A leader was given one goal for his coaching: improve how he answered questions. Knowing he struggled with this not only at work, but at home, he asked his coach for tools. 

Our free PDF shows the two scripts: one for closed-ended questions, one for open-ended. Download it here.

Don’t assume you know why people ask what they ask. You don’t. Ever.

The closed-ended script:

• Answer what’s asked
• Match Length
• Check for understanding
• Then add your details

No mattress stuffing!

It’s a customer service exchange.

The open-ended script:

• Start with a number 
• Label the first item
• Explain in brief

Make the leap. Start with a number. It’ll be okay.

When you know things, use this script. You will sound expert.

The open-ended script is a variation of the Sorting & Labeling tool. Download the PDF and listen to the episode.

CALLING ALL COACHES!

Come join ICF-LA’s Executive Coaching Special Interest Group. We’d love to see you. Check us out here.

Related categories in the library:

Communication Skills

Leadership

Perception – How Others Perceive You

Five related episodes:

215 - How to Stay Calm Under Fire

249 - How to Tackle Overtalking

159 - Short Sounds Confident

185 - The Talky Executive

151 - Under Executive Questioning

Have ideas about how “The Look & Sound of Leadership” might grow and evolve? Share your ideas with Tom here.

Transcripts of this and every episode are available for free here. 

Our monthly email, with resources you don’t hear about on the show. Subscribe here!

Wishing you spring freshness, 

From The Look & Sound of Leadership team 

A leader suddenly hears how harshly she speaks to herself. Wanting help, she turns to her coach who gives her tools to build a practice of self-esteem.     

The three self-esteem practices are:

• Self-Acceptance: Practice being FOR yourself
• Self-Worth & Happiness: Practice saying, “I am worthy of being happy”
• Live in Reality: Practice acknowledging what is and what is not.

Download our free Feeling Words Grid.

The Tools bin with other free resources is here.

Four ways to help you live in reality:

• Respect facts
• Respect facts about yourself
• Interpretations are not facts
• Feelings are not facts

Nathaniel Branden’s “The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem” is still a definitive work. Check out the 31-week sentence completion exercise in the back.

Related categories in the library:

Managing Yourself  

Perception – How You Perceive Yourself

Self-Talk

Five related episodes:

241 - Conquering People Pleasing

209 - How to Build Self-Awareness

224 - How to Disarm a Trigger

242 - Mastering Nerves

231 - Staying Afloat in a Shitstorm

Curious about coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Free transcripts of this and every episode are available here. 

Our monthly email – finally easy to subscribe to! Click here!

CALLING ALL COACHES!

Join us at the Executive Coaching Special Interest Group. We meet six times a year. Our first meeting in 2025 is Friday, February 14th, 9:00 am Pacific.

2025 Meeting Dates

February 14

April 11

June 13

August 8

September 12 

November 14

Fridays, 9:00 – 10:30am Pacific

Sponsored by ICF-LA

Stay safe, everyone.

From The Look & Sound of Leadership team 

A coaching client wonders what elements need to be present for someone to appear ‘executive.’ Two executive coaches ponder this question and come up with five elements they deem essential.

Categories in the archive to explore:

Developing New Behaviors

Executive Presence

Perception – How You’re Perceived

Six episodes to dive into:

189 - Don’t Take Anything Personally

178 - Executive Presence – Three Pillars

168 - Influence

108 - Shouldering the Burden of Leadership

23 - Speed of Thought

Download the Six Books for Growth here.

Listen to “The Show Must Go On” episode, about a real-life on-stage catastrophe.

Curious about coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Free transcripts of this and every episode are available here. 

More resources are available in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

FOR COACHES:

Michael Lewis’s podcast, “Against the Rules,” devotes its second season (2020) to all different types of coaching. 

Join us at the Executive Coaching Special Interest Group. We meet six times a year. Our first meeting in 2025 is Friday, February 14th, 9:00 am Pacific.

2025 Meeting Dates

Fridays, 9:00 – 10:30am Pacific

February 14

April 11

June 13

August 8

September 12 

November 14

Sponsored by ICF-LA

Wishing us all compassion and grace in 2025.

From The Look & Sound of Leadership team 

A senior leader, upset about having flubbed her reply to ‘Tell us about yourself’ during a high-stakes interview, talks with her coach about how to prepare for what she considers to be an incredibly stupid question. 

Categories in the archive to explore:

Communication Skills

Executive Presence

Presentation Skills

Six episodes to dive into:

34 - Keeping Repeated Materials Fresh

77 - The Power of Rehearsal

65 - Sorting & Labeling

180 - Becoming Expert

114 - Gravitas

124 - Personal Branding

For help Sorting & Labeling, download the PDF.

For help finding your three words, use our Needs & Values assessment.

For a new way of thinking about interviewing: Interviewology, The New Science of Interviewing.”

For career guidance, Michele Calderigi, head of Next Career, is a seasoned counselor.

Lois Frankel’s Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office remains a favorite among senior women in the workplace.

Curious about coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Free transcripts of this and every episode are available here. 

More resources are available in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

Safe and sane holidays, everyone!

from The Look & Sound of Leadership team 

A chief officer had known for years he was an over talker. His CEO, desperate for improvement, gave him a coach. This episode highlights their first coaching conversation. 

Two mindsets from this episode:

1. When you speak, have a destination in mind. 

Ask yourself: “What is my point exactly?” and “Why is this something they need to know?”

1. Pay attention to your listeners. Respond to their interests.

Ask yourself: “Does what I’m talking about right now help us get to the destination?” If not, skip it.

It doesn’t matter why you overtalk. Overtalking is limiting. Build your awareness of when you do it.

Learn to ‘hear’ the communications you have.

Who talked how long? 

What were the smaller conversations within the larger communication?

More tools to build your self-awareness and communication skills can be found in the Essential Communications bin and in the archive of all 16 years of the show.

Build awareness browsing these categories:

Self-Management

Perception – How You Perceive Yourself

Develop your communication skills in this category:

Communication Skills

Five Episodes to help your skills are:

53 - Answer What’s Asked

65 - Sorting & Labeling

20 - Staying on Track

11 - Sounding Executive

16 - Sounding Well-Spoken

“Think Fast Talk Smart” podcast with Matt Abrahams. Great tools to help you be a better communicator.

Curious about coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Free transcripts of this and every episode are available here. 

More resources are available in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

Coaches!

Download the results of ICF-LA’s pricing survey here.

Be safe, everyone! 

The Look & Sound of Leadership team 

A vice-president gets kudos for likability but knocks for her inability to listen. With her coach, she talks about listening repeatedly. This episode features one of those conversations. 

The 3 listening mindsets:

• Listen to learn
• Feelings are natural
• Stay separate

Download the free multi-page learning tool about listening here. 

This episode is tagged in three categories in our podcast archive:

Communication Skills

Managing Yourself

Relationship Building

Five episodes you might listen to are:

136 -  A Breakdown of Listening

83 - Leadership and Listening

10 - Listen Without An Agenda

229 - The Sound of Leadership & Management - 2023

232 - Unlocking Executive Presence through Emotional Intelligence

Coaches!

Download the pricing survey here.

Join us at the Executive Coaching Special Interest Group. We welcome coaches at every stage of development. Check us out here:

If you’re curious about coaching, reach out to Tom here.

Free transcripts of this and every episode are available here. 

More resources are available in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

To all of you, from all of us here at The Look & Sound of Leadership, much gratitude! 

Battling perfectionism and anxiety, a leader asks her coach for help and learns a tool that helps her tame her terrors. 

This episode dovetails with many ideas in last month’s episode about Coaching versus Therapy.

Tom talks about his own bout with anxiety and a near career-ending attack of nervousness in this episode from April. 

https://essentialcomm.com/podcast/mastering-nerves/

Pixar’s Inside Out 2 has a powerful depiction of a 13-year-old girl suffering a full-blown anxiety attack. The experience and its aftermath is moving.

MindShift CBT is a free app designed to help you take charge of your anxiety and develop more effective ways of thinking.

 Watch the introductory video

Dr. Steven Melemis, a mood disorder expert, wrote I Want to Change My Life, filled with practical exercises and a one-month step-by-step plan to start you on a road to transformation.

In under two minutes, Tom shared a “golden nugget” on the “How to Survive and Thrive Podcast.” You can hear it here.

This episode is tagged in three categories in our podcast archive:

For Women

Personal Growth & Self-Development

Self-Talk

Five episodes with more tools to help you master anxiety are:

#52 Coaching v Therapy 

#152 Combating Emotional Hijacks

#147 Conquering Fear

#96 The Many Parts of you

#78 Unmasking a Stand-In

Curious about coaching? Reach out to Tom here.

Want a free transcript of this episode? You can download it here. 

Every month we share more resources in our Essential News email. Sign up here.

To all of you, from all of us here at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks! 

Tired of feeling like a fraud, a leader searches for help down different paths. She and her coach talk about how coaching is, and is not, like therapy.

The leader in this episode wrestles with feelings of being a fraud. Tom talks about three resources to help manage that feeling:

“The Executive Impostor”  Episode #176 of “The Look & Sound of Leadership”

Self-Esteem at Work by Nathaniel Branden & Warren Bennis

The Confidence Code by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman

Additional tools to support your professional development are these free PDFs from our Essential Tools bin:

Johari Window

Readiness in Coaching

You can listen to Tom’s conversations on these two shows:

“I Need at Coach” with Adam Packard 

“Take Five” with Paul Butler

This episode is tagged in four categories in our podcast archive:

For Women

Managing Yourself

Personal Growth & Self-Development

Self-Talk

Four episodes, in addition to “The Executive Impostor” listed above, that will help you dive deeper into the ideas in this episode are:

52 - Coaching v Therapy 

191 - Coaching Under Attack

78 - Unmasking a Stand In

171 - Taming the Wild Child

Be in touch with Tom here.

Grab a free transcript of this episode here.

We share more resources in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

To all of you, from all of us here at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks! 

A leader and her coach discuss a three-step model for turning upward feedback into a learning conversation that might allow the boss to hear the message. 

This month’s coaching conversation explores whether feedback should be given upwards in the first place. If so, are there ways to deliver the feedback effectively? 

Download the free “Giving Upward Feedback” PDF.

In the commentary, Tom tells a story about the Marshmallow Test being debunked. Here’s the column he mentions.

This episode is tagged in the library in three categories:

Communication Skills

Feedback

Managing Up

Five related episodes you might listen to are:

74 Dealing with Emotional Responses

14 Delivering Tough Feedback

32 Giving Powerful Feedback

118 Perception is Reality

99 The Disruptive Executive – Part One

Be in touch with Tom here.

Grab a free transcript of the episode here. 

We share more resources in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

From all of us here at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks! 

Knowing she’ll need to network to achieve her career goals, an ambitious leader asks her coach what a good networking conversation actually sounds like.

Resources for Building Your Networking Skills

Leverage the latest algorithm on LinkedIn with this research report.

Coaching For Leaders podcast: “How to Grow Your Professional Network”

Coaching For Leaders podcast: “Executive Presence with Your Elevator Speech”

10 Rules for Networking

Link to 10 Rules of Networking PDF in Essential Tools bin

Sorting & Labeling

Link to Sorting & Labeling PDF in Essential Tools bin

The Look & Sound of Leadership: “Assume Equality”

The Look & Sound of Leadership: “Being Concise”

This month’s episode is in the podcast archive in three categories:

For Women

Relationship Building

Social Skills

Five episodes to grow your networking skills: 

162 - Acting on the Corporate Stage

180 - Becoming Expert

193 - Branding Yourself

176 - The Executive Impostor

192 - Pursuing a Promotion 2020

Grab a free transcript of this episode here. 

Be in touch with Tom here.

We share more resources in our monthly Essential News email. Sign up here.

Listen to Tom’s conversation with Scott Ritzheimer on “Secrets of the High Demand Coach.”

COACHES!

Join us at the Executive Coaching Special Interest Group sponsored by ICF Los Angeles. You’ll get CCE’s, too!

From all of us here at The Look & Sound of Leadership, thanks! 

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