Executive presence, gender bias, and imposter syndrome collide for ambitious women trying to get ahead. If you’ve been interrupted mid-sentence, had your idea repeated back by a man, or been told to “take up more space,” you already know the double standard. In this live training, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki breaks down her leadership presence framework and provides 3 techniques to build your confidence and credibility, without changing who you are.

Join the Women’s Executive Presence & Personal Branding Masterclass-  starts Sept. 23, 2026. Sign up at https://talkabouttalk.com/fall26. 

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

TRANSCRIPTION:

Andrea Wojnicki: Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

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

In this episode, you’re gonna hear a live training session that I ran focused on executive presence for women. I encourage you to stay tuned to the very end of the episode, where you’ll hear some brave women ask me some very intriguing and important questions with regards to their executive presence. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome, and kudos to you for kicking off this back end of 2026 by investing in yourself. There are always things that we can be doing in terms of our day-to-day job, and you’ve chosen to show up for an hour to invest in yourself, and I promise I’m gonna make this as productive as possible. I’m not gonna waste my time introducing myself.

If you wanna learn more about me, we’re probably connected on LinkedIn, and if we’re not, you can learn more about me there. But you can learn more about myself and Talk About Talk and everything we do at Talk About Talk if you just go to TalkAboutTalk.com. I always make it really easy for you with the URLs and the links.

Let’s get into this. I wanna start by saying, I was thinking about this as I was, I was pulling this material together. We ran a similar session to this in the spring, earlier this year, that was really successful. It was a little bit different. I think this one’s gonna be even better. It was a little bit different because we focused on five different ways of improving your executive presence, and in this session, I’m gonna double down on three.

You know what? Those of you who know me know I’m a big fan of the power of three. We’re gonna focus on three things, and the other thing that’s different about today’s live training session is that this is for women. And yes, it is different for women. I can tell you that based on the academic research, but also in the conversations that I have with folks.

I do coach men. Most of the audiences that I coach and where I do my speaking actually are mixed, but there is something magical that happens when women are together, and I always end up seeing a lot of head nodding. Like, “Yes, I’ve experienced this,” or, “I’ve wondered about that, and I’m not the only one,” right?

So if you’re here, I’m gonna guess that you are focused on self-improvement, that you are ambitious, and that you are maybe tired or frustrated with trying to establish executive presence for lots of reasons that we’re gonna get into. So you are here with a group that you have a lot in common with, and as I said, we’re gonna be super productive.

So I’m going to demystify for you or break down what executive presence is. Now, this is based on a lot of the reading, the writing, and the coaching that I do. I’ve created a definition and a framework of executive presence that I’m gonna share with you, and, in fact, a different term that I’m gonna, gonna encourage us to use, and this is what I presented in the spring.

It’s a nice framework where we can pick and choose where we wanna focus on the framework in terms of our skill development. So that’s where I’m gonna provide you as women with three specific suggestions for how you, as a woman in particular, can focus on improving and developing your executive presence based on this framework.

I’m also gonna share with you a program that I’m running starting in a couple weeks for women only, and then we’re gonna get into the favorite part of these sessions, I absolutely love them, the open Q&A. I can’t wait to hear your questions. So you’re welcome to put the questions in the chat, and I’ll also take them verbally if you want, if you wanna ask me.

I would love to answer the questions of the people that are here, okay? And I want you to be candid, and the more provocative and, I guess, authentic and true you can be in terms of these questions, the better. 

So Let’s back up a minute. Executive presence gets a lot of airtime. I have a lot of people who come to me directly, and they say, “You know, Andrea, I look around at the people who I’m, I’m gonna be frank, am competing against for promotion, and the ones that are, you know, maybe I’m a vice president, and I’m looking at the C-suite, and the folks that are there have about the same amount of technical expertise as I do, but the thing that distinguishes them is their exceptional communication skills and specifically their executive presence.”

And by the way, this holds for both men and women. But like I said, it is different for us women. So I’m gonna ask you to participate just a little bit here. You can raise either your physical hand like this or your virtual thumbs up or your hand. I’m gonna ask you three questions. The first question is: tell me if you have been interrupted in an important meeting or when you were trying to make what you thought was an important point, and you’re pretty sure that that interruption was at least partly based on your gender status.

I’m gonna say it definitely has happened to me. Okay. The other one that I hear from women a lot that I don’t hear from men– Actually, that’s not true. There are a few folks that I’ve coached who told me that, that this has happened to them, but it, it certainly is more common for women. How many of you have said something in a meeting that was met with mild interest, and then you hear some bro say the same thing and people, you know, physically turn towards him and, “Yes, that’s a great idea,” and you’re like, “What?

That’s what I just said.” I see a big thumbs up. Okay. By the way, this is a whole separate topic. Do you know what they call that? It’s bropropriation, as in appropriation, but it’s a bro who’s appropriating your comments. And there is power, by the way, in labeling this behavior because when you label it, you reify it, you make it real, right?

So next time you see it, maybe privately, uh, before you actually point your finger at someone and say, “Stop broappropriating,” but that, that is the label for that behavior, especially when they do it on purpose. Last question. How many of you- and I’m laughing at this because I know I’ve heard this so many times.

How many of you have been told that you need to take up more space or be less emotional or to be tougher or to lower your voice? In other words, you’ve been told, maybe indirectly, that you need to be more like a man. Definitely. Okay. Okay. So gender bias is real, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.

And I’m gonna say, furthermore, consistent with what we’re talking about here today, gender bias makes it a lot tougher for us as women to establish executive presence. So I’m gonna share some slides with you here. Hang on. Okay, you’re in the right place. Executive presence for women, breaking down the bias and building up your brand.

So like I said, executive presence is different for women, and we’re gonna talk specifically about three ways that you can think about improving your executive presence, acknowledging some of the bias that we have, so you can build up a strong professional identity or personal brand. By the way, I have taught this framework that I’m about to present to you right now, two rooms full of women before, and the one regret that I had is that the specific skills that I focused on in those presentations weren’t always specific things that women may experience bias with.

So what’s new about this presentation here is the three skills that I’m gonna talk about in detail are ones where women experience these things differently.

Okay. So when I think about executive presence, and this is a complaint that I hear from a lot of the women, the senior women that I coach, and some of the men.

We hear that we don’t really like this term. Why? Because it’s subjective, right? What is executive presence? People will literally say to me, “I know it when I see it. It has something to do with gravitas, but I’m not really sure exactly what it is.” The other complaint that some people have is that it could be construed as coded feedback for, “You don’t have the it factor, and you never will.”

I’ve heard something like that, similar to that, from a couple of different people, not just, you know, one or two people. So maybe it’s too subjective. Maybe it’s actually coded feedback for, “You don’t have the it factor.” And the third thing I’m gonna say is it can also be construed as being quite sexist.

So for a lot of us, when we think about executive presence, we think about the 1980s, 1990s era of the male blue pinstripe suit standing behind a podium, the command-and-control leadership style that was celebrated, right? I mean, Jack Welch wrote books about it, and now people are looking back going, “Oof, wow, that was a different world back then,” right?

So for all of these reasons, I’m gonna encourage you to not necessarily correct people when they say executive presence and not to dismiss the term, because it is a valid construct in terms of the traits or the presence that you need to establish when you’re a leader. I’m gonna encourage you instead to think about leader…

So if someone says executive presence, in your mind, I want you to think about leadership presence, right? We all wanna be a leader. And by the way, the other thing about executive presence, I forgot to say this, I coach a lot of healthcare leaders, so surgeons and physicians and, for example, hospital administrators who don’t consider themselves to be executives, but they are leaders, and all of the stuff applies to them in terms of their acceleration up the career ladder, right?

So leadership presence is something where I generally, I see a lot of nods from people, and based on my experience coaching hundreds and hundreds of folks thousands if you include the workshops. I’ve created a framework that I’m gonna share with you right now, and it’s a hierarchy, and we’re gonna start at the bottom with foundational communication skills.

So your foundational communication skills by foundational I don’t mean easy, but I mean this is the foundation. If you don’t have these critical communication skills, you’re, you’re not gonna progress in your career as quickly as you could. So this includes, you can see on the right there, things like formal presentations, precision listening, storytelling, negotiating, body language.

This is things like leading meetings effectively. This is things like introducing yourself with confidence and clarity. These are all foundational communication skills. And when I coach folks on these things, which I do in workshops and I do in one-on-one coaching and masterclasses, they often will say to me unprompted, “Andrea, you know what happened?

I started doing these things, these formal presentations, the precision, the listening, the storytelling, et cetera, and I felt an improvement in my confidence.” It’s almost like focusing on the skills distracts me from my nervousness, and I feel more confident because I know what I should be focusing on.

And I’m like, “Well, that’s interesting,” ’cause there are ways that we can directly improve your confidence, including things like talking to you about imposter syndrome, which by the way, we are going to do. We’re gonna talk about imposter syndrome, ’cause yes, it does affect women differently than men. And we can also think about adopting various tactics and mindsets that can improve your confidence, and different things work for different people.

I love doing workshops on this because I see people in the audience where things are like, “Well, that, that’s a great idea,” and other people are like, “I’ve tried that.” So different things work for different people, but the point is you can learn to become more confident, okay? So we work on confidence, and then what happens?

They proactively come to me, and they say, “Guess what? People are starting to comment on the fact that something’s different about me. People are responding to me differently in meetings.” And so this is like the manifestation of improved communication skills and confidence is credibility. So what do I mean by that?

I mean, people are leaning in to listen to you. People are taking you seriously. They’re probably not bro-propriating you. And we can also directly improve our credibility by doing things like thinking purposefully or strategically about controlling our narrative, doing things like demonstrating leadership, and, by that, I mean thinking about what your leadership, your unique leadership style is that works with your personality.

And also, there are different tactics that you can use beyond just being a boss, right? So things like establishing thought leadership, right? Or training and coaching people. These are all things, different ways that you can demonstrate leadership. And a big one here is establishing your personal brand or your professional identity.

This is a key way of improving your credibility. So you’ve gone from foundational communication skills to confidence to credibility that’s noticed by others, and then you hit the apex of this hierarchy, and that’s impact. And this is where I leave it to you to define this. There’s a little star there.

What is your goal? Is it to, um, you know, get promoted? Is it to not be talked over? Is it to be noticed? Is it for, to have people turn and nod their head at you? Is it to get a new job? Is it, you know, to secure a sale? Is it to win a, win a negotiation? Whatever it is, that top level is up to you. So I, I encourage you to think about this framework as a more sort of objective way to think about executive presence.

So executive presence is this nebulous, subjective, maybe sexist term, and when you hear it, I encourage you to just basically adopt this framework that I’m giving you. You can take a screenshot of it if you like. Think about my communication skills, my confidence, and my credibility, and how can I layer up on those things?

And I say layer up, and I, I do present it as a sequence from the bottom up. I don’t think you can achieve one layer without being great at the other. But I can tell you this, some of the most successful leaders, some of the most effective communicators that I coach, they’re seeking coaching and guidance on the bottom layer, right?

They’ll say, like, “I really need to step it up in terms of my presentation skills. I really need to step it up in terms of…” A big one that I hear is communicating with precision. And especially for women, I hear this request to focus on how to handle interruptions. So what I’ve pulled out here, which I think most of you haven’t seen if you’ve been in any of my live training sessions before, is three specific ways that we can focus on this leadership presence framework.

One thing on each of the three levels where we see a significant difference for how men versus women experience these things. Okay? So now I’m gonna take you through these three things. 

The first one, we’re gonna start at the bottom, is … I, I remember when I was creating this slide, I was like, how to handle interruptions.

Really, it’s how to handle the interrupter, right? Like, how do you say, “For God’s sake, stop interrupting me”? Right? You’re handling, like, the person. I see some smiles. I, I love the way this woman is, like, rolling her eyes, like, “Oh my God,” you know? Like, first of all, you interrupted me, and now you’re going off and taking credit for, for whatever I said.

So I’m gonna give you my quick coaching 101 on what you need to know about interrupting. The main headline is this: interrupting is all about power, period. So what does that mean? That means that we are used to hearing, and we actually witness and probably expect that people who have more power interrupt people that have less power.

So older people interrupt younger people. The boss interrupts the subordinate. And yes, the research shows men interrupt women. Men interrupt women more than men interrupt men and more than women interrupt women. So [00:18:00] okay, Andrea, I probably could have guessed that, but here’s the thing that I think is the power of this insight here I’m thinking about a very successful female leader who’s also a great communicator, and she and I were having a, like, a heated coaching session about interrupters, and she said her male boss was driving her crazy interrupting her.

And so, I let her rant, and then I said, “Here’s what you need to know. Interrupting is all about power.” And I said, “You know, in terms of our societal power norms, your boss has gender power, but he also has legitimate authority over you. So I want you to put the experience of being interrupted through this filter of, do other people, like she clearly noticed, right?

There was no question she noticed, and it was, like, really agitating her. She’s like, “I feel like screaming at him, but he’s my boss, and I can’t do that,” right? “So what do I do? Do I privately talk to him about it?” And I said, “You may be, based on the research, the only one in the room that notices it.” I wanna be perfectly clear here.

I’m not saying that interrupting people is okay, and when you have power, you should be interrupting. I’m telling you, based on our societal norms, the research shows that people may expect it. So I said to her, “You wanna keep in mind that he has the gender power. He also has the legitimate authority in terms of he’s higher than you in the corporate hierarchy.

People are not only not noticing it, they’re probably expecting it. It would be strange if a woman in a more junior position interrupted a male in a more senior position, if you get the idea.” And she said, “Okay, I need to think about this.” And I said If a peer was interrupting you, and particularly if a subordinate was interrupting you, you absolutely need to do something about it.

But I, I want you to first put it through the filter of, like, how egregious is this behavior? We gotta pick our battles, ladies, right? So a- again, I’m not advocating more powerful people to do that, but I’m, I’m just telling you to think about the dynamic in a little bit of a nuanced way. And so when we finished our coaching session, this woman summarized it beautifully.

She said, “You know what? That peer of mine who’s competing against me for a promotion, when he interrupts me, we’re gonna put an end to it. And subordinates who interrupt, I mean, they’re gonna, they’re gonna get the hand right in the face. Like, you do not interrupt me. But if my boss does it, like, it’s okay.”

And I said, “Yeah. So don’t stress out about it. It’s not making you look bad. People are not thinking that it’s, um… Yeah, it’s not, it’s not minimizing your authority or your credibility.” Okay? Now, the next question that I always get, and that I got from her, was, “What if it is a peer?” So I remember another woman who was on the senior leadership team of a big company here in Toronto, and she told me that she was– I think there were five people on the senior leadership team and she said one of them constantly interrupted her.

And I said, “Okay, I’ve got a framework. It’s a sequence of things that you need to do if someone’s constantly interrupting you.” The first time they interrupt you, you just, like, make a comment like, “Whoa,” you interrupt. You don’t need to make a big deal. It’s kinda casual, right? But you acknowledge it. And the second time they do it, this is what you do.

You put your hand up facing them, and you turn your body away from them and your eyes, right? So, what you’re doing is you’re directing everyone’s attention away- you’re, like, putting a physical wall with your hand between you and him, and you turn to the rest of the group, and then you say, “I’m gonna finish what I was saying.”

Don’t pause. Okay, if you pause, he’ll be like, “Oh, what?” No. So you say, “I’m gonna finish what I’m saying, and then I’m happy to hear what you have to say. As I was saying, la, la, la, la, la.” And you just– So you put your hand up, you turn your shoulders and your eyes away from the person. So you make eye contact with the other people in the room, and they will look at you, not him, okay?

And then you just keep talking, and you do not pause. That will take him down, and he’ll see. So you don’t do that the first time someone interrupts. The first time you, like I said, casually reference it. If this has become a repeated behavior, as it was for this woman who was on the senior leadership team, and you can practice doing this.

It’s hand, shoulders, and eyes. “Happy to hear what you have to say after I’m finished my thought,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do not pause, and keep talking, okay? So, the two key insights about how to handle interrupters. First, put it through the filter of is this egregious, or is this expected? And then you can decide how you wanna respond.

And then secondly, when it is repeated rude interrupting, first ca- reference it casually, and then go through the sequence of hand, shoulders, eyes, keep talking, don’t pause. And if he keeps talking when you’ve done that, it’s gonna make him look really bad, not you. Okay? I see some heads nodding. That makes me very happy.

All right. Back to our framework.

We’re moving up now. How to leverage imposter syndrome. I am very, very passionate about this because I believe I know from the research and from coaching so many people about imposter syndrome. That this is true, and it can make a massive difference. So if you experience imposter syndrome, and by the way, the research shows that almost all of us do. Women maybe more so than men, and junior people more so than senior people, but all of us feel it.

So I wanna share with you some insights about why I want you to think about imposter– I say leverage your imposter syndrome. Yes, I mean think of it as a positive thing. “Andrea, are you crazy? All the, you know, Harvard Business Review articles about imposter syndrome are about how women need to get over it.

It’s called a syndrome, for goodness sake. It’s like a sickness, right?” Well, let me tell you a few things. Let me tell you a few things. Imposter syndrome is a term that was originally coined in 1978, so yes, decades and decades ago, by two female social psychologists in the US who were researching successful female executives.

Let me say that again. Successful female executives. So the first thing I want you to know is that successful people experience imposter syndrome. In this paper, if you wanna look it up, if you just Google, uh, imposter syndrome 1978 original research imposter phenomenon. They called it the imposter phenomenon, okay?

So successful women do experience it. And here’s what I want you to know: people who are sitting on their couch, not going for it, who are comfortable in their job, who aren’t pushing themselves, they are not experiencing imposter syndrome. The folks that experience imposter syndrome, I can tell you this, I get, um, consults on you know, there’s a button on my website, “Book Andrea for a consult,” and very often people will say, “I just got promoted. I used to be confident. All of a sudden, I’m– I sound like a blabbering idiot. I have huge imposter syndrome.” And I say, “Hang on a second. Congratulations on your new job, and the reason you’re experiencing imposter syndrome is because you’re pushing yourself, you’re ambitious, and you’re experiencing something new.”

When you feel that feeling, I don’t know, like, I, I feel it kind of like in my gut, in my chest; it’s like, ugh, you should be celebrating that because that means you’re pushing yourself and you’re growing and you’re improving and you’re ambitious. So this is a bit of a mindset change. Instead of thinking of it as something that hurts us, think of it as something to celebrate.

And speaking of how you’re labeling it, I told you that I do a lot of coaching with healthcare leaders, and they have validated that this is, in fact true. The only difference between anxiety and excitement is what you call it. In other words, when you feel that yucky feeling in your chest or in your belly, “Oh, no, I have imposter syndrome.”

No, no, no. Oh, it’s like, “Oh, yes, I’m excited. I’m learning new things. I’m trying new things.” So if you, if you can have the self-awareness and the mindfulness, I guess, to, to, to think about what actually is going on here and label it as excitement. And I do this when I go out in front of big crowds, sometimes, especially if I’m coaching something new, I’ll be like, “Okay, I don’t, I don’t know how this is gonna go.”

And then I’ll be like, “Oh, there’s that feeling. I’m excited.” So I, I call it like the spark of positive energy. It’s not like, “Oh, no,” and then you start ruminating and go down, spiraling down. Instead, be like, “Oh, there’s that spark of positive energy. Look at… I’m pushing myself. I’m ambitious. I’m growing.” This is how you leverage imposter syndrome, okay?

So know that the term was coined 25 years ago, over 25 years ago. Sorry, not 25 years ago, 45 years ago. Gosh, that’s good math. 45 years ago by these two female social psychologists, and it’s the women that they interviewed who were successful; all experienced it, so you are in good company, and it’s something that only people who are pushing themselves experience.

And your brain, you can label it as excitement instead of anxiety. You could think of it as playing a trick on your… You’re not playing a trick on yourself. You’re like, “There’s that feeling. How am I gonna choose to label it? I’m gonna choose to label it as excitement and ambition, and this is what I’m here for.

Let’s go.” So leverage your imposter syndrome. I can’t wait to hear the questions about this one when we do the Q&A. Okay. We’re working our way up the hierarchy here, and the last one is, I’m gonna say, probably of these three, the toughest to internalize or to leverage or to understand. But once you get this idea, this can be the most powerful.

This can be incredibly impactful on actually how you think about yourself and, of course, how you present yourself to other people. So I have this image here that I love of this woman who’s like, “No, let me tell you what I mean.” Like, right? You can see her body language. Her hands are like, “Yeah, no, this is what I mean.”

You have the ability and the opportunity to share your story in a way that helps you or not. So I always say this to people, there are a million ways to tell a story, and there are a million– there are infinite ways, right? Ways of telling your own story. Why not tell your story in a way that serves you?

Okay, Andrea, that sounds good, but how… This is what I mean. This is a, this is a tough one to get. Let me give you a couple of examples. I was leading a session not unlike this. It was a lot bigger. There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in the audience, and at the end of the– it was on personal branding and confidence, and this brave woman raised her hand, and she said, “As you can tell by my accent, I’m an immigrant.

I am a lawyer in New York, and I’m tired of my brand being immigrant Andrea. You can tell by my accent that I am one, but I don’t want that to be my brand. I want my brand to be lawyer. So how do I change that? And I said to her, “Well, first of all, thank you for asking the question and for being so vulnerable.

And yes, I can detect from your accent that you are, you know, not from New York originally. It sounds like you might be from India. Is that right?” She said, “Yes, I was, uh, born in India. I went to school in India. I worked in India, and then I went to school in the UK, and I also worked there. And then I came to New York.

I passed the bar exam in the state of New York, and now I’m a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, and I want that to be my brand, not this immigrant story.” And I said, “Okay, you need to know s- a couple of things. First of all, we all have an accent. It’s just that your accent becomes more salient or more noticeable if it’s different from the people that you’re around.

So you’re now in downtown Manhattan, and people are noticing your accent.” And I said, “The thing about accents is, as long as you’re not making us work hard to understand you, it’s not a negative. And I think there’s an opportunity for you here to control your narrative and actually turn your accent from a liability into an asset.”

Power pause. And she was like, “Okay, how do I do that?” I said, “When you introduce yourself, you say, you know, ‘My name is… I’m a corporate lawyer in Manhattan, and as you can tell by my accent, I have global experience. I have lived and worked in three different continents, and I’m now working as a corporate lawyer in Manhattan.'”

Right? So you, you can actually control your narrative by naming it and explaining it on your terms. She was so ecstatic when I gave her this advice. Yeah, I love telling that story. It seems to resonate with a lot of people. But you can extrapolate beyond this, right? This is the power of especially turning that thing that you’re maybe not proud of or that you don’t wanna emphasize for whatever reason.

You know, and I hope that I helped her realize that her immigrant status is not a bad thing, and her accent certainly is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a positive. Another great example was, it also happened to be a lawyer, a woman that I was coaching who’s a senior lawyer at a corporate law firm, and she told me that she was going through a very, very nasty divorce.

She has two kids, and she said, “I’m really afraid that this is starting to impact my career. The people around me, the other senior partners, are thinking like, when they see me, it’s like this is part of my brand, that I’m suffering because…” And she’s like, “I have confided in a couple of my male colleagues about, you know, what my ex-husband has done or is doing or whatever.”

And as we were going along in our coaching program, I said to her, “Can I ask you a question?” “Yeah.” “It’s about your divorce, so it’s, it might be a little personal.” And she said, “Okay.” And I said, “But it’s related to how you’re being perceived at work. Are you feeling relieved at this point about getting away from your ex-husband and the divorce being kinda mostly over?”

And she said, “Yeah, I think that’s fair to say.” And I said, “Have you consciously thought about that or shared that with anyone?” And she said, “No.” I said, “Okay. Between now and our next coaching session, I want you to think about that yourself. I want you to really focus on this feeling of relief that you have.

But at least as importantly… Well, not at least as importantly. Also importantly, I want you to go out of your way to mention this in conversations. Probably not in big meetings, right? But if you’re having one-on-ones and, you know, you’re talking about the future of the firm or whatever it is, you can say, ‘I can take that on,’ and say, ‘I am so relieved that my divorce is over with.

I am ready to hit the ground running this quarter.'” Right? So just bring it up. And the next time I met with her in our next coaching session, she said, “Before we go into anything, Andrea, I just wanna say this line about feeling relieved,” she said, “First of all-” I feel it.” I said, “Yeah, that’s why– I, I sensed it.

That’s why I, I asked you.” She said, “But I– But labeling it and saying it.” And I’m like, “It’s called controlling your narrative.” And she goes, “Okay.” Controlling my narrative around what was going on with my divorce personally helped me. It was relieving to focus on the relief, right? And she goes, “And when I shared it with other people, I got head nods.

They were like, ‘Yeah, I can see that. Things have changed. Good for you.'” Right? And then it’s like chapter closed. So these are just a couple of examples of how you can control your narrative. The other way that I really encourage you to think about controlling your narrative is in terms of your self-introduction.

So if any of you have done any training with me before, you know that one of the big things that I push is developing a strong self-introduction, and this is not about memorizing a script. It’s about customizing what you’re gonna say to people, but understanding that your self-introduction is significant because it is the most direct way that you have of reinforcing your professional identity.

So you can control your narrative by using my three-point self-introduction framework: present, past, future. Present, who I am and what I do. Past tense, establish credibility by identifying one to three things that are relevant to the person that you’re introducing yourself to. And then step three, the one that most people forget, future tense.

Share something that you’re enthusiastic about, especially about in, in terms of introducing yourself to someone, focused on the other person. So if, if you’re looking for a new job, you could say, “My name is whatever. I currently work in a certain place, and my expertise and my industry expertise is this.

Previously, I…” You name a couple things and accomplishments, and you could say, “I’m happy to elaborate on that, of course, in, in the job interview.” You switch to future tense, and you say, “I just wanna say how excited I am about this opportunity ’cause I think I might be a great fit.” Right? You, you see how this present, past, future works really well, and you’re controlling your narrative.

You’re establishing your professional identity directly. These are your words from you about you. Okay? One last thing I wanna say about controlling your narrative, and this is a big one for women. The self-introduction is for everybody. The controlling your narrative, uh, it’s for everybody for sure. This last one, a lot of women that I talk to say, “I know I’m supposed to self-promote.

I know I’m supposed to talk about my strengths.” But I feel like I’m gonna sound arrogant. And for women, it is tough, right? Because we have this tightrope that we’re supposed to, we’re supposed to be confident, but not too confident, right? We’re supposed to be a strong leader, but n-not too strong, right? So it is a valid concern for women, and here’s what I have to say about that.

You need to talk about your unique strengths. If you are really clear on your unique strengths and you’re controlling a narrative around what you have to offer, what your value is, but it’s you’re not saying you’re good at everything, right? Arrogant people think they know everything. They think they’re good at everything.

People who have this beautiful level of ideal confidence are focused on their unique strengths, and that’s what I encourage you to do. And you can control the narrative around it. You could say things like when you raise your hand, “I don’t know about, you know, the private equity dynamics associated with this, but I can talk to you about the branding side,” and then you jump in, right?

You tell them, label for them what your expertise is. I’ve done this in meetings. I remember I was in, um, a board meeting at North York General Hospital. Some of you from Toronto know I was on the foundation board, and these guys were talking about their investment strategy for the, uh, the hospital endowment, and I heard them go off, and I was like, “What am I doing here?

I mean, I have a PhD in business, but come on.” And I raised my hand, and I said, “You know, based on my expertise and my background in branding and marketing, I think that we should also tell our donors that we are investing the endowment in things that are aligned with the hospital’s vision and values.” And everyone turned their chair and were like, “Oh.”

And you know, what I did with that comment was I contributed something valuable, which helped the group, but it also helped me personally ’cause I established why am I there. What is my value? I was controlling my narrative, okay? So there are many ways that you can do this. I want you to think about there are an infinite number of ways that you can talk about yourself.

You don’t need to share every thought. You can purposefully share your story in a way that serves you. All right. So we have worked our way up this, uh, leadership presence framework. And like I said, I chose three specific skills, how to handle interruptions or interrupters, how to leverage imposter syndrome, and how to control your narrative, just as three examples of the many, many different ways that you can focus on improving your communication skills, your 

In fact, the list can feel overwhelming, so what I’ve been doing this, uh, for several years now, and this fall, I’m gonna be introducing a program that’s just for women, where we’re gonna basically go through this leadership presence hierarchy in a six-week program for women only called Executive Presence & Personal Branding Masterclass: Build Your Brand, Communicate with Confidence, and Lead with Gravitas.

It starts in just a couple of weeks on September 23rd. I made it as easy as possible for you. If you go to talkabouttalk.com/fall26, or you can take a picture of this, um, QR code, it’ll take you to the landing page. Don’t worry, it’s not like a checkout page. It’s actually the page that shows you everything that you get in this masterclass, which I’m just gonna run through quickly here before we get to the Q&A.

So we are going to focus on establishing your personal brand or your professional identity, which is at the credibility level of the hierarchy. We are going to focus in every single session on introducing yourself with confidence. This is such an important skill. We are gonna specifically look at optimizing everyone in the masterclass’s, uh, LinkedIn profile.

We’re gonna talk a lot about beyond imposter syndrome and what we talked about here: specific confidence-building mindsets and tactics. And like I said before, not everything will work for every person, but we’re gonna go through enough of them that I know, I’m– I am confident that you will find some tactics and mindsets that work for you.

And we’re gonna learn to think about your credibility and your executive presence so that you can achieve your goals. And the way that we’re gonna do this is we have weekly live coaching sessions on Wednesdays at lunchtime. I have six-plus because we have six sessions scheduled. I also have some guest speakers who have offered to come in and do bonus training sessions, which are always amazing.

So it’s minimum of six live coaching sessions. You also get access to 10 instructional videos from me on personal branding. You get this fantastic workbook that becomes your playbook. We talk about this all the time. Print your workbook; it becomes your playbook for how you can establish executive presence in your brand.

And you also will participate in a private virtual group. I’m actually doing a sort of a masterclass right now, ’cause I, I’m writing a book, and I’m, um, in the masterclass that I’m in; it’s with a bunch of authors, and I’m really enjoying the private virtual group. So I know, I know these, uh, private virtual groups are really valuable and enjoyable.

And yes, I’m in the virtual group with you, so if you ask a question there, I will be answering it. And I know you’re wondering the price. So it’s the regular price is $1297, and until next Wednesday at midnight, that’s Eastern Time, so I guess eight days, you have to use the coupon code LIVE200 to save $200.

So your investment to everything in the masterclass that I just talked about, you know, I guarantee you will experience transformation in terms of your self-identity, your professional identity, and your executive presence for $1097. So if you wanna learn more, you can contact me through the website. You can find the information about the masterclass on the website.

You can also DM me on LinkedIn. And like I said, if you wanna use the QR code or just check out the landing page, it’s TalkAboutTalk.com/fall26. We have got, I think, nine or 10 people signed– women, I should say, not people, women signed up, and we’ll probably double that, but no more. So it is small group. And I’m gonna say one other thing about this. When I first launched these, I, I called them boot camps.

I switched them to masterclass. We started with four weeks. Now we made it six weeks, and they really are masterclasses. I did this partly because the price of private coaching is very, very expensive, and it’s a deterrent for some people, so this is a really good value for the six-week program. And I kind of thought of it as like a lower tier of coaching.

But in my experience, and based on what I’ve heard from the masterclass participants that I’ve coached, is that these masterclasses are, I would say, even more impactful. They can be even more impactful than private coaching because you’re learning not just from me, but you’re also hearing what the other women in the group are asking or saying, and we’re all smart enough to extrapolate, right?

Many of us went to business school. We did the case study method. When someone else asks a question, you’re smart enough to extrapolate if that means that for her, what would it mean for me? And then you get this like bonus reinforced learning. So if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

I just wanna do a quick review here of our leadership presence model, which I’m hoping you’ll consider to replace this otherwise maybe not ideal executive presence term, and thinking about it as your foundational communication skills, your confidence, your credibility.

My hope for you, based on what I just took you through, is that you’ll think of one or two things that you can work on that will help you improve your leadership presence. I know we went through a lot, and I’m, I can’t wait to hear your questions now. We went through a lot. If you can, maybe even, if you have a chance, write down or just put it in your phone one or two things that you wanna try and make a difference on and focus on those; that would be fantastic.

And I pause and ask you to do that because I am one of those coaches who’s not just here, you know, trying to sell my wares. I really do wanna make an impact on you. I wanna help you transform into the leader that you wanna be and that I want you to be. Okay?

So that, I think that’s it. Questions? Yes. I’m gonna look in the, uh, in the chat. But before I do that, does anyone here have any questions that they wanna ask? Marissa, hi. 

Marisia Campbell: Hi. Um, and I have to say the master class was awesome. I took it, but now that I’m going through transitions, I wanna take another one, so this is great to hear that you’re doing that, ’cause I think each time you go through transitions, right, you can learn something else.

And I guess my question goes around, like, all three really of the stages, and when you’re going through transitions and redefining yourself, what do you focus on first? You know? Because you’ve, you’ve had one set of skills, right? And y- you’ve taken yourself to on stage, but then now all of a sudden you’re making this big change in your life, and- Yeah … you’re redefining, like, your third chapter or whatever. Yeah. In my case, like, retired- Yeah … and then now starting a whole new career that’s using skills that I had, but, you know, also having to build new ones. 

AW: Yeah. Okay. Such a good question. Such a good question. And not just for the third chapter, right? So this, this kinda goes back to what I said about imposter syndrome. The only people that experience imposter syndrome are the ones that are pushing themselves, which means you’re evolving, which means you’re making things happen.

So if you’re going through a transition, it may be imposed on you, or you may be proactively seeking transformation. The big thing here is controlling your narrative, and there is a research paper writ- written may- maybe not surprisingly by a whole bunch of female academics at various business schools in the US where they looked at what distinguished successful women, and one of the things that really stood out for me in this paper was they didn’t use the term controlling their narrative, but they talked about creating a discourse.

You know, that, that’s another word for creating a narrative, right? Creating a discourse that made it sound as if their success is inevitable. So this is, like, not about be- being manipulative. This is about really understanding and believing that there are infinite ways of telling your story. You tell your story in a way that serves you.

So typically, people, if they say, “Tell me about your career and what your goals are,” they’ll be like, “I graduated in 1992, and then I worked at Kraft, and then I did my MBA, and then I…” And it’s like, “Da, da, da, da, da, da, da.” How is that helping you, right? Versus, “You know, throughout my career, I’m not surprised that I’m here coaching people on executive presence and personal branding because I have these skills and these interests I’ve always had on,” and then you name the things, right?

So you create the story in a way that makes it sound as if your current status and your future success are, I love this word, inevitable. I think without understanding someone’s specific context, it’s hard to kinda go beyond that. But, uh, eh, let me, let me try to summarize here. Don’t depend on your chronology.

So people, men and women, often default to chronology ’cause that’s the way our brains are wired, and that’s fine, but I think it’s a missed opportunity. What’s the real message that you want them to understand? You want them to understand that everything you’ve been doing for decades is pointing you towards this job that they’re gonna give you, right?

Or this promotion they’re gonna give you, or this whatever it is, and then you’re like, evidence A, evidence B, evidence C, right? And then, I ac- by the way, I accidentally did this when I was in my 20s. I was working at Kraft trying to get moved from sales to marketing, and I did this in my interviews. I was like, “I feel like I’ve been circling this.

I did this degree, and then I worked at Toys R Us, and then I worked at Kraft in sales, and I’m circling marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing. You gotta give me this chance.” And they were like, “That’s pretty compelling,” right? And then I ended up creating a career around marketing. So I mean, it was true.

That’s the other thing. I’m not, I’m not talking about or encouraging anyone to create falsehoods about themselves, right? That’s not what I’m saying here. Does that help, Marissa? 

MC: Oh, yeah. No. I, I love that, uh, a lot. That’s, yeah, the, the, it, I think the inevitable is the key, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, fantastic. It’s like I was meant to do this.

AW: Yeah. 

MC: Why was I meant to do this? 

AW: Yeah. Focus on that, not your whole life story. I was trying to avoid saying the word, but I’m just gonna say it. 

MC: Yeah. 

AW: Reverse engineer your success. Yeah. Were you thinking that? Yeah. Yeah. Julia, you have a question? 

Julia Rios: Yes, I do. Um, I, uh, also wanna start with I’m super excited for your upcoming book, and I’ve been listening to you for a while

AW: Thank you.

JR: And I really appreciate your guidance. I feel like I’ve grown a lot since I’ve been listening to you, so thank you so much for all of what you’re doing. Great. I do have a question. 

AW: Thank you, Julia. That means a lot. 

JR:  Of course. Oh, thank you. And so my question is about fighting the established mold. So I’m working in a very heavy, uh, men industry. 

AW: Yeah. 

JR:  And when you look at the corporate ladder or, um, organizational chart, you see, like, the traditional, um, middle-aged white men higher you go, right? So I am aspiring future leader, and I really believe there is a plenty of opportunity here just out of challenging and being a trailblazer.

I see it as a challenge for me, all right? So I really wanted to start with empowering other women. So I’m getting to the question right now with if there is a lack of challenge from, um, fellow women in, in organization, uh, and no authority given to them either. I want to empower them, and if you have any guidance how to do it without being pushy or without sounding like I know better.

AW: Do you mean as a mentor, Julia? Like, you want to encourage other women? Is that what you mean? 

JR: Yes. 

AW: It’s almost like you’re creating a narrative within the organization that women are capable. 

JR: Correct. 

AW: First of all, I love what you put in your Zoom name, aspiring future leader. Thanks. Um, I… One thing that you can do that’s actually really easy, and you can make it into a game, is, uh, you can go too far on this, but I’m guessing that it’s an extreme in the wrong direction right now. 

Asking people, so you do this yourself, talk about yourself as a leader, and use the word lead, led, leadership, leader in reference to yourself, and also in reference to other women, and then encourage them to do the same thing. So this is like a for a lot of people, right? So I remember I was coaching a guy actually in one of the boot camps that I was talking about.

It was a boot camp on job transition, and this guy was like, “Oh, I, I’m looking for a job in sales, la, la, la.” And I looked at his LinkedIn and I was like, “I don’t see the word sales anywhere.” And he’s like, “Oh my God,” right? And I was like, “Oops.” I, I feel like a lot of people do that with the term leader or leadership as well.

If you don’t call yourself a leader, no one’s gonna see you as a leader. And even if you’re not managing people, you’re probably leading projects, you’re probably leading meetings, and you can… And it’s not like you’re dropping a bomb, like I led that meeting. But you could say, “In that l- meeting that I led last week, la, la, la, la, la,” right?

And it’s, like, just these little prompts that you’re planting for people that you are a leader, that you have led, that you are leading. That’s, like, low-hanging fruit, Julia. 

JR: I love it for others because I’ve seen it for myself and obviously listening to your podcast. But seeing it as I can empower other women by actually changing their own narrative, um, because I empower them.

I give them the confidence they are leaders as well, and I want them to have that authority, and I can give it to them by simply using better choice of words, right? 

AW: Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. If you can do that, you’re magic, Julia. And it’s, it is easier than you, than you think. And many women don’t wanna do it still, but y- you do it yourself, role model it, and encourage other people to do it. Heather. 

Heather Mullen: Hello there.

AW: I can’t wait to hear your question. 

HM: Well, actually, I put it in the chat- oh… but then I thought I’d take the opportunity to actually voice it as well, which is that I would say traditional executive signals have changed. So how do you cultivate leadership presence in a business casual and increasingly remote work environment? Because I’ve heard you speak before about your appearance, and I hate the word gravitas. 

AW: Yeah. 

HM: And I, it just gives me, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. 

AW: Yeah. 

HM: But I would like to have your, uh, thoughts on that. 

AW: One thing is coming to mind, Heather, that I have noticed with such consistency, it’s almost scary, and I challenge all of you who are curious about this to check as well.

Go to LinkedIn and go to the recent activity of the leaders that you admire, and if it’s not obvious, then click on comments. And the most impressive leaders that I coach spend a lot of their time online congratulating other people. They’re elevating others. So if you have such leadership presence that you are going out of your way to elevate others, I think you’re– it’s, it’s like you can think about your, you, you’re demonstrating the communication skills, definitely the confidence and the credibility that you’re encouraging others.

I feel like, kind of like what I said to Julia, this is like the low-hanging fruit. That is a tactical, easy, like check mark way that you can demonstrate leadership presence. And then when you’re in virtual meetings, like we are right now, doing the same thing. Like, what do we have to celebrate? You know, so and so, last week you launched that product.

I know that we met, not only met, but we did better than what we were targeting in terms of the volume or the date that we were supposed to, whatever it is. So you congratulate other people. When I’ve noticed this in the context of as a thought leader, the thought leaders that I admire the most are doing posts about other people’s books that they admire.

It’s like they have this confidence that they’re pointing to other people, right? So and I, and I– then I look at leaders in business, and they are constantly elevating people. I don’t know if you thought about that before, Heather. Does that resonate? 

HM: Yes, it does. No, it does. 

AW: Okay. There’s one other question.

Um, here’s what I’m gonna… Here, I, I know it’s 1:01, so we’re one minute over. I do respect your time. If you have to go, I totally understand. We’re gonna post this on YouTube, so you’re gonna be able to watch the whole thing. I’m also gonna take the time in LinkedIn to answer all of the questions that are in the chat.

I just want to answer, before we go, Mary Ann’s question. She’s a communication coach at a major business school where extroversion is the currency that gets people ahead there. I understand. I went to Harvard Business School. 50% of your grade is participation, right? And so all the extroverts were getting A+.

I got that. What approaches might you have for coaching introverts to keep their gifts and also get ahead? The reason I pulled this question out is I think that introverts get a bad rap, and I think they are underappreciated. I’m married to one. They are some of the smartest people. Some of them also are the best teachers and leaders and even presenters that you know, and this is the reason I pulled this question out is if you are an introvert and you maybe don’t speak or contribute quite your fair share.

If there’s four people in the room, you tend to speak less than 25% of the time. Here’s an opportunity for you to control your narrative. You raise your hand two-thirds of the way through the meeting, and you say I’m an introvert. I don’t speak very often, but let me tell you something, I’ve been listening deeply to everything that everyone has said.

Guaranteed what’s gonna happen: people are gonna turn their chairs towards you, and they’re gonna lean in. And then you say, “I have an observation that I wanna make,” or, “I have a big question here based on all of this synthesizing that I’ve been doing,” right? You tell them. You control the narrative around what your role is and what your strength is.

The best leaders aren’t doing all the talking, right? They’re doing the listening, and then they’re allocating resources. And if you can demonstrate that, you don’t need to be an extrovert to be successful. As an extreme extrovert, I will die on my sword for this, that introverts are underappreciated. Okay.

Thank you. I honestly wish we could go for… Thank you, Maryanne. I wish we could go on for another hour, truly, but I respect your time. And if you wanna connect with me through email, I’m [email protected], or you can check me out on the website, TalkAboutTalk.com. Yes, I make it easy for you. And if any of you are interested in the masterclass, I would love to see you then.

Talk soon. Bye.

The post Executive Presence for Women (ep.221) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Wondering how to build your personal brand? Executive communication coach Andrea Wojnicki walks you through three exercises straight from her upcoming book to help you identify your own unique and valuable personal brand themes. Learn how to organize your strengths using the three Cs, clarify exactly how you make money, save money, solve a problem , and how skill stacking your abilities can make you distinctive.

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🧭 Take the Archetypes Quiz: TalkAboutTalk.com/ArchetypesQuiz

TRANSCRIPTION:

Andrea Wojnicki: You are in for a treat with this episode. I am really excited about this one. It’s gonna be a short one, but I promise it will deliver impact. I’m gonna coach you through three brand-new exercises that I share with my executive coaching clients in private coaching and in workshops. These are exercises that will help you develop your own unique and valuable personal brand.

Sound good? Let’s go. I want you to think of this podcast episode as a private coaching session just between you and me. Are you ready to work on your personal brand? Then you are in exactly the right place. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please, just call me Andrea.

For the next 15 minutes or so, you can consider me your personal executive communication coach. I coach ambitious leaders like you to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals. You can learn more about Talk About Talk and everything that I do if you go to TalkAboutTalk.com.

You’ll see information about keynote speeches, corporate workshops, masterclasses, online courses, private coaching. It’s all there. There’s also plenty of free resources. So I encourage you to explore, and while you’re there, sign up for my free email newsletter. That’s more free coaching.

Okay, now I have something exciting to share. I am writing a book. This may or may not be news to you, but it’s not on the website yet, and it will be soon. It’s due to be published in 2027, and I have to tell you, it is way, way more work than I expected, but it’s also way more enjoyable. The title of the book is Let Me Introduce Yourself.

As you can probably guess from this title and from the topic of this podcast episode, the book is about how to introduce yourself with confidence and how to build a strong personal brand. Writing this book has pushed me to think in an even more disciplined way about how I coach people through this process.

And as I’ve been writing, a few things have bubbled up, you could say, and I just wanna share these things with you now. Three things, in fact. Today, I’m gonna walk you through all three, and I’m gonna coach you on how to use each one to help you identify and develop your own unique and valuable personal brand themes.

First, though, I need to provide you with a little bit of context. When I work with these clients, these leaders, whether it’s one-on-one private coaching or in a group workshop, our goal is to build a succinct list of between 10 to 15 personal brand themes that are positive, unique, and resonant things about you that you wanna reinforce as part of your personal brand.

I use all kinds of exercises and prompts to help you build that list. And the most popular of these exercises is the Archetypes Quiz. If you go to talkabouttalk.com/archetypesquiz, you’ll find it there. It’s absolutely free, and it will help you identify which one of the 12 archetypes is your default. This output will give you confidence, focus, direction, and a real sense of identity, not to mention a whole new way to think about yourself and talk about yourself.

Okay, context is set. You now know that our goal is to come up with between 10 to 15 personal brand themes, and you know one way of doing so. It’s through the Archetypes Quiz. I’m gonna take you through three more. 

The first one I call the three Cs. As I was writing my book and describing this personal brand building process, something struck me.

The list of possible personal brand themes is so extensive, it’s actually exhausting. It can feel overwhelming. Think about it. We’re talking about your industry expertise, your functional expertise, your sector, your current title, your educational credentials, your past jobs, your archetype, your personality traits, especially where you’re off the charts, your leadership style, your geography, where you live and where you’re from, your hobbies, your family, and on and on.

You get the idea. Overwhelming, right? So when I was writing the book, I asked myself, “Is there a better way to organize all of this?” And that’s when I came up with the three Cs. The three Cs are credentials, character, and context. So here’s your exercise. Grab a piece of paper or open a document and write these three words across the top: credentials, character, and context.

Then, under each heading, brainstorm the positive, unique, and resonant things about you that belong there. Under credentials, you include things like your title, academic achievements, awards, certifications, past positions, and so on. Under character, you would include things like your archetype, which I just mentioned, and you can find a link to the quiz in the show notes.

You would also include your personality traits, your leadership style. You get the idea. These are your character traits. And then in the third column, under context, you put your family role, your stage of life, where you grew up, where you live now, your hobbies, and so on. Simply categorizing this previously overwhelming list can help you think more clearly and more strategically about which themes belong in your personal brand.

It might even surface something that you’d otherwise overlook. Okay, so that’s exercise one, the three Cs: credentials, character, and context. 

Moving on to exercise two. This exercise comes from a quote from a very good friend of mine named Sharon Ma Jin. You may have heard me mention her before. I’ve even had her on this podcast a few times.

She is a very successful executive recruiter, and we’ve worked together in workshops and coaching sessions to help people identify their professional identity and personal brand. And she is adamant about this, and I love her for it. Here’s her quote. Sharon says, “You need to know how you help a company make money, save money, or solve a problem.”

Say it with me. Make money, save money, solve a problem. Think about that. Here’s your exercise. Write those three phrases down. Then for each one, brainstorm the specific ways that you do this and include real examples and real experiences wherever you can. This exercise has a way of illuminating strengths and personal brand themes that people don’t even realize they had.

Okay, so that’s exercise two. Make money, save money, or solve a problem. Thank you, Sharon. Okay, we’re already onto the last one. We’ve covered the three Cs. Do you remember what they are? Credentials, character, and context. And we also covered Sharon’s suggestion of identifying how you help a company make money, save money, or solve a problem.

And now onto the last exercise. I’m gonna be honest here, this one is my personal favorite. Have you ever heard of skill stacking or talent stacking? This concept is credited to Scott Adams. Yes, the Dilbert cartoonist. His idea is that you don’t need to be exceptional at any one thing. Instead, if you can combine two or three things where you’re, say, in the eightieth percentile or so, this combination will make you truly exceptional.

I like to think of this as a Venn diagram. Picture two or three circles, each representing your different skills. Where they overlap, that is uniquely you, and that is how you, my friend, are exceptional. I spoke about a related concept to this back in episode number one hundred and seventy-nine with Harvard Business School professor Christina Wallace.

Christina wrote a book called The Portfolio Life. I’ll leave links to that episode and her book in the show notes. Christina encourages us to create our own personal Venn diagram. Sound familiar? Consider three or so of your skills. Each of them is a circle, and where they overlap is magic. This is similar to skill stacking or talent stacking, isn’t it?

For Christina, her three circles are entertainment, technology, and business. Now, I have to say, there is nothing unusual about someone with business experience and expertise or someone with a tech background or someone in entertainment. But how many people do you know with all three? That is Christina’s sweet spot, and that is her brand.

For me, my circles are, I would say, marketing and branding is one, communication is one, and teaching and coaching is another. So now, when I work with clients who feel like their value proposition isn’t distinctive enough, like they’re just not unique enough to stand out and get noticed, skill stacking is the exercise that changes everything.

Think about the finance expert who’s an AI pioneer and also happens to be a genuinely collaborative leader. Or imagine an HR executive with an entrepreneurial mindset and a passion for data. When you combine these skills, suddenly you really see these people as unique. Do you see what I mean? So here’s the exercise I want you to try.

Identify your two to four unique skills. I’m gonna say target three. Make sure these are your distinct strengths and stack them. Then, craft a short phrase, even just a sentence, that captures the unique value at their intersection. That is your skill-stacking statement, and it might just become the cornerstone of your personal brand.

So there you have it. Three new exercises straight out of my upcoming book, Let Me Introduce Myself, to help you identify your personal brand themes. Let’s do a quick recap. One is the three Cs: credentials, character, and context. Organize this overwhelming list of themes into something meaningful. Two, make money, save money, or solve a problem.

Get crystal clear on the value that you bring. Thanks again, Sharon. And three, skill stacking or talent stacking. Find the magic at the intersection of what makes you you. Now, I’d love to know which of these three resonates most with you, and I have an ask. If this episode gave you even one useful insight, please share it with someone who could use it.

It could be a colleague, a friend, someone who’s navigating their career, or maybe they’re building their brand. Yes, I am asking you to talk about Talk About Talk. I had to say it. And if you haven’t left a rating or a review for Talk About Talk yet, now would be a great time. It takes you about 60 seconds, and it costs you nothing, and it makes an enormous difference in helping new listeners find this Talk About Talk show.

I gave you three exercises for your personal brand. I’m asking you for one review. Sounds like a fair trade, right? Okay, you got this. Thank you for listening, and talk soon.

The post 3 Ways to Identify YOUR SUPERPOWERS (ep.220) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Trust comes down to three pillars: logic, authenticity, and empathy. But when you’re under real pressure, one of those pillars usually starts to crack.

Leadership coach and bestselling author Anne Morriss joins Andrea to unpack the trust triangle and introduce two ideas every leader needs in their back pocket: your trust anchor (the pillar that holds firm no matter what) and your trust wobble (the one that slips the second things get hard). You’ll learn how to spot your own anchor and wobble, why this same pattern shows up in even the most accomplished leaders on the planet, and how knowing the difference can help you build trust faster and hold onto it longer.

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🌐 Website: AnneAndFrances.com

📖 Move Fast and Fix Things by Frances Frei and Anne Morriss: https://amzn.to/4wcl5JM

Anne Morriss: If I’m underslept or haven’t fed myself properly or under stress, I am more likely to wobble. And when I’m wobbly on authenticity, what will happen is a people-pleasing part of me will show up and tell you, Andrea, what you want to hear and not necessarily what I think, know, and believe. 

Andrea Wojnicki: That was entrepreneur and leadership coach Anne Morriss.

And if her name sounds familiar, it might be because she’s also the co-author of three books, one called Move Fast and Fix Things, one called Uncommon Service, and one called Unleashed. I am really excited to share with you my conversation with Anne. Amongst other things in this episode, you’re gonna learn the three-ingredient recipe for how you can establish trust.

Okay, so first of all, yes, of course it is a three-ingredient recipe. The power of three, right? And secondly, trust is critical. I realized that I really don’t use this term trust very often. Instead, I talk about personal branding and credibility, but these are all related terms, aren’t they? So if you wanna make an impact, and I know you do, then you need to establish trust.

In this episode, you’re going to learn the three pillars of trust, how to identify your trust wobble and your anchor, and a lot more. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

Welcome to Talk About Talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. Please, just call me Andrea. I’m an executive communication coach at Talk About Talk, where I help ambitious leaders and aspiring leaders to communicate with confidence and credibility so that you can get ahead in your career.

A quick note before we get started. If you wanna go deeper on improving your communication skills and your credibility at work, I encourage you to head to talkabouttalk.com. That’s where you’ll find lots of free resources, plus information about my keynotes, my corporate workshops, my master classes, my online courses, and lots more. It is all there. TalkAboutTalk.com.

Okay, let me introduce today’s guest, and then we’re gonna get right into this power-packed interview. I encourage you to stay with us through the end, though, because as always, I’m gonna wrap up with three key learnings that I wanna reinforce for you. People tell me that they appreciate this. I get lots of emails saying this.

So basically, you do not need to take notes. Okay, let me back up. I came to know Anne Morriss through her partner, Frances Frei, an award-winning faculty member and exceptional teacher who generously mentored me when I was a student at Harvard Business School. So the three of us, Anne, Frances, and myself, we all share a passion for helping leaders communicate more effectively.

I was absolutely thrilled when Anne agreed to join me on this podcast. As I mentioned, Anne Morriss is an entrepreneur, a leadership coach, and an author. She’s also a TED speaker and the founder of the Leadership Consortium, a first-of-its-kind leadership accelerator that prepares emerging leaders for senior leadership.

Over the past 20 years, she has helped organizations around the world strengthen their leadership, culture, and transformational change. Here we go. Thank you very much, Anne, for being here today to talk to me and the Talk About Talk listeners about trust and communication. 

AM: Oh, Andrea, I’m so delighted to be here.

AW: Let’s get right into this. Let’s talk about trust. I know that you and Frances say that trust is the foundation of leadership. Can you share with us what the three core components are of trust? 

AM: Yeah. It actually goes all the way back to Aristotle’s logos, pathos, ethos, which was a persuasion framework. So it will not surprise you that these ideas are very relevant to your mission on this podcast and in so much of your work, Andrea.

But the three component parts of trust are, I’ll go through them the way we often teach it, which is that I am more likely to trust you, Andrea, as a leader, if I believe you can do the job, if I think you’re competent at the wheel, if I think your reasoning and judgment are sound. It is not enough; I also have to believe that I’m interacting with a real version of you, so that your, you know, your thoughts, your feelings, your actions are all aligned.

We call that authenticity. It is still not enough. I also have to believe that you’re not just in it for you; you’re also in it for me. You’re also committed to my well-being, and you care about my interests and success, often in the job. When all three of, we call them the trust pillars, when all three of these trust pillars are sturdy and strong, trust is a very natural byproduct.

And by the way, this is all from the perspective of the other person. So I have to be convinced of your logic, authenticity, and empathy so that I can trust you. And as you said right at the top, it is very foundational. Leadership is a relational practice. We often forget that when we tell the story, you know, these great men and women stories of leaders.

We forget that it is fundamentally about having impact through other people. So that’s why this is just, this is so critical to anything you’re trying to accomplish as a leader. 

AW: So first of all, the power of three. Anyone who listens to the Talk About Talk podcast knows it. And actually, Aristotle, I was looking back at evidence of the power of three, and this is one of the things that comes up.\

So logic, authenticity, and empathy. Can you comment on, as folks, you know, are climbing the corporate ladder, as their careers are progressing, they’re becoming more senior, they’re leading more people, where those wobbles in this triad might be more likely to happen? Or may- and maybe this is a different question, where they can be the most damaging or catastrophic in people’s quest to create, I guess, leadership presence or identity?

AM: Yeah, absolutely. We think about this question all the time. And as you suggest, so we use this word wobble to describe this other very stable pattern. So one stable pattern is, we call it the trust triangle. So logic, authenticity, empathy, you need all three. The other pattern we see, even among the most accomplished leaders, is that all of us lose trust some of the time.

And when that happens, it’s not that all three of these pillars collapse. One of them tends to get a little shaky. We call that your wobble. So that’s pattern one. And then the other pattern, the good– that’s the bad news. The good news is that one of them tends to be rock solid. So if I were to drag you out of bed, Andrea, at three in the morning, you would be logical or authentic or empathetic.

So we call that your anchor. So we’re constantly working with leaders on these two questions of how do you lean into and leverage your anchor, and how do you keep your eye on your wobble? So it is different for each of us. And it is tied more to personality, is just a layman’s way to think about it, than role.

What we do find, however, is that empathy wobblers, so that’s the language you use, I’m an empathy wobbler and an authenticity anchor, is a common leadership profile. That’s actually not my trust profile. I would tell you my trust pro- profile in a second. But we do find that empathy wobblers are disproportionately represented at the top of organizations.

AW: Do you think that that’s changing? ‘Cause I have this conversation a lot with folks that this, you know, think back to the Jack Welch era, right, compared to today. Do you feel like this might be changing in terms of the emphasis or significance? 

AM: Yeah, I think with the pattern we are seeing more than empathy wobbler.

So we, we are still finding empathy wobblers disproportionately represented at the top, and I think a longitudinal study of that I think is a really interesting question. What does seem to be reinforced in 2026 is that authenticity anchors are disproportionately succeeding and ascending the hierarchy in organizations.

So if that’s your anchor, then you have two wobbles to choose from, and I think we’re finding that profile of authenticity anchor, empathy wobbler to be pretty stable at the top of the hierarchy. 

AW: So can you define what authenticity is? I just wrote a paper, and I write about this and think about this all the time.

What’s the difference between authenticity and transparency and being a professional, and how do you walk this line? I’d love to hear your take on that. 

AM: Yeah, so and I will use myself as an example. So I am an empathy anchor, authenticity wobbler. The way we define it, we are very practical people. When I say we, um, you know, my partner in all things, including my co-author, Francis Frei, who’s on the faculty at Harvard Business School.

So the way we define it is the alignment between, which is, uh, between what you say and what you do and what you think. And then we’ll sometimes throw in what you feel, because often in leadership roles, we forget about this powerful variable that is our emotions, the emotional experience of the people around us, the role we can play and to change both of those things, both what we’re feeling and what other people are feeling. But we talk about it in terms of the alignment. 

AW: Right. So alignment is different from full transparency, and I, I, I actually really like that term. I say, you know, this whole idea of sharing your whole self at work, the full transparency folks, I’m like, “I don’t share my full self anywhere,” and I don’t suggest that my clients do either.

You can be authentic to yourself without being fully transparent simply by filtering what parts of you you want to share, and I totally agree that this consistency and alignment is much more important, and I, I see how that ladders up to trust. 

AM: Yeah, I, I agree with you. Again, we’re practical people, so we’ll sometimes say 80% is plenty.

You know? 80% of any of us is plenty, probably tops out at 80%. But the metaphor I like is window, not a door. So what is the window that… of transparency that’s most useful to you and most useful to the people you’re leading? 100% transparency is not helpful in most cases. It just, it creates a lot of friction and noise and anxiety, and it’s not helping people make better decisions, including about their own lives.

So that’s part of your job as a leader is to curate information very thoughtfully, but you can, you have to continuously solve for that authenticity piece, or other people won’t be willing to be guided by you. And that’s really our, my favorite metric of leadership. When you boil it down, are other people willing to be guided by you?

Like, that’s what matters, and that’s why trust is so foundational and that’s why communication, which you focus on, Andrea, is so critical, because that is the way that you are engaging with these other people and influencing their discretionary behavior. 

AW: So I can see the significance of effective communication skills in all three of the pillars.

AM: Back to our friend Aristotle, it’s not surprising that I think actually all three of these are quite material to the challenge of communication. So I think about logic as content, as how we would traditionally think about content. Like what is the message? What are you trying to say? Is it persuasive? Is it rigorous?

Is the credit is the content effective? I think authenticity is, is voice. Like, does the messenger… If logic is message, now it’s about does the messenger match the message? And it is– I am increasingly, like, interested in and persuaded by how important that alignment m- has to be for, like, the story to land.

And then the last one, empathy, I think of in terms of mission. Like, when you walk into a room, are you there to perform? Are you there to get what you came for, which is affirmation from the crowd? Or are you there to be in service of your audience and give them a gift that they would not have otherwise received?

I think that is a very, also a very powerful variable in effective communication. 

AW: Definitely. But I was actually having this conversation this morning when I went for a walk with a girlfriend of mine who just got promoted into a big new position, and she’s meeting with the board chair, and she’s talking about what she’s gonna wear.

And she goes, “Well, the… I guess it doesn’t matter.” And I said, “Actually, it matters ’cause they’re gonna see you before they hear one word that comes out of your mouth.” And it’s not that we need to overemphasize this, but I said, “We are constantly checking each other out. We’re looking for signals of, do we trust the person?

Do we like the person? Are they capable?” And I realize now that I was, in a different way, kind of talking about exactly the same thing as the three pillars here. 

AM: Yeah. And it will have a huge impact on how she feels in the room, which arguably matters just as much. Like, is, you know, what is she putting on her body so that she can show up in the way that she wants to show up?

AW: Yeah. And that, that’s a big theme of the personal branding work that I do. ‘Cause one of the big criticisms of personal branding in the context of establishing your professional identity at work is that you’re caring too much about what other people think. And then the epiphany that happens when I’m working with clients on developing their unique identity is that it, it elevates their internal confidence.

They feel validated, and their confidence grows. So I’d love to shift it to personal branding here. I see a very strong link between trust and establishing a strong personal brand. Do you agree? 

AM: Yes, 100%. I think it goes back to, like, what is a personal brand? And to me, it’s very connected to this metric, are other people willing to be guided by you?

Like, you, you want to show up in a way where you can be an influence on the way other people think, act, feel, behave. Ideally, in your absence eventually, but in the beginning, in your presence, and you need to live into a version of you- Yeah … that allows that exchange, that beautiful exchange to happen. Yeah.

Call it whatever you want. Um, but personal brand is certainly a good word for it. 

AW: Yeah. Yeah, personal branding may have a branding problem, but I agree, as long as we’re defining it purposefully. I say that personal branding is being yourself on purpose, and yourself, it’s your whole self, your true self, and your best self.

So you are filtering what parts of you you’re sharing, but it’s your best self. And I think the, um, the whole idea here that you mentioned the word alignment and consistency, I think that’s a huge part of personal branding, right? Yeah. So I’ve got a question for you: Do you think that leaders should encourage their folks to invest time and energy into developing their own personal brands?

And I’m asking this not facetiously. I’m not, I’m not trying to, whatever, get more coaching clients. I’m asking honestly. Many of the folks that I coach on communication skills will come up with a list of 10 or 12 topics that I’m gonna coach them on over the course of six months, including personal branding, and then when they share this list with their manager, their leader, they’ll say all the topics on the list are approved with the exception of personal branding.

I have some ideas about why that is, uh, and it could go back to the definition, but do you think generally leaders should encourage their folks to invest their time and effort into this? Or what, what’s your take on that? 

AM: Yeah. So I think I agree with your, uh, I don’t know if we… If, if it’s strong enough to be a premise, but your suggestion that personal branding might have a branding problem.

And I think part of it is when we hear that word, and that is no fault of the people who created the term; it’s a term of art, a very reasonable thing to call, like, this phenomenon. It reads as self-distracted. It reads as self-promotional versus, you know, how do I get better at advancing our shared mission?

Like, if we go back to our trust triangle, it raises questions about empathy. You know, it seems to be the phrase and the way people hear it; it sounds like, okay, authenticity, yes, and maybe, maybe a little logic, but the, like, where is e- you know, leadership is the practice of setting other people up for success.

So in the personal branding, like, universe, where is that part of the story, is where I come at this phrase. There are other things, but if we define it the way we just defined it, which is around, you know, being intentional about being the leader you wanna be in the moment, that to me is a critical part of effective leadership, and bringing intention to it is a very reasonable thing.

You know, you can call it executive presence. I have a very humble relationship with language in the sense of this stuff gets locked in and weaponized. And when that happens, like, move on to another term. Let’s just move on. As opposed to fi- dying on the hill of, like, “Oh, you’re getting it wrong.” I feel the same way about psychological safety.

The world’s very confused about what this means. I think we just need another term instead of like, spending so much energy fighting people on this is what we mean. 

AW: I am so with you on that. And in fact, e- even before I went into academia, I would be in meetings, you know, people would start talking about something, and then they’d get all riled up, and I’d be like, “Hang on a second. We need to define some terms here, or come up with better terms.” 

AM: Yeah. I think this kind of friction is an indicator that we need different language because I do think in the way the world hears this term, it’s missing a very critical part of leadership, which is that it’s not about you. It’s actually about the other people.

We use the metaphor of a mirror versus a window, and I spend a lot of time coaching people to move away from the mirror and look out of the window at the people you’re here to serve and the mission you’re trying to achieve. 

AW: So this conversation is reminding me of an experience I had recently. I was coaching 14 executives at a pharmaceutical company, and I did one-on-one coaching sessions with each of them, where we were identifying some of their personal brand themes.

And by personal brand themes, you can just think of it as the… It could be expertise or credentials or leadership styles that kind of define them, okay? They’re typically unique things about them. And so as we were creating this list of themes, I noticed that some of them, some of these pharmaceutical executives, most of whom had PhD degrees, they’re scientists, and they would very easily list their scientific and academic credentials, right?

So I feel like this is the logic foot on the, on the stool, okay? And some of them, they would just keep adding these things, right? And, and I said, “What about your leadership style? What about your default kind of social interaction? Are you a leader? Are you a follower? Are you a collaborator?” And then they’d be like, “Oh, I never really thought about that before.”

Whereas others were… It came naturally to them. Like, they would say their number one strength is their scientific background and their schooling, and then that in combination with their people leadership skills. And I think that this is actually a, a new lens for me to coach folks through this exercise.

It’s like, so when it comes to logic, substance, and style, what are your personal brand themes there? And then when it comes to empathy, this would be your interpersonal communication style, and then your authenticity. So what would that be if we’re thinking about personal brand themes? 

AM: So I’ll show you how my an- authenticity wobble shows up for me, and this might lead your beautiful mind somewhere interesting.

But, so for me, the exposure, and this is true for all wobbles, so if I’m underslept or haven’t fed myself properly or under stress, I am more likely to wobble. And when I’m wobbling on authenticity, what will happen is this, as a people-pleasing part of me will show up and tell you, Andrea, what you want to hear and not necessarily what I think, know, and believe.

And so your personal brand doesn’t happen in isolation. There’s no personal brand until other people come into the scene. So it is always about you in relationship to others. And so how does that other person experiencing me is the material question. And is what I am saying, doing, selling persuasive? You know, that feels like logic.

Is, like, do they think that I am telling them the truth instead of bull them is a very material personal brand question. You know, like it sometimes shows up in the workplace as, you know, like, it’s too salesy or, you know. It’s like, so that, to, to me, that’s where th- that all of those questions live. And then is it like, a- am I, as the person outside this, you know, this, this hu- this system of this human being, like, do they care about me?

And can I be persuasively convinced of that? And it feel, it, they all, those all three feel relevant, but quite separate to me. 

AW: I, I hear, you’re reminding me of another theme that, that people will represent themselves when they’re talking about themselves and their brand. They’ll talk about, like, “I’m a very direct person,” or they’ll say, “I’m really not direct.

I communicate implicitly to people,” right? So I feel like that belongs in there somewhere. This is fascinating. I love this idea of merging these frameworks that we’ve developed. 

AM: Yeah, someone who says they’re direct tends to be an authenticity anchor and an empathy wobble because they’re saying, “I’m direct,” and unspoken is regardless of the cost of that directness.

And so what, how, when we work with that person, we’ll often say, “Okay, like, how do you make sure that your empathy, you’re coming in hot,” right? Sometimes, ’cause that’s sometimes the goal of the triangle is that it’s balanced. So if you are gonna come in hot with a strong point of view and like calling it like it is, ’cause that’s the other story people like, then you have to make sure that your empathy is just as strong, that I understand as someone receiving your directness that you are doing it in service of something that we both care about, or you’re doing it to make me better, or you’re doing it for this thing that we both decided is important, this shared mission that we both signed up for.

So you might wanna dial it back a little bit, but the real solve for most people is to dial up the empathy, not dial back the authenticity. 

AW: Yeah. Generally, these are three things that we want to increase. Like, we wanna keep them all in a nice equilibrium, but we, the higher they all are together, the better.

Yeah. Okay, so last question before we get into the three rapid-fire questions is, what advice would you give to emerging leaders, especially women and other underrepresented minorities who wanna build visibility and influence and this leadership presence? And to do so, how can they achieve this without feeling like they’re performing leadership, even when they have this beautiful triad that they’re aspiring to?

AM: It’s a very deep question. So for those of us who don’t fit the expectation of who we think is gonna be at the front of the room, the world has notes, right? 

AW: Oh, I love that, Anne. You are gonna be quoted on that. 

AM: Yeah. And so it can lead to a higher, like, self-distraction, self-consciousness, which is totally understandable.

But the mindset shift, the story shift is also counterintuitive, which is not like, oh, you know, our instinct, the spotlight is brighter, and so our instinct is to not it up. Sorry if this is a family show. Not screw it up, right? And then, and that, that can, like, pretty quickly tip over into perfectionism, so we’re not taking the risks we need to have the impact that we can have in advancing our career.

And so the mindset reset is often it’s not about me. It’s about this, this thing bigger than me and beyond me. Leadership is a team sport. The people who are most effective, even at the very top of organizations, they are not lonely at the top, right? They are deeply interconnected with the people around them, and they’re playing this leadership game as the team sport that it is.

So the work on that one is around like resisting the story that it is about you and that you are isolated in some way, and just, like, treating isolation as the enemy, playing leadership as a team sport, like, waking up every day, even though, even when the world wants you to look at yourself, like refu- like refusing to take the bait.

So I think that’s part one. And then when we look at the demographics around wobbles, if we are Xs in an organization of Ys, and that can mean a lot of things. It do- it’s not necessarily, like, visible demographic differences. It can also be, you know, like level of education or geography or, you know, it can be so many things.

Like, there’s so many of us walking around with this “I don’t belong” story that’s getting in the way of the impact we can have and the le- the leader we can be out in the world. So if you identify with, “I don’t belong,” for whatever reason, those of us who have that experience of being Xs in a, in an organization filled with Ys, we are more likely to wobble on authenticity.

And again, this is for very good reasons. We are more likely to have these people-pleasing habits because it is a safety tactic. It’s a security tactic ’cause, you know, we weren’t faster, fiercer. Like, back on the savanna, early Homo sapiens, we were not stronger, faster, fiercer. The thing that we were better at was working with each other.

We weren’t even smarter in the beginning. The thing that we were better at was collaboration. And so it was an existential threat. Like, we could not survive on our own. We had to survive in tribes. And so we have this very ancient cellular biological memory of that being a, a, a big problem for us to be separated from the herd in some way.

So I think all of that gets, gets swirled together for those of us who feel different in any way. And so bringing the same strategy. I mean, I have two sticky notes on my computer. One of them is tell the truth. Because if I’m not intentional, like, that’s the one that’s gonna slip. The other one is host the party, which is ’cause if we have this storyline that we don’t belong, we’re also less likely to properly take care of the people around us.

And that’s one of the advantages of these, of authenticity anchors, is it doesn’t occur to them to not host the party. Obviously, they’re hosting the party, right? So yeah, I mean, uh, you’re asking a very deep question. We could have another 30-minute conversation about it, but that’s my top-line response.

AW: I love your metaphors. And as you started answering that question, Anne, I was thinking about the tightrope metaphor that I hear almost every day from women saying, “If I show up and I’m too empathetic, kind, nurturing, they dismiss me. And then if I’m too focused on performance, the logic stuff, getting things done, the expertise, the maybe bit of command, leadership style, then they think I’m a jerk,” right?

And it’s, like, really impossible. And what I’m hear- The metaphor that I saw in my mind was you’re desperately trying to balance on this tightrope, and maybe what can kinda pull you up and help you with that balance is shifting the focus to the greater cause or to the other people around you. 

AM: I do think that’s the exit from this safe room that feels like a trap. I also think resisting the false trade-off of those two experiences is really important.

‘Cause what, when we, we, the most effective leaders we see are setting high standards. They’re making the expectations really clear, while also signaling their commitment and devotion to the people around them. So we call it high standards, deep devotion leadership, ’cause you can do both, and the most effective leaders do both.

AW: High standards, deep devotion. 

AM: Those are the two axes, and most of us spend most of our time, like, on the off-diagonal, thinking that we have to pick one or the other, when in fact, you can and should most of the time choose both. 

AW: So it reminds me of the lovable fools and competent jerks 2×2, right? Everyone thinks they’re in, on the offside, and we- you really wanna be in the top corner.

I was gonna say, I recently interviewed the recently retired CEO of McDonald’s Canada, and she was relentless about this, and she actually had this mantra that she used to say, which is, “Do not mistake my kindness for weakness.” She said, “W- I created this virtuous cycle of high performance,” because we were creating an environment of psychological safety, right?

Where people were coming up with new ideas. They were truly being themselves. They were admitting their mistakes. They were learning from them. We were learning fast. We were kind to each other, and then it, this flywheel started, and it’s like that. Yeah. Another metaphor. Gosh. 

AM: I love that phrase, uh, my kindness mistaken for weakness. I think Rihanna put it in a song. 

AW: Do you know who said it first, Anne? 

AM: No. Who said it first? 

AW: Al Capone. 

AM: No. 

AW: The mobster. 

AM: No way.

AW: Wow. He meant it in a very different way. Yeah. “Do not mistake my kindness for weakness, ’cause if you piss me off, I’ll kill you” is what he meant, right? Yeah. 

AM: Yeah, that follow-up sentence is, is, is, it’s a little brutal.

AW: There you go.

AM: Um, but that’s, that is so fun to know. Thank you for that fun fact. I grew up in Ohio, and I think Midwesterners in the US and Canadians, I think, have a little bit of advantage on this one because we can visualize it. I think we are more likely to grow up with role models, coaches, teachers, and parents who at least some of the time were in that upper right of, like, revealing high expectations without, like, without being an, to be, to just actually use…

I don’t know why I’m swearing like a sailor in front of you, Andrea, today. That was not my intention. 

AW: I was, uh- You sound like my 19-year-old son. 

AM: I was trying to be on such good behavior. 

AW: That’s funny. You’re being authentic. 

AM: Yeah. 

AW: Okay. Speaking of authentic, let’s get on to the three rapid-fire questions. Are you ready?

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

AM: I am an extrovert. Your follow-up question, which is how does this affect your communication? This one is, uh, th- we could spend another 30 minutes on this, so I was really contemplating this. I think it’s not necessarily an advantage. I think that what’s helpful is it makes me more interested in my audience.

It makes it easier for me to connect to that mission orientation, being of service, bringing my audience a gift. All of that helps because I really like people, right? I like being around them. It does make me more distracted when the guy in row three is, like, on his iPhone instead of paying attention. So I am paying attention to the other humans around me, and sometimes that’s not helpful to me as a speaker or as a messenger.

The other thing I will say is some of the most effective speakers I know are introverts, and I think there is some advantage built into, I think, a couple of things, including– Well, and it depends on the, um, like, scale of the audience. But you put an introvert up, like in a stadium of thousands, okay, like, and there is an advantage in that dynamic somewhere that we can tease out in a follow-up conversation.

AW: Yeah. I think introverts, I’m also an off-the-charts extrovert, but I think introverts are underrated, and I know based on the research that they are, uh, typically exceptional listeners, which can make you a great presenter and communicator, right? Okay. That wasn’t very rapid fire, but it was awesome.

Question number two, what … I’m curious about this one, Anne. What are your communication pet peeves? 

AM: Talking down to your audience. 

AW: Yeah. Also using terms that aren’t well-defined? 

AM: No, no. Language is a living, breathing thing. Something that was well-defined and well understood 10 years ago is now not … I, I mean, I, I have two Gen Z kids, and nothing is more fun than them bringing new vocabulary home.

So I love how dynamic language is. I think this is the only communication sin. Really, the only communication sin is, is not treating your audience as, you know, sophisticated, complex human beings. 

AW: With respect. Agree. Yeah. Okay, last question. Is there a book or a podcast that you find yourself recommending lately?

AM: The work I’ve been talking about in the last 72 hours is the original peak performance work, which is Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr. Their kind of breakthrough book was The Power of Full Engagement, and they were the first to really make the case persuasively in a way that broke through into the business world, that high performance really is about managing energy and not time.

And I think there’s a lot of people, the world is moving fast, there’s a lot of uncertainty, there are a lot of forces acting upon us that are outside of our full control, and I think many people are trying to feel the illusion of control by working harder and working more, and it’s not working. 

AW: Yeah, it backfires.In fact, it backfires. 

AM: And so I think they have a lot of insight that is still very relevant today on an alternative way to live and to work. 

AW: Okay, I’m gonna put a link to that in the show notes. Now, before I let you go, do you have any last words, suggestions, advice for the Talk About Talk listeners on developing trust in their communication?

AM: We spent a lot of time on defining the terms. There is so much power in understanding your message so deeply that you can describe it simply And so actually taking the time, back to respecting your audience, taking the time to figure out, okay, though a lot of people are s- speak in a complicated way, like bringing a, the next level of intention to translate what I’m saying in a way that other people can really absorb.

I think that’s one. I’m gonna do two because I can’t resist. The other thing is just get, like, is just the power of, of reps and, like, practicing in low stakes environment before you walk into any high-stakes environment. No serious performer or comedian, w- you know, or like pick a performing art that is hard, that is about, that rests on communication.

So I go to comedy all the time because, I mean, it really is distilled down to, you know, the power of saying things to affect another human being. There’s no serious comedian on the planet that would ever go out on a stage that matter without working out their material in smaller rooms and on smaller stages.

And then we have this illusion that we’re gonna like make some slides and like run through them in the privacy of our own mind and then go and nail it in the room, you know, where our nervous system has no preparation for what we’re asking it to do. So deeply, simply, and get your reps in. That’s my, my final advice.

AW: I love it. Thank you so much, Anne, for sharing your frameworks and your coaching and your advice. Thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation. 

AM: Very mutual, Andrea. Thank you for bringing me on the show. 

AW: Thanks again to Anne. I absolutely loved this conversation. I always enjoy speaking with people who challenge and expand my own thinking.

That’s part of why I love what I do, and this discussion certainly did that. As I promised, I’m now gonna leave you with my three biggest takeaways, the things that I want you to think about. Number one, trust is earned through three pillars, or dimensions, or ingredients. The three pillars are logic, authenticity, and empathy.

And Anne traces all three of these back to Aristotle. So logic is good judgment, authenticity is being real, and empathy is genuinely caring about other people’s success. As Anne said, when all three of these trust pillars are sturdy and strong, trust is a very natural byproduct. The second insight that I want to reinforce for you is that every leader has an anchor and a wobble.

All of us. And under stress, one pillar tends to get a little shaky. That is your wobble. One tends to stay rock solid. That’s your anchor. So Anne shared that her anchor is empathy, and her wobble is authenticity. For the record, mine are the opposite. My anchor is authenticity, and my wobble is empathy. Why is this important, and why should you diagnose your anchor and your wobble?

Well, this is really about self-awareness. Rather than trying to become perfect, understand where you’re naturally strongest and where you’re most likely to lose trust under pressure. How could this not help you show up and build trust, right? Okay, last, the third point that I want to reinforce for you is that leadership is not about performing.

It is about serving others. If you’ve ever felt like you don’t quite belong in the room, Anne’s advice is to shift your focus off of yourself and onto the people that you are there to serve. She said it best. She said, “For those of us who don’t fit the expectation of who we think is gonna be at the front of the room, the world has notes.”let m

I love that. The way through this is not perfectionism; it’s connection. Lead as a team sport, because it is one. I love this. There are so many quotable moments in this conversation with Anne. Another one that stayed with me is Anne’s description of the best leaders as combining high standards with deep devotion.

I think that is a beautiful reminder that kindness and accountability are not opposites, and that strong leaders consistently demonstrate both. Okay. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d be very grateful if you’d leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help more listeners discover Talk About Talk.

And if someone on your team or maybe in your network is working on building trust and executive presence and their brand, and they’re looking to become a more influential communicator in their career, please send them this episode. I think they will thank you for that. And I thank you for listening.Talk soon.

The post Leadership & Communicating TRUST with Anne Morriss (ep.219) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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

We cover 5 questions:

1️⃣ How do you reposition your brand when people have already decided who you are?

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🌐 Website: EmilyDurham.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s start with what common mistakes do people make when they’re in this job interview process? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ED: Definitely, and I hate that it’s still so taboo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: me yours. Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

Suddenly, December doesn’t seem fair. 

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Hmm. So when we are at work, speaking of taboo topics, there inevitably there are people who are difficult people, whether it’s your manager or your peers. I’m curious, maybe you can start general and give some specific examples of when there’s someone at work who’s making things difficult for us; what do you suggest we do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ED: Pretend you didn’t hear. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love it. Can I ask you the three rapid-fire questions now? 

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Oh, I’m so with you. 

ED: Yeah. Are you the same, extrovert? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ED: Thank you. 

AW: Isn’t she great? Emily, I just love your positive energy.

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

The first one was Emily’s point about the power in your communication at work comes from pacing and pausing. Her point is that confident communicators speak slowly, and they tolerate silence. They don’t rush to fill the space. It’s true. The pause really is powerful, so think power pause.

The second point is that when folks are answering questions in job interviews, the most common failure may be on length, either rambling and speaking for way too long or cutting yourself short, so then being evasive and not answering the question.

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

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

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

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

Thanks again, and talk soon.

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

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: Sonia-Kang.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SK: Thanks so much for having me on.

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

SK: So I think that in theory it’s a nice idea, right? Like, everyone wants to feel like they can be authentic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Good for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: The pendulum has swung, Sonia … 

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

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

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

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

AW: Be your whole true self. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SK: Oh, wow. No, I didn’t read that. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Yeah. Who do you think you are? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love it. Okay, I wanna ask you the three rapid-fire questions. Are you ready? 

SK: Sure. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SK: Exactly, yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

AW: So are you a fan of the TLDR? 

SK: I love TLDR. 

AW: I thought you might. 

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

AW: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SK: Yes, exactly. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/victoria-rennoldson

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

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

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

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Yeah, a disease. Yeah. 

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

And I basically have three strategies to really help people think about this. 

AW: Beautiful. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VR: So I think it kind of breaks down into three parts when it comes to the strategies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would love to ask you a specific question that I get all the time, and it’s about people’s accents. So we all have an accent, it’s just that it becomes more salient when we’re in with a group where ours is more unique, right? And so people will often ask me, “How can I erase my accent, Andrea? Can you help me erase my accent? And can you help me be more comprehensible to the people that I’m communicating with?” That’s a big ask that, that I hear frequently. 

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

AW: I’m sure. Yeah. 

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

AW: Okay. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VR: Absolutely. 

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

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

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

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

AW: What?

VR: Exactly, right? I, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for listening and talk soon.

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🔗  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/murielwilkins/

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

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

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

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MW: As do I. 

AW: Yeah. So even the way you’ve worded them, like I know they come from your real experience in coaching individual executives.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: So that’s fair. And my next question was going to be which one or more of these do folks struggle with when they’ve identified it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Right. 

MW: Right? 

AW: And strategic. 

MW: I also think- 

AW: And strategic, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MW: Oh my God. Oh, I love it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can I ask you the three rapid-fire questions now? 

MW: Sure. Absolutely. I’m ready. 

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

MW: I am an introvert. 

AW: Oh, are you? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MW: Thank you. Thank you so much.

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

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerald-zaltman-112634162/

📖  Consilience by Edward O. Wilson – https://amzn.to/49vQPRq

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

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

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

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GZ: I think most people are pretty good thinkers. I mean, most of, most people have. They’re not in jail, they’re not having problems with drugs or, you know, whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: So we’ve got serious playfulness, and this next one I feel like is, it may be a trigger for a lot of executives who may describe themselves and be described as others as someone who has authority and insight. The second technique for adopting an open mind is befriending ignorance. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: That’s true. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GZ: Yeah. 

AW: Is thinking differently. 

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

AW: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AW: E.  O. Wilson. Yeah. 

GZ: Yeah. 

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

GZ: Absolutely. Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GZ: Okay. 

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

GZ: Uh, introvert. 

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

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

AW: Yeah. 

GZ: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are your presentations always falling flat?

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

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

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

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

🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/

Andrea Wojnicki:

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

Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. 

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

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

Okay, let’s get into this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mistake number five is reading. Yes, as in reading your script. This is a very easy one to fix. Never ever under any circumstances do you bring your script on stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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