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Tip 55. Strive to be more articulate in your communications. Successful women leaders are usually very eloquent.
Public speaking may be a prevalent fear among the general population, but leaders must decide early in a career to build it into an asset. Articulate communication skills are a must-have for any leader.
The last time I heard a leader fumble through an off-the-cuff speech, I moaned internally at what it must be like to hear him in a meeting. Following that, I noted my impression of his capabilities had just descended a notch. That’s what is at stake here.
My colleague Matt Rix has a presentation he titles “You Ain’t No Leader If’n You Caint Talk Good.” You may be great at your job, but if you do not come off polished … baaaad.
Good thing for the public speaking associations and top-notch training classes that give you the experience, because that is the best way to overcome poor speechmanship.
Practice it, present it, and ask for feedback.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
All 249 Success Tips in the book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership and is available at Amazon Buy Now
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
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Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast! The podcast for tips and techniques you can use to increase your confidence and project a powerful image to get the job with a client, the raise or the promotion you deserve.
Katie: At the podcast – this episode, we’re going to be more eloquent than you could ever imagine.
Carol: Is that a fact, Katie Snapp?
Katie: I’m Katie Snapp.
Carol: Well, I just said that.
Katie: And you’re who?
Carol: Introduce me.
Katie: And you’re Carol Wight.
Carol: And this is Carol Wight.
Katie: And this is serial. Do you know what serial is?
Carol: Serious?
Katie: No, serial. If you’re listening and you do know – you know. If you don’t, then you don’t know.
Here’s our tip this week. Carol and I (by the way) are presenting in some of these podcasts a shot into a spotlight. That’s really what I’m trying to say. That’s how eloquent I am.
Carol: Ha-ha!
Katie: A spotlight into certain tips that are worthy of discussion. And this one happens to be as Tip Number 55. What is it, Carol? Read it for us.
Carol: “Strive to be more articulate in your communications. Successful women leaders are usually very eloquent.”
Katie: I have worked with clients before that want this as a desired…
Carol: Outcome?
Katie: Yeah, it is a desired outcome.
Carol: It should always be. You know, I actually think that any leader that is moving ahead is somebody who’s very good at articulating.
Katie: So true. So there was one leader that I was working with who had asked me to do some coaching with him, some one on one coaching. It wasn’t around particularly speaking, but it was about being more effective. So I turned on a recorder when I was in one of his staff meetings with him and recorded him. I was wondering why you were looking at me that way.
Carol: Ha-ha! It’s a sneeze.
Katie: The way he came off in the meeting, I’m sure he was unaware of. And this is delicate, right? He was not articulate. He was not an eloquent speaker. He was not someone that didn’t interrupt his staff. There were lots of things he could’ve done differently.
Carol: Uh-hmm.
Katie: I think the first step to improving that is to listen to it as painful as it might be. And no one likes listening or watching themselves on video anyway.
Carol: Right.
Katie: But this was a great first step for him. So I recorded about 10 minutes of his interaction with his staff and then sent it to him, had him listen to it and we talked through some pieces of what you can be doing differently. That was super tactical in a way.
Carol: Nice! I like it!
Katie: It was great. I’ll do that for you if you would ever like?
Carol: People can just send in their comments on my podcasting abilities.
Katie: I know! We’re giving them plenty to talk about.
Carol: We are.
Katie: But you have to be ready to listen to yourself in what you want to do a little bit better. I mean, there are times when I can listen to myself doing a public speaking event and it sounds greats and other times where I just do nothing but trip over myself.
Carol: Interesting.
Katie: And you and I are not professionals.
Carol: And what do you mean by that?
Katie: We’re not professional radio personalities.
Carol: Right.
Katie: We’re not that.
Carol: No.
Katie: We’re not on TV all the time.
Carol: No.
Katie: But that’s what makes us like the everyday leader. You’re in front of someone. You don’t have to be that. You still have to be someone that gets your point across and manages a room well.
Carol: Right. And especially if you want to move up – you have to be able to introduce yourself to folks and walk into a room and be noticed and be eloquent when somebody’s talking to you.
Katie: Right. So my point being – you can’t just brush it off as, “Oh well, I’ll never do that very well.” My friend Matt Rix has a talk that he titles, “You Ain’t No Leader If’n You Can’t Talk Good.”
Carol: Ha-ha-ha!
Katie: And he’s right. You may be good at your job, you may be good at what you do, you may be good at the in’s and the out’s, you may know how to manage contracts, you may know how to do the widget – but if you can’t influence people in a way that sounds like you’ve got your act together, if you can’t be a little bit polished, people think you really don’t have your act together.
Carol: Sure. So one of the things that comes to mind when we talk about this – is you talk about public speaking being so important because it requires you to get your thoughts together in order to give them to somebody else.
Katie: Yes.
Carol: And talk a little bit about that because I always think that that’s true. You know, when I’ve got to boil it down to a five minute speech or a 15 minute speech, it makes my message that much more clear.
Katie: Think about someone that you’ve interacted with – where you walk away feeling confused.
Carol: Uh-hmm.
Katie: So I know someone. He’s an entrepreneur here in town and I’ve had a couple of interactions with him. When he talks, he has good diction and he has good vocabulary, but it doesn’t stick together. I don’t quite know where he’s ever going with anything.
Carol: Does he scattered?
Katie: I can’t tell because I can’t tell where he’s going.
Carol: Ha-ha-ha! Interesting!
Katie: And I know that sometimes people have trouble pulling their thoughts together – I understand that. But when you’re influencing others or you’re wanting to come off as someone that knows what they’re talking about – you have to be able to say, “Here are the top three things.”
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: You have to be clear, you have to speak directly and you have to have the top… you know, whatever it might be. You have to have that mental list.
One tip that I give women for being more eloquent is to speak in bullets because it gives it verbal structure. People love that.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: So that was just an example right there of three things that you need to remember most.
Carol: Right.
Katie: So in order to be eloquent, Carol – what would be the top three things that you would recommend women remember?
Carol: Be very careful about your um’s and ah’s because it makes you appear…
Katie: Indecisive?
Carol: And you don’t know what you’re talking about. So I’ve done some training with Toast Masters and of course, there’s somebody in the room that will count your um’s and ah’s and pauses and thought places. And unfortunately, I come away with way too many of those. The score is really high when I’m doing this.
Katie: Yes.
Carol: So just be aware. And especially if you’re on radio, TV or something else – that an um is not supposed to…
Katie: Sounds bigger than it is?
Carol: It sounds very big. And I’m not being very eloquent right now.
Katie: Ha-ha-ha! Also wouldn’t beat yourself up.
Carol: Right.
Katie: Many people will not notice the um’s or not. It will sound a lot cleaner when you stop a sentence and you start the next one.
Carol: Yes.
Katie: If you attach all of them with an and or a so.
Carol: Or a like. That’s what my kids do. “Oh, yeah like…”
Katie: “That’s like… Oh, and like… I’m going to go get on the 4:25 like.”
Carol: Ha-ha!
Katie: If you connect all of them with “a” and “so” or begin everything with “well” – you know, it sounds like you’re warming up a little bit, but it does not sound quite as smooth. So those are the little things that have to do with eloquents.
I coached someone several years ago who wanted to be more like a character that was in a TV show. She used that for her role model.
Carol: Oh, interesting.
Katie: I actually thought it was pretty good. And the next time I saw that, it was like NCIS or one of those where people are dying. It was one of the female investigators who always looked hot and [Inaudible][0:08:53.9] together and was confident. And she said, “I want to be like her.” And it was not bad.
Carol: Well, then memorize your lines. Ha-ha!
Katie: It wasn’t bad to have a role model like that so you could see in action what you want to replicate. We think that role modeling is really useful for that.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: But the other thing I wanted to work on her with (and this was her idea, not so much mine) was her vocabulary. She felt like if she had a more extended vocabulary, it sounded more erudite.
Carol: Uh-hmm.
Katie: How was that for a good word?
Carol: It’s good and you used it correctly.
Katie: And if it’s because I’m edumicated.
Carol: Ha-ha!
Katie: If you have a vocabulary that you can call from that helps you be more articulate, then go for it.
Carol: Well, and we’ve talked about being eloquent in speaking. But there’s also being eloquent in writing. And I think the same thing applies. You need to be clear. You need to be concise. You need to know your audience and you need to know who you’re speaking to.
So in any case, whether you’re in a speaking engagement or if you’re writing something – an email. I’ll tell you what? I have come to the point where my emails are less than two paragraphs because I know that’s what people are going to read.
Katie: Uh-hmm. Good grammar, tight words.
Carol: Yes.
Katie: We did an exercise in high school in an English class. I’ll never forget when I was in a composition class where we wrote something and then went back through it and eliminated as many words as you could and still keep the same meaning.
Carol: It’s huge.
Katie: It’s amazing!
Carol: And sometimes a bigger word isn’t necessarily better. Sometimes the smaller word that just gets to the point is perfectly fine.
Katie: Or bombastic words like…
Carol: Bombastic.
Katie: Like “I’ve attached three copies in triplicate.”
Carol: Ha-ha-ha!
Katie: That’s like, “Really? That sounds like a lawyer.” Just say, “I’ve attached copies.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: You know? Okay. Maybe “I’ve attached three copies.” Or, “Here are three copies.” Some plural are sometimes better.
Carol: Right.
Katie: There’s an exercise we use in the communication class that I teach called “Lasering.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: It’s a technique that’s somewhat common in a lasering approach. Well, let me tell you the objective of lasering – which is kind of self-explanatory if you think of the word laser.
Carol: Uh-hmm.
Katie: The objective of a laser approach is to hone in on the heart of the message that you’re really trying to get to.
Carol: Right.
Katie: Listen to the difference between these two things.
“So Carol, we have safety meeting every Monday morning and we’re usually in the workroom gathered at 8:15 and I really like everyone to be there. In fact, it’s really kind of required. I’ve noticed that the last three you’ve either been too late or you have not been to at all. So what’s going on? How can we get you there?”
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Okay. End of conversation.
Carol: Okay – painful.
Katie: Rattled on a bit, right?
Carol: Right.
Katie: Can you hear someone doing this though – because they want to be sensitive or they’re afraid they don’t want to hurt your feelings or I’m having to be a little bit disciplinary, but I’m trying to sound like I’m kind of softening up to you…
Carol: Concerned? Right.
Katie: And isn’t it nice how I’m being buddy-buddy or whatever it might sound like? Alright! So if you were to laser that. “Carol – safety meetings are not optional. Please be there.”
Carol: “8:15 Monday morning. Yes, ma’am.” Ha-ha!
Katie: See?
Carol: Sure.
Katie: Then it’s beautiful.
Carol: And it’s eloquent – I got to say. It’s much more eloquent to be that direct.
Katie: Yeah. And you can script it out ahead of time if that helps you.
Carol: Sure.
Katie: If it’s a conversation that’s going to make you nervous, a little bit jittery – jot down the first sentence to open it up. That’ll get you off to the right start.
Carol: Yeah. And why does this woman want to look like the woman on TV? Well, the woman on TV has memorized her lines. The woman on TV is spewing a group of lines that was fed to her.
Katie: Exactly! Of course, she sounds eloquent.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: Somebody wrote it for her.
Carol: Exactly! And she’s delivering it eloquently, right?
Katie: Remember when we used to study vocabulary and we’d learn words that… I mean, do kids do that anymore?
Carol: Oh, God. No. I mean, I would look at my kid’s vocabulary words – one of my daughters was an AP student so she actually had real vocabulary words, but the other one didn’t.
Katie: Uh-hmm.
Carol: I’d look at them and just be like, “Really? This is what you’re learning?”
Katie: Yeah. One of my girls has an aptitude for vocabulary. She’ll toss out a word that… you know, when you’re raising kids and they started using a word you’ve never heard them use before?
Carol: Or that’s not in your family anywhere?
Katie: Wow! I remember first using the word “indeed.”
Carol: “Oh, indeed!”
Katie: I don’t think I used it that way at age whatever. But I thought, “Indeed! That sounds like a sophisticated word.” And I started using it.
Carol: How fun!
Katie: We used to read the book “Word Power Made Easy.” And it gave you a list of chapter by chapter, here’s the difference between this word and that word and words that I guess that would make you sound a little bit more educated.
Carol: Yeah. So you have a E-Book on email etiquette.
Katie: I do! Thank you for bringing that.
Carol: Yes. And that’s part of being eloquent. I mean, anymore – that maybe everything every communication that somebody else has for you.
Katie: What are you trying to say?
Carol: Ha-ha-ha!
Katie: Can you laser that, Carol? Ha-ha-ha!
Carol: Sorry, I was looking at something else.
Katie: Let me tell you what the book is. Shall we start with there?
Carol: Okay. Why don’t you do that?
Katie: I wrote a book as a result of a workshop that I did for a client who had asked me to come in and help their office be more professional in their communication, especially their email.
You know when you use voice texting a lot? You end up saying things out loud.
Carol: Yeah.
Katie: So after I did the workshop which was a two or three hour with the staff – it happened to be a law firm and there were maybe 15 people on the room. I put them through some exercises that had to do with standard email practices, do’s and don’ts, how to tighten up your grammar, how to use emoticons. Emoticons appropriate and this is a law office of course.
So they were having trouble with some people in their office sending emails externally. You know, a good practice is to keep your internal ones professional too, right? But sending them externally that had colored font in them of something that was buzzing or popping or text that was moving or…
Carol: Emoticons that did that. Yeah.
Katie: Yeah. And they just did not want that image to be coming out of their office justifiably. So we really turned it into a – “Let’s make a system for you that helps your email maintain a certain etiquette.”
Carol: Sure.
Katie: So we went through a process where we identified what would be appropriate, what wouldn’t. And then we standardized it, we made it part of the policy.
Carol: Nice.
Katie: So they walked away, they got a training around grammar and do’s and don’ts and all the others. You know, when did you reply all – that kind of stuff. But then they also picked a part of it that was going to be now part of their office policy.
Carol: Nice.
Katie: It was nice. And so I turned it into an E-Book. It’s a super simple E-Book. It includes some of the exercises at the back of the E-Book. It’s maybe 15 or 20 pages and it is at our website. It’s for sale at the website unless you’re a subscribe member. Subscribed members get it for free. But if you are, you know who you are. Our website has a products page that includes it and you can buy it on the spot and download it.
Carol: Nice. I think it’s fabulous. And I have shared it with my staff because I think it’s important that we’re all emailing along the same lines. I mean, we have style sheets for our emails so our signatures all look the same. You’re not going to get something different from somebody else.
Katie: Oh, good idea!
Carol: You know, it’s all going to look formalized and then things that you do and don’t do on email. It’s so nice to have. Thank you for doing that.
Katie: Sure. And I wanted to mention something about being eloquent or being careful with your diction in some way. Not only does it make you look more professional, but if you are challenged… first of all, we show the example of lasering.
Carol: Right.
Katie: If you’re challenged with rattling on, lasering in the right time can be appropriate. If you’re challenged with feeling like you sound professional, listening to yourself can be appropriate. Increasing your vocabulary can be appropriate, speaking clearly and slowly can be appropriate.
If you come from a background where you don’t have a high school or a college education or some education where you got the sort of extra work into English composition or grammar, that’s okay. It’s completely overcomable with some exposure and some training.
But what you can do right now is to sound clear, think about your thoughts, speak in bullets, summarize, speak in a tone that’s measured and not fast and not slow and reflects that you’re listening.
You can look composed and elegant and still not have a lot of bulk to what you’re saying. But cover up (I’m not saying cover up a part of it) but that certainly is a piece of it – it’s to just sound like you’re… you know, like we say a lot, “Fake it to make it.” You want to look like you’ve got it together. Ladies, you want to look like you’ve got it together.
Carol: You do. And another piece of that is you can always listen.
Katie: That’s a great point.
Carol: And giving your presence to somebody has a lot of eloquence in its own right.
Katie: If I were to leave something with the listeners, I would have them do two things. My bullet list has two items.
“Number 1: Listen to yourself as you’re talking.” That sounds super basic. But when you become good at public speaking, you get really good at what I call, “two-channel communication” which is the channel that’s coming out of your mouth, the information coming out of your mouth, but also the channel of what’s going into your ears and you’re listening to it.
So you start to listen almost as if you’re separated from your own talk and then you can hear it a little bit more objectively. That’s helpful. So that’s number one – “Listen to yourself a little bit more.”
“Number 2: Try that laser technique.” It’s not always appropriate. If someone is emotionally charged, you don’t want to necessarily be direct. But in that example that I told you about – “Meetings aren’t optional.”
Carol: Right.
Katie: How well do you remember when it’s a short little – “Meetings aren’t optional.” I remember my boss telling me, “Meetings aren’t optional.”
When you can laser it to arbitrarily 12 words or less, just short 12 words or less, then the message is sent more clearly and directly and the person is likely to remember it better. And then you just let it sit.
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Carol: Right.
Katie: Resist the urge to continue on. Just stop talking.
Carol: To rattle on. Right.
Katie: So there’s a couple of things that I would leave for you. And I think with that, you can really maintain a type of eloquence that is most appropriate for you.
Carol: Yes, darling.
We’re so glad you joined us for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. We’d love to hear from you with questions or comments. Email us at info@skirtstrategies.com or interact with us on Facebook. Now more than ever, the world needs powerful, confident female leaders – and that’s what we are.
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