Talk About Talk - Communication Skills Training

Andrea coaches you on 5 quick fixes to boost your communication effectiveness: How to avoid upspeak, establish eye contact, focus on others, communicate with precision, and control your narrative. Where should you focus to get traction and improve your communication skills? CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/ TRANSCRIPT Lately, when I’m in coaching sessions, I’ve been noticing a few common mistakes that many executives make. Sometimes it’s a bad habit.  Sometimes it’s just not knowing better. It almost always negatively impacts their credibility. Fortunately, there are quick fixes that can significantly improve their communication effectiveness, and ultimately boost their credibility.  So I thought it might for an impactful episode if I shared with you 5 quick fixes to boost your communication effectiveness. Are you curious what these 5 quick fixes are? Let’s do this. Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 154, quick fixes to boost your communication effectiveness. Yes, this is going to be a productive episode. In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you – to elevate your communication and your confidence, so you can establish credibility, and accomplish your career goals. If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, bootcamps, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me.  This is going to be a relatively short episode, but it’s going to be valuable for you. I encourage you to think about which one or two of these five things where you can get the most traction to improve your communication. I encourage you to carefully listen to the definitions, the examples, the stories, and the solutions that I will list for you here. Don’t worry about taking notes. As always, I do that for you. I’ll summarize what the five points are at the very end, and I encourage you to go to the talkabouttalk.com website where you can access the full transcript of this episode. Alright let’s get into this. The first quick fix that I recommend is this Avoid upspeak. 1of 5 Quick Fixes: Avoid Upspeak Upspeak is the habit of ending sentences with a rising intonation, as if posing a question. Kind of like this? It’s a common feature among many speakers?, particularly women and younger individuals,? but it’s not exclusive to them.  Recently I’ve noticed an uptick in Upspeak. Yeah, got that. And uptick in upspeak. It’s like upspeak might be a trend.  But this is not a trend you want to join. When you sound as if you’re asking a question, even when it’s not a question, you sound unsure of yourself, like you’re seeking validation.  This is not how credible leaders sound. If you’re not sure whether you use upspeak, I have three suggestions for how to diagnose yourself: Ask a trusted friend or even your boss.  You could say “I just learned about Upspeak.  Do you know what it is?” Then “Do you ever hear me using upspeak?” Record yourself in a meeting, and then listen specifically to your intonation.  Create a transcript of a meeting when you talk a lot and then search the transcript for question marks.  If the AI that created the transcript thinks you’re asking a Q, then chances are, so do us humans. Interestingly, with all of the executives with whom I’ve mentioned upspeak, none of them had heard of it. Then, once we talked about what it is and how it can negatively impact your credibility, 100% of them were able to at least minimize if not avoid upspeak altogether. That’s a pretty high cure rate! A few years ago, one of my clients asked me to meet with each of his direct reports in one-on-one coaching sessions, to improve their communication. I remember he told me that he was really excited about the potential of one of his newest recruits, a recent university graduate who was valedictorian of her class and was wickedly smart and ambitious. However, he was concerned that she didn’t come across as professional as she should. When I met her in our one-on-one coaching sessions, one of the first things that I diagnosed was her upspeak. I asked her whether she knew what it was and she said no. I remember when I was explaining to her what up speak is, and how it diminishes our credibility, instead of being defensive, she was curious and committed to stopping the upspeak. Given her growth mindset and her ambition, that is exactly what she did. Now, several years later. When I speak with this senior client he raves about her transformation in terms of her executive presence. Avoiding upspeak can make a massive difference, literally in your tone, and generally in your credibility. Upspeak was one of the first things I mentioned recently when I was coaching another future leader. His boss sent him to me for a series of coaching sessions to prepare him for promotion. After immediately diagnosing upspeak, he similarly admitted that he didn’t know what it is, After I explained what Upspeak is and how it diminishes our credibility, he told me he was committed to stop it. We brainstormed how to remind himself. This is not easy is it? Apparently slowing your speech can help you avoid upspeak, but what else can you do? It’s one thing to know what upspeak is.  It’s another to remind yourself to stop.  I guess that goes for many habits we’re trying to change. Anyway, here’s what he did: He took a post-it note and wrote a big question mark on it, with an X through it.  This was his reminder to himself to stop sounding like he was asking Qs.  It worked. In our second coaching session I only had to remind him a few times to avoid upspeak.  In the third session there was no upspeak at all. I’ve got more stories, but you get the idea. Based on my experience coaching folks on upspeak, it seems this is an easy fix with a big upside in terms of your perceived credibility.   Now, on to the second easy fix.   2 of 5 Quick Fixes: Make eye contact  Not establishing eye contact is, in my experience, even more common than Upspeak. Managers at all levels sometimes have a habit of looking around the room. Some people that I’ve coached have a habit of looking up at the ceiling, especially when they’re thinking about something and responding to something and they know everyone’s eyes are on them. But here’s the thing. You know that saying, eye-to-eye?. As in we see each other eye-to-eye… We trust people who make eye contact with us. And when we like people more, we’re more likely to make eye contact with them for longer. So think about the negative signal that you’re sending when you’re avoiding eye contact. Recently, I was coaching a senior banking executive who told me that she is conscious of the fact that she sometimes avoids eye contact and instead looks up at the ceiling. She told me that she feels as if she’s looking into her own brain. This is her almost involuntary response when she’s thinking deeply about what she’s about to say. I saw her do this a few times when we were meeting and then I suggested to her that you are smart enough to still be able to think about things without physically looking into your brain. We had a good laugh about that and she started practicing. And guess what? She was able to improve her eye contact. I’m not talking about staring into someone’s eyes for an uncomfortable length of time. That’s just creepy. I am talking about looking at the person instead of looking around the room. When you’re in person, especially if you’re seated around a meeting table or a boardroom table, try to make sure your chairs are all at the same level. You don’t want to be seated at a pedestal above everybody else, and you certainly don’t want to be sitting lower than everyone else. You want to see people eye-to-eye. I get this question a lot in terms of online meetings. Is it important to stare directly at the camera? This is something that we all had to work on in the early days of the pandemic when we were all working at home all the time and staring at our screens. Here’s my updated take on this question of staring at the camera for online meetings. It’s OK, and in fact it’s a good thing to look around the screen so you can see the expressions in the body language of the people that you’re meeting with. And by now, we’ve been doing this for long enough that we know what you’re doing when your eyes aren’t looking directly at the camera. So don’t worry about that. As I said, whether it’s in person or online , it’s important to scan the room for body language and facial expressions. However. And this is the main point here: when you are making your most important points, when you’re making a final recommendation, when someone asks you what you think, that’s when you should consciously look directly into the camera when you’re in an online meeting. People will non consciously perceive that you’re looking them in the eye and that you can be trusted. So that’s the second easy fix, establishing eye contact. The first one was avoiding upspeak and the 2nd is establishing eye contact, the third easy fix is:   3 of 5 Quick Fixes: Communicating with precision Of all of the easy fixes that I’m listing here, this is the one that senior executives often seek improvement on. Let me tell you what I share with these senior executives. First of all, give yourself a break. The reason you might not be communicating with precision is simply that you’re generous. You’re trying to share everything that you’re thinking about a topic with your audience or with the people with whom you’re communicating. However, If you really want to be a generous, you need to do the work to focus your message. You know the saying, If you try to share everything, they will absorb nothing. However, if you communicate one main point, your audience will understand exactly what your message is. So think about that one key message. Every time you write an e-mail. Every time you run a meeting. Every time you give a speech. Once you yourself are clear on your main message, I suggest, whether your communication is written say in an e-mail or whether it’s verbal. Start with your headline. Think about the online articles that you read and those that you choose not to read, and the significance of the headline. If you’re writing an e-mail, you can be perfectly explicit about this. Start off the e-mail by saying. The purpose of my e-mail is. And tell them. Then get into the details. If you’re leading a meeting, or if you’re delivering a speech, make sure you start with the headline. Then connect everything back to the main message. If you’re introducing yourself in a professional setting, You state your name, Your title and your firm, and then ideally, you identify something important about yourself:  your expertise. Or your value. Or your role in the meeting that’s about to take place. This is you creating your headline. So headlines are a key way to make sure we communicate with precision. They keep us focused. And they ensure that the audience knows what’s to come. As you may have heard me say, no one gets on a bus unless they know where it’s headed. Isn’t that a beautiful metaphor? Tell them where the bus is headed.  Share your headline. Another tactic to help you communicate with precision is to use the power of three. If  you’ve listened to a few Talk about Talk podcasts, you probably know I’m a huge fan of the power of Three. Three is enough to be substantive, but it’s not overwhelming. And that “overwhelming “ point is important here in our focus on communicating with precision. Depending on what your objective is, you might be able to very effectively combine this idea of starting with a headline along with the power of three. Let me give you a few examples of how this might work.  Imagine you are walking into a job interview and the interviewer starts by asking you to share a little bit about yourself. How the heck do you answer that question? Here’s what you do. You start with a headline, and you leverage the power of 3. You say something like this. My name is Katerina. An I am a human resource executive at a pharmaceutical firm. Three things that differentiate me relative to other. Pharmaceutical executives are. A B&C. Let me tell you what I mean by those three things. Then you elaborate on a. You elaborate on B and you elaborate on C. The advantage of this strategy of starting with a headline and leveraging the power of three is that the person who’s listening knows exactly how many points you’re going to make. It’s like you’ve provided them with a road map for your answer to their question. Here’s another example. Say you’re in a meeting and you’re asked. What do you think we should do? Option A or option B. Everyone turns to you and you know you’re in the hot seat. How do you answer this question? You start with your headline and you leverage the power of 3. Something like this.  “Well, there are certainly disadvantages and advantages for both. Otherwise this would be an easy answer. But based on my experience in working with other clients with similar challenges, I think we should go with option B. There are three main reasons for this.” Then you briefly summarize. Reason one, reason 2 and reason 3. Boom. When we practice these types of statements in my coaching sessions. With my clients, sometimes they ask me: what if I can’t think of three things? My answer to them is this. You are smart enough! You will always be able to come up with three things. Even if you don’t have them top of mind when you say “let me provide you with three reasons or three things.” You will be able to come up with a third thing when you’re talking. I promise. OK, so that’s the third easy fix communicating with precision. Try using headlines and leveraging the power of three. Now we’ve covered, avoiding upspeak, establishing eye contact and communicating with precision. The 4th easy fix is:   4 of 5 Quick Fixes: Focus on others As human beings, you could say that we’re all sort of self absorbed. We’re really focused on ourselves most of the time, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Part of this is self-awareness. self-awareness is important. And if we weren’t thinking about ourselves, we might not survive and we certainly would not thrive. However, focusing on others can elevate our communication and our general effectiveness. This is about being empathetic. This is about listening to the words, but also the subtext, the tone and the body language of others.  Stop thinking about yourself for a moment. This is also about being genuinely curious about what others think, and believing that they add value. I have two suggestions for how you do this.  The first suggestion is to be conscious of pronouns. I’m not necessarily talking about gender pronouns here. Not the she, her, he, him, they pronouns. I’m talking about whether your pronouns are focused on you or on the other people. Ask yourself. How often do you say I? How often do you say we? How often do you say you? I coached a gentleman awhile ago who unfortunately had the reputation of being self absorbed. I encouraged him… NO. I stated point blank that my recommendation to him was that to stop saying I and start saying We and You as much as possible. Another place to check your pronouns: your emails. Whenever I write an e-mail, I always look at the first word of every paragraph to make sure that I’m not focused on what I want and what I need. So that’s the first suggestion. Watch your pronouns.  The second suggestion is to ask questions. Ask lots and lots of questions. If you’re asking questions, you by definition are not focusing on yourself. You are focusing on what other people think and say.  The third suggestion is to track the ratio. Track the ratio of you speaking versus other people speaking in the room. Be mindful of your talk to listen ratio. Make sure that you are speaking at or below your fair share. If there’s only one other person you are speaking with, make sure you are speaking less than 50% of the time. If there’s five people in the room, make sure you’re speaking less than 20% of the time. Be other focused. So that’s the 4th quick fix – be Other Focused.  On to the last quick fix.   5 of 5 Quick Fixes: Control your narrative This one is probably the least quick of the five quick fixes I’ve listed here. But it’s really important. Controlling your narrative is about carefully, strategically choosing the words and phrases you use, ESPECIALLY about yourself. Here’s the thing:  The words coming out of your mouth about yourself are the most direct way you reinforce your personal brand. It’s explicit, because it’s words, and they’re coming out of YOUR mouth. This may be the most credible, most objective, most direct way for people to assess who you are. An obvious example of when this opportunity to control your narrative comes up includes, of course, when you’re introducing yourself.  Controlling your narrative is not about creating an elevator speech about yourself, but it is about consciously considering the words and the phrases that you want to reinforce about yourself. For example, many of the folks that I coach are leaders or aspiring leaders. So I encouraged them to use the word leader, lead or leadership as much as they can. You might introduce yourself as I lead the ABC division at this company or you might say “in that meeting that I led last week.” This is controlling your narrative. Another context when you can control your narrative is when you’re making a point in a meeting, or sharing your opinion.  Here’s what I encourage my clients to do.  Preface your recommendation or your opinion with a statement about your valuable experience or expertise. Let me give you an example. Imagine you’re in a meeting where your team is trying to decide whether to go with option A or option B. Instead of saying, I think we should go with option A. You take a step back and say. Based on my experience in banking. Or. Based on my expertise and focus on strategy and marketing. Or Based on the success of Our team’s previous client engagement…. You get the idea. You’re reinforcing your expertise or your success by sharing where your input is coming from. This is controlling your narrative.  A great example that I have for controlling your narrative came from a Q&A that I did a few years ago where a lawyer in New York talked about how tired she was of being known as an immigrant. Her brand, she said, was that of an immigrant. Yes, she was an immigrant from India. So, I asked her, You’re a lawyer in New York? Yes, in Manhattan. What kind of law? Corporate. OK, I said to her. You’re going to stop saying the word immigrant. Take control of your narrative. Replace Immigrant with GLOBAL EXPERIENCE. And here’s the thing. Your accent is simply a reminder to all of us of your global experience. Here’s your new narrative.  I am a corporate lawyer with a global perspective.  Yah, she was pretty happy with that new narrative. So now I’m asking you. What is there about your valuable experience, about your unique perspective, That you can use to similarly fuel your own narrative? And that’s the fifth of the five quick fixes to boost your communication effectiveness.  Do you remember what they are? The 5 quick fixes include avoiding upspeak. Establishing eye contact. Focusing on the other. Communicating with precision. And controlling your narrative. Now here’s your challenge. Take out a sheet of paper and write down these five quick fixes. Then ask yourself. In which one of these areas am I most deficient? where is there opportunity? and where can I get traction?  then double down, implement the quick fix , and boost your communication effectiveness. If  you enjoyed this podcast episode, I do hope you’ll share with your friends who could also benefit from some quick fixes to boost their communication effectiveness. 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 5 QUICK FIXES to Boost your Communication Effectiveness (ep.154) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Should I share my personal life at work? This is about boundaries and navigating your professional identity. Andrea shares 3 real risks to sharing your personal life at work, then 3 levels of benefits. The balance between sharing personal information and maintaining professional boundaries is delicate and can significantly affect workplace culture, individual well-being, and even your own career trajectory.   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/ TRANSCRIPT Whenever this topic of sharing your personal life at work comes up, I always think of this experience I had about 10 years ago. I was serving as an advisor for a small private firm. I respected the CEO very much. He sent an e-mail out to all of the advisors asking us to submit to him our corporate bios for the website. At the bottom of his email request, he said something like, “Please make sure you include some personal details at the end. We all know that people tend to like us better when we add some personal details to the bottom of our professional bio.” I remember thinking:  Is that true?  Seems possible. I want to see the research! I get this Q a lot in the workshops and coaching I do.  Men and women both ask me about this. Should we talk about our hobbies? Should I mention that I run ultra marathons?? Should I mention that I do stand up comedy on the weekends? Or that I look after my partner’s elderly parents? Should I mention that I have a newborn at home? In this episode, I’m going to share with you what the academic research says about specific reasons that we should or perhaps should not share our private or personal life at work.  The advantages and disadvantages, if you will.  The answer to this question of “should we share our personal life at work?” does not have a simple yes or no answer. I would think of it more as a checklist or a series of considerations. My goal is to help you make informed decisions about whether and what to share about your personal life at work, depending on your PERSONAL context. Sound good? Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 153, sharing your personal life at work.   In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you – to elevate your communication, your confidence, and your clarity, so you can establish credibility, and accomplish your career goals. If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.  Alright let’s get into this. A few years ago, at the beginning of COVID, I was doing small group personal branding workshops for senior female executives around the world. One brave participant asked how to manage her personal brand at work, particularly in the context of sharing her personal life. She told us all about a recent experience in her new role as a partner in her male-dominated organization. She noticed immediately that the few times when she mentioned her children or family obligations, the room got quiet.  She got a strong signal that talk about your life outside of work was not welcome here. This not uncommon. OK, that was a double negative. This is common. In fact, there’s a name for this. It’s called quote the motherhood penalty, unquote. Researcher Shelly Correll’s work demonstrates how women, in particular, can be disadvantaged by perceptions that their family responsibilities will interfere with work commitments. Have you ever experienced, or maybe wondered whether you were experiencing the motherhood penalty?? I remember when I was in the job market in the last year of my doctoral program, looking for a job as a new faculty member.  I was interviewing at some amazing universities in The US, in Europe and in Canada.  I was married with a 1 year old at the time, and certainly hoping to have more children. I know a lot of women struggle with what to disclose in terms of their family situation. Should I talk about my baby? Never mind my plans to have more children? Should I even wear a ring?  This sounds crazy to me now, but I DID take my wedding ring off for a few interviews. I didn’t want to prime anyone to wonder about my motherhood status. But then I decided if being a mom was a bad thing at any of these universities, then I probably didn’t want to work there anyway. The ring went back on. Wow, I forgot about that whole experience. More recently, I was coaching a woman who has two young children, who asked me whether and how she should tell prospective employers that she’s DONE having kids. That’s an interesting one!  Then, just a few weeks ago, one of my friends, a successful tech entrepreneur, told me that decades ago, she went into a job interview very pregnant. I cannot imagine. She got the job, had the baby, and had a stellar career at that firm for over a decade. That’s a happy story. But this isn’t always so easy, is it? I suppose there are really two questions here, there is one general question about sharing your personal life at work across all dimensions. Talking about your own childhood, where and how you grew up, your hobbies, what you do on weekends, and yes, your family. And then secondly, there’s a question about discrimination against women, and particularly their roles as mothers and how that impacts their professional careers. Understanding that the motherhood penalty is a real thing, and that it may compound any potential negative effects on sharing your personal life at work, I’m going to focus on the first Q.  We’re going to focus more generally in this episode, as I said, on the pros and cons or the advantages and disadvantages of sharing your personal self in professional contexts. At the end of this episode, I’m going to share with you a summary. Almost like a checklist for you to consider when you’re deciding whether and what to share about your personal life at work. So as always, you don’t need to take notes as you’re listening to this podcast. I do that for you! First of all, there’s the summary at the end, and secondly, if you want to read the checklist, you can always find it on the transcript on the Talk About Talk website. OK – we’ve established that this is a very common question that people have – how much and what to share at work. But research also shows that it is an important, a critical question. Research shows that what we share about our personal identity can have at least as much impact on our professional reputation as our expertise and accomplishments at work. Let me say that again. What we share about ourselves personally can impact our professional reputation even more so than things that are more directly related to our professional identity. The balance between sharing personal information and maintaining professional boundaries is delicate and can affect workplace culture, individual well-being, and yes, our career trajectory. Let me start by addressing this Q in the context of your personal brand. For those of you who have listened to previous Talk about Talk episodes focused on personal branding, or maybe if you’ve been to one of my workshops, you know that when I say personal brand, I mean, I mean your whole, complete, authentic Self. Your personal brand includes ALL of the most important elements or traits that comprise you, the whole person. When I’m working with executives to help them articulate their personal brands, we create what I call a personal branding template. In this template, we list their passions, their expertise, their values, their principles, their accomplishments. And so on.  At the bottom of the template, I encourage them to include 3-5 positive and unique parts of their personal identities. Their hobbies, family role, and so on.  The big Q is:   Should we share these personal elements of our personal brand at work?  Should we share every single element in our personal branding template with others? My answer might surprise you. Should we share our whole selves at work?   Absolutely not,   In fact, We shouldn’t share our whole selves with anyone!  It would be overwhelming. If I shared everything with you about me, you’d think I was crazy.  Save everything for your epic biography!  OK, so what should we do?  We should FILTER what elements of our identity that we share.  The keyword here is FILTER. To be clear: we are always the same person. But in different contexts and with different people, We should think about FILTERING what parts of our identity, our brand, what parts of our LIFE we want to share.  This notion of consistent with what Irving Goffman, a famous Canadian born sociologist calls Impression management. Goffman was one of the most influential thinkers in this area of impression management, culminating in his work entitled,  “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.”  Goffman provided foundational insights into how we perform roles in various contexts, including, of course, at work. He talks about this concept of “front stage” and “back stage” as a way of thinking about how we manage our professional identities.  I call it filtering. When we’re at work, we might filter out some of our personal life and our personal roles. That doesn’t mean they’re completely eliminated from our entire being, and overtime, of course, we may share more of our personal lives an roles with our coworkers. But generally, we filter out our personal and present our professional traits at work.   And of course vice versa. In our personal life we don’t introduce ourselves typically in terms of our work title and the last work project that we completed.  So I call it filtering, Goffman calls it front stage and backstage.  Let me give you an example. Last year I coached an impressive CEO on this personal brand. One of the many things that I love about coaching ambitious executives on their personal brand is that I get to know people very quickly. If you’re going to be successful at creating an articulating your brand, you have to be pretty open about sharing your passions and your expertise and really every part of your life. Anyway, at the beginning of our 3rd coaching session with this impressive CEO, he started by apologizing for how he dressed, saying he just came back from a run. I said, “oh you run  That hasn’t come up in our conversation.’   “Yes,” he responded. “Actually, I run ultra marathons.” “WHAT? Why hasn’t that come up in the context of your personal brand?” “Oh, I didn’t think it was relevant.” “Of course it’s relevant!  Its positive, it’s unique, it’s impressive, it demonstrates your energy and your discipline, should I go on?” He laughed.  We ended up re-writing his LinkedIn headline to conclude with “avid runner”” and he imported a banner image to his LinkedIn profile that showed him at the starting line of a marathon that he ran. So when this CEO ‘s at work and yes, on his LinkedIn profile, he leads with his leadership expertise and his credentials. These things are front stage. Backstage, he might mention his personal interests, including things like the fact that he’s an avid runner. He doesn’t lad with that. He filters that out, or at least makes it secondary. This is just one of many many conversations I’ve had with clients who are apprehensive about whether and what parts of their personal life they should share in conversations at work, in their corporate bios, or on LinkedIn. So I did some reading – I went through the academic research on the risks and benefits of sharing your personal life at work. I created a list of us of 3 specific risks and 3 ways to think about the advantages of sharing personal life at work. I Yes, of course 3.  Always  The 3 Risks of Sharing your Personal life at work include: Privacy concerns, Reinforcement of stereotypes & biases, and Violating norms.  Let me tell you what I mean by each of these. 1.PRIVACY CONCERNS Obviously sharing personal details can expose you to privacy risks. Consider what information you’re comfortable with people knowing.  This could be about your demographics, your health – physical and mental, your family members, etc.  How much and what do you really want  people to know? This reminds me of a recent experience. A few months ago I was hired by one of the big 5 audit forms to run a series of workshops in person. One of the senior partners stood at the front of the room to kick off the first session by introducing the program, and then introducing me.  She was obviously very well-regarded by the folks in the room, and I could tell she had a good sense of humour.  She made a joke, saying something like, “wow – this is nerve wracking.  I’m up here in the spotlight, formally introducing a COMMUNICATION COACH to all of you. Talk about anxiety! I’m sure I’m doing it all wrong.   Once she formally  introduced me, I thanked her and said, Actually, I can think of something worse than introducing a communication coach. It’s BEING a communication coach and living with three critical teenagers who are watching you carefully, ready to pounce on any communication blunder you make.  Welcome to my world, Claire!” Everyone in the room smiled and laughed. I realized that before I even started talking about the workshop material, they already knew I have three kids. Because of privacy concerns, I never share my kids’ names. Privacy concerns about our children, especially on social media is a topic that we could do a whole episode on. But the point is that whether you’re talking about your demographics (where you live, your age, your family, your socio economic status), also your health status – mentally and physically, and more – and it could be in person, in a workshop or on social media. These are all things that we need to be careful about in terms of privacy concerns. That’s the first risk. The second risk to sharing personal information is that it can 2.REINFORCE STEROTYPES & BIASES Here’s the thing. We’re all looking to for signals from others to interpret who we’re dealing with – including our coworkers. Sometimes the information we share can provide evidence that reinforces a negative stereotype.   Like young mothers. The negative stereotypes include that they are sleep deprived and less loyal and less hardworking than others.  Ugh.  Or like people who grew up a certain country. We sometimes assume they will have particular values or principles or even abilities. These are biased assumptions.  This is an important point: As I said earlier, research shows that people may be more likely to form opinions about you based on personal aspects as opposed to your professional qualifications.  Sometimes this is because of the biases that people may hold, even implicit biases, against some element of your personal background – something that’s not even directly related to your career. Recently in one of my personal branding bootcamps, there was a female CEO who talked about this directly. This CEOs hobby was baking.  She loved baking and she loved giving her cookies and cakes to family, friends, and yes, co-workers. She told us that she was acutely aware of the bias against women in leadership positions, and how bringing cookies to her team at the office might just reinforce her identity as a woman – and maybe a woman who belongs in the kitchen.  YIKES. I have to give her kudos though. She was acutely aware and strategic about the stereotype.  She called it out as she was sharing the cookies. Like: don’t you dare discriminate against me, just because I’m conforming to the female stereotype of being in the kitchen.  Yes, I can bake a mean cookie.  But I’m also successfully leading this team to meet our KPIs! I love it! So that’s the second risk – potential bias.  We’ve  covered privacy concerns and potential bias.  The 3rd risk of sharing personal details is related to boundaries and relevance. It’s about 3.VIOLATING NORMS This is really about conforming to or violating the norms at an institutional level – like the norms associated with your industry or your corporate culture, and also at a contextual level.  Professor Kristie Rogers at Marquette University focuses her research on identity and professional boundaries at work.  Maintaining professional boundaries is crucial for workplace dynamics. Over-sharing or inappropriate sharing of personal information can blur these boundaries, leading to discomfort or conflicts within teams.  And even more so depending on the corporate culture.  Of course!  So there’s the norms of the corporate culture. Of the institution. Then within that one institution, there are many different contexts.  Like if you’re selling something to a new prospective client, versus chatting with a familiar co-worker that you communicate with on a daily basis. Of course, the longer we know someone, the more we tend to share. Here’s a context most of you are familiar with- LinkedIn I remember posting something on LinkedIn years ago. The post was about something related to the art world. (Yes I’m also a painter. Did you know that?) Anyway, an old co-worker – a guy I knew years ago ,commented on the post that I should move it to Facebook. He publicly commented on my post, shaming me for sharing something that wasn’t directly career-related.  In other words, he believed I was violating norms. (By the way – you might be wondering what I did? I PRIVATELY messaged him and explain my rationale.  His response was belligerent. So I blocked him. ) Anyway, here’s a context where the norms are evolving. LinkedIn used to be almost exclusively about job searching.  Now it’s a professional network where people connect on all sorts of topics, including job searching, yes, but also industry thought leadership, mentorship, career progression, professional AND PESRONAL development, and yes, even personal interests. The NORMS of what’s acceptable to post on LinkedIn have evolved. So those are the 3 reasons why you might NOT want to share personal information at work: privacy concerns, biases, and norms. Chances are, if you feel li9ke you messed up by sharing too much, it’s because of one of these three things: privacy issues, reinforcing negative biases, or violating norms.   So what can we do when we do mess up?  Back to our filter metaphor.  We messed up and shared too much.  That’s when we need to MEND our filter.  We can adjust what and how much we share. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t share anything personal at work!  In fact, there are several compelling reasons why we SHOULD share personal things at work.   This idea of the blurred line between personal and professional boundaries is considered by several academic researchers including Kristie Rogers and Shelley Carroll whom I just mentioned, plus Laura Morgan Roberts. Nancy Rothbart and Ashley Martin, just to name a few. Generally, the research highlights that sharing some aspects of your personal identity or personal life at work can BENEFIT us on 3 levels: organizational performance, team cohesion, and individual well-being  So I categorized these benefits into three levels or reasons – there’s the macro or group level, there’s the 1:1 relationship level, and there’s the individual level. Here’s the thing.  Particularly if you’re a leader, you can consider this both for yourself AND for your team.  This is important at both a cultural and an individual level. Starting 1. at a macro level,  We see that by sharing personal stories and experiences, individuals can challenge and reduce stereotypes in the workplace. Yes, this is related to the disadvantage I mentioned to sharing personal details – stereotypes and bias. Shelley Carrell’s research on gender stereotypes, for example, suggests that personal narratives can play a role in changing preconceived notions and biases. It can also improve job satisfaction and even sometimes reduce burnout for everyone in the organization Research also indicates that knowing about our coworkers’ lives outside of work can foster empathy and support within teams. A supportive macro environment like this can also lead to reduced stress and increased job satisfaction. When people are  comfortable being and sharing some of their personal life at work, they can be more authentic and true to their distinct identity. Despite the recent backlash against DEI, the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace are well-documented in academic literature. Sharing personal experiences can help highlight and celebrate diversity, contributing to a more inclusive culture. This relates to Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety, where individuals perceptions of the risks of being their true self impacts team performance. Basically this point here is that when the individual feels comfortable being their whole and true self at work, the organization also benefits at a macro level. Makes sense. OK, let’s look at the second level, the relationship level. 2. at a 1:1 relationship level Of course we’ve all noticed that OVER TIME, we share more personal details with our co-workers. And when someone shares something personal, we typically respond by doing that same thing.  This is supported by theories like the Social Penetration Theory, which highlights how over time, gradual self-disclosure helps deepen interpersonal relationships, often leading to improved workplace communication and relationships. We probably don’t need to read the academic research to understand that when people reveal things about themselves, they’re signaling that they trust us and then we in turn reciprocate with trust. The social bond is elevated. Strengthened. Suddenly teamwork and collaboration are much more viable an effective. You’ve probably also noticed overtime that we all look for similarities or things in common with others. Again, this applies for both professional interests, but also, and perhaps even to a greater extent, Personal insights. If you share a personal interest, a hobby, Or maybe you went to the same college or lived in the same city, as someone else. Shared interests and experiences create social bonds. When you share that you grew up on the east coast, or that you play golf, or that you enjoy baking or that you too have young children, you create a connection.  So at a relationship level, you can think of two reasons why you might want to share personal information: Its (1)  to create an environment or relationship characterized by TRUST and (2.) to establish SIMILARITY or things in common.  It’s all about creating connection. Now we’ve looked at the macro level and the relationship level. The third and last level to consider in terms of the benefits of sharing personal information is the  3. Individual level.  This is about establishing your professional identity or your personal brand. Sharing personal interests or achievements can reinforce that you are a well-rounded individual, and perhaps even highlight diverse skills that might be tangentially related to your career success. A great example of this is the CEO client that I was talking about earlier in this episode, who was an avid runner, he ran ultra marathons. Clearly, this hobby isn’t directly related to his professional expertise. But it does share that he is well-rounded, disciplined and has a lot of energy. At an individual level, sharing personal information can make you more relatable to your audience. It adds a human touch to your professional accomplishments, making you seem more approachable. Personally, I might share things like how I workout most days at noon, online with a bunch of women – an amazing routine that we started at the beginning of covid.  Or how I love painting.  Or – here’s one.  I have three extremely tall children.  Depending on the context and the people or person with whom I’m communicating, these insights can make people feel closer to me or simply to signal that I am a real human with a real life. These personal insights are mostly backstage when I’m in my role as an executive communication coach.  But they’re still there, and I might decide to share them, depending on the context.  Ask yourself: Is there some outside interest that you pursue, that you might want to share? It doesn’t have to be over the top. It doesn’t have to be an extreme sport or something like running ultra marathons. Just something that showcases you as a well-rounded human. Maybe it’s artistic, Or maybe it’s athletic. Or maybe it’s your family. Unique hobbies, interests, or aspects of your background can make you more relatable and maybe even more memorable. There you go – 3 risks and 3 levels of benefits of disclosing personal information at work.  Let me summarize and remind you what they are.  This is your checklist.  The risks of sharing personal information at work include (1.) privacy concerns, (2.) reinforcement of negative stereotypes and bias, and (3.) violating norms. The benefits are plenty, so I encourage you to consider them at 3 levels: (1.)At an institutional level, (2.) at a relationship level, and (3.) most obviously, at a personal level, in terms of reinforcing your POSITIVE and UNIQUE personal brand. So now what do you do with all this? My suggestion is that you carefully and strategically share elements of your personal identity in professional contexts. Now then, here’s my challenge to you. Take some time to identify 3-5 elements of your personal life that you might share at work.  Consider carefully the risks (the privacy concerns, negative stereotypes & bias, and violating norms) along with the benefits (at an institutional level, at a 1:1 relationship level and at an individual level). And if you’re a leader, remember that you are role model and how you respond when others share personal information, never mind when and what personal information you yourself share, has a significant impact on your organization.  Remember, we should certainly strive to be authentic. Always. We are our true selves.  But that doesn’t mean we are 100% transparent. We don’t share everything with everyone.  Goodness no! Alright that’s it.  If  you enjoyed this podcast episode, I do hope you WILL  SHARE IT with your friends and maybe even leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it. If you want to connect, I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what you thought about this episode, and maybe ideas for future episodes. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or on the talkabouttalk.com website and send me a message.  Thanks again for listening.  And talk soon! The post Should I Share My PERSONAL Life at Work? (ep.153) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Are you a giver or a taker? Andrea shares evidence for why being generous can be an advantage plus 5 specific suggestions for how you can be generous at work starting today. CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/ RESOURCES “Influence” by Robert Cialdini – https://amzn.to/3M1ScfA Talk About Talk episodes with Sharon Mah-Gin: Ep.67 – Online Networking https://www.talkabouttalk.com/67-online-networking-with-sharon-mah-gin/ Ep.107 – Communication Skills for JOB-SEEKERS https://www.talkabouttalk.com/107-job-seekers/ Ep.146 – Resume Best Practices https://www.talkabouttalk.com/resume-best-practices-with-executive-recruiter-sharon-mah-gin-ep-146/ Academic Papers: “Everyday Prosociality in the Workplace: The Reinforcing Benefits of Giving, Getting, and Glimpsing”  Chancellor, Margolis, Bao, Lyubomirsky  Aknin, Lara B., Elizabeth W. Dunn, Ashley V. Whillans, Adam M. Grant, and Michael I. Norton. “Making a Difference Matters: Impact Unlocks the Emotional Benefits of Prosocial Spending.” Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 88 (April 2013): 90–95. “Social Motivation: Costs and Benefits of Selfishness and Otherishness” Crocker, Canevello, Brown, Annual Review of Psychology TRANSCRIPT I’ve been hearing the word GENEROUS a lot lately.  In different contexts. So I started to take notice. I proactively identified situations or contexts where I saw people being generous – or being selfish.  And I identified people in my network who are generous – the givers, versus the takers.   What about YOU? Are you a giver or a taker?  Of course we like to think of ourselves as givers, not takers.  But does it actually matter?  I mean, I see a lot of selfish people out there doing pretty well.  Am I right?  Yes, we are wired to be self-interested.  If we weren’t, we would not survive. But that does NOT mean that we always ACT in a way that is self-serving.  Research shows that we are very capable of acts of kindness, compassion and yes – generosity, even when we might be acting against our best interests.  Research also shows there are great benefits of being generous. In this episode, you’re going to learn about the power of generosity and what they call “prosocial behavior”, specifically at work. I’m going to tell you what the research says about the impact of being a giver versus a taker.  Spoiler alert: being a taker might benefit you in the short term, but that’s about it. You want to be a taker.  I’m also going to provide you with five specific ways that you can be more generous at work, starting right now. Are you ready? Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 151, Generous Communication,  This is where I provide you with the evidence for – and examples of – when you should be a giver – not a taker. In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you – to elevate your communication, your confidence, and your clarity, so you can establish credibility, and accomplish your career goals. If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.  Alright let’s get into this. I told you that I’ve been proactively identifying situations or contexts where I saw people being generous – or being selfish.  And I identifying people in my network who are generous – the givers, versus the takers.   One of the most generous people I know is Sharon Mah-Gin. Sharon’s a successful executive recruiter, and she generously shared her on several Talk About Talk episodes focused on topics like networking and job seeking. Sharon and I also co-lead some corporate workshops together in Toronto.  One of the most impactful insights I learned from Sharon is how we should “add value” or be generous when we’re networking. You know that icky feeling you get when you hear the word “networking”? Well, instead of thinking about networking as selling or being selfish, walk into every networking reception or lunch or whatever with the philosophy of adding value and being generous.  Suddenly that icky feeling is gone! Sharon is very very compelling in her delivery of this message.  People often remark immediately after out workshops and even afterwards, they tell us that this insight of being generous and adding value when networking CHANGES EVERYTHING. One important caveat here. And this is really important. It’s subtle, but important. In the workshops that Sharon and I have conducted on networking, we noticed that many people equate networking with reciprocity. You do a favour for someone in your network, they feel obliged to reciprocate. (Hold the book.) Yes. Of course, the psychology of influence. Does. Highlight reciprocity as A key motivational factor. Reciprocity is one of Cialdini’s now 7 influence factors. That said, a mindset of imposing reciprocal obligations is anything but generous.  In other words, don’t do it.  Focus instead on creating value and being generous.  Got it? If someone does a favor for us or gives us something, we feel obligated to reciprocate. That said, if you go out. With this. Motivation in mind of encouraging people to feel their indebted to you, then this whole. Idea of being generous can backfire people., we noticed that a lot of po  Reciprocity – yes it is a common motivation, The truth is that while shifting your networking mindset away from selfish connections toward providing value benefits you more than just in being a more enthusiastic and effective networker.  There’s plenty of research supporting how generosity can benefit you.  It’s almost ironic, right? There’s the research that you’ve probably heard about that shows how people who give money benefit in terms of psychological well-being.  In other words, it improves their own satisfaction – it makes them happy.  Sometimes even happier than the receiver of the money.  And it’s not just being generous in terms of money.  This also applies to other ways of being generous, other ways of giving.  What we’re talking about here is what psychologists call “pro-social behaviors”.   What’ exactly is prosocial behavior?  Well it’s not exactly the opposite of anti-social behavior. In essence, it’s a fancy term for actions intended to benefit others. This could be as simple as holding the door open for someone. That’s a pro-social behavior.  Another example of pro-social behavior in a work context could be when a colleague steps in without being asked, offering to lighten your load or to stay late and help you finalize the project. That’s giving without the expectation of immediate return, and it speaks volumes about workplace camaraderie. Or consider the open sharing of knowledge, like in a team meeting, when someone shares a new technology or an app that benefits your workflow. That’s pro-social. It’s about benefiting others or a group, not just yourself. Prosocial behavior could also show up in terms of emotional support. When you’re having a tough time, and someone offers to listen or talk it out with you, that’s pro-social. However, not everyone around us is so generous –  so noble, are they? Let’s talk about the takers for a minute. I’m going to imagine that is NOT you! Imagine a co-worker who consistently takes the best projects for themselves, leaving the scraps for you and everyone else. Or the one who’s always first to claim credit for a team’s success but nowhere to be found when there’s blame to be shared. And how about the infamous information hoarders? They keep valuable insights to themselves, thinking it will make them indispensable. But in reality, this just fosters distrust and it’s counterproductive. I’ve worked with these selfish people. The takers And my clients tell me stories about these people all the time. And at ALL levels. It’s shocking! I told you at the very beginning of this episode that I started paying attention to real examples of generosity that I came across.  Identifying people in my network as givers and takers. I have two very contrasting examples to share with you. Recently I was coaching a talented female executive on her personal brand. We were listing her superpowers and she mentioned that she has an incredible network.  Like she knows a LOT of influential people.  Then she said “I’m tired of introducing people to others in my network, then watching them benefit.  I’m going to stop doing that.   WAIT.  WHAT? I was careful in my response. I did not mention my fascination with givers and takers,  Instead, I told her about the research on generosity and prosocial behavior,  I asked her whether the introductions were costing her anything?  NO. I asked her whether the other people were grateful for the valuable introductions she made. YES, she answered.  Well, there you go. You actually benefitted in some way, in terms of your social capital or your personal brand, your reputation as someone who’s connected AND generous! We talked about it for a while and decided that these introductions and connections  were a good thing to keep doing. I still think about that conversation. I hope I nudged her over from being a taker to being more of a giver. The second example is a woman I met on LinkedIn. She’s become a client. Let’s call her Nicole. Nicole was generously liking and commenting on all my posts.  Like ALL of them.  NICE!  Thankyou! Then I was running one of my LinkedIn Lives and she messaged me: “Can I help you with anything for the LinkedIn live?  I was stumped.  And honestly a bit confused.  Like – was she looking for a job?  Then I realized – she’s just being generous. I asked her if she’s mind re-posting my invitation to the LinkedIn Live to HER network.  She did so instantly, And graciously. I can tell you what she also did.  She commented herself in my mind as a giver.  As a generous good human.  And I won’t forget it. So, what does the research say about all this? Research – mostly in organizational behavior and psychology tell us that generosity pays off, not just in “good vibes” but in concrete outcomes.  I’ve included links in the shownotes to some of the papers that highlight these benefits. Let me summarize with four of the main benefits right ow. Benefit number one: generosity improves team performance. When people share and help, teams achieve more. Of course they do! And imagine the impact on your corporate culture when you’re generous.  Especially if you’re a leader. You are a role model, modeling generosity and there’s a ripple effect through the organizational culture. Benefit two: being generous makes us happier. Giving releases endorphins, creating a phenomenon known as the “helper’s high.” This has been shown in research where people are giving money. But them also other contexts, like doing favors, and so on. Thirdly, generous people build stronger networks. This sis a HUGE one.  This is my friend executive recruiter Sharon. This is about being generous with your connections in a way that provides value for them. This is about building up goodwill with many people.  And last but not last, the fourth benefit of being generous is that it enhances your personal brand – your reputation.  Here’s your personal branding homework: think about your personal brand superpowers: your passions, your expertise, and your skills. These are your currencies, but currency you can share. Sharing your passions, your expertise and your skills with others is not a zero sum game.  When you share, you don’t lose. In fact, you benefit.  Right? Now ask yourself, who would benefit from you sharing these things? Then go.   Give.   Be generous. Be a giver, not a taker. You might be wondering how. I know this all sounds great, right?  But HOW, Andrea? HOW exactly can I be generous?  I’ve got a list for you of 5 specific ways that you can be generous. First, the obvious. It’s sharing resources with others, It might be money, software, staffing capability, office space.  Things you have that others don’t have, but that would benefit them. So that the first way you can be generous. Share resources.  The second way is Providing expertise and knowledge. This is about sharing technical insight or advice. It could be one on one.  Or it could be publicly – as in sharing thought leadership.  Yes this is one I do through this podcast. One of my strategies is to generously share thought leadership about communication skills. But it doesn’t have to be at that level. This might be showing someone how to do something.  Like coaching them.  That’s the third way to be generous: Mentoring and coaching – As in supporting someone’ s personal development. This could be someone inside your organization or outside, and it could be formally or informally, it could be a one-off or ongoing.  But coaching and mentoring is a fantastic way to be generous.  It’s also a great way to reinforce your status – your brand – as a leader. The 4th way to be generous at work is introducing your colleagues to valuable connections – This is networking at it’s best. Introduce your peer to someone more senior in the organization that might help them out.  Or introduce your salesperson to a prospect – someone you know who might become a customer. Or introduce one of your connections to a hiring manager to help them get a job.  You see, the options are limitless! And the 5th and last way to be generous is Recognizing others – Praising, acknowledging and appreciating the achievements and contributions of others. Ideally publicly, like during meetings or on professional social media platforms. Also providing job references, or writing recommendations or even endorsing posts or skills on LinkedIn or other professional platforms to enhance their profile and career opportunities. There are many ways to generously recognize others.  And really – it doesn’t cost you anything to do so, does it? Now that I’ve done the research for this episode, I’m so glad I did.  Now I’m motivated more than ever to be generous  To be a giver, not a taker. Let me VERY briefly summarize. 5 suggestions from me for how to be generous at work.  DO you remember what they are? And then Based on the academic research, four benefits of being generous. The 5 suggestions for how you can be generous at work include  Sharing resources with others,  Providing expertise and knowledge.  Mentoring and  introducing your colleagues to valuable connections   Recognizing others – Praising, providing references, or writing recommendations you get the idea. And the four benefits of being a generous giver: Benefit number one: generosity improves team performance.  Benefit two: being generous makes us happier.  Thirdly, generosity helps us build stronger networks.  And the fourth benefit of being generous is that it enhances your personal brand – your reputation. Don’t forget your PB homework: Think about your personal brand superpowers: your passions, your expertise, and your skills. Then ask yourself, who would benefit from you sharing these things? Then share them! Alright that’s it. I’m going to guess that you were already a giver, not a taker. But I hope the stories and the evidence I mentioned here will make you even more conscious of the power of generosity and your opportunity to demonstrate pro-social behavior. You can make a very positive impact.   If you enjoyed this podcast episode, I hope you’ll GENEROUSLY share it with your friends and maybe even leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it. If you want to connect, I’d love to hear from you. You connect with me on LinkedIn and message me there.  You can also go to the talkabouttalk.com website and send me a message there.  Thanks again for listening.  And talk soon! The post GENEROUS COMMUNICATION: Are You a Giver or a Taker? (ep.152) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Are you a powerful storyteller? Andrea interviews strategy and storytelling expert Rob Tait, who shares examples of and suggestions for great stories. These insights apply to stories from and about both product brands (marketing) and people brands (personal branding). NOTE: the accompanying free “Storytelling Tip Sheet” includes Rob’s 9-step process for creating compelling presentations and lots more to help you become a better storyteller.   Free “STORYTELLING TIP SHEET”: https://talkabouttalk.com/storytelling   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/   RESOURCES Rob Tait: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/robtait/ Email – robmtait@gmail.com Website – https://www.taitstrategicstorytelling.com/ ep.11 STORYTELLING with Harvard Professor Jerry Zaltman – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/11-storytelling-with-harvard-professor-author-jerry-zaltman/ Ken Robinson TedTalk “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” – https://youtu.be/iG9CE55wbtY?feature=shared Adam Grant – https://adamgrant.net/ Terry O’Reilly Under The Influence – https://terryoreilly.ca/undertheinfluence/ Jeopardy podcast – https://www.jeopardy.com/listen/inside-jeopardy Volkswagen ad – https://youtu.be/SBNSWjkFrOM?feature=shared Nancy Duarte – https://www.duarte.com/ Steve Jobs –  https://youtu.be/MnrJzXM7a6o?feature=shared TRANSCRIPT Well, hello there and welcome to talk about Talk Podcast Episode #151.  The Power of Storytelling with Rob Tait. Yes, this is episode #151. I’ve been doing this for a while. I remember way back in the early days, when I was learning the craft of podcasting, I used to listen to a podcast called,  The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson. I listened to it every single week. I considered him to be my podcasting coach. Kind of like the way I hope that I am your executive communication coach. Anyway, one day I finally got the nerve to email him, and then he ended up featuring me on his podcast a couple of times.    Before one of the interviews when he interviewed me, he asked me to suggest a specific TAT podcast episodes that will give him some idea of what I do. I remember this. Viscerally. I suggested that he listened to podcast episode number 58, mentally preparing to communicate with confidence. In our conversation before the interview, he said to me, I listened to that episode you suggested. You definitely know what you’re doing. That podcast was full of exceptional storytelling. I remember thinking: he didn’t tell me I was a great podcaster. He didn’t tell me I was a great communication coach. He DID say I was a great storyteller.    Since then, I’ve become acutely aware of the impact of storytelling. I’ve noticed in my own business that the workshops where I really knocked it out of the park , Those are the workshops where I was telling stories. I also know that the podcast episodes that get the most downloads, including that episode on communicating with confidence, those are the episodes that are full of stories.    Evidence regarding the positive impact of storytelling goes on and on. That’s not what this episode is about. We’re past the point of establishing how storytelling is important.  I think you get that. Otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to this episode! This episode is about helping you craft storytelling in your communication.    You may be a marketer, looking for stories to tell about your brand.    You might be looking to tell stories about your own experience, creating your narrative around your personal brand.   You might be looking for a story to weave into an important presentation that you’re preparing for.   Or you may be looking to generally improve the effectiveness of your communication through storytelling.   The guest expert I’m about to introduce you to is going to help you with all  this. Are you ready?   Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 150, The Power of Storytelling   In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you – to elevate your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you can establish credibility and then accomplish your career goals.   If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.    Alright let’s get into this.   You’re about to hear my interview with Rob Tait. Rob is the ideal person. To seek expertise from in terms of storytelling for a couple of reasons.    First of all, Rob’s background. I met him when we were working together on advertising. I was a brand manager at Kraft Foods and he was a creative director at the advertising agency. He’s the one who created the stories around the brands that I was managing. So that’s the first reason. He knows how to tell brand stories,    The second reason robs insight is so significant here is that now for a living, what Rob does is through his firm “Tait Strategy & Storytelling.” He has lots of pragmatic and well tested advice to share with us.    And 3rd, as you’ll hear me mention in the interview, Rob. When I was working with Rob, I noted several times that he was typically the smartest person in the room. He’s very wise. Humble and wise.   Here’s how this episode is going to go. 1st, I’m going to briefly introduce Rob and then we’re going to get right into the interview. And then at the end, I’m going to summarize with three, yes, of course, ALWAYS! three of the main thoughts or themes that I want to reinforce for us.   Before I introduce Rob, I just want to highlight two important things about this episode in particular.    The first one is that based on the amazing insights from this interview, I decided to create a one page “Storytelling tip sheet” that I hope you will download and use to boost your own storytelling skills. The info in this storytelling tip sheet are based on the insights that Rob shared, plus previous episodes that I’ve done on storytelling, plus my own experience and coaching on storytelling.   Here’s what you need to do. Go to talkabouttalk.com/storytelling. And then you can download this one pager. I’ll remind you about that again at the end.   The second thing about this episode that stands out for me is the long list of valuable resources that Rob mentions. If you go to the show notes for this episode on the Talk About talk.com website or on your podcast app, you’ll see links to all of these resources, including the many ads he mentions, the experts he mentions, like Nancy Duatre, and his favorite podcasts. So please do that. You have two things to do then, right? First of all go to talkabouttalk.com/storytelling to get your storytelling tip sheet and secondly check out the show notes and in particular the resources that I listed for you there.    Alright, let me introduce Rob. Because Rob is such an eloquent writer, and former creative director, I thought I would be doing a disservice if I edited or paraphrased his bio. So I’m going to read to you exactly what he sent me. Here goes.   A seasoned marketing communications veteran, Rob is a strategist, writer, and swashbuckling storyteller who helps clients make the complex simple, and the simple compelling.   As a passionate practitioner of content marketing and brand building (and a former advertising Creative Director), Rob has worked with some of the most successful companies in the world creating and executing marketing programs that span content, digital, CRM, experiential, and traditional advertising. Currently Rob is working with the Facebook for Creator’s brand marketing team in New York. Past clients include McDonald’s, Hilton Worldwide, Apple, Roche Biotech, Microsoft, Mazda, and Kraft. (That’s where we met, when I was a brand manager at Kraft)   Founder and principal at Tait Strategy & Storytelling, Rob has also held senior creative roles at BBDO, McCann and Redwood CC. Rob’s reputation is that of a highly strategic creative thinker, a deft writer, and an engaging presenter who delivers engaging, meaningful, and memorable stories that connect with audiences, build brands and drive results. ANDREA  0:00   Thank you so much, Rob, for joining us here today to talk about the power of storytelling.  My pleasure. Glad to be here.  So Rob, you and I met years and years ago, when we were working together on advertising. And so I thought that’d be a great place for us to start. Can you share with us a few of your ideas about why storytelling is so effective in the context of brands? ROB  0:29   Sure, there’s a couple of things that go on. Really, just two. So the first thing is, is like, we’re actually hardwired to love stories. You know, if you heard in your good story, your pulse quickens the eyes dilate, those old sailings, like I was on the edge of my seat or, you know, made me cry like a baby. So we actually just sort of their inherent in enough, then you think about oral tradition, going back 1000s of years, all three stories. The second thing is a little bit more practical from a brand standpoint. And that’s that stories allow us to engage emotionally. And when you look at the way people make decisions, they generally make a decision, they act based on emotion, they then will use reason to post rationalize what they acted on. So if you’re engaging somebody emotionally with a story, you’re more able to get them to actually take an option. So from a marketing standpoint, you want somebody to buy something, you really need to engage them emotionally, they got to feel something that’s what brands are all about. Brands are about, what do I What value do I see in that product or service? What values do they hold? So that’s sort of the basis of why stories are so powerful in marketing and for brands. ANDREA  1:37   Okay, so to help make this a little bit real for the listeners, can you share with us some examples of brands that are doing a great job of storytelling. ROB  1:49   And, you know, a lot of brands are not, that’s the funny thing. But historically, Apple, Apple have been great storytellers. And, you know, you can go back to, you know, 20 years to the iopc. I’m a Mac campaign that really launched iMac into the binocular after the 1990s were disastrous for Apple, to even some of the local or student some of the latest iPhone 15 ads, which are great. But right. Currently, the one that sort of pops to mind is Volkswagen. It’s got a couple of ads out there right now, which are great stories. And what’s interesting, they’ve clearly been created with a global audience in mind, because they use no dialogue. So there’s one with you know, you see a guy getting all dolled up, sort of, like 1970s, he’s got the, you know, like the obesity roller haircut, he’s tagged himself, he’s got these short shorts on, he’s got an old tank top on any poses in front of his brand new Volkswagen, and his wife takes a picture. And then you know, you see them packaging it up and driving, and they show up at his father’s house. And he takes them gives them you know, as a present to his father, this picture, and we see a picture of the Father, in 1970s, dressed like the Son is dressed now with the short shorts and the tank top and the city ruler haircut in front of his Volkswagen from the 70s. And you know, that, like, it’s endearing, it’s a great story. It talks about new products, it talks about quality old products, talks about people being in love with the brand because it stays in the family. So that’s a really good recent example of stories. ANDREA  3:27  So as you were describing the apple ads, and the different versions, they have been great storytellers over the year, one thing that occurred to me and I’m interested to get your take on this. You said, starting out with the I’m a Mac, I’m a PC story. And then we’re like, is that really a story? And actually, like I have an opinion about that it is, but it depends on how you define storytelling. Right? One thing that I tell my clients when I’m coaching them, you know, is to tell stories whenever they can, for the reasons that you said at the very beginning. And I said, but don’t be don’t feel overwhelmed by that, because stories don’t need to be epic. It doesn’t have to be like introduced the main character. Right. So please, elaborate. ROB  4:24   Well, for one thing, Apple had been great storytellers. You know, before it was funny, because Apple did not do well in the 1990s. But some of the best advertising in the 1990s were were Apple ads. And, of course, you know, the the historic Superbowl ad what, which launched Macintosh in 1984. Right. You know, that’s considered one of the greatest commercials of all time, but ANDREA  4:47   I just interrupt. I would say that that is an epic story, right? Yes. But they don’t have to all be epic stories to be effective. ROB  4:55   No, really what makes a story is is a structure Oh, Right. So if you think of, and, you know, like when I talk about presentations, I talk a lot about structure of presentations at work a story arc, and, but essentially a story arc, you know, has exposition. So you’re setting something up, you have rising action, climax, falling action, and then you do know denouement, or you know, resolution. And so if you think of the Iowa Mac on a PC, you know, you always start with an exposition, PC has got a problem, right? Stories are about problems and solutions. And then and, you know, they’re sort of the antagonist. The hero is, is Mac. And you know, so the problem escalates, Mac as a solution, or offers a key differentiating benefit to being on a Mac versus a PC. And then there’s usually a nice little button to close it off at the end. So it calls a nice story arc. So ANDREA  5:50   the classic story is the hero’s journey. Right? Yeah. So yeah. So I was just going to ask is, is that story follows the story arc arc that you it’s one version of the story arc, right, that you just described? ROB  6:12   Yeah, I mean, the thing about Hero’s Journey is that if you get caught up on a hero’s journey, because you hear or hear a hero’s quest, you hear about that a lot is, you know, a story archetype. So if you if you start out thinking, oh, I want to create a tragedy, or I want to create a comedy, or, you know, you’re gonna get caught up, you want the story to emanate authentically, from whatever pitch you’re making, and especially in branded marketing, right? But you want to create characters, you know, and you do want to, if you can have a hero, you always want to have a protagonist stories have to have a protagonist, the product can be a protagonist, you know, and the problem your product solves can be the antagonist can be the villain. ANDREA  6:49   So let’s switch a little bit to storytelling as an executive. So I was gonna say, as a person, but actually in the context of being an executive, right? So you’re either telling a story about your career, or you might be telling a story about the product that you’re selling. So you work with a lot of a lot of creators at meta, right? And you do partnerships with creators? So how does this translate, I guess, I mean, we as humans are storytellers, we as executives are storytellers. And then brands, we as humans, create stories around brands, are there are there important distinctions that we should be keeping in mind between the different types of stories depending on what the context is? ROB  7:39   No, I don’t think so. I think it really you look at you look at structure. So when you talk about like when I’m working with meta, the part of the meta that I work with deals with creators, specifically Facebook brand, for creators. So in that case, there’s sort of two parts to that. There’s Facebook, trying to support creators, and providing them training on how to become better storytellers. Although most creators are naturally very good storytellers. That’s often what they’re, they’re doing. And you know, whether they’re, you know, they’ve got a smaller yoga studio, and they’re using content, and being a creator to build their business, or build awareness, or they’re a baker or they’re a musician, they’re generally naturally pretty good storytellers. What I usually get involved in is working with executives inside internally, to make them better storytellers. So that when they’re communicating with creators or organizations outside of meta, that they’re using storytelling as part of the way they pitch whatever they’re trying to pitch, whether they’re trying to cool, yeah, trying to drive some kind of metric. That’s good for the, you know, good for Metis business. ANDREA  8:47   Okay, so I buy that there’s, there’s no, you know, major distinction that I’m sure they’re minor minor tweaks, but major distinction depending on the context and or the source of the story. You said, naturally, good storyteller. There are some naturally good storytellers create and craters may tend to be that maybe they have a great story is in their quest to become a creator. Right. So what makes for a great, it’s subtly different from what makes for a great story, what makes for a great storyteller? Like, who are the folks that are great, what are the skills that they have? ROB  9:23   Um, that’s actually tough, because it’s really, it’s really tenuous, I don’t, I’m not sure what makes a good storyteller, except for a couple of things. Generally, they’re very authentic. Right? They’ve actually believed the words they’re saying, they have passion for what they’re talking about. You know, and they think more in they think more about their audience. Which is interesting because if you’re if you’re actually talking about, you know, within the business context of creating using storytelling as part of a presentation, when in the skills, things that I teach, the first thing I say you need to do is AUDIENCE Do audience analysis. So who you’re talking to? Right? You know, what are their pain points? What do they think of you right now? What do you want them to think of you all those sorts of things. But it’s really hard to say what gives a person that sort of natural ability to have a cadence when they’re trying to tell you something, where they’re going to SET set up a proposition, you know, and then they’re gonna build, you know, either through facts or benefits or whatever to say, again, here’s the solution. And then sort of, and now, this is how we’re going to, you know, execute on that solution. And that’s it. So that’s that rising story arc, that exposition that rising action, falling action and resolution. ANDREA  10:38   Got it? That’s, that’s fair. You said cadence, I might, I might dig into that a little bit. So you said, three of the criteria that make great that, that are, I guess, common amongst storytellers, three things love it, the power of three, authenticity, passion, and focus on the audience. And I was like, those are all great things for storytellers. But those are all actually great things for anyone who’s communicating anytime. And in particular, when you’re giving a formal presentation, right? If you are authentic, passionate, and you know your audience, almost almost every time you’re going to nail it. So So then let’s shift then to what makes for a great story beyond the arc. Right? So what are the criteria that make some stories better than others? So I can imagine that one of the questions you probably get when you’re doing your training is, I was going to tell this story. Or I might tell this other story, which one should I tell Rob? And how do you decide which stories are worth telling? Okay, ROB  11:43   two quick things. Just going back to what you said about you know, great communication, great communicators, I would contend that you cannot be a great communicator without also being a great storyteller. Oh, I ANDREA  11:55   love it. Yeah, Rob, you’re gonna be quoted on that you’re gonna be quoted. ROB  12:01   Great. Now to talk about, oh, shoot, I lost my train of thought. I got the ADHD and me right, you said something, and I just can’t let it go that making the point I wanted to make. ANDREA  12:17   So So could you repeat my question? Yeah, the question is, if, if we are all of these things, and someone comes to you with two different stories, how do you identify what stories are more, quote, unquote, were worth telling? ROB  12:31   Perfect. Okay. That’s easy. Because again, I’m going to do this in the context. Because I think with business people, where storytelling becomes the most important is in the presentation. Right? Okay. And you doesn’t mean that you’re mean doesn’t mean that you have to be standing up a group of people with a slide deck behind you, it could mean that you’re in a lunch, and you’re pitching somebody an idea, you’re still presenting. So I would say that with every presentation, you have an objective. So if you’re vetting, saying, you know, what story, should I tell you no story A or story B, you vet that against your objective? What is going to be more persuasive to getting somebody taking the action that you want them to take? So ANDREA  13:09   relevance? And yes, I guess, relevance, I was gonna say persuasion, but the persuasion is the outcome. It’s you need it to be absolutely relevant to your objective. Right? Absolutely. ROB  13:21   And again, if I’m going through, I have this nine steps that, you know, I teach people to follow when they’re creating a presentation. The first one I mentioned was audience analysis. The second one is, set your theme or set your objective. You know, I’m Who am I talking to what I want them to do. That’s number one. That’s step two. Notice we haven’t opened up PowerPoint. Number one mistake people make when they say, Hey, I want you to give a presentation as they go in. They open up PowerPoint. That’s Step five, right?  ANDREA  13:47   Yeah. Yeah, I agree. 100%. I, I usually flip your one and two, but I’m in agreeance. With you, right? You need to have What’s your main point? Or what’s your objective? And then really understand who you’re talking to? And then we get into fleshing out and then eventually, it’s the PowerPoint slides. Yeah. Yeah. How many people say, I think in PowerPoint, have you ever heard Have you ever had books meta say that to you? Well, I think PowerPoint. Well, it’s interesting. ROB  14:17  Step three is collecting information. And the way they collect information is they, you know, to say think in PowerPoint, they go back and they start collecting all this past slides that have data points that they want to make, or, uh, you know, the features and benefits, they want to highlight whatever that is. But they still have yet Not yet. figured out what story they want to tell they’ve got the information collected, but then they need to go to Step four, which is okay, what story am I going to tell I’m gonna set the narrative? Right. ANDREA  15:46   You know, I never thought about this when I was working with you, Rob, I shared in the introduction, how I always felt like you were the smartest guy in the room. I always thought you were this. I want I want to say that publicly. I thought you were compared to the Vice President and the director that I was working with in my firm and the other folks that the client service folks at the advertising agency, I always thought you were the smartest person in the room. So it was your ability, I think, and now that I’m talking to you to create a story around a brand, given a bunch of data and objectives that we were giving you, right? I mean, you can agree, yes, maybe that? Unknown Speaker  16:27   Yes. So ANDREA  16:31   I guess we’ve highlighted kind of what makes for a great storyteller. And what makes for great story, how to choose a story. What are the most common mistakes that you see folks making? When they are trying to incorporate storytelling into their communication? ROB  16:51   Often will not often, but the story gets in the way, what they’re really trying to say, because they haven’t gone that they haven’t gone through the due diligence, of saying, Here’s my objective. And then everything after that should be going does this further my objective? Because the story further my objective? Or is the story not relevant? So you think about, like a lot of the stuff that we met, it’s all product based. And so a lot of product people, they, they’re engineers, they’ve been involved in creating these incredible features. This product can do this can do that it can do this. And they’re very excited about it. I mean, it’s they’ve worked so hard on it, they’re passionate about it, and their audience doesn’t care, one lick about their features, their economy, and their audience cares about what’s in it for me, what does it do? What’s the benefit? So I would say in that case, I mean, that’s a sort of an example of where they think they’re telling a story, but they’re really just giving you a list of features. If you start thinking, Okay, what is the feature do to a person? How does it help? Right now you start to naturally bring in storytelling, because a benefit solves a problem. Okay, the minute I set up a problem, and then I create an arc to solve that problem, I’m, you know, Finley, but you’re in the realm of storytelling, ANDREA  18:08   right? Yeah. So as you were describing that, a couple of things came to mind. One is, when I was working in brand management, we talked a lot about the brand benefit letter ladder, right. So you start with features, benefits, and then you get up to emotions, right? And it’s like these human needs. And the higher up that ladder that you can get in a way that’s real, though, right? So you’re, it’s not that you’re being airy fairy, it’s like you have this fundamental need. And this product, or this service, or this brand is going to help you accomplish whatever your goals are associated with that need. And the second thing that I was thinking as you were talking is in terms of testimonials. So as a coach, I know how important testimonials are and we knew even with the brands that we were working on together, you know, food brands, that word of mouth is important, right? And those are sort of informal or formal one on one testimonials if you want to think about it that way. I feel like their stories may serve almost as a testimonials and it’s very indirect, right? But when you tell a story about someone who has, for example, done what you’re you’re encouraging your audience to do and this is where they went. They This is here’s where they started. And here’s what they evolve to through this product you’re providing them with with even though it’s coming from the source that’s trying to sell them right. You’re providing them with a story of something that might happen to them. And it is like a test. It is like a testimonial again, as you said at the very beginning, it needs to be absolutely authentic. Like, you can’t if you’re making it up, they’ll smell it a mile away. raxil ROB  20:07   Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s why testimonials do work. You know, they’re, you know, from an advertising ad agency sometimes hate them, right? Because they’re sort of they, they’re taking the creative juice out of the agency, and they’re, you know, putting it in the place of some person who’s used a product and service and wants to speak well of it. But people don’t get testimonials by listing features and benefits give people a testimonial, saying, I had this problem. And this thing came along, and it helped my problem. And, you know, and they’re usually, you know, they’re, they’re enthusiastic about it. And and if they’re genuine, you know, it’s, it’s second best to word of mouth, right, you know, in anything you do. Anything you do, having somebody behind the scenes going, oh, you know, you hired them, you can’t go wrong, right, that’s the best thing that can happen. I mean, it’s cool. If I, if I may, I was doing this as a number of years ago, but I was doing a gig with an unnamed agency, they had brought me in to create a content strategy for a big marketer, who was, you know, doing as many marketers did, you know, starting 10 or 15 years ago, they started to move away from advertising to creating content, right. And sort of, instead of interrupting people’s content they chosen to create, they were creating content that people were actually choosing to consume. And so I was at this agency, I had been hired on the recommendation of somebody, but the team I was working with didn’t know me from a hole in the wall. And they were, they were a little dubious, let’s say, and so I had done two or three weeks with them, I was trying to build up their confidence in my abilities. And then we had our first big meeting with the market or refer the client, right. And I had worked for the client previously, when another at another agency. And so we arrived at this meeting. And I didn’t really let the agency I was working with know that I knew some of the people at the client. And I wasn’t sure if this one very, very senior person was going to be in the meeting. But I had known that person for a very long time. And we had mutually high opinions of one another. He was a very, very smart guy. But anyway, we’re walking into the meeting, and he comes in at the tail end of his team. And goes, holy crap, I didn’t know we had paid on this. Awesome, awesome, good to see you again. Wrong. And it was like, problem solved. Yeah. Then, you know, from then on, I had an opinion with my team at the agency. They listened. Because clients are thought, oh, yeah, she said, He’s talking about so testimony. ANDREA  22:45   And it was genuine. If you had if you had spoken to him before and said, Are you going to be there? It would really help me then when he showed up? He would have been like, oh, Robert, right. But he was genuinely surprised. I love that story. ROB  22:58   And the meeting was minor enough that I think the agency was surprised if it’s going to be in it. Right, he was he was senior enough to usually wait until we were further along in the process before he started getting his opinion. Anyway. Beautiful, ANDREA  23:10   that is beautiful. Do you have any other anecdotes, like some small stories or epic stories that you want to share? Possibly about successes or failures of of some of your, your clients, or the folks that you’re working with, with storytelling? Too many? Oh, ROB  23:30   I used to. I used to be an instructor to, you know, continuing education for premium Marketing Association. And it was in, in live classes in person classes. And so I could tell my stories, because nobody was taping me. And I could sort of say, you know, I could bear, you know, bear the truth of what happened sometimes behind the scenes. And the minute they went and put that class on tape, the effectiveness of my teaching, you know, was diminished completely, because I could no longer tell those stories, you know, when told in Vegas, stay in Vegas. And it’s kind of the same situation here. Ah, but it’s funny, because we’re talking about storytelling and making points, you know, like, that pitch. So if I may, there’s one example I often use in when I’m when I’m teaching this, talking about, you know, using storytelling to make a point. And it comes from an old TED talk, and most people have seen this TED talk. It’s Ken Robinson, back in 2006 2008. Talking about creativity. Unknown Speaker  24:36   It’s the number one TED talk of all time. Yeah. ROB  24:38   So so people will will know this. But there’s, it’s interesting because he’s giving a presentation and he has no slides. Yet. It is a classic presentation, in that he builds a story arc. He uses a little bit of Nancy Duarte talks about you know, we talked about classic story art. She uses the same thing where she says, you set up what is As the status quo, and then you present what could be, right, and you want that gap between what is and what can be fairly large, and that’s the loftiness, where she goes loftiness of your idea. And that’s the way she uses story arcs in presentation calling, and he uses that to perfectly. But he’s trying to make this point about creativity. And he tells a story about a, you know, a little girl who, you know, didn’t do very well in school. And they’re in a drawing class. And the teacher notices that she’s working a lot harder than usual at her drawing. So the teacher wanders over. And she says, What are you drawing? And that little girl says, a picture of God. And the teacher goes, well, nobody knows what God looks like. And little girl says they will in a minute. And the point he’s making is that while that kids, our kids are naturally creative, they’ll take a chance. And while being wrong is not the same thing as being creative, if you’re not willing to be wrong, you’ll never create anything original. Yeah. And then he draws out, he says, the problem was our schools is we punish being wrong, right. And he draws it out that a lot of large corporations we punish being wrong, therefore we make the act of being original, or creative, very difficult. Yeah. And What’s always interesting is he could have made that same point, using charts and showing the neurological change of children as they grow older, and how we sort of lose our creativity and all that kind of thing. We told the story about a little girl. Yeah, and it’s a perfect example of he used that story as a visual aid. But the visual aid had no visuals. It was just the picture he painted in everybody’s mind of this little girl. My ANDREA  26:36   brain is my brain is exploding. Rob, I keep thinking, no one has ever asked me for data to prove that the coaching I do folks, whether it’s workshops, or I mean, they’ve they’ve asked, like, you know, what are your ratings on the workshop, but they haven’t been asked, what is the lasting impact of it of workshops, or of one on one coaching, no one has ever asked me for that. But when I tell them stories about the transformation that has happened with some with some of my clients, one that really comes to mind is I was coaching a really smart CEO on his personal brand to help him really think about his professional identity. He was he was moving jobs. And he told me after two or three sessions together, where we had really started to nail what his superpowers were right. And he was trying to feel really confident and focused. He told me that he went to a job interview. And it was maybe the second or third interview that he’d had with them. And they said, you have any questions? And he said, I have a really important question, actually. Are you looking for a new CEO? Who is going to charter open waters? And you know, take this company to new heights? Or are you looking for the CEO, that’s going to prevent us from hitting icebergs and other ships and other debris in the sea? And like keeping things safe keeping things, you know, status quo? And they said, great question. Very cool metaphor. The answer is in the short term, it’s status quo. And in the long term, it’s it’s charting open waters, and he stood up. He very politely thanked them for their time. And he said, I’ve been getting this feeling over the last couple of interviews. And I just want you to know, I am a trailblazer. I need to be charting open waters, or I will die slowly inside. And I don’t want to waste your time. I really, really have enjoyed meeting with you. And this guy, you don’t know him. Obviously, he’s a really nice guy. He would, he would never do this in a disrespectful way. But he said, Andrea, the work on my personal brand, made me confident enough to physically walk out of a job interview. And I was like, well, and I’ve told that story a few times, and people are like, whoa, that’s amazing. Like that story is more telling than any data could ever be about the power of personal branding. Right? So ROB  28:57   Oh, yeah. And it’s interesting, because, you know, if I think back in my old ad terms, he wanted to check on the brief. And when the brief wasn’t what he actually did that a couple of times back in the ad world where you’d be in presenting creative, and the first thing in the meeting is you go back through the creative brief. Yes, is what the agency has been asked to do. This is the strategy these are the most important thing you want to say here’s the support for the most important thing to believe the reasons to believe and having you know, presented for the first time to a very senior person and you go through the briefs in the garage. I’m not sure about the brief, but let’s see what you got. And having to stand up and go if you’re not sure the brief then when I have mixed notebook because it’s all built on that brief so you don’t go away and Lou trouble I bet. ANDREA   I bet you have specific stories where that actually happened. It did. Yeah. ROB   Wow happened on happened on a couple of more than one occasion. So, and it was one of those things where you know, the account people were very angry with me. But I was working for good creative directors who supported the decision. So always nice. But that’s essentially what he did. I mean, he sort of went, what he, you know, is very smart. ANDREA   Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he is a very smart guy. He’s now. Yeah, very, very happily employed in his in his new position, which is completely aligned with a superpower. So you mentioned Nancy duart. I just wanted to touch base on that. So she, I’ve read a couple of her books, and she is famous for working with Al Gore. Right, in the early days. ROB You know, I actually discovered her through a TED talk. And, and what I find interesting is where she came up with the what is to what could be was all just by looking at, I mean, it was funny, she, she, you know, dissected Steve Jobs. I think it’s 2007 iPhone introduction, Keynote, at Macworld, which is considered one of the best product pitches ever. Right? If you haven’t seen it, go watch it on. I sure it’s on YouTube. ROB   But she she dissected that, and then she dissected things like Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. And she found that they both followed, there’s still get back to the word cadence this, Unknown Speaker   what is what could be. And what idea was going to bridge that? What is the status quo, to what could be, you know, the threshold, or the new bliss, as she says, the language she uses? ANDREA   Right? Beautiful. Rob, are there? Is there anything else you want to add about storytelling? ROB   You know, the only thing I’ll do just because we’ve talked about presentations, I’ll just, you know, I’ll just add one of the things. So when you’re thinking of a presentation and a story arc, this is why I counseled people to think of what you want to say, break it into three chunks, you know, Act One, the beginning act to the middle, Act Three, the end. And then each of those chunks, has the, you know, what is what could be, what is what could be what is what could be, and then you mentioned it earlier, the power three, then structure your presentation. So I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you, and then I’m going to tell you what I told you. And you do that three times. So if you think of the flow of a presentation, you know, you have your opening remarks, thank you for being here, the washrooms are over there, hold your questions to the end, yada, yada, yada. Then you have a creative opening, which is often like an anecdote or something that catches the, the audience’s attention, then you set your sights set, set your sub subject, which is we’re here to do this. And I’m going to talk about agenda one, agenda two, agenda three. Now I’m going to do body one. Everything I want to say under agenda one, everything I want to say under agenda two, everything I want to say under agenda three, and then I’m going to sum up one, I’m going to sum up to I’m going to sign up three. And now here’s my conclusion, which is should be okay, I’m willing to follow the accident or, you know, whatever your you’re doing. And so that’s sort of a really practical way on how a storytelling arc works into a presentation just to sort of close the loop on all the talk about ANDREA   presentations. That is absolutely beautiful. So I’m going to end up I think creating a list. It’s a current, it’s a chronological list, right of how the presentation should go. And when you’re pulling it together, you look at that list, you first think about your audience, as you said, right? And then you think about what your main point or your objective is. And then you can start filling in the points here. For those of the listeners that are actually watching on YouTube, they and you probably saw, I have a massive smile on my face, because you’re talking about the power of three. I also talked about, say what you’re gonna say, and then say it and then tell them what you said. Beautiful, I love it. In fact, that’s what I do with every podcast episode. A really smart podcast or Dave Jackson told me once that people don’t get on a bus unless they know where it’s headed. So that’s why the very beginning Isn’t that beautiful. Learn. Yeah. And and so he’s, that’s people aren’t going to listen to a 45 minute podcast episode unless they know what they’re going to learn, or even what you’re just going to talk about, right. So I love that I will create a chronology and share that as well. So now let’s move on to the three power of three. rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Yep. Okay, question number one, introvert or extrovert? ROB   I could say what do you think? But believe it or not, when I do all that? I’m an introvert. Unknown Speaker   I believe it. Yeah. Unknown Speaker   People often don’t, but I am an introvert. Yeah, I ANDREA   think people miss attribute. So you’re not socially awkward. You’re not socially anxious? That’s actually different from an introvert. It’s right. It’s about your energy. And, okay, I would have guessed that a lot of the smartest folks that I know are introverts. I’m just gonna say that, as an extreme extrovert, I have noticed that. Question number two, what are your communication? Pet peeves? The things that bug you? ROB   You know, actually, this is going to be kind of, like, given the fact that my biggest client right now is, you know, a technology company. But I kind of missed the old fashioned phone call. Yeah, like a string of texts, rapid fire texts. Sometimes, sometimes it’s fine, but sometimes just my thumbs can’t keep up. So that kind of, it’s like, if you’re doing a rapid fire, you know, 20 texts in a row to get a point across, it really would have been a lot quicker if you just picked up the phone, or jumped on a Google meets and said, Okay, let’s talk about this, ANDREA   then. So is it a is it about the time that it takes? Or is it about the effectiveness somehow of the communication? Or is it both? ROB   I think it’s a little bit both. It’s definitely you just don’t you just, it’s just like, you don’t know where somebody’s going. And, you know, it’s like the stream of consciousness, which we do when we talk, but somehow we tend to organize our thoughts. I think more when we’re, you know, in person with somebody. ANDREA   Okay, last question. Is there a podcast, I’m gonna say, a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending lately? ROB    I think you had mentioned to me previously, Adam Grant. So I love I like Adam Grant. And I also like whether I listened to it on the radio or on the podcast, Terry O’Reilly under the influence, which is all about advertising. And so I know, for one thing I know Terry, he used to be radio producer, and I’ve worked with him. nicest guy in the world. Talk about being the smartest guy in the room. He was always at incredible Director of Talent. But he just just reminds me of the good old days, but also really informative and interesting. And he’s a master master storyteller. Yeah. And ANDREA   you know what, Rob? I should you’re just making me think I should interview him for a podcast episode not about storytelling, necessarily, but just generally about communication. That would be great. Yeah, ROB   he would be great to that. And then the other one, it’s one of my, you know, you know, guilty pleasures is, you know, my wife and I, we watch Jeopardy every single night. And when we can’t watch it, we tape it. So are we DVR? So inside Jeopardy? Oh, behind the scenes stories of you know, what’s going on in jeopardy land? ANDREA Ah, that’s really interesting. You know, I feel like, even though Jeopardy is about memorizing trivia for, for lack of a better word, right. People that do really well on Jeopardy are very high IQ typically. Right? And here you are saying that it’s your favorite show. So I’m not surprised. Okay, I’ll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much, Rob, for sharing your insights. We’ve got lots of gold here. Thank you for sharing your insights about the power of storytelling. ROB Thank you. I’m really happy to be here with you.   _________________________________   Thanks again to Rob for joining us and sharing your insights.     Like I said at the very beginning, we’re past the point of establishing how storytelling is important.  I think you get that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have listened to this episode. That said,  I love how Rob pointed out that– stories are SO much more engaging and persuasive than data. Ask Rob, the advertising executive.  Ask the executive communication coach. Ask anyone. Just use stories!!   Before I summarize, I want to remind you about the storytelling tip sheet I created for you. It includes this summary and lots more.  Just go to talkabouttalk.com/storytelling to download your free copy.   OK  the top three things I hope you to remember. What distinguishes great storytellers from not so great storytellers The #1 most important element of a great story Robs 9 step process for creating exceptional presentations   Number one: What distinguishes great storytellers from not so great storytellers.  Do you remember? I know.  I hate quizzes too.  Rob highlighted that the best storytellers are authentic and they engage with and know their audience. That’s a nice list. Authenticity, Engaging and Focused on the audience. So the next time you’re communicating a story, make sure it meets those criteria.   Number two: The most important element of a story. DO you remember what Rob said?  It’s the arc of the story.  The trajectory. The journey.  Even if it’s not an epic story, there’s tension and a climax.  So ask yourself when you’re telling a story whether there’s structure – a compelling arc.   Number three: Rob’s Nine Step Process for creating exceptional presentations. He mentioned this in the interview and emailed it to me later.  Here are the 9 steps: Audience Analysis ( particularly the decision maker) Set Your Objective (and focus on it) Collect Information (data, evidence, content) Develop Your Narrative (your three acts – or agendas. This is where you can add a relevant story) Create Your Slides  Read/Click Thru (get a sense of timing, Prepare for Q&A) Rehearse. Rehearse. Rehearse (and Make sure your technology is working) Deliver it  20/20 review  Many folks, like Rob said, start with the slides.  That was step 5 of 9 in his process. OK. This story is over.   Ove last reminder about the tip sheet. This is a document packed with suggestions that you can print or save to help you elevate your storytelling.  I hope you’ll go to talkabouttalk.com and get your free download.   Thanks again to Rob!  And thanks to you for listening!   If  you enjoyed this podcast episode, I hope you’ll share it with your friends and leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it.   If you want to connect, I’d love to her from you. You connect with me on LinkedIn and message me there.  You can also go to the talkabouttalk.com website and send me a message there.    Thanks again for listening.  And talk soon! The post The Power of STORYTELLING with Rob Tait (ep.151) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Are you a thought leader? Andrea interviews prolific thought leader Roger Martin, professor emeritus and past Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. Learn the distinction between private and public thought leadership, why you should consider your cadence in publishing, and three objective criteria to use when evaluating your brand promise, whether it’s for an advertising campaign or for your own personal brand.   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/ RESOURCES Roger Martin https://rogerlmartin.com/ HBR – Harvard Business Review – 2023 Year in Review – https://hbr.org/year-in-review Roger Martin’s Jan’24 HBR article – https://hbr.org/2024/01/the-right-way-to-build-your-brand Andrea’s Self-Introduction article – https://hbr.org/2022/08/a-simple-way-to-introduce-yourself Roger Martin video (A Plan is Not a Strategy) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYlGRnC7J8 Michael Porter HBR video (Porter’s 5 Forces) – https://youtu.be/mYF2_FBCvXw? Smart Brevity book – https://amzn.to/3pj2Jdj Roger’s Favorite Thought Leaders – Amy Edmondson – https://amycedmondson.com/ Adam Grant – https://adamgrant.net/ Dan Pink – https://www.danpink.com/ Roger’s favorite podcasts – Farnham Street Knowledge Project podcast – https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/ Tiffany Bova’s What’s Next! podcast – https://www.tiffanibova.com/whats-next-podcast/ TRANSCRIPT Well, hello there and welcome to talk about Talk Podcast Episode #150. I am so excited about this episode. Today we’re tackling the topic of thought leadership and building your brand.   Just over a month ago, I was sitting in the waiting room of my eye doctor scrolling through emails on my phone when I saw an e-mail from HBR – Harvard Business Review. The e-mail was titled “HBR’s best of 2023.” Interesting. So I opened up the e-mail and I started scrolling. … I paused because I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then I gasped out loud. Someone asked me. Are you OK? I had a huge smile on my face. Yes, I’m definitely OK, thank you.   What I saw on my phone was the announcement that my HBR article entitled, “A Simple Framework to Introduce Yourself”, was one of the top 3 most read articles in HBR in 2023. Wow, I couldn’t believe my eyes.    I kept scrolling through the email and I saw a face that looked very familiar. It was the face of Roger Martin, my old boss, the former Dean at the Rotman School of Management. The e-mail said that Rogers’ video, entitled “A Plan Is Not a Strategy,” won the award for being the most downloaded video on HBR in 2023.   So – I went home and I promptly wrote Roger a congratulations e-mail. I also asked him if I could interview him for the Talk About Talk podcast. And here we are.   Welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast episode number 150, where we’re talking thought leadership and building your brand.   In case we haven’t met, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you to elevate your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed and you can accomplish your career goals.   If you go to the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.    Alright let’s get into this.   For this episode, as I said, you’re going to hear my interview with my old boss from when I was on the faculty at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. I’m going to interview my boss, the former Dean, Roger Martin.    Roger is undeniably a PROLIFIC thought leader, with 33 HBR articles, 13 books, and more. And let me tell you, if you’re interested in thought leadership and building your brand, this interview is full of gold.   Here’s how this episode is going to go. First, I’m going to briefly introduce Roger and then we’re going to get right into the interview. And then at the end, I’m going to summarize with three, yes, of course, three of the main thoughts or themes that I want to reinforce for us.   As I said, this interview is full of gold. But you really don’t need to take notes. The transcript of the entire interview is included in the show notes which you can find if you go to thetalkabouttalk.com website. And also, as I said, I will summarize the main points at the end.    I’m really proud of this episode now. But I have to tell you, this was not an easy episode to produce. First of all, I was suffering from a bad cold when I conducted the interview with Roger, and I had a terrible coughing fit at the very beginning of the interview. So if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re going to see me turn my microphone on mute and cough – a LOT. Then about 20 minutes later, the battery in Rogers computer died. And we lost our connection, so we had to start again after he plugged his computer in and we reconnected.   Aye aye aye, It’s never easy, right! Anyway, I’m really pleased with how this episode turned out.   OK -let’s do this.  Let me introduce Roger and then we’ll get into the interview.   Roger Martin received his BA from Harvard College, then in 1981 he earned his MBA from the Harvard Business School.    Roger then spent 13 years as a Director of Monitor Company, a global strategy consulting firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. You’ll hear Roger talk about how his thought leadership started there with the internal memos he used to write.   Roger’s now a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, That’s where we crossed paths.   Today Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego, Ford, BHP and Verizon.   Roger’s newest book is A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness. His previous twelve books include When More is Not Better , Creating Great Choices. Getting Beyond Better and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley, which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50.   As of January 2024, Roger has written 33 Harvard Business Review articles.   In 2010, Roger was named one of the 27 most influential designers in the world by Business Week. In 2007 he was named a Business Week ‘B-School All-Star’ for being one of the 10 most influential business professors in the world. Business Week also named him one of seven ‘Innovation Gurus’ in 2005.   And in 2017, Roger was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers.   Clearly, Roger is a thought leader.     ANDREA: Thank you Roger, so much for being here to talk about building your brand. ROGER (00:44): It is great to be here, and as you know, we go way back. And so I always love interacting with the professors I work with in the good old days at Rotman School of Management, so thank you. ANDREA (00:57): Me too. So as we were discussing before we press record, your name came across my screen when I got the email about HBR’s most downloaded podcast, most downloaded articles and most downloaded video. You had the most downloaded video of 2023. Congratulations. ROGER (01:24): Thank you. Thank you. You can never tell Andrea if you would’ve said, oh, this one is going to do 3.4 million views at last count. I would’ve said, oh, come on, really? But it just hit some vein in people’s thinking that seemed to resonate. And same I’m sure with your article where you probably didn’t necessarily know that it was going to strike. But in the modern world, when something sort of hits an important vein like that, it just goes and there’s no end to it going. ANDREA (01:59): So how many downloads? You told me when we were emailing, how many downloads approximately did it get? ROGER (02:05): It said 3.4 million views and counting. Okay. And so it’s by now by $400,000, a 400,000 view margin, the most viewed video in the history of Harvard Business Review videos. And it is moving away from the pack. Mike Porter, my beloved, my beloved colleague, Mike Porter’s, 15-year-old one explaining the five forces was always number one at now 3 million. ANDREA (02:43): I remember reading that one too. I will leave a link in the show notes so that the listeners can also watch. It’s called A plan is not a Strategy, right? ROGER (02:52): That is correct. That is correct. ANDREA (02:53): Very compelling title by the way. I’m sure that that also contributed to the number, but then they don’t count views unless they keep viewing. Right? So ROGER (03:01): Yep. No, no. And I would give HBR and I know you publish a lot there too. I’d give them great credit. The difference between HBR now and 30 years ago when I did my first article is there, it was just content. The covers of the magazine were bland and boring. There was no artwork associated with them. No production values. ANDREA (03:25): I remember that. ROGER (03:26): Yeah. But now the magazine, the website, these videos are very, in my view, high production values. So they did a great job of graphics and the like in the video. So I give them great credit for taking whatever content. I guess my content was interesting enough, but they took that and made the most of it rather than 30 years ago. They would’ve made the least of it, honestly. And so I give them credit and hopefully you’ve had a good experience on that front too. ANDREA (03:56): Very good. It is been great. People contact me because of the article. So you said, I guess it was good enough. You’re being very humbled. So for those people who don’t know Roger Martin, he is in fact a prolific thought leader. Roger, just in January, 2024, published his 33rd article in HBR. He also does keynotes. He’s published elsewhere. He’s published how many books? ROGER (04:26): 13. ANDREA (04:28): 13. Lucky number 13 books. So do you have some advice when I’m speaking with executives, coaching them on their personal brand, establishing their professional identity, I sometimes get questions about thought leadership and is it required as a part of being an effective leader? Do you have any advice for those executives out there who are seeking to, as we say, establish thought leadership? ROGER (04:57): Yeah. Well, I guess I would say the answer to your question is actually yes. But that answer might not be what people think it is because I think there’s a difference between a public thought leader and a private thought leader. And I know that difference because I was a private thought leader until 1998. What does that mean? Well, I was at one of the leaders of a firm called Monitor Company. It was a firm that was built essentially around Mike Porter. And I liked to communicate with my clients, my CEO clients, often with memos because I sort of hate PowerPoint and it’s just not the same as gathering your thoughts to put together a coherent memo. And so I would write memos to CEOs on all sorts of interesting topics that they had on their minds, and I became known within Monitor for that. And people would just email me all the time and say, Roger, have you written anything on overhead costs? (06:09): Have you written anything on Industry Evolution? Have you written anything on whatever one after another? So much so that I put together a file on my computer desktop called Greatest Hits, and they were just ones that other monitor people asked for because I hated searching through client files to find, oh, I did write something on that one time. But that was highly private thought leader. Nobody outside Monitor knew it was only other monitor consultants knew that the guy within Monitor to ask to email was me, because I probably had done something in a similar way. I think to be an effective leader, you have to have thought leadership within your organization. They need to know what you stand for, what do you care about and how do you think about what you think about and why? And so my longtime friend and co-author Ag Laffy was that way within Proctor before he became more famous outside there were Agism, the consumer is boss. (07:21): We have to win the first moment of truth, which is when the consumer does or does not pick your product off the shelves before we win the second movement of truth, which is when she puts our lay on her face or the guy shampoos his hair with head and shoulders or whatever. So he was a thought leader. He took the time to be able to communicate in a clear and compelling way what was on his mind and what he thought was important. And I think if you can’t do that, if they say, yeah, Andrea or Roger’s, my CEO, but they run the place, but I don’t really know what they think, I don’t think you’re going to be nearly as effective as if you are that kind of thought leader. But it is a completely different thing to be a public thought leader, which I only became actually only when I figured out it was my job when I got to be dean of Rotman school. As you know, I hired you in 1998 and it just sort of occurred to me I shouldn’t, especially at a University of Toronto as a public university, at a public university, you should be writing for more people than this private little group. And so I just started, I literally did similar things, summarized my thought as in what was hopefully a useful way and projected it to the outside world, but that’s different form of thought leadership in my view. ANDREA (08:59): So I was going to ask you a question about The topic that you become a thought leader on, so it could be functional expertise, discipline, expertise. You’re saying it could be your strategy, it could be an element of something that your customer cares about. So in terms of what the topic is, people think there’s put your stake in the ground and you decide you’re a thought leader in a certain area and you’re like, well, if you think about it in terms of public and private thought leadership, suddenly the types of topics expand. ROGER (09:43): I think that’s true. And I think you have to, products and services sort of have to stand for something. And I think people, similarly, if you’re sort of all over the place on what you applying on, people are not going to be able to sort of say, oh, here’s what I can expect from Roger. Here’s what I can expect from Andrea. And it turns out though that I would say be careful of putting yourself in a box. Yes, people think about me as having things to say about strategy. That would be one thing that they would know me for. But I think more generally, and I think this is reflected in my last book, a new way to think, I think people expect me to kind of go back to first principles on management and help people find more powerful, productive ways to think about whatever management subject is on their mind. ANDREA (11:38): So Roger, you’re speaking my language. You’re really talking about Roger’s personal brand, your personal brand, your professional identity is someone who brings in business fundamentals and teaches or coaches, people how to think about things in a different way so that they can create a strategy, not just a plan to accomplish their goals. You could call it a recipe, you could call it, but it’s your brand. You now have a reputation for doing this. ROGER (12:05): I think so. I think so. And another piece of it is it’s enabling. So I don’t just say you should do the following thing. I say, here’s why. Here’s the reasoning behind why, so that you can really internalize it and understand. That’s why, and I do that in part to protect the person on the receiving end of the advice because virtually all of my views are minority views. So at least 85, if not 90% of all things that are called strategy in the world aren’t planning. And I say, don’t do that. Do this other thing. And the person who listens to me and does this other thing is going to have a whole bunch of people saying, why are you doing that? Do it our way, the way we’ve ANDREA (12:58): Always ROGER (12:58): Done it. I have to equip them with the logic that says, so I have to explain why sensible people, totally sensible. People are planning and thinking it’s strategy and here’s why it’s sensible and here’s how they got there and here’s the history how they got there, but it’s not working. Here would be another way of doing it and here’s why. And if there’s anything I think I’m known for, it’s that it’s helping people be able to think differently, not just giving people different answers ANDREA (13:39): And not accusing them of making irreparable fatal mistakes in what they’re doing. So the analogy for me in terms of coaching people on their personal brand is I ask people, what do you think the most common mistake is that people make with their personal brand? There are many mistakes that people make, but one of the most common is copying others. Yes. And then I see this look and I say, listen, we are social learners. We look around, we see other people that are successful around us and we emulate them. And I say, that’s a fantastic strategy early in your career, if you want to knock it out of the park later in your career, double down on your unique passions and expertise and then you will be your happiest and most successful self. So I’m not saying you’re an idiot for copying other people. I explain why people do that. It’s very common. In fact, we’re wired to do that. Here’s this insight that I can provide you with, so I think we’re kind of doing the same thing, Roger. ROGER (14:38): No, no, I think so. And there’s one of my most beloved mentors, if not other than my parents most beloved mentor is a guy that late great Chris arduous. One of the things he explained to me, Andrea, way back when is he said, if when you’re seeing somebody doing something that you think is not, doesn’t make a bunch of sense, they shouldn’t be doing that. If you best and only explanation is either they’re stupid or evil, good luck to you in ever getting something to change. Right? And I hear you saying something similar. You are saying, no, no, no, no, no, you’re sensible. You’re being sensible, but the sensible thing you’re doing isn’t getting you the results you want. So you have to empathize with them. Most people who try to change other people literally think that person is either stupid or evil and I’ve got to fix them, and they have no success because the person on the receiving end of that thought in your mind, you don’t express it or anything. They know that you’re essentially judging them as stupid or evil and they want to listen to you. They want to cut off the right arm last person. (16:03): That’s ANDREA (16:03): Why I’m ask you a question. ROGER (16:04): We’re very similar in that respect from the sounds of it. ANDREA (16:06): Yeah. I want to ask you a question that’s a little bit more specific to thought leadership for executives today, right? So as you said, we knew each other a long time ago when books were really the way that it was sort of like the pinnacle of thought leadership was to write a book and if you became a bestseller, even better. Now we’ve got Ted Talks. You’re talking about you yourself evolving from writing internal memos to now having the most downloaded video at HBR and also having, as I said, prolific books and so on. How can CEOs really think about media? I would love to hear just any general or specific comments that you have about, is it good to double down on one kind of media or should we go broad with the same message? How can we think about leveraging media? ROGER (17:07): It is a good question, and the question on books is Apropo one for me. I’ve written 13 of them and I’m feeling less like writing books than I used to. The thing that I write most, as you may know, is my medium column. I’ve got a column on Medium. I started it three and a half years ago called the Playing to Win Practitioner Insights series. I’ve just, on Monday, I drop a new piece every Monday and have for the past 170 odd weeks, but just started the fourth year of the series. And I love that more than I love writing books. As it turns out, I like the quick turnaround. I think about something, it can be out next Monday. Sometimes it’s out a few Mondays later, I percolating on it, but if I really want it out, it can be out. They’re designed to be six to eight minute reads. So 1500 to 2000 words is what it turns out. That medium says they’ll medium will judge how many versions of that. So that’s six to eight minutes, and I’ve gone up from zero followers to Atlas Count 213,000, which is now on the edge of the top 10 of medium followership as it turns out. I like that and people seem to seem like it a lot. I’ve had just under a million and a half views of my medium pieces. So ANDREA (18:55): To your question, the analogy for me is my podcast. So what can we learn from that? Is it the fact that you have a regular cadence of publication and that’s what works for you? I’m sure it varies by person in terms of what’s going to work. ROGER (19:10): No, but there are some rules. I think people are habit driven. People have habits of doing things right. This is why movie sequels, that’s the whole business is movie sequels. I have a habit of watching every equalizer movie when it comes out. And so if it was the same plot, but they called it something else, I might watch it and I might not, even if it was Denzel Washington, I might or might not watch it, but if it’s equalizer four, I will watch it because I’ve developed a habit of doing that and people are all habit driven. And so what if you want to be a thought leader of consequence, you need to have a bunch of people adopting you as a habit. You’ve got to make that easier for them rather than harder for them. And so if Andrea, you did a podcast and then disappear for a while and then wrote some books and did a podcast the seven months later, and then it was three months after that, so it’s not even a regular interval. People would find it hard to have an Andrea habit, but instead they say, you know what? I just check and I know Andrea’s got a series and she comes out every two weeks with one ANDREA (20:43): Every second Monday at 1:00 AM Eastern. ROGER (20:46): Do you? Okay, that’s the best. So the best mine are 9:00 AM Eastern on Mondays, give or take, take half an hour or so depending on my schedule. So habit has to be, you will not be a thought leader if people do not have a habit of you. And so what you have to do is make it easier to have an Andrea habit and every two weeks at the same time and the same sort of thing. If it suddenly was No, I’m dropping a written thing at that time, they say, no, no, no, no, no. It’s a podcast, Andrea, it’s a podcast. What’s your problem? You’re not helping me feel good about my habit. You’re sort of jerking me a little bit out of my sense of calmness. So that’s why they need to know what to expect. I mean, it goes to the promise article that I know we’ve talked about is that in some sense you’re making a promise. ANDREA (22:00): Yes. ROGER (22:01): Your promise is that’s true. Yeah. Every two weeks, 1:00 AM eastern, a podcast drops and it’s going to be me, Andrea, talking to somebody else about a subject in this domain. That’s a promise. ANDREA (22:22): Yes. ROGER (22:24): And if you make no promise, you say, I’m Andrea and I do whatever the hell I please whenever I please at random intervals. B of Skinner learned this a long time ago with pigeons. They go nuts if they get hit at in levels infrequent times. If they know every morning they’re going to get a wrap on the head, they can live with that. They can deal with it. They don’t like it, but they can deal with it. If it’s random, they go nuts. They go crazy. So people like to be able to have a habit. ANDREA (23:04): I’m so glad that I have a content calendar. So I have a newsletter that comes out once every Thursday. I’m thinking about all these things and I want to shift to what you made me think about in the right way to build your brand HBR article. But before we shift away from thought leadership per se, I want to ask you who I can guess based on previous conversations that you and I have had, what are the thought leaderships thought leaders out there right now that you admire the most? ROGER (23:40): Good question. Sorry, I have to get a charger for my computer. ANDREA (23:50): Oh, ROGER (23:55): There we go. Who are my favorite thought leaders these days? Well, Amy Edmonton is a really good friend and I like what she does. Adam Grant is a really good friend. I like what he does. He’s ANDREA (24:17): Definitely one of my favorites as well. Wow. Yeah, ROGER (24:20): Dan Pink. Dan Pink is different. He’s just such a down the learning curve journalist, that was what he was. He creates wonderful stories around what he does. So whatever topic, Dan Pink tackles, he’ll tackle it ANDREA (24:48): From a journalist perspective. Right? ROGER (24:50): Yeah, just beautifully is the way I think about it. ANDREA (24:55): Those are three great ones. I’m going to put some links in. I have read Dan Pink, but I am not as familiar with his, so I’m going to, based on your recommendation, pursue that a little bit more, but I’ll put links to all three of those thought leaders in the show notes. I want to shift to your most recent HBR article, the Right Way to Build your brand. And you and I had a conversation off camera where we were talking about the old marketing days and the new marketing days and how this has sort of come together. And now you’ve done this research to address this sort of disparity between performance marketing and brand marketing with a beautiful evidence-based prescription for marketers on how to execute brand marketing or what we used to call awareness marketing in a way that is going to get results. So do you want to share the premise of the article? ROGER (25:59): Sure. Well, the premise is that a brand, you have a brand only when you make a promise to your customer, whoever that is, whether it’s a corporation or a consumer, you make a promise to that customer. Fulfill that promise, make it fulfill it until such time as the customer doesn’t think about whether or not you will fulfill your promise. Then you have a brand, ANDREA (26:35): You as a marketer don’t have a brand. Yeah. ROGER (26:39): So you have to stand for something that they care about, they find valuable, and you’ve got to deliver on it. And if you don’t make a promise, it’s just a competitive world, somebody else will. And if you fulfill it some of the time, but not others of the time. So back to your podcast, if randomly there’s just nothing at 1:00 AM on the week that there should have been something and it’s just randomly, then they’ll say, well, I like Andrea’s podcasts when they show up, but am I going to count on that? No, because sometimes they don’t show up. So you wouldn’t have consistently fulfilled a promise to have really interesting content on this subject in this format that it shows up at that time. And I would say, not to be too harsh, you deserve it. You deserve not to be a brand because, because it’s so unclear. ANDREA (27:59): So in my read of the article, there are also three criteria associated with the promise that are necessary. It needs to be memorable, valuable, and deliverable. Deliverable means you make good on the promise, really, ultimately. That’s right. Can you elaborate on what those three levers are or? Sure. ROGER (28:19): Yeah. So the memorable one is it’s clear enough that it’s easy for you to remember. And again, for me, I think of Geico, 15 minutes could save you. 15% is memorable because it’s crystal clear. It’s absolutely crystal clear. I think even though it’s probably good because they pounded it for many years, you’re in good hands with Allstate or Nationwide is on your side, I don’t think are as meaningfully functionally memorable as they would be as the Geico one. And it’s because they’re more elliptical. What does in good hands actually mean? What does it mean the insurance company is going to do? Are they always going to fulfill my claims and quickly, well, maybe, I don’t know. Nationwide is on your side. Does that mean regardless of what I do, I don’t think they’re as crisply memorable as I spend 15 minutes and I get 15%. It ANDREA (29:39): Seems like it’s specificity. ROGER (29:41): Well, it is just not elliptical. You don’t have to kind of think too much about it and value. I think there’s, and you would know this six ways to Sunday, there are core category benefits of any category. If we go Byron Sharping on this, there are core benefits. There are fringe benefits, and it’s going to be valuable to the extent that it deals with a core category benefit. (30:23): If hair colorants, it’s getting your hair colored the way you want it colored what you imagine it being, or if head and shoulders again gets rid of your dandruff. Those are the category benefits. So to the extent to which the promise is about a core category benefit that clearly matters to customers, that’s going to be more powerful and then deliverable, you can actually deliver it. The flip side of deliverable is sort of auditable. So that again, what I like about 15% could save, 15 minutes could save you 15% is the degree to which you go online, you spend 15 minutes and did I get a quote that was 15% less? And so you can audit that one nationwide is on your side, good hands with all state. How exactly do you audit that? And I think if it’s super auditable, the company will be embarrassed quickly if it can’t deliver. And so I think auditable makes it more likely to be a deliverable less auditable. We’re a great company or we’re going to save the planet. ANDREA (31:48): Or even you can depend on us, right? It’s okay, ROGER (31:52): In what particular way can we depend on it? Sherman Williams has got this knowing that I like that says, you can say your color into their little machine now that’s in the thing, and it will produce that color for you. I want Polynesian Island, that blue water, and you can say that to it and it’ll come up with something for you. ANDREA (32:30): Oh, amazing. That sounds very cool. ROGER (32:32): Yeah. But does it come up with a color? It’s very auditable. ANDREA (32:44): If you could read my thought bubbles right now, Roger, you would be laughing because everything you’re saying, I’m like the analogy for that with personal branding is this, or this is an exception. So in the article, I really love this point about the challenge that brand marketers have now in establishing what’s the story? How are we going to get brand marketing approved or awareness marketing approved When this performance marketing, we’re actually measuring and benefiting immediately. It’s almost like the performance marketing is short-term wins. So how can we even fight against that in terms of awareness or brand marketing when it’s a longer term haul from awareness to interest, to desire to action versus immediately to action. So when I put that lens overlay onto personal branding, I feel like personal branding is about doing the work to optimize the brand for your awareness, if you want to call it campaign where you’re communicating as you might through internal messages or memos that you’re sending to staff through your memo that you’re writing, through books that you’re writing, through keynote speeches, through how you’re acting in meetings, through every single conversation that you have. I’m wondering if the three levers that we talked about in terms of, or criterion that the message is or the promise is memorable, valuable and deliverable, how would that translate in terms of personal branding? So maybe we need a specific example, so we can use me again if you want. I’m an executive communication coach and I have a podcast and I do workshops and one-on-one coaching. (34:48): How is that message memorable, valuable, and deliverable? ROGER (34:53): Well, I think first you have to make a promise, which is if you work with me and you listen to me, you’ll gain these communication benefits. Your communication will go from here to here in some sense, whatever way you’d want to define that. Or often I think it could be that here’s a particular communication problem that they’ve come to you with. It’s sort of like the I am on the wrong page with the board or in my quarterly analyst meetings, I don’t feel like they work so well. I get beat up or something. So whatever it’s you say, my promise is if you work with me for the next three months, you will have great quarterly meetings. And so then to be memorable, I think I would paint a picture of it. I would say, let’s look at videos from, or you tell I would do it this way. (36:08): Probably I would say, you tell me who you think does a great job at this. I go get a video of that person because most of these are now videoed on their website. So I just get their quarterly, quarterly kind of meeting on it. I’d sit them down and say, let’s watch this. Yeah, I promise you will be as effective as that person. So that’ll be very memorable because they’ll have an image of the person that they wish they could be as well. I say, you’re going to be different because everybody, this is Dale Carnegie. Do you know what he said? What ANDREA (36:46): He said? Many things ROGER (36:47): He said on this front, he said, never give another man. It was a man’s world. Never give another man’s speech. And he said something to the effect of, if you’re the EA of some important person, the senator and the senator literally falls down and smashes his head five minutes before the speech. Do not go up to the podium and read his speech. What you should do is do your own thing because you should never give another event speech. You have to be yourself, ANDREA (37:22): Roger. This is consistent with what we were saying about having your unique personal brand. Right, exactly. Yourself and you’ll be your best. Yeah, ROGER (37:30): And I got to be an awesome presenter at monitor over practice. Only after I decided not to be Mark Fuller, who I tried to be, who was the CEO. He was the adult. We were all in our twenties and he was in his early thirties and he was an outstanding presenter. And I would watch ’em and say, I can do that too. I can’t. I can do something else. But I’d make it memorable by giving them an image of it. That person can say, if Andrea can make me as effective as her or him, whoever that person is, that would be memorable, valuable. In this case, you’ve listened enough for them to say it’s not communications in general that get on my nerves the most. It’s the earnings calls and getting terrible or ER people are like, oh God, and we get terrible. So you’ve identified the benefit that they’re seeking and you’ve aimed right at instead of saying, no, no, no, no, let’s not worry about that. (38:35): We’ll get to that sometime later and just have it so valuable. Yes. Valuable is category benefit they care about. Yeah, a thing that they care about most. And then deliverable is, I would say that one, you’ve got to be able to deliver that. You can’t say that to somebody when you know that some people are C crummy, which I don’t think is true. Some people are crummy communicators or you can only work with somebody. But then to make it auditable, to make it the most powerful promise, I’d say, here’s a roadmap. I think it’s going to take you six months and you’re going to have to practice in your first quarter is going to be a quarterly.  Right? So that’s what I would do on, on, uh, on personal branding. And so, so what I would hope that happens is then he or she, uh, says to their buddy when they talk about, ah, boy, my earnings falls. I haven’t been doing so well. Or I, they ask me to make these big Yeah. Presentations to all staff and I do such a crummy job. And they’ll say, there’s this woman, Andrea, uh, and she, she will tell you what she can do and she’ll do it. Right. She’ll absolutely, absolutely do it. Yeah. Then then you’ve got a brand, right? Yeah. You’ve got a brand where, where people say, here’s your promise. And, and it’s, it’s been memorable enough that they can repeat it. Yeah. And, uh, and it was valuable to them. And they can vote that you can deliver it. And then you’re, you’re off to the races ANDREA (02:54): And you benefit from organic word of mouth, which is my dissertation research. I was gonna also add that your, your, uh, comments about promises. Remind me. I was interviewing one of my clients, one of my personal branding clients. I was interviewing some of her stakeholders to get input to her, her existing personal brand. And one of her clients said, she’s very dependable. She has a very high say, do ratio. And I was like, oh, that is gold. We all wanna have a high say do, do ratio. In fact, we as humans, as personally and professionally, right? We wanna be dependable. And then also the brands that we’re managing, you wanna have a high say, do ratio. It’s another way of putting you, you keep your promises, ROGER (03:41): Right? Absolutely. No say do is is keep promise for sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, the, the, the, the article, uh, that I, uh, that I wrote with Jan and Mimi, who are great to, great to work with, by the way, uh, um, LinkedIn folks, uh, I mean, like many of my <laugh> my articles star, it’s not, it’s not earth shattering no surprise when you think about it. Yeah. You, you know, you say, ah, that, that makes, that makes sense. And that’s again, a a lot of, for what it’s worth, my, my work, which is, which is bringing a way to think about something that is, that, that may not be earth shattering, but if you don’t think about it that way, you just don’t do it. Yeah. And, and you saw the little, the little thing on, on the, the Super Bowl, right. Super Bowl ads, and you know, how much a Super Bowl ad costs, uh, uh, Andrea, and, and even in that context, 60% ish of them in, in, in last year’s, uh, uh, super Bowl, and I bet it’ll be this for, in the Super Bowl a month from now. Yeah. Had no promise whatsoever. And, and so, so even though it makes sense when you say it, if people don’t have that framework in their head that says, I better, I better kind of, uh, you know, audit it, uh, for that. Um, and I, you know, so ANDREA (05:05): You, you’ve, I’ve worked ROGER (05:06): Forever with Proctor and Gamble, right? And, and, and so I, you know, I, I went to my friends there and said, and, and said, Hey, this is coming out and whatever. And, um, and a, a really senior guy there put together a series of com, uh, of ed copy for me. Yeah. And he wanted to review with me together because he had come to a confusion on, and he wanted to understand whether it was, and, and he said, he said, and, and, and it was five ads. And, and he asked me, you know, at the end, do you know why I put them in the order? I did. And I, and I said, yeah, the promises were less memorable, valuable, deliverable, uh, kind of, uh, at the first one, all, all the way, they’re still okay. ’cause they’re proctor and they’re really good. Uh, but he said, even Hmm, even within our ads, there’s a variability on this front. And I, uh, now that I’ve, now it’s sort of, now that I’ve, now that I’ve understood the, the data here more Yeah. That variability, you know, there’s no good reason for, for allowing that to, to happen, ANDREA (06:10): Right? So, like you said, it’s not rocket science, but you’ve come up with a framework. And, and by the way, I wanna, um, just note to the regular listeners of talk about talk. They know I’m a huge fan of the power of three. You’ve identified three criteria against which brand marketing campaigns can be evaluated rather objectively, right? Yes. When the advertising agency comes, or the promotional agency comes and presents, here are our three ideas. Here’s our, our leading idea. What do you think? Are you gonna approve this? Instead of like, oh, I like it because of this, or not because of this, or trying to sound, sound quote unquote strategic. You can say, here’s the three criteria. I’m putting it against me. Is it memorable? Is it valuable? And is it a deliverable promise? Yes or no, it’s approved or not approved. I think, yes, in the same thing by the way that, um, my three point self introduction framework, you talk about your present self, you establish your superpower, then you establish credibility by talking about your past. So it’s present, past, and then future. You make an enthusiastic statement about the future working with the person. It’s not rocket science, but it’s a framework that you can use in your, in your mind that, that, um, alleviate some of the anxiety associated with self introductions. And it works. So, yeah. (07:29): Okay. And, ROGER (07:30): And it’s important. And it’s important. I mean, I know this slightly off topic too, but, but, but, and this is your more or your old world of ads and, and dealing with ad agencies and the like, unfortunately, ad agencies have a, have a different metric, uh, than than their clients. ANDREA (07:47): I know. They do. ROGER (07:49): What’s their metric, ANDREA (07:50): Right? They’re trying to win awards. ROGER (07:52): You got it. ANDREA (07:53): Right. I know <laugh>. I know, ROGER (07:56): I know. You know, that’s why I, that’s why I asked that que that that listeners will, will understand that, that that’s not a obvious, obvious answer. Right. You had to, you had to be an insider kind of to know, but that’s what they want. ANDREA (08:08): Yeah. I mean, and the real power is ROGER (08:10): What they have on their desks, plaques in their office. It’s not, we increase sales this much for this client. It’s, I got that con lion, uh, kind of, uh, award. And so that’s why it’s so important is you’ve got to audit them because they are not interested in what you are most interested in. Right. And if you think otherwise, you know, you, you will be, you’ll be sadly disappointed. Repeatedly ANDREA (08:36): True. True. Okay. Are you ready to answer the three rapid fire questions? ROGER (08:44): Sure. Sure. ANDREA (08:45): Question number one, are you an introvert or an extrovert ROGER (08:49): Introvert in spades? ANDREA (08:52): And how does that affect your communication? ROGER (08:55): Um, I, you know, I, I just have to make sure that I am, uh, well rested before important communications. Oh. So if, if I were to have had, uh, back to back to back beatings before this, uh, and not had a chance to just settle and, and recharge, uh, I, I, hopefully I’ve done an okay job. Yeah. I would’ve done a crappy job Yeah. At doing it because my brain would’ve been like this. Yeah. And I would’ve been depleted in, in energy. So it’s more, it’s more about prep for communication because people don’t understand about introverts. Introverts are, are like, like people as much as other people know that introverts simply lose energy by interacting with other people. Extroverts gain energy, uh, uh, from interacting with, uh, uh, with other, other people. And so you have, you have to protect, introvert has to protect their energy for important communications. ANDREA (09:59): Agree. So, a lot of people conflate introversion with shyness, and they in fact are orthogonal. If you define shyness as social anxiety, it’s, it’s a, it’s a completely different concept, right? From, from introversion. It really is about managing your energy. If you wanna, if you wanna leverage your superpower. If you’re an introvert, you’re also probably a great listener, right? And there, there are great things associated with it, managing your energy as an introvert or as an extrovert. Um, I used to come home from board meetings at 10, 10 30 at night, and I’d be wired because I was, I was as an extrovert full of energy. And I, and I realized then I needed to figure out a way of managing my energy that way. So, okay. These rapid fire questions are not, are not going very rapid. Second question. What are your communication pet peeves or pet peeve? ROGER (10:47): Uh, elliptical, uh, introductions. Right? Where it’s like really, I, I, I would rather, I would rather go right into what you’re gonna gonna say, um, uh, and, and not leave people guessing. And so when some people, when somebody come used to come into my office as dean and, and start talking about stuffing, and, and I, and I don’t know what it’s about. I, I, I just like, it’s, it, it starts to get under my, my skin. And I will often, I would often do a timeout. Could we just subject, yeah. Could we have a subject of this meeting? ANDREA (11:28): Did you read, uh, did you read the book Smart Brevity? ROGER (11:31): No, no. Is good. Oh, ANDREA (11:33): Highly recommend. So you’ll even like the format of it, um, in terms production quality. So the whole point of smart brevity is tell me what you’re gonna tell me. Tell me how long it’s gonna take and why I’m gonna read this, and then, and what the point is. Right. And then gimme the details. Uh, ROGER (11:51): Boom. I’m, I’m, I’m with it. Who, who’s, what kind of person has written it? Is it an ANDREA (11:55): Acronym? Acronym? Uh, it’s the three co-founders of Axios. ROGER (11:59): Oh. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Fascinating. Okay. Okay. That, that sounds Well, ANDREA (12:04): I’ll put a link, link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah. Okay. Third question. Is there a podcast that you find yourself recommending lately? ROGER (12:16): Well, I, I’ll tell you what my favorite podcast is. It’s the Farnham Street Knowledge Project podcast. Uh, and it’s a Canadian guy who used to be in, in, uh, uh, in csis, who has gone and done and, and, and done this, uh, this podcast. It’s called The Knowledge Project. And it’s, it’s my favorite to be interviewed by. And that’s probably like, I, I, my, my greatest, uh, interaction with podcasts is who I’m, who I’m what podcast I’m interviewed by. That, that, and the podcast he did, uh, with me was my, uh, I’ve gotten the most positive feedback from people listening to that, of any podcast I’ve ever, I’ve ever done. Wow. ANDREA (13:02): Something to aspire to. ROGER (13:03): Yeah. Yes. Well, absolutely. Absolutely. ANDREA (13:06): What about, uh, what about, I also ROGER (13:07): Love Tiff, Tiffany Bova, I don’t know if you ever listened to her, Tiffany Bova. Yep. She, she does a, uh, a good, uh, a good podcast.   ANDREA Alright. Thank you. Roger. Is there anything else you wanna add about establishing thought leadership about the right way to build your brand and or about personal branding or maybe a meta comment about how to ROGER (13:57): Well, you, you, you, you, you’ve got a love doing it. Um, so people often ask me, you know, Roger, you write so much. Right? The medium column, the, uh, practitioner inside is, is the equivalent in length, the four playing the wins. And they say, how can you write so much? How do you carve out time? And I said, well, that would be like asking my older brother who loves golf, how does he possibly, and he is a, he runs a big business, but he plays 75 rounds of golf a year, maybe a hundred for all I know, but 70, 75, at least. Now, Rick, how on earth could you possibly find the time to fit it in? He loves it. He’s gonna find, he’s gonna find the time. So don’t try to be a public thought leader if you don’t love the activities involved. If you’re an executive, right. If you run an organization of some sorts, you’re gonna have to work on your private thought leadership, right? Regardless. But public thought leadership is a lot of work. And if you love it, do it. And if you don’t, I just wouldn’t try and make yourself or force yourself to be it. ’cause you’re not gonna be any good. ANDREA (15:12): Right. I love your distinction between public and private thought leadership. Um, I thank you very much for publicly sharing your ideas and suggestions and advice with the listeners. Thank you so much, Roger. ROGER (15:27): Hey, it’s, it’s my pleasure. And I, and I, and I gotta say, I’m, I couldn’t be happier to see how your career has developed and evolved since your time at, at, at the Rotman School. Like, I think it’s, it’s just cool that you’ve carved your own way, right? You recall, right. From the world of academia. Yeah. It’s really, really specific, right? It’s like you become a assistant professor, then you do this set of things, then you become an associate. And it’s all quite programmed, more programmed than I thought until I got in, into it. Um, and I love the fact that you’ve created your own programming and, and are doing such wonderful stuff. So it makes me, it makes me happy. ANDREA (16:10): Aw, thank you so much for sharing that, roger. That really, that really means a lot. Thank you. ROGER (16:14): Not at all. Not at all.   _________________________________   Thanks again so much to Roger Martin for so generously sharing his insights about thought leadership and building your brand. As you can probably tell, I really enjoyed that conversation. It occured to me about halfway through that I kept mentioning I was going to put links to things in the show notes. There’s quite a list of resources, including his HBR video with 3.4M views, the Michael Porter video. Rogers podcast recommendations and many other things that were mentioned.  Again, its all in the show notes for you. I encourage you to take a look.   Now, as promised, I’m going to summarize with three of the main points from our conversation. Of course three!   The first point is the distinction between private and public thought leadership. Roger made the very astute point that as leaders, we must develop at least private thought leadership. Your organization needs to know as a leader what you stand for, what you care about and why. That said, you do not need to be a public thought leader in order to be an effective leader.   The next point is advice for PUBLIC thought leaders. I love this quote from Roger, he said. Quote, don’t try to be a public thought leader if you don’t love the activities involved. If you run an organization, you’re going to have to work on your private thought leadership regardless. But public thought leadership is a lot of work. And if you love it, do it. And if you don’t, I just wouldn’t try to force yourself ’cause you’re not going to be any good.  This is fantastic advice!   The other advice for public thought leaders that Roger shared was about the cadence of publication. When I asked him about his thoughts in terms of media for thought leadership – Should we write a book? Should we do a Ted talk? Should we focus exclusively on one media or try go broad? His answer was completely different. He suggests that as PUBLIC thought leaders, we should publish at a regular cadence. Why? Because people aur habit driven. And that’s why he publishes his medium articles at the same time every week. And that’s why I publish this Talk about Talk podcast every two weeks on Monday morning at 1:00 AM Eastern. And also why I publish the coaching e-mail newsletter every week on Wednesday.    The last point I want to reinforce is from Roger’s. Article THE RIGHT WAY TO BUILD YOUR BRAND. And it’s this. When we’re evaluating a brand message – perhaps an ad campaign or maybe even thinking about our own personal brand, You need to make a PROMISE. And you can evaluate that promise in terms of the three criteria: Is it Memorable, is it valuable and is it deliverable. Do you keep your promise. Suddenly the evaluation of performance marketing, which previously was a very subjective task, can at least become a little bit more objective.   This is a significant insight associated with evaluating advertising and I think it’s going to make a big impact in the advertising world. Another great example of Roger Martin’s thought leadership. Thanks again to Roger very much for taking time to share his thought leadership with us.   Alright – that’s it! I hope you learned some valuable nuggets to inform your own thought leadership and building your brand. Please connect with me and let me know!  You can message me on LinkedIn. Please connect with me if we’re not connected already. And if you go to the talkabouttalk.com website, you can leave me a voicemail message. I would love to hear your voice or you can fill out the contact form that’s in the about section. Anyway, I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening and talk soon. The post THOUGHT LEADERSHIP & Building Your Brand with Roger Martin (ep.150) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

  Is it ok to swear at work? Do you use profanity at work? Dr. Andrea Wojnicki shares the myths about profanity and highlights what the research says about the pros and cons of swearing at work.   CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/ RESOURCES Ep.23 – PROFANITY: TALKING TABOO with linguistics professor Darin Flynn – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/23s2-explicit-profanity-talking-taboo-with-linguistics-professor-darin-flynn/ Yehuda Baruch and Stuart Jenkins, 2007, “Swearing at work and permissive leadership culture When anti-social becomes social and incivility is acceptable “Leadership & Organization Development Journal Vol. 28 No. 6, pp. 492-507  (Read the article) Y Baruch, R Prouska, A Ollier-Malaterre, J Bunk (2017) “Swearing at Work: The Mixed Outcomes of Profanity” Journal of Managerial Psychology Darin Flynn: “White people should never rap the n-word: A linguist breaks it down“- https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/white-people-should-never-rap-the-n-word-a-linguist-breaks-it-down Darin Flinn: “What the &*$%?: What qualifies as a “bad” word nowadays?” – http://www.calgaryherald.com/swerve/features/What+What+qualifies+word+nowadays/8873621/story.html   TRANSCRIPT Well, hello there and welcome to the Talk About Talk podcast. Today I’m going to help us answer an important question: Is it OK to swear at work? Recently I had a consult, a short virtual introductory meeting with a prospective client. Let’s call her Candace. I immediately liked Candace. I could tell she was incredibly ambitious. Super smart and very keen to boost her communication skills. She had what you would call a strong personality. I also noticed that she swore. Like a lot. Like, not just. Oh God or WTF. She was dropping F bombs. At one point in our conversation, I even made a joke about this, mentioning that as a communication coach, I have to highlight that she uses profanity excessively compared to most of my executive clients. Her response was basically, “I’m going to talk the way I’m going to talk.” OK… After Candace hired me to help her with her communication skills, I spoke with her manager. I often do this so I can get a better feel for where the real opportunities are for my clients. Her manager told me that Candace has got to stop swearing. Her colleagues and clients all find it offensive.  The good news is that Candace immediately agreed that she’s going to make this change. And she’s done so. Every now and then, in one of our coaching sessions, she’ll let one slip. But then she always has a big smile and she apologizes.  At least she’s become very aware of it. This experience with Candace and her manager, and specifically with what her manager told me about how her clients and colleagues were so offended with her profanity, really got me thinking about the impact of profanity at work.  Last month, I ran an informal poll on LinkedIn, with the  simple Q: Do you swear at work?  And two possible answers.  Yes or No.  I figured most people do just a little bit, and I wanted to force them into a Yes or No answer. But of course, there’s the snippy comment made by my friend Hilton Barber, the culture expert, who said I was hoping one of the options would be. F*** Yes.   The results of this poll surprised me.  Of course it’s unscientific, But can you guess what proportion said No and what proportion said Yes? 63% of the respondents to this LinkedIn poll said no, they do NOT swear at work, and 37% said YES they do. So its more like 2/3 1/3. So apparently only a third of us ever do. Now, in this episode, I’d like to help us answer another Q: Is it OK to swear at work? Welcome to TAT episode 149 – where I’m going to help us answer the question: Is it OK to swear at work? I’m going to take you through some myths about profanity, and the then the benefits and disadvantages of swearing at work. Yes, there is academic research that I’m going to share with you that highlights some of these specific pros and cons. Then we’ll all be in a better position to evaluate whether it’s OK to swear at work. First though, let me introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you so I can help you elevate your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed and you can accomplish your career goals. If you go to the TalkaboutTalk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, some amazing bootcamps that I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.  OK – let’s talk profanity. A few years ago I interviewed professor, Darin Flynn, from the University of Calgary. Darren. In the linguistics department, Darin teaches a course on rap lyrics. As you might imagine, Darren gets into profanity in this class. If you want to learn a lot more about profanity from a linguistics perspective. I encourage you to listen to talk about talk episode number 23. There are actually 2 versions of this episode. One where you’ll hear some profanity. And another version where it’s cleaned up. You get to choose.  By the way, this episode is clean. I am not going to swear.  I learned a lot from Professor Flynn. Spent a lot of time talking about how, for example. How fascinating it is that the words that come out of our mouth literally the sounds that we make. With our lips and our tongue and our cheeks and our teeth and our breath. Combine to form different sounds and how we as humans create associations and social meaning around them. And some of those sounds become profane. Over the years. Profanity has served different purposes. For example Over the centuries and the decades. Profanity in the form of cursing deity and cursing Gods was considered the worst, most profane language. There’s also the words for urine and excrement. Turns out there’s a good reason for these literally filthy words to be profane. These are things that, if they’re not kept cleaned up, could kill us, right? Then there’s profanity associated with our bodies. This could include our urine and excrement, and also our sexual organs and other sexual intercourse.  Yes, I’m talking about the F-bomb. And more recently, Professor Flynn pointed out  that these days, “the most profane, the most offensive words in the English language are the ones that are derogatory to minorities.”  In fact, those are the profanities that Professor Flynn himself refuses to say. Think about the N word or the C word and consider that for a moment. We now live in a society where these words that denigrate racial and gender minorities are the most profane. Isn’t that just wonderful?  The worst possible things you can say, the most profane expressions, are derogatory towards minorities.  I love that.  It makes me feel optimistic. So anyway, I encourage you to listen to this interview if you’re really interested in profanity, but let me just tell you this, after I had this conversation with Darin Flynn, I started thinking about profanity more objectively (these words are just arbitrary sounds coming out of our mouths, right?) and …I started swearing more often. A lot more often. I was fascinated to see people’s responses. I was also fascinated to see how quickly the people around me joined in. As we know, swearing is contagious. Everyone in my house was swearing So I remember a few weeks after my interview with Professor Flynn, I was thinking – Enough. We had gone way over overboard and it was not acceptable. So we implemented the swear jar. You swear, you owe a looney. Amazing how quickly the swearing stopped. Nowadays my mantra is “save it for when you need it.” I say that  lot to m y teenaged kids.  And now I say the same thing to my coaching client Candace.   And here we are.   Let’s talk about the myths associated with profanity.   Myths About Swearing  People have a lot of misconceptions about swearing. I’m going to group them into three main myths. Yes of course three.  The first myth is Swearing Doesn’t Relieve Pain: WRONG. Contrary to this myth, research has shown that swearing can actually help in tolerating pain. The emotional release that comes with swearing can provide a temporary relief from pain. (OK, good to know) Swearing is Always Negative or Harmful: WRONG Swearing can be negative or harmful.  But it can also express excitement, surprise, or even solidarity and camaraderie. It can serve as a form of emotional release or stress relief. In some cultures (I mean like country cultures and possibly corporate cultures), profanity can be a harmless way of expressing strong emotions or relieving stress. The 3rd myth is a common one that I want to correct right now.  It’s this: Swearing Indicates a Limited Vocabulary: and/or low IQ: WRONG. And WRONG. People who use swear words often have a robust vocabulary; they choose to use swear words for their emotional impact or as a form of expression. And swearing is not inherently linked to intelligence. Swearing can be a strategic tool for emphasis or to convey strong emotions and is not limited to any particular level of vocabulary or intelligence. So, the next time someone brings up one of these myths, like how profanity doesn’t relieve pain, or that it’s always harmful or negative, or that it indicates a limited vocabulary or low IQ, you know better! You’re welcome. Now I’m excited to share with you the academic research on profanity. This research spans across many disciplines, including psychology and sociolinguistics. Linguistics, neuroscience, cognitive studies. Business and management studies, the social sciences and cultural studies. I’m going to draw on 2 main papers that I found that specifically look at the impact of profanity in the workplace. There’s a paper from 2017 called Swearing at Work, the mixed outcomes of Profanity in the Journal of Managerial Psychology. And there’s a paper from 10 years before that, in 2007 called Swearing at work and permissive Leadership Culture, when antisocial becomes Social and Incivility is acceptable. This is from the Leadership and Organizational Development Journal. I’ll leave links to both of these papers, which are available as PDF’s in the show notes. Let me start by saying that. There is absolutely not a singular answer to the question of. Whether it’s OK to swear at work, but what this research does is clearly define in a disciplined way the impact of profanity – the specific pros and cons.  If you’re like me. You might be a little bit surprised to learn about some of the pros or advantages of using profanity.   ARGUMENTS FOR SWEARING – The Pros Let’s start there. The advantages or positive impacts for using profanity at work? Based on my reading of this research, there are 4 general benefits of swearing at work. These include  Establishing a positive culture, social bonding, stress relief, and identity formation.   ESTABLISHING A FUN, PERMISSIVE CULTURE One of the research papers concluded that managers are face with a choice, or really a continuum, of where to place their corporate culture, ranging from the most permissive to the most authoritative. The most authoritative culture could include an all out ban on all profanity. The alternative. A much more fun culture. Would be more permissive. The question is how much profanity to permit?  And the interesting point here is that employees may equate some level of profanity in the workplace with a more permissive and fun culture. As the researchers conclude, “The challenge for leaders is to master the “art” of knowing when to turn a blind eye to norms of communication that, do not confer with their own standards.”   BONDING 2nd, there’s plenty of research that highlights the SOCIAL benefits of profanity in the workplace. Positive outcomes of swearing at the group level include an increased sense of belonging, mutual trust, group affiliation, bonding, cohesion, and solidarity.  They also talked about the connection between swearing and humor. Where employees may use profanity in a quote, un-quote humorous way to develop friendships at work. It’s not surprising to learn that language varies in different subgroups. So imagine for example, a group that was highlighted in one of the papers.: The warehouse workers. They speak differently than the front office workers, who speak differently than the senior executives. And profanity can be a significant signal of group solidarity. So that’s the second benefit of swearing at work. Social bonding. The first was establishing a fun, permissive culture and the 2nd is this social bonding. The third is stress relief.   STRESS RELIEF We’ve all personally experienced and probably witnessed people in highly stressful situations, whether it’s mental or physical letting off steam by swearing. This phenomenon is common in the workplace where employees talk about verbally letting off steam, or expressing their anger and frustration, through profanity. It was noted that profanity may be a cathartic mechanism for coping with emotional work. I hadn’t thought if it quite like that before.  But sometime swearing can feel cathartic. I immediately thought of physicians who work in emergency or palliative care departments – . Extremely emotional and stressful work, letting off steam, perhaps with profanity.  I recently had a conversation with a firefighter who told me some of his colleagues do this too. So that’s the third advantage for using profanity in the workplace. Stress relief. We’ve covered establishing a fun and permissive culture. Social bonding and now stress relief. The 4th and last benefit of using profanity in the workplace is identity formation. This is an interesting one.   IDENTITY FORMATION Research shows that at an interpersonal level ,swearing and profanity is sometimes used to get attention, to emphasize an important point, to persuade, or to establish a sense of urgency. Of course! When people use profanity, especially when we’re not used to it, we stand up to attention, don’t we? People also use profanity to convey authority.  This shows up when power is imbalanced, and for example in terms of gender differences,. Interestingly, the research indicates that  swearing was reported as beneficial to female executives who wanted to demonstrate assertiveness and earn respect in male-dominated environments. Talk about identity formation! This stuff is fascinating. In mixed company, men swear less, and women swear more. It’s like they’re accommodating the other with their language, in order to gain approval.  So those are the four arguments for swearing. Swearing and using profanity can establish a more fun and permissive culture. It can contribute to social bonding at work. It can serve to relieve stress. And it can serve in terms of identity formation. So, are you convinced? Are you ready to start swearing more at work? Hold on, let me share with you the arguments against swearing the cons.   ARGUMENTS AGAINST SWEARING – The CONS Even after accounting for some of the myths associated with profanity, like, I’m thinking about the myth that people will believe you have. A weaker vocabulary. If you resort to using profanity, that’s simply not true. The research shows that people who use profanity typically do have a broader, more expansive vocabulary. That said, there are many, many, I would say very compelling reasons. Why you should not use profanity at work. According to the research, the specific reasons why we shouldn’t use profanity, the specific negative outcomes include: A perception of lack of respect. A perception of a lack of leadership skills. A perception of lack of control. The potential to create conflict. And generally the potential to degrade one’s image. A negative general perception. In addition to all of this, there’s also research that shows, despite what I mentioned before about. Using profanity. About the benefit of using profanity in terms of it serving as a stress relief, using profanity can also increase stress. Research shows that even when profanity is not directed at someone and not personally abusive, it is often still offensive. And generates greater levels of stress rather than dissipating it. Furthermore, when it is abusive or directed at someone. Well, They’ll definitely be less. Motivated at work and in a more extreme case. They may bring a lawsuit against the organization. In one. Legal case that was described in the research. A manager. Described his personal assistant to her face as being an intolerable B on a Monday morning. She immediately resigned, sued for constructive dismissal and one. So the cons. This way we shouldn’t. The disadvantages and reasons why we shouldn’t use profanity. Include. The perception of a lack of respect, a lack of leadership skills, a lack of control, creating conflict. Generally degrading. The image of the person using the profanity. And. Increasing stress. Decreasing motivations and as I said, in extreme cases. Ensuing litigation. Well that’s pretty compelling to me. Where do you stand now on this question of is it OK to swear at work? Here’s your quick summary. 3 myths about swearing:  Profanity doesn’t relieve pain – WRONG  Profanity is always harmful or negative – WRONG  Using profanity indicates a limited vocabulary or low IQ – WRONG Now you know better! And the 4 benefits of using profanity: Establishing a positive culture Social bonding Stress relief Identity formation. And the disadvantages or negative impacts: If you do swear, you might suffer from a lack of respect, a lack of leadership skills, a lack of control, you might create conflict, increase stress, decrease motivations, and possibly even get sued. Here’s where I stand. Certainly in most cases, in particular in the presence of customers or clients profanity should be discouraged. Let’s say “Virtually banned.” As I said at the very beginning I’ll save it for the rare occasions when I need it. This is our rule now in our house. I’d love to hear what you think. There are several ways that you can contact me. You can message me on LinkedIn. Please connect with me if we’re not connected already. And if you go to the Talkabouttalk.com website, you can leave me a voicemail message. I would love to hear your voice or you can fill out the contact form that’s in the about section. Anyway, I would love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening and talk soon. The post Is it OK to Swear at Work? (ep.149) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Improve our self-awareness – Based on her research and coaching experiences, Andrea announces her personal goal for 2024: improving her self-awareness. Learn the distinction between consciousness, self-consciousness, and self-awareness. Andrea challenges listeners to diagnose their own internal and external self-awareness levels and commit to three specific goals for improvement in 2024, just like she did! CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK LinkedIn:  Andrea –  https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ 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/   RELATED EPISODES Ep.121 – Self-Awareness – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/121-self-awareness/ Ep.96 – The 3 Point Body Language Scan – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/96-3pt-body-language-scan/   TRANSCRIPT Happy new year!  For me, a new calendar year is a blank slate. I’m optimistic about what’s ahead.  I’m also big on goals.  On looking back, assessing, and then looking forward with purpose and focus. Based on all the research, the reading and the coaching I did over the past year, I decided that the area where I personally want to focus this year is SELF-AWARENESS. I encourage you to do the same.  After I challenged myself to come up with one, meta-level communication goal for myself for 2024, I decided to create an episode where I share with you exactly how I’m thinking about that goal and how I will make it happen.  Again, my hope is that this will inspire you to do the same. Most of us think we are SELF-AWARE.  But research indicates that only 10-15% of us are technically considered highly SELF-AWARE. Way back in episode 121. I shared a story about Ashley a high potential sr executive that I was coaching.  We’re talking high potential for the CEO position. After coaching Ashley for several weeks, she told me that she was very excited because she had a moment, an awakening, in the middle of one of her team meetings, when she suddenly became aware of her thoughts, or her body language, and of how others were perceiving her. Basically she suddenly became aware of her own awareness.  This made me very happy! But I was also shocked, frankly, that she hadn’t consciously experienced that before. It was like an awakening that unlocked her communication effectiveness.  Since then, I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about self-awareness. For me, self-awareness belongs right up there with adopting a growth mindset in terms of the most important things we can focus on to improve our communication, our performance, and our life. Yes, it’s that big. Welcome to TAT episode 148 – where I’m going to share with you my communication goal for 2024, and how I’m going to achieve it. Spoiler alert – its all about self-awareness.  First, let me briefly introduce myself. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m your executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea! I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives like you so I can help you elevate your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed and your career will soar! That’s my goal here.  I want to help you accelerate your career trajectory. If you go to the Talk About Talk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one coaching, online courses, bootcamps which I run every few months, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get free communication coaching from me every week.  OK – let’s talk self-awareness. I’m going to start by briefly defining of self-awareness and why its important.  In other words why, with all of the other things I could be focusing on for 2024, why did I decide to focus on self-awareness?,  Then I’m going to share several very tactical ways that we all can improve your self-awareness.  And at the end, I’m going to share with you the 3 things that I’m personally committing to boost my self-awareness.  Of course it’s three things.  It’s always three right? The power of three.  Some things never change.  OK definitions.  What is self-awareness? Many people confuse self-awareness with consciousness.  Consciousness is a more general term. To be conscious is to simply be aware. To be UNconscious, is to have no awareness. So when we’re conscious, we’re aware.   All sorts of animals can certainly be conscious. Your dog.  That squirrel that ran across the street. But that doesn’t mean they have self-awareness. Self-awareness, what we’re talking about here, is really about being conscious of our own consciousness.  It’s a meta-awareness.  Simply put, Self-awareness is recognition of the self.  It is one’s recognition of one’s own being, in terms of things like emotions, triggers, reactions, and the impact of those reactions. This is different from self-consciousness. Usually people who are self-conscious are nervous. Self-consciousness is about a negative self-perception.  Did you get all that? It’s not that complicated.  Self awareness is being conscious of your SELF.  Of course. It’s consciousness of your consciousness or meta-awareness, and that’s different from simple awareness or from self-consciousness. We all have some degree of self-awareness. How would you rate yourself? As I mentioned, most people say they have higher than average self awareness.  But research shows that only 10-15% of us actually have high self-awareness.  As a communication coach, its easy for me to convince myself that I’m one of those 10% with high self awareness. But then every now and then I get some feedback, directly , or ore often indirectly, that shows me I have some work to do.  Or I see myself on video and I think – YOWZA – you got some work to do girl!  That’s what inspired this resolution for myself and it’s also what inspired this episode.  Also – based on my work particularly over the past year, I’ve concluded that elevating your self-awareness is one of the areas where people get the most traction in terns of improving their communication skills and their performance in whatever they do. And yes, this is backed by research. Self-awareness has a significant positive impact on us in several ways, including improving our confidence, our influence, our creativity, our ability to collaborate, our ability to regulate our emotions, and self-awareness decreases our stress levels and makes us happier. Wow – count me in! So let’s break it down. Let’s dig into the types of self-awareness. INTERNAL First, there’s internal self-awareness, also referred to as private or INTROSPECTIVE self-awareness Introspective self-awareness is about being conscious of your feelings, emotions, desires, beliefs and even your own body. Its both mental and physical. It’s your mental consciousness, and also your Bodily self awareness – How are you feeling physically. This is being aware of your blood pressure, your physiological stress signals, your body language. I sometimes get the tingles when I’m in coaching sessions with my clients.  This is one way I experience internal self awareness. Honestly I love it when this happens. It often happens when I’m coaching someone on their personal brand and we end up articulating their unique superpower in a way that really resonates with them.  It is so powerful. I feel the tingles.  Like a spider is tunning up and down my arms. It’s a visceral, physical reaction. That’s an extreme way of experiencing internal bodily self-awareness. Let me share a few other examples of internal self awareness. Let’s make this real. Consider for example what you’re thinking and feeling when you notice yourself feeling anxious before an important meeting. Your brain might be shifting to imposter syndrome, and your body might be heating up., ready for fight flight or freeze.  Noticing these  things is internal self awareness. Or another example – you might notice your apprehension about disagreeing with your boss when you know you’re right. Suddenly you’re conscious of your inner desire to blurt out your convictions.  And you’re conscious of trying to appear in control. THAT is self-awareness. Internal self awareness is really about being conscious of what you’re feeling – mentally & physically. EXTERNAL External self-awareness, on the other hand is more public. This is about what’s going on in the social context, how am I being perceived, and what impact am I having on the dynamic? There’s a phenomenon called the looking glass self that I often share with my clients to help illustrate external self awareness.  Imagine you are a third party, you have a camera and you’re looking down at the situation, watching the players in the room, including yourself, and noticing the impact that you’re having on others…  This is a great exercise to make external self awareness more real. If you’ve ever been criticized for showing a lack of self-awareness, it’s probably external or social self-awareness that was being referenced. It’s about how we are perceived by others, and what impact we have on the social dynamic. This is an Interesting dynamic that I’ve noticed.  Its this: when we evaluate our own self awareness, we tend to focus on our internal self awareness.  When we evaluate others self-awareness, we focus on their external self-awareness  Over the past year, a few of my clients declared to me that they’re extremely self-aware. I quickly realized they are off the charts in terms of one type of self awareness, and lacking in another.  It can be very productive for us all to diagnose our relative levels of internal and external self awareness.  That way we can focus more on where we’re deficient. I’ve shared the story before of a client I’ll call Betty.  That’s not her real name. Betty was very bright and technically exceptional. She knew her stuff. She was high IQ, very creative, and very ambitious. But Betty was not well-liked.  She told me that she’d received feedback that she was arrogant. I spoke with her manager, as I often do with my clients – I check in with 1-2 of their managers to make sure we’re focusing on the right things.  Anyway, her boss confirmed to me that, yes,  Betty does come across as arrogant. When I brought up the topic again with Betty, she argued and justified herself, telling me, and I quote, “I’m not arrogant. I am very self-aware.” My diagnosis? Betty is very high on internal self-awareness.  She thinks about what she thinks about.  But she’s low on external self-awareness. She focuses less on her impact in the social dynamic.  I shared this dynamic with Betty and she wholeheartedly agreed. People like Betty with low external self awareness might come across as arrogant, or awkward. People with low external self awareness often have people whispering things like “Does she even know how she sounds?” Is this YOU? If not, ask yourself whether you might have high eternal self awareness but low internal who told me this definitely is that case for him. He told me that he is the youngest of many many siblings.  I don’t remember how many exactly, but lots.  Like 8 or something.  As the baby of the family, he felt like an observer of all the dynamics (remember the looking glass self?) and he was very focused on how he fit into this crazy big family.  He ended up being off the charts for external self awareness.  However, as he confided to me, his internal self awareness is lacking.  Id run him and his team through a personal branding workshop, where we were focusing on our professional identity.  That’s when he had this epiphany.  He had never taken the time to  think about his own identity and he was very outwardly focused.  He has a lot of work to do on his internal self-awareness. If you met this guy, you would never guess.  Actually, I was kind of excited for him.  Like imagine you have this new awareness about yourself that can open up all sorts of opportunity and advantage for you. So now I encourage you to ask yourself – where can I get the most traction?Internal or external self-awareness? Personally, I’m focusing on both.  I can see opportunity for improvement in both internal and external self-awareness.  Maybe slightly more in external. So now what? I’ve got several specific tasks, tactics, things you can do to boost your self-awareness.  I’m going to share these suggestions for you now. Then I’m gonna reveal which 3 I’m personally working on in 2024. For internal self-awareness, the general advice to up your self awareness is to be curious and focused on what you’re thinking and feeling.  A great place to start is to journal.  If you’ve never journaled before, it’s not a big deal. Grab a piece of paper, or a fancy new journal, whatever you like, and just start writing.  Write about what you’re grateful for, what inspires you, and what stresses you out.  Sometimes writing the words can make it real. When you’re living your life,  working and interacting with others, you can boost your self awareness by focusing and eliminating distractions.  Be more focused. Less multi-tasking.  One thing at a time.  Turn off our phone. Focus. Listen to what others are saying, of course, but also listen to what’s going on in your own mind. Here’s another suggestion. Be mindful of your goals or objective. Here’s a tactic that I know has helped many of my clients. Before every meeting, write down one business objective and one personal communication objective. Maybe write them in your notebook or on the agenda. During the meeting, be mindful of your communication objective. It could be a meta-objective, like being more empathetic, or of demonstrating your leadership, or being more confident. Or it could be an immediate term objective, like when you’re in a meeting with a client and your objective is to demonstrate your responsiveness to their concerns. Its about being mindful. What’s my communication goal here? I love that tactic. Here’s another one: Focus on your words.  Three ways you can do t his.  The first is PAUSING.  As in pause a moment before any words come out of your mouth.  This is a great one, especially when things are heated. I’ve been using this one and I have to tell you, it works.  I’ve  never regretted pausing.  My best parenting moments are when I paused. Hmm. The second way to focus on your words is to consider the valence of your verbal and your self talk – is it positive, neutral or negative? Why is that? Be curious. Be aware.  And then make a shift if need be, perhaps to more positive verbal or internal self-talk. The third suggestion in terms of your words is to focus on a mantra.  If you’ve listened to the TAT episodes focus on confidence, you’ve probably heard me talk about mantras. They focus your mind. So maybe come up with a sentence or phrase that focuses your mind on what you WANT to focus on. SO those are my suggestions for increasing your  internal self awareness in terms of your mental focus.  You could start journaling – write down your thoughts. You could eliminate distractions and focus.  You could create a specific communication focused goal or objective for meetings and interactions.  And you cold also focus on your words – by pausing your words, by considering the valence of your words, and by reciting the words of a mantra to focus your thoughts. Now. What about physically, your bodily self awareness? The obvious tactic here is to take note of your physical state.  Your breathing, your body temperature, your body language.    This is like when I get the tingles when my clients have epiphanies, especially with regards to their personal brand.  That visceral, physical reaction. Your physical reaction to your environment can be positive or negative.  As the dancer Martha Graham says, “The Body never lies” A simple way to check in with your physical state is to run through the 3-Point Body Language Scan: The 3 points are Your Posture, your hands, and your eyes. Check in with all three of these things. Are you sitting or standing up straight or are you slouching? Why?Are you expansive or making yourself small?Are your hands hidden or are you using them  to communicate?Are you using jerky movements or slow purposeful movements ? And for eyes, of course its about eye contact. Are your eyes shifting around or are you focusing on who’s talking? There’s a lot more to this, which you can learn about in ep96.  In the meantime though, when you’re aware of your body language, which I hope is more often than not, just think 3-point body language scan. OK – moving on to external self awareness.  When it comes to social self-awareness, I have 4 suggestions for you here. The first is generally being empathetic. Scanning the room, as they say, scanning others for how you are impacting them. Being other-oriented. Tuning in to others.  Watching their body language, especially in their interactions with you. How are they responding to you? The second is Listening. So tracking the ratio of you talking versus others talking, listening in a truly collaborative way. And the third is asking for feedback! This is a great way to improve our communication. As my friend Sharon Mah-Gin says, feedback is a gift! Ask the people with whom you interact for feedback on how you can improve your communication. The last suggestion for how to improve your external self awareness is to put that whole ‘looking glass self idea into action.  Record yourself, then watch yourself, as an interested observer. My clients who have done this all rapidly accelerate their communication skill development.  More so than just about any other exercise.  Why? Because you’re looking at yourself as a third party.  You see yourself in action and you know what others see. So those are my 4 suggestions for improving your external self awareness. Focus on being empathetic Listen keenly Ask for feedback Record and observe yourself. And that’s it for the suggestions I have for you. Here’s my challenge to myself – and to you, if you so choose: Diagnose yourself in terms of your self awareness – your internal self awareness and your external self-awareness.   Personally, I think I need to work on both.  What about you? Then, once you’ve diagnosed yourself, identify 3 goals for yourself to improve your self-awareness – and your communication.  Personally, I’m going to do three things.  Yes, of course three.  And I’m conscious of the fact that I’m committing to  this publicly, on this podcast.  The research shows that therefore I’m more likely to be successful.  So I’m publicly committing to three things: Writing down my communication goal for every meeting or significant interaction.  To get me thinking at a meta level. Seeking more feedback from others – personally and professionally. Recording myself on video and watching myself.  Whether it’s a LinkedIn Live or a an in person corporate workshop, I’m committing to recording and watching more of these. Yes, these are things I recommend to my clients all the time.  I know they work.   So – what three things are you gonna try? If you need a summary of your options, the transcript for this episode is in the shownotes.  You can find it on the tat.com website.  Here are also links in the shownotes to several other podcast episodes that will supplement this one.   So – what did you think about this episode? Are you inspired? What are your communication goals for 2024? I’d love to hear.  Please leave me a voice message on the talkabouttalk.com website, or message me on LinkedIn.   And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.  And please share this episode with a friend who might also find it helpful. I hope you have a fantastic 2024. And I hope to talk soon. The post Andrea’s 2024 Goal: Let’s Improve our SELF-AWARENESS (ep.148) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Gift-giving is a symbolic form of communication. Are you a good gift-giver? Andrea shares research-based tips about what matters and what doesn’t, so you can think about gift-giving more rationally. Here’s a hint: We should worry less about how much money we spend. It’s typically the “low substance, high sentiment” gifts that are appreciated. It really is the thought that counts! CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive GIFT-GIVING RESEARCH Talk About Talk ep17: What Our Possessions Say – https://talkabouttalk.com/17-what-our-possessions-say-with-russell-belk/ Mauss, Marcel (1924) THE GIFT https://archive.org/details/giftformsfunctio00maus/page/n9 Belk, Russell W. (1976) “It’s The Thought That Counts: A Signed Digraph Analysis of Gift-Giving” Journal of Consumer Research Belk & Coon (1991) “Can’t Buy me Love: Money, Dating & Gifts” Association for Consumer Research  Geisler, Markus (2006) “Consumer Gift Systems” Journal of Consumer Research  Sherry, John F. (1983) “Gift-Giving in Anthropological Perspective” Journal of Consumer Research Sherry, McGrath & Levy (1993) “The Dark Side of the Gift” Journal of Business Research Ward, Morgan K., & Broniarczyk, Susan M. (2011) “It’s Not Me, It’s You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness” Journal of Consumer Research Wooten, David B. (2000) “Qualitative Steps Toward an Expanded Model of Anxiety in Gift-Giving” Journal of Consumer Research Professor Russell Belk:  https://schulich.yorku.ca/faculty/russell-w-belk/ 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. As I was planning episodes for the end of the year, I kept going back to one of my favorite topics: Gift giving. 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 professional gift for a client or a colleague. Whether you’re celebrating the Winter Solstice or Saint Nicholas Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Guru Gobind Singh Jayanti, Bowdee Day , Shōgatsu, or Maybe you’re just celebrating the new calendar year. Chances are you’ve got some shopping to do for other people. This is where I can help you. Even if you’re done your shopping for the year, I promise there are some insights in this episode that you can keep with you for every gift giving opportunity you have. – Again, whether professional or personal. The insights that you’re going to hear in in a minute all apply. Welcome to Talk About Talk episode #147.  I’m going to introduce this topic with a few of my favorite insights, then you’re going to hear an episode I recorded a few years ago on this topic.  That was way back at episode #38. When I just re-listened to that episode, I realized it’s ALL there. You’ll learn a lot – I promise. Certainly, a few things have changed since I recorded episode #38 on gift-giving a few years ago. For starter, there’s AI. It might be fun to ask AI what an appropriate gift would be for someone. As you add more and more information about them, you might come up with a very cool gift. So there’s that. If you’ve listened to a few recent episodes, you’ll probably notice that in this past episode that I don’t talk a lot about personal branding. These days, over 100 episodes later, I talk about personal branding A LOT! This is the topic where I certainly see the most traction. And I would say that personal branding has A LOT to do with gift giving. Think about the symbolism of what you’re expressing about yourself from the gifts you give. In fact, I think that’s something that I will bring up next week at the personal branding boot camp that I’m running right now.  Speaking of boot camps, that’s another thing that’s changed. I wasn’t running bootcamps back then. If you’re thinking about a high substance, hi sentiment gift someone or maybe even for yourself. please consider the February 2024 Personal Branding Boot Camp. You can learn more about it at talkabouttalk.com/Feb 24. All the information is there.  And my gift to you? $100 off the boot camp. Just enter the promo code. Podcast.  Again, the website with all the info is talkabouttalk.com/feb 24.  And the promo code for $100 off is PODCAST.  PODCAST I’d love to see you or your friend in February at the boot camp. As this year closes, I’m really excited about a gift that I just procured for a dear friend of mine who’s helped me a lot with my business. A few months ago she showed me a necklace that her sons bought for her, that which she absolutely loved. So I went out and I bought her the matching necklace and bracelet. I can’t wait to give it to her. I hope she’s excited about this gift, as I think she’s going to be. I’m particularly excited about this gift because I anticipate that she’s going to love the gift. But also because of what I know about what the research on gift giving says. Frankly, I think I nailed it. It’s high sentiment AND it’s jewelry.  That’s like a hole in one when it comes to gift giving. Now, I want to share with you three things. Of course, 3.  If you were only to learn three things from this episode, the three things that I hope you will remember: Gifts are symbolic.  Specifically they are symbolic of three things: they are Symbolic of you, of your thoughts about the receiver, and about your relationship with the receiver. There are two. Dimensions or criteria against which people evaluate gifts. Yes, I know this sounds very objective, but this is what the research says. The two dimensions are substance or cost. And sentiment where sentiment is some combination of time, effort, thoughtfulness, or customization. So you could think of all of the gifts that you give and receive on a two by two matrix. On one dimension you have cost and on one dimension. You have sentiment. The research shows that the gifts that are the most appreciated are high on sentiment. And surprisingly low on substance. More on that in the episode. The third insight is this. And this might be the thing that you thank me for the most. It’s this. If you don’t have time, research shows that most women enjoy jewelry an most men enjoy technology gifts. You probably know if the person that you’re buying for, the person that you’re gifting is an anomaly to these preferences. If not, and you’re stretched for time, just go with jewelry or technology. You’re welcome.  Alright let’s do this! Hey there, I’m your communication coach, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. You can call me Andrea.  Thanks for listening to Talk About Talk.  This is where we come to learn and talk about all things communication.  My goal is to help you learn the communication skills that will catapult your career and enhance your relationships.  Because when we communicate effectively, we can be a better manager, colleague, parent, partner, and friend.  We can also be a better gift giver, right?  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. 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. 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)  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 & 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!!!) Consider two people who are dating. There’s the symbolism associated with traditional gifts like flowers or chocolate, or when someone insists on paying for a meal.  Or the gift of jewelry. That’s all symbolic communication, right?  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. 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. 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. 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 – maybe with a big hug, so they know you really love them. Alright that’s it for this episode.  THANKS for listening – and READING! ***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 TalkAboutTalk. The post Communicating Through Gift-Giving (ep.147) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Let’s upgrade your resume! Executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin shares best practices in terms of resume format and content, plus common mistakes people make with their resume. Whether you’re looking for a new job or a board position, having an up-to-date resume that follows best practices can be a big advantage. Link to free RESUME TIP SHEET from Sharon & Andrea: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/resume  Resources Previous Talk About Talk Episodes with Sharon Mah-Gin  Ep.45 – Networking – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/45-networking/ Ep.67 – Online Networking – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/67-online-networking-with-sharon-mah-gin/ Ep.107 – Communication Skills for Job Seekers – https://www.talkabouttalk.com/107-job-seekers/ Connect with Dr. Andrea Wojnicki – Talk About Talk Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn – Andrea: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ Talk About Talk:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/talkabouttalk/ YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube/ Transcript Let me start by saying that this is a particularly selfish episode for me. Yes, I said that.  Selfish. OK, OK, Let me take that back. I guess it’s also generous. I know this topic is helpful. I know a lot of you are looking for guidance and best practices. On how to optimize your resume or your CV. I get a lot of people asking for my advice, input and suggestions regarding their resume. I guess this isn’t surprising, based on all the work I do with clients on developing their personal brands.  So I keep getting the same resume Qs from people. And I keep saying the same things again and again. Recently when I was talking with my friend, executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin, she shared a similar story with me. In her role as an executive recruiter who gets hired by firms to find the best people, she finds herself constantly being asked by individual executives for advice on their resume.  So, Sharon and I decide decided to pull our expertise together – hers as an executive recruiter and mine as an executive communication coach, to help you with your resume. Welcome to Talk About Talk episode 146 ‘Upgrade Your resume”.  In this episode, you’ll hear my interview with Sharon and you’ll learn a lot – the most common mistakes, Do’s Don’ts, and suggestions for formatting, content, and integrating your personal brand into your resume.  Or it is your CV?  What IS the difference, anyway, between a resume and a CV?   Yes, you’ll get an answer to that Q too.  Let’s do this!     Greetings again, and welcome to talk about TALK episode #146,  “Upgrade Your Resume with executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin” In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m YOUR executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives through 1:1 coaching, bootcamps, workshops and keynotes. My objective is to help you improve your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed for the right reasons and your career will take off.  Sound good?   In this episode, you’re going to learn a lot. Here’s how it’s going to go.  I’m going to introduce Sharon, and then we’ll jump right into the interview. Than I will re-cap with the top 3 learnings. (Yes, always the power of 3!) You DEFINITELY do not need to take notes for this episode!!! Sharon and I worked together to create a summary of suggestions for you that you can easily access.  We call it our “resume tipsheet”. Just go to TAT.com/resume and you can download it there.  This is huge value for you.  Basically you listen to the advice first, then you print the tipsheet. It’s basically a checklist to guide you through the process of upgrading your resume. Again, its TAT.com/resume  So – as always – you don’t need to take notes, because we’ve done that for you.  You’re welcome! Just keep doing whatever you’re doing! Walking. Or driving. Or doing housework. Or sitting on the couch.  By the way, If you are sitting on the couch, you can also watch Sharon and me on YouTube. And I hope you’ll check out the TAT.com website. There are lots of resources there to help you out. If you’re an individual executive, there’s information about 1:1 coaching and bootcamps. If you’re a leader or an HR manager looking to boost the communication skills of your team, there’s also information about workshops and keynotes.  And there are free resources too: like the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, and the free newsletter. I REALLY hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication tips and coaching from me once a week.  Now, let me introduce Sharon. I’ve known Sharon for years and years. She is a successful recruiter and – she’s a generous human. This is the FOURTH time Sharon has shared her expertise with us. Previously she shared her expertise on episodes focused on networking skills, networking online, and communication skills for job seekers.  Sharon and I have also collaborated on workshops together – typically focused on topics such as personal branding and networking, Sharon is a master networker. Actually, I would characterize her as a master connector.  And generous.  And outgoing, as you’ll hear. Sharon’s been active in executive search for over 25 years. She started as a Client Partner in the Toronto office of Korn Ferry International, the world’s largest publicly traded executive search firm and now serves as a partne While Sharon has successfully completed engagements in all functional areas including sales, marketing, operations, human resources and general management, her designation as a CA or Chartered Accountant has led to her developing an expertise in financial roles.   Sharon earned a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University and articled at EY, where she performed audits for large clients in major industries, including manufacturing, utilities and mining.  Prior to joining Korn Ferry, Sharon was Director of Internal Audit at a major North American real estate developer and as an Internal Audit Manager with a major Canadian retailer. She also served as Assistant Controller at another major real estate developer.    As I said, Sharon has a lot of energy. Outside of her role as a recruiter, Sharon served on the Global Asian-Advisory Board for PepsiCo. Her past board roles included BioCEO and Youth Science Ontario.  She’s currently helping with the EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards program and serves on the founding committee of Women in Life Sciences.  AND, I know she recently completed hiking 900 km. of the Bruce Trail.  Yes, 900km! The post Resume Best Practices with executive recruiter Sharon Mah-Gin (ep.146) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Do you use AI to boost your communication effectiveness? Andrea shares her evolving perspective on AI, including whether using AI is “cheating,” practical ways to use AI to improve communication, and offers three “Dos” and three “Do Nots” for effective AI usage. Do you have more to add to the conversation? Let’s talk! Resources Forbes October 2023 article on AI Talk About Talk ep.15: AI with Avi Goldfarb Talk About Talk ep. 129: Power with Tiziana Casciaro Connect with Andrea & Talk About Talk: Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive   Transcript Let me start this episode by staying until recently, I didn’t think I had a lot to say about using AI. Four and a half years ago, I interviewed Professor Avi Goldfarb for a Talk About Talk podcast episode on AI. Avi is one of my past colleagues at the university of Toronto, and the author of two AI-focused books, Prediction Machines and Power & Prediction. This was before we’d heard of ChatGPT, and before everything really took off. Obviously a lot has changed since then. Then, in the past month or so, I had a couple of experiences that made me realize, yes, in fact, I do have a thing or two to say about AI. Recently I was collaborating with an organization to lead a series of workshops for them. After our first meeting to plan the workshops, they sent me an e-mail asking for a title for the workshop series. I thought about it for a few minutes and nothing inspiring came to mind. So I opened ChatGPT, and I asked it to generate ten possible titles for the Workshop series. I told ChatGPT who the audience was and what the topics would be. The list that ChatGPT generated was boring. Not helpful. So I asked the same question again, but this time I clarified that I was looking for CLEVER titles. This new list had a lot of potential. None of the 10 suggestions were bang on, but it was incredibly helpful. This list inspired me and helped me generate some better ideas. After I forwarded 3 potential workshop series titles to my client, I quickly got a response  saying that the titles were fantastic.  Frankly, I agreed. The next day I shared this story with a girlfriend of mine. She’s a lawyer and she works full time in a big organization. So her response surprised me. She said, Andrea! That’s cheating! What?  You’re not allowed to do that.! That’s cheating! Wait! I asked. You think using ChatGPT to help me come up with a title is cheating? Yes! She answered. Oh boy. I had a lot to say about that, let me tell you. So that was one experience. A few days after this conversation, I was at my sons high school, and I met his English teacher. He asked me how everything was going and if I had any questions for him. I know my kids would always wish that I’d keep my mouth shut, but that’s just not my style. So I asked him, what’s the policy of your high school students using AI for their homework and assignments in your English class? UNFORTUNATELY, this high school English teacher’s response was exactly what you might guess.  And that disappointed me. He started giving me the speech about what AI is. OK. Then he started in on the potential and the downfalls of the technology. And then he said, “For now, the policy is that it’s not allowed.”  I just looked at him with a completely neutral face and nodded. It’s certainly not that I didn’t have a response. I had a lot going on in my mind that I wanted to say. As it turns out, I do have an opinion.  So those two conversations are what inspired this Talk About Talk episode #145 Using AI to boost your communication. Greetings and welcome to Talk About Talk episode 145: Using AI to Boost Your Communication.  In this episode, you’re going to learn: My thoughts on AI and cheating How you might use AI And some Dos and Don’ts when it comes to using AI to boost your communication.  My hope is two things:  I hope you’ll be inspired to use AI more I hope you’ll learn something new to try Before we go any further though, I just want to say that I in no way claim to be an AI expert. Rather, I’ve used AI and done some reading on it, and as I said, I have a few things to say. if you’re a tech expert, this episode is probably NOT for you. I’m certainly not a tech expert.  I acknowledge I have a LOT to learn! SO please connect with me on LinkedIn and join the conversation. Tell me how YOU’RE using AI to boost your communication.  I’d love to hear.  Bring it on.  OK – I better introduce myself. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m YOUR executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives through 1:1 coaching, bootcamps, workshops and keynote speaking. My objective is to help you improve your clarity and confidence, so you have more credibility. When you have credibility, you can make real impact. And that’s when you’ll get noticed and your career will take off!  Sound good?   If this resonates with you, then I also encourage you to check out the Talk about talk.com website. There are many resources there to help you out. If you’re an individual executive, there’s information about online courses, private coaching and small group bootcamps. If you’re a leader or an HR manager looking to boost the communication skills of your team, there’s also information about corporate workshops and keynote speeches.  And there are plenty of free resources too: like the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk email newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication tips and coaching from me every week.  I also  hope you’ll connect with me on LinkedIn and maybe send me a message and let me know what you think about this episode. I’ve experimented quite a bit with ChatGPT and some AI-based image generation software. I’ve also done some research (listened to podcasts, done some reading), and I’ve done a lot of thinking about this topic. And as I said, these experiences that I shared at the beginning of this episode, (1) My conversation with my friend about whether using ChatGPT is cheating, and (2) the conversation with my sons high school English teacher — These conversations made me realize I do have something to say about AI. And I’m hoping that I can encourage you to think about AI and use it to boost the quality of your communication. In some of the reading that I did about AI, I learned some interesting trends and statistics that helped me put things in perspective. In an October 2023 article from Forbes Magazine, I read that 58% of executives say they use generative AI regularly. Does that sound hi or lo to you? I thought it sounded about right.  58% are using it. The same article said that 81% of companies have generative AI teams. That seemed high to me. Also surprising to me, is the fact that SMALLER companies are more likely to leverage generative AI, then larger companies, primarily due to perceived trust and accuracy issues.  This might explain why my girlfriend accused me of cheating. She works at a larger company. Plus she’s a lawyer! So here’s a big question. Is using AI cheating? What do you think? Yes or no? Is using AI cheating? If you ask me this question, I will not answer you with a definitive yes or a definitive no. I will say that AI itself is a tool. So AI cant cheat. It’s the person using AI who can cheat.  This reminds me of a conversation that I had with Professor Tiziana Casciaro about the term “power.” I interviewed Tiziana for TAT episode #129. I’ll leave a link to that episode in the shownotes.  Tiziana said that power itself is benign. It’s what you do with power that makes it good or bad. Power is a tool. Kind of like a hammer. You can use a hammer to build a beautiful home. Or, you could use a hammer to seriously hurt someone. It’s what you do with it. The same holds for AI. AI is a tool that can definitely, most certainly, be used for good – and for bad. Personally, I am optimistic about it. I do believe that it’s going to change the world in profound ways, and I’m very glad that there are some smart people working on regulations and policies to make sure that this tool doesn’t become a tool of destruction. But I haven’t actually answered the question yet, have I? Is using AI cheating? Well, let’s go back 30, 40, or 50 years ago.   Imagine yourself in a senior high school or university setting. What were the big topics of debate? Well, how about encyclopedias and calculators.  Some of you may have never seen an encyclopedia.  But I remember in grade 8 or so, writing an essay for history class and using an encyclopedia to help me.  I was very very careful not to plagiarize.  We were taught to read, then think, then look away and write.  No plagiarizing,  No cheating.  The encyclopedia was the resource, or the tool. The onus was on the students to not cheat.  Do you see the parallel? An even bigger deal in schools back then were calculators  When I was in high school and university, there was a big uproar about whether students should be allowed to use calculators. I remember watching about 5 of my classmates in my operations management final exam get walked out of the gymnasium for cheating with their calculator.  Yikes.  Nowadays my 15 year old daughter has a mighty powerful calculator in her backpack. She uses it for assignments AND in exams. It’s a tool.  It’s definitely not cheating. Something that I noticed when I was doing the reading about AI that I guess is kind of obvious, but I just wanted to point this out is that for high schools and universities, the conversation about AI is really focusing on catching plagiarism. The fundamental assumption here it seems is that students who use AI to generate essays, for example, are at fault for plagiarizing. We blame the user. Interestingly, when you shift the lens to business, it’s less about plagiarism specifically and more about copyright ownership. It’s less focused on blaming the user, the business person or the organization who leverages AI. It’s more focused on blaming the technology itself. What sources is the AI referencing? And what are the copyright obligations of the AI technology to the rightful owner of the intellectual property.  Does that make sense?  I find this fascinating. We’re ultimately talking about the same technology being used in similar ways. But when the context is essay writing for high school and university students, the main focus and blame, is on the student for plagiarizing.  In a business context, where an essay or a presentation may similarly be generated through AI the focused and blame is on the technology for not attributing the copyright properly in terms of the original owner of the intellectual property. Fascinating. So let me answer the question.  Is using AI by-definition cheating? No.  AI is a tool. It is possible to cheat with this tool though, if you generate content using AI and claim it as your own. So was I cheating when I used AI to help me come up with the titles for the workshop series I was working on? No.  I asked ChatGPT to come up with some clever titles, and I used those ten ideas to come up with a few titles that worked very well. You could say that I the titles were AI assisted.  This is another insight that kept reading about you probably already know but I think it bears mentioning here.  It’s the distinction between AI generated vs AI assisted.  I have an example here that I think beautifully helps illustrate the difference between AI generated and AI assisted.  When I interviewed professor Avi Goldfarb about AI, he talked about how the professors he admires are allowing students to use AI as a tool in their essay writing.  He talked about how, for example, a professor would assign an essay and share with the students what an AI generated response to the assignment would look like.  Then the prof would say “Something similar to this would probably get you a C. So the baseline has gotten tougher.  I expect you to use AI and your own knowledge and creativity to come up with something significantly better than this.” The essay that the professor generated using AI is exactly that – AI generated.  The versions the students would turn in would be AI assisted. Ill get to some of the ways the students could use AI in a moment. Avi’s example of how professors and teachers might use AI in the classroom is the answer I was hoping my son’s English teacher would have to my question about AI in his class.  Maybe it’ll just take some time. In business, some folks may start with AI generated copy, then edit it.  That’s still called AI generated.  Other folks, including myself, create content, then use AI to edit and improve it.  That’s AI assisted.  By the way, if I ever use AI generated content, I will let you know!  That goes for copy and images. For this episode, I used ChatGPT to assist me with the description and I used Lensa to create the feature image  Now, I’m going to share with you some ideas for how you can use AI to help you communicate in business.  Then I’m going to conclude with my 3 favorite ways to use AI, 3 DOs and 3 DO NOTs when it comes to using AI. THREE FAVOURITE THINGS TO USE IT FOR: beyond spell check and grammar check and generating basic emails, contracts, images, and transcripts. BRAINSTORMING IDEAS I use AI to make sure I’m not missing anything when I’m listing suggestions for you.  Like the episode I released a long time ago on how to dress at work.  Episode #xxx. I wrote the outline for the episode, then I asked ChatGPT to list ten suggestions or rules for how people should dress at work. I used the list to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. So you can use AI to make sure your suggestions are complete. Another way I’ve used AI is to suggest relevant metaphors an analogies. This can be incredibly helpful in elevating your communication.  Sometimes the best way to describe a new concept or an idea as similar to something that your audience already knows.  Like how AI is a tool that is similar to encyclopedias and calculators, in some ways. So that’s the first way to use AI.  For brainstorming. REFERENCES – Much of the advice I share in coaching and workshops is grounded in academic research. I often use AI to help me quickly identify research that either backs up my advice or that supplements it.  Chances are you are not in academia and you don’t need to cite everything.  But you can still use AI to back up your recommendations at work with objective references. SUMMARIZING –  I use AI to help me write podcast episode descriptions. These always need a heave dose of editing, but it’s a good start.  You might use AI to help you with summarizing a presentation or a white paper.  Or even for data analysis.  That’s summarizing.   So those are my 3 suggestions for how you can use AI. Brainstorming, References and Summarizing. That’s a great start! Oh – this is not one of my 3 things, but I do have an idea that I’ve shared with a few clients that I want to share with you.  It’s this. Automatically generating transcripts from the audio recording of your presentations or meeting dialogue and then analyzing the transcript as a means to improve your communication. Here’s an easy hack.  Record the audio and then search the transcript for your crutch or filler words.  How many times did you say “like” or “um” or whatever your crutch word is? Similarly, if you’re working on avoiding upspeak, you can search the transcript for question marks, when you were asking a question,  That’s the definition of upspeak.  Helpful, right? (CATHY, THAT’S A SOCIAL MEDIA POST!) There are also are some new platforms and software out there that will take this kind of insight to your communication skills to a whole new level.  I’ve used a platform called YOODLI to analyze some of my clients formal presentations. You upload a video and it assesses your tone, your cadence, your engagement, your crutch words and more. The data generated by Yoodli is supplemented by my suggestions.  Its kind of cool,  Let me know if you want to give it a try! OK, moving on. Now I have 3 Dos and 3 DONTs for you. Starting with Three DOs: (1)Consider the multitude of ways that AI can enhance your communication.  Consider the media.  Of course AI can help you with words.  There’s also audio, images, videos, and more.  So explore various media.  Also consider your various tasks and the folks you work with.  Ask them if they’re using AI, and if they’re not, encourage them to try it out.   (2) Focus on getting good at writing prompts. Practice. If you get really good you might even become a Prompt Engineer. Yes, that’s a real job. You see, AI isn’t just taking our human jobs away. It’s also creating new jobs. Anyway – my prompt writing is slowly improving. I always assume it will take me several cracks at a Q before I get something back that’s helpful. One thing that I’ve found really effective in writing prompts is to add the tone or to say “in the voice of”  This is what I did when I was genereating the titles for the workshop series.  When I added that I wanted “clever” titles, they suddenly improved.  So DO practice writing prompts (3) This Is a new one for me: Encourage ChatGPT (or whatever software you’re using) to ask you Qs about what you’ve asked it to do. Like when you’re assigning a new project to your direct report .  You might ask them at the end to summarize what they’re going to do  You could ask your AI to do the same. “Please summarize in different words what it is that I’m asking.” Then, what other questions do you have for me about this request?”  This is a strategy that will help you accelerate your skill in writing prompts. And last, 3 DO NOTS By the way, I almost always find the DO NOTs to be the most helpful.  Have you ever noticed that? This is an aside, but years ago when I was learning how to teach, I asked one of the top professors at Harvard Business School for any advice she had for being a better teacher in the classroom. The first thing she said was, ask lots of people this question, andrea.  But focus more on what they tell you to avoid or what NOT to do. What you SHOULD do is probably personal,  What you should NOT do is more universal.  TRUE. SO what should we NOT do with AI? (1) Don’t assume AI is correct. It can be very wrong! A while ago I created an experiment that ended up illustrating how ChatGPT can be very wrong. I asked ChatGPT to summarize what the personal brand is of Executive Communication Coach Andrea Wojnicki, based on her LinkedIn profile. Based on the time lag of the data that’s been uploaded to ChatGPT, I assumed that the summary might be slightly out of date. But I was surprised to see that the summary generated by ChatGPT was categorically wrong. It included facts about my background that were not even hinted at in my LinkedIn profile. For example, I remember it said that I had previously worked as an actor, which helped me in my role as an Executive Communication coach. Nope. That ain’t true. So always, always, always Fact Check what AI is generating for you. Then, verify these “facts” with other sources. (2) DO not ignore AI. Many AI tools are free right now and relatively easy to use. But that’s not the only reason to not avoid AI.  When I was doing some research for this episode, I kept adding again and again and again that the most productive and employable folks ar using it now. SO jump in. Here’s an insight that might inspire you: “Instead of losing your job to AI, consider that you might be more likely to lose your job to someone who uses AI better than you do.”  So do NOT ignore AI. (3) LAST: Tell it what to do, not what to NOT do. As in when you’re prompting ChatGPT, for example, avoid negativity. Instead of saying “without sounding arrogant”, try prompting “in a modest voice.”  Or instead of saying “without being obvious or boring” try prompting “creative” or “clever.”  You get  the idea. So the 3 Do Nots: Do not assume AI is correct DO not ignore AI. Do not tell AI what to void or what not to do. And that is it for this episode! I’ve been thinking about doing an episode on this topic for a long time. I know many people know a lot more than I do about how to use AI.  But I also know I have something to say.  I hope I’ve inspired you in terms of your opinion about AI and cheating, in terms of the distinction between AI Generated and AI assisted, in terms of the many ways you might use AI at work, including brainstorming references and summarizing, and in terms of some of the Dos and Don’ts of using AI.  DO consider the many ways you can use AI. DO practice getting good at writing prompts and DO encourage generative AI to ask you Qs about what you’ve asked it to do. DO NOT Do not assume AI is correct, DO NOT ignore AI. And be positive. Do NOT tell AI what to avoid or what not to do. I’m sure you have lots to add to this.  Pleas bring it on! I’ll be posting lots about this on social media and in my email newsletter. SO please connect with me on LinkedIn and share your thoughts! And please go to the TAT.com website and sign up for the newsletter. You can reply directly to the newsletter and we can talk more.  Bring it on.  Let’s Talk! Thanks for listening.  And talk soon! The post Using AI to Improve Your Communication (ep.145) appeared first on Talk About Talk.