recover if you lose your place in the presentation. Just remind yourself of your one main point. And if you happen to be one of those people who tends to ramble on and go off topic, I have an insight to share with you.

In my experience, folks who ramble and go off topic are typically very generous They’re the ones who want their audience to know everything that’s going on inside their head, and truly, this generosity is a lovely motivation. But if you really want to be a generous presenter, you do the work of focusing your main message and the main learning instead of imposing that work on your audience. That is how you make an impact.

Okay, moving along. Mistake number four is being generic. Think of this mistake as sharing the presentation that anyone could give. Here’s the test. Could your presentation be delivered by anyone if they had the script? If yes, you need to personalize it. You need to customize the content so that you are the only one who could give this presentation, or at least you’re the one who could best deliver it.

Here’s your question: What insight or perspective can I uniquely share here? Most of the folks that I coach who are preparing for significant presentations haven’t even thought of this before, but this insight can truly take your presentation to the next level. Ask yourself, “What can only I add to this topic or this presentation that no one else can?”

Make it personal. When you customize your talk in this way, you’re actually accomplishing two things. One, you’re making it more interesting and impactful, and two, you’re also gonna boost your confidence. Okay, moving on. We’ve covered four mistakes so far. The first mistake is not providing a roadmap. The second mistake is not understanding your audience.

The third mistake is trying to say too much or not focusing your point. The fourth mistake is being generic and not customizing or personalizing your presentation.

Mistakes #5 and #6: Reading Your Script and Going Overtime Mistake number five is reading. Yes, as in reading your script. This is a very easy one to fix. Never ever under any circumstances do you bring your script on stage.

Okay, maybe if you’re a celebrity presenter or a politician and you’re delivering an important speech, and you have two teleprompters, but otherwise, do not bring your script on stage. Why? Because in all likelihood, you’re gonna end up reading it. Depending on the context, you can certainly bring up a note card that outlines your main points in case you lose your place, but do not read your typed-out script, and don’t bring it on stage with you.

And related to this point, do not read your slides. Got it? No scripts on stage. Next mistake. Mistake number six is going into overtime. If you’re giving a forty-five-minute speech, you need to rehearse it until you can nail it in forty-four minutes. If you’re delivering a TED Talk, you’ve got exactly eighteen minutes.

Going over time is disrespectful, and it implies lack of preparation. Back to my point about generosity. It might be the case that you’re just trying to be generous and share as much information as you can, but that’s no excuse here. You need to be focused, and you need to respect the timeline. A few months ago, I was asked to deliver a keynote at a conference, and I was given twenty minutes to deliver what the organizers had seen me deliver previously in one hour.

So I focused on the script, and I practiced it beginning to end. The first time it took forty minutes. The second time it took thirty minutes. And the third time it was just under twenty minutes. I knew exactly what I could say and what I needed to cut. And when I went on stage, guess what happened? Muscle memory kicked in, and I was able to deliver it within the short twenty minutes. Do not go into overtime.

Mistake #7 and Final Recap: Navigating Q&A with Confidence Now, the last common mistake that people make when they’re delivering presentations is in the context of the Q&A. This is the question and answer period that sometimes happens at the end. What do you do when someone asks you a question, and you don’t have an answer? The common advice here is to respectfully say, “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you.”

And here’s the thing: that’s fine, but I have a much better suggestion. Before you get out on stage or in front of the room, remind yourself of your expertise. You do not know everything, but you do have unique insights and experiences. You do have unique and valuable knowledge and expertise. It’s inevitable that someone will ask you a question that you don’t have an answer for.

Instead of responding with the cliché, “I’ll look into it and get back to you,” we hear this all the time, right? Consider this instead to be your chance to reinforce your unique expertise or your personal brand. Instead, try something like, “That is an insightful question, something I haven’t considered before.

Based on my expertise, based on what I do know, here’s what I’d say.” And then you tell them, based on your experience and your expertise, what your opinion is or what your perspective is. And depending on the context, you might also follow up with, “And I’m gonna do some research and find the answer to this question and confirm with you as soon as possible.”

But sometimes your perspective on something, given your unique experience and expertise, is all you need. Okay. That’s it. Those are the seven common mistakes that I see people making when they’re preparing and delivering impactful presentations. You may have noticed that the first four mistakes, numbers one through four, are all related to preparation, things that you can fix when you’re preparing, and number five, six, and seven are about your delivery. Okay, so you’re planning your presentation.

Mistake number one is not providing a roadmap at the beginning for your audience, not telling them why they should pay attention. Mistake number two is not understanding your audience in depth, not going beyond simple demographics. Number three is not focusing your main point, not being generous by doing the hard work yourself, of clarifying your main point instead of imposing that work on your audience.

Number four is not customizing or personalizing your presentation. In other words, being generic. Now you’re on stage. You’re delivering the presentation. Mistake number five is reading your script. Do not bring your script on stage. Number six is going into overtime, not respecting others’ time. And number seven is handling tough questions with, “I’ll find an answer and get back to you,” not grounding your answer in your unique expertise and experience.

You can find a summary of these seven mistakes on your device in the show notes for this episode. Take a look and review them there. And whatever platform you’re listening on, I encourage you to hit subscribe so you can continue to improve your communication skills. Thank you for listening to Talk About Talk, and talk soon.

The post The Top 7 Presentation Mistakes Leaders Make (ep. 212) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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How much should you share at work? How personal can you get? What’s ok and what’s off-limits? This question of what to reveal at work is exactly what Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John addresses in her book Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing. Listen to learn the psychology behind why we conceal, a practical framework for deciding when to reveal, and what to do if you find yourself crying in a meeting.

We also talk about emotional literacy and what it means that so many high-achieving people, Leslie included, struggle to answer the question “how do you feel?”

If you’ve ever defaulted to “I’m fine” when you’re not, this episode is worth your time.

BOOKS MENTIONED📖 Revealing: The Underrated Power of Oversharing by Leslie John — https://amzn.to/4mG1kqR
*📖 Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson — https://amzn.to/4tmJVG2***

CONNECT WITH LESLIE 🌐 Website: https://www.lesliekjohn.com/
📝Her Quiz: https://www.lesliekjohn.com/quiz

TRANSCRIPTIONLeslie John: It feels like overcommunicating, but it’s just communicating like you’re gonna feel like you’re overcommunicating, but turns out people can’t read your mind and your motivations. And so if you don’t tell them, then they’re gonna like make these all kinds of inferences that probably aren’t right.

Andrea Wojnicki: If you’ve ever grappled with whether you should say something personal or not at work, or maybe you mention something personal or revealing that you regret saying, well, you’re not alone.

About the Guest: Leslie John, Harvard Business School Professor and Author of RevealingThat was Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John. Professor John recently published a book called Revealing Her Award-Winning research appears in top academic journals and the media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist. Like me, professor John was born and raised in Canada, and here’s an interesting fact about Professor John that does not come up in the interview before entering academia, she was an internationally trained ballet dancer. Yes, you heard that right. She was a ballet dancer.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m an executive coach at Talk About Talk. Please just call me Andrea. I’m here to help you learn to communicate with confidence and credibility. To learn more about Talk About Talk and what I do, please click on the links in the show description.

And don’t forget to hit subscribe. You can also go to TalkAboutTalk.com where you’ll find lots of resources and see all the different ways that you can learn to boost your own communication skills. Just go to talk about talk.com. Now, let’s jump right into my conversation with Professor Leslie John.

In this conversation that you’re about to hear. You are gonna learn why we might have a bias to omit or not reveal things, a framework for how we should think about whether to reveal or conceal, and what to do if you find yourself shedding a tear at work. Thank you so much, Leslie, for being with us here today at Talk About Talk to talk about revealing and oversharing.

LJ: Thanks so much for having me.

Why “How Are You?” Is Harder Than It SoundsAW: So, as I was reading your book, something occurred to me, Leslie, I was thinking that one of the big questions that I try to help my clients answer is when they’re asked the question, tell me about yourself. For you, I don’t know if you agree with this, but for you, I was thinking maybe the big question is how are you

LJ: To an extent, it’s how are you? You know, it’s interesting because I do think that in order to answer that question, like it seems like a very simple question, but. As I learned more about it than about myself as I wrote the book, actually, I realized that it actually requires some emotional literacy, and I realized that sometimes the issue isn’t, when someone doesn’t answer, doesn’t reveal, doesn’t say how they are, sometimes it’s not just the superficial.

Like not answering. It’s actually often much deeper is they don’t even know how they’re, and I say this because this is what happened to me because I was talking to my therapist, I don’t even know what I was fetching about, but I kept saying like how other people felt or what I thought. And he said, well, how do you feel?

How do you feel? And he kept saying, how do you feel? I’m like. I until finally I said, what is a feeling? And then he, I know. So it seems so simple, but like I, I realized, I’m like, I don’t even know. I’m not naming feelings. I don’t know what a feeling is. And then he gave me this tool called, it’s an emotions wheel that helps you kind of articulate what you’re feeling so you can say it.

It helps you expand your emotional vocabulary. I actually have one in my book. It’s a, I made my own because all of the ones I was finding were like too complicated for me. I needed that much remedial help, so I made an even simpler one. But yeah, this question of like, how are you, it can be a lot, a lot more complex than you think, and it can expose that you don’t actually really understand yourself, at least in my case.

AW: Yeah. So yesterday I was, um, in an executive education program where an emotional intelligence academic was actually talking about that wheel. So I know, I know exactly what you’re talking about, and thank you for simplifying it because it can be overwhelming.

But what I’m hearing here is that if someone asks how you are, maybe one of the reasons that we kind of go on autopilot and say, fine. That’s the default answer. I’m fine. How are you? Or, I’m good. How are you? You’ll hear people say, maybe part of the reason that we answer that isn’t just because we don’t wanna reveal so much about ourselves.

It’s actually because we don’t even know ourselves.

LJ: Exactly. Exactly. That’s what I discovered, and that was wild. I’m like, I’m 45 years old, and I don’t know the, I need a freaking feelings wheel. Like it’s wild. But I mean, I think like. You know, different generations have honored different things. And my parents generation, it’s like IQ or bust.

Um, I don’t even know how much my mom believes in psychology, even. It’s funny because, um. One of my jokes, or I don’t know, quips about parenting is that every parent screws up their kids. The goal is to screw them up in a different way than how you are screwed up.

AW: That resonates Leslie. Yeah, that resonates.

LJ: And so, so for me, like with my kids, I’m always asking them like, how do you feel? How do you feel? And I’m sure I’m screwing them up in other ways, but. By God, they will know their feeling and they’re so, one night my kid said he was three when he said this, he said, mama. I love you, but sometimes I don’t like you. And I’m like, that’s, yeah. I read amazing read that’s in your book. It’s amazing. Like.

AW: Yeah.

LJ: I could not, I only like just started being able to do that.

AW: That’s very cool.

LJ: Or they’ll say, I’m feeling frustrated. I’m like, what?

AW: You’re talking about your feelings?

LJ: I know. And then I’m like, great, great. Like, I’m like celebrating their frustration. I’m not happy. You’re frustrated. Just the fact that you know what it is.

AW: So they’re very lucky. I’m gonna say to who’s attuned to that. And maybe they will grow up to be the senior leaders who are not only sharing their emotions in a productive way, but also encouraging their teams, too.

Crying at Work: Risk, Perception, and Controlling the NarrativeTowards the end of your book, you talk about, um, leadership and how emotions and revealing and oversharing shows up in the work context. Um, and at the end, I’m just staying on this topic of emotions. I get asked about this all the time, Leslie, like people will say, I’ve welled up, and people can see that I’m about to cry.

Or they’ll say like, no, I was a blubbering mess. Or they’ll say, under no circumstances. Will I shed a tear at work, even if I am like whatever it is, exhausted and overwhelmed, or whatever it is? So what’s your take on that?

LJ: Oh yeah. I’ve got a lot of takes. So I guess I get why people are like, under no circumstance, I will.

I show that I’m crying, or want to cry, or feel like crying. I get it because. There is research on this, and as you probably would expect, especially when women cry at work, they, the risk is that they’re viewed as like hysterical and overly emotional and not like it kind of erodes your credibility or your perceived competence, right?

Which is not good. So that concern is valid. So the way I think about it though, if you do have to cry, like cry. Um, you know, great if you can do it in, in private, but if you can’t, and sometimes you can’t, then the really important thing is to own it and to say why you’re crying like that can salvage your reputation.

I know. So, because as you know, in the book, I had an epic crying episode where I was a pretty junior academic at the time, and I was giving a talk at. University of get-go if I want to mask the name. That’s funny. Uh, which has a reputation for being jerks to the, uh, speakers, especially female. Like it’s just a toxic environment.

So I gave a talk there. When I was starting out and I had like prepped everything, I was like, they’re hard question, so I was extra, extra ready? And then in the talk, yeah, were asking me hard questions. Asking them in a really nasty way. They were being belligerent; they were interrupting me. They were, um, being loud.

They were not accepting a perfectly reasonable answer. So, like they were being behaviorally obnoxious and asking hard questions. So those kind of couple things. And I was crying because they were just being a-holes, because they were being bullies. They were being mean. And you know, when you’re like, okay, like you’re like, okay, I can do this.

But then he just ke there’s just this onslaught. It just kept, kept, and then I just, I’m like, I couldn’t control it anymore. And just the dams open, and it was ugly cry. It was like, it was the blubbering version that you mentioned, and so I couldn’t hide it. And so. What I decided to do in that moment, I said, I thought, well, it can’t get worse than this.

Maybe I can just lecture them on why they suck, like why they’re so nasty. And more importantly, and substantively, why I’m crying and why I’m not crying, ’cause I thought from their perspective, they may think I’m crying ’cause you’re asking me hard questions. And that’s very undermining of my credibility.

And so I wanted to kind of set the record straight, and so I just stopped the talk as I’m like, and I said, I want you to know. Why I’m crying and why I’m not crying. And then I said, I’m crying because what I just said right now to you, like I gave all the examples of how they were being obnoxious. And, um, I think that that’s a way of saving it because you tie it to something that’s not, it’s not that you’re like easily.

It’s not overly emotional; you’re just like, it’s legitimate. And the fact that you then are able to speak about your feelings and talk about them also models a certain maturity and a certain miss stability, even though you’re like, you, like you don’t feel stable. Um, that was like an extreme version, but I think less extreme versions.

And there have been studies on this where like if you are crying at work, if you cry about something, if you link it to your passion for the work, if you say, I’m crying because I’m so passionate, ‘ because I care so much about getting it right, then it doesn’t erode your competence. The other thing I think that’s interesting is if, especially like if you’re a leader, like first of all, leaders have a lot more latitude because they already have high status, they already have respect.

So they’ve got kind of a nice like competence capital, like they’ve got this like bank, and so they have a little more leeway such that you know, if something horrible happens. In the world that is relevant to your work, your employees, and you don’t well up, you like suppress welling up. You just look like a monster, right?

Like we’ve seen examples of CEOs that are like. Like, I’m thinking this was a while ago, but like the United CEO, Oscar Munoz will no longer CEO because of this. When the person was like dragged off the flight, and when he’s addressing afterwards, he’s just like, oh, this was unfortunate. Like there was no feeling in it.

Like that’s crazy. Like you need to show some feeling like, so when it’s expected and you don’t do it. It’s actually very undermining, I think, especially as a leader.

Why Sharing Is an Underrated Leadership Tool AW: Okay. I wanna, I wanna get into that as a leader, because you have the sentence that I’ve read, which is sharing is potentially the most overlooked leadership tool.

I wanna go down that, but first I wanna close the loop on what I would call in my work with my clients, Leslie, I call it. Creating or controlling a narrative around Yeah. What’s going on completely. Because there’s completely a million ways to tell the same story. Right.

LJ: So, yeah.

AW: Yes. I see you nodding. So, yeah. Is another way to say what Yeah. What you’re suggesting. Yes.

LJ: Yes. Control the narrative. Exactly. Yeah. Control it. Yeah. Because if you don’t, other people are gonna do it, and so literally you’re controlling the narrative. Yeah.

AW: I think that controlling the narrative is also a hugely underleveraged skill that eople have like at all levels, but particularly ambitious folks who are looking to get ahead. And then people are like, well, why did that happen? Or why is that person doing that? Or Why is that person crying? Or why are they so upset? And then you tell them. You tell them, I am really upset right now because our entire team spent so much time on this and were really disappointed.

And I think, you know, and then you create the narrative around it as opposed to look at how pissed off she is.

LJ: Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And so much of this like, it feels like overcommunicating, but it’s just communicating like you’re gonna feel like you’re overcommunicating, but turns out people can’t read your mind and your motivations.

And so if you don’t tell them, then they’re gonna like make these all kinds of inferences that probably aren’t right. In fact, that’s another construct that I find fascinating that I encountered as I wrote the book, was mind reading expectations, how it’s a trait. You know, we, psychologists love measuring individual traits, and there’s a trait called mind-reading expectations, which is the extent to which you kind of naturally implicitly expect that your partners or your colleagues or your friends should just know what you’re thinking and feeling, which, when I say it so bluntly, it sounds.

Of course that’s ridiculous. But yet so many of us have this implicit belief. I have it. I took the scale my, it’s on my website. You can take it yourself. I took the scale myself, and I realized I have this off the charts, but it’s been so helpful knowing that about myself, ’cause now like I realized, oh, I have to tell my husband that I slept badly and so I’m moody today.

Like he can’t read my mind. Um, so it, it often feels like over-communicating, but then once you realize, oh yeah, they, they don’t know what’s going on in my head. I just have to tell them. And. Controlling the narrative is super important. I was just advising, um, anec ed participant about this is super common.

Lots of times executives come to our programs, and they, you know, they’ll be like a, the, the focus, like a month-long program and they’ll be like transitioning. They wanna use it as a jumping point to like a new career or moving within their organization. And, um, and so I work like one of the. People I was just talking to, I was like, well, what’s your story?

What’s your story when you go to a new employer? What’s your story? Because you’ve got a gap in your resume now. And like, what’s your story? And he started saying like, well, you know, private equity bought us. And then they found out I was redundant, and I’m like. Okay, what’s another story? And like the thing is, it’s like there’s lots and lots of different stories.

You just have like they have, it has to be true, but there’s lots of different true stories. Pick the one that’s a strength, or like what my publicist said in coaching me for the book, my book publicity. The question, why did you write the book? Shaylyn, my publicist, said there are many answers to that question.

Only one or two are actually interesting. So really like think like, choose your story intentionally.

AW: Yeah, there’s a million ways to tell the same story, even a million ways that are true. So tell your story in a way that serves you.

LJ: Exactly, yes.

AW: We are aligned on that. Okay. Okay. Let’s move to this idea about sharing being an overlooked leadership tool.

LJ: Ah, yeah.

AW: What do you mean by this?

LJ: So I mean that leaders act as if they need to project strength, confidence, invincibility, and perfection. Not that they were just had to change their shirt when they left the house ’cause there’s burp stuff on it. Like they can’t say that that’s how they act. And yet again and again in research, we have found that when leaders reveal a little bit. Not a lot.

It’s not like exposing all of your flaws, but some of them in a metered way, it actually makes their teams trust them more. It makes their teams more motivated, and it doesn’t undermine their credibility, the leader’s credibility at all.

AW: So why is this? Is this because we trust people when we know them better?

Or like what is it about them? Or is the revealing like a signal of I trust you so I’m gonna share, and therefore you should, it’s both.

LJ: All of these things. Yeah, it’s so, it’s super fundamental where like when I say something personal to you, something a little sensitive, like let’s say in the workplace, if I was a leader, if I said I’m working on my time management skills.

That’s what I’m talking about here. I’m not saying like I’m a like pathologically messy person, which is true, like outside of this window, it’s like a disaster. You’re not saying that. You’re saying like, I’m working on my time management skills. When I say that there’s risk to it, there’s social risk ’cause it’s sensitive.

And so the act of doing that. Literally, I’m showing you, I trust you because I’m doing it by doing it. I’m implicitly saying, I trust you not to make a fool outta me. Right? And so when I show I trust you, it makes you trust me back. And that’s like the spark of like collaborations, of friendships, of intimacy, and so on, is that mutual trust.

And so in the workplace, when a leader does this, so the the extra thing that’s going on, though, there’s other things too, which is that like leaders. They can be intimidating. They can be aloof. Like, even if their personalities aren’t that way, the fact that they’re high status and that they control resources that they have power is intimidating to people.

And so when you share a little bit of what you’re working on, it humanizes you and it warms you up, and it makes people trust and like you. So you already have competence. But to be trustworthy, to be really an admired person, it’s not enough to be perceived as competent. You also have to be beloved.

Which is, which is warmth, and basically revealing is a way to show that you’re warm too.

AW: Exactly. Okay. So imagine that there’s a successful leader out there listening to us right now, Leslie, and they’re like, okay, I wanna try this. What are some things that they can do that aren’t gonna, that aren’t gonna sound like they’re coming outta left field.

Like, what the heck did this person just listen to a podcast or read a book? Like something that would sound like, how would you get started in doing this?

LJ: One area is. In the context of if lots of people do 360 feedback. So if you’re trying to get honest feedback from your teams, a typical thing that people will do, leaders will do, is they’ll say, they’ll basically be like, please tell me the honest truth.

I can take it. I respect you. It’s anonymous. Blah blah. That doesn’t work. You know, just assuring someone that I can take it like makes me actually think you can’t take it. So, but what does work, and this is research outta Wharton, they actually did a study with leaders where they randomized half of the leaders to just do that, the normal, and the other half, they got them to share a little bit of something they’re working on.

I’m working on time management, I’m working on organizational skills. Sometimes I feel a bit nervous public speaking these things. Mild, but work-related weaknesses. So when the leaders did that, the feedback they got was way more helpful. Like, people were actually comfortable giving them honest, helpful, constructive feedback.

So that’s one thing that you can do immediately in that context. There’s other opportunities, like are you thinking of like kind of rapport building?

AW: So, implicit in your answer there, something, and maybe this is a bias of mine, but I think I also hear this from the folks that I coach, is that what could be overshared or revealed?

They’re thinking about personal things, not professional, and your answer was about sharing workplace-focused or more professional-oriented vulnerabilities. So I think that that in itself is a point, right? Like if you’re not comfortable sharing something personal meaning, like from your personal life, how can you be vulnerable about your, maybe it’s something that you’re particularly worried about at work, or a skill that you’re developing at work, even that is considered revealing.

LJ: Totally. That’s so interesting because, um, my, because I, it shows how like weird I am or something that, that, to me, revealing a weakness in a workplace is like more revealing than saying like. Something super personal about myself. Um, like that, I peed my pants on stage. Like that’s, but I realized that I’m abnormal.

So I love the way you framed that, that like, if you don’t wanna do the risky thing of sharing something personal, you can do the less risky thing or more like. Context appropriate, like less weird from what the colleague, what your, your direct reports are gonna hear. Yeah. Share a work-related week is, and, and, or like, um, you know, oh, my handwriting is so messy.

I hate that. I’m trying to make it better. Like you, like a foible. Even you think of the like Pratt fall effect in psychology of like, somebody spills a bit of coffee on themselves, and it makes them endearing and people like them for it. It’s kind of similar to that. Makes you more likable. I mean, almost anything personal that’s somewhat sensitive that you share will make you come across as more likable, as more warm. The exception there is sharing things about like unethical behavior. So best not to do that in the first place.

AW: If you’re revealing a character flaw that is, you know. Not something you’re working on necessarily. It’s like, okay.

LJ: Right, right. But, but even still, it’s interesting because it’s like relative to what? Well, if someone asks you what’s the worst grade you’ve ever gotten, like in a job interview, and the answer is F and you say, I’m gonna answering that question, you will be viewed with contempt relative to if you just say, yeah, I got an F.

So sometimes like, admit, not that that’s immoral, but that’s like quite negative, right? I mean, even immoral things. We’ve tried it with immoral things too, and it’s re it’s the, the comparator is important too, right? Saying something that you’ve done that’s bad. Have you ever filed a false insurance claim?

Yeah, I’ve done that all the time versus, versus, have you ever false decided to follow the false insurance claim? I’m not answering that question. Right. That’s so much worse. Neither of them is like optimal at all. I wouldn’t, um, you know, but that was a series of thought experiments to really push it and be like conspicuously withholding is so bad that it’s actually better to admit to bad things.

The Reveal vs. Conceal Framework—and Our Omission BiasAW: Okay. So this is a beautiful transition to omission bias. Can you talk about, describe the two by two with the reveal, don’t reveal, and the pros and cons, and how and why there this pattern exists where we have this omission bias. I love this.

LJ: Oh, thanks. Yeah. This is kind of the North star of the book, which is, you know, how to make better disclosure decisions because on the whole, my view is that.

We don’t disclose nearly enough. Like we’re way too scared of TMI, and we’re not scared enough about TLI, too little information. We didn’t even have a word for it until me.TLI is, I think T-L-I, T-L-I is a way bigger issue, but yeah, TMI, we still, TMI can be problematic. So, how do you decide, how do you adjudicate these decisions better?

Like, do you tell your boss you have ADHD? Well, you might get accommodation, but they could discriminate against you. Do you, another example would be, suppose like you came up with this, some idea for like a new product or some innovative sourcing supply chain or whatever the idea is, and it took a team to bring it to life, but you, it was your idea and you hear your colleague say to the boss, oh yeah, it was a team idea, teamwork.

A part of you dies inside ’cause you’re like, I love my team, but it was my idea. And so like, what do you do? Do you, how do you even make that decision? Like, do you speak up or not? Well, when I ask people to consider these types of dilemmas, the number one thing they think about their mind immediately goes to the risks of revealing.

So, it’ll be an awkward conversation. They’re gonna hate me. I’m gonna come across as petty and needy, like risks of revealing, and those are valid. Those are real risks of revealing. But the problem is, this is so crazy again and again in my research. Like people do not come up with the other. There’s four things.

It’s a two by two, right? We love two by twos. At HBS, we love two-by-twos in our MBA lives. So this is just one quadrant of risks of revealing what else is there? There is the risk of not revealing. There is the benefit of revealing and there’s the benefit of not revealing. So it’s a risk. Risk, reward, reveal, don’t reveal.

It’s a two by two. And what the omission bias tells us is that the omission bias means that we’re kind of really, um, very, very sensitive to bad things that happen in the wake of things we did. So when disclosure terms, that means we really beat ourselves up for unfortunate things that we shouldn’t have said.

Regrettable disclosures. Okay. That’s because that’s a sin of commission. On the other hand, not revealing something we should have revealed, like praising a colleague who we think is amazing, withholding praise, or, um, not telling our crush, not having the guts to tell our crush in college that we love them, like not disclosing.

That’s a sin of omission, and we’re not so worried about those sins of omission. We don’t beat ourselves up over not having taken. Important actions. Right? Even saying that is confusing cognitively, right? But yet sins of commission, bad things we did, blurting something, and seeing to people cringe. That’s aish sin of commiss.

We’re really sensitive to it. By contrast, not revealing. Something that we should have is a sin of omission and a kind of, we don’t even code it as a sin off and we don’t even realize it. Because it’s like missed opportunities are the Yeah. Right. ‘Cause you didn’t know anything north salient. Right. Right.

You didn’t, you didn’t do anything. Yeah. Yeah. And so one of the things I’ve started doing in my life is just trying to gain a more appreciation for the opportunities to share because of omission bias. It’s so insidious that it causes us to not even. Realize the opportunities that we have to share. So like I started doing these things that I call disclosure audits where I’d like go through the day and I would, um, so I’d, ’cause I’m a nerd, I’m gonna do some quick data collection here.

I would go through the day and I’d have, I’d have a sheet. Okay. The sheet says it’s a tally. It says, said unsaid. And because so much of. The things I don’t even consider revealing, it’ll become clear. Uh, just a two-minute exercise here. So I wake up in the morning, typical boring day. I wake up in the morning, I roll over in bed.

I say, good morning, Collie to my husband. What I don’t say is I slept like crap. When I don’t sleep well, can’t regulate my emotions, I’m gonna need kid gloves. I don’t say any of that. It doesn’t, it doesn’t occur to me to say it. We’re standing in the bathroom, brushing our teeth. I think to myself, I feel older than I thought I would at this age.

And then I’m like, wait, is that a zit? I’m 45. How come I still have acne? I don’t say any of this. And so we haven’t even gotten to breakfast, and I’m five to one. Five onsets, one said. And the point isn’t that like, I mean, in this case, I think I should have said all of those things, but you know, I get to my office later in the day, my assistant asks, how are you?

I say, I’m great. What I don’t say is, I’m overwhelmed. I’m exhausted. I got a big presentation. I don’t say that. I think that’s fine. Like. The point isn’t just for all the unsaid things to be said, you don’t want that. I don’t want that. The point is like, ’cause sometimes we withhold for good reasons.

Sometimes we don’t have time, or we’re being thoughtful, or there are status imbalances that would make it unkind to share. But so often we don’t even appreciate these as opportunities. We don’t code them as decisions. We just default to silence. But they are decisions and I. We should treat them as such and consider revealing more in all of those.

The ones I wrote down, I think I should have said, because like talking about my body to my husband, like that’s a source of intimacy. How you actually feel about yourself and knowing that your partner knows how you feel is like the source of intimacy. Feeling known for who you are is like probably the most powerful source of intimacy.

So I’m blabbing on, but um, can you tell I feel passionately, but so that omission bias makes us, we don’t even realize it. So I’ve been trying to kind of like. I realize these things, and then once you realize you have way more opportunities, then you can do the matrix, the two by two and start. And with the thing about the like, oh, should I say something about this person who didn’t credit my idea?

Immediately? We know the risks, but if I then get you to go further and say, okay, those are valid. What are some risks of not revealing? You might say, well, hmm, I’ll ruminate, and I’ll brood, and when I brood it, passive aggression maybe seeps out, and maybe I’ll, maybe that will be bad for our relationship.

When you start to see, oh, there’s risks in the other way. If I could figure out how to say it to the person, which is a whole other topic, is like, how to say hard things. But we can do, there’s good science on that. So suppose we, we figure out how to say it. If I say it, then that person will know me, that I care about ideas, and ideas matter, and maybe I’ll respect before that.

So that’s kind of how I think about these decisions now.

AW: So you’re reminding me, Leslie, recently I had a conversation with a friend, a neighbor who is in his fifties, and he, for the first time is bike riding. And he signed up to do this, like really like endurance ride. And he’s like, am I crazy? And I said to him, we don’t regret.

We do. We regret what we don’t do, and I feel like we can also say we don’t regret what we say as much as we maybe regret what we don’t say.

LJ: It’s so right. It is, but it’s weird. It’s a little bit tricky because in the short run. We like immediately after we say something a little edgy or we do something we maybe shouldn’t have, we feel regret over the thing we did.

We, and right afterwards, we feel more regret over sins of commission, regrettable things we did than things that we did not say that we should have. But over time, it completely flips over time, and that’s the important thing that you’re highlighting. Over time, you end up regretting. You’re like, whatever.

I made some silly joke that doesn’t matter. What I really regret is I didn’t tell my first love how I really felt, and now I don’t have them anymore. The first chapter tells a story. I mean, they’re lucky tho those two people because they ended up reuniting. But so often I think that’s so relatable to people and to me, one of the things that just really blew my mind when I was doing research for the book was the, I mean, this is Tom Gil’s work on regret, but it’s also.

In a parallel universe, a woman by the name of Brony Ware found this as well. So she’s a palliative care nurse, and so she spent many, many hours with people in their final moments, and she started kind of grouping together the things people say they regret. And four out of the five top regrets are regrets of things they did not do.

And number three is directly about not sharing. Its number three is I wish I had shared my feelings more.

AW: I mean, just read that chapter, and you will be revealing more. So Leslie, I wanna talk to you a little bit about personalities. So, in your book you talk about the revealers who may err on the side of TMI and maybe concealers who err on the side of TLI, and the assumptions that we make about the types of people who share and don’t share.

Can you summarize for us? I guess what the mistake is, the mistake and assumption that we make, and what the data actually shows you.

LJ: Yes. So when I ask people, what personality trait do you think is most associated with revealers? People say extroversion, but that’s what I call the extroversion illusion, because I tested this for the, because this research didn’t exist.

So I’m like, oh, I’m gonna figure this out. And it turns out that. Extroversion is not related to whether you’re a revealer or a concealer, which actually kind of makes sense when you think about it, because extroverts they’re talkative, they’re bubbly, they’re positive affect, they’re outgoing, but like.

Like, decibels doesn’t mean depth, you know, it doesn’t necessarily mean, and then when I started thinking like one of my best friends is a hardcore extrovert, like so much so that I’m such a social loafer in situations with her because she just does all the talking and I can just like hang back. Um, and she, she says, says this public, like she struggles with vulnerability so.

By contrast, I’m kind of more introverted, I’ve become more extroverted, but I’m more introverted, and I’m very reveal. So the one trait that is very strongly predictive of. Being comfortable opening up is agreeableness. Agreeableness plays along well with others, kind of easygoing. And the reason is because a central facet of agreeableness is trusting others.

People who are agreeable, just super trusting, which is me, like I’m. It’s burned me before. I mean it’s, but I, I still would rather be more trusting than less trusting. Um, so it’s agreeableness that is predictive of being revealing.

AW: So when I read that, I was like, that makes so much sense. The agreeable folks assume the best in others and therefore maybe the risk of omission.

For them is not as high as it would be for people that are low on agreeableness. I love that point. I think so. So folks out there, if you’ve taken the big five a personality test, think about your level of agreeableness on that scale and then ask yourself whether that maybe correlates with your propensity to reveal.

LJ: Yeah.

AW: And you have a quiz on your website, don’t you, Leslie?

LJ: I do. Yeah. I was just gonna say, yeah, so there’s a mind-reading quiz, and there’s a, um, like do you have a revealing personality quiz so you can, you can test yourself.

AW: Okay, awesome. I’ll put the links to all of that, plus the diagram of the two by two and more in the show notes for people to access.

Rapid-Fire Questions and Final Reflections on RevealingAre you ready for the three rapid-fire questions?

LJ: Yes. I feel unprepared, but let’s, maybe it’ll be even better.

AW: Well, guess what? I think you’ve already answered the first one, so this will be really rapid, but the first question is. Are you an extrovert or an introvert?

LJ: Oh, introvert. Which is surprising, but I do think that I have, I know that I’ve become more extroverted, which I’m happy about.

’cause extroverts are happier. And I think honestly the re, I know this is rapid fire. Sorry. The reason I’m more extroverted is because of kids. Like they force me to push. ‘Cause you know, you go to social events, you hang out with other moms like you. And then I realized, oh, people are, I kind of like people. I kind of like talking to people.

AW: Nice. I wasn’t expecting, I wasn’t expecting a one word answer from a psychologist on that question. Don’t worry. Okay. This one, I have no idea what you’re gonna say. What is your communication pet peeve? What drives you crazy that other people do?

LJ: Oh, I have so many of them talking too much. Talking too much is a big pet peeve. ’cause I’m thinking of my workplace and people that in meetings they just talk too much, and they may tend to be of a certain gender more likely than others. That drives me crazy when people, it’s fine to be talkative if you have substance. Another communication pet peeve is, um, not being grateful.

Not saying thank you. Not saying please, like I am like with my kids. I’m like, what was that? What do you, I guess,

AW: Yeah.

LJ: That’s maybe how I’m screwing them up. They have to be like, they’re so polite.

AW: I put the fear, you know, what I do with my kids is I just say, my kids are a little older than yours. I just say, you’re welcome.

And then I walk. I’m like, I’m not gonna keep asking you to say thank you. We’re past that point, but I am gonna use my manners and say, you’re welcome. That’s awesome. It’s a little passive-aggressive. Okay. A little question number. Question number three. Is there a book other than yours and a podcast other than mine that you find yourself recommending to people lately?

LJ: Okay. A book. Yes. I love so many books. So the book I’m gonna recommend is right here, but it’s a little revealing. It’s sitting here. This is the book. I have never felt so heard in my life. The book, I don’t even, I feel bad saying the name out loud. Should I say it?

AW: You definitely should.

LJ: Okay. The book is called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. That’s what it’s called.

AW: Is Your Mom Terrible Podcast episode.

LJ: I hope not. Um,

AW: Well, she doesn’t believe in psychology. You said that at the very beginning.

LJ: Yeah, I mean, like, I love, I, okay now I have to say, which is true. And now it’s just gonna sound disingenuous ’cause, but literally the book is sitting right here, so I’m like, I have, I can’t not, um, no, I think she’d be like, well you, she has. I have the book.

’cause it’s, I’m just, I’m a psychologist. I’m, it’s literature. I’m learning. I like to learn. Like, I don’t, I don’t think she would, um. Ize it like that. I’ve actually had this conversation with my brother because they were coming over, and I’m like, oh shit, I gotta hide the book. And will’s like, no, no, no. You don’t have to hide the book.

She’s not gonna internalize it. You may wanna cut this, but, um, but I, uh, but I, you know, and this is like, I would not be where I am in my life without my parents. Like they’ve just given me. So, like, I just live a charmed life and I’m, I’m, I’m truly. Super, super grateful.

AW: And both can be true.

LJ: Both can be true.

Yeah, exactly right. Both can be, and you know, I’m writing the book was the best therapy for me. Like I really, as you know, in chapter three, like there was a really big thing that I had kept from my mother, and it was like this distance between us, and then we talked about it, and now like our relationship is even stronger.

Like, I feel like also it’s helped me to maybe grow up a bit and realize, you know, when you’re a child, your parents are perfect. And now finally that I’m in my forties, I’m like, oh, they have strengths and weaknesses, just like everyone. And I don’t fall. Like they’re just human, and they’re, we, they’re ama, their strengths are just so amazing.

AW: Oh, that’s nice. That’s nice. So, for the record I did, and I might be in the minority here, I did not see it coming, that you were describing your first person story. You were like, by now you’ve probably realized it was me. I’m like, what?

LJ: That’s so funny.

AW: I didn’t know, and I even knew, I even knew before I picked up your book that there was gonna be a story that demonstrates the power of revealing.

Like, I even knew that going into the book.

LJ: How did you, I guess maybe someone told you or something.

AW: I think it’s, it was in the, um. The HBS alumni bulletin summary. Oh, okay,

LJ: Okay.

AW: That makes sense. It’s like you, you share something in the book that demonstrates the power, whatever. Yeah. So I was like, oh.

Anyway. Um, yeah. Yeah. So what about a pod? Is there a podcast that you.

LJ: Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry. Podcast. I mean, there’s just so many. I’m trying to think of, I’m looking at my phone at what my fate, what the ones I’ve been listening to lately. I mean, I know this isn’t a very original one, but I really. Love the Mel Robbins show.

I love it because she has taught me so much by listening to it about how to communicate. Like there’s a lot of things that she does that I as a scientist can’t, won’t do. Like the number one thing, like,

AW: I’m glad to hear you say that because a lot of people reject her podcast because of that. So I’m surprised to hear that you like it, but I think you’re right.

LJ: Right? Like if you, if you like put it in perspective. It’s so good and I just like be talking about my book with the media world where people are great communicators. I’ve realized how much in a bubble I am in academia and how much we suck at communicating. Like try to read a journal article, right? Like they’re ill incomprehensible.

Which is so ironic ’cause it’s like we’re doing all this new, finding new things, but nobody knows what we’re finding and so. I just think that all scientists should take a lesson from, whether it’s Mel Robbins or not to be like hyperbole, but like. Communicate extremely clearly what the key thing is. And um, so I like it for that reason.

But I agree like it’s jumping the shark if I would do that, like that’s totally jumping the shark, but there’s so much that I’ve learned from it.

AW: Oh, I love that. I feel like that was a little bit revealing. It’s a little bit risky as an academic to say that.

LJ: Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

AW: Yeah. But you created a narrative around it.

That is very valid. So look at, look at how meta this has become, which often happens. I wanna say thank you so much, Leslie, for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation and I have a copy of your book right behind me, and I hope that either when I come to Boston or you come to Toronto, that you can sign this for me. I can’t, I can’t wait for that.

LJ: And I can’t wait for you to sign your book to me when you, when it comes out. I can’t wait to read it. It’s gonna be so good.

AW: I would love that too. Trust me. So. Is there any last advice you wanna share with the talk about, talk listeners, these ambitious professionals about the power of revealing?

LJ: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s that revealing is a skill. We often, sometimes we think of it as we’re either good or bad at it, but I really think it’s a skill. We, weirdly, we’re never taught it, but like any skill, you know, we can get better at it. With practice, with experimentation, with reflection. And I guess what I would say there is.

I always encourage people to like try sharing more, trying a little bit more, not a like, not dumping yourself, but like a little bit more and see what happens. And also it’s a bit of a gift to occasionally feel the TMI sting because if you never feel it, you’re not doing it enough, you’re not going far enough.

So celebrate it when you hit that. And then dial it back a bit, but it’s, that’s part of the learning, I think.

AW: Fantastic advice. Thank you so much, Leslie.

Your 3 Key Takeaways on Revealing at WorkThanks again to Professor Leslie John. Now as always, I wanna summarize with three key learnings that I hope you take away from this episode. Just briefly. Number one, I want you to think. Revealing and deciding about what to reveal at work as a skill that you can develop. Simply listening to this episode gave you some insights and frameworks to help you do so.

This is a skill that you can learn. Number two is our propensity to have an omission bias. I want you to really think about the two by two. Maybe take out a piece of paper and write this out right now. A simple two by two. So a box with a vertical line and a horizontal line through it. And on one dimension you have reveal or not reveal.

In other words, reveal or conceal. And on the other dimension, you have the pros and the cons, or the benefits and the disadvantages. The bias that we have that Professor Leslie John highlighted is the omission bias. So we have a propensity to believe that the cons or the disadvantages associated with revealing something are higher than they actually are very often there are more benefits. To revealing things than not. So the next time you’re actually considering consciously whether to share something or not, you can pull out a piece of paper, draw this two by two, and really think carefully about what the benefits and the disadvantages are of revealing versus concealing.

The third and last thing that I wanna reinforce with you is that. If and when you’re deciding that you wanna reveal more at work, there are really two ways that you can think about this. This came through in the conversation. I thought this was fascinating. So what you decide to reveal could be in a personal context or in a professional context.

So that’s it for this episode. I hope we’ve helped you think a little bit differently about revealing and oversharing at work. Talk soon.

The post Oversharing: “Revealing” with Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John (ep.211) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

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Have you ever been told you need to work on your “executive presence” and walked away thinking, what does that even mean?

In this Talk About Talk episode, you’re getting a front-row seat to one of Dr. Andrea Wojnicki’s live training sessions. Andrea reframes the way we think about executive presence, calling it what it really is: leadership presence, and shares five concrete strategies to help you build it.

You’ll also hear live Q&A from the audience on everything from dressing for presence, to navigating small talk in a high-stakes geopolitical moment, to showing up credibly across cultures.

Executive Presence 2.0 by Sylvia Ann Hewlett – https://amzn.to/4bGiZex

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious professionals to improve their communication. So you can achieve your career goals.

Rethinking Executive Presence: From Vague Feedback to Actionable SkillsThis episode is a little bit different from most. You’re gonna hear a live training session that I ran recently, focused on leadership presence and executive presence. In this episode, you’re gonna learn my framework for leadership presence, and you’re gonna hear five different strategy that you can choose to adopt to help you boost your leadership presence.

You’ll also hear live questions from the audience for this session. I hope you enjoy it. Here we go.

Welcome everyone. We are here today to talk about executive presence. So if you’re here, I’m guessing that either. You are a very ambitious person who has looked around at the folks around you that are knocking it outta the park in terms of their career. And you’re like, what is different about them? And I have people who come to me, and they’re like, it’s communication, but it’s more than communication, Andrea. It’s their executive presence.

So that might be you, or you may have been told by someone, maybe a mentor, or maybe even your boss. It might have come up in your annual review that you need to work on developing your executive presence. I hear this a lot from folks. So the good news is I do a lot of thinking, writing, and coaching about executive presence.

I’m gonna be encouraging you in the next hour to start to think about executive presence in a little bit of a different way, but a way where you can get traction. So here’s my promise to you. I’m gonna share with you a framework for how you can think about this sometimes nebulous topic or vague topic, you could say in a way that can really help you get traction in developing your executive presence.

And I’m also gonna share with you, I’m a, for those of you who know me, I’m a big fan of the power of three, but I’m actually gonna share with you five different strategies or tactics that can help you establish this elusive executive presence. And so my challenge to you is to identify which one or two of these five that I’m sharing with you that you can adopt for yourself.

So consistent with being, you know, focused on the power of three, we’re really gonna go through three things. First of all, we’re gonna talk about what executive presence is, and this is where I think I might surprise some of you with how I think about defining executive presence. The second thing. I’m gonna share with you the five different ways of establishing executive presence.

And the third thing is, I’m gonna share with you an opportunity for you to work with me. It’s a program that I have to help people establish their executive presence and beyond, and then we’re gonna open it up for an open q and a, which is truly, it’s become my favorite part of doing these live coaching sessions.

What Is Executive Presence—and Why It Feels So VagueSo, as I said, some people. Are sent to me by their boss to work on their executive presence, and some people proactively come to me. And interestingly, something that I’ve noticed, and I’ve been reading a little bit about this lately, many people are not a big fan of the term executive presence. And there may be a couple reasons for this.

The one that I think is very valid is that executive presence seems very subjective, right? It’s like you know it when you see it, but how do you actually define it? And in fact, some people have told me, and I think that this is a very eloquent way of putting it, that being told that you need to develop your executive presence can sound like vague coded feedback.

That means you don’t have the it factor and you probably never will. I’ve heard those exact words from a couple of my clients, and they’re like, Andrea, I need to figure this out. And I’m like. It can be subjective, but we’re gonna turn it into something that’s a little bit more tangible or quantifiable, like real skills spec.

We’re gonna specify, forget this vagueness, forget this coded feedback. We’re gonna make it into something that where you can get some traction. So when I ask people to define what they think it means, usually what comes up is something around gravitas. And inspiring people. So it’s a combination, often of gravitas, which I would say is a synonym for confidence as an executive, right, and inspiring people.

And I would push back on that definition. I would say that sounds a little bit like a definition of effective leadership in general. There is a book, which I have over here by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, that is one of the best books I’ve read on executive presence, and she recently republished it. It’s called EP, as in Executive Presence 2.0, and she says there are three ingredients based on her research in what comprise executive presence.

It is in fact, number one is gravitas. Number two is communication skills, and number three is what she calls how you show up. So your physical presence, and it’s kind of in that order, right? So if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna do one thing, it’s establishing gravitas, and then it’s communication skills, and then it’s how you show up.

When I read this book, I thought to myself, for those I see some people in the room here that I’ve coached before. You probably know that I coach people on all of these topics. I would consider gravitas and confidence to be. A communication skill. Of course, communication skills are communication skills, and how you show up is certainly a communication skill.

So I say great executive presence is all about communication. So that’s why we’re here, and that’s why I’m here to coach you. I wanna read to you the definition from Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book about what she says executive presence is, it’s something to think about here. She says, executive presence is typically perceived as consisting of three elements in descending order of importance, gravitas, skillful communication.

The right appearance having, and she tells a story about showing up for her first job, interview out of college, dressed completely wrong, and how she attributes that to the fact that she didn’t get the job. So a lot of people say, well, how I dress doesn’t matter. It matters. People see you often before they hear a word that comes outta your mouth.

So I would say that this is a great start, but based on my years of coaching. Hundreds of ambitious professionals, leaders, and aspiring professionals and leaders. I’ve noticed a trend, and I’m gonna share a framework with you. I’m also gonna encourage you to think about this executive presence in a different way.

So I’m gonna start sharing my screen here. I want you to rethink executive presence. Because of the issues that I said before that it may be vague coded feedback. Some people also say when they think of executive presence, they think of like an old school 1990s. Dictatorship, authoritarian style male in a standing behind a podium, in a blue pinstripe suit.

I know some of you, I see some names where we were hanging out in those days, and that was what an effective leader with executive presence looked like. Okay?

From Executive Presence to Leadership PresenceSo I’m encouraging us now to rethink this and maybe call it. Leadership presence, and I would say leadership presence, ’cause that’s really what we’re aspiring to, right?

Leadership presence is the ability to establish credibility and create impact. So you’re doing things, you can see there’s this upward arrow, right? You are doing all the things. Maybe some of the things that Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the author of, of EP 2.0, all of the things that she talked about will help you establish credibility so that you can create impact.

And by the way, what is impact? I turn the question back to you. What is your goal? Are you looking to get promoted? Are you looking to get a new job? Are you looking to be heard in meetings? I hear this all the time. I don’t say a lot in meetings, Andrea, and when I do, people ignore me, and then someone else will say something similar, and they’ll get all the attention.

I literally had this conversation last night in a coaching session. So impact can be big or small, right? Being heard, it can be having people congratulate you after you give a formal presentation. It can be a new job, it can be a promotion, it can be any of these things. The impact is what you want. And then how are you gonna get there?

Well, there’s, you can see there’s a few steps here, but you’re not gonna get there unless you have credibility in the eyes of others. Okay. So I am encouraging us to define a new term and maybe forego this executive presence term, which has some baggage, and instead call it leadership presence.

Five Ways to Build Leadership Presence (Where to Focus First)Okay, so now I’m gonna share with you five ways to work your way up this hierarchy or this pyramid.

Like I said, I’m a big fan of the power of three, but we have an hour together, so I’m, I’m gonna share five with you. The first is, you know, I’m a communication coach, and I would say making sure that you’re never gonna have credibility if you’re not an effective communicator, right? It’s as simple as that.

And so by foundational communication skills, by the way, I do not mean the basics. I don’t mean easy things. I mean foundational communication skills, like being a really effective formal presenter. Learning how to lead meetings that are really impactful. I’m talking about listening skills and not just shifting from what a lot of people default to, which is passive to active listening.

There are many, many ways that you can focus on your foundational communication skills. And by the way, the most. Successful senior folks that I coach are constantly upgrading their foundational communication skills. I’m not sure if foundational is the right word, ’cause I don’t want people to think it means like basic things that you get outta the way.

They’re things that are the foundation of how you present yourself. And so three great examples are introducing yourself with confidence, listening, as I mentioned, and formal presentation skills. For those of you who haven’t heard or learned myself, introduction framework, I just wanna say this. Your self-introduction is the most direct way that you have to reinforce your professional identity.

These are your words from you about you. So it is well worth your time to learn how to introduce yourself with confidence. And this does not mean learning a script that you memorize and rehearse and then spit out why? Because it sounds rehearsed. Because it is, and it’s not customized for your audience.

So instead, I encourage you to learn my framework, and I think someone’s gonna put it in the chat so you can read the article if you like it. There’s an HBR article from 2020 that I had published with this framework, and in 2023 is one of the three most downloaded articles at hbr.org. The framework is really easy.

You don’t even need to take notes to remember it. It’s three things, present, past, future. So who are you, what do you do, and where do you do it? Hi, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at talk about Talk Boom, who you are and what you do. And if you’re between jobs, you could say, my expertise is in the finance industry or in the pharmaceutical industry.

And I’m a finance expert, right? So you could clarify what your industry or functional and or functional expertise is. So that’s step one. Present past tense. Here’s where in a professional context, you establish credibility, so you could. Mention previous jobs. You could mention a project that you just finished.

You could mention an award that you won. You could mention your credentials, your university degrees, whatever this is. You choose, depending on the context, one, two, or three things to help you establish your credibility. And again, it’s not a script. You’re choosing the things that are relevant.

So if I’m pitching to an HR leader who’s thinking about bringing me in to do some coaching or workshops for the folks on their team. I will tell them about how I earned my doctorate from Harvard Business School, where my research focused on exactly what I’m coaching you on. It was interpersonal communication and consumer psychology.

I would mention that I used to teach at the University of Toronto in the MBA program, or whatever I thought was relevant for that person. Right. So you establish. Credibility with the past tense, and then you shift to the future. This is easy, and it’s often forgotten, but it’s like the icing on the cake.

One or two sentences where you demonstrate enthusiasm about the future. Like, I’m really excited to help all of you establish executive presence or leadership presence so your careers can skyrocket. Ideally, you make it about the other person, what you’re excited about for them. Okay, so introducing yourself with confidence.

You just had a quick coaching session there. The three-point framework. It’s present. Past future. It’s not chronological. You start with, you anchor yourself with the present, who you are, and what you do. You establish credibility by talking about the past, and then you move to the future, and you talk about how enthusiastic you are about the future.

This is a foundational communication skill. I encourage you to try this framework if you haven’t already, as soon as possible, and it’ll become a life skill. The next time someone says, let’s go around the table or around the screen and introduce ourselves, you’ll probably do what I do and go, oh gosh. And then you’ll say, ah, I have a framework, and you’re gonna nail it.

So there’s introducing yourself with confidence. There’s listening beyond. Just act passive to active. Let’s seek really collaborative listening where you believe that you have insights. The other person has insights, and if you listen carefully to together, you’re gonna come up with something amazing. So pushing your listening to be at a new level.

By the way, I always say this when I coach people on listening. You can’t be listening at this ultra high level all the time. It is exhausting. It’s really about self-awareness. So I’m in this training session right now with Andrea. I think I’m gonna be actively listening. I’m not gonna be this collaborative level.

I’m gonna be active later on. When you’re in a meeting, and it’s something that you already know everything about, you might slip into passive listening, which is where you’re kind of pretending to listen. Maybe you’re writing a few notes just to keep yourself awake. Being conscious of what level of listening you’re at, I think is actually a superpower.

Again, it’s about self-awareness and then formal presentation skills. The one thing I would say in terms of how to get better at formal presentation skills is practice. Just do it every chance. You get leading meetings, doing formal presentations, doing informal presentations. The more you do it, the easier it gets and the more fun it gets.

I’m gonna say I have some horror stories that some of you, I know, some of you have heard, but I decided that was not acceptable, and so I started practicing, and now I do love it. I even have a podcast, so obviously I love formal presentations. Okay, so that’s the first way to establish your leadership presence is work.

And these are just three. I’m gonna give you three for each of the five, three ways. So, three ways to improve your foundational communication skills, introducing yourself effectively and boosting your listening formal presentation skills. Okay. The second way to establish leadership presence is to communicate with precision.

Now, I would say that precision counts as a foundational communication skill, but I, when I was pulling this together for us today, I wanted to pull this one out because of this very interesting insight. I think it’s interesting folks that are more junior in their career often come to me. Saying, Andrea, I have imposter syndrome, and I need some help speaking up.

It’s like they want to speak more. And then the more senior and successful folks that I coach actually say the opposite. They’re like, Andrea, I ramble sometimes, and I need you to help me communicate with precision. I wanna speak less, but with more impact. So I have this pair of scissors here. This is about brevity, so taking up less airtime.

And clarity, so making sure that you are really clear. So I of course have three suggestions for how you can do that. The first one that I always say, when people come to me seeking precision in their communication, this is the most important thing you can do. Speak in headlines. Use headlines. What does that mean?

That means when you send an email, sure. Your first sentence might be, I hope you had a great weekend, but your second sentence should be, the purpose of this email is, or I’m sending you this recommendation and the, you know, the accompanying evidence or whatever it is, like you tell them what you’re going to tell them.

I recently came up with this kind of saying that I have to explain this, which is if you’re writing a screenplay or you’re writing a novel, suspense is great, but suspense is not an effective strategy in business. Do not rely on suspense. Instead, tell them what you’re gonna tell them right away. So speak in headlines.

The second thing here is the power of three. If you know me, if you’ve listened to my podcast, if you’ve seen my posts on LinkedIn, if you know me at all, you know that I’m a huge fan of the power of three. I even have three kids and the power of three is actually grounded in science. So three is, I hope your default whenever you’re wondering how many, why?

Because three is balanced. Think about a tripod, right? You need three legs or a stool with three legs. It’s balanced. Three is enough that it sounds like a trend. So it’s substantial or substantive, but it’s not overwhelming. And three is easily memorized. It’s memorable or easy to recall. Remember, in the self-introduction framework, it’s three steps, not an accident.

Whenever I ask myself, how many, whatever should I include, I always say three. And if three is not enough, make it three groups of three. So I’m writing a book right now about some of the material that you’re hearing today, and I have three parts: part one, part two, and part three. And each of them has three chapters.

So use the power of three. This will help you in communicating with precision because you’ll tell people with your headline, here’s my recommendation, and then you’ll say, there are many reasons why this is the right way to go. Why? This is my recommendation. I’m gonna share with you three reasons as soon as you tell them that you’re anchoring the people that are listening in.

Basically, how long you’re gonna talk. And then you say, the first thing is blah, blah, blah. The second thing is the blah, blah, blah. And imagine if you hadn’t told them that you were going to use the power of three, and you just started listing things. After two people start to go, how much longer is she gonna keep talking?

Right? So tell people it’s the power of three. Follow the power of three, and then you can restate what the three things are. Okay. The last way that I’m gonna suggest that you communicate with precision is what I call tracking the ratio. So what do I mean by this? I mean tracking the ratio of the airtime that you’re taking up in a meeting.

So far, I’ve taken up 100% of the airtime, not including the chat, thankfully, in this meeting, but typically, if you were in a meeting with three other people, so there’s four of you, I encourage you, no matter what level you’re at, to say what would be my fair share of the airtime? It would be 25% if there’s four of us.

And then say, typically, do I speak too much or not enough? If you don’t speak enough, try to take up 25% of the airtime. If you’re the leader, you should probably be speaking less, so you should say, I wanna keep it down. And also, this is really important. If you are a leader and you are demonstrating leadership presence, you are tracking the ratio of everyone in the meeting that you’re leading.

And if someone’s not speaking up. You can very gracefully encourage them to do so by saying something like, Jane, I noticed you haven’t said anything yet, and I also know that you have a great expertise and background in whatever the area is. I’d be really interested to hear what you have to say, and then just go quiet, and the person will feel flattered because you authentically flattered them about their expertise, and they’ll pipe in.

So track the ratio, whether you speak not enough or too much, and if you’re a leader, track the ratio of everyone in the room and make sure that all of the people in the room are meeting participants, not just meeting attendees, right? If someone’s sitting there and they’re not saying a word and you really don’t need them to say a word, then I say they shouldn’t even be in the meeting anyway.

You can send them the minutes later, right? Okay. So that’s the second of five ways to establish leadership presence. The third is communicating with confidence. So. Remember, in my definition of leadership presence, it’s establishing credibility so you can create an impact. How do you establish credibility?

A big factor in driving credibility is your confidence. It’s how you feel and how other people are perceiving you. So I like to think of confidence really, and this is how I always talk about a confidence in terms of three things, imposter syndrome, confidence boosting tactics. Then mindset. So the first thing I say here is lean into imposter syndrome.

There’s so much research about imposter syndrome and the thing that may surprise all of you is even in the original research, this term was coined based on research on successful people. Successful people feel imposter syndrome. So lean into it. And furthermore, if you’re not feeling imposter syndrome, one of two things is probably true.

Either you’re arrogant. You’re done learning. And probably not. There aren’t that many arrogant people, so I’m gonna say, or more likely, you’re not pushing yourself. So I get a lot of calls from folks who have just got a big promotion and then their confidence plummets, and they’re like, Andrea, I need help.

I don’t know why, but I’m feeling this imposter syndrome. And then they tell me that they just got this big promotion into a different area. And I say. Your imposter syndrome is because you’re pushing yourself to learn new things. You should celebrate that. So lean into imposter syndrome instead of that.

When you feel that icky feeling, I feel it in my chest, like adrenaline, right? I feel like someone kind of punched me in the chest instead. And when I feel that instead of thinking, oh gosh, I have imposter syndrome and letting myself go into a downward spiral, I say. You know what? That’s the spark of positive energy that I need to shine in this workshop that I’m coaching right now.

And successful people put themselves in situations where there are high stakes. So, imposter syndrome is a good thing. Then the next two are the tactics and mindsets that different things work for different people. But the one thing you need to know as you’re experimenting with different ways of improving your confidence is that confidence can be learned.

Trust me, I have epically failed in the confidence department and been able to build my confidence based on using some of these tactics. So in terms of tactics, I would say things like being expansive. I’m holding my arms out here, being expansive, confident people take up space. So whether you’re seated around the boardroom table or standing in front of a room, remind yourself that confident people take up space.

And the two illustrations of that kind of prove this one is think about Trump. I’m not gonna get political here, but think about pictures of Trump in the Oval Office, right? He’s manspreading. I see photos all the time. He’s got his arms out, he’s got his legs out. He is taking up space. Now, I don’t know that he’s doing it on purpose, but he’s showing that he is confident and credible in that room.

So that’s one example. And the other example that I think of is remember when you were back in college or high school, and the teacher would ask a question, and then they’d turn around and look. And if you didn’t know what the answer was, you’d try to make yourself really small. Right? We kind of hide versus if you knew the answer, you’d be like, oh, oh.

At least some people would, right? So those are great examples of how we make ourselves small when we don’t wanna be seen, and how we make ourselves expansive. So the tactic of making yourself expansive is a big one. Slowing down your breathing is such a simple and hugely effective way of boosting your confidence.

I’ve read this research in detail, and here’s the insight. If you slow your exhale in particular, your brain says. Hang on a second. I’m not gasping for air. Everything must be okay. And then your blood chemistry will actually change. Your stress hormones will stop being produced, and you’ll feel less stressed out.

So if you’re up on stage and you feel this shot of adrenaline, it’s not like you’re gonna be heavy breathing into the microphone. However, you can quietly slow your exhale knowing that that will boost your confidence. And then there are confidence-boosting mindsets. Things like really focusing on learning.

If you are, so I’m not talking about this, I’m gonna say it. Stupid advice that we often hear, like there’s no such thing as failure. Only learning. Come on, you can fail. But if you are genuinely, authentically focused on learning all the time, especially in these high-stakes contexts, you really can’t fail.

In fact, the story of your epic failure, like the one of me failing when I was on stage, can become part of your story and catapult you into future success. So one of the mindsets that I encourage people is really think about a growth mindset. Really learning into that, leaning into that lifelong learning mindset.

And another mindset that I know works really well is focusing on your personal brand. Your unique strengths focusing on your superpowers. So in the research on social psychology, they talk about global self-esteem. So generally, how confident are you? And then they talk about domain-specific self-esteem.

So my question for you is, and you might wanna write this down right now, in what areas do I feel confident? Where do I know I have skills, expertise, and passion that adds value in my organization or in my career? If you focus on these things, your confidence will be elevated, and the research shows that when you focus on your domain-specific expertise, your self-esteem in those areas goes up, and then your global self-esteem also goes up.

So, I mean, this is a lot of social psychology talk for. Focusing on your superpowers before you go out on stage, remind yourself of what you’re good at. So I remember many years ago, for the first time, I was getting in front of a room with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and I really didn’t, it was an open q and a.

I didn’t really know what was gonna happen, and I was nervous about the open q and a in particular. And I said to myself, Andrea. You have academic credentials in branding and marketing. You’ve spent your career in branding and marketing. You’ve coached all these people, you’ve done these workshops.

You don’t know everything, but you are an expert in personal branding. So anything that they ask you, either you’re gonna have an answer for, or it’s gonna be something that you should learn anyway. Right? And then I went out there. So remind yourself of what your unique superpowers are. That’s a very powerful, uh, mindset.

Okay. Moving on to the fourth way to establish leadership presence is exactly what I was just talking about. It’s developing your personal brand. So there are several things that you can do. If you follow me, you know that I’m talking about this all the time. Why? People tell me that this work is some of the most impactful work that they’ve done in elevating their confidence and also in developing their career.

So, as I said at the beginning, your self-introduction is the most direct way that you have to reinforce your personal brand. I cannot overstate how important it is to be comfortable and confident in your self-introduction, focusing on your unique strengths, like I just said. My saying here is unique is better than better.

Instead of trying to figure out what everyone in your organization or in an industry is expecting you to do or to call your strengths, ask yourself what your unique strengths are. Unique is better than better. The people around you who are knocking it out of the park. Undoubtedly are focused on their unique strengths.

Okay? And then once you’ve identified what those unique strengths are, then you shift to communication. This is where in person and virtually, so like in your LinkedIn profile or whatever social media you’re on, in your email signature. When you are in virtual meetings like we’re in right now, so in person and virtually, and then.

Explicitly, so using words and also implicitly how you show up the whatever you have in your background. It’s no mistake that I have the corner of my university degree over here. I have some plants. I have my color-coded bookshelf. I have more books here, not an accident. I’m trying to reinforce my brand.

Okay, so consistently reinforcing the unique strengths. There’s so much more that I could share with you about personal branding, and I’m happy to answer more about that in the q and a, but that’s the fourth way to establish leadership presence. And now we’re on to the last one, which is demonstrating leadership.

So I don’t mean exactly demonstrating leadership presence. There are slightly different things. I mean, demonstrating leadership, and I use these words because these are the words that my clients tell me. They meet me for a consult, and they say, Andrea. My boss says that technically I have the skills and I’m ready to be promoted and I need to start demonstrating leadership.

Those are like the exact words that I hear a lot, and this could be like from a junior position to a middle position, middle to senior, it happens at all levels. I need to demonstrate leadership, and again, this could come across as like vague coded feedback. And many people also say, especially if they’re earlier in their career, they’re like, it’s impossible for me to demonstrate leadership because I’m not the boss of anyone, or I’m only the boss of four people, and they want me to demonstrate that I can manage a group of 25 or more.

How am I supposed to do that? So here’s what I remind you. Is that there are many, many ways that you can demonstrate leadership. So the obvious one is leading people, and if you don’t have a team that’s reporting to you, you can still informally mentor other people and you could even formally coach people by setting up training programs or whatever.

So, yes. People. Leadership is a big part of demonstrating leadership, but there’s also a couple of other things here. I have proactive leadership, strategic leadership, and thought leadership. So pro what is pro, what do I mean by proactive? Well, leaders lead, right? We’re not talking about following, we’re talking about leading.

So when was the last time you had a proactive thought. I’m guessing it happens all the time. Shared it with the group and did something about it. I’m talking about being super proactive. Leaders lead. When you do that, you are demonstrating leadership, right? Strategic leadership. So I often think about, I used to work at Kraft Foods and Marketing, and I remember sometimes I’d be in these big meetings where we were brainstorming something or trying to decide on advertising campaign, which campaign we were gonna go with.

Something like that. Somewhat things would, the conversation would go off track, and then after a certain amount of time, some very smart person who I would say was demonstrating leadership would raise their hand and say, we’re going off track. Let’s shift back to focusing on our strategy. Remember the brand strategy?

Whatever it was, let’s focus on what our priorities are instead of getting distracted. And I remember whenever someone said something like that, I’d always think, gosh, that person is so smart. What a great leader. So when you’re presenting your thoughts and when you’re in discussions with others, when.

Encouraging focus and being sort of principled, like what is the brand strategy? What have we decided the core principles or ideas are that we’re gonna be pursuing this year? Being grounded in your firm’s objectives, whatever they label them will help people, will encourage people to think of you as a leader, and then this one is often forgotten.

Thought leadership. So, is there something that you have expertise on? It could be something technical, it could be a leadership style. It could be something that’s related to your industry or your function where you can share either in person, like verbally, or in writing. You could write papers, or you could post it on LinkedIn.

Right? Thought leadership. Private and public. Thought leadership is definitely, I mean, that’s what it’s called. Thought. Leadership. The point here is demonstrating leadership beyond people. Leadership, proactively being strategic, and using thought leadership. Okay, so. Here is the list of five ways. I mean, there are many more, but these are five ways that I would say are very common gaps that people can get a lot of traction in your foundational communication skills.

Like I said, communicating with precision, boosting your confidence, developing your brand, and demonstrating leadership

Choosing Your Focus: Don’t Try to Do All FiveSo this list may seem overwhelming. Again, what I encourage you to do is to identify which one or two, I think more than two is probably too many. Identify which one or two you wanna commit to yourself that you’re gonna focus on.

I think of these in terms of what I call the leadership presence framework. So I shared a little bit of this with you in one of the earlier slides. Impact is at the top, right? This is your goal, and it again, it could be big or small. How are you gonna get there? By establishing credibility on the first two steps.

This is what I notice when I’m coaching people. We work on their foundational communication skills, and they tell me, Andrea. By working on my self-introduction, by working on my listening, by working on my formal presentation skills, and on and on, I feel my confidence boosted, right? And then when their confidence is boosted, this feeling that they have other people tell them like, what’s going on with you?

Like all of a sudden, you have this credible presence in meetings, and then that’s when they can make an impact. This is the framework that I encourage you to, you’re welcome to take a screenshot if you like. I encourage you to think about this. And then I, I have these kind of rectangle, whatever the, are those trapezoids, whatever the shape is called, I need to figure that out.

You can put all sorts of communication skills there. And then the interesting part here, I think, is that you can build confidence by improving your foundational communication skills, but you can also do it. By overcoming imposter syndrome and also by using the confidence-boosting mindsets and tactics that I shared, and more.

And then when that happens, your credibility’s boosted. And when your credibility gets boosted, then you can make an impact. But you can also, in a focused way, improve your credibility by thinking about the different ways of demonstrating leadership. By developing your personal brand and by doing all sorts of things.

By the way, Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s definition, remember the third part? It was gravitas, communication, and how you show up. The, how you show up belongs right there in the credibility, right? Like, do you look like a leader? So this is a framework that you can probably tell by my tone of voice I am so excited about because I think it gives people a framework where I know it does, because I’ve, I’ve been using it in, in my private coaching and, uh, workshops.

It gives people, I guess, like a framework for them to think about where there may be some gaps for them, where they can get some traction and start to develop this leadership presence. So I’m excited to share with you that next month, starting in the third week of April, I have an executive presence and personal branding masterclass.

Now I’m calling it executive presence because that’s the term that people are mostly using, but in this masterclass, it’s six weeks long. We are gonna talk about the framework, how it’s leadership presence, and we’re gonna work our way up. Up the framework. So I’m just gonna share two slides with you about this, and then I’m gonna open it up for q and a.

If you wanna learn more, if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com/april2026, there’s detailed information about what’s included and everything, but here’s what you get. There are six live coaching sessions on Wednesdays starting at noon. You also will be included in a private virtual group where only the masterclass folks will be there.

The group will probably be. 10 to 15 folks or so. So it’s enough that there’s gonna be people there that you’re gonna learn from and make some fantastic connections. But there’s also a lot of individual customized one-on-one coaching. So we have this virtual private group. I’m in the group as well, and asking questions and answering questions there.

So that’s on 24/7. For the six weeks, you also get a comprehensive workbook that basically becomes your playbook for developing. Leadership presence or executive presence, and your personal brand, and you also get access to a recently re-released and hugely improved online course on personal branding. So the content that I had from the course that I introduced four or five years ago was great, but the production value wasn’t, and we recently improved the production value of that.

So that’s the program that I’m excited about.

Wrap-Up & Live Q&A: Applying Leadership Presence in the Real WorldBut now I would love to answer any questions that you have. So, questions about executive presence, about leadership presence, about the five ways that I shared with you, shared that I encourage you to improve your leadership presence. Any questions about the masterclass as well?

I’m happy to answer.

Christie: I can ask you a quick question, I guess.

AW: Hello? Is it Hey, Christie?

C: It’s Christie. Yeah,

AW: I, how did I know that?

C: Because we’ve chatted briefly before.

AW: Yeah. Nice to see you, Christie.

C: Nice to see you. Are those situations where you’re doing a presentation, and you’re showing up in executive presence, do you have like awardrobe guide or do you have like go-to places or is it just like suit navy? Like how, how deep do you go on that? Because it does impact perception, right?

AW: It does. I’m glad you asked. Okay, so, oh gosh. There’s, there’s actually so many things that I can say. If one thing that a lot of people don’t know, if you are virtual, go with solids, not prints because they pixelate and they can be distracting.

So that’s one thing. So I have a photographer that I absolutely love. So she’s taken all the photos that are in my social media posts and on my website, and I brought like my favorite turquoise and white hounds tooth blazer. And she was like. I was like, it’s my favorite. It’s my signature blazer. She said, no, no, it, it’s gonna be pixelated.

That’s not what you want. She said, you can wear it when you meet someone for lunch or if you’re in front of a group, but don’t wear it for photos or anything that’s online. That’s a big one. The other thing that I can tell you is if you don’t have any idea what to wear, no. That blue is most people’s favorite color.

Or how do you, how do you say that? Right? Blue is the color more than other that people favor. Right?

C: So that was a tongue twister. Yeah.

AW: Blues. Blue’s a good one. I would say that the other thing that comes up a lot is formality, and I just wrote a LinkedIn newsletter on this and I say, I encourage you to dress up.

And by up I do not mean more formally. I mean, look at the people. Who are up from you, who are above you, who to whom you aspire to their position, how are they dressing? And you wanna be yourself, of course, but think about what they’re wearing. I’ve started to wear like a turquoise blazer with a t-shirt and jeans or pants with really cool Adidas running shoes. I have turquoise run. I have two pairs of turquoise running shoes. Um, so you can actually have fun, and I get comments on ’em like, oh my God, love your shoes. Right? So I’ve just started doing that. You don’t have to dress up formally, but dress up like the people that you admire.

And then in terms of being in front of people, Christie, I would say the most important thing truly is that you feel comfortable and elevated. So comfortable. Like, you know, if you have a like I have a blazer, actually it’s on the couch that I’m pointing to it over there in my room. It’s like a bit tight in my shoulders.

Like I would never wear it if I was standing in front of a room because if I, as soon as I point up, it’s gonna be like pulling. So you wanna be like comfortable, but you also wanna feel elevated. Like, if it’s a big deal, you wanna show up in a way that you feel good. The old saying, when you look good, you feel good.

When you feel good, you look good, and then you do good. Like, that’s the idea. Do you have any other specific questions, Christie, about that?

C: I totally agree on the, the being comfortable. I do think it shows up, and I do agree because I’m an on the marketing side of things. So we do that from a brand and thought leadership perspective, so that’s great.

And context matters, right? Like dressing up in who you’re in front of and who you’re talking to. I don’t know. I think it would also like, I like that. Like make it your own.

AW: Yeah.

Christie: Because if you’re not authentic, I guess that must show too, right?

AW: Yeah. Yeah. So I encourage you all to think about what your thing is for how you show up.

So it could, for me, it’s a color, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a I, by the way, I met a woman at a conference and she, she had an orange jacket, an orange person. I said, oh, I love your orange. She said, I wear orange all the time. It’s like my go-to, no one wears orange, so I, it makes me memorable. And I was like, good for you.

Uh, so it could be a color, it could be that you always wear a great scarf or you’re really into, even, even today, ties maybe not done up all the way. I, I know some guys that it could be. Your socks, or you could really be into shoes or may, a lot of people are really into running shoes. Right? And by the way, it can change over time too.

It’s not like you’re, I say turquoise, so it has, for me, I always loved turquoise. I used to be a figure skater, and I, I, my dresses were always turquoise, everything. My houses turquoise. But for most people, it’ll evolve over time. Pick a thing. I remember, I used to be on a board of a hospital, and one of the guys on the board, he was known as having great hair and.

Really crisp white shirts like, like they all looked brand new, right? That was like his thing. It said a lot. It said a lot. He was, he also worked in quality control, and I was like, okay, he’s got the hair, and he’s got the shirt. Right? So, is there a way you can reinforce your brand by how you show up in terms of how you dress?

Try and think about what your thing might be. Your thing might even be your stature, right? Like I’m super, not me, but someone’s like super tall or I know some people that are. Are like five feet tall and they create a narrative around themselves as like, you’ll know me when you see me. I’m like a big ball of energy, but I’m tiny in stature.

And I’ll be like, okay. And then it’s like, oh, there she is. Right? So that is included as part of how you show up. Anyone else have any questions they wanna ask me out loud?

Heather: Hi, I have a question. My name is Heather. I’m looking for the raise hand emoji, but I can’t find it on the screen. So my question is, once you have communicated and you have introduced yourself appropriately, what about the dead air?

Like, the small talk? I mean, you mentioned at the beginning, like I, I’m not sure, maybe that’s another podcast or another area, but. What do you talk about in this day and age and in this situation where geopolitical, you know, fever is at an all-time high. What can you actually talk about? It used the weather used to be safe, and now with climate change, that’s not safe.

AW: Yeah, that’s true.

H: What, what do you talk about?

AW: It’s such a cliche, isn’t it, to talk about the weather, but the weather is often newsworthy these days. I am not a big fan of these kind of rehearsed. Small talk prompts like, so what have you done lately that really lit up your world? Or you know, tell me about the best place you visited in the last year. I, I think asking those kind of random questions that you could ask anyone is, it seems a bit trite to me and, I know I appreciate it when people are doing it because they’re trying to fill the conversation void. But instead, I would look at the person and. Ask them something about the here and now.

Like literally, if you’re at a conference and you meet someone, you could say, what’s your connection to the conference? Are you a speaker? Do you know the speaker? Are you a sponsor? What? Whatever. Right? So ask them about them. Ask them. So how did you get here? Did you take an Uber or did you drive? Right?

So, asking the person about them, and then the conversation will flow people. Love talking. I know you all know this. People love talking about themselves. So instead of asking these kind of generic questions, I would think like, what is context and person relevant? And then ask ’em a question based on that, like here and now with this person. I hope that helps.

H: Yeah, thank you.

AW: Yeah. Who else has a question?

Lally: Andrea. Hi. I have a question.

AW: Hello.

L: I work with people all around the world, obviously mostly remotely. What considerations should I have or anyone in this obviously room have when it comes to establishing executive presence or leadership presence when you’re working with other cultures?

AW: Yeah. This is something that I’ve started to think about more and more, and I’m gonna say this is not my expertise. I. Think it takes beautiful empathy and self-awareness to know what your culture, it could be like your country or even your corporate or your industry industries have culture, right?

Companies have culture. Countries have cultures. Religions have cultures. So ask yourself, what cultures am I a part of, and what are we known for, right? So if you are from, I’m gonna say Texas versus. Montana, right? There are differences in how people communicate, and so just being aware of that, and you could even call it out.

You could say, I know not everybody is, so I’m from Canada, and I’m a female, so people would assume that I am soft spoken. I’m not. So I could comment on that. I could make that like I’m probably not a typical female Canadian. I’m a little bit more outgoing. I’m definitely an extrovert. Right. And then you’re like, so you’re acknowledging differences.

The big thing, Lally, that I would say is especially when you know there are distinctions in culture, again, whether it’s a corporate culture or a country culture, whatever it is, industry culture, being explicit about it and sharing that you are open and that you respect other perspectives can go a long way.

And even when you do that. You can mess up. I have messed up, right? People will say, well, you’re teaching this and that. That doesn’t really work in my company culture, whatever. Or you said this, and that’s offensive. I was in New Mexico about a month and a half ago, and I whistled like I do this all the time when I’m in work.

I did this when I was in the MBA program teaching in the MBA program, and when I do live workshops after people are in breakout groups, I will whistle, and I did it twice and the second time I did it, this guy in the front row. Had tears rolling down his face and he was like extremely sensitive to sound.

And then I obviously, I saw what was going on, so I didn’t whistle anymore. And then I went up to him and he said, I know you didn’t do that on purpose, but please. And I said, I am so, so sorry. Like, I violated something for him that was like physically he couldn’t handle it. So it’s a little bit different from culture, but my point is, if you mess up address it and you don’t need to dwell on it, right? Like, you don’t need to call the person out. Don’t dwell on it, but apologize and make sure that you’re course correcting.

L: Thank you very much.

AW: Yeah,

L: This is very helpful.

AW: Michelle Brown asked for any more tips on how to effectively introduce yourself? So I’m gonna say.

This three-point framework, which I, I believe is in the chat. It’s also if you go to the Talk About Talk podcast, whether you’re in, uh, YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts, if you scroll down, I have rereleased the episode on how to introduce yourself. Many times it’s always a top episode for downloads.

Learning this self-introduction framework is actually a life skill beyond the, let’s go around the table, or around the room or around the screen and introduce ourselves. You can use this framework anytime. Someone says, tell me about yourself. Imagine you walk into a job interview, and the first question is, maybe you’re just meeting with a, it’s a preliminary meeting with a recruiter.

Tell me about yourself. You’re like, oh boy, like where do I start? And then just use the framework. Okay. You can also use this framework, present past, future in your LinkedIn profile, in your About section. Your about section should be written in first person. My name is Andrea. I, you don’t have to say your name, but you could say, I am an executive communication coach.

I am a, whatever your title is at organization, where I, my leadership style is so you’re present, present, present, and then you can shift to the past. Before I held this position, I worked, whatever. You don’t wanna necessarily, this is a tip by the way. I would say it’s not a mistake, but it is a missed opportunity.

When you’re talking about your past, be it in your about section or be it in your self-introduction, if even if someone asks you about your career journey, you don’t have to default to chronology. The number of times people say, when I say to them, I used to, in my podcast, I used to say, why don’t you, why don’t we start by you introducing yourself to the audience?

And then they’d be like, well, I graduated from university in 1997, and then my first role. And I’m like, oh boy, here we go. Right? Like, sorry, I didn’t ask you for your Epic bio. So instead, think about. Two or three things that are relevant, right? So my passion and my expertise is this thing, and I used it when I had this role, and I had this role, and this is what I learned, and my leadership style is blah, blah, blah.

And that leadership style was cultivated from years of doing this and this, right? So don’t necessarily default to chronology again. It’s not that it’s a mistake. Our brains, they kind of default to chronology right in your self-introduction. Instead, think about what are your unique strengths that you wanna share, and then tell the story about the past to reinforce those things.

I hope that helps. Okay. Um, do, oh, Magdalena. Your question is so timely. She says, do these principles also apply outside of corporate IE if you are a business owner? So I used to talk about coaching executives. All the time, right? Yes. I’m an executive communication coach. I’ve recently started to change to say, professionals and leaders.

You’ll probably hear those words coming outta my mouth more often. These skills apply whether you are an entrepreneur, whether you are working in healthcare like you’re a physician or a hospital administrator. These people that I coach, actually a lot of healthcare leaders, and they will say to me, I don’t consider myself an executive, but I see the stuff that you’re coaching people on, and that’s what I need to advance my career.

So it’s, yes, the answer is yes, it is absolutely relevant, and it will help you Magdalena, establish credibility with your staff, with your partners that you have. I’m sure you have partners that you’re collaborating with, and with your clients or your customers as well. So the answer is a big fat yes on that one.

Um, Cesar or Cesar, I’m not sure how you say your name. Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. John Maxwell. Love it. And to have the influence, you have to have credibility. So I’m just gonna say thank you so much for being so active in the chat and here with your questions. I’ve really enjoyed it, as you can probably tell.

And if you wanna connect with me, my email, I’m gonna give you my email. It’s andrea@talkabouttalk.com. If you aren’t already connected with me on LinkedIn, please do. I’m on LinkedIn almost every day. I actually love it. I just went on vacation. I forced myself not to look at LinkedIn for a whole week. It was really hard.

You can find me on LinkedIn again. You can find out more about what I do at TalkAboutTalk.com. And if you’re interested in the masterclass, it’s TalkAboutTalk.com/april2026. So I tried to make it as easy as possible for you. I would love to hear from you and you can connect with me in any of those ways, and I hope you have a great rest of your week.

Bye.

The post Executive Presence LIVE TRAINING: 5 Ways to Boost Your Leadership Presence” (ep. 210) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Ever led a meeting where no one seemed engaged? Don’t blame your agenda or your slides. Fix your opener!

In this Talk About Talk episode, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares three specific techniques you can use to open any meeting in a way that gets people engaged immediately and keeps their attention the whole time. No extra storytelling required.

TRANSCRIPTIONCertainly not all meetings go as planned, do they? But you’ve probably led a few of these successful meetings, the kind where people are locked in, ideas are flying around. The kind of meeting where you walk out, impressed, feeling proud, and like you actually got something done. And then you try to run the exact same meeting two weeks later, and it’s crickets.

Here’s what I figured out. After years of leading live workshops and coaching executives on communication, the difference almost always traces back to the first one to two minutes of the meeting. It’s not the agenda, it’s not the slides, it’s the opening. So today. I’m gonna share with you three specific things that you can do to start off any meeting in a way that gets people engaged immediately and then keeps them that way. Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m your executive communication coach. I coach ambitious professionals like you to communicate with confidence and credibility so that you can achieve your career goals.

Please check out our website, TalkAboutTalk.com. You’ll find more information there about the topics that we cover and the different ways that you can learn from workshops, keynotes to masterclasses, to online courses, and more. There are plenty of free resources for you there, too, so check them all out. It’s at TalkAboutTalk.com.

The First Two Minutes Set the ToneHere’s what most of the leaders that I coach tell me: they say, Andrea, I don’t know why some of my meetings just work, and others totally fall flat, and I can’t figure out how to make the good ones. Happen on purpose. Does this sound familiar? What’s interesting is that it’s almost never a content problem.

The agenda is probably more than fine. The people in the room are capable, but something about the energy at the start of the meeting sets the whole tone. If you’ve lost people in the first couple of minutes, you are fighting an uphill battle until the end. Now, if you do an online search or ask AI, how should I start my meeting?

You’ll see the same advice recycled everywhere. Tell a story. Get people emotionally invested. And here’s the thing, I’m not gonna tell you that stories don’t work because they certainly do. If you’ve ever tried to shoehorn a story into the top of a project status meeting and then watched people check their phones, then you know that a forced story can somehow be worse than no story at all.

So instead, I wanna give you three things that actually work every time, regardless of the type of meeting, the size of the room, or whether you consider yourself a natural storyteller or not.

Tell Them Where the Bus Is GoingTechnique number one. Tell everyone where the bus is going. Here’s my question for you. Would you get on a bus if you had no idea where it was headed?

Obviously not, right, but that’s exactly what many meeting leaders do. They ask people to get on the bus without telling them where it’s headed. They send a calendar invite with a vague title. They kick off with, okay, let’s get started, and then they wonder why people seem checked out. Your team is sitting there doing a mental calculation in the first 30 seconds.

Is this worth my time? I mean, I have to sit here, but is it in my best interest to pay attention and to participate? Or maybe I should pretend to listen while I check my email? Is it worth my time and attention? And here’s the thing, if you don’t answer that question for them, their brain answers it for them, usually with probably not.

The fix here is simple. Before you get into any content, spend 60 seconds telling them exactly why this meeting is worth their attention. Not just the topic, not even just the meeting objective. I’m talking about the stakes. What is at stake here? Why it matters to the people around the table. And by the way, if it doesn’t matter to them, why did you invite them?

So, what decision are you gonna make in this meeting? What problem are you solving today that we haven’t been able to solve asynchronously? What will they walk out knowing or being able to do that they couldn’t do before the meeting started? You really need to clarify this. I actually use this exact tactic every time I record a podcast episode.

Before I get into any content, I tell you the listener specifically what you’re going to get, what you’re gonna learn. So before your next meeting, write down this sentence. By the end of this meeting, you will? What? If you can’t fill in that blank, clearly your agenda needs work before your opening does.

Okay. So that’s the first technique. Tell your meeting participants where the bus is headed and why they need to get on the bus.

Encourage the Nod: Create Instant AlignmentThe second technique is what I call encouraging the nod. I want you to think about the last time you were listening to someone. It could be a speaker, maybe it was a presentation, maybe a podcast like you’re listening to right now, and you found yourself nodding along.

Like, yeah, that’s exactly right. That’s my experience, or that’s what I want. That nod is not accidental. The best communicators design for it. And you can do the same thing at the top of your meeting. Open your meeting with one or two statements that name your attendees, shared reality, something like, I know we’ve all been in meetings all week, and I wanna make sure this one earns a spot on your calendar.

This is well worth your time, or you could be more specific. I heard from a few of you that this decision we need to make has been making you feel stuck, and that is exactly what we’re gonna fix here today. Suddenly, you see people nodding their heads, and when you name people’s actual experience, especially if you name a pain point, they lean in, and they nod.

And a nodding person is an engaged person. The science backs this up. Research on rapport and engagement shows that physical agreement cues like nodding your head actually increase your sense of alignment with a speaker. It’s like our brains believe our bodies, just like our bodies believe our brains.

As the meeting leader, you might also nod to yourself and encourage the meeting participants to mirror you. You’re not manipulating anyone here. You’re just meeting them where they already are and calling it out. So here’s what I encourage you to do. Write out two sentences for your next meeting opener that describe your participants’ feeling a pain point, an experience, or something that they’re seeking.

Test it by yourself. Will this encourage nodding? If not, try again. If so, you nailed it. Okay. Now we’ve covered two techniques to maximize engagement in your meetings. One, tell them where the bus is headed. Two, encourage the nod.

Get Them Talking Early—and Keep Them EngagedNow, for technique number three, get them talking early. I would say this is one of the most powerful of all the techniques.

There is a huge opportunity for you here. Here’s the principle. The earlier someone participates in a meeting, the more engaged they will be for the entire meeting. And this isn’t just my intuition; this is backed by research on group dynamics. I like to think of it as creating momentum or encouraging momentum.

When people contribute early, they develop a sense of ownership over what’s happening in the meeting. They’ve got momentum. Staying engaged stops feeling like a chore and starts to feel like following through on something that you’ve already started. And lemme tell you something, I’ve tested this purposefully in my workshops.

Same material, similar audience. When I encourage engagement early, the workshop is always more successful in large part because people stay engaged. I encourage you to do the same thing in the meetings that you lead. Get as many people as possible talking or somehow engaging in the first five minutes.

There are a few different ways that you can do this, depending on the context who’s sitting around the table, the number of meeting participants, and so on. You could kick off your meeting with a quick round of self-introductions, or you could ask everyone to answer a question with a hand gesture, like a thumbs up, a thumbs down, or a count.

Like, tell me, is it one or two or five or 10? You get the idea. If you’re virtual, you could drop a one-question poll into the chat. I find that much easier than creating breakout groups, but often breakout groups work really well. It’s a great way to get people brainstorming and talking, whether you’re virtual or in person. You could run a short breakout where pairs have to answer a question like, what would make this meeting a success for you?

Or what’s the most important thing that we need to consider to make the decision that we’re gonna make in this meeting? You get the idea. It does not need to be elaborate. It just needs to happen before people have had too long to settle into passive observer mode. Because here’s the thing, silence in a meeting is sticky.

The momentum works both ways. Once you’ve been quiet for 10 minutes, asking them to speak up feels like a big, big ask. But if they’ve already participated and spoken, that barrier’s gone, momentum kicks in. So look at your next meeting agenda and identify the earliest possible opportunity where you can design a moment where participants actually participate.

A poll, a share, a show of hands. Put it in the first five minutes. It’s not negotiable.

Your 3-Step Playbook for More Engaging MeetingsSo let’s bring this all together. Now, the next time you are leading a meeting, before you go into the room, make sure you’ve answered these three questions.

1. Tell Them Where the Bus Is GoingNumber one, have I told them where the bus is going? Do they know what we’re deciding, solving, or leaving with?

2. Encourage the NodTwo, have I encouraged a nod? Have I named their reality in a way that makes them feel seen even before we start?

3. Get Them Talking EarlyAnd number three, have I built in early participation? Is there a way to get voices in the room in the first five minutes, maybe even in the first two minutes?

These are three things together that make up probably an extra three minutes of preparation for you, but they’re gonna make a huge difference between a meeting where people are fully engaged versus one where they’re mentally halfway out the door, check in their email, essentially checked out.

And look, none of this requires you to be a charismatic storyteller or even an extroverted entertainer. This is about being intentional and tactical. In the first few minutes of your meeting, you got this, okay? Before you go. Whatever podcast platform you’re on, please don’t forget to hit subscribe. This way, you won’t lose out on getting even more coaching on your communication skills from me.

Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post How to Lead ENGAGING MEETINGS Where People Actually Pay Attention (ep. 209) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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“Do not mistake my KINDNESS for WEAKNESS.” What does it take to go from working front cash at McDonald’s to becoming its CEO? Michèle Boudria, Board Director and Former CEO of McDonald’s Canada, spent four decades figuring it out, and in this episode, she’s sharing everything.

Michèle shares her insights, all in the name of creating “a virtuous cycle of high performance”: a relentless focus on feedback, next-level networking, curiosity, and an authentic, people-first leadership style. This one is full of honest, practical gold on building confidence, leading with impact, and getting the right people in your corner, and leading with impact.

DOWNLOAD THE LEADERSHIP PRESENCE FRAMEWORK NOW at: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/leadershippresence

Whether you’re early in your career or already in the C-suite, this one will make you think differently about the kind of leader you want to be.

CONNECT WITH MICHÈLE 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-boudria/
🌐 Website: https://www.mcdonalds.com/ca/en-ca/newsroom/executive-team/Michele-Boudria.html

MICHÈLE’S BOOK RECOMMENDATION 📖 Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth → https://amzn.to/3ZAyjCg

TRANSCRIPTIONMichèle Boudria: Say, do not mistake my kindness for weakness, and that is really what I believe was that kind of unlock when I was 25 years old, was I realized that I could be kind and strong and confident and successful.

Andrea Wojnicki: Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. I am so excited about this episode. A couple of months ago, I was speaking at a conference, and I met one of the other conference speakers who you are about to meet.

From Front Counter to CEO: Lessons in Leadership and CommunicationHer name is Michèle Boudria, and she’s the recently retired CEO of McDonald’s Canada. She started four decades ago working front cash at McDonald’s and worked her way up to CEO. She has an incredible story to share with you, and I have to say, other than hearing her speak at this conference, I really didn’t know anything about Michèle, and the way our conversation unfolded will provide you with some gold in improving your communication skills in terms of career advice, and I would say even life advice. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Here at Talk About Talk, I focus on coaching ambitious professionals like you to improve your communication skills.

So you can achieve all of your career goals. You can find more about what I do. If you go to talk about talk.com. On the website, you’ll find the archive of this podcast. You’ll find a free newsletter. You’ll find free resources. You’ll also find information about the private coaching, the masterclasses, and the corporate workshops and keynotes that I run.

About the Guest: Michèle Boudria, Former CEO of McDonald’s CanadaOkay. Let me introduce Michèle. Michèle Boudriaa’s journey with McDonald’s started when she was just 16 years old, working the counter of a restaurant in Elmer, Quebec. Four decades later, in 2025, she retired as president and CEO of McDonald’s Canada. Having led one of the country’s most iconic brands through remarkable growth and transformation, her journey included leadership roles across continents from frontline operations to the C-suite, where, as CEO, she oversaw more than 1400 restaurants, generating billions in annual sales.

She made making franchisees successful, relentless pursuit of a consistently great customer experience, and known for her operational expertise and ability to deliver results in mature markets.

Michèle championed innovative pricing approaches, expanding digital channels that reached millions of more Canadians and data-driven insights to build success in the franchise network. Today, Michèle brings her decades of experience in growth strategy, operational excellence, franchise partnerships, and organizational transformation to her corporate board and community work.

Here’s Michèle.

MB: At McDonald’s, it’s actually not that unique to have grown your entire career and started in our restaurants at the front cash or in the kitchen or drive through, or whatever it may be. We have quite a few colleagues around the world who have taken a similar path. You maybe don’t always make it to CEO, but you certainly take on some very important roles in the business.

The Three Drivers of Success: Grit, Curiosity, and a Personal Board of DirectorsWhat I attribute my success to, it kind of boils down to three things for me. One is grit. I am a firm believer in this, the power of going after something and never stopping until you achieve it. Now, I certainly wasn’t thinking I’d be CEO when I started, but every task, every responsibility that I was given, I had to make sure that I was the best at it, that I achieved it to its full potential.

So I’d say that would be one of the first things. Curiosity was probably the other one. I know that I probably drove a lot of my bosses crazy. I had millions of questions all the time if I didn’t quite know how to do something. But I thought, you know, that looked kind of interesting to be responsible for that.

I’d ask a million questions to the point where they’d say, okay, you just take over and try it and see how well you do with it. And so curiosity to me was really, really important. I’d say the last was more around how do you surround yourself with the right people who are gonna give you. The good, the bad, and the ugly from a feedback perspective.

And so I call that my personal board of directors. And I have over the years had some really, really, really close partners who, some are still really good friends today and continue to be part of my personal board of directors, but many have come and gone. But I’m really grateful that I had those types of people around me who gave it to me. Like I said, good, bad, or ugly.

AW: Oh, gosh. I have so many things I could say here. First of all, I love that you’re using the power of three. I mean, you could list one thing, or you could list 10 things, and you’re like, no, here are the three things. So grit, curiosity. People. So your personal board of directors.

I talk a lot on the Talk About Talk podcast about the power of a growth mindset, which I think is related to your second point, well actually, maybe to all of it, but mostly to your second point and curiosity. I’d love to dig into the third point ’cause I get a lot of questions about networking and how to create a high-quality network around you, especially ambitious folks like, like yourself, like most people that are listening here, this idea of a personal board of directors comes up in conversation.

Can you talk a little bit about how that unfolded and if you have any advice for people on how to do the same?

MB: Yeah, I think it, how it unfolded is I actually attended this workshop, you know, for women in leadership roles at McDonald’s, and this woman kind of introduced the concept to us, and I was really. The idea of building that, and it was literally. It’s not an interview process where I interviewed folks, but I put down the names that I thought would fit the various roles and the various type of feedback I was gonna receive or need.

And to be perfectly frank, it has evolved over time because I might have been looking for different type of feedback, or if I didn’t interact with someone for a long time because our roles are so far apart, or our worlds were so far apart. At times, I would change up and get different folks to help out. You know, I firmly believe, you know, over the years I’ve had the pleasure of receiving this really rich feedback and sometimes it doesn’t feel like a pleasurable experience.

But I have been really lucky and I’ll, I’ll never, you know, forget, I was really, really young. I was 25 years old. I was leading a team of about a hundred people and I. I had around me a lot of really strong businessmen, and the behavior and the leadership style was very much one of, you know, ruling with a bit of an iron fist.

And so that’s what I thought was going to make me successful. And so, you know, at some point in, uh, my period as a, as leading this team. I received some pretty harsh feedback, you know, and people did not enjoy working with me. Well, the funny thing was, is I wasn’t really enjoying myself either, and so, you know, I really took that to heart.

I had reflected on it quite a bit, and I decided that. You know, I was the kind of person who really cared about people. I was the kind of leader who, or wanted to be the kind of leader that was kind to people, motivated people, and got people excited about vision and strategy, and really wanting to give their best self.

And I realized that doing that with an iron fist wasn’t working for me. And so I basically woke up one morning and said, that’s it. I am going to be who I am, the leader I want to be, and the style that I want. It works. And if it doesn’t, well maybe this just isn’t for me, and somewhere else it won’t work.

And many, many, many years later, I look back, and I think, thank goodness that. That leader that I worked with at the time had the courage to gimme that really harsh feedback, and I applaud my team at that time for also being honest and speaking out. And by the way, they didn’t tell me because they were afraid of me.

They told someone, and that was also very eye-opening. And so it has worked for me and I, you know, this is who I am, you know, I’m proud of it. It’s how I’ve led teams for all these years. And, um, you know, it’s the legacy that I’ve left at McDonald’s in my retirement is I’ve taught other leaders that you can be kind, you can, but still be confident and still be demanding and still achieve really great results. You just do it in a different way.

AW: Wow. Okay. I wanna get into leadership style, but before we go there, I wanna go back and kind of close the loop on the networking. And you used the term feedback a lot. So it sounds like you were looking for mentorship and you mentioned the word roles. So as you were creating what eventually became your personal board of directors, what was your, I guess like tactical strategy?

What were you thinking like? Who do I need? Like what types of people, what role will they play?

MB: Yep. And I think your boss always plays a role, you know? And that obviously will change with whomever you’re reporting into. So that was clear. The boss was one of those folks. And I would always kind of, my strategy for each one of these roles was to say, listen, here’s what I’m really ambitious.

I wanna achieve a lot, I have got lots of potential, and I wanna be able to pursue everything that I wanna pursue. I know I can’t unless I’m given really honest feedback. So this is me asking you and giving you permission to be very, very transparent and honest and timely with me when you see something.

And so I’m not sure that I necessarily accepted it exceptionally well every single time. Yeah. But I would go home, reflect, sleep on it, come back in the morning, and think, you know what? You know, that was good feedback. I just need to accept it. I’ve asked for it, now I must deal with it. There’s some folks that will play more of an ally role, right?

So that, that could be a peer, it could be someone who’s got some similar thoughts as mine. And so in a meeting, we might strategize a little bit so that we can deliver some strong messages together. I’d have obviously, uh, supporters and those supporters. They talk about you when you’re not in the room, and there are people who believe in what you believe in and wanna do, and they don’t necessarily have a direct connection to you, but they’re influential.

And they’re in the room, and they’re making a difference for your career in these conversations. And then of course, mentors. Mentors have always been part of my, uh, board of directors. And sometimes I’ve had more than one. Sometimes I have one that’s specific to a topic because this person is an expert at this, and I really wanna draw out as much as I can from that person on this particular topic.

AW: So when I read about kind of strategic networking, and by that I don’t mean being manipulative, I mean like, like thinking like you did about carefully in a disciplined way about the roles of different people in your network that are influencing your career. I hear about mentors, and also, there’s so much research about how a champion or an advocate can positively influence your career.

The one thing that I heard you say, in addition to these two roles, is the power of allies. And I think many of us don’t. I mean, maybe we naturally might side with certain people, feel a connection with people, but I think that’s a really nice ad, right? It’s not just mentors. And it’s not just the champions, it’s also allies.

MB: Yeah. And think about what that also does in the workforce. When you start to create an environment where you’re looking for allies in your workforce, the competitiveness is still there. A lot of these folks were my peers, but it becomes so healthy.

Because you play, you’re each other’s ally, and so you want what’s best for both, for yourself and for that individual, and it really creates this really strong culture.

AW: I think that may be something that stands out about you compared to. I haven’t heard people articulate that so clearly. The other thing that I’m hearing quite clearly and consistently, Michèle, is your focus on feedback.

And I talk about this all the time. I’ve received in the last, you know, six years as I’ve been doing talk about talk podcasts and workshops. Twice, I’ve received emails from people saying, Andrea, are you open to hearing feedback? And when I get that email, so I usually do say, you know, please run a survey after, please share the results with me.

You know, I say feedback is a gift, and I really do mean that. But every now and then someone will say, are you open to feedback? And then I’m like, this is not gonna be fun. But yes. And it’s like we have this human to look for flattery and compliments, and when it is constructive criticism, it’s really, really hard.

Do you have any advice for people on how to get over that? It’s not easy.

MB: Yeah. You know, interestingly enough, I think it’s in our human instincts is to focus on what you know along with the direct feedback that’s not so maybe so, you know, pleasant and positive. You generally get some constructive feedback and for some reason all we focus on is that piece.

And so, you know, I always tell folks, listen to it, absorb it. Think about what one or two things you might do differently moving forward, and then put it on a shelf. Because you can’t constantly be thinking about that every time you’re talking, acting, moving, writing an email, because then it consumes you.

And you’ll also then don’t even recognize all the great things that people have said about you. And so I love the fact that we run a lot of assessments on people in psychoanalyze leaders and so on and so forth. But with that is some very, very rich feedback. And you can get really caught up on one element of it and lose sight of all of the great things that have also been said.

So one or two quick things you’re gonna change, put it on the shelf. Read the good stuff, move on.

AW: Okay. And the good stuff may inform something that I talk about a lot, which is your personal brand or your professional identity, right? Those are the things that you wanna reinforce, that you wanna be known for, and that ultimately become part of your leadership style.

And I think the span of your career. I covered a massive paradigm shift. I always think of the Jack Welch GE era, where it was like authoritarian leadership, and here’s how you do the command and control style to improve productivity and results and blah, blah, blah. And it was like this, I guess, assumption that people had that if you were friendly, or god forbid, maternal.

Your interactions at work that you were weak and you were not results-oriented. And there, there’s definitely been a shift where the people are now criticizing that authoritarian paradigm and focused on things like psychological safety, taking risks, and being authentic. Can you talk a little bit about your experience with, do you, first of all, do you agree that has been a paradigm shift and your observations there?

Kindness Is Not Weakness: The Evolution of Modern LeadershipMB: Yeah, it’s definitely a paradigm shift because it’s now an expectation of the workforce. If you do not shift, you’re going to struggle to build the workforce you want or the best of the best in the workforce to have them come and work for you. I live by this statement. People say it describes me to as I say, do not mistake my kindness for weakness.

AW: Oh, I love that. So good.

MB: And that is really what I believe was that kind of unlock when I was 25 years old, was I realized that I could be kind and strong and confident and successful. And so there are a couple of things I think, you know, from a leadership style, being confident but not arrogant is probably one of the most important steps.

Now, there is an expectation now of our workforce. We show up in a way that is absolutely confident. People won’t follow you if you’re not leading with confidence, but they certainly will not follow you if you lead with arrogance. It’s just not something the workforce today will accept. I also say get spend time, invest time in getting to know the people who work for you that matters more today than it ever has.

People want you want to know about their families, their schools, their hobbies, their pets, their likes, their dislikes, their career ambition. Once we establish that kind of relationship and they’ve seen how much you’ve invested in them and how much time you’ve spent just getting to know them and not necessarily talking about the business, then the world is your oyster.

You can ask for just about anything, and that’s where I believe this like virtuous cycle of high performance comes into play, where when I have seen myself create a relationship with someone. That is so deeply rooted in me getting to know them and spending that time with them. I can ask them just about anything, and the last thing they wanna do is disappoint me, and so they go above and beyond anything I would’ve ever expected.

Then I get to recognize them and reward them for incredible work. And then together we set new heights as far as what we can achieve. And then it becomes this like incredible flywheel where you’re actually getting better and better results. And then other people wanna join this because they see the success, they see the rewards, they see the appreciation.

And it creates this culture of, of high performance that I, you know, have prided myself over the last, you know, several decades of making sure that I created and I go to work. This is one of the easiest jobs ever because people just wanna do more, and they just wanna do well. You know, people always said to me, Michèle, we just never wanna disappoint you, but we know if we do, it’s not the end of the world.

We’ll fix it, and we’ll move on. And that, to me, the epitome of leadership, I think. And we achieved great things together, and I was really proud of the team. But along with that comes a lot of honesty. Some real deep-rooted conversations around feedback, and because you have such strong relationship, you set it up, and you say, listen, I want you to be successful and to be successful.

I think you’re gonna need me to be really transparent with you. When I see some an opportunity, do you give me permission to do that? And then the answer is always yes, because they know it’s gonna come from a place of kindness, but not a place of weakness.

AW: So as you’re sharing all of these things that you thought about, that you think about, it’s becoming pretty apparent how your success happened.

I wanted to double down on two of the things that you said. One was it’s confidence is a requirement. I, I say that too. I was just teaching a group about this last night, and we were talking about how. If you’re not confident, you can’t establish credibility, and people only follow people that are confident and credible, but not arrogant.

So specifically, how do you, how did you prevent yourself from slipping into that arrogant territory? And if you notice someone who was reporting to you who might be, you know, they start off as a little bit more anxious, and then they build up their confidence, and then it just keeps going into arrogant territory.

What would you tell them, or what, what were you thinking about to prevent that from happening?

MB: Yeah, I’d say sometimes you, um. It happens, and you don’t even notice it, right? So that’s why you’ve gotta have those great people on your board of directors who kind of remind you that it’s happening. But I also, I think if you surround yourself with the right people, I’m a firm believer that my job as a CEO of McDonald’s Canada was to have smarter people than me at the table surrounding me.

And when you actually firmly believe that you don’t just say it, but you actually believe it, it’s really easy to be confident because you know you’ve put the right people at the table, but it’s really hard to be arrogant because most of them are smarter than you. And so my job is never to be the most, you know, knowledgeable financier or real estate rep, or that’s why you surround yourself with the best of the best in the industries, you know, and the functions that you require to run your business.

The art of being a really strong leader is the ability to be able to do that, and people will only work for you if you are confident but not arrogant. And it’s easy not to be arrogant when you know that there are people who know more than you do around the table about their particular piece.

AW: It goes back to what you said about curiosity, and also if you’re genuinely curious. Then you’re not arrogant, right? Like arrogant. People think they know everything.

MB: One of the things that I realized I did all the time, and it’s funny, I’ve never even thought of it, but the team would say to me after, would say, it’s so helpful when you do that because it gives permission. I, you know, as a CEO, of course, I had lots of opinions, and I had lots of thoughts on how we might do things and do better, and so on and so forth.

And when I would make a statement, and I would realize that I was making a statement that could carry a lot of weight and that people might just take and run with when I was done, I’d always say, does that make sense or is anybody thinking about it differently?

AW: Wow. Yeah.

MB: And so you. Because you, you, what you need to realize very quickly is that, you know, when you take on this kind of a role, any leadership role where you have a team of people who are looking to you to set direction, vision, strategy, what you say carries a lot of weight, but you may not always have it right?

And so you have to create this environment where you might make a type a statement where you might wanna create a certain expectation, but you gotta validate that it’s right. And so, you know, what it did is it just created this environment where I could push the envelope really, really far, sometimes, often, but the team would then, you know, say, well, what, you know, we need to think about this, and we might wanna reflect on that.

And then we would probably get to the sweet spot of where that should be. But they were given permission, and there was an environment where they were expected to provide a point of view on my point of view. And that takes time, trust, and patience because it’s not automatic. Because you ask the question that they’re actually gonna say it.

AW: Yeah. Yeah. And you’re, it sounds as if you have exceptional self-awareness. Michèle, you’re conscious of the fact that. How you respond to their questions. Maybe the risky comments that the self-perceived risky comments that they’re making when they’re questioning something that you’re recommending or suggesting your response to those things has significant impact on the moment, but really also on the culture. Right?

MB: Yeah. And I didn’t always get it right, you know, the importance of, of self-awareness and transparency. Yeah. Um, but again, when I didn’t. Most of the time, I knew I didn’t. And you know, I would take a deep breath, walk around the building, come back, and say, all right, let’s chat about it. Where did I go wrong there?

And, find the person on the team who. Was in that place of trust and comfort to be able to say, yeah, maybe that wasn’t, you know, the way we shoulda handled it, or whatever it may be, but acknowledge it and correct it, and all that does is goes back to, it builds that credibility because you’re confident enough to come back and acknowledge it and get it right.

AW: And encouraging them to do the same thing.

MB: And role modeling that is so critically important.

AW: Oh, Michèle, it sounds like such an incredible, such an inspiring, uh, work environment that you cultivated. You mentioned the word transparency, and previously you were talking about, you know, asking people about their family, schools, and so on.

I’m wondering if you’ve thought at all strategically about authenticity versus transparency, and there’s this kind of adage that happened I guess, after COVID, during COVID, people were saying, I should be bringing my whole self to work, or wish we should be able to bring our whole selves to work. Are you bringing your whole self to work, and how that relates to transparency and authenticity in your thoughts on that?

MB: I believe it’s important you create an environment where people can do that. People are at their best when they can be themselves. And I reflect back on that 25-year-old who said, I’m not happy being that Iron Fist leader either. So why don’t I just be who I am? And if it’s good enough, then it’ll be successful.

And if it’s not, then maybe this isn’t for me. And I firmly believe in constantly creating this environment where people can just be who they are. I’ve seen people kind of come out of their shell and just do amazing things for the business and for their career. When they’re led by someone who they feel really comfortable with and know that they won’t be judged.

Now, that doesn’t mean I always agree with everybody’s points of view. It doesn’t mean that, you know, we didn’t have debates and disagreements and really strong discussions, but done in a respectful manner. And at the end of the day, there are times where I had to make decisions that weren’t popular. Not everybody agreed with it, but if you take the time to listen to everybody’s points of view, you demonstrate some empathy.

You sit in their seat for a minute, and you say, what might be their reaction to this? And if you’re able to look them straight in the eye and say, listen, I thought about what this might feel like for you or for, you know, a group of folks. And here, let me explain why I’m thinking that this is still the right decision for the business.

I wasn’t. I mean, we were running a business, right? And so it still needed to be successful, and to be successful, sometimes you have to make really hard decisions. But if people knew that in the end they were allowed to express themselves, their points of view, and show up in their authentic way, whether they got their way or not mattered a heck of a lot less because at least they knew.

I respected them enough to be able to hear them out, get their point of view, live in their shoes for a minute prior to making a decision. And then going forward and making the decision that was required for the business.

AW: Yeah. It sounds like you’re so skillfully walking that fine line between like personal but not personal.

I mean, business is business. The business is about working with people and back to like getting to know your family, the schools, the community that you live in, what you care about, and knowing that I respect your personal advice, the advice from you about what the, whatever the business decision is. But then ultimately we’re, the decision that Michèle is making is to whatever, achieve the business goals.

Preparing for the Next Chapter: From CEO to Board LeadershipSo, wow. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall. I wish I’d been an employee back then. So I, I wanna shift gears with all of our, uh, careers are in transition, but you’re currently undergoing experiencing a transition where you retired from this position of CEO of McDonald’s Canada, and now you are doing corporate board work.

And so I’m wondering if you have any advice for the listeners about how to narrate in an effective way. Career transitions. I have a feeling that this is something that you would be very conscious of.

MB: Yeah. Get help. There are actually professionals out there who do this really, really well, and so I have, I’ve always had a professional coach, and she is, you know, one of my.

Members of my personal board of directors for many years now, and she’s probably my most honest, um, you know, feedback provider that I have. And she’s amazing. And, obviously, you know, she works with a lot of companies and CEOs and boards, and so obviously she has real-life examples, example and lots of advice to offer.

So she’s, you know, really important. But I’ve also worked with someone else who’s just helped me think differently about my resume, my bio, how I show up on LinkedIn, all of those things. There are professionals out there who can help you transition because when you’re in a role of CEO or any leadership role, you’re busy.

You don’t necessarily have a whole lot of time to think about what does this next chapter looks like. You get in that next chapter, and that’s when you can dedicate some time for that. And as a CEO, I wasn’t on a whole lot of boards, um, because I was so focused on our business. So I had a couple of boards that I sat on, but to be perfectly honest with you.

Now is a whole other world and something that I want to jump into. And they have been extremely helpful. And just last week I was talking to a young man who wanted some advice on how does he prepare for this? He’s new in business, but he wanted, and you know, and I said, listen, there are classes, there are courses you know that you should be looking into, meet with people who have successfully joined.

Boards, like the ones that you’re interested in in the future, and set yourself up. And some of it, you talked about networking earlier, a lot of it is around networking as well. And you know, in some ways I wish I’d invested a little bit more in networking and in other ways I’m just being smart about how do I leverage the network that I have today to continue to build on it.

And you know, good things will come, I have no doubt. But yeah, it takes a lot of preparation, and again, I just surrounded myself with people who knew how to do it really well. And took the time to listen to their advice.

AW: I have to say, Michèle, these board positions that you’re gonna land or that you have landed are exceptionally fortunate.

I can imagine you sitting around the boardroom table asking the really important questions and even kind of helping. Optimize the culture, I guess, of the board and of the organization. So I can’t wait to see what you do next.

Rapid-Fire QuestionsBut now’s the time for me to ask you the three rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

MB: I am

AW: Question number one. Actually, I don’t know the answer to this one. I’ve now met you virtually and in person, but I, I’m not sure, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

MB: So it’s changed I think over the years, and so I think professionally I’m more extroverted. But not necessarily by choice. Um, my role had, you know, me kind of in the spotlight all the time, and so one that I just embraced and worked on, but what it did is it led me to become very introverted in my personal life.

Um, needed a lot of time to. Quiet time, time to recharge. And so the folks around me professionally would never say I’m introverted, but the people in my life personally would tell you absolutely. There’s definitely some introversion there for sure.

AW: I appreciate how you are distinguishing between where I get my energy clearly is solitude, recharging through solitude, right?

But that doesn’t mean on the other hand, that you don’t have an energetic presence. Okay. Question number two, what are your communication pet peeves?

MB: I think people giving me the answer they think I want to get rather than what they’re really, really saying or thinking. And to me, if I’m asking you, it’s because I really wanna know what your thoughts are, but I also recognize that it takes time.

You have to be patient. Create that environment where people feel that way. But if I’m asking, it’s wanna. I can kind of see through that when I’m talking with people, and I sometimes will just say, stop. I know you’re thinking differently. I don’t wanna hear what you think I wanna hear. I wanna hear what you really think.

AW: So good. So good. Okay, last question. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending lately to people in your network?

MB: I mean, talk, talk, podcast, of course.

AW: Other than Talk About Talk. Okay.

MB: Yeah. You know what, I started with this. If you’ve ever never read the book Grit, uh, from Angela Duckworth, I would recommend it.

I love the idea that grit is twice the indicator of success and intelligence. And you know, this idea also kind of goes. Well, with, um, you know, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to bring the smartest people around you to be successful. And this concept of, you know, grittiness and really working, you know, until you try and try and try again until you, you’re successful, to me is, has really been an unlock and realizing that.

It was okay not to be that smartest person in the room. It just needed to be really gritty, and that I think, has attributed a lot to my success. I had the opportunity to meet Angela Duckworth and listen to her speak about her work and ever since then, I’ve been fascinated by this book, and I go back to it.

Sometimes I’ll go back, and I’ll read a chapter because I don’t quite remember exactly everything in the chapter, but I know there’s a nugget in there that I think I can use. And I think everybody that I meet ends up buying the book because I’m like the, probably her number one cheerleader for this book.I just love the book itself, but the idea behind it.

AW: So I have to say, Michèle, that you come across as someone who truly exemplifies. The grittiness and the growth mindset that she advocates is very evident and it’s very impressive and inspiring. I wanna say thank you for joining us and is there anything else you wanna share with the talk about, talk listeners about optimizing their communication, their leadership style as they navigate their own careers?

MB: I think the last thing I would just say is this world is rapidly changing, the workforce is rapidly changing and assessing and adapting your leadership style is going to be more important than ever. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It doesn’t mean that it’s, you know, you’ve done something wrong. It’s simply taking the time to assess it, and you’re likely not gonna need an overhaul. You’re probably just going to need some tweaks.

But the smart and incredibly successful leaders out there do that regularly. They surround themselves with people who give them the honest feedback in that allows them to identify where those opportunities are. So if you are not doing that exercise of reflecting on how do I need to adapt, I would suggest that that’s something you really incorporate into your annual thinking and planning and, and strategizing.

Uh, every year, at the very least, give us some thought, see if there’s anything but the speed at which things are happening in our world. You’re gonna have to be a very different leader than the folks who have led in the last 40 years, myself included.

AW: Wonderful advice. Michèle. Thank you so much for so generously sharing your suggestions and your experience with us.Thank you.

MB: Pleasure. Thank you.

AW: Isn’t Michèle fantastic? I enjoyed that conversation even more than I anticipated. And like I said at the beginning, I didn’t really know Michèle, and I didn’t know where the conversation was gonna go, but I know she provided us with so much gold.

Key Takeaways from My Conversation with MichèleSo here are three things before we go that I wanna reinforce in terms of my learnings and things that I hope you’ll remember from this episode.

They are feedback, the power of your network, and some networking suggestions. And the third thing is about your leadership style.

1. Seek Feedback—and Act on ItSo in terms of feedback, this I would say really was the main theme, at least for me from this conversation. Michèle provided us with a fantastic example of how proactively seeking feedback and then being self-reflective on that feedback can really catalyze and advance your career.

I don’t think I could put that anymore clearly. And Michèle’s example, as I say, is the epitome of this. So instead of avoiding feedback, seek it out proactively and act on it. That’s number one.

2. Build a Strategic Network (Your Personal Board of Directors)Number two is about strategic networking. Michèle spoke at the beginning about creating a personal board of directors around her, and I’ve talked about this in past episodes and with other guests about the research and the power of having mentors.

Also, sponsors, champions, or advocates. Michèle encourages us to also add a third role to our network, and that’s allies. And I know many of us do this sort of serendipitously, maybe less strategically. We make friends with people at work, but she advocates that we not only have these champions or advocates and these mentors, but also peers and allies.

We can count on in our network to help us grow and improve. Back to the feedback theme, right?

3. Lead with Kindness and ConfidenceThe third thing that I wanna reinforce with you is about leadership style. So a couple things here. Michèle described explicitly how there’s been this paradigm shift from the authoritarian dictator type leader to a more authentic and open style of leadership.

She also talked about being true to your own style. She mentioned a couple of times that once she realized what her true leadership style was, she decided to embody it. Whether the organization respected that or not, and fortunately, it did. I would say, fortunately for her and fortunately for McDonald’s Canada, I loved her line.

Do not mistake my kindness for weakness. Yes, you can lead a high-performing organization. You can be productive. You can meet all of your business goals. You can be strong, but also be kind. Make no mistake, I love this leadership style, and I’m optimistic that the world is evolving to a place where this kind of leader is highly valued.

That’s it for this episode of the Talk About Talk podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I would love to hear your comments. I’d also love it if you subscribe, whatever platform you’re on, whether it’s Spotify, Apple or YouTube. Wherever you’re listening, just hit subscribe and you won’t miss any episodes.

Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post What 40 Years at McDonald’s Taught One CEO About COMMUNICATION and LEADERSHIP – with Michèle Boudria (ep. 208) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

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“You need to demonstrate executive presence.” What exactly does that actually mean? And why does it feel like code for “be someone you’re not”?

In this Talk About Talk episode, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares why the term “executive presence” isn’t ideal, and how “leadership presence” should replace it. She also shares a “Leadership Presence Hierarchy” framework that highlights what specific skills you need to work on.

DOWNLOAD THE FRAMEWORK NOW at: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/leadershippresence

Check out the four-tier” Leadership Presence Hierarchy” that takes you from foundational communication skills all the way to having real impact.

This isn’t about conforming to some 1980s CEO stereotype. It’s about showing up authentically while commanding respect, building credibility, and getting heard.

TRANSCRIPTIONThe folks that are getting promoted to the C-Suite have executive presence, but the ones who stall out do not. Since I coach senior executives and aspiring senior executives, I get asked about this topic of executive presence all the time. In fact, I’d say that over the last year I’ve noticed a real uptick in clients seeking guidance on how to establish the all elusive executive presence.

Sometimes they’re being proactive, but sometimes this high potential leader is sent to me by their HR manager, and they’ll tell me something like, this person has all the check marks for the C-suite, but they really need to demonstrate executive presence.

And by the way, I always tell the person, this is very good news. Your employer thinks you have what it takes. They’re investing in you. Anyway, as I said, I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in requests for coaching on executive presence, but I have to tell you something else. I’ve also noticed increased pushback associated with this term.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk

In this episode, I’m gonna share with you some important background on executive presence, why it’s so important, why I suggest we relabel it to something else, and a list of specific skills that you need to acquire. You can think of this as a checklist, your executive presence, or leadership presence playbook. Are you ready?

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I’m here to help you improve your communication skills so that you can achieve your career goals. In addition to this biweekly talk about talk podcast, you can learn more from me through the workshops, keynotes, and master classes that I run plus, private coaching and a growing library of on-demand online courses.

You can learn more about everything we offer at Talk About Talk by checking out the website at TalkAboutTalk.com. You can even set up a consult with me there. Check it out. TalkAboutTalk.com.

Executive Presence: Why It Matters—and Why It’s ControversialOkay, let’s talk Executive presence. Executive presence is one of those things that might be tough to define, but you know it when you see it.

Am I right? The professionals that I coach tell me that it’s all about confidence, feeling, and, more importantly, being perceived as confident, but of course not. Arrogant and executive presence is necessary to achieving leadership status. This is what I hear from the HR managers, right?

The folks that are getting promoted to the C-Suite have executive presence, but the ones who stall out do not.

That is why people are seeking coaching in this area. Well, here’s the good news. Executive presence can be learned. I’ve worked with senior folks with exactly this quandary. They have all the technical skills and people like them. They’re likable. People are rooting for them, but they’re missing this magical executive presence.

I remember coaching a senior partner at a consulting firm. Who had this exact experience, and after I worked with him for about two months, he started to feel more confident, but also, at least as importantly, he started getting comments from others about his improved confidence and his presence. So what exactly is this executive presence?

One of the most common definitions that you’ll hear is from an author named Sylvia Ann Hewlett. She says executive presence is a set of qualities that enable leaders to inspire confidence in others. In her research, Sylvia highlights. Three, of course, three ingredients that comprise executive presence.

One, communication skills as in public speaking, body language, and so on. Two, gravitas as in confidence, integrity, unflappability, and three, appearance. In other words, how you show up. When I read this list of three ingredients, I thought. Oh good. This is all about communication. Of course, there’s communication skills, she says, but also gravitas and appearance.

And to me, all of these things are communication. And the good news again is that communication can be learned. So we can think of executive presence in terms of Hewlett’s definition. Executive presence is a set of qualities that enable leaders to inspire confidence in others. And you can also think of it specifically in terms of these three ingredients.

She highlights these ingredients as communication skills, gravitas, and appearance. Now, before I go on, I also wanna clarify what executive presence is not. First of all, executive presence is not a title. In other words, you don’t need to be in the C-suite to have executive presence, and actually, not everyone in the C-Suite has executive presence.

Of course, if you do have it, you’re more likely to ascend the corporate ladder. Executive presence does not equal title or status. Executive presence is also different from expertise. I mean expertise as in technical skills. Of course, expertise is also something that we need to succeed in our careers, but executive presence is very different from expertise.

What I often observe is that people who come to me for coaching, they often have technical expertise and they’re looking to brush up on their executive presence. So executive presence is not the same as status. It’s not the same as expertise. It’s also different from charisma. Charisma is more about energy and emotional impact.

Charisma can help boost your executive presence, but I would say executive presence is broader. Charisma is about attracting and energizing people. It’s often associated with extrovertedness. On the other hand, executive presence is about substance plus delivery, and you definitely do not need to be an expert to have executive presence.

That said, I’ve noticed that many people conflate executive presence with extroversion. This is just wrong, and this isn’t the only issue that I’ve been hearing and reading about executive presence. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the term executive presence turns many people off altogether.

I have a masterclass that I run a few times a year, focused on. You guessed it. Developing executive presence and your personal brand, and more than a few times, I’ve had to carefully define with people exactly what I mean and what I don’t mean when I say executive presence. Generally, it seems that some people are legitimately turned off when they’re told that they need to develop executive presence because it often feels like vague-coded feedback that’s used to block their promotion.

And this happens especially to women and racialized people more than once. I’ve heard people say that when they hear the term executive presence, an image of General Electrics or GEs former CEO, Jack Welch comes to mind, along with what they see as his direct, non-inclusive, formal, authoritarian leadership style nowadays.

Our celebrated leaders are authentic. Yes, I said it. The A word and inclusive, I guess that’s the I word. Importantly, today’s celebrated leaders are listening to learn, not narrow-minded and authoritarian.

From Executive Presence to Leadership PresenceFor all of these reasons, I suggest that we change the term from executive presence to leadership presence.

Executive presence is just too loaded. Leadership presence is something that many of us aspire to. This term, leadership presence might just be more ethical and better for business outcomes. It can also be used in context outside of the executive boardroom, like with the other professionals. I coach leaders in medicine, leaders in law, and so on.

They don’t call themselves executives, but they do aspire to leadership. So what do you think? Let’s call it leadership presence.

The Leadership Presence Hierarchy: From Skills to ImpactNow, what I’d love to share with you is my model for developing leadership presence. This model is based on my reading of books and articles on yes, executive presence, plus my observations from coaching hundreds of professionals, thousands.

If you include the corporate workshops that I run, it’s a framework that I illustrate as a hierarchy. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see this hierarchy on the screen. If you’re listening, you can easily download the framework. If you go to talk about talk.com/leadership presence, that’s talk about talk.com/leadership presence.

Yes, I made it easy for you, of course. So whether you’re looking at the framework right now or not, I can describe it to you.

Level 1: Foundational Communication SkillsAt the bottom of the hierarchy, we have foundational communication skills, things like body language, storytelling, listening, communicating with precision, vocal presence. I call these foundational communication skills, not because they’re easy.

In fact, folks with true leadership presence often go back and revisit these foundational communication skills to elevate their leadership presence, but I call them foundational because they’re at the bottom. And here’s what my clients tell me. When we’ve been doing some work to elevate or improve their foundational communication skills, they start to feel confident and they’re often told that they appear more confident by others.

Level 2: Building Confidence (Internal and External)So this makes up the next level of the hierarchy of confidence. Again, this is both confidence in terms of how you feel and how you’re perceived. The interesting thing about this level is that there’s a couple different ways of elevating your confidence.

As I said, you can do so by improving your communication skills. You can also directly improve your confidence by doing things like learning about imposter syndrome and how to overcome it. You can also learn mindsets and tactics that are specifically focused on elevating your confidence. Things like slow deep breathing.

Things like expansive body language and things like positive self-talk. These are all tactics that can directly boost your confidence. So here, we’re ready for the next step. We’ve started with our foundational communication skills. We’ve experienced improved confidence.

Level 3: Establishing CredibilityOnce we are feeling more confident and we’re being perceived as more confident, this is when we start to establish credibility.

Again, there are things that we can do to directly boost our credibility. I’ve got three ideas. One, focus on developing your personal brand. Two, focus on demonstrating leadership, and three, focus on your influence. So let me go into a little bit of detail about each of these.

Credibility Driver #1: Define and Reinforce Your Unique Personal BrandFirst focusing on establishing your unique personal brand.

Notice the term unique. As I said at the beginning, one of the criticisms of this executive presence notion is that some people believe it means conforming to a stereotype of what a leader should look like. Personal branding. Is the opposite of this. The way I coach personal branding. It’s about identifying, articulating, and reinforcing your unique brand, your unique strengths and passions.

So this is the opposite of conforming. It’s about standing out as your true, unique, and best self. So that’s one way that you can really help establish your credibility.

Credibility Driver #2: Demonstrate Leadership (Proactive, Strategic, Thought)The second is by demonstrating leadership. When I coach people on demonstrating leadership, I often share with them that the obvious way to demonstrate leadership is to be a good people leader, right?

That’s where our mind goes to when we hear the word leader. But don’t forget, there are many, many ways to demonstrate leadership. Consider, for example, just being proactive, being the person who comes up with innovative and creative ideas. If you think about it, leaders lead; they are out front.

Proactive. So be proactive, and people will see you as a leader. There’s also strategic leadership. The leaders that we admire are strategic thinkers, right? They’re identifying and then reinforcing strategy. They think strategically. So there’s people leadership, there’s proactive leadership, there’s strategic leadership, and there’s also thought leadership.

What area do you have expertise in where you wanna share your thought leadership? Privately inside your organization and even publicly on social media and beyond. So thought leadership. And then the last thing that I share with my clients who I’m working with on demonstrating leadership is simply using the word lead.

Use the word lead led leadership leader, especially when you’re referencing yourself, and people will start to think of you as a leader as well. Okay, so we’re still at this, almost at the top of our leadership presence hierarchy. We’re at the credibility stage, and we’ve talked about developing your personal brand.

We’ve talked about demonstrating leadership.

Credibility Driver #3: Strengthen Your InfluenceThe third way that you can reinforce your credibility is by focusing on influence. This is about negotiating and making an impact. This is about being heard. If you think about it. This is all about effective communication skills and confidence, too. Do you see how all the layers reinforce themselves?

So now you see how this leadership presence hierarchy works. Again, we start with the foundational communication skills, and as we improve our communication skills, we start to feel and be perceived as more confident. There are things we can do to further. Improve our confidence, and that’s when we start to establish credibility again.

There are ways that we can reinforce our credibility, personal brand, demonstrating leadership, and working on our influence.

The Apex: Creating Real ImpactOnce we’ve done all of these things, we reach the apex or the top of the leadership presence hierarchy, which I label as impact. What that impact is is personal. For you, it could be getting a new job, it could be getting a promotion.

It might simply be being heard in meetings when you’re at work, you can achieve impact when you have leadership presence.

And that’s it for this episode. I hope you’re feeling a little bit more informed and inspired to develop leadership presence. Now I have an ask, two asks, actually. First, please hit subscribe.

Wherever you’re listening, whether it’s Spotify, Apple, or YouTube, wherever you are, please hit subscribe, and then you won’t miss any of the communication skills, coaching tips that you get from me and Talk About Talk every two weeks. My second ask is that you share this episode with a friend. Do you have a friend who might benefit from these insights on executive presence and leadership presence?

Spread the word. Thank you. So much, and thank you for listening. Talk soon.

The post Rethinking Executive Presence: How to Show Up with Real LEADERSHIP PRESENCE (ep. 207) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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You know the person: they derail meetings, push back on everything, and somehow make simple projects complicated. So how do you actually handle it without losing your mind?

In this Talk About Talk episode, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki walks you through exactly what to do when you’re dealing with difficult people at work, whether that’s a customer, a direct report, a peer, or even your boss.

If you’re wondering when and how to escalate the situation, Andrea’s five-step escalation sequence provides you with a step-by-step playbook. You’ll also learn the two-word principle that keeps you from getting pulled into drama with difficult people.

This is Part 2 of a two-part series. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, start there to get the foundational framework. Then come back here for the specific tactics.

TRANSCRIPTIONHow to Respond When Difficult Behavior ContinuesFocus on the issue, not on the person. Refuse to get pulled into the, you always do this, you’ve done this, you shouldn’t do that. You can’t do this. It’s not about you and me. It’s actually about the issue or the challenge.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. This is part two of a two part mini series on how to deal with difficult people.

So here’s the question. Have you noticed someone at work who’s being chronically difficult, confrontational, or nasty? Either to you or maybe to everyone. Have you tried to diagnose what’s going on based on the Dr. David rock scarf framework and still nothing has changed? Well, I hope what you’re about to learn in this episode will have a positive impact.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. We’re going to. Strategies for how you can respond to these difficult people depending on who they are. And I’m also gonna share a sequence of steps that you can follow, steps that you should follow if things aren’t changing or perhaps if they’re getting worse.

Let me start with strategies for how to respond to different people. How you respond, what you do can and should vary depending on who it is that’s being difficult.

How to Respond Based on Who’s Being DifficultSo I’m gonna run through this list of five different types of people or categories of people and what you should and shouldn’t do depending on who they are.

That’s being difficult. You’ll see what I mean in a minute. So the first one. Is no one. So it’s not that the person is being difficult, it’s actually that you are in a difficult or a challenging situation. In this case, I say, great, the opportunity here is for you to pull the team together and go for a win.

Corral the group and focus on what you can do to overcome this difficult situation. Okay, that was a little bit of a cheater. Now let’s get into the actual people. So imagine you have this scenario where it’s either a one-off situation or a customer or a client who is chronically difficult. The first thing I suggest you do is pause.

Don’t get caught up. Getting emotional and responding in a reactionary way to how this difficult client or customer is acting. The second thing that I do, and this one is magic, focus on the issue, not on the person. Refuse to get. Pulled into the, you always do this. You’ve done this. You shouldn’t do that.

You can’t do this. It’s not about you and me. It’s actually about the issue or the challenge, and it’s the issue or the challenge that they are probably experiencing. So you could say, Hmm, I understand how this would be very frustrating, or, let’s work on this together. I think we can solve this. You’re focusing on.

The issue or the challenge, not the person, it’s the situation, not the person. And then the third thing, I alluded to this a little bit here in the example that I gave. Use the pronoun, we make the default that you are working with this client or this customer in solving the challenge. Okay? So again, if it’s a client or a customer, pause.

Don’t react before thinking and remind yourself, focus on the issue or the situation, not on the person, and use the term we be inclusive and encourage you to work together to solve the problem. So that’s the first one. The next one is if it’s a peer. In the previous episode, I shared a scenario where a newly promoted partner named Leanne was being challenged on a daily basis by her peer named Mike, who is also a partner at the same consulting firm where she worked.

Here’s what you do with a peer. You have the opportunity to get personal. I don’t mean necessarily that you’re sharing your private thoughts and your personal life with the person, but I just mean get them into a one-on-one situation and share how you’re feeling. I actually shared this advice with Leanne when I was coaching her.

I suggested that she invite Mike. To go out for lunch or for coffee and then talk to him. Say like, I noticed our relationship has really changed since we started working together as partners, and we used to confide in each other and help each other and celebrate each other. And I’d really love to go back to that because I think we can make each other look really good.

We could be a team. You don’t need to necessarily need to go that far, but getting personal is a suggestion that works really well if the difficult person is your peer, someone who’s at your level. Moving on. What if they’re not at your level, but they’re actually below your level? It might be someone that you are managing that’s reporting to you, or it could be someone in a different department, but they are at a lower level in the organization, in the hierarchy.

From where you are in this case, this is your opportunity. If they’re being chronically difficult to highlight the values, the expectations, and even the resources that the organization provides. People are being difficult. So I’m imagining someone here who you know is disrupting meetings, is disrupting progress and productivity in the projects that you’re working on.

And so you pull them aside and you say, listen, it seems like things aren’t as productive and positive. As I was hoping they would be. And I wanna share with you that this is not consistent with the values of the organization in this organization. We pride ourselves on being collaborative and on and on and on.

So you talk, highlight the firm’s values, the expectations of the organization, and even potentially, as I said, resources that you can share. It could be learning opportunities or other things, coaching to, uh, help the person. Whatever the challenges that they’re experiencing. Okay, so that’s if it’s a subordinate.

The next one gets really interesting, and I have two suggestions. If it’s your boss, things can get pretty tricky. So I have two suggestions. The first is a quick one. The second one requires a little bit of an explanation. So the first one, the quick one is if you are reporting to someone who is chronically difficult, you can ask yourself.

What can I learn from the situation? What can I learn about what I do not want to do if and when I get promoted to this level? I remember coaching a very impressive woman who was working in not-for-profit, and she was reporting to the executive director who was basically responsible for the not-for-profit and who reported into the board of directors, and she said, this woman was an absolute.

Tyrant, of course not with the board, but with her direct reports, including my client. And so I said, if nothing else, you can learn from this situation. What not to do when you someday become an executive director of a not-for-profit and you’ll know exactly what not to do. And in fact, fast forward a couple years, she now is an executive director of a different not-for-profit.

And she said, I have a playbook of what not to do, how not to treat my staff. So that’s one way of kind of it. It’s not overcoming the situation, but it’s reconciling it in your mind, how you can maintain a sense of productivity and maybe even job satisfaction. You’re learning what not to do. The second one here, I’m gonna say this is a little bit personal because this is advice that I received from my father when I had the experience of reporting to a boss who was being very difficult and chronically so.

So I have this distinct memory of. Presenting something to, it was my boss’s boss at the time, at a meeting where he had challenged me and the team that I was leading to meet certain challenges. And if we did, we were gonna be given permission to launch a new product. My team had gone away under my direction, established what the criteria that we were gonna achieve.

And we had worked together really hard to achieve this criteria, these benchmarks. And I went back with great pride in anticipation and presented our results and our recommendations for the new product launch to my boss’s boss. And he was like, eh, I don’t know, Andrea, I mean, whatever. And I was like, what?

I remember I was so upset. I eventually did convince him that we should launch the product that we had worked so hard on. But I remember being so upset and I actually went. I left the building. I went down to my car and I called my dad and I was commiserating. I said, dad, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how much longer I can handle this.

I’m asking my team to jump through hoops, and they’re doing so and they’re exceeding my expectations. And then when I go to this guy, he’s constantly changing his mind. He’s a horrible boss. And my dad asked me this question that I’m now sharing with you. He said, does your boss’s boss do his values reflect.

The values of the organization, or is he an anomaly? And I said, why do you ask? He said, very simple, Andrea, if his values reflect the values of the organization and you are misaligned, you need to get outta there. However, if he’s the anomaly, if your boss’s boss is the one whose values contradict, not only yours, but also the values of the organization, things typically have a way of working out.

I was like, Hmm, that kind of makes sense. I would say in this case, it’s the latter. My boss’s boss is an anomaly. I know a lot of people get frustrated with him and his values are not aligned with those of the organization, and he said, well, my suggestion is not forever, Andrea. That would be ridiculous, but.

You could probably wait this out and things have a way of working out. And you know what? My dad was right within a couple months. This guy, he was a vice president at the time. He got moved into a different department and then he got let go and I thanked my father and I have shared that advice with plenty of people who say, this is very sage advice.

So if it’s your boss. First of all, ask yourself, what can I learn about how not to manage people from this person? And secondly, ask yourself whether their values and their behavior are aligned with the values of the organization. If they are not, you can wait it out. If they are, you probably need to make a move.

So we’ve covered now a couple of different scenarios, maybe. No one is being difficult, and it’s the situation that’s your opportunity to pull your team together. Perhaps it’s your client or your customer who’s being difficult, in which case I shared three suggestions. Pause, focus on the issue and use the term we, if it’s your peer, get personal.

If it’s your subordinate. Highlight the values, expectations, and resources of the organization. If it’s your boss, as I just said, ask yourself, what can I learn about what not to do? And ask yourself whether their values are aligned with the organization. There’s one other person that it might be that’s being difficult.

If it’s everyone, if everyone around you, all of your clients. Your peers, your subordinates, your boss, your family, your friends. If everyone is around you is being difficult, then I have to say it’s probably you. I’m just kidding. That never happens. So that’s my summary of the differential advice that I have for you for dealing with difficult people depending on who it is.

A Step-by-Step Sequence for When Things Don’t ImproveNow, this is critically important. What’s the sequence to follow when things. Aren’t getting better or maybe they’re even getting worse. Well, I have a list. This is a sequence, a step-by-step sequence of things that you should do. I distinctly remember sharing this with a senior leader whom I coached last year.

She was on the senior leadership team at her corporate law firm, and she hired me to help her communicate with more credibility and authority. She also specifically asked me how to respond to one of her peers. Another corporate lawyer who constantly interrupted her in their leadership team meetings. I shared the sequence with her then that I’m gonna take you through right now.

Are you ready? So the first thing is to casually reference whatever it is, secondly, publicly and directly reference it. Three, check in with others and get an ally. Four, ask the person directly and emphatically. And the fifth and last step. Is to escalate to HR or senior leadership. A lot of folks, including this woman, this corporate lawyer that I was coaching, they find themselves in these scenarios where they’ve, they really don’t have a strategy or a sequence to follow.

And having this sequence will make you feel like you’re in a little bit more control, and it’ll make sure that you are not wasting any opportunities to try to correct the situation. The idea here is that hopefully after step one or after step two or after step three, the sooner the better. The behavior is gonna change with a difficult person, so.

After you’ve started to notice what’s going on, and maybe you’ve even jotted down, I remembered it started on such and such date, you could put it in a journal or in an email to yourself or something. The first thing you should do is casually reference it. So I told this woman, this corporate lawyer, and I’m telling you, you could almost make a joke out of it.

You’re in a meeting, the guy interrupts you. You say, Hey, you keep interrupting me. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Right. You’re casually referencing it sometimes. Calling it out. Labeling the behavior will encourage the person to stop. Often not, but sometimes step two is much more direct. This is where you publicly and directly referenced the behavior.

So in the case of this corporate lawyer and this peer of hers that kept interrupting her, she said to him when he interrupted her twice in a meeting, she said, that is the second time. In the last 10 minutes that you’ve interrupted me, I’m gonna finish my sentence and then I’d love to hear what you have to say.

She said, I’m gonna finish my point here and then I’m gonna pass it over to you. And then she didn’t even pause. She just kept talking and turned it over to him. So this is step two, publicly and directly referencing the behavior. This is a little bit more emphatic than the casual reference, right? If that doesn’t work, you move on to step three.

This is when you check in with others. And potentially get an ally. So this woman with this gentleman who was interrupting her constantly, she went to one of the other senior partners and she said, listen. I’m not gossiping behind someone’s back. I just wanna make sure that what I’m witnessing here, what I’m experiencing is real.

I’ve noticed that whatever the guy’s name is, Sam is constantly interrupting me. I’m worried that it’s affecting my credibility and I’m feeling like my voice isn’t being heard. Is it just me? And the guy was like. It is not just you. It is absolutely not just you. I can’t believe that you’ve put up with it for as long as you can.

And that’s when she went in for the ally. She said, listen, the next time we’re in a meeting and I asked him to not interrupt me. If he keeps doing it, do you mind stepping in? And he goes, absolutely. In fact, you don’t need to say anything. I’ll say it. And so the next meeting that they went to, guess what happened?

The guy interrupted her and her friend Sam stepped in and said, listen. You’ve been interrupting her over, not just this meeting, but many meetings, and we all need to respect each other and to listen to what the points that we’re making. Please let her speak. Guess what? The interruption stopped. So that’s step three.

Check in with others. Make sure you’re clear by the way, when you’re checking in, this is not about gossiping. This is about confirming whether what you’re experiencing. Actually is what other people are witnessing and the opportunity potentially to get an ally on your side. If that doesn’t work, step four.

Is directly and emphatically asking the person to stop. So I shared with this client, this corporate lawyer, if he doesn’t stop, after you get an ally to step in for you, that’s when you book a meeting with him. Ask him to come into your office, close the door, look him in the eye and say, I’ve been tracking this for the last three months.

You’ve been interrupting me. It is affecting my credibility. It’s affecting our productivity as a leadership team, and I’m asking you to stop. That step is also necessary because if it doesn’t work after that, you go to step six, which is escalating to human resources or senior leadership. And here’s where it’s really important that you have followed the previous four steps, because if you go to hr, the first thing they’re gonna say is, have you asked them to stop?

Then they’re gonna say, have other people noticed this? Have you directly and emphatically asked this person to stop whatever the behavior is? Right? And you’re gonna say, I first noticed on this day, I casually referenced it on this day. I publicly and directly referenced it on this day. I checked in with so-and-so.

He or she confirmed that I’m not crazy. This is actually what’s going on. They became an ally. They also asked the person to stop, and then I booked a meeting with the person and directly and emphatically asked them, so you’re going in. In good faith, telling them that you tried to solve the problem, you solve yourself.

You did everything in your power and it didn’t work. This will help you maintain credibility with HR or senior leadership before you escalate it, and then you can turn things over to them knowing that you’ve done everything that you could.

Wrap-Up & Key TakeawaysOkay, so now in this episode. We’ve covered strategies for how to respond to different people who are being chronically difficult, depending on whether they’re your customer or your client, or your peer, or your subordinate or your boss.

Different strategies work for different people, and now you also know the sequence to follow. When things don’t get better, one casually reference it two publicly and directly reference it. Three. Check in with others and get an ally. Four. Ask them directly and emphatically, and then five, you can escalate it.

I hope that this episode in combination with the previous episode 2 0 4, where we talked about the mindset you need to adopt and the scarf framework for diagnosing what’s going on. I hope this helps you feel better equipped on how to deal with difficult people. Please. Let me know how it goes. I know it’s not pleasant, but these skills will help you immensely.

And don’t forget to subscribe to this talk about Talk podcast no matter what podcast platform you’re on. Click subscribe now so you don’t miss any of these opportunities for communication skills coaching. Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post Dealing with Difficult People at Work – Part 2 (ep.206) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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If you’re dealing with a difficult person at work, this episode will help you handle it.

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares a simple mindset shift that will help you feel empowered, plus a 5 word mantra that changes everything.

Andrea shares a real client story about a newly promoted partner who was being undermined by a colleague, and how this simple mindset shift completely transformed her experience.

You’ll also learn the S.C.A.R.F. Framework, a powerful diagnostic tool created by Dr. David Rock. This framework helps you understand exactly why someone is being difficult (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness) so you can respond strategically instead of reacting emotionally.

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In Part 2, you’ll learn specific do’s and don’ts for dealing with difficult customers, direct reports, peers, and even your boss, plus a step-by-step sequence for when things escalate.

If you’re ready to stop dreading these interactions and start handling them with confidence, this episode is for you.

TRANSCRIPTIONWhy Dealing with Difficult People Is Part of LeadershipPart of your job is dealing with these difficult people. It might not literally be in your job description, but ask yourself this: as a senior leader, who else is gonna deal with these difficult people? Unfortunately, dealing with difficult people at work is a common challenge. In fact, I have to tell you this, I’ve noticed that requests for coaching and workshops on this topic are becoming more frequent.

Let me tell you why I encourage you to listen to this episode. Personally, I am a pretty positive person. I’m definitely an optimist, and I’d prefer to only cover positive topics if I could here at Talk About Talk. But the demand for strategies for dealing with difficult people is real. Here’s the good news.

You are going to learn some. Actionable frameworks and strategies for dealing with these difficult people that really work. You will feel empowered. Are you ready? Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk.

About the Host: Dr. Andrea WojnickiWelcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk, where I coach driven professionals like you so that you can communicate with confidence and ultimately achieve your career goals.

You can learn more about everything we do here at Talk about Talk, including private one-on-one coaching and online courses. Corporate workshops and more. If you go to talk about talk.com, we just relaunched the website, and there are plenty of free resources there for you as well, including my free communication coaching newsletter.

Okay, let’s get into this.

In this episode, you are going to learn a deceptively simple strategy that I promise will help you deal with difficult people, and also you’re gonna learn a framework to help you diagnose what exactly is going on with these difficult people. This, of course, will inform you about how to respond if you have a diagnosis.

It tells you what the treatment is, right? First, though. The deceptively simple strategy.

Leanne and Mike: When a Peer Becomes the ProblemLet me tell you a quick story about a client. Let’s call her Leanne. Leanne was an incredibly driven consultant who hired me to help her boost her communication skills. She actually called me her secret weapon.

She was gunning for a big promotion to partner at her firm, and it turns out she got that promotion when we were just a few months into our six-month coaching program. But that is when things got really difficult for Leanne, as in. She started to have to deal with difficult people. Actually, one main person, let’s call him Mike, actually, I think his name might have been Mike.

So Leanne and Mike started at the firm at about the same time, and he got promoted just a few months before her. They were both new partners and their offices were near each other. To Leanne’s surprise, things got pretty ugly pretty quickly. She told me that Mike seemed to be going out of his way to undermine her.

He would argue with her. He would argue with the recommendations that she made in meetings. He would raise his eyebrows and shake his head when she spoke up, and he even organized meetings and forgot to invite her. So publicly and privately, in person and online, Mike was being a very difficult person. Leanne told me that at first she decided to ignore it, but then that didn’t work.

So she tried to go out of her way to be friendly with Mike. Guess what? No change. She even tried fighting back, as she called it, in one of her meetings when he disagreed with her, and she ended up coming across as defensive and regretting her response. Andrea, what should I do?

“It’s Part of My Job”: A Simple but Powerful ReframeShe pleaded, here’s what I told Leanne, and here is what I’m telling you.

This is a deceptively simple mindset shift that you’ll need to adopt to survive as a senior leader, especially when these difficult people rear their ugly heads. It’s a five-word mantra. Are you ready for it? Here it is.

It’s part of my job. Lemme say that again. It’s part of my job. What exactly do I mean by that?

Well, here’s the thing. When you’re junior in your career, and maybe even when you’re a middle manager, you have a boss who’s looking over your shoulder, making sure you’re learning the technical skills and doing everything right and checking all the boxes for you to help you get promoted. And if someone slows you down, if there’s a difficult person that gets in your way, it’s your boss’s job to fix the situation.

But then, when you advance up the corporate ladder, here’s the insight. Part of your job is dealing with these difficult people. It might not literally be in your job description, but ask yourself this: as a senior leader, who else is gonna deal with these difficult people? It’s now part of what you do, so accept it and figure out how, instead of dwelling on how negative the situation is, dwell on your skills to deal with it.

When I shared this insight with Leanne, she told me, okay, Andrea, that makes sense. I’m gonna try it out, and I’ll let you know what happens then. At our next coaching session, she couldn’t wait to tell me how this simple mindset shift helped her deal with Mike. She told me, Andrea, when I see Mike’s name in my inbox now, or when he knocks on my office door, I actually smile to myself, and I say, here comes part of my job.

You got this. And then that’s what she does. It’s empowering. It makes you feel less like a victim. So I encourage you to try this too. Instead of dwelling on, woe is me. Why do I have to deal with this difficult person? Instead? Remind yourself that as a leader, this is part of your job. And then. Get on with it, but what exactly do you do from there?

Well, I do have some suggestions.

The SCARF Framework: Diagnosing Difficult BehaviorSo the first thing I want to share with you is a framework that will help you diagnose what is going on. When I teach this framework, people tell me they love it, and I hope you love it too. It’s called the SCARF framework. I didn’t create it. It was created in 2008, about 25 years ago, by Dr. David Rock.

And frankly, I have to say, I’m a bit surprised that this framework hasn’t gotten more traction. Most people tell me they haven’t heard about this. Maybe I should invite Dr. David Rock to be a podcast guest here to talk about Talk. Okay. Here is Dr. Rock’s scarf theory. He says that our behaviors are guided in part by five things that we seek.

If any of these five things come under threat, we act out as in yes, we become difficult. Scarf is the acronym that will help you remember what the five things are. S-C-A-R-F stands for status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness. Got that. Its status, certainty, and autonomy. Relatedness and fairness.

You can find the list in the show notes, but let me briefly define each of these and share some ideas on how you might respond if you diagnose someone as feeling like any one of these things is under threat. Okay. The first is S status. Status is about respect and acknowledgement. Maybe with a competitive edge.

It’s a little bit about standing out. When I was coaching Leanne, I asked her whether Mike might feel like perhaps she threatened his status. Yep. When people feel respected and important, their status is secure. They’ll feel more engaged at work. If their status is threatened, they may lash out because they feel embarrassed or diminished.

So what can you do? You can appeal to their need for status. And I’m telling you, this works. Okay, so that’s the first one. S is for status, Part of your job is dealing with these difficult people…” and the next one, C, is certainty. The example I always give with certainty is COVID. Do you remember how uncertain we all felt? Like, how dangerous is this really? And how long is this gonna last?

And on and on. And of course, our anxiety and our stress levels skyrocketed. We were feeling uncertain, and many of us lashed out. The best leaders in organizations are the ones who provide certainty if someone’s being difficult because they feel things are uncertain. What you can do is make them feel certain, provide them with predictability, and tell them what the plan is.

That’s it. Okay, moving on. The third one is autonomy. Autonomy is about control. It’s about being independent. When we lose control, when our autonomy is under threat, we might become difficult. It’s natural, like when employers say we have to come back to work on certain days, and maybe for certain hours.

Some people feel like their autonomy is under threat. And you know what? That’s fair. Do you see how this works? So we’ve covered it. S is status. C is certainty. A is autonomy, and by the way, I have to mention this, these are not mutually exclusive. You can experience one or more of these things at the same time.

Or if someone’s being difficult at the workplace, you might diagnose them as potentially feeling like two or even three of these five things are under threat. Moving on. The fourth is r. Relatedness or I say relationships. This is about social groups. We are social beings, and we all wanna be in the ingroup.

However, you define that. If someone feels like their status as being in this ingroup is threatened, you better believe they’ll act out. On the other hand, have you ever noticed how you feel when someone refers to you as being in the collective, the we and the us, and how satisfying that is? That’s what I’m talking about here, relatedness.

Okay. We’re onto the last one. F. Is for fairness. Fairness as in consistency. Consistency over time, and consistency across people. This is a common one that people tell me is their diagnosis. When someone’s being difficult at work, it’s often because that person perceives that something is just not fair.

Okay, so there you go. Scarf status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness.

Wrap-Up: How to Apply SCARF—and What’s Coming in Part 2Are you trying to deal with someone who’s being difficult at work? Here’s my suggestion. First, stop complaining about it and tell yourself, this is part of my job. I can do this. Then use the scarf framework to diagnose what’s going on and to inform you about how to respond.

I hope this helps people tell me that it does. And in the next episode in two weeks, I’m gonna share with you some dos and don’ts, specific suggestions for how to deal with these difficult people. After you diagnose the issue, you certainly need to understand whether it’s your customer or your client, or maybe it’s your direct report.

Or maybe it’s a peer, like with Leanne and Mike, or maybe it’s your boss. That’s always a fun one when your boss is a difficult person. I have some fantastic suggestions and strategies to share with you about how to deal with these folks, and I’m also gonna share with you a sequence of steps to follow if things escalate.

Unfortunately, sometimes things get worse, and you end up having to go to HR or escalate it in some way, and I’m gonna share with you exactly what you need to do and when, step by step. So that’s the next episode. If you’re not already subscribed to this talk about Talk podcast, please hit subscribe now in whatever podcast platform you’re on, and then you’re gonna automatically receive part two of dealing with difficult people and more communication skills coaching from me.

That’s it. Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post Dealing with Difficult People at Work – Part 1 (ep.205) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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New year, new you. What does that actually mean?

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki makes it clear: it’s not about reinventing yourself or becoming someone you’re not. It’s about rediscovering your strengths, elevating your best self, and defining a professional identity that helps you achieve your career goals in 2026 and beyond.

In this episode, Andrea shares a powerful personal brand training session that walks you through three critical questions designed to reveal what your authentic professional brand should be. You’ll explore what you’re most proud of from 2025, your biggest career accomplishment from the last decade, and what you truly want to accomplish moving forward.

Andrea also shares three definitions of personal branding that will inspire and guide you, plus her proven Present-Past-Future self-introduction framework that helps you present yourself with confidence and impact in any professional setting.

The episode also includes a live Q&A where Andrea tackles tough questions about ageism in the workplace, how to introduce yourself in sales calls, navigating social media versus in-person communication, and more.

If you’re ready to present your true best self and not the version your boss thinks you should be, this episode is for you.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE* Archetypes Quiz – http://talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz * Ageism Episode – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/ageism-160/

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: Happy New Year, and welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. Let’s do this.

Let’s Talk About Talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious professionals to communicate with confidence and credibility so they can achieve their career goals in 2026 and beyond.

New Year, New You: Clarifying Your Professional IdentityEarlier this year, I hosted a live training event called New Year, New You personal brand training. In this session, we covered all sorts of definitions and activities and exercises, and three questions that I ask myself and that I encourage you to ask yourself to help you develop your ideal, positive personal brand in 2026 and beyond.

Are you ready? Here we go. I wanna start by saying truly how much I was thinking about this as I was getting ready, how much I think about respect that you’ve taken time out of. I know no matter what you do, you have a busy schedule, you have lots to do, and this time of year. It’s like it gets all bottled up and then boom, first week of January, you’re back at it and you’re taking an hour of your time to spend with me.

I feel honored. I feel privileged about that, but I also, I already have a lot of respect for you, whether I know you or not, for taking this time to invest in yourself. So I promise you, in the next hour, I’m gonna share with you some things where my intent is to provide you with some real impact in how to help you develop your.

Ideal personal brand, or what we’re calling in this context here are professional identity. Okay?

What This Session Will (and Won’t) Do for YouSo it’s a new year and a new you and I was, I was also thinking about this a lot. New Year, new you. I do not mean reinventing you and turning you into something that you are not already. I’m talking maybe about rediscovering something about you that you haven’t been thinking about in the way that you maybe should.

I am talking about. Really elevating your best self, okay? So that you are as happy. And as successful as you can possibly be. So we’re not talking about your needs, the things that your boss is telling you that you need to work on. We’re actually thinking about the opposite. We’re thinking about your strengths and your skills and your expertise and how to share those things with the world, and actually for how you can think about those things more yourself.

I am not gonna waste your time. We’ve got a lot to get through here. I am very ambitious, I’m gonna say that in terms of what we’re gonna generally and in this hour in terms of what we’re gonna get through. So I’m not gonna waste my time. I’ve been to some of these events where people spend 15 minutes introducing themselves.

I am not gonna do that. I’m gonna say, many of you already know me on LinkedIn. If you don’t, you can check me out on LinkedIn. Um, I’m Andrea Wa there, but probably what might be more helpful is if you go to the talkabouttalk.com website, and you can learn all about me there, including the podcast.

I have a biweekly podcast on Apple, on Spotify. We have a YouTube channel now where all the episodes are there and all of the. Past live trainings that we’ve done like this one are there. So you can, there’s lots of resources. And one resource in particular that I wanna draw your attention to is my biweekly email newsletter.

So every two weeks, if you sign up, you get an email from me, and it’s an update with me. And my objective with this email is basically to provide you with free communication skills coaching. So I coach ambitious executives, I’m guessing like yourself, who have establish some level of technical expertise, and you’re looking to step it up in terms of your career and maybe in terms of your life.

And you’ve identified communication skills rightly as one of the things that can really help you get there. So in that newsletter, which I hope you’ll sign up for, you can get free coaching from me there and keep updated on everything that’s going on in the talk about talk world. Okay. What I want you to do now in the next 55 minutes, we’re gonna think of this as a, not just a training session, but a real-time coaching session where you’re gonna make some traction and make some progress in terms of not just thinking about, but actually writing down what your ideal brand is.

So if you have a piece of paper and a pen or a notebook or something like that, please get those out. And if you don’t. You can write it in your phone. Some people like to write notes in their phone. Write it on another device. You can also rewatch this video later on YouTube, and it’ll also be posted on LinkedIn.

Okay? So get your paper and pen ready. I’m gonna take you through four things. For those of you who know me. You’ll be like, what? It’s not three. I know. I told you I was really ambitious. It’s a new year. Four things. The first thing I’m gonna do is I’m gonna ask you three. Really important questions, and I want you to write your answers down, so that’s why you need a piece of paper and a pen.

Okay, so first thing is three questions. The second thing is going to be three definitions of personal branding, but that’s also gonna help you inspire and define your brand. Okay? Then I’m going to share with you a three-point self-introduction framework, and I know from the folks in the audience for a few of you, this is gonna be a refresher.

You’ve seen it before, but we’re gonna be looking at it through a new lens. Then I’m gonna share with you three reasons why this work is so important and how you can do it. And then we’re gonna get into a q and a. So in the Q & A, for those of you who know me, you know that I love an open q and a where I have no idea what you’re gonna ask me.

So I always make time for that at the end, if you have questions, you can save them for when we do the live q and a, or you can put them in the chat. So I’m gonna be looking for people who are raising their hands first, and then we’ll go into the chat for, um.

Three Questions That Define Your Personal BrandOkay, so let’s get into this. I don’t have slides for this part.

I will when we get into the definitions and everything, but we’re gonna start now by me asking you, and I’ve asked myself these questions, by the way, three really important questions that can inform what your personal brand should be, and it might surprise you what these questions are. It might not. But regardless, I think these are questions that we don’t ask ourselves often enough, and if you really double down on the answers for these, you’ll be doing yourself a big favor.

Okay? The first question is this. What are you most proud of that you accomplished? That’s a very general term, right? Accomplished. 25. So before you answer that, I just wanna say we in this session, in this one-hour session, are focusing on your professional identity. And many of us, I hope, have personal accomplishments that they’re really proud of.

So, for our context here, let’s keep it in the context of your career. It could be a skill that you learned. It could be a leadership skill. It could like, it could be a soft skill or a hard skill, right? And the soft skills often are related to ourselves personally as well. Like you could say, I really worked on my listening, or I really worked on not using filler words.

And this is professional and personal, but I want, if you said like, I’m really proud of, you know, having my oldest child graduate and go off to college, that’s an amazing accomplishment, and you should definitely be celebrating that. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about personal or professional accomplishments.

So again, it could be a skill, it could be an award that you won, something that you got a big check mark on. It could be something that maybe at the beginning of 2025, you and your boss decided that it was something you needed to work on, and then at the end of the year, you were told that you made great strides.

It could be that. I want you to write that down. That’s the first question. Okay. You can, of course, continue to refine your answer to these questions, but that’s number one. The second question is, I want you to just pull the lens way back. What is the thing that you are most proud of in terms of your career in the last 10 years?

So I was gonna say five years, and then I thought, I know from myself and from some other people that I coach that things may have happened five or six or seven. It doesn’t really matter. It’s like recent history in the last 10 years. What are you really proud of in your career? Again, it could be you learned a hard skill.

It could be you launched a new product. It could be that you made a career change. It could be that you earned a degree or other credentials. By the way, you’re allowed to answer with more than one thing, but you need to have at least one thing that you’re really proud of from the last 10 years. Okay? Now, at this point, when I’m coaching folks one-on-one, I often get this comment from people they say, I find this really hard to answer, Andrea, because I spend so much of my time thinking about what I need to work on.

My weaknesses or my developmental areas. So that’s what’s really special about this work. On personal branding, we purposely focus on the positive, unique, and relevant things that you wanna reinforce. And of course, you need to work on your development areas, but we rarely double down on our strengths and our accomplishments.

So that’s where I wanted to kick this off. So you’ve got your, hopefully. Answer number to question number two, which is what is the accomplishment or the skill that you are most proud of from the last 10 years? Okay. Now you’re probably wondering what the next question is. Is it gonna be like the last 25 years?

I know some of you probably aren’t even 25 years old. No, that’s not where we’re headed. The third question is something that I know personally and from coaching hundreds and hundreds of folks can be very, very illuminating. And the question is this, what compliments have you received that mean the most to you?

So for some of you, you might be like, oh, I know what it is right away. For most of you, you probably don’t. So here’s the thing, when we. Receive compliments from people. We light up, we feel happy, we feel validated. We feel appreciated. We feel like we are successful at something, right? So we might be told that we are smart, or we might be told that we’re attractive, or we might be told that we are a kind person.

If you had to choose out of those, which one, it’s not that they’re not all fantastic, of course they are, but which one is the most meaningful? Which one lights you up? I can tell you the compliment that I’ve received a couple times in the last, I don’t know, six, eight months from my clients that really lights me up is they’ll say to me, Andrea, you have incredible listening powers when we’re in these coaching sessions.

You really listen to what I’m saying, and then you’re able to interpret what I’m saying and then articulate it in a way that I’ve never thought of it before, but it’s true to me. And that just shows that you’re really listening. And when my clients tell me that I light up because I’m, I’m like, well, I wasn’t actually listening on purpose.

I was just really trying to understand them so I could help them articulate their brand. And when they say that I’ve done that, I light up. So what compliment have you received? That lights you up. And this is really important for your brand because these compliments and your responses to them are telling you something, perhaps about where you should be focusing more.

So the fact that this lights me up really to me, reinforces that I’m doing the right thing with my career and coaching people. Because if the compliment is that I’m. Making an impact on my clients, and that’s what lights me up, then that’s exactly what I should be doing. So again, I’m sharing my first-person story here, hopefully to inspire you to think about when have you felt that way when someone made a specific compliment to you that really lit you up?

If you’re not sure about what this compliment is, the other thing that you could do is I have an archetypes quiz on my website. It’s talkabouttalk.com/. Archetypes quiz, and if you take the quiz, you’ll get an email back that tells you what your archetype is. So when I take this quiz, it tells me that my archetype is magician and someone who leads people through transformation, and I’m like, that maps perfectly to the compliment that lights me up.

It’s not a coincidence. Right? So the answer to this question, what lights you up in terms of a compliment and what your archetype is? Probably, there’s probably a very direct link there. There should be a very direct link there. So I guess my challenge to you is to answer that question first. To the best of your ability.

And then if you wanna, the quiz is free, by the way. When you take the quiz, you can see whether it valid and what I hear from people, they, you know, guess what their archetype might be. Or they, they think about what the compliments are and when they get the answer back from the quiz, the results of the quiz, if they align with what they.

Thought before it’s great. It’s very validating, and sometimes they don’t. It’s a little bit different, but then they see the archetype, and they’re like, but actually that’s really true. And it this helps you feel seen and this your archetype can help inform what is unique about your brand that you should be reinforcing.

So the archetypes all talk about a PO one of 12 positive personas that, um. Is like a universal pattern that people will understand and that you can use to reinforce your strengths. Okay, so we’ve got, hopefully, you’ve written down three answers to three questions that I asked. What are you most proud of from 2025 in terms of your career?

What are you most proud of from the last 10 years, and what compliment lights you up the most? I kind of feel like I may have opened a big can of worms here because you’re like, okay, this, this feels good. It’s all positive, Andrea, but what am I gonna do with it? I’m gonna take you through some definitions and an exercise, uh, uh, self-introduction framework, and some benefits of personal branding now, and I’m gonna be referencing back to these questions and your answers to these questions to help you sort of make sense of how you can leverage them.

So, by the way, your answers to these questions should be evolving all the time. I, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions the next time someone compliments yourself. I hope you have a new lens on that compliment, and you think compliments are nice. How does this one rank in all of the compliments that I’ve received?

Is it a just nice to hear or is it like telling me something? My response to it? Is it telling me something that I should be paying attention to in terms of my brand, how I’m being perceived by other,s and how, what I wanna be thinking about myself. Okay. I wish I could read what all of you wrote down so badly.

All right. Here we are. New year. New. Yes. By the way, I’m wearing the same blouse I was, I was like it, looking at what to wear today, and I’m like, I should just wear the same thing that I’m wearing on the, um, on the poster for this event.

From Self-Awareness to Strategy: Being Yourself on PurposeOkay, so the first question is, what is a personal brand? I’m gonna start by telling you what it is not.

So my guess is that, well, I hope that you are not in the camp of folks out there, and there are plenty of these folks who think that personal branding is about turning you into social media influencer or monetizing your brand, Andrea, encouraging you to quit your job. So because you’re, you’re feeling empowered to go out there and become this big, you know, influencer, celebrity that is not, that is not what we were talking about here.

Okay? We are talking about identifying, as I said before. The positive, unique, and relevant traits about you that you wanna reinforce. You can think of your personal brand in the same way that marketers, brand marketers, think about product brands, right? Like you’re selling a box of Tide, you’re selling, uh, I don’t know, an AI software platform or whatever you’re selling.

You think about what are the unique characteristics of this product that I want people to know. It’s exactly the same. Almost exactly the same with people. With people. It evolves, though, right? Because the world changes. We grow, our family changes, our careers change. But you can think of it as your reputation or your identity.

Over the years I’ve used, as I’ve been coaching folks, I’ve been using different definitions of personal branding and, uh, the one that I think is the most well known is this one from Jeff Bezos. If you haven’t heard it, you, I’m, this is probably a reminder for most of you, any article that I have read in the last, at least five years on personal branding, almost always within the first three paragraphs this comes up, Jeff Bezos says, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

So I want you to add, this is a real coaching session here, okay? I want you to ask yourself. The important stakeholders in your career. It could be your boss and your boss’s boss who look after succession planning. It could be your clients, your customers, or your consumers. It could be your colleagues at work.

It probably is your colleagues at work, no matter what. It could be your people that you’re negotiating with. It could be investors. If you are an entrepreneur, these important stakeholders, what are they? Saying and actually thinking about you when you’re not in the room. So imagine you just met with them and you leave.

What’s their impression of you? Or if I just ask them right now, or if you could read their mind and your name comes to mind, what are they thinking and saying about you? That’s your brand. Now, here’s where a lot of people say, oh Andrea, it is not good. That is not like it. I mean, it’s fine, but it’s not what I want people to think about me.

And I say, that’s great. That’s why we’re doing this work. But if you’re gonna be. You know, if you’re really gonna make an impact here with your brand, you gotta start with what people are already thinking and saying about you, and also thinking about what you wanna reinforce. So now I want you to go back to the three questions also and ask yourself, do these people know about these good things that I’ve accomplished in the last year, in the last 10 years?

Is there a way without bragging or being awkward about it, that they, that this can come up in conversation. Should it be on my LinkedIn profile? Are they aware of these compliments that other people are giving me that are lighting me up? Did are they aware of these things? These are important questions to ask yourself.

Okay, so this is, this is. Very helpful. This is actually an exercise that I do take folks through when I’m coaching them in masterclasses and one-on-one coaching. It’s very helpful. Um, and I brought this up when. Two years ago, I interviewed the marketing guru, Seth Godin, who’s written many, many, many, many books.

Uh, depending on how you count them, it’s either 20 something or 80 something. Um, and he also ran the podcasting fellowship that I did, uh, six and a half years ago. So I asked him if I could interview him. He said, sure. And it was. Fascinating conversation. Let me tell you, this guy thinks like no one, like I knew when I logged on, this is not gonna be a normal interview.

And I also said to myself, I’ve listened to many of the other folks that have interviewed him on podcasts. I’m gonna ask him questions that my audience wants to know. So we started talking about personal branding, of course, and he said, oh, people think my brand is my orange glasses that I wear, but that’s not my brand, that’s just my logo.

And I was like. Oh goodness. We’re not gonna go down that rabbit hole. That’s just, that’s not helpful. And I said, Seth, how do you think about your brand? And this is what he said, this is gold. He said, my brand is what people think I’m gonna do next. Let that sink in for a minute. Think about the folks that I just listed, right?

The boss’s boss, your colleagues, your clients, your customers, your negotiating partner, your investors, these important stakeholders who have impact on your career. What do they think you’re going to do next? Okay? At least as importantly, what do you want to do next? So this is the next thing I want you to write down.

What do you want to accomplish in your career? In 2026 and maybe beyond, do these people think it’s likely? So let me tell you one of the things that I am most proud of in 2025, it took a lot of work, and I am really proud of it, but it’s just opening a whole other, a whole other line of projects that I’m working on now is I signed a book deal, right?

So, if my brand is what people think I’m going to do next, the important question for me to ask myself is, do people think I am going to write a book that is worth reading? Right? And if they do, that’s fantastic. If they don’t, what can I do to make sure that I’m evolving my reputation or my brand so that that is the case?

So when Seth Godin shared this definition with me, I was like. Oh my gosh. And we talked about it for a while, and then when I finished the interview, I pulled out a piece of paper sitting where I am right now. I drew a line down the middle, and I was like, what are my goals? Do people think it’s possible?

And I gave myself a score, and then I was like, how can I make people believe that this is gonna happen? Because when they believe it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna be even more successful, and it’s also more likely that I’m gonna do it. So I want you to do the same thing. What do you want to accomplish? And do other people think you are gonna do that, or that it’s conceivable or perceivable that you’re gonna do that.

And if they are great and if they’re not aligned, then you have some work to do. But this is work that is, I was gonna say, it’s not, it’s not easy work, of course. It’s not easy work, but it’s really, really important work. Okay. Alright. So we have these two definitions of personal branding from these two.

Very smart, very successful, very well-meaning people, and these definitions are getting a lot of traction. The thing that bothers me about these definitions is that there’s no agency associated with them. So what do I mean by that? By agency, I mean we have no influence or control. It’s just what are people saying and thinking about us, and what do they think we’re gonna do next?

So what am I gonna do about it? So here’s my definition now that I use it’s personal branding is about being yourself on purpose. And there’s really two parts of this definition that I want you to really understand here. It’s being yourself, and by yourself, I mean your true self. You’re not acting like somebody else.

Your whole self. So yes, we’re talking about your professional identity, but you are also maybe a husband or a wife, or a parent, a sister or a brother, or a friend, or an athlete or a musician. Like these other things that are not directly related to your professional identity, they are related to your professional identity, right?

So it is your whole self. It is your best self. So I’m asking these questions at the beginning of this session in terms of the things that you’re most proud of. I want you to start to focus more on your strengths, your accomplishments, and your skills. How can you leverage those things? Make sure you’re in opportunities where you can demonstrate those things.

Make sure you’re reinforcing them. One of the interviewees that I had in my podcast last year said it so well. She said, people are afraid to share their accomplishments and their skills. And she said, I think of it more as like a service that you’re doing for the people that you’re working for. They hired you to do a job.

You need to tell them what you do best. Think about it. If you know what your skills are and you share that with the people that you’re working with, then you’re gonna be doing your best work, and they’re gonna be getting the most out of you. So personal branding is about being yourself, your whole self, your true self, and your best self.

You got that whole self. True self and best self. It’s not that you’re ignoring your weaknesses and areas of opportunity, but that’s not what you’re emphasizing when you’re introducing yourself and you’re interacting at work. Right. And then the second part of this definition is on purpose, and I have it in capitals because that is what we’re literally, maybe not literally physically.

This is what we’re physically doing right now. We are unapologetically, strategically. Taking the time and making the effort to purposefully present ourselves in a true and effective way to others and to ourselves so that we can be our happiest and most successful self. That sounds good, right? I have this on purpose thing.

I put it in caps. I emphasize it as much as I can. It’s like I hope I’m turning a light bulb on for you that most of us go through our careers doing kind of what we wanna do and a lot of what other people expect us to do, and introducing ourselves without really thinking about it. What we’re saying about ourselves.

If you put a little bit of effort into identifying what your strengths are. What you love to do, what you’re good at, what your accomplishments are, and how to share that with the world and reinforce it even with yourself. This work, you know, I’m a communication coach, and my background is marketing and it’s all, you know, it’s all about like amplifying your message.

Recently, I’ve been thinking more and more and more about like this whole idea of self-identity and your professional identity and your personal brand. It affects you as much as it affects everyone else. I mean, not just because of the impact and what happens, but actually how you think about yourself.

So this is my definition, and personal branding is about being yourself on purpose, and what, so what this definition adds here, like I said, is agency. You can make a difference in over to Jeff Bezos, what people are saying and thinking about you. You can make a difference in as Seth Godin says what people think you’re going to do next.

You can do that. And it starts by taking an inventory of the things that you love to do, that you’re good at, the compliments that mean the most to you, the accomplishments that you’re most proud of. Okay, so you see how this circles back to the three questions that I asked you at the beginning. If you wanna take a screenshot of this page, by the way, you’re absolutely more than welcome to.

And again, it’ll be posted on, on YouTube if you wanna reference it there. And we’ll also be posting it on LinkedIn. My challenge here, if you want to think about these three definitions, is to. Like I said, do the mental exercise of answering the three of them for yourself, and also maybe thinking about where can you get the most traction.

If you look at each of the three of them, some people say, like Andrea, I agree with your definition, but Jeff Bezos, that’s the one that really matters to me, ’cause I’m trying to convince my boss that I deserve promotion. So I want, when I’m not in the room, I want ’em to tell everyone that I need to get promoted.

I’m like, bingo. That’s the definition you need to be focusing on, then. Right? So think about. Maybe which of the three is most relevant for you today, and maybe in 2026.

The Three-Point Self-Introduction Framework (Present, Past, Future)Okay. Now we are gonna move on to the three-point self-introduction framework. So some of you have seen this before, and if you have, I’m going to be.

Asking you to think about it just a little bit differently in terms of integrating the three questions that I asked you at the very beginning. For the rest of you, I just wanna share a couple things. So, your self introduction, both personally and professionally, by the way, is the most direct way that you have to reinforce your brand.

Think about it. Your self-introduction is your words from you about you. You’re sharing with the world, and they’reyour words. It’s not just, oh, Andrea’s, you know, got books behind her. It’s like this implicit thing. No, no, no. These are words about you that you’re sharing. So about four years ago I did an episode on how to introduce yourself.

And it very quickly became the top Talk About Talk podcast episode of all. It actually remains number one of 203 episodes as of, uh, this week. And. I wrote up, I wrote it up, and I sent it into Harvard Business Review in 2022, and in 2023, it was one of the three most downloaded articles of the year on the hbr.org website.

So this topic gets a lot of traction, and the self-introduction framework works. That’s why this article was so popular. I’m gonna share it with you now. And by the way, it is so easy that you do not even need to take notes. It’s just three things you start with present.

So this is the way many people start their self-introduction, by the way, hi, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I have a podcast, and I coach ambitious executives to be successful in their careers by focusing on their personal brands and their communication skills. So you see what I did there? It’s my name, my title, my company, my What I Do.

If you’ve done the work on your personal branding, you can also. Talk about, um, maybe what your unique leadership style is, what differentiates you compared to other people. Um, but at least it is your name and what you do. Okay? So I, I told you I was gonna be linking this back to the three questions in terms of your present.

If there’s something that you have accomplished, and maybe you have a new title or you have a new skill, you can talk about this in the present tense now, right? My name is whatever. I’m a chief technology officer at a BC tech company, and what differentiates me compared to other technology experts or leaders is my ability to do this.

And I’ve recently, uh, developed a skill with AI, whatever it is, right? So you’re talking about yourself in the present tense. This is really important. You wanna anchor yourself introduction in who you are and what you do very often people will say. We’ll be going around the table. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?

And people will start with the past, and they’ll share this kind of default, boring chronology. I’m exaggerating here, but I graduated in 2002 with a commerce degree, and then I went and worked at this company and then I, and it’s like what? Start with who you are and what you do. This is the most important thing, by the way, if you’re unemployed.

I coach plenty of people that are in job transition and they say, how do I do that if I’m in job transition? You introduce yourself and you share what your expertise is, right? My name is Jane Smith. I am a finance and marketing expert, blah, blah, blah, right? You just, you get right into your expertise and you tell them your industry expertise or your functional expertise.

Okay? So that’s step one. Present tense. Step two is past tense. So, here in a professional context is where you establish credibility. You, depending on the context, you might share one or two or three things. I say less is more. We all, including myself, get tempted to share too much information. You don’t wanna talk more than the person before you.

You wanna speak slightly less in your self-introduction than the person who introduced themselves before you. But here’s where you can say, guess what? The answer to the, the questions that I asked you, at least question one and two, you could say I’m something I’m really proud of in the last year that I accomplished is blah, blah, blah.

By the way. Telling people that you’re really proud of something, as long as you don’t do it all the time, like, I’m proud of this, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of this. I’m proud. Of course, that’s not what I’m talking about, but saying, you know what? I’m actually really proud of the fact, like I told you at the beginning, I’m really proud when my clients tell me that I am an exceptional listener.

I hope you don’t take that as me being arrogant. It’s like one thing. So arrogant. People are defensive. They can do no wrong. They’re good at everything, right? Telling someone one thing that you’re proud of does not make you arrogant. In fact, you should practice. Telling people what you’re proud of. So here is where you could say, in the past 10 years, one of the most significant things in my career is that I accomplished a transition from blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah.

Or I earned this degree. So this is where you talk about the thing from question number two, the thing that you’re proud of for the last 10 years, and then you can say, in the last year. In 2025, the accomplishment that I’m most proud of is this. And you’re telling people what your value is, what your expertise is, what your skills are, and remember what I said before.

This is actually providing a service to others so that they can get value out of you. Okay, so you could talk about your past credentials, accomplishments, things that you, you know, new products that you launched, big projects that you led, or projects that you participated in. Maybe it’s your business results from 2025 or from the last five years, whatever it is.

So this second step is establishing credibility. That’s how I want you to think about it. Okay? Now, many people, in fact, I’m gonna say. Most people, a significant majority of people, end their self-introduction here. They’re like, my name is blah, blah, blah. This is what I do. Previously I worked at this other company, la, la, la.

And then it kind of fades off. Then the next person goes, are you done? Okay, my turn, blah, blah. Right? That’s how it goes. Sound familiar? The research shows that if you can share something. Positive and enthusiastic that things will go your way. So I first learned this from a negotiation expert who I interviewed.

She was doing her PhD research on negotiations emotions, and she found this insight about the emotion of enthusiasm. And when you share enthusiasm, the negotiation is more likely to go your way. So I went into Google Scholar, and I started looking at all the research on enthusiasm. It turns out in the teaching context, people learn more when you’re enthusiastic.

In the job application process, the job applicant who is more enthusiastic, is more likely to get the job. In a sales context, the salesperson who is more enthusiastic is more likely to close a sale, and on and on and on. So here’s the magic in your self-introduction. Instead of ending it with this awkward like, and that’s me.

Add one simple sentence about something that you’re looking forward to and say it with enthusiasm. It could be generally about like in 2026. I’m really excited, you know, to be in this new role, or I’m really excited to work with you all. Ideally, when you’re introducing yourself, this three-point self-introduction framework is not a script.

It’s purposely just three words, present, past, and future, and you fill in the blanks and you always customize it and personalize it for the person that you’re introducing yourself to. For example, in step three, this future step, you will turn to the person, look them in the eye and say, I’m really looking forward to getting to know you better, or, I’m really looking forward to working with you, or I’m really looking forward to like, as a client, serving your needs, whatever on this account.

So, turn it back to them with a smile on your face and enthusiasm. And I have so many stories from podcast listeners and people who have read this article who told me they get caught off guard and asked to introduce themselves. So one of my clients, his name’s Mike, he is a very very successful wealth advisor, and I was coaching him a couple years ago, and he told me that on some Saturday, he was, uh, at the golf course, and one of his very wealthy clients ran into him and said, Hey Mike, nice to see you.

Happy Saturday. Oh, by the way, this is my buddy that I was telling you about and he’s looking for a wealth advisor. And Mike was like, oh, come on. It’s my Saturday. I don’t wanna have to sell myself. And then he thought, self-introduction framework. He said, Hey, yeah, my name’s Mike, and I’ve been a wealth advisor.

I used to live in Toronto. I moved my family over, blah, blah, blah. And then he goes, he shifted to past, and he said, I’ve been doing this for X number of years. He added a few things for credential and then future. He said, I don’t know if you, if you live around here, but maybe next week we can connect. And the guy said, sure.

And five days later, he had a new client, and I was like, oh. So Mike, do I get the commission check? Anyway, he said, Andrea, you saved me. Because he goes, my mind was in a fog. I was trying to drink my coffee. It was Saturday morning, and I just thought, present past future. And he goes, it actually resulted in me signing on a client.

So your self-introduction is not always gonna be this impactful, but I’m telling you sometimes it will be when you walk into a job interview and they say, tell us about yourself. Are you kidding? The way you answer that question determines whether you make it to the next round of interviews. Let’s be serious here, right?

This framework works for that. So present, past, future. Now, I want you to think about your answers to the three questions, the compliments and the things that light you up, and how the compliments that light you up and your accomplishments from 20, 25 and 10 years before. How can you work these in without, you don’t have to say I’m particularly proud of, although I, I would suggest maybe you could once, right?

How do you include positive, unique, and relevant things about yourself in each of these three steps? Here’s the word that I was telling someone yesterday. I’m, I used to say, introduce yourself with confidence. Now I’m saying introduce yourself with purpose. This is an opportunity for you to really reinforce your professional identity in a positive way that’s gonna impact how other people think about you.

Okay, now we’re gonna move into. Three benefits of building your brand. And again, I’m gonna map this back to you, and you can continue to take notes here. But these are three, yes, I’m a huge fan. In case you didn’t get the memo of the Power of three, but perhaps not, coincidentally, there are three things that I see and hear all the time from people about the benefits of doing this work, about being yourself, your true self, your whole self, and your best self on purpose.

Okay? The first thing is when you do this work. You have the ability to control your narrative. Have you ever noticed that sometimes people will talk about you, and you’re like, ah, that’s not quite right. Or something comes outta your mouth, and you’re like, ah, you know, that’s true, but it’s not the best thing that I would’ve said about myself.

When you’ve done this work, you are controlling the words that people use to describe you and how you even think about yourself. You’re not leaving it to chance, and I, I say this to my clients all the time. You can be a very strong B plus, maybe even an A if you don’t do this work, but if you really wanna knock it outta the park, you’re gonna take the time to really define yourself, your true self, your best self, and your whole self purposefully.

And then you’re going to use those words to control the narrative. The best example that I have of this is well. Best. I said that so emphatically, didn’t I? I think it’s one of the best stories that I have to illustrate this. I was doing live coaching session very similar to this, and a brave woman raised her hand, and she said, I have a question for you, Andrea.

As you can tell by my accent, I’m an Indian immigrant, and I live in the States. I’m a lawye,r and I want my brand to be lawyer, not immigrant. How do I control the narrative around that? And so. I said to her, tell me about yourself, like where do you work? What kind of law? And every, and as she, as she was speaking, I was listening to her accent, and then I, I said to her, so your accent is definitely decipherable.

You didn’t have to tell me that you were from India. I could have guessed, but your English is clear. I’m not working hard to understand you. And you know, the research shows that when you have an accent, people might click in that you have an accent, but then as long as you don’t make them work to understand you, it’s fine.

It’s not a negative thing, so I wouldn’t worry about it. In fact, you’re thinking of it as a liability. Let’s turn your accent into an asset. And she said, okay, how do I do that? I said, you control the narrative around your accent. You could literally say to people, yes, literally, literally say to people, as you can tell by my accent, I am from India.

I have global experience. I have lived and worked in India, and there was one other country, and now the United States. I passed the bar exam in New York, and I’m now a corporate lawyer. I work as a corporate lawyer in Manhattan. And I said, boom, like your accent is actually evidence. And so you are controlling a narrative.

So here’s where if you have something about yourself that you aren’t. Maybe that you’re trying to hide like her, she’s trying to hide her accent. You can create a narrative around that thing. Don’t let other people create the narrative for you. I said, you don’t need to correct people if they call you an immigrant, but you can tell them what it means, right?

When they say, oh, are you an immigrant? You could say, I’ve lived and worked in three different countries, and I’m a corporate lawyer now in Manhattan, where I leverage that global experience. Boom, drop the mic. Right? You control the narrative. Okay? The second benefit is that working on your brand provides you with direction and focus.

So, as I said before, arrogant people think they’re fantastic at everything. I asked you a really, really hard question about what compliments mean the most to you. That answer, I hope, provides you with direction and focus. It doesn’t mean you never work on anything that’s not related to that compliment, goodness knows, but it means I hope that you have the opportunity to raise your hand enthusiastically and volunteer for any kind of project or work that relates to that compliment where you can really flourish.

Okay. So you can see how building your brand provides you with direction and focus. I hear this from my clients all the time. They’re like, I dunno if I should be doing this or that, or this or that. And then we create this list of themes about them that they know are positive, unique, and relevant to them, and then it provides them with direction and focus.

The third and last benefit is the one that. I think is the most significant. I wanna really be clear about this, and the reason I keep bringing this up is I get this question often, like frequently all the time. I’m afraid that it’s one thing to write down these things that I’m proud of and these compliments that light me up, but to actually talk about them, and I say, you are not saying that you are good at everything.

You are taking the time on purpose. Remember to identify your unique strengths and skills, and there’s nothing arrogant about that. So, identifying the unique things about you that differentiate you compared to everybody else who does what you do. Differentiates you compared to your coworkers, your competitors, maybe even compared to your family and friends.

This is gonna boost your confidence. And one of the reasons I love what I do so much is that I am focused on the positive, right? I help people think about this strangely. They’re at work, and they’re thinking about their weaknesses and what they need to work on and their skill deficiencies, and I’m like, hang on a second.

What about your strengths? Think about the people you know who are. The most genuinely confident, not arrogant, genuinely confident, and happy and successful in their careers. They are the ones that have doubled down on their unique strengths, right? So that could be you. These are the three benefits of building your brand.

It helps you. You can see how they’re kind of intertwined. They’re integrated, but they’re importantly distinct. You’re controlling your narrative. You’re thinking about the words, and you’re reinforcing them with purpose. I’m not saying you’re great at everything. You’re providing yourself with direction and focus, and you’re elevating your confidence because you’ve taken the time to think about these positive accomplishments.

The two first two questions and compliments that you get from people, and this is sure to boost your confidence. So that is the main material I guess, that I wanted to cover with this. We’ve covered a lot already. We’ve got three big questions if you wanna send them to me, by the way, on LinkedIn, I, I would love to see what some of them are, three definitions of personal branding to get you thinking about them more deeply.

The three point self introduction. Remember, present, past, future, it’s not chronological, and the three benefits of building your brand. So if I were you. I would be thinking, thank you. This is helpful. I feel empowered, but now what?

Wrap-Up & Live Q&ASo onto my favorite part of the session, the q and a. First thing before I look in the chat, what brave soul here has a question for me.

I would love to hear a question. I know you’ve got questions.

Theo: All right, I’ll go.

AW: Oh, Theo. Amazing.

Theo: I’m afraid you’ll cold-call someone. So I am curious how you think differently about the future piece and the present. Well, actually, the whole introduction piece, when you’re talking about people who are either currently employed, transitioning, or coming back to employment after a long time out of the workforce.

Yeah. I’m curious, like for people who are not 25 on this call.

W: Thank you Theo. Amazing. This is a common question that I get and I think it’s really important. I think if you are gainfully employed, it’s kind of obvious, right? Like present tense is who I am and what I do. Past tense is, you know, the things.

Remember, you’re customizing it for the people in the room, right? So you’re thinking, if you’re introducing yourself to a new project team, like what do they need to know about me that I’ve done that’s gonna help me establish credibility, right? And then future is, I’m looking forward to working with you.

If you’re in a job interview, I think the best way to answer this might be to just make some scenarios up, right? If you’re in a job interview. You go in and they very often purposely ask you, tell me about yourself. And you don’t know how long to talk, and you don’t even know what the structure is. Yes, you do.

It’s present, past,and future. Hi, my name is Andrea. I am a, or my name is Theo. I am a blah, blah, blah, industry, blah, blah, blah. Function expert. I am. You’re still present tense, right? I am excited to learn about this position, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then you say, I’m gonna tell you three things about my experience and my skills.

There are many things, many things that I could share with you, but, um, in terms of, you know, sharing things about myself, there are three things. Again, I told you I’m the, I’m a big fan of the power of three, the benefit of saying. At that point, I’m gonna share three things, is they’re not gonna be like, how long is she gonna keep talking?

And then you say, the first thing is I have extensive expertise in blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? And then you say, the second thing is, one of the things that I’m most proud of in my career is this. And the third thing that I wanna say is maybe something that’s directly related to the company that you’re interviewing with.

Right. And then you say, so those are just three things, and I’m happy to elaborate on those three things. And on any other questions that you have, and then they’re gonna think that you’re just gonna end there, and you say, but I just wanna conclude by saying I’m really excited. You see what I did there?

That’s enthusiasm. I’m really excited to learn from you more about this company and more about this role because, based on what I know, I think I’m gonna be a great fit. Boom. That’s. Okay. And if you’re, say in a networking meeting, you’re either thinking about leaving your company or you’ve already lef,t and you’re doing, you know, the classic networking call, uh, or you’re at a networking event, and it’s like, let’s go around and introduce ourselves.

That’s not when you’re gonna say three big thing,s and you’re gonna take the mic for that long. But think about what do you wanna be remembered for with the people that are here, right? So you could say, my name is Jane Smith, and I don’t know sales and. Retail sales expert and in technology, blah, blah, whatever it is, right?

So you tell them what, tell them so that when they hear about a job in that area, they’re gonna think of you, right? And then you could say, I’m currently seeking a new job in this area. I have 25 years of experience in things that are gonna really help me succeed. And I’m really excited to get to know all of you better.

Right? So you, you, you shorten it. You make sure you’re really clear and I do a lot of work with an executive recruiter, and she said after these networking events, you literally remember if they’re lucky, one thing about each person that you met. So make sure the stuff that comes outta your mouth about you is what you want them to remember.

Does that help, Theo? I’m guessing you have more specific questions.

Theo: No, that’s amazing.

AW: Okay, good.

Theo: Like to get push on that a little. Thanks.

AW: Yeah, you’re welcome. My pleasure. So Blake has a question in a sales call, would it be better to skip the future remarks and just speak on present and past Blake?

Excellent question. No, the future can be one. In fact, most of the time it’s one sentence. So if you’re, for example, you have a call with aa prospective client, and as I do right with my coaching clients, and I’ll say, why don’t you introduce yourself and then I’ll introduce myself. I would never skip the future thing.

I’m like, I would love to help you. I even say to people in this call, I’m not gonna hold back. I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you whatever coaching advice that I have for you, but I’m really looking forward to getting to know you better. Right? So just say one thing. I’m really glad to meet you, or I’m really looking forward to this, or I’m excited about this, or I’m enthusiastic about this.

It could be about the person. Ideally. Actually, it is about the person, but sometimes if, if that doesn’t feel quite right, you can make it. The comment about yourself in general, you could say, and I’m really excited about 2026. I feel like, you know, we’ve turned a chapter or whatever, or despite what’s going on in the world, I am really excited about what we’re doing here at work.

I hear people saying that a lot right now. Okay. Anyone that wants to raise their hand in this group, I’m gonna answer it first, but otherwise I’m, I’m staying in the chat. Sydney Ann asked to piggyback Blake’s question. In public speaking, we’re taught to establish credibility. Yes. Recency bias and primacy bias.

However, in social media, it’s preferred to begin with the hook solving the audience problem. Oh, okay. Sydnee, that’s fantastic. I actually learned this from Sarah Blakely. I did the Sarah Blakely. You know the Spanx billionaire entrepreneur. She has a masterclass where she talks about problem-solving. How you did it, like what the details are.

And then step four of the sales pitch is the ask. Right? But you start with the what’s their problem? Same thing on social media. I tell my team this too, when we’re working on my social media posts, it’s not, guess what, Andrea did today? No. It’s actually talking to them about what matters to them. I think for the self-introduction framework, it’s really about.

Finding opportunities to use the framework, but you’re not shifting the attention to yourself all the time. In other words, I’m not saying that all social media posts should be present, past future, I’m not saying that at all. And if you’re doing the sales pitch, I hope you first have the opportunity to ask the other person, introduce themselves, and you’re introducing yourself.

And then I, I totally agree with you, Sydnee. You start with the other person. You do not want to be. One of these myopic, selfish people who’s always talking about themselves. By the way, did you notice I did not really introduce myself here in this session? I just said, if you want more information about me, here’s where you can go that’s on purpose, because I want this to be about you.

So Sydnee, there’s an example, right? You don’t wanna be the person that talks longer than everybody else, and you don’t wanna be the person that everybody thinks is like self-absorbed. So you speak not as long as everybody else. You make sure that the other, like this morning I had a coaching call with someone that I, I’ve been coaching for about six months and he’s like, how was your holiday?

And I was like, you go first. Right? Like it’s not all about you. I think Sydnee, the fact that you’re asking that question tells me that you know that. So that’s fantastic. Okay, I’m gonna take one more question. Are there any live questions? Otherwise, I’m gonna go to Jennifer’s question. How do you recommend navigating age bias in high-stakes stakeholder meetings, particularly when they appear younger than you are or actually are early career, while still signaling authority and competence in rooms where age is often equated with credibility?

So I get, um. I think it was about a year and a half ago, because I remember it was in the summer. Yeah, it was about a year and a half ago. I was getting this question a lot. I think there was an article that came out in the New York Times about ageism. Ageism is real. So I am 55. I’m gonna tell you that right now I’m 55, and I would say I started feeling ageism probably at around 50.

I think it depends on your industry. In some, I talk to 40-year-olds who tell me that they feel like a grandparent, like the wise old grandparent in the office. So it really depends on what industry you’re in, but ageism is real. It is a bias. It apparently is an illegal bias, but it is a bias that definitely exists.

So how do you present yourself as having the expertise and maybe years, maybe decades of expertise without having the negative impact of ageism and this sounds really simple, but if you can present yourself in a way where you have energy, then your age. Probably doesn’t matter. It actually, it’s not just energy, right?

It’s energy and like current insights. This is an extreme example. If your email is AOL or even Yahoo, I’m gonna say it, as opposed to, you know, a more modern email provider, if you are constantly talking about your grandkids or your listing, and I don’t mean necessarily on your CV or on your LinkedIn, but you’re like.

Articulating when I, you know, when I graduated from high school in 1985, and people, you’re, you’re prompting people to do the math, so don’t prompt people to do the math. Do present yourself with energy and in like youthful energy, right? People that are, you see kids running around. I sometimes if I’m walking down the sidewalk and I see a family and it’s like the two adults are like this, and the kids are like running around, right?

So have that, you have youthful energy, and you’re current. And then my big thing is like I just told you, I’m 55. Unless you have reason to believe that your actual age is really gonna hurt you, you don’t need to necessarily tell them your age, but you can reference that I clearly, the elephant in the room here is that I’m older than everybody else, but you know what?

I have a lot of experience that I’m, I would, and wisdom that I would, the word wisdom will help a lot that I’m happy to share. I think as I’m saying that, it really does, as I said, the beginning, depend on the context of your industry and the audience of people that you’re talking to. I hope that helps.

It’s a great question, Jennifer. I do have a podcast episode on ageism that I will, when I post this on LinkedIn, I’ll put a, a link to that episode. So I wanna say thank you. I wanna start actually, by saying Happy New Year again. We can say that at least for this week, right? Happy New Year. Again, thank you so much for being here for this session.

I loved your questions, and I hope you found the information that I shared with you on personal branding. To be helpful. It’s a new year. It’s a new you. That doesn’t mean you’re reinventing yourself again. It does mean that you are presenting your true best self. And I want you to really think about your answers, especially to the first three questions that I asked you at the beginning.

Thank you so much. Bye.

The post New Year, New You… REALLY?!? Personal Brand Training (ep.204) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Your work doesn’t speak for itself. If you’re a woman leader who works hard but feels invisible when promotions are discussed, this episode is for you.

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki delivers a powerful training on personal branding specifically designed for women. You will learn the three ways that branding is different for women, why “my work speaks for itself” is holding you back, and exactly what to do about it.

This isn’t about becoming a social media influencer. This is about taking strategic control of your professional identity so the right people know your value, your expertise, and what you bring to the table.

Andrea shares the PUR framework (Positive, Unique, Relevant), real stories from women who transformed their careers by focusing on what makes them unique, and practical communication strategies you can use immediately.

If you’re ready to stop being overlooked and start being recognized for the leader you are, this episode will show you how.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Glass Walls: Six Barriers Holding Women Back at Work by Dr. Amy Diehl: https://amzn.to/4jeuQlI * Competent Jerks and Lovable Fools research paper: https://hbr.org/2005/06/competent-jerks-lovable-fools-and-the-formation-of-social-networks * Seth Godin Episode:* https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/making-a-ruckus-with-seth-godin-ep-171/id1447267503?i=1000669800604

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: Being yourself on purpose. I have this in capital letters because that’s what we’re doing here right now. We are unapologetically in a disciplined and strategic way, thinking about what we’re communicating about ourselves, and then communicating it in this strategic way. Well, hello there. I am really excited about this episode.

Personal Branding for Women Leaders: Being Yourself on PurposeYou’re about to hear or watch a recording if you’re on YouTube of a one-hour live training that I did recently called Personal Branding for Women Leaders. If you’re a long-time listener to the Talk About Talk podcast, you’ll notice that this one is just a little bit different. If this is your first time listening to the Talk About Talk podcast, then I have to say this is an outstanding place to start, and I should probably start by introducing myself.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk where I coach ambitious professionals and executives like you to communicate with confidence and clarity so you can achieve your career goals. If you check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find information there about all the services we provide, including private coaching, masterclasses, corporate workshops, and on-demand courses.

There are also lots of free resources that you can download there, and my free communication skills-focused email newsletter, you can check it all out at TalkAboutTalk.com. Let’s get into the episode.

As I said, this one is a little bit different from what we usually do. First of all, this episode is a recording of a live training session that I led a while ago. If you can watch this episode on YouTube, then you’ll be able to not only hear me, but you’ll also see my slides, and I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of this, regardless, even if you’re just listening.

The second way that this episode is different is that the topic is targeted to females. To women leaders. You’re about to learn three ways to define your personal brand, three ways. It is different for women, and three ways that you can start to build your own personal brand immediately. You’ll also hear the Q&A at the end, and this is my favorite part of these live sessions.

You’re gonna hear some very insightful questions from a few audience members, including a question from an entrepreneur who I had no idea was in the audience and whose products I’ve used for decades, which was actually really cool. Alright. Here we go. If you are here, I’m gonna guess that you are either curious or maybe you’re beyond curious and you’re ready to start establishing your strong personal brand, or your professional identity, as I call it.

And you probably also know, as I certainly do, that it is a little bit different for women. I’m gonna say that it is a little bit different for women. I’m gonna say it’s, we have some unique challenges. Some of these challenges are imposed on us from society and culture, and some of them are things that we do to ourselves.

So we’re gonna talk about those things explicitly. But the fact that you’re here, I think we are a fantastic tribe. I’m gonna say that if you’re here, probably like me, you’re not giving up. You’re not. I’m gonna just let it happen. You’re gonna make it happen. So kudos to you. We are gonna cover lots in the next hour.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, or if you listen to the podcast, or you subscribe to the newsletter, you’re gonna know one thing about me, which is I’m really big on the power of three. I’m really big on the power three. So I’m gonna take you through three ways to think about your brand, and then I’m gonna take you through three ways that branding is different for women.

Then I’m gonna take you through my top three suggestions. So I was thinking, given this audience of women only, what are my top three suggestions? Given these definitions and given the ways that branding is different for women, my three suggestions for what you can do starting right now to start developing your ideal personal brand or professional identity.

So we’re gonna cover those three things, and then I’m gonna open it up to the Q&A. And as I said, you can put the questions in the chat. I’ve got Priscilla here who’s helping us out and to moderate me some of the questions. Or you can also raise your virtual hand at the end.

I don’t wanna spend too much time introducing myself, but I just wanna say briefly, for those of you who I do know, it’s wonderful to see you again. And for those of you who I haven’t met, thank you and welcome.

What Personal Branding Really Means (and What It’s Not)So I wanna start by sharing with you what branding is not in my mind. One thing that I know from reading and thinking and podcasting and interviewing people and on and on about a focused on personal branding. One thing that I know for sure that’s true is that many people have different ideas about what we’re talking about here. So I have had clients who want me to help them establish their personal brand, and we set up a coaching program, and they go back to their boss, and they’re like, here’s the list of topics that Andrea’s gonna take me through that we’re gonna cover in the coaching sessions.

And one of the 10 topics is personal branding. And sometimes this has happened a few times. Their manager will say, yes, yes, yes, yes. No, no personal branding. So why is that? They think that I am going to try to turn them into a social media influencer, so they quit their job or monetize their brand. And I’m here to say that is not what I’m talking about.

Although if you really wanted to, you could. But I think about branding differently. I think of it as your identity or your reputation. This is basically taking the strategic principles that we know as brand managers. As I was at Kraft, a brand manager has a creative brief, a strategic brief that they share with their agency to come up with their packaging and their advertising and their promotions, and their positioning.

And all of the elements of that brief are. How we can think about ourselves in terms of your values, in terms of what makes you unique relative to your competitors, if you wanna use the same vocabulary, right? All of these things we can think about strategically in terms of ourselves.

Three Powerful Ways to Define Your Personal BrandI’m gonna share with you a couple of definitions. The first one is a definition that, if you’ve done any reading on personal branding, you’ve probably come across this before. It’s Jeff Bezos, the founder and former CEO of Amazon. He famously said, your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. And this quote has become synonymous with personal branding work, just about any article, as I said that you’ve ever read in the first couple of paragraphs.

This is what comes up, and this is the definition that I actually use with my clients for a couple of years. So I would ask them. What are people thinking and saying about you when you’re not in the room? And now I’m actually asking you this in real time, right here and right now. What are the important stakeholders in your career?

So it could be your boss and your boss’s boss are meeting to talk about succession planning, and your name comes up in conversation. What are they thinking and saying about you? That’s your brand. Now, most people will freak out. They’ll be like, oh, oh, I think they think this. I think I want to be seen as this, and there’s a bit of a disconnect.

That’s okay. That’s why we’re here. We’ve got some work to do. But this is a really valuable mental exercise. What are people thinking and saying about you when you’re not in the room? And the important stakeholders, again, it could be your boss, it could be clients. If you’re an entrepreneur, it could be clients, it could be your staff.

It could be your team that you’re working with. It could be if you’re an entrepreneur, maybe it’s investors. What are the important stakeholders thinking and saying about you when you’re not there? So this was my definition for. Years. This is the exercise that I would take my coaching clients through.

And a couple years ago, or about a year and a half ago, I had the great fortune of interviewing Seth Godin for the podcast. And Seth, I did his podcasting fellowship, his inaugural podcasting fellowship, way back about six or seven years ago. So I emailed him, asked if I could interview him. We had this fantastic conversation.

I definitely went off script. I wasn’t just talking to him about his books. I really wanted to hear his take on personal branding, and I asked him, I said, Seth. How do you think about your brand? And we got into this conversation about his quirky, like he wears these plastic orange glasses, actually similar to mine, these plastic glasses.

And he said, some people say, that’s my brand, but that’s not my brand. That’s my logo. And I was like, we don’t need to go down that rabbit hole. I think that is part of your brand, how you show up, right? Renee, how you show up is part of your brand, but really, Seth, how do you think about your brand? And then he delivered this gold.

He said, Your brand is what people think you’re gonna do next. So he said, Andrea, my brand. What people think I’m going to do next. I was like, this is next level. This is next level. So we have Jeff Bezos. Your brand is what people think about you when you think and say about you when you’re not in the room.

You can also think of it as what people think you’re gonna do next. I actually think this is a little bit more powerful, right? It’s more impactful. So I ask you now. I encourage you now to do exactly what I did when I got off this interview with Seth Godin. I took out a sheet of paper sitting where I am right now.

I drew a line down the middle of it, and I said, what do people think I’m gonna do next? Like, what are the big career, I guess, guideposts, the impressive things, the accomplishments that I’m gonna have over the next five or 10 years? What do they think? And then, actually, what are my goals? So I encourage you to do the same thing in one column.

Write down the things that you want to accomplish. For me, I wanna write a book. I wanna be on the TED stage, I wanna be a bestseller. I’ve got lofty goals. What do people think is possible? And then the magic happens when you merge these two lists, right? This is the magic of personal branding, but it doesn’t come without effort.

And when I think about these two ways that these two smart men talk about branding, I give them credit. These are helpful exercises, but to me, they lack one thing. They lack agency. What do I mean by that? Your brand is what people think you’re gonna do next. It’s like, well, so what can I do about it? Right?

Or your brand is what people are thinking and saying about you when you’re not there. Well, okay, so how do I influence what my boss is saying about me in that room where they’re talking about succession planning? So I created a different definition that, as I said, includes agency, and it’s this personal branding is about being yourself on purpose.

So there are two elements here that are really important for you to consider being yourself. You. Your true self, your authentic self. Yes, I said the A word, your authentic self. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re sharing everything with everyone. As Seth Golden would say, Andrea, I don’t care if your cat is puking over there or that you’re barely got here on time.

You show up as a professional. So it’s being yourself, your true self, your authentic self, and your best self. There are a million ways to tell the same story. So tell your story in a way that serves you, show up as your true self and your best self. And then, so that’s part of it, being yourself on purpose.

I have this in capital letters because that’s what we’re doing here right now. We are unapologetically in a disciplined and strategic way, thinking about. What we’re communicating about ourselves and then communicating it in this strategic way. So the big difference between how most coaches will coach you on creating a strong brand versus what I do is you can think of it as two steps.

Step one is creating or articulating your brand. Who am I? What do I stand for? What are my unique strengths? Expertise. I see people writing notes. I’m so happy when people write notes. What are my unique strengths, my expertise, my skills, my passions? So that’s step one.

And then step two is communicating it. Communicating it on LinkedIn, communicating it in how you introduce yourself, communicating it in your corporate bio, communicating it. What’s behind you? I have my books, I have my degree, I have my plants. Right? Like, what do you have all? Communicating it in how you dress, communicating it in what drink, what drink you bring into the meeting, right?

If you, if someone brings in, I don’t know, a coffee, a beer, a water, a cola, you’re signaling something about yourself. So, being yourself on purpose. First, thinking about who you are articulating and identifying, and focusing on your unique brand. And step two is the communication step. The big difference again is that I spend much more time guaranteed than most people do on step one.

This is the thing. Garbage in, garbage out, quality in, quality out. If you spend the time creating a list of your unique strengths. Really internalizing them and thinking about how you’re gonna narrate them and how you’re gonna reinforce them. The communication step is so much easier. It’s so much easier.

Okay, so we’ve got these three definitions, and I’ve spoken with. You know many people I’ve run corporate workshops where I put the slide up, and I ask people to raise their hand and tell me which definition resonates for them. I wouldn’t be sharing each of these three definitions if I didn’t think they were valuable.

I think these are all very effective ways, and I encourage you to think of all three of them. Ask yourself, what are people thinking and saying about you when you’re not in the room? Maybe you’re like, oh, they’re thinking and saying kind of what I want. Fine. Move on to the next definition. Or if it’s not what you want, then start thinking about correcting that.

Right? And then secondly, what do they think you’re gonna do next? If these are not aligned with your goals, then you need to start communicating things about yourself so that the list of aspirations versus what people think, as I said, merges. And then lastly, this definition that I share with my enthusiastic thumbs up.

Being yourself, your true, authentic, whole self. I’m gonna add one other thing there. We are always, this drives me crazy when people say, well, I have my work identity and then I have my personal identity, and I’m really two different people. I’m like. That must be really, really hard. That must actually be exhausting.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you were always the same person? Like, truly, if you’re always the same person, but you filter, this is like, I call it the F word of personal branding filter. You filter what parts of your identity you are gonna share with the world, depending on who you’re talking to and the context.

So I didn’t share with you that I’m a painter. I didn’t share with you that I’m obsessed with the color turquoise. I didn’t share with you that I have three children that are absolutely ginormous. They’re all very tall. Okay? Those are parts of my identity. In other contexts, I might share those things, right?

If I’m going to an art gallery with a friend, I’m, I would, of course, they would know that I paint and I would talk about that, but, so you are always your whole true self, but you filter what you share. This comes up, by the way, a lot. For women in the context of being a mother. I hear this. Uh, I just got the shivers because I was remembering back in, during COVID, I was doing some workshops for newly promoted partners at one of the consulting firms around the world.

And this wonderful, young, incredibly intelligent, high-achieving, ambitious woman in China said to me, I just got promoted. I was in the room at the table with the partners, and I said something about one of my kids. Everybody went silent and they all looked at me and she said, I was like, and then later on I noticed someone else said something about their kids and she said it was like, and I said, listen, when you’re senior enough in your organization and you are gonna be, look at how young you are and what you’ve achieved, you can create a culture where everyone can talk about that stuff.

In the meantime, you filter what you talk about to accomplish your goals. Given the context, given the people that you’re with in the moment, you filter what parts of your identity, doesn’t mean you’re not a great mom just because you’re not talking about your kids in that context. In fact, you may be a better mom because you’re doing better at work, right?

So we filter. You are always the same person, and you’re doing so strategically in a disciplined way and unapologetically, and I know that that unapologetic part can be difficult, particularly for women.

Why Personal Branding Is Different for WomenSo at this point, I’m gonna move on now to three ways that branding is different for women. And I’m gonna say that I could have put so much here.

So I decided to narrow it down to, given the power of three, I’m gonna narrow it down to three. And the first one is related to society, you all. And I have very little, if any, control over the second and third one; we can control. Okay. And I hope that that inspires you. So we do have some control. That’s I guess, one of the main takeaways from today.

The first one, of course, is societal stereotypes and the culture that we live in and the research. I’m familiar with the research. I have some of the books up here. The academic research shows that women are expected to be. Warm, communal, maternal service-oriented, right? Versus leaders are expected to be authoritarian, and sometimes people would say like the opposite end of the spectrum of all of those traits.

And so, there are things that happen therefore, that are outside of your control because you are a woman. People will stereotype you, and you probably embody some of these stereotypes. So what happens? Women get interrupted so much research. Men interrupt women, women interrupt women. Women do not interrupt men, like it’s crazy.

It’s so imbalanced. We get interrupted, and when we do say something. Sometimes our comments are attributed to others. Has this ever happened to you? You say something in a meeting, and somebody says, um, so I have a thought, blah, blah, blah. They repeat what you said in different words, and then people go, great idea.

You’re like, what? Just I see people nodding. What just happened? So our, so we get interrupted. Our ideas are attributed to others. They carry less weight. Maybe, I don’t know. Anyone else have any ideas? Some dude says something, and it’s like gold, right? One other thing that happens is the type of feedback.

So I learned this really directly when I was a professor at the University of Toronto, a female faculty member warned me the first time I ever got, you know, that at the end of the class, they give all the students an evaluation sheet. Used to be pen and paper. It’s probably online now, but anyway, and scale of one to seven, how effective is this?

And then they go into the comments, she said. So the scale of one to seven is, is probably fair. Although there is a main effect of gender. Men get rated higher. By the way, pregnant women. Get rated lower than non-pregnant women. And I found, I actually hid my pregnancy one time when I was teaching ’cause I wanted to see what would happen, and then the next whatever.

So the feedbac,k though, the words in the evaluation form are very different for women, and this may happen in your formal evaluations that you get with your employer, right? They talk to you about your style. They talk to you about you should be more confident, you should improve stakeholder analysis, you should, whatever.

It’s very sort of vague style personality feedback versus for men, it’s. Great job achieving this thing, and you didn’t, you missed this one, but we understand why, because you had these things, and it’s like, what? So they get feedback that’s more tangible, and we get feedback. That’s more, and maybe this goes back to all of the stereotypes.

So the point here is we are walking a tightrope based on society and culture, where we’re trying to balance, if it’s possible, how we project our strengths. And our authority and our expertise, while also being communal and maternal, if you wanna use that word. Or at least, let’s call it having strong people skills.

Right. And it’s like the more you do one, it seems like there’s a paper that one of my colleagues at the University of Toronto wrote when she was at Harvard Business School called Competent Jerks and Lovable Fools and Who Gets Promoted. And it’s basically the idea is at work, you’re one or the other.

You’re like a really nice woman who’s a fool, or you’re a competent jerk. And by the way, the competent jerks do better. Right? And so this is really hard for women. I co-authored a paper with Dr. Amy Diehl. She and one other co-author wrote a book called The Sixth Glass Walls. It’s, you know, in addition to the glass ceiling.

The glass cliff. There are all these walls that we can find ourselves walking into that limit our career progression. And she and I coauthored a paper for Fast Company, where we talked. The paper was called Stop Telling Women to Lead Like a Man. So in fact, being aggressive or being authoritative or really mastering self-emotion or avoiding weak language.

Like these are all things that women are told that men seem to do naturally. And our point was maybe somewhere in between what women are naturally doing and what men are doing, maybe somewhere in between is actually the magic place. So again, this is a tightrope. It’s really hard. I’m gonna say this. This is almost an impossible task to overcome societal stereotypes.

But, we also do things that hurt us, like suffering from imposter syndrome. So I wanna share something with you about imposter syndrome. So first a definition and then a little bit of background. So, imposter syndrome is this feeling that most of us have, that we will be found out and people will realize that we’ve been promoted beyond our ability and we don’t belong in the room.

We don’t belong on stage, or we don’t belong behind the microphone. Right? So this term imposter syndrome was actually coined in 1978 by two female social psychologists in the US, and they were doing research on successful women. Let me say that again. The research was on successful women, and they interviewed them in depth, and they were trying to figure out what do these women all have in common that differentiates them from less successful women, and maybe that differentiates them from men.

One of the themes that came out really strongly that ended up being kind of the pinnacle of the careers of these two social psychologists was, they called it imposter phenomenon. And it was this feeling, like I just described, of being found out, I don’t deserve to be here. I’m like, I’m the one lucky person who got in somehow, and maybe I’m gonna get kicked out.

They identified this theme, and then they compared it to women who were less successful, and they realized actually it doesn’t differentiate them. They feel that way, too. And then they also researched men. Guess what? Men actually have imposter syndrome as well, and there’s been tons of research.

Basically, everyone experiences imposter syndrome. If you don’t, then you’re probably veering on the side of being arrogant. Imposter syndrome is really common. You can work to overcome it. So I’m gonna say this, it’s not your fault that you are experiencing imposter syndrome, and I, I have to say, the research shows that men experience it too.

But men don’t come to me saying, can you help me overcome imposter syndrome? They’re like, can you help me communicate with precision or can you help me with my formal presentation skills? Women are like, I know I have imposter syndrome, and I know you can help me. Here’s the thing. You can work on your confidence.

Confidence can be learned. Just ask Tina Fey. She talks about impostor syndrome all the time. And look at her. She’s a rockstar. Just ask Natalie Portman, the Oscar-winning actress. She went back to Harvard to deliver her the graduation speech, and she was quoted in the newspaper saying like, I look around at these smart kids.

I don’t belong here. I don’t know. Excuse me. First of all, you graduated from the school. Secondly, you wouldn’t want an Oscar. You’re very inspiring and capable, and ambitious. You definitely belong here. We all experience imposter syndrome. The issue with it is that it’ll prevent you from speaking up and stepping up.

You need to speak up, and you need to step up if you’re gonna be successful, and you can control this; you can work on your confidence. And this relates to the speaking up point, relates to the third way that I think branding is different for women, and it’s, I have this in quote, my work speaks for itself.

I hear this. Over and over and over again from my clients, including very successful clients. I’m coaching right now a woman, she’s an assistant general counsel at a massive global technology firm. She’s like second in line in the law department, in the legal department, and she’s been there for I think 12 years.

She hired me to help her establish her brand, her strong professional identity, and to elevate her confidence and her credibility, her executive presence, you could say, because she was given the feedback that she’s great at doing the work, but people don’t know who she is and what she does. There was one of these succession planning meetings.

She told me this when we first met, where her boss went in to advocate for her for a promotion. Like three of the people in the room said, oh, I didn’t even know she was in legal. Who is that again? And she came back to her, and she said, you have a branding problem. Like you need to be establishing who you are and what your value is and what you do so early.

It’s not our fault that this happens. By the way, and this is what I said to her early in your career, so actually before your career started, when you were at school, your teacher told you what to do. You did the work, you got an a. You applied to the universities. You did your best. You got into a great school.

She got her law degree. She started at the law firm, right? She’s ling. She’s doing what the partners are telling her to do. Patting her on the head. Good girl. You’re doing what you can. Here’s the thing. When you hit mid-career and senior career, there’s no one looking after your over your shoulders to give you the check marks.

It’s your job to make sure that you speak up for your work. Your work does not speak for itself. And so I know a lot of you, a lot of men and women, but especially women, it seems like we are apprehensive about talking about the value of our contribution and our expertise and our work. And I say this arrogant, people think they’re great at everything.

They think they know everything, and they’ll take credit for anything. Perfectly confident. People who have a strong brand are very specific about the value that they provide in the organization, what their expertise is, what their skills are, and they’re not afraid of talking about it. In fact, you can even say the words, I have to say, I’m particularly proud of how I led this team to achieve whatever the goal was, right?

You can call it out. You can say, I’m not into bragging. If you wanna be perfectly explicit, I’m not into bragging, but I am really proud of what the team under my leadership accomplished this year. Look at, here’s where our goals the, this is the final metrics. We knocked it outta the park. I heard a guy, a tech dude say once, if you don’t talk about your work, you might as well not do it.

So this is a little bit different from imposter syndrome, right? Imposter syndrome is feeling like you don’t belong there, and not speaking up, and not raising your hand to volunteer to do the work. This third one is you’re actually doing the work, but you’re not talking about it. And this goes back to, remember I said the process is step one, articulating your strengths, your skills, your expertise.

And step two is the talking. So being clear and focused about what your brand is, what your value is, what your accomplishments are, and then it makes the talking part, the communicating part so much easier. Okay. So we have these three ways. That branding is different for women, and so I don’t want you to be like, okay, this is depressing.

Cause we have society stereotypes against us. We have this imposter syndrome, which is fair game given how we were raised. And I literally said this to the assistant general counsel that I was coaching. I’m not gonna say her real name, say it’s Susan. I said, good girl, Susan, you’ve been doing your hard work for 12 years.

And she goes, that’s pretty much what my boss said. He’s like, you’re great, but you need. To be clear on what your value is, and not just sit down. And so I purposely chose this image of this woman burning the midnight oil. You will not once you hit middle management. I see this again and again. The hard work is not gonna help you knock it outta the park if you wanna knock it outta the park. You need to learn to talk about your values and your identity.

Practical Next Steps: Three Ways to Build Your Brand Starting NowAll right, so I’ve got three ways that these are the top three things that come to mind that I would do if I were you given. The societal dynamics given our typical female beliefs and behaviors, here are three things that I would do. The first one, when people get this, makes a massive, massive difference.

So the criteria for the traits and the skills end up in your personal brand, the list of, I’m gonna say up to 15 things that you share about yourself on a regular basis. Implicitly and explicitly the criteria is that these things are positive, unique, and relevant. Positive, PUR, positive, unique, and relevant.

But if I had to choose just one criteria, it’s this one unique. If you can double down on your unique skills, you will be happier and more successful than you ever would’ve been. So if there’s one thing that I wanna leave you with, it is this. And I can tell you, I’m thinking of all of the senior executives that I’ve coached before.

This is the one that makes the biggest difference, and it seems to make a big difference, especially for women. There was a vice president of human resources that I was working with. She was on the job market. She. Happily. Well, she was employed, not happily, but she was employed. She said, I’m ready to be a Chief Human Resources Officer, A-C-H-R-O.

So she said, I’ve let my network know, and I’ve been going to several interviews. I’ve done maybe six interviews, and she said, Andrea, I’m not getting called back. For any second round interviews, and I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. It must be communication skills, so I need to hire you to help me. And I said, okay.

So I said, let’s first focus on developing your brand, and then we’ll talk about your job interview answering and communication skills. So in one of our first sessions, I said to her, What is your unique strength that’s gonna make you a great CHRO? And she said something like, Well, I think they’re looking for someone who obviously has the technical human resources skills and expertise, but also who’s a real team person.

A team leader with strong EQ and people skills. And I was like, did she not hear my question? So I asked her again, and she kind of answered it the same way. And then I said to her, you’re not answering the question. What makes you unique? And she kind of like had a little bit of a meltdown she goes. Call it an epiphany.

She said, Oh my God, I have been answering the questions in these interviews in a way where it’s pretty clear that I’m guessing what they want to hear as opposed to truly presenting who I am. And I said, okay, so let me ask you again, what makes you unique? And she goes, actually, it’s my people skills.

People love working for me. My boss told me I can make my people do just about anything. And I was like. That is gold. That is gold. That’s the thing that you know people say about you, that you know is true. It’s positive, unique, and relevant. So the rest is history. She went to her next interview. Her confidence was heightened.

She felt focused on her unique brand proposition, and she got the job as a C-H-R-O. So this is gold. Focus on what makes you unique. Stop trying to guess. Of course, you have to meet minimum standards for all the criteria that they’re looking for promotion for investment, for getting a new job, but focus on what makes you unique.

You’ll be happier, and you’ll be more successful. It’s a big speak for your work and control your narrative. So this really addresses one of the points that I made on the previous slide, where your work doesn’t speak for yourself. You must speak for your work. Don’t assume that people know what you did. Don’t hesitate to use the word lead leader led leadership.

It’s shocking to me how many leaders and aspiring leaders are not controlling the narrative. They’ll say to me privately. I led this initiative where, you know, we doubled our revenue, or we doubled our profitability, whatever it is. And then I looked at their LinkedIn profile, and I’m like, first of all, I don’t see that accomplishment there.

But more importantly, where’s the word leader? Oh, this is a big one. Control the narrative. Instead of saying, so tell me what you do. And you say, Oh, my name is Jane Smith. I work at x, Y, Z company in this department. I’ve been here for 10 years. So what? You could say in the last 10 years I worked from being like a mid-level analyst to joining the C-suite, where I’ve worked in three different functions, and I now have a fantastic overview, and last year we blah, blah, blah.

Like talk about the so what, control your narrative, every word, every phrase, every sentence that comes out of your mouth. And maybe if you’ve done the work in listing what your personal brand themes are, you can challenge yourself to mention some of those things. Particularly when you’re introducing yourself.

So this comes up if you’re sharing your career narrative. If you’re sharing your career narrative, why don’t you tell me a bit about your career history? Most people think that means, okay, I graduated from my Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1997, and then I did this, and I worked here for so many years, and then I did my MBA.

No, no, no. Unless there’s a reason why you wanna share it chronologically. Why don’t you tell the person the highlights? Like, I’ve lived in three countries, I’m a global leader. I’ve lived and worked in three countries. My superpower is this, and I did this at this company and this company and this company, right?

So, share your career journey with purpose. That’s one thing. The other thing you can do here is introduce yourself with purpose. If you’ve followed my work, Priscilla will put the links in the show notes. If you followed my work, I’m really big on introducing yourself using the three-point self-introduction, present, past, future, in all three of those steps.

Use intentionality, narrate the benefit to you of what you’re sharing. Present tense. I’m a blah, blah, blah. My expertise and skill is this, right? So start it with that past tense. Previously, I tell them what you did. Tell them what your accomplishments. Again, depending on the context and the person, you are establishing credibility.

You’re choosing what you share. This is, remember I said the definition is? Be yourself on purpose. This is the on purpose part. You’re being very conscious, and then the future is something enthusiastic about what’s to come, what your goals are, so whether you’re introducing yourself, whether you’re sharing your career journey, whether you’re meeting someone at a networking event, whether you’re.

Updating your LinkedIn profile, speak for your work, and control your narrative. It’s about self-awareness. It’s about being conscious and not just like trying to get the mic, like it’s my turn to introduce myself, blah, blah, blah. Next, no. Next time someone says, Let’s go around the table and introduce yourself.

I really hope that you will think this is the best opportunity that I have to reinforce my strong personal brand. Look forward to your self-introduction. All right. The third thing that I encourage you to do to develop a strong personal brand is to network and build relationships. And so this is really taking the step two.

Remember, I said step one is articulating. Step two is communicating. If you have lots of people in your network. Yes, sure. This does include LinkedIn followers, but it also includes just getting out there, like you see this lovely woman who’s smiling at a networking event, right? It’s getting in front of people and telling them what you do, and I decided to capitalize the word relationships here.

Very purposely. I know that you’re probably, if you’re like most people, thinking networking, ugh, I hate it. I hate networking. That’s because you’re probably thinking of networking as being selfish and self-serving. I encourage you to think of networking as establishing meaningful relationships, and how do you do that?

You do that by providing value to others. Think about. Sharing information with people, sharing your personal brand, your expertise, your skills with other people in a way that will help them think about connecting your network with other people in your network. Right? You are adding value, and you are strengthening relationships.

That’s all networking is. Networking is not going to event showing up, passing out your business cards and shaking paws. No. It’s actually establishing relationships. And by the way, when you go to that networking event. Circle back to every single person that you met. Otherwise, you might as well not have met them.

It’s the same way that if you do the work and you don’t talk about it, you might as well not have done it. If you go to a networking event and you meet someone and you never follow up, you might as well have not met them. You might as well have not gone to the event. Right?

So these are three ways that you can develop a strong brand and when I look at this list, I’m like, I feel very passionately that these three things will get you a lot of traction in developing your brand. Focusing on member positive, unique, and relevant, especially unique things. Speaking up for your work, being very purposeful about that, and choosing the words.

Use the word lead. Please use the word lead, and if you have global experience. Stop trying to hide. I talk with clients about this all the time. Stop trying to hide your accent. Your accent is evidence of your global experience. So introduce yourself as someone who has international or global experience and let your accent be evidence of that.

And of course, networking and building relationships. But there’s a lot to do in each of these three things, and I know a lot of people feel overwhelmed. And before I open it up for questions, I just wanna say, if you wanna learn more about me and what I do, you can go to talk about talk.com. I think we’re all connected on LinkedIn, and I encourage you to check out the podcast.

I’m on all of the podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, and on and on and on. And now we’re also on. YouTube, so you can watch m,e and I’ve done some pretty cool interviews where you can actually see what the guest looks like and see me interview them. It’s actually a lot of fun, so I hope you’ll check that out as well and subscribe on YouTube.

Wrap-Up & Live Q&A with the AudienceSo now I’m gonna go open it up for questions and the women that are here right now get first dibs. I have a question. Oh, yay Fatima. Yay.

Fatima Lusito: So I wanna ask a question about, I used to work in the corporate space, but one of the things that I would say U is unique or that I love about is bringing fun into the work that I do, and fulfillment is really, really important.

So, is there any suggestions or thoughts about how you do that in a way, because the corporate side is, it could be a different feel, how you incorporate that, and that, you know, if you have a personality that you wanna bring fun into what you’re doing and how you’re supporting your clients.

AW: I think Fatima one of the most effective ways establishing a strong personal brand is taking something that someone might think is a negative and turning it into a positive. So this is really being yourself on purpose. You are the one who wants to make work fun. Hang on a second. Work is hard, right? We’re supposed to be suffering and not having fun, and I feel like you can create a narrative around that where you actually call it out.

I mean, there’s even cliches around this, right? Like, we spend so much time at our at work, we might as well enjoy what it is. And you could say that, well, like, that’s the cliche. But I actually really, truly believe that we will not only just enjoy ourselves more, but will actually be more productive if we enjoy coming into work.

So I am the boss, I am the manager. I am the leader. Use, use the L word. I am the leader who is relentlessly focused on achieving our business objectives. And making sure that we all have fun when we’re here. And then you tell them how you do that. Well, because we have a mandatory offsite and you better smile and laugh when you’re there, right?

You could make jokes about actually evaluating people on whether they’re having fun and whether they’re contributing to a fun culture. And by the way, I’m also gonna say this is like a fantastic platform for the most senior leader, right?

Like, I’m seeing a CEO who has this? Brand of relentlessly focused on meeting OB business objectives and creating a culture that, I encourage you to use the word culture because I’m not sure what level you are, but if you’re leading any kind of team, you could even say my team culture is the most fun of any culture, any team in the organization. And then as you ascend to the most senior leadership, you could say, this is the company that people wanna work at.

Because yes, we are accomplishing our business objectives, but we’re also having fun. And you have a big smile on your face, and it’s unique, it’s positive, unique, and relevant. Okay. Who else has a question? Mabel’s labels. Oh gosh. We have so many Mabel’s Labels in our house.

Mabel’s Labels Inc.: Oh, do you? I’m so glad. Sorry. It’s my work-from-home day, so I’m wearing my second city.

When you mentioned Toronto, I’m like, what? I’m, yeah. Yeah. Um, so I just wanted to maybe clarify, I’m not sure if I kind of missed it. It was back near the beginning when you were talking about filters and, I mean, maybe, I guess ’cause I think for my brand, my personal brand, you know, I really try to use to elevate my business brand Mabel’s labels, right?

So my customer’s moms, so like one of my personal branding goals, which is. Easy is just to be relatable, ’cause I have six kids and it’s a shit show and whatever and you know, so do all my customers. Like, it’s just, I, my personal brand is like also trying to get through the day without smelling like baby vomit kind of thing.

Right. My kids are big now, but you know what I’m saying. So I mean, I bring in, like obviously, I guess I just think maybe you can talk a little bit more about knowing who’s in the room, who your customer is, who you’re speaking to, because for me, I don’t wanna filter out that messy crap. That’s what they like.

AWi: Right? So I think that your story here, by the way, this is an incredible company. I know you’re very successful. So my kids are. 17, 18 and 22, we have in our front hall, like a little plastic bag full of Wojnicki stickers. Yeah. From your company. Um, you can label everything courtesy of Mabel. So you’ve identified your, your primary target market and it’s like you are one of them actually.

You’re one of them on steroids. You have six kids and whatever, and you’re also doing the full-time work thing. And so I think that’s very smart. But this is a great example I’m gonna say of where you’re filtering. What parts of your brand you’re sharing. If you were at a stage where you’re looking for investors and you go into a room, frankly, whether there’s women there or not, having baby vomit on you should not be the first thing that comes out.

‘Cause you’re filtering for the things that are gonna help you establish credibility with those people. It doesn’t mean you’re not a great mom; it doesn’t mean you vanished from motherhood to businesswoman. It means you’re showing up as. A working mom who has it together, right? And so the other parts of your brand, Julie, will be being a hard worker, able to transition, solving problems, leading teams, inspiring people, and resonating with clients.

All of these things, like I tell people, to come up with a list of about 15 themes that includes your current employer and your current title. The industry expertise you have the functional expertise, you have your leadership style, your formal credentials, the school that you went to, whatever other credentials that you have, awards that you’ve won, huge things that you’ve created or accomplished geography.

So for some people, it’s like born and bred in Toronto, but I love to travel. Or it could be, you know, I’ve lived and worked in three different continents, and I love traveling. Whatever the geography is your family is for everybody. Young, old male, female. Your family role, like I, I say this, whether you say I’m a cat mom to two really lucky cats, or whether you say I’m the mom of six hooligans ranging in age from blah, blah, blah to blah, blah, blah, right?

We all have some kind of family role. It could be that you’re in the sandwich generation. I know a lot of my peers are talking about their very aging parents and their crazy teenagers or young 20-somethings. That’s another whole other thing. Thing. Right? So all of these elements are part of your brand, and you never are gonna share all 15 of these things ’cause people would say you’re crazy.

It also includes your personal hobbies. What do you do? I don’t know, Julie, after. What time are they in bed after 1130 at night, and maybe on the weekends when you’re not doing Mabel’s Labels. Right. So all of those things are part of your brand. And I mean, if you’re pitching to investors, you would tell them, part of our story that it makes us resonate so well with our customers is the fact that we are the target market.

Right? I am a mom, and I do. So that’s how it would come up as opposed to you grabbing a mic and sharing what happened in your house this morning. Right. Does that help? Okay, I got a thumbs up. Who else has a question?

Anne Grason: Hi, Andrea. I’m so sorry I came in late. I was on a call that just wouldn’t end. So I’ll listen to the recording later.

But comes to imposter syndrome, and you may have already covered this. Do you think that affects everybody or primarily women? What’s your point of view on that?

AW: So the research shows that it affects everyone. I like. I’ve done a bit of a deep dive here because I would say second to personal branding, the most common questions or focuses that I get for workshops and coaching is on confidence.

Confidence and overcoming imposter syndrome, really. So I’ve done a deep dive in the research on it. I can tell you a coupleof things. I can tell you that the. Tide has shifted a little bit on imposter syndrome. There’s a recent, within the last maybe four years, HBR article where they talk about stop blaming women for having imposter syndrome and start changing the culture so they don’t feel this sense of inadequacy.

And the other thing is it’s not just women. It’s not just unsuccessful women, it’s also successful women. It’s also men that have it. I can tell you anecdotally. Men are not coming to me saying, I need help with my confidence to the extent that women are. I can also tell you, there is beautiful research that I stumbled across this past summer that says, here’s the sentence, I memorized it.

Self-concept clarity builds self-esteem. When I read that sentence, I was like, yes, this is what I see. This is what I see with my clients. Self-concept clarity is. Building your strong, unique, personal brand, self-concept, clarity, build self-esteem. That’s social psychology. Talk for overcoming imposter syndrome and communicating with confidence, right?

So I think, an important thing for me to highlight when you do the work on articulating your unique strengths and passions and skills, your confidence generally will be boosted, and when your confidence is boosted. You have credibility. We don’t listen to people, we don’t believe people, we don’t follow people who aren’t confident.

If you’re confident, though, people are gonna say, Oh, she seems to know what she’s talking about. I’m gonna think about what they’re saying. Maybe you know some of the things that I was talking about before, where people talk over you, or they interrupt you. These things, you can dampen them by. Asserting and clarifying who you are and what your value is. Yeah, so Sorry Anne. I went on, I went on a little bit of a rant there.

Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s golden. It’s gold. It’s what I was, um, I was. I was outside on my deck in, it was like July, and I read the sentence and I stood up and I did a dance. I was like, yes, yes, yes. That’s it.

Self-concept, clarity builds self-esteem. Bam. That’s what I’m here for. Yeah, that’s, that’s the link between confidence and branding. So actually I think that’s a great place to end. I wanna say thank you so much for being here. I hope that you got some valuable insights. I hope you are thinking about your brand differently, whether it’s what people are saying about you, when you’re not in the room, what people think you’re gonna do next, or.

Hopefully, being yourself on purpose, being unapologetic, being strategic, being disciplined, taking a little bit of time, I’m telling you a little bit of time thinking about this stuff will take you a long way.

If you wanna learn more, go to TalkAboutTalk.com and in the top there’s like a little search, whatever magnifying glass you can just enter personal branding or personal brand and a lot of the resources will come up, the masterclasses, but also the podcast episodes and newsletters and on and on, so we can continue the conversation there or on LinkedIn. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Talk soon.

The post Personal Branding for WOMEN Leaders (ep.203) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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When it comes to networking, your strongest professional relationships are the ones you build long before you expect to need them. Learn from 3 accomplished leaders who know how the ripple effect works in real life.

You will hear insights from BARON MANETT, Founder and Chief Experience Officer at PSBX, SHELAGH PAUL, Head of Global Communications at OMERS, and THE HONOURABLE DAVID TSUBOUCHI, former Ontario Cabinet Minister. They all contributed to the book “The Ripple Effect: Networking for Success,” and in this episode, they share personal stories about connection, reciprocity, and the habits that help the right people stay in your orbit.

This conversation will help you rethink your approach to networking. You will learn how to make a clear and respectful ask, how to stay relevant without being transactional, how to recognize valuable peers early in your career, and how consistent behaviour builds a reputation that others trust.

CONNECT WITH THE GUESTSBaron Manett
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/baronmanett/
🌐 PSBX: https://www.psbx.co/

Shelagh Paul
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shelaghpaul29/

The Honourable David Tsubouchi
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtsubouchi/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE📚 Books:

The Ripple Effect: Networking for Success by David Tsubouchi and Marc Kealey – https://amzn.to/3WZyqpK
The Currency of Gratitude by Michele Bailey – https://amzn.to/434Vqpe
The 4 C’s Formula by Dan Sullivan – https://amzn.to/49t6RMZ
Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson – https://amzn.to/4nYujVE

🎧 Podcasts:

The Tim Ferriss Show – https://tim.blog/podcast/
The Diary of a CEO by Steven Bartlett – https://www.youtube.com/@TheDiaryOfACEO

TRANSCRIPTIONShelagh Paul: You don’t know the diamonds that are all around you in your own peer set right now.

David Tsubouchi: When you’re helping others, they remember that, and they remember you.

Baron Manett: To make it work in true networking, somebody has to pick up the phone.

Andrea Wojnicki: Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast, where you’ll learn the communication skills so that you can communicate with confidence, credibility, and achieve your career goals.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your executive communication coach. Just call me Andrea. Please check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website to learn more about all the services that we offer at Talk About Talk, including private coaching, corporate workshops and online courses.

And don’t forget to hit subscribe, so you’ll never miss a new podcast episode.

Today we’re talking about networking specifically what you need to do to create the network that you need later by taking action today. I have to admit, I was a little bit nervous about this episode because it’s the first time that I’ve interviewed three guests at once. Yes, the power of three me plus three. But it went really well, and I hope you agree.

About the Guests: Baron, Shelagh & DavidAll three of these guests contributed to a book on networking called The Ripple Effect: Networking for Success. You’re gonna hear from my friend Baron Manett. He’s my favorite classmate from our MBA program. He wrote a chapter called Curious, Grateful, and People First, Networking for Future Leaders. Baron is a leading Canadian brand strategist, a marketing professor, and the founder of Per Se brand experience.

Then there’s Shelagh Paul, author of the chapter entitled The People on the Bus. Yes. Shelagh is a master of the metaphor, and she is also the global lead at Omers of Communications. Yes, communications. I think I have a new friend.

And finally, David Tsubouchi. David’s the co-editor of this book that we’re referencing, The Ripple Effect Networking for Success, which was published in 2025. David’s chapter is entitled, be a Giver, not a Taker. I love this. He’s an accomplished leader, a former Canadian cabinet minister, and an author whose insights on generosity and connection are nothing less than inspiring.

Overview: Why Networking Feels “Icky” — and How to Fix ItOkay, let’s get into this. As a communication coach, I know that often people feel icky about networking, but when you’re purposeful about networking, and you make an effort. That effort can go a long way, and this conversation will provide you with many suggestions for how to make that happen. Here we go.

Thank you so much, David, Shelagh, and Baron for being here today to talk to us about networking and the ripple effect. Let’s start with a big picture. The book title, the Ripple Effect, and Networking for Success. I would say that this is an evocative title. It’s a beautiful metaphor. David, can you share with us what inspired you to create this collection and to use this title?

DT: I’m gonna start you off in a different direction. That wasn’t the original title that I submitted. Uh, the original title I submitted was. The no *hole rule. And, uh, the publisher reminded me that, uh, we, we have Simon Schuster distribute this in the United States, and that probably wouldn’t be a good thing to have as a title.

And he was quite right because we were lucky enough to get book list, which makes recommendations, the libraries in the United States to recommend a book for the libraries down there. So it was a wise decision. So, as you know, I mean, the ripple effect, you know, one small ripple can create. Figure waves.

Uh, and sometimes it’s a matter of time. I mean, networking is not something that happens overnight. It’s about creating relationships. And all of us will say the same thing. Uh, it’s a common thing throughout the book that the ripple effect, uh, is about quality, not quantity. It’s about having that circle of integrity around you.

It’s like having the culture, you know, organizations have to have a good culture to be successful. The same thing with the, with, uh, your network.

AW: Exactly. It’s the quality of relationships, not the quantity of relationships. And I was gonna say the term network is itself almost like, well, it’s not a network, it’s describing what it is.

And I love this image of. The ripple effect, like a drop of water and how it ripples out. And it grows not just in quantity, but in quality. So networking starts with the first step, right? The drop of water.

Taking the First Step: How to Reach Out AuthenticallyBaron, in your chapter in the book, you talk about how you reached out to David you years ago, and you were, I’m gonna say a little bit nervous or anxious about doing so.

Can you tell us that story and then talk generally about how we should write that first email. I get this question all the time from my clients. They’re like, it’s just awkward. How do you do that?

BM: It’s a great question. It’s so great to be, uh, back on the podcast, and thanks for having us. You know, I think back on it ’cause it was approximately 20 plus years ago when I first really heard of this guy, David Tsubouchi.

And I was, uh, I thought I was a kind of high Roland in advertising creative person, and I had a great idea, long story short, an idea around poker, and I thought it would be just as simple. To just, I sold it to our awesome client. It turned out to, you know, be a big program, and I just thought I’d go down to the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario, like a driver’s license kind of thing.

And I just get a license. And I walked in, I said, I’m just here for my license, for my poker tournament. And the outspoken clerk behind the counter says, you whatcha talking about, you can’t have that. And then, who are you? I was like, whatcha talking about? I just give it, go ahead. Just how much is it?

It’s illegal. I go, well, that’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. I go, who came up with that law? And she goes, listen, if you don’t like it, don’t complain to me. Call David Tsubouchi ’cause he wrote the law. And I went home, and I went back to the office. I looked it up, and he is right, some guy named David Tsubouchi.

And so I got his number, luckily. And I called them. And here’s what’s really interesting, right? Because I talk to a lot of young people who are afraid to make the call, and I totally get that. I was afraid to make the call. So I didn’t just call the honorable David Tsubouchi government minister. I did a little bit of research.

What was his purview where, you know, what was he focused on? I obviously could not talk to him on his peer level at the time, but I was hoping I could at least find common grounds of themes. And one of them was around innovation. You know, Mr. Tsubouchi liked to do things first, so did I. Common ground, even though we are different ages.

But to make it work in true networking, somebody has to pick up the phone, right? Somebody has to say yes. I hear a lot of people complaining, oh, my kids are networking all they can, and I believe them. Are they as prepared as possible? But are we being good partners on the other side? If David doesn’t pick up the phone, if David doesn’t say yes to me, none of this book, none of this story happens for me.

Right. So it’s a two-way street. It’s a value exchange. So thank goodness David was open-minded enough to realize that it’s not just one level. We, and now 20 plus years later, I’m trying to pay him back and so many other people by picking up the phone and saying yes. And you know, we can’t just lecture people to call into the air.

So it was a great lesson for me early to come prepared. And it’s not a one-way ask ever.

AW: I love that it’s not a one-way ask, and also this point about preparation. I’ve heard from some other wise folks that you wanna make it really easy for the other person to help you, but you also wanna make it. Clear that you’re not wasting their time.

And I can imagine, I think I knew you back then, Baron. You’re a keen young whipper snapper, and I bet you immediately impressed him, but he didn’t have to pick up the phone.

DT: Let me interject here if I could. You know, it’s how you ask to, I mean, look at all of us on this call, get all kinds of requests to meet and to talk to all kinds of people all the time.

You know, when Baron called me, I didn’t know Baron from anybody else, and I just liked the tone of his voice and the way he was talking, and it wasn’t someone who was reaching out and saying, I need this from you, or whatever it is. Uh, we just had a good conversation to begin with and, you know, it’s like having a, not coming out and asking right away.

But creating the interest on having a relationship with somebody else. And as you know, by now, because you know, Baron, I mean he’s very personable and, uh, he kind of sucked me in.

AW: So yeah, that’s Baron’s superpower. That’s Baron’s superpower. But you’re reminding me, David, of the other thing that he said was that he identified something that the two of you have in common, right?

Your quest for innovation, creativity being the first one. That’s brilliant. I talk about how this is like accelerating the relationship trajectory when you mention anything like, oh, you worked with so and so, or, oh, you’re focused on this, or whatever it is, your leadership style. Me too, whatever it is. Absolutely brilliant.

Start Before You Need Something: The Early Bird Gets the CakeSo Shelagh, I wanna get you in here. You talk in your chapter about how. The early bird gets the cake, and I absolutely love this. I love this. It’s powerful. Can you share exactly what you mean by this in the context of networking and what advice you have for listeners, many who have maybe early in their career, or even if you’re not early in your career.

How does this early bird gets the cake fit in here?

SP: Thanks, Andrea. And thank you for having, uh, me join this great group on this topic. Might that chapter or might that part of my chapter? The point was start networking before you need something. So, exactly what David just said, if you have identified someone that you might share an interest, you might really appreciate their perspective on something.

That’s the best way in. So for me, it’s what about that person’s perspective on something might help me grow my own perspective on something. So I’m not asking you for an introduction, I’m not asking you for anything other than a conversation. Uh, and I think that’s the best way, and I think this insight for me happened in.

I was looking back on some of the things that worked out in the best possible ways. So I was dumped into a committee, uh, in 2010, auto change, uh, when I was in the insurance business. And it was a group of people that I just found bright, fascinating, interesting. And I thought, I gotta get to know these people.

I wasn’t going into it because I wanted to network with them. I just really, truly wanted to learn from them. And so doing it early and getting the cake, uh, is, has got a tie into our actual story, but I’ll leave that for now. It’s networking when there’s nothing at stake, and that’s all there really is to it.

So those people in that group, in that particular story, have all gone on, and I won’t name them to do spectacular things. And we are peers. So it wasn’t again that I think when some people think about networking, they’re like, I need someone that’s maybe more senior than me, or someone that can help open a door for me.

And that is a certain type of networking. But for this, I was talking about you don’t know the diamonds that are all around you in your own peer set right now. Pay attention to those two, pick the right ones, pay attention to those two because you dunno what doors that might be opened for you 20 years later.

AW: I love that. And I heard you say Shelagh. I’m not just in there to network, like, it’s like, it’s almost like it’s a dirty word, right? I get this question all the time, or this response when I talk about networking, which is like, ugh.] And you’re saying get to know people before you need to.

SP: Exactly. The last part of your question was about early-stage career versus maybe someone more seasoned.

Hmm. And I would say early in your career, there are lots of opportunities. Get away from your desk or whatever you’re doing. Try to find other groups of people with like interests. Like Baron was saying, people that you can connect with. If you’re at a big company, they usually have employee resource groups.

There’s lots of opportunities to connect with people outside of your actual job and someone more seasoned. Think about it when you’re at a table, and you’re about to debate or try to decide something together. How much fun, easier, more respectful. Will it be if you’ve already built the relationship with them before you get to the situation where you need to actually navigate a, a solution together?

DT: Shelagh’s a hundred percent. Right? And, I get asked an awful lot by people, how do you meet people above your pay grade? The easiest example I can give is politics, and I don’t care if you’re what party you’re with, but if you have volunteer for a political party. You think about other people are volunteering, and a lot of the people volunteering are very important people, and they see you then as a colleague, not someone who wants something from them, but someone in a common cause.

And, you know, you got a chance. I mean, I inadvertently fell into politics and meeting people as a raw kid out of law school. And all of a sudden I’m rubbing shoulders with like Mel Lastman, who’s the mayor of North York at the time, cabinet ministers, and obviously, it’s not most kid. I didn’t know anything.

And, but here you get a chance to meet people way above, and you don’t need, and Shelagh’s right? You’re meeting people now as a volunteer. You’re not asking them for anything. But you know, later in life, that kind of connection. Really, really resonates because. They know you as something else other than something who wants, someone wants something.

They have that camaraderie with you. So I think Shelagh’s a hundred percent right on this because you meet people, but have a genuine interest on what you’re doing and the commonality, whatever the cause is. I mean, don’t be a, you know, a mercenary going in there. You gotta be, someone really cares what’s going on.

Why Nobody Wants to Be Sold ToAW: Oh. As you were speaking there, I was, I kept thinking about personal branding, right? So, I’m a little bit obsessed with the topic of personal branding. It’s like you establish what you have in common with a person, but you also make it clear what value you add, what expertise you have, your unique brand, and then magical things will happen.

But you’re not coming in to Shelagh’s point. You’re not coming in with the ask; you’re coming in with the let’s collaborate. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s establish a relationship, and I think a lot of people feel like they don’t know how to do that because ultimately, like, why am I going to this networking event?

Ultimately, maybe it’s to somehow accelerate my career progression and they feel selfish, and they feel salesy and they’ll, they feel icky. So I’m wondering what your take is on this, Baron, in your chapter, I have a quote here. You said, gone are the days of aggressive sales pitches. Pushing your agenda at networking events, right?

Like the, Hey, nice to meet you. Guess what I do? People wanna help and be helped is what you said.

How exactly do we do this? I mean, it’s one thing to say that we all nod our heads. How do you actually do that?

BM: I think, none of us have time to be sold to. And I think if I’m gonna have value to or add value to interrupt someone’s time if they don’t know me, or to engage someone who does know me and take up their time, how can I be helpful?

How can I provide utility? And that might not be what I’m selling at the time. That might be somebody I know or experience that I can share, but I think being helpful. Has relevance, and I think we only have time for relevance now, and we don’t have time for sales pitches. That’s how I feel when people connect, meet with me, and I tell them what I try and bring to my contacts and conversations.

AW: So I’m gonna interrupt this interview and challenge the listeners to do something right now. Think about who has helped you in your career, and think about how that happened, and think about how you think about that person. In terms of in your network, what role they play versus like LinkedIn, every time I log into LinkedIn, someone has sent me a connection request, and then boom, sales pitch selling me something, selling me something.

Andrea, can I send you a video? Andrea, la la la. I’m like, didn’t ask to be sold to. I thought we were connecting. This is not connecting. Right. It’s become. Well, it’s gone from the networking events, right? The classic cocktail party to now happening on LinkedIn. Uh, I would say an accelerated time, and I love your point, Baron.

It’s not what am I selling? It’s how am I helping for value?

BM: I mean, and just to go back to something David said before, right when I first met David, we of course, career-wise, no parody. Uh, the same today, right? But what David let me do was to his point about volunteerism, he had a couple programs. He said, Hey, do you want to help, you know, with your talent set?

And he let me be in the room. He let me be around the table. He let me learn how to be in the room and then when to talk and when to not talk. And I think more as leaders now, we need to be, remind ourselves of that young people need to be in the room. Right? And the same time, younger professionals, if you are gonna be in the room.

You gotta earn the room. It’s a two-way street, right? A lot of people I talk to want the ball, and then they don’t know what to do with. It was fine, but just speak up. So nobody has to be perfect, but with opportunity comes responsibility, I think.

SP: You know, and you’re going to an event, you’re, you’re gonna be somewhere where you know, you.

I might wanna have a conversation with someone. I hope that’s everywhere, but I have a couple of back-pocket questions. Just ones that you know, and because I’ll say one of the networking events we were at for this book, a young professional came up to me and said, you’re really approachable, but I have such a hard time, you know, just coming over and starting to talk to someone.

I said, well, how hard was it? So you just did it? So let’s just take that step by step. I mean, the ask was so specific. We ended up having a 20-minute conversation. We’re now connected on LinkedIn, blah blah. So and so. If he came back to me and asked me another question, I’d be all in answering it. So rather.

General like you can you, again, you can smell who said it. I can smell it a mile away. When there’s an attempt to sort of flatter your career and get specific is my point. Like, ask a question and you’re gonna get a way better return on value

AW: And you can get meta. So I know you’re big on communications Shelagh, as well, and just calling out the awkwardness of the event can actually be the icebreaker of the conversation, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ve been talking about the in-person networking event and a little bit about networking in the digital era. And I know that, um, all of us here have. Done all of the above, right? We’ve gone to those conferences, and you go, and you fill your glass, and then you turn around and you look at the swarm of strangers that you’ve never met.

And maybe if you’re an extrovert, you’re excited, and if you’re an introvert, you’re horrified, but you go in and you network versus what’s going on on LinkedIn. I’m wondering if you have any advice for professionals who are young and old again, who are looking to establish a stronger network and meaningful relationships when most of the interactions that they’re experiencing may maybe because they’re working from home or at least they’re hybrid when most of it’s virtual. Anyone can jump in on this one,

SP: I think for there’s no one-size-fits-all all. So the only advice I would give in that space is figure out how to be authentic. Online, in a teams chat, in a room, whatever, people can smell through non-authentic connections. So practice. Like show some people what, like this is what I, how I might start a conversation on LinkedIn,

What’s your reaction to that? And, so for people that already know you and trust you and know that your intent is good, they’ll likely say, you know what? That’s, I wouldn’t answer that. If I got that, here’s what I might do. And then I think again. We asked this question about sort of in person in the office versus on screen, and we all learned how to create relationships on screen.

It’s not impossible. I still in the camp where it’s better in person, but I think again, if you can show a little soul is what I call it, it’s a little more interesting through screen than not.

AW: I have a quick anecdote that I wanna share that you just reminded me of. Shelagh during one of my kids was in college, and there was parents’ weekend, which obviously didn’t happen ’cause we were being confined to our houses.

So they had a Zoom call with like 50 parents or it was open, but there were like 50 parents on the screen. And I had my name Andrea Wojnicki Talk About Talk on the bottom of my screen. And someone sent me an email, and she said, I’m in the Zoom with you. I just googled Talk About Aalk. Looks like you have a very cool company.

Can we set up a meeting and chat? And I was like. Wow, this is happening virtually, and I became great friends with this woman. She’s also an entrepreneur. She lives in Silicon Valley. Like you can do it online. You can use the chat, use private chat, use the public chat, put your LinkedIn profile right in the chat so other people can connect with you.

What other advice do you have for making this happen in a virtual context? Anyone else?

DT: Well, you know what, uh, I’ll just tell you about Murray Simpson. Murray’s one of our writers, and I didn’t know who Murray was, and he connected with me through LinkedIn, and then like I get a lot of requests to meet, uh, and I can’t do all of them obviously, but.

The way he asked me, like, Baron, he said, you know, eventually we, he said, you know, could I, could you meet with him and give him a little bit of advice on his company? So I looked him up and I actually, I looked up some of the people who were supporting him, which I, I need one half, which helped out. And I said, well, I’m going downtown for a meeting down at the, uh, at Elmers.

Uh, I’ll give you half an hour, you know, in the evening. Have a coffee with me and we ended up talking for three and a half hours. Wow. And we just connected on, like, I talk to Murray now three times a week. He’s like, Baron’s age too. So he is a, you know, we’re a different generation, but we connected on so many different levels, and now we do a lot of stuff together, and here’s somebody I didn’t know at all, and through LinkedIn and connected to.

And of course, I guess what you have to say sometimes is, uh, you can make that connection on, on, on, through. Remotely. But ultimately I think your personality and who you are really closes the sale,

AW: Your personality and being, as we said at the very beginning, authentic and focused on the other person, as opposed to, and it sounds, I was gonna say, David, your story, it sounds like it was a virtual relationship.

That’s in person, and now it’s hybrid, right? To use the vocabulary that we’re using.

The Power of Gratitude and Follow-UpsOkay. I’ve got two more questions for you before we move to the rapid-fire questions, if that’s okay. The first one is regarding follow-ups and thank you notes. I mean, it’s probably a sexist cliche, but your mom always told you to send thank you notes and follow up.

Right? But what are your thoughts on this in the context of networking?

BM: It’s a passion area for me. I actually just got my new thank-you note. It’s the first gift I got when I started, right before I started my career. Every young person I’ve met with in my career, I suggest a thank you note because, as a marketer, it is the biggest bang for your buck as a marketer.

If you think about it, the price of a stamp. Talking about paper envelope, handwritten analog, and it’s delivered to your audience. I’ve received 14 thank-you notes in my career from young people. I do about 75 to 101 oh ones a year. I’ve hired half of those thank-you note writers. And the other half, I found jobs, if you wanna break through.

It’s the easiest way in the world, and it’s so thoughtful, and it’s a lost art.

SP: I would say in addition to what Baron’s just said, I think you have to train yourself to be appreciative, and that sounds really weird, I know that, but if it’s transactional, it’s like I just had a meeting and now I need to send a thank you note.

At least you’re gonna do it. But sometimes it can feel like a chore, or I’m not really sure what I’m gonna say. I think what I found is I had to sort of change my whole, I am an appreciative, grateful person to begin with, but I’m like, how do I get in the habit of every day looking for things I appreciate?

And that’s something I talk about in the book, and it’s different from a gratitude journal. It’s not the things I’m grateful for in life, of which sunlight streaming through right now. It’s a kind word from somebody in the office. It’s the crunchiness of a fresh apple. It’s something that’s brought me pure joy, and so I do five things I appreciate in the last 24 hours.

Every single morning. I force myself to write those down. And then I’m not allowed to repeat anything. My dog would be on the list every time if I did. So I have to look for things to be appreciative about and what that’s done, and I didn’t realize it was gonna happen. It’s now two years in that I’ve been doing this, is I look for things to be appreciative about, whether it’s a conversation.

With somebody, a hap, you know, a happenstance meeting in the kitchen, something that one of my teammates says to me that really touches me and I make sure they know. I say, thank you because you made my list today. You made me happy. You made me just a pure spark of joy. And that practice has made me more likely to do exactly what Baron just said to do, which is write a thank-you note.

Let someone know what they did that was meaningful for me.

DT: Shelagh, that makes you more attractive to everyone else as well. That positivity just attracts people to you. And I think that’s what people need to understand. Look, I can tell you a quick story here. I’m working at home just before Christmas, a few years ago, and I got the FM radio on, listen to the local FM station.

And they had these two ladies come on, uh, talking about this women’s shelter. Locally, and I really liked them. I just listened to ’em. These things, the house was sincere, and they’re trying to raise $500 in an hour. So about 15 minutes before the program ended, I called them and said, how you doing?

Said, we’re doing pretty good. We raised the $200. And I thought, well, geez. So I said, I’ll give you the $300. And so I gave him the $300. Then I get a beautiful note from these people and I thought, well that’s kind of nice now because of the note they sent me, my wife and I are that, that’s our major charity we support out here now.

And, but it’s because they were thoughtful enough to send me a note, and I really appreciate it. It’s a small gesture, but boy, we remember these things as Bar said.

AW: That’s a such a beautiful story, David, that really. Illustrates the point that I sometimes share with people, which is if you don’t follow up after you meet with someone, you may as well have not made the connection at all.

Right? It’s closing the loop and the thank you note is a beautiful reminder and your reinforcing how important or how grateful you are. I wanted to ask you, Shelagh, do people know about your practice of writing down the five things every day.

SP: I tell people now, um, I try to inspire other people to do it because I, I honestly think it changed my outlook on life doing this.

So, um, I just am a happier person, but I was unhappy before. But it’s just, you know, looking for things that make you smile. And it was actually in a podcast I listened to. A couple of years back, and again, they sort of unpacked the difference between gratitude and appreciation, and I thought appreciation is just way easier.

It’s way on. It’s on the fly for things to make you happy, not for things to argue about. It’s. A ripple effect, literally.

AW: So one of the, my past, uh, podcast guest experts is Michele Bailey, who wrote a book called The Currency of Gratitude, and she talks about these benefits of sending a thank you.

You’re closing the loop, you’re reinforcing the relationship, you’re demonstrating your values and your personality. There’s like no downside. In fact, there’s like a whole positive ripple. So, here is the last question that I wanna ask before we get to the three rapid fire question, is that I’m hoping that this podcast episode, this conversation itself will be a ripple and if someone listening, an individual listener takes action after hearing this episode, what is the one thing that you hope they’ll do?

This is your opportunity for a very brief last word, or I’ll give you a sentence. Okay. About what you hope people will do differently after listening to this Baron? Yeah,

BM: And that’s a great question. I would hope that I’m gonna do a two-parter. One is that maybe we’ve made it a little less scary to reach out to that person you wanna reach out to.

And two, reach out with purpose, right? So the biggest gift you can give is someone’s is your time. If you’re gonna ask for that gift. The least we can do is say thank you about the gift, right? So that’s the full circle. I love what you’re talking about here. So can say thank you in a number of ways you can make donations.

You can tell people how great people are, but the least you can do is say thank you. And it’s so inexpensive. And sadly, right now, a very easy way to look like the tallest, most wonderful person in the room. So I think. Don’t be afraid. ’cause you’ll be surprised how many people will say yes and pick up the phone and don’t ignore the amount of work it is for someone to make time for you, ’cause it’s extremely valuable. Okay. Shelagh?

SP: I would say flip the script. Get out of this. I mean, it sounds strange for someone who’s written a chapter on networking, forget about networking. Try and get. Your own instinct, your own internal muscle around building human connection, every opportunity you get.

So again, it’s not to Baron’s point, it doesn’t have to be a scary thing if you are just focused on expanding your community in the moments where you’re not actually even trying to build a network, just think about it differently. You need to change the I have to, to, I want to. You’re not gonna be successful.

AW: That’s powerful. And before you need it, to your previous point, David.

DT: You know, I talk to a lot of senior executives, and they have trouble networking, too. And one of the things I say to them is mentor. Because mentoring’s a two-way street. And it’s interesting how many people over the years I’ve, I’ve mentored, and years later they’ve become very successful and they always ask me if they can help me out.

I’m not really after anything right now. I’m doing too much stuff right now. But it’s interesting when you’re helping others, they remember that. Remember you first of all, anytime they more need more advice or help with something or new, new project. So it’s a two-way street and I think it’s being always, again, as we talked earlier on, it’s better to give than receive and to have that degree of POS positivity in what you do.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: Fantastic. Okay. Are the three of you ready for the three? Gosh, I love this. The power of three everywhere. The three rapid-fire questions. We are gonna make this rapid fire. Okay. The first question, I think it was Baron or maybe David, who already kind of answered this on behalf of the group, but the first question is, are you an introvert or an extrovert? David?

DT: Uh, introvert.

AW: Shelagh

SP: Introvert or Gambivert. Apparently, there’s a new category, introverts that like socializing. That’s me. So, uh, or extrovert that are, or more thoughtful, but I’m more the introvert who likes socializing.

BM: Okay. Baron introvert. I wanna be alone with my thoughts. Really? Okay. Yeah. I thought I knew you, Baron.

Wow. If I have a preference, I love people. I just love them over there. Yeah.

AW: Okay. I know this is rapid fire, but I just wanna say, Shelagh, I didn’t wanna, um, trivialize your answer. I ask introvert or extrovert to be provocative. The truth is most of us are ambiverts. We need social time to fill us up, and we also need solitude to fill us up.

DT: So, I’m a professional likes being alone in this farm. Yeah.

AW: Nice. Okay, next question. I actually can’t wait to hear this. I’m gonna ask this in reverse order. What. Is or are your communication pet peeves? What infuriates you about the way other people communicate? Baron?

BM: People who spell names wrong.

AW: Ooh. Too many R’s and not

BM: enough T’s. Right? You know, I know it’s not the easiest name, but I didn’t ask you to reach out, so just spellcheck. That’s all just details. Those things I find silly. And the no thank you is, uh, I think intolerable obviously. I’m on the record.

AW: Can you, sorry. I know this is rapid fire. What do you mean the don’t thank you.

BM: You gotta say thank you afterwards, after a phone call. I’m not saying, Hey, thank you. Don’t say, yeah, that’s, that’s a no-go for me. Okay, Shelagh,

SP: I’m just gonna tack on Aarons, and then I’ll answer the question. I have two first names, right? So. And Paul, please trust that I know the order to put them in, and do not send me a message to Paul because I get it all the time because it’s a more familiar name, like.

Have a look at how, what the person’s LinkedIn profile is. The chances are if they’ve got this far in life, they don’t have their name in the wrong order. So that would be, that would be my ask is don’t call me Paul. My communication, uh, pet peeve is actually an evident lack of curiosity. Someone is speaking to you, and they’re just speaking to get their point across, or they just wanna be told what it is you need from them or, and you know, if you’re as a communicator, if you are not curious, you are not thinking about what your audience is thinking about. And so in, in terms of growing communicators, I love stumbling across curious people, and that’s what we need more of.

AW: Amazing. David.

DT: Yeah. I hate it when people don’t say what they’re after. I’ve got a great interesting idea for you.

I mean, tell me what do you want my help with to begin with? Secondly, I hate lazy people, so, you know, like. Someone who on LinkedIn will say to me, what do you do? My history is on my profile. Just read the stupid thing. And that automatically just, you know, thinking, well, I’m gonna delete that.

AW: Yeah. Oh, I’m with you. The stupid questions that people try to open with on LinkedIn, it’s like, come on, it’s all there. I’d love to hear more about what you do as you look at my profile.

Okay. Question number three. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending lately? Shelagh. Diary of a CEO. Oh yeah, I was just listening to it in the car.

SP: So I, again, there’s a, I, this is rapid fire, so I won’t get into the tons of examples that I had that are so relevant to the conversation we’re having. But there was an episode on the small things and being able to remember the small things about people, and it’s a really interesting differentiation that I don’t think I’d put my mind to.

Before, so not just their name, what they do, whatever else, but a year later, you remember their child’s name, or you remember something about the story that they told you. And most people have to write that down. So that’s again, being intentional. If you meet someone, try to remember the small details, ’cause you will stand out if you can do that.

AW: Yes, people are. Really flattered when you remember personal things about them. I know speaking from experience, being on both sides of that equation, I think Diary of a CEO is really popular, and I just thought about this today when I was listening to the podcast.

It is today’s Tim Ferriss podcast. ‘Cause Tim Ferriss used to interview really successful people and try to pull in like what are the skills that we can learn? And I think Diary of CEOs doing the same thing. Baron, is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending?

BM: Yes, both actually. Uh, the book I’m loving right now is a book called The Four Cs, the Four Conversations by Blair Ends, who I think is the best writer of developing how to sell expertise.

Certs just amazingly smart. And then the podcast I’m listening to is a marketing podcast Right now, best story wins. The podcast. Podcast. So just talk to me every week how, uh, different brand leaders come on and break down their challenges. Uh, yeah, motivating, motivating for somebody in my profession.

AW: Fantastic. I’m gonna leave links to those in the show notes. And David,

DT: A book I got years ago when I was in the board of, uh, Tet before, uh, uh, it was bought up by Omar years ago. The CEO give everyone on board a, a copy of Who Moved My Cheese and the simple book about. Learning a lesson from everything you go through, whether it’s positive or negative.

And that’s very important for all of us. And Baron and I, oh, before the pandemic, were asked to talk to a, a big pharmaceutical company on our greatest failures because I’ve learned more lessons from my greatest failures, and I’ve had some spectacular ones than I have about successes. And so the I idea of all this is maintain that positivity. Learn from everything you undergo.

AW: Be humble. Right. Okay. I’m gonna leave links to the books and the podcast that you mentioned in the show notes. I’m also going to leave links to your LinkedIn profiles and any other connections that you wanna leave with the listeners. And I just wanna end by saying thank you so much, all three of you, for sharing your unique perspectives on the ripple effect Networking for success. Thank you, David. Thank you, Shelagh. Thank you, Baron.

What a great conversation. I love that. Okay, here are my top three takeaways from Baron, Shelagh, and David. First, start networking long before you need something. As Shelagh says, the early bird gets the cake. I love the metaphors. Shelagh, reach out early. When you’re simply curious or maybe when you’re grateful, not just when you need a favor.

Second, remember, no one wants to be sold to. Let me say that again. Nobody wants to be sold to you can do better. So approach people with curiosity and authenticity. As Baron suggested. A great way to start is by saying, I’m not asking you for anything other than a conversation. Love it. Okay. Third, say thank you.

Close the loop. Communicate gratitude. A small gesture of appreciation, like a quick note or a message, can make a lasting impression. Gratitude builds trust and strengthens relationships. And that’s it. Please take a moment to subscribe, to talk about, talk on whatever app you’re listening to, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube.

Click subscribe or follow. Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post The RIPPLE Effect: NETWORKING for Success with Baron Manett, Shelagh Paul, and David Tsubouchi (ep.202) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

The Currency Of Gratitude: Turning Small Gestures Into Powerful Business Results

The 4 C's Formula: Your building blocks of growth: commitment, courage, capability, and confidence.

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Your out-of-office email response is an easy and effective way to communicate who you are as a leader.

In this short episode, communication coach Dr. Andrea Wojnicki explains how to craft your OOO email response to reinforce your professional identity. You’ll also learn the four do’s and don’ts: be specific about dates and coverage, be consistent while you’re away, show personality without sarcasm, and don’t overshare.

Listen for practical examples you can copy in minutes and start using today.

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: An out-of-office message might seem trivial, but it can be a powerful way to reinforce your personal brand if you take advantage of the opportunity.

How Your Out-of-Office Message Reflects Your Leadership BrandWell. It’s the holiday season. First, there’s American Thanksgiving, and then the December craziness starts. We’ve got Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, the winter solstice, and of course, New Year’s Eve.

I hope you’re able to take some time away from work to refresh and rejuvenate, and be with family and friends. I also hope you’re able to manage your out-of-office status. Have you ever considered that your out-of-office email responder is an opportunity for you to communicate and reinforce your professional identity and your leadership status?

Listen. I know you’re really busy, especially this time of year, so here’s my promise to you. In this short episode, you’re gonna learn some ideas that will help you easily elevate your personal brand, all while you’re physically away from the office. Let’s do this. Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. If you’re a longtime listener, welcome back, and thank you for listening. If you’re a new listener, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach here at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious professionals like you so you can communicate with confidence and ultimately achieve your career goals.

You can learn more about everything we do at Talk About Talk, including private coaching, masterclasses, and corporate workshops, if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com, and there are plenty of free resources for you there as well. Alright, let’s get into this.

Like I said, I know you’re busy always, but especially this time of year, and if you’re like most people, you don’t give a second thought to your out of office status, out of sight, out of mind. Well, not quite. Here’s the big insight. Spending a little bit of time managing your out-of-office status can go a long way in reinforcing your professional identity.

Turn Your OOO Message into a Branding OpportunityLet’s talk first about making some tweaks to your out-of-office email responder, and then I’m gonna take you through four dos and don’ts about how to manage your time away. Okay. First, your email responder. This is also relevant for Slack or Teams or whatever messaging platform you use. If there’s an opportunity for you to customize your message, that’s what we’re talking about here.

Your out-of-office response can communicate so much about your leadership style. I would call this an under-leveraged communication opportunity where it’s really so easy for you to reinforce your brand. This insight originally came up for me in a recent private coaching session that I had with a brilliant client.

We were talking about the touch points that shape our professional identity, and she mentioned how she saw a very thoughtful out-of-office reply, and it made her pause and think. This really says something about who they are as a leader. And you know what? She’s right. An out-of-office message might seem trivial, but it can be a powerful way to reinforce your personal brand if you take advantage of the opportunity.

Partly, I think, because people aren’t expecting it, we kind of expect the generic email, I’m away, and my response will be delayed. I’ll get back to you after I return. Hmm. This is a missed opportunity. So here’s what I do instead. First. Identify what part of your personal brand or your professional identity that you wanna emphasize.

Do you wanna emphasize your thought leadership? Your people leadership, your strategic thinking. Maybe you wanna role model boundary setting for your internal team, or maybe you want to empower them while you’re away.

Identify the Message You Want to ReinforceThis first step is critical. Ask yourself, what’s the one message that you wanna reinforce?

And then once you’ve identified this main theme, go into your email settings and craft your out-of-office responder accordingly. Make sure you reinforce that theme that you chose. Here are some examples. If you are an empowering leader, you might say something like, I’m out of the office, but my team’s got this.

If you’re a strategic thinker, you might add a comment about taking time to reflect, refocus, and strategize. If you’re a boundary-setting leader, you could say, I’m offline modeling boundaries and making space for the big stuff. And if you’re a thought leader, you could say. In the meantime, while you’re waiting for my response, here’s an article or a link to a podcast episode that I think you’re gonna find helpful.

You get the point. Just adding one sentence can have a big impact. I hope this inspires you to think more strategically about reinforcing your leadership style, or you could say your professional identity, through your out-of-office response.

Four Do’s and Don’ts for Crafting a Standout OOO ReplyAnd now I wanna follow up with a few do’s and don’ts. I hope you’ll consider these four pointers when you’re writing your out-of-office email responder and as you’re managing your time away. Yes, there are four more than just the power of three.

1. Be Specific About Dates and CoverageThe first one is do be specific about the dates that you’re gonna be gone. And the coverage that you’ve set up, share the date that you’re gonna return, and name the person to contact with urgent needs. And here’s a bonus tip: don’t be tempted to overpromise regarding when you’ll be able to respond.

If you’re coming back on January 2nd, don’t promise a response on that day. You know, it’s always more overwhelming when you get back than you anticipated. Am I right? So don’t over promise, rather under promise and overdeliver. This isn’t just about communication skills; this is life advice. Okay?

2. Be Clear About Coverage (and Then Stay Consistent!)My second suggestion is to be clear about coverage and be consistent. If you’ve identified someone who’s looking after urgent things when you’re away, then go and let them do their job. I know, trust me, it’s tempting to jump in and help out, but imagine how this feels to the person you’ve designated to step in for you. They can feel frustrated if your out-of-office responder says that you’re away, but you’re still actively communicating with them and managing through things.

It’s also confusing to everyone. You work with your team and your customers, or your clients. So be clear about coverage and responsibilities, and then follow through and be consistent. So now we’ve covered the first two pointers. One. Do be specific about the dates that you’re gone and the coverage that you’ve set up. And two, be clear about the coverage and be consistent.

3. Show a Little Personality (But Keep It Professional)Number three. Show some personality. You could add a joke or something that’s relevant to your firm or your brand, but do be careful. Don’t assume that people will get your sarcasm or your quirky sense of humor. Remember, your out-of-office response goes to everyone, including prospective clients, customers, and people that you haven’t met yet.

My suggestion is that you write your out of office responder with some personality, and then ask yourself, if someone read this who didn’t know me, would they be offended? Would they be confused? If yes, then edit it. Remember, sarcasm never does well in an email. Okay?

4. Don’t Overshare — Stay Safe and On-BrandNow, the last, the fourth pointer, do not overshare. Sure, a little personality is great, but the reader does not need to read your full vacation itinerary, and you don’t wanna come across as bragging. I’m off on my private jet to the Riviera, where we’re meeting some friends on their yacht. Ugh, do not do that. And also with regards to oversharing, including your full itinerary, could pose a security risk.

Oh, Andrea’s whole family is away and her house is empty until January 2nd. Excellent. Let’s plan the heist now. No, no, no, no. Okay, so these are my four pointers for you. One, do be specific about the dates that you’ll be gone and the coverage that you’ve set up. Two, be clear about that coverage and be consistent. Three, show some personality, and four, do not overshare.

Lead with Clarity — Even When You’re OOOI hope that this brief episode has inspired you to customize your out-of-office email responder in a way that will benefit you. Here’s the thing. The most effective leaders out there communicate with clarity and intention, even when they’re not at their desks.

Your team is watching your colleagues, and customers do notice. This is your chance to model behavior, demonstrate credibility, and yes, show a little personality. So take a few minutes to craft something that reinforces your leadership style. Then your email response can do the work for you while you’re off enjoying your time with family and friends.

And speaking of family and friends, please forward this episode. It’s Talk About Talk episode number 201. Share it with your family and friends who might find it helpful. And now I hope you go off and enjoy your time away. Talk soon.

The post How to Craft an Out-of-Office Message That Reinforces Your Leadership Brand (ep. 201) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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What makes the most successful leaders stand out? The way they communicate.

In this special 200th episode, communication coach Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares the three ways that leaders communicate differently based on years of executive coaching, workshops, and research.

You’ll learn how to:
✔️ Shift from “speaking up” to communicating with intent and precision✔️ Practice next-level listening to understand, not just respond
✔️ Project confidence and credibility while staying humble and growth-oriented

Andrea also reveals the Top 3 most downloaded Talk About Talk episodes of all time, each one packed with tools to boost your communication confidence and impact.

If you’re serious about leadership, this episode will show you exactly how to elevate your presence and influence through communication.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEEp.169: Communicate with Confidence:

Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/communicate-with-confidence-part-1-mental-preparation/id1447267503?i=1000668212684
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5JjfIbOvKM5uHkTluJ8OO4?si=c4c1b53654454bb3

Ep.154: 5 Quick Fixes to Improve Your Communication:

Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/5-quick-fixes-to-boost-your-communication-effectiveness/id1447267503?i=1000651033350
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1jLaxQXf9dsfWhhJFohqeh?si=b31772612b604a20

Ep.170: Introductions – How to Introduce Yourself:

Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introductions-how-to-introduce-yourself-ep-170/id1447267503?i=1000669087059
Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Ga0FecP4SHLh4qVfPXYdT?si=ab84ea12e7e644e0

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: Successful leaders are focused on intent and precision in their communication. By intent, I mean that successful leaders don’t just speak to fill the air. Every word, question, and story has a purpose, whether it’s to inspire, clarify, or align.

How Successful Leaders Communicate Differently — and What You Can Learn from ThemWell, hello there. I have an announcement. Talk About Talk is 200. This is our 200th episode. Several people have asked me how we’ll commemorate this 200th episode. Yes, this is a big deal. Andrea, will you list your top 10 episodes to date, maybe your top 10 learnings, or Andrea, we know you’re a big fan of the Power of three. Will you list your top three episodes? Sure, I can do that, but I can also do even better.

In this short episode, you’re gonna learn how the most successful leaders communicate differently than everyone else. Over the last several years, I’ve coached hundreds and hundreds of executives, thousands. If you count the folks in the communication skills workshops that I’ve led. And based on my years of coaching ambitious executives, plus the podcast interviews and my research, I have some unique insight into what distinguishes the most successful leaders from everyone else.

These are the insights that you wanna hear. If you are hungry to become one of these successful leaders. So I’m gonna share with you three ways that your communication must evolve if you plan to ascend to a position of leadership. And yes, of course, I’ll also share the top three Talk About Talk episodes of all time.

Are you ready? Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. If you’re a regular talk about talk listener, welcome back, and thank you for listening. If you’re a new listener, welcome. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, please. Just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, and if you’re ambitious and keen to improve your communication skills to help you achieve your career goals, well, you are in the right place.

And whether you’re a longtime listener or a first-time listener, I encourage you to check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website, where you can learn more about what we do here at Talk About Talk, including corporate workshops, private coaching, and online courses. And a free weekly communication skills newsletter. You can learn more on the website.

Okay. As I said, people have been asking me for a while now, for several months, how we will commemorate this 200th episode. Yes, it is an important milestone, and to be honest, I have to say I am very proud. And I have this idea that’s been brewing in the back of my mind for a while. It’s this idea of focusing on how successful leaders communicate differently than everyone else.

This is a topic that I don’t really hear a lot about. I don’t hear other people talking about it, but it’s critical, really. If you’re a middle or a senior manager, actually, whatever level you’re at. If you’re ambitious and you wanna become a leader with strong communication skills, what would you be doing differently?

Today, I mean differently from the junior folks and even differently from the other middle and senior level folks who aren’t quite as successful. I can tell you exactly what you’d be doing differently. So I encourage you to sit back and take this in as a private coaching session. Listen to my three suggestions, evaluate them for yourself, and decide where you can get some traction in your quest to become seen as a successful leader.

Communicate with Intent and PrecisionAlright, here goes the first way that successful leaders communicate differently from everyone else: Instead of focusing on speaking up in meetings and filling the air, you focus on communicating with intent and precision. Let me tell you how this first became apparent to me. I noticed that many of the more junior folks in my corporate workshops would share their struggles to speak up in meetings.

And let me tell you so. I can relate. I remember when I was in my twenties, a recent business school graduate, sitting around the boardroom table with my boss and her boss and his boss, and I was so focused on speaking up and saying the right thing. I remember making a rule for myself that I had to speak up at least once in every meeting.

I also volunteered to give formal presentations whenever the opportunity arose. It was all about speaking up and getting airtime. Have you ever noticed, though, that successful leaders never struggle with this idea of speaking up? In fact, in my experience in coaching, it seems like it’s quite the opposite.

Successful leaders are focused on intent and precision in their communication. By intent, I mean that successful leaders don’t just speak to fill the air. Every word, question, and story has a purpose, whether it’s to inspire, clarify, or align. And by precision, I mean both brevity and clarity. I almost never hear more junior folks or less successful folks asking me about communicating with precision.

But almost all the senior and successful folks highlight this as a key area where they wanna focus. Communicating with precision is a skill that they know they must attain. Now, before I get to the next point, I just wanna make something perfectly clear here. If you’re a junior person and you’re still earning your stripes, you’re still demonstrating the technical expertise, and you haven’t yet established your leadership brand, then by all means speak up.

But if you’re in a formal leadership position in an organization, then I encourage you to shift your focus to communicating with intent and precision. So that’s the first thing. Successful leaders are less focused on speaking up and more focused on communicating with intent and precision.

Next-Level ListeningThe second way that successful leaders communicate differently than everyone else is their next-level listening. More junior people and maybe also the less successful senior folks. They might listen intently to their boss, but it’s only to know what their boss is looking for. They might also listen passively in meetings, politely waiting for their turn to talk. Meanwhile, successful leaders listen to understand, not to respond.

They listen deeply for insights. They reflect back on what they hear, and they ask clarifying questions. The successful leaders I coach fully understand that they do not know it all. They understand that they have to listen deeply to their team members so that they can be well-informed and informed enough to make important decisions. So that’s the second thing. Let’s call it next-level listening.

Confidence Without ArroganceThe third and last way that successful leaders communicate differently from everyone else is their ability to project confidence and credibility without arrogance. I’ve noticed a real pattern here when it comes to seniority and confidence.

The more junior, early-career folks are typically focused on boosting their confidence. They talk about suffering from imposter syndrome, which, by the way is not a bad thing. This relates to the confidence of speaking up, doesn’t it? Which I just mentioned early in our careers we’re more likely to feel anxious and nervous.

We know that building confidence is key. I rarely hear this from more senior folks, and particularly from these successful leaders. It’s like over the course of our careers, we evolve from anxious and nervous to more confident and sure. Some people tip the scales, and they become arrogant. These arrogant folks are the close-minded ones who think they know everything.

But in my experience, this is rare. I can count the arrogant folks that I’ve coached. On one hand, interestingly, these three or four people all knew they were perceived as arrogant, but they deny it. Andrea, my boss, said that I can come across as arrogant, but really, I’m not arrogant. Okay, so here’s the thing to test.

If you’re arrogant, if you worry that you might come across as arrogant. Then in all likelihood you’re not. It’s those folks who don’t worry about arrogance, who are arrogant, and if you’ve been told that you come across as arrogant, then, like I said, you probably are one thing I know for sure. Confidence is key to credible leadership.

We are inspired to follow the confident, credible folks. I like to think of it as a continuum. On one end, we have paralyzing anxiety, the nervous folks. That is not good. On the other extreme, we have the arrogant folks. Also not good. In the middle, though, we have this beautiful equilibrium of perfect confidence.

This is where successful leaders sit. And do you know what their secret is? What is it that keeps them at this perfect equilibrium? Not nervous and anxious, and not arrogant. It’s their growth mindset. Their focus on learning. If you’re focused on growing and learning, your anxiety will dissipate. And if you’re growing and you’re open-minded, you’re definitely not arrogant.

So if you struggle with confidence, no matter what level or stage you are in your career, I encourage you to shift your mindset to focus on growing and learning. This means seeking feedback, truly listening, seeking growth and improvement. Ultimately, this can be what propels you to successful leader status, and that’s the third and last way that successful leaders communicate differently from everyone else.

We covered three, of course. Three. Do you remember what they are? The three ways that successful leaders communicate differently than everyone else are: number one. Instead of focusing on speaking up in meetings and filling the air, successful leaders communicate with intent and precision. Two successful leaders are next-level listeners instead of passively listening.

They listen to truly understand. And three successful leaders project confidence and credibility, and they maintain that beautiful equilibrium in terms of their confidence through what their growth mindset. Now that I’ve identified these ways that successful leaders communicate differently than everyone else, I see evidence in all three of them all the time.

So I thought I had to share them with you. My challenge to you is to evaluate yourself on these three dimensions and identify where you can focus so you can get yourself one step closer to successful leader status.

Celebrating 200 Episodes & Top 3 Listener FavoritesIn case you’re wondering what the top three most downloaded episodes are of the 200, talk about talk episodes released to date.

I’m really excited to share them with you now. Number three is called. Communicate with Confidence. Part I, preparing to communicate with confidence. It’s episode number 169. In this episode, I share strategies to help you prepare for those anxiety-inducing scenarios like giving a speech or leading a big meeting.

I also share some of my own disasters on stage, and I think that might be one reason why that episode is so popular. The second most downloaded episode of all time is episode 154, called Five Quick Fixes to Improve Your Communication. Yes, it’s five, not just three. And yes, there’s a quick payout for listening to this one.

I cover five things you can do that will make a big difference in your communication. The number one most downloaded talk about talk episode of all Time is an early episode that quickly became and remains the most downloaded episode. I’ve also rereleased this episode a few times, most recently as episode 170, 1-7-0, so you don’t need to scroll all the way down to the early episodes.

This episode is called Introductions. How to Introduce Yourself. Why is this one so popular? Well, a few reasons. First of all, I know most of us feel some anxiety regarding our self-introduction, and with good reason. First impressions are important. This three-point framework that you’ll learn in this episode is easy to remember.

It’s customizable in any context, and most importantly. It works. I hope you’ll listen to all three of these popular episodes. I’ll leave the titles and the episode numbers for these top three episodes at the top of the show notes so you can easily access them and listen to them. If you haven’t done so already, and whether you’re listening on Spotify or Apple, or maybe you’re watching Talk About Talk on YouTube.

Please subscribe when you hit subscribe. It helps us get traction, and it helps you make sure that you don’t miss an episode. And that’s it for Talk About Talk episode number 200. Thanks again for listening. I hope you continue to find this podcast helpful in your quest to improve your communication skills and accelerate your career. Here’s to the next 200 episodes. Talk soon.

The post Top 3 Communication Skills of Exceptional Leaders (ep. 200) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Ever been stuck in a conversation at a networking event that feels a little too long? You’re not alone.

In this short, practical episode, communication coach Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares five graceful ways to exit a conversation politely without burning bridges.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
✔️ How to transition smoothly by connecting people with someone else
✔️ Why the “food and drink” excuse still works (when used well)
✔️ How to tell someone you want to meet other people and still sound professional
✔️ The selfie trick that creates a natural exit and helps you remember names
✔️ How to be transparent and end any chat with confidence and warmth

If you ever dread awkward endings, these strategies will help you handle them with tact and ease so you can keep your conversations (and your reputation) positive.

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: The next time I go to one of those awkward networking events, I am going to graciously thank the person for the connection and move on. Have you ever found yourself at one of those infamous networking events, and you’re going around and you’re meeting new people, and then suddenly you find yourself in a conversation that’s lasting a little too long?

You probably have, you’re back to the wall, and someone’s firing questions at you and telling you their life story, and you’re thinking, I need to get out of this conversation. This context is awkward even for an extrovert like me. So in this episode of the Talk About Talk podcast, you are going to learn five creative, clever, and polite ways to graciously exit a networking conversation without burning bridges.

The Awkward Networking DilemmaAre you ready? Okay. Let me start with a true story. This actually happened to me. I remember once I was at a networking event, there was a room full of powerful women, and I wanted to meet all of them. And I found myself, after about half an hour or so, engaged in a very intense conversation with one woman, and there was no one else around.

And she was firing questions at me, and she was telling me her life story. And I remember thinking, I don’t want this conversation to go any further. I need to find a graceful exit. And you know what I did? I looked over her shoulder, and then you know what she said, Andrea, is there someone else you’d rather be speaking with?

Is there somewhere else you’d rather be? And I actually thought to myself, Oh my gosh, this is like the networking event nightmare. I’m stuck talking to one person. I’m trying to figure out a graceful exit. And she actually calls me on it more on what I should have done in a moment. But first, let me introduce myself.

Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk. In case we haven’t met. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious executives like you to improve your communication, your clarity. And your credibility so that you can achieve your career goals.

If you’d like to learn more about me, I encourage you to go to talk about talk.com, where you can read all about me and all of the services that I offer. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I spend lots of time there and I would love to hear from you.

Okay, let’s do this. Five ways to graciously Exit Networking Conversations.

Connect Them with Someone ElseHere’s the first one. Connect them with someone. This is actually what I should have said to that woman who asked whether I’d rather be talking to someone else. I should have quickly said. Actually, I just noticed a friend over here that I’d love to introduce you to, and that I should have grabbed her and pulled her over to a friend and introduced them, and then you have your way out, right?

You’ve created a threesome and you’re the third wheel, so it’s time to leave. I’m not saying take the person you don’t want to talk to and introduce them to another unsuspecting victim. I am encouraging you to think about real positive connections that you can make. After all, this is a networking event.

Use the Food or Drink ExcuseYou can do yourself and everybody else a favor by establishing connections. Okay, so that’s the first one. Connect them with someone else. The second one is the old food and drink excuse. Here’s what you do. You announce something like, Listen, I am famished. I haven’t had anything to eat all day. I’m gonna head over to the food table and fill my plate, and I’ll come find you later.

And then you just leave. The other thing you could do is bring them with you, say. I notice you don’t have a glass of wine, or I notice you don’t have a cup of coffee. Let’s go over to the beverage center and help ourselves, and then bring them with you, and you’re bound to find other people along the way that you can meet with and talk.

So that’s the second way. Announce you’re getting food and drink.

Be Honest About Networking GoalsMy third suggestion is to turn the conversation to networking and meeting people. This is actually about telling them why you’re there. You could ask them, So what’s your objective here? And they tell you, well, I wanna learn this, I wanna meet people.

And you could say, listen, I really do too. I’m really trying to expand my network. So if you don’t mind. I’d love to exchange business cards or exchange LinkedIn connections. And then I’m gonna move on, and I’ll connect with you sometime later this week, and then you leave. So the secret here is being honest and telling them exactly why you’re at the event.

You want to make as many connections as possible. You want to expand your network. Make sure you tell them that you’re gonna reconnect with them later. And then make sure you do always follow up. So we’ve already covered three of the five ways that you can graciously exit networking conversation. Do you remember what they are?

Number one, connect them with someone. Number two, announce that you need food or a drink. And number three, focus on networking and tell them you’re trying to expand your network.

Take a Selfie TogetherThe fourth way to graciously exit a networking conversation is to invite them to take a selfie with you. This is a great one that I haven’t heard before, but actually one of my clients who’s become a friend shared it with me.

She said she finds herself in this situation all the time, and you know what she does? She says, I’ve met a lot of people tonight and I plan on meeting a lot more. So here’s what I’d love to do. Can I take a selfie with you? And if you’d like, I can send it to you, and that way we can exchange phone numbers or email addresses, however you’re sharing the photo.

This is creative, and it establishes the connection and it gives you an out. So that’s the fourth thing. Invite them to take a selfie with you.

Just Be TransparentThe fifth and last strategy is to just tell them. Be transparent. So there’s really two ways that you can do this. Depends on how confident you are. If you’re not feeling particularly confident, you could revert to suggestion number three, right?

You could tell them, listen, I’m feeling really awkward about this, but I feel like I need to move on because my whole objective, my goal for this event, is for me to meet as many people as possible. So please don’t take this personally, but I’m gonna move on. It was lovely to meet you. And then close the loop with them, right?

So that’s one way of doing it. The other way that you can do this was actually inspired by a woman who I met a couple of times at different events, at dinners and cocktail parties, and she was the master of this. She would spend three to five minutes chatting with me, getting caught up, and then she’d say, Listen, I need to make my rounds.

So I just wanted to say it was fantastic to get caught up with you. I look forward to seeing you again soon, and I’m just gonna move on. And then she would go. And I remember consciously thinking to myself after she did this with me a couple of times at different events, like, wow, I really want to master that, that eloquence, that graciousness.

She wasn’t making excuses, she wasn’t calling out the awkwardness, she was graciously telling me how lovely it was to see me again and that she was gonna move on, and then that’s what she did, and I didn’t feel in the bit slightest. This is my goal. The next time I go to one of those awkward networking events, I am going to graciously thank the person for the connection and move on.

What’s your goal? Remember the next time you go to a networking event. If you find yourself in a conversation for a little bit too long with someone, try one of these five strategies. Number one, connect them with someone. Number two, the food or drink, excuse. Number three, tell them that you’re focused on networking and meeting as many people as possible.

Number four, invite them to take a selfie with you. And number five, just be transparent. Okay. That’s it for this short episode of the Talk About Talk podcast. And yes, this is episode number 199. The next episode is a big deal. It’s gonna be episode number 200. I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to the Talk about Talk podcast.

If you’re not subscribed already, please hit subscribe or follow on whatever platform you’re on, whether it’s Apple or Spotify, or YouTube. Where now, yes, you can watch the Talk About Talk podcast. Thanks again for listening and talk soon.

The post 5 Ways to Graciously EXIT a Networking Conversation (ep.199) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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How do you speak up with confidence without sounding aggressive? Leadership coach and TEDx speaker Ivna Curi shares how to find the balance between boldness and respect so your message lands with influence.

In this episode, you will learn:
✔️ The important difference between aggression and assertiveness (hint: you want to be assertive!)
✔️ How the DESO framework helps you handle hard conversations
✔️ When apologetic language undermines credibility and when it builds trust
✔️ Ivna’s personal story of moving from people-pleaser to confident communicator

Whether you lead teams, pitch clients, or want to be taken seriously in meetings, these strategies will help you speak boldly and be heard.

CONNECT WITH IVNA CURI🌐 Website: https://AssertiveWay.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.Linkedin.com/in/IvnaCuri/
🎙️ Speak Your Mind Unapologetically Podcast: https://AssertiveWay.com/Podcast

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE📖 Building A StoryBrand by Donald Miller: https://amzn.to/3IMAduF
📖 Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://amzn.to/48GtWuW
📖 Principles by Ray Dalio: https://amzn.to/4nrBnL3
📖 Acting With Power by Deborah Gruenfeld: https://amzn.to/3WhuoIF

🎧MORE HERE: Ivna interviews Andrea for her Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/how-to-identify-and-communicate-your-personal-brand/id1623647915?i=1000719522727

TRANSCRIPTIONIvna Curi: Speak to people in a way that makes them wanna hear your power in your delivery and that conviction, and then listen to people in a way that makes them want to speak to you.

Andrea Wojnicki: Are you an assertive communicator on a continuum from anxious to passive, to assertive, to aggressive? Where do you stand? Do you know what the important difference is between assertiveness and aggressiveness?

Yes. We want to be assertive. No, we do not wanna be aggressive. But what exactly is the difference? In this episode of Talk About Talk, you are about to find out. Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. I’m your executive communication coach, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. You can learn more about me on the TalkAboutTalk.com website.

And please, if you’re not already, please subscribe or follow the Talk About Talk podcast on whatever platform you’re on. Spotify, Apple, YouTube, wherever you’re listening, hit subscribe, or follow. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. If you’re tuning into this episode, then I’m gonna guess that you could use some help with what we call self-promotion, a little help with feeling more bold and sounding more assertive and confident.

If you happen to be one of the lucky few for whom this does not resonate, maybe you’re already bold and assertive; well then, I encourage you to listen anyway. But from a different perspective. As a leader, chances are a significant proportion of the folks who you work with and who report to you have serious issues speaking up and being assertive as a leader; part of your job is to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard. We call this encouraging courage. I love that we encourage courage.

Whether you’re an individual seeking more courage yourself, or maybe you are a leader, making sure everyone gets heard, you’re gonna wanna hear some of the insight from our guest expert today, Ivna Curi.

About Ivna CuriI met Ivna on LinkedIn. She had me at bold, unapologetic, and assertive.

I knew the Talk About Talk listeners would wanna hear her message. Ivna leads practical workshops that empower leaders to navigate hard conversations with confidence, ultimately improving performance across teams. She’s also the host of the Speak Your Mind Unapologetically podcast, a TEDx speaker, a Forbes contributor, and the author of Unapologetic Voice.

Here we go. Thank you for being here today, Ivna, to talk with us about using assertive language.

IC: Thank you for having me, Andrea.

The Power of Bold & Unapologetic CommunicationAW: Okay, so out of the gates, I’d love to start with some definitions. I noticed with your podcast and your TED Talk, and other things that you do on social media that you use the terms bold and unapologetic a lot, so I thought we would start there. What exactly do you mean when you say bold and unapologetic?

IC: And that’s a great question because a lot of people use those terms, and everybody seems to have a different definition of what bold and unapologetic means. And I actually use unapologetic a lot because it, people are very attracted to that.

Uh, they love it. However, it is not what people think. Unapologetic and being bold is not venting off. Our frustration is not purely self-expression. It’s not just being authentic. It’s not being honest and blunt. What it is, is being able to express ourselves respectfully, so fully express ourselves, our thoughts, our ideas, our concerns, our boundaries, our perspectives, everything that we are, you know, those, those important conversations, our feedback in a respectful way with the purpose of influence.

So it’s not simply, let me just speak and get it out of my system. Right. And make myself heard, there’s a purpose there. There’s something that we want out of that conversation. There’s an element of influence on the other end. So it’s, it’s not about just saying whatever, or controlling other people.

AW: So I heard two, I heard many things I love there, but I heard you say respectfully. Yes. And I think that’s really important too, ’cause I agree. It’s dangerous. I talk about building your personal brand unapologetically, but that doesn’t mean you’re just not being respectful and you’re not filtering.

Right. So I think that’s important. And then you talked about with purpose or for with influence. So, I’m gonna start to think about that term, unapologetic, using those ideas as well. What about bold? How does bold fit in there?

IC: Bold means, and here’s something that happens a lot, a lot. I see a lot of people speak tentatively with hesitation so that they can be polite and kind and nice, and that’s the opposite of bold.

Bold means speaking with conviction. Bold means speaking in a way that’s definitive, being decisive, not holding back, because we wanna be polite and make people comfortable. There are other tools to do that. There are other tools to be warm and build connection, but when it’s time to express our thoughts, our ideas, our concerns, our perspectives, we gotta be bold. We cannot try to be tentatively. Polite.

AW: So I heard you talking about this. I told you that I watched your TED talk, which I’m gonna link to in the show notes here and recommend men that everybody else watch it. But as I heard you speaking, even before you mentioned it, I thought of psychological safety.

IC: I’ve had 13 managers in my career before I took on a completely more entrepreneurial role, and the very best one of them for me that made the biggest impact for me in my career and my ability to be productive as well. Yes, he provided psychological safety, but he pushed me towards risk every single day in the world, the world beyond him, while I was interfacing with external vendors and supply chain client, angry customers.

Other leaders in the organization, they were not happy, and they were not giving me safety. Now, my manager gave me safety when he would push me towards the world, the dangerous world out there, make me speak up, basically coach me through it, but not protect me. And then he would be a safe space for me to come back and say, I, this did not work.

I struggled with this. How should I do better here? Amazing. And that’s how I was able to evolve and be still able to speak up and express myself in different situations and be more independent, be more autonomous, and grow and develop as a leader. You know how they say with children, sometimes overprotective helicopter parenting can be damaging to kids, and helicopter leadership can also be damaging if it’s excessive.

And sometimes, as a leader, and I’ve been there, you, we feel like we’re the mom, we’re the dad. We gotta protect from everything, all bad things. We gotta protect our, our little children, our team from any struggles, any challenges, any difficulties, any hard conversations.

Psychological Safety and the Benefits of Assertive LeadershipAW: So this is a nice segue, I think, to the benefits. So I’m hearing that for parents, it’s a good thing to encourage your children to take risks. For managers, it’s a good thing to encourage psychological safety and encourage your people to be bold and unapologetic. So, in the context of at work, what are the benefits of being bold and unapologetic?

IC: So being bold and unapologetic. As assertive communication. So respectful communication. Yeah, with influence is very powerful because especially in hard conversations, you know how transformational hard conversations can be. Mm-hmm. To relationships, to business, to productivity, that actually enhances the quality of collaboration. Because often when people are collaborating, there’s some people who tend who are naturally more passive, more quiet, and they tend to step back and avoid conflict, which means they’re always compromising.

They’re compromising on their ideas, they’re compromising on their perspectives. And so that collaboration doesn’t work because the more dominant types are always, you know, getting their way, getting their point across. And we’re not leveraging the diversity of thought of that team, of that organization, to come up with the best ideas to problem solve, to innovate, because it’s not truly inclusive, because the communication in that meeting is not truly inclusive.

But if there is an environment that has psychological safety to some extent and where people, there’s an environment that, a structured environment for participation, but also people are able to communicate in a mutually respectful way with influence. Then that problem-solving ability goes up, organization’s resilience goes up, conflict reduces significantly.

People spend a whole lot of time, like about a month, a year, dealing with unproductive conflict. Festering conflict. So there and miscommunication gets reduced tremendously. And miscommunication is, is is a daily reality for most leaders. True.

AW: So I’m hearing a lot of the same benefits that accrue for psychological safety. Right? I feel like if you’ve created an environment where people can be bold and unapologetic, almost by definition, you have an environment of psychological safety, and so that’s why you wanna encourage those things. You mentioned that some people on your team are gonna be quieter and more passive, is what you said, right?

So, to those people, what advice do you give them to encourage them to be more assertive?

IC: So, a couple of things. One of them, one of the things that people who are confrontation, avoidance, and just, focus a lot more on preserving their relationship than winning or getting their point across, is they also feel like they need to feel confident before they speak up.

AW: Mm-hmm.

IC: They wanna be fearless and that’s just not the order of things. That’s not gonna magically happen out of the blue without speaking up or engaging in those conversations. They’re not going to start to speak up more because they’re they just suddenly became confident out of nowhere, right? That confidence comes with experience in doing something and skill.

So I always encourage courage, and courage is something that we can also develop. To take that step beyond the comfort into a little bit of that risk, but in a measured, experimental way. Because people are often in their heads, and they project a fear and a consequence that’s much greater than reality.

And when even if they speak up and things go in the wrong direction, and here’s what happens typically. People who tend to be more passive, right? So we have assertive, aggressive, passive, and passive-aggressive are the most common. And obviously it’s situational as well, but people have a tendency to be more passive and compromise and agreeable people pleasers, they’re scared, and they tend to, when they try to be more assertive, they tend to go too far into aggression because they don’t really know what they’re doing yet.

And so when they go too far in aggression, people know them. As someone who’s, you know, always quiet and let, and letting others speak and agreeable, that causes some tension because people don’t understand, they haven’t seen this, this individual before speaking up like that. And they’re, they tend to be a little bit aggressive because they don’t know the techniques.

So being able to get the manager support and saying, Hey, or put in the development plan, personal development plan, Hey, this is something that, a skill that I wanna develop. And getting the manager to support you along the journey, knowing that you will make mistakes, and it’s just part of the process. So you can get that feedback in terms of response from people.

Think about what you’ve done well, what you could do better, and then try again, and the make that official so that people around you can support you in that mission is also critical. And then the last thing I’m gonna say is the skill piece. And when we don’t know how to speak up, obviously, the consequences of retaliation, backlash being seen as net, is difficult, as aggression go up.

However, when we upskill ourselves, when we know what we’re doing. Yeah. And how to have these conversations and the frameworks to do so, especially the harder conversations, it de-risks that conversation and it increases our influence to achieve the outcomes, to make our message land in the other end.

And when we increase the reward because people are here us to understand us, and they’re acting or responding the way we want them to respond because our influence went up and the risk goes down, then we naturally feel more inclined and more courageous and more confident to do that thing even more, which is speaking up.

AW: So it can be like a sort of a vicious downward cycle. It’s like a positive upward cycle when you start to do it. So as you were describing that, even I was imagining a continuum where at one end you have people that are paralyzingly anxious, right? Yes. And then at the other end, you have aggression, and in the middle you may have an equilibrium of the ideal level of assertiveness. Does that sound kind of right?

IC: Yes. And the thing that most people confuse with, like they think that it’s a bit of a personality trait, but it’s something that can be very much learned and taught. I’m naturally very passive. I avoid confrontation. I am a people pleaser.

When you talk about brand, the brand I had for my, the first 10 years in my career was nice. Yeah. That was the word that people used to describe me, and I had to put in an intentional effort to develop and understand how to communicate with respect, with, yes, with kindness and empathy, but also with a bit boldness. Right. And influence to get that message across.

AW: Yeah. So you said this, there’s this common pattern of folks that are a little bit more passive. When they try to become assertive, they may jump past assertiveness to become aggressive. What exactly is the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness?

Assertive vs. Aggressive: Finding the BalanceIC: And that’s crucial for people to understand. Yeah. Because they get this wrong all the time. Yeah. So philosophically, it’s around control and aggressive. When we’re communicating aggressively, we’re trying to control others.

And their behavior when we are assertive. We control ourselves. We’re controlling our communication so that we can influence others.

AW: Back to the influence. Okay.

IC: Back to the influence. And so that manifests in many different ways because sometimes a lot of people, a couple things that don’t have influence. Right. That tend to be a more aggressive, very typical, in assertive training, you always find this, which is the I language versus the U language.

People use this all the time. Yeah. In aggressive communication, the very subtle things that we say, Hey, you hurt my feelings. There’s like a client that came to me and said, I was super assertive Ivna, you would be so proud of me. I had, I arranged this meeting with this person who had changed my slides last minute, all this, and I told them, you hurt my feelings.

I had to break it to them. Like, listen, you were courageous. That’s beautiful. I’m so glad you took initiative and you had the conversation. But the reality is that, you know, you hurt my feelings, is can be seen as very aggressive as opposed to when this happened. You know, I felt this or this action that you did impacted me in this way.

AW: This way, right

IC: This way. Or another one that I see all the time is people say, you know, you made me feel disrespected or you disrespected me. Right? It sounds okay, but it’s actually, it can come across as very aggressive and judgmental, and it lacks evidence, and it’s not constructive. So there’s many different little subtle things that we say in our language that can come across as aggressive if we’re not careful.

And it’s definitely not influential, right? Right. Making someone putting, making someone defensive is not going to increase our influence. When people are asking others to change behavior, and this, most people don’t, they’ll complain, but they won’t. They won’t talk about the thing that they want different, that, that to change, right?

The requests, they’ll never bring that up. And when they do. It’s something like, you know, stop being disrespectful or stop interrupting me, or, I don’t like this. Versus a future-oriented, constructive invitation. Mm-hmm. To change something. Yeah. Little subtle things that make a huge difference, and I could spend a whole hour just on. These, these differences and how they manifest in our communication.

AW: So one, one clear one that I heard there was saying I instead of you. Yeah. And then there’s, there’s also the one that’s a little bit closer to that, which is when you do, this is how I feel. Which might be okay. Right. But what are, are there any other little tactical tweaks that you can share in terms of our language that will keep us in the assertiveness realm and out of the aggression realm?

IC: So the deso or the desk script are very famous for assertive communication, having hard conversations. The one that I teach is a version. That goes beyond that. It has a few more elements so that it can be a, it, it can vary and be adjusted based on, uh, the power dynamics, based on personality, based on how strong a relationship you have with that person, and all those other elements based on.

You know, something that I see a lot like women struggle sometimes. A younger woman, maybe with an older man in, in those different elements. But the basic assertiveness script that can really help for these conversations is called DESO or DESC Script.

AW: Yep.

IC: So D is for describe the situation. You know, I noticed, in these meetings, I’m getting interrupted a lot, or I’ve been interrupted three times in the last five team meetings. The more specific we can get, the better, versus saying things like, you are always late, or you always interrupt me, or you never do this. The second step is explaining your sentiment or your feelings, or in a business context, it’s much better to talk about expressing the impact of someone’s actions on us or the team, or the client or the customer. It’s a lot more professional than just talking about our feelings. Yeah.

AW: In the context of being productive and meeting certain objectives.

IC: So that’s where the, when this happened, is the context, you know, I felt this, or the impact of this action was, their team lost, didn’t feel psychologically safe to express their thoughts, and we didn’t get enough discussion around this.

Then the S stands for specifying our request. I like to call that an invitation because a request, sometimes people can feel like it’s a act as if it’s a demand, and we don’t want that. We want it to really feel like an invitation.

So the invitation is forward-looking, and a great way to start this is, hey, going forward, because then people are more amenable to that versus the past is more blame-oriented. Hey, going forward, I would appreciate if you, you know, you let Sally or others in the team speak before sharing your ideas.

Since you’re superior to them and they might feel threatened to speak otherwise. And the last one is O for outcomes or C for consequences, which is giving people a reason to accept the invitation, right? That way, we can make sure that we get the most collaboration out of the team. We get the most ideas before we make a decision.

Right? Then getting at some level of confirmation. Does that work with you? Are you good with that? Agree. And then closing with the relationship. Once again, Hey, thank you so much for making the time to talk about this. I really appreciate your collaboration. And then you’re done.

AW: Yep. And you sound confident and clear. You are not being aggressive. Right. And you’re trying to meet everybody’s business objectives and everyone’s personal objectives. Yeah.

IC: Yeah. And you’re in control. You have the influence to being respectful. You have the framework, so you know the key points you wanna make. That allows you to not to make sure that they don’t derail you. Yeah. If things don’t get overly emotional.

AW: Yeah.

IC: So it’s very easy, very thoughtful,

AW: And you know that I love a framework Ivna, right? Like I know you, you’re not talking about It’s not, yeah. It’s not a script, it’s a framework, and you can fill in the blanks and you’ll sound great. And it’s easy to remember.

I love it. Okay, so on this continuum from aggressiveness to assertiveness, and here we have this kind of passive apologetic maybe. Is it ever, okay, so I’m sure you get this question from your clients, like sometimes, isn’t it okay to use apologetic language or weak language?

IC: And I get in my workshops, I get a lot of pushback on this because the group usually is primarily passive.

And, you know, and I’m encouraging, and some of them say, Hey, you know, here in the south, that’s, that’s what we do. You know, we, we, we ask for permission for everything, right? We apologize for everything. And I get it. There are cultural nuances at the same time, in a workplace context, it’s very different. If you’re in the bakery and you know, there’s someone in front of you and you cut, I mean, there’s a, it’s just a different situation.

It’s a different situation. If you’re talking to a superior and, you know, pitching an idea. Versus talking to a direct report and trying to make them feel safe and showing vulnerability. So it’s all about being intentional with that. Generally. We also wanna role model for our teams that they can be bold.

That’s okay to be bold, and it’s important to role model that as well.

AW: Yeah. They’re watching you. Right? They’re watching.

IC: They’re watching you both on the vulnerability, but also on being bold. Yeah. With your ideas. So being able to express ourselves, our ideas, our thoughts, our concerns, set the boundaries, whatever that is, self-expression that is respectful is, no apologies for that.

AW: Right?

IC: No apologies whatsoever. Yeah. Now, where does it make sense? Okay, well, we make it a mistake. Even then I would, I would be cautious about. When to issue an apology, when to talk about an apology, and when to position that in a different way for which is, for example, acknowledging the impact of our actions on others and that at least for me, it would feel so much better if someone is expressing, not just saying sorry, because it feels empty.

AW: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

IC: And lacks meaning if there’s not a demonstration of understanding of empathy towards the impact that person’s mistake had on me, on my team.

AW: Right.

IC: And an intent to change things going forward. Right. That is way more powerful than just saying, sorry. Yeah.

AW: I know there’s this formula that I’ve seen a million times on social media about when you’ve done something wrong and you know you need to apologize. You go up to the person, you say, I apologize for, you label what it is that you did. Then you describe, as you said, what the negative impact was that you understand, and then you say, here’s what I’m gonna do, going forward.

So you’re saying if I had to skip step one. Not, not hear the, I’m sorry. And I just had step two and three. I would be fine with that. In fact, I’d be better off. I get it. Yeah.

IC: Better off. Yeah. I don’t care about the, sorry, apologize part. Yeah. Just show me that you’re committed to make things different and that you understand my perspective.

AW: Yeah. So I thought you were gonna go in a different direction with this, and so I wanna just share this conversation that I had with a senior client of mine. She was running for CEO of her organization, and we were talking about her communication plan, ’cause she needed to make sure she had all the stakeholders who would, who were, had input onto the decision of who the CEO was, including a board of directors and some of the senior, existing senior executives in the organization.

And she said they are very diverse, and some of them are very old school. Very hierarchically thinking, and I am the only woman contender for the CEO position, so I need to be very strategic about how I’m communicating with these folks. Never mind the gender dynamic itself. Like, never mind, like, how do I bring up the fact that I’m the only woma,n or do I bring that up?

Right? There’s the whole point of how I talk. And so we, we actually created a strategy where we wouldn’t call it apologetic language, but it was more like she would use language where she’s deferring power to the other person because that’s what they expected. And again, this is, you used the word intentionality.

She was very intentional about it, and she definitely comes across as a bold woman and a confident woman. But she said sometimes that can backfire. So I was just, that’s where I thought you were headed. So let’s go to the other end of the spectrum. I wanna ask you, have you ever had clients or even people in workshops who are like arrogant and like beyond aggressive. They’re just like, well, they’re probably aggressive and arrogant. Have you ever come across that?

IC: They do happen, but they don’t happen often. I come across a lot more people that have the poor me victim mentality, and that’s probably harder to deal with. The arrogant types.

There are people who resist feedback, and change initially, but they tend to open up and under and understand a different perspective. So I haven’t, uh, I haven’t seen truly like arrogant people. Now, arrogant people like most other of these, you know, the, these, this dysfunctional waste of communicating.

They come from insecurity, from wanting to protect themselves, from wanting to command. I’ve had clients say, I wanna keep my edge so people respect me. Yeah. Wow. So Wow.

AW: They don’t, I haven’t heard that one. I haven’t heard that one, but I can imagine you haven’t heard I, yeah,

IC: Yeah. Like how do I keep my edge? And so what they don’t understand is that there’s, you know, I have actually whole talk about this, which is speak boldly, connect openly. Mm-hmm. I speak to people in a way that makes them wanna hear your power, your delivery and that conviction. And then listen to people in a way, in a way that makes them want to speak to you.

And when you combine those and you’re able to know when to use each one and how to combine them together in important conversations, then you do not lose your edge.

AW: Yeah.

IC: But you do not, you’re also not controlling people. Right. People are there with you because they want to be with you.

AW: Yeah. I love that. I love that. So in the vocabulary that I use, I would say communicating with conviction and credibility. Also, having a growth mindset and genuinely being interested in what other people are saying because you have a true belief that your collaboration is gonna be more effective than you just telling them what it’s not.

You’re not delivering a monologue, right? You’re sharing your thoughts, and then you’re listening to their thoughts, so you can come up with the best solution or decision or whatever it is. I love that. Okay. Is there anything else before I get to the three rapid-fire questions, Ivna, that you wanna share? I guess the ultimate question is for the folks that are erring on the side of being apologetic or not assertive enough, so that they can land, they can maybe move along this continuum a little bit closer to the ideal level of bold and assertive communication.

IC: I am extremely passive by nature. I’m socially anxious people pleaser. That is my, that’s who I am. My tendency, however, I felt like that was my strategic strength in the past. We talk about identities. We talked about brand. I actually thought that was part of my brand. I’m just like an easygoing collaborator.

That’s who I am. Once I found the other side of, once I found the real me, nobody is authentically passive people pleaser. That’s not you. Everyone is assertive. I just haven’t hadn’t found it yet. Once I found assertive evening, oh my gosh. I’m never turning back, ever, because this evening feels empowered, feels free, feels happy. I attract the right people to my world. I can actually command people’s attention when before I couldn’t, and my self-confidence and my self-worth, we talked about self-worth all went up. Yeah, this is the real me.

AW: Oh, I love it. So people pleasers are not pleasing themselves. It’s

IC: I apologize for not them, they’re not pleasing themselves. Yeah. That’s not who you are. Yeah. Gotta break free and be willing to experiment. I’m all, I’m very big in social experiments, in a controlled way with the support. Try new things, figure out, learn some of these frameworks, learn how to do things so that you make fewer mistakes, how people respond, adjust, try again and people who are people pleasers tend to catastrophize the consequences of speaking up a lot more than reality.

So when you start to get that real feedback loop from the environment you’re in and people starting to respond positively to your speaking up moments, that’s going to give you tremendous confidence, courage to start finding that new, more powerful version of yourself.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: Amazing. You will be quoted on that. Okay. You ready for the three rapid-fire questions? I am. Question number one: Are you an introvert or an extrovert, and how does that affect your communication?

IC: So I am introverted, introverted, socially anxious, and a people pleaser.

So that was me. However, none of that is static. So, when we start to expose ourselves to the thing that is uncomfortable or different, we enjoy it. When I go to conferences, I enjoy meeting new people and talking to them, but do I like to stay at home and do in solo walks? Absolutely.

So it’s something that we can evolve into. Now, what I do say is a lot of people just don’t understand the differences between all of those things. Yeah. It’s important to understand a little bit of that, a little bit of psychology, so that we can not think that that is who we are and we can’t change that, or that it’s gonna somehow hurt us.

AW: Right. A lot of people have a negative association with introversion, and I say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is not a judgment. It is a way of being, and introverts typically are the best listeners. And it doesn’t mean that you are also socially anxious. You can, you know, go, like you said, go to the networking event and get out there and on stage like you’ve done.

It’s just gonna take more energy, and you can manage your energy, right? Like this is a different construct than I think a lot. A lot of people think that introversion means you’re paralyzingly shy and you can’t be around people. No, no, no, no, no.

IC: Right. Simon Sinek is introvert.

AW: A lot. A lot of incredible teachers are actually, yes. Okay. Question number two. What are your communication pet peeves?

IC: One of the things a co, there’s a couple of them. One of them is really polite people. They drive me crazy because. I can’t get a good conversation. I can’t move when their politeness is disguising what they’re really thinking, and it kills conversation.

It kills the ability to find mutual value, which is what I’m always looking to explore. And so I’d rather someone be, I’d, honestly, I’d rather have someone be blunt and unpleasant than politely. Not say anything. Yeah. Politely. Boring substance. Yeah. Politely boring.

AW: I bet. Doesn’t I have a hypothesis? I bet that as people are listening to this episode, they’ve got someone in their mind that they know I know someone.

Very well actually, who is very polite and often during and always after my conversations with her, I always think she’s so polite, and I don’t, I have no idea what’s going on in her head. I have no idea. Right. I love that. Okay. Is what else? Any other pet peeves?

IC: Yes, yes. So something that I’ve been experiencing a lot, and maybe you do too.

From these people who call themselves who, who broadcast how nice they are, how servant leaders they are, how kind they are to people, and they ghost me. Like there’s no tomorrow what? They ghost, ghost, ghost, ghost, ghost, ghost, ghost. And I’m okay. I think there are circumstances where, you know, we, we, it’s fine to ghost people.

That’s okay, but I’m talking about. Like, we’ve had several interactions and you’re still ghosting me. Hmm. And it is a pet peeve ’cause it upsets me. However, one of the things that assertive people do, and I keep reminding myself, is to take responsibility for things. We have the power to influence communication with other people, even if they’re not being assertive.

So in all these instances, if someone’s being overly polite and expressing themselves, and if they’re ghosting me, I always have the ability to respectfully, with the right kind of questions, the right kind of action, the right kind of attitude, consistently open people up, and that’s very empowering.

AW: I’ve heard, I have to tell you, I’ve heard this theme. Being ghosted as a pretty common pet peeve. Recently, I’d say in the last year, four or five people have told me that this is their pet. Oh, really? Pet peeve. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like it.

And there, there are we and we, I ended up getting this conversation with, with one person expert that I was interviewing, and I admitted that I used to respond to every email and LinkedIn message that I got from anyone. And then I realized so many of the unsolicited emails were coming to me, and I just, I couldn’t do it. And someone said to me, you do not need to respond to unsolicited sales pitches. Yes. That is not ghosting someone. So, you clarified when you were just talking about being ghosted, you’re not talking about pitching someone for the first time.

AW: No. You’re talking about an, you know, like a, a dialogue that suddenly stopped. Right? Yeah.

IC: You’ve had 3, 4, 5 interactions. Yeah. You had meetings, you spent one hour together, three hours. You’re not asking, you’re not pitching anything. Mm-hmm. Explicitly. But people are scared of you. Yeah, they’re scared of us.

They’re scared when people ghost. Here’s what my interpretation of it: they’re scared of their own reaction. Inability to handle a conversation. They can’t say no. They don’t know how to say no. They don’t know how to say, well, I have concerns. They don’t know how to express or even think through, and talk about. What’s bothering them? So insecure.

AW: Well, and that gets to your point of how to, how you can, as a communication expert, make your question a way that will help them get over that. So, okay. Rapid question number three. Is there a book or a podcast that you find yourself?

IC: I have to recommend my own podcast.

AW: Yeah. To start with, there’s a link there. There will be a link to it in the show notes. Yes.

IC: So speak your Mind Unapologetically podcast and actually listen to myself. As a reminder, because I do have to remind myself sometimes of what I teach. Yeah. So when I go on walks every now and then, or if I’m in the plane traveling somewhere, yeah.

I’ll put it on my own podcast and listen to what I have to say.

AW: I think that’s really, that is really smart. I sometimes, when I haven’t heard myself for a while, I go back and I listen as well, partly because I want to keep improving. But you also wanna remember certain like frameworks or whatever you were teaching.

IC: Now I’m like, oh wow, that was really smart. That’s awesome.

AW: I like that. That’s good. That’s good. I love that you admit that on the podcast episode. I do, I do. I’m, oh, I like that. What else? What else is in your podcast feed that you recommend?

IC: I’m gonna give you books. Yep. Okay. So we talked about. Branding. I love the book.

Building a StoryBrand, uh, gives a great understanding of how to build that, that, that, it just gave me really a lot of, a lot to think about. Atomic Habits was a great book, and I think about building habits around communication skills as well, and that came from that book. It’s a great book. Principles from Ray Dalio.

Love Ray Dalio. Bold man. Bold thinker. If you want to have some bold thoughts on how to approach things and culture, and organization. Yeah, I really like that book. Acting With Power by Deborah Greenfield, also. Great book. I haven’t heard of that one. A Stanford professor. Okay. Really studied the whole power dynamic thing and how do you act with power, especially as a woman in a work environment.

AW: Amazing. So I’m gonna put links to all of those books in the show notes. Is there anything else that you wanna leave the Talk About Talk listeners with in terms, in terms of cultivating the ideal level of assertive, bold, unapologetic communication?

IC: Yeah. So embrace the process of getting there. It’s not, it doesn’t happen overnight.

Surround yourself with assertive people or bold people, and that is a bit contagious as well. Uh, often when we’re not bold, we don’t feel comfortable around bold people, but I encourage you to surround yourself with that kind of people so that you can see how it works and the kind of results that it lead, it creates, and how people respond by observation, and that’s going to naturally cultivate that desire to discover how you can, and there’s no more authentic thing than being able to express ourselves fully in any environment.

So that should lead the way. Figure out what’s most important to you and make sure that, and, and focusing on the goals that you have, the dreams is going to help overcome the fears of being able to speak up, so focus a lot on the dreams as well. Those were my little tips.

AW: Very inspiring. Thank you so much, Ivna. I really enjoyed the conversation and getting to know you. Thank you.

IC: Thank you so much, Andrea.

AW: Thanks again to Ivna. Okay. The first thing I wanna say, did you catch the difference between assertiveness and aggressiveness? I think this is important.

Aggressive is control of others. Assertive is controlling ourselves and expressing ourselves.

One of the simplest ways to do this is simply to say, I, not you. I have something to add. I wanna share something important. I love this disciplined focus on assertiveness versus aggressiveness. We all want to be assertive, and we want to encourage it in others. Before I let you go, I also wanna highlight the DESO or DESC framework that Ivna mentioned. This was a new framework for me.

As you probably know, if you follow me here on the Talk about Talk podcast or on LinkedIn or if you subscribe to my newsletter, you know I love a good framework. It’s not a script, it’s a guideline or a prompting sequence that you can customize and optimize for your context. This DESO or DESC framework will help you when you need to be assertive.

It’s describe, explain, specify the consequences or outcome. So you describe the situation, then you explain or express the impact. Then you specify or invite the other person to hear a message, to make a change. And last, you clarify the consequence or the outcome. This is the impact. Sticking to this framework will help you sound confident, concise, and yes, assertive.

I love this framework, Ivna. Thank you so much for our inspiring conversation. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling encouraged about being courageous. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit subscribe, and if you’re interested in learning more about how to optimize your communication at work so you can show up with confidence and credibility, then I encourage you to check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website.

There are lots of communication skills, resources for you there. Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post How to Become a Bold, ASSERTIVE Communicator | Ivna Curi (ep. 198) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

Acting with Power: Why We Are More Powerful Than We Believe

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How do top leaders captivate audiences and drive action? Carmine Gallo distills the communication habits behind Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos into practical moves you can use right away. From minimalist slides to memo-driven meetings, and from relatable stories to memorable metaphors, this episode shows how to simplify, persuade, and be heard.

In this episode, you will learn:✔️ Why simplicity signals confidence and increases retention
✔️ How to wrap data in a narrative so people care and remember
✔️ The Amazon rule that replaced slides with written memos
✔️ How to manage nerves with deliberate rehearsal under pressure
✔️ A simple structure to avoid the curse of knowledge. Start at the top

Whether you lead teams, pitch clients, or present to executives, these strategies will help you communicate with clarity and credibility.

CONNECT WITH CARMINE GALLO🌐 Website: carminegallo.com
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carminegallo/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE📖 Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo: https://amzn.to/3N9Fgn2
📖 The Bezos Blueprint by Carmine Gallo: https://amzn.to/4gpDaOi
📰 Carmine’s Columns on Inc.: https://www.inc.com/author/carmine-gallo
🎙️ Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard: https://armchairexpertpod.com/

TRANSCRIPTIONCarmine Gallo: We’re all storytellers. We’re wired for story. It’s how we process the world through narratives and stories. It’s the way we communicate information, mostly through stories, not bullet points on a slide.

Andrea Wojnicki: If you wanna communicate like the world’s top leaders, then you’ll love this episode with Carmine Gallo, bestselling author, storytelling guru, and expert communication coach. We’ll reveal storytelling secrets from Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, and break down how you can craft stories that connect, persuade, and stick.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. This is Talk Sbout Talk, the podcast where I help you communicate with confidence. I also write a newsletter. We’ll put a link to that in the description.

About Carmine GalloAfter years of following Carmine Gallo, I finally connected with him on the Inc. Magazine Slack channel of all places. Yes, we’re both columnists for Inc.Magazine. I’ll leave links by the way to his and my articles in the show notes too.

Thank you so much for being here today, Carmine, to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about communication skills.

CG: Well, thank you for inviting me. I think one of the reasons why I like your approach is because, unless I’m mistaken, it comes from an academic research background, doesn’t it? Didn’t you get a, uh, you got a PhD from the Harvard Business School?

AW: I did. I got a doctorate of business administration, uh, with a major in marketing.

CG: Yeah. So I shared the perspective of putting things into contacts and sharing ideas that we can back by research and data. These aren’t just opinions, but everything we talk about is really backed by the latest science, which is always cool.

I think we come from different perspectives. Obviously, I’m not from an academic background, but we probably reach similar conclusions.

AW: Yes. And I know from reading most, if not all of your books, Carmine, that you do a ton of research for your books, whether it’s interviews or counting things in various Ted Talks, which we’re gonna get into.

CG: Excellent. I see some of my books on your bookshelf. Yes. You, you a smart, you’re a smart podcast host.

Secrets of the World’s Best CommunicatorsAW: Yeah, that’s the image I’m trying to portray here. Carmine. Okay. So. I have so many questions that I wanna ask you, but I really wanna start with this one, which is, I know based on your books and your writing and your articles that you’ve studied, many of the world’s greatest communicators, including Ted speakers, including Jeff Bezos, including Steve Jobs, and on and on and on. So I wanna start there. What do these incredible speakers have in common? Maybe what surprised you about them? Who stands out for you as the number one speaker in your mind?

CG: In my opinion, still the world’s greatest brand storyteller was Steve Jobs. He brought a completely new dimension to presentations. His presentations were like theatrical performances. They were fun and engaging and interesting and entertaining. So I wrote the first book on how Steve Jobs gave these awe-inspiring presentations.

That’s where I really started getting into the research, trying to talk to people who had worked side by side with Steve Jobs or who were in the practice and rehearsal rooms when he was getting ready for these huge keynote presentations, like the launch of the iPhone in 2007 and some of the other iconic presentations.

AW: Can I just add, I’m so glad to hear you say that because I teach a lot of workshops on communication skills, and there’s a series that I’ve been doing for some physicians, some healthcare workers, and on the set, the workshop that we do focused on formal presentations, I ask them to watch that 2007 presentation, ’cause I think it is iconic as well. I’d love to hear maybe what you think stands out about that in terms of his preparation and delivery.

CG: I’ll tell you what they all have in common. The great Ted speakers, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. Getting back to one of your questions, and this will answer the Steve Jobs one too, it’s, he had the courage, they all had the courage to keep it simple.

Minimalism. When we talk about minimalism right now, it’s more about product design, or when you walk into an Apple store or a luxury store, it’s minimal, more white space, fewer products. Well, you can also apply that to presentations. So if you look at that, Steve Jobs’ presentation. There’s one picture on a slide.

One photo, one image, two words. You, there are no slides. That Steve Jobs probably ever delivered, you know, maybe decades earlier. There are no slides with just text and bullet points. It’s an image and minimal text, or just an image that takes a little courage. That’s what I mean by having the courage and the confidence to keep things simple.

Simple meaning everything from the words you use. Less jargon, more familiar language, all the way to the presentation itself, if you are using slides or visual materia,l to have the confidence to tell the story and let PowerPoint complement the story, but the slide should complement the story first. Does that make sense?

You are the storyteller, not the slides.

AW: Absolutely. Yeah. So. As you were answering that question, Carmine, you made me think about something that I wasn’t planning to ask you, but I wanna get your opinion on this. I have this theory that a lot of us, maybe even most of us, make a lot of mistakes because of our generosity.

We think that the audience needs to know everything that we know about the topic, right? So then we end up losing focus, which is kind of your point here, right? So, I have this saying that I say to my clients, which is the most generous communicators, ironically, are more precise and more focused, and they’re sharing less quantity.

CG: Again, I mentioned something in the beginning that we’re reaching similar outcomes from different perspectives. I’ll tell you a story that I learned from the TED Talk organizers, but it doesn’t have to do with generosity; but it’s saying the same thing. Okay.

So when I was writing a book on the on TED Talks that talk like TED, the organizers of the TED Conference, tover some 30 years have learned that when a speaker is invited to give a TED Talk, whether it’s 10 minutes or at the max 18 minutes, the speaker often asks in, in frustrated, in a real frustrated tone, how can I possibly tell the audience everything I know in 18 minutes? You can guess what the answer is.

AW: We don’t wanna know everything that you know. We just wanna know the one thing, right?

CG: Exactly. What’s the big picture theme? Then you can fill in some details, but the point is never in any presentation really, to tell people everything you know. It’s to tell the audience what they need to know at that time.

Depending on the audience, depending on your intended outcome. Then presentations and public speaking become so much simpler, and don’t try to condense everything, you know, select what the audience needs to know. You mentioned generosity, so let’s unpack that a little bit. I feel like I’m gonna turn the interview on you because I hadn’t thought about it that way, and I think it’s an interesting way to think about it.

AW: So, Carmine, I go back and look at some of the early newsletters that I was writing for my Talk About Talk audience, you know, six years ago. And I’m like, wow, I just was giving them everything. Every week. They were getting this huge volume. Was frankly a bit scattered, but I know in my mind that I had the best intentions.

I wanted to teach them everything that I could, and I realized over time that being more focused is really the generous thing to do. Yeah. I like, I like that approach.

CG: Interesting way of looking at it.

AW: Yeah, I think it was, you know, the lesson was from me looking back at my past work and seeing my mistakes.

CG: You know, I use the word courage at the beginning of this. Uh, I think everything we’re talking about, advanced communication, persuasion, does take a little courage. At least you gotta build up your confidence because if you’re not confident, let’s say you just got outta grad school, you have a business degree.

Wanna tell everybody how smart you are? You want everyone to know how smart you are. And then as you progress through a career and you see people who reach the top who are extraordinary speakers, they tend to do what we’re recommending here, which is holding back on a lot of information and only giving the audience the information they need to know.

They’re much more selective than people who just enter the workforce because they’re already confident in their role. They don’t need to prove anything to anybody. So it does take a, build that confidence early before you’ve been in a career for 40 years.

AW: So, that is a different way of looking at it. Right. Maybe six years ago, I didn’t have the confidence as a communication coach that I now have, where I’m like, I know the, and also, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. Right? Of course.

CG: Yes. Yeah. Then I think that’s a big part of it too. I’m only half joking, but I think it does take a little confidence to be simple.

It takes confidence to deliver a PowerPoint presentation and not have a hundred words on a slide or eight bullet points and just have one picture. Uh, yeah, that takes a little confidence, but I’m not, I never ask anyone to completely blow up their PowerPoints, but within the culture that you’re in, within the corporate culture that you’re in, if most PowerPoints are really wordy and cluttered, see what happens when you insert a couple of PowerPoint slides that are completely opposite, and then you can kind of go back to the others. But see what happens. Try experimenting counter culture.

Building Confidence & Overcoming NervesAW: I love it. So I wanna drill down on the confidence topic. A lot of the folks that I coach experience imposter syndrome, or they talk about anticipating feeling nervous and anxious before they go out on stage, either to lead a big meeting or to give a presentation.

What are some of the hacks or maybe mindsets that you share with people to boost their confidence?

CG: It’s tough. Yeah. You’re supposed to be. Anxious about public speaking. So I think that’s the first thing. And I’m sure you’ve talked about this before, which is it’s natural. It doesn’t help a lot to say that, but when you talk to neuroscientists and cognitive scientists, you should be nervous.

Uh, because our, you all, Noah Harari has written about this, the famous historian, I’ve interviewed him once, but he was talking about how, uh, storytelling and communication skills were all important as we developed as a species, uh, because people could rally around a leader, a story, and uh, and share stories.

So anyway, we were having a whole conversation about storytelling, and then we got into this whole topic of, well, people are nervous, public speaking, and you’ve all said, yeah, you’re supposed to be, it’s mission critical. It’s from an evolutionary standpoint that you are liked by the tribe. If you were not accepted, you were banished outta that cave and that wasn’t a good outcome.

So to him it was like, yeah, so it’s natural. You’re, it’s, you’re supposed to be that way. So I kind of think that’s the first step. It’s like, yeah, okay. Acknowledge it. It’s a yes. This is a thought that’s coming through my head. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s there and it should be because I’m excited and, and I wanna share my ideas and I, yeah, I want to get them across.

But can I tell you before we leave this topic, there’s only one tactic on that I’ve come across that works. Terms of alleviating stress. And it’s the same tactic that professional athletes use before the big game, uh, or that law enforcement or military or anyone who actually has to execute something under high pressure.

They practice that skill thousands of times. I thought you were gonna say deep breathing. Carmine deep breathing. Actually, we could talk about this for the whole podcast, but deep breathing is a part of it. The Navy Seals use deep breathing to get their fear under control. So I’ve actually talked to seals about breathing exercises, but that’s a part of the training and preparation.

The point is they practice for it. They practice getting nervous. They practice putting themselves in high stress situations that they’re not familiar with. So I think the problem that most of us have when it comes to feeling anxious about. Speaking is because we’re doing something that we haven’t done a thousand times, and if you don’t practice and you don’t rehearse and you don’t put yourself under some kind of stressful situation.

You just worry for three weeks ahead of your PowerPoint. Yeah. You’re gonna be worried about it. Okay.

AW: Yeah. Yeah. So, I’ve told a story of when I was in my twenties and I worked at Kraft Foods and I had to give this big presentation at the national sales meeting, and, and I completely bombed. I was shaking and I’m sweating, holding my script or whatever.

And then, yeah. So thankfully I independently made a decision that is never gonna happen again, and how am I gonna get over it? Is by volunteering every opportunity that I have to practice.

CG: So at that time, whether that was intentional or not, or whether it was a conscious thing, you were going through those steps that, uh, and a professional athlete, uh, you know, or high-performance athlete goes through, so they don’t get nervous when the pressure is on.

You practice and you had practice games, you had a lot of them. Yeah. I honestly believe that’s one of the few tactics that works because it’s like any skill. The more you do almost anything, you get more comfortable at it. But very few of us give a presentation in front of a board 10 times a day. Of course, you’re gonna be uncomfortable, so you do need to put in that practice time and if deep breathing exercises help you and they should help you incorporate that into like your practice sessions.

Go through some deep breathing, then rehearse out loud, maybe in front of a friend or two.

AW: Add a little attention to it. Make it as realistic as possible. I love it. I love it. I’m gonna be thinking about you next time, Carmine, when I’m rehearsing a keynote. So you’ve mentioned storytelling a few times, and I know you’ve written books about storytelling.

I feel like as a communication coach, and you might agree that at this point, everybody knows that storytelling is, I think, necessary for truly impactful communication, but it’s really hard. Why is storytelling so difficult? I think they’ve heard of it and some many know that they’re supposed to do it.

We make it sound, uh, and I’m saying we creatives like us and people who talk about it, I think it’s important not to make it sound like it’s just for novelists and creative types and marketers, because I think a lot of people turn off almost immediately and think storytelling.

CG: I’m not writing the next Great American novel. Yeah. Okay, that’s cool. I’m sure there’s something to learn, but how does it apply to me? So I think it’s very important that we tell people. We’re all storytellers. We’re wired for story. It’s how we communicate. It’s how we process the world through narratives and stories.

It’s the way we communicate information, mostly through stories, not bullet points on a slide. So you, we are storytellers you, but it may not be your title. Your title does not have storyteller on it. It’s Vice President Development Manager, but you’re a storyteller. So understand that you’re the storyteller first.

It applies to each and every one of us. Some people just do it for a living. They’re called writers or screenplay writers, but you’re a storyteller too. You simply have to adapt it, understand it first, and then adapt it to a business, uh, business setting.

AW: So. Imagine. I am not a storyteller. I am a vice president of marketing or hr, whatever finance at this organization.

I do some public speaking. I do lots of internal meetings, and I fully agree with Carmine and Andrea that storytelling is critical. Where do I get the stories and how do I think about integrating them into my communication?

CG: You’re a storyteller first. So stories come from your own personal experience. When you tell a case study, we’re all familiar with case study examples. A case study is a story. You just don’t call it a story, but it’s, it’s a story. So whenever you craft a narrative, it’s so much more impactful than simply delivering information. And I’m sure you’ve talked about the neuroscience of why that is, but essentially it goes back to, again, you all will tell you our evolutionary traits.

As Sapiens, we processed our world through stories and that’s how we became explorers and learners and people who, uh, cooperated with each other. You can’t cooperate just by giving people facts. You have to motivate them and take them on a journey. There’s a lot about storytelling gets pretty involved. I mean, you, you can get really, really deep into it.

So what I like to do is just start, you know, big picture stories can be personal anecdotes. An anecdote about yourself, your background, uh, why you came up with your idea. It could be a case study. Our competitors are doing X, Y, and Z, but if we do this, we’ll get ahead; we will get a big jumpstart on them.

If we do not take this, uh, if we do not adopt this new platform, we could be left behind and we may lose a lot of money and we may lose customers. Let me give you an example of a company that happened to. Oh, okay. It’s an example. It’s a story. So you’re telling stories all the time. Just think more deliberately about what those stories are.

Well, let me give you an example. I was thinking about the other day. Let’s say that I were to say. Andrea, after this interview, I think I’m gonna hit the golf range and practice something that I saw on YouTube. Okay. That’s a story, that’s a little mini story I can even go on about what I learned on YouTube and, and, and the outcome and what I hope to accomplish.

It’s not relevant. Okay. That’s, it’s odd. It would be awkward. It’s not relevant, but it’s a story. What if I were to make it a little more relevant and use myself as an example of something that would be put into context, and I would say something like, Andrea, let’s talk about practicing and alleviating nerves in public speaking.

I’m a golfer. As any golfer knows, there’s a big difference between hitting the ball well on the range and walking to the first tee, and that’s where we all collapse because we get really nervous when we’re on the first tee. That’s called first tee jitters. Well, public speakers have the same thing, and I think one of the solutions is to practice like a professional golfer does, and practice under extreme conditions and a little stress to get used to being on that first tee.

Now we can have a whole conversation. Okay. So that’s, that would be the beginning of the conversation, but it is a little story about myself, um, and what I’ve experienced on the golf course, but it’s relevant. I’m making it relevant to this conversation, so it doesn’t have to be. We’re not creating the next, you know, uh, three-hour blockbuster movie here.

It can be just something simple to connect with one another, but to make it so much more interesting than to bring up a slide and start hitting numbers data. Insert pie chart here. Insert Excel here. Data, bullet points. That’s why people are put to sleep. And if you want to cut through the noise, you need to keep people alert. People get bored easily, and bad PowerPoint or bad presentations will put people to sleep. We don’t want that.

AW: So the story does not have to be epic, is what I’m hearing. It doesn’t have to be epic. A vignette or a metaphor is a. I guess effective and appreciated by the audience, even if they’re not conscious of it.

CG: Yes. And by, and when you do those kind of things, you’re, you’re just, you’re already telling a story. Just make it more deliberate. Do more of that. Less of just facts and figures. And if you’re going to use a fact, figure, or statistic, wrap it in some kind of story. Okay. The, yeah, this, um, this is an important number, 82%.

We can increase our profits by 82% if we follow this, my idea, this three-step process that I’ve been researching, okay, that’s information. It’s not a story. Uh, and then you can say. So let’s imagine what this would look like. You come to work in the morning, instead of doing this, you would do this. And just by doing this, by the end of the year, we would increase our profits.

Oh, okay. So now you’re taking me into like a journey. It doesn’t have storytelling does not have to be that complicated, but I think that when people hear storytelling. They kind of tune out because it’s, oh, that’s more for creatives, not for me.

AW: I think you’re right. We overcomplicate it. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be epic. You don’t have to be a great novelist.

CG: I love epic. I, when I teach and talk about storytelling and write about storytelling, I get pretty involved, um, you know, pretty deep into it, but doesn’t have to be epic. Everyone’s a storyteller. It’s how deliberate you are about it.

Storytelling Secrets from Bezos, Buffett & BeyondAW: So speaking of Epic, let’s talk about Jeff Bezos, your most recent book, the Bezos Blueprint.

Carmine, I absolutely devoured that book. So first of all, I had no idea that he was such an incredible communicator. Like it was all news to me. And then the systems that he was mandating at Amazon were all news to me as well. For the listeners who aren’t familiar with the book and also like me at the time, are not, uh, familiar with Bezos and, and kind of what he did, can you share some of that with the audience?

CG: Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994, and he had a challenge, and the challenge was, how do I explain this to people? Because in 1994, the question was not. Why would I buy books online? Although that was one of the early questions. No, the Quest, the first question Jeff Bezos got when he was raising money for Amazon was, what’s the internet?

So by default, Jeff Bezos had to create and think through a lot of communication tactics that would make things easier and more understandable, and I think he got better and better at communication. So I wrote a book called The Bezos Blueprint. The Bezos blueprint. Plays off of many of the tactics that Jeff Bezos pioneered at Amazon to fuel the company’s extraordinary growth.

But then I go into the research behind it and I use a lot of other examples, both from people within Amazon and uh. And other companies that will do some, or other leaders who do something similar. Uh, remember Jeff Bezos did something that I think very few people know about. I’ve written about it. Other people have, but it’s not that commonly known.

Uh, Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint at Amazon. That was enough for me. When I first heard that, I said, I wanna know more. There’s a story there because who would do that? And then what he did was he banned PowerPoint within meetings at Amazon specifically, and he replaced PowerPoint with the written word.

Well, that is really interesting. And again, it’s, it counterintuitive. Uh, Jeff Bezos, he used to work for a hedge fund. He graduated from Princeton with computer science and electrical engineering. He is a data guy, a technologist. He’s talking about written memos and how writing is so much more effective than PowerPoints in paragraph form.

Right? Like a, like a narrative. Yeah. He said, you gotta write, I want to hear a, I wanna read a memo, like a narrative with like a title and examples and stories and subtitles. Like, like a, a short book. Who does that? Not Steve Jobs didn’t even say anything like that. So to me that was so fascinating and the more I got into it, oh my, my gosh, I just kept learning more and more and more about Jeff Bezos and some of the skills he pioneered.

And I argue they’re kind of advanced, a communication tactic. It’s not public speaking 1 0 1, it’s for aspiring leaders and, uh, more senior executives. Can I tell you one of my favorite? Uh, I’m sure. You know this; you’ve probably read it in the book. Maybe you were gonna ask me about it, but can I tell you about my favorite tactic of Jeff Bezos that No, I’d love to hear, I think is under appreciated.

I’d love to hear the analogies, analogies, metaphors. Yeah. Always thinking about an appropriate or interesting metaphor. A comparison between something that’s new with something that the audience would find familiar. He was very, very creative, and that’s more of an advanced skill. Very few leaders are good at using analogies and metaphors, but boy, when you are, it’s a real skill to have.

So, very few people know this, but do you know what metaphor was used to? Start Amazon. How did Jeff Bezos come up with a term Amazon?

AW: I forget, but I keep thinking it was, he wanted something that started with A.

CG: That’s the common story; that’s a side effect of what he was looking for. He wanted to find some kind of comparison, uh, and easy to understand metaphor that people would get immediately.

Amazon. The Amazon River is the, is no first, he started with the bookstore. I want to start a bookstore. I wanna create a bookstore, uh, that offers the largest selection of books. Largest selection, largest earth’s largest selection, Earth’s largest river, the Amazon River, Amazon. Oh. And it starts with a, it’s a metaphor.

Amazon itself is a metaphor. He went on to do other metaphors in business, like in the startup world where I live in Silicon Valley, everyone talks about the flywheel. Everyone’s got a flywheel because the flywheel is what gonna helps, uh, create momentum and growth. That comes from Jeff Bezos popularized the flywheel.

He didn’t invent the concept. He read about it and he thought, that’s an interesting metaphor. So he was, he’s creative in that way. Some of the most famous metaphors in business today come from people like Jeff Bezos or another great communicator who is a Warren Buffet, another one of my favorite financial communicators.

AW: Tell me more about Warren Buffett. What do you respect about his communication in particular?

CG: He recently announced that he is gonna step down from Berkshire Hathaway after leading it for some 60 years or so for decades. I think it’s 60 years he’s been writing an annual shareholder letter. That letter is taught even at business schools because Warren Buffett can take complex financial information and make it interesting to read.

How does he do that? Well, he uses metaphors and analogies in every letter, there’s always some kind of an analogy. So the next time you’re watching business news, stock analyst is gonna come on the air and say, we like this investment. It’s got a moat around it. A moat, you know, like a castle and a moat.

That means it’s, uh, hard to, hard to enter, hard to enter that industry, keep the competitors out. That came from Warren Buffett. He first wrote that in a shareholder letter about 20 years ago, and now everybody uses it. It’s shorthand. It’s great. Oh, yeah. There’s a moat around it. We like that stock.

There’s a moat there. Okay. That came from somebody, it came from Warren Buffet who really talked about it, and now it’s kind of attributed to him, but he does all, he does this all the time. So if you, here’s the lesson for everybody. The advanced lesson is if you have a. An idea that’s new, unfamiliar, somewhat complicated, find a familiar, uh, comparison to make it more relatable.

]We call it an analogy, a metaphor, I don’t care what you call it, but find a familiar comparison, and that’s how people will remember it.

AW: I love it. It’s like, I’ve heard this, this formula, when you’re selling your idea, just say it’s like a. Blank, but blank. Right?

CG: There you go. That’s an analogy. Absolutely. It’s like a blank.

AW: So, I wanna ask you before we get into the rapid fire questions, Carmine, I’d love to hear your take on communication these days, particularly in business and with AI. So, how can the most effective communicators or people who are looking to boost their communication effectiveness use ai?

And I’m gonna say maybe other than asking it to help you brainstorm metaphors which I feel like it’s low hanging fruit. Like, if you’re looking for a metaphor, describe a situation and then you can ask. And I, I heard this years ago, actually, um, when people were talking about what to use AI for.

CG: Okay, don’t make the assumption because I make this mistake too.

Because we would use it for something like that. We understand its uses, don’t make the assumption that everybody knows this because they actually don’t. Uh, when I’m speaking to very high-level business professionals or people who are very comfortable with chat, GPT and ai, and I bring up exactly that, you know, it’s really good for if you wanna brainstorm a metaphor and they look at me like.

You know, with that glazed look, the, the, the how, what, how would you ask it to do that? What do you mean? So, I think there’s still a lot of learning to do. Most people, I don’t think use AI as, I think it’s a good, uh, as a tool that we can use for, IM improved communication. So yes, use it, brainstorm. Give me some suggested comparisons or analogies or metaphors for this idea, and it’ll come up with a few things that may or may not work, but they’ll at least get you to start thinking about the concept in a very different way.

So that leads me to what I think about AI at this point. It is a wonderful tool for communicators because most people, again, are not. Thinking and obsessed with communication as we are. So they’re not really thinking about storytelling, and yeah, they’re not thinking it through. So they do need a little more help.

And AI is terrific for researching and then organizing and, uh, outlining too. Making your structure just a little simpler to follow, pulling out some key phrases, ask it to simplify your writing, and the first thing it’ll do is start identifying jargon and unfamiliar words. Uh, you might find that that is going to be a lot easier for most of your listeners or readers to understand.

So I love it. I love it for that good brainstorming tool. Terrific assistant. Partner, whatever you wanna call it, thought partner, but do not for a second. Think of that AI in any of the platforms replace you, your distinct personality, your lived experiences, your imagination. AI cannot imagine things that haven’t happened before.

Okay, newsflash. You know that it can’t do that. It looks for patterns that have already recurred. I remember speaking to one of the leading world’s leading scientists in ai. He wrote a book about China versus, uh, the US in terms of the AI wars, right? And, uh, I was speaking to him and. I must have been reading a lot of scary AI stuff at the time because I was like, oh my gosh, AI, it’s gonna replace everybody.

It’s gonna take all our jobs. It can do this, and it can do that, and it’ll do that. And the guy looks at me like, you know, he tilts his head well, you know, like a dog when they tilt their head. ’cause they don’t, they’re confused. And he said, you know, it’s, it’s not real, right? It’s not a human, you know, it’s not human.

It can recognize human emotions, but it doesn’t have human emotions. But it was very matter-of-fact, like what are you talking about? So his point was, and he actually later got to this, he said, great tool, amazing tools, but. Nobody wants to hear AI lead them, motivate them, get them to collaborate together as a team.

Uh, nobody wants to hear AI give them a pep talk. It’s, there’s a difference between a real lived experience coming from you, a real emotion, a person who has emotion connecting to another person emotionally, and what AI does. So if you can just. See AI for what it does and use it. I think it’s a fantastic creative brainstorming tool, but don’t just copy and paste.

CG: The story’s gotta come from you. That, and that’s how you set yourself apart. Being unique. Be distinct.

AW: Yeah. I, you’ve probably read this line a million times as well before, it’s not likely that your job’s gonna be replaced by AI, but it, it will be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI better than you do. I’ve heard that. Thanks for reminding me. That’s a good line.

CG: I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

AW: I actually, I stand corrected. You know my point, when I first asked you the question about metaphors and thinking, we all know this. I recently interviewed an AI expert named Jonathan Mast, and he was spewing off these stats, and I kind of had the same attitude.

AW: I was like, you know, everyone’s using it. He goes, no, Andrea, 18% of the US workforce right now is using it daily. And I was like, oh.

CG: I’m an early adopter. Yeah. Again, I’ve been, and I’ve been using it; not only am I among the 18%, but I think you and I, are probably a subsection of that 18% because very few people are using it for.

This kind of creative brainstorming that we’re talking about. So there’s plenty of room to grow, uh, and learn more about how best to use AI. I’m learning something new every day, so it’s kind of fun. It’s fun for me.

AW: I was gonna say, send me your tips. I’ll send you mine. I find it fun as well. Uh, before we get to the three rapid-fire questions, one big question.

It’s a big one, Carmine. If the Talk About Talk listeners could change one thing about the way that they communicate to make it more impactful, and you can, this can be written or verbal, whatever context you choose. What’s the one thing that you would suggest where you see people making, getting a lot of traction when they learn this, whatever it is.

CG: Well, you caught me on a week where I’m gonna give you one answer, but. Two weeks ago, I may have given you another answer, but today where I think people can move the needle and it maybe it’s a reflection of my pet peeve and something I get really frustrated about, because people have the curse of knowledge.

They know way too much about their particular industry. They start in the middle constantly. When someone asks you, can you tell me more about this topic? They want you to start. At the top, at the 30,000-foot level, and then drill down. And, I think this is why people sound confusing. They’re convoluted; they trigger another, uh, set of questions.

I see this all the time on business news. Even the business hosts, the technology experts are saying, can you simplify this quantum computing? What is it before you explain how it works? You know, it’s like, just what is it people are, they don’t ask you, give me the big picture, but they want you to start from the top and then start drilling down.

Um, and, and so, find that that’s where people tend to make things far more complicated than they should be because you’re not starting from the big picture, you’re starting in the middle. And my frustration a lot is when I get directions or instructions from an organization or a bank, you know, you call up your bank and you get all these complicated instructions, and what they’re not doing is they’re not starting at the top.

Here’s a credit card, Carmine, and this credit card allows you to do X, Y, and Z. Let’s talk about Z. Yeah. Okay, great. Top and now. Now we can start going down the funnel, but start at the top and then don’t start from Z because now I’m confused. Why are we even going to Z? Why do we need Z? Start at the top, and you’ll start seeing.

I think if you just start being aware of this. You’ll begin to realize when you’re listening to a really boring presentation or you’re listening to instructions that are somewhat confusing, it’s because they’re not starting at the top.

AW: Yeah, they’re starting in the middle, so I’m gonna be doing two things. I’m gonna be watching out for this. I would say it’s zooming out first and then zooming in is another way of putting it. I’m gonna be looking for that all the time now. And secondly, I’m gonna be watching the business news through a whole new lens based on this conversation as well.

CG: Well, my background was as a journalist.

I was a broadcast journalist, and then the last few years of my career as a journalist, I was in television news. And, uh, the reason why I started writing books. Speaking on the topic of communication storytelling is because you’ll appreciate this. When I was at C-N-N-C-B-S, few other outlets, we always went back to the same people.

We always went back to the same sources. Not, we didn’t cover as much politics back then. It was like serious, just business news. Uh, and so we would go to the same analyst, the same economist, the same stock market experts, and I started to ask, why are we going to these same few people? Because they could explain it a lot better.

Uh, so when you have that skill of being able to explain complex material in a way that is interesting and engaging, uh. You’ll stand out, not just on television. Of course, you’ll stand out in any field because people appreciate it, and they crave that simplicity or an interesting way of getting their information.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: You will be quoted on that. Carmine, that was so well put. Okay. Are you ready for the three rapid-fire questions?

CG: Yeah. And rapid fire, meaning I only get one sentence, or can I expand or can I expand? Oh, you can elaborate.

AW: I wanna hear. I wanna hear.

CG: Okay, so it’s kind of loose, rapid fire.

AW: Yeah. It’s loose, rapid fire. Yeah. Okay. Question number one: Are you an introvert or an extrovert? And how does that affect your communication?

CG: Okay, years ago, I would’ve said I’m an introvert, which people don’t expect. But, um, then someone called my attention to the fact that there’s different types of introverts and extroverts. So I’m, uh, something called a thinking introvert.

I dunno if you’ve, have you heard of these things? I’ve done a lot of research and reading on introvert and I have not heard about that. I don’t know if it’s thinking introvert, maybe it’s a different term, but it’s kind of a subsection. I am kind of, I’m thoughtful. I am someone who does kind of stay in their own head a lot, but I am also someone who can speak to audiences in big groups.

But that doesn’t mean I’m like a big group kind of guy. I can do it. I could do it comfortably. But usually if I’m speaking to a group of people, I would rather listen to them, get them to talk about themselves, and just sit and listen rather than just talking about myself, which I feel uncomfortable. And someone told me, no, that’s introversion, but it’s the type of introvert who can be an extrovert.

I said, okay. Haven’t read a book on that yet, but I’ll go with it.

AW: Carmine, you and I couldn’t co-author that book. I have so much to say about that. There’s gotta be a name for it. Yeah. Uh, well, I think people are confusing shyness, which is social anxiety, with introversion, which is getting your energy from solitude.

Okay, well then, I think I’m an introvert first. Yeah. Uh, okay. You’ve already answered this, but maybe you can give us more. My second question is, what are your communication pet peeves? Other than not zooming out before you zoom in any other pet peeves?

CG: The next time you’re listening or watching CNBC, whatever program has a lot of like stock analysts and business professionals, listen carefully to these experts wh,o instead of sounding confident, this stock is moving in this direction because of X, Y, and Z.

They come across as almost like teenagers, almost like kids. Uh uh. So we really like this stock because of, well, you, you know, there there’s just a lot of, um, like, um, well, momentum, right? Right. Is that right? You know? Right. Like, you know, oh my God, my head’s exploding. Just thinking about that right now. And it’s not just a few; it’s constantly during the day.

Right. Well, no, don’t say right. You’re the expert. That’s why you’re on television. You tell me. So, but I think this is an example of something that a lot of people suffer with, and, uh, and it diminishes the perception of confidence, fewer filler words, and you don’t have to start every sentence with, and then end it with Right. You know? Right. Those things diminish the strength of your message, so be aware of it also.

AW: Well, one of my pet peeves is when. Interviewees start every answer with great question. And I don’t think you did that once. I don’t think you did. So when, when someone interviews me, I have this rule, I’m allowed to say it once, and I usually say, I only say this when I mean it.

That is a great question. And then I answer it. So, the third question, is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately? It could be related to communication skills or not.

CG: I tend to like podcasts that have interviews with really interesting people and I will tend to follow those that have more interviews with creative types, uh, but fun interviews with creatives.

For example, if I were to look on my Spotify list, you know, let’s be honest of what I have on my podcast list, it would probably be like Dak Shepherd who has that armchair expert, Dak Shepherd, because he. Interviews a lot of people who are authors or historians or Hollywood types or creatives. So I like learning from a lot of creatives.

Uh, smartless, you know, that’s another one that I tend to enjoy. I think I lean toward those because they interview a lot of Hollywood types, but also directors, creatives, and storytellers. So I’m always just intrigued by someone who’s an interesting character. And books too is, I’m a history buff, so I tend to read a lot of history, but history that’s really fun and interesting and engaging to read because getting, we’ll end here I think, or wrap this up because it’ll come full circle.

Almost every major event throughout history, if you study it or read about it, there’s always someone who triggered that event, and they had to be really persuasive. So I like to read history books because I learn a lot about communication in history.

AW: Yeah. And it’s stories. It’s his story, right?

CG: I love got people who can write a book, uh, they’re called like nonfic or, or, um, nonfiction narratives. Uh, I think that’s the category. So they’re real history books, but written in a narrative form. And I always loved that because I, I’ve told the authors who I’ve read, uh, sometimes I’ll tell them how is it that I knew exactly what was going to happen?

I still had to turn to the page to the next chapter. How did you do that? I already know the history of it and you made me wanna read till the end. That’s what a good writer can do. So I appreciate good writing.

AW: Amazing, Carmine. Is there anything else you wanna share with the talk about talk listeners that will help boost their communication effectiveness?

CG: I love to keep in touch with them. Find me on LinkedIn. I think I’m the only Italian Carmine in California. There’s not many. There’s not many of us, so just look for Carmine Gallo, the author. If it pops up and I’m in California, that’s probably me. But, uh, yeah, I, I love to keep in touch or just go to my website, carmine gallo.com.

But those are both great ways of actually contacting me so we can have a conversation.

AW: Amazing. I’m gonna put links to your LinkedIn to CarmineGallo.com and to your fantastic books in the show notes. I wanna say. Thank you so much, Carmine. I said at the beginning, I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a long time, and you exceeded my expectations.

I really appreciate you sharing your time and your expertise with me and the listeners. Thank you. Oh, thank you.

CG: Thanks for inviting me.

AW: Thank you again, Carmine. It was wonderful to finally have the opportunity to talk communication with you. Now. As always, I’m gonna summarize. With three main points that I hope you’ll take away.

1. Focus Like a MinimalistThe first point is focus. Carmine spoke a lot about minimalism. This is about precision and brevity. And interestingly, how it takes courage to have this focus to be a minimalist in your communication. More focus, fewer words, less clutter on your slides.

2. You Are the Storyteller, Not the SlidesThis relates to the second point that I wanna reinforce. When you give a presentation, you are the storyteller, not the slides. Think of Steve Jobs, minimalist slides, black background, one simple image, maybe two words. The slides support you. They do not tell your story.

3. Nervous? That’s Normal—Now Practice It.And the third point, if you’re nervous about presenting, just know this. You’re supposed to be nervous. It’s supposed to be that way. So what can you do about it? Practice being nervous. Go out of your way to put yourself into situations where you feel anxious. Raise your hand to lead every meeting and present every talk.

This is what high-performance athletes do. They practice hard until competition day comes, and then muscle memory sets in. Practice really does make perfect. And that is it for this episode. Thanks again to Carmine, and you can check out the show notes for links to everything that we discussed, and of course, to connect with both of us.

Now, if you enjoyed this episode, I’m gonna ask you to please leave, talk about talk a rating or a review. This helps us get discovered by more folks, and I really appreciate it. If you’re not subscribed yet, just click subscribe or follow. Okay. Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos & the Secret to Unforgettable Communication | Carmine Gallo (ep. 197) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds

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What questions do ambitious professionals ask to help them improve their communication? In this special Q&A episode, Andrea answers listener questions on imposter syndrome, brain fog, elevator pitches, and executive presence.

In this episode, you will learn:
✔️ Why imposter syndrome is common and how to reframe it as a strength
✔️ How frameworks like “Present, Past, Future” and the “Power of Three” can help when you are not at your best
✔️ Why rehearsed elevator pitches fail and what to say instead
✔️ How to recover when you lose your train of thought in a meeting or on stage
✔️ The one word that immediately reinforces leadership presence

This special Q&A shines a light on common speaking challenges and provides frameworks you can use immediately in meetings and presentations.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA💻 Website: TalkAboutTalk.com
💼 LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
💼 LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/TalkAboutTalk/
📣 Newsletter: https://www.TalkAboutTalk.com/Newsletter/
🟣 Podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503
🟢 Podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369

TRANSCRIPTIONAndrea Wojnicki: It is critical to feel confident and to be perceived as confident. If you wanna establish credibility, then you’ve got to be confident, and the good news is that confidence can be learned.

Hey there. Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. You are in for a fantastic episode. I am really, really excited about this one. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been asking you for questions in my email newsletter on LinkedIn and Instagram, and even here on the podcast, what communication skills questions do you have for me today? I’m answering those questions. This Q&A episode is your chance to hear my answers to your questions. This is like a free coaching session.

Let’s do this. Let’s talk bout talk. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I coach ambitious executives like you to communicate with confidence, clarity, and credibility.

Why? So that you can make an impact and achieve your career goals. You can learn more about what I do if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com, or you can connect with me on social media. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, and I would love to see you there.

Okay, let’s get into this. I scoured my inbox and my social media feeds to collect your questions, and we’re gonna dive in right now. Let’s talk about talk. I’ve got question number one printed right in front of me. Let me read it to you. This is from a listener named Steven who emailed me. Here’s his question.

How Do I Handle Imposter Syndrome and Overthinking My Audience?One thing that’s tripping me up with communication skills is what others are thinking about me and about what I’m saying. Are they thinking, Ugh, this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about? Or is it something like, what in the world is this guy talking about? I’m so lost. I also begin to overanalyze my audience, and I think that they’re all zoned out, and the look that they’re giving me is a look of, we don’t really want to be here.

Andrea, I need your help. All right, Steven, a couple things for you. First of all, what you’re describing here is a perfect example of imposter syndrome, and you need to know imposter syndrome is very, very common it is. Only a few exceptions that I can think of, of clients of mine who do not experience imposter syndrome.

And the good news is you can overcome it with practice and with different mindsets and tactics. So that’s one thing you’re describing, imposter syndrome, and you can overcome it. The second thing I wanna say, based on the way that you worded your question for me, Steven, is I’m gonna diagnose you as someone who has very high self-awareness.

Let me back up for a minute here and talk about the research on self-awareness, which is very important if you wanna be an exceptional communicator. So. The research on self-awareness shows that there are really two different types of self-awareness: internal self-awareness and external self-awareness.

Internal self-awareness is probably what most of us think about when we think about the term self-awareness. It’s being conscious of our thoughts. Our feelings, our emotions, and even our physicality. Like, I’m hot, I’m cold, I’m shaking, I’m nervous, whatever. Okay, so that’s internal self-awareness. There’s another kind of self-awareness that maybe we don’t think about as often.

External self-awareness. So external self-awareness is being aware of your environment and context around you, and specifically aware of your impact on others. Steven, the way that you worded your question to me it sounds as if you are very high on external self-awareness. And I wanna tell you, this is great news because this is a key ingredient for exceptional communication.

I hope that in and of itself will help to elevate your confidence. I’m gonna provide you with one other tip that I hope helps, and it is simply to check in. It is okay whether you are in front of an audience. The way you worded your question, you used the term audience, so I’m guessing that you’re talking about when you’re giving a formal presentation.

But even if you’re in a meeting, you’re seated around a table or around a screen. If you’re online and you’re making your point and you’re interpreting through your external self-awareness that people might not be getting their message and you might not be clear, they might not agree with you, whatever the point is, it is a power move.

To pause and say, I just wanna check in with everyone is the last point that I made here, clear. And you could be more specific and say the point about whatever the my, the reason, my recommendation, or my rationale here, whatever it is, check in and ask them. You can be very explicit. Can I have a raise of hands on?

Is everyone clear? If you’re clear, raise your hand. Or you could say. Raise your hand if you have any questions. I would love to pause and answer it right now. So when you do this, you’re helping your audience. You’re making sure that they, if they have any questions, they have an opportunity to ask and to check in.

And you’re also helping yourself. You’re clarifying whether what you’re interpreting in terms of your external self-awareness is in fact, true. So I wouldn’t do this, you know? Four or five times in a presentation. Of course, maybe you do it once or twice, but if you’re making a very important point that you wanna make sure is clear, or if you’re catching some cues in terms of facial expressions, body language, that things might not be clear, it is a power move to pause and ask them explicitly. I hope that helps, Steven.

What Should I Do About Brain Fog?Okay, let’s move on to the next question. The next question I have here is from Christine, who emailed me. Hello, Dr. Wojnicki. I wanted to write you about the communication issue that I struggle with. I’ve noticed that since I’ve been going through menopause, my memory and energy has plummeted, and the brain fog has me grasping for words.

It’s like I can’t mouth these simple, everyday words that are on the tip of my tongue, and it’s infuriating. I feel dumb and flaky around my coworkers, which then turns into the imposter syndrome as communication is paramount in my line of work. This feeling has damaged my confidence to a certain extent and has caused me anxiety.

Okay, Christine, there we go with the, with the imposter syndrome topic again, so. I wanna clarify before I answer your question that I’m gonna answer this in the context. Not of getting over a menopause brain, but you could have baby brain if you have a young infant in your house. It could be that you are sleep deprived, maybe you’re hungover, whatever, you’re not at your best, you come, maybe you got in a big fight with your spouse before you got into work.

The point is, you know that you’re not at a hundred percent. And how do you make sure that your communication is optimized in this context? I do have three suggestions, and for those of you who have been listening to the Talk about Talk podcast, you know I’m a big fan of the power of three. So Christine, I’m gonna give you three suggestions, and two of them are kind of obvious.

And the third one is actually my main recommendation for you. The first thing I wanna suggest is if you’re going into a high-stakes meeting. Even if it’s just a status meeting with your boss and you’re feeling, you know, sleep deprived or you have menopause brain, whatever the reason is, preparation will help you immensely.

So make sure you understand what’s on the agenda, make sure you understand what your role is, think in advance of some things that you can say. The truth is, most of us don’t do it, and if you spend some time preparing in advance for the meeting, you may end up providing more value than others in the meeting, despite your brain fog.

Okay, so think about what the topic is, think about what you might say, anticipate, and prepare. My second suggestion is, again, before you go into this meeting, separate from what the agenda is. I want you to focus on your personal brand. I want you to focus on your unique professional identity, and what do I mean by that?

Before you go into this meeting, Christine, think about your unique strengths, skills, expertise, and passions, the things that you know, you can add value on in the meeting. So it’s probably an internal meeting and you’re meeting with other people that work at the same company. What unique value do you bring?

And then make sure those are the things that you comment on that will help elevate your confidence and help you be a bigger contributor in the meeting. So that’s my second suggestion. My third suggestion for anyone out there generally, but especially if you’re not ticking at a hundred percent, like Christine was talking about with brain fog, is to think about using frameworks.

Frameworks are great because they will boost your confidence. You have a structure that you’re following. The structure is also proven, so it’ll make better sense to the people you’re communicating with, and it’ll help boost your confidence. Two frameworks that come to mind are my self-introduction framework and also using the power of three.

So my self-introduction framework is present, past, future. If you go into a meeting and you’re asked to introduce yourself, whether you have brain fog or not, please use the self-introduction framework. It’ll help you do so with confidence. Here’s the framework, present, past, future, present. So start with who you are and what you do.

Hi, my name is Christine. I am a construction consultant at ABC company. Okay. Then you move to past. Here’s where you establish credibility. So you, depending on the context, you mention one or two or at most three things about yourself or about your past that are relevant to the context, and that will help you establish credibility.

You could say, I’ve been here for three years, where I came in at this role, I got promoted to this, and last month we succeeded in achieving this goal. Right? So you say a few things that are relevant to establish credibility for yourself. Then you move on to the future tense. Here’s where you say something enthusiastic about what’s to come.

You could say, I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of you better, working on this project together, and knocking it out of the park. So research shows, enthusiasm wins. End your self-introduction with a statement of enthusiasm. So that’s one framework you can use is the self-introduction framework.

And then the other framework that you can use is just using the power of three. Imagine Christine, you have brain fog and your boss says, in this meeting, we need to make a decision. Are we going with option A or option B, Christine? And you’re like, oh dear, and you’ve got brain fog. Just remember the power of three.

Here’s what you say. There are many advantages and disadvantages, pros and cons, for option A and option B. I’m gonna go with option B. Three reasons that come to mind. Number one, reason number two, reason number three. Even if you don’t have three reasons at the top of your mind, Christine, when you say this, you’re smart enough that they’ll come to you.

So highlight three reasons and then say again. I understand that there are some advantages to option A. But for these three reasons, I really recommend that we go with option B. And you sound so succinct when you say this. You’ve got structure to your answer. You’re doing your audience, the other people in the room a favor.

You’re telling them, I’m gonna tell you three reasons why. So when you get to the second one, they’re like, she’s not gonna keep rambling. She’s only got one more. You’re doing them a favor. You’re doing a self yourself a favor. You’re boosting your confidence and you’re communicating with clarity. Okay, Christine, thank you for that question. I hope that helps.

What’s Better Than an Elevator Pitch?Let’s move on to the next question. The next question is on LinkedIn. Actually, I got questions from many, many, uh, folks including Jad, Mohammed, and Daniel. They are all asking for tips on developing, or as a few of them said, nailing their elevator pitch or their elevator speech. My answer to this general question may surprise you.

It’s this no. I will not help you nail your elevator pitch or your elevator speech. Why? Two reasons. One, an elevator pitch always sounds rehearsed because it is, and you don’t wanna sound rehearsed. Secondly, an elevator pitch or an elevator speech is not customized and therefore it is not optimized for the audience.

Okay, Andrea, so you’re not gonna help me with my elevator pitch. So what do I say when I get on the elevator and the CEO is there, and I know I’ve got two and a half minutes to get from the 40th floor down to the main floor with the CEO? What do I say? Here’s what I tell you. You don’t start by talking about yourself.

Instead, bring something up about the other person that they care about. I promise you the CEO has people pitching them all day. Does anyone ever ask them how they are? Does anyone ever comment on the work that they’ve done? So that’s my first piece of advice is check in with the other person. It could be as simple as, how’s your day going?

Even better, ask them about a project that you know they’re working on, or maybe one that they just completed that’s positively impacted your work, so make it about them. Then you can go into your pitch if you want to call that if you don’t know the person. This is a fantastic time to use a self-introduction framework: Present past, future.

Make sure that your future comment is very enthusiastic about what you’re working on, and relate it back to the CEO or the person that you’re talking to. If you’ve already met them, you can still use the framework, but just customize it. Use the self-introduction framework. You could say, well, you may recall, I work in this department, right?

So talk about who you are and what you do. Go to the past tense and say, Recently, I’ve been working on these other projects, and we had some great success. So this is your chance to sell yourself a little bit, right? Establishing credibility, as I said, and then again, end it off with a positive statement with enthusiasm, talking about the future.

So the research shows that enthusiasm wins, as I said before, whether it’s in the context of sales, negotiating, teaching, and coaching. People are more likely to close the sale, to win the negotiation, to successfully coach and teach people when they demonstrate enthusiasm. And you wanna make a positive impression on the CEO, right?

So end with a, I’m really excited about this project, and I hope I’ll be able to present the outcome of this project to you soon. Something like that. So, to the folks who are inquiring about nailing their elevator pitch or their elevator speech. Don’t think of it as a speech. Think of it as an opportunity to check in with the other person, and then use the self-introduction framework to guide your comments.

How Can I Practice Public Speaking Without a Live Audience?Okay, moving on. I had a lot of questions about formal presentations. I’m gonna share three with you here. The first one is from Amisha on LinkedIn. Who said, what’s the best way to practice public speaking when you don’t have a live audience?

Okay. Amisha, I’m so glad you asked this. When I read this question, I was like, I’m for sure gonna answer this. I work from home, okay. I don’t have a bunch of colleagues that I can go and practice or rehearse my keynote speeches or my workshops with, so you know what I do. If it’s a high stakes presentation, I will literally stand up and practice presenting to the wall. What do I mean by that? I mean, I did this recently.

I was in my kitchen. Nobody else was home, and I had to deliver a 15 minute, so very time-bound keynote speech. I wrote out my speech, and then I narrowed it down to one sheet of paper with my main points. I stood up with my sheet of paper. I’m not reading a script, right? I’ve just got the main points written there.

I used the timer on my phone to record how long I would take, and I practiced delivering my speech the first time I gave it. It was 30 minutes. That’s not good. I need, I only had 15, so I sat down, I cut some things out. I tried again the next time, it was 20 minutes. By the time I practiced it a third time, I had it down to 15 minutes and it flowed.

And here’s the thing, when you practice this way, even though you’re practicing, you’re standing up, you’re practicing talking to a wall, your brain has muscle memory. So when you go out on stage, it’s like, I’ve done this before, and I find that works really well. So don’t use the excuse that you don’t have people to present to, to rehearse to, as an excuse for not practicing. Practice does make perfect.

How Do I Stop My Voice From Shaking During Presentations?Next question about formal presentation is from Nikolage on LinkedIn. How can I stop my voice from shaking during presentations? I don’t have an issue with my voice shaking now, but earlier in my career it definitely happened. I remember when I was a sales rep and then I was working in the marketing department at Kraft Foods, I had to give some presentations, and very often I would be sweating and shaking, and my voice would be shaking.

So I have a couple things to share with you that help a lot physical things. Mental things, so physically first, I know you probably know this is where I’m headed. Breathing is key. I’ve had the great opportunity to interview some fantastic vocal coaches over the last couple years on this podcast.

And breathing is always a core tenet of optimizing your voice. So recently in the research that I’ve been reading, it’s actually your exhale. So yes, you want to breathe deeply and slowly, but particularly your exhale why. When you slow or elongate your exhale, your brain says, oh, I’m not gasping for air.

Everything must be okay. And then it calms your body and your brain down. So just try this before you go out on stage or before you answer that big, important question in a meeting: take a slow, deep breath and really slow your exhale. Now you, you don’t wanna blow like that into the microphone, but you get the idea.

So slow your exhale. This will calm your body down and make your voice sound better. The other thing physically that you can do that most people do, but not everyone does. Make sure you have water. So if you’re in a meeting, always have water with you, and especially if you’re going out on stage. I used to bring a glass of water.

Now I always bring a plastic bottle with a lid just in case it falls down and it seems like it’s Murphy’s Law if I have it there with me. I won’t need it, but there have been a few times when I’ve been on stage in front of an audience where my throat has gone really dry and I desperately would’ve appreciated a sip of water.

So bring a bottle of water with you, whether it’s a meeting or whether you’re on stage. So you’ve looked after yourself physically, you’re breathing deeply, elongating your exhale, and you’ve got your water with you in case you need it. Mentally, what do you do to optimize your nerves and not have a shaky voice?

What I do, what works for me, is a mantra. My mantra goes like this, Andrea, you know what? You know, and you’re keen to learn more. Lemme break that apart for you. You know what, you know, this is about me doubling down on my expertise. I’m not saying I’m good at everything, Andrea. You’re the best. No, no, no, no.

You know what you know, you know consumer psychology, you know communication, you know, whatever the topic is of the speech that I’m giving or the keynote. So, remind yourself of your skills and your expertise. This will elevate your confidence and provide you with focus. Okay? And then the second part of it is.

You’re keen to learn more. This is about me reminding myself of my growth mindset. There’s a good chance someone in the audience is gonna ask me a question that I haven’t thought about before and I don’t have an answer to. This is an opportunity to learn. So with my mantra, I’m reminding myself of my strengths and my growth mindset.

You are welcome to steal or borrow my mantra, by the way. But regardless, I encourage you to use a mantra. This will focus your brain on the good, right, and it’ll also distract you from your anxiety and your nerves. I find it works, and I have lots of clients who do the same, and they say it works for them.

What’s the Secret to Recovering After Losing My Train of Thought?Okay, third question about formal presentation. Elena on LinkedIn asked, what’s the secret to recovering smoothly after you lose your train of thought on stage? So. Yes, I’ve had this happen to me a few times when I’m actually giving virtual presentations. It’s happened when I get distracted when I’m looking at someone on the screen, and I know that it, it happens to people all the time.

I do have an answer for you here. The answer is to be singularly focused on what your main point of your presentation is. This actually has a couple of benefits, right? If you think about it. The presentation that has many, many main points is going to be less engaging and less memorable than the one that has one key point.

So this will provide you with focus and that will benefit your audience or your listeners. The other thing that having a main point does is it allows you to reset. So imagine you’re giving a presentation and someone asks you a question, you know, mid presentation, and you answer it, and then you’re like.

Hang on a second. Where was I? And whether or not you have slides, you might not remember what you were gonna say next. If you go back to your main point, that will bring you back to your presentation and the focus. And in every situation where I’ve heard this happening, it’ll remind you of where you were.

So it’ll boost your confidence. It’ll help your audience. And if you lose track of where you are in the presentation, it’ll bring you back. Be crystal clear on your main point.

How Can I Develop Executive Presence?The last question I have here is also from LinkedIn. Two people ask me this. Daniel and Monia separately ask for tips on developing executive presence.

So I think about this a lot because executive presence is something that I would say most of my clients are seeking. And so I have three things again, the power of three. Three things that we can all work on to help us elevate our executive presence. The first one, maybe this will surprise you, maybe not.

The first thing is to focus on your basic communication skills, and when I say basic, I don’t mean easy, but I mean the kind of elementary communication skills, things like listening, storytelling, formal presentations. If you think about the folks around you who are exhibiting executive presence, they all have exceptional communication skills, so you can elevate your executive presence by focusing on your basic communication skills.

The second thing is to focus on elevating your confidence. A lot of the questions that we’ve had here in this Q&A episode have been focused on imposter syndrome and confidence. So think about the tactics and the mindsets that will help you. Everything from deep breathing, reciting a mantra. To doubling down on your personal brand or your professional identity, really thinking about what your unique strengths are.

All of these things will help boost your confidence. And the truth is, if you’re feeling confident, people will perceive you as confident or as exhibiting gravitas, and that’s when you can start to establish credibility and executive presence. So we’ve got the basic communication skills and we’ve got confidence.

The third way of establishing executive presence is actually a really easy one. And it’s interesting. People always answer this one with, oh, I already do that. Or, of course, and it’s something that they can easily change. And it’s this, use the word lead when you’re talking about yourself, when you’re introducing yourself, when you’re talking about your work.

Use the word lead. Leadership led, the team I led accomplished this. My leadership style is this, I lead the blah blah, blah function or the blah blah, blah team, right? So however you can use the term, every time you use the word lead, you are either explicitly or maybe implicitly reinforcing your status as a leader and establishing your executive presence.

So three ways to help boost your executive presence. One. Work on your basic communication skills. Two, elevate your confidence using mindsets and tactics. And three, use the word lead in reference to yourself and the work you do whenever you can.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsOkay, I’m gonna stop there. We’ve covered imposter syndrome and self-awareness, how to boost your confidence and clarity when you have menopause brain, or really any time you have brain fog, why and how to replace your rehearsed elevator pitch with something a little more customized and compelling.

I’ve answered questions about nailing formal presentations and specific advice about how to develop your executive presence. When I look at all of the questions that you asked, there really are three, yes, three themes here.

1. The Power of Using Frameworks

First, the power of using frameworks. You can optimize your communication with frameworks to guide you while still optimizing and customizing what you say.

Yes, I am a big fan of frameworks.

2. The Signifance of Our Confidence

Second is the significance of our confidence. We started off with Steven’s description of what it feels like to have imposter syndrome. Yes, it is critical to feel confident and to be perceived as confident. If you wanna establish credibility, then you’ve got to be confident, and the good news is that confidence can be learned.

That is what I spend a lot of time actually helping my clients with.

3. The Impact of Developing Your Personal Brand

The third and last theme is the impact of developing your personal brand. And what I mean by this is focusing on your unique strengths, expertise, and skills. Taking the time to identify your unique strengths will go a long way, and it’ll boost your confidence and it’ll establish credibility with the folks that you talk to.

I hope this was all helpful. If you’re not already subscribed to this talk about Talk podcast, please hit subscribe now, and you can also forward this episode to your friends who might find it helpful. And as you’re going about your day, if you can think of any new communication skills questions for me, I say bring it on.

You can connect with me through the TalkAboutTalk.com website, or you can DM me on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you. Talk soon.

The post Answers to Your Burning COMMUNICATION Questions | Q&A with Dr. Andrea Wojnicki (ep.196) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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What does it take to build a strong network? The Honourable Marie-P. Charette-Poulin shares the networking strategies that built her career across decades of leadership in broadcasting, law, public service, and politics. She also reveals her “7 Rules of Networking,” principles rooted in service and respect that apply to both career and life.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
✔️Why true networking is about others, not yourself
✔️Why handwritten notes and business cards still carry weight today
✔️ How to follow up in ways that deepen relationships
✔️ The 7 timeless rules for building meaningful connections

From negotiating with unions at CBC to serving in Canada’s Senate, Marie’s career has been defined by connection and grace. Her stories illustrate how networking can shape careers, build trust, and even save lives.

This episode is essential for anyone who wants to network with authenticity and create relationships that endure.

CONNECT WITH MARIE-P. CHARETTE-POULIN:💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marie-poulin-450392126/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:📖 Biography: She Dared to Succeed: She Dared to Succeed: A Biography of the Honourable Marie-P. Charette-Poulin by Fred Langan:https://amzn.to/3HIjGr5
📖 The Power of Kindness by Dr. Brian Goldman: https://amzn.to/45oSFC9

TRANSCRIPTIONThe Honourable MPCP: Networking is not projecting. Networking is actually showing interest in the other person. You’re not showing interest in yourself. You’re asking questions about the other person, and once you start networking, you can actually say that every individual multiplies.

Andrea Wojnicki: I met Marie recently at a conference where we were both delivering keynote speeches. My keynote was about delivering executive presence, and her keynote was focused on effective networking. We immediately hit it off, and I asked her to join me on the Talk About Talk podcast, and here we are. In this episode, you will learn Marie’s secret sauce to successful networking. It’s a recipe with seven ingredients.

You’ll also hear some unbelievable stories from her incredible career in broadcasting, public service law, and higher education. In case we haven’t met yet, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk. You can learn more about me and what I do at TalkAboutTalk.com or by clicking on the links in the show description.

About the Guest: The Honourable Marie-P. Charette-PoulinNow, let me briefly introduce the Honorable Marie Poulin, and then we’ll get right into the interview. Her impressive bio includes so many accomplishments that I’m afraid we’re gonna run outta time. So let me hit the highlights. Here it goes. Let’s do this. Let’s Talk About Talk.

AW: The Honourable Marie-P. Charette-Poulin is currently parliamentarian in residence at St. Paul University in Ottawa. Earlier in her career, Marie worked her way up at CBC Radio Canada as a producer, then a station manager, and as a senior executive. She then shifted to the Canadian government, where she served as Deputy Minister at the Privy Council and as parliamentarian in the Senate.

She was also a partner at the International Law Firm Gowling, WLG, and an international development officer with the Institute on Governance, working in Iraq. Her involvement with not-for-profits, as well as foundations and advisory councils, demonstrate her commitment to public service, higher education, and community involvement.

Marie’s biography entitled, She Dared to Succeed by Fred Langan was published in 2023. People say that Hoorable Poulin’s trademarks are her smile and her laughter. I would add a third trademark, her incredible grace.

Thank you so much, Marie, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about networking and the impact that it can have on our careers.

The Honourable MPCP: Thank you, Andrea. It’s an honor and it’s a joy. I had the pleasure of hearing one of your talks, and it was simply inspiring, so thank you.

The Power of Strategic NetworkingAW: Back at you. I mean, that’s why we’re here, right? We really connected at that event. I wanna start by asking you, I guess, the general question, which is based on the fact that you’ve built an extraordinary career across broadcasting, across public service, and across politics. What role would you say strategic networking played for you in terms of opening doors and advancing your career?

The Honourable MPCP: It’s not only advancing your career, but I think that what networking does is helping you be of service to others above all, because people call you and they say. Do you know someone in this field? And I’ll give you an example. 2020. It’s the winter, and a longstanding friend of mine.

And so we’re in 2020, and she calls me and says, Marie Paul, because that’s my, she knew me in grade one. Marie Paul, do you know anybody at the Ministry of Health in Ontario? And I said to her, Oh, Rashelle, I’m so sorry. I don’t know anyone. She says, Marie, you’re the most connected person I know. Yeah, think. And I said, Oh my God, Rashelle, wait a minute.

Give me a little bit of time, but don’t leave your email. I will get back to you. I immediately called my contact, got the name of the very senior, a public servant in the Health Department of Ontario was able to get the name, the email address, the phone number, and sent everything to Sarah. A few days later, she sent me the most beautiful email saying to me, you probably saved the lives of many of my nuns because of the information I was able to gather, and I can’t thank you enough.

And the beginning of 2020, what was it? The beginning of COVID. Yeah. And we, so we still didn’t see each other twice a year. And she always says to me, you saved the life of nuns. And I can’t thank you enough. Okay. And so that’s what networking, that’s really what networking is all about. It’s not about us, it’s about the others.

AW: So out of the gates, you’ve given me the shivers. This happens to me sometimes when I’m coaching people and we come up with something really profound. You’ve given me the shivers with the first story that you’ve told Marie. Oh my gosh.

The Honourable MPCP: She wasn’t a blank.

AW: But this beautifully illustrates the impact that effective networking can have.

The Honourable MPCP: Yeah.

AW: It also beautifully illustrates your mindset or your philosophy around networking. Right. That of providing service.

The Honourable MPCP: But I had never realized that networking was networking network until the former Prime Minister Jacques, I went into his office one day for coffee and he said to me, how’s the most connected person I know.

And I said to him, What do you mean boss? Connected. He said, you have a million dollar Rolodex. How do you do it? You can’t imagine how much people appreciate it. But I had never realized until he mentioned it. And I think it’s also because he has a lot of influence on me that I did a double take, and as you say, I had shivers because I hadn’t realized that actually, that’s what I’ve been doing since the age of five.

AW: So then in retrospect, I guess what impact did this skill of yours that you may not have been conscious of, and then you became conscious of, right. What impact did it have on your career?

The Honourable MPCP: It made me decide to be more of service to others. So when I was invited by the University of St. Paul in Ottawa, which is a bilingual small Catholic university, but is very inclusive because we have many Muslims, we have many Protestants, and we have many nonbelievers. So it’s a very inclusive, small university. So when I was called by the then rector to join the university as a parliamentarian and resident.

I thought, Oh my God, maybe I could be of service to the university. And you know, that’s how it’s working. It’s been 18 months. I’m learning every day. I’m enjoying every day, but I really feel that I’m being of service to the leadership of the university. To the professors, to the deans, and to the students.

From CBC to the Senate: Career Transitions Fueled by ConnectionAW: Amazing. That is fantastic. I think all of those stakeholders are very fortunate to have you around. I remember. When you and I were at this event a couple months ago, where we met, you shared a story about how there was a sudden change early in your career when you were working with the CBC, and then how you ended up using your network or cultivating your network, right, to help you evolve to the next stage. Do you wanna share that story? ’cause I think it’s quite, um, fascinating.

The Honourable MPCP: Well, it’s interesting, you know, when I began at the CBC in 1973 as a researcher at $15 a week. Loved it, loved it, loved it. Became a radio producer. Then I was sent to Sudbury to open all the Francophone radio services in Northern Ontario, one production center with 35 repeaters.Fantastic.

Ben invited me. He was then president of the CBC, invited me to come back to Ottawa to become the vice, the Associate Vice President of all the regional stations across Canada, Rimouski, Quebec City, Moncton, Vancouver, Edmonton.

AW: Can you just stop there for a second? Just for the record. This is a big job, especially for a woman then. Can I say that?

The Honourable MPCP: Well, this was the eighties.

AW: Yeah.

The Honourable MPCP: And there weren’t many women at the executive table.

AW: Exactly.

The Honourable MPCP: I have to admit. There was only one more, and there were 15 executives. So I fell in love with the country. Well really fell in love with public broadcasting. Then invited me to move to become Vice President, Secretary General to the Board, and I worked hand in hand with him, and after that, the new president who came in invited me to become the Vice President of Human Resources and Industrial Relations.

When I told him I know nothing about human resources, he said. Yes, but you’re connected to all the presidents of the 33 unions. You’ve worked with most of them. And I said, yes, I’m from operations, and you know, Mr. President, if I could be of service to you, I will be. So I had been vice president of Human Resources for two years, and one morning I came to the office and there was a little brown envelope under my door.

I opened the envelope, and there was the summary of the bonus, the yearly bonuses. At that time, for the seven vice presidents who were what we call support services, vice presidents, finance, internal audit, engineering, human resources, and industrial relations, and so on, and there were six men in one. All the men received $15,000.

And don’t forget, this is 1992, and I received $6,000. So I went to see my immediate supervisor, who was the senior vice president, and I put the page in front of him, and I said, I’m a bit surprised because I renegotiated 33 union agreements in 10 months. It really went well. But I said, so why? It’s the president’s decision.

So I went to see the executive vice president, who had the same professional development as I have had within the organization. And I said, I did the same thing, put the page in front of him, and said, I don’t understand. I renegotiated 33 union agreements in 10 months. He said, Come on Marie. We know you’re just that cheerleader.

So I slowly got up, took the page back, started walking towards the door, and he said immediately, Come on Marie, we can talk about this. And I turned around, smiled at him, and said, Michael, I have to go out and buy my pompoms. And I turned around and slowly left. I didn’t slam the door, went to my office, closed the door, called my husband Bernard at home and started crying, and said, Bernard, I have to leave the CBC. He said, What are you talking about? I told him the story. He said, Marie, you know you’re right. You have no choice. You have to leave.

Don’t tell anybody your intention. Come home tonight and let’s make a plan.

AW: Smart.

The Honourable MPCP: So what did we do When I got home, he made me say to him, Marie, who do you know where? That’s when I realized, who do I know? And so I started saying, oh, so and so there, and so and so there, and. Who’s the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council because we worked together when I was Secretary General, and he was then the chief of staff to the Minister of Communications, and Oh, I know the chief of staff to the Prime Minister.

I said, I know Hugh Siegel. We met in Sudbury, remember? Sure. In, uh, 19, uh, 80, uh, he came with William Davis to the radio station, and so I went through the list. We decided that I would call, not directly these people, but that I would call three different friends who would call them to give them the message that Marie Poulin was interested in a new professional chapter.

Nothing about what had happened. I didn’t tell anybody, and I didn’t share it for years. And so the next thing I knew, I was invited for lunch by the clerk of the Privy Council, Glenn Shortliffe, because my timing was impeccable. They were looking for deputy secretary to cabinet in communications because the outgoing had just given his resignation, and the job was open.

So the timing was perfect, and so I was able to announce to the president privately that September. That I would be leaving on October 1st. And so there was a tradition that when a vice president would leave the CBC, there would be a special dinner in the boardroom with the members of the board, all the vice presidents, and the vice president and his, because it was usually a he, his spouse.

AW: Yeah.

The Honourable MPCP: So there was no dinner for me. There was a lunch given in the cafeteria, chaired by the president. And all the vice presidents, my husband was not invited.

AW: Oh, wow.

The Honourable MPCP: And so when I was invited to say a few words, I thanked my colleagues for their cooperation and told them how much I had enjoyed my 20 years at the CBC. And I thanked them all for their friendship and their success stories. And then the lunch was over, the president left, and the senior vice president and the executive vice president. And every vice president came and shook my hand and said, Marie, you’ve got class.

AW: Mm-hmm. You do.

The Honourable MPCP: And I never forgot it. It was the lesson of my life where you can be respectful in a very difficult situation.

AW: Yeah.

The Honourable MPCP: And not slam the door, but just make sure that other doors are opening. Because of the respect that you’re showing.

AW: So to me, Marie, this exceptional story really it highlights many things, but two of the things I just wanna identify are is one that being so gracious, having such class is actually a sign of strength that ends up helping you, but it does take strength. And I just want you to know how much I respect, you know, all of the decisions that you made there really made it, your story really made an impact on me.

But the other thing about your story is how you weren’t in a situation where so many people are, where they realize too late that they have not been cultivating their network, their professional and personal network, right? That they, they’re like, oh, I need a job, and, and your husband was smart enough to say, let’s come home and brainstorm what contacts you have and what the plan’s gonna be in terms of leveraging that network that you’ve been servicing.

The Secret Sauce: 7 Traits That Make a Great NetworkerSo this is my question for you. What were you doing that you can think of now in retrospect that you can maybe suggest to the Talk About Talk listeners as advice in terms of cultivating a strong network?

The Honourable MPCP: I think that, first of all, we need conditions, or what we call premises. Okay. To be able to reach out to people successfully. And there are seven of them. Can I share with you?

AW: Yes, please.

The Honourable MPCP: Because they’re fun. So I have seven of them. Number one, intellectual curiosity. You gotta wanna know what makes other people tick. Number two, reliability. People have to know that you can count on them, but also on your discreteness. So important number three, authenticity. You have to be comfortable in your own skin. I’m proud to be from Sudbury, from Northern Ontario. It’s fun. I like cars. When you’re from Northern Ontario. You like cars and you like water, and by the way, those are three qualifications, curiosity, reliability, and authenticity. Being comfortable in one’s own skin that make up the results of the Berkeley study. These the three conditions to being successful. So, what else do you need?

You need generosity. Number four. You never hesitate to give of your time when a person asks you for something.

AW: including being on a podcast.

The Honourable MPCP: That’s an honor.

AW: Yeah. Number five, courage. You’ve gotta be bold enough to ask for help. Number six. Appreciation. Oh my God. You’ve got to take the time to express gratitude to say thank you.

That thank you, goes a long way. Number seven, respect. No matter if it’s the former prime minister or a former clerk in a store, you’ve got to show respect to every every person. Those are my seven premises to be able to network. Now, what does it take to develop networks and everybody can, no matter if you’re shy or outgoing or tall or short, or working as a waitress or working as the governor general,

AW: Or male or female.

The Honourable MPCP: Or male or female, right. Thank you. Yeah, because there’s one precious tool. And it’s called the business card. I’m still using it, and people are, or more and more using them. The Japanese have found out that it’s such a precious tool because even today it’s sensual. You touch a card, you have all your information on that card, who you are, what you do, how you can be reached if you have a psych.

You have an address for your site. Everything is there, but it has to be accessible. I always have them in my right-hand pocket. When someone gives me their business card, I put them in my left-hand pocket. They’re not in a purse. They’re not inside. They’re not in a satchel. They have to be very accessible.

AW: So Marie, I remember when you and I met at this event a couple months ago, and you and I started speaking before we delivered our keynote speeches. And I asked you if you had a card, and you said yes. And then you said, do you have one? And I had to run and grab my purse and pull it.

And then you taught this to me in your keynote, which is Andrea, keep your cards on in one pocket left or right, and then use the other side for the ones you receive. Such an obvious thing, but so helpful. So helpful. And I have to say one other thing about business cards. I feel like they were waning, and I feel like they’re now coming back to your point. Oh yeah.

Most of the people at that event, most of the women that were at that event, they were all CEOs, right? Female CEOs. Yes. I think. Almost every single one of them had a business card.

The Honourable MPCP: Very much. And if they didn’t, they did 48 hours later because they all sent me emails. I received emails for the whole week. Following or so. And they certainly have business cards now, and what’s interesting is that it is very practical to be able to simply, with your phone, get the electronic address from the other person. But when you get home, it’s amongst all your other contents. Whereas the business card, when you enter your pockets, you remember meeting that person or those people, right? And you say, Oh, wasn’t that nice?

AW: Right? So it’s a reminder. It’s also a cue to follow up. Right. We were talking about that. We were talking about the fact that if you don’t follow up, you may as well have not met the person. Frankly, you can put them in your LinkedIn if you’re not following up.

The Honourable MPCP: Very much so, and there are different opportunities to follow up also. So it’s key and it’s personal.

Timeless Tools: Business Cards, Handwritten Notes & Staying Top of MindAW: So Marie, in addition to having business cards and sharing them with people, with this left pocket to the right pocket strategy and following up, what other specific tips will you would you like to highlight?

The Honourable MPCP: It’s involvement is saying yes to the invitations. To gathering, gather where you can meet people and new people, old friends, but new friends, new colleagues, old colleagues. It’s so important. It’s giving that time. And thirdly, I would say that it’s taking the time to write a handwritten note, example. A friend of yours gets a big promotion.

It’s nice to send an email. Of course it’s, but you know, that handwritten note is special. Let’s hope Canada Post stays in business for handwritten notes, please.

AW: Yeah. Beautiful. You’re right. You’re right. An email is better than nothing, but a handwritten note is, is a very personalized gesture and it, and it takes a little above, beyond.

The Honourable MPCP: I act my talk. I even suggested to get personal letterhead done so that when your note is received, it’s clear on who it’s coming from and it gives it a touch of professionalism. Yeah. Which is so important. So be it. If you’re a doctor or a cashier, or a sales representative. That personal note makes it very special.

AW: Yeah. I love this idea of, of, I love personalized things just generally, but having personalized stationary, it’s, you know, in relation to your personal brand or your professional identity, it’s signaling, you know, a certain conscientiousness, a certain class.

This is a common theme with you, Marie, is this, is this class, and Grace that you have, I wanna ask you. A couple of other more specific questions about networking. Do you think it’s different for women versus men especially, you know, today? Do you think it’s networking is different for women?

The Honourable MPCP: I don’t see it. I don’t see it as different, honestly. Andrea. Yeah, I do think that there are, there are individuals, both men and women, who are shyer than others, and so they don’t want to project who they are. But networking is not projecting. Networking is actually showing interest in the other person. You’re not showing interest in yourself.

You’re asking questions about the other person. And once you start networking, you can actually say that every individual multiplies. I always say, if you know one senator. You know, 105 senators, because you can reach out to that one person and find out who is interested in this issue that I could connect with.

And so it’s the multiplication, therefore of your contacts, which is really, really important. And you’ve gotta be bold to ask, as I was mentioning earlier, you know, we asked our doctor. For the name of a specialist. Well, we have to be bold to ask a colleague in a law firm, for instance, Does one of your colleagues practice this type of law?

AW: Right. Brilliant. I love what you just said also about for shy or introverted people who may be apprehensive about networking. It’s not about you, it’s about the other person. You absolutely are gonna be quoted on that. I love that.

The Honourable MPCP: But the other thing also, Andrea, is that if you really want to be up to date. You have to keep what I call the Rolodex.

You have to keep that list of names of contacts. Up to date, right? When you get new business cards, you have to enter them in your phone. And I have to say, it’s work.

AW: It is work. It is work. But you can get a lot of traction.

The Honourable MPCP: Yep. Whenever I’m on the train to go to work, uh, from Hot Water Toronto, I always take advantage of those four hours to put my list up to date, and I don’t stop.

And while you’re putting it up to date, what’s interesting is you fall on a name. Oh, Dr. Andrea, I wonder how she is. You sent Dr. Andrea A. Little message. How are you? Right? And so it’s a way of not only keeping the list up to date, but also the contacts, right?

AW: Again, the business cards are serving as a catalyst to remind other people about you. And then also, as a reminder to reconnect very much.

The Honourable MPCP: The biggest challenge is maintaining your list, right? Is maintaining those contacts. So I do it in a very very specific way. When I was called to the Senate, I discovered that there was a tradition on the hill that all parliamentarians from both houses would send out a New Year’s card to their constituents, their friends, their contacts.

So I started sending out New Year’s cards, and so even if I’d left the Senate 10 years ago, every year I send out New Year’s cards to family, friends, and contacts. The challenge is that very often people have moved. Right now, that’s another challenge, but I have to say that those cards have more impact than we can ever imagine.

Someone sent me an email, or more than one actually. It’s so nice to receive your personal card with your personal wishes, Marie. Thank you so much. And same to your family. So that’s one way of keeping up a network.

AW: You’re keeping, there’s another, you’re keeping top, top of mind with people, right? And, and it’s, and it’s lovely. You’re, you’re, it’s once to hear. You’re not asking for anything. You’re just providing your well-wishes.

The Honourable MPCP: That’s it. And do you know the pleasure I get outta saying writing. Dear Andrea, I trust you’re doing well. May the new year bring you the best of everything, Marie. It’s that pleasure you get in those 30 seconds of thinking about that one person and his or her loved ones, right? It’s very, very special. Then there’s something else that I’ve started doing, and I started doing this quite a few years ago.

I’ve always loved birthdays ever since I was a little girl. So whenever I meet someone. I always try to find a way to ask them their birthday. So every fall my husband buys me a new calendar. It’s huge, and it’s a paper calendar. I put in an every date birthday of Andrea, birthday of Steve, so that every month I have about 75 birthdays that I know of.

AW: Oh, wow.

The Honourable MPCP: So that when I get up in the morning. One of the first things I do over coffee is check the calendar and see whose birthday, and I send out a wish.

AW: So nice.

The Honourable MPCP: And it takes a few seconds to send a birthday wish to two people, three people.

AW: Amazing.

The Honourable MPCP: And it’s special. It’s their birthday, it’s their day. So is special.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: So I’m seeing this common theme of providing service and not asking anything in return. I’m also hearing a common theme of you using, there’s certain tools or practices or exercises that you do that serve, I used this word before as a catalyst to remind you to reach out to people. There’s the business cards, there’s the calendar, right? I think it’s absolutely brilliant.

The Honourable MPCP: And I know it’s not online, it’s not electronic. Why? Because I can see huge. Yep. Huge. Right in front of me, and it sort of sticks out. Birthday off, birthday off. With all my, my, my agenda for the day. So it’s, uh, it’s fun.

AW: So people could put the birthdays in their electronic calendar. Oh, absolutely. Or on their paper calendar. So that reminds me of, I guess the last question I wanted to ask you before we get into the three rapid-fire questions, which is obviously the art of networking. Maybe not your philosophy around it, but how you do it has evolved over the course of your career with the internet and computers and phones, and everything and the rise of social media.

So how has that impacted your networking or what you see other people doing? I find that it’s facilitated it.

The Honourable MPCP: Yeah, ’cause networking now has been made so much easier, and it’s right there, right in front of us. So thank God. I love, love, love being able to send an email being able to, and most former parliamentarians. Don’t go on social networks too much. We’ve been, uh, harassed enough. But I do go on one or two, and I love being able to react to someone who’s been promoted, just been promoted, or use that information mm-hmm. To send a personal note to the person who’s been promoted. Right. Which is nice. A handwritten note for a promotion because it’s a success story.

AW: So the internet and technology is providing us with the ability to have, I guess, a broader network. It’s also faster access. And I remember after you and I met, we were emailing back and forth, and I said, I missed the name of your daughter, and I’m trying to connect with her on LinkedIn. Right. So that conversation could have happened, but it would’ve taken a long time if we were sending each other letters. Right. So it was like instant. Within a couple days, I reconnected with your daughter, which was lovely.

The Honourable MPCP: It’s interesting. I find that a phone call sometimes can be intrusive because people are so busy today that I prefer sending an email when the person will read it at a convenient time for him or her.

AW: Yeah. The asynchronous nature. And I think that that’s why with, I guess, the generation Z, the generation Y and Z, they are staying off the phone. Right. And it’s like they wanna have asynchronous communication. Yeah.

But I understand them.

AW: Yeah. Well, once again, you’re considerate of others. You’re in the service of others, and you’re so gracious. Are you ready for my three rapid-fire questions?

The Honourable MPCP: Oh my, that’s, this is interesting. Absolutely. So I take for granted that you ask those three questions to all your guests.

AW: I do.

The Honourable MPCP: Oh, interesting.

AW: I do, I do.

The Honourable MPCP: Okay.

AW: Okay. And, I can share with you some of the trends of what I hear, but let’s, let’s go. The first one is, are you an introvert or an extrovert? And how does that affect your communication?

The Honourable MPCP: Oh, that’s interesting. I think we all are a balance of folks. Because I love meeting people. I don’t like being the center of attention. As a former radio producer, I like bringing the light on others, but I love meeting people.

On the other hand, I was raised by nuns and priests who taught me the importance of closed retreats. So I try to go away four times a year for a few days, just on my own, to go into complete silence and prayer for a few days.

AW: Wow.

The Honourable MPCP: Yeah, and it really nourishes the soul and the mind. And the body.

AW: For how long have you been doing that?

The Honourable MPCP: Since 1992. I was very, very, very tired. I had just finished renegotiating those 33 agreements at CBC, and my husband greeted me at home with a ticket when I got home, and he said. You’re leaving for Mexico tomorrow morning for a trip on your own for a week.

Because you need to rest, otherwise you won’t survive. And that’s when I discovered the pleasure of being in silence. By yourself, even though you’re in a social environment of an all-inclusive, for instance. No, I’m not sociable at all. I say hello. That’s about it. I do a room service. Yeah. And I really go into silence for a few days. And I really, every time I come back, I feel as though I’m a new person.

My husband always reads me at the airport and says. Where did you leave the last 10 years? Oh, wow.

AW: So nice. Your husband sounds absolutely amazing. Okay. Rapid fire. Question number two. What are your communication pet peeves?

The Honourable MPCP: The fact that people are introducing themselves only with their first name.

History has taught us that when there was slavery, people were known only for their first name. I like to hear the full name. The first name and the family name. That’s my pet peeve.

AW: Nice. That’s a unique one. Okay, question number three. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending to people lately?

The Honourable MPCP: Well, I could always recommend Fred Langan’s book. She Dared to Succeed, which is the title of my biography that he wrote. There is one book.

AW: I’m gonna put the link to that book in in the show notes, by the way, so people will see.

The Honourable MPCP: Thank you. Fred Lagan is a great biographer, as you know. He works for the global male. Yeah, and he’s a great biographer. The book that really touched me was The Power of Kindness by Dr. Brian Goldman from Toronto. Have you read?

AW: I have not read the book. I’ve met him. I will also put a link in the show notes to that book, and I need to read it myself

The Honourable MPCP: And maybe do a podcast with him.

AW: That’s a great idea. That’s a great idea. Is there anything else you wanna share with the Talk about Talk listeners, Marie, about networking with grace?

The Honourable MPCP: Oh, I just say to all your viewers and your listeners that you’re doing a great job because what you’re doing is you’re giving us an opportunity, Andrea, to learn from others.

So thank you, because I’m learning from others and I love learning. I have to say, I did a Bachelor of Arts and Psychology, and then I did a Master’s in social sciences. At 59 years old, I went back to law school. It was the best thing I ever did, and today I’m working at the University of St. Paul, but I’m also studying Canon Law as a student. So, I’m really having fun learning.

AW: Learning is where it’s at. I am with you on that. Marie, thank you so much. The pleasure really has been all mine. I really enjoyed meeting you the first time and now interviewing you here. Thank you so much.

The Honourable MPCP: Thank you, Andrea, and a warm hello to all your viewers.

AW: Thank you again, Marie. Isn’t she inspiring? Such a fantastic role model. Now, typically I conclude these episodes by summarizing three main points, you know, me and the power of three. But in this case, I’m going to conclude by sharing Marie’s special sauce for networking.

Seven ingredients. One intellectual curiosity. You gotta wanna know what makes other people tick. Two, reliability. People have to know that they can count on you. Three. Authenticity. You have to be comfortable in your own skin. Four is generosity. Never hesitate to give of your time, especially when someone is asking. Five is you gotta be bold enough to ask others for help.

Six is appreciation, as in expressing gratitude. And number seven is respect. No matter if it’s the former prime minister or the president or a stranger on the street or a clerk in the store, you’ve got to show respect to everyone. I feel like this list of seven things is gold, not just in networking, but in life.

Intellectual curiosity, reliability, authenticity, generosity, and asking for help. Appreciation and, of course, respect. Marie, thank you again so much for sharing your insights and your stories. We are all inspired now to network with a little more grace, and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you’ll share it with a friend, and I hope you’ll subscribe on whatever platform that you’re on. Talk soon.

The post 7 Ways to NETWORK with Grace | The Honourable Marie-P. Charette-Poulin (ep.195) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy Is Essential in Everyday Life

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What does it take to earn a board seat and influence what happens once you’re in the room? Award-winning corporate director Deborah Rosati shares what she’s learned from over two decades in the boardroom.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
✔️ How to show up with presence without dominating the room
✔️ How the W.A.I.T. acronym can elevate your boardroom presence
✔️ A strategic approach to finding (and exiting) the right board roles
✔️ How women can build credibility even as the only one in the room

Deborah Rosati is the founder and CEO of Women Get On Board and co-founder of Women Funding Women. Her mission is clear: to help women show up with confidence and credibility at the highest levels of leadership.

From asking better questions to knowing when not to speak, this is essential listening for anyone pursuing board roles or seeking to show up with confidence in high-stakes meetings.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA💻Website: TalkAboutTalk.com
💼LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
💼LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/
📣Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/
🟣Podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503
🟢Podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369

CONNECT WITH DEBORAH💻Website: https://deborahrosati.ca/
💼LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/deborahrosati
📱Instagram: @deborah_rosati

CONNECT WITH WOMEN GET ON BOARD💻Website: http://womengetonboard.ca/
💼LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wgobcanada/
📱Instagram: @wgobcanada

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:📖 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins: https://amzn.to/41mgXuf
📖 Bragging Rights by Lisa Bragg: https://amzn.to/3Jiz1Pz

TRANSCRIPTIONDeborah Rosati: I think, as women, we sometimes hold ourselves back. We’re not good enough. We’re not smart enough. We’re not pretty enough. And you know what? We are enough.

Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk: If you ever wondered what it takes to land a corporate board seat, you’re about to hear from someone who’s made it her mission to show you how.

About Deborah RosatiDeborah Rosati is an award-winning corporate director who served on boards for over 20 years. She’s also the founder and CEO of Women Get On Board and the co-founder of Women Funding Women Incorporated. She’s on a mission to increase the number of women on boards, close the funding gap, and cultivate the next generation of female corporate directors and founders. In this conversation that you’re about to hear, Deborah shares what boards actually look for in their candidates, what holds many women back, and the exact playbook that you can use to go from quiet expert to board-ready, visible, and in demand.

You’ll also learn an acronym that you can use to guide your communication in board meetings and beyond. And I love this acronym. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk.

I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and this is Talk About Talk, where we coach ambitious executives to stand out with confidence and credibility. To learn more, click the links in the show description. Now, let’s jump right into my conversation with Rosati.

Thank you, Deborah, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about getting women on boards.

DR: Well, thank you, Andrea. Delighted my favorite topic each and every day.

Communication Skills That Matter in the BoardroomAW: So we’re gonna put a little bit of a communication skills spin on this as we were talking about, and my first question for you is, can you help us identify some communication skills that are particularly important for board members?

DR: That is a great question. I think I’ve thought long and hard on that. I would say for board members in particular, you have to remember your role. Your role is there to have an oversight, insight, foresight in hindsight. So you’re not there to manage the business day to day. So how you’re showing up is really important.

That ties back to your role from an oversight perspective. So active listening. You have to be going into the boardroom, not telling the executive team what to do, but listening and be really active. And I know I have to work on that each and every day. But that listening, because if you’re there to provide and make informed decisions, you have to understand the issues, and you need clarity around the issues.

And so a way that I like to communicate on the active listening is, so Andrea, let’s say you are the board member and you’re presenting a sensitive matter, I might come back to you, Andrea, and say, so Andrea, what I’m hearing you say is x, y, z. Am I missing anything, or can you help me understand? Right? And that’s really that active listening, where you’re listening to that person.

But maybe you need to clarify, maybe you need some additional information, or, uh, you don’t wanna come across as a board member telling the person across the table from you what to do. And I’ve been on the other side of that as an executive, where once a quarter would come in and tell me what to do as the CFO, and I vowed to myself, I would never be one of those board members.

So I feel like active listening is number one. Secondly, showing up with empathy, being an empathetic listener, and being empathetic in your communications. So. I think as women, we do a really great job of showing up with empathy. We’re listening. That’s our EQ, right? EQ, our emotional intelligence. Empathy is one element of it.

So when you’re coming in, you’re looking, you’re observing. I might be observing that someone’s really tired in the boardroom, someone’s really tired around the table. Executive, it could be a board member, and maybe it’s a communication that you have not right then and there in the board meeting, but it might be after you call the person up and say, Hey Andrea, I noticed you’re really tired.

Is everything okay? Being empathetic? Maybe understanding, you know, the board meetings that the length of the board meetings, the time that you’re communicating with each other, and maybe some people have different styles, right? Some people like to be confrontational, some like to be collaborative, and so really that rolls up to that emotional intelligence, and I think as women, we do a really good job showing up with that, but we can lean in with that empathy.

AW: So, listening and being empathetic. I have to tell you, I’ve been on some not-for-profit boards, and I remember this, this sort of mantra, which was nose in, hands out. You see the head nod. Um, I feel like this should be updated based on what you said, which makes a lot of sense. Maybe it’s ears in hands out.

DR: I love that. Well, so yeah, so Andrea, you’re right, there’s a commentary called Nose and Fingers Out. So whether you put your fingers in or you put your hands in, whichever, it’s basically saying, listen, your job is to have an oversight, not to get into the trenches. So I do like that ears in because we, you have to be listening.

Why Am I Talking? How to Be Strategic with Your VoiceAnd I think the other element that really I amplifies your communication skills in the boardroom is there’s a term called WAIT. Have you heard of that?

AW: No. Tell me.

DR: Oh, I love it. So you have to think about when you’re showing up in the boardroom, why am I talking?

AW: Oh my gosh, Deborah. I love that.

DR: I have to remind myself all the time, Andrea. So these are tips for me as like, okay, I get excited. I wanna show up, I wanna comment, but then I have to step back and go. But wait a sec, Deborah. Why am I talking? What do I need to bring to the table? You don’t have to be the smartest in the room. You don’t have to be the loudest in the room, and even your positioning of when you lean in to have a conversation. Are you the last to speak? Are you the first to speak?

AW: Oh my goodness. So I am gonna steal, first of all, I love acronyms

DR: And this one is someone else. Don’t you worry? It’s public domain.

AW: Okay. Okay. So why am I talking? I encourage my clients to think about no matter what level they are in the organization, to track the ratio. How much am I talking versus everyone else? And when you’re junior in your career, a lot of folks need to speak up. So if there’s four people in the room, try to speak at least 25%, the folks that are more senior.

They need to speak typically less than their fair share, and also, as a leader, make sure that everybody else is speaking their fair share. So, making space as a leader for everyone to contribute. And so you’re taking this kind of idea of tracking the ratio and actually turning it inward and saying not only how much am I talking, but why am I talking right now?

What is the purpose? And I think, um. I would just write this word on the top of like the meeting agenda and write, wait, and then look, when you look down, ask yourself why am I talking? And it will amplify our self-awareness like exponentially without a doubt. And that kind of goes back to that empathy and emotional intelligence.

And I, the other element I think when you are in the boardroom is you want to be an ally for others in the boardroom. So, especially if you’re chair of the board, your role is to be the sort of the lead conductor. You’re facilitating an orchestra to have conversation to put out the best music as a team.

So when you’re thinking about facilitation, not only as a chair, but as another, as a fellow board member, is look around the room who hasn’t spoken. So you may be able to amplify someone else’s voice. And it doesn’t, that doesn’t apply just in the boardroom. That applies everywhere where you go, whether it’s an executive meeting, whether it’s a client meeting, whatever meeting it is.

But I do think it’s important to, if you notice that someone has not spoken up, and some cultures, they’re more submissive not to speak up, right? So you wanna encourage dialogue. And that really goes to that whole diversity of thought and diversity of practice. And everybody has different communication styles, as you know.

AW: Yeah. And, I absolutely agree. The onus is on you, whether in the boardroom or outside of the boardroom. If you are an effective leader, you’re making sure you’re pulling out everyone’s valuable opinion. Otherwise, why are you at the meeting that’s a whole other topic.

Navigating Conflict and Leaning Into Your Strengths During High-Stakes MomentsSo Deborah, I feel like that this is all great.

You’re going into your meeting, you’re listening, you’re ears in. Hands out or fingers out. You’re being empathetic. You’re asking yourself, why am I talking? You’re prepared. Sometimes things go sideways in these meetings. I know. And sometimes you’re an, you may anticipate it because there’s some sort of, uh, restructuring or investigation or there’s major, uh, succession planning issues going on.

You’re nodding your head. Yes. Checked. Been there. Yeah. Been there, been there. So when things get intense, when maybe there’s even conflict, maybe amongst board members or between the board and the executive, do you have some guidelines for either mindsets or tactics that people can try to keep things productive.

DR: Well, you know, there’s a saying, stay calm and surface with grace. So if you can think of that, of course, there’s always gonna be conflict. There’s going to be, because there’s, the stakes are high. So you go through, you’ve talked about some very stressful, very complex matters. So could be an M and A.

Let’s use M and A as an example, okay. For acquisition. And I’ll give you, I love to give stories, so if I can, kind of. One. So typically when you get into these unique situations, they’re special situations, and usually you’re forming a special committee of the board. And that special committee has a mandate, right?

Because a lot of these special situations are very time sensitive. So, you’re forming a special committee, and that maybe it’s two or three, maybe four members of the board, depending on the size of the board, or going on this special committee, because there’s a lot of diligence, there’s a lot of work. At the end of the day, you, if you’re gonna make an informed decision on whether you’re gonna accept a proposal, whether it’s a special investigation, whether it’s succession planning, crisis communication, you’ve gotta make an informed decision as a board.

So you ultimately have to collaborate, but you sometimes have to go into special task force special committee to go deeper into the, and so I had a situation where we were a board and the chair of the board, we formed the special committee and he said, okay. And there was four of us. And he said, you’re all gonna lean in.

You’re gonna lean in. And Deborah, you’re gonna lean in on due diligence and Sue and Joe, let’s use their names. You’re gonna lean in on this, and you’re gonna, and really what he was doing was really trying to activate us in an area that he knew we had expertise, but he didn’t want us all leaning in the same direction. Right.

And it was powerful moment in time for me as a director where a chair all saw the value that I could bring and he just positioned it. And I never thought that my work was about leaning in. And it made that special committee really impactful and very agile because we all had our lean-in roles, and it really allowed us to facilitate our special committee meetings.

So when we showed up. It was, we each had areas that we were leaning in. We were closely working with, I was working with valuation experts, I was working with investment bankers, I was working with the CFO. I was working like there was a team, and I was showing up in a lot of those meetings to just be eyes and ears of the board not to.

And so that when we met as a special committee, I could lean in on where we were in the process, where the discussions were, and so to me, that communication was the delegation divide and task, but it was framed in this lean-in concept. So what he took the expertise of the various, and it was really great because we were able to divide and conque,r and it was a really successful M and A and we, it was in 60 days or less. So you’re working, you know, round the clock. But it was really valuable. So from a communication that chair of the board who ended up chairing the special committee, really empowered us as a committee.

AW: So Deborah, what you’re describing here works, integrates so beautifully with the work that I do with my clients on helping them develop their personal brand or their professional identity, and to summarize it as succinctly as I can.

Basically, there is real power in identifying your unique strengths and passions and especially as you, as you become mid-career and, uh, more senior in your career, if you wanna have, you know, your most satisfying and successful career, which of course you do double down on those strengths, and you’re saying in the board context, this can actually help you be productive.

So I just wanna underscore for the listeners that everything they’ve heard me say in the past about personal branding, you could definitely not. You can, you should apply to your board role. Make sure your board chair and the nomination and governance committee understand exactly what your strengths are.

I wanna share a really, it’s not even a story, it’s more like an anecdote, but I was on a hospital foundation board and I have a PhD in business, so I can talk finance and strategy and marketing and blah, blah, blah. But in this foundation meeting that I’m thinking about, in particular, the finance guys, the finance committee.

I was going way deep in, in like in front of all of us, right? And I was, I actually thought to myself, why am I here? I can’t contribute anything, whatever. And they kept getting more and more and more into the minutia. And then I thought to myself, I had this moment where, kind of like you said, I was like, why am I here? Why am I talking?

I’m here because of my strategy and branding expertise, and communication expertise. So I raised my hand and I literally said the words based on my expertise. From what I’m hearing from a financial perspective, we can communicate it this way to our foundation, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

Stakeholders and everyone, I remember physically, everyone turned and nodded, and I was like. Oh, there’s magic in really doubling down on what your unique role or expertise is on the board. Right.

DR: Can I just extend that out for you, Andrea? Because I know we’re gonna talk about women and communication style.

So what you did, and I love it, and I wanna elevate that for you, is instead of saying, Hey, I don’t know why I am here, you turned it around, you positioned to say. I’m here. Yes. Here’s what I’m hearing and here’s how we can apply it, and here’s what I bring to the table. Right? You were able to turn it around to use your value proposition and what made you unique, but it took you had to step back from the situation, right?

AW: I did. I did.

DR: And but you, I love that. That was so powerful. I’ve had situations, if I may, ’cause this is very much the same topic, where I was just joining a new, uh, public company board post a GM. It’s during COVID, there’s Zug base, Switzerland. Nobody’s, I haven’t met a single person. In person, go into the AGM, and they’re just forming this nominating corporate governance committee.

And I know for certain they wanted me to chair the audit committee, ’cause yes, I have financial expertise, but there was this moment in the meeting that I had this pivot. Sometimes you just have to wait for it and wait. Find that nugget. So it came up. The question came up was like, well, what’s a nominating corporate governance committee?

I’m new into this board role. We’re all virtual. And all I said to the chair of the board is, can I take this? I would like to answer this question. He said, you go ahead, Deborah. And at the end of the sentence, I said, And by the way, that’s the committee I wanna chair.

AW: Oh, wow. Beautiful. So there’s something about focus here, right? It’s not that I didn’t say I was good at everything. I said, based on my specific expertise, here’s my input. And you were saying, I can take this. I’m not saying I’m leading the meeting, I’m not taking over, but I want to answer this and this and yeah. So there’s something magical about focus.

DR: Well, but I think what it does is we’ve given ourselves permission. We have the confidence to say, yes, I know this. I don’t know everything, but I’m gonna lean in here, and this is where my focus and I know I can make those contributions. But you have to be certain and confident that you can deliver,

AW: Right? You don’t wanna overpromise and underdeliver, but you do wanna be confident at the same time in what your specific focused expertise is.

Being the Only Woman: Confidence, Credibility & Standing OutSo let’s shift then to women on boards, and I know you’ve. I did a little bit of reading and research. Deborah, I know you’ve been the only woman on the board before.

I was the only woman in the marketing department at Rotman when I was on the faculty there, teaching in the MBA program. It’s a fascinating experience. A little bit horrifying. I will admit. Do you have any advice generally for women who find themselves as the only one or one of the only ones in terms of establishing credibility beyond what we were just mentioning and highlighting your unique expertise? How else can we establish credibility and influence in our board roles?

DR: Well, we have to have courage and confidence without a doubt. And but to build that credibility, you just don’t show up and say, Hey, I’m credible because I have my FCPA and I have my ICD. And I’m a doctor. I have my honorary doctorate that people read that.

But it’s, you’ve gotta build that trust and that credibility, right? It’s not instantly. So for me, when I go into situations or I go into new environments, it takes time. So you’re reading the person, and I’ll give you an example of where it was instant credibility, but I didn’t do it intentionally. I’m in a board interview, and I am meeting with the CEO and the CFO.

It was a public, and I read all the disclosures. I read the financial statements, the notes to the financial statements, and I asked one simple question and the question was, I noticed in note 15 of your financial statements, in your segmented information, that you’ve got a healthcare division. When are you spinning it off?

The CEO looked at me. He said, are we under an NDA? And I said, well, no, it’s in your notes through your financial statements. The CFO looked at me, and we just continued on. So I wasn’t there to do a aha, but I was there to understand how impacting the company. And so it was just it. It wasn’t a trick question; it was just a question, but it was helping me inform where the company was going.

So whatever your expertise may be is use it appropriately at the right time. Don’t be flustered by it. Don’t ask for permission to do that. I responded, and I said, no, we don’t need to be on an NDA because it’s so, when you’re informed and you have that information, and you have the expertise, it is really powerful to show up with it. Don’t not use it, but use it at the appropriate times.

AW: So, I’m hearing here be very prepared, which on one hand is almost like generic advice, but on the other hand. I know from being on boards that’s not always what happens. So be very prepared and don’t underestimate the power even of asking questions in terms of establishing your credibility. Right.

DR: Well, it’s that style. Yeah. I always like to kind of approach it. If I’m not certain, I might just say, Hey, can you help me understand? I’ve seen it this way. I don’t know if I fully understand where you’re coming from, but help me understand, well, that’s a different approach than saying, why did you deliver this?

This does not make sense. It’s like you understand and don’t forget as board members. From the Rotman, from ICD, they talk about the divide, and they think about a Grand Canyon, and there’s this big divide. The board’s on one side, management is on the other side, and there’s this divide. Management spends 2000 to 3000 hours in their day job and what they do, the board is maybe two to 300 hours, so 10% of their time. So there’s a big divide between what management is doing and understands the business versus the board. So it’s always, you’re always trying to think about how you can get better alignment and how those communication skills can help you at the end of the day, make a more informed decision.

AW: So this sounds like advice that everyone would benefit from, not just women. Is there anything in particular that, uh, and I’m not, I’m not negating it, it’s still critical, but is there anything in particular that stands out based on your own experience and or mentoring women, stories that you’ve heard, things you’ve observed that maybe women need to pay more attention to?

DR: Well, I like to use the Barbie analogy, and yes, I’m wearing my Barbie pink. I think as women, we sometimes hold ourselves back. We’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we’re not pretty enough. And you know what? We are enough. And so the reason I say that is I talk to a lot of women, and they’ll say to me.

I don’t have financial expertise. And I say to them, guess what? Not everybody on the board needs financial expertise. You need to have financial acumen. You need to have financial literacy, but you do not need to have, so the whole, or there’ll be the conversation is, well, I’m not a lawyer. I said, not everybody on the board is going to be a lawyer.

And so sometimes we discount what we truly bring to the board because we talk about what we don’t have versus. We have, and I think to you with your clients and your personal branding, it’s all about who you are and what and how you show up and what you bring to the table. As women, we need to show up with our best foot forward, but we have unique skills.

AW: Yes. So lead your strengths and then, you know, in your interview or whatever, you can say, here are the areas where I have baseline knowledge or experience, or I’m getting training on this thing, or whatever. But highlighting first and foremost what your strengths and your expertise is.

DR: I would take it one step forward is just build on your strengths. I don’t think you need to talk about your weaknesses. If it comes up and say, Hey, Andrea, I noticed you haven’t been on a public company board. Tell me how we can get comfort around that. You might say, well, actually, I have worked for public companies in marketing and communications, and here’s the value that I contribute. Right? So I would take the weakness out because as women we will always go default to that as opposed to, here’s how I’m leading.

AW: I love it, Deborah. So, something that you don’t know about me yet is that I am a huge fan of the power of three. In fact, it’s a joke with many of my clients in my, I told you that at the end, I’m gonna summarize with the three key learnings that I wanna reinforce.

I have a self-introduction framework that was published in the Harvard Business Review, a simple framework for introducing yourself. It’s three steps. It’s like three. I have three kids. It’s all about, when I say, whenever you’re wondering how many. Make three your default, and I read that you have a unique perspective on the power of three. Can you share that with the listeners?

DR: Thank you, Andrea. So it is not something that I made up. It’s out there. It’s the power of three with respect to boardrooms and women in the boardroom. So one woman on a board is a token, two is a presence, and three is a voice. I think that I have been the only one, a token or the only one, two, and it changes the dynamics, and I know we’ll get into that different style as well.

AW: But also just on threes, Dale Carnegie, did you ever do public speaking or read hit?

DR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of influence. He said, you know, you’ve, for public speaking, it’s three Es. You’ve earned the right, you’re eager to tell, and you’re enthusiastic, right? So, yeah. I love the three I. I love three. It’s everywhere. I love threesomes.

W: Deborah, you’re gonna get quoted on that. Okay. That’s funny. So you said you’ve had experience as a token, as like one of two in terms of the presence and in terms of three being a voice, it’s real.

DR: It’s real and then tip it where you actually have a majority of women on board and that’s, I’ve had that experience, so I’ve had the full range, but usually being the only.

AW: Yeah. Oh gosh. I, you’re reminding me of, and I can’t remember who it is, but it’s one, it’s a, a powerful like managing director of one of the big investment banks on, on Wall Street, and she’s had an incredibly successful career, and she said. People always told me, Oh, poor you. You’re the only woman in the room.

And she said, in the back of my mind, I was always like, no, that this is what makes me memorable. I’m the only woman here. So, I mean, there are strategies that we can use sometimes when we’re forced into it, but it’s not ideal.

DR: Well, I always look at it that I was given the opportunity as a professional, so I never looked at it to say, Hey, I’m a woman, I need to be treated different.

I have two examples. If I may, 2015, I go for a board interview. It was public company and it was, uh, intergenerational. It was all men, and it was retail. 80% of your purchaser or consumers and retail are women. So they were going to be bringing the first woman on their board.

And I walk in and I have my first interview with the CEO, and he says, you know, I’m not interviewing you because you’re a woman. I thought I am 30 plus years into my career here, or maybe somewhere, maybe 25 years. I thought that’s a really odd way to start a conversation, but I thought I was prepared. I reviewed all the documents and I was very curious on the position and the opportunity.

So all I said to him was, I’m not here because I’m a woman. I’m here because I can add value to your board, and let’s talk about your strategy? I had a two-hour strategy conversation with him, and I just stepped back and I thought, well, he is probably uncomfortable. He probably didn’t know how to position it, and I didn’t take offense to it. I thought I just came back even stronger. Um, and.

AW: Good for you.

DR: And I had to, it was 2015 and I’m like, how is this happening in my career? And then I have one other scenario was I was in venture capital. And I was the only female general partner in that particular office. And we would have meetings, and my colleagues would go to the men’s bathroom.

They’d come back from the men’s bathroom, and they’d made a decision. So I started following them to the men’s bathroom, and they started taking notice, and they said to me, what are you doing standing out here? I said, if you’re making decisions in there, then I’m gonna be in there making decisions with you. They did not do that ever again.

AW: Wow. Deborah, you’re ballsy. Well, I had no choice. Oh my gosh. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So I’m gonna guess, is it true that you weren’t always this confident? I mean, it sounds like you were confident in your voice, right? You, you said to this, this, uh, CEO, that I’m not just speaking as a woman, I’m speaking as someone who’s qualified that you basically told these men that it’s not appropriate for you to be making decisions in the men’s room. Early in your career? I mean, were you always this confident woman, or did you evolve over time?

Curiosity, Growth Mindset & the Journey to Board LeadershipDR: I think evolution definitely evolved, but I think from a young age. I had an older brother. I have a younger sister. My brother didn’t wanna go to school. I said to my mom that I’ll go to school for him. He didn’t wanna swim. I said, I’ll swim for him. So I guess I had this kind of throughout my life. I wouldn’t say I had as much confidence as I do now, and kind of what I know now versus what I knew back then. But I always had curiosity.

And I always, when the door opened, I felt that door opened for a reason. So I’m gonna walk through it. There have been many a times where I fell down and had to pick myself up. There are times where I thought, what was I thinking? And why am I doing this? But I think the confidence really came from just wanting to always be moving ahead, doing something unique, doing something different.

But having the base that I’m a professional, I’ve been trained a certain way, I’ve had different situations, and at the end of the day, it really comes down to your inner drive, right?

AW: I’ve heard you use the term curious and curiosity a few times. Can you comment on the role of curiosity in your success and the success of other folks that you see?

DR: Well, curiosity to me is something about you have an open mind, you’re curious on something, you’re curious why is this not? And so for me, when I founded Women Get On Board, my curiosity was why are these women always asking me how I got on a board? And this was like going back to like 2009. I started doing slides, and I called them, Women Get on Board, I do these presentations.

And I was just curious, well, why do I always get asked this question? And like, I know there’s other women on boards. And so that curiosity really led me to being as an entrepreneur. It’s like, well, how come no one else is doing this? And if there really is this demand, what should I do about it? So that was curiosity for me that really created this platform for Women Get on Board.

And then the curiosity of just opportunity to meet women like you and have conversations. I’m curious when I go on every call that I have and every meeting I have, I’m curious, how did you get to be where you are? What do unique, and how can I help you? So that curiosity is something I guess, ingrained in me.

AW: So I was telling you before we press record here, that this morning I did a workshop and I was coaching some women on their branding and their, and their confidence, and we ended up talking about the growth mindset or curiosity a lot and how I have definitely no, I mean, I advocate for, for a growth mindset.

I encourage it in myself, in my kids, in the folks that I coach, and I have noticed that most of my clients self-select. They are; they have a growth mindset. They want to improve; otherwise, they wouldn’t be investing in coaching. Right. But there are a few who are less so, and they inevitably are not as successful.

Like I, I think there’s a very strong correlation between a growth mindset, curiosity, however you want to, a lifelong learner, whatever, however you wanna label it, and success. So I was curious about, and I’m, I’m not surprised, before I get into the three rapid fire questions, Deborah, I wanna ask you if you could go back to when you were maybe interviewing for your first corporate board role, and then also when you were first starting to attend, uh, these meetings. If you could go back and give yourself some advice, what advice and Yes. I’m asking you this so that other people that are listening can maybe extrapolate. What advice would you give to your younger self?

DR: My younger self, so I have been serving on corporate boards for almost 25 years, and it really came to me ’cause I was in venture capital, and as a general partner, I served on the portfolio company boards.

So, by virtue of that position. I ended up being a board member, but post that when I was independent. For me, was doing due diligence, do as much due diligence on the financials, on the people, on the culture, on the industry. And a lot of people feel like, oh, it’s an opportunity. I can’t ask these questions.

And I’m like, you have a fiduciary duty to do due diligence, and the company is gonna do due diligence on you. So I would do, I would. Earlier self, do more due diligence. And you know, I don’t know if it was overanxious to get on that certain board or do it, or you knew the people. But I would say, be prepared.

Do your due diligence, research, and you know what? Be prepared to say no, say no. This isn’t the right fit for me now, but I know three other women, right? So there’s nothing wrong with assessing an opportunity and saying no. Right. It’s your reputation, it’s your time. Also, know when to leave a board. Um, so always know your exit strategy.

Is it the right time? Is management change? Is it situation? So just be really deliberate in why you’re joining a board. So make sure it aligns with all your values, you’ve done your due diligence, and also know when to leave a board.

AW: I think smart for people, even in the positions that they’re taking outside of their board roles. Right. It’s almost like we’re going full circle here, Deborah. You started with the, why am I talking? It’s, and then it becomes like, why am I here? Like you have a purpose. You’re aligning your objectives and your values with those of the organization. You have a purpose, not just for talking, but actually for showing up and for, you know, formally taking that role.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are not as thoughtful or purposeful, right? About what they’re doing and why they’re doing it in the moment or generally in their careers.

DR: Well, what I see a lot of too, a lot of women are very want to get on a board and they’re super excited. I’m on a not-for-profit, and then they go on another not-for-profit and another, and really, what I say to them is, why are you not elevating your board leadership?

Why you’re not chairing a committee, why you’re not sharing the board because part of that evolution in your board journey is to elevate your board leadership, too, right? So as you develop your skills and your knowledge in the boardroom, you should also want to be taking on those leadership roles. And if you look at the data, less than 8% of TSX-listed companies have female chairs of the board.

AW: Sorry, what percent?

DR: 8%. Oh. Wow, that was last year’s data. 8%. So if we’re gonna go, we have a seat at the table, we also should be leaning in and taking on leadership roles. A hundred percent.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: Okay. Are you ready for the three rapid-fire questions, Deborah?

DR: Bring it.

AW: First question, are you an introvert or an extrovert? And how does that affect your communication?

DR: Well, I’m sure I won’t surprise you. I’m an extrovert.

AW: No, I’m not surprised.

DR: And how does it affect my communication? Well, I’m working on listening. Because I have a lot of energy, I have enthusiasm. I show up. I wanna fill those blank spaces. So I have to work on why am I’m talking. I have to work on, so I know I can bring the energy in, but I also wanna make sure that I’m giving space for others and be very inclusive for others to show up and have their thoughts known.

AW: Deborah, this is like a masterclass in self-awareness that you’re doing, and actually the very first answer that you had was, was, you know. Ears in, hands out or the listening skills. So you are, um, a testament to self-awareness. Okay. Question number two. I’m actually very curious about this. What are your communication pet peeves?

DR: Oh, my communication, pet peeves are people that talk the talk. But don’t walk the talk. So they can be great communicators. They can be telling you all the great things. At the end of the day, they don’t show up, they don’t deliver. You talked about under-promise and over-deliver. So they have the opposite, over-promise and under-deliver.

And so to me, you know, there’s, there’s a style you always observe and you take away. You’ve thought, oh, I really liked how they showed up. So that would be a pet peeve as somebody who just wants to take up space, who wants to be the loudest, wants to be the smartest in the room, but at the end of the day, doesn’t give other people opportunity to speak.

AW: Or they’re not doing the work to back up their convictions.

DR: Yeah, and as women, one of the things I have heard as well is we’re worker bees. So when you show up on a board, we might get delegated, like I had that lean-in concept for the special committee, but it was, we were all leaning in, and we all had different areas.

But if I was the only one leaning in and it was all men on a special committee, I might have to step back and go, wait a sec, this does not make sense. Right? I think when we show up, we wanna make sure that we have an equal voice and we have influence and power. And it’s not being delegated to be the worker bee, uh, on the committee or on the board.

AW: Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, recently had an episode with Dr. Amy Diehl, who’s a co-author of a book called Glass Walls, and she talks about all of this, including office housekeeping or unpromotable tasks, so you can guess what that is. So you wanna make sure it’s not that, and she said, Andrea, it’s not that you’re not doing those things, but it’s that you’re not the only one that’s doing them.

Right. And I think if the same thing goes for all of the work. You don’t wanna be like, oh, good girl, de doing all the work while the guys are doing all the talking. No, no, no, no, no. You’re speaking for your work. And then they’re speaking for their work, not just raising their hands and, and, uh. Whatever, boasting, whatever, whatever vacuous comment it is.

Um, okay. Third and last rapid-fire question is, is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately?

DR: Can I give you two, please? The one that I read recently, and she has, she’s got her global podcast theory, um, is Mel Robbins, as you know, and she has her book, Let Them Theory.

Phenomenal book. It’s about communications, it’s about relationship. And I kind of went in and she has re she’s got it research back. But the real is about setting boundaries for yourself. Let them, so, you know, we all have kids, they’re growing up. Sometimes we wanna do everything, sometimes we have to let them.

And then her view is, let them, but then let me, so you as an individual. So it’s really about setting boundaries and communication, and in lifestyle and everything from family to work, to love relationships. It’s, it’s a full gamut. Friendships, friendships, um, why certain friends are in your life today, and then proximity and not necessarily proximity.

So, you know, it almost kind of gives you the permission to say. Yeah, I, uh, maybe I don’t have that friendship anymore because I moved away, or maybe I wasn’t investing in it, and it’s okay. I think it was really giving us permission to let them, it’s called the theory. You said there were two, is it because it’s a podcast and a book?

Well, I read it in Audibles. Okay. So I listened to it in Audibles. So the other book that just, and you probably know her, Lisa Bragg with Bragging Rights. I know her very well. Yes. You would really speak to some of the work that you’re doing as well, is that whole. Having a purposeful self-promotion. I just heard her speak last week at a women in AI, and you know who one of the award winners were, Andrea?

AW: Yes, I do. Sherry Shannon-Vanstone.

DR: Yes. Uh, Lisa was there, one of the speakers, and it was really enlightening and I hadn’t heard her speak on her book. So then I just said, I’ve just ordered four copies for my friends, and she’s like. Congratulations. Go on Amazon and put some good reviews on. But I liked her approach is really, it is that we as women, we have to be more purposeful in how we self-promote ourselves.

AW: So I will put links to Mel Robbins’ book and to Lisa Bragg’s book in the, um, in the show notes. And I’m, I’m not bragging here, but I have to tell you, I’m quoted in Lisa’s book.

DR: So, Andrea, am I not surprised? ’cause I haven’t read it. I just got it. But I’m like, read delve into it.

AW: Yeah. You can see the connection. You can see the connection, yeah. Is there anything else you wanna share with the listeners that talk about, talk listeners, Deborah, about getting on boards, about communicating about your board role or communicating when you’re, when you’re in the board meeting?

DR: I would like to say that it’s a journey. And if I look back over the 25 years, how I showed up 25 years ago versus how I show up now is different.

And I think you have to be kind to yourself. A lot of people set these expectations, and they should be this and they should be that, and it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You gotta work your way there. And so it is a journey, and you wanna map it out and each time you take on a new board role or a new opportunity, make sure you’re learning up and you’re going outside your comfort zone. Always be pushing.

Don’t go to status quo. Don’t go back to, Hey, I’ve always done it. You should. It should be continuous learning. So that’s why I’d say it’s a journey. It’s a very fulfilling journey, but be very deliberate and strategic where you put your time and how you value yourself.

AW: Thank you so much, Deborah, for your time and for sharing your expertise. I learned a lot from you, and I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.

DR: Thank you, Andrea.

Post-Interview RecapAW: So many nuggets, whether you’re seeking to improve your communication, or you’re seeking a board position, or you’re a woman looking to establish credibility or perhaps all of the above. Thank you so much, Deborah. Okay, let me share with you now my three key learnings. If you’ve been listening, you know that I am a big fan of the power of three, and it turns out so is Deborah.

1. One is a token. Two is a presence. Three is a voice.So let’s make that the first point. The power of three when it comes to women on boards, one woman on a board is a token, two is a presence, and three is a voice. If you lead a board or a committee, or even just a team, I hope you’ll consider this rule of three. One is a token. Two is a presence. Three is a voice.This is the power of three.

2. The Power of PreparationThe second point that I wanna reinforce is the power of preparation. Deborah shared a powerful story about how she asked a CEO something related to a footnote in one of his financial statements. That is preparation, and preparation is key. Preparation can drive your credibility and your confidence.

This reminded me of a quote that I heard recently from Janet Yellen, the economist and former chair of the US Federal Reserve. I heard her on a podcast, and she said that she attributed to much of her success to ensuring that she was always the most prepared person in the room.

3. Why Am I talking?Okay. Moving on to the third and last point that I wanna reinforce, Deborah shared this lovely acronym that I hope you’ll remember, and I know I’m gonna remember this.

I’m gonna start writing this on the top of all my meeting agendas, it’s wait. Why am I talking? This is about being self-aware. Got it. Well, that’s it. Thank you again to Deborah Rosati for sharing her generous advice, and that’s it. Thanks again to Deborah Rosati for sharing her generous advice to help all of us, especially women, get on boards.

And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode. I hope you’ll share it with a friend, and please subscribe or follow us on YouTube if you’re not subscribed already. Talk soon.

The post Women: Get on BOARD with Deborah Rosati (ep.194) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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What if using AI could make you a better communicator without making you sound like a robot? In this episode, executive communication coach Dr. Andrea Wojnicki sits down with AI strategist Jonathan Mast to reveal a 4-step framework that helps leaders use AI effectively without losing their voice or their edge.

From writing difficult emails to brainstorming, summarizing data, or prepping keynotes, Jonathan’s framework empowers you to collaborate with AI like a pro. You’ll learn how to prompt like a strategist, refine your outputs, and lead by example in this new era of communication technology.

Copy & Paste Jonathan’s AI Perfect Prompting framework:

Focus on [insert area of expertise] and [insert second area of expertise].
I’m a [insert your role or job] working on [insert project or goal].
My question for you is: [insert your question]?
First, ask me any clarifying questions you need to optimize your output.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA💻Website: TalkAboutTalk.com
💼LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/
💼LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/
📣Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/
🟣Podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503
🟢Podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369

CONNECT WITH JONATHAN💻Website: https://whitebeardstrategies.com
💼LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jonathanjmast
📺YouTube: youtube.com/@jonathanmast_withai
📱Instagram: instagram.com/jonathanmast

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODEBuy Back Your Time by Dan Martell: https://amzn.to/45atGkM
16Personalities (Myers-Briggs assessment): https://www.16personalities.com/

TRANSCRIPTIONJonathan Mast: Now is not a time to punt this to somebody else. It’s time for you to embrace what you wanted to do upfront and change people’s lives by leveraging AI to amplify your skill and experience.

Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk: What do you do when everyone around you is suddenly talking about AI? Like it’s magic? Here’s what you do. You slow down, you ask better questions, and ideally, you call on someone like Jonathan Mast.

Here’s What You’ll LearnJonathan’s been leading conversations around digital strategy and AI long before the headlines caught up. He doesn’t deal in hype. He helps leaders understand how to actually use AI without losing trust, authority, or human connection. In this episode, you’ll learn why tone, clarity, and credibility matter even more in this age of AI.

How to avoid sounding like a robot. Yes. Even when you’re using one, and you’re gonna learn the exact playbook that smart communicators. Yes, like me, are running right now to stay ahead without selling out.

Let’s do this. Let’s Talk about Talk in case we haven’t met yet. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where we coach ambitious executives to stand out with confidence and credibility. I also write a newsletter where I share my coaching tips. You can subscribe to this newsletter by clicking on the link in the episode description.

About Jonathan MastAlright, let me introduce Jonathan Mast. Jonathan stands at the forefront of AI prompting mastery. Empowering us to leverage artificial intelligence for measurable growth. Jonathan has emerged as a leading authority on practical AI implementation with an engaged audience of nearly half a million AI enthusiasts and entrepreneurs.

His perfect prompting framework, which you’re about to learn, teaches businesses how to effectively communicate with AI prompts through ChatGPT Claude and Gemini to achieve exceptional results. As the founder of White Beard Strategies, Jonathan focuses on helping executives and businesses leverage AI to save time, increase profits, improve their communication, and deliver more value to their business.

His philosophy emphasizes AI as a tool that amplifies our skill and our experience, rather than replacing human creativity and judgment. His international speaking engagements across North America, Asia, and Australia are packed with practical takeaways. And now. We have him here. Let’s do this.

Thank you so much, Jonathan, for being here today to talk to me and the Talk about Talk listeners about how to use AI to improve our communication.

JM: I’m excited to be here. I think it’s a tremendous tool and I’m sure we’ll get into some interesting discussions.

How Executives Are Using AI Right NowAW: Me too. Me too. So let’s start really broad. We all know that AI is big in the news, and it’s big at work. It’s big with everything we’re doing these days. Can you share with us some ways that executives, in particular, are using AI to improve their communication? I realize this is a very broad question, but I thought we’d start broad.

JM: It’s a good thing, and I think there’s probably two or three key ways that I’m seeing that is really working, especially for executives. First is as executives, I’ve never yet met an executive who like SOPs, we all understand they’re important, but we hate them because it means we need to take time to get the stuff that’s up here or the thoughts, and at least in a lot of cases, maybe even add more than what’s up here. Because we’ve got ideas worth 30,000, 50,000 feet, but coming back into 500 feet for our staff, it’s painful. And ChatGPT and I I’ll use ChatGPT to say AI. I mean, it’s really any AI model can literally take and within a couple of minutes, grab the information that’s in our heads. Not literally, I mean, we have to share it, but you can get that information, and it can then create literally step-by-step SOPs for our team. And what I found and what so many of my students have found, especially the executives, is that we have these great ideas, but we’re often, and I’m gonna say it myself, we’re almost scared to go to that 500-foot view because we’re really good at 30 to 50,000 feet.

We’re not so good when we get down below because a lot of us don’t do well with some of that minutia. Some do, but a lot of us don’t. And so,we do better with vision and things like that, and ChatGPT is just amazing at increasing that communication and helping. The other part that I find is real important as executives, it always seems we’re the ones that are tasked with the difficult emails.

The ones that are really important, whether it be from a legal perspective or a compliance perspective, or whatever we’re dealing with, sometimes just to make sure that we don’t tick off the customer while we tell them where they need to go, and that can be difficult. And AI, again, does such a tremendous job of that because I can get an email from you, Andrea, and I can say, all right, I need to set these boundaries. I need to do this, and I need to be nice about it, and I don’t have to be nice. AI will do that for me, and then I can just edit it. And that really difficult email that I probably put off for three days, while my assistant was like, Jonathan, you gotta do that email. You gotta do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m not, ’cause I’m really not sure what to say.

I can now get done in just moments with AI. So those are two areas that I think are really impactful for executives in particular.

AW: Amazing. So SOPs and difficult emails. So as you were describing this, I was thinking pretty much all of us have been using AI even before it was really on our radar in terms of, you know, using it as a thesaurus and for grammar check and spell check and all of those things. And now it seems like everyone that I know is using it for brainstorming, and many people are using it for writing, but I think there’s a huge range in terms of the adoption. What would you say is pretty typical right now? Can you share with us any statistics or observations, or trends that you’ve noticed in terms of adoption?

JM: So the most recent statistics I saw, and of course stats, as we know can lie, and they can be made to say anything we want, but we’re indicating people that what they called regular users of AI, and they define that as using it on a daily basis. What they didn’t do is define whether that was one prompt a day or whether that was a hundred prompts a day.

But the numbers that I saw on that were just shy of 18% of businesses are regular users. Given how broad that is, that means to me that most people still are not using AI effectively. Most executives are not using AI effectively, and certainly, our teams are probably not using AI effectively, and that presents a massive opportunity for us because of how the time savings and the value add that can come when AI is leveraged properly.

AW: Yeah, so I did not look at the statistics before I opened up this interview. I am shocked that it’s so low. So I’ve been using by that standard AI for over a year. I remember I bought a subscription to ChatGPT, and I put it as like when I open my browser, that’s what it goes to, ’cause that’s gonna prompt remind me to use it.

I’m looking at my screen right now, and I can see it in the corner of my screen. And then I just had a lot of fun, and I even on LinkedIn, I would see examples of prompts that people are using, and I would try it, and I’d be amazed at what it could do. And I started experimenting. So.

The Biggest Opportunities Most People MissSo, maybe you can share with us what some of the other low-hanging fruit is.

So if you’re one of the, you’re not included in the 18%, right? So you’re in the majority, you’re not using it, or you’re not using it regularly. What’s the low-hanging fruit in addition to the SOPs, the standard operating procedures, and the difficult emails? I love that point. Make that email that you thought was so difficult to write a lot easier with AI. What’s some of the other low-hanging fruit, in particularly in a business context?

JM: Well, you mentioned brainstorming. I think that’s one that AI does a tremendous job at, and not enough executives are using it for. You know, sometimes it’s difficult because either we don’t have the people around us to talk to, or sometimes we’re just not comfortable sharing some of our thoughts, because let’s face it, sometimes we want to nuke everything, and that’s probably not what we should be doing.

AI gives us essentially a safe place to go do that and to have those conversations, and it’s really effective. So I think that’s one. The other area that I think how I recommend people get started, and especially executives, is take a book like Dan Martel’s, Buy Back Your Time. One of the things Dan talks about in the book is go through your day and literally for every 15 minutes, just write a one to two words about what you were doing.

Do that for every day of the week, but at the end of every day by yourself, or sit down with your assistant and highlight everything that energized you that made you go. Yeah, man, I love that highlighted in green. Everything that made you go, I wish my assistant didn’t even have to deal with this. Take a pink highlighter. I’d say red, but they don’t really have any that I’ve seen. And take a pink highlighter and highlight that pink. Then use AI to help you get rid of all the pink stuff, or to help you leverage all the pink stuff. Every person I know, executive or not, has got items that they, we just do because we’re in the habit of them, or we somehow are in the, even though we know better, it’s just, it’s easier if we do it.

We know that’s not the case, but we get stuck in that. Take those pink items and start there. Those are things we don’t wanna be doing anyway. That means we’re probably not doing a very good job, and if we are doing, we’re procrastinating. And that means as an executive, we’re wasting really valuable resources, telling our assistants, I’ll get to it tomorrow. I’ll get to it tomorrow. I’m guilty. I’m not pointing any fingers. I’m guilty of that. My assistant will say, Jonathan, what about this? I’ll get to it tomorrow. She’s now learned that when I have difficult emails to write, guess what? We have a custom GPT that’s trained on Jonathan’s tone and style. She writes it, and she sends it to me, and she’s like, can we just send it this way?

Guess what? That’s easy. That’s. I like easy. We do the same thing for a lot of the other things that I need to do. One of the things that I need to do, a lot of executives need to do, we need to review reports. Most of us don’t exactly get that’s not, that’s not our jam. That’s not what gets us all excited.

But imagine being able to take those reports or have our admin take those reports and literally have ChatGPT in a predefined way analyze that and give us a summary. And now I can get that. Every Friday, for example, I get a report from my team, and it’s done in audio format. It’s all created by AI. And when I do my 45-minute walk in the morning, guess what? I listen to the report. What that means is one, I’m walking anyway, so I need something to do. In other words, just walking ’cause my ADD kicks in and I can’t just walk. Two, I actually get to review data that I might not otherwise review on a regular basis, ’cause the report would come through and maybe I’m the only one, but sometimes those reports didn’t get read.

Sometimes those emails would get archived. I’ll get to it later if I need it. Now I’m getting them in a way that’s digestible. It’s easy. We tweak it so it fits my tone, what I wanna listen, the key points that I want information on, and then if I’ve got questions, it’s really easy. I can ask my team, Hey, help clarify this, or what happened here? What’s going on? We had a 20% drop. Doesn’t seem like we should have. Are you sure that’s right? All those things are really quick follow-ups. And we’re getting ’em done faster as opposed to delaying them and missing them, and possibly if there is a problem causing more damage, ’cause we missed something.

AW: Okay. So, to your point about people not reading the reports, this is an aside, but I have to tell you, I know they don’t. ‘Cause I remember years ago I wrote a detailed summary of a day-long meeting that we had at an offsite, and I asked everyone to read it, and embedded in the document I wrote, if you’re reading this, email me now, and I’m gonna take you out for a very fancy lunch. No one emailed me.

JM: I was gonna say no. You didn’t buy any lunches, did you ?

AW: No. I bought zero lunches. Fascinating. So I love that.

How to Use AI for High-Stakes PresentationsI wanna get real here for a minute. Imagine that you are a senior executive, or you’re coaching a senior executive on how to create and then deliver a really important presentation. So it could be your annual general meeting report to shareholders. It’s a big presentation. Maybe it’s a keynote, right? Related to your thought leadership. How can you use AI along the way to help you optimize your preparation and your delivery for this high-stakes presentation?

JM: If you’re an executive, the first thing I recommend you do with AI after you play with it once or twice is go, and you’ve probably got multiple personality tests you’ve taken. If not, go up to 16 personalities. Take their Myers-Briggs assessment and take the personality test, takes you 10 to 15 minutes. One. If you haven’t done it, I’ll be shocked, but if you haven’t, the insights will be amazing. Take that and give that to. ChatGPT or whatever model you’ve got, because we need to first train the model on who we are, our tone, and our style.

And this fits directly in with your question because if I’m preparing an important presentation, it need to know who I am and how I would say things. Because if I just let AI do it, it might sound like AI and not sound like Jonathan, and that’s not good for my brand or anything else. So step one, train it on how you sound, it’s as easy as I said, giving us some personality results.

Secondarily, make sure you talk about the audience that you’re presenting to and what’s gonna be important to them. Generally, the good news is we tend to know both of those things. We tend to know going in, here’s my audience, here’s what I am. Then explain what you’re trying to do very simply, and probably the most important part when you’re explaining it. End your prompt, which is what we call it when you’re asking ChatGPT what to do. End it with this question. Ask me any questions you have. In other words, you’re literally going to be asking the AI to now interview you, to ask you the questions it needs in order to gather the information to answer your question.

When you do that, your life gets easier because you’re already running at a million miles an hour. You don’t want to have to pause and think through it. Now, you literally, and I do this a lot of times when I’m walking using the voice mode, I literally say, ask me any questions you’ve got, and it will then I’ll hear it through my headset, and it’ll go, okay, tell me about this. I’ll respond, ask me another question, respond. Now I’m taking that downtime, so to speak, my walk time, turning that into something productive, and I’m giving real, relevant information to the AI model so that it can put that together.

Keep in mind it’s been trained on the best presentation techniques, the best ways to reach your audience. It knows a lot of their pain points already. Now I can help you put together that the other part and the last part have it start by creating an outline first, and then filling out the outline as multiple prompts, multiple questions.

Don’t expect it to be a slot machine where you’re gonna pull the handle once you’re gonna give it one prompt, and you’re gonna get the perfect keynote. It won’t happen. You need to do it step by step, and when you do that, you can take that prep time. That was again the thing, you were dreading the thing you were trying to figure out how to get done before you got home tonight, and you can have it done in maybe an hour or two instead of hours or days.

AW: I love your slot machine metaphor. That’s beautiful because I think that’s how people, a lot of people think about it. There’s these lists that we see as lead magnets all over the internet. Click here, give me your email address, and I’ll send you 50 AI prompts or a hundred AI prompts. And it’s like, I just need to find the right prompt and it’ll solve all of my problems.

The Perfect Prompting Framework (That Actually Works)So this, Jonathan, is actually why I invited you to be on this podcast, because I was listening to you and you said, forget the AI prompts. I have a framewor,k and I was like, what? So you don’t know this about me, but I am not a fan of memorized or rehearsed anything. Self-introductions, anything. It’s all about having a free yeah, high five, high five. It’s all about having a framework that you customize. I would love it if you shared with the audience your prompting framework, which I’m just gonna say I started using literally the same day that I heard you say it. And it is magical.

JM: Well, thank you. First of all, like you, I don’t like memorizing things; it’s just not how my brain functions. I can memorize frameworks though, because they make sense to me, because it’s a recipe that I can follow and..

AW: And you can customize it, right? Sorry to interrupt you, but you can

JM: Exactly. No, you’re, you’re absolutely right. I don’t, I’m not tied in. I like probably most executives, I don’t like you to tell me what I can’t do.

Well, this is about you can do not what you can’t do, and therefore it works. Four simple steps. The first is tell the AI model. Doesn’t matter what one you’re using, what type of expert it is. So let’s just say, hypothetically, that we’re gonna write a press release. I’m gonna start off by telling it you are an expert at writing press releases.

Not very complicated, but as you can imagine, I’ve now narrowed that scope right down to where I need to go. Step number two: give it background information. Andrea, if you and I are working on a press release together and you are the expert, and I walk up to your desk and I go, Hey Andrea, I need a press release.

And you go, great, I can do that. Then I turn around and walk away, and you go, but I got a couple questions, and I don’t give you any context. What’s the likelihood that press release is gonna be relevant? It’s not. No matter how brilliant you are, if I don’t give you the context. ’cause my wife reminds me she can’t read my brain.

Neither can AI, and you need to give it context. Now that doesn’t have to be a lot, but give it the context you have. Then step three, this is what normally we just prompt with. So we told that the expert, we gave it context. Now we ask it our question. That’s where most people start and stop. But we’ve got one more really important step, and if you only remember this one, just ask your question.

Do step four. In other words, steps three and four, the two most important. Step four is you end your prompt with this simple statement. Ask me any questions you have. That’s it. Because see, the AI is not sentient and it, we can’t read our minds, but it has been trained on the proper format and framework on how to do about everything, and that includes press releases or anything else.

So when it reads through its framework and goes, Jonathan doesn’t know a framework ’cause he doesn’t know how to write press releases, but he missed these four things. And when I say, ask me any questions you have, it will then do so. If I don’t add that though, it’s been taught to make assumptions, and it will just fill in the blanks assuming the data that it thinks is correct.

And we all know what happens when we assume we resemble the southbound end of a northbound mule. So AI does the same thing.

AW: Oh, I’m just saying this again. I really wanna underscore to the listeners that it’s magical. So, for example. Immediately after you shared this. I’m trying to think of maybe what I used it for. Maybe I was asking it to edit an article that I’d written for Ink Magazine. So I would say use your business and communication skills expertise. I actually found that if you give it two different types of expertise, I think it kind of levels up. It’s like a multiplier. And then I gave it the background.

I’ve written this article. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I say to it, I am going to upload a draft, who the target market is. I give it all the information. Here’s the word length I want, here are my three main points that I wanna make, blah, blah, blah. And then I say, before I upload the draft. What clarifying questions do you have that will optimize your response to me?

And the other thing that I would always add is I would specify, because I’ve noticed a couple times when I didn’t specify that the AI would give me a list when I wanted a paragraph or vice versa. It would give me a paragraph when I wanted a list.

JM: And that can be a fifth part of it, if you want, as to how you want it to respond to you, give it the format. Absolutely.

AW: Okay, so if there’s one takeaway, you know, I think it’s the framework generally, and then specifically your question about clarifying questions. Do you have that will optimize the output? What, I mean, this framework might help answer this question, but what are some of the most common mistakes that people make when they’re using AI?

JM: The first one’s probably gonna surprise people. They overcomplicate it. AI is not as complicated as we wanna think it is. It can be, but there’s no reason to overcomplicate it. So even with the perfect prompt framework we just went over, that’s by the way, what I call that four steps.

If you go through that and you spend too much time overthinking, wow. What type of expert should it be? I’m really not sure. I want to pick the right one. Just get close. You don’t have, I loved what you said. You’re an expert at these two things. Okay, great. And they can be anything that you want. Then don’t overcomplicate it.

The other thing, and we talked briefly about this, is many, many people treat AI like a slot machine, and they assume it’s one question, one answer, one question. No. It’s a conversation. Just as you and I would have a conversation if we were collaborating on a project, AI is the same way. You’re gonna do something, you’re gonna get a response back that’s close.

You’re gonna go, you know what? I forgot to tell you this. I forgot to tell you I wanted a paragraph and not as a table. Don’t start over, just have a conversation and go to the next step or go, well, that’s an interesting perspective. What would happen if we changed this variable and have a conversation?

Many of my chats are 20 or 30 back-and-forth questions with AI as we get to that point to refine. Now, at some points we get there and I’m like, never mind. You’re just not understanding me. And like any relationship that happens occasionally. And then the good news is that nobody ever gets mad when I say that and I just start over. But that happens only occasionally, like you said. So the two biggest, again, overcomplicating and treating AI, like it’s a one question, one answer. We’re hoping to hit the jackpot. Both of those, I think, are the two mistakes.

AW: It’s like an iterative tool, like your analogy of two partners working together to solve a problem, right? And they’re. Building on each other, other’s ideas? So recently, I’m gonna say in the last couple months, I’ve noticed in the output that I’m getting from ChatGPT, there are some common kind of markers. There’s often a solid line if I ask for a list. So if I’m creating a podcast where I’m writing an article or something, I will independently brainstorm what I think should be there.

And then I wanna make sure I’m not missing anything obvious. So I will separately ask ChatGPT, give me a list of 10 things that qualify here, and then I just usually I go, yeah, I’ve got that. I got that. Okay, I’m fine. Right? That’s kind of probably the most common thing that I use it for, but I’ve noticed when I ask it for these lists that there’s these solid lines that are just bizarre that.

And then I noticed the rocket emoji, and then I saw people. I noticed a woman that I work with who I respect very much. Obviously, she’s using ChatGPT, ’cause a lot of her work has the rocket ship emoji in it. And then I started reading on LinkedIn. I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn. I started reading people’s posts saying, you know what’s with all the rocket ship emojis? Stop using them.

And if you’re gonna use ChatGPT or other AI, at least edit out the markers. And then the most recent one is the em dash. So, I actually asked my ChatGPT to stop putting those solid lines to stop using the rocket ship to stop using the em dash. It’s not very obedient. It keeps using them. And then I will actually say, I asked you to stop doing that, and it says, Oh, sorry, thank you for the reminder.

JM: I’m glad I’m not the only one. Yes, you’re absolutely correct in that it is not perfect. I will give you a hint in order to do have it do a better job of doing that. Begin or end your prompt because it’s important where you put that and start with, and it sounds really weird, they’re called delimiters, and this is gonna sound over complicated, but it will help three quotes in a row and then a square bracket.

Whatever do not do is closed, square bracket, and three more quotes. It’s like taking a yellow highlighter to that section of your prompt and saying, don’t forget this. Not perfect. I have a 17-year-old, and it’s like a 17-year-old who goes, I forgot that was highlighted. It won’t be perfect, but it will help out with that.

The other hint, that can be hugely valuable when you copy and paste out of Chat GPT, and yes, I do it too, and then I often edit afterwards. When you’re pasting it wherever you’re going, instead of doing a command V or what control V, do a command shift V or control shift V, and it will paste without the formatting.

And a lot of times it’s faster to just to go back in and add a quick heading in, and it will remove those lines that now we’ll still keep the em dashes or the en dashes. You’ll still have those, but it’ll get rid of all the emojis. It’ll get rid of all the extra lines, and then you just simply need to go and tell it find the em dashes. Em dashes are weird in that if my wife was trained as a journalist and so she’s like, I’ve been using em dashes forever.

AW: Me too. I love them. My agency was like, we love them. I said, you need to stop.

JM: Yeah. Now all of a sudden people get angry ’cause they’re like, you used an em dash. And I’m like, well, that was actually proper. Well, yes, but that means you used ChatGPT. Well, no, I actually been using those for most of my career. Now all of a sudde,n that’s a hot button for those people that decide to care.

AW: It’s such a shame. The em dash is a beautiful thing. I’m fine with losing the solid lines. I’m fine with losing the rocket ship emoji. Are there any other markers, Jonathan, that you’ve noticed recently?

JM: There are a number of what they call non-space markers, and it’s kind of like. People are like, Oh, this is some sinister conspiracy theory. No, if you’ve ever copied from Microsoft Word to another thing, you’ve gotten weird characters somewhere because of the formatting.

They’re simply formatting characters that are used in markdown, which is the language that AI tools write in. It’s not a big deal, but again, that’s another thing where you’re command shift or control shift V will remove those non-space characters. And when they say non-space characters, it literally means it’s a character in the code that doesn’t show up when you paste it anywhere. So that’s a good way to get rid of that.

AW: So I wanna ask you at this point, if you had kinda one other than your brilliant framework. Okay, ’cause that brilliant framework is probably your answer to this question. Other than that, is there one thing that you want people to know about AI? It could be a misperception or something that’s way easier than they thought. Like if there’s one thing that you could share with the audience that will inspire them and help them use AI really productively in their jobs.

JM: I believe AI is like electricity. And when I say that, I mean that AI is on the path to become so ubiquitous in our lives that we’re not even realizing we’re using it when it comes to so many other things in life.

We think about them, but we don’t think about the electricity until we lose it. Then all of a sudden we realize everything that we were using it for, and pretty much for most of us, it’s not like we wake up and we decide to use electricity. We’re just using it by living by everything that we do, by everything that’s on in our residences and everything else, and AI’s headed down that path and why I wanna share that, especially for executives.

I believe it’s fundamentally your responsibility to your business and to your team to teach them how to use it in a way that provides value to the organization and to your clients. Because if you don’t, your competition will. It’s not a matter of if, it’s only a matter of when, because it didn’t take very long for the world to go electricity rocks, and everybody started using it. AI is gonna be even faster, and the time is now. It’s not too late, but the time is now to start leveraging it as a tool.

The example I always give, and it’s probably not perfect for your audience, but if you could just imagine you’re a roofer for just a moment. If you are putting shingles on a roof, you don’t wanna do it the old-fashioned way and carry up a bucket of nails and carry up a hammer and one by one, knock those in. It takes too much time. Instead, you wanna be up there with a pneumatic hammer that literally every time you tap it to the roof, it puts a nail in because it’s much faster.

And nobody in their right mind would not use a pneumatic hammer just because they weren’t familiar with it, and they liked their hammer because it wouldn’t be productive yet. That’s the same thing that so many of us are telling ourselves. Well, I’m just not ready for it, or I’m just not. It’s time. It’s here.

It doesn’t, it’s not scary, it’s not sentient, it’s not gonna take over the world. We can still unplug it, but it’s time to embrace it.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW: Jonathan, I have to say I love your metaphors. I lost track of how many amazing metaphors you’ve used. All right. I’m gonna move on now to asking you the three rapid-fire questions that I ask every guest.

I know you’re gonna be familiar with the first one based on your comment about Myers-Briggs. The question is, are you an introvert or an extrovert, and how does that affect your communication?

JM: I am both depending on the situation. I am an ENTP, and I am very comfortable acting as an extrovert, but I need time to recharg,e and most of that time is spent on my own.

AW: So you may be an ambivert.

JM: Yeah. Might be. I’m not familiar with that term. Yes.

AW: Yes. Most people are actually in the middle. And it’s ambivert. I’m an ENTJ. So we’re close. Second question. What are your communication pet peeves?

JM: So my biggest one is it’s never been worse. I hear people say that all the time to make a point. I’m a student of history. I’ve studied a lot. Everything we’re experiencing today, we’ve experienced before; how we’re experiencing the manner in which, you know, AI is brand new. We’ve not gone through AI before, but we’ve had the printing press, we’ve had the steam engine, we’ve had the internal combustion engine, we’ve had the internet, we’ve had PCs.

We’ve went through tectonic technological shifts before, and all the naysayers were wrong, and everybody who. Embraced it came out on the far end smelling like a rose because they found new opportunities, and that’s definitely the one that just drives me crazy. It’s never been worse.

AW: So the extremely negative, the superlative that’s negative, especially related to AI.

JM: Related to anything. I mean, whether it’s the news that’s going off or it’s AI, I mean, I, again, I hear it fairly frequently, and it’s just one of those things I just want to scream and go, No, it’s not true. What about, you know, we didn’t live in the and in during the Black Plague. It could have been worse, trust me.

AW: Okay, let’s go to question number three. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending to people lately?

JM: Uh, there’s a book that I recommend regularly because I do think it appeals to starting to use AI, and I think we talked about it earlier, and that was Dan Martel’s Buyback Your Time, especially as an executive, and I think most of us know this, but sometimes we have to be reminded.

There are things we don’t need to do in our lives because we can pay people to do them, and it’s more productive. It’s not a bad thing. I grew up in an environment where you were trained, you always did everything yourself. That’s the way it was, and I had a hard time learning that some executives didn’t. Some do, but if you’re in that understanding, how to buy back your time is so incredibly important.

AW: Jonathan, I listened to that book last summer, and I had the same reaction. This is gold. It’s absolutely gold. So, Jonathan, do you have anything else that you wanna leave the audience with in terms of suggestions, tips, or advice in their adoption of and use of AI?

JM: Well, I just wanna encourage everybody as leaders, which I think almost all of us in the audience would identify with. We have a responsibility of those that we lead. And I wanna encourage you to not just on the surface, go, okay, this AI thing is something I’ll have somebody else do. It is a way to absolutely amplify your skill and experience.

And most of us became leaders because we wanted to do good in the world. We wanted to add value, we wanted to change things. If that’s you, I just wanna encourage you that I believe that AI, I’m 56, just for relevancy. It is the single biggest tech to technological shift that we’ve seen in the last 50 to a hundred years, maybe ever in history.

And now is not a time to punt this to somebody else. It’s time for you to embrace what you wanted to do upfront and change people’s lives by leveraging AI to amplify your skill and experience.

AW: I love it. Leaders are role models. People are watching you. People will adopt the habits that you adopt. So leaders have a responsibility to model their use of AI and to adopt it.

And there is no better time than today. Thank you very much for sharing your time and your expertise with me and the Talk About Talk listeners. Thank you, Jonathan.

JM: Thank you, and pleasure.

Post-Interview RecapAW: I hope you’re feeling as inspired as I am now about using AI, and I’m thinking I’m gonna diverge from my usual practice of sharing three key learnings with you. For this episode only, I have one key learning that I promise will make a huge difference in your productivity. It’s this.

Copy and paste Jonathan’s perfect prompting framework, which you can find in the show notes. Paste it somewhere where you can easily access it. I pasted it to the top of my to-do list. Then you can easily copy and paste it right into AI whenever you have an AI query. As a reminder, Jonathan’s perfect prompting framework has four points:

One, tell the AI what specific area of expertise you want it to focus on. Maybe economics or social media, or something else. Two, provide context who you are, what you need, and relevant details. Three, ask the question; four, then ask AI to ask you any questions that will help it to optimize its output. And that’s it .

Again, you can simply copy this AI prompting framework directly from the show notes in this episode. Now, if you wanna go to the next level, you can add two more points to the framework. These are two points that I find very helpful. Think of them as bonus points. The first is to tell the AI what kind of output you’re looking for.

It might be a list, an email draft, a matrix, an image. Whatever, tell it exactly what format you’re looking for. The second one is to remind it what you don’t want. For me I do not want em dashes, and I do not want rocket ship emojis. Otherwise, I find that if I don’t constantly remind ChatGPT, what I don’t want, it keeps forgetting.

I really hope this prompting framework helps you as much as it’s helped me. If you know anyone who might find this episode helpful, please share, and please subscribe to the Talk About Talk podcast if you’re not already. Thanks again so much to Jonathan for sharing his framework and all of his insights with us, and thank you for listening to talk about Talk.

Talk soon.

The post AI PROMPTING Secrets You’ve Never Heard | Jonathan Mast (ep.193) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire

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Think networking means being transactional or self-promotional? Think again. Shelly Lombard, former Wall Street analyst and founder of Schmooze, shares her playbook for building a strategic network without feeling fake. You’ll learn how to reconnect with weak ties, build visibility on LinkedIn, and follow up in a way that feels natural, not awkward.

Ready to speak up, stand out, and lead with gravitas? Join my 6-week Women’s Personal Branding Masterclass, starting Oct 15. Register by Aug. 15 and save $250 with code EARLYBIRDFALL at TalkAboutTalk.com.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA * Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ * Podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503 * Podcast – Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369

CONNECT WITH SHELLY* Website: https://schmooze.biz/ * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shellylombard/ * Newsletter: Schmooze https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/schmooze-7018971677694840833/

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE The Lost Art of Connecting by Susan McPherson: https://amzn.to/46d84X1 * Fck Being Humble by Stefanie Sword-Williams: https://amzn.to/46O8kfa

TRANSCRIPTION Shelly Lombard: Reach out to those weak ties. Say every week, three people, somebody I worked with 10 years ago, I’m just gonna ping them. Hey, thought of you. That kind of thing. It’s only transactional when you’re not keeping in touch with people.

Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk: If you think networking is just schmoozing at cocktail parties or collecting LinkedIn connections, you’re gonna wanna hear what my guest has to say. Shelly Lombard spent 30 years on Wall Street making high-stakes investment calls and building a career that, frankly, most people would envy. However, by her own admission, she did some things wrong.

Here’s What You’ll LearnIn this conversation that you’re about to hear, Shelly opens up about the missed relationships that could have completely changed the trajectory of her career and how she finally learned to stop believing that just doing the good work would earn her a seat at the table. If you’ve ever hesitated to reach out or worried about bothering someone, then this episode will change the way you think.

You’re gonna get practical tips to grow your network without feeling pushy or fake or self-promotional, and you’ll walk away knowing exactly what you need to do to build real relationships that open real doors. If this is your first time here, I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. This is Talk about Talk, where I coach ambitious executives like you to communicate with confidence and credibility.

I also write an email newsletter that you can subscribe to at the link below if you’re on YouTube. Or in the show notes if you’re listening on any other podcast platform.

So now, without further ado, let me introduce Shelly Lombard, and then we’ll jump right into our conversation. And at the end, as always, I’m gonna summarize with three key learnings that I wanna reinforce with you.

Introducing Shelly LombardI met Shelly Lombard on LinkedIn, believe it or not—and let me tell you, Shelly is a force for good.

She worked on Wall Street for over three decades, and early in her career, she was one of only a handful of women specializing in investing in distressed companies. In the early 2000s, she became one of the most quoted automotive analysts on Wall Street, frequently appearing in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and CNBC.

After her Wall Street career, she began serving on corporate boards, including the board of Bed Bath & Beyond, among others. Shelly recently launched Schmooze, an initiative that supports and encourages professional women to build strong business networks and close the gap between where they are in their careers—and where they want to be, whether that’s a board seat, the C-suite, or a career pivot.

Schmooze offers mini masterclasses in networking—and yes, I’ve personally led one of them. Let me tell you, Shelly has created something really special. She also hosts Schmooze events that serve as an alternative to the golf outings and sporting events that men have traditionally used to build business relationships.

Thank you so much, Shelly, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk about Talk listeners about networking.

SL: I am thrilled to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

AW: I’m so excited about having the opportunity to talk to you in person. It’s virtual, but we’re one-on-one here. I really admire what you’re doing on LinkedIn.

Before I pressed record, I was sharing with Shelly how much I enjoy reading her posts on LinkedIn. She shows personality, and you can tell that what she’s doing brings her joy, and then it, in turn, brings the rest of us joy. In fact, last night I read one of her posts to my teenage daughter, and I made her laugh.

Shelly, thank you for making LinkedIn a better place.

SL: Yeah, and teenagers are tough too, so she, yeah, I’m impressed because she laughed. That made me feel good, ’cause teenagers are tough. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

AW: Toughest critics. Toughest critics. Yeah. Okay, so I just read your introduction, but I want to ask you, after spending over three decades in Wall Street. How did networking specifically help you succeed in such a competitive, intense environment?

The Missed Opportunities That Sparked a MissionSL: Yeah, so you know what? What I will say is that I was not as successful as I could have been. I was not intentional about networking. I wasn’t strategic about it. I could have been much more successful if I was. I had a good run, but I would’ve been more successful. My career would’ve gone maybe in different directions, et cetera. I approached networking. I was very happenstance, half ass, oh, I like you. Let’s have lunch. But there was no really, oh, let me think through. I probably should get to know this person.

I did belong to a small group of women. At that time, there were only a handful of women doing what I was doing on Wall Street. Women on Wall Street were there. There weren’t as many of us. But what I was doing, which was investing in distressed companies, there were even fewer. So we formed a little group and we would get together for dinner, every other month or something like that.

But that was about the extent of it. And I think one reason I wasn’t more intentional is that I’m an introvert. People don’t believe that, but I am definitely an introvert, and I’m shy. So that’s different from being an introvert. I’m an introvert, and I’m shy. And then the second reason is I didn’t know any better.

Like my parents were teachers, and it was expected that you would go to college and then get a good job, and then, hopefully, stay there for your entire career. But nobody told me anything about networking or forming relationships. They didn’t know that wasn’t their world, and I didn’t figure it out on my own.

So I felt like I missed out on opportunities that I didn’t even know I was missing. I’ll tell you a quick story. Two guys I should have kept in touch with, and a lot of the people I worked with over three decades did really well on Wall Street, and I didn’t really; I wasn’t strategic enough to stay in touch with any of them.

One was a guy named Chad, our bank merged with another bank. He was my boss’s boss. Great guy. And he, as part of the merger, lost his job. Great guy. He landed on his feet somewhere else. I should have kept in touch with him, but I didn’t. Another guy who after the merger, replaced this guy, Chad, his name was Jimmy.

And Jimmy was my boss’s boss. Like he was way up there. And so when the two banks merged. They had a meeting for everybody who was vice president and above, and I think I might’ve been the only person of color in the room, certainly the only woman of color in the room. But as a result, Jimmy knew me, and this was years ago.

I’m sure it would be different these days, maybe not so much different. But as a result, the good thing was Jimmy knew who I was, so I would get on the elevator and he might be on there already, be like, Shelly, hey. And then he liked FaceTime. So he was one of those people who liked you to be at your desk for long hours on trading floors.

People usually left six o’clock, but I might be there like seven o’clock, and he would walk around just to see who was still working. He liked that and he would always talk to me, Hey Shelly, how you doing? And I would just say, Hey, and go back to work. I never engaged with him. I never tried to develop a relationship.

So like I said, I’m shy. I’m an introvert, and I just didn’t know any better, and I didn’t figure out it out on my own. And had he obviously was reaching out to me. Had I taken him up on that, I might still be sitting at, it’s now JP Morgan, but I might still be sitting there and it would’ve made a world of difference in my career.

AW: So hindsight’s 2020. You identified Shelly the one thing that you did do right was you connected with some women and you had dinners with them, every second month, which is great. But would you say it’s true, maybe then that you started Schmooze because of some regrets that you had about how you managed your career, specifically in terms of networking?

And if so, I see you nodding your hair, your head there. What gaps are you aiming to fill for women in business through Schmooze?

SL: Yeah. So you’re absolutely dead on, right? I started Schmooze to help other women avoid the mistakes that I made. And so a turning point for me was working from home. So, toward the latter part of my career, I worked for a small boutique that researched investments.

And, fidelity was a client, Goldman Sachs was a client, and they let us work from home. And so working from home was great for my life and for managing my kids, and I didn’t have to commute into Manhattan, et cetera. But when I reared my head from that job, when that job ended right around the time of the financial crisis, a little bit after that, I realized I had let my contacts go dormant.

Like people would call me and say, Hey, meet me in Manhattan for a drink. And I’m like, girl, I’m. Sitting in my pajamas, with a baseball cap on, and I’m getting ready to take my son to soccer. The second thing, inflection point was when I left Wall Street and I started serving on corporate boards, and once I did, I learned that 80% of corporate board rules are filled through relationships.

One woman said to me, when somebody leaves, when one guy leaves a corporate board, the other guys in the room look around at each other and they go, okay, who do we know? And so if you are not known to them, if you don’t have a relationship with them, they obviously go to a guy in their network. So those things hit if I didn’t realize it before, those two things, working from home and corporate boards. hammer the point home.

So what I’m trying to do with schmooze is one, encourage women to do it and to understand how important it is. And also to give them tools. So helping them to learn what I call networking hacks, like curiosity. So one of the things that kept me from inviting Chad or Jimmy out for a drink or a cup of coffee was like, I’m like, okay, now I gotta talk to him.

What do I talk to him about? And curiosity is a hack. I didn’t have to be charming. I didn’t have to be like knowledgeable. I thought I had to be all these things to have a conversation with them if I had engaged with Jimmy over what about what the bank was doing, ’cause he was a real deal junkie. He loved deals and being a big bank and a big kahuna in the market.

If I had started saying to him, Hey, so I hear we’re working on a deal for Procter and Gamble or something like that. What’s going on with that? He would’ve talked to me for hours. So I didn’t have to be smart. I didn’t have to come across as charming and knowledgeable about the market.

Curiosity would’ve helped me to build a relationship with him, and we’ve actually had a schmooze class on networking internally and how you can use curiosity to build your internal network, and it would’ve made all the difference with Jimmy.

Making the Shift from Transactional to IntentionalAW: I love that word, curiosity, because I think it’s very, instructive. It’s very actionable for people, ’cause we’ve all heard that if we wanna engage in a great conversation, we need to ask questions. But actually labeling that as curiosity, what can I be curious about with this person? I think that’s brilliant. So you’ve labeled, I guess now the first hack, and you spoke about your story about it being particularly difficult to network when you were working from home.

Do you have any hacks for the listeners out there, including myself who want to network when they’re mostly working online at home?

SL: Yeah. So I think you have to be, it’s, it was great for, my life wasn’t so great for my network. Visibility on LinkedIn makes all the difference in the world. So really lean into those tech tools.

People talk about being zoomed out and too much Zoom, et cetera. But that was one of my issues back when I was working from home, is that Zoom didn’t exist. LinkedIn was a baby. So using those tools like Zoom to have coffees, LinkedIn, one of the things I intended to talk about today, which I’ve learned really makes a difference in social media, has made it possible, is being visible.

And so what I would say to people working from home is be intentional about it. I wasn’t so people I was running into, so when I worked at the place where I was working from home, we had a PR person. So we our revenue model was subscriptions. So other firms did trades, and they got commissions.

Our firm was strictly subscription-based, so people like Goldman Sachs at Fidelity, and hedge funds had subscriptions. So we had a PR person who would get us. In the paper. And I would, I was always quoted in the New York Times, the journal, I covered the auto industry. I was quoted in the auto news.

And so people knew who I was, but I never followed up. Like I never, kind of took advantage of that. And so what I would say is working from home visibility is an important thing, and whether that’s being visible inside your company or outside your company, I was visible, but I’m, I’m happy to talk later about following up and the importance of following up.

SL: I left there, that company, and lots of people knew my name, but I hadn’t followed up and built relationships with any of them. So I think working from home, you need to be more intentional. About relationship building, and you also need to be more intentional about being visible both internally and externally.

AW: Oh gosh. Even in those quick anecdotes that you shared and stories of regrets and things that you were doing well, things that were going on. There’s so many hacks to, I think in the conclusion here, I’m gonna be listing what the hacks are. So there’s networking inside your organization, and then also being conscious of networking inside and outside of your organization.

There’s the point, I think, that was subtly made. By you here, or maybe implicitly made, which is when something happens, like a press release, or you attend an event that could become a catalyst for you to share on social media, right? So nowadays, if you were interviewed, you could show the video or a photo of it, or even just talk about it right on social media to reinforce.

So use these little events or big events as a catalyst, a topic for you to share with your audience. I’m wondering, just to back up for a minute, do you think this is different? For women versus men, Shelly.

SL: Yeah. And remind me to talk more about visibility ’cause that’s another hack that I make sure I wanna talk about you.

You started talking about it being visible, but yeah, absolutely. So I think it’s two things. With women, it’s a mindset. So we are trained to be good girls and pleasers, and we’re not comfortable being transactional because it implies that you’re not nice. I remember when I first started, so I got into this group before this group of women, who invested in distressed companies, existed.

I remember being in a deal with another woman, and I reached out to her, Lisa, and I reached out to her and I said, Hey, you wanna have lunch? And then I felt Ooh, I felt like I didn’t want think that I wanted something. And so I remember saying, I just wanted to, I, I just thought, we should have lunch.

And she was like, it’s okay. So I think women have a tougher time being transactional, and men don’t, they’ll take you to a Knicks game, they’ll take you to a golf game, and then they’re not. woo. If you reach out to them three months later, and hey, you know what I noticed, so and can you introduce me?

I think also too, in terms of mindset, women think our work speaks for us, and it’s, it does not, your boss doesn’t always know what you’re doing. People in other companies that do what you do definitely don’t know what you’re doing. People outside your company definitely don’t know. So I think with women, it’s, we are afraid to be transactional and ask for stuff, and we’re also thinking, oh, my work speaks for itself. I think the other thing is time. So my sister has a thing, all roads lead to mom, all roads lead to mom. You are the emotional support person. You are the person who finds the summer camps very often. Maybe it’s different, in different, situations, different families.

But I know in my family, my, my husband was involved. He would ferry people of soccer, et cetera. But I was a person who thought, oh, it’s time for Lindsay to get braces. Oh, you know what, Andrew needs to get his physical now so he can be ready for soccer in the fall. Yeah. Oh, Lindsay needs an SAT tutor.

Yeah. I have never sat next to a man on a trading floor, and trading floors are open, so you don’t have an office and everybody’s, you can hear everybody’s conversation. I’ve never sat next to a man on a trading floor and heard him make a phone call about a birthday party. A clown, a pony? What time? What time does the bouncy house need to get there?

Do I need extra insurance? That’s totally left to mom, and I had a little nanny at some point, but there’s certain things you can’t delegate. like finding a tutor or recognizing that the kid needs a tutor. So I didn’t have time to play golf, didn’t have time to get good enough at it to use it as a networking tool.

So I think the two differences for women are mindset. And then also time, because when all roads lead to you, I think I read something a couple of years ago, it said, moms don’t do everything, but they make sure everything gets done. So even if it’s you saying to the babysitter, oh, can you do X, Y, and Z?

A lot of times, that falls on us. And so I think women have to approach networking, be more intentional about it. It may not just happen. And I think we also have to be more intentional about how we think about it.

AW: Yeah. So when I asked the question at first, Shelly, I thought you were gonna say, yeah, because it is harder for women because there are fewer of us which, which is your experience, and I believe it is in many industries, still the same. And you didn’t even go near that. You’re talking about the transactional nature of men’s relationships with each other about how women are assuming that their hard work is gonna speak for itself.

And then this all roads lead back to mom. So here’s the thing, if you’re aware of these things, then it can almost become a superpower because you can work to un to undo them or to at least mitigate their negative impact. I just wanna share in terms of this transactional relationship, that’s a different way of saying something that I had a conversation with, actually, a classmate of mine back when I was a student.

And she was talking about how, she first introduced this concept to me. She said, at work, men are friendly and women are friends. And I was like, oh. And that’s a good thing and a bad thing, ’cause we should be friends. We should be thinking long term. Yeah. But also we shouldn’t be taking things so per, when we’re friends, we’re taking things personal. Men aren’t taking things personally. It is. And that fits beautifully, I think, with your transaction points. So I just wanted to highlight that.

SL: Yeah, that’s actually a great point. That’s a great point.

AW: Yeah, I love it too. It has so many implications, and if you don’t know what it means, if you haven’t thought about it that way, maybe it’s less relevant for you. But people right away, I find go, oh, and then suddenly you’ll see it everywhere. and the whole thing about women putting their head down and doing the work, and then not being recognized or compensated for it because they’re not speaking for their work. There’s this beautiful quote.

You must speak for your work. Your work doesn’t speak for itself. And furthermore, if you’re a leader, it’s not just about you doing the work; it’s about getting the work done, which means you can delegate.

SL: Yeah. Two things I’d like to add to what you said is one, think about networking, not just networking with other women, but networking with men, and so I belong to a host of women’s groups, but I think that, look, most of the people on boards are men.

So if I wanna get a corporate board seat, I gotta be one of the names that comes up when the men in the group say, okay, who do we know? ’cause we have a, we need an audit chair. And the other thing that I would say is that I think that we often think of relationships as being transactional because we are notaking the time to invest in people, in, in other words that it’s not just, and, I guess the thing is, or invest in ourselves and I’ll step back and make this point. Women in terms of feeling it’s transactional or it’s manipulative. That’s the word that I was looking for.

So it’s transactional when you deal with someone else, but if you don’t let your work speak for itself and you’re speaking for it, you’re being manipulative. And what I say to people. It’s only manipulative if you’re not doing the work. You know what I mean? We resent the people who would try to get ahead on their smile alone.

They’re charming, they manage up, and then they’re not really doing anything. They’re sleeping in their cubicle, or they’re talking on the phone, or whatever. But if you are doing the work, then it’s not, it’s not manipulative. And so you should. not feel like, oh, I gotta let my work speak for itself, because if you’re actually doing the work, take pride in speaking about it.

And so those are the two things that you said that kind of made me think about you need to network with men and women. And two, speaking up for your work is not a bad thing. You’re not being manipulative. And when you’re actually doing the work,

AW: I heard a man quoted on the Tim Ferriss podcast, and he said. When you’re more junior in your career? I actually, this first part of it I added because I believe when you’re more junior in your career, there are people looking over your shoulder to see that you’re doing the work, and then you get promoted once you hit mid-career. This is, this was his point. If you don’t speak for your work, you might as well have not done it. Ooh, drop the mic.

SL: That’s a drop the mic drop. Yes. Because nobody knows. Absolutely. Nobody knows. That’s a great point.

AW: Yeah. I love that one. So it’s inspiring.

Why Visibility is the New SuperpowerLet’s go back to the visibility point, though. You were talking about how it’s about relationships, and it’s also about visibility. So do you have any other hacks for how, how do you personally, or how do you coach the folks that are part of Schmooze to boost their invisibility? It boosts their visibility, whether it be online again or in person.

SL: So I guess I learned along the way that visibility is a relationship hack. It’s a networking hack. It’s a networking multiplier. And so that’s a way that technology has made networking easier. And what I would say to people is, you need to be visible. Post on LinkedIn, and I’m gonna do a whole class on what to post on LinkedIn and tips for posting, and what to say, and all of that kind of stuff.

But when you do that, you attract a network to you. So people who I don’t know will click and follow me. Click and ask to connect with me. And I don’t even need to reach out because you know my posting. And if you’re not posting, maybe you send professional updates to people who you know. So it’s just email.

So instead of, oh, I’m not comfortable posting on LinkedIn, but I have 50 people that I work with or used to work with, that I’m just gonna send ’em an email, B, C, everybody. And hey, just wanted to let you know what I was up to. And that helps you attract a network because maybe they will say, Oh, that’s interesting. Let me let Sally know what you’re doing these days. The other thing is you help people remember you. And so somebody who had, I posted something and he had a better comment than my post was, he said, networking is about being remembered when it counts. So it’s one thing to have all of these contacts and connections on LinkedIn, but if something comes up that you would be interested in, but that person who’s in your network, but they don’t even remember you, then that’s a problem. So visibility is one thing that LinkedIn and email has made easier. It’s easier for you to be seen and be remembered. I am gonna, do a class.

I was actually, we were saying before we started recording that, before I was a banker, I was a writer. So, LinkedIn, writing for LinkedIn, and writing for my newsletters comes a little bit easier for me. But there’s certainly tips I’ve learned along the way that can help you be visible. And like I said, people whine about too much Zoom, but one, it’s how I met you. Yeah. It enabled me to connect with people all around the country and the world. Yeah. I just interviewed two women who have a company called Power Suit. They’re based in New Zealand. I’m publishing that interview on a Friday, and they talked about networking with the women in their group.

The kinds of things that they may be struggling with, et cetera. So the ability to do coffee on Zoom would have changed my life. When I was working from home, it just wasn’t available. But, and so now I won’t say people don’t have any excuse, but because as people are still, especially women, press for time, et cetera, but you do have many more tools than you had 10 years ago.

AW: It’s not that there’s no excuse, but maybe there’s less excuse. So, back to your point, I love this. I wanna underscore this point about being remembered at the right moment when it counts. This goes back to something that you and I have talked about in the past, right? Which is establishing and reinforcing your brand.

So, Shelly, you have expertise in networking now, and you said in the automotive industry, in the financial and banking industries. So, how on LinkedIn, if someone comes up with this list of five things that they wanna make sure people know about them, do you have any tips of what to share on LinkedIn?

SL: Yeah, so what I would say is it depends on your goal. So I don’t post a lot about corporate boards, unless it’s networking your way into a corporate board. But I don’t post a lot on being on corporate boards or that kind of stuff, ’cause right now I won’t say I’m not looking for a board seat. If one drops in my lap, that’d be great, but I what I would suggest is pick a lane.

Like you can’t be known for five or six different things. You are known for communications, and then you expand out from that. I’m known for networking and so people lane, that helps you make your posts consistent and people will remember you. Like people always say to me, oh, we need somebody to teach on networking.

And I have to say, let me step back and say I am not a thought leader or an expert on networking. I have learned from people like you, I’ve learned from the almost a hundred women I’ve interviewed for my schmooze newsletter, and I’ve detected some patterns and said, okay, this makes sense. This is what works.

And so I approach LinkedIn. You know what, let me tap into the experts, ’cause I’m not an expert at this. And so that’s how I pro, approached it. And now I’m starting like curiosity was something multiple women, when I interviewed them, they mentioned it. Curiosity. Oh. I said, why is this person take you under their wing?

And you, they became your sponsor. Oh, I was curious about what was going on in the company and how we were making money, and this pivot we were gonna do. So after seeing curiosity pop up various places. I was like, okay, that’s a relationship, that’s a networking hack. Particularly internal. So what I would say is I am, I’m not a thought leader on networking, but there’s certain themes that I have learned and that I have distilled from my conversations with women who were much better at it than I was. And those are the kinds of things that I want to share with other women.

AW: So, Shelly, I think you are describing something that I actually just shared, in a bootcamp that a couple hours ago I was teaching in a bootcamp on LinkedIn, and I asked everyone in the bootcamp to rate themselves on a score of zero to 10 on their LinkedIn profile and then also on their activity on LinkedIn.

And they were all way below five, like zero outta 10, three outta 10, whatever. And most of ’em said they avoid it. They don’t really know what to say. And your point here is that the thought leadership doesn’t have to come from you. You can share your interest, expertise, and passion in something by sharing other people’s perspectives, right?

So I said the first thing I want you to do is go to the home page on LinkedIn, start scrolling through your feed. Find an article or a post that’s interesting, and then repost it with comments. Not just repost it, and right repost it with a comment that’s I absolutely endorse this, and I would add this one other point, or I absolutely endorse this, particularly this one thing. And then you are implicitly sharing your expertise. So, Shelly, with those 100 women who you’ve interviewed, you are sharing your expertise through them. I think it’s a brilliant strategy

SL: And that’s a great point. I. Didn’t. That’s how Schmooze started. I hadn’t done the networking, didn’t know how to do it, so I started interviewing women, and so I gathered things.

It also was a great way to increase my network, ’cause the women I interviewed were oh, okay. and so now many of them, in my network, so to speak. And yeah, I launched mine. From, I won’t say a place of weakness, but I guess a place of curiosity. I didn’t do this well, and so here are some women who have done it well.

Here are the themes that I’ve found. And so that’s how Schmooze started is just a LinkedIn newsletter. But absolutely, I would pick a lan,e and I think targeting it to networking or whatever works for you was one of the keys. if I’m just introducing, or I’m just interviewing, managing women who’ve made it, so to speak.

They could be talking about anything, sponsor, mentors, anything. But if you boil it down to one thing, and now I’m known for networking. Now, some things coming out of that, or networking to get a board role. And then, one of our popular classes was being an advisor to a startup, which is a way to expand your network.

So there are things that come off of that. But what I would say to people, similar to you, scroll through, see what people are talking about, even if you don’t have an expertise, like I’m not a thought leader, I don’t think. Now I’m starting to see themes. So I’m like, okay, lemme put this out there.

Visibility networking hack. Let me put this out there. And so I picked a lane, and I just started posting what other women were saying about it, about that lane, which was networking. And that really resonated with people. And I’m not. There’s a lot about women in management going on out here, but I picked Elaine and then was very consistent about posting on that.

As you said, even if it was the thoughts of other people, because it was like, wow, she did it right. I didn’t let me share what she did.

AW: Yeah. Shelly, you have convictions, you have opinions, you do have thoughts on strategic networking that would definitely qualify you as being a thought leader. I truly think as soon as you start teaching something, and this is actually another hack, right?

As soon as you start teaching something, you are demonstrating leadership in that area. And this is something that I sometimes coach, especially women who are struggling with demonstrating leadership, right? They’re, they’ve been told, you’re ready for the promotion, you just need to demonstrate leadership.

And they’re like, how do I do that? How do I do that? And I said, one thing is find something that you can coach and mentor, and teach people about, and then you’ll be seen as a leader. And I think that’s what’s, that’s what you’re doing. I admire what you’re doing so much Shelly.

How to Take Action TodayBefore we get into the three rapid-fire questions I wanna ask you this, maybe perhaps overwhelming question, which is.

If someone who’s listening here is ready to level up their networking strategy this year, or in the short term, what is the first thing, or one of the most important thing,s that you would tell them to do starting today?

SL: Okay. So I think the most important thing is schedule a time to do it. Don’t expect that it’s gonna happen, like just, organically. So maybe 4:00 PM on Friday when you’re starting to wind down and look forward to the weekend, or maybe on a Sunday afternoon where the kids are doing something else, or you are on the sideline of your child’s soccer game and you’re chatting with the other parents, you can steal a minute and do a few things, connect with a few people.

So, schedule a time to do it. Step some small goals. So we just recently, that’s why recently started a schmooze accountability group where people can meet and say, okay, these are three things I wanna get done this week. So set out some very achievable small goals every week that you can meet.

And a couple other things I wanna make sure to mention, weak ties. I think it’s LinkedIn and Harvard did research on where most people find jobs, and they find them through people they don’t know as well. They don’t find them through close ties. I’m not gonna find them through my friend Sharon, who I went to business school with ad we are really close because we have the same network, but it’s people that they don’t know well. So I would start, if I’m gonna set aside the time and start, do some small goals, reach out to those weak ties, say every week, three people, somebody I worked with 10 years ago, who I haven’t talked to in a while, I’m just gonna ping them.

Hey, thought of you. That kind of thing. Thinking of you, it’s only transactional when you’re not keeping in touch with people. Another thing you may wanna do is send a professional update and then schedule a coffee catch-up. Hey, just wanted to let you know this is what I’m up to now. Let’s grab a Zoom coffee and catch up.

And then I would also say go to at least one in-person event per month. If you can . Read Andrea’s article about how to nail your self-introduction, and people tell me, read that first because that will equip you for going to a meetup. But it doesn’t have to be in your industry or in your functional area.

It doesn’t have to be the National Association of Accountants and your accountant or it doesn’t have to be people in AI and you’re in AI. I often get invited to things about women and wealth. And it’s like I did the Wall Street thing. I’m not interested, but I go anywhere. Go anyway. Because in addition to strategy, being a part of networking, serendipity is as well.

When you meet people, you meet their network. In addition to that introducing people to other people in your network is really helpful, so you can help other people. So I’m going to something, somebody just invited me to something, women in their money, or something like that. And so I’m gonna go because I don’t know who I’m gonna meet.

So it may not fit into my strategy, but I may, there may be serendipity, like I may stumble across somebody and happens to me all the time, who like, oh, didn’t know you were gonna be here. Or, oh, even though you do that, I don’t do that. But you know what, this is how we could work together. So strategy and serendipity.

And can I just say one thing? So, just to recap, schedule a time to do it. Set some small goals. Don’t forget about weak ties. It’s only transactional if you’re not, keeping in touch with people. It feels less transactional if you are not reaching out to ’em once every 10 years. So send some thinking of you, thought of you, LinkedIn messages or e-mails, maybe a professional update, and then go to one in-person event per month.

Can I say one other thing before we go to our rapid-fire questions? Yes. Yes. Follow up. One of our most popular Schmooze courses is the Fortune is in the follow-up. After you meet someone, LinkedIn or we introduce each other to each other on LinkedIn and you had a coffee chat or you met ’em in person, do a, oh, it was such so great to meet you, 24 or 48 hours after then Comment on their posts, re-share their posts like you said, oh, so and so said this. I thought it was so insightful. Let me re-share it with some comments. And then we recently had a session with Susan McPherson, who wrote the book, The Lost Art of Connecting. And she talked about approaching it. And this also takes it out of the realm of being transactional or being like a bad person or manipulative person.

The whole thing is, how can I help? Even if the person isn’t active on LinkedIn, you can forward articles, information about conferences. It doesn’t have to be work-related. If you and small talk is helpful because you’re not connecting with a title, you’re connecting with a person. So you know, if they’ve said they’re from Chicago, send ’em something on the White Sox.

If they said they’re planning a trip to New Orleans, I’m from New Orleans, you can send ’em an org article on the 10 best restaurants in New Orleans. So your follow-up doesn’t have to be work-related. One huge follow-up hack is introducing people to in your network to each other. So in addition to saying, how can I help?

Saying to them, would it be helpful if I introduce you to so and and one point that Susan makes in her book is that you make people feel seen. It’s obvious if you introduce people to each other, you notice them, you notice, made a note of what was important to them, and you try to be helpful so they feel seen.

And that has really been helpful to me in terms of following up, introducing people in your network to each other. So even though I don’t need anything from you, I don’t, we are not even doing the same thing, but I know somebody who is doing the same thing at you as you, let me introduce you, and that’s where the serendipity comes in. And also the follow-up.

AW: I love it. You know what you made me think when you were saying that Shelly is in the same way that if you don’t talk about your work, you might as well have not have done it. If you don’t follow up with someone after you make a new connection, you might as well have not met them.

SL: Oh my goodness. That is amazing. Yes, absolutely. I learned more sitting on you. Yeah, that those three insights are worth the price of that mission. It is those, you said a couple of things that resonated with me. Fabulous. Absolutely.

Rapid Fire QuestionsAW: Shelly, back at you. I got, I’m gonna say this again, reading your posts on LinkedIn, always make me smile and you make me think. You do make me think, right? So, thank you, and let’s move on to the five rapid-fire questions. So the first one, I already know the first part of the answer because you already said it, but maybe not the second part. The question is, are you an extrovert or an introvert? And how does that affect your communication?

SL: I’m definitely an introvert, as I said, and I’m shy, which is different from being an introvert. People always say that to me. I’m my best one-on-one, like in a podcast. I’m best when I’m speaking to thousands of people, ’cause it’s not, I’m at my most self-conscious when I am talking to a small group, like 10 people. But I definitely am an introvert. An introvert, an extrovert is more about how you, recharge yourself.

And I recharge myself by being alone. And that has had a huge impact on my networking. I have to be much more conscious. But, somebody said this to me. One of the women I interviewed for Schmooze she said, introverts are not introverted in their area of expertise. And so I’m less of an introvert now than I was when I worked on Wall Street because I’m all into schmooze and I love what I’m talking about, and I love what I’m doing, which is why I don’t come across as an introvert now. And I probably did on Wall Street ’cause I was much, I wasn’t in my zone, and now I’m in my zone.

AW: Oh yes. That’s a great way of putting it. I can see you’re in your zone. Okay, second question. What are your communication pet peeves, things that really annoy you?

SL: You know what? I don’t think I have one. I don’t think I have one. I was a communications grad on a major undergrad, and I am a voracious reader. Yeah, I don’t think I have a communications pet peeve. I can’t think of one.

AW: So you’re the second person recently that I’ve interviewed that said that, and I have to say, I admire the fact that you don’t get annoyed.

SL: Yeah, I really don’t. I’ll read somebody’s LinkedIn post and I’ve said, oh, it would’ve been more effective if she did this, and this. But it doesn’t annoy me. and again, I think it comes from being in my zone. ’cause now I’m open to pretty much anything. I’m like, this is interesting.

That’s interesting. I’m curious about that. So I don’t really, the only thing I think that bothers me is the lack of communication. So, my husband is never on LinkedIn, and I’m like, dude, he’s getting ready to retire. I’m like, if you want to do something different, you gotta put yourself out there. And my pet peeve would probably only be the lack of communication.

Like my husband’s not on any social media at all. And I’m like, if you are trying to start a new chapter in your life, pick up your LinkedIn messages. You know what I mean? And I think that. is more of oh, frustration to me than, some stumbling in communication.

AW: Okay. third and last rapid fire question, is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending to other people lately?

SL: Yeah, so a couple, and now that I have been on yours, I will be recommending this ’cause I know you’re a communication expert, which so many people need. There’s a book called F*** Being Humble, and she came and talked to the Schmooze community. It’s Stefanie Sword Williams, and it’s about self-promotion and how self-promotion is not a dirty word.

Another one is The Lost Art of Connecting, and that’s Susan McPherson. She did a, also did a Schmooze session, probably a few weeks ago. So those two, one of the ones that I like and it has to do, more about building a business, is falling in love with the problem, not the solution. So in other words.

And it can relate to helping people. It’s about, you know what, let me see what they need. If you approach networking from, how can I help you? Would it be helpful if I connected you to this? You’re falling in love with the person’s problem and offering them a solution. And so that book was more about building a business, but I absolutely loved it. And I go back to it over and over again with my business. Am I falling in love with my solution rather than is this solution helpful to people who are members of Schmooze?

AW: Okay. I’m gonna put links to those books in the show notes. I’m gonna ask you one last question, Shelly. Is there anything, any suggestions or advice you wanna leave with the talk about, talk listeners related to? I guess succeeding in their networking.

SL: I would just say, even though I’m shy. Social media has made, look, even an introvert can hit click, and so the introverts among us, social media is a gift because you really don’t have to be out there at 10 events a month. You really just have to focus on being visible on LinkedIn.

Now, it’s very helpful if you’re out there visible in person as well, but even I can hit click. And so that’s one of the reasons that one of the things that’s helped me to get into my zone. And so what I would say to people is just get out there, and if I can do it, and in addition to be shy and being shy and introvert, I’m also a little bit socially awkward.

I would rather have my nose buried in a book somewhere than to be doing anything. That’s my a book in the beach is like my ultimate, that’s how I recharge myself. But if I can get out here and do it and learn to enjoy it, I think other people can as well. I’m about as far, I’m not totally on the introvert spectrum, but I’m certainly like on the introvert, introverted, more introverted than extroverted, and even introverts can do this.

And I guess one last thing. If somebody commented on one of my posts, if you’re not doing this, you’re gambling with your career. You gotta, you have to, you can’t just put your head down and work if you’re not doing this. There is going to come a point, like it came with me, where I needed a network and I didn’t have one.

I got laid off four times on Wall Street. The first three times people found me, there was no LinkedIn. They called people who knew me, and they sought me out and made me job offers the fourth time after working from home for eight years. My phone did not ring. And so you wanna get on this before you need it.

You wanna dig the well before you need the water. And so not only can introverts do it, and I think the, a large, the majority of the world identifies as being an introvert, whether that’s true or not, but you have to do it because if you don’t do it, there’s gonna come a time when you’re gonna need that network.

This world is changing so rapidly and so fast. The people who work in the federal government who thought they had a job for life turns out they didn’t have a job for life. It’s really critical, and you can get a lot of joy out. It don’t think of it as building contacts.

Think of it as relationships. And so not only will you enjoy meeting other people, but build that network before you need it ‘cause at some point, if you don’t need it, your kid don’t need it, your spouse will need it. Do it.

AW: Wonderful advice. Shelly, I wanna say thank you. It was so enjoyable to hang out with you here and to have this conversation one-on-one. I hope we can do it again. Thank you.

SL: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Post-Interview RecapAW: Isn’t Shelly fantastic? I encourage you to follow Shelly on LinkedIn if you’re not following her already. And now I’m gonna share three key learnings that I wanna reinforce for you.

1. Pick A Lane and Be VisibleFirst, pick a lane. And be visible. Shelly’s suggestion is that you decide on your niche, the thing that you want to be known for, then stay in your lane.

This is about consistency and then visibility. So get out there to live events, write articles, give presentations, and online share your insights on social media. If you’re not comfortable creating your own thought leadership, then you can repost others with your comments. So that’s the first point. Pick a lane and be visible.

2. The Difference Between How Men and Women NetworkThe second point that I wanna reinforce is the difference between men and women that Shelly outlined in terms of how they network. She mentioned three things. Men have no issue with being transactional. Meanwhile, many women are focused on creating relationships and friendships. Of course, relationships and friendships are good, but sometimes we need to be reminded that it’s okay to be transactional. Shelly highlighted how women often assume that their work speaks for itself. As we said, this can be dangerous. Oftentimes, if you don’t speak for your work, you might as well have not done it. The third point about gender differences is that, as Shelly says.

All roads lead to mom. This can make networking even more challenging. I hope this one is changing. So these gender differences in networking are the second thing that I wanted to reinforce with you.

3. The Fortune is in the Follow-upThe third point is that the fortune is in the follow-up. Shelly highlighted a few times how important it is to close the loop with new contacts and also to stay fresh in the minds of your existing network.

This relates back to the point about visibility. She talked about using small and big events. As a catalyst to follow up with your network, meeting new people. Connect on LinkedIn and close the loop. Read a great article. Share it with your comments. Interviewed for a podcast or an article. Share this with your network.

That’s it for the three key learnings. One, pick a lane and be visible. Two gender differences in networking, and three, the fortune is in the follow-up. Got it. Again, I encourage you to connect with Shelly on LinkedIn. As I mentioned, Shelly and her work with Schmooze. Make LinkedIn a better place. And while you’re there, connect with me too.

Thanks for listening and talk soon.

The post The #1 NETWORKING Mistake Smart Professionals Make—and How to Fix It with Shelly Lombard (ep.192) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

The Lost Art of Connecting: The Gather, Ask, Do Method for Building Meaningful Business Relationships

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What is your body saying when you’re not speaking, and how could it be holding you back? In this episode, world-renowned body language expert Mark Bowden explains how nonverbal signals impact trust, credibility, and executive presence. Discover how our brains instinctively scan for safety cues, and why understanding body language is critical for anyone who leads, presents, or communicates under pressure.

CONNECT WITH ANDREA * Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ * YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/

CONNECT WITH MARK BOWDEN* Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarkBowden1 * Virtual Presentation Training: https://truthplane.mykajabi.com/store * https://truthplane.com/ * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MarkBowden1

TRANSCRIPTION“What instantly comes to your mind when you see me cross my arms?”

Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk:I’ve been told that’s a sign of defensiveness, but I’m not sure that’s true.

Mark Bowden:Yeah? Well, good. You know, I’d start by checking who told you that.

AW:I think it’s just common knowledge, right?

MB:Common knowledge. Yeah, stupid. You know, I actually stopped trying to count all the reasons why people cross their arms after I hit 30. It just got boring. There are many, many reasons.

Meet Mark BowdenAW: Mark Bowden is a world-renowned body language expert, and he’s been on my radar for a while. When we finally connected for this interview, we discovered that we live and work near each other. What a coincidence! We both share a passion for helping others communicate more effectively.

But I have to say: Mark blew my mind.

This conversation took twists and turns I didn’t see coming. So buckle up. You’re about to learn a ton about body language, perception, credibility, and so much more.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk Podcast!

In this episode, you’ll hear my conversation with body language expert, keynote speaker, and bestselling author Mark Bowden. You’ll learn the one key thing you need to focus on to instantly improve your body language, and your communication overall. You’ll also gain insight into how our motivations, including our primal survival instincts, shape our perceptions of others, especially when it comes to interpreting body language. And finally, we’ll bust a few body language myths that you’ve probably accepted as truth…until now.

If you’re a returning listener, welcome back. I’m so glad you’re here. And if you’re new to Talk About Talk, welcome! Please subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice (Apple, Spotify, or YouTube), where you can actually see me and Mark in action. Subscribing ensures you never miss an episode and that you receive ongoing communication coaching from me every two weeks.

We cover topics like:

Overcoming imposter syndrome
Giving powerful presentations
Establishing executive presence
Building your personal brand
And yes, body language.

You can also find free learning resources, coaching services, and more on the Talk About Talk website: talkabouttalk.com.

A Quick RoadmapFirst, I’ll introduce Mark, then we’ll dive into our interview. Afterward, I’ll summarize with three key learnings that I hope you’ll take away. You don’t need to take notes. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing: walking, driving, lounging on the couch. I’ve got you covered. And of course, you can always reference the show notes in your podcast app for more details.

About Mark BowdenMark Bowden is a globally recognized authority on body language. He’s been named the No. 1 Body Language Professional in the world multiple times by Global Gurus.

His unique GesturePlane™ system of nonverbal communication empowers audiences to use body language to stand out, build trust, and gain credibility.

Mark is the founder of TRUTHPLANE®, a communication training company that serves major organizations including Zoom, Shopify, Real Madrid, Toyota, the U.S. Army, and NATO. He’s also worked with G7 prime ministers and business leaders worldwide.

He’s a bestselling author, a popular instructor in Canada’s top-ranked EMBA program at the Kellogg-Schulich School of Business, and the current President of the National Communication Coach Association of Canada.

You might’ve seen Mark on the Dr. Phil Show, CNN, CBS, or Global News, or watched his TEDx talk, “The Importance of Being In-Authentic,” which has reached tens of millions of viewers. He’s also a co-host of the YouTube hit The Behavior Panel, which has garnered more than 75 million views.

Thank you so much for being here today, Mark, to talk with me, and the Talk About Talk listeners, about body language.

MB:It’s great to be here. So, what are your thoughts? What are your questions or observations?

AW:Let’s start with the big picture. I coach senior executives on all things communication. So how, and why, does body language fit into the broader context of communication and executive presence?

MB:Easy. I judge you. You judge me. We all judge each other. That’s it. Now, how do we do that?

Well, we could come up with all kinds of explanations that aren’t really true. But the reality is, we form (and continue to form) judgments based mostly on how people behave in front of us. What their face is doing. What their body is doing. What their hands are doing. How they’re dressed. The environment they’re in.

We judge partly by vocal tone, but we barely judge each other on what’s actually said. In fact, we often just make up what we think someone said based on how they behaved. So if you change, or more importantly, choose, your behaviors, you stand a much better chance of shaping how someone judges you. That influences how they interpret what you’ve said and even what they imagine you said.

AW:So the transcript doesn’t really matter?

MB:Right. Here’s the interesting thing. I could say something with very positive content, and if you transcribed it, it would read positively. But if I use body language that communicates negativity, that’s what people will walk away with.

AW:Mm-hmm.

MB:I’ll ask people, “What images came to mind when I said that?” And they’ll often report negative associations, even though my words were positive. That’s because they weren’t truly listening. Their brains were inventing meaning based on how I looked and behaved. And that narrative, the one their brains created, completely takes over.

AW:Right.

MB:They go back to their teams and say, “We came up with such a great message!” but the audience didn’t take that message away. Instead, people are telling each other a whole different story. And that story, based on body language, spreads. If I use body language effectively, I can control the narrative in people’s minds and influence how they communicate that message to others.

AW:I’m watching you now, Mark. You’re so effectively reinforcing your words with your gestures: your facial expressions, your arms, your hands. And I’m suddenly very aware of my own body language.

My clients say the same thing. As soon as we talk about body language, especially when they’re on stage or leading a meeting, it’s like, “Where do I look? What do I do with my hands?” So what should executives prioritize when it comes to body language and being perceived as credible leaders?

MB:Just one thing.

AW:Mm-hmm?

MB:Open-palm gestures at navel height.

AW:The truth plane.

MB:Exactly. People often ask, “What else?” But until you master that one thing, especially under stress, don’t worry about anything else. That one behavior has incredible power when it comes to building trust and credibility.

AW:Okay.

MB:If you’re speaking in front of a group (whether it’s 10 people or 10,000) and you ask me what single behavior gives you the most bang for your buck, it’s open-palm gestures at navel height. Once you’ve nailed that, everything else, like eye contact, will start to fall into place.

When you’re under pressure and still use open-palm gestures at navel height, you create what I call a “cascade effect.” It triggers certain behaviors in your audience, and those behaviors influence the rest of the room.

AW:Right. From mirroring and everything else. I often tell my clients that showing open palms signals you’re not holding a spear, rock, knife, or gun. It communicates safety. But why specifically at navel height?

MB:Great question. You’re right: Open palms universally signal no tools, no weapons. That message transcends culture. You and I may come from different backgrounds, but our brains understand that visual cue the same way.

But it’s not just the hands. The navel area represents the body’s center of gravity. It reveals your true intention. People say, “Watch their feet.” No, watch where their center of gravity is going. If the torso doesn’t move, the feet don’t matter.

This area here (your stomach, your navel) is incredibly vulnerable. We haven’t evolved to have ribs protecting it all the way down. Why? Because our ancestors needed to be able to duck, run, and twist quickly to survive. If we had a rigid ribcage extending all the way down, our agility would be compromised.

AW:Right.

MB:So think back to when we were ground-dwelling mammals. When there was a threat, we’d hit the ground and protect our belly. That was our survival instinct. But now, as upright hominids walking the plains of Africa, we’ve gained visibility (we can see threats from far away) but we’ve also exposed our most vulnerable area.

AW:Because we’re standing up now.

MB:Exactly. Standing upright offers a tactical advantage: you can spot predators or allies from miles away. But the downside is that your vital organs are now exposed. So when I show you my open palms at navel height, I’m not just saying “no weapons.” I’m signaling vulnerability, exposing the soft tissue that could lead to death if damaged.

AW:So you’re communicating: “I’m not a threat. I trust you.”

MB:Yes. And in doing that, I reduce perceived risk. And in a leadership context, especially when there’s risk outside the room, you want to be seen as the least risky person inside the room.

AW:Right. Beautiful.

MB:I use words, metaphors, and imagery to communicate that the risk is out there—not in here, not with me. I want people to think, “Wow, this is a safe space.” That’s why open-palm gestures at navel height work so well for leaders.

AW:When I coach executives, whether in workshops or one-on-one, many say they feel overwhelmed by body language. They’ve heard that 68% (or whatever the number is) of communication is nonverbal. So they start to panic: “Where do I look? What do I do with my face? My hands?”

That’s why I created a simple three-point scan:

Posture: Be expansive
Hands: Open palms
Eyes: Make intentional eye contact

Now I’ll say “Open palms at navel height.” What do you think about that framework?

MB:It’s great. You’re simplifying a complex system. Human communication is overwhelming. There are so many signals flying around. Your clients are trying to manage their own behavior while analyzing others. The brain starts to panic. Oxygen leaves the thinking part of the brain, and they fall back into instinct: fight or flight.

That’s why I try to get clients down to just one behavior. When they’re under pressure, dealing with a big presentation or unexpected scrutiny, they can’t manage everything. So I say, “Just do the one thing that will create a cascade effect.”

Forget what you’re feeling. I don’t care if you’re scared or confident. It’s not about you, it’s about the audience. We’re trying to change their minds. That’s the hardest thing in the world to do.

So I tell clients: open-palm gestures at navel height. They’ll ask, “Should I make eye contact?” Don’t worry, it will fall into place.

This moment is extraordinary. You’re in an extraordinary situation. Ordinary behaviors, what feels natural or “authentic,” won’t cut it. Authenticity is about survival. It’s designed to keep you where you are, safe and small. But you’re not trying to be small, you’re leading. You need extraordinary behaviors for an extraordinary moment. And yes, it will feel odd. Do it anyway. Do it on purpose.

AW:Got it. So how does this change in a virtual environment? Say I’m doing a podcast, a TV interview, or a Zoom call. Should I still be holding my hands up and showing my palms? What should we be thinking about with the face, the framing, and the impressions we’re giving?

MB:Great question. The biggest thing to consider here is context. Let’s imagine we were doing this interview live, in person.

We’d have to travel to meet. That’s time and money. We’d have to find a venue. That’s even more risk, logistics, insurance, and a physical audience. There’s a reason insurers require waivers for live events, it’s risky.

Now compare that to this. What’s the risk assessment here?

AW:Pretty low. I can delete parts if needed.

MB:Exactly. This is a cheap signal. In animal communication, this is what we call a “cheap signal.” It didn’t cost much. So my value, and your value, just dropped in your audience’s eyes.

If you met me in person, you’d think, “Wow, Mark’s amazing!” Why? Because you would’ve invested time and energy. Your brain would say, “This must be valuable, why else would I have spent all this effort?”

So here in this low-cost environment, I need to raise the perceived value. I do that by making this conversation feel more alive. More animated. I need to give your brain the sense of social risk, like we’re breathing the same air, even though we’re not.

AW:That reminds me of something a vocal coach told me. She said that online communication dampens everything. So we need to be more intentional, more dynamic with our voice: vary the pace, pitch, tone, and volume. It’s all about overcoming that dampening effect.

MB:Exactly. I’m doing the same visually. I’m maximizing the video. I’ve got a great mic here, a Neumann TLM 103, so I can get up close and whisper if I want, and it picks up that intimacy. That creates proximity.

But humans are visual. Some people claim they’re more auditory or tactile, but look at how much brainpower is dedicated to vision. Evolution figured out that sight is our best survival tool. So most of our attention goes to what people are doing, not how they sound.

Now, the sound part of the brain doesn’t like to make stuff up. Unlike vision, where your brain fills in the blanks, hearing is more binary. That’s why you’ll crash your car if you talk on a phone while driving. The low audio quality forces your brain to work harder on decoding sound, stealing resources from vision. Your peripheral vision narrows, and you don’t see danger coming.

AW:Public service announcement! Stay off your phones while driving, people.

MB:Exactly. You literally won’t see it coming.

So when I’m on a video call or a podcast, I’m really trying to animate the frame. I’ve got 30 frames per second. If I’m not using them, I may as well send a still image. But I’m not doing that. I’m sending a moving image, one that wakes up your brain.

I’ll often break the frame slightly to get your attention. You’ll notice I use baton gestures, too. These gestures match the rhythm of my speech. They help you not only hear the cadence, but also see it.

That helps the Broca’s area of your brain (where speech processing happens) get more confident that it’s predicting me correctly. Because really, you don’t hear what I’m saying; you predict it. Then based on whether your prediction matches, you feel like, “Oh, I understand Mark!”

AW:Sounds a lot like AI…making predictions.

MB:Exactly. Our brains aren’t knowledge machines. They’re best-guess machines. All the knowledge you think you have? It’s just a series of guesses that turned out to be right.

But the moment those guesses stop working, your brain says, “I don’t get it.” First, it’ll assume the world is wrong, or that other people are wrong. If that doesn’t hold, the brain gets discouraged and says, “I don’t understand the universe anymore.” That’s because it’s not working from knowledge, it’s operating from predictions.

AW:So when we’re trying to make a strong impression, we need to understand that people are constantly making judgments, and updating them. They’re looking for cues that either reinforce or contradict their initial impression.

MB:Let me tweak that a bit. We’re not constantly judging. We only update our judgments when something new happens, when there’s a pattern disruption.

Our brains are pattern recognition machines. They spot patterns, and they like consistency. But when that pattern gets disrupted, the brain wakes up and re-evaluates.

If the new pattern is subtle or consistent, the brain keeps its judgment. But when it meets the “min spec” (the minimum specification needed to change its mind) it does. It flips.

So, when you’re trying to change a first impression, the key is understanding what that minimum trigger is. What’s the hair-trigger that shifts their perception?

AW:Got it.

MB:Too often, people think, “If I want a big reaction, I need to do something big.” But that’s not sustainable. You’ll burn out. Instead, figure out which small action nudges the domino. You don’t even have to pull the trigger, just touch it, and let the audience do the rest. That’s how you communicate effectively: cheap, fast, and with maximum impact.

AW:I imagine that applies to a lot of leadership communication, whether it’s implementing a new strategy or speaking to shareholders.

MB:Absolutely. Same principle applies in politics, too. Candidates are constantly trying to shift perceptions: of themselves, their policies, or their opponents.

AW:Right. And you’ve analyzed a lot of political candidates’ body language on TV. I’m curious: If there are certain tropes or myths out there about body language or just outdated tips that you’re just sick and tired of hearing about.

MB:This isn’t a pet peeve, but it’s a classic example: crossed arms.

AW:Yes! I was going to ask about that.

MB:Right? What comes to mind when you see me cross my arms?

AW:I’ve always heard that it’s a sign of defensiveness. But I’m not totally convinced that’s true.

MB:Good. First off: Who told you that?

AW:I think it’s just… common knowledge.

MB:Common knowledge. Yeah. Stupid. I’ve stopped counting the reasons why someone might cross their arms. I hit 30 and gave up. There are so many.

Now, why do people automatically assume crossed arms mean someone’s “closed off”? Why make that judgment?

AW:Maybe because you leaned back while doing it? Like, “I’m done with this conversation.”

MB:That’s one possibility. But I leaned back here just so you could clearly see the movement. Also, when I cross my arms, you can’t see my palms, there’s less visible information. And when we have insufficient data, we default to the negative.

That’s why open palm gestures work so well. They give your audience enough information to make a safe, positive assumption. Crossed arms do the opposite.

So when I cross my arms, your brain reassesses. It goes: “I don’t know what that means. It’s a big enough shift to warrant re-evaluation, but I don’t have enough info.” So, instinctively, the brain defaults to negative: “Mark is bored, angry, or defiant.”

But maybe I’m just thinking. Or I’m cold. Or I’m trying to reduce neural load to help with decision-making.

AW:Right. That makes sense.

MB:Here’s the point: Even as a body language expert, I’m telling you, we are all terrible at reading body language instinctively. We get it wrong constantly.

AW:Says the expert!

MB:It’s true. But we default to negative interpretations for survival. Our instincts don’t care about accuracy. They care about safety…right now. So if something is ambiguous, the brain says, “Prepare for something bad.”

AW:So we’re in survival mode. And ambiguity makes us defensive or cautious.

MB:Exactly. We’ll evaluate someone negatively before we ever evaluate them positively. The only way around that? Critical thinking. But that takes time. And in the moment, time is a luxury we don’t always have.

AW:You can’t pause a conversation to analyze every gesture.

MB:Right. Unless you have a very fast, practiced system and you’re constantly checking for your own safety in the process.

Communicating Safety Through Body LanguageAW:In executive presence coaching, we focus on thriving. But maybe part of the message is acknowledging that your audience is often in survival mode.

MB:Exactly. And the simplest way to help them feel safe? Provide sufficient data.

AW:What do you mean?

MB:Let’s say I’m your boss and I send an email: “See me in my office at 4:30.” That’s it.

AW:Yikes.

MB:Why? Because there’s no context. No information. Your brain fills the gap, and it fills it with negativity. You assume the worst. But what if I was calling you in to promote you?

The more information you provide, the better people behave. Their judgments are more accurate, and they’re less likely to spiral into fear or doubt.

AW:I heard a lot of that during the pandemic. Leaders were told to over-communicate.

MB:Absolutely. When fear is already present, less information won’t calm people down. You need more clarity, more transparency. Combine that with aligned nonverbal cues (open palms, eye contact) and you reinforce the message of safety.

Mark’s Hot Takes on Body LanguageAW:Before we wrap up with our rapid-fire questions, what’s your hot take on body language?

MB:Here’s one: The idea that you should mirror other people’s body language to get them to like you. That’s not quite right.

AW:Oh?

MB:We naturally mirror anyway. It’s part of how we develop empathy and theory of mind. But when you do it on purpose, you might mirror behaviors that aren’t useful.

If someone crosses their arms and you do the same? Now you’re both closed off. You lean back, they lean back, you spiral downward. Instead, only mirror the behaviors you want to see more of.

AW:Got it.

MB:A better approach? Positively affirm the behaviors you want to reinforce.

Here’s another take: All body language is either a response to power or a display of power.

AW:Interesting.

MB:For example, gravity is power. Throughout this interview, I’ve been showing my buoyancy against gravity. Now watch: I slump. That’s a different response to power. Now I lift again. Different message.

Every movement you make is about power. Recognizing this helps you decode behavior more effectively.

AW:There’s a beautiful tie-in to survival here. Those with power are more likely to survive, and influence others’ survival.

Who We Follow, and WhyMB:We mirror the strongest, clearest signal in the room, not necessarily the smartest or best. Just the most followable.

AW:So true.

MB:We also follow the person who controls the most valuable resource, whatever that may be in your environment. That’s why symbols and rituals matter: badges, behavior patterns, language.

AW:And if you’re unsure of the hierarchy?

MB:Just ask. Don’t guess. Say, “What’s most valuable to you here?” Then ask, “How would I know who controls that?”

People will tell you: Our brains love answering hierarchical, evaluative questions. It’s hardwired.

Wrap-Up & Rapid-Fire QuestionsAW:So helpful. I coach people who want to thrive, but many of these insights come down to survival. Understanding that helps us lead more effectively.

Okay. Ready for rapid-fire?

MB:Let’s go.

AW:Introvert or extrovert?

MB:Ambivert. Most of us are. It’s situational, not fixed. Put someone in a different environment, you’ll see different behaviors.

AW:Love it. Question two: communication pet peeves?

MB:Honestly, none. In my line of work, being annoyed by communication would be unbearable. People don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why I’m here.

But ask me about food? Pet peeves galore!
Nuts in chocolate? Salt in chocolate? Unacceptable.
And don’t get me started on putting raspberries on crème brûlée. That should be illegal.

AW:(Laughing) Okay, noted. Final question: Any podcasts or books you recommend lately?

MB:Yes: The Rest is Politics. If you like politics, it’s thoughtful and offers fresh perspectives. Also The Rest is History. Great storytelling, global context.

AW:Amazing! I’ll link both in the show notes.

AW:Mark, thank you so much. I learned a ton, and I had fun.

MB:My pleasure. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

🎧 Post-Interview RecapWell, that was a fascinating conversation, wasn’t it?

I didn’t expect we’d end up discussing our evolutionary path from ground-dwelling mammals to upright hominids on the African plains, but I’m so glad we did. That’s why I love bringing expert guests on the podcast. We get to learn together.

Now, let me reinforce the three key takeaways from my conversation with Mark Bowden:

1. Open Palm Gestures at Navel HeightMark strongly emphasized this single technique. If you want to appear credible, trustworthy, and influential, use open palm gestures at navel height. This is your center of gravity. It’s also a vulnerable area. By exposing it, you signal trust and reduce perceived risk.

2. We’re Wired for Risk and SurvivalWe instinctively scan our environment for threats, and we default to negative interpretations when information is missing. As communicators, and especially as leaders, we must recognize this and over-communicate clarity and safety, both verbally and nonverbally.

3. Body Language Myths DebunkedFirst, crossed arms don’t always mean defensiveness. They can indicate thoughtfulness, comfort, or even that you’re cold. Second, don’t mirror others’ body language indiscriminately. Only mirror behaviors that you want to reinforce. Otherwise, you risk reinforcing negativity or detachment.

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review on your podcast app, and don’t forget to hit subscribe so you can continue improving your communication skills with Talk About Talk.

Thanks again to Mark Bowden.

And thank YOU for listening.

Talk soon!

The post BODY LANGUAGE, a Matter of Survival – with Expert Mark Bowden (ep.191) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Feeling like a fraud? You’re not alone. In this episode, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and Kim Meninger explore the roots of imposter syndrome and share actionable strategies to move through it with courage, clarity, and impact. Learn how to lead more inclusive meetings, build authentic confidence, and reframe self-promotion as a meaningful contribution.

CONNECT WITH KIM* Website: www.KimMeninger.com * LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/KimMeninger * Instagram: Instagram.com/kim.meninger * Podcast: The Impostor Syndrome Files * TEDx: How to Bring Your Diverse Voice to the Workplace

TRANSCRIPTIONSelf-promotion, when approached strategically, is a service…to others and to ourselves. Nobody is hired just to fill headcount; they’re brought on because of their unique combination of skills, strengths, and capabilities. If you don’t share what you know and what you can do, it becomes harder for others to leverage your strengths. That creates inefficiencies and redundancies.

Thinking of self-promotion as an act of service allows us to reframe what might otherwise feel selfish or boastful. Instead of asking, “How can I tell everyone how great I am?” consider asking, “How can I help?”

Meet my new friend, Kim Meninger. Kim is an expert on imposter syndrome. In this episode, you’re going to hear our conversation (yes, conversation, not interview) about this powerful and often misunderstood topic. We take turns asking questions, building on each other’s ideas, and sharing practical strategies.

You’ll learn new mindsets and actionable tactics to help you combat imposter syndrome and communicate with confidence. These are tools you can start using right away. Ready?

Welcome to Ep.190 of the Talk About Talk Podcast

Yes, we’re getting close to 200 episodes, and you know there’s going to be a party! If you’re not already subscribed, please hit that follow button on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening. You can also watch full episodes on YouTube.

In case we haven’t met, I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, but please, call me Andrea. I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I serve as your executive communication coach. Through private coaching, workshops, and keynotes, I help ambitious executives master formal presentations, establish executive presence, build personal brands, and yes, overcome imposter syndrome.

If you want to stay up to date with my latest tools and coaching insights, go to TalkAboutTalk.com and subscribe to my newsletter.

Introducing Kim MeningerAndrea Wojnicki (AW):
Today, we’re tackling imposter syndrome with Kim Meninger, a leadership coach, TEDx speaker, and host of the Impostor Syndrome Files podcast. Kim’s mission is to make it easier to be human at work. She brings a wealth of experience, including leadership roles at EMC and Monster, and she holds an MBA and a Professional Certified Coach credential. Kim is passionate about helping professionals boost their confidence, collaborate effectively, and show up authentically at work.

Let’s Talk Imposter SyndromeAW:
Kim, thank you for being here to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about imposter syndrome.

Kim Meninger (KM):
Thank you for having me! I’m really excited for this conversation.

AW:
Me too. Let’s dive in. First, tell me about your perspective on imposter syndrome.

KM:
Imposter syndrome, for me, is rooted in anxiety. It’s that constant fear that someone will discover you’re not good enough. While it’s not a clinical diagnosis, it’s very real. It keeps us playing small, avoiding risks, and staying quiet. Recognizing that fear is the first step in managing it.

AW:
Absolutely. And research shows this affects almost everyone, not just women, not just junior professionals, and not just those who appear to lack confidence. In fact, feeling imposter syndrome can be reframed as something positive. If it’s holding you back (say, from raising your hand in a meeting) it will only get worse unless you address it.

Tactics to Overcome Imposter SyndromeAW:
Here are three of my go-to tactics for managing imposter syndrome:

Reframe the adrenalineWhen I feel that spark of nervous energy, I reframe it as excitement. Energy I can use to shine.
Breathe, especially the exhaleI focus on slowing my exhale. It signals to my brain that I’m safe, which calms anxiety.
Use distanced self-talkBased on research by Dr. Ethan Kross in his book Chatter, I speak to myself in the second person: “Andrea, you’ve got this.” It’s incredibly effective.

KM:
Those are powerful. I especially love the focus on breathing. It’s a simple way to ground yourself. I also encourage clients to:

Speak slowly: It keeps thoughts and speech in sync and projects confidence.
Do scary things regularly: Perfectionists often avoid risk. Stretch your comfort zone consistently.
Keep an accomplishments journal: Write down three things you did well each day. It rewires your brain to notice strengths and successes.

AW:
That ties beautifully into personal branding. Owning and articulating your strengths.

Framing Self-Promotion as a Service

AW:
Let’s talk about self-promotion. Many people fear sounding arrogant. But there’s a sweet spot between paralyzing anxiety and overconfidence. I recommend:

Adopting a growth mindset: “I know what I know, and I’m keen to learn more.” This keeps you grounded and curious.
Using the phrase “people tell me”: Instead of saying “I’m great at this,” say, “People tell me I’m great at this.” It sounds credible and authentic.

KM:
Exactly. I also frame self-promotion as a service. If you don’t share what you’re good at, others can’t benefit from your expertise. Start by:

Updating your manager regularly: Share what you’re working on and what skills you’re using.
Teaching others what you know: Sharing knowledge is self-promotion that helps the team.
Shaping your brand: Focus on what you want to be known for. Not just what you’ve done in the past.

Leadership & Imposter SyndromeAW:
For leaders: how can you support team members dealing with imposter syndrome?

KM:
Assume your team members have it. Most do. Structure meetings to include:

Before: Send an agenda and pre-read materials.
During: Use diverse participation methods: go-arounds, raised hands, written input.
After: Debrief and solicit additional input.

AW:
Yes! And I always recommend leaders track the ratio (how much airtime each person gets). Extroverts should self-monitor, and leaders should create space for quieter voices. This ensures balanced contributions.

Final Thoughts on Imposter Syndrome

KM:
Remember: imposter syndrome is normal. It peaks during transitions, when we’re out of our comfort zones. Don’t let it stop you. Confidence follows action.

Rapid Fire Q&A

AW:
Kim, are you an introvert or extrovert?

KM:
Extrovert. I thrive in unscripted situations but have to watch that I don’t wing it too much.

AW:
What’s your communication pet peeve?

KM:
Passive-aggressive comments. I prefer directness and clarity.

AW:
Favorite book or podcast lately?

KM:
Your Brain at Work by Dr. David Rock. It’s practical and neuroscience-based. It’s great for understanding behavior and communication.

Andrea’s Top 3 Takeaways from Kim

Take risks regularlyImposter syndrome = fear. Daily risks (personal and professional) build confidence.
Manage meetings effectivelyUse the before-during-after framework to ensure all voices are heard.
Frame self-promotion as a serviceShare your strengths to help others. Teaching what you know is an act of generosity.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who might benefit. Thank you for listening, and as always, talk soon!

The post New Strategies to Overcome IMPOSTER SYNDROME with Kim Meninger (ep.190) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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You’ve heard of the glass ceiling, but what about the glass walls? Dr. Andrea Wojnicki speaks with Dr. Amy Diehl, co-author of Glass Walls, about six subtle yet powerful gender bias barriers still limiting women at work. Learn how these biases show up in communication in the workplace and what individuals and leaders can do to recognize and dismantle them.

CONNECT WITH DR. AMY DIEHL* Dr. Diehl’s website & speaking engagement enquiries: https://amy-diehl.com * GLASS WALLS book: https://amy-diehl.com/glass-walls-shattering-the-six-gender-bias-barriers-still-holding-women-back-at-work/ * Gender Bias Scale for Women Leaders: https://amy-diehl.com/gender-bias-scale/

TRANSCRIPTION“Female hostility. I always get the question. Sometimes people say that the women in the workplace are worse than the men. I don’t know whether that’s true or not, but I will say that when women don’t support other women, it hurts us more. We expect solidarity from our female colleagues.”

That was Dr. Amy Diehl, co-author of the book Glass Walls: Shattering the Six Gender Bias Barriers Still Holding Women Back at Work. In the next 45 minutes, we’re going beyond the glass ceiling and glass cliffs. You’re going to learn what those six glass walls are, how they manifest at work, and what we can do about them. Especially in the context of communication, we’ll explore the power of labeling these barriers and talking about them.

We all witness these glass walls at work. Whether you’re a woman directly affected, an ally observing them, or a leader with the power to influence change, this episode is for you.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about complaining. This is about using real research to identify, label, and discuss gender bias.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. If you’re a returning listener, welcome back. If you’re new, let me introduce myself. I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk. You can learn more about me at talkabouttalk.com. While you’re there, I encourage you to sign up for my email newsletter. Between this podcast and the newsletter, you’ll get valuable communication coaching.

I help leaders improve their communication: presentation skills, executive presence, precision, and personal branding.

All of these skills are hard enough without the additional challenge of gender bias.

Recently I read Glass Walls by Dr. Amy Diehl and Dr. Leanne Dzubinski. From a communication perspective, I saw insights that I knew would resonate with you. So I reached out to Amy, and here we are.

Here’s how these 45 minutes will go: I’ll first introduce Dr. Diehl (Amy) and then we’ll jump into the interview. At the end, I’ll share three key takeaways. Yes, always three; the power of three.

OK, let me introduce Amy.

Amy Diehl, PhD, is an award-winning IT leader and Chief Information Officer at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. She’s also a gender equity researcher and co-author of Glass Walls. Her work has appeared in scholarly journals, Harvard Business Review, Fast Company, and Ms. Magazine. She’s a sought-after speaker, consultant, and expert witness. Her passion is gender equality in society and the workplace. You can find her at amy-diehl.com.

Here we go!

Thank you so much, Amy, for being here to talk about glass walls with me and the Talk About Talk listeners.

Amy Diehl: Thanks so much for having me, Andrea. I’m excited for this conversation.

Andrea Wojnicki: We’ve all heard about the glass ceiling and the glass cliff, but can you define what glass walls are and walk us through the six described in your book?

AD: When my co-author Dr. Leanne Dzubinski and I wrote the book, we didn’t initially have the title. It came together after we finished the manuscript and realized what we were really talking about—barriers in every direction. Not just a ceiling above, but walls all around. Invisible, like glass, you often don’t notice them until you run into them. So the metaphor of glass walls made sense.

These barriers are baked into workplace cultures. Our goal was to name them, make them visible, and start discussions about how to dismantle them.

AW: It’s a perfect metaphor. Can you walk us through the six walls?

AD: Absolutely. The first is male privilege: A dominant workplace culture that includes male gatekeeping, the boys’ club, and even the glass cliff, where women are set up in risky roles and then blamed when things go wrong.

AW: And that first wall, male privilege, forms the foundation for the others, right?

AD: Exactly. The other five barriers build on that base.

AW: Before you go further, I want to encourage listeners to do a mental checklist as they hear about these barriers. Ask yourself: Have I experienced this? Have I observed this?

AD: That’s great advice. For context, we developed a tool, the Gender Bias Scale for Women Leaders, while researching. It identifies the six barriers and is available on my website as a quick self-assessment.

AW: Fantastic. I’ll include that link in the show notes.

AD: The second wall is disproportionate constraints. Women are in the workplace, but with limitations, fewer choices, more scrutiny. From career paths to communication, women face muted voices and are held to unequal standards. Their appearance, tone, and behavior are under constant watch.

The third is insufficient support: lack of mentorship, sponsorship, and access to informal networks. Women are often left out of spaces where decisions are made. One insight from my dissertation: the most confounding barrier for women was unsupportive leadership. Being hired, but not backed when challenges arise, is demoralizing.

AW: That’s especially confusing. “You hired me. Why aren’t you supporting me?”

AD: Exactly. They couldn’t make sense of that.

The fourth wall is devaluation. Women’s contributions are diminished. Salary inequality is one example. Others include being interrupted, called pet names, or not addressed by their professional titles. And there’s office housework (taking on tasks like organizing lunch or cleaning the fridge) without recognition.

AW: Linda Babcock’s work on “non-promotable tasks” comes to mind.

AD: Yes. These tasks are necessary but should be shared. Better yet, hire admin staff to handle them.

AW: Leaders must ensure tasks are equitably distributed.

AD: Right. The fifth glass wall is hostility. Harassment, discrimination, and, yes, female hostility. People often ask whether women in the workplace are worse than men. I don’t know if that’s true, but when women don’t support other women, it hurts more. We expect solidarity from each other. When another woman blocks your opportunity, it feels more shocking.

AW: Can you talk about the queen bee phenomenon and female-only versus mixed-gender dynamics?

AD: Yes, and the sixth and final wall is acquiescence. After repeatedly hitting barriers, women may give up. They stay silent, limit aspirations, or leave entirely. Not because they’re incapable, but because the emotional toll is too high.

AW: So we’re talking to women, allies, and leaders; people who can help create equitable, productive, happy workplaces.

AD: Exactly.

AW: Let’s shift to communication. One strength of your book is the vocabulary. You and Leanne coined many terms to describe these phenomena.

AD: Yes. When we couldn’t find terms in the literature, we created them. For example, role incredulity: assuming a woman isn’t in charge. A director mistaken for an assistant. A physician assumed to be a nurse.

AW: One of my clients is a global CEO, and people often assume she runs just the Canadian division. It’s a classic case.

AD: Yes. It’s often unintentional, but impactful. That moment can change a person’s perception.

Another term is credibility deficit: women’s statements aren’t believed unless confirmed by someone else. My co-author Leanne once had a man turn to her husband to verify what she said, even though she was the expert.

AW: That example stuck with me. What about terms like mansplaining and he-peating?

AD: Mansplaining: Explaining something to a woman in a condescending way. He-peating: A woman’s idea is ignored until a man repeats it and receives credit. If done intentionally, that’s called bro-propriating.

AW: The intent matters. Sometimes it’s unintentional, but still harmful.

AD: Right. One of the biggest issues is interrupting. Men’s voices are privileged. They’re taught it’s acceptable to dominate conversations. If you’re interrupted repeatedly, especially by peers, it undermines your credibility.

AW: I coach women through this all the time. They need strategies, from jokes to private conversations, to enlisting allies.

AD: Yes. Sometimes the most effective approach is pulling someone aside, assuming positive intent, and addressing the pattern.

AW: Let’s talk about a story from a workshop participant. A senior OB-GYN received feedback that she was difficult. She believed female nurses were biased against her.

AD: That’s the status-leveling burden. Women in higher roles often go above and beyond (baking cookies, being extra nice) to gain cooperation from other women. It’s about navigating the contradiction between gender and organizational hierarchies.

AW: Leaders should be aware and provide training so teams understand these dynamics.

AD: Yes. Raising awareness helps people recognize patterns and adjust their behavior.

AW: You mentioned experiencing this personally.

AD: Yes. I had to spend extra time connecting with a secretary who didn’t support me. In the end, what changed things was her retirement. I even sent male colleagues to ask for things because they’d be more successful.

AW: It’s about recognizing the situation and working around it strategically. Let’s talk about flip it to test it.

AD: A simple but powerful tool from sociologist Kristin Pressner. If you say, “Maria is too assertive,” flip it: “Would I say Mario is too assertive?” Probably not. It reveals gender bias in assumptions.

AW: Great for self-checking and for leaders in hiring or evaluations.

AD: Exactly.

AW: What’s your take on Adam Grant’s article about women using “weak” language strategically?

AD: His mistake was calling it weak. It’s not weak, it’s smart. Women are adapting to navigate male-normed environments. Maybe men should adopt these techniques, too.

AW: Like imposter syndrome. Maybe men should question themselves more!

AD: Yes. These strategies make women effective communicators.

AW: Tell us about your next book, Excuses, Excuses.

AD: It explores six myths about why women are never “just right” at work, excuses based on age, appearance, race, etc. The subtitle is The Six Myths Why Women Are Never Quite Right at Work and How We Can Shatter Them. Many of these judgments are contradictory: too quiet, too outspoken, too young, too old. It’s not about the woman. It’s about systemic bias.

AW: Sounds like a powerful follow-up.

AD: We aim to name these issues so they can be addressed.

AW: Let’s end with three rapid-fire questions. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

AD: Introvert. I think before I speak, and I listen a lot. I believe introverts make great leaders.

AW: What’s your communication pet peeve?

AD: The expectation that women fluff up their emails with pleasantries. It’s time-consuming. With close colleagues, I skip it. But with others, I feel I have to include it so I’m not perceived as cold.

AW: Should men do more of that, too?

AD: Yes. It builds relationships and improves communication for everyone.

AW: Final question. Any books or podcasts you’re recommending?

AD: Yes—Powerfully Likable: A Women’s Guide to Effective Communication by Kate Mason. It offers practical tips without telling women to change who they are. It’s about authentic, effective strategies.

AW: Thank you, Amy. Any final words for listeners?

AD: Gender bias is solvable. It takes all of us working together. And if you’re experiencing bias, remember: it’s not about you. It’s a systemic issue. Don’t take it personally. Strategize and persist.

AW: Thank you, Amy. I learned so much from our conversation.

AD: Thank you for having me.

AW: Most of my guests are doing good in the world, but Amy truly stands out. Her research and advocacy are making workplaces better.

As promised, here are the three takeaways I want to reinforce:

Vocabulary: Learn and use terms like glass walls, role incredulity, credibility deficit, housekeeping duties, non-promotable tasks, mansplaining, he-peating, and bro-propriating. Labeling helps make bias real, and solvable.
Female hostility: It hurts more when it comes from other women. This isn’t about blaming. It’s about raising awareness and fostering solidarity.
Intentionality: Bias is often unintentional, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. Consider whether a private or public conversation is appropriate.

Thank you again, Amy. And thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review the podcast. It helps others discover us.

Talk soon!

The post Gender Bias and Communication in the Workplace: 6 GLASS WALLS with Dr. Amy Diehl (ep. 189) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Are you ready to go beyond the basics with AI? If you’re only using it for simple tasks, it’s time to level up. Andrea shares three powerful strategies that move past the fundamentals to elevate your communication, deepen your audience connection, and help you integrate AI seamlessly into your workflow.

How to Use AI to Improve Your CommunicationMost of the executives I coach are already using AI in their day-to-day work. They’ve mastered the basics, but they know there’s more potential.

If that sounds like you, you’re in the right place.

Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. I’m Dr. Andrea Wojnicki (but please, call me Andrea). I’m an executive communication coach who helps leaders communicate with confidence and credibility. Through private coaching, workshops, keynotes, and this podcast, I empower professionals like you to level up your executive presence and personal brand.

In this episode, I’m sharing three next-level strategies for using AI to supercharge your communication effectiveness.

But first: let’s talk about how most of us are already using AI.

5 Basic Ways to Use AI to Improve CommunicationAI has become a behind-the-scenes partner in our daily workflows. If you’re using it this way, you’re not alone:

Spellchecking and grammar correction
Using AI as a thesaurus to find better or more precise words
Brainstorming content, from blog posts to presentation titles
Adjusting tone, such as making your writing sound more formal, supportive, clever, or empathetic
Summarizing or shortening content to make it more concise

These tools are powerful, but they’re just the beginning.

3 Next-Level AI Strategies to Boost Your CommunicationIf you’re ready to go beyond spellcheck and tone tweaks, here are three powerful ways to use AI to improve your communication strategy:

1. Crafting Compelling MetaphorsMetaphors are one of the most underused tools in business communication. They help clarify complex ideas and make your message memorable.

💡 Example:
A friend of mine, Richard (a partner at a consulting firm) explains staffing requirements to clients using a metaphor: “Our team is like a tennis ball machine. If your team doesn’t have enough people to hit the balls back, the balls pile up on your side, and the engagement stalls.”

How to Use AI for Metaphors:* Ask AI: “Give me 10 metaphors to describe [concept].” * Narrow it down to a few promising ideas, then refine with follow-up prompts. * Test different tones (professional, humorous, or inspirational) to fit your audience.

When used well, a metaphor can become the centerpiece of your pitch, deck, or keynote.

2. Creating Visuals with AIAI isn’t just for text. It can also generate or inspire visuals that elevate your communication.

Here are some ways to use AI to create effective visuals:

Upload a document and ask: “What visuals would best support this?”
Ask AI to generate charts or graphs to illustrate data
Request slide outlines or graphic design ideas for a presentation
Use AI to generate illustrations or images or brief a designer with AI-generated direction

💡 Pro Tip: I used AI to create the cover art for this episode. Check it out at talkabouttalk.com on the podcast tab (link in the show notes!).

3. Getting Critical Feedback from AIWould you rather get constructive criticism from your audience, or from AI before you hit send?

Use AI to anticipate issues with your communication by simulating tough critics:

Prompts to Try:* “What questions might my audience have after reading this?” * “Why might my boss reject this?” * “What parts of this proposal might frustrate a skeptical customer?” * “If you were a disillusioned editor, how would you critique this article?”

Asking AI to play devil’s advocate helps you spot blind spots and strengthen your message before it goes live.

3 Caveats to Keep in Mind When Using AI for CommunicationBefore you go all-in, keep these best practices top of mind:

Enhance, don’t outsource.
AI is your assistant, not your voice. Start with your own ideas.
Keep personal messages personal.
Use your real voice in personal communication. Relationships deserve authenticity.
Double-check everything.
AI still hallucinates. Your credibility depends on accuracy.

Recap: How to Use AI to Communicate More EffectivelyThe Basics:* Spellchecking * Thesaurus use * Brainstorming * Tone adjustment * Summarizing

Next-Level Tactics:1. Crafting compelling metaphors 2. Creating engaging visuals 3. Getting constructive, critical feedback

What About You?How are you using AI to enhance your communication?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram, or comment on YouTube.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a colleague, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Talk About Talk podcast for more communication tips.

Thanks for listening. Talk soon!

The post How to Use AI to Improve Your COMMUNICATION (ep.188) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Bad habits in your communication, like apologetic language, upspeak, and jargon overload, can undermine your credibility. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares fixes for 10 bad habits so you can start communicating with confidence and credibility. Get the free “Bad Habits” download: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/badhabits CONNECT WITH ANDREA Website: http://talkabouttalk.com/ LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ […]

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Ready to improve your Elevator Pitch? Your elevator pitch is an asset that can optimize high-stakes conversations. Learn a dynamic 3-point framework that will help you confidently engage with critical stakeholders, ensuring you make a positive, memorable impact. CONNECT WITH ANDREA Website: http://talkabouttalk.com/ LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ YouTube […]

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Looking for guidance on how to ace your job interview? Andrea shares an interview preparation checklist, focused on your preparation before the interview, your communication during the interview, what to do after the interview, and how to answer specific Qs. You can download the free downloadable checklist at talkabouttalk.com/interview RESOURCES The “Ace Your Interview Checklist” […]

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BeYourSelfOnPurpose: Five words packed full of meaning. Andrea shares the power of developing your strong unique personal brand by doing two things: 1) being yourself, 2) on purpose. You’ll also learn three specific contexts when you can put this mantra into action. CONNECT WITH ANDREA Website: TalkAboutTalk.com LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ LinkedIn Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ […]

The post #BeYourSelfOnPurpose – Be Your Self On Purpose and build a strong personal brand (ep.184) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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What’s your archetype? Knowing your archetype can help you control your narrative, provide you with focus, and boost your confidence. Take the Archetypes Quiz at www.talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz. Archetypes are shared, universal patterns that help us understand characters, stories, and even ourselves. 12 PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY ARCHETYPES CAREGIVER – maternal, comforting, trusted, generous CREATOR – artist, […]

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Learn three ways to control your narrative and steer your professional identity. Andrea will teach you how to introduce yourself with purpose, reframe perceived weaknesses as strengths, and narrate your career transitions and your career journey. There are a million ways to tell the same story. Why not tell yours in a way that serves […]

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Are you keen to kickstart your Personal Brand? Not sure where to start? Andrea shares 5 ways to kickstart your personal brand, including helpful advice on how to introduce yourself, articulating your unique value proposition, establishing thought leadership, optimizing your digital footprint, and building a quality network. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/ […]

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Optimizing your voice means sounding like your best self – not someone else! Andrea talks with vocal coach and voice actor Claire Fry to understand why you should focus on your unique voiceprint—rather than imitating others—and how to support your voice through techniques like deep breathing and smiling. They also cover practical tips for enhancing […]

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“The Portfolio Life” – Have you ever considered your personal interests and activities to be a portfolio? A portfolio worth assessing and diversifying? In this interview with author Christina Wallace, you’ll learn about the four pillars of creating a portfolio life, how they might inform your personal brand, and three exercises to help you be […]

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Is your resume or CV updated to comply with ATS (Applicant Tracking Software) standards? Whether you’re actively job-searching or vaguely considering a job change, these insights from resume expert Martin Buckland will set you up for success. Bonus download: “How to Optimize the Top of Your Resume for the ATS.” BONUS DOWNLOAD “How to […]

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Do you have an ELEVATOR PITCH? Not a rehearsed script, but a sentence that articulates your unique brand? In this bonus episode, Andrea shares a popular episode of the Under the Influence podcast hosted by epic storyteller Terry O’Reilly, focused on “Elevator Pitches.”

TERRY O’REILLY Podcast ”Under the Influence” – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/under-the-influence-with-terry-oreilly/id493536367 * Website* – https://terryoreilly.ca/

CONNECT WITH ANDREA * LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Website: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/ * Email Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ * YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/

TRANSCRIPTWelcome to this bonus episode of the talk about talk podcast. Are you curious what this is all about? This episode was inspired by my conversation about storytelling with Terry O’Reilly a few months ago. Terry is the host of the under the influence podcast, and he’s an epic storyteller. If you haven’t listened to our conversation yet, I encourage you to go back and listen to Talk About Talk episode 173.

During that interview, Terry and I started talking about Elevator Pitches. That’s when this happened. Take a listen:

Andrea Wojnicki: My favorite elevator pitch of all time is, you know, the Sigourney Weaver aliens movie. Do you know what the elevator pitch was for?

Terry O’Reilly: Jaws in space.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes, I probably learned that from you, Terry.

Terry O’Reilly: Yeah, you may have.

In case it wasn’t clear – I shared with Terry my favorite elevator pitch of all time – It’s the pitch for the movie Aliens. I can just imagine the writer pitching this Aliens movie to the Hollywood producer. Saying, “what’s this movie all about? Well, think Jaws in Space.” Three words. “Jaws in Space.” Beautiful.

As I was sharing that with Terry, it occurred to me – WAIT! I think I originally learned that story, that elevator pitch, from Terry! I think I learned that from one of his Under the Influence episodes. That was pretty funny. Kind of embarrassing, But Terry was very gracious.

I subsequently re-listened to Terry’s Under the Influence episode on Elevator Pitches – and it’s fantastic. So – here we are with our bonus episode. Now YOU’re going to hear that episode! You’ll hear Terry describe that elevator pitch for the Aliens movie, and a whole lot more.

Here’s your task: I encourage you to listen to this episode through the lens of improving your personal brand narrative. Based on your unique expertise and passions, based on your superpowers, and based on Terry’s guidance in developing a compelling elevator pitch, is there a phrase you can use when youre introducing yourself?

For those of you who’ve been in my workshops or private coaching, you know that I am not a fan of the rehearsed elevator script. You know, that overly-rehearsed, too long, too generic ramble that you hear people recite when theyre trying to impress you? That’s not what Im talking about. Im talking about a few words, a phrase, maybe one sentence, that you can own. Your “Jaws in Space,” if you will.

OK – here we go. Here’s Terry.

The post BONUS: “Elevator Pitches” with Terry O’Reilly of Under the Influence appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Gift-giving is a form of communication. Yes, gift-giving can be stressful! Andrea shares the art and science of gift-giving, plus a gift for you – a free one-page summary of gift-giving do’s and don’ts.

*YOUR GIFT FROM ANDREA*Get your one-page summary of gift-giving do’s and don’ts:

https://www.talkabouttalk.com/gift-giving

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK* Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Communication Coaching Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter * LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * YouTube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube

TRANSCRIPT

Well, hello there! Wow – the year is almost over. Can you believe it? It’s such a cliché, but the years really do go by fast.

Many of us mark the end of the year with a gift. It could be a personal gift – for a family or friend. Or it might be a professional gift for a client or a colleague. It might be a THANK YOU gift. Or you might be celebrating the Winter Solstice or Saint Nicholas Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, … or maybe you’re just celebrating the new calendar year? Chances are you’ve got some gifting to do.

Chances are you’re also a bit stressed out

Don’t worry – I got you! In the episode, you’re going to learn what the research says about gift-giving. I’m going to share a framework and specific do’s and don’t. I ALSO have a gift for you! Are you ready?

Welcome to TAT podcast episode 177 – Gift-Giving Do’s & Don’ts

This is a re-release of a previous episode – way back at episode 38. I just re-listened to that episode, I have to tell you, it’s ALL there. You’ll learn a lot – I promise.

Certainly, a few things have changed since then. Like the obvious one – there’s AI. Have you tried using AI to help you with your gift giving? I must admit, I have. “Hey Chat GPT, what’s a great gift for a client who’s constantly referring new business to me? Or what’s a great gift for my 17 year old son who’s obsessed with hockey?

Of course, the more specific you get about the person you’re gifting, the better the AI recommendations. As with all things AI, the personal human touch is what makes a big difference.

Now, before we get into this, I want to give YOU a gift.
I know this time of year can be very stressful. It feels like everything’s piling up, right? And on top of everything happening at work and personally, there’s also this added task of gift-giving. As you’ll hear in this episode, there IS reason to be anxious about gift giving. So, to help you with this anxiety, I have a gift for you! It’s this – a one-page summary of the do’s and don’ts of effective gift giving. Stop guessing, and base your gift giving decisions on what the research says. Here’s how you can get the one-pager: go to TAT.com/gift-giving ((((HYPHEN))). Then you can download this Free “Gift-Giving Guide,” a summary of the Dos & Dont’s of gift giving, including what the research says about what to worry LESS about. Yes, you heard me – what you should worry LESS about. You’re welcome. Just go to TAT.com gift-giving (hyphen) right now to get your one pager.

Alright let’s do this!

Yes, gift-giving is a form of communication. A significant one, it turns out. Gift-giving is prevalent, it is a common phenomenon. It is also highly symbolic. The gifts we give and receive communicate a lot of things – about the giver, about the receiver, and about their relationship.

My goal for this episode is to help you mostly when you’re gifting someone, but also some things to think about when you’re receiving a gift. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a list of things to consider, and yes, a few things to stop worrying about when it comes to gift giving.

If you guessed by the enthusiasm in my voice that I love this topic of gift-giving, well, you’re right. I first researched gift-giving over 15yrs ago when I was a doctoral student. Those of you who have been listening to previous Talk About Talk podcasts may recall that my main topic of academic research when I was a student was WOM. It occurred to me that WOM (or consumer recommendations about what to buy and warnings about what to avoid) was like a gift from one consumer to another. So, at the time, I decided to study gift-giving to help me with my WOM research.

Well, I can tell you that that research on gift-giving has stayed with me. I can’t be in a room when a gift is being opened (whether the gift is from me or to me or whether I’m just an observer), I always go back to thinking about this research. It’s like having a whole different lens through which to observe the gift-giving phenomenon. Are you curious? I can’t wait to share it with you.

CONTEXT

You know that feeling when you give a gift to someone and they absolutely LOVE it? It feels fantastic, doesn’t it?

The opposite is true too though. Gifting FAILS. Have you ever put a lotta time and effort into finding an amazing gift for someone, and then – when the person opens it, you realize you bombed? I can tell you personally that HAS happened to me – more than once. And it really hurts – especially when the person, the receiver, is important to me and especially when I thought I nailed it. It makes me question how well I know the person – and all sortsa things.

I’m not sure if you ever considered this before, but gift giving is a form of communication. Have you ever considered that? Well, THAT is why we’re doing this podcast!

Gifts communicate things about us as givers, about also what we think about the receiver, and about what we think about our relationship with the receiver. Layer onto that, gifts are highly susceptible to encoding and decoding errors (Sherry 1979). In other words, misinterpretations (communication fails) can happen frequently in the gift-giving process.

So trust me – this gift-giving stuff is worth knowing. Some of this research isn’t too surprising. For example, the significance of reciprocity in gift giving. In this podcast, you’ll learn what the research says about gift giving dynamics so that you can become a better gift giver and a better gift receiver. Or at least a more informed one.

Let’s start with the significance of gift-giving.

*SIGNIFICANCE OF GIFT GIVING*

There is no Q that GIFT GIVING IS SIGNIFICANT. There are two main reasons for this: the prevalence of gifts and the symbolism associated with gifts. In other words: gift giving is frequent, and it has deep and multiple meanings.

Researchers in the areas of anthropology, economics, sociology, psychology, and consumer behavior have examined the gift-giving phenomenon in detail and concluded that gift giving is a process that integrates a society (Sherry 1983), and that the significance in gift giving is “uncontested in terms of retail sales alone”, accounting or about 10% of retail sales in NA. That is HUGE! In fact, there are even gift stores, right? (Sherry 1983)

(SIGNIFICANCE) We give birthday gifts, teacher gifts, hostess gifts, thank you gifts, I could go on and on. Clearly gifting is frequent. It’s a significant part of our culture.

Gift-giving is also highly symbolic. Symbolic of the giver, of the giver’s beliefs about the receiver, and about the relationship between the giver and the receiver. Gifts can reinforce important relationships, take them to the next level, or even destroy them. Have you ever noticed how gifts-giving is a common complaint about people after a break-up? It’s true, right? And by the way, If you think that gifts don’t mater, that they aren’t significant, well, there’s symbolism in that too.

All this symbolism is probably why gift-giving induces anxiety. Much of the gift-giving research is focused on the premise that the obligation to give and receive might spark tension or anxiety. There’s also a strong evaluative component that exists at every stage of the gift giving process.

Kids compare gifts they got for their birthday or Christmas, don’t they? Even adults – have you ever been involved in a conversation where people are comparing what gifts they received from their partners for Valentine’s Day? Yikes, right?!?

Not surprisingly, gift-giving research concludes that inappropriate gifts cause embarrassment, threaten social ties, and leave lasting impressions. That’s a lot of stress when you’re shopping for a gift, isn’t it?

Then there’s the stress of receiving a gift. Of course, we don’t want the person who’s gifted us to feel badly. But gifts can produce unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt. Have you ever received a gift from someone, and you suddenly felt like the relationship was out of balance? That’s partly because gifts are construed as currencies that are exchanged, and they’re also symbolic.

THE GIFT ITSELF: COMMUNICATION AND SYMBOLISM

As I said before, gifts are a form of communication – gift-giving is symbolic. Gifts impart meaning. When you’re giving a gift you can think of it as being symbolic of three things: your own identity, your beliefs about the receiver, and your relationship with the receiver.

Sometimes Gifts “say” what cannot be said in words. Because of this symbolism, Receivers read into the gift (and the giver knows this!!!)

Gifts can express all sorts of things, including things like: Interest, power, gratitude, an apology, compatibility (that’s a big one), and gifts can even indicate resources available (or affluence).

That’s a lot of pressure to find the right gift, right? Well, I want to share with you a gift-giving model that can help us think about gifts in a way that might make this all seem slightly more rational. In a paper from 1993, CB researchers Sherry, McGrath & Levy highlighted how you can evaluate gifts across two dimensions: Substance and Sentiment.

The substance is how much cash you spent. It could range from no cost (say, something you made) to something astronomically expensive, right?

The second factor, sentiment, is the thoughtfulness and/or effort associated with the gift. A low sentiment gift could be a random gift card or a generic gift (like say, a teacher’s mug). Examples of high sentiment gifts are things that are personalized or homemade or that took a lot of effort to procure.

Here’s Professor Russell Belk, the multiple award-winning York University marketing professor who also appeared in Talk About Talk podcast episode #14 where he shared his expertise about how our POSSESSIONS communicate things about us. Professor Belk also has a lot of published research focused on gift-giving. Here he is describing the sentiment associated with a gift:

”…It used to be insulting and still is to some degree, to give a monetary gift or even a gift card rather than tangible gifts that you’ve actually sought out and thought about and found to be appropriate to the recipient. Emerson said that the true gift should be a part of you. And so, you bring your skills and your interest to bear on the gift, from the receiver’s point of view. So from the recipient’s point of view, you’re more appreciative because it really is a part of that giver. If you send your secretary out to buy a gift for your partner, that’s inappropriate because they [you] haven’t put the time and effort and love and thought into it.”

So I know this is tricky because it’s a podcast and I can’t show this to you unless you go to the show notes, but imagine for simplicity’s sake a 2×2 matrix, where you have substance (or cost) on one axis and sentiment on the other. There are four boxes. So gifts are either high substance, high sentiment, or hi substance low sentiment or low substance high sentiment, or low substance and low sentiment.

Can you guess which gifts are most appreciated by the receivers? Well, you might be surprised. If you guessed high substance and high sentiment (the most expensive and most thoughtful gifts, you’re wrong!

Apparently gift receivers experience displeasure at the extremes. Basically this means that if the gift is extremely high or extremely low on either substance or sentiment, then they don’t like that. If the giver was being too cheap or if they spent way too much. Similarly, if they went to way too much effort – or if it was way too easy (like as Professor Belk said, you ask your secretary to go get a gift for your partner. That’s too easy!) Another classic example here is the gift of cash. It’s so easy, right? Easy? Yes. But appreciated? Not so much.

(Of course, there are exceptions, depending on the person and the situation!)

Can you guess what kind of gift is most appreciated then? Well, it’s actually the low substance, high sentiment gifts that are the most appreciated. In other words the cheap but thoughtful gift. Like the drawing child gives her parent. Or the homemade meal that a one neighbor makes for another.

Most people don’t guess this, but it sounds about right when you think about it, doesn’t it?

Personally I find this 2×2 gift-giving matrix fascinating. Yes, I think about it when I’m giving or receiving or even just observing a gift-giving interaction. It’s a really cool way to examine the whole gift-giving phenomenon.

It’s also a helpful guide when you’re selecting a gift for someone. All else equal, the sentiment is more important that the substance. It really is the thought that counts

I’ve discovered though that some gift-giving scenarios don’t seem to quite fit into this 2×2. Two of these scenarios are surprise gifts and gifts from gift-registries .

First – the surprise gift. Last December I was at home working on my Talk About Talk podcast, when the doorbell rang. Honestly, I was annoyed by the interruption. But boy was I in for a pleasant surprise. At the door was a woman who I met just a year earlier, in a professional context. We’d definitely hit it off. She was at my door with an unexpected gift for me and my family. A bunch of jumbo shrimps and high-quality steaks. Whhhhaaaaat? I was so overwhelmed with her generosity. It wasn’t the gourmet elements of the gift that impressed me (although trust me, it was very very much appreciated). Rather, it was the complete surprise of there being any gift at all. This got me thinking – sometimes the gesture of gifting itself is symbolic. Regardless of the gift. Maybe there should be a third dimension on this substance and sentiment two-by-two – or maybe it’s part of sentiment – call it the element of surprise. .

The second scenario that doesn’t fit perfectly into our 2×2 substance x sentiment matrix is gift registries. You know, for bar or bat mitzvahs or weddings or for people who are expecting a baby? I read recently that people who create gift registries almost always prefer something from their registry, versus something else. Meanwhile, the gift giver might be trying to add some sentiment to the gift – some thoughtfulness or effort. Have you ever done this before? I know I’ve done his before. For a friend’s’ wedding. Sure there was a registry, but I had to think of something they might like at least as much and that demonstrated how much I adore them. But apparently, according to the research, that was just a waste of time. People who create registries generally just want stuff on their registry! So don’t over think it. Just buy something from the registry. Got it? Now we know.

THE GIFT-GIVING PROCESS: RITUALS & RECIPROCITY

Researchers have also sought to describe the gift-giving process with models. Many of these gift-giving models focus on three main steps: giving-receiving-reciprocating. So as you can imagine, the model or process is circular – it never ends!

The GIVING includes choosing the gift, creating or procuring the gift, wrapping it, and presenting it.
The RECEIVING includes unwrapping the gift, identifying it, thanking the giver, and displaying the gift
The RECIPROCATING includes identifying an obligation and an occasion to start all over again, this time as the GIVER.

In his research, Professor Russell Belk, whom we just heard from, describes gift-giving as a self-perpetuating system of reciprocity.

There are very few exceptions to the universal requirement to reciprocate. (Sherry 1983). A few examples of people who may be exempt include work subordinates, wait staff, students, monks, and transients. If you’re not one of these, then sorry to say, but you’re probably obliged to reciprocate.

Of course there are rituals associated with each of the elements:

Consider the gift wrapping. How fancy do you go with the wrapping? Do you always remove the price tag? What about the return receipt? And what do you do with the gift bag once the gift has been opened? Is it ok to re-gift the gift bag?
Consider thanking the giver. Is a formal thank you required? Do you have to hand write a thank you or is it ok to text? And how soon after the gift was given is the thank you expected?
And what about displaying of the gift? Do you have to wear that shirt your great aunt gave you? Do you have to display the decorative pillow that doesn’t match your living room? And when is it ok to exchange the gift?

These subtle but important elements associated with gift giving comprise the important rituals that become our cultural and our family traditions. They also explain why gift-giving expectations can be askew and feelings can get hurt. The customs that we grow up with inform our gift-giving expectations as adults, sometimes in ways that we aren’t even aware of.

I asked Professor Russell Belk about this:

“Anytime two people get together they have to decide how they’re going to regard especially rituals and the way that we celebrate things and how we eat our dinner.

AW: Is a dinner a gift?

RB: Yes, it certainly could be. And even such things as do you serve a [it] family style? Or does someone dish it out for you? It is a different sort of power….”

Wow. Preparing a meal for someone is a gift? I definitely hadn’t thought of that. See what I mean?

But I guess it makes sense. They say that cooks are giving some of themselves when they present a meal.

So there’s a lot to think about in the gifting process. Not just for the giver. But also in terms of the receiver.

RECEIVING

Sometimes the receiver will experience unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt (Belk & Coon 1991). And sometimes not only these negative feelings, but even the gifts themselves are unwanted.

Sometimes the giver pays more for the item than the recipient values it, which is always awkward. By the way, this partially explains why people ask for Christmas lists or gift registries.

Despite all this anxiety, obligation and guilt, there is an expectation that the receiver will be gracious. Here is Professor Belk again –

”…the worst thing you can do is refuse the gift. To say I don’t want this. So somewhere in between would be re-gifting, where you take the gift to give it to someone else, hopefully not forgetting who was the original giver, giving it back to them. But in that case, this is developing as a more acceptable thing to do.”

It’s true. Regifting used to be extremely insulting, but it seems to be more acceptable, right? or at least talked about. It’s almost a cliché. Nowadays re-gifting is even joked about as being environmentally responsible! I’ve heard of schoolteachers who put all the teacher gifts they receive into a pile and telling their friends to help themselves.

Speaking of teacher gifts – teacher gifts may fall into the category of what we call token gifts. They are small (ok not all – have you heard about the ridiculous teacher gifts that Manhattan private schools teachers receive from their students? We’re talking little blue boxes with diamond bracelets. Crazy! Anyway, I digress.) Token gifts are small, they are less personal, and they are often expected or anticipated gifts that symbolize or communicate gratitude. Hostess gifts sometimes fall into this category. A bottle of wine, some cocktail napkins, some flowers. A relatively simple gift that communicates gratitude. You can probably imagine giving token gifts like these to someone you don’t know well, right?

The relationship between the giver and the receiver is significant here…

THE RELATIONSHIP

The nature of gift giving changes as relationships change. (Belk & Coon 1991) As relationships progress, gifts can become more costly and more personal. So yes, remember the 2×2 matrix? Well, as relationships progress, gifts typically move from the low substance low sentiment to the high substance high sentiment quadrant.

And of course, people misfire with their gift-giving all the time! Giving too much, too little or too late can strain a relationship (Sherry 1983).

Gifts can also signal compatibility or incompatibility (Belk & Coon 1991). Here’s another model or theory to consider in the context of gift-giving: transitivity. DO you remember transitivity or balance theory from school?

(+) x (+) = (+)(+) x (-) = (-)(-) x (-) = (+)

So assuming you’re buying a gift for someone you like (that’s a positive) and you choose something that you like (also a positive), you hope and assume they will like it too (another positive). But if they DON’T, then maybe you don’t know the person? Or (gasp) maybe you don’t want to know the person? It’s about balance between the giver, the receiver, and the gift itself.

Since gifts are so symbolic, they can communicate a desire to alter a relationship trajectory (Ruth Otnes & Brunel 1999) (Wooten 2000). Imagine an unexpected, incredibly thoughtful and meaningful. Maybe an intimate gift. It kind of changes things, doesn’t it?

When we communicate with people, we have our words, we have our tone, we have our body language, and, amongst other things, we also have our gifts.

Gifts are significant.

SUMMARY

Let me summarize now to help you think about gift-giving from a new, more rational perspective.

Gift-giving is significant. Simply put, gift-giving has the power to communicate a lot. Of course, there are token gifts, but there are also not-so-token gifts, especially when the gifting occasion or the tangible gift itself is unexpected.

Just understanding the significance of gift-giving can help you with your communication and with your relationships. And understanding the nuances of gift-giving can help you determine what you should worry about and what you shouldn’t worry about.

What should we worry about? Well, we should seriously consider the symbolism of the gift. But also consider the gift givers’ individual situation – their culture and personal family upbringing. Sometimes we read into gifts unnecessarily when they were intended as tokens. And sometimes we misinterpret based on divergent cultures or family rituals.

I hope you will give some thought to the substance and sentiment gift-giving model with the 2×2 matrix. Remember that people typically don’t appreciate the extremes, and that the most appreciated gifts are often the low substance high sentiment gifts.

What should we worry less about?

Well, apparently we should worry less about how much money we spend (it really is the thought that counts!)

And as for those gift registries and wish lists – just buy from them. Stop trying to go above and beyond. Just give them what they want!

OK – that’s it for this episode. Don’t forget my gift for you.

You can download your Free “Gift-Giving Guide,” a summary of the Dos & Dont’s of gift giving, including what t you should worry LESS about. Yes, I’m here to minimize your stress.

Just go to talkabouttalk.com/gift-giving, And download the 1-pager for free. You’re welcome.

Talk soon!

The post Gift-Giving Do’s & Don’ts (ep.177) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Extreme opinion seems to be the norm. How many times have you consciously avoided a conversation about social or political views? “Remaking the Space Between Us” author Dr. Diana McLain Smith shares her insights with Andrea about how to start the conversation in an environment when toxic polarization is standard.

*DIANA SMITH** Book: “Remaking the Space Between Us: How Citizens Can Work Together to Build a Better Future For Us All“ – https://amzn.to/4hIM1uw * Article: Diana Smith & Amy Edmondson “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. + California Management Review – https://www.iths.org/wp-content/uploads/Too-Hot-to-Handle.pdf + University of Toronto Rotman magazine – https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/news-events-and-ideas/rotman-management-magazine/back-issues/2008/fall-2008—the-future-of-capital-/ * Diana’s 3 Recos: + Podcast: “The Bullwark”, Sarah Longwell – https://podcast.thebulwark.com/hosts/sarah-longwell + Book: “And There was Light” John Meacham – https://amzn.to/3YIImnR + Documentary. “I Am Not Your Negro” https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5804038/

*DIANA SMITH’S RECOMMENDED RESOURCES:** “Ask: Tap Into the Hidden Wisdom of People Around You for Unexpected Breakthroughs In Leadership and Life” Jeff -Wetzler – https://amzn.to/3CnOGtu * Sharon Says So (Instagram) – https://www.instagram.com/sharonsaysso/?hl=en * Solutions Journalism Network – https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/ * Reuters – https://www.reuters.com/ * More in Common – https://www.moreincommon.com/ * Listen First Project – https://www.listenfirstproject.org/ * One Small Step – https://onesmallstep.com/ * Starts With Us – https://startswith.us/

TRANSCRIPT

Meet Dr. Diana McLain Smith. I’ve interviewed a lot of high IQ folks here at the talk about talk podcast. But I have to say, Diana is off the charts. I met Diana when Amy Edmondson recommended that I read Diana’s book, entitled “Re-Making the Space Between Us.” This book is chalk full of relevant history, more current stories, and incredible insight.

In the next 45 minutes, you’re going to hear my conversation with Diana Smith, and my summary of what we can do to help us re-make the space between us.

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #176
“Talking Extremes – Remaking the space between us with Diana Smith.”

My interview with Diana Smith was recorded just before the US presidential election. We decided to wait until after the election to share these insights with you. As November 5 came and went, Diana Smith’s insights, and our conversation were top of mine for me. The next day on November 6, I flew from my home in Toronto to attend a women’s leadership conference in Boston, Massachusetts. Yes, many of my friends said that I was crazy to go to the US. Anyway, when I was at the airport waiting for my flight to board, I started a conversation with a complete stranger. Interesting how this often happens when we’re traveling, doesn’t it? Of course, the election came up, and we explicitly decided not to mention which side of this political divide we support. But over the course of our conversation, it became very evident …
she mentioned her son’s request that she not mention the triggering Trump word in the presence of his liberal minded girlfriend. Ah! She’s a trump supporter. Oh dear. We waded into immigration, and things got testy. I remember pausing and thinking to myself, “Andrea! You’re a communication coach! You have Diana’s advice t guide you! You can do this!” And here’s the thing. This woman was a complete stranger. We could’ve both walked away with absolutely no implications. But we kept talking. I asked her questions and she asked me questions. The conversation shifted to bodily autonomy and abortion. I remember saying “that’s interesting” when I disagreed. I also remember the tension notably diminishing as the conversation went on. Our political opinions were mostly diametrical. But we discovered we had a lot more in common, like our love of our almost adult children, and our focus on gender parity. At the end of the conversation, I put my hand on her arm and said “I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you have a great trip. “ At once I felt relief that the conversating went the way it did, also a sense of hope.

Have you had any conversations like this lately? This episode will help you navigate these conversations.

OK – I better introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m an executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. At Talk about Talk, I coach ambitious executives to elevate their communication skills so they can communicate with confidence and credibility. To learn more about what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com where you can read about the coaching and the workshops that I run. Plus there are lots of free resources for you on the TAT website, including all sorts of quizzes, tips sheets, and other resources. The one that I’m most excited about is the brand new TAT archetypes quiz. It’s kind of like a personality test, but instead of evaluating you on personality traits, you can learn which of 12 professional identity archetypes resonates with you. You can find all of these resources, including the archetypes quiz, on the talk abouttalk.com website.

Alright Let’s get into this. “Talking Extremes and Remaking the space between us.”

Let me introduce Diana, then we’ll get right into the interview.
At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you.
This summary will be based on insights from a paper that was co-authored by Diana Smith and Amy Edmondson in the California management review and the University of Toronto Rotman magazine. The paper is called “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. In this paper, Diana and Amy outline three. Practises for discuss discussing hot topics: one is managing yourself. Two is managing the conversation. And three is managing the relationship. So I’m going to summarize my conversation with Diana by sharing insights sharing her advice in each of these three categories, managing yourself managing the conversation and managing the relationship. I love this. The power of three.

Anyway, as I’ve often said you don’t need to take notes because I do that for you. So sit back and listen and I’ll provide a helpful summary for you at the end.

Now, Diana.

Dr. Diana McLain Smith earned her masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. Prior to graduate school, Diana was trained as a family therapist. Today, Diana is a renowned thought leader who has led change efforts in some of America’s most iconic businesses and cutting-edge non-profits. A former partner at the Monitor Group and a former chief executive partner at New Profit, Smith developed an approach to conflict and change called Leading Through Relationships (LTR)™. Diana’s frameworks and tools are captured in dozens of articles and in her books, entitled, “The Elephant in the Room” and “Divide Or Conquer .“ Her insights and expertise have been used around the world to turn intergroup conflict into a powerful force for change.

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Diana, for being here today to talk to us about “Remaking the Space Between Us.”

Diana Smith: I am delighted to be here, Andrea. I really am excited. I love the questions you sent me, and I think we’re going to have a great conversation.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Me, too. So let’s get right into it. I know from, you know, the outset of reading your book, and then it’s definitely confirmed in the epilogue which I just reread. I know that you feel optimistic about the future, despite all of the, if you want to say it, horrible things that are happening out there.

What is your hope for this book?

Diana Smith: Well, the hope for the book is actually that it gets in the hands of everybody, because I’m trying to correct for a bias on the part of the media. The media leads with what bleeds. And there was once a wonderful conversation that Judy Woodruff had with Roger Ailes, political operative, and he told her, “Here’s the thing about the media: you get two guys on the stage running for office. One gives you the Middle East peace plan, and the other one falls in the orchestra pit. Who do you think the media is going to cover? The orchestra.”

So I’m trying to correct for a profound bias that I think is discouraging everybody and exhausting everybody. It’s— you talk about it in your research— it’s this tendency to focus on the extremes. My hope is that I can help correct for that, so that people have enough energy to get reengaged as citizens and to start to heal the divides that have emerged over the past 50 years.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, beautiful. I mean, that sounds like Utopia, right? It sounds—it’s so—it’s utopic. Perhaps it’s also really, really challenging. I mean, every essay that you wrote in your book, I was like, “Oh, and there’s that!” Oh, and there’s our implicit bias, right? Oh! And you referenced my research. So my doctoral research, which I don’t talk about a lot in my business with Talk About Talk, but my research was on word of mouth, and particularly what motivates people to share their consumption experiences—the services and the products that they’ve consumed. And not surprisingly, there’s an asymmetrical U-shaped relationship between the valence of your experience, or the story for our purposes here, right? And whether or not you’re going to talk about it. In other words, people talk about extremely satisfying or dissatisfying consumption experiences, not the mediocre ones, because there’s nothing novel about them. There’s nothing interesting about a mediocre experience. It’s those experiences on the extremes that we talk about, that we remember. And as I was reading your book, I was thinking, this is exactly the same phenomenon—like we’re being pulled to extremes, which makes it very difficult to remake the space between us, right?

Diana Smith: So I’m not looking for Utopia. But let’s come back to that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Fair enough, yes.

Diana Smith: Just to come back to the question you just asked. I don’t much like mediocrity myself. Mediocre experiences. I’m sympathetic to that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Good job.

Diana Smith: With the media, they subscribe to what I call an outrage model of news. Okay? So they’re only focused on the people who go to the restaurant and get served a crappy meal and go, “God! This was awful.” Okay.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s right.

Diana Smith: But think about the people who go and they say, “Man, this is the best meal I’ve had forever.” They report on it. Right. Well, there are news outlets out there that are reporting on those “Wow! That’s great news” stories, but you don’t hear about them. It’s not part of the dominant news model, of an emergent news model. And that emergent news model is showing up in places like the Solutions Journalism Network, which I highly recommend your readers check out.

You can go there and look at their story tracker and find lots of stories that are the equivalent of a 5-star restaurant meal. Okay? And people will talk about them and exude happiness about them, and so on. The difficulty we have is that we’ve been so cultivated in the outrage model that we carry around in our heads an outrage mindset, which fits like a hand in a glove. Okay, so one of the things I’m hoping to do, partly through the book, why I wanted to get it in everybody’s hands, is I’m trying to cultivate—not only in the news, which I care about, but in people—an engaged mindset.

Which looks not just at the problem but at what people are currently doing to solve those problems by working together across divides, because, even though we differ dramatically, we do share common problems. And we actually have a lot of common goals, and more in common. A research organization has demonstrated through endless studies, and I highly recommend people check out More in Common, that suggests that we agree on more things than we disagree on. 67% of us are not in ideological extreme groups, and so those people are absolutely prepared and primed to get great stories that will motivate them to get involved.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, my goodness! I don’t know where to begin with the questions here. I think one of the stories in your book that I think—I told you this before—the interview that really resonated with me was the story about the young boy whose bedroom window was broken.

Can you share that story? I think this is really kind of setting the table here.

Diana Smith: I mean, there were 3 hate crimes in a row in Billings, Montana, in the 1990s, and this was the beginning of a movement called Not in Our Town. And I found the most poignant one of those crimes to be the 6-year-old boy who put a Menorah in his window at Hanukkah, and somebody threw a rock through it.

Prior to that, African Americans attending a church were terrorized by self-proclaimed skinheads, and before that, a Native American home was vandalized—the outside of their home was painted with a Nazi insignia and the word “die.” And the first thing that happened is the Painters Union went and painted that house for free.

And when asked why, he said, “Don’t other places come to the help of their neighbors when they’re not doing well? I mean, that’s what we do in Billings.” And then white neighbors escorted the African American congregants to their church. And then perhaps most notable, the local newspaper printed a copy of the Menorah and hundreds of homes put the Menorahs in their windows.

There was a woman who I have great respect for, and she did another film recently called Repairing the World about Pittsburgh, after the Tree of Life incident, where 11 people’s lives were taken by a white nationalist. Patrice O’Neal and her colleague, Riam Miller, went to Billings, Montana, back in the 1990s after these hate crimes had occurred to see what the neighborhoods did to respond. And she did a documentary called Not in Our Town, which you can find on PBS. Even though it’s quite old, the film quality isn’t great, it’s still an incredible film.

And she showed the film when she got back to Oakland, California, where she’s from, to communities in the Bay Area. And after people came from all over—by the way, it was like law enforcement and faith leaders and educators and regular citizens, and you know, the big auditorium with lots of people there—she showed the film, and then she turned to them and she said, “So, what do you think of Billings, Montana?” And they said, “I don’t want to talk about Billings, Montana. I want to talk about our town.”

“Are we creating a sense of belonging sufficient to reduce hatred?” Because they understood that one of the reasons hatred takes root is because people are isolated and are alienated, and people don’t have a role, and they don’t have a place to belong to.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And so…

Diana Smith: Not in Our Town is both about saying we won’t put up with this, but also about educating people about how hate takes root and helping people to become included.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. We all want to become part of… we have a need to join a collective or a tribe. Right? I know that was a theme in the book as well.

I’m sure this has occurred to you a million times, but it just occurred to me right now how sort of meta this is, right? We’re talking about how the media is focused on extreme messages, because that’s the news that sells.

But there may be an opportunity for us, for you—starting with you now being on this podcast and other podcasts, and with your book and everything—to use that idea of an extreme message. The downfall, if we don’t do what you’re hoping, what you’re prescribing here—is that it’s an extremely negative outcome. Is that not enough to get people’s attention? Do you know?

Diana Smith: I think it has gotten people’s attention. I think Kamala Harris’s campaign—whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican—just from an empirical point of view, I don’t think she could have sparked the enthusiasm she sparked, if it weren’t for how fed up people are with the… It’s not just extremism. This is… it’s negative. Hateful extremism.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? You can get…

Diana Smith: Dream, joy, love, and people solving problems. But what you’re getting here is extreme hatred, and people are tired of it. I read some article that talked about… I think it was Jumping the Shark, which was from an old TV show. The Fonz jumps the shark, and it was a metaphor for when a TV show has gone too far, and people just get fed up with it and sick of it. And so they start doing stupid things like having the Fonz jump the shark. Well, that’s what’s happening to the far right right now. Okay, it’s almost becoming a parody of itself, because people are tired of it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm, yeah, I love that. That they become a parody of themselves. That’s amazing. So back to the asymmetrical U-shaped relationship I was talking about—the extremes—but it is asymmetrical, right? Where, to your whole point, it’s the negative news that gets attention, that gets published, and then gets the attention, and then is recalled.

You know, I remember when I was studying word of mouth, there’s this sort of myth—this kind of common-sense myth—that we’ve all heard, that you know, negative word of mouth travels faster than positive word of mouth. And it was like, actually, no, it’s just that it’s recalled more. So we even recall negative messages more so than positive messages, and definitely more so than neutral messages.

Diana Smith: This is really important. And I think the people listening to you are probably saying, “Yeah, that’s right. You know, you’ve got this negative news, and we’re up against so much, what are we gonna do?”

And all it does is disempower people.

Okay? And there’s no question that for evolutionary reasons, for cognitive reasons, for social reasons, we’re all primed probably to be more responsive to negative messages as a way of defending ourselves from threat. True.

So, that’s a given. We really understand that. There are also lots of things that we, as human beings, have learned to self-discipline ourselves, because we know if we follow our instincts… I pick up the guy on the street who looks really cute… people are gonna say that’s inappropriate behavior. I know not to do that. I mean, there’s a whole lot of things that we have learned to socialize out of our responses because it’s detrimental to ourselves and detrimental to others.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Can I just say, at a social level, and also at an individual level? Right.

Diana Smith: Exactly. I mean, I’d get arrested. I mean, so yeah, right? And so…

This is the kind of thing where I think if people start to reflect on their own internal responses, and there’s been lots of research on this, we… you know, the negative messages target our “hot” systems in our brain, and Michelle, a psychologist, and his colleague, whose name I’m blocking right now, did research on self-control.

And they discovered that, you know, we have a hot system which reacts quickly, is emotional, overcomes our rational… it’s reactive. But they’ve learned that people can shift to their “cool” system with practice, and the more they practice it, the quicker they can shift to their cool system, which is reflective, is thoughtful, is mindful… all those kinds of things. So I think what I want to do is put control in the hands of people.

And I believe, by the way, if you look at the beginning of my book, I cite 15 citizen movements that have led nations out of darkness. I’m not believing this as a matter of faith. History tells us that we have more power than we are aware of. So I want to focus on what can we control…

And we control? We can control how we react to those messages. We can find better news sources, which I’d be glad to recommend later. Okay?

We can do lots of things to counter this. So I don’t want to suggest—and I think it’s problematic to suggest—that these forces are so powerful, we are helpless. We are not. We are vulnerable to those forces, but we are not helpless.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So let’s get into what some of your top suggestions are for ways that we can get traction in this quest. As I was, after we had secured or booked this interview, Diana, I was listening to a podcast with Scott Galloway, and he was talking about… he and his new co-host Jessica Tarlov just started a new podcast called Raging Moderates.

I just love the title. And he even smiled and joked about the title. So there are big things like you writing this book, like Scott and Jessica hosting this podcast, but what maybe… start with some of the little things that we as individuals can do. I guess proactively—not in the moment when we see a transgression—but I mean, like proactively, what can we do?

Diana Smith: Yes. Well, you know, I think the first thing is that we extend to ourselves the grace we wish others would extend to us, and we hope to extend to others. Okay, because…

We are going to get triggered. I get triggered all the time. I know you had Amy Edmondson on your show recently. And she’s obviously the thought leader behind psychological safety.

But, you know, we can’t always create psychological safety for other people, or be perfect, or react perfectly. I think it’s a natural instinct for us to distance from people who make us uncomfortable.

So I think one thing we can do is start to think about… What do we have to gain from interrupting that immediate response to get angry, distant, to run away?

And I think one thing is to help ourselves see, and to coach ourselves to see, that as a leader and as a colleague, for us to succeed, we have to have the biggest bandwidth possible for collaborating with people. That is in our interest as a leader and as a colleague. If you can’t deal with a lot of people, you tend not to be successful. So you have to increase your bandwidth anytime you find yourself getting angry, threatened, frustrated, upset.

Okay, essentially, what that person is telling you is that you’ve reached the limits of your competence. You’ve reached the limits of your bandwidth. You don’t know how to deal with this person, and therefore, you’re upset because it’s threatening to you.

If, instead of seeing it as a threat, you see it as an opportunity to expand your bandwidth, to expand your capabilities, to learn how to reach across divides. So that would mean doing things like reaching out to the person, finding out things you have in common…

Getting behind their eyes to see what they see, getting inside their heads to see what they experience. It’s not having a political conversation with them. It’s like, if somebody in a meeting says something inappropriate, you don’t have to call them out in the meeting. Afterwards, you can say, “I was surprised you said that. What’s going on?”

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Diana Smith: What’s going on? What are you… what are you going through? Right? What are you experiencing? And then try to help the person see things that you see that they might not. And a great book out now by Jeff Wetzer, I’d recommend him for your podcast, called Ask…

And he talks about how the most caring thing you can do for somebody is to get curious.

And so, you know, getting curious is really important. And then…

You know, the one thing Lincoln said, many brilliant things. But the one thing he said that I think tops them all…

Is, “I don’t like that man. I have to get to know him better.”

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, yes, I remember that. I love that.

Diana Smith: Okay? And I think if… I think it’s possible to remind ourselves of that. And then…

You know, I think in addition to what we can do when we’re face to face with people as leaders and colleagues, I think we can start to educate ourselves on what people are already doing to remake the space between us. There are organizations, and I can name a few, and you might put them in the show notes. There’s an organization called Starts With Us, and they’ll send you an exercise every day to get you to reflect on how you navigate the space between us.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, amazing. Yeah, I’d love to.

Diana Smith: It’s amazing. And this is like, you know, a few minutes a day. And then there’s the Listen 1st project, which lists about 150 organizations across the country, literally millions of people working at the local level in nationally connected groups, remaking the space between us by working on common problems together over time.

Another internet site that I highly recommend is Sharon says. So it’s on Instagram, and it’s Sharon McMahon’s site. Okay? And it has workshops, it has seminars, and then get in touch with organizations like Not In Our Town. They’re all across the country.

So, you know, what you can do… And then there’s another one called One Small Step, which will hook you up with somebody who’s completely different from you for 30 minutes so you can just talk about your life experience.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, yeah.

Diana Smith: And then you can make a friend across a demographic or ideological divide. But no matter what…

Do not give up.

Do not withdraw.

Our democracy cannot survive if the people in that 67% give up. We have to keep our heads and our hearts in the game.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, we’re at a majority. And we need to use our numbers.

Diana Smith: Exactly.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So in a business context… At the very beginning, when you were answering that question, Diana, you were talking about, to paraphrase, diverse…

Groups… You know, the research shows, and I want to really reinforce this: diverse groups are proven to be more effective. So diversity in, particularly senior executives in an organization, organizations that have more diverse boards of directors…

You know, are more successful in terms of the metrics, the profit and bottom line that they’re tracking and other key metrics. So another way to think about this, if you want to be really sort of performance-oriented or rational from a business perspective, is…

Listening to diverse perspectives and internalizing them, and then maybe even acting on them or collaborating can be a competitive advantage.

Diana Smith: Oh, it is a competitive advantage. That’s why I go crazy when people talk about this as woke, or ideological, or, you know, soft or Kumbaya. I’m an extremely practical person, and I’m the most competitive person most of my friends know.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. Good to know. Good to know.

Diana Smith: So I care about doing well. And in order to do well, I need to see things I can’t see.

And I can’t do that unless I tap the wisdom and the knowledge and the perspective of others. So it’s a very self-interested point of view, and in some ways, I consider myself a bit of an Imperialist, because I’ll grab any idea that I think is going to help advance something I really care about and get me to a goal, and you’re going to do that best with a diverse group of people.

So it’s too bad that that has become an ideological football, because no one’s going to win the game with that attitude.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like, it’s like the term diversity has become weaponized, which I know is a term you use. Right? It’s become weaponized when, in fact, what you’re talking about is…

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: …just the fact that we’re not all the same, you’re not prescribing a certain way of thinking, you’re actually…encouraging… I’m trying to not use the word diversity. You’re encouraging different perspectives.

Diana Smith: Yes, I’m encouraging learning.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So…

Diana Smith: …has been my life’s work is organizational learning. You know, we live in a competitive, fast-paced world, and organizations that can’t adapt can’t keep up, and you can’t adapt without learning.

And you know, if you’re drinking your own bathwater to use a disgusting image, you’re not going to get very far. So you need to be able to learn, and you need to be able to learn from people who think and experience differently than you, the world differently than you do, and have access to different information. And, by the way, I’ve spent my life and some of it with Amy, and you know, over 30 years looking at groups and organizations, do what we’re watching our nation do. Which is why I wrote the book.

Groups discounting each other rather than learning from each other.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Diana Smith: And yet the nature of the groups, and how they get divided in organizations is such that they have access to not only different information, but different kinds of information. They have different experiences, they have different competencies. So putting that all together is critical for the organization to survive, same goes for our nation.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah, okay, so I have to… I have to confess, Diana…

When we first started this conversation, I did not share your optimism. I’m hopeful, but I was feeling a little bit more pessimistic, I’m just gonna admit, than I am now.

With your conviction of being ambitious. So I need… I need to just share this. I know for a fact that the people that listen to this podcast, my clients, and the podcast listeners…Almost a hundred percent of them have two attributes that I admire so much. One is their ambition and the other one is their growth mindset, right? And you were just talking about how you also have those traits and the combination of those two things has got to more of us to do all of the things that you’re talking about, right, to remake the space between us. So…

If you could also, just to get really practical here, maybe share some new sources. I know that there’s the one that you mentioned…

Diana Smith: Solutions, journalism, network. Better than most of them by far.

I think If you want a more balanced news, I think Reuters is probably the most balanced. but in terms of a solutions, orientation solutions. Journalism network is by far the best. But I want to come back to something that it’s a distinction that James Stockdale makes between being an optimist and having hope.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, because words are important.

Diana Smith: Yeah, I don’t self-identify as an optimist. So I want to read to you something that he said.

First of all, Vice Admiral James Stockdale survived 8 torturous years in a Vietnamese prison camp. Yeah. And so Jim Collins, business writer, Jim Collins, Good to Great, interviewed him, and he said, “How the heck did you survive?”

And he said, “You know, I never lost faith in the end of the story.”

“I never doubted, not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end, and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect I would not trade.”

He then went on to say that faith was very different from the optimists.

The optimists would say, “We’re going to be out by Christmas.” Then Christmas would come, and then Thanksgiving, and then, you know, Easter, and then Christmas would come again, and they’d set their sights on a date, and the date would pass, and they died of a broken heart.

Yeah, this distinction led to what’s called the Stockdale Paradox, which he put this way:

“You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

And you saw in the book I confront some brutal facts in that book.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Diana Smith: Yet I never lose faith in the ability of humans to overcome those adversities because we have done so throughout history. The only question in my mind now is because of climate change, we have a time horizon that is imposed on us, and so our ability to climb the learning curve fast is absolutely critical, and the more people who despair and think it’s not possible, the slower we will go up that learning curve.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hmm. That is a beautiful point. Yeah.

Diana Smith: Hope is a political act.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

So speaking of time constraints…

You and I are talking today less than a month away from the U.S. elections. And I know that this episode is going to be released after…

But I want to ask you your top-line thinking about where we are and what might happen between now and election day, and maybe to go back to the hope and optimism point, what your hope is.

Diana Smith: Yeah. Well, my hope is that no matter what the outcome of this election is, that the millions of people already at work across the country, working to bridge the divides that created this dysfunction we are experiencing…

That people will join their ranks, and make sure that this democracy that our founders sacrificed their lives to create, did not… and people in the Civil War died to save, that they did not die in vain.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Whoo.

Diana Smith: People join that movement. We’re going to need to do it, regardless of how the election turns out. I think the bigger election, so to speak, is, are we going to vote on ourselves as citizens, and believe in ourselves and do what we need to do to save our democracy and to save our planet and to make this multigroup democracy of ours functional?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah. So it’s about taking our lens and pulling back, like, what is our ultimate objective here? It’s not just, “I voted for the party” or the “candidate that won” or “that lost.” It’s much bigger picture than that. And really focusing on that. Okay.

Diana Smith: It’s about our ability as a multigroup democracy to solve urgent problems as quickly as we can before they trump us. That’s going to require us to work across groups. We have failed at doing that the last… not completely, but we’ve not done well the last 50 years. We’ve done worse and worse. We have to turn that trajectory around. Our elected officials are not going to do it until we, the people, do it because they’re going to cater and pander to the extreme.

So we in the 67% have got to stop ceding ground to the extremists, take back our power and our control, join these groups across the country that are working to do that, and turn around what has been a bad trajectory and turn it into a good one.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. So I am gonna sneak another question in before I get to the four rapid-fire questions, because, you know, before I pressed record again, you and I… I said I want to ask the questions that I know the listeners want to hear. I know what I would want to hear is: what exactly do I say in, you know, it’s the end of November, and I’m in a meeting at work, and I’m in the 66-67%. Someone who’s got an extreme view says something in the moment. Right? So, I mean, the meta-level or the strategic level of advice that you’re giving is to join these movements, to practice media hygiene, to do all of these kind of proactive things. What about when you’re in the moment?

Diana Smith: Yeah. Well, we talked a little bit about it earlier, but let me get into it. I came across an article in Dear Eric, which is in the Washington Post in the Life section.

Someone wrote to him and said, “I’m in this group of guys that get together on Zoom, and we’ve been together for many years, and sometimes this one guy says things that make me uncomfortable. I sort of don’t say anything and let it pass, but recently, he said he really has a problem with all the brown people coming to the country.”

And this fellow thought that was a very— as I would, too— a very problematic statement. And just to be clear, I find it problematic because I think people don’t understand the positive role that immigrants play in coming to our country. But anyway, Eric’s response, I thought, was really good. He said, rather than call him out, call him in.

Calling someone in is an invitation to discussion and repair. It’s a way of saying, “It concerns me that you hold this opinion. Would you be open to talking it through?”

Now, I would ask a different question than that, but I certainly think that’s perfectly reasonable. I would tend to say, “I’m surprised to hear you say that. What are you worried about?”

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Okay.

Diana Smith: I want to understand. What is it behind that statement? And then I can imagine saying things like, “Well, you know, I’ve had a different experience. And some of the research I’ve done, because I know immigration is a big issue, I’ve done some inquiry into it. And I’ve discovered that immigration has been actually vital to turning around dying towns, that they’ve added money to coffers, that they play a vital role in industries across the United States.”

So what is it that you’re seeing or hearing that leads you to worry? And then just start a conversation, not a fight. We need to build relationships, not cases.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So we’re building relationships, not cases. That said, we can focus on the issue as opposed to pointing fingers at a person and being accusational, right? So there’s a…

Diana Smith: Good morning!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Diana Smith: Yeah, but…

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I never thought of that before, because I know some of the most common advice that communication coaches give, you know, on this topic of communicating with difficult people— I’m saying “difficult people” in air quotes— is to focus on the issue, not on the person.

Diana Smith: Yeah, yes, exactly. And if you focus on the issue, understanding that people can disagree, but they don’t need to be disagreeable.

And through talking about the issues, if you’re genuinely interested in learning what’s going on, not just condemning the person, then through that, you build a relationship of greater trust and openness.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Diana Smith: And it’s possible. I mean, in the book, I talk about the transformation of a white nationalist whose experience in college led him to disavow white nationalism. And he did that because of the conversations he had with friends.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, do you wanna share a little bit more about that?

Diana Smith: This is an extraordinary story, and it’s… I’m sorry, yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It is.

Diana Smith: It’s one that falsifies the idea that, you know, someone is so far gone that there’s nothing you can do. Okay? So first of all, the story—which I write about in the book—is called Befriending Your Ideological Enemy. It’s based on a book by Eli Saslow called Rising Out of Hatred, and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. It tells the story about a young guy named Derek Black, 18 years old, and he was the heir apparent to the white nationalist movement in the U.S. He was the son of Don Black, who founded Stormfront, one of the first hate sites on the internet, and godson to the ultra-right-wing politician, David Duke, who’s a neo-Nazi and a conspiracy theorist and a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

So this guy came from a very small, insular white nationalist group. After being homeschooled, he goes off to New College in Florida, and New College is a liberal arts college that has a far-left-leaning student body.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So…

Diana Smith: And there, he meets and makes friends with people far outside of the circle that he’d ever encountered. Okay, so you can imagine the cognitive dissonance this guy’s going through. He’s there for about a year, and nobody knows he’s a white nationalist. He meets people, he makes friends, acquaintances, and so on, but after a year, somebody finds out and outs him.

And the message board at the college just goes wild. They start saying things like, “You know, Derek’s an idiot, a hatemonger, a Hitler, a fraud. You simply cannot reason with someone like that.” And they said he ought to be expelled or ostracized.

There was a very small, diverse group of students that made a different choice.

And it was one of Derek’s acquaintances, an Orthodox Jew by the name of Matthew Stevenson, who decided to invite Derek to his weekly Shabbat dinners. A bunch of people dropped out because they didn’t want to be there, but a small group came, and beforehand, Matthew turned to them and said, “Just don’t be assholes. We want him to come back.”

And his view was: “This guy has been raised by white nationalists. We’re not going to change his view in one night. Let’s not talk about white nationalism. Let’s just get to know each other.”

Also at the table was a Peruvian immigrant by the name of Juan, another Orthodox Jew, Mosh Ashe, whose grandfather had been in a concentration camp in Germany, and then Alison Gornick, who was a leftist feminist. Okay? And over the next 18 months, this small group of friends created a context in which Derek’s very narrow mental space, which had been cultivated in this white nationalist community, started to expand.

And he started to reach across this chasmic distance between a white nationalist group and these ultra-liberal students. Okay, imagine how hard that must have been for the guy. And so, after 18 months, he eventually came around. He reexamined his beliefs, mostly with Alison. They’d get on the internet, they’d look up studies to examine the intelligence of different races, to look at the consequences of immigration— they did the whole thing. And so, afterward, he reflected on the process, and he told a reporter:

“It was people who disagreed with me who were critical to the process, especially those who were my friends regardless, but who let me know, when we talked about it, that they thought my beliefs were wrong, and took the time to provide evidence and civil arguments. I didn’t always agree with their ideas, but I listened to them, and they listened to me.”

It’s amazing to think of the distance this young kid traveled in two years. Okay?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It is.

Diana Smith: So it shows it is possible.

And that’s the point I wanted to make.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So it’s impressive that he went from what many of us would say, like a kid that didn’t have a chance, I mean, given his upbringing, right? Didn’t have a chance.

Yeah, he somehow had an open mind.

But also the other people who didn’t just reject him. That’s also very impressive.

Okay, are you ready for the 3 rapid fire questions.

Diana Smith: And.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Question number one: are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Diana Smith: I’m an introvert trapped in an extrovert’s body.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh!

Diana Smith: Meaning, I push myself to be an extrovert, as I am today. Okay.

But I recover alone.

And the definition of an introvert is usually, where do you recharge? And I recharge alone. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Diana, do you know that almost a hundred percent of the people that I interview have an answer, something like what you just said.

Diana Smith: Yeah, I can believe it. Because if you’re a leader, you have no choice but to be an extrovert. And it’s exhausting because you’re basically alone.

You’re taking on the weight of the organization on your own. I’ve been executives for 40 years. It’s a tough, tough job.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Okay. Question number two.

This, I’m very curious to hear from you. What are your communication pet peeves?

Diana Smith: Well, I’m, you know. I always hate to call them pet peeves, because I’m empathetic with why people do these things, but they can be irritating, and they’re problematic, and they’re not in the interest of the person who uses them. But the incessant use of qualifiers, especially the worst one would be: Let me be honest.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, so.

Diana Smith: Because, like, okay, cause all the other times I haven’t been honest. So watch out.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I say that way more, but I catch myself saying it. Recently, I’ve been—when I’m in the middle of a coaching session or workshop, I’ll say, Well, to be honest, and then I go: Stop.

o be clear, I am always honest. What I meant was actually… or I want to emphasize this point exactly.

Diana Smith: I think a lot of qualifiers are what an old mentor of mine, Roger Brown, at Harvard called politeness strategies. Okay, we want to mitigate any tension. And so we say, you know, I know this is a sensitive topic. So I want to make sure, you know… And so you’re packing these sentences up with all this superfluous stuff, it’s inefficient.

And it—the point gets lost in all the padding, and I think it sends a signal that you’re uncomfortable, that makes other people uncomfortable. It reduces honesty. It reduces learning.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You and I could do a whole podcast episode, conversation about that topic. I love it. Okay, last question.

Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately?

Diana Smith: Can I give a podcast, a book, and a documentary?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Please.

Diana Smith: Okay. Podcast: The Focus Group, Sarah Longwell’s podcast on The Bulwark. It’s extraordinary. She gets together with voters, and she asks them what they think about all sorts of things. So you get to hear, unmediated by the press, what people are really thinking, and we need more of that.

Excellent book: John Meacham’s And There Was Light: Abe Lincoln and the American Struggle. If you want to see a reality in the United States which is identical to today, read that book.

It’s incredible. Documentary: I Am Not Your Negro, which is basically a documentary on James Baldwin.

And it’s an extraordinary documentary, and especially for people who are white. It will be an eye-opener, and it’s an important one for people to understand.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, I will put links to the three of those in the show notes.

I’m good.

Ask if there’s anything else you want to share with the listeners about Remaking the Space Between Us.

Diana Smith: I think it’s the single biggest challenge we face. We have become very insular within our own groups.

Recycling the same news, the same beliefs, the same values. And we’ve gotten very distant from groups that are demographically and ideologically different.

And so we need to start to…

Close those divides. Open up. We have to open up the space within our own group before we can close the distance. So we have to start opening the space within our own group. And then we need to close the distance across groups.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Diana, for sharing your insights, your suggestions, and your hope for how we can remake the space between us. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you.

Diana Smith: Thank you, Andrea. This has been a lot of fun.

CLOSING

Thank you so much, Diana!

Diana’s knowledge of history, combined with her storytelling, and of course, her strategic acumen provide such a compelling case for us to focus on remaking the space between us.

Diana shared many many recommendations of resources that we can explore to help make this a reality. I combed through the transcript and included links to all of these resources. You can find the list at the top of the show notes in whatever podcast app you’re using.

Now, let me summarize. As I mentioned at the beginning, I’m going to briefly review Diana’s insights focusing on three categories that I found in a paper she co-authored with Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson. The paper is called “Too Hot to Handle: How to Manage Relationship Conflict”. In this paper, Diana and Amy outline three practises for discuss discussing hot topics: one is managing yourself. Two is managing the conversation. And three is managing the relationship.

Let’s start with managing yourself.

An easy place to start here is to explore the resources that Diana mentioned. If you’ve taken the time to fill your brain with neutral information or perhaps information from across the spectrum, you’re better equipped in so many ways.

Remember that diversity of thought and opinion can be a competitive adntage – for yourself and for your team. Did you catch Diana’s comment about bathwater?

“if you’re drinking your own bath water, you’re not going to get very far.”

That’s pretty visceral. Hopefully this idea of diversity of thought inspires you to check out a different website or news source from the one you’ve been reading. Maybe starting with a few that Diana suggests.

So that’s tactical. In terms of a mindset, Diana mentioned many times that are focus on learning and curiosity can help. This is what I focussed on in that heated conversation that I had in the airport the day after the election. I remember thinking Diana would encourage me to be curious. So I started asking questions. It works beautifully. Thank you, Diana.

That’s managing yourself.

The second category of insights is about

Managing the conversation.

Diana aptly said “start a conversation, not a fight. We need to build relationships, not cases.” Let’s start with conversations, then we’ll get into relationships.

Imagine you’re in a meeting. It could be one on one where you need to have a conversation with someone about something to build your business or it could be with a large group. Someone might say something inappropriate or perhaps something that you believe is not true. They may be expressing their social and political views.

Assuming they’re not Kai bashing the whole meeting, Diana suggests that you address it privately, after the meeting ends.

Diana shares a few prompts to get us started the first one is:

“ it concerns me that you hold this opinion. Would you be open to talking it through?”

The second is: “I’m surprised to hear you say that. What are you worried about?”

With both of these prompts, she starts with a non-threatening she starts by stating her opinion, but in a non-threatening way. In the first, she said it concerns me that you hold this opinion and then the second she said I’m surprised you hear to hear you say that. Then she followed that statement up with a question, would you be open to talking it through? Or what are you worried about?

This is a great framework for all of us. Start by sharing our concern in a non-threatening way then ask a question.

In practice, these prompts are a great idea,. However, in practice, sometimes things get very heated. We get triggered. Diana reminds us to use our self control. To pause. To overcome our hot system, which is reactive and emotional and shift to a cool system, which is more rational. Then we can follow up after pausing with one of these prompts.

So that’s managing the conversation. We’ve covered managing yourself and managing the conversation. Now , the third and last category is .

Three is managing the relationship

This is probably the most important thing isn’t it? Relationships.
Diana encourages us to remember that 67% of us are not in ideological extreme groups. In other words, we might have more in common that e thought, with more people than we thought. Take my conversation with the woman in the airport that I met the day after the election. She and I were both probably in the middle 67%. Just because we would vote for a different political candidate doesn’t mean we are at extreme odds.
Diana also reminded us that it’s a natural instinct for us to distance from people who make us uncomfortable. Instead of pushing those people away, we should focus on remaking t eh space between us.
One of the most caring things you can do for someone is to get curious. Do you remember the Lincoln quote that Diana shared? “I don’t like that man. I have to get to know him better.”

I think that’s a great place to close. the most caring thing you can do for somebody is to get curious.

The next time you’re in a heated conversation with someone, whether it’s a coworker, a family member, a friend or a complete stranger in an airport. I hope you remember these words. The most caring thing you can do is to get curious. Thanks again to Diana.

As I said, you can find links to all of Diana’s recommendations and more in the show notes for this episode.

My coordinates are there too. Please connect with me anytime. Check out the Talkabouttalk.com website or send me a DM on LinkedIn.
I love hearing from you.

Talk soon!

The post Talk EXTREMES – Remaking the Space Between Us with Dr. Diana McLain Smith (ep.176) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson talks with Andrea about the significance of accountability in a psychologically safe workplace. Learn about the important difference between disappointment vs regret and between mistakes vs failures. Amy shares insights from her new book, “The Right Kind of Wrong,” including the three types of failure, and the one we should be striving for!

*BOOKS & ARTICLES MENTIONED** Amy Edmondson – “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth” – https://amzn.to/4dYjz4R * Amy Edmondson – “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well” – https://amzn.to/4eGjOTc * Daniel Kahneman – “Thinking Fast & Slow” – https://amzn.to/3UmQMjv * Adam Grant (NYTimes) – “Women Know Exactly What They’re Doing When They Use “Weak Language” – https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/opinion/women-language-work.html * Samuel Culbert – “Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters“ – https://amzn.to/40glY7x

TRANSCRIPT

Yes, we all have work to do. In the next 45 minutes, you’re going to learn directly from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, a pioneer in psychological safety and failing well.

Wait – isn’t that an oxymoron? “Failing Well”?
Not necessarily.

I cant wait for you to hear my conversation with Amy

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #175
“Psychological Safety and failing well with professor Amy Edmondson.”

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m an executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. Through my work at Talk about Talk, I coach ambitious executives to elevate their communication skills so they can communicate with confidence and credibility. To learn more about what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com where you can read about the coaching and the workshops that I run. Plus there are lots of free resources for you, including the brand new archetypes quiz, where you can learn which archetype resonates with you and your professional identity. You can also free coaching from me by signing up for my free email newsletter.
Head over to talkabouttalk.com to sign up now.

OK,Let’s get into this.
Years ago, I had the privilege of taking Professor Amy Edmondson’s doctoral course called “Field Research Methods” at Harvard Business School. Fast forward to today. Many years later, I regularly coach executives – and medical and health care professionals, as youll hear, whether through 1:1 coaching sessions or corporate workshops, on some of the phenomena that Amy taught me, and some of the concepts that she pioneered, including psychological safety.

Recently, Amy published a new book called “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing well”. After reading the book, I emailed Amy and asked her if I could interview her for this podcast. I was thrilled that she immediately agreed. To say Amy’s work is impactful and prolific would be an understatement. So my goal with this interview is to ask Amy the Qs that I know YOU would ask – Qs focused on communication skills, and possibly Qs that differ from the Qs she typically gets in many of the other interviews she’s done. Here, we focus on our communication and our mindset as leaders and as communicators.

We have a LOT to talk about here!

Let me introduce Amy, then we’ll get right into the interview.
At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. Sound good?
Ok.

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society. Amy is so perfect for this chair, I have to say.

Amy studies teaming, psychological safety, and organizational learning, and she’s authored 7 books and over 75 cases and articles. She’s been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; She also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.

In 2019, Amy’s published her seminal book, “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth.” Her more recent book “Right Kind of Wrong – The Science of Failing Well,” is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.
Yes, I’ll leave links to these books in the shownotes, along with links to other books and papers that we mention in our conversation.

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Amy, for being here today to talk to us about psychological safety and the concept of failing well.

Amy Edmondson: Thrilled to be here.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I’ve already shared the definition of psychological safety, but I have a question. When I’m discussing this with my clients, especially when it comes up in coaching sessions, I often describe it as a culture where it’s safe to take risks. Is that a solid, short definition?

Amy Edmondson: It absolutely is.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Perfect!

Amy Edmondson: This topic has come up frequently in my work and research within organizations, largely due to the growing popularity of the concept. However, this also leads to many misunderstandings and misconceptions. There are two key points that people often raise that can be frustrating, both for them and for me. One is…

Amy Edmondson: People often say, “We love this psychological safety concept, but we have to care about performance.” The reality is that without a climate where risk-taking feels safe, it’s challenging to perform well.

In our world of uncertainty and interdependence, there’s another concerning trend: people are starting to misuse the concept as a weapon. They might say, “You can’t give me feedback, or you’ll undermine my psychological safety.” That’s completely incorrect.

Psychological safety actually encourages an environment where we provide feedback to one another. We should aim to give it respectfully and accurately, even though it won’t always be perfect. We need to accept that we might get it wrong sometimes, but we’re doing our best and will work through it together.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love how your two seminal books are not mutually exclusive; there’s so much overlap. You mentioned getting it wrong, which leads me to a question I was planning to ask later. Recently, I conducted workshops for physicians in Australia, despite the 14-hour time difference! I shared that I would be interviewing you, and they had some questions for you.

One physician mentioned that, in Australia—especially in medicine—while it’s not illegal to not create a culture of psychological safety, it’s increasingly coming up in courts of law. I see you nodding; this isn’t news to you.

Amy Edmondson: Yes, I’ve heard similar concerns. While the intentions are good, this situation can be deeply problematic.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: yeah. So is it against the law to not create a culture of psychological safety? Or is it that it comes up.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: One of the physicians mentioned that it seems to come up when people are accused of bullying.

Amy Edmondson: Yes, and that’s a complex issue. Bullying can sometimes be perceived very differently—what one person sees as bullying, another might view as directive management. Before labeling behaviors as bullying or linking the lack of psychological safety to legal issues, we need to be clear about what constitutes illegal behavior, rather than focusing solely on subjective outcomes.

It’s tricky because someone might say, “I don’t like you; therefore, you’re a bully,” leading to reports that might not reflect the true situation.

What worries me about these well-intentioned efforts to eliminate bad behaviors is that making it a legal matter can create a serious atmosphere. If the consequence of speaking up is something as severe as going to jail, people may feel compelled to hide issues rather than learn from them.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Unfortunately, and ironically, this could lead to negative outcomes. Yet, there’s a wealth of research—much of which you’ve contributed to—that shows psychological safety is critical for team performance.

Amy Edmondson: Absolutely. My own empirical research is just a small part of the broader literature. I developed a measure of psychological safety long ago, and many researchers have since built upon that work. If we include the healthcare literature, there are over a thousand peer-reviewed studies demonstrating that psychological safety is linked to higher-performing teams.

This connection exists because most teams require a level of risk-taking for success—not reckless risks, but behaviors like asking for help, admitting mistakes, or expressing dissenting views. Those actions are essential for performance but can be difficult for many people to engage in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Returning to our earlier discussion about the challenges you’ve mentioned regarding the true spirit of psychological safety, it often comes up that we have business objectives to meet. I often use a 2×2 matrix that shows psychological safety on one axis and accountability on the other. I see you nodding your head.

Amy Edmondson: I remember I drew that. I I conceptualize that in like in the middle of a class one day 20 years ago because because I I realized that so many people have this kind of false dichotomy that either you know, care about or uphold high standards of performance and accountability, or we can have, you know.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Amy Edmondson: Psychological safety and accountability are two different dimensions. Once you plot them, you realize there are four quadrants. There’s a zone where both are low, which I call the “apathy zone.” In this state, there’s no accountability and no psychological safety, leading to a lack of motivation.

Then there’s the “comfort zone,” where psychological safety is high but accountability is low. It might feel good for a short time, but it doesn’t foster growth or high performance.

The quadrant I see more often is the “anxiety zone.” Here, accountability is high, and there’s pressure to perform, but psychological safety is lacking. People want to do well, but they don’t feel safe enough to engage in the behaviors that would actually help them succeed.

This zone can lead to burnout, as it’s exhausting to operate under those conditions.

The ideal environment is the “learning zone,” or the “high-performance zone.” In this space, there’s a sense of ownership and commitment to high standards, paired with the freedom to speak up, ask for help, and share differing opinions. In an uncertain world, that’s the only culture that truly thrives.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Absolutely, and this applies beyond work. Think about family dynamics—when teenagers communicate with their parents, for instance.

Amy Edmondson: Exactly. I discuss this in my book Right Kind of Wrong, emphasizing that in family situations, you don’t want kids to be afraid to tell the truth. If they are, it can lead to dangerous situations—like not calling for help because they fear a negative reaction.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes, the communication skills we talk about in coaching can be valuable in personal life as well.

Before we continue, I want to share a question from Dr. Janette Wright, an anesthetist in Australia. She’s familiar with psychological safety and her colleagues are as well. Here’s her question:

In an operating theater during a critical incident, psychological safety can diminish due to harsh words or urgent tasks that are ordered rather than requested. Even in a team with a great culture under normal conditions, what’s the best way to maintain or renew psychological safety during these circumstances?

Amy Edmondson: This is such an important question. These situations can occur not just in operating rooms but in families and relationships as well. If we expect perfection in our responses, that’s unrealistic.

Fortunately, there’s a path to recovery. The first step is to acknowledge what happened. If something was said or done that might have harmed psychological safety, it’s crucial to name it. Apologizing is also important; it shows that you recognize the impact of your actions and are committed to doing better next time.

The key is that these moments must be discussable. We will all make mistakes, but when we do, we shouldn’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. Instead, we should create an environment where these issues can be openly addressed.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You know.

Amy Edmondson: Logical safety, or we find some optimal place in the middle. It’s like, No, no, no, it’s two different dimensions. And so.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, they’re orthogonal.

Amy Edmondson: They’re orthogonal and once drawn, then you realize, oh, there really are four quadrants here. There really is a zone where both are low, and you know that’s a pretty sad state of affairs. Nobody wants to work there. I call it the apathy zone.

Amy Edmondson: You know, no accountability, no psychological safety, and it’s you know you try to take care of yourself. But you’re not terribly motivated.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Amy Edmondson: And then, of course, the one that people are worrying about is the comfort zone, where it’s like high psychological safety, but no accountability, no commitment to high standards, and you know I always think that might be fun for a day or a week or so. But that’s not really what it means to be a thriving, you know, adult human being or child, for that matter, you know. So the one, of course, that I see far more often, and I want to come back to this in a moment is the anxiety zone where.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Amy Edmondson: You know, the accountability is apparently high around here. The need to perform well is high around here, but psychological safety feels low.

Amy Edmondson: And so that’s you know. That’s the anxiety zone. That’s where I’d like to do a good job. But I really don’t feel safe engaging in the behaviors I need to do a good job.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

Amy Edmondson: And and then.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s like the burnout zone, too.

Amy Edmondson: That’s a burnout zone. Absolutely. It’s exhausting.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. And then the.

Amy Edmondson: You know, the place we all want our teams to be is the learning zone, or the which I also think is the high performance zone. And that’s where we feel a sense of accountability or ownership and a commitment to high standards, and we feel able to speak up to get help to, you know, offer a different point of view, and so forth. And in an uncertain world that’s like that’s the only kind of climate or or culture that’s going to work.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I’m even thinking about, even in families, right? When children like teenagers are talking to their parents, or what? Like, yeah, it’s even beyond work.

Amy Edmondson: Oh, yes, in fact, I didn’t think you know I write about that in Right Kind of Wrong, because it’s the last thing you want is in a family situation is to have kids be afraid to tell you the truth, because then they might first of all, you don’t know what’s going on, and that’s dangerous. Second of all, they might literally, you know, get into the car of a drunk friend rather than call you, because they’re afraid you’re going to yell at them.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Right? So we can extrapolate. I find that with most of the things that I coach, it’s communication skills. It’s that people are like. Oh, this would work in my personal life, too. I said, yes, it will.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So before we go any further, I want to read this question from this this woman, Dr. Janette Wright. She is an anesthetist in Australia, and this is her question. She’s very familiar with psychological safety, and most of her colleagues are as well. So here’s her question.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: In an operating theater environment. During a critical incident there can be a loss of psychological safety, for example.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Harsh words or time-critical tasks that are ordered rather than requested.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Even in a team who, under normal conditions, have a great culture of speaking up and collegiality. What is the best way to maintain or renew psychological safety during these circumstances I read that word for word from what she sent me.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So you can imagine her in this high stakes, or right.

Amy Edmondson: It’s such an important question. And you know, I think it happens in the OR but it also, we were just talking about families, and it happens in families, it happens in couples and relationships. Right? We will. We if we, if you and I had a theory that depended, or a practice that depended on being perfect and delivering the perfect response every time. That would be a lousy theory. Because no, we’re fallible human beings. So this situation will happen. Fortunately, I believe it is. There is a path to recovery, the sooner the better. But the most important steps on this path are, first name it acknowledge it.

Amy Edmondson: Oops, you know. That was not how I really wanted that to come out. Now you may not be enough presence to do that immediately, but do it as soon as you realize that something happened that is potentially harmful for the future, and then apologize and apology just means my in. I was scared, and you know my my I reacted too quickly, and I’ll I don’t think that had a positive effect, and I’ll do better next time, and then and then keep working at doing better next time.

Amy Edmondson: So the most important thing is that it’s discussable. We’re all going to fall off the balance beam, but when we fall off we shouldn’t be ashamed, embarrassed. We shouldn’t make it undiscussable, which it often is. It’s like, did you see that, you know? Behind closed doors.

Amy Edmondson: Remember. Oh, that was awful! Well, I’ll never feel safe again. There! It’s like, just get out, you know. Get get on top of it as quickly as possible, and speak truthfully about it. And the very act of doing that is demonstrating the kind of candor that, after all, is what we’re looking for.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right? Right? So when I’m coaching my clients and they’re looking for almost like a prescription. So I understand what it is. I’ve seen the seven question survey. I understand the definitions the mistakes people make, and so on, and so on.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What do I do? And so I say, think about your mindset. Think about your words and think about your actions, and you’re talk. You’re actually talking about and taking an action and and the words combination. Right? So you’re.

Amy Edmondson: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay later on to admit fallibility. That’s one thing and the other one that I that I often mention that I’ve heard you say many times is when someone comes to you with an issue, or even a mistake, that they made you say thank you for telling me. Tell me more.

Amy Edmondson: Yeah, thank you for telling me.

Amy Edmondson: Maybe even depending on the situation. How can I help what ideas do you have? You know. So it’s all it’s it’s at least first and foremost about the what next I mean. Our instincts as humans, I think, is to look back like, well, how did that happen? Yeah. And you know, why were you so stupid? But no, we don’t say that. We, you know it’s it’s because you can’t do anything about the past, but you sure can do something about the future, and that’s your God. That’s your that’s your job, that’s your goal. So I I would say, you know it is. It’s, you know. Thanks for telling me. How can I help, or what? Now? What ideas do you have.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So being future oriented is actually.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I think I probably implicitly was coaching people to do that. But but I’m not explicitly so. I I love that be future, not past oriented, right. There’ll be enough.

Amy Edmondson: And I’m a big fan of after action review. Right? I I believe we can learn a great deal, and we must learn from the past, especially from failures.

Amy Edmondson: But it’s just that. It’s that. What we’re talking about here is, how do you react in that moment? Because in a sense. If someone’s coming to you with a mistake or any kind of bad news. This is already a difficult moment for them. Job is simply to not make it worse. Right? It’s to make it better. Demonstrate that you welcome it, to demonstrate that this is what we do. This is what good looks like around here.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, and back to the example from the question from the physician in Australia. If later on you go back and apologize, you’re demonstrating that you know fallibility firsthand, and if, especially if you’re a leader, you have a huge impact on the culture. So you’re reinforcing it in real time and your course correcting right.

Amy Edmondson: Yes, yes, and if you I mean, if you’re expecting others to admit mistakes, and you’re expecting others to ask for help and admit their human fallibility. I promise you it won’t work if you’re unwilling to do the same.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So we keep saying the word mistake. And I wanna shift into failing. Well, and I wanna start by asking you what you think about this and it’s about vocabulary.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And I think maybe because I’ve I’ve evolved my career into becoming a communication coach. I’m more conscious of and hopefully careful with the language and vocabulary that I use.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And one thing that I talk about with my clients, and and especially if they’re in career transition, or they’re making plans for the future right, and talking about the difference between disappointment and regret. So I say, this is this is my take on this, which is, you make the best decision that you have with the information you have at the time. You may or may not be disappointed, but if you truly did make the best decision with the information you had then you really can’t have regrets.

Amy Edmondson: I love that. Yeah, I think that’s great. First of all, I love the word disappointment. I use it a lot because it’s a. It’s part of a self training practice to to not say, Oh, this is awful! This is, you know, this is the end of the world when it isn’t and to say instead, This is disappointing, right? I’d really I’d wanted that to work right. I’d want to, whatever. And so disappointment is a very powerful world word, because it’s clean and clear and not exaggerated. Right? And and regret. Yeah, regret is quite interesting. I hadn’t thought about it that way because it really it does imply that you would love to rewind the videotape and do it differently. I mean, that’s not always appropriate. It’s appropriate for some things like that that operating room story again, you’d you’d love to if you were that surgeon you would love to rewind the videotape and not lose your cool. But you didn’t. So that’s okay. Do your best. You go forward. But but for the things that we do and try in life that we think might work or will work. But they don’t. You must not feel regret, because if you do, you will then hold yourself back, and you’ll do what I call playing, not to lose rather than you know going for it, rather than do your best. It’s sort of I’ll just take the safe, you know. I’ll I’ll try the same things.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So so both of your books and I. And I think maybe all of your research is really grounded in this kind of growth mindset. Right?

Amy Edmondson: Yes.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Really is.

Amy Edmondson: And I love the growth mindset work.

Amy Edmondson: You know, Carol Dwecks, and you know others, her students, and others as well, because it’s I think it’s so.

Amy Edmondson: It’s so consistent with what is needed in a world that keeps changing. And for people who want to keep achieving or doing better, you know.

Amy Edmondson: Learning and growing and improving, and it’s so tempting. And I think the world is constantly sending us messages that we’re supposed to be perfect, or we’re supposed to get it right, or hit our targets or win awards. And it’s it’s so tempting to get caught up in those rather than in this idea, which is true, that we can keep learning and growing.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right learning. I say, learning, as opposed to performing.

Amy Edmondson: Yeah, yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So can you share with us the three archetypes of failure? I I first of all, I also archetypes. So you’re speaking my language so categorizing and defining. I think this also really helps people think about leveraging their growth mindset. By the way, I’m sure you notice this, too, in what you do. There’s like a self selection. People who are listening to this podcast probably have a growth mindset. Otherwise they wouldn’t select themselves.

Amy Edmondson: Probably true. It’s probably true, although I bet there are people who are, you know, growth, mindset. Curious, right?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I know.

Amy Edmondson: Because they know they know and want to learn and grow, but they also are like so many of us. Not immune to the pressures in their organizations, or the pressures in society that can re that can reinforce more of a performance mindset.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I want to talk about that self awareness. But but first, can you share the definitions of.

Amy Edmondson: So. I’ll I’ll rewind for just a moment and say, Mistake, I’ll start with mistake. Then I’ll describe the three kinds of failure. So a mistake is an unintended deviation from a known practice or process.

Amy Edmondson: Right? And and and so I think that’s important, because a mistake is a kind of a particular category where it it’s a nonsensical word, unless there already is existing knowledge or process. Yeah, that gets the result. We want. Okay, mistake. And it’s got to be unintended, right? And an intended mistake is an oxymoron that doesn’t exist. It’s that’s just sabotage or carelessness, or whatever. Okay, so and forget careless. Let’s wipe that one out. So because that’s a different thing, anyway.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You can.

Amy Edmondson: You can be careless and make a mistake. So, okay, so a but so so.

Amy Edmondson: I started with mistake because in ordinary talk people use the words mistake and failure interchangeably, and they’re not. A failure is an undesired outcome. There are three kinds. One is what I call a basic failure, which has a single cause, usually a mistake. It’s in familiar territory. If I text and drive and get into an accident, that’s a basic failure. I did something I shouldn’t have done, and I got a bad outcome.

A complex failure has a handful of factors contributing to it, any one of which wouldn’t create a failure on its own. But the unfortunate combination of factors gives rise to an undesired outcome. You know, supply chain breakdown, multi-causal—some workers are sick, weather patterns over there, and boom, it comes together.

Both of those kinds of failures are undesired and largely preventable. At our best, with incredible vigilance and communication skills, we can prevent most of those kinds of failures in familiar territory.

The third kind, intelligent failures, are the undesired outcomes of a thoughtful foray into new territory. These are the undesired results of experiments. You can’t have regrets about these because you could not have known in advance that it wouldn’t work. You had good reason to believe it could work. You’re a scientist in a lab running an experiment. You think, “This makes sense. Let’s get the data. Let’s see if it’s true.” Lo and behold, you’re wrong. Disappointing, to be sure—a failure, to be sure—but an intelligent one, and one that we need to learn to welcome and celebrate because they bring us new information.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: This categorization of the types of failures helps us reconcile the societal obsession with avoiding failure and performing at a high level, on the one hand, and what we keep hearing about failing fast and failing hard, on the other hand.

Amy Edmondson: There’s no bad idea in the operating room, right? Not something you’d want to do in passenger air travel. There are contexts in which we need to do everything in our power to ensure a successful outcome, particularly in high-stakes, high-risk situations. Part of the reason I articulate this typology and these archetypes is primarily to help us make the important distinctions we need to truly welcome the new knowledge that comes from intelligent failures. If failure is all lumped into our minds as one idea or one category, it’s not going to work psychologically to make us feel okay about failure. We can only feel okay about failure when we have cognitive distinctions around the types of failure, and then it frees us up to engage in more smart risks.

I point out in the book that, in fact, name a field—the people who are most successful are not successful because they’re failure-free. They’ve become most successful because they’ve failed more often than the rest of us. They’ve been willing to try hard things and stomach the disappointment of failure, getting better and better at their craft.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: When I hear you describing these archetypes, it occurred to me that there are kinds of wrong that we want to avoid and kinds of wrong that we are totally okay with.

Amy Edmondson: Exactly. They’re all wrong in a sense, in that they are all undesired outcomes. But only one type of undesired outcome is the right kind, or at least the productive kind.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: In part two of the book, you talk about self-awareness, situation awareness, and system awareness. I just gobbled up chapter five because I’m all about self-awareness—internal and external. I was going back and forth between feeling optimistic about the message and then feeling pessimistic.

Amy Edmondson: That’s exactly the experience I have. I toggle back and forth between feeling very hopeful about what we know and what we’re capable of doing, and also feeling very depressed about it because we do, we? I will repeatedly and consistently fall into the same traps. Even Danny Kahneman, of course, who wrote “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” falls into the same traps.

I think part of the solution is recognizing that it’s okay to have system one fast thinking. If you stop to pause—like which way should I brush my teeth every time you do it? You’d never get through the day. Many of our instincts are necessary for survival. You stop yourself from running out into traffic without even thinking about it, and that’s good. So we need all of these skilled routines to get through our days. We need to get continually better, and none of us will ever be perfect. But we need to get continually better at learning when to pause and slow down our thinking.

To me, the hopefulness comes in once we become aware that self-awareness is a thing and that thinking about your thinking is not a bad idea. For things where there’s uncertainty and reasonably high stakes, we really do want to challenge ourselves. I borrow from some of the great thinkers and those who spend time thinking about how to have healthy thinking.

I try to borrow some of the simple wisdom and say: how should we do that in business or in organizations? The simplest rubric I borrow from a former mentor, Larry Wilson, is stop, challenge, choose. Just pause. Learn to breathe, learn to say, “Okay, I’m feeling a little anxious. What’s going on?” Pause and take a look at your thinking.

Ask yourself, “How tethered to reality is this, or am I spiraling out?” What other ways might there be to think about this situation? Now pick the one that is in my best interests and health, and maybe happiness. If I can realize that, “Oh, that’s disappointing, but not fatal, and I’m going to try harder next time,” then that’s a healthy habit.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So you’re shifting me a little bit over into the optimistic.

Amy Edmondson: Right with it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: As you were talking, I was thinking it still relates to a growth mindset.

Amy Edmondson: Oh yes!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: After coaching executives for a couple of years, I had an epiphany. At the end of the calendar year, I looked back and realized what really differentiates the most successful people is a growth mindset. A few years later, I recognized self-awareness as another key factor. These aren’t necessarily orthogonal; I think they’re correlated in some ways.

Amy Edmondson: Yeah. yes, I mean, I think, yeah, in order to have a growth mindset. I think you you have to be a little bit more thoughtful about what you’re doing, and why and why? The disappointment isn’t really so awful, because the spontaneous reaction to a failure or being wrong about something. And this is just well, you know. Well, well demonstrated in research, our spontaneous reactions are not are. It’s a negative emotion that’s just automatic. Right if I didn’t do as well as I thought. Whatever that’s I’m going to have a negative reaction. So the growth mindset is that superpower that comes back in and says, No, it’s it’s a learning experience, and not in a cliche way. But like, what what did I do that led to the outcome that I’m not happy about, and what might I do differently next time.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love that you use the word superpower. There, Amy. I love it. Okay, I’m I’m gonna ask you the 3 rapid fire questions. Now, are you ready.

Amy Edmondson: Okay. Yep.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: 1st question, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Amy Edmondson: Introvert hands down!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hands down. Yeah. Have you taken.

Amy Edmondson: I have taken. I’ve taken the you know the the Briggs.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Briggs.

Amy Edmondson: Briggs. I was. Gonna say, Briggs, Myers, that’s wrong.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And the Big 5. It’s also in the Big 5 of social psychology, right? Both of us.

Amy Edmondson: Yes, it’s 1 of the Big 5, and and I was. I was gratified to learn, though in as part of being trained as a psychologist like you that you know, that doesn’t mean you’re inept in social situations. It just means it takes more energy than. and that then I, as an introvert. It means I have to recharge, and I’m happy to recharge. I have lots of opportunities to recharge a lot of the work I do is solo at a keyboard.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Yeah. And and also, you may have a superpower of being a fantastic listener, which probably helps you in your research. Right?

Amy Edmondson: That is true, I mean, I’m not sure I got that as good as I want it to be. But I but it is true that as an introvert you are a good listener, and and prone to listen.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, okay, that wasn’t so rapid. But I love hearing your thoughts on that. second one. I I’m curious about this one. What are your communication.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: pet Peeves?

Amy Edmondson: The up lilt. So that is let me tell you about my work. And I was just finishing this chapter. and I know it’s it’s gotten to be so common now that it almost is disallowed as a pet peeve, because it’s practically everybody and I find it so so much less compelling than than stating it as a sentence rather than asking, or, you know, implying it’s a question plus. I think it really requires. It takes it drains the listener because the listener is is sort of feeling, because it’s implied by the tone that they have to say something, or respond, or agree or disagree, and it’s it’s exhausting.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So I’ve noticed, I labeled this Phenomenon, or the kind of increasing prevalence of it, the uptick and up speak.

Amy Edmondson: Okay.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, and it also.

Amy Edmondson: I like that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So Adam Grant had an article a couple of years ago in the New York Times, where he talks about women purposely using weak language. So with some of my senior female leaders, I assign them to read the article, and then I say, I want to talk to you about this, because, depending on who you’re talking to, it might be in your best interest to use up. Speak, but I hope you’re conscious of it. I hope that when you are, when you have conviction about something, you’re not asking them. Instead, you’re telling them

Amy Edmondson: Exactly, exactly.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay question number 3, is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending the most lately?

Amy Edmondson: Yes, the book. Maybe it’s old fashioned to say a book, and it’s not a brand new book, but it is a brilliant book, and it is called, get rid of the Performance review.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh!

Amy Edmondson: Sam Culbert, Ucla emeritus. And it is not a book about why we shouldn’t have performance reviews. It’s it’s really a book about how the way most of them unfold is not learning oriented, not helpful, not forward looking. and does. And it’s a sham. Or it’s theater that isn’t working. So it needs to be replaced by what he calls the performance preview where we. Together and my job. If I’m your manager, my job is to help you think about growth mindset again. My job is to is to help you do well. so I need to know what you need from me. You need to know what I expect or what we’re trying to do, and I need to know how to most enable you. And so it’s a mute. There’s mutual learning, and it’s forward looking and it’s so. you know, it’s so profound and so rare, but but really a powerful way of of managing performance.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, sound like, it sounds like this book made a real

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: real impression on you. That’s very. I can see how it’s very kind of interrelated with with your topics of failure, the right kind of wrong and psychological safety. I will put a link to that book in the show notes, and I just want to close by asking, is there anything else you want to share about the right kind of wrong failure, psychological safety, anything else.

Amy Edmondson: One thing, so I’ll go full circle back to psychological safety, which, as you said, it’s all interrelated. and say.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. Okay, that is beautiful. Thank you so much, Amy. I really appreciate your insights and your time. And it was wonderful to chat with you again after so many years. Thank you.

Amy Edmondson: Likewise. Thank you.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Oh, Amy, thank you so much. I just want to say also congratulations on having such a significant impact and influencing institutions and individuals at such a massive scale to be better people.

Amy Edmondson: Thank you. That makes my day.

The feeling is mutual, Amy!

OK – let me now highlight and reinforce
three of the INSIGHTS
from our conversation:

The 3 points are:
Focus on Performance
Focus on our vocabulary
Focus on Leraning and the future

Focus on PERFORMANCE
I want to reinforce first and foremost that the whol point here is performance.
Amy mentioned that “we love this psychological safety thing, but we have to care about performance. “ Yes, that’s the whole point.
Psychological safety is not about being comfortable and laissez-faire. It’s not about rejecting feedback. It’s not about weaponizing a woke excuse for performance. In fact, performance is the whole point.
The research consistently demonstrates that a culture of psychological safety contributes to team performance. And accountability is critical.
Even in Amy’s research on failures. It’s all about longer term performance. As Amy said, The people who are most successful – who are the highest performers, they’re not most successful because they’re failure-free. Rather their success and performance is because they’ve
been willing to,try hard things, and to stomach the disappointment of failure. But it’s a certain kind of failure, isn’t it? It’s intelligent failure.

Which brings me to the second point I want to reinforce:

FOCUSing ON OUR VOCABULARY
I brought up the distinction between regret and disappointment. Regret is wishing you’d done something differently. Disappointment is knowing things didn’t turn out the way you hoped, despite making the right decision at the time. This is analogus to Amy’s intelligent failure.

Amy started by distinguishing between mistakes and failures.

A mistake is an unintended deviation from a known practice or process.

A failure is an undesired outcome. There are 3 kinds of failures: basic, complex, and intelligent. I bet you can guess which one of those three is good!
A basic failure has a single cause. That cause is usually a mistake. You do something you shouldn’t hav, and there’s a bad outcome. You text and drive and get into an accident. That’s a basic failure.

A complex failure has a handful of factors contributing to it.

Intelligent failure is the undesired results of experiments. Think of a scientific experiment:
– hypothesis, action, undesired result, learning.

SO we encourage you to be careful of your vocabulary. Knowing that as humans we all fail at times and we all make mistakes. And we all experience disappointment and even regret. But if we consciously focus on taking smart risks, we can label our failures as intelligent failure and move on to learning.

Which brings me to the last point I want to reinforce – the Focus on LEARNING & THE FUTURE

Ultimately when you focus on learning and the future, you are cultivating a growth mindset.

This notion of cultivating a growth mindset, of focusing on the future and learning, is a key theme running through Amy’s work in psychological safety and in failing well.

That reminds me, I loved how when I mentioned that I think most of the Talk About Talk podcast listeners have a strog growth mindset – there’s self-selection there – Amy added that there are probably many who are growth-minded curious. Probably true. If that might be you, know this. Inasmuch as the research on team performance consistently shows that psychological safety contributes to team performance, the research by Carol Dweck and other consistently shows that whenou culativate a growth mindset – when you focus on learning and the future, this also can also improve your chance of success.

Thanks again to Amy.

Your work really is contributing to a more productive – high performing society. And a more enjoyable one too. .

As I said, you can find links to aAMy’s books aswell as the other books and articles we mentioned in our conversation, right in the shownotes for this episode.

My coordinates are there too. Please connect with me anytime. Check out the Talkabouttalk.com website or send me a DM on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you.

Talk soon!

The post PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY & FAILING WELL with Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson (ep.175) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing--and Focus on What Really Matters

Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well

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How to boost your self-awareness with Dr. Tasha Eurich. Tasha and Andrea talk about how self-awareness can improve your communication, relationships, confidence, promotability, influence, empathy, leadership, and more.

*Dr. TASHA EURICH** Books: + Insight – https://amzn.to/42LqCIi + Shatterproof (2025) – https://amzn.to/3ZLzXlM * Insight Quiz: + https://www.insight-book.com/quiz * Tasha’s book recommendation: + “Wonder Hell” by Laura Gassner Otting – https://amzn.to/3Nc4BNt

TRANSCRIPT

Are YOU a self-awareness unicorn? That RARE person with exceptionally high internal and external self awareness? Probably not. But according to self-awareness expert Dr.Tasha Eurich, just by learning some of the tools and approaches you’ll hear in the next 45 minutes, you’re way ahead of the pack. One step closer to unicorn status.

Let’s do this!

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #174 “Boost your Self-awareness with Dr.Tasha Eurich.”

I’m so excited for you to meet Tasha. I read her book called INSIGHT a few years ago after it was recommended by Adam Grant. The full title is Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why the Answers Matter More Than We Think. It immediately became one of my favorites, a book with research that I reference all the time, and a book that I often recommend to my coaching clients.

So I was very excited to book this interview. When the time finally came and we logged into the interview, we both stopped and stared at the screen. I’m sure my jaw dropped. Tasha was sitting in front of her beautiful horizontal bookcase, all sorted by color. Like a beautiful rainbow of books, including the turquoise book jacket cover of her book INSIGHT. Some of you might know that I am also obsessed with color, particularly turquoise. So there I was, in front of my vertical bookshelf, each shelf coded by colour – black then red then turquoise, then yellow, and so on.

WOW. Even if you’re not obsessed with colour, our screens were a sight to be seen. You could say we had an instant connection.

Speaking of connection – In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. To learn more about what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com and you can read about the coaching and workshops I run. Plus there are lots of free resources for you at the bottom of the talkabouttalk.com homepage. You can also sign up for my email newsletter, where you’ll get free coaching from me in your inbox. Head over to talkabouttalk.com to sign up now.

Alright, let’s shift gears.

In this episode, you’re going to learn a helpful definition of self-awareness, why it’s important, and Tasha’s strategies that you can start immediately to help you become more self-aware.

Let me introduce Tasha, then we’ll get right into the interview. At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. Sound good?

Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times best-selling author who helps people thrive in a changing world.

With a PhD in Organizational Psychology, she’s the principal of The Eurich Group, working with clients like Google, Walmart, and the NBA. She’s been recognized as the world’s top self-awareness coach and featured by Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, and more.

Her 2017 TEDx talk has been viewed more than 8 million times! Tasha’s first book, Bankable Leadership, debuted as a New York Times bestseller. Her latest, Insight, explores the link between self-awareness and success. That’s where we’re focusing here today. She also has another book coming out in 2025 focused on resilience called SHATTERPROOF. I’ll leave links to all these books in the show notes.

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

Thank you so much, Tasha, for being here today on Talk About Talk to talk about our self -awareness.

Thank you. It’s great to be here, Andrea.

So I guess we better start with definitions. When you are writing and researching and talking about self -awareness, what exactly do you mean?

So it’s a great place to start, I think, and you’re very smart to do that. It took our research team actually almost a year to scientifically and empirically.

So it’s the will and the skill to understand who we are and how you’re seen.

So I am familiar enough with your work that I know exactly what you mean by each of those very precise words.

But I want to say I applaud and appreciate how precise you’re being with that. So maybe break it down. What do you mean by will and what do you mean by skill, first of all. So both of those are equally important, right? If you’re missing one, you can’t become self -aware. The will has to do with not even necessarily a daily commitment because life, right? Life is crazy. Most days, if you are committed to seeing yourself clearly, that really kind of satisfies that piece of it. And then the skill is not just sort of using the myths and assumptions that we have about what it takes to become self -aware, but actually looking at scientifically supported actions that will improve our self -awareness. One of the things, you know, and I’m sure we’ll talk about this that we discovered in our research was that a lot of really well -intentioned people are sort of approaching self -awareness in a way that’s not giving them increased insight.

And so that’s where the skill component comes in. So it’s not just, you know, kind of throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping something sticks. It’s saying this is my self -awareness strategy. This is how I’m going to break this down for myself.

When I was listening to and then reading your book, that’s where I felt like I personally got a lot of traction as well, providing me with the skill, the frameworks, right, for how to think about or how to get input to your identity and, well, and so that you can become more self -aware based on other people’s input and other frameworks that we’ll talk about.

So let’s go back to the definition, though. The second part was about, I’m going to paraphrase here, but it’s really about knowing yourself and also knowing how others perceive you.

Is that’s another way of saying it. It is. And I think a lot of times when we think about self -awareness, we only consider that inner piece, right? Knowing who we are internally.

What do we value? What are our passions? What are our personality patterns over time? Things like that. But we often neglect an equally important piece of the puzzle, which is to understand how other people see us. And what I always say to people is, you know, everybody has these shirts of like, what other people, other people’s opinion of me is none of my business, right? And I, while that’s very empowering, and I’m sure it sells a lot of T -shirts, unless you work in a cardboard box and live in a cardboard box and never speak to another person again, it kind of matters how other people see you.

And the angle that I’ve gotten to with, you know, I’ve been coaching CEOs for more than 20 years now is they’re already having these perceptions, right? They’re already talking to other people about these perceptions.

Wouldn’t you rather know? Because when you know, you can decide what you want to do about it, it doesn’t mean necessarily you have to change. But if we’re not actively soliciting other people’s perceptions of us, we are missing literally, you know, one of the two camera angles of that skill. What’s interesting in our research is that we found that very often, you know, highly self -aware people discover that those two data points don’t always match up, right? I might see myself one way. There might be a perception of me that’s very different. And I always go back there to the F.Scott Fitzgerald quote, which I really love. He says the definition of true intelligence is being able to hold two opposing ideas in your mind and still retain the ability to function, right?

And so to become self -aware and to be on this journey, it’s a dance, really, of soliciting both, navigating both, making sense of both, and sometimes believing and understanding that they won’t square up, but you still have to have both of those data points. Oh, my goodness, Tasha, there’s so, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, oh, I need to ask her this, I need to ask her this, I need to ask her this, I need to to ask, there’s so many directions we could go. Let me start with a quick anecdote that when I was reading your book the first time,

I was also, I happened to be coaching a gentleman who I now realize was not self -aware, but I asked him whether he thought he was self -aware. And he said, I think I’m extremely self -aware.

Of course. And when I was reading your book and thinking about it after, I thought, I know based on your research and others, there’s what you call, or we call internal self -awareness and external self -aware. And I thought instantly, he’s high internally self -aware, but not externally self -aware. And in your book, you talk about how most of us think we are more self -aware than the average, right? Including me, by the way. Fun discovery. Well, everybody is everybody, right yeah um so losers and the introspectors, if you had to put the population, you know, maybe of working professionals into this two by two matrix, the introspectors would get more than its fair share of folks. I’m not,

I’m not sure.

It’s interesting because I actually have the data. I could look at that. We have our insight quiz. Maybe we can put a link in your show notes for your listeners. But we’ve been doing this insight quiz and making it available to people for free for like more than five years now.

So we could run those stats. I just don’t want to speak out of the wrong side of my mouth, right? It’s been a while. But the last time we did it, I want to say three or four years ago maybe, we were seeing very few people are high in both, right? That internal self -awareness, the first part of the definition, knowing who we are, and then the second part of it, understanding how other people see us, that’s hard to achieve, right? But it is possible and very learnable. It’s just that, again, most people are approaching it with good intentions, but bad tools, right? The Seeker category is people who are just starting their journey in both of those categories, right? They’re just starting to learn kind of who they are, what they want, what matters to them, and maybe they haven’t gotten a lot of feedback in their life. And they’re really trying to start that journey. What I always tell seekers, if you feel like you might be in that category for anyone, is pick one to start with.

Don’t try to boil the ocean. Say, do I want to kind of get in touch with myself more? Do I want to understand how other people see me more? And then you can always add things after that. But to your question, where it gets really interesting is when people are high on one and then low on the other. And this happens because those two types of self -knowledge are totally independent. Just because it’s like the executive you were coaching, just because he saw himself clearly doesn’t automatically translate to other people, to him understanding how other people saw him. And then the reverse is true. The category I fall in,

I call pleasers. And these are people who are so focused on knowing how other people see them, that sometimes they forget their own, they forget or they aren’t even in touch with the choices that they can make in their own best interest.

Like the example that I give about this, it’s kind of a silly one, but a couple of years ago, I couldn’t decide what color car to get. I was renewing my lease. I was traveling. I was super busy.

So I texted like my five best friends. And I said, here are the choices. Which one should I pick? Right? It’s like this, this completely other focused view, which can have its advantages, but it can also have really big disadvantages.

You know, in that case, what car did I want? You know, what would make me happy? But going back to your – You’re the one that’s going to be driving it every day, Tasha. Exactly. They’re probably not going to be in it very often. But to your point, there is a pretty wide variety across those three categories. So I think it’s interesting, you know, I would argue that even somebody who says they’re self -aware may not be internally self -aware at all, right? If they say they’re self -aware and you look at them and you’re like, well, buddy, I’m not sure you understand. That probably means they’re low in external self -awareness. But what our research has shown is that regardless of where you fall on that spectrum,

95 % of us believe that we are self -aware. And the real number, according to several different studies that we’ve done, is about 10 to 15 % of us, right? So if 10 to 15 % of us meet those criteria, 95 % of us think we’re self -aware. What that means is that on a good day, 80 % of us are lying to ourselves about whether we’re lying to ourselves.

So that’s the question I ask about your client, right? It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. It’s like our default should be to believe that we probably are not self -aware or at least not as self -aware as we could be.

Bingo. I always say, I put the word gently in front of that. Gently stop assuming that you’re self -aware. I wouldn’t want any of your listeners to get the wrong idea about this.

I am not here as like a poster child of self -loathing or, you know, self -consciousness or neuroses. That isn’t what self -awareness is at all. But there is, I think you’re exactly right, there’s this paradox that as soon as we stop assuming that we are self -aware, we can actually become that. And, you know, another way to look at it is as long as you’re making forward progress, that’s all that matters at the end of the day. That’s very inspiring. So I want to get into some of the tactics that you recommend. I know there’s the what versus why recommendation. But before we get into that, I just want to touch on something that you said that also is related to something in your book about folks that are like the senior leaders and the most powerful people. So when you’re talking about the pleasers,

It reminds me of some of the conversations that I have in workshops and coaching with my clients when we’re talking about their personal brand. And one of the most important strategic principles,

I believe, of establishing a strong personal brand is to focus on what makes you unique. Because if you’re thinking and focused on your unique strengths and passions, you’re going to end up being as happy or satisfied as you can be and as successful as you can be.

And so when I’m thinking about this two by two matrix, I feel like it might be okay to be a pleaser early in your career, but then at some point, you have to focus on what you want to be and what you are so that you can evolve. And this is what I say. Like it’s early, it’s fine early in your career to look around and copy people because you’re trying different identities, right? But as soon as your mid -career, and definitely when you’re a senior executive, you need to double down on what makes you unique, right? So maybe that’s when being a pleaser can really backfire on you, right? But it happens because we’re social learners. We look around at other people that are successful and we copy them. I guess the question is, do you think there might be kind of a similar insight here about self -awareness as there is about personal branding, where to, let me tell you a little bit about the sample of people that we really studied most exhaustively. And you know this. We called them our self -awareness unicorns. And these are people, yeah, that didn’t start out as self -aware, but through some, like, mysterious process that we wanted to uncover, were able to become dramatically more self -aware and, in fact, highly self -aware. And what was so interesting to me is that there weren’t any patterns in that sample based on any demographic, including age. So I’m thinking about, you know, one person, Kelsey, who is a middle school science teacher, who was very, very early in his career. But even earlier in his career, he had been an engineer and was absolutely miserable. And so he went on this journey of self awareness and said, you know what I really want to do is I really want to be a public school teacher and I want to teach science to kids.

And so from my perspective, I think we miss something really for every year we’re not on this journey. We could be, you know, depending on whether it’s internal or external self -awareness, if we’re missing internal self -awareness, you know, we’ll be like somebody who, you know, is maybe not choosing a career that makes them happy. And for every year that goes by without having external self -awareness, we could be alienating everyone, right? Who knows what impact we’re having if we don’t know and can’t control it? So I see what you’re saying, and I think you’re right. I think in some sense, self -awareness becomes more important the higher up you rise because it’s more rare. But I would also just encourage anybody, like, wherever you are on this journey, wherever you are in your career, it will put you above the pack. If you use some of these tools and really use what’s scientifically supported, it’s a superpower. There’s no better way I can say it.

I absolutely agree. I’ve been telling people lately, I used to say a growth mindset was the superpower that would build your success in your communication skills and then in your career. But I actually think it’s a combination, a growth mindset and self -awareness. In your definition of self -awareness, though, there is the growth mindset because it’s the will, right? We just put everything in there just to make sure.

So my next question is related to what you were just saying about as you get more senior in your career, it becomes more important. So in many things that I’ve read that you’ve written and interviews that I’ve listened to, you list the many, many benefits of self -awareness. Why don’t you just list some of them right now? I love this question. So we could be here forever, but I’ll kind of focus it to your audience specifically.

So people who are self -aware are more successful at work. They get more promotions. They’re better communicators. They’re better influencers. I know, right? Pick your favorite. They’re more confident. They’re more empathetic. They’re more effective and respected leaders. And there’s even some evidence that’s been starting to emerge over the past 10 or so years that in companies with high numbers of self -aware, you know, employees and leaders, those companies are actually more profitable. So a lot of executives might think like, oh, I’m a very busy person and, you know,

I don’t have time to work on my self -awareness. But what I would say is, you know, you are modeling this behavior for the entire organization. And an organization can only be as self -aware as the person at the top or the team at the top or the senior team, right? But wait, there’s more. This is where I’m like the knife salesman person or the infomercial, but wait, there’s more. So self -awareness also benefits us in our personal lives. There are a ton of examples, but I think kind of most universal is that people who are self -aware have better romantic relationships. They have stronger and deeper friendships. And this might be especially interesting for some of your listeners.

They tend to raise more mature and less narcissistic children. Oh, wow. Right? So like pick your poison. The beauty of this, and this is why I call self -awareness the meta -skill of the 21st century is that it is literally the foundation of everything else that you’re accomplishing in your life.

You can only be as influential as you are self -aware. You can only be as good of a communicator as you are self -aware, right? You can only be as authentic as you are self -aware. And so that’s where, you know, I think if, again, if you choose to work on the skill, the ripple effects are are astonishing. Okay. Well, you’ve got me convinced, Tasha, easily. Easily, when you say communication skills, I light up, as you could see. So before we move on to the tactics for how people can work on developing their self -awareness, I just want to ask you this question that occurred to me a couple of days ago.

So on the one hand, there’s this research that one of the things you said was more effective, and it was effective and something leadership, more effective and respected.

Respected leadership, leaders. But there, I think you said there’s also an inverse correlation between power and self -awareness. So how do you reconcile that?

Because presumably these leaders have power. Right. So the way I would reconcile that is that some leaders figure it out and benefit, right? So just because it’s rare at the top ranks of a company doesn’t mean it’s not immensely powerful. And in fact, I would argue that makes it more powerful.

If, you know, we all, I would argue that, like, we all probably start at a similar level of self -awareness, but what happens is when you’re the boss, suddenly you walk in and like nobody’s giving you bad news, everybody’s laughing at all of your jokes, right? Nobody’s bringing you problems before the problem becomes a big problem. And that’s just the nature of, you know, hierarchy and power.

There’s a lot of other examples too of, you know, many leaders, especially senior leaders that I’m sure we both worked with make assumptions. And the assumption is something like, well, I must be doing something right.

I’m the CFO. Right. I must be doing something right. I’m an SVP. And, you know, that is often true. But the success criteria change, we change, the environment changes.

So we can’t ever say, I’m good, right? I’ve arrived. And I think, you know, again, with each successive level of leadership, fewer and fewer people are comfortable telling us the truth. So that’s how I would square that is it is actually, it’s empirically important at high levels, but it’s even more important because it’s so rare. Right. B, not necessarily because of something that you did differently. It’s because of other people treating you differently.

And then you just, but if you have similar beliefs about what feedback is, yeah, I get it. Okay, that makes sense. Please share with us a couple of your favorite frameworks, if you want to call them that, or tactics for helping us improve our self -awareness? Sure. So let me give you two. And I think these are, in some ways, these are the, like, simplest and most practical.

And I use these a lot with my coaching clients. So one is for internal self -awareness and the other is for external self -awareness. So internal self -awareness, we found that those self -awareness unicorns, almost to a person. Each had some kind of daily practice. It was very quick. And again, if they didn’t do it every day, they didn’t beat themselves up, they just tried to do it most days, where they were reflecting on their day, but not in a way that kicked them down something I call the rabbit hole of rumination, right? And the danger of sort of over -analyzing ourselves and our experiences is that we actually lose insight, and it makes us worse off. It makes us more stressed, more anxious, more depressed. And that’s probably a whole other podcast that we can do. But for the purposes of this, the daily check -in process,

I would offer three questions. So think about this, like, the next time you’re brushing your teeth at night, or the next time you’re driving home from work, ask yourself some variation of, number one, what went well today, number two, what didn’t go so well, and then three, how can I be smarter tomorrow? And by the way, if you’re working on something different, if you’re working on something specific, you could even say, how can I be more empathetic tomorrow? How can I be more influential tomorrow. How can I be a better coach tomorrow, right? But I think smarter is a nice catch -all of how can I use what I learn today to be 0 .1 % more self -aware tomorrow.

And what’s really interesting about the journey of self -awareness that we’ve discovered is most of the time improvement doesn’t happen in really dramatic leaps and bounds.

It happens slowly, incrementally, every day. which is maybe what I’ll give you for the second tool.

This is actually not something that I identified. It was something that I named. I call it the Dinner of Truth, but it was developed by a communications professor named Josh Meisner. And Dr. Meisner has been doing this exercise with all of his students for many, many years. I would guess he’s probably in, I mean, at least the thousands, if not the 10 ,000s. And here’s what it entails.

So First, you identify someone. It could be a work colleague. It could be someone in your personal life with whom you want to improve your relationship, right? Then you take them out to coffee, lunch. I like dinner because you can have cocktails and one cocktail can make this a little bit easier if that’s something that you’re into. And then you sit them down and you kind of explain, trying to improve myself awareness. you’re someone that’s very important to me. I have a question I’d like to ask you to answer as honestly as you can. And the question is, what do I do that is most annoying to you?

Everybody’s stomachs collectively dropped upon hearing that question. That is a hardwired human response. We’re very scared of possibly discovering that people don’t think, actionable that I can focus on. So instead of an indictment of who I am, you know, I always worry that my friends would be like, you know, Tasha, I’m really glad you asked because everything you do annoys me.

And I don’t really like that much. And I don’t want to be, but that’s the fear, right? And I know it was, you know, at the time, I even knew it was irrational, but you’re afraid of it. But like, one of my friends, you know, said, I love you in person, but you really annoy me on social media. And I was like, thank you. That’s so actionable, right? And I actually complete, this was like 10 years ago, I completely changed how I was showing up in, in that sort of virtual space. And so I would encourage people as scared as, as scary as it sounds or as scared as you might be.

Give it a try. Just try it once and see what happens. So I guess the criteria, who would you ask? It would be someone who probably Thank you. ask and then you just say, that’s okay. Thank you very much. Let’s have a nice dinner now. But yes, but I think if you’re a little more strategic about it than that, if you say, you know, has this person, you know, maybe been the brave soul who says the thing that nobody wants to say, like in at least one context that I can remember, that’s a pretty good sign. Yeah.

I’ve gotten in the habit. I’m thinking now as I’m speaking with you, Sasha, probably based on my reading of your book and listening to you, I’ve gotten in the habit after I’m done with coaching sessions and with workshops of immediately asking for feedback and make me really clear to people that I truly believe feedback is a gift, right? Because I’m in this environment where I’m coaching people. And if I don’t ask for feedback, unless I did a really bad job, which doesn’t happen, but if I did a really bad job, I’m sure they would let me know, but they’re always like, oh, it was great.

You got nine out of 10, la, la, la, whatever. I’m like, tell me something I can do to improve next time. And most of the time, they don’t share anything. They’re like, no, everything was great.

Is there something you can say to people that encourages them to share feedback with you that you’ve come across? Yeah. I mean, let’s take that situation specifically, because I think it’s something very generalizable, right? We all can ask for immediate feedback. And so how can we get that feedback and have the best chance it’ll be helpful? I might even, so two ideas there.

One would be to share with them past feedback you’ve gotten. You could say, you know, gosh, I remember you know, five years ago I was giving this workshop And a gentleman, you know, came up to me during lunch and said, you know, we don’t have enough breaks and we just don’t have the mental space to think about everything we’re learning. And it was so incredibly helpful. And here’s how I changed the class.

Like, maybe you can give a couple of examples of that. If it’s the first time you’ve asked for feedback on something and you don’t have, you know, a past track record, I would just make some stuff up, like, or even say the things that you’re worried aren’t working, right? Like, you know, I felt like my energy was down a little bit this afternoon. And, you know, maybe that’s in my head, but maybe you can verify that for me. That’s a hypothesis I have that I can’t test without you telling me what you think.

So to kind of give them, like, I’m not just saying this, I’m actually going to give you examples and show you how excited I am about hearing feedback on those examples.

I think that might do a lot. It’s obviously just one thing you can do, but I think that’s worth trying. Definitely worth trying. I’m going to try it and I’ll let you know how it works. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t work, right? It’s like you’re setting the table for the feedback. Yeah. I love it. Okay. So I can imagine some people are hesitant, is a nice way of it to ask for feedback, to gain insight into particularly their external self -awareness, right, and what their identity is in the eyes of other people.

So this leads me to your upcoming book called Shatterproof. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be talking about in that book? So I have to preface this by saying that the book just went to copy editing,

And I am not yet as smart and talking about it as I know that I need to be. But I’m just going to give you like some headlines. I started writing this book.

I worked on Shatterproof for five years. And it started out as an exploration of, you know, when bad things happen to us, what are the best ways that we can respond?

So that we’re not just sort of getting back to where we were before, but we’re getting, you know, smarter, more confident, stronger, more ready for, you know, whatever challenges lie ahead.

But during this research, COVID happened, as we all remember, and I experienced something that I had never experienced in my life. So I’m a person, you know, I just recently learned I’m not a fourth generation entrepreneur. I’m a fifth generation entrepreneur. and I have been raised, you know, I was raised by a single mother, taught that when you fall down, you get back up again, right? You’re resilient, you’re tough, you persevere. And I’ve, you know, I’ve had lots of challenges in my life like we all have, you know, for me, the biggest one has been a lot of, like, pretty significant health challenges. But I, you know, up until COVID happened, I had always found a way to kind of push through them to endure quiet endurance, right, where I wasn’t complaining.

I was getting up every day. And, you know, for the longest time, I assumed that everyone else was in 10 out of 10 pain every day and they just didn’t complain about it as much as I did. So then I was like,

I have to complain less. But what happened during COVID was literally, and I can trace the day that this happened. I woke up one day And my resilience ran out.

I hit my resilience ceiling where I was, my coping tools that I had relied on for my whole life were not only not working, but they were feeling like extra stress. You know, things like exercising or meditating or my gratitude journal, right? All the things were taught will help us be resilient.

My tank was completely empty. And so that actually kind of kicked me down into this hole of looking at what does the research on resilience actually tell us?

And what’s the alternative? Right. And so the best way to think about becoming shatterproof is a second skill set in addition to resilience.

It’s not that resilience isn’t helpful. It’s that it has its limits, right? So becoming shatterproof is about instead of bouncing back, which is what resilience is, when we become shatterproof, we are proactively growing forward through our toughest challenges. So instead of, you know, waiting for something to be over and just trying to keep persevering, we’re actually saying this is an opportunity for a profound personal transformation. In order to do that, I need to understand what my pain is telling me.

I need to kind of understand the self -limiting patterns and behaviors and beliefs that I’m bringing to the table. I need to pick new ones. And so the book is really about this four -step framework to become shatterproof that we can use, you know, all the time, first of all, but specifically when our resilience is starting to run out so that we’re not, I never want anyone to experience what I experienced and it was about, you know, March or April of 2021. And so the book is really to help people, my publisher didn’t like this title, but the goal is to help people build a more beautiful life in a world of constant chaos.

Instead of just bouncing back, like, and people, you know, they’re falling off equipment or whatever. And some of them, it was like not the first time that day where they had just like something’s happening, right? And I was watching with my mom and I said, well, they’ve got a TED talk. They now hit rock bottom in front of billions of people. Billions, I think, right? Isn’t that? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I’m going to move on to the three rapid fire questions are you ready i’m ready okay first question are you an introvert or an extrovert big time introvert really okay i’m what’s called yeah i’m a gregarious introvert that’s the qualifier okay what are your communication pet peeves there’s only one at the top of the list and it’s lying dishonesty Dishonesty.

Okay. Question number three, is there a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending a lot lately? By the way, I recommend your book all the time. Well,

I and Penguin Random House, thank you, Andrea, for that. That’s very nice of you. So to your question, yeah, the book that I have been, I find I’m recommending most often lately is by my really dear friend Laura Gassner Otting.

She has written two books, but her most recent one is called Wonder Hell. And it’s about what happens when we start to achieve our greatest potential and how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

It gets into things like imposter syndrome and all the things that come along with success when we thought success would be easy and we actually discover that it’s hard and it’s it’s a it’s very clever she is um she’s like the best friend that’s going to kick your ass and tell you exactly what you need to do um but in a way that is so kind and warm and she’s also very very funny it’s it’s a delightful book oh I can’t wait to read it i can’t i can’t wait you know based on the fact that we’re both interested in in i guess self -identity and self -awareness And based on the fact that we arrange our bookshelves similarly,

I’m going to maybe make the hypothesis that we might also enjoy reading the same books. So I can’t want to read that book. Is there anything else you want to say, do you want to share with the talk about top listeners about self -awareness?

I mean, I would just say, sort of let me give them two things. Number one, I would encourage everybody listening to this to go take the five minute insight quiz. You can get it at https://www.insight-book.com/quiz.It again takes five minutes. It’s free. You fill out 14 questions. You send it to someone else who knows you well. They fill out 14 questions. Very important. And then when both results are in, you get a nice report that shows you high level, which of those four boxes are you in right now? And then it gives you, you know, usually two or three very practical things you can do if you decide you want to improve.

So I think that’s the first thing. But the second thing, I’ll go back to, you know, kind of a theme that I think we’ve touched on multiple times, which is

Amazing. Thank you so much, Tasha.

I really appreciate your time and your expertise, and it’s really nice to get to know you. You too. I really enjoyed this. Yeah, two self -identity, self -development, bookshelf nerds. We had to come together at some point, so it was a pleasure. I love it. Thank you.

Thanks again to Tasha for sharing her insights about self-awareness.

Yah I got that.

Her book is called Insight and she’s insightful.
Of course!

OK – let me now highlight three of the INSIGHTS from our conversation that I want to reinforce:
1. Why self-awareness is important
2. The definition of self-awareness and a model for how to think about it; and last
3. Two suggestions for how to boost your self-awareness

First – The significance of self-awareness.
The impact that it has. According to Tasha’s research and the research of others, those with higher self-awareness benefit in many ways. This is a long list. Are you ready? So people who are self-aware are more successful at work.

They get more promotions.
They’re better communicators.

They’re better influencers.
They’re more confident.

They’re more empathetic.
They’re more effective and respected leaders.
And the companies they lead might be more profitable.

They have better romantic relationships.
They have stronger and deeper friendships.

And.
They tend to raise more mature and less narcissistic children.

As Tasha says, self -awareness the meta -skill of the 21st century.

That’s the first point.
Don’t underestimate the significance of self-awareness.

The second point I was going to reinforce is the definition of self-awareness. This is about thinking but self-awareness in a more disciplined way, beyond self-awareness as “thinking about thinking”. Tasha’s definition is the will and the skill to understand who we are and how you’re seen.

There are 4 components of this definition:
1. The will – the desire to improve.
If that list I gave you of the many benefits of self-awareness doesn’t improve your WILL to improve it, I don’t know what to say.
Then there’s:
2. The skill – knowledge about how to become more self aware, beyond the myths and “common knowledge.”
3. Who you are – your strengths, weaknesses, passions, values, opinions, idiosyncrasies, all of it. This is internal self-awareness.
4. How you’re seen by others – how others perceive you This is external self-awareness.

As Tasha mentioned, it might be helpful to think about these last two dimensions – internal and external self-awareness, in terms of a twox2. There’s low and high interval self awareness on one axis and low and high external self-awareness on the other axis. The rare folks who are high on both are what she calls the unicorns.
If you’re low on both you’re a seeker. You don’t yet know who you are, what you stand for, or how others see you, and you probably feel stuck or frustrated with your performance and relationships.

Many of us are on the diagonal – There are the Introspectors (those with high internal and low external self-awareness) – I’ve worked with some clients who are Introspectors. They’re clear on who they are but don’t challenge their own views or search for blind spots by getting feedback from others. They end up in big trouble. Then there’s the Pleasers (those with low internal and high external self-awareness) – Tasha admitted she might be a pleaser, and I think I might be too. We’re so focused on appearing a certain way to others that we could be overlooking what matters to us.

The last point I want to reinforce is Tasha’s suggestion for how to become a unicorn. She has two suggestions:
1. the daily check -in process, Where you answer three questions. some variation of, number one, what went well today, number two, what didn’t go so well, and then three, how can I be smarter tomorrow?

The idea here is that is that improvement in your self-awareness doesn’t happen quickly, Rather, it happens slowly, incrementally, a little bit every day.

The second suggestion from Tasha is
2. the Dinner of Truth. The dinner of truth was developed by communications professor Josh Meisner. What you do is identify someone with whom you want to improve your relationship. Then you take them out to coffee, lunch, or dinner. Or maybe cocktails. Then you ask them to answer this very awkward Q, as honestly as they can: What do I do that is most annoying to you?

You know what? I’m going to start doing this. I‘m not going to wait for some fancy dinner reservation. I’m just going to ask my co-workers, friends and family what I do that annoys them. Actually, I already know what annoys my family. They tell me all the time. But I’m not sure about my friends and co-workers. Hmm.

Well that’s it!

The three things I wanted to reinforce for you are the significance of self-awareness, which includes the long list of different ways it can benefit you; the definition of self-awareness, along with the helpful 2×2 framework that distinguishes between low and high internal and external self-awareness; and two ways to boost your self-awareness. To boost your self-awareness, ask yourself the three questions: What went well today? What didn’t go so well? How can I be better tomorrow? And, of course, there’s the Dinner of Truth.

Thanks again to Tasha. Tasha, I can’t wait to read your next book, SHATTERPROOF, and interview you again. You can connect with Tasha through her coordinates in the show notes. My coordinates are there too, so please connect with me anytime. Check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website or send me a DM on LinkedIn. I love hearing from you.

Talk soon!

The post Boost Your SELF-AWARENESS with Dr. Tasha Eurich (ep.174) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Insight: Why We're Not as Self-Aware as We Think, and How Seeing Ourselves Clearly Helps Us Succeed at Work and in Life

Wonderhell: Why Success Doesn't Feel Like It Should . . . and What to Do About It

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How to become an epic storyteller with “Under the Influence” podcast host Terry O’Reilly. Terry and Andrea talk storytelling, elevator pitches, and peeling the onion to identify what business you’re really in.

TERRY O’REILLY* Podcast ”Under the Influence” – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/under-the-influence-with-terry-oreilly/id493536367 * Book – My Best Mistake (2023) – https://amzn.to/3zroPQe * Book – This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence (2018) – https://amzn.to/3TzNbOm * Book – The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture (2011) – https://amzn.to/4ewW9Et * Website – https://terryoreilly.ca/ * Terry’s recommendations: + “The Plot Thickens” podcast + The Score: Bank Robber Diaries podcast

TRANSCRIPT

That fabulous voice belongs to Terry O’Reilly host of the popular “Under The Influence” podcast. I’ve been listening to “Under The Influence” for years, and I’ve always enjoyed Terry‘s sense of humor, and his skill as an exceptional storyteller. I knew we were both Canadian and we’re both podcasters. I had no idea he’s also a huge fan of the power of three. Did you hear what he said? Bingo, Bango Bongo. Let’s do this!

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #173 “Under the Influence with storyteller Terry O’Reilly”. In this episode, you’re gonna learn the ingredients necessary to create compelling stories, how and why to “peel back the onion” and think hard about what business you’re really in, and so much more.

In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and clarity, establish credibility, and ultimately achieve your career goals. Sound good? To learn more about me and what I do, head over to talkabouttalk.com and you can read about the coaching and workshops that I run. Plus there are a bunch of free resources for you at the bottom of the takaboutalk.com homepage. You can also sign up for the Talk About Talk email newsletter, where you’ll get free coaching from me in your inbox. Head over to talkabouttalk,com to sign up now.

Alright, Let’s shift gears. I can’t wait for you to hear my conversation with Terry O’Reilly. If you’ve ever heard his Under the Influence podcast, you know he is like an encyclopedia of stories and insights. As you’re about to hear, he’s the same in real-time, without a script. He’s also very gracious.

Let me introduce Terry, then we’ll get right into the interview. At the end, as always, I’m going to summarize with three learnings that I want to reinforce for you. Sound good?

Ok.

Long before he had a radio show, Terry was an award-winning writer at Canada’s top advertising agencies. Creating campaigns for top brands such as Labatt, Bell, Nissan, and the Hudson’s Bay Company.

In 1990, Terry co-founded Pirate Radio & Television with eight recording studios in Toronto and New York.

In 2005, he became the host of the CBC Radio One and WBEZ Chicago radio show, Under The Influence, with over one million listeners a week. His podcast has been downloaded over 75 million times.

Terry was awarded with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Advertising & Design Club of Canada, and has been granted Honorary Degrees from three Canadian universities.

Ah – the power of three again.

Terry has also written three books, the latest being “My Best Mistake” about people who made catastrophic career decisions – but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them.

He has a wonderful wife and yes, three lovely daughters, Terry he says like some of this work.

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Thank you so much, Terry, for being here today to talk to me and the talk about talk listeners.

O’Reilly: Well, it’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: There are so many directions that we could go in this conversation advertising, branding, personal branding. But I thought something that really stands out about you that I appreciate very, very much is your fantastic ability to tell stories. So I thought we would start there. And I’m curious as a master’s storyteller. What do you think makes for a great story? Is there an ingredient list that’s necessary.

O’Reilly: That’s a very good question. when I think about that, I I think 2 things, I think structure. I think that’s always been one of my strengths. For whatever reason, who knows? Is story structure that may have come from almost 40 years in the advertising business, where you have to? You know, structure Mini stories inside 30 and 60 seconds, which is, you know, in a a Herculane feat at best. So I think. And even you see, a lot of movie directors start out in the advertising business, and they learn storytelling because you have to. You have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end inside 30 or 60 seconds. And I think that’s a real discipline that you have to develop. So structure is the key for me cause as a director, so I directed commercials for 3 quarters of my career. I think I directed my staff, told me at one time something like 14,000 commercials in my career.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow!

O’Reilly: So I got to see a lot of really great storytelling and a lot of really bad storytelling and where most stories fell down, Andrea was in the end. There was great beginnings, wonderful middles, and terrible ends. It just never wrapped up. They never had a they never had a destination in mind. It didn’t come to this wonderful satisfying. It’s like seeing a great move, and you think I loved everything but the way it ended. You know that because the ending is the toughest thing for a writer to write so structure to me is critical that you have a beautiful teasing opening, and then you have this really sumptuous middle. And then you have this inevitable end. That’s just so satisfying. I think the other little thing beyond story structure is the element of surprise. Where you don’t really know where a story is going, or you think you know where it’s going. And then the writer just yanks you to the left or to or to the right, and I think those unexpected moments add impact.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: My brain is immediately going to personal branding when you say that. But I’m going to stick with advertising for.

O’Reilly: There you go!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Couple minutes here. So beginning, middle, and end. consistent with my love of the power of 3, I’m thinking about my my self-introduction framework where I encourage people to Start with who you are, what you do, what your passion is, what your expertise is. Ground yourself in the present, then go past to establish credibility. And most people end there. Right? They’re like, and that’s me. Right going around the table or around the screen step 3 is the icing on the cake. And you you said similarly that many people or many stories, are missing. Kind of that last? Yeah, that part 3 or the ending of the story.

O’Reilly: Act. 3. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, act 3. So that’s that’s interesting. That that analysis.

O’Reilly: You know, even in sound, Andy, it’s interesting. You say that the power of threes I was known to be a I was a humor director. So if you had humorous scripts you would bring them to me. I I could do drama, but there were directors that were better at that than me, but humor was always my thing and I used to call them Bingo bango bongo moments that when things happen in threes like, you know, 2 knocks at a door is one thing, but 3 knocks is funny. and it’s hard to articulate. Why, that is, or if something falls off, let’s say a glass falls off a table. If it falls in a sequence of 3 sounds, it’s funny, and if it’s falls in 2, it isn’t so that even the power of 3 is a is a powerful rule within our audio.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I had no idea. But I’m not surprised. Yeah.

O’Reilly: Fact. Yeah. that’s the power of 3 a 3. Is this this amazing number in our lives? Although they say the world’s favorite number is 7, and the world’s favorite color is blue. But I’d say 3 is really it is that key secret ingredient.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I I think 7 is like the maximum. There’s something like, that’s why phone numbers are 4. Right? Yeah, I I’m a fan of threes. You have 3 daughters right.

O’Reilly: I have 3 daughters. That’s right.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I did my, I did my reading. Terry.

O’Reilly: You did, you did.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So back to the storytelling. I’m I would love to hear what your take is on what brands are the best storytellers, maybe past and present.

O’Reilly: My favorite brand for storytelling of all time is Volkswagen in the in the sixties. So Doral Dane burn back, which I think was the greatest advertising agency of all time, led by Bill Burnback, probably the greatest creative director of all time. What they did with that brand to me is amazing, because if you put it in context, the early sixties automobile advertising was all the same. It was, you know, see, the USA in your Chevrolet and the Vw. Brought humor to advertising for the 1st time, and then they brought incredible honesty. They would talk about how ugly the car was. and they talk about how underpowered the car was, and they’d make they would make all its faults strong points. And you know that even though it’s under powered it, doesn’t it. It doesn’t take much gas, and just because it’s ugly doesn’t mean you can’t love it. And it became the most beloved car North America, I think. And it was all due to the storytelling. You know, they, the one of the 1st ads. The headline was Lemon. and I don’t think I could sell that ad today. There’s no way a car manufacturer is going to allow me to say lemon as a headline. But if you read the story underneath that headline. It was basically saying that the car you were looking at in that ad had a blemish on the chrome of the glove compartment, so it can’t go out yet. So it really was a story about incredible quality.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

O’Reilly: Under a headline that was is the most toxic word in automobile advertising. So the storytelling made that car a an icon, and I think they were the best storytellers in advertising for all time. A little more recently, I would say. Nike is a great storyteller, you know. Just do it, and every Nike ad, you see, is a story about a team or a person achieving something in amazing yet no, Nike ad looks like the other Nike ad like they. They almost feel like they have nothing in common. But it’s a storytelling that makes campaignable.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

O’Reilly: Apple’s the same thing. I think Apple does incredible advertising. It’s always they harken back to Steve Jobs, which is so interesting to me. They’ve really been so consistent that virtually every apple ad is is about one person achieving something. It’s not a business, it’s not a company. It’s always one person achieving something with the power of a computer which was Steve Jobs vision of taking the computing power out of Ibm and giving it to the individual. So they’ve run to that strategy for all these years, and I love their storytelling.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: You asked me who the best storyteller is today. Right now. At this moment I would say, Heinz.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, Heinz.

O’Reilly: Hines is doing this. This catch up is doing the best work I’ve seen in years. They and most of it’s done out of Canada. It’s got done out of rethink in Vancouver. They are winning every award. They are being written up in ad age and add news every week. They are doing things like I wrote them things down. They do. They did a big puzzle with 5,700 pieces or something is all red, you know, one of those crazy puzzles they did they asked kids to draw just ketchup. They just said, draw ketchup and kids. All the kids drew Heinz labels.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow!

O’Reilly: They asked AI to do to. They said they asked AI draw ketchup, bottle, and AI drew Heinz great ways. They did a tweet, which was the slowest tweet in the world. 57 letters. The message was 57 letters, Andrew, but it took 57 h to complete. So, just sitting there watching this tweet slowly appear. All of that is storytelling right? Because the richer a ketchup is, the slower it pours, which has always been Heinz raison d’etra right? And all these fun ways of getting across. How unique and how love the brand is in that category is just incredible storytelling.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It’s almost like they’ve gone, Meta. They’re reinforcing their equity and creating new equity with it. Right? Like, yeah, wow, especially.

O’Reilly: In an in that old sleepy brand like it’s not a.com like it’s it’s been around forever.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So where are you seeing these ads? I mean, I know you’re you’re I shouldn’t ask you personally. But where cause.

O’Reilly: And we’ll see them.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Where can people see them?

So we used to, you know, tune in when we got home from work, and we’d watch the Evening News and everything so. And and now the media landscape has become so fragmented. And I’m I’m I see, as many ads as the average person.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But I have not seen that. So I’m wondering if they’re on certain meat that you know. Maybe they are on television or streaming platforms that I’m not.

O’Reilly: I would say, most of it’s probably online in the form of videos, Youtube videos, or whatever just. They’re great at creating press. All those Heinz ideas create press, and I always say the best advertising creates press, because suddenly your budget feels like it’s quadrupled. If the press gets hold of it right, and rethink, or masters at that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So my next question I was gonna ask you is is related to the point that you just made there. So over time other than becoming more fragmented and going into new media. Obviously with the Internet especially, and video. What else has changed in terms of advertising and storytelling.

O’Reilly: I think this, I think you sort of touched on it. I think storytelling is spilled out of traditional media for sure. But even online. It’s spilled out. So, for example, sticking with Heinz, they put out on at New York’s fashion week, which just happened. They put out a line of clothes. Heinz, a ketchup, put out a line of clothes that had just a little ketchup drip. and it became the talk of fashion. Week.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I did. I did read about that. So.

O’Reilly: Here’s the catch up finding a way to worm their way into New York’s fashion week. With this, with just the ongoingness of their strategy and and their storytelling ability.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, you know what I would say. There, the medium is the message right? that’s absolutely brilliant. I love that.

O’Reilly: And everything they do is is tailored to that but specific medium which is so great, which I think is the sign of a great marketer. It’s not the same thing in every medium. It’s the same tone. It’s the same overall strategy. But but Instagram looks different than Facebook and Facebook looks different than Youtube. Video, like everything’s tailored to that medium.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right brilliant. So I’d love to switch over into personal branding. And you you were talking about the Volkswagen lemon ad, and how they turned that into a pot. So it: drew the reader in. You know. What? What do you mean? You’re calling yourself a lemon. I better read what they’re talking about here, right? And they basically turned. I’ve heard this term a lot recently. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. Yeah, right? Right? And that also relates to humans. So when I’m coaching executives on their personal brand or their professional identity

They’ll admit to me that there’s some part of their identity that they try to hide right it could be, for example, their sense of humor like. I don’t want people to think I’m unprofessional, so I hide my sense of humor, or I hide my you know my upbringing where I was brought up, or my accent, or they tried to somehow hide their identity. And then and then I talk to them about how we can create a narrative where what they’re perceiving as a bug may actually be a feature. So that’s my segue into asking you, Terry, whether you consciously and or strategically develop your personal brand.

O’Reilly: You know I did an episode on personal branding a couple of years back.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. And it was the most popular episode of that season which surprised me because I thought I just never would have guessed that. Yeah.

O’Reilly: And that’s why, in the book that’s sitting behind you there, there is a chapter on personal branding.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I read it that even.

O’Reilly: That book is for marketers. I I really thought, you know, there’s everybody, even within marketing, has a brand. So I think, like any great brand a a personal brand has to share so many things in common with. If you look to Nike, or Apple, or Heinz, or whatever is that? 1st of all. they figure out what their uniqueness is in the category. and then everything they do kind of centers around that uniqueness. And there’s a consistency. Then there’s a tone there’s a kind of language that a great brand uses. There are guardrails, too, I think, but I don’t think they can be super super narrow. Because, as you were saying, you know, if someone’s really funny, or you know, if someone had a really tough upbringing, but achieved a lot of success. That’s a great story like that can really be. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature like it can be a really great part of your of your personal brand about how you overcame obstacles or overcame speed bumps to achieve success. So for me, a great brand is what makes you different.

And then how can I express that in creative ways? And that means you have to look around the category. See what your competitors are doing because you don’t want to strike a similar tone to somebody else. You want to find your own piece of real estate that you can own. Even my radio show on CBC is different in one big way, because I looked when when I pitched the show to Cbc. Never thinking for a moment that they would ever buy it, Andrea? You know the advertising free Cbc, taking on a show about advertising.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

O’Reilly: Shockley.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Irony. Love it.

O’Reilly: No, it is yeah. I looked at all the shows on on Cbc. And I thought, Okay, I’m going to Zig. Everybody’s saying I’m going to Zig, and what that was is I didn’t do interviews like I may be the only narrative show on Cbc. Maybe there’s 1 more out there, but I chose to go narrative storytelling instead of interviewed.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that’s the only thing that distinguish. I mean, it is.

O’Reilly: So it’s 1 of them. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So you also have a beautiful voice. You also have incredible knowledge. You’re also a beautiful storyteller, right? I could go on

O’Reilly: So that was the starting point, though Andrea was that beyond all of that lovely stuff the starting point was, how can I stand out on the air just sonically.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right.

O’Reilly: I thought, Okay, I’m not going to do interviews. That was a big decision. Because there’s a lot of great advertising people. I could interview.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I’m sure, and it’s fun.

O’Reilly: And it’s fun. Yeah, it’s fun, right?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I was. Maybe you’ve answered this next question with what you just said. But so what’s your product? Category, or your cat or personal category. I guess I mean, you’re saying other radio shows.

O’Reilly: Well, you know, the 1st chapter of that book is, what business are you really in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: And that’s that’s you think that’s so easy to answer. And it’s and I give some examples in there that Molson’s not in the beer business or in the party business, and Michelin’s not in the tire business. They’re in the safety business. I mean, you really have to know what people are buying from you in order to be relevant. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You see, I’m just showing I’m opening the book to show you. As I was reading that chapter in particular, I took my marker out. I started writing. Talk. Talk about talk is in the business of right. Yes.

O’Reilly: Right, but that I mean that that gets to the heart of your question. You know you have to know what it is people want from you. because, as I say in the book, if you’re if someone’s shopping for tires because they wanna have make sure their family’s safe if you’re selling speed as a tire feature, and the and the place across the street selling safety. They’re gonna cross the street, even though you’re both selling tires right.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: I think you have to, really. And it’s so hard to. you know. Peel, the onion, to figure out what it is that you offer even my show it. It started out as a show about creativity. and then it very quickly morphed into a show about strategy. And that has been my ongoingness, and I’m a creative guy. I was really always dealt with strategy. But I wasn’t a strategic account director. I was a writer. But here I am evolving into strategy. So so my show is really a look. I take people on a a look behind the closed doors of advertise, like everybody’s got should have an elevator pitch. That’s how you get to the nub of who you are and what you offer is, try coming up with a 1 sentence elevator pitch.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Of what you do, whether you’re a brand or a person. Yeah.

O’Reilly: And what you do, and what makes you unusual? You know I have a chapter in that in that book which I find such a great exercise. It’s really hard to do well that exercise. But you know, I always say, you know, Dirty Harry, that great Clint Eastwood film series of phones that made him famous. Really, you know, what was it about about Dirty Harry that made him so compelling? And it was that it wasn’t that he was a rogue cop. It wasn’t that he was tough. it it wasn’t that he broke the rules, which is what everybody answers. The the true answer to that is, he was more violent than the criminals he chased.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That’s right. I just read that. I just read that.

O’Reilly: When you, when it’s articulated, you go. Yes, that’s exactly why he was so mesmerizing and and and why he created so much that character created so much controversy, and and ticket buying was never really seen before. and even I wired magazine, which is my favorite elevator pitch of all time. They, you know, it’s about entertainment technology at at trends and their elevator pitch when they were looking for funding from investors was. we want to feel like we’ve been mailed back from the future.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I, yeah, I love that too.

O’Reilly: Maybe the best elevator pitch of all time.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: My favorite elevator pitch of all time is, you know, the Sigourney Weaver aliens movie. Do you know what the elevator pitch was for? It.

O’Reilly: Jaws in space.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yes, I probably learned that from you, Terry.

O’Reilly: Yeah, you may have. Yeah, I’ve mean that once you can articulate a really great elevator pitch. And that means, I mean, look at the language in the 3 we’ve talked about there. It isn’t like, I am a marketing communications expert like that’s not an elevator pitch. That’s a that’s just a statement that’s not an elevator pitch. An elevator pitch should make people lean right in. So when when wired magazine said to their investors, We want our magazine to feel like it’s been mailed back from the future. All the investors around the table instantly were interested in that magazine. You know what.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That that unexpected element that you said.

O’Reilly: Who is it so?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Important, and it.

O’Reilly: Business.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Is one sentence right? If it has something unexpected in it, then.

O’Reilly: Yeah, a little surprise or or an incredibly interesting collection of words that sums up. What is the essence of you that makes you so different.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: okay, so I want to have time for the rapid fire questions at the end. But I, before we do that, I want to shift to your most recent book my best mistake.

O’Reilly: Yep.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Can you share with the listeners what the basic premise of the book is, and then also share with us maybe one or 2 of your best mistakes.

O’Reilly: The premise of that book was people who more, that I have a couple of other of additional little stories in there. But the overall arc of that book is people who made catastrophic career decisions where they lost their jobs, the credibility, their livelihood. They lost everything. and it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them. So I thought that as an exploration was interesting, because when that happens to most people they usually disappear, they disappear into the ether, or they just completely change careers or vocations, and just like wipe the slate clean. But I thought, it’s yeah. And I thought people who actually muscle through that are more interesting. So the 1st chapter of that book is about Jaws Steven Spielberg. It’s such a well told story, except for one detail, right? So everybody knows he was out on location in Martha’s Vineyard. He’s got 3 mechanical sharks that he’s had built to scale. which ate up most of his budget. By the way, he’s a 1st time film director really done some television. This is his 1st time with the Big Leagues. You think he’s only 28 or something? He gets out to Martha’s Vineyard. They put the sharks in the water. He’s got his cast, his crew, everything out there and the sharks immediately. Malfunction. And he’s paralyzed because the main beast of this film doesn’t work. And he goes into his hotel room one night thinking he’s gonna lose at all. He’s gonna lose his his chances. Being a director. He’s gonna he’s gonna be pulled back to Hollywood. He’s gonna be fired. He’s sitting in the dark panicking. and then he asks himself the most interesting question. He says. what would Hitchcock do.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, wow!

O’Reilly: In that moment he knew the answer, and the answer was, What you can’t see is is the most terrifying thing of all. So then he, you know, he figures out a way to imply the shark, the fin through the water, or the pulling the big yellow. What it barrels through the water to show it’s or the music the great score. Right? Don’t, don’t. But the mistake he made, which is really why I decided to retell that well-told story, because everybody knows those details, is he? When he tried these sharks out in Hollywood he tried them in freshwater tanks. Mistake was he didn’t try them in salt water. The saltwater corroded all the mechanics. I thought there, I never knew that detail, and that’s why I love the story, and that’s why I loved how he let me. That that huge mistake he made in the filmmaking led to the best part of that film and lost him on his career like be ended up being the best thing that ever happened to him.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. And the so it’s really interesting that that story is your lead in this book, Terry, because as an audio storyteller, you’re leaving just in the same way that he left the the moviegoers image of the of the shark up up to the moviegoers. Right? When you’re telling your stories on your podcast and your radio show. You’re leaving it up to us to kind of fill in the blanks in our minds about what everything looked like.

O’Reilly: That’s the joy of audio. Your your listener becomes your art director. and I always thought that was so incredibly powerful. I mean a lot of writers and advertising don’t like audio don’t like raid. Let’s call it radio don’t like radio. They’re afraid of it. They much rather do television or print or film because at 1st glance. It looks like audio doesn’t have all the the same toolbox. You don’t have casts like you don’t have faces. You don’t have wardrobe. You don’t have locations.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: I always thought that was way more freeing because I could be on the moon in a radio commercial. If I have done it correctly. You’re with me as a listener. I could be at the bottom of the ocean, and all of that would. I couldn’t do on television because it was too expensive.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, that’s really interesting. Right? And and this, yeah, it’s the power of audio. I wonder if these art directors or creatives are also thinking that it’s just less tangible, right? Like it’s a it’s an audio file. I can’t actually open something,

O’Reilly: That’s why it’s also the hardest to present, Andrea, because you can show a print layout. You can show a TV storyboard. But with radio. You have to actually get up in a boardroom and perform it for your client, which gets to your great question, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Bye.

O’Reilly: Yeah. I love this question. I was so glad that it’s on your list.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, let’s do it. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Terry?

O’Reilly: Complete Introvert.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Of really.

O’Reilly: Oh, complete introvert, so they say the definition of an of a introvert versus an extrovert is, do you get recharged by being alone or recharged by being around a lot of people. So I recharge not by being alone. I’m not a hermit, I mean, but away from the crowd is where I recharge. Right? So that was, that was a big hindrance to me when I started my career. because I learned quite quickly that you had to learn how to present in a board room you had to get up. You had to be able to perform. You had to be able to feel questions. You had to be able to to really own the room. And there’s a lot of money riding on those meetings right? You could spend, you know, a million dollars on it. You’re trying to convince someone to spend a million dollars on your idea. It’s there’s a lot of pressure going on. And I hated it. It was my white knuckle fear. I would beg people to present my work for me, because I just it was just the it was the the thing I feared most. And then I realized that by letting other people present my work, most of it wasn’t getting sold. So I thought, Okay.I have to learn how to do this. so I was very fortunate because I had a great mentor. a creative director. I had early in my career was a magnificent presenter he was just. Oh, my goodness! He could just thrill you with the work. He just it was something about him, and I just watched him constantly at work. and I, slowly, by osmosis, learned how to do it. and then I actually got over the hump of fearing it. So by I would volunteer a lot. So you know, Craig, director, say, okay, who’s gonna present the work tomorrow, when I go put up my hand and go. Okay, O’reilly’s gonna present the work. Who’s gonna present the strategy? Jill’s gonna and I would go home and just rock in the dark, because I’ve now put myself in a situation where I have to do it, but I did it so many times that I actually got over the hump of fearing it to actually looking forward to it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Amazing.

O’Reilly: Introvert like me.That is a big journey. Situationally, specific extrovert.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. Oh, wow, wow! You just came in with the Zinger. So the most common answer that I get is like, I’m a recovered introvert. That’s some version of that, right like I was an introvert. But I overcame it, and I’m like introverts are the best listeners.

O’Reilly: Yeah, right. World needs, introverts. World needs. Yes. But your story, I’m sure, will inspire a lot of people, whether they’re an introvert or an extrovert or not

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Ok, so that wasn’t so rapid fire. But it was a very valuable story for everyone to hear. The second rapid fire question is. what are your communication, pet peeves?

O’Reilly: 1st of all, I think you touched on it, too. I think people don’t listen. I think listening is a big part of communicating like 2 monologues don’t make a dialog. Right? Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Very well put. You are going to be quoted on that, Terry.

O’Reilly: Yeah, I’ve seen, you know I I’ve been in so many meetings where somebody will ask a client a question and then answer it. Before the clients had a chance to add like again, it’s just a monologue, then. I think listening is a very underrated huge part of a great communicator is listening and know thy audience. The the Golden rule, you know. putting yourself in the shoes of who you’re talking to or imagining. It’s a funny thing, you know. If I’ll write an episode of our show. and I’ll send, you know. I’ll record my part, and the engineer puts it together, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll make a a list of revisions, sometimes 20 or 30 revisions long. because I’m I mean the weeds on it. and then I’ll listen to it, you know, over the course of that process like 6 times. and then I’ll then it’ll air on Cbc. And it feels completely different to me because I know a million people are listening to it. I’ll pick out little mistakes in it. Where I thought, how could I have missed that when I listened to it 6 times in a row.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow! So I just wanted to share with you that over the past several years people ask me all the time, what do you think communication superpowers are, what are the things we need to work on? And I would come up with a list of 3 depending on the person. The 3 most important things probably are confidence, listening and storytelling. Yeah, right? If you if you don’t have confidence, actually, you have nothing because you’re paralyzed to your point. And then, being a good listener, is a great next step, and then kind of the icing on the cake is becoming an eloquent or effective storytelling.

O’Reilly: It has to be. You know Theodore Levitt has that great line that I’ve stolen for decades, which is, people don’t buy 3 quarter inch drill bits. They buy 3 quarter inch holes, and you have to understand even not just brand advertising, but as a personal brand, or in a meeting or an exchange. You have to understand what it is. People are buying right. You have to listen to them and know what they want, and not just make it myopic in one way.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So this is what I handwrote in the front of the book. When when you you did that, you shared what the story in in the 1st chapter that you just shared here. And so I you know, I put the book down and I thought, what is talk about talk selling. is it communication skills, coaching? No. it’s actually selling confidence.

O’Reilly: That’s what it is. Exactly right. Takes a long time to get to that, though, doesn’t it? To peel that onion to get to that that word.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love the metaphor peeling the onion. I’ve been dancing around that idea of confidence for years. So okay, the final rapid fire question, rapid fire question is there a podcast or a book that you’ve been recommending lately? Not not your books, not your podcast not my podcast something. Else out. There.

O’Reilly: I read so much. Oh, my goodness.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Do you? Oh, yeah, you have a book club. Yeah.

O’Reilly: Oh, yeah, and you can see. I don’t know if you can see behind me. I can’t see myself on the thing, but I mean, that’s just marketing books back there right.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: Yeah. let me think about that for one second one podcast. It’s got nothing to do with marketing per se, that I love is the plot thickens from classic movies. So Ben make. That’s who I love. I just love his intro. If you ever watch that channel, he always does these really wonderful interviews? And or he’ll do great introductions to movies, old movies telling you what happened behind the scenes, etc. He has this great podcast called the Plot Thickens, where every season is about a different filmmaker or actor or actress, and it is absolutely rivetingly fascinating.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh. excellent! I will check it out, and I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.

O’Reilly: It’s really good. There’s 1 more, I’ll say, I’ll talk to you about just very quickly. here’s a a podcast. Series called, I think it’s called the bank robber diaries. I may have that name wrong, but they enter this whole series. They interview a, a a real-life, modern-day bank robber.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh!

O’Reilly: Robbed. I wanna say I may have my numbers wrong because I listened to the series a year or 2 ago. He may have robbed like 20 banks in California now, not some like now, and he tell he talks about how he does it. about how we. It was just a fascinating look into a, into a criminal mind that you would never normally get like. Here’s how I case a bank. Here’s how I make my getaway. Here’s where I parked my car because I had to run out with all the money, and I had to like. It was like just mind blowing to get inside the mind of someone like that, and then he’s he’s now, you know, re Beyond that he’s eventually an FBI guy caught him. He went to jail. Now he’s on the other side of that and he’s just. It’s a fascinating story.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I was curious whether they were interviewing him in jail.

O’Reilly: Already done his time.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Done this time So. Is there anything else you want to leave with me? And the talk about talk listeners in terms of storytelling or personal branding or advertising.

O’Reilly: I think I think, above all, it’s it’s to be a wonderful storyteller. In my humble opinion. I just I think it’s you have to have an enormous sense of curiosity. I think you have to be curious about people and things, and why people do the things they do and and influences in the culture. And you know again, that’s about listening or asking the right questions. And I think really wonderful writers have this ability, Andrea, to be in a situation, then hover above it at the same time. So you know you’re having an exchange with your car mechanic, but you’re also watching it from above in the ceiling, because you’re watching the dynamics.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: That I remember I I was getting my car fixed. am I? And I looked at the bill, and I had a heart attack. and my mechanic said to me, You know what it was really difficult, but you know I I didn’t even bill you for all our hours. It’s you lose, I lose. and I thought what a great way to sell a high, a high bill was to use the term you lose. I lose, and and then I as a writer, I hovered above that moment, you know, and I grabbed that moment to use elsewhere him and and I am always making notes by the way of things people tell me, or I make copious notes on every book I read. And I collect them all, and the great thing about being digitized is you can search anything, but I may not. I may find a wonderful story that someone’s told me, Andrea and I. I may not use that story for 5 years. but when I use that story it is the perfect story. For that moment.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Gosh!

O’Reilly: So, writer. I collect stories.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So where do you put them?

O’Reilly: So on my computer, it’s on a hard drive in case my computer. you know, dies. But yeah, but even just book notes. I have probably 1,600 pages of book notes. So far.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Wow, incredible.

O’Reilly: Just pulling out little moments, little stories, little turns of phrase that I can attribute back to somebody. But, like, you know, you don’t buy through quarter and drill bits you buy through quarter inch holes, like all those little nuggets that just clarify.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, I’m going to sneak one last question in, because, like, you’re basically serving this one to me. have you created a language model for AI based on all of your books and all of your podcast episodes. Because I feel like people would pay money to ask Terry. I have.

O’Reilly: Haven’t done anything like that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, there’s an opportunity for you.

O’Reilly: AI is is kind of I’ve I’ve been stepping back from that just to see it unfold, because it’s so new to all of us.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

O’Reilly: Yeah. Well. who knows?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: all right. Well, I want to thank you so much, Terry, for sharing your stories and your advice very much. I learned a lot, and I have learned so much over the years. And now I’m thrilled to share that with the talk about talk listeners. So thank you.

O’Reilly: Well, this has been a terrific conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

Isn’t Terry great? If you want to hear more of his voice, check out his “Under the Influence“ podcast.

Thank you, Terry, for so graciously sharing your insights with us. As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun.

Did you catch where I realized I was telling Terry a story that I learned from him?

Pretty funny. Probably the best implicit compliment ever, right? Repeating a story back to someone that first shared the story with you. Hmm.

Anyway, now, as promised, I’d like to summarize three main points from our conversation:

The necessary ingredients for a great story
The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success –
The idea of peeling back the onion –

1-Storytelling

Terry says that two things make for a great story:

structure. You have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end … As he says: a easing opening, a sumptuous middle. And then you have this inevitable end. That’s just so satisfying. And second
the element of surprise. As Terry says, unexpected moments add impact.

And to be a wonderful storyteller Terry says you have to have an enormous sense of curiosity.

Curious about people and things. Listening and asking questions.

2-The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success

This is the main point of his latest book: “My best mistake”?

Terry talked about the example of how Steven Spielberg’s Jaws mishap (i.e. the mechanical shark rusting in the salt water) turned the movie into a long-lasting cultural icon.

Terry also specifically mentioned how that weakness, or obstacle ,or BUG of yours can become andintegral and compelling part of your of your personal brand. It’s what makes you unique.

3- peeling back the onion

This idea of peeling back the onion – it could be for a product brand or for your personal brand. It’s about thinking deeply, peeling back the onion, regarding what business you’re really in.

For example, Molson’s not in the beer business, rather it’s in the party business,

and Michelin’s not in the tire business, rather they’re in the safety business.

And Talk about Talk is not in the communication coaching business, rather it’s in the business of elevating your confidence.

Now ask yourself, what business are you REALLY in?

OK – There were so many more rich points, but if I limit myself to three, its:

The necessary ingredients for a great Story
The power of overcoming obstacles or speedbumps to achieve success –
Idea of peeling back the onion –

And that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did,.

I put links to Terry’s podcast and his books in the shownotes. Please check them out.

Thank you again, Terry, it was wonderful to meet you and I loved our conversation.

Thank YOU so much for listening. Please let me know what you thought of this episode. Connect with me on LinkedIn and DM me there. And talk soon!

The post Under the Influence with Storyteller Terry O’Reilly ep.173 appeared first on Talk About Talk.

The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture

My Best Mistake: Epic Fails and Silver Linings

This I Know: Marketing Lessons from Under the Influence

View Details

Building your personal brand is about identifying and communicating your points of difference. Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery joins Andrea to talk about why personal branding is so important and why many people hesitate or reject this whole premise of personal branding.

TAKE THE PERSONAL BRAND SELF-ASSESSMENT

https://www.talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand

RESOURCES

“A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand” by Jill Avery and Rachel Greenwald HBR article: https://hbr.org/2023/05/a-new-approach-to-building-your-personal-brand
“The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters FastCompany article – https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you
Jill’s recommendation: “Breaking Glass: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street by Patricia Walsh Chadwick – https://amzn.to/3yWBxWL

TRANSCRIPT

Particularly in today’s world. Avoiding personal branding is just really not an option.
And I’m not sure it ever has been. You know, people point to the rise of social media as building up the hype of personal branding. But we’ve always had a need for personal branding. We’ve always had a need to communicate the value that we bring to the world. So our medium is different in the way that we communicate it. We use, you know, online and and social media and other digital technologies to help us. But we’ve always done this work. And there’s always been a need for this work.

That was Jill Avery, marketing professor at Harvard Business School and personal branding expert. Last year Jill co-authored a paper in Harvard Business Review called “A New Approach to Building Your Personal Brand.”

Jill is not only a personal branding expert, she’s also a friend and a wonderful human. I can’t wait for you to her what she has to say share with us about personal branding. Let’s do this!

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #171 “Building Your Personal Brand with Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery”. In this episode, you’re going to learn why personal branding is so important – mandatory really, and also a few reasons why many people hesitate or even reject this whole premise of personal branding.

In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki please just call me Andrea. I’m your executive communication coach. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and achieve your career goals. To learn more about me and what I do, check out my website, talkabouttalk.com where you can read about the coaching and workshops that I run. Plus there are a bunch of free resources for you there.

Ok, let’s get into this. I’m sure you want to hear from Jill. Here’s how this episode is going to go. After I introduce Jill, we’ll get right into the interview. Then at the end I’m going to summarize with the three learnings that I want to reinforce based on our conversation.

I met Jill over 20 yrs ago, when I was in my first year of the doctorate program at HBS. She was considering joining to program. We met and instantly hit it off. We quickly learned that we had similar backgrounds – we both worked in Consumer Packaged Goods (or CPG) marketing, she at Gilette and me at Kraft. We also both earned our MBAs, but we loved school and we both ultimately earned our doctorate.

Today, Jill Avery serves as a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. She’s a prolific and award-winning author of 100+ publications on branding, CRM (that’s cust relationship mktg), and digital marketing.

In addition to her role as a faculty member at HBS, Jill remains close to practice by serving as a board member, consultant, educator, and advisor to companies and their executives.
She is a passionate and enthusiastic award-winning teacher and a creative and innovative course designer, currently teaching two courses, Marketing and Creating Brand Value.
She also leads a new Harvard Business School Executive Education program on
Creating Brand Value designed for senior executives and two Harvard Business School Online courses: one on Creating Brand Value and the other on Personal Branding.

Yep, she’s qualified!

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

Thank you so much, Jill, for being here today to talk with us about personal branding.

Jill: I’m thrilled to be here, Andrea. Thank you so much for having me, and it’s delightful to be working with you again.

Okay, let’s get right into this. My 1st question for you is with regards to the benefits of developing your personal brand you mentioned to me when we met that it seems to be a hot topic. It’s in demand with your Mba students and your Exec Ed students. why do you think that is what are the benefits of developing your brand.

Jill: I think there’s so many benefits for developing and managing your personal brand over time. And I I think this is why people are so excited about this topic right now, and a little anxious about it. As well. I to me the greatest benefit of personal branding is empowering yourself empowering yourself to to tell your own story. But you know, think about personal branding as giving you the opportunity to tell the story that you want to present to the world about who you are and what value you have to offer, and what difference you’d like to make in the world. and how you can create value for those around you. So to me, that’s that’s kind of the central reason to to do a personal branding effort. There’s lots of secondary effects. Things like enhancing your visibility in your field and and establishing yourself as an expert making yourself more memorable to the people that you meet, enabling you to fit in by communicating something about your legitimacy, to to be in a space, and enabling you to stand out by communicating what makes you different. What makes you unique in a certain group of of people? It’s about communicating your competitive edge. So you can expand your social network, open up new opportunities for yourself. but I think not to be forgotten in all of this, because all of those sound, very professionally enriching, and and, you know, helpful for my career I personally believe that a personal branding journey is really about helping you uncover and celebrate and share the unique value that you offer to the world. It’s about self reflection, and and having the luxury of time for self reflection, and then being able to uncover and celebrate what makes you you. and effectively communicate that to people around you.

AW: Right? Right? So when I coach folks on their personal brand, I identify a bunch of strategic principles that we follow. and I have a feeling that these are going to align based on your Hbr article I know that they align with with what you think. If I had to choose one, though it’s about focusing on what makes you unique. And I’m wondering what you think about that. I have this saying that people seem to love. It’s unique is better than better.

Jill: Yeah, I think personal branding is about discovering what makes you unique. It’s about discovering what we’ll call in marketing your points of difference. What makes you stand out from others around you? I think, unfortunately, we’ve been socialized for so much of our life to try to fit in with others, to try to to assimilate or or blend, or make ourselves more like the people that that we surround ourselves with. When our real value as a person is about being different, being unique, seeing the world differently, approaching the world differently and creating value in a way that nobody else can. And for me, that’s what personal branding is all about. It’s about uncovering those differences. finding ways to make them valuable in helping us achieve our goals and finding ways to communicate those to people, so that they recognize those differences as valuable and as something that that can help them in their journey, as well.

AW: Right. So it’s what I’m hearing you say is, it’s about 1st identifying them and then creating a narrative around them right? And then consistently reinforcing them with your audience or your target market, you might want to say, Yeah.

Jill: Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, sometimes we think of our differences as deficits. I’m different than everybody else. But in personal branding. Those things are often the things that make you the most memorable or or the most willing to to stand out in a crowd. And so it’s finding how to turn differences into a positive story about how they have shaped you and how they help you contribute in a differential way.

AW: So you’re making me think about Dei right? And and you know, over the last, let’s say 10 years. It’s it’s become a bigger part like it’s more often, for example, a topic in Hbr, and there are courses being taught on it. There’s all sorts of projects going on. Do you think that Dei might be fueling the interest in personal branding, or vice versa? Or are they just? Are they somehow related.

Jill: I think there’s been so much talk and conversation about diversity, equity, inclusion belonging. How do we bring our authentic selves to the office, and and what precludes us from from doing so. And I think it’s a really healthy conversation. What I find when I present my work on personal branding to diverse audiences. The people who are perhaps the most intrigued and the most agitated about what I have to say are often underrepresented minorities, whether that be women or people of color, or Lgbtq plus individuals. They come up to me after the presentation, and they say I’m fascinated.

But personal branding is really hard for me, because I don’t bring my authentic self to the office, or I often hide aspects of myself. And and how do I stop doing that. How do I present myself in a more authentic way that feels safe for me, and that helps me communicate my values. So I think, particularly for for people who feel underrepresented in a setting. Personal branding is even more important because you want to be the one to tell your story. You don’t want other people.

Jill: Narrating your story for you if you will. So so I think it’s more important. One of my top episodes of the over 160 episodes to date is called controlling your narrative.

AW: And it’s really about that. And people tell me that they find it really empowering. And it’s for that reason, right? Sometimes there’s this other saying that I’m hearing a lot lately these days. It’s it’s not a bug. It’s a feature. right? So you can take what you may have thought was a bug. It could be a personality trait it could be. It could be something you were born with, or something that developed over time, or whatever it is. It’s a you think it’s a bug, or people tell you it’s a bug, and you can you know, turn it within reason. You can turn it into a feature by controlling the narrative around it and establishing it and reinforcing it as part of your personal brand.

Jill: Absolutely. I think a big part of personal branding is what I’ll call embracing your blemishes, finding those things that are different about you, and that you may have hidden in the past because you might have been anxious about them, and finding ways to turn those blemishes into something more memorable about you.

AW: Beautiful. I love that embellishing your blemishes. Love it so. You said that it may be an even more powerful exercise. I’m paraphrasing, but it may be an even more powerful exercise for folks who do already have unique characteristics about them, and and they may have been hesitant to do so. Let’s shift that now to what about junior folks who are more early in their career versus the senior leaders. for whom is personal branding more important? Or is it the same.

Jill: I I don’t ever like to answer a question with both. But I’m gonna say, both here, Andrea, I think early in your career. You need to think about your personal brand as a somewhat blank slate. Right? You. You haven’t started to fill up the narratives or communicate the narratives about who you are and what you have to offer your resume, if you will, is a little sparse, your Linkedin profile a little empty so early in your career. You’re looking for opportunities to begin to tell your story, to begin to establish your credibility, to build connections. Think about early in your career as making a 1st impression, and we know in communication the importance of 1st impressions and managing them strategically. So as a a new employee. Everything you do is being watched and observed and assessed and evaluated. And so everything matters when, when you’re early in your career. but later in your career, personal branding and the need for it doesn’t end, I think, of personal branding as an ongoing journey, of negotiating and renegotiating our personal brand with others around us and that renegotiation needs to happen over your lifetime. Because you’re not the you that you were yesterday. You’re changing, you’re growing, you’re developing. So there’s new narratives. There’s new attributes. There’s new value to be communicating to the world.

I think the other thing for senior leaders is to remember that while you’re focused on promoting your personal brand in doing so, especially if you do so authentically, genuinely, with humility, with vulnerability. You’re creating the conditions and the culture at work to allow others on your team to bring their authentic selves to work. The more vulnerable you can be in your personal branding effort as a senior leader, the more it makes it okay for everyone on the team to express who they are and their individuality and the value that they’d like to to bring.

AW: That is such a good point. That’s such a good point. I also share your opinion that it’s important throughout your career. You know you and I both have kids in their twenties, and 1st impressions are really important. You need to nail yourself introduction and then follow up by reinforcing that said, it is a lovely time when you can experiment right. And I sometimes say, and when I’m doing workshops in particular, I say the most common mistake people make with their brand copying others. But it’s kind of okay to do that early in your career, because you’re experimenting with different. If you want to call them personas or points of difference. And and we’re social learners. Right? We look around. We see other people who are successful. Oh, I’m going to try what she tried, or I’m going to try what he tried. and see if that works for me, and how it feels when you get to be a middle manager and definitely a senior manager. You’re never going to reach your potential. I don’t think, unless again, you’re really celebrating what makes you unique. Right?

Jill: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to be said, though, in personal branding for modeling after others. Right? If I if I think about my personal brand. It’s definitely influenced by many of the mentors that I’ve had in both my professional and and personal life. Not that I’m embodying or trying to be someone else. But I’ve picked up tips and tricks and strategies along the way that I’ve incorporated, and that I enact authentically in my brand that help me be the person that I am today. So so I think that practicing modeling is is an important part of of exploring your personal brand.

AW: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point. While we’re celebrating our uniqueness. we are social learners. and we should be unapologetic about taking advice that we or or modeling other successful folks. Again, the the word, though, is that you used is authentic, right? It needs to feel true to you. You’re not trying to act a certain way you’re like, Oh, that’s interesting. I’m going to try that right? Yeah, it’s it’s an interesting balance. So a couple of times. You’ve said the word points of difference, and it just reminds me, back in the day you and I both worked in consumer packaged goods. and then we shifted to Academia. And now you’re you’re teaching in the Mba program in the Exec Ed program, and I’m coaching folks. And but we still have this Cpg background.

Jill: We do?

AW: The advertising brief. Do you remember writing that document like this is the brand name? The brand personality is this, the brand values are this. Here’s the benefit. Here’s the differentiator. Here’s all these, all these things. So do perfect analogy like, can we take product, brand strategy document and use it to fill in what our personal brand is.

Jill: So I think there’s a lot of points of overlap between marketing products and brands and marketing people. And when I started approaching this area of research. I relied upon the the big body of research that we have in the product and brand area for branding versus the people branding area which was more underdeveloped.

So I think there are concepts that transfer incredibly well, I’ll talk about one step in the personal branding process as creating a personal value proposition. And that’s a 4 part strategic statement that looks just like a customer value proposition. So if you take my Mba marketing course, you’d be like, I recognize that. And I think it translates really well, it it encourages us to focus on who is our audience? Who are we branding for and to to focus on the people on the other side of the table. It enables us to think about that point of difference or that unique value claim that we’d like to make and it helps us understand that we do that in the context of competition. And it allows us to imagine the evidence or the proof points that we need to put forward. So there’s a nice parallel between the world of products and people. But there, I think there’s 1 really important difference between marketing, a product and marketing a person.

Jill: And that is that we are human and we act human. And that means we make mistakes, and we sometimes act off brand and we do things that aren’t always accretive to our brand or creating brand equity in a more positive way. And so when we’re managing a personal brand, we have to get good at managing inconsistencies or multiple identities. I think there’s you know, there’s there’s other things that get in the way of personal branding that we just don’t have to worry about on the product branding side things like we’re personally and psychologically invested in ourselves to the point where we’re biased. We can’t easily see our weaknesses. So when we do a personal brand audit on us.

We we can’t really interpret the data well by ourselves. We might need other people to come in and and help us interpret that so so because it’s us, and because we’re human. We, you know, it is a little bit different from marketing products and and regular.

AW: I can see that it would be so. I was thinking as humans, no matter what, every day that goes by. We’re also aging. But but so is a brand right like you. You could, if you were forced to. You could even say what what you were just talking about is is similar to like a brand transgression, right?

Jill: It is, it is. We have brand crises in both personal branding and in product branding, that that we need to manage and and negotiate our ways our way through.

AW: Yeah, yeah, so it’s like, it’s a force fit. But I love. I love your point. It’s actually the difference is that we’re human. And the box of tide on the shelf is not.

Jill: Yes, and so it’s much easier to manage the brand of a box of tide, because tide doesn’t act up over time.

AW: Much easier, but not nearly as satisfying.

Jill: Exactly.

AW: Again, we’re self-interested. So okay, I love it. I love it. When you and I met Jill we were talking about how, in both of our experiences. We found it really interesting that some people are hesitant to develop their brand right? It’s like they they put up a bit of a wall. Can you share with us? What? What your experience of what you’ve heard from people who are, who have this hesitation.

Jill: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of anxiety. There’s a lot of frustration out there about the need for personal branding. Even myself every semester my Mba students would come to me and say, Professor Avery, you know this course was really interesting, but do you have anything on personal branding. And I would be like. Yeah, we well, I don’t do that. I you know, I market products and and brands. I don’t market people. And I had this like sense of uncomfortableness about it, that that it was fundamentally different. And as I present this work to audiences, I often have people who sit in the audience with arms crossed, you know, shaking their head, disagreeing with me, and they come up afterwards, and and they start to argue that they don’t want to be a personal brand. They don’t want to feel commercialized by this, that they just want to act authentically. They just want to present themselves without having to be strategic or intentional about this. So so it feels to some people false. It feels like they’re an actor on a stage rather than just being themselves in in life. I think the other point of uncomfortableness comes from the fact that we’ve grown up in a world where we’ve been socialized to not toot our own horns. We’ve been socialized to be humble or demure or not not really tell people what we have to offer. And so there’s a social reticence to personal branding. As well.

And then there’s other people who have seen people’s efforts at personal branding that have gone awry, and you know some people do this in a very inauthentic way, or smarmy way, or they’re too sales mini, and it feels uncomfortable, and and people don’t want to be perceived as as that themselves. And then I think, there’s there’s some people who don’t like caring about what others think of them. They don’t like that concept that other people are always judging them. And so they say, I I don’t care about managing my personal brand. I am who I am, and I don’t care how you perceive me. And with those people I often say, great you be you. But remember that a lot of your professional and personal goals rely upon other people. And so you must think about how you’re communicating your value to those people if you need them, in achievement of of your your professional or personal goals. So so I find that one interesting. It is. I I think that the getting us through this getting us through the anxiety and the uncomfortableness really important, Andrea, it’s it’s about finding a way to do personal branding in a way that feels true and authentic and not smartmy.

Jill: It’s a way to, you know. Put your story out there, but in a way that allows you to do that naturally, so that you can enact it in every touch, point in every day of your life, without like effortful thinking and strategy for it.

Jill: So the the effort and personal branding, I think, has to come at the beginning of the process where you’re uncovering and refining your stories. The enactment of those stories should feel natural and authentic. Otherwise my opinion you’re doing it wrong.

AW: Yeah, I owe Jill. This is music to my ears. So so much of what you’re saying, I say in just in different words. It’s 2 steps. The 1st is articulating or creating, and the second step is communicating, and then there’s the updating. If if there was a 3rd step, it’s of course it’s constantly evolving most coaches and probably even faculty that are focused on personal branding don’t spend enough time on Step One. They they shift right to, you know, finding social media followers, or whatever step one is really like you, said the self-discovery where you identify what makes you unique. And so I say, garbage in garbage, out quality in quality out, let’s spend 75% of our time focused on the articulation and and creating the narrative that is authentic to you, and then step 2 is so much easier. It’s so easy.

Jill: I know. Matt, I told you that I actually have had this experience a couple times when people have hired me to coach them over the course of, say, 6 months. And so we we create a plan. Of course, the the plan changes over time. But we create a plan of the topics that we’re going to cover. And it’s all the usual things that you would think about from a communication coach. Right? It’s confidence and listening and storytelling and formal presentations, and so on.

AW: And then personal branding, so creating your personal brand, and then communicating your personal brand, and a couple times when these folks have then gone to their managers to get approval. The man it has happened where the managers have said all the topics look great except personal branding. Take that off. So then I said, Okay, well, let’s call it something different. Let’s call it professional identity.

Jill: Yeah. About, you know, identifying your unique and authentic strength so that you can focus your career in those areas and your value to the organization. And then suddenly, it’s approved. Right? So.

Jill: Fascinating.

AW: Has baggage.

Jill: It has the word brand has baggage, and I and I think it goes back to that. I don’t want to be a commercial product. I want to be a human. I want to be a person. And so sometimes I’ll I’ll talk about this. If people are uncomfortable with the word branding. I’ll talk about this as discovering and communicating your personal narratives. This is about storytelling and and getting people comfortable with uncovering. composing, and and creating the stories that that make them them, and then communicating those.

AW: Beautiful, beautiful. So I call them themes. I like calling them stories. That’s that’s wonderful. So some people have different. It’s not to say, other people’s definition is wrong. It’s just that’s not what what you and I are talking about. We’re not talking about monetizing people. We’re not talking about creating different people right? Or changing a person. It’s it’s discovering their stories. I really like that. So so separate from that misconception. Are there any mistakes, or maybe other misconceptions that you have witnessed that people make when they’re developing and managing their personal brand.

Jill: There’s a few common mistakes that that people make in personal branding, I I think. The one, and it stems from the anxiety and the hesitation that we’ve been talking about. Andrea is having an underdeveloped or insufficient personal brand and you know, this might be characterized by a person who says, Oh, I I just I don’t have a Linkedin profile.

And in today’s world, not having a Linkedin profile, says something about your personal brand. You know you can’t avoid having a personal brand like it or not. In professional and personal settings. We all have a personal brand, and everything we do or don’t do, contributes to the building of of that brand. So if we make a conscious choice to really disengage from personal branding that builds our personal brand, but not in a way that’s that’s very advantageous for us. So so be careful about opting out of, you know personal branding activities that most people are are engaged in.

AW: A long time ago, years ago, I wrote an blog and an email newsletter about you know this, this main point, that we all have a brand whether we choose to strategically manage it or not, and you might be surprised at how easy and even enjoyable or satisfying it is to do some of that discovery work and then develop your brand. And I said, the analogy is your credit rating. so you have a brand whether you choose to manage it or not. You also have a credit rating, and you can ignore your credit rating, but your credit rating doesn’t go away, and it it can, and probably will affect you when you’re, you know, making a major purchase, or even getting a job right?

Jill: Yeah, that’s a great analogy.

AW: An hour.

Jill: It’s, you know, particularly in today’s world. Avoiding personal branding is just really not an option. And I’m not sure it ever has been. You know, people point to the rise of social media as building up the hype of personal branding. But we’ve always had a need for personal branding. We’ve always had a need to communicate the value that we bring to the world. So our medium is different in the way that we communicate it. We use, you know, online and and social media and other digital technologies to help us. But we’ve always done this work. And there’s always been a need for this work.

AW: We’ve always had a reputation or an identity. Right? So when I’m working with my clients on defining first, st what personal brand is it is, if you, I say to them, if you’re thinking reputation and identity, you’re bang on. That’s really what we’re talking about.

Jill: Exactly, exactly.

AW: On that I hope so.

Jill: Yeah, I. I explain it to my students as the image that other people hold about you in their head. And that image is very impactful because it it affects the way people perceive. You understand, you value, you experience you. It’s it really molds a lot of the way people interact with you. And so it’s important for us to care about. That brand that exists. you know. It’s it’s funny to think about our personal brand as something that we can curate and try to manage and shepherd. But it actually doesn’t belong to us. It exists in the minds of other people.

AW: Oh, very well, put Jill. You are going to be quoted on that that is, I would say, a lovely I need to think of the word a lovely. not interpretation. Actually, that is, I think, a very eloquent interpretation of Jeff Bezos. Quote where he says, your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room. So that used to be my definition that I used with my clients. And and I said, it’s now it’s more like a mental exercise. Right? What is your boss and your boss’s boss saying about you when they’re meeting to talk about promotions. and your name comes up in conversation. What do they think? And what do they say? That’s your brand? And then I see the looks on people’s faces like -oh! And I say, this is all good. There are things that you aspire to. There are things that you’re working on, and there’s things that you are that they don’t know yet, and we can. We can work with all of that. So.

Jill: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that points to one of the other mistakes that people make often in personal branding where they think it’s all about me. It’s all about what I want to say, and you know who I am and how I project that to the world.

Yes, it is about you, but it’s about you in relation to other people, and the value that you want to deliver to other people. And so the best personal branders are the ones who really get into the heads of their audience, who understand the person on the other side of the table, and all of the misconceptions or stereotypes, or existing brand associations, that they might already hold about you. and then using your personal branding efforts to change their minds, to adjust that story and renegotiate your personal brand with those people over time. Now, is it all people do. I need to care about what everybody thinks about me? No, I just need to care about the people who are important to my goals, and that might be people at work, people in at home. But if someone’s important to me and and important to the achievement of my goals. Then I do need to care about what, how they perceive me and and what my personal brand is in their mind.

AW: This morning I had a coaching call with a client. and we were kicking off the personal branding stuff, and he started making some comments about his response to things that were going on in some meetings. and I said to him, You sound like you’re very self-aware, but externally self-aware. So you are consciously thinking about what other people are saying and doing, what your response is to them, and how your response is interpreted by them. You have this high external self-awareness, I said, most of us have pretty high if we’re successful anyway, high internal self-awareness, and we call that self-awareness right? But we may be less conscious of our external self-awareness. And I think what you’re describing is shifting the lens from. I know who I am to. What do other people think about me. It’s almost like it’s less selfish. right? It’s less myopic.

Jill: It’s almost like you’re having a meta understanding of the social interaction. Right? You’re you’re understanding how you’re acting, how that’s being perceived by the other person, and how that perception is going to affect the opportunities that you have to create value in the world. And so it’s it’s having other awareness. But it’s also having a more sophisticated social awareness of how your actions insight, response in someone else and how that’s going to cause their actions to be different towards you.

AW: Over time consistently reinforcing those things. So it just becomes like they don’t think about it. You walk in the room. They know exactly what they’re getting right.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

AW: Okay, are you ready for the 3 rapid fire questions.

Jill: Yes, I am.

AW: Okay, I love it. They don’t need to be that rapid fire.

Jill: I know rapid fire questions always scare me. I don’t know why.

AW: The 1st question is, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Jill: Oh, I think I’m an extroverted introvert. You know, as a professor I I speak in public every day, but I still get nervous before every class. And you know I I it’s it’s amazing to my students to see that and to hear that. And and they say, But you seem so calm, and I’m like no inside. I am shaking every time I have to do public speaking.

AW: So that’s why you do so well, Jill, because you have positive energy. That’s that’s what I tell my clients. When you feel that adrenaline in your. I feel it in my chest, too.

AW: Don’t think oh, no, I’m nervous. Think? Yes, now I’ve got the positive energy to go out there and knock it out of the park, and that’s what you do.

Jill: Yes, definitely. 1 1 of my colleagues at Harvard Business School, Allison Wood, Brooks, has a fascinating piece of research that teaches managers to reframe nervousness to excitement, to enhance their performance. And so I’m not nervous. I’m excited, says Alison.

AW: Being excited. It makes you smile when you say it right. I mean.

Jill: Exactly exactly, and I think you know I don’t think the anxiety will ever go away for me, but I think I’ve learned how to manage that anxiety in my communication practices, and so I’m an over preparer for any public speaking engagement that I have, and I write down notes, and I bring those notes into the classroom, and I lay them out on the table.

But once I start speaking I never look at the notes. It’s just a security blanket for me that I know, no matter what happens, whatever contingency happens, I’m prepared. And so that’s just one of my practices that I put in place to help me manage that anxiety.

AW: Sounds familiar. Jill.

Jill: Okay.

AW: Question number 2, what are your communication, pet peeves?

Jill: Oh, definitely, when my students start a comment with quote, this may be wrong, but. And I hate that you’ve just undermined your credibility. When you start a statement with that I want my students to speak with confidence. I want them to defend their ideas and and stand behind them when you lead off with. This might be wrong, or what I might be wrong. You’re sandbagging yourself. You’re you’re you’re making your audience, not listen as intently or not. Take your recommendation as seriously. So start strong. Finish, strong. Don’t sandbag.

AW: I love it. It’s the whole apologetic language thing right? And they, you know, the research shows that women use more apologetic language, and they preface their recommendation or their comment with. Can I just say a question, can I just say something? Or this might be wrong, but, like, just stop.

Jill: Yeah, yeah, no. Buts. Just make your recommendation confidently.

AW: Not just the recommendation that suffers the person. Actually, because you’re everything you say, you’re reinforcing something. You’re signaling something to other people about your brand about your credibility. Right?

Jill: Yup, it’s a it’s a weak posturing rather than a strong posturing.

AW: Beautiful okay. Last question is there a podcast or a book that you’ve find yourself recommending lately.

Jill: I am super excited about a book and it’s called Breaking Glass Tales from the Witch of Wall Street, and it’s authored by Patricia Walsh Chadwick, who actually is a colleague of mine from one of the corporate boards that I sit on. It’s a fascinating memoir. It’s a hero’s journey about a woman who grew up in a religious cult, who was expelled from the cult at age 17, with no education, no money, no place to live. and who worked herself up from that beginning as a receptionist in a brokerage firm to become a senior partner on Wall Street, breaking all kinds of glass ceilings having lots of trials and tribulations and adventures along the way. And I I love this book. It’s a story about perseverance. Patricia’s a fantastic storyteller. And this is a book that is also also a great social history of the 19 seventies, eighties, and nineties on Wall Street so highly recommend it.

I cannot wait to listen to it or read it. I’ve been listening to books lately, so oh, I can’t wait. I’m going to download it right now. Thank you so much.
Is there anything else you can think of that you want to share with the talk about talk listeners regarding personal branding.

Jill: I guess I would just leave you with. I know personal branding is a little scary. It might feel a little uncomfortable at first, st but I actually believe it’s the greatest gift you can give to yourself that time for self reflection that time to uncover and celebrate the real you, and that time to start owning the narratives that you’re putting out there in the world. Jill: All of that is going to help you make the difference that you’d like to make in the world. so just do it.

Thank you so much, Jill.

Jill: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

I could have gone on and on in that conversation, but I have to respect your time and Jill’s. So now, I’m going to quickly summarize with three of the themes or learnings here that I want to reinforce for you.

The first point is what I refer to as the most important strategic principles of personal branding – focusing on what makes you unique. Jill refers to it as your POINT OF DIFFERENVCE. She said, QUOTE:

Personal Branding is about discovering what we’ll call in marketing your points of difference. What makes you stand out from others around you? I think, unfortunately, we’ve been socialized to fit in with others, to make ourselves more like other people. Our real value as a person is about being different, being unique, seeing the world differently, approaching the world differently and creating value in a way that nobody else can.

And I loved her point about how we often think of our differences as deficits. Instead, she encourages us to… Embrace your blemishes. Maybe even embellish your blemishes. That’s what makes you memorable. It might even be how you add value.

The second point I want to reinforce from our conversation is that yes, we can take most of the tenets of product branding and apply them to ourselves as personal brands. We have points of different, and target markets and competition. But there is one critically important difference. Managing a person brand is more complicated because we’re human, We are complicated. Managing a product brand (like Tide laundry detergent) is much easier than managing a personal brand, but not nearly as satisfying. If you take the time and effort to focus on developing your brand, you’ll be amazed at the traction you get.

The 3rd and last point that I want reinforce is Jill’s reminder for leaders. She highlited how senior leaders should remember that while theyre focused on promoting their personal brand, they’re creating the conditions and the culture that allows others on their team to bring their authentic selves to work. She said QUOTE

“ The more vulnerable you can be in your personal branding effort as a senior leader, the more it makes it okay for everyone on the team to express who they are and their individuality and the value that they’d like to to bring.”

OK – that’s it for this episode!

.Thanks again to Jill for sharing her thoughts and expertise on personal branding. I loved every minute of our conversation, as I’m sure you could tell. I hope you too enjoyed listening!

If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will refer it to one of your friends, and I also hope you’ll leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. Talk soon!

The post Building Your Personal Brand with Harvard Business School Professor Jill Avery (ep.172) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Seth Godin, famed author, blogger, and podcaster shares his wisdom on what communication skill we should work on, the issue with authenticity for professionals, and a new definition of personal branding. Let’s make a ruckus!

BOOKS BY SETH GODIN

This is Strategy – https://amzn.to/4dwi1PS
Linchpin – https://amzn.to/4fIr7ux
Tribes – https://amzn.to/3yHo4lI
The Dip – https://amzn.to/3X4E7n6
Purple Cow – https://amzn.to/3M3SuBR
This Is Marketing – https://amzn.to/46PIaXK
The Song of Significance – https://amzn.to/4ctABHl
Seth’s all-volunteer community project: The Carbon Almanac – https://amzn.to/3YLSIFk

RESOURCES

“The Brand Called You” by Tom Peters Personal Brand FastCompany article – https://www.fastcompany.com/28905/brand-called-you
Smart Brevity book – https://amzn.to/3pj2Jdj
Roger Martin “A Plan is not a Strategy” video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYlGRnC7J8
Seth’s recommendations:
- Mystery Show podcast (ep.3) – https://gimletmedia.com/shows/mystery-show
- A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs – https://500songs.com/
- The Moment with Brian Koppelman podcast – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-moment-with-brian-koppelman/id814550071
- Hardcare History podcast with Dan Carlin – https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/
- Just Kids: An Autobiography by Patty Smith – https://amzn.to/3ApVA0k

TRANSCRIPT

That, as you can probably guess, from the title of this episode, is Seth Godin. And he’s on a mission, encouraging us all to make a ruckus. To make a generous contribution to the world. To change the world for the better.

Whether it’s in one of his books, in his blog, or in this conversation you’re about to hear, Seth Godin always makes me think about things in new ways. Take, for example, Seth’s answer to the first rapid fire question that I ask every guest: “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?” Seth had the most unique answer to this Q that I’ve ever heard :

I never thought of it that way before, did you? You know, most of the smart guests I interview tell me they’re an introvert. So maybe he’s right. We’re evolving to all be introverts. I guess I really am an anomaly. And now I know why cocktail parties without alcohol don’t work very well.

Are you keen to learn more from Seth? Let’s do this!

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #171 “Making a ruckus with Seth Godin”. In this episode, you’re gonna learn what communication skill Seth thinks we should work on, a new definition of personal branding, and why we all need to choose our genre – amongst other things.

Ok, let’s get into this. I’m sure you want to hear from Seth. Here’s how this episode is going to go. After I introduce Seth, we’ll get right into the interview. Then at the end I’m going to summarize with the three learnings that I want to reinforce based on our conversation. Three things that I hope you’ll take away and that I hope will help you in your quest to make a ruckus.

Seth has been on my radar since I was a brand manager early in my career, and I read his book called “Purple Cow.” That book is just one of the 21 books that have been bestsellers around the world and that have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, and of course Purple Cow. His book, “This Is Marketing,” was an instant bestseller around the world. Recently, he organized the all-volunteer community project called The Carbon Almanac. In 2023, he wrote, The Song of Significance, which is already a bestseller, and I strongly recommend it if you are a leader of any kind, or if you seek to become one. I’ll leave links to all of these books in the shownotes. Yes, Seth is prolific.

Seth also creates impact. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world.
His podcast is in the top 1% of all podcasts worldwide. In 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.
It would not be an exaggeration to say Seth changed my life. In 2018, I read a Seth blog, where he invited candidates to join the inaugural cohort of the Podcasting Fellowship. In writing the application for that program, I came up with the title of this podcast. I remember typing “the topic of my podcast will be communication skills. Basically my podcast will be talk about talk.” Wait! I thought. That could also be the name of the podcast. I checked the URL. It wasn’t taken, so I bought it – pronto. Then I legally secured the trademark. Here I am, 6yrs later, interviewing Seth. Yes, this is a moment for me.

But back to Seth. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth has founded several companies, including Yoyodyne and Squidoo. More than 40,000 people have taken the powerful Akimbo workshops he founded, including the altMBA The Marketing Seminar, and yes, “The Podcasting Fellowship.”

I have to tell you, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Just ask my family. Anyway, one of my favourite episodes of all time is a relatively recent episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast where he interviews Seth. Seth is irreverent, wise, and inspiring. It was when I was listening to Seth provide advice to Tim Ferriss, that I decided to finally ask Seth if I could interview him.

My goal here is to ask Seth new and different questions that I haven’t heard him answer on other podcasts. Things like, “do you think about your personal brand?” and “What do you think is the most important communication skill?”

Here we go!

INTERVIEW

AW: you ready.

Seth:Born, ready.

AW: Nice. Thank you so much, Seth, for joining us here today to talk about making a ruckus.

Seth:Well, thank you for having me and for showing up hundreds of times. This podcasting thing takes a lot, and I appreciate you beating.

AW: Well, as I said, I know that your podcasting fellowship was a catalyst for me in making this happen. So I am very grateful for that. And even before the podcasting fellowship, Seth, I always thought that I had read most of your books in the last couple weeks since you agreed to do this interview. I did a little bit of research, and I found a list of well over 80 books that you have written. and that list did not even include the Carbon Almanac, or this is strategy.

Seth:Well, I didn’t write the Carbon Almanac, but many of the books you’re talking about are from my early career as a book packager. and if you’re doing your job right as a book packager, you’re not writing every word. every book beginning with permission, marketing. I wrote every word. There are also books. Before that I wrote every word. But I don’t have a team anymore. I used to have a team.

AW: Okay, I know. I looked back at your bio, and I saw that you were in the publishing space, and I thought that explains some of it, but still.

Seth:Yeah. It’s a lot.

AW: Seth, you are absolutely prolific. And I have a question for you about this body of work that you’ve created. The question is, how would you characterize or summarize or label what your body of work represents? And let let’s say, your recent body of work. Maybe, since purple cal.

Seth: Well

AW: I hope I’m making a ruckus. That’s very aspirational. A couple of months ago I listened to one of my favorite interviews of you, which was, I think, a walk and talk that you did with Tim Ferris, and I took some notes from that that I wanted to follow up with you on. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you is about again defining something, but you use the term genre. And I was wondering if you could share your take on genre.

Seth:Well, genre gets a bad rap because of generic but they’re not really related. Genre is essential at a bookstore, because the mysteries have to be next to the mysteries and not mix in with the cookbooks. Because if you’re going to buy a mystery, you want a book that’s in the mystery genre. Now, that doesn’t mean all mysteries are the same, but it means they rhyme with each other, and they allow us to make predictions and to sort without wasting all of our time. So we can agree, I hope, that books have a genre but so do charities, so do political causes, so do people we go on dates with, so do restaurants. If you go to an Ethian or Opian restaurant and they serve you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It might be a very good peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But you’re not happy because you went to an Ethiopian restaurant and so with lots of people who I work with, who are creatives. They seem to think it’s a badge of honor to have no genre. And to say, this is for everyone. It’s really important. and what I say to them is, if you don’t have a genre you will be ignored.

AW: Beautiful. a lot of my work has evolved from focusing on improving communication skills to helping people identify their unique passions and expertise and superpowers, and I call it their personal brand, or in the context of executives, their professional identity. And one thing that really gets a lot of traction is helping people identify what their archetype is

Seth:Hmm.

AW: People love being diagnosed, and then it’s not that there’s a better or a worse archetype. I think the power is seeing yourself, and then understanding yourself and focusing, and then being the best version of that that you can be. I’m curious if you think about your personal brand, Seth.

Seth:Well, because I’ve been in the marketing business for a long time. I take the word, brand very seriously. Tom Peters wrote the very 1st breakthrough article about personal branding, in FastCompany. Exactly the same day that I wrote the 1st book on personal branding called, Get what you deserve. and.

AW: 1,997.

Seth:Something like that. It’s a long time ago.

AW: And it would. 84

Seth: What’s a brand? A brand is a promise. It’s what we expect from you. So a logo is not a brand. All the stuff you think is important is not a brand, brand is what other people think you’re going to do next. And so the story that I tell is Hyatt and Nike both have Logos. But if Hyatt hotels announced the line of sneakers, we have no idea what it would be like. But if Nike announced that they were going to open a hotel. We all know what it would be like because Nike has a brand and high, it doesn’t. So most people have worked very hard to have a brand of They do what you ask them to most of the time, and you have to pay them. Yeah, that’s it. right that you know you go to see a podiatrist. The podiatrist is going to fix your foot, but that’s it. That’s their brand. It’s not the clothes you wear. It’s how do you act in a way that changes what people expect from you? Right? And a very personal, simple example is, if you were coming to my house for dinner tonight? Would I expect that you would be bringing about online. or would I expect that you would be ridiculously over the top and bring me this and this and this, and this, and I’d be like, wait, wait! What’s going on here? This is too much that could be your brand, then that’d be a good thing. It could just be a thing. And so when we want to not be a commodity, an easily replaceable cog. we have to stand for something. and once you choose to stand for it, it helps to stand for it all the time

AW: Right in all ways. You, you said. It’s not how you dress. Actually, I would say how you dress is one of the ways that you reinforce that brand. Right? Do you agree.

Seth:It depends on whether you’re fashion designer or not. Let’s say I need somebody to build a deck on my back porch. I don’t care what they wear, and they may have a ridiculous article of clothing on. It probably won’t affect what I was looking for when I was hiring someone to build the deck. So what you wear only matters to the extent like these glasses I’m wearing. They’re my logo. They’re not my brand that when someone is reading one of my blog posts or books, they’re not saying, Oh, I can hear the yellow glasses. No, that’s not the case. The logo is just a signifier to, you know. So you know it’s me.

AW: Interesting. I think a logo could be inconsistent with your brand, though right. Of course you can have a logo, you know. this is a great experiment. Think really hard about 2 really? Well done. Logos. Okay, you got them in mind. Gay. Yeah.

Seth: Are they for terrible, terrible products.

AW: No, they’re for excellent products.

Seth:Right. Everyone always picks Logos that they associate with excellent products. The fact is, the Starbucks logo is terrible. Terrible. There’s nothing good. It’s hard to reproduce. People think she’s naked, but maybe she’s not, and her hair is a mess, and what is that, and the Starbucks name is terrible. It has the word bucks in the title for an expensive place. None of it makes sense, but people love the experience. So they’ve now decided they like the logo.And yes, it is possible to slap an average logo on a great brand. But if you think about it. like Patagonia, is one of my favorite brands, the logo. It’s memorable, but it’s not. It doesn’t match their brand. 140

AW: True. true. So your previous comment reminded me of the famous quote from Jeff Bezos, where he says your brand is what other people say and think about, say about you when you’re not in the room. right? It’s really about your identity which may or may not have something to do with the yellow glasses that you’re wearing right like when I think about Seth, I picture you in yellow or orange glasses right? And sharing expertise about how to make a ruckus.

Seth:Well, I would argue that my brand is different than my logo. because most of the time. if people have me show up in the room. They expect me to do 2 things one say something that is both true and surprising at the same time and 2 be pretty kind and there are plenty of people in my line of work who are not kind. and there are plenty of people in my line of work who say things that are not surprising. So I am distinguished from those people by those 2 things.

AW: I love that I love that that’s like the intersection I was just listening to. This is marketing for at least the second time. Maybe the 3rd time. And you talk about what’s what’s on the X axis? What’s on the y axis right? And plotting. And and I even do this actually with my clients when we’re talking about their archetypes, and I used to say, identify the one archetype that represents you. And now it’s like the intersection of 2 can often be at least as powerful. I think that’s a huge insight, I mean, the consultants would be laughing at us right like. Of course it’s a 2 by 2. It’s always a 2 by 2, but.

Seth:And consultants are up, and consultants are always laughing at it.

AW: Yeah, yeah, I guess I guess. So I want to shift into communication a little bit. So my, this podcast talk about talk is really targeted to growth-minded executives who are trying to grow their career. And they have this idea, this epiphany that communication skills, are going to help them get there, right? Based on your observations and conversations? What communication skills do you think are the most important? Maybe it could be that they’re the most lacking. But the most important communication skills that we should be focusing on.

Seth:I think the biggest problem most people have is they don’t actually want to communicate that they so semiotics is the science of flags and signals. If you can watch a movie with the sound turned off and understand what’s going on. It’s a pretty well made movie. I guess the symbols and the signs are expressing themselves. If you get on an airplane and someone who works there is pointing with that 2 finger point in each direction, you know in whatever language they’re talking exactly what they’re doing. You know it by heart. but lots of times we’re hiding. We are talking, talking, talking, talking, but we are hiding because we don’t actually want to be seen, because it’s scary to be seen. We don’t actually want to make a point, because then we’d have to be responsible for it. So that’s why, when you call a big company, and they have all this gobbled ego gobbledygook gobbledy book that they just said to you on the phone instead of just saying, Yeah, it’s broken. right? Because they don’t want to say, Yeah, it’s broken. And so the hardest part for me when I see people who have trouble communicating, I think the hardest part is, people don’t actually want to be heard, so they’re afraid to directly say what they mean.

AW: Wow! Okay, that blows me away. Let me tell you. The typical answer that I hear is Oh, it’s confidence, or Oh, it’s precision. Or Oh, it’s storytelling. One answer to the question that gets a lot of traction also is listening. And I thought, that’s where you were headed at first, st right? We think we’re communicating. But we’re not really communicating because we’re not listening. And you’re saying, no, it is actually about amplifying what you’re saying. But people are. It’s almost like they’re afraid to put their stake in the ground. Yeah. okay, I’m going to do some thinking about that. I was just listening to. A new book called Executive Presence 2.0. Where the author talks about Sylvia Ann Hewitt. She talks about how the 3 ingredients to executive presence are communication skills, gravitas, and showing up. and people that have these things and have exceptional executive presence, are the people who put their stake in the ground and say what they mean, and back it up. They make the tough decisions.

Seth: Yeah, I think it’s very important to realize that there are 8 billion people on Earth. Nobody is for everything. No one is for everyone you need to find your people. So I don’t go to Paul Weber’s anymore. Because Weber sells hamburgers. I haven’t had meat in 40 years. I can’t even smell the place right. And if I said Paul Webber, you gotta stop doing that. Start serving kale milkshakes instead made with oat milk. They should appropriately say, there’s a place 5 miles up Highway 11. You can go, you know. We don’t do that here and a key part of communicating is, I’m speaking to people who speak this language, who wanna go in that direction, who believe this sort of thing? And if you’re not one of those people, you might be in the wrong room

AW: So that relates to another topic that I wanted to ask you about this. I don’t know if it’s tension or integration, maybe between authenticity and consistency. I love how you, Seth, define these terms, and then talk about how they’re the same and different from each other, and how people may confound them. Yeah, I have a whole rant about authenticity, as you know.

Seth: you and I do not know each other well, so I have no idea if you’re having a good day or not. because you’re a professional. If you were showing up authentically, and your cat had just thrown up behind the refrigerator, and there, you know, crank collar just bothered you, and you had athletes, foot, and you were cranky about all those things. I wouldn’t like you more. Because I wanted, I came to the podcast to talk to a professional professionals are consistent. They’re not authentic. We want a consistent doctor. We want a consistent customs and border patrol agent. We want a consistent gas station attendant. We don’t want to have to guess every time we see, because we’re not their friend. we are engaging with them on a transaction. So yeah, I’d like my friends to be authentic with me. I can call my friend Lisa in Italy, and she will tell me her truth But if you’re not my friend, please just be consistent.

AW: So during Covid and after Covid there was this this phrase going around, should we bring our whole selves to work.

Seth:- 228

AW: And I replied to some of these articles and said, I hope we don’t bring our whole selves anywhere. Right? Sounds consistent with what you’re saying so. But back to this authentic, so consistent professionals need to be consistent and authenticity. You’re equating with full transparency. And so we don’t want that is that right?

Seth:Well, even partial transparency, you know we were. We started by talking about brands. Is Nike consistent? Right? That Nike isn’t going to sell you a 3 inch heel. and they’re not gonna sell you something that breaks in a week, because if they did that their brand would fall apart. Maybe they authentically feel like doing that, because they would make some money.

AW: That.

Seth: What what we want is to build something that even if the logo wasn’t on it, people could tell we did it well. The only chance of that is, if it’s consistent. Now, the exception which social media has amplified are divas, rock stars, and people get paid for throwing a tantrum. Those people are supposed to be authentic. But guess what they’re faking it? They’re consistently being fake authentic, right? They’re having tantrums all the time, because, like maybe, Bob Dylan feels like being eloquent and singing in a way that we can understand, but he can’t. because he has to be consistently authentic as a mumbler.

AW: Yeah, I love this. I interviewed an academic from the Us. On the archetypes of female pop stars. And she was talking about this, you know, you go from like the innocent girl, and then you rebel, and you go through these stages. And oh, oh, my goodness! That’s but you need to consistently conform or show up consistently, as that you know, hot mess, or as that diva right.

Seth: Yeah, and that’s what killed Amy Winehouse. right like. And there’s a lot of misogyny. There’s a lot of family trauma. But the fact is that if you make a reputation as a diva who’s living right on the edge, you might not make it to

AW: Yeah. Oh, gosh! It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wow! So be careful what you’re conforming to. What archetype, if you want to use the term archetype, or what persona, or what brand. or what genre.

Seth: Right. And this this rubs people the wrong way because they think it’s fake. But is it fake that a surgeon’s wearing a mask and the rubber gloves, and standing like this in front of you before they do surgery right? The fact is that when you put on the uniform you become the professional, and the word uniform is the word uniform. For our reason.

AW: Yeah. So I’m curious about your take about transparency at work like so I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the work of Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School, right? And she talks. She talks about psychological safety and creating an environment where it’s safe to take risks, and she encouraged. Leaders are the folks that create the culture so they they can’t. They can’t allocate the adoption of psychological safety. They need to create it themselves. And one way they do that is, by being vulnerable, admitting mistakes, and so on. And the the term authenticity shows up a lot here in in this body of work. So how do you.

Seth:Okay.

AW: And so.

Seth:Let’s let’s break this into pieces a little bit. If you are consistently creating culture in an organization by doing things like admitting mistakes, acknowledging that you’re not infallible. You’re not being authentic doing that. You are being consistent, doing that. You are showing up to do it even when you don’t feel like it. even when you’re like. Oh, I can’t believe they need me to tell that story again. It embarrasses me every but you tell it anyway, right? That is consistent. So if Amy is writing down steps. she’s encouraging people to be consistent. She’s not encouraging, encouraging them to say, whatever the hell pops into their head.

AW: That’s right.

Seth:The key for me about transparency at work is let’s get real or let’s not play which is a simple sentence. That means we’re going to agree on what things are like around here, and we’re going to agree on where we are going. If you don’t want to buy into that, I get it. Here’s a severance package you are welcome to leave. but we’re going to agree that that’s what things are like around here, and then we can be honest with each other about whether we’re accomplishing that. So my friend Danny Meyer owns a bunch of restaurants. He started. Shake shack. If you work for Danny Meyer at one of these restaurants. We don’t have to revisit on a regular basis. Why, people are coming to spend a hundred dollars for dinner. and we don’t have to regulate regularly. Revisit. Why, we fold napkins. I know you don’t fold napkins at home, but we fold napkins here cause we’re putting on a show. And if you’re grumbling about that, if you’re grumbling about the, you know, systemic income inequality that leads it so that people can come by a $200 bottle of wine I get that. That’s totally legit. But the show we put on here that’s at the center of it. So let’s get real. This is what we do. This is a game, and I get to say to you that napkin wasn’t folded properly, and I’m not attacking you, and I’m not making a personal statement. I’m talking about the napkin. and if we can’t agree on what the napkin’s supposed to be, then we can’t work together.

AW: Love it. Okay. I have a boot camp that I’m running after this interview, and I’m going to be talking to folks a lot about consistency. I love this. Okay, I want to shift to a different element of communication, and that is brevity. conciseness.precision. I know you have a very famous short blog, the shortest blog. What was the shortest blog you ever wrote.

Seth:You don’t need more time. You just need to decide.

AW: Yeah, I love that. I love that. In fact, you’ve already made the decision. So just do it right back to Nike. Just do it. So I recently read, brevity. Is that what it’s called? The book by the axios founders? Smart brevity. It’s called.

Seth: Okay.

AW: Yeah, highly highly recommend that. But

Seth: I hope it’s not too long, and I probably will just

AW: It’s they.

Seth: I probably would have just in the book brevity. I’m not sure they needed the word smart. So right there, I cut it in half. But okay, go ahead.

AW: They could have cut it. No, they it’s very meta. They use all the principles that they’re teaching in the book, in the, in the communication of the book itself. So I have this theory that a lot of people think they’re being generous with the volume of information that they’re sharing. I know that I did early on when, 6 years ago, when I started blogging and podcasting, I thought, the more I shared the better. And so I have this new theory that if you really want to be generous, you do the work to sharpen the message, to make it more concise, more brief, so that it’s easier for other people to understand. Does that sit well with you?

Seth: I’m always in favor of people doing the work. But let me challenge the concept of brevity the way many people understand Nordstrom’s founders and employees frequently tell a story A guy who was working at the tie counter at Nordstrom’s men’s ties. and a 75 year old man comes in with 2 snow tires.

AW: I knew you’re gonna say that.

Seth: And he puts the snow tires down on the desk, and he says, I bought these here. I don’t need them. I need a refund. and the person who’s working at the counter reaches into the cash register hands the guy $300 and says, Thank you. And he leaves and part of the punchline is nordstroms doesn’t sell. Snow tires this story, which I’m happy to explain it. But I don’t need to. This story is told because it is way longer than always give people a refund but it works better than saying, always give people a refund. True, because stories stick with people. So brevity actually means as short as possible, but not shorter. I mean, I used to know a kid who’s really young, he said. It’s simple the boy! Cried Wolf, and the villagers didn’t come. that’s it. You can’t tell that story more briefly than that.

AW: Yeah. Okay, okay. okay, I want to ask you about your upcoming book. This is strategy. very cleverly and simply titled consistently with your previous book which I told you I’m rereading right now. This is marketing can you share with? I know it’s coming out in October. I can’t wait to get my hands on it. Can you share a little bit about that book?

Seth: There aren’t any books on strategy I’ve ever been able to recommend. because they’re not really about strategy. There are big, thick books for Mbas. There are books for generals. but mostly there are books of tactics. and strategy is a philosophy of becoming. Strategy is deciding what work to do today to get the results we seek tomorrow. Strategy is about systems and games and time and empathy and an elegant strategy is a path that gets better as we go. And most people, small companies, big companies, nonprofits, political campaigns. embassies. do not have an elegant strategy. They’re constantly pushing uphill. They’re constantly insisting that the world align the way they want it to align. and the thing is good. Waves make good surfers. So 1st we got to look for the right wave 1st we’ve got to understand how the world is structured, and then the change we seek to make in that context, not insisting that the whole world rearrange itself because it’s unjust.

AW: So that’s the systems thinking that you were talking about. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I read a summary. And I thought, it’s if I had to choose the 2 things. The 2 things that this book is about in terms of strategic thinking is systems thinking and longer thinking longer term. I think you? You just said it, you said it’s it’s about, what are we doing today to plan to succeed tomorrow? Something like that.

Seth:So longer term might just be one day. And it might be 100 years okay, that people who listen to podcasts like this, love curves and graphs, the long tail, the crossing, the chasm, the Gartner Hype cycle, and all of them go like this right? But we forget that the axis on the bottom is time. Right? Time is Nature’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen all at once. And so we do something today. And we have 3 customers. But we get traction. That gets us to 9, and then we get traction. That gets us to 81. But if we start today and don’t get 81. That doesn’t mean we failed. And if we start today and hustle. trying to skip 3 and 9, 81 that we are planting seeds. We are watering, fertilizing. We’re gardeners, and if you go to the wrong soil, or you use the wrong seeds, it’s not going to grow.

AW: So recently, I interviewed Roger Martin, who was. Boss. He was the Dean at Rothman when I was on the faculty there. and he is also a prolific thought leader, and he has the most downloaded video at Harvard Business Review called A Plan is not a strategy, and I was listening carefully when you were talking about your book. You did not use the word plan. but it sounded an awful lot like a plan.

Seth: This is fascinating. I’m gonna have to go find that video. I’ve never seen it. Rogers, a big Rogers, a big brain. So I can’t wait to see it. Yesterday I changed the subtitle of my book. the subtitle used to be creating the conditions for change and that’s what the book’s about, but I don’t think I don’t think that’s and brand for me consistently because it’s a little too hard to understand. So I changed it to make better plans.

AW: Oh. Oh, wow! Oh, I can’t wait to hear what you what you say about this video.

Seth: Well, I need to watch it right away, cause it’s not too late for me to change it back, so we’ll see what.

AW: Amazing. I’m I’m going to send it to you right when we’re done here. I’m also going to put it in the show notes. Okay. So one last thing before we get to the the 3 rapid fire questions that I can’t wait to also ask you is. did you happened to read. Arthur Brooks, one of his recent books, called from strength to strength.

Seth: I did not.

AW: Okay. So let me tell you the one graph in this book that to me is basically the thesis of the book on the X-axis. You have time, and on the Y-axis you have some sort of output that humans have over their lifetime. Right.

Seth: Right and.

AW: And so he talks about how, as ambitious, smart, well-intended folks, we jump on this curve in our career, and it’s about productivity and output and status and getting promoted. And all these things And at some point we hit cognitive decline. And it’s earlier than we all think. It’s in our 40 s. So I’m well past that. And then many of us, especially the ambitious folks. keep fighting for, you know, dominance for productivity, for. These things, and it gets harder and harder, and often to the detriment of our physical health, our relationships, and our life in general right, and what he advocates is that we jump to a second curve. Instead of being productive, the output is sharing our wisdom.

Seth: Interesting.

AW: This. I was like this perfectly described. It was very validating for me, right? Because I used to be a brand manager at Kraft, and I was working really hard. And then I went, and I earned my degrees, and I was on a faculty member, and then I jumped off. I started. Talk about talk, and I’m sharing wisdom, and and I find it incredibly fulfilling all the things that he talked about. And then I thought. I think Seth has been doing this from the beginning

Seth: Well I am not a role model for anything except maybe not eating hamburgers. The sharing wisdom is a broad statement right that I happen to be in a line of work where my words are on a piece of paper, and sometimes people pay money for them. But you know, if I think about the A/C heating contractor down the street, who’s my age? He has apprentices and people coming up in the business. He spends a good chunk of his time teaching those people how to install air conditioning. That’s wisdom as well. So I don’t think that what Arthur is saying is that everybody should become a pundit. No, I don’t think he is, either. I’m not saying you were saying that I’m clarifying for me right that what we have is the chance. You know I spend almost all my time helping nonprofits and people I care about for free figure out what they ought to be doing. and I don’t do that in public cause. That’s not my brand. I do that because that’s my my craft, my work, and I’ve been doing that for a while I couldn’t do it when I was 35, because no one would trust me to do it. And so what’s really happening is it’s not the internal thing of physical or cognitive decline. It’s the asset value of the benefit of the doubt. And as we gain the benefit of the doubt. I think we have leverage to amplify our insight. and even if we lived to 200, it feels to me like it’s a good use of your time long before you have to worry about whatever’s gonna have to do next.

AW: I love that I love that so it’s not just that you’re shifting your idea of what the what’s on the y-axis right? It’s that over time you accumulate more wisdom to share and back to branding. Maybe a reputation for credible wisdom.

Seth: Exactly.

AW: Beautiful. Oh, my goodness! I love that you are going to be so quoted on that, Seth. Are you ready for the 3 rapid fire questions?

Seth: They’re all rapid fire the way my brain works. What do you got.

AW: Yeah. So I just want to. I want to share with the listeners that, like all of the people that I interview for my podcast once I said to Seth, once we book the interview, I’m going to share some of the ideas that I have for questions. We’re definitely going to go off script, and you replied to me and said, I don’t want the questions I love that I love, that you don’t want the questions so1st rapid fire question, official, 1st official rapid fire question is.

Seth: because people get there, and they don’t know what or why to engage right? So when I’m doing my work, I am eagerly showing up for other people the same way. A swimmer is swimming as fast as they can. But that doesn’t mean that in their spare time the swimmers swimming as fast as they can, just for fun. So I regularly. you know I have no one in my office. I have no employees. I can go 12 h without seeing another person quite happily. Huh!

AW: Not me. But that’s okay. That’s okay. All right. Next question. what are your communication, pet peeves, or a pet peeve that you have when other people are communicating, and you wish they would change the way they’re communicating.

Seth: Well, peeves make lousy pets because they’re just. They’re hard to keep but with that said it hurts me when I see someone who is on a useful, righteous path undermining their work by falling into common traps. It could be something as simple as regularly. I will hear people on an interview use ums, and us to stop person from taking the mic back. That’s not a hard problem to fix. It’s 4 days of work. and that’s a trivial one on a bigger scale, much bigger, much more important, much more common scale marketers, particularly people with a personal brand in quotation marks hustle too much. They interrupt too much, they hassle too much. They try to get the word out, I think getting the word out is a ridiculous mantra. It’s not effective, and it it undermines everything you’re trying to do.

AW: I know you talk about that a lot. And this is marketing. Yeah. okay. The last rapid fire question I’m really curious. Given the bookshelf behind you? Is there a book or a podcast not one of yours, and not one of mine, a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending a lot lately.

Seth: Okay. So the best podcast ever made was mystery show episode 3. She only made. Starley only made 6 episodes. Don’t start with episode, 3. Start with episode 4. Episode 2. But you should listen to mystery. Show episode 3. Mystery. Yeah.

AW: Joe

Seth: Mystery show. It’s in each. In each episode she solved the mystery.

AW: Okay.

Seth: She’s she was terrific. But the problem was, she tried to make one a week, and it needed to be one a year, and if it was one a year there’s no way she could have made it work anyway. I listen to history of rock and roll in 500 songs. I’m up to the current episode, which is 189. And that’s a lifelong project for Andrew. It’s gonna outlive me for sure 99% invisible is nothing but wisdom, wisdom. Wisdom. Roman is a superstar. My friend Brian’s podcast, the moment highly recommend it. I used to listen to Dan Carlin’s history podcast. They’re a miracle. After a while. It’s too much Genghis Khan was too much Genghis Khan for me. So I took a break. Who else we got and then the best audio book ever recorded is just kids by Patty Smith.

AW: Okay. I am going to put links to all of those in the show notes, and I’m going to definitely listen to all of them myself. Is there anything else you want to share? Seth, with the talk about talk listeners, about how they can effectively make a ruckus.

Seth: Big problems, demand small solutions. find one person. find a tiny pocket of a system. find someone who is lonely and begin there. do not wait for the Pope to call you and put you in charge of solving something. Giant. Build things that are small. We gain traction, and then we do it again.

AW: Wow! All right. Thank you so much, Seth. I appreciate you sharing your time and all of your insights with us. I’m very grateful. Thank you so much.

Seth :Thank you for having me keep making this ruckus. It matters.

Did you get that? Don’t wait for the Pope to call you and put you in charge of something. Thank you, Seth. Personally, I’m inspired to take action and make a ruckus.

Now I’m going to quickly summarize with three of the themes or learnings here that I want to reinforce for you.

But first, I want to share a few things he said that I’m not sure I agree with. Im curious what YOU think. The truth is I’m still thinking about these things, which is what I love. As I said at the beginning, Seth always leaves me thinking.

The first thing I’m not sure I agree with is how Seth said that how you dress isn’t your brand, its your logo. Remember when I asked, “how you dress is one of the ways that you reinforce your brand. Do you agree?” His response?

Hmm. I think how you show up, including how you dress, is a significant part of your brand.

The second point where I’m not sure whether I agree was when Seth said “Professionals are consistent, they’re not authentic.” I understand his point about being professional and consistent, but I think things are changing in terms of authenticity. More and more, respected leaders with strong personal brands are sharing parts of their personal life, their humanity, their vulnerabilities, with others at work. They’re encouraging others to also “be themselves” and not conform. Of course, you also must be dependable, accountable, and trustworthy.

Again, I’m curious what YOU think. Is it true that Professionals are consistent, theyre not authentic.”?

So as you can see, like I said, Seth makes me think.

Now, the three themes that I want to reinforce with you from this episode. Here they are.
The first is based on Seth’s answer to my Q: what communication skill should we all work on”? His answer was something I never expected. He said ,“the biggest problem most people have is they don’t actually want to communicate” Wait what”? I thought he would say we are too verbose or that we lack confidence. But no. Seth identifies that many people struggle with communication because they are afraid to be “seen” or to take responsibility for their messages. This fear leads to evasive or unclear communication. I think he’s right on that one. Take a stand, people!
The second theme I want to reinforce is about GENRES. Like books have genres, people should too. He said I work with lots of people who think it’s a badge of honor to have no genre. He talks about the importance of genre in helping people categorize and predict experiences, whether in books, restaurants, or personal branding. Most importantly, he highlighted that if you don’t have a genre, you will be ignored. Again, take a stand!

The third and last theme I want to reinforce is Seth’s definition of personal branding. I’m definitely going to be using this definition in my coaching. Remember Jeff Bezos’ definition: Your brand is what people say about you when youre not in the room. Seth’s got a slightly different take that I think is at least as compelling. “Your Brand is what other people think you’re going to do next.” Aks yourself, what do people think YOURE going to do next? That’s your brand. LOVE IT!

Phew ok – that’s it. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, I just cant wait to read Seth’s upcoming book THIS IS STRATEGY. I’m sure he’ll have a new take on strategy that I haven’t considered before.

I leave you with this.
If the action you are taking is generous and would be missed if you didn’t do it, that’s what seth calls making a ruckus. Making a ruckus is not having a tantrum. Making a ruckus is showing up with leverage to change the system for the better.

Let’s all make a ruckus.

Alright. That’s it. That’s everything for this episode. Thanks again to Seth for sharing his thoughts and for encouraging us all to make a ruckus

If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will refer it to one of your friends, and I also hope you’ll leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. Now go make a ruckus. And talk soon!

The post Making a Ruckus with Seth Godin (ep.171) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams

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Introducing yourself shouldn’t be something you dread. Learn a 3-point self-introduction framework (not a script!) plus 4 general tips for introducing yourself effectively. Introducing yourself is a rare opportunity to highlight your personal brand! (Re-release of ep. 86)

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The post INTRODUCTIONS – How to Introduce Yourself (ep. 170) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Communicate with confidence: There’s the mental preparation, then there’s confidence in the moment. In this first of a two-part series, we focus on the 4P’s of mentally preparing to communicate with confidence: Practice, as in rehearsing; Proverb, as in adopting a mantra; Pep talk; and Pirate, as in copying that confident feeling. (Re-release of ep.58)

The post COMMUNICATE WITH CONFIDENCE: Part 1 – Mental Preparation (ep 169) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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How self-aware are you? Andrea shares the definition of self-awareness, different types of self-awareness, and how we can improve our communication effectiveness by being more self-aware. (Re-release of ep 121)

TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT

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RESOURCESThe 3 Point Body Language Scan

Podcast Episode: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/96-3pt-body-language-scan/ The post SELF-AWARENESS & Communication (ep. 167) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT

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***When referencing resources and products, TalkAboutTalk sometimes uses affiliate links. These links don’t impose any extra cost on you, and they help support the free content provided by Talk About Talk.

The post Communicating with PRECISION (ep. 166) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Gratitude is a communication skill that can build loyalty, serve as a catalyst to connect, and release endorphins! Andrea interviews The Currency of Gratitude author Michele Bailey, who shares insights on how to express gratitude in a professional context, how gratitude relates to brand ambassadors, how gratitude relates to reciprocity, whether expressing gratitude makes you sound weak, and some provocative thoughts about work-life balance. (Re-release of ep. 155)

TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT

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RESOURCES BOOK: The Currency Of Gratitude: Turning Small Gestures Into Powerful Business Results* by Michele Bailey – https://amzn.to/434Vqpe * Michele Bailey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michele-bailey-a111b6a/ * Michele’s agency is BLAZING: https://blazing.agency/ * Recommended podcasts: + Tim Ferriss – https://tim.blog/podcast/ + Smartless – https://www.smartless.com/ + Happier – https://gretchenrubin.com/podcasts/ + On Purpose – https://www.jayshetty.me/podcast + Huberman Lab – https://www.hubermanlab.com/podcast + Voices of leadership – https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/voices-of-leadership-insights-and-inspirations/id1710435149

The post The Currency of GRATITUDE with Michele Bailey (ep.165) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Personal Branding is important, yet it never seems urgent. Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares 3 specific reasons why we should all take the time and effort to develop our personal brand, plus she shares a variety of resources to help you develop your personal brand: a new online course, podcast episodes, newsletter blogs, and more. (Re-release of ep.98)

TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT

https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Communication Coaching Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube * Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ RESOURCES*

Personal Branding BOOTCAMP – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/bootcamps/
Personal Brand Self-Assessment – https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand
“5 Steps to Nail YOur Personal Brand” Online Course – https://talkabouttalk.teachable.com/p/5-steps-to-nail-your-personal-bran
#84 Strategic Principles of Personal Branding Before you start promoting your Personal Brand, you need to articulate what it is! Learn the 3 strategic principles of Personal Branding, plus the most common mistake that people make when crafting their Personal Brand.
#71 Personal BrandING, AUTHENTICITY & TMI How can we be authentic without sharing TMI? How can we be transparent, without appearing unprofessional? Copywriter and messaging strategist Tom Megginson encourages us to be authentic and focus on our audience. Code-switching and filtering are 2 ways to maintain authenticity without compromising professionalism.
#77 Personal BrandING: Reinforcing your Personal Brand with Implicit CommunicationPersonal branding is more than just the words we say about ourselves. Learn to reinforce your personal brand through consistent implicit communication, ranging from your personal style, possessions, affiliations, how you show up for meetings, and more.
#68 Communicating Your Personal Brand ONLINE Actionable advice on how to communicate your personal brand online, including 3 KEY PRINCIPLES of personal branding, plus instructions for how to UPDATE, PARTICIPATE and MONITOR your personal brand online.
#90 DEMONSTRATING LEADERSHIP: Leadership & Your Personal BrandHave you been told it’s time to start “demonstrating leadership”? Learn 5 ways to communicate your leadership potential and make leadership an integral part of your personal brand. You can create thought leadership, demonstrate people leadership, you can talk leadership, and more.

PERSONAL BRAND NEWSLETTERS* Strategic Principles of Personal Branding * Developing Your Personal Brand * 5 Insights to Strengthen Your Personal Brand * Personal Branding – Who Am I? * Personal Branding – Navigating the Authenticity-TMI Tension * Update your personal brand online – 10 steps * Your Online Personal Brand * Reinforcing your Personal Brand with Implicit Communication * Personality Tests The post The Power of PERSONAL BRANDING (ep.164) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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FREE – “Speak Up” TIP SHEET Visit the FREE Resources section on the bottom of the talkabouttalk.com homepage for your free SPEAK UP Tip Sheet*

TAKE THE FREE PERSONAL BRAND ASSESSMENT* https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK* Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Communication Coaching Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * LinkedIn Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn TalkAboutTalk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube * Talk About Talk Podcast Archive: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/communication-skills-podcast/ The post SPEAK UP! Communicating in Meetings (ep.163) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin shares her advice for job seekers, including what to do first, what employers are looking for in job candidates, common mistakes, and (yes!) the significance of your personal brand when it comes to job searching. (Re-release of ep.107)

ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK* LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn – Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Email Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/newsletter * YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/

TAKE THE PERSONAL BRAND SELF-ASSESSMENT* https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand

Sharon Mah-Gin LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonmahgin/ * Executive Search Alliance – http://www.execsearchalliance.com/* * Recommendation: Jay Shetty podcast

Relevant Talk About Talk Episodes for Job Seekers Online Networking with Sharon Mah-Gin * Networking with Sharon Mah-Gin* The post Communication Skills for JOB-SEEKERS with executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin (ep. 162) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Controlling your narrative means purposefully reinforcing your positive and unique traits in a way that communicates your value. Tell your story in a way that serves you! When it comes to your personal brand narrative, you can LET it happen or you can MAKE it happen. Andrea shares many inspiring examples of real-life success stories, actionable tips, and explores the consequences of neglecting your narrative. (Re-release of ep.142)

TAKE THE PERSONAL BRAND SELF-ASSESSMENT* https://talkabouttalk.com/personalbrand

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Has ageism impacted you – yet? Learn what ageism is, the nuances of how it affects us, and most importantly, three actionable strategies to combat it. Andrea highlights the importance of maintaining a strong personal brand, avoiding age-related details, and the opportunity to control your narrative by addressing age directly

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK* LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn Talk About Talk: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * Talk About Talk YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/

AGEISM RESOURCES* Douglas Guilbeault (2024) Nature – article about online images: https://techxplore.com/news/2024-02-online-images-gender-stereotypes-text.html * Jessica Grose (2023) NYTimes “The Hour Between Babe and Hag”: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/women-men-work.html * Lisa LaFlamme Story: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/open-letter-to-bell-says-laflamme-ousting-shows-sexism-ageism-women-face-at-work-1.6045084 * Olena Hankivsky (2012) Social Science and Medicine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953612000408 * UN Human Development Report: https://hdr.undp.org/content/human-development-report-2023-24 * Wilkinson J and Ferraro K, Thirty Years of Ageism Research. In Nelson T (ed). Ageism: Stereotyping and Prejudice Against Older Persons. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 200

TRANSCRIPTRecently when I was on stage giving a keynote for an audience of women in the banking industry, I mentioned my age.

Someone asked me an insightful question regarding a topic that I’ve recently changed my opinion on. I thought about it for a moment, and then I turned to the audience, and declared: “I’m 54 years old. And I’m still learning!” I paused and looked around. I distinctly remember noticing many encouraging smiles and nods from the audience. Interesting. Then later, several people came up to me and explicitly mentioned how impressed they were that I mentioned my age. Wow.

The subtext was clear. People rarely publicly declare the taboo topic of their age. Particularly, when they’re OLD.

After this recent experience, declaring my age in front of an audience, I decided to do some research and thinking about ageism. Up until now, as I’ve been preparing for this episode, I haven’t given ageism it much thought. Perhaps I’m lucky because I’m a healthy 54-year-old. Also, I run my own show. I’m responsible for creating the culture at talk about talk where ageism is definitely not tolerated. But not everybody is so fortunate. Consider those aged 50 or 60+ who are on the job market.

Recently, I met such a job seeker. Let’s call her Carla. Carla is a 57-year-old Caucasian female who’s experienced ageism multiple times in her job search. Here is Carla:

One cannot prove that ageism is the problem or speak to the elephant in the room if one cannot get anywhere near being in the room. Try getting past an algorithm over age 40 these days and even getting an interview. #ageismonpaper #digitalageism has us out of the running long before any now possible interview.

Recruiters wont bring us in, because we’re not a “cultural fit.” If we do manage to get an interview, the person interviewing us is generally 10, 15 or even 20 years younger. Even if things went as well as possible, they will not hire you knowing you, will be taking direction from them or a similarly aged peer. Even if you’re more than willing to be a junior, you were dismissed on site before the interview started. They’re not comfortable with that scenario.

My recent conversation with Carla is just one of many that I’ve had with clients about ageism – Along with racism, sexism, and the other isms, I feel like Ageism is being mentioned more and more lately. Is it just me because I’m old? Maybe. In conversations with clients, they ask me things like:

Should I try to look younger?
Should I try to talk younger? What words do the young folk use?
Should I erase the years off my résumé and LinkedIn profile?

Whether you’re young, old or somewhere in between, whether you’re looking for a new job, or whether you’re the CEO running your firm and responsible for your firm’s culture, ageism is an important topic for all of us to be conscious of – whether it’s your experience being affected by ageism, or perhaps you’re being ageist yourself.

Let’s talk AGEISM.

Welcome to Talk About Talk podcast episode 160. In this episode, we’re talking AGEISM – What ageism is, how it affects us, AND I’m going to highlight three strategies for you to employ if you think you may be a victim of ageism, if you believe you may be negatively impacted by your age.

This is an important topic, whether you are a victim of ageism, whether you’re an ally for others, or whether you yourself might be ageist.

Of course, as humans, we’re constantly judging and evaluating each other. People look at how you’re dressed, your posture, your tone of voice, your words… we make judgments, sometimes based on negative stereotypes that may result in discriminatory behaviors. We talk about the isms: including, but not limited to your height, your race, your gender, your sex, and, of course your age.

Ageism is an interesting ism. Typically, when we think about age ism, we think about discrimination against older people. But as you’re about to learn, ageism also affects folks who are quote unquote too young. So, if you think about our lifespan, we typically start out as too young, and then,if we’re lucky enough, we end up being too old. I suppose that’s the beautiful irony of ageism. Ultimately the folks who are being ageist may very well end up being victimized by ageism as they too grow older. It’s poetic justice.

Before we go any further, let me introduce myself. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please just call me Andrea. Yes, I’m 54 years old. I’m an executive communication coach at talk about talk, where I coach ambitious executives to improve their communication skills so they can communicate with confidence, clarity and establish credibility.

Recently, my team and I re-launched the whole TalkAboutTalk.com website. I hope you’ll check it out. Its talkabouttalk.com. You’ll find lots of resources there. Here’s something new: At the bottom of the homepage there are all sorts of free tipsheets and checklists that you can download to help you with your communication skills. Yes, it’s free. You’ll also find information on the website about my coaching, speaking and workshops, and the email newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication coaching from me every two weeks. Sound good? Please signup at talkabouttalk.com.

If you’ve been listening to the Talk About Talk podcast, you might know that while I cover all of the communication skills you’d expect, like confidence and listening and storytelling, I’m mildly obsessed with the topic of personal branding and establishing your ideal professional identity. It’s a fundamental assumption of my executive coaching practice that we can shape and mold our professional identity. Certainly, we need to be authentic, but we have the opportunity to control the narrative around our respective personal brands. In my experience coaching thousands of executives, when we develop our personal brands in a disciplined and strategic way, we can get a lot of traction in terms of our career progression and our satisfaction.

Are you wondering why I’m sharing this with you? Why the rant about personal branding? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how this topic of personal branding fits with age and ageism.

Simply put, Age is one of the many many dimensions of your brand. And it’s one that you have absolutely no control over, at least in terms of your chronological age – that is, the amount of time lapsed since you were born.

Many of the elements in our respective personal brands you CAN control, at least to some extent. Consider your leadership style, your communication effectiveness, your work ethic, and how you “show up.”

That said, there are dimensions of our personal brands where you have little or no choice in how you show up. Consider your childhood circumstances, your race, your geography (where you grew up and maybe even where you live now – sometimes we have very little choice in these things). And yes, your age is an element of your personal brand.

Even if you don’t talk about your age. Even if you don’t flaunt it. Even if you don’t stand on stage in front of a big audience, and declare, I am 54 years old, your age is still one element of your personal brand and your professional identity. So it’s well worth your time to understand what ageism is, how it can affect you, and what you can do about it.

Have you ever had any of these experiences?

Someone told you that, “You look good – for your age”?
Someone mentioned, “I can’t believe you’re 54 years old!”?
Or – when you look around your firm or your industry, you notice that the prime, high-visibility assignments are being awarded to younger folks as opposed to those with valuable experience.
Or – like Carla, whom you heard from a few minutes ago, you were outright denied a job or promotion because of your age?

If you’re listening from outside of Canada, you may not have heard about the story of journalist Lisa LaFlamme’s experience. I’ll leave a link to her story in the shownotes.

Laflamme was a highly regarded national news anchor here in Canada at CTV news. She was well respected with over 35 years of journalism experience. In the year 2022 she decided to let her dyed dark brown hair go to its natural gray. In August 2022 she was let go. She was terminated. Coincidence?

The backlash was instant and strong, at the grassroots level, and at the formal institutional level. CTV’s parent company Bell media went on record, saying that terminating LaFlamme’s contract after 35 years was a business decision, and they wanted to move her anchor role in a “different direction.”

Then the head of bell media took a leave of absence. And there was a formal open letter that was signed by well-known and highly reputed politicians, business people, journalists, celebrities, and more, all supporting Lisa LaFlamme and criticizing BellMedia and CTV.

Notably, this open letter also identified that sexism played a role in the termination of LaFlammes contract. More on the intersectionality of ageism and sexism in a minute.

My point in sharing Lisa LaFlamme’s high profile story here is to illustrate that ageism is on our cultural radar. It’s talked about in the media.

Lets start by defining ageism.

The term ageism was coined in the late 1960s by American physician and gerontologist Robert Neil Butler. Yes, gerontologist, as in geriatric. At the time, Dr. Butler was referring to the treatment of elderly people. Since then, this AGEISM term has evolved to also describe discrimination against younger people as well.

Dr. Butler defined AGEISM as a combination of three things:

negative attitudes towards old age and the aging process
discriminatory practices against older people
institutional practices and policies that perpetuate stereotypes about elderly people

This three-point definition is important. It can help you identify ageism when you see it. This three-point definition also reminds me of Ron Tite’s “think do say” framework from our last episode. Ageism includes what people think, do & say.. The thinking is the negative attitudes, the doing is the discriminatory practices, and the saying is the institutionalization of these practises and policies.

Research identifies several types of ageism. Note these are not mutually exclusive. But they can be helpful in thinking about ageism that you experience or witness:

Explicit and implicit ageism depending on whether you are consciously aware of it
Benevolent ageism where someone holds patronizing beliefs about age. Think: “Sweet Old Lady.”
Hostile ageism whch is having “openly aggressive beliefs about age, such as that teenagers are violent or dangerous”
Interpersonal ageism, which, as you might imagine, occurs in social situations
Internalized ageism which is focused your beliefs about yourself. (Yes, you can be ageist about yourself. And if this is you – just stop!)
Institutional ageism which shows up in policies and actions

That’s a lot of ageism.

Yes, ageism is institutionalized. It’s culturally ingrained. According to the World Health Organization:

“Children as young as 4 years old become aware of their culture’s age stereotypes. From that age onwards they internalize and use these stereotypes to guide their feelings and behavior towards people of different ages.”

So Ageism includes negative attitudes, discriminatory practises, and institutionalized practices and policies by people of all ages, against people we think are too old and/or who are too young.

This reminds me of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a very impressive, 40-something female CEO of a large apparel brand that I’m quite certain you’ve heard of. She told me that when she people ask her what she does, of course she tells them she’s the CEO. Almost like clockwork, she tells me, they say, “Oh, CEO of the Canadian division?” “No. I’m a global CEO.” Typically that’s followed by a moment of silence. Lol. But it’s really not funny. Depending on these people, their response might be to be even more critical of her because of her young age.

Men also experience ageism in terms of being “ -“ too young. One of my good friends was promoted to the role of CEO of a big global company when he was in his 40s. He told me that he was conscious of the fact that many people believed he was too young and we joked about putting white paint in his hair so at least he’d have a few grey hairs.

So yes, ageism is real, even for the young folk. At the beginning of this episode, I shared a story where I was delivering a Keynote to an audience of women in the financial industry when I mentioned my age. After my Keynote, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with an ambitious middle level manager who works in the corporate head office of a big bank. This woman is noticeably attractive. She’s undeniably very pretty. She told me that she believes her appearance hinders her career progression. But she wasn’t commenting on her attractiveness. She was commenting on the fact that she looks younger than she really is. She constantly wonders whether she’s being held back because people believe she’s too young. She even brought it up with her manager.

You might be thinking oh, poor thing! LOL. But her concern is real and shared by others. Last year there was a fantastic article by Jessica Grose in the New York Times, addressing this intersectionality between ageism and sexism, aptly called, The Hour Between Babe and Hag. The title says it all doesn’t it? As a woman in the workplace, you’re either considered a young babe or an old hag. There’s only one hour between the two.

The author quotes social gerontologist Tetyana Shippee, who reports the following:

“From ages 18 to 30, women report age discrimination due to being too young. From your mid-30s to your mid-40s is a safe time. Then age discrimination starts to pick up again after age 50, and it’s especially high after 55-plus.”

Did you get that? From ages 18 to 30 you’re too young. From your mid 30s to your mid 40s it’s relatively safe. Then discrimination starts to pick up again after age 50 and especially after 55.

(Yikes, I’m in trouble.)

This is further compounded for women from racialized or underrepresented communities. Again, that lovely intersectionality term.

Recent academic research also validates how ageism negatively impacts women more so than men. I included links in the show otes to various articles, including one academic article that concluded that online images reinforce gender stereotypes that contribute to BOTH ageism AND sexism, against women in particular.

Another academic article confirmed the structural bias within healthcare that negatively impacts older female patients, in particular.

Even the United Nations weighs in here. The 2023-24 United Nations human development report concluded that older women face compounded advantages relative to other groups based on ageism, and sexism.

That all said, there is ageism affecting men in the workplace, too. For them, this ageism generally happens much later in their careers, not during their prime earning years.

Phew. This is all so heavy. Male or female, young or old, if you’re experiencing ageism in your career, I hope this information at least validates your experience.

So far in this episode, we’ve defined ageism in terms of negative attitudes, discriminatory, behaviors, and institutionalized policies and practices, remember, think do say, and I’ve provided you with plenty of examples, and we’ve talked about how ageism interacts with sexism. The question is, what do you do about it? Especially when you’re the victim.

This is where it gets good. I’ve got some ideas for you for

How to Deal with AgeismIf you’re concerned about age-based discrimination, my advice for you is threefold:

(1)A strong personal brand goes a long way.

When you introduce yourself with confidence and mention your unique strengths, you focus everyone’s attention on the value you provide. For example, you might highlight your specific experiences, your expertise, your credentials, your leadership style, and/or your successes. Make these the salient points.

Without a strong personal brand and inspiring self introduction, it’s possible that people will think about you as that older woman or that older guy. If you’ve done the work to develop your personal brand, and you introduced yourself with confidence, highlighting your strengths, your passions, and your super power, suddenly people might be thinking about you as “ a senior banking executive with unparallelled people skills,” or “the senior HR executive with a proven track record of solving problems, big and small.”

So that’s my first suggestion for you, if you’re experiencing ageism. Develop your unique personal brand.

My second suggestion in combating ageism is:

(2) Avoid providing details that allow people to “do the math.“

As I’m saying, this, I realize this one’s gonna get me in trouble. If you’re proud of your age and you’re not concerned about ageism, then skip this one. Go ahead and tell them you graduated from high school in 1988.

Do you remember Carla, who you heard from at the beginning of the episode talking about #DigitalAgeism? Here she is, talking about filling in the application form for a new job as a 57-year-old.

We’re also often asked to put when we went to school on our major. For those of us decades into our careers, that is generally irrelevant. But it sure gives the algorithm what they need to discredit us at the get go.

Ugh. I feel your pain, Carla.

So do you have to include the years you graduated from college or the years you were in your first jobs?

I get asked this question all the time. My suggestion is this. If you’re filling out a form where these questions about years are asked, then yes of course you need to include these dates. Otherwise, avoid providing details that allow people to do the math.

This is about purposefully not reminding people of your age, without compromising your authenticity. It’s not that you’re being untruthful. Rather, you’re choosing to not remind them that you graduated from University in the previous century.

Let me give you a few examples:

If you talk about your children at work, you don’t need to mention their ages. (e.g. “My daughter…” as opposed to “My 35 year old daughter…”)
You don’t need to highlight the decade when you grew up (e.g. “When I was a teenager…” as opposed to “Back in the 70’s when I was a teenager…”)
Yes, you can delete the year you earned your undergraduate degree. Most employers don’t care what year you graduated, it’s more about the credential. (That said, They do want to see how many years you worked in various jobs.) And of course, if you’re filling out a form you need to include this information.

Onto the third and last suggestion for how to deal with ageism, we’ve covered focussing on other elements of your unique personal brand, and we’ve covered avoiding providing details that allow people to do the math. My third suggestion is this.

(3)Sometimes calling out the elephant in the room can be a smart strategy.

This is a perfect example of what I call, “controlling the narrative.” Instead of avoiding the topic of your age, try, addressing your age, head on in a way that strategically controls the narrative.

For example, you could say:

“My extensive experience over the decades provides me with a catalog of relevant case studies that I can draw on…”
“I might be the only person in the room with gray hair, but I’m also the only person who’s done this before. I have so many insights and experiences to share with the team…” or –
“I’m 54 and I’m still learning!”

Speaking of 54, that reminds me of a fantastic book that I read that I strongly recommend, particularly if you’re north of 50 years. It’s called “From strength to strength” by Arthur C. Brooks. The subtitle is Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.

In this book, Brooks describes how many of us, including me, including him, focus over the years on ambition and productivity. Then at some point, probably earlier than you think, you hit an inflection point in terms of your cognitive abilities. They call it cognitive decline. Brooks advoicates jumping off that productivity and ambition curve to a new output, focused on sharing your wisdom.

When I read Brooks prescription for happiness and success, I felt very validated, as my career has evolved from being an ambitious and productive brand manager, then academic, and now shifting to a new track where I’m sharing my wisdom as a coach.

Question, how can you shift your focus to sharing your wisdom and expertise?

Before you reject Arthur Brooks’ advice, because you think it might not be relevant, consider what opportunities you may have in your current industry or your current function where you can share your wisdom. I share this idea with some of my clients in other industries. It’s something to consider. Again, I will leave a link to the book “from strength to strength” in the show notes.

And that’s it for this episode.

I hope these insights about ageism will encourage you to question your own attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. And certainly to call out others when they might be ageist. I also encourage you if you are the victim of ageism to consider my three suggestions:

Develop a strong personal brand. Focus peoples attention on your strengths.
Avoid reminding people of your age. Unless you’re filling out a form, that explicitly asked for years and dates, you don’t need to prompt people to do the math to figure out how old you are.
Sometimes calling out the elephant in the room can be a smart strategy. Reference your age and control the narrative. Turn your experience into a positive.

If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I do hope you’ll share with your friends, young and old, who could also benefit from some insights about ageism. You could also leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. These reviews make a nbbigg difference in the podcast algorithm, and I appreciate it.

Don’t forget to check out the recently re-launched talkabouttalk.com website and to sign up signup for my free communication coaching newsletter.

Thanks again for listening. And talk soon!

The post Let’s Talk AGEISM (ep.160) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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“Think Do Say” author Ron Tite joins Andrea to talk about thinking before saying, leaning in to our idiosyncrasies (or “bugs”), thoughts on profanity, how filtering your personal brand is like choosing an outfit from your closet, and how to deal with those annoying pitch slappers!

RON TITE RESOURCES “THINK DO SAY: How to seize attention and build trust in a busy, busy world” by Ron Tite – https://amzn.to/4bO2hqf * LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/rontite/ (no pitch slapping, please) * Church+State agency – https://churchstate.co/ * Video reco: “Talking Funny” with Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Rickey Gervais & Louis CK – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKY6BGcx37k * Book reco:* “What they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School” – https://amzn.to/3yGJaQA

CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn Andrea – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ * LinkedIn Talk about Talk – https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ * Website: TalkAboutTalk.com * Communication Coaching Newsletter: https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup * YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/*

TRANSCRIPTIf you’re like me, and a lot of people that I talk to, you probably have a love hate relationship with social media. We love connecting with interesting people and learning new things. but we hate the annoying people and wasting our time. sound familiar?
I choose to spend most of my time on social media on linkedin.
LinkedIn used to be the online platform for job seekers. but nowadays it’s more like the virtual water cooler conversation. sure it’s focused on our careers and our professional life but it’s a lot more than just job seeking. it’s learning, it’s mentoring, it’s connecting, and a lot more.
Of course there are the folks on LinkedIn who are constantly in sales mode, sending you direct messages To help you accelerate your sales funnel or gain a million followers. I also get a lot of pitches from people who want to be a guest on this podcast or who want to write a guest post on the talkabouttalk.com website. again, this is all about generating sales. So annoying.
That all said, just about every day I read something that inspires me on linkedin. There are certain people who I follow who consistently add value to the platform. one of these folks is the knowledgeable, generous and entertaining Ron Tite, whom you’re going to meet in just a few minutes

In this conversation with ron, you’re going to his advice for how to simplify your out of control brand strategy document. We also talk about how to apply these insights to your own Personal brand. We cover the difference between self-awareness, honesty, transparency and authenticity, we cover insights about profanity, and yes, we talk about Pitch-Slappers… Pitch slappers is the name is the label that Ron tight gave to those annoying folks on social media who politely request a connection and then bam – slap you with a pitch. he even created a segmentation scheme for them.
Pitch slappers is the label that Ron Tite gave to those annoying folks on social media who politely request a connection and then bam – slap you with a pitch. he even created a segmentation scheme for them.
there’s the Groper,
The stumble upon,
The smoke blower,
The howdy partner,
The mother, or father Teresa,
The script follower,
And, of course Robbie random.

I love it!

Welcome to Talk about Talk podcast episode #159 “Think, Do Say” with Ron Tite”.

In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please just call me Andrea. I coach executives like you to improve your communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and and ultimately achieve your career goals. You can learn more about what I do on the talkabouttalk.com website. There are lots and lots of resources for you there. There’s one-on-one coaching, boot camps, online courses, information about corporate workshops, and of course, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast. And while you’re on the website, I really hope to sign up for my bi-weekly email newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me in your email inbox, plus some behind-the-scenes insights, information about the most recent podcast episodes, and upcoming programs. So please sign up for that newsletter.

Ok, let’s get into this. I’m sure you want to hear from Ron Tite. If you’re a frequent listener of talk about talk, you probably know how this is going to go. First, I’ll introduce Ron, we’ll get right into the interview. Then at the end I’m going to summarize with the top three learnings that I want to reinforce with you, based on the interview. Three things that I hope will help you in your quest for improved communication skills.

Now, let me introduce Ron.

As an entrepreneur, speaker, and best-selling author, Ron Tite has always blurred the lines between art and commerce. Ron is what you might call a Renaissance man.

He is founder and chief strategy and creative officer of an agency called Church+State, host and executive producer of the hit podcast, The Coup, and executive producer of the Canadian Screen Award nominated documentary film, Fresh Water (Crave, 2021). He has written for television, has been a frequent guest on CTV, CBC, and Global news programs, and was a judge on the CTV business reality show, Dream Funded. He wrote and performed a hit play. Created a branded art gallery. Published an award winning comedy book for the CBC. And for 5 years was the host and executive producer of the Canadian Comedy Award nominated show, Monkey Toast. This was before the time a few years ago when I was a guest on monkey toast. quite an experience, having improv actors on stage basically making fun of you. yes, Ron has a great sense of humor. He’s very clever. he’s also in demand as a speaker all over the world. Ron speaks to leading organizations about topics such as creativity, disruption, leadership, and growth.

He’s also written a few books. in 2016 he co-authored his first book called open quotes Everyone’s an artist, or at least they should be his second book is the one we’ll be talking about in this episode, quote think do say how to seize attention and build trust in a busy busy world close quote.

His 3rd book, The Purpose of Purpose, will be released in the fall of 2024. I can’t wait to get my hands on that one. but now let’s listen to Ron’s insights about thinking, doing and saying.

INTERVIEWThank you very much, Ron, for joining us here today to talk about, think, do, and say.

Ron Tite: Well, thanks, Andrea, thanks for having me.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Why don’t we start by having you describe what the main premise of your book is which I’ve got sitting here right over my corner, the corner of my shoulder.

Ron Tite: Beautiful. Over there looks fantastic.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Doesn’t it look fantastic? It’s it’s actually always there. It’s usually turned in.

Ron Tite: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Always there it is

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: so why don’t you describe what you mean by thinking, doing, and saying.

Ron Tite: Well, this was in reaction to what I saw, as business leaders are the business leaders over complicating their business. and we just went through man. It was like, we need a mission. We need a vision. We need a north star. We need a be, hey? We need a purpose like it was just. It was just getting endless, and I was going around and doing a ton of speeches, and I started to speak to frontline employees. And how do they kind of connect what the organization believes into their actions like? How do they contribute to the goals of the organization? And historically, they would just they would go like they’d either go. I have no idea what a mission revision is. I have no clue. What that what that means, and how it relates to my job. or they would know it by heart. You know they’d go. The mission of this organization isn’t. But and they would. They would spew that because it was beaten their heads on on onboarding day. but they again had no idea what it meant. And so I thought we we, as because business got so complicated that we needed a simplified operating system in order to kind of run and grow businesses. And I just think it was like, well, what’s the simplest. the operating system? And it is really that successful organizations can align what they fundamentally believe. The think part what they do to reinforce that belief, the do part. And then how do they talk about it? And that when you look at, you know, successful organizations, they’re really they’re focused by a sense of purpose. They’re focused by a sense of purpose. They’re still defined by the actions that they take, and that when you look at growth, it happens, really depending on how we, how we talk about it, how we communicate it, and only then will people adopt our ideas and our passions.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I’m imagining you running your agency and getting maybe a creative brief from a consumer package goods or some other organization. And and it has all of these things in it that you were listing. Right. Here’s the vision of the brand. Here’s the mission. Here’s the personality. Here’s the values. And you’re like. it’s not helpful. Right? It’s.

Ron Tite: Yeah, it’s just like, well, where do you focus? Which one do you? It’s like that Spiderman meme, you know of, just like, what is it over here? What?

Ron Tite: And and I just thought we needed to simplify because the inputs to it could be really complicated. There’s way, more tools. The consumer journey is, you know, way more complex than it ever has been before. The sales funnel is completely dead. It’s now a sales cyclone like there’s all these things.

Ron Tite: And and I just thought like those. And and it’s only gonna grow. It’s only gonna become increasingly complicated. So let’s simplify the operating system that handles all those in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So? Is it a sequence in that order? First you think. then you do, then you say.

Ron Tite: Yes, it’s really funny, cause and I was very conscious about that. And the day I the day the book launched I think I was in a saskatoon or something, and and I was on a I had a morning hit on like a morning show, a TV morning show, and and the anchor, said the he’s the author of Think, say, do, and I thought I can’t correct him. Live on air but everybody often will say he’s the author of things they do. They get it wrong? Because our mind, I think, naturally puts the promotion part before the action part. And I think that’s wrong. I think we want to talk about it first. and before we actually do it. And if we talk about something, what we haven’t done. even if it’s aspirational that has way less credibility. Then you know than stuff that is currently in place or actions that are currently taking place. So yeah, so the do goes before they say. And you need to first figure out what you fundamentally believe in as an organization. And only then, can you, you know, should you focus the activities on reinforcing that purpose, and then, and only once, it’s done. Should you be talking about it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So you probably see this massive smile on my face. Ron.

Ron Tite: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I coach the the topic that I coach executives on more than any other is actually their personal brand, which I say it’s synonymous in terms of their professional identity. So I’m not talking about turning people into social media influencers or monetizing their brand. I’m talking about them. thinking deeply about who they are, what they care about what their expertise and passions are, and then going out and communicating it. So I I actually say explicitly. compared to other communication coaches. When you work with me, we’re going to spend way more time on step one which is creating or articulating the brand, and then step 2, the communicating becomes so much easier.

Ron Tite: Right and.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. So I think that might be one of the reasons why that your book resonated with me. So much. So it’s that, plus the fact that you’re really encouraging consistency. right?

Ron Tite: This is a rapid head. Nod.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I see a big smile there, too. Yeah, yeah. So I you know what I say sometimes is garbage in garbage, out quality and quality out, and I don’t understand. So I’ve you know I’m curious what other coaches are, and personal branding coaches are coaching their folks on, and I see. So sign up and I’ll teach you how to get 1,000 followers. What you need to do is, you know, fill in the blanks with these posts online and guaranteed. And I’m like, Wait, what? How do they know what they’re even talking about? Yeah, I mean.

Ron Tite: And Warren Tomlin calls it random acts of digital. It’s just random bunch of random stuff. And yeah, we when we work with brands and executives, and we use that is, I mean, the book and the speech are what I, you know, call that the kind of the corporate theater version of it. But when we get into, you know, working with, you know big brands. It gets way more granular and kind of way, more strategic but it’s still. It’s the exact same operating system.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So have you ever thought about the analogy of taking your process that you take your clients through to a person.

Ron Tite: Yeah, yeah, we.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Brands to people, brands right?

Ron Tite: Oh, yeah, yeah, we’ve we’ve worked with Olympians. We’ve we’re right now. We’re working with 2 executives. So sometimes the organization will go through a huge transformation. and we think that often not always. but often, the face of the company can be a separate, independent marketing channel and that it can drive investor relations. It can drive internal alignment. It can drive, you know, prospects and biz dev and things like that. And so. But we can’t just have them kind of parroting. You know what the organizational beliefs are. So you know, as an example. One. I can’t say the organization right yet, cause. It’s not live yet, but large Canadian organization, and who have fundamental beliefs about the category that they’re in. Now when we get to the CEO, what does she believe in? Well, we’re articulating in the in the area of collaborative leadership. that how are they? Gonna how is the organization going to achieve this with various stakeholders. It’s through collaborative leadership. And so that’s what the person stands for, and that contributes to what the organizational goals are. But it’s how she plays an individual role in it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Interesting. I could go off on a tangent inquiring about collaborative leadership and what the difference is between that and servant leadership. But I’m not going to go there. I’m going to ask you another question with very many of my clients when I’m coaching them on their personal brand. I asked them whether there’s part of their identity that they know is unique about them. Did they end up trying to hide. especially in their job? And there’s a quote in your book where you say it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. And when I read that I was like ding ding. So, for example, I want to. I want to give you a couple of examples. One is a common one is when people have an accent, and they say to me, Andrea, can you help me bury my accent? I don’t want to have an accent anymore, because I’m I’m thought of as the foreigner I’m like, hang on a second. The research says. if I can understand you clearly and I can, then I then I register for an accent, and then I just hear the content like it’s insignificant. Secondly, this is your opportunity to provide evidence of something that actually is valuable. And that is your global experience. Right? So you’re not a foreigner. You’re a lawyer with global experience and.

Ron Tite: Thrilled with that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And the other example is a woman that I was coaching who’s a senior partner at one of the big audit firms. and she said, well, I know what stands out about me is my sense of humor, and I really have to quash it. So I know. And we can. We can also talk a lot about humor, because I think you have a great sense of humor. But I said to her, Didn’t you just get promoted? Yeah, does your boss not know you have a sense of humor? Yeah. Do you think that your sense of humor was part of the reason you got promoted? She goes I don’t know. And I said, Well, are you not the person in the room that brings levity to otherwise overly intense situations? She goes well, yeah. And I said, and you know, not to tell off color, you know. Inappropriate jokes, of course, even though even though that’s my what might be playing in the track in your head. And she said, Okay, okay. And I said, you need to lean. Lean into this as your superpower. It’s not your main superpower, but it’s one of them. And she she felt this immense sense of relief. Can you comment on this whole thing? The it’s not a bug. It’s a feature. I’m going to quote you on that. I love that.

Ron Tite: Yeah, that that was from a from a a CEO who Chatham house rules were in effect, so I can’t tell you who it was.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Hey!

Ron Tite: But he was. He is the a global CEO of a of a global software company that we all know. And he’s from the deep South in the Us.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay. Oh.

Ron Tite: And he was at a Cp. Before the software company was at a Cpg. Who will go unnamed, and they sent him on a Leadership Development course when he hit Vp. And he said, I quickly realized the sole purpose of the Leadership Development course was to get me to lose my Southern accent because they didn’t feel I’d have credibility on the global stage. And that’s when he said. And I kait cause I realized it is a bug. It’s a feature.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Love it.

Ron Tite: Yeah, it was amazing. But I think there’s a couple of things with that. I think if you if you hide something from well, I think we all have this like belief that we’re supposed to look and act and sound like the stock photo version of whatever we think an executive in our field is supposed to look and act and sound like.Hmm. And that’s just bullshit it. It is because you and when you do that you kind of take on this mindset that oh, this is what I’m supposed to say, and this is what I’m supposed to do, and you lose your authenticity and you lose your uniqueness. And I think in the gut of the people that you’re dealing with. They think if they’re hiding the real you for me, like, what else are you hiding like? This is just some Polish scripted version of of you, and I don’t know what you’re hiding there. And so that’s the first thing is, I think authenticity helps to build trust. My definition of authenticity is just being comfortable with your supposed imperfections. Because that’s what people buy. That’s what they that’s what they trust, and that’s what they believe. The other side of it, though, is that when people go one of them in a hall, you know, like, am I supposed to lean into that authentic person. And so yeah, there has to be a business model that supports your authentic self, so you can’t just be who you are. But there’s also, you know, to the example that you talked about with the, with the humor. the metaphor there is. you know. if if you’re single and you’re going on blind dates. Well, you probably have a whole wardrobe of clothes, and if you find out you’re going on a date with an investment banker. You probably go. You know what I’m gonna wear this suit. I’m gonna wear this one but if you have a date with a total tree hugger. Then you probably have something else. You more dribble. You’re like, you know, I’m gonna wear this thing. This is what I’m gonna wear for for this. And so what you’re doing is you’re accessing different aspects of your personality. And all these things are all in your wardrobe. They’re all a shade of yourself, but they’re true and authentic. You already own them. Now, if you go out and buy something that you don’t have to try and become something that you’re not. Then you can fee you feel it. It doesn’t feel right, you know, like everything. And you just. You’re not. You never yourself. So to the people who are. You know the the funny people they’re like, well, I’m funny, but I can’t bring it to a meeting like well, you probably don’t bring it to a funeral, do you? No, okay, so that’s where there’s kind of 0% humor is your funerals version of yourself. But but to a baby shower. Oh, you probably have a little bit of humor that that shows up, and to to a board meeting there’s probably a little bit there, and you, you know, and you dial all the way up to sitting on a dock with a beer with your friends. So we’re not all 100 humor. you know, executive and 0% humor executive. We all have shades of those different personalities, and it’s dialing them up and dialing them down to suit the situation that we’re in.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love that shades and dialing it up and dialing it down. I talk about filtering right? So that’s I say, the F word of personal branding is filtering. Share every part of yourself with every single person that you meet. They think you were crazy. You couldn’t show up wearing your entire wardrobe right.

Ron Tite: Right. That’s.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I like that analogy as well. It’s beautiful.

Ron Tite: One of one of the. It’s funny because one of the first things I do

Ron Tite: in speeches. Usually they’re they’re always different. But I’ll usually talk about my kids within the first 3 min and make a joke about like I’m 53, and I have a 4 year old and a 6 year old. and right away it takes the script of the speaker that they’ve heard 4 million times and removes it. And it’s and it just shows up. It shows the human that who’s before them opposed to just the the speaker.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: There’s something about talking about our family, isn’t there?

Ron Tite: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Me. It’s I have 3 ginormous children. My my sons are 6, 7, and 6 8 Am.

Ron Tite: Like no.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. And people go. How do you feed them? I’m like, Oh, let me talk. Talk to you about like inventory in the refrigerator. It’s ridiculous.

Ron Tite: Wow! Oh, yeah, they tower. They would tower over me.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah. And I buy like 2 bunches of bananas. And then I get up in the morning. They’re all gone. I’m like, anyway. Yeah, there’s there’s something about talking about your family, though, that just you know. Okay, I saw a little glimpse into your life right.

Ron Tite: Yeah, exactly. So.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You mentioned authenticity. This is another topic that I’m often questioned about, that I have a lot of thoughts about

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: after well, during and after the pandemic there was there was a common headline, that was or question, I guess. Should we share our whole selves at work? Yes or no?

Ron Tite: Was like.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: We should never share our whole selves. People would think we’re crazy right? And then I was like, if you’re talking. And also what’s the difference between authenticity and transparency. because a lot of people think being transparent and being authentic means sharing everything like every part of your personal life, like the bad stuff your kids did, or the thing that you’re not proud of, or whatever right can you talk about that a little bit and and relate it back also to product brands.

Ron Tite: Yeah. I I’d love that inside of that cause. There are a lot of people who like, I’m gonna over share, because that’s being transparent. It’s like, Hmm, we, you know. I don’t think we need to know everything, especially if it if we, you know, if it doesn’t contribute to the positioning of the brand, be it personal or organizational, then I don’t think you want to talk about your failures now, I think. saying and being honest and saying, of course I’ve had stuff that hasn’t gone the way I thought it was going to go. Of course, like, of course, I have but that doesn’t mean we have to get up every single day and share every single detail of like what went wrong that day, where we let ourselves down and everything. I don’t. I don’t think we we need to share that, because what I find is that then that just becomes the stuff that people share. That’s the only thing they share. Yeah. And they don’t. You know, they don’t end up sharing the great business insight. They don’t share the positive stuff they don’t like. And so I think you need to keep focused on where you’re going to add value for people, and anything that helps you add value like the honesty that goes like, oh, that’s gonna bring more trust to to my message. Then, of course, you share that, and anything that detracts from it. Maybe you don’t lead with that now, of course, when questioned, or if it comes up like, of course you do, you know you don’t lie about anything? I do think it does get weird when? What? The definition, because the definition is different for everybody. Some people don’t want to share like their background kind of thing. So I’m in my basement. And the reason I have this is because I use I love you good, but I use like, you know. Oh, there we go, you know. So I. So there’s my kids right? So I use photos in doing virtual keynote presentations. And it’s just way easier for me to do this and post to creating a a background for for people. But I did say in the middle of the pandemic at 1 point. that I thought people that when you do welcome your personal life into your work life that your roots are showing. And I don’t. Yeah mean these roots.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Nice.

Ron Tite: It’s your roots, the things that keep you grounded and and focused and and stable those things, I think when you expose your roots, then I think, you people get to see where your stability comes from and where the important things are in your life. So oftentimes because my office is in the basement. The kids are home, that door will open and the kids will come in. and I will immediately. Even if it’s a client, I will pop my kids up on my lap, and I wear an earpie so they can’t really hear what’s going on anyhow. But I have no issues having my kid join a meeting like I’ve no no clause button at all. Not everybody else shares that definition, and that’s totally cool. I think you just need to stay within the boundaries that you’ve established for yourself. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But so, as you were describing that I was, I was thinking about the hero’s journey archetype. and how you probably witness this as well, right. There’s there’s this successful storyline right where you have someone. Their their mom dies. Usually it’s the Disney story, right? The mother dies. They flounder. They find someone. They’re not sure where they’re to trust them. They have to make a decision. There’s a crisis, this whole story, right? And and the popular advice. If you’re standing up on stage, is be vulnerable and share a story. Follow the hero’s journey, and I feel like sometimes you said people get obsessed, and they? They fall into this. This, I’m paraphrasing what you said. But they they fall into this pattern of it’s almost like self deprecation. Yeah, right? It. Do you. Do you think it’s related to this common advice of what’s your hero’s journey story? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think I think we. And which is

Ron Tite: especially from a speaking standpoint. that’s the wrong approach. You don’t want to be the hero on stage. Like all those stories I’ll tell young speakers. They’ll come to me, and they’ll say, you know, I’ve got a really unique story that I should share on stage. and I’ll always stop them and go great. Just hold on a sec. I want to hear the story. That’s okay, just remember one thing. the guy before you, the person who spoke before you. He went to space. But the space. Okay, now, how special is this story you got. And they’re like, I built a business that you’re like, right? Yeah, not so special, so special to you. Not that you shouldn’t be proud of, so I don’t speak about Church and State on stage. I don’t share any of our work. I don’t do any of it, cause I’m not there to be the hero. I’m not saying you should live like me. No, I am here as a curator of of information, and my advice is sure. Surely it is based on personal experience and what I’ve gone through. But it also is what the literature has kind of said. This is what works really well, and it’s a mix of data and anecdotes and stuff. The only time I share a personal story is when somebody else is the hero in my story. then it makes it really unique, and nobody else can tell that story. But I shouldn’t be the hero in that story.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You’re making me think about all the stories that I’ve been telling, and I’m thinking, am I the hero, or is someone else the hero. I love telling stories of transformation of my clients. Not. I’m not making myself the hero for coaching them to that. It’s they’re the hero for raising their hand, for self-improvement or self-development right, and then doing the work.

Ron Tite: Yeah, I mean, it’s.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Purple that that’s this message.

Ron Tite: Ye. Yeah, I mean, I think it all comes down to like I won’t do it in speeches, cause it’s only an hour, and I’m you know there’s a very specific reason I’m there. But if you look at the body of Linkedin work well. you know, I post typically, I share stuff 3 times a day. So that’s a ton of content. and I know that occasionally I will, you know. share something really vulnerable. I will talk about my mom. The effect my mom had on me. And here’s what’s crazy is. I know that when I do that the number of shares and likes, and but all the superficial metric stuff is going to go through the roof. I know that and most marketers would go. Oh, that’s driving your numbers. You should just do more of that. and I go. I don’t wanna do. I don’t wanna do more. I don’t wanna be that person, that’s all they share is those vulnerable, vulnerable things, but 5% of the post, 2% in the post. Sure. I think that then, makes you a more complete human being. And do I talk about what we do at church and state? 7% of the post, or whatever you know, whatever the numbers are. Yeah. But I try and make the majority of the stuff somebody else’s thoughts that can add value to the person who’s reading it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, Ron, you’ve established a track track record on Linkedin of someone who has valuable information and learning to share with people. You’re funny, you’re insightful. And and so when you show up with something that’s vulnerable and and really authentic, maybe you’re being more transparent about your personal life or your personal experience. That’s why you’re seeing the numbers. I think if they you’re right. If they were all like that, people would be like, Who is this guy?

Ron Tite: Yeah. So people who like take pictures of themselves crying right?

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: There was that one of those went viral. But people were were basically hating on the guy that did that. I don’t know. That was a couple of months ago. Yeah. Speaking of Linkedin, before I pressed record, I was thinking. there’s a good side and a bad side of Linkedin right? The good side is. I got to meet you.

Ron Tite: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I read your posts. I was impressed. I bought your book, I read your book, I invited you to be on my podcast, thank you, Linkedin, for that.

Ron Tite: He does.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So a bad side of Linkedin, and you talk about it in your book. It’s called The Pitch Slappers. Can you explain that to the readers. This is, oh, I could! We could do the whole interview about this, but.

Ron Tite: Yeah, there, there, you know, back when I was a creative director at Havas, like, just in the kind of the rise of digital and social and stuff. All the pure play digital people like, oh, just you wait, man, T, cause I was, you know. you know, create a vector on a whack of TV spots. And they’d be like, just you wait. Because when digital really comes in, people are only gonna get the ads that they wanna see for the products that they need when they need them on the platforms that they’re on, you know there’ll be no more innocent by standards. And I was like, well, this, this will be great. And you know it was always supposed to be about personalization and customization, not scale. And what people use digital tools now is just for scale. They’re like, if I get point 0 2% of the people who click through, then I don’t mind sending 2 million messages. I don’t mind taking the opportunity to pitch slap somebody every single opportunity I get. If they hate me, I don’t care. Cause point 2% of them is gonna is are gonna convert.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What do they call it? Spray and play? Is that what they.

Ron Tite: Spray, and pray.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right, yeah, right.

Ron Tite: Right? Yeah. And it’s just. And you know. I just think it’s not that it doesn’t work either. Right? I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Of course, it works at point 2%. You’re gonna get and people build businesses based on this. But then you got to be that person.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Ron Tite: But that’s the person you become. You’ve become the person whose sales pitch is more important than your than your authenticity. and and of course, we’re all there on some level, because we’re interested in business. And we wanna take those tools and those conversations and apply them so that we can improve our businesses and grow our businesses, and there’s an element of sales in all of us and everything that we do. And there’s just a way of earning the trust in order to pitch yourself or your ideas? And building up trust that your priority is to add value opposed to just going for the jugular every single time. I just it’s like it’s it’s like innocent bystanders you’re like, I I’m not even in your target. I don’t know if you saw this thing I’d share that they have somebody who reached out and says, like, I have a client. I’m a certified broker. They wanna buy a church.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I saw that.

Ron Tite: What like. Clearly. you just are. You’re using this for scale.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Ron Tite: And I don’t feel so special anymore, let alone. I’m not an owner of a church. So I I I get. Why, it’s so easy. And I get why, there’s an inner. I have the. I fight those demons, too right. I fight the demon of like man. I really would love to work with that client, and I should just pitchlap them.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: No, but you wouldn’t pitch slap them right? Cause I’m I’m just going to read what the segmentation scheme that you create you created. There’s the groper stumble upon the smokeblower. Gotta love them. Yeah. Howdy, partner? The mother, Teresa or Father Teresa, the script follower and Robbie Random. hey, hey? Andrea? What’s your favorite Bagel.

Ron Tite: Yeah, it’s just like random email pitch, Link Linkedin messages that the the and you just, you just know when they come in of which segment they’re in. The smoke blower is like the person is like. You are so brilliant.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, I list andre, I listen to your podcast on fill in the blank podcast. Episode. And I really loved it. They don’t say anything about it. They clearly they didn’t listen.

Ron Tite: Coming in there.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Not that. Not that I would not that it would make a difference anyway, but flattery does not get you everywhere.

Ron Tite: No. no, it does not.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: So I’ve gone through phases where I’ve unconnected like. So some of these, some of these people that are messaging me on Linkedin are my connections. I don’t know them. And I’ve gone through phases where, if someone requests to connect with me and it says. I’ll grow your podcast downloads 10 times, or hey, coaches triple your income by working with me. That’s in their headline. So you know what’s gonna happen right? It’s like a foreshadowing. Yeah, really, even a foreshadowing. But now I just I accept it, and then I get the message and I just ignore it. But I actually have sent people links to your book. then said, read the chapter on first lap.

Ron Tite: Oh, well, thank you. Do you know what I do? Cause I have a similar rule in that I to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. Right? Like, hey? We’re all here to learn and share with one another. I get all of that. So IA right away. I will accept you and give you the benefit of the doubt. but if I suspect something in my acceptance I will say so happy to connect. I don’t want to be pitched. Hi! That’s it!

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I read that you said that? Yeah, that’s a smart one. I’ve thought about it.

Ron Tite: And then when they come back, you’re like.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: That takes time, Ron. It gives you some kind of satisfaction.

Ron Tite: Oh, no, I have a shortcut.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You do. You have a shortcut key.

Ron Tite: 100%. That’s that states that line have a quick shortcut.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love it. I love it. Okay. before we get into the rapid fire questions I want to ask you about profanity.

Ron Tite: M-

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Talk about it in your book. So far I think you’ve only sworn once I have to decide whether and.

Ron Tite: I think so.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: But out, or keep this as a clean episode.

Ron Tite: Yep.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I’ve I’ve actually interviewed a linguist who teaches a course at a university on rap lyrics, and he’s he’s an expert on profanity. So and I’m absolutely fascinated by the topic of profanity. To be honest.

Ron Tite: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: What’s your take on it, the impact of it when to do it, when not to do it. Any rules you have for yourself, or things you wish you’d see or not see. Other people do.

Ron Tite: Yeah, again, we all have our line, but mine. Is that I in speeches when it is difficult. The rooms are bigger. Right? So you don’t. You don’t know exactly who’s there and you don’t. Wanna you know you don’t want to abandon you don’t everything else. So the line is so certainly I have a no F bomb ruling speeches, that’s for sure. But I will consciously use the word shit. and I will use it in certain places. because I think it actually a. It’s kind like I’m a swearer. I just. This is just who I am. So there’s a little bit of authenticity there, but I also think it. It can make a it can make your point better. It can really raise the seriousness of of your point. and it could be. It can just may, and that’s what they’re there for to persuade, and people to think like you think.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, if you’re using it selectively, then it is like punctuation right.

Ron Tite: Yeah, it’s a great way to. That’s a great way to describe it. It’s like punctuation, I know. Like, say, Jerry Seinfeld, in in a there’s a great video highly recommend for everybody. It’s called Talk and Funny. It’s Jerry Seinfeld, Ricky Gervais Chris Rock and Louis Ck. And they just talk about comedy and the ins and outs of it, and and and the and the swearing, and they they are the other 3 who swear all the time say to Seinfeld. You don’t swear. and he says, No, I I I mean, I have, but I typically don’t, because I don’t see the funny in it, but he had one joke. and he was doing it, and in his natural delivery there was an F bomb in the joke, and then he consciously said, I’m not going to tell the joke with the F. Bomb. and he knew it was just not as funny. It just wasn’t as funny without the punctuation of the F bomb in it. And he was. He was a little sad at that, because he thought that he was always a purist. but it was like, No, there, sometimes it makes you funnier.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Really interesting. Yeah, I just having a conversation on the weekend with someone about profanity. You said that you will avoid the F bomb. But you will say. Shit yep.

Ron Tite: I will avoid the F bomb in speeches.

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Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that. So 1 one thing that this linguist shared with me that that you might also find really interesting is how over the decades, maybe over the centuries, but over the decades profanity evolves where it may be more. The most profane terms may be focused on religion. Right? Just think about that. Yeah, we focused on excrement and filth.

Ron Tite: Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: They may be focused on sex. And now the worst words, at least in the English language, are derogatory terms about racial minorities. Yeah. And he said, Isn’t that a beautiful thing about our society where the words that are the most taboo are the racist words? Yeah, that’s actually a good sign for humanity, and I was like, Oh, I love that point.

Ron Tite: Yeah, it’s a great sign of progress.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: It is, yeah. Okay. Can I ask you the 3 rapid fire questions. Now.

Ron Tite: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go for it.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, I actually don’t know what you’re gonna say about these first question. are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Ron Tite: I’m I’m usually an extrovert, but I’m an extrovert who needs my introverted time.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay.

Ron Tite: Is, that is, that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: You’re an amber. No, that’s not cheap. You’re an amber vert most. I ask it that way to be provocative. You’re an amber vert which most of us are. we’re right in the middle. Yeah. yeah. Okay. Next question. what are your communication, pet peeves? What do people do that really annoy you? I I.

Ron Tite: Bristle at bad grammar. Gotcha like the word scene. Guess who I seen the other day. I just that drives me but otherwise. I don’t love like if you’re talking broader communications like the the the Powerpoint slide with the 800 points on it. or that you probably can’t read this at the back of the room, because there’s 2.5. But anyhow.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Read it to you.

Ron Tite: Yeah. that I don’t like. I don’t like leaders who read speeches prepared by their people. especially the reading part, like, there’s the. You know, the Presidential paddles thing is just like that’s a really specific skill that not a lot of people can actually do convincingly.

Ron Tite: So what happens is a lot of leaders. They they deliver speeches that are remarks that are prepared by their Comms team or their handlers. And those people edit those remarks and create those remarks in written form. And so they write them to be read. They’re reading them, and they edit them as they read them, because it doesn’t set, but but they’re not created to be spoken. And so it’s like, Yes, I’m reading this, but no audience is going to read this. They’re going to hear this from somebody speaking it. And so this perfect language that you’ve written is beautifully written. make it like dumb it down. We this is nobody speaks like this. People write like this, but they don’t speak like this.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Right. I did a podcasting coaching session at one of my kids in their class because they had to create a podcast episode for for an English assignment.

Ron Tite: Nice.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: And I and they were writing their scripts for it, and I said, Here’s a pointer anywhere where you can add a contraction. That’s the way we talk. We don’t say there is, and they are. We say theirs, and there and and the teacher goes. Oh, that’s good! And I said, oh, don’t get me started. That’s just the beginning, right? Anyway. Yeah, we don’t. You’re that’s a great point. We don’t read the same way we hear someone speak or we shouldn’t. Yeah.

Ron Tite: And we get that all the time, because we work with on speeches and stuff for for Ceos, and it’s their handlers that come in they go. Well, I want to see before they see it, and they’ll write. Edit it to sound beautiful. And but it’s like no one’s gonna speak like that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, you know I can. I can imagine where they get there, though, right? Because I’ve had a few executives come to me for what they call media training, and they want to learn how to not go off script. So they are memorizing lines.

Ron Tite: Yep. You’ve been.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Even for interviews. Note to all the listeners. Yeah.

Ron Tite: You know the trick I use for that. Yeah, you know. But you know the trick that I use for that is a conscious repeat of words like, Yeah, and I’ll get this a lot where that the handlers will say, like, we’ve used this word too many times in this kind of like. No, we consciously did that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, it’s.

Ron Tite: It’s like this, change is difficult. Change is hard. Change is dynamic changes moving forward, because that’s how we kind of talk. But they’ll want to sub in different words for change. And like you’re being way too conscious about it like we wouldn’t speak like that.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: I love that Ron Ron. That’s back to the original point of being consistent in what you’re thinking, what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and then hitting your audience over the head with the same message. Because. you know, I I tell people when we’re creating the narrative for their personal brand, you have to say it in your self introduction. You have to say it again in your next self introduction. You need to remind people when you see them. And the thing is. it’s not repetitive to them, because it’s not all about you. It’s it’s actually all about them, right. Okay. Third, in this, not so rapid rapid fire.

Ron Tite: Question.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Is is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending lately.

Ron Tite: Lately, I mean I I someone just asked me this like about business books, and I the example I gave. It’s a old, old, old, old, old, old, old, old, old one. but it it holds a special place in my heart, because it was the first time I read a business. I think I was 14 or 15, and I wasn’t a business guy. You know. I was not like I was.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: The same age. Ron. I’m really curious what it is.

Ron Tite: I’m 53. Oh, oh, so the book! What’s the book? So the book was. You may have read this. Given your background. It’s what they don’t teach you at Harvard Business School.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Oh, yeah, of course.

Ron Tite: By Mark Mccormick and the line that got me in that book, and at first tweaked my interest in branding and marketing, and business was the very simple line that Arnold Palmer made more money in his first year of retirement than he ever made playing. And I was like, how is that possible? How? There’s no way? This guy made more money in retirement than he made the one of the best golfers in the world, and it was because of partnership deals. And it was the Arna Palmer brand that that’s what did it. And all those things still hold up. They all hold up. Yeah, mark Mccormick has passed away, and that book still, to me it holds up. Yeah.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Well, you know. There, I know I talked to a lot of marketers, and they all talk about how originally it was about strategy. So back to your back, to your whole motivation for writing the book. They were talking about strategy and and identifying consumer insights. And now it’s all about data. And I’m like, well.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: and then, what do you do with the data? Or how do you read the data based on the strategy and the insights? Right?

Ron Tite: Yeah, the data. It’s just there’s so much now. And we’re already seeing it with AI where they’re just trying to people just trying to jump the queue to the next thing, like, what’s the next thing? Okay, we’re gonna start using AI, and we went in saying, Yes, of course, of course, of course, of course, you should be using AI. But how about we use it to make us smarter like? Let’s.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Whoo!

Ron Tite: May use it to make us smarter. and but people are jumping right to how do we crank out? How we just turn to AI and say, Write my book for me. It’s like, that’s maybe eventually, sure. But let’s let’s take step one like, how do we use it to make us a little bit more efficient. How do we use it to make us smarter, so that the insights are better.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah.

Ron Tite: Not jumping the queue to just cranking out stuff.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Yeah, yeah. Very well, put Ron. I have really enjoyed this conversation. Is there anything else you want to say to the talk about talk listeners about improving their communication skills, or what they’re thinking, or what they’re doing, or what they’re saying.

Ron Tite: No, no, I mean this has been great. I just can’t think of anything else that other than thanks for investing the time and listening.

Andrea Wojnicki – TalkAboutTalk: Okay, thank you very much. Ron.

Ron Tite: Thanks for having me.

Thanks again to Ron for so generously, sharing his at time and insights with us. If you watched our interview on youtube, you probably noticed that I was smiling the whole time. Ron definitely has a joie de vivre and I appreciate his clever sense of humor. if you were watching on YouTube you probably also you may have also noticed that Ron is wearing a gingham dress shirt. he shared with me at the beginning when we first logged into the zoom call that he frequently wears gingham. be it blue, gray, pink, purple, gingham is part of his brand. just like turquoise is part of my brand.

Before I get into sharing with you the three learnings that I hope you’ll take away from this conversation, I want to acknowledge that perhaps one of the most useful points from this conversation is Ron’s suggestion on how to respond to potential pitch slappers. you know when you’re on LinkedIn and the person who’s requesting a connection has their pitch in their headline? the one who says, “I’ll help you accelerate your sales funnel” or gain a million followers or whatever. when those people reach out to connect, Ron suggests that you accept the connection with a comment: “happy to connect, not to be pitched.” beautiful!

Now as promised, I’m going to share with you three learnings that I hope you’ll take away from this conversation.

the first point I want to reinforce is the title of Ron’s book. the sequence he recommends you can use as a brand manager, creating the brand strategy for your product or service. first you think. then you do. then you say. there’s no need to confuse or overcomplicate things with a voluminous brand strategy document. Ron is also purposeful and disciplined about the sequence. many people mistakenly focus first on the saying or the communicating. whether you’re managing a product brand, a service brand or even a personal brand, Always start with the thinking. The saying is the last step. For those of you who have taken any of my personal branding workshops or boot camps, you’ll you might recognize this sequence. I’m also very disciplined and strategic about first doing the creating or the articulating and spending most of your time here. then moving on to the communicating step. Ron and I share this belief of garbage in garbage out, quality in quality out. if you spend most of your time in the first step of thinking or creating, the saying or communicating will be a lot easier.

The second point I want to reinforce is a Ron’s line from his book. it’s this quote: “Its not a bug, it’s a feature.” So many of us waste our time trying to hide or change things about ourselves that we see as weaknesses or things that are holding us back. Ron shared the story of the rising executive from the Deep South who was sent to leadership Training. this executive quickly realized that the objective of the training was to erase his Deep South accent. he refused. it’s not a bug it’s a feature. Whether it’s your accent, or your sense of humor, whether it’s your leadership style, or your or a personality trait. of course we need to make sure we these things arent standing in our way of being a productive leader. but there’s often an opportunity to create a narrative around that unique trait and to embrace it as part of your valuable, unique personal brand!

The third point I want to reinforce is also a line from Ron’s book: “Self-awareness is the purest form of honesty. And honesty is the purest form of authenticity.”

Ron carefully distinguishes between these terms: SELF-AWRANESS and it’s relationship with HONESTY and how HONESTY relates to AUTHENTICITY, and then in our conversation we also talked about the distinction between AUTHENTICITY and TRANSPARENCY. We should be careful with using each of these terms.

Transparency doesn’t mean you’re sharing every truth about yourself with every person that you meet. I love Ron’s metaphor of choosing what to wear when you go on a date. if the person you’re meeting is an investment banker, chances are you’re going to dress differently than if they’re a tree hugger. sure these are extreme examples, but you get the idea. When I’m coaching folks on their personal brands and how to show up as your authentic self, I remind people that we are all complicated, sophisticated smart humans, with multiple roles that we play in our life. we can’t share everything with everyone all the time. so we filter what parts of our personal identity we share, depending on the person and depending on the context. as Ron says, you can choose which outfit from your closet to wear, depending on the person and depending on the context.

Alright. That’s it. That’s everything for this episode. Thanks again to Ron Tite for sharing his time and insights with us. If you havent already read his book, THINK, DO, SAY,I certainly recommend that you do! there’s a link to it in the shownotes. And I cant wait to read his new book, “The Purose of Purpose,” coming out later this year.

Now, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will refer it to one of your friends, and I also hope you’ll leave a review on Apple, Spotify or YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you so much for listening. Talk soon.

The post Think, Do, Say with Ron Tite (ep.159) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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Credibility in the workplace starts with confidence. Andrea shares two mindsets and five tactics to help build your confidence and credibility. Her challenge to you is to identify a few suggestions from this list that will help you establish credibility.

TRANSCRIPTRecently, I was hired by a CEO to coach one of his middle managers. The CEO told me that this manager was an emerging leader. He was showing signs of being ready for promotion, but he really needed to demonstrate credibility and leadership.

Last week when we were in our third 1:1 coaching session, this young emerging leader admitted to me that he often feels imposter syndrome, and he could use a confidence boost. He and I decided to create a list of strategies for him to improve his confidence and credibility. His list included many many mindsets, frameworks, and tactics that we went through one by one. After our coaching session, I thought: gosh this would be a great list to share with the talk about talk listeners! so what I’ve done is I’ve taken the seven of the strategies on this list and I’m gonna share them with you now. These are the seven strategies that I personally use and that seem to get the most traction with my clients.
This list includes two mindsets and five tactics. My challenge to you is to identify a couple of the things on this list that you can use to help you boost your confidence and your credibility. Are you ready?

Welcome to Talk about Talk Podcast Episode #156 Five ways to reinforce your Professional identity. In case we haven’t met, my name is Doctor Andrea. Wojnicki please just call me. I’m your executive communication. I coach and business executives like you to improve their communication skills so you can communicate with confidence and clarity. Credibility. And then you can create impact, ultimately achieving your career goals. Sound good? If you want to learn more, check out talk about talk.com. I’ve got lots and lots of resources for you there. I’ve got one-on-one coaching, bootcamps, online courses, information about corporate workshops, the archive of this bi weekly podcast, and when you’re there, I really hope to sign up for my email newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication program from me every two weeks. Sound good?

OK let me start with a quick story about my own confidence or lack there of. Some of you may have heard this story before. Early in my career when I was working in brand management at Kraft foods, I was asked to speak at a national sales conference. This was a great honour for me. As you can imagine, I prepared myself thoroughly. When the day finally came, I stepped out on stage… And I completely lost it. My face turned red. My hands turned clammy. I had sweaty armpits. And I was shaking. It was a lovely site. Let me tell you. It was all I could do to walk across the stage grasp onto the podium and read my presentation. Word for Word from my written notes. Pathetic. When I was done, I ran off stage and my boss Sandra asked Me Andrea are you OK? No I’m definitely not. I went to a quiet place and collected my thoughts. First of all, this can never ever happen again. So what am I gonna do? Two things. One I’m going to volunteer every opportunity I have to do public speaking. I must get over this! Too. I’m gonna start collecting tips or hacks that work for other people and that might work for me to help me boost my confidence.

Starting on that day I start I created a mental list of different mindsets and tactics that might help me use my own confidence and now as a communication coach I continue to add to this list and share this list with my clients.

Now I’m gonna share with you seven of these tips. These are strategies that I use myself and also the things that I see working for my clients. Two of the seven tips are mindsets. The other five are more tactical in nature. Again, my challenge to you is to identify a couple of the things maybe two specific strategies from this list of seven that can help you boost your confidence and your credibility.

Here we go.

The first strategy is to adopt a growth mindset. I know what you’re thinking. Andrea, a growth mindset is when I reframe mistakes and failures as learning opportunities. That’s great. But it’s not gonna cut it when I’m standing in front of the room giving a big important presentation and I fail.

OK, fair enough, adopting a growth mindset when you feel nervous and maybe your presentation is failing, it might help your psychological well-being in the long run, but it’s not gonna help your career in the short term is it? I get it. I have a different way of thinking about a growth mindset when it comes to conquering our confidence issues. It’s about focussing on your genuine curiosity, your growth, your learning mindset.

Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of Q&A or question and answer sessions – live. I never know what questions people are gonna ask me and sometimes I get a little nervous. So do you know what I do? I recite my growth mindset mantra. It goes like this: “I know what I know and I’m keen to learn more.” There are really two parts of this. I know what I know. This is me reminding myself of my expertise. (More on that in a minute.) the second part is: “I’m keen to learn more.“ Here, I’m reminding myself of my genuine growth mindset, my focus on learning and growing, and my curiosity. When you focus on your curiosity and your desire to learn, it’s almost like no one can catch you. Imagine someone asked you a question that you are in no-way qualified to answer. If you have a growth mindset, you could say: wow that’s a fascinating question! I don’t even know where to begin, but let me tell you what I do know and then you can share with them – based on your expertise, based on your experience, based on your background, what you do know, and then you could say: “I’m gonna do some research, or I’m gonna talk to someone else and get an answer ,and I’ll get right back to you. Thank you.”

This is just one example of how you can use a growth mindset when you’re feeling nervous. I encourage you whenever you’re feeling a lack of confidence to focus on your growth mindset. Consciously consider your desire to learn and your curiosity. This can take a lot of pressure off of knowing everything and having the right answer for every single question.

So that’s the first strategy. Adopting a growth mindset.

The second strategy is also mindset related. It’s focussing on your personal brand.

What I mean here is focussing on your unique strengths and passions.

Often when we’re feeling nervous, it’s because we have an implicit belief that others are going to expect us to know everything. Focussing on your personal brand or your unique strengths can also take the pressure off here. It’s not that you’re good at everything, and it’s not that you know everything, but you do know what your strengths are.

When I coach ambitious executives on identifying and articulating their personal brand, we come up with a list of several themes – they could be personality traits, they could be their leader ship style, they could be their industry or their disciplinary expertise, this is where they have expertise and passion.

After we create this page listing their personal branding themes, I encourage folks to print it off or create a Screenshot and then every time they’re going in to lead an important meeting, to make an important presentation, or maybe even to go into a job interview, make this the last page that you look at , before you go into the room or before you go out on stage.

Again, it’s not that you’re good at EVERYTHING! but the items on this page are the things that you know are your unique strengths. This can’t help but elevate or boost your confidence.

I remember when I was in a board meeting many many years ago and the conversation got sidetracked into investments that the firm was making. I remember looking across the board room table at a bunch of guys talking about the pros and cons of various investment strategies and thinking why am I here? Am I an imposter? Do I belong here? I have 3 degrees in business and sure I can talk about a balance sheet or an income statement. This is getting, but this is out of my league. Then I reminded m myself of the reason why I was brought onto this board. It was for my branding and strategy expertise. So when there was a lull in the conversation, I raised my hand, and I said, based on our strategic priorities, my suggestion is that the investment strategy should integrate with these priorities…

I remember consciously noticing everyone’s chair turning towards me and a bunch of heads, nodding. With that one sentence, I got the meeting back on track, and I also reinforced my professional identity as the branding and strategy expert in the room.

The next time you feel like an imposter, remind yourself of your personal brand and specifically your unique strengths. This can’t help but boost your confidence. And your credibility!

So those are the first two strategies both of them are mindsets. The first one is adopt a growth mindset, and the second mindset is to focus on your personal brand. Focus on your unique strengths.

The third strategy is much more tactical. It’s breathing. You’ve probably heard this a million times. When you feel that shot of adrenaline, just take a slow deep breath. I have a slightly different take on this, based on what I’ve been reading lately. It’s this: slow your exhale. Very often when we focus on our breathing, we focus on our inhale. Instead, think about slowing your exhale. Here’s the insight. When you slow your exhale, your brain thinks: wait! she’s not gasping for air. Everything must be OK. and then it is ok.

Recently, when I’ve mentioned this to a few of my clients, we also talked about how there’s like a positive placebo effect here. If you believe it’s true, by slowing our exhale, we’ll reduce our stress, then yes the research shows that is what happens, but also because your brain believes it, it amplifies the effect. So that’s the third strategy. Slow your breathing, specifically your exhale.

The fourth strategy is something that seems to get a lot of traction with people. Like immediately when I tell it to them, I can see on their face that this is something that they’re going to try, and then they tell me it does work. And I can tell you personally, that I do this and it definitely works for me. It’s this: frame your nerves as a positive. Put another way, when you feel that shot of adrenaline, when you feel the butterflies, when you feel your body temperature spiking, and your face turning red, consciously say to yourself: “yes! That adrenaline I’m fuelling me up to perform!”

A while ago, when I was doing some reading on imposter syndrome, research paper after research paper highlighted that almost everybody experiences, imposter syndrome, men women, young old, successful, and unsuccessful. It’s almost everybody. And almost everybody feels nervous. In fact, the people that DONT feel imposter syndrome, the people who never feel nervous, They’re are the ones that end up showing up FLAT when they’re on stage.

You may have seen these folks in the past. Maybe you’re at a conference and there’s a panel of four or five people sitting on barstools on stage and they’re asking him questions.

Inevitably, one of them will come across as far too casual or aloof. This might be the person who is not feeling any adrenaline whatsoever.

So the next time you feel that shot of adrenaline remind yourself that that that you’re now fuelled up and ready to perform.

On to the fifth strategy. We’ve covered four strategies so far: the first was adopting a growth mindset. The second is focussing on your personal brand or your unique strengths. The third is breathing – slow your exhale, and the fourth is reframing your nerves as a positive. This is the fuel that you need to perform.

The fifth strategy for boosting your confidence is emulation. As in copying. Here’s the exercise. Ask yourself: whose confidence do you admire? It could be a senior leader in your firm or maybe a celebrity CEO or perhaps it’s even a friend or family member. When you feel your nerves, ask yourself, how would this person respond? How would this person act? And then, simply act like them.

I had an experience many many years ago that I’ve shared a couple times that’s relevant here. I was a relatively new faculty member at the University of Toronto and they asked me to give a lecture to the first year marketing students at convocation hall. This is an auditorium that seats thousands. I was honoured to do this lecture, and let me tell you – once again, I was prepared.

When the day finally came, I dressed in my favourite pantsuit and my favourite heels. They asked me to arrive half an hour early so that they could get the AV set up. Like I said, this was a huge auditorium. When I walked in, the lights were all turned off, except there was a spotlight on the stage. The AV guy hooked up my headset and microphone and asked me to walk out on stage to test the audio and my slides. I remember feeling the heat of the spotlight on me, and thinking… my God I feel like a rockstar! I kind of feel like Madonna! So I when the lecture finally started, I imagined that I was Madonna with all of her charisma and confidence. I copied Madonna’s confidence. When the lecture was over, I remember genuinely feeling like a rockstar. The young students got up out of their chairs, and many of them rushed the stage to talk to me. When do you have office hours? Are you gonna keep teaching this course? What other courses do you teach?

Thank you Madonna. Here’s the bonus part of the story. Now when I look back at the many many lectures, workshops and keynotes that I’ve led, this is one of the public speaking experiences that really stands out in terms of my confidence and connection with the students to the audience. So whenever I’m feeling a lack of confidence, sure I can act like Madonna, but I can also emulate exactly how I felt when I was on stage at convocation hall.

So here’s the question for you. When did YOU knock it out of the park when you were on stage? Maybe it was when you were in a job interview or perhaps it was when you were leading a meeting, or giving an important presentation? Ask yourself: what was my mindset for that presentation or what tactics worked? And then in the future, whenever you feel that shot of adrenaline, you can emulate or copy yourself from that experience.

So that’s the fifth strategy: emulate or copy someone else’s or your own confidence from a successful presentation that you made.

Onto the sixth strategy: positive self talk.

The next time you’re feeling nervous, or a lack of confidence, I encourage you to be conscious of your selftalk. What are you saying to yourself in your head? Instead of ruminating and focussing on your anxiety, give yourself a positive peptalk. How would a supportive friend speak to you if you were experiencing anxiety?

I asked a friend of mine, Angie, to provide me with a peptalk once before I went out on stage with some improv actors. When the evening finally came, and there I was on stage, again, with the spotlight on my face, and my body temperature rising.

I remember Angie’s words coming back to my brain. Andrea, you got this! andrea there’s a reason that they asked you and not someone else to do this. you’re gonna knock it out of the park.

This, by the way, is exactly how we should be talking to ourselves. Research conducted by Professor Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan highlights how speaking to ourselves in second person is most effective in terms of halting negative rumination. Here’s how that would sound if I was talking to myself. I would say, “Andrea you got this!”

Try it for yourself. Say your name and use the word you.

You can imagine the research that they did to come to this conclusion about using second person. They probably had people writing or speaking out loud to themselves in first person. “I got this.” And others in second person “you got this!” The research shows that second person is most effective. This is another example where there may also be a positive placebo. Ever since I learned about this research insight, I think it’s become particularly effective for me because I read the research and I understand how it works.

The next time you’re feeling nervous, and you could use a confidence, boost, consciously say to yourself, your name, you, and give yourself a peptalk. Andrea, you got this. It works, I promise!

So that’s the six strategy. On to the seventh and last strategy and it’s this focus: on your main point. What exactly does this mean? Well if you’re in the middle of a speech and you feel your nerves getting out of control, maybe you even forget what you’re talking about, go back and focus on your main point. Or if you’re in a meeting like I mentioned, and you’re feeling like you’re an imposter, go back to the main objective of the meeting, or maybe the main strategy of the organization. There are really two benefits of this strategy. First, in most instances, focussing on the main point, or the main objective, or the main strategy is almost always a good thing, and other people will appreciate it. Second, reminding yourself of the main point will refocus your thoughts, away from negative rumination, and toward something relevant for that context. This is something that I share with my clients who are preparing for a big formal speech. If all else fails return to your main point. It doesn’t have to be a formal speech. This insight also works in meetings, and even one on one conversations.

And that’s it! These are my top seven ways to boost your confidence and your credibility. Do you remember what they were? Don’t worry, I’m gonna review them for you now I hate quizzes too! As I’m reviewing these, I encourage you to think about which one or two you think will help you get the most traction for you to boost your confidence and credibility.

The first two were mindsets:

the first was adopting a growth mindset. Focus on your genuine curiosity and desire to learn. It’s really hard to fail when you’re learning isn’t it?
The second is focussing on your personal brand or your unique strengths. It’s not that you’re great at everything, but when you’ve taken the time to list your expertise and your strengths, this is got to boost your confidence.
The third is breathing – slow your exhale. It’s easy and it works.
The fourth is reframing your nerves as a positive. That shot of adrenaline you’re experiencing is the fuel that you need to perform.
The fifth strategy for boosting your confidence is copying. Copying someone else’s confidence whom you admire, or maybe copying the confidence that you experienced in the past when you were successful.
The sixth strategy to boost your confidence and credibility is positive self talk. Provide yourself with a mental peptalk in second person, the way, a supportive friend with would would talk to you.
And the seventh and last strategy is to focus on your main point. If you’re standing on stage and lose your place, restate your main point. If you’re in a meeting and things are going off track bring people back to the main point on the agenda. Other people will appreciate it, and it will refocus your thoughts away from negative rumination towards what matters.

Now again, here’s your challenge. Identify which identify a couple of these seven strategies that you think will work best for you. Try them out for a week a few weeks and see if you feel a boost in your confidence and your credibility. Let me know how it goes!

If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I do hope you’ll share with your friends who could also benefit from a boost to their confidence and credibility. You could also leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it.

Don’t forget to signup for my free communication coaching newsletter on the talkabouttalk.com website.

Thanks again for listening. And talk soon!

The post 7 Ways to Boost Your Confidence & Your Credibility (ep. 158) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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