Talk About Talk - Executive & Leadership Communication Skills

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

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

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

Gift-giving is a symbolic form of communication. Are you a good gift-giver? Andrea shares research-based tips about what matters and what doesn’t, so you can think about gift-giving more rationally. Here’s a hint: We should worry less about how much money we spend. It’s typically the “low substance, high sentiment” gifts that are appreciated. It really is the thought that counts! CONNECT WITH ANDREA & TALK ABOUT TALK Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive GIFT-GIVING RESEARCH Talk About Talk ep17: What Our Possessions Say – https://talkabouttalk.com/17-what-our-possessions-say-with-russell-belk/ Mauss, Marcel (1924) THE GIFT https://archive.org/details/giftformsfunctio00maus/page/n9 Belk, Russell W. (1976) “It’s The Thought That Counts: A Signed Digraph Analysis of Gift-Giving” Journal of Consumer Research Belk & Coon (1991) “Can’t Buy me Love: Money, Dating & Gifts” Association for Consumer Research  Geisler, Markus (2006) “Consumer Gift Systems” Journal of Consumer Research  Sherry, John F. (1983) “Gift-Giving in Anthropological Perspective” Journal of Consumer Research Sherry, McGrath & Levy (1993) “The Dark Side of the Gift” Journal of Business Research Ward, Morgan K., & Broniarczyk, Susan M. (2011) “It’s Not Me, It’s You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness” Journal of Consumer Research Wooten, David B. (2000) “Qualitative Steps Toward an Expanded Model of Anxiety in Gift-Giving” Journal of Consumer Research Professor Russell Belk:  https://schulich.yorku.ca/faculty/russell-w-belk/ TRANSCRIPT Well, hello there! Wow – the year is almost over.  Can you believe it? It’s such a cliché, but the years really do go by fast. As I was planning episodes for the end of the year, I kept going back to one of my favorite topics: Gift giving. Many of us mark the end of the year with a gift. It could be a personal gift – for a family or friend.  Or it might be professional gift for a client or a colleague. Whether you’re celebrating the Winter Solstice or Saint Nicholas Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Guru Gobind Singh Jayanti, Bowdee Day , Shōgatsu, or Maybe you’re just celebrating the new calendar year. Chances are you’ve got some shopping to do for other people. This is where I can help you. Even if you’re done your shopping for the year, I promise there are some insights in this episode that you can keep with you for every gift giving opportunity you have. – Again, whether professional or personal. The insights that you’re going to hear in in a minute all apply. Welcome to Talk About Talk episode #147.  I’m going to introduce this topic with a few of my favorite insights, then you’re going to hear an episode I recorded a few years ago on this topic.  That was way back at episode #38. When I just re-listened to that episode, I realized it’s ALL there. You’ll learn a lot – I promise. Certainly, a few things have changed since I recorded episode #38 on gift-giving a few years ago. For starter, there’s AI. It might be fun to ask AI what an appropriate gift would be for someone. As you add more and more information about them, you might come up with a very cool gift. So there’s that. If you’ve listened to a few recent episodes, you’ll probably notice that in this past episode that I don’t talk a lot about personal branding. These days, over 100 episodes later, I talk about personal branding A LOT! This is the topic where I certainly see the most traction. And I would say that personal branding has A LOT to do with gift giving. Think about the symbolism of what you’re expressing about yourself from the gifts you give. In fact, I think that’s something that I will bring up next week at the personal branding boot camp that I’m running right now.  Speaking of boot camps, that’s another thing that’s changed. I wasn’t running bootcamps back then. If you’re thinking about a high substance, hi sentiment gift someone or maybe even for yourself. please consider the February 2024 Personal Branding Boot Camp. You can learn more about it at talkabouttalk.com/Feb 24. All the information is there.  And my gift to you? $100 off the boot camp. Just enter the promo code. Podcast.  Again, the website with all the info is talkabouttalk.com/feb 24.  And the promo code for $100 off is PODCAST.  PODCAST I’d love to see you or your friend in February at the boot camp. As this year closes, I’m really excited about a gift that I just procured for a dear friend of mine who’s helped me a lot with my business. A few months ago she showed me a necklace that her sons bought for her, that which she absolutely loved. So I went out and I bought her the matching necklace and bracelet. I can’t wait to give it to her. I hope she’s excited about this gift, as I think she’s going to be. I’m particularly excited about this gift because I anticipate that she’s going to love the gift. But also because of what I know about what the research on gift giving says. Frankly, I think I nailed it. It’s high sentiment AND it’s jewelry.  That’s like a hole in one when it comes to gift giving. Now, I want to share with you three things. Of course, 3.  If you were only to learn three things from this episode, the three things that I hope you will remember: Gifts are symbolic.  Specifically they are symbolic of three things: they are Symbolic of you, of your thoughts about the receiver, and about your relationship with the receiver. There are two. Dimensions or criteria against which people evaluate gifts. Yes, I know this sounds very objective, but this is what the research says. The two dimensions are substance or cost. And sentiment where sentiment is some combination of time, effort, thoughtfulness, or customization. So you could think of all of the gifts that you give and receive on a two by two matrix. On one dimension you have cost and on one dimension. You have sentiment. The research shows that the gifts that are the most appreciated are high on sentiment. And surprisingly low on substance. More on that in the episode. The third insight is this. And this might be the thing that you thank me for the most. It’s this. If you don’t have time, research shows that most women enjoy jewelry an most men enjoy technology gifts. You probably know if the person that you’re buying for, the person that you’re gifting is an anomaly to these preferences. If not, and you’re stretched for time, just go with jewelry or technology. You’re welcome.  Alright let’s do this! Hey there, I’m your communication coach, Dr. Andrea Wojnicki. You can call me Andrea.  Thanks for listening to Talk About Talk.  This is where we come to learn and talk about all things communication.  My goal is to help you learn the communication skills that will catapult your career and enhance your relationships.  Because when we communicate effectively, we can be a better manager, colleague, parent, partner, and friend.  We can also be a better gift giver, right?  Yes, gift-giving is a form of communication.  A significant one, it turns out.  Gift-giving is prevalent, it is a common phenomenon.  It is also highly symbolic.  The gifts we give and receive communicate a lot of things – about the giver, about the receiver, and about their relationship. My goal for this episode is to help you mostly when you’re gifting someone, but also some things to think about when you’re receiving a gift.  By the end of this episode, you’ll have a list of things to consider, and yes, a few things to stop worrying about when it comes to gift giving. If you guessed by the enthusiasm in my voice that I love this topic of gift-giving, well, you’re right. I first researched gift-giving over 15yrs ago when I was a doctoral student. Those of you who have been listening to previous Talk About Talk podcasts may recall that my main topic of academic research when I was a student was WOM. It occurred to me that WOM (or consumer recommendations about what to buy and warnings about what to avoid) was like a gift from one consumer to another.  So, at the time, I decided to study gift-giving to help me with my WOM research.   Well, I can tell you that that research on gift-giving has stayed with me.  I can’t be in a room when a gift is being opened (whether the gift is from me or to me or whether I’m just an observer), I always go back to thinking about this research. It’s like having a whole different lens through which to observe the gift-giving phenomenon. Are you curious?  I can’t wait to share it with you. You know that feeling when you give a gift to someone and they absolutely LOVE it? It feels fantastic, doesn’t it? The opposite is true too though.  Gifting FAILS. Have you ever put a lotta  time and effort into finding an amazing gift for someone, and then – when the person opens it, you realize you bombed?  I can tell you personally that HAS happened to me – more than once.  And it really hurts – especially when the person, the receiver, is important to me and especially when I thought I nailed it.  It makes me question how well I know the person – and all sortsa things.  I’m not sure if you ever considered this before, but gift giving is a form of communication. Have you ever considered that? Well, THAT is why we’re doing this podcast! Gifts communicate things about us as givers, about also what we think about the receiver, and about what we think about our relationship with the receiver.  Layer onto that, gifts are highly susceptible to encoding and decoding errors (Sherry 1979).  In other words, misinterpretations (communication fails) can happen frequently in the gift-giving process. So trust me – this gift-giving stuff is worth knowing.  Some of this research isn’t too surprising. For example, the significance of reciprocity in gift giving. In this podcast, you’ll learn what the research says about gift giving dynamics so that you can become a better gift giver and  a better gift receiver.  Or at least a more informed one.  Let’s start with the significance of gift-giving. There is no Q that GIFT GIVING IS SIGNIFICANT.  There are two main reasons for this: the prevalence of gifts and the symbolism associated with gifts.  In other words: gift giving is frequent, and it has deep and multiple meanings. Researchers in the areas of anthropology, economics, sociology, psychology, and consumer behavior have examined the gift-giving phenomenon in detail and concluded that gift giving is a process that integrates a society (Sherry 1983), and that the significance in gift giving is “uncontested in terms of retail sales alone”, accounting or about 10% of retail sales in NA. That is HUGE! In fact, there are even gift stores, right? (Sherry 1983)  We give birthday gifts, teacher gifts, hostess gifts, thank you gifts, I could go on and on.  Clearly gifting is frequent. It’s a significant part of our culture.  Gift-giving is also highly symbolic. Symbolic of the giver, of the giver’s beliefs about the receiver, and about the relationship between the giver and the receiver. Gifts can reinforce important relationships, take them to the next level, or even destroy them. Have you ever noticed how gifts-giving is a common complaint about people after a break-up? It’s true, right? And by the way, If you think that gifts don’t mater, that they aren’t significant, well, there’s symbolism in that too. All this symbolism is probably why gift-giving induces anxiety. Much of the gift-giving research is focused on the premise that the obligation to give and receive might spark tension or anxiety. There’s also a strong evaluative component that exists at every stage of the gift giving process.  Kids compare gifts they got for their birthday or Christmas, don’t they? Even adults – have you ever been involved in a conversation where people are comparing what gifts they received from their partners for Valentine’s Day?  Yikes, right?!? Not surprisingly, gift-giving research concludes that inappropriate gifts cause embarrassment, threaten social ties, and leave lasting impressions.  That’s a lot of stress when you’re shopping for a gift, isn’t it? Then there’s the stress of receiving a gift. Of course, we don’t want the person who’s gifted us to feel badly. But gifts can produce unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt.  Have you ever received a gift from someone, and you suddenly felt like the relationship was out of balance? That’s partly because gifts are construed as currencies that are exchanged, and they’re also  symbolic.  The Gift Itself: Communication & Symbolism As I said before, gifts are a form of communication – gift-giving is symbolic. Gifts impart meaning. When you’re giving a gift you can think of it as being symbolic of three things: your own identity, your beliefs about the receiver, and your relationship with the receiver. Sometimes Gifts “say” what cannot be said in words.  Because of this symbolism, Receivers read into the gift (and the giver knows this!!!) Consider two people who are dating. There’s the symbolism associated with traditional gifts like flowers or chocolate, or when someone insists on paying for a meal.  Or the gift of jewelry. That’s all symbolic communication, right?  Gifts can express all sorts of things, including things like: Interest, power, gratitude, an apology, compatibility (that’s a big one), and gifts can even indicate resources available (or affluence). That’s a lot of pressure to find the right gift, right?  Well, I want to share with you a gift-giving model that can help us think about gifts in a way that might make this all seem slightly more rational. In a paper from 1993, CB researchers Sherry, McGrath & Levy highlighted how you can evaluate gifts across two dimensions: Substance and Sentiment.   The substance is how much cash you spent. It could range from no cost (say, something you made) to something astronomically expensive, right?   The second factor, sentiment, is the thoughtfulness and/or effort associated with the gift. A low sentiment gift could be a random gift card or a generic gift (like say, a teacher’s mug).  Examples of high sentiment gifts are things that are personalized or homemade or that took a lot of effort to procure.  Here’s Professor Russell Belk, the multiple award-winning York University marketing professor who also appeared in Talk About Talk podcast episode #14 where he shared his expertise about how our POSSESSIONS communicate things about us. Professor Belk also has a lot of published research focused on gift-giving.  Here he is describing the sentiment associated with a gift: ”…It used to be insulting and still is to some degree, to give a monetary gift or even a gift card rather than tangible gifts that you’ve actually sought out and thought about and found to be appropriate to the recipient. Emerson said that the true gift should be a part of you. And so, you bring your skills and your interest to bear on the gift, from the receiver’s point of view. So from the recipient’s point of view, you’re more appreciative because it really is a part of that giver. If you send your secretary out to buy a gift for your partner, that’s inappropriate because they [you] haven’t put the time and effort and love and thought into it.” So I know this is tricky because it’s a podcast and I can’t show this to you unless you go to the show notes, but imagine for simplicity’s sake a 2×2 matrix, where you have substance (or cost) on one axis and sentiment on the other.  There are four boxes.  So gifts are either high substance, high sentiment, or hi substance low sentiment or low substance high sentiment, or low substance and low sentiment.   Can you guess which gifts are most appreciated by the receivers?  Well, you might be surprised. If you guessed high substance and high sentiment (the most expensive and most thoughtful gifts, you’re wrong!  Apparently gift receivers experience displeasure at the extremes. Basically this means that if the gift is extremely high or extremely low on either substance or sentiment, then they don’t like that. If the giver was being too cheap or if they spent way too much.  Similarly, if they went to way too much effort – or if it was way too easy (like as Professor Belk said, you ask your secretary to go get a gift for your partner.  That’s too easy!) Another classic example here is the gift of cash.  It’s so easy, right?  Easy? Yes.  But appreciated?  Not so much. (Of course, there are exceptions, depending on the person and the situation!) Can you guess what kind of gift is most appreciated then?  Well, it’s actually the low substance, high sentiment gifts that are the most appreciated.  In other words the cheap but thoughtful gift.  Like the drawing child gives her parent.  Or the homemade meal that a one neighbor makes for another. Most people don’t guess this, but it sounds about right when you think about it, doesn’t it? Personally I find this 2×2 gift-giving matrix fascinating.  Yes, I think about it when I’m giving or receiving or even just observing a gift-giving interaction. It’s a really cool way to examine the whole gift-giving phenomenon.  It’s also a helpful guide when you’re selecting a gift for someone.  All else equal, the sentiment is more important that the substance.  It really is the thought that counts I’ve discovered though that some gift-giving scenarios don’t seem to quite fit into this 2×2. Two of these scenarios are surprise gifts and gifts from gift-registries . First – the surprise gift. Last December I was at home working on my Talk About Talk podcast, when the doorbell rang.  Honestly, I was annoyed by the interruption.  But boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.  At the door was a woman who I met just a year earlier, in a professional context.  We’d definitely hit it off. She was at my door with an unexpected gift for me and my family.  A bunch of jumbo shrimps and high-quality steaks.  Whhhhaaaaat?  I was so overwhelmed with her generosity. It wasn’t the gourmet elements of the gift that impressed me (although trust me, it was very very much appreciated).  Rather, it was the complete surprise of there being any gift at all.  This got me thinking – sometimes the gesture of gifting itself is symbolic.  Regardless of the gift.  Maybe there should be a third dimension on this substance and sentiment two-by-two – or maybe it’s part of sentiment – call it the element of surprise. . The second scenario that doesn’t fit perfectly into our 2×2 substance x sentiment matrix is gift registries. You know, for bar or bat mitzvahs or weddings or for people who are expecting a baby? I read recently that people who create gift registries almost always prefer something from their registry, versus something else.  Meanwhile, the gift giver might be trying to add some sentiment to the gift – some thoughtfulness or effort.  Have you ever done this before? I know I’ve done his before.  For a friend’s’ wedding.  Sure there was a registry, but I had to think of something they might like at least as much and that demonstrated how much I adore them.   But apparently, according to the research,  that was just a waste of time.  People who create registries generally just want stuff on their registry!  So don’t over think it.  Just buy something from the registry.  Got it?  Now we know. Researchers have also sought to describe the gift-giving process with models.  Many of these gift-giving models focus on three main steps:  giving-receiving-reciprocating. So as you can imagine, the model or process is circular – it never ends! The GIVING includes choosing the gift, creating or procuring the gift, wrapping it, and presenting it. The RECEIVING includes unwrapping the gift, identifying it, thanking the giver, and displaying the gift The RECIPROCATING includes identifying an obligation and an occasion to start all over again, this time as the GIVER.  In his research, Professor Russell Belk, whom we just heard from, describes gift-giving as a self-perpetuating system of reciprocity.  There are very few exceptions to the universal requirement to reciprocate. (Sherry 1983).  A few examples of people who may be exempt include work subordinates, wait staff, students, monks, and transients.  If you’re not one of these, then sorry to say, but you’re probably obliged to reciprocate. Of course there are rituals associated with each of the elements: Consider the gift wrapping.  How fancy do you go with the wrapping? Do you always remove the price tag?  What about the return receipt?  And what do you do with the gift bag once the gift has been opened?  Is it ok to re-gift the gift bag? Consider thanking the giver.  Is a formal thank you required? Do you have to hand write a thank you or is it ok to text?  And how soon after the gift was given is the thank you expected?    And what about displaying of the gift?   Do you have to wear that shirt your great aunt gave you?  Do you have to display the decorative  pillow that doesn’t match your living room?  And when is it ok to exchange the gift? These subtle but important elements associated with gift giving comprise the important rituals that become our cultural and our family traditions.  They also explain why  gift-giving expectations can be askew and feelings can get hurt. The customs that we grow up with inform our gift-giving expectations as adults, sometimes in ways that we aren’t even aware of.   I asked Professor Russell Belk about this: “Anytime two people get together they have to decide how they’re going to regard especially rituals and the way that we celebrate things and how we eat our dinner. AW: Is a dinner a gift? RB:  Yes, it certainly could be. And even such things as do you serve a [it] family style? Or does someone dish it out for you? It is a different sort of power….” Wow.  Preparing a meal for someone is a gift? I definitely hadn’t thought of that.  See what I mean? But I guess it makes sense.   They say that cooks are giving some of themselves when they present a meal. So there’s a lot to think about in the gifting process. Not just for the giver.  But also in terms of the receiver. Sometimes the receiver will experience unwelcome feelings of obligation and guilt (Belk & Coon 1991). And sometimes not only these negative feelings, but even the gifts themselves are unwanted.  Sometimes the giver pays more for the item than the recipient values it, which is always awkward.  By the way, this partially explains why people ask for Christmas lists or gift registries.  Despite all this anxiety, obligation and guilt, there is an expectation that the receiver will be gracious.  Here is Professor Belk again –  ”…the worst thing you can do is refuse the gift. To say I don’t want this. So somewhere in between would be re-gifting, where you take the gift to give it to someone else, hopefully not forgetting who was the original giver, giving it back to them. But in that case, this is developing as a more acceptable thing to do.” It’s true. Regifting used to be extremely insulting, but it seems to be more acceptable, right? or at least talked about.  It’s almost a cliché. Nowadays re-gifting is even joked about as being environmentally responsible!  I’ve heard of schoolteachers who put all the teacher gifts they receive into a pile and telling their friends to help themselves Speaking of teacher gifts – teacher gifts may fall into the category of what we call token gifts.  They are small (ok not all – have you heard about the ridiculous teacher gifts that Manhattan private schools teachers receive from their students? We’re talking little blue boxes with diamond bracelets.  Crazy! Anyway, I digress.) Token gifts are small, they are less personal, and they are often expected or anticipated gifts that symbolize or communicate gratitude. Hostess gifts sometimes fall into this category.  A bottle of wine, some cocktail napkins, some flowers.  A relatively simple gift that communicates gratitude. You can probably imagine giving token gifts like these to someone you don’t know well, right? The relationship between the giver and the receiver is significant here… The Relationship The nature of gift giving changes as relationships change. (Belk & Coon 1991) As relationships progress, gifts can become more costly and more personal. So yes, remember the 2×2 matrix? Well, as relationships progress, gifts typically move from the low substance low sentiment to the high substance high sentiment quadrant.  And of course, people misfire with their gift-giving all the time! Giving too much, too little or too late can strain a relationship (Sherry 1983). Gifts can also signal compatibility or incompatibility (Belk & Coon 1991). Here’s another model or theory to consider in the context of gift-giving: transitivity. DO you remember transitivity or balance theory from school?   (+) x (+) = (+) (+) x (-) = (-) (-) x (-) = (+) So assuming you’re buying a gift for someone you like (that’s a positive) and you choose something that you like (also a positive), you hope and assume they will like it too (another positive).  But if they DON’T, then maybe you don’t know the person? Or (gasp) maybe you don’t want to know the person? It’s about balance between the giver, the receiver, and the gift itself.   Since gifts are so symbolic, they can communicate a desire to alter a relationship trajectory (Ruth Otnes & Brunel 1999) (Wooten 2000).  Imagine an unexpected, incredibly thoughtful and meaningful.  Maybe an intimate gift.  It kind of changes things, doesn’t it?  When we communicate with people, we have our words, we have our tone, we have our body language, and, amongst other things, we also have our gifts. Gifts are significant. Let me summarize now to help you think about gift-giving from a new, more rational perspective. Gift-giving is significant. Simply put, gift-giving has the power to communicate a lot.  Of course, there are token gifts, but there are also not-so-token gifts, especially when the gifting occasion or the tangible gift itself is unexpected. Just understanding the significance of gift-giving can help you with your communication and with your relationships.  And understanding the nuances of gift-giving can help you determine what you should worry about and what you shouldn’t worry about. What should we worry about? Well, we should seriously consider the symbolism of the gift.  But also consider the gift givers’ individual situation – their culture and personal family upbringing. Sometimes we read into gifts unnecessarily when they were intended as tokens.  And sometimes we misinterpret based on divergent cultures or family rituals. I hope you will give some thought to the substance and sentiment gift-giving model with the 2×2 matrix.  Remember that people typically don’t appreciate the extremes, and that the most appreciated gifts are often the low substance high sentiment gifts. What should we worry less about? Well, apparently we should worry less about how much money we spend (it really is the thought that counts!)  And as for those gift registries and wish lists – just buy from them.  Stop trying to go above and beyond.  Just give them what they want – maybe with a big hug, so they know you really love them. Alright that’s it for this episode.  THANKS for listening – and READING! ***When referencing resources and products, TalkAboutTalk sometimes uses affiliate links. These links don’t impose any extra cost on you, and they help support the free content provided by TalkAboutTalk. The post Communicating Through Gift-Giving (ep.147) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

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

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

Learn how to articulate your strengths without sounding arrogant by using three key strategies: 'Three Magic Words,' 'Pivoting,' and 'Own It.' Avoid 'I am humbled' and humble bragging. Instead, express genuine enthusiasm and gratitude. Utilize positive feedback, testimonials, and alternative words to share your accomplishments.

Controlling your narrative means purposefully reinforcing your positive and unique traits in a way that communicates your value. When it comes to your personal brand narrative, you can LET it happen or you can MAKE it happen. Andrea shares many inspiring examples of real-life success stories, actionable tips, and explores the consequences of neglecting your narrative. Intentionally controlling your narrative is like having the steering wheel of your career in your own hands. Resources Talk About Talk ep.90: DEMONSTRATING LEADERSHIP: Leadership & Your Personal Brand Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High-achieving Women’s Legitimacy Narratives Connect with Andrea & Talk About Talk: Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive Transcript I have a story for you. About a year and a half ago I was hosting a live question and answer period focused on communication skills and personal branding. A brave woman raised her hand and I called on her. She introduced herself and she told us that she was a lawyer in Manhattan. Then she said, “As you can all tell from my accent, I’m from India. When it comes to my personal brand, I feel like I’m always going to be the foreigner. I’m certainly not ashamed of my background, but I wish my identity was more than this.” Then she paused and I jumped in.  “So let me make sure I’ve got this right. You were born and raised in India, is that right?” Yes.  And you immigrated to the United States? And you passed the bar exam in the state of New York?  Again, yes.  And what kind of law do you practice?  Corporate, she said. OK. It’s time for you to take control of your narrative.  You’re not a foreigner. You’re a corporate lawyer with a global perspective. Stop using the word foreigner. You need to control your narrative. She raised her eyebrows and nodded. But I wasn’t done. “And by the way,” I said. “Your English is excellent. Yes, of course we can all perceive an Indian accent, but really, that’s just a reminder of your global experience.” I’ll never forget the look on her face. She looked as if a huge weight had been lifted off her and she had a massive smile. Then I turned to the audience to clarify this point about controlling our narrative. It’s not about being manipulative. It’s definitely not about being deceptive or sharing falsehoods. It’s about consistently reinforcing something about yourself that’s true and that’s aligned with your goals. And that’s what we’re talking about in this episode – controlling your narrative. Greetings and welcome to Talk About Talk episode 143: Controlling Your Narrative.  I’m so glad you’re here.  Let me introduce myself. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m YOUR executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives through 1:1 coaching, bootcamps, workshops and keynote speaking. My objective is to help you improve your clarity and confidence, so you have more credibility. When you have more credibility, you can make real impact. And that’s when you’ll get noticed and ultimately you’ll get promoted!  THAT is my goal here.   If this resonates with you, then I also encourage you to check out the Talk about talk.com website. There are many resources there to help you out. If you’re an individual executive, there’s information about private coaching and small group bootcamps. If you’re a leader or an HR manager looking to boost the communication skills of your team, there’s also information about corporate workshops and keynote speeches.  And there are plenty of free resources too: like the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk email newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication tips and coaching from me every week. One last thing: I do spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Like I’m there everyday. So I hope you’ll connect with me on LinkedIn and maybe send me a message and let me know what you think about this episode. Alright, let’s get going. CONTROLLING YOUR NARRATIVE I’ve got lots and lots of relevant examples to share with you – like the story I just shared with you about the women who’s narrative evolved from “foreigner” to “corporate lawyer with a global perspective.”   These are stories mostly from my one-on-one coaching sessions and some corporate workshops, where I helped clients control their narrative in a way that’s true and that’s aligned with their career aspirations.   I hope that one or more of these stories will inspire you to start controlling your own narrative.  Whether you’re a rising star eager to make a strong early impression or a seasoned executive looking to refine your image, this episode has something for you.  I’ll share real-life success stories, actionable tips, and even explore the consequences of neglecting your narrative.  This topic of taking control of your personal narrative typically comes up when I’m coaching folks on their personal brand. I’ll often start out a coaching session or a workshop by sharing some of the specific benefits that we can experience when we develop our personal brand. Of course, there are many, many benefits of developing our personal brand. But specifically the top three that I share are: #1 that it’ll boost your confidence. Simply because you’re identifying your passions and your expertise, how could it NOT boost your confidence? #2 developing your personal brand provides you with focus and direction. And #3 working on your personal brand will facilitate in helping you control your narrative. And yes, you could say this last one works the other way around too. You could say that controlling your narrative will strengthen your personal brand. It works both ways and its helpful to look at it both ways.  Controlling your narrative and personal branding are closely integrated. If you’ve heard me or others talk about personal branding before, you may have heard Jeff Bezos’ definition. He says that your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. In other words, you could say that your brand is “others’ narrative about you.”  Hmm…. I love this definition because it encourages a mental exercise, where we imagine what the important stakeholders are thinking and saying about us – what  the narrative is – when our name comes up in conversation.  So when they’re discussing who to promote. Your name comes up. What are they thinking and saying about you? Well, if your brand is others narrative about you, then your narrative can shape your career trajectory.  And here’s the thing I want you to consider. When it comes to your narrative, you can LET it happen or you can MAKE it happen. I say make it happen. Take control of your narrative. Imagine the possibilities if you could intentionally shape your narrative. It’s like having the steering wheel of your career in your own hands. Such power! That said, I want to point out that this is about not about being manipulative nor inauthentic – nor creating falsehoods – nor crafting a facade. It IS about identifying a theme that you want to emphasize, then putting words around that theme – the narrative – and consistently communicating those words and reinforcing them with corresponding actions. Oh that was good!!! Did you get that? This can our working definition of controlling your narrative. It’s about (1.) identifying a theme that is authentic and true to you, that you want to emphasize, (2.) then putting the words around that theme. Articulating it. And then (3.) consistently communicating or reinforcing those themes through your words and your behaviors. Alright, enough pontificating! Let’s get into some examples. I’ve got some stories to share. I thought that a great place to start would be with what happens when you fail to control your narrative.  oboy! There are so many examples around us of people who fail to control their narrative. The most obvious examples are with public figures. When, for example, politicians fail to establish a narrative that resonates with voters or with their opponents. Or celebrities who fail to advocate for themselves. This is why PR firms exist, I guess. But of course you don’t have to be a public figure to benefit from controlling your narrative. Or to suffer when you fail to control your narrative. Just this week. I had a consult with a female executive who was in desperate need of help with her personal brand and controlling her narrative. She told me that she was gainfully employed at a company – a well-known company that you’ve probably heard of. She’s doing well in her role as a VP , but she’s getting restless and she’s looking for a C-suite role at a new firm. Based on her credentials , she was invited to interviews by several firms. But she never made it through to the final round. She realized, in retrospect, that she was struggling to answer many of the questions that they were asking her. She was failing to control her narrative One of the things we ended up focusing on for her is her leadership style. LEADERSHIP should be a key theme for many of us when we are controlling our narrative. As a VP pursuing the c-suite, this woman’s leadership is a critical part of her brand. She’ll geta lot of traction by thinking about her true and authentic leadership style and putting words around it, then she can then consistently communicate. So What about you? What’s your leadership style?  Have you taken the time to think about that in a disciplined way? I have an episode on demonstrating leadership it’s episode 90 – I’ll leave a link to it in the shownotes. There are many ways we can demonstrate leadership – there’s leading or managing people, of course, but there’s also being proactive or using your initiative. There’s also being decisive, being strategic, AND we can also demonstrate leadership through thought leadership.  How else can we demonstrate leadership?  How about by using the word “leadership,” – referencing ourself as a leader?  Controlling the narrative!  Simply using  the word “lead” or “led” or “leadership” in reference to ourself.  The team I led.  Or my leadership style.” You get the idea.  Its shocking to me for how many executives this is a revelation.  If you want to be seen as a leader, use the word lead! This reminds me of some academic research I rad a few years ago focusing on how female executives build legitimacy through their self-narratives. It’s a paper called “Class Matters: The Role of Social Class and Organizational Sector in High‐achieving Women’s Legitimacy Narratives.” Keyword for us there? NARRATIVES.  I’ll leave a link to this paper in the shownotes. The authors highlighted how successful female executives consciously employ six different types of self-narratives, or, as they call them, “six different discursive legitimation strategies” to explain and justify their success against the odds. Are you curious what the six are? There’s: Success through competence, or skills, however they acquired them Success through endurance or resilience Success through maneuvers or being a strategic and analytical thinker Success through their social network or relationships Success through serendipity – or good luck Success through warrior-like action – or being a courageous fighter These women articulated their path to leadership (did you get that? Their “path to leadership”) to one or more of these narratives. Fascinating.  And a wonderful opportunity for us. You can check out the paper, as I said, in the shownotes for this episode. And look at the list of narratives in the appendix.  Its almost like a checklist.  Which of these 6 narratives resonates with your story? Is it pure competence? Resilience? Strategic? Based on relationships? Or maybe it’s your good fortune? Or perhaps its your courage to fight for yourself? The narratives we’re telling others – and ourselves! – is rally important. SO it’s well worth the effort to do so consciously or strategically.  This comes up a lot in my workshops and coaching sessions where executives are seeking to overcome an identity that isn’t serving them. Let me share a few examples.  A few years I was running some workshops for some senior female executives. These women were all over the world. We were talking about which archetype best personifies each of us. I am the sage and the magician, I announced. What are you? One of the amazing female executives raised her hand and she said, well, I know that deep inside my heart I’m the jester. I love cracking jokes and making people laugh. But I try to hide that when I’m at work.  Wait, what? I asked. You hide your true persona? Let me get this straight. Didn’t you just get promoted to Global Chief of Staff? Yes, I did. And does your boss know that you have a sense of humor? Yes, I suppose he does, she answered. Well, of course you know you can’t go around making inappropriate. Jokes. And laughing all the time. Period. Business can be serious. But we also all appreciate that person who provides levity when things get a little too intense. Period. And I think that’s you. Let’s make Have you ever thought about making that part of your narrative. You’re a strategic thinker and a strong leader. Who also provides levity when needed. You are a positive influence on the corporate culture.  She was silent for a minute.  Then she adhibited she was absolutely thrilled with that narrative.  It was like a relief.  A way of articulating hr true self and highlighting her value of that true self in the work environment.  Its very validating. So here’s the question for you. Is there some part of you that you’re not particularly proud of? Or something that you’re trying to hide when you’re at work? Is there a way of labeling that attribute or creating a narrative around it that becomes a positive? Of course it still needs to be true and authentic and valid. But have you thought about creating a narrative around that thing that might not be so positive? Let me give you a few examples of. When this is exactly what I’ve helped my clients with. There’s the gentleman who rarely speaks. He’s quiet and shy. Of course, he had the technical capabilities, but he rarely said a word. Certainly he could work on his confidence and that is something that we worked on, but we also worked on creating a narrative for him. Around. The fact that he is a deep thinker and a strong listener, not just quiet and shy. There’s also the female CEO that I was coaching that talks very quickly. The cadence of her speech was. Noticeably rapid. She got comments on it all the time and we worked on slowing her speech. We also worked on her narrative whenever anyone pointed out. Her fast talking. She would say something like. Yes, I’m working on it. I’m a fast thinker, and sometimes that translates to being a fast talker. That simple statement implies that she’s high IQ without sounding too boastful. And by the way, there was absolutely no question that she was high IQ. Admitting that she’s working on her speech cadence, on slowing down her speech, and also admitting that she’s a fast thinker encourages people to think of her as someone with high IQ.  This is a smart narrative. Did you get that?  SMART narrative. This story is similar to the woman who spoke with an accent, the quote unquote foreigner, who shifted the narrative to “global experience.” Speaking of global experience, I met a beautiful mixed race woman at a workshop recently who told me that she’s exhausted with the Q: where are you from? The truth is, she grew up in Canada, as did her parents. Her grandparents were all from different continents.  Instead of sharing all this though, I encouraged her to try this narrative: When someone asks where are you from? Instead of being annoyed, think of  this as an opportunity to share your narrative: “My ancestry is A, B, C & D. I also travel extensively for work and for pleasure. I’m a leader with a true global perspective.”   Compelling, right? She turned her annoyance into an opportunity to share something positive about herself. That’s like my friend Lori, a successful event manager turned professional photographer.  If you met Lori, the first think you would notice is that she’s tiny.  I mean, she is noticeably short. But she has huge personality and capability. She’s type A and she’s very bright.  Instead of letting people focus on her stature, she controls her narrative.  She says things like “I’ll see you at the event.  I’m the short one with the bright clothing and with lots to say.” She told me that she purposefully wears bright clothing so people notice that. She’s the short woman in bright clothes, a bright mind, and lots of energy. She’s a powerhouse and she’s controlling her narrative. OK – I’ve got more examples for you here. Here are a few that might be helpful if you’re seeking to position yourself for a promotion or a new job. Plenty of executives whom I coach talk about their extensive or broad experience. Recently I was coaching a c-suite executive  who was interviewing for A new position. When he shared his experience with me, there was absolutely no denying That he had broad experience. But it wasn’t clear to me, nor was it to him, that this broad experience would actually provide value to a future employer. So I asked him to share some stories with me about how his broad experience has helped him in the past. Then I suggested. Then I said quote It sounds to me as if you have an incredibly. Valuable catalog of case studies. That you’ve experienced first hand. So as a senior executive, you can. Leverage these case studies in the decisions that you’re making, Is that right? Again, that big smile. When we nail the narrative. He was so thrilled. My broad experience provides me with a catalog of case studies that I can leverage. When I’m solving problems and making decisions. Here’s another one period. Plenty of leaders that I coach. Are genuinely nice people. It even shows up in their 360 degree feedback. They are adored. But how do you say this without sounding cliche. I’m a nice guy. How do you say that? And how do you say that in a way where? You don’t sound like a wimp, like maybe you’re too nice and you’re not assertive enough. Well, this is when my advice of leveraging the word using the word lead comes up again. If people call you nice, Ask yourself what kind of leader am I? A few suggestions: Perhaps you could reference your Collaborative leadership style as Of you might highlight how you are people focused, you bring out the best in people. Or you might talk about the type of culture you create to encourage a high-performing team. You get the idea. Take the point you want to make about yourself.  That rue thing, and articulate it is a way that is true to you and provides value to the organization. This is the recipe that I used for all of these examples I shared, and it’s the recipe I encourage you to try when you’re creating your own narrative. I want to close with three things.  My three point summery. Are you ready?: When it comes to your narrative, you can LET it happen or you can MAKE it happen. I say make it happen.   When you control your narrative, you strengthen your personal brand.  Of course,  You are strengthening your professional identity.  But how do you do so? Well, that’s my third point. It’s about (1.) identifying a theme (or themes) that is authentic and true to you, that you want to emphasize, (2.) then putting the words around that theme. Articulating it. And then (3.) consistently communicating or reinforcing those themes through your words and your behaviours. Remember, your narrative is a story worth telling.  I will leave it there.  And if you enjoyed this podcast episode, I hope you’ll share it with your friends and leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it. And please connect with me on LinkedIn. I’d love to see you there and you can always message me on LinkedIn.  The post Controlling Your Narrative (ep.143) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

Is it time to update your headshot? What about other photos of you? Join Andrea in conversation with professional photographer Helen Tansey, as they talk LinkedIn headshots, how to get great photos of yourself, and how to integrate your personal brand into your headshot and other photos. Resources Connect with Helen Tansey – Sundari Photography Website: https://www.sundariphotography.com/ Mention “Andrea from Talk About Talk” and Helen will give you 2 bonus touch-ups when you book her Corporate Branding Photography Package! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/helentanseyphotography/ https://www.instagram.com/coming.into.focus LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-tansey/ Coming into Focus podcast with Helen Tansey: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/coming-into-focus-with-helen-tansey/id1581128512 Helen’s recommendation: Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ podcast “Wiser than me”: https://lemonadamedia.com/show/wiser-than-me-with-julia-louis-dreyfus/ Connect with Andrea & Talk About Talk: Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive Andrea’s LinkedIn Headshot checklist: It needs to look like you – today Colour vs. black & white doesn’t matter, but definitely use a high-resolution image. Make sure your face takes up most of the space in the circle. You might need to zoom in. Make it a stand-alone photo of you only.   Solid and/or neutral background.  Wear what you typically wear to work on an important day.  Big smile! More on LinkedIn Headshots: 10 Tips for Taking a Professional LinkedIn Profile Photo New Research Study Breaks Down “The Perfect Profile Photo” 9 tips for better LinkedIn profile photos Transcript Greetings and welcome to talk about TALK episode #142, Headshots and Photographs – your online visual brand. When I’m thinking about what topics to coach you on in these podcast episodes, I think about the questions that I get in workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions. Certainly this topic of getting the best head shot or other professional corporate photography comes up a lot. But I have to tell you I have a LONG list of topics in the queue that qualify under that criteria. I have a bit of a different origin story for the topic of this episode! A couple of months ago I was coaching an amazing female CEO on her personal brand. When we were finished identifying the themes, her unique superpowers, I asked her to send me her headshot so that I could include it in her personal branding template. She told me she’d recently had some professional photographs taken and she was really pleased with them. She sent me four or five photos from the photo shoot and asked me to choose one. These photos absolutely blew me away. There were a few headshots, one of her sitting, one of her standing, amazing. The CEO looked beautiful AND professional AND she looked like herself. Her unique personal brand. The photographs were like a visual representation of the personal brand we had been cultivating and articulating for her. The photographer’s name is Helen Tansey and lucky for me, she’s here in Toronto, Canada, where I live. And you’re going to meet her in a minute. Long story short, I started recommending Helen to my clients in Toronto, even before I met her. And even a few clients outside of Toronto booked photo shoots with Helen when they came into town. They’ve ALL been thrilled. So I decided to book myself in for Helen’s 3 hour corporate branding photography package, with hair, makeup and several outfit changes. It was a blast – it felt like a day at the spa. And I learned so much. So I asked Helen if I could interview her so you could hear some of her advice first hand. And here we are! This is going to be so much fun. Before we go any further, I need to introduce myself. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m YOUR executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives through 1:1 coaching, bootcamps, workshops and keynotes. My objective is to help you improve your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed for the right reasons and ultimately get promoted!  THAT is my goal here.   In this episode, you’re going to learn what to think about in terms of how you show up visually, online, in a way that reinforces your personal brand. I’m talking about those headshots and other images of you. You’re going to learn about what to wear, how to smile, what to think about, and even what to look for in a photographer. First, I’m going to briefly share with the LinkedIn headshot checklist that I share with my clients. 7 tips for you. Then I’ll introduce our guest expert, photographer Helen Tansey. , and we’ll get right into the interview. At the end. I’m going to summarize with some of the key learnings. So as always you don’t need to take notes. Just keep doing whatever you’re doing! Walking. Or driving. Or doing housework. Or sitting on the couch.  By the way, If you are sitting on the couch, you might want to watch this podcast on YouTube. A couple of months ago, I started releasing all of these episodes in video as well on YouTube. This episode in particular, you might want to watch. We ARE talking about our visual image! Speaking of which, I‘m so delighted with the photos Helen took that I’m going to slowly start updating the photos on my website. In the meantime, I encourage you to go to the website anyway. There are lots of resources there to help you out. If you’re an individual executive, there’s information about 1:1 coaching and bootcamps. If you’re a leader or an HR manager looking to boost the communication skills of your team, there’s also information about workshops and keynotes.  And there are free resources too: like the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication tips and coaching from me every week.  OK, on to our topic at hand. Before I introduce Helen, I’m going to start with a list of seven things to think about when you’re choosing your LinkedIn headshot. I get asked about this all the time, so here’s the list.  If you want to improve your perception as likeable, trustworthy and capable, in other words worthy of following or connecting with on LinkedIn, here are 7 things you want to ensure you keep in mind for your headshot: You want a photo that looks like you. That means relatively recent.  Have you ever connected with someone online and then you didn’t recognize the person when you met this in person? I hear that happens a lot with dating apps too.  Not a good idea in either case.  Make sure it looks like you- today. Colour vs black & white doesn’t matter, But definitely use a high-resolution image. We want to see your face. When you’re on LinkedIn on our phones, the headshots are TINY.  Please make sure they’re clear.  And that leads me to the next point. Make sure your face takes up most of the space in the circle. Many many of the executives I coach have too much torso in their headshot and not enough face.   You can easily zoom in on your face using the edit function on your profile. Make it a photo of you only.  You might like how you look in that photo with your arm around your partner, but we can all tell you cropped them out. Make it a stand alone photo of you. I used to say a neutral background. Now I say a solid or neutral background. Lots of people have a punch of colour in their headshot background and it looks great. The idea is to not distract us from your face.  But photos from your vacation with no palm trees on the beach or – get this – seat belts.  One woman I was coaching obviously took her headshot in her car.  I could see the seatbelt beside her head. So a solid or natural background. You can express your personality more in the bigger banner image behind your headshot.  Got it? Wear what you typically wear to work on an important day. I know a lot of people don’t like this fact, but research shows people will think you’re more influential if your dressing more formally. A suit isn’t always necessary. But stay away from sloppy t-shirts and hoodies. And here’s a bonus tip: solids typically look better than patterns. Smile! This should go without saying.  One study I read concluded that people view you as more likable, competent, and influential if you smile in your pic. And smiles that show teeth were rated twice as likable as closed-mouth smiles.  Even if you hate your job.  Just smile. And that’s 7!  Did you get all that? If not, you can review them in the shownotes. Let’s move on to our guest expert. Helen Tansey started her career as a professional model in Europe and then made the transition from being in front of the camera to behind the lens. Yes, she’s stunning, which you’ll see if you’re watching us on YouTube. For over 30 years now, she’s been photographing corporate executives, actors, celebrities & families. You can see many of these amazing photos on her website: sundariphotography.com. Some notable clients Helen has photographed include Gordon Ramsey, Carrie Ann Moss, Jason Isaacs, Colin Mochrie, Scott Speedman, Supermodel Monika Schnarre and many others.  Helen has been featured on CBC Television, Breakfast Television, Fashion Television, Discovery Channel’s “Behind the Lens”, Global Television and The Candice Olsen Show.  Her work has also been featured in magazines such as Flair, Elle, and plenty of other magazines and newspapers. Helen loves to turn the lens on things she’s passionate about. Of course that’s people. But her latest passion is photographing women over 40 which she calls “Sundari Woman.”  This is also the name of her firm and her website: sundariphotography.com.  I’ll leave a link in the shownotes so you can take a look at some of the amazing photos she’s taken.  Helen’s “Sundari Woman” project resonated so deeply with many women’s that she published a coffee table book which feature over 40 women ranging from 40-93 years old. The book showcases beautiful black and white photos taken by Helen, and alongside these photos, these inspiring women share their wisdom on aging.  Helen love’s being a photographer and takes great joy and pride in working together with her clients to get the perfect shot.  INTERVIEW Thank you so much, Helen, for joining us here today to talk about corporate photography and our personal brands. I thank you so much for having me. I’m excited about this conversation. Me too. I know you have so much incredible insight to share based on your modeling experience. And of course, based on your experience as a professional photographer. So I was thinking that many of the people listening, when they hear corporate photography, the first thing they think of is their headshot, right? So that little circle image that shows their face on LinkedIn, for example. Let’s start with that. What advice do you have for people who want to get the best headshot? Well, I think it’s interesting, because sometimes people just want to, you know, get a headshot up there. But you have to remember, especially with LinkedIn, like first impressions are huge. So you don’t want a photo where it’s like you’re at a wedding. And you can tell that your partner’s been cut out of it or something like that. I know that even a friend was just telling me that there’s an AI now where you can take your own selfie, and then it goes in and changes, but it looks horrible, I think. So I think it is really important to invest in getting a great headshot and keep it really, you know, simple. And keeping it nice and simple, where you walk going on in the background, a solid color, and then just really clean clothes that you’re wearing. And then let the photographer direct you also, because sometimes people will go on YouTube and like, you know, how do you get your picture taken? I have women coming in, they’re sticking their jaws out. And I’m like, why are you doing that? And they’re like, Oh, well, I heard it makes me look better. And I’m like, No, it doesn’t, you know, so just really trust the photographer, that they’re going to direct you to make sure that they’re getting your best angles. And even, you know, we all have little tricks to help you feel more comfortable when you’re smiling. I have something I do. And you know, I just kind of say like, Hey, say hi, because it kind of connects everything and, and just really sort of trust the photographer. And I would even suggest before you book a shoot with somebody to have a consultation so that you make sure you feel comfortable with them. Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. And I just want to start by saying full confession. I definitely have heard and read that you’re supposed to stick your chin out to avoid the what’s it called? The jowls or something? I don’t know. But you just look like a lizard. That’s true. So many little tips and hacks that people share. So what what so you shared the one about saying, Ah, right. And I know Yeah, when you were directing me. And to your point, I would like to think that I was kind of putty in your hands, right? Like I really trusted you to direct me. What other tips do you have to help us relax and really get the best shot? I mean, you did great, because you just went with it like you completely whether you were nervous or not. You couldn’t tell which was wonderful. And you had fun. And I think that’s an important thing, too. It’s like you’re spending this money you’re getting photos done. Have fun with it. Like what a great opportunity that you get to have photos that you get to brand yourself. So whatever nerves that you know, sometimes people come in and of course, they’re very nervous. Just tell the photographer like even I think when you came in you were like, I’m feeling a little nervous. And I’m like, okay, that’s okay. We got you. And sometimes when you just vocalize it, you can let it go. Right. That’s right point beyond photography, Helen. That’s a great yeah, biggest boost our confidence. I love that. Because you’ll find that you’re not alone with it. No, no, I’m not alone, that that helps, too. I also have another confession, which is I was thinking about the images that exist of me on the internet. And there is one photo when you were talking about you know, the the photo that was taken of you and your partner and then you crop out your partner. I have a photo of me I’m at a conference I was I wasn’t with my partner, but I was at a conference and someone took a photo. And it turned out to be a great picture of me, and I use it for my peloton. Oh, that’s hilarious. Yeah, I will change that. I will change that. So so it has to be you only in the photo obvious. Yes. Yes. And you don’t want to be posing and and you know, sticking your chin out or whatever else. And you said you want to where you talk a little bit maybe about wardrobe. Yeah, for especially. Again, I’m just going to sort of because a lot of people need photos for LinkedIn. You don’t want anything too busy. You don’t want I mean, you look so beautiful. Right now you’re wearing stripes. I wouldn’t use that for a photo. Because it’s just yeah, you want to be the focal point. If you do have a signature like sometimes people like earrings or a necklace, definitely where that but nothing. Again, that’s going to distract from you. And a lot of people, a lot of people when they do photos, they don’t do them again for another five days. 10 years. So you want to make sure that it’s timeless also, right? So even if something is in fashion, maybe just be like, okay, is this a timeless fashion? Right? Or is this just quick fashion? Yeah, that’s a really interesting one I’ve noticed. Lately, a lot of women are wearing exactly the same necklace. And I’m thinking, in two years, nobody’s gonna be wearing that necklace. And we’re all going to know that that photo was taken in the last whatever, three years. So interesting. And also, I told my clients that we want to recognize you, when we see your photo, image on LinkedIn, and then we meet you, you know, for coffee or whatever, for the first time in a meeting, we want to be able to recognize the person. That’s a really good point, too, because sometimes people want to do retouching afterwards. And I’m okay with that, like the the retouching that I do, it’s very light. But you don’t want to have like, all your wrinkles taken away, because then you’re not going to look like your photo and people can tell. Right? And I think especially in business, they can tell and it kind of it to me, it reads is a bit of insecurity. So I think having a great photo for sure, a little bit of retouching, but don’t go overboard, because then you’ve got that pressure when you walk in the room that you’re not going to look like your photo. Yeah, I really I encourage all the listeners to go to your website, and I’m going to leave I’m going to leave the link to that in the in the show notes. But if they go to your website, and they can, you can scroll through the actor photography, photographs, the modeling photographs, and of course the corporate photographs. Yes. See how Helen really has has a talent for making people look like their best selves, but it is real. You can see wrinkles, you can see wrinkles, including mine. So before we go on from headshots, I just want to make a comment about what you said in terms of what you’re wearing and pattern. So I was thinking about that when I got dressed for this interview, and I’m wearing this striped jacket. So I brought to our photoshoot my favorite, I would say it’s one of my signature jackets. It’s a turquoise hounds tooth jacket that I love. And yeah, very politely put it aside and you opted for all solids. Yeah, you want to talk about that? A little bit? Yeah, because you have to remember, again, it’s going to be distracting. And sometimes when patterns come up on people screen, they can get really sort of pixelated. So you want to be careful of that too. Because even though you might have a high quality computer, somebody else might not do you know. So that’s one reason. And also, again, you want to be the focal point you don’t want when they see the photo to see the pattern first and then see you. So it’s really important that you are the center of attention. So two great reasons for wearing solids, you know, to be pixelated, and you want to be the center of attention, not focus, right, not your clothing. One last thing about clothing that I had as an insight was I was wearing fur as you encouraged me to I brought a white blouse. And I typically don’t wear white on here. I’m wearing my white jacket, but I don’t usually just wear white, right like plain white. And I think that demonstrated to me that, that having a simple white blouse, In a photograph, even though you might not necessarily wear one like around the office is a great classic shot. It’s class. Yeah, yeah. And that’s something interesting to Andrew, because sometimes you might have something that you love, but it doesn’t photograph well. Yeah. So you always want to bring a few options, because I’ve had that where I put on something and I love it. But then when you see it on camera, it’s like, oh, it makes you look bigger than you are or the color isn’t right or the Fit isn’t right. So I think it’s really important that you also bring a few options. Yeah. So the things that we’re talking about here apply. I’m thinking not just to our headshots, but also to our virtual meeting backgrounds. Yeah. So all of these learnings, I want to just say that, again, all of these learnings apply, not just for when you’re being photographed, but when you’re showing up on screen in real time in meetings or if you’re being video recorded. Right? I agree. Yeah. So what colors show up best on images? You know, it depends on you like it depends on your coloring. I think I mean, what I usually do when people come in for shoots is again like bring a few options. Like you said that you wouldn’t have thought of wearing the white but I think the White was so beautiful on you. And then I also love the strong color so when you brought you also brought that beautiful turquoise or teal colored blazer, not the hands tooth one, but the other one. I’ve had clients where they were like bring a beautiful red blazer. And if you shoot it on a gray background, it’s not to you you wouldn’t shoot Have a red background, you know, that blue background with a red jacket like that would just be Whoa, it’s way too much. So you have to also trust the photographer that they’re going to balance out the colors so that they’re complementary. And that still that you are the one who’s standing out in the photo. Yeah. Okay, let’s get into posing. We’ve covered now kind of generally how to think about it, we’ve covered what to wear. And you mentioned not sticking your your neck out your neck. Or your chin out, I guess. Right. And looking at lizard. Yeah, I’ve heard things like, you know, this is this is more about like the full body photography. But when when you when you have your hands out, you should have this like claw. This is another thing that I’ve read on the internet, you should you should think of your hands as claws, which seems kind of weird. And also not standing straight to the to the camera standing at a 45 degree angle. And, you know, based on how you directed me, I’m thinking some of these things aren’t actually even true. No? Well, it’s funny. Yeah, because I mean, hands are always really tricky. And photos, because they can look like claws. And you don’t want that. Right. So I have little tricks I don’t if you remember shooting where you kind of bend your wrist a little bit, because if I have this and then have that, it just looks so much more, you know, appealing. And then also, the angle thing is true. Like if you look at the red carpet, where they’re always sort of turned to the side and the hand is out a little bit. Part of that is because if your arm goes flat against your body, it flattens it out and it can make it look larger than it is. So that’s just like creates really nice sharp lines. But I when I shoot I do all angles, as you know, because sometimes it’s you know, if everybody has a shot on the side, it can get really boring, right? So definitely when I shoot I like to do you know the left side, the right side, I like to do standing forward. And I love if you bring pockets because a lot of people don’t know what to do with their hands. So having if you can put your hands in your pockets, or even if we don’t see it, even if you have glasses, you can you can hold the glasses in front of you. It just helps to give you something to hold on to which consent for you. And that you’re not worrying about. Oh, what do I do with my hands? Because that’s something people ask all the time. Yeah, yeah. So I have a three point body language scan that I encourage my clients to use or adopt, which is focus first on your posture. And then on your hands. And then on your eyes. Because we you know, when we feel self conscious, all of a sudden, we don’t know what to do with any part of our posture, hands eyes, maybe? Maybe that’s a good framework for us to start with here. What would you say in terms of posture for when we’re getting Incidentally, I mean, that’s why I always say to people like length, I never say shoulders back stand tall. But I always sort of say, lengthen your spine, right? Because it does. I don’t think people realize if you’re hunched over it can also read as being insecure. Yep. So having that, you know, beauty, and that’s the photographer’s responsibility also, to catch you on that because you’re already nervous. You already have a lot going on your head. And I always believe that it’s the responsibility of the photographer to sort of go okay, take a breath, lengthen your spine. And usually people are like, Oh, my God, thank you so much for telling me that I know I slouch. And especially now because we’re all on our computers. We’ve been on Zoom meetings, were all like a little bit more rounded. Yeah, I’m feeling conscious right now of lengthening my spine. And then yeah, the hands if for those hands, like just sort of, you always want like a little bit of a bend in the wrist. That’s why you’ve been putting them you don’t want Wonder Woman You don’t want them right up, you know, under your ribcage because that can look they also have to remember when it’s being cropped, it can look like very weird, right? So you have to think especially on LinkedIn, it’s a circle. So if your arms are here and they’re cropped, it can just look like you have these stubs coming out of the side or something. So that’s something to be mindful of. So always kind of low Hands on your thighs is really good. Just so you have that little bit of space between your arm and your body. Okay. Okay. And then what about eyes? What should we think be thinking about with our eyes? With regards? Yeah, we’re being photographed. So I think what what we did when we shot is like a lot of people when they smile, they just smile with their mouth and their eyes are dead. So if you just kind of go, Hey, hi, and it feels corny. You know how you do it? No, it feels corny, but it works. It kind of engages everything. Sometimes what I’ll do if people are really struggling, I’ll just say, Okay, think of something that you love. Think of something that lights you up, and I give them that moment. And then they do it. And then it’s like, okay, and you can see the shift. Like it’s very subtle. You know, that’s why when you watch actors on the screen, like it’s very, it doesn’t take a lot to capture that. You know, that’s a great idea of So visualizing something or imagining something that you Yeah, and then yeah, then kind of internalizing that and then exuding it. Yeah, I know. Sometimes I’ve actually said like, think of your kids and then they get stressful on their face? No, no, no, don’t think about your kid on their best day that’s think of your dog or something. This was a new one for me the one you said previously, though, you said, say, ah or Ah, right. Hey, hey, yeah, I remember like, it makes you sort of lean forward. Hey, I think she engaged that of a smile, instead of saying, yeah, he’s. Yeah, right. Yes. Yeah. So we’ve done the your posture, your your outfit, your posture, your hands, your eyes. What about your smile? I think like, to your point, when when a photographer asked you to smile, you just think about turning up the corners of your lips. So that’s so first of all, you have such a beautiful smile. Not everybody likes to smile, right? Not everybody has that big, gorgeous Julia Roberts smile. So what I would say is that if it comes naturally to you, then absolutely do that big smile, but don’t force it. Right. So if your smile is like a little bit of a closed mouth, smile, that’s totally fine. It’s better to have that than having one of those cheesy smiles where you can tell that you’re uncomfortable, and it’s not your personality. So again, I think that’s something that’s between you and the photographer. I can tell right away if somebody’s uncomfortable with smiling, and then I’ll ask them like, is there something do you not like your teeth? Or you know, and usually they’re like, Oh, I’m not a big smile, or and I’m like, Okay, how about if we just do little smiles. And then when I do the hay thing, they usually start laughing. And I can get like a beautiful sort of more of a candid photo. But again, you want to be authentic in your photos, right? So having a photo where you’ve got like a big grin, but it’s not you and you’re uncomfortable with it, then don’t do it. It’s okay. You don’t have to you want a warm, approachable photo, but it doesn’t have to be a big smile. So if I’m hiring a professional photographer to do my headshots, and then I decide I’m gonna go for the package and get more photos, can you share some advice on what types of photos we might be seeking? So whether, for example, you know, you have your own website, like I do, and you need photos for the website, or for most of my clients, you know, they may be they may need clients, they need that my clients might need photographs for their Corp, their company’s website for the company that they work for. Or it might be to share with a biography, if they’re speaking at an event if they’re doing a keynote speech, or that kind of thing. Yeah, it kind of looks do you think makes sense to capture from a professional photography session? Yeah, I think first of all, exactly what you’re saying, like, knowing what Your looks are, I have a woman who’s coming in and she wants to do some fun creative looks. But she sent me what her company uses, which is just like that horrible white background and very straight and measured out. And it’s like, Okay, we’ll do that. And then we can move on to some fun stuff. So, you know, she needs that for her company. But then she wants more corporate photos for exactly she does speaking events. She also wants it for her LinkedIn for a different look. And she also wants to use them on social because social is a big platform now and people use it for business. So even having a great photo of yourself that’s maybe a little bit more of a lifestyle shot. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s a great point. That’s a great point I should have I should have brought that up you know, I by interact on a daily basis with a lot of people including some thought leaders who post images of themselves in various sometimes they’re in a studio, but often they’re even outside right or you can it looks like there may be in their office or maybe even at home. So what kinds of I know you sent me an email before our session, what different outfits Do you always encourage people to bring and then what are some other options in terms of back back to clothing? Yeah, so definitely, I always think a blazer is really nice, especially on women doing a blazer and then if you do a blazer, I personally wouldn’t do a collared shirt under it because I feel it can get a bit too busy with all the collars. So doing like a nice sort of scoopneck whether it be a tank topper, you know like I don’t know like Banana Republic where they’ve got this beautiful T shirts like not like a you know t shirt that you wear it with your kids like a really nice t shirt under it. And then you can do it with a pair of pants. Sometimes people now again now with more casual, you could also do pair of jeans with a beautiful silk blouse can look really nice. Yes. So just sort of playing around and knowing what your colors are. I also don’t mind a turtleneck. Hmm, I think it turtleneck can look really cute specifically on women. Because it and depending on your field, like if you’re a little bit more of an artist, if you’re an art director or something, it just has that sophistication, but it’s got that feel of an artist to it also. So, again, I think a really great thing for your listeners, if they’re choosing photographer, I would suggest to always do a consultation beforehand. Yes, yeah. So that they can sort of walk you through it and sort of go okay, and, and sometimes people will send me photos of their clothes. And I’m like, Nope, that’s not gonna work. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, yeah. And that’s okay. Right. Like his, again, sometimes we have our favorite outfit, but it’s not going to read well on camera. So I think it’s really important if you can, just to sort of set up like a quick 15 minute zoom call, or you can even through email, send photos, and just that way, you are more prepared, because the more prepared you are, the more you’re gonna get out of your shoot. The more prepared and I keep thinking about this, the more you trust the photographer Helen, I emphatically trusted you. I realize in retrospect, I really was putty in your hands. I was like, tell me what you want me to do. And I’ll and I’ll do it which way to look how to smile, how to stand what to wear. I think I brought probably eight completely different outfits, where things were interchangeable, right jackets, sweaters, blouses, tank tops, dress, dress, pants, jeans, and so on. And you went through while I was getting my makeup done to, to choose what would look best on camera, and I completely trusted you. So and you were great too, because you brought like jewelry and rings. And even that, like when we would wear when you would wear gold chains. It’s like, okay, let’s not do earrings, because you don’t want to be too much. Right? Right. So even like that was great that you brought that variety. You brought big hoops. You brought studs, you brought lots of chains, so we can really play around with it. Yep. What about for men? I’m thinking if I was a guy listening to this, I’d be like, come on to me. So I’ve got my nice, you know, high quality blue suit with my white shirt and my favorite silk tie. What else? Yeah, would you. So I would again suggest when I photograph men, again, that corporate feel. And then we do some without the tie. I love the look of a suit with just a nice crisp shirt. And no tie I think is gorgeous. And then the same thing, doing a casual, just like have a nice dress shirt. You know, I think like a nice crisp white dress shirt looks great on a man. You can do something like that. Or you could do not a suit but a blazer. Do you know what I mean? Like just more of a casual blazer, you could do something like that with a shirt under it. And you could even try it with a T shirt as long as it doesn’t look to Miami Vice or anything. But you know, and just sort of for more of that casual feel. So and with men, I don’t know why I find most men wear clothes that are too big for them. Interesting. Yeah. And I’m not sure why that is. I don’t know if they don’t care. And they just but making sure if you have a shirt that it fits you properly, that the neck fits properly, that it’s not too oversized. And try your stuff on specially for men try your stuff on beforehand, because sometimes men come and they can’t do the top button up because maybe they’ve gained weight a lot of people over COVID, right? And then they’re like, oh my god, I can’t do this app. So always like try your stuff on beforehand and make sure you feel comfortable in it. Because if you don’t feel comfortable in it, don’t bring it. Yeah, that’s a great tip. So make sure that your clothing is either new, or it’s in very good shape. Right? And yes, it’s pressed. Also make sure it fits. Make sure it fits. Yes, yeah. So what have you noticed, in your experience, photographing executives in particular, nevermind the models and the actors but but the corporate shots? What have you noticed the differences are between men and women? I’d love to hear. Yeah, it’s funny, because I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And when I first started doing corporate, I found that women, you know, would have that, you know, the arms crossed and being very serious. And, and I feel as you know, we move away from the patriarch, where women kind of step into their power and who they are, that we can smile, we can laugh and, and be beautiful and photos, it doesn’t mean that we’re not smart, it doesn’t mean that we’re not as competent as men are. So I love that where I love that women are coming in and owning who they are and owning their brand, and not being afraid to sort of step out of, you know, the boundaries of what is considered, you know, that sort of headshot, which is very, you know, masculine, I think, yeah, yeah, it’s as you were, as you were explaining that I was I just kept thinking of Barbie right, like, I can enjoy playing with Barbies. And I can become a kick ass leader, right? Yes, I can be feminine, and I can be a successful core We’re pretty executive. Yes. And you can be beautiful and look fabulous. And a photo like don’t downplay that, right. Yeah. Being beautiful does not mean that you’re not credible and effective. That’s that’s a really important message for women to hear. What about differences between older folks and younger folks, when they’re when they’re being I don’t know, maybe executives in their in their young executives in their 20s versus older older folks, I know you really love photographing women in particular, you have a section on your website with that. Any any observations that you’ve had about differences between young and old? I think everybody has their insecurities. It’s just different. You know, if it’s older women, they’re a little bit more concerned about wrinkles, or maybe under their chin. If it’s younger women, it’s more like always my hair perfect. And so everybody has their insecurities. And I think what happens when we do photos, I don’t think we really think about what we, we think about what we look like, but we don’t sort of obsess over it. But then when it comes to getting our photos done, we’re like, oh, my gosh, how are my roots? Or should I was that five pounds, or you know, because we’re recapturing this time in our lives. But also remember, too, that you know, these photos, you’re dressed, you’re wearing clothing, you’re not in a swimsuit, you’re not naked. So if you’re five pounds overweight, no one’s going to notice that, you know, so go easy on yourself with it, too. And then again, like I think that we all have insecurities, but bring it up to your photographer, you know, and just say I’m a little or even I know, when you came in, you got your your makeup and hair done, which is wonderful, because it also gives you time to sort of decompress and just sort of taking the environment beforehand. And so when I’m there, it’s like, I can sort of hear like, if it’s like, oh, I don’t like this part of my face. Or if I don’t like this, I’m like, can make notes of that. So I can address it when we’re shooting. And a lot of times, what I do is I’ll show you as we’re shooting, I’ll show you the back of the camera. And right away, we can make corrections. But you you know, if you love it, you’re like, Oh my God, that’s great. And then you just sort of let go of all that stress and know that you’re in good hands. Or if there’s something you don’t like, Okay, what is it? Let’s tweak that? You know, is it? Do you need a little bit more eyeliner is it feels like too much makeup? Do you need to use your hair a little bit? Should we try in a different tops? Is that not feel? You know, like? It’s it’s a it’s a collaboration between, you know, the person that I’m shooting and myself like, and we’re team working together? Yeah. So when one of my clients recommended you to me, many, many months ago, I my interest was piqued and I went to your website. And then you and I had a conversation, we actually went out for lunch. But you know, it could have been over the phone, I’m thinking about what criteria people should be using in order to choose a professional photographer. And I just want to, you know, kind of start this list by saying the main reason I hired you is because I trusted you. So I had a strong recommendation from someone that I trusted, and she said you were fantastic. And also you did offer as part of the package, the hair and the makeup. And and you have your own studio. So you have a bunch of checkmarks. But generally speaking, is there a list of things that you would recommend people look for when they’re choosing a professional photographer for themselves? I mean, obviously, their website, you know, do you like their work? Is it all? You know, of course, you want to put photos on your website that are great, but is there a variation of different ages of different ethnicities? Do you like their style? You know, because if it’s somebody like I know, right now, there’s this big thing with corporate where it’s kind of like this boho background. And I think that’s great, but that’s not timeless, you know? And then everybody’s got that. So kind of seeing like, is this the style that you want to go with? And it’s not that you like the photographer’s work, but maybe you want something a bit different again, ask them is this a possibility to do this?  And I think the comfort part is the most important thing of finding, making sure that you’re comfortable with the person. And then I’ve even had people say, like, what happens if I’m not happy with my photos? And that’s okay to ask that question. Right? So my thing is, like, if you’re not happy with the photos I want you to be that’s more important than anything. Right? So, so I would, you know, I’m not huge on doing reshoots. Maybe, you know, but but if it’s what it takes to make sure that you feel good about your photo, I’m definitely open to that. But it’s also sort of like, okay, you know, what was it that didn’t work? And how can we change it? So we don’t do the same thing again. So kind of knowing that also is, I think, kind of a good thing, because it takes the pressure off, right? Yeah. So and then just saying that you, you know, further made me, You encouraged me to trust you even more? Of course. Yeah. So I think the trust is the big thing. And as you were describing, going to people’s websites and photographers websites and checking out what they’ve done, it’s almost like choosing an interior decorator, I know, I’ve hired decorators and designers in the past, who were recommended by friends of mine, but then I realized too late in the process, that their style was very different from mine. Yeah. So I think that that’s a really important insight that you identified there, look at what they’ve done in the past and see if it if it conforms, at least to some extent, in terms of what you personally are looking for. Yes, yeah. And I haven’t had anyone do this. But you could also ask for a reference, if you’re really nervous about it. I haven’t had anybody do that. But I guess that’s something you could do if it puts your mind at ease. So Helen, you could just ask them to listen to this podcast episode. Okay. Okay. Okay. So one last question before we get to the five rapid fire questions. Okay. And that is with specifically with regards to personal branding. So a big part of what I do is encourage my clients to take the time to identify and articulate the positive and unique traits, values, personalities of the of themselves. Right, so identifying what makes them unique. Do you have any suggestions for how to make that show up on camera? I think that’s such a good question. It is. Yeah, I know, it’s hard. I think for me. I mean, you know, because you came in and you worked with me, I think it’s just sort of connecting to that person and what it is that they want to bring forward. And sometimes it is just wardrobe, right? Like, sometimes that’s a part of it. But I think that it’s just this, I don’t know what your experiences, but I find a lot of people when they’ve come in, they get their photos done. They just feel like they were at a spa or they feel like they were just in like incredible like retreat. Like it’s really, I really try to make my space and hold space for people so that they feel really connected to who they are and empowered. So that’s really important to me then even like from right, like the makeup artists that I use, and for myself, like nobody has an attitude. You know, you can’t ask too many questions. And, and I really want to make sure that people feel comfortable because when you’re comfortable you shine. Oh, very well put Helen you are definitely going to be quoted. So so it is wardrobe. Right? So we talked about, you know, what colors, is there an accessory, maybe a piece of jewelry, maybe it’s a tie, maybe it’s a certain suit or an accessory, whatever it is, right? For me, it’s the color turquoise and I have not wearing it right now. But I have a turquoise ring that I wear all the time. I always wear the same necklace. And we kept this necklace on I think for every single photo. So there may be accessories or wardrobe things right. But then it’s also how you feel and really feeling comfortable as yourself actually being encouraged to be Yeah, in the photographs. Yes. Yeah. Well, sorry. All right. Well, very well put. Okay, you ready for the five Rapid Fire question? I am. First question. What are your pet peeves? Oh, people that are rude. Like when you’re driving and you let somebody in and they don’t say thank you drives me crazy. Okay. Second question. What type of learner Are you? Visual? No kidding. Photographer, right. And also when I grew up, I had dyslexia I have dyslexia. So for me, that was my learning was visual. So if somebody were to teach me something, if I were to read it, it doesn’t. It doesn’t come into me. Do you know what I mean? Like I have I’m tactile I have to see it. I have to do it in order to learn it. This room, this question reminds me of the fact that you also have a podcast, which is interesting because it’s audio only. Are you on YouTube yet? Well, I’m starting to do that for you. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. Okay. Next question. introvert or extrovert? Can I be both? Of course you can. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What does it call ambivert? And are ambiverts. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because I’m very like, like you like, I think I’m very sort of an extrovert. But I also really, because of that, and I don’t know, if you’re like this, then I need to have that time to pull back to myself to sort of regenerate and, yeah, you know what I mean, to release things. I’m a pretty extreme extrovert, but I totally get what you need. Yeah. Like every now that you need to just go have a quiet bath, close the door and just be by yourself. Yes. Yeah. Go for stuff. I get it. I get it. Okay. Next question. Communication preference for personal conversations or interactions with friends and family. Oh, sorry. Call me call call. I feel like I’m on families in the buzzer. Call Oh, yeah. And not people, a lot of people text, which is awesome. But I’m like, I’ve just pick up the phone. Yeah, yeah. Last question. Is there a podcast that you’ve been listening to that you recommend the most lately? Julia Louis-Dreyfus wiser than me? Isn’t it the best? She’s so good. She’s so good. She’s my idol. I loved it. But I love what her mom comes in. It’s just so sweet. And I find as women we need. I mean, I love that you’re doing this too, because we need more women’s voices. And when we listen to podcasts, I think that we learned so much from hearing people’s stories. And I just love that you are holding this space for men and women, but that you are this beautiful, strong voice that is helping elevate women is so important. back atcha Helen, like 100%? back atcha Thank you. Thank you so much, Helen, for sharing your advice and your tips with the listeners about how to get the best photos of themselves. Well, thank you. I had so much fun having this conversation with you. I really appreciate it. Bye. Bye.   CONCLUSION Thank you so much to Helen . After the interview, I told Helen that I just know many TalkAboutTalk listeners are going to want to book her. If you’re considering it, you can find her coordinates in the shownotes or on her website at sundariprotography.com. Helen has graciously offered to provide you with a bonus, too.  If you mention that you listened to this interview on the talkabouttalk podcast, she’ll give you two extra touch-ups when you buy the Corporate branding photography package.  That’s the package I did, with hair and makeup and several outfit changes over 3 hours. SO. MUCH. FUN. Alright, let me briefly summarize. There are the pointers for getting the best headshot – or any shot really, and then a few pointers for how to incorporate your personal brand into the image. In terms of getting the best shot, Helen has many suggestions.  To start,you certainly don’t need to.  But if you’re choosing a professional photographer, first take a look at their shots on their website and make sure you like them.  It’s kind of like hiring an interior designer. The first Q is – do you like their aesthetic?   Whether it’s  a professional photographer or a friend taking your photos, bring a few clothing options with you.  Make sure your clothing is in good shape, pressed, and it fits.  Helen noted that many men wear clothing that is too big for them.  Also dont wear anything too trendy.  If it’s trendy then by definition it will be dated in a few years. Or maybe even in a few months.  So go timeless.  And no patterns. Wear solids.  Patterns can be pixelated and or they can be distracting.  No stripes, no florals, no houndstooth, no patterns.  Once you’re in the studio, you’re posing, you might start to feel nervous or awkward.  If you’re nervous, just say so. I LOVE this insight.  If you’re feeling nervous, Helen encourages us to just vocalize it, and then you can let it go. She also encourages us to say “HEY” instead of forcing an awkward smile or instead of saying “cheese.”  It really works! Or if you’re feeling awkward about your smile, you can also think of something that you love. Something or someone that lights you up.  And use that energy to smile. Last, once youre done, retouching of the photos is fine, but we want to be able to recognize you! SO don’t go overboard When it comes to your personal brand, Helen mentioned that of course, some of it is WARDROBE.  She talked about choosing something visually unique.  It could be a colour or an accessory, like a piece of jewelry or your collection of cool ties. Or maybe it’s your glasses.  But at least as important as wardrobe is your trust in the photographer. This insight is huge. Of course your photo is going to look like the best version of yourself when you trust the photographer. And that’s it! Thanks again to Helen for sharing her insights with us. As I said, you can check out her website and all her coordinates in the shownotes.  You can also find my coordinates in the shownotes and also on the talkaboutalk.com website.  And if you enjoyed this podcast episode, I hope you’ll share it with your friends and leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it. Thanks for listening.  And talk soon! The post Headshots & Photography – Your Online Personal Brand (ep.142) appeared first on Talk About Talk.

How do men and women’s communication styles vary? Explore the stereotypes of how men and women communicate, with research as a guide. Consider how much we talk, communication mindsets, our choice of words, vocal patterns, listening skills, non-verbal cues, and confidence. Andrea navigates the nuances, dismantles stereotypes, offers insights into the roots of imposter syndrome, and reveals how embracing these differences can foster more effective and diverse communication in various contexts. Resources Books and Articles Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, John Gray, PhD You just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation,” Deborah Tannen Tokyo Olympics chief says women talk too much at meetings, calls it ‘annoying’, Matt Bonesteel, Washington Post Why Do Men Have Deeper Voices than Women?, Erika Engelhaupt, NPR Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Harvard Business Review Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jodi-Ann Burey, Harvard Business Review Everyone Suffers From Impost0r Syndrome – Here’s How to Handle It, Andy Molinksy, Harvard Business Review Is Your Communication Style Dictated By Your Gender?, Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., Forbes Academic Papers “Physician gender effects in medical communication: a meta-analytic review,” Debra L. Roter, Judith A. Hall, Yutaka Aoki (2002) “Sex differences in eavesdropping on nonverbal cues,” Rosenthal, R., & DePaulo, B. M. (1979) “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention,” Pauline Rose Clance, Suzanne Imes (1978) “Perceiving Sex Directly and Indirectly: Meaning in Motion and Morphology,” Kerri L. Johnson, Louis G. Tassinary (2005) “Candidate Voice Pitch Influences Election Outcomes,” Casey A. Klofstad (2015) “Strangers meet: Laughter and nonverbal signs of interest in opposite-sex encounters,” Karl Grammer (1990) “The Influence of Facial Emotion Displays, Gender, and Ethnicity on Judgments of Dominance and Affiliation,” Ursula Hess, Sylvie Blairy, Robert E. Kleck (2000) “Gender and Job Status as Contextual Cues for the Interpretation of Facial Expression of Emotion,” Sara B. Algoe, Brenda N. Buswell, John D. DeLamater (2000) “‘Troubles Talk’: Effects of Gender and Gender-Typing,” Susan A. Basow, Kimberly Rubenfeld (2003) “Voice pitch and the labor market success of male chief executive officers,” William J. Mayew, Christopher A. Parsons, Mohan Venkatachalam (2013) “Gender and Power in the Workplace: Analysis of Communication Patterns,” Joann Keyton (2005) “Gender Differences in Communication Styles: The Impact on Gender Equality in the Workplace,” Judith Baxter (2003) “Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples,” James W. Pennebaker and Deborah J. Stewart (1999) “Gender and Power in the Workplace: Analysis of Communication Patterns,” Joann Keyton (2005) “You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation” Deborah Tannen (1990) “Sex Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples,” James W. Pennebaker and Deborah J. Stewart (1999) “Gender and Communication: A Content Analysis of Children’s Animation Programs,” Jodie M. Plumert and Karen Z. Naufel (1997) Talk About Talk Podcast Episodes Interruptions (Ep.128) Taking the Stage, Part 1 (Ep.94) Taking the Stage, Part 2 (Ep.95) Let’s Talk Imposter Syndrome (Ep.83) Connect with Andrea & Talk About Talk: Website: TalkAboutTalk.com Communication Coaching Newsletter:  https://talkabouttalk.com/blog/#newsletter-signup LinkedIn: Andrea and TalkAboutTalk Youtube Channel: @talkabouttalkyoutube Talk About Talk Podcast Archive Transcript In early 2021, Yoshiro Mori, president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee was asked about why there were so few women on the committee. His response – his formal, on-the-record response to committee members and reporters –was, quote:  “Board of director’s meetings with many women take a lot of time. When you increase the number of female executive members, if their speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying,”  Mori used 38 words.   My response to Mori is just 3 words: DO. THE. RESEARCH. And THAT is exactly what we’re gonna do here! Greetings and welcome to talk about TALK episode #141 Gender Differences in Communication. In this episode, you’re going to learn about the stereotypes we have about how men communicate and how women communicate. And of course, I’m going to take you through what the research says.  Was Yoshiro Mori right? DO women talk too much? Well, let’s just say he ended up apologizing a few times and them he finally resigned. First though, let me introduce myself. In case we haven’t met, my name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki and I’m YOUR executive communication coach. Please call me Andrea!  I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, where I coach communication skills to ambitious executives through 1:1 coaching, bootcamps, workshops and keynotes. My objective is to help you improve your communication, your confidence and your clarity, so you’ll get noticed for the right reasons and ultimately get promoted!  That’s my goal here.  I want to help you accelerate your career trajectory. If you go to the Talk About Talk.com website, you’ll find many resources to help you out. There’s information there about one-on-one and group coaching, online courses, corporate workshops, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, AND, I really hope you’ll sign up for the Talk About Talk newsletter. That newsletter is your chance to get communication coaching from me every week. I choose a communication topic and coach you on 3 things related to that topic. OK, on to our topic at hand. Gender differences in communication. This is gonna be fun and I promise there’s lots to learn. But you don’t need to take notes, because I do that for you. I will summarize the important takeaways for you at the end of the episode and you can always rad the transcript on the TAT.com website.  SO just keep doing whatever you’re doing – walking or driving or just sitting on the couch. I got you covered! So – I have to say that People ask me about this topic ALL THE TIME.   And it’s a popular search on the TAT website.   People literally search: “What are gender differences in communication?” I should start by reminding you, as you’re listening this, keep in mind that sex is biological, and gender is learned.  In other words, while there are innate, physiological differences that may explain some differences between the sexes, we should also keep in mind that socialization, culture and learned behaviors also account for significant differences. And of course the differences identified in these research studies are averages for a group and do not apply to every individual – OF COURSE!  It’s essential to remind ourselves to treat each person as an individual rather than making assumptions solely based on gender. That all said, gender differences certainly exist: You probably hear things like “Men are direct. Women are emotional….”  Just yesterday I had this conversation with my hairdresser. We were talking about this podcast, and I was telling him that I was about to record an episode on gender differences in communication. And I asked him what his observations were in terms of how men talk versus how women talk. You know what he said? He said, “Men are generally more direct. But Andrea, YOU are very direct! “ (SMILE) I had to laugh about that. I told him that I agree. Generally, men tend to be more direct than women, and also, I agree that I am probably more direct in the average woman. There’s no passive aggressive here! I say it like it is.  Anyway, so you may have heard the stereotype that men are direct, and women are emotional.  You may have also heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Are men and women really from different planets? No, of course not! However, men and women often DO have different communication styles. So, I scoured the academic research and came up with seven meaningful ways that men and women’s communication styles may differ.  Seven is a lot. I agree. If you’ve been listening to the Talk About Talk podcast, you probably know that I’m a big fan of the Power of Three. But when I combed through the research, the insights were more easily categorized in terms of these seven things. Lucky number 7, I guess. Let me tell you what they are right now, and then I’m going to get into detail and tell you what the research says about each of these seven elements of communication. OK, first:  How much we talk  Our communication mindsets Our words (or vocabulary) Our voices Our listening skills Our non-verbal communication Our confidence (and imposter syndrome) Alright – let’s see what the research says!   1. HOW MUCH WE TALK Yes, out of the gates, let’s see if that notorious Japanese Olympic Official was on to something. Remember he said:  that if women’s, “speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying.” Well, let me tell you this, Mr. Mori.  Based on my comprehensive analysis of research focused on gender differences and communication volume, it seems that if anything, the opposite might be true!  While there IS a common PERCEPTION that women and girls talk more, be it in the classroom or in business, this perception INCORRECT.   You can imagine how this research was done, right? They could count words or they could measure time when women talk versus when men talk in various contexts. It’s pretty simple research to conduct, actually.  But important research, so we can dispel the incorrect messages like what Mr. Mori is pontificating.  By the way, all of the research papers that I referenced for this episode are included in the show notes. You can find the show notes in your podcast app or on the Talk About Talk website. Before we move on, one more point  I wanted to share from the research on how much we talk. I found a paper called “Physician gender effects in medical communication: a meta-analytic review” This paper concludes that female doctors spend an average of 2 minutes longer talking to their patients. In other words, your female physician may talk more, bu only because they spend more time with you than a male physician. Hmm.  OK, let’s move on to  2. COMMUNICATION MINDSETS The research on this on is quite definitive.  Women are more focused on relationships and emotions, while men are more direct and focused on information sharing.  Even starting at a young age, multiple sources demonstrate that women use communication as a tool to enhance social connections and create relationships, While men use language to command dominance, power, and to achieve tangible outcomes. In a 2009 study of over 400 participants, researchers concluded significant differences in how men and women perceive the benefit of work relationships. Men focus on relationships at work as a means to get the job done.  Women value relationships at work in terms of social and emotional support. For women, work friendships are a key driver of job satisfaction. In other words: men tend to be task-oriented while women are relationship-oriented. men may engage in “report talk” while women gravitate to “rapport talk” A helpful way to think about this is that men tend to be “friendly” while women are “friends.” (Thanks to my friend Mary for this one!)  Let me say that again: “Men are friendly, women are friends.” This plays out differently, depending on the communication context.  One research paper I read,  concluded  that in conflict situations, women may approach resolution by seeking compromise and emphasizing collaboration. They often prioritize maintaining relationships and may use indirect language to express disagreement. Men may be more direct in addressing conflicts and may focus on finding solutions quickly, sometimes at the expense of discussing emotional aspects. Another paper focused on topics of Conversation: Research suggests that women tend to engage in conversations that revolve around relationships, emotions, and personal experiences. Men may gravitate towards discussions related to factual information, activities, and external events.  Speaking pf topics of conversation, Let’s move on to the 3rd element of communication.  So far, we’ve covered  1.How much we talk and 2.mindsets. #3 is our words  3. OUR WORDS There are a few things here. Research suggests that women tend to use more expressive and elaborate verbal communication. Men, on the other hand, may prioritize content and use more direct, concise language. You could say that women’s words can be more flowery while men’s is more black and white. Linguistic research has found that women may use more qualifiers and hedges (words like “maybe,” “I think,” “sort of”) that soften their statements and make them more polite.  I’ve read a lot of papers about this, and you may have come across this yourself. Ladies, we need to stop with  these qualifiers. No more “maybe,” “I think,” “sort of”and certainly, no more seeking permission to speak. “DO you mind if I interject here’ or apologies: “I’m sorry – I have one suggestion to add.” WHY are we apologizing? Then there’s the way some women may employ more tag questions or phrases that turn a statement into a question, like “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?” This is seeking validation or agreement. Men, on the other hand, tend to use more assertive and direct language.  One other point here in terms of our words and women seeking validation.  I learned this one from Judith Humphrey, a communication coach and author. She highlights how women tend to talk more about their hard work, while men lead and delegate. It’s like women need to describe their work, again, seeking validation. Of course, there are many reasons for this in terms of culture and social norms and yes, sexism. But it’s interesting, once you’ve read some of this research and you learn what the tendencies are, you start to see them everywhere. Let’s move on to #4 – our voices.  4. OUR VOICES Our voices vary across several vocal elements including rate, volume, articulation, pronunciation, fluency, and pitch. Understanding and incorporating variety in (most of) these elements creates a more engaging voice. In other words, if we speak fast and slow, with a high and low pitch, loudly and softly, our communication tends to be more engaging.   This goes for both men and women. The pitch of men’s voices is typically almost one octave deeper than women’s due to their relative testosterone level, the hormone that elongates the vocal cords during puberty.  But we all knew this. Women are also more likely to use upspeak. This is when you make a statement but with an inflection at the end, so it comes across as a question. I’ve noticed upspeak with plenty of women I’ve coached over the years. Once they learn about upspeak and hear themselves, it’s relatively easy to fix. They don’t want to appear as if they’re implicitly seeking validation.  Back to the pitch of our voices though. Plenty of research highlights the benefits of men’s deep voices. Not surprisingly, women find men with deeper voices more attractive than those with higher-pitched voices According to one academic study, male CEOs with deeper voices are more successful than their higher-pitched peers across several measures: they tend to manage larger companies, make $187,000 a year more, and last in their jobs an average five months longer. A 2015 study concluded that the U.S. Presidential candidate with the deeper voice won in every election since Calvin Coolidge. And you may have heard that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher took voice lessons to deepen her voice prior to an election – which she then won. Alright, we’re rounding the corner here. We’ve covered how much we talk. We’ve covered communication mindsets. We’ve covered our words. We’ve covered our voices. Now, it’s listening. 5. LISTENING Here’s the thing. The anatomy of our ears is identical. Yet somehow, our listening is not.  In other words, it’s not our HEARING that’s different.  But rather it’s how we listen.  What engages us. The signals that men focus on might be different from the signals that women focus on.  Research reveals that women may tend to use more nonverbal cues like facial expressions, gestures, and body language to convey meaning, while men may rely more on verbal cues. This sounds similar to what I was just saying, in terms of mindsets. Men are more direct. Women might consider nuance.  There’s another point here related to listening that I want to share. It’s from my interview with Judith Humphrey.  She notes that women typically don’t assume people will listen. Said another way, women assume people aren’t listening to them. This might also explain why many women use qualifiers to get a word in. But I wonder if we shift to assuming people are listening, then they will.  If you think this might apply to you, I challenge you to try to shift your mindset.  People. Are. Listening. And yes, I have a big smile on my face as I’m saying this into the microphone – I hope you’re still listening. On more thing related to listening. It’s about interrupting.  I did a whole episode on interrupting recently.  It’s episode 128. I share lots of research in that episode, much of which was conducted by Professor Sally Farley at the university of Baltimore. So, if you’re curious I encourage you to check out that episode. Three of the most relevant and impt things I want to share with you from that episode: #1: Men interrupt more than women. Hmm. #2: Who’s “allowed” to interrupt and who is not, has a lot to do with relative STATUS #3: (This is where it gets good) If someone of higher status interrupts you, let it go.  Everyone expects it and no one thinks less of you for letting it go.  But if a more junior person or perhaps your competitive peer interrupts you, that’s when you need to stand your ground.  Does that make sense? This all reminds me of the verbal sparring, focused on interrupting, that we witnessed in the 2020 vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. Do you remember that? Well, that leads me to turn-taking and tracking the ratio.  If you’ve been listening to this Talk About Talk podcast for a while, You’ve likely heard me encouraging you to track the ratio.  As in track the proportion of the conversation when you’re talking versus others.  And if you’re a leader, making space for everyone in the room to speck up. It’s about tracking the ratio of airtime, and TURN TAKING.  When I was doing the research for this episode on gender differences in communication, this term TURN TAKING came up in several papers. Generally speaking, the research shows that men tend to interrupt more frequently in conversations, often to assert dominance or take control of the discussion. Women, on the other hand, may prioritize turn-taking and show more awareness of each other’s speaking time, contributing to a more cooperative conversational dynamic. In other words, women may be more likely to track the ratio. Interesting, right?  But I have to say, in my experience, I have not noticed this.  The senior executives that I coach, men and women, are all focused on tracking the ratio.  But I also know there’s a self-selection bias here.  I’m coaching folks who are literally investing in their communication skills. So, there’s a lot going on here in terms of gender differences with listening in particular.  I started here by mentioning the research that concluded that when men listen, they rely more on direct, verbal cues, while women may tend to rely more nonverbal cues like facial expressions, gestures, and body language. The 6th of our 7 communication elements that we’re focusing on here includes these non-verbal cues, including facial expressions, gesture and body language.  6. NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION AND BODY LANGUAGE The upshot here is this: Men and women ACT differently!  Research shows significant differences between men’s and women’s non-verbal communication. Generally, men display more power and status-oriented body language, while women display more “warm” body language. Various research studies show that MEN’s non-verbal communication: is more assertive and power-hungry shows more dominant behaviors such as side-to-side head shaking, expressions of anger and disgust, and it may be more expansive (as in… man-spreading) You know, that guy who sits with his pegs spread apart, and who takes up as much space as he possibly can.   On the other hand, you might not be surprised to learn that the research indicates women may: be expressive, tentative, and polite in conversation display more AFFILIATIVE  body movement such as smiling and open body postures.  Not open as in man spreading, but open as in vulnerable. Women may also be more likely to touch their face and their hair. You’ve probably heard that this can be perceived as flirting. It can also signal anxiety and stress. Either way ladies, keep your hands off your face. So that’s non verbal communication.  We’re ready to move on to the last, the 7th of 7 communication elements.  So far we’ve covered  How much we talk,  Our communication mindsets Our words (or vocabulary) Our voices Our listening skills Our non-verbal communication The last communication element is confidence. 7. CONFIDENCE & IMPOSTER SYNDROME You’ve probably heard and read a lot about imposter syndrome. But do you know the origin of the term?  In 1978, psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes studied high-achieving women. They were interested to learn what makes them tick and what differentiates them versus other women. They were surprised to learn that almost 100% of these high achieving women described what Clance and Imes called IMPOSTER PHENOMENON.   Thus the term was born. Ever since then, people have been diagnosing “imposter syndrome” (or – doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud) in themselves and particularly in women. Recently though, the “imposter syndrome” discourse has shifted in at least three ways: It turns out that EVERYONE suffers from imposter syndrome! We should focus less on improving women’s confidence, and more on changing toxic work environments. “Confidence doesn’t equal competence.”  Overconfidence (arrogance) is inversely correlated with leadership success.  Humility can be a strength. This is great news for all of us. I could go on here with all sorts of advice for you on how to communicate with confidence and credibility.  But we’re focusing on gender differences. There’s one other point here that I want to share. There’s another commonly known phenomenon that illustrates the difference between men’s and women’s confidence.  It’s with job applications. Apparently men are more likely to apply for a job or seek a promotion when they fulfil one of the many job criteria, while women will wait until they fulfill all of the criteria.  That says a lot, doesn’t it? It also might explain a lot in terms of the proportion of women in sr. executive positions. Alright we’re through the list of 7 ways that women’s and men’s communication may differ.  There’s  How much we talk (turns out there’s no significant difference) Our communication mindsets (Women are more focused on relationships and emotions, while men are more direct and focused on tasks and information sharing.) Our words (Women are more likely to expressive and to use qualifiers and hedges. Men are more direct) Our voices (women are more likely to speak softly and possibly to employ upspeak. Men’s voices are deeper, and deeper voices are associated with credibility.) Our listening skills (our ears are the same and we hear the same things, but we listen differently,  We focus on different things. Men listen to the words.  Women also listen for nuance in terms of non verbal communication.   Our non-verbal communication is the 6th communication element. There are big differences here. Women are more expressive, tentative and polite, while men are more assertive and expansive.) and last –  Confidence – while more recent research shows that MOST of us – not just women – suffer from imposter syndrome, it seems that men demonstrate higher levels of self-confidence. Who’s the better communicator? So who’s the better communicator? Oh no.  There’s no right answer to that question. But I will say this. While I was combing through the research it occurred to me that these differences in communication styles also explains why diverse groups are more high performing. When men and women work together as a team, they can benefit from their diverse communication styles.  I’m curious, as you were listening to me run through all this research, did you consider whether your own personal communication style is consistent with the patterns found in the research?  We have a lot to learn from each other, don’t we? Men can learn from how women tend to communicate. And women can learn from men. For example, women might focus more on leading and being direct.  Sometimes, not always, of course, but sometimes being direct is ideal. And women could also focus on not apologizing, not minimizing their comments, and not seeking permission to speak. And men might focus more on nuance. At this point we have a much more thorough response for Mr. Yoshiro Mori, the Japanese Olympic official. Mr. Mori stated that when women’s speaking time isn’t restricted to a certain extent, they have difficulty finishing, which is annoying,” Well, Mr. Mori, let me tell you what the research says. Academic research indicates that women do NOT talk more.  Unless, of course you’re referencing your medical doctor. Female doctors do spend more time and talk more with their patients. Women are also more likely to be tracking that ratio of how much people are talking. They’re more focused on taking turns in conversation. Perhaps, Mr. Mori, you should try to do the same. And THAT is a great place to end this episode! If you ever have any questions or suggestions for me, I LOVE hearing from you! Yes, even you, Mr. Mori.  There are multiple ways you can connect with me. Everything’s on the talkabouttalk.com website so that’s probably the best place to start.  From there you can send me a message, connect with me on LinkedIn, and even leave me an audio recording.  Like I said, I’d love to hear from you – bring it on. And if you enjoyed this podcast episode, I hope you’ll share it with your friends and leave me a review on whatever podcast app you’re using. It really makes a difference and I appreciate it. Thanks for listening.  And talk soon! The post GENDER DIFFERENCES in Communication (ep.141) appeared first on Talk About Talk.