360 | How to be taken seriously when you speak: 3 beginner-friendly communication tips

When you speak, the little things you say and do send a subtle message to your audience about how credible and trustworthy you are as a leader. When you know how to send the right signals, your audience will begin to listen to you and respect you more deeply. In today's episode, I'm teaching you three beginner-friendly ways to convey credibility when you speak so you can grow your impact and your reputation as a leader. Let's dive in. Welcome to the art of speaking up. A podcast that helps professional women access the limitless potential that lies within them. I'm your host, Jessica Gase, and my mission is to help you find that spark inside you that has the power to transform your career in ways you may not have thought possible. I'm so excited that you're here and now on to the show. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Today's episode is for you if you want to be taken more seriously when you are speaking at work. I think that we've all had those moments in our corporate career where we start to realize that the amount of respect someone gets in a room is not necessarily correlated with the quality of their work. And so often, it's not the people who do the best work that get the most respect in a company or an organization, but it's actually the people that know how to talk about their work in a super compelling and inspirational way that end up garnering the most respect within an organization. Today, I want to teach you how to become one of those people. So if you are ready to learn to package your work in a way that has your audience respecting you, thinking of you as a leader and wanting to hear more from you, then this is the episode for you. Let's dive in. So let's start with the first core teaching. Tip number one is that when you're sharing your work with an audience, especially if it's an audience of executives, don't just share the outcome of your work. Also talk about the obstacles that you had to overcome in order to achieve that outcome. Now the best way for me to teach you why this makes your credibility so much deeper is through an analogy. So here's what I want you to imagine. I want you to imagine that you are hiring a babysitter because you're going to be out for the evening. And you leave cash on the kitchen counter so that the babysitter can order pizza for your kids once you're out. Okay, so my question to you is which babysitter would impress you more when you come home at the end of the night and you walk back into the house and you say, how was the pizza? Did you order pizza for the kids? So my question to you is which of these two babysitters will impress you more? Babiesitter number one who says, oh, we didn't end up ordering pizza. I made the kids spaghetti and meatballs or babysitter number two who says to you the pizza shop was temporarily closed for renovations, but I wanted to make sure the kids had something good. So I found some pasta, some sauce in the pantry and some ground meat in the freezer. And I decided to pivot and make them spaghetti and meatballs so that they could have a fun dinner, even though the pizza shop was closed. So which of those babysitters are you more impressed by? For me, it's babysitter number two. Even though both babysitters ended up making spaghetti and meatballs for the kids, the way that they explained the spaghetti and meatballs to you impacts your perception of the babysitters. Babiesitter number one only focuses on the outcome. They say we made spaghetti. But babysitter number two talks about the obstacle. This babysitter talks about how the pizza shop was closed, but they overcame that obstacle by finding pasta and sauce and meat in the freezer and making something that would be equally fun for the kids. This is more effective because when babysitter number two goes beyond the outcome and talks about the obstacle and how they overcame the obstacle, we start to see that they're able to take initiative. They're able to pivot. They're able to be creative. And all of a sudden, we respect them much more and think that they have a much higher level of capability and competence than babysitter number one. Even though babysitter number one may have faced the exact same circumstances, both babysitters weren't able to order pizza and both babysitters made spaghetti, but the way that they told that story impacted how competent we think they are as a babysitter. This is exactly how it works in a corporate setting. If we only share the end result of our work with our audience and we don't talk about the obstacles and we don't tell them that story of how we overcame the obstacles, then it's really hard for them to be impressed by us and to take us seriously as a leader because they haven't seen all of the behind the scenes of the innovation and determination that we put into the work that we do. So when you are communicating, you want to be more like babysitter number two and instead of going straight into I made spaghetti, you want to tell your audience the story of all of the obstacles that you solved on the way to making spaghetti. Now of course you're not making actual spaghetti, but you are definitely solving obstacles whether you have issues with data integrity, whether it's challenging to coordinate across teams, whether unexpected problems pop up in the middle of a project. I want you to figure out what those are and tell the story of you overcoming them so you can have that hero moment and get credit for the level of leadership that you are bringing to the process. So that is tip number one, which is don't just talk about the outcome of your work, talk about the obstacles that were overcome along the way. And now I'm going to pivot into tip number two and we're going to be building on the babysitter analogy. Tip number two is move your audience into action and the best way for me to teach this is through the analogy. So I want you to imagine once again that you are going out for the evening and I want you to imagine that you say to the babysitter bedtime with my child can be a little bit challenging. But if you pick out one of the bedtime stories that she is really into and obsessed with, it will go a lot smoother. She's been really into the princess stories lately. So just make sure that when you get to bedtime stories that you pick out a princess story. Okay, which babysitter is going to impress you more? Baby sitter number one who says got it when it's time for bedtime stories. I will pick out a princess story or babysitter number two who says great. Why don't we just quickly go over to the bookshelf and pick out a couple of stories so I can make sure that I'm reading ones that are really going to help her wind down and get to sleep. So which babysitter would impress you most for me for sure it is babysitter number two. Baby sitter number two is going beyond just listening passively to the directions and they're taking action. They are bringing you over to the bookshelf and saying, Hey, let's make sure to pick out the right book now before you leave so that bedtime goes smoothly the way that you want it to. When the babysitter takes action, it shows us their level of commitment and it deepens our trust not just in how they're going to handle bedtime stories, but in their overall competence as a babysitter. And that is because of just one simple thing, which is they went beyond passively listening and they moved into action by going over to the bookshelf to pick out a book. So when you are speaking to leaders and executives, I want you to move out of passive mode and get into action and take your executives to the proverbial quote unquote bookshelf with you to pick out a book in a corporate setting. What this means is that you are not just passively sharing information. You are asking yourself what action am I here to take with these executives and how can I clearly communicate to them that we will be taking this action together. So some examples of what this might look like is you might say today we're going to be making a decision on the timeline for this project. So I'm going to need your approval or you can say today we're going to be workshopping the messaging for our marketing campaign. So I'm going to be asking you for your ideas and input. I want you to think about going beyond just sharing information passively and I want you to think about taking. action, bringing your audience to the bookshelf, picking out the book with them, because just like it makes the babysitter look more competent, when leaders and executives see you taking action with them, they know that their time is being used effectively and more importantly, they know that you are not just someone who is there to passively spew out information, you are there to get things done, take action and get things over the finish line with them. This trait is known as biased to action, it means you have a biased towards taking action and people who demonstrate bias to action tend to be more respected as leaders and they also tend to get promoted more quickly. And by the way, if you want to get really good at bias to action so that your audience respects you and really sees you as a leader, I have a free biased action worksheet that teaches you how to do this. It is a step by step guide that teaches you exactly how to take your meeting agenda and your talking points and infuse them with a bias to action so that your audience sees you as someone who is truly leading them towards an outcome. Bias to action is one of the big ingredients that helped me get promoted super quickly in my corporate career so it is worth getting good at so I strongly recommend that you download this free worksheet. I will link it in the show notes or you can go to jeskusetcoaching.com/bias to action. So this brings me to tip number three. This is one that people often forget but it is incredibly important. Tip number three is go beyond execution and focus on inspiration. So let's go back once again to the babysitter analogy. So I want you to imagine that you're getting ready to leave for the evening, the babysitter comes over and you say to the babysitter, "All right so some of her favorite toys are in the living room and some of the recent games that she's been enjoying playing are over here at the dining room table so you have everything you need." And babysitter number one says, "Okay great got it. Toys are in the living room. Games are in the dining room table. Awesome." Now let's contrast that with babysitter number two who comes into the house, you give them the same instruction on where they can find the toys and games and they say, "Okay great toys are in the living room. Games are in the dining room table." And then they open up their bag and they pull out two princess tiaras and two fairy wands and your daughter gets super excited at seeing all of these fairy props and the babysitter says, "And of course we can't forget our fairy outfits and the babysitter puts on the tiara and puts the tiara on your daughter and they're both holding the wands and they start doing fairy play and your daughter is giggling and laughing and you start to gather up your person get ready to leave for the evening." So which of those two babysitters are you going to be more impressed by? Once again, it's babysitter number two. Babiesitter number two went out of their way to create a magic moment, a special moment that stood out to you as the mom and also that was really emotionally resonant like getting to see your daughter so happy and so excited and running around with these fairy props really hits you in this deep emotional place and that impacts your thoughts about the babysitter. You see how considerate she is? You see the excitement and playfulness that she's brought into the house and you're going to have a much stronger impression of babysitter number two for those reasons. So what this example highlights is that if we can get beyond just like this transactional way of interacting with our audience and if we can realize that our role as a leader is to figure out how to inspire them, to figure out how to make our work and the time with them feel special, we will be so much more deeply respected as a leader. Now of course you don't have to bring tiaras and fairy wands into your next meeting although I would love working somewhere personally where that was the culture of anyone knows about that sign me up. But what you do want to do is ask yourself how can I make this meaningful for my audience? How can I inspire them? And how can I introduce a little bit of magic into what might otherwise be a dry and transactional meeting? And typically the way that we do that is by playing an inspirational role for our audience and thinking about us as not just being there to convey information but being there to get them excited and bought in and inspired. So next time you're leading a meeting I want you to ask yourself what can I do or say within the first couple of minutes of this meeting to create excitement to create a bit of a magic moment. There are a few different ways to do that so some examples to give you some ideas are one talking about the bigger picture goals that you know your audience is excited about. Number two talking about that bigger picture vision that your entire company is moving towards. Number three highlighting some recent wins and momentum that have been achieved as part of the project. All of these are ways to engage them emotionally and interrupt the monotony of a work day that is just filled with boring transactional emails and meetings and to really remind them and get them feeling fired up about why the work truly matters. And this is one of my favorite tips because for me and for so many of my clients the idea of being an inspiration to their audience and making their audience feel uplifted and invested feels very good and authentic and it feels like a type of leadership style that they want to grow into and that they want to adopt and I really think about it as I am here to help my audience feel excited to help them see how they're going to win to help them have a special moment that makes this meeting stand out more than the others. So I'm going to summarize the three tips that I taught you in today's episode. Tip number one don't just share your work also talk about the problems that you solved. Tip number two don't just talk about things in theory move people into action and show your audience how you are taking action with them in the room. And tip number three make sure to go beyond just the transactional execution of the work and actually inspire your audience at a deeper emotional level so that they feel invested and excited about the work that you are leading. When you do these things you will feel more powerful in the room and your audience will feel it too. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode and if you learned something valuable from this episode go ahead and share it with a friend, a coworker or someone on your team who you think would benefit from these tips. It is such a joy to have you here and I'll catch you in the next one. Bye!