Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Now, as we emphasize the importance of communication skills on this podcast, especially when it comes to our professional lives, We've even had guests who previously lost jobs due to not being eloquent in their communication skills. My guest today, Mike Acker, who is an executive communications coach, an author and speaker, is here to share exactly what we can do to improve our communication skills and how this benefits us, both professionally and personally. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Mike. Hey, thank you so much, Roberta. So looking forward to talking with you and talking to your audience here and giving them some values, some stories, some inspiration, some tips, some tactics that they can take with them. We need that especially because as I said earlier, it seems like everybody just talks the technical, but you know, you want to know exactly after I finished listening to this episode, now what do I do? Absolutely. So we want to give you some very specific things to do, but also understanding and just have some fun with it. Speaking is something all of us have to do. Speaking and growing your confidence in speaking, I tell everybody is a universal advantage. So whether you stay at home with kids, whether you're in corporate office, whether you're a truck driver, whether you're Amazon delivery, whether you're office worker, insurance, financial advisor, nurse, on and on, improving your communication will help you step up. that area that you're involved in. Certainly. But before we get into the nitty gritties, would you like to tell us a little bit more about yourself? Yeah, absolutely. So my story in communication and just in life goes back to when I was a kid with the speech impediment. And so a lot of times people think, you must be a natural speaker. You get up there, you spoke to 10,000 people. Wow, you're just a natural. No, no, there's no such thing as naturals. There's proclivity and there's practice. Some people have a proclivity to it, but never put the practice in so they never get great. And then there's some people who put a lot of practice in and even without proclivity, they get great. Now, proclivity plus practice equals phenomenon. As I was a kid, I didn't have this natural tendency. I didn't even have a proclivity towards it. My proclivity was towards not being able to be understood. There were certain letters I could say and sounds that I can pronounce like juh. It came out completely different. And when I would go to speak, people would constantly say, what did you say? My mom tells me, because I don't remember all of this, my mom tells me that it got so frustrating to me that I hated not being able to be understood that I was one of the driving forces to go towards a speech therapist at five years old. And at five years old, I would work and I was a driving factor, my mom said, towards doing my exercises and working hard on being understood. Eventually I got to a spot where I could be understood. And suddenly I was being thrust into opportunities. A lot of times people say, if you just get out there and practice a whole bunch, you'll get better. And I say, no, no. That's not true. If you have a broken leg and you go walk on that broken leg, it's not gonna get better, it's gonna get worse. So if you actually have some brokenness in your speaking, now if you don't, that's fine. But if you have brokenness in your speaking, like my speech impediment, or other huge insecurities or whatever else is happening, getting out there will actually just make it worse and you'll fail and then you'll feel miserable and you'll repeat, repeat. Thankfully, I worked with somebody to get better. I had a speech therapist, a coach working with me to get better, to be able to pronounce those sounds. Then I had opportunities, science fairs, poetry class and readings and competitions and other things. and I had a chance to work, work. So my story goes back to not being a natural, growing up in a small town in the United States, in Washington state, and having a chance to overcome a speech impediment. Now, right when I got comfortable, right when I'm thriving, I'm in fourth grade, I loved it, I remember it well. Some of my favorite highlights of those memories, he'd go, oh, that was so fun. My dad comes home, he was an attorney at this point in time, and he says, I quit my job, we're moving to Mexico. So we uprooted our family, we moved to Mexico to be missionaries there to serve the poor and disenfranchised in the outskirts of a large city, Mazatlan. And when we got there, my dad and I decided to be good for me to learn the language by going to a school. I was thinking like a nice private school where people were used to Americans, some other Americans had been there, but instead I went to an inner city Mazatlan, Mexico school where most people had never seen a white person and most people had never... met an American. They had seen them on TVs. In 1990, there was TV shows that would show up every six months later. Movies would show up six months after they came out in the United States. And we were away from the tourist zone. Was the school in Spanish or in English? Oh, all Spanish. And so I stood out in just what I looked like, how I dressed and how I spoke. My fear of speaking in front of the group was so bad because every single time I got up in front of people, people laughed. For the next couple years, my identity changed because I watched the responses of people and they laughed when I spoke. So I thought I was a class clown. And it's so interesting. Your identity will switch the way you perceive yourself, the way you think of yourself will switch when you see the responses to your communication with people. So I became someone other than which I was. And it wasn't until about ninth grade that I was able to really feel like hey, I could speak Spanish well enough. I get my point across there. I can be who I want to be, not who everybody is making me be. And finally I got comfortable. In fact, by the time I left Mexico seven years later to go to college in the United States, I was actually more Mexican than I was American in terms of culture. And then I moved back to the United States and I went to college and I ended up going to a speaking career, speaking pathway and coach people along the way. So I always tell people, my story is one of... someone with significant challenges learning to overcome those challenges in communication and other challenges to become the person that I am today. It's given me an insight into others, it helps me understand what someone feels like an outsider and it helps me feel understand, empathize and feel with people who feel like the odds can sometimes be stacked against them. You know your story is not as common as the usual person who says I'm afraid of speaking, I'm afraid to stand in front of people. They were always in the environment. Nobody made fun of them. They were just never on the stage to begin with. What is that imagined fear you think people have when it comes to speaking? Yeah, there's a couple. So one of the imagined fears is what will people think about me? We feel confident off stage. I actually talked about this in several of my books and coaching programs. We have an idea of who we are. Imagine that you decide that you're going to buy a property in Montana and you move to Montana and there's. A thousand acres, just a beautiful untouched thousand acres. And you buy 10 acres right in the middle. Now there's a fishing stream there. You build a fishing hut on it and it's on kind of the corner of your property. There's some trees. So you build a tree for, for the kids over there and it's kind of on your property. Then there's a big, huge pasture and you build a barn or some horses. It's kind of on your property. And then you have a road that cuts through all the acreage to get to your property. Now, if I were to say, Roberto, where's your property? You would say, oh, it's from the road to the fishing hut, to the tree fort, to the barn. Now, you have an idea of your territory, of what is yours. Now, what happens when a massive developer comes in and starts plotting out land to develop houses? You see someone come in and they're roping off part of what you thought was your land. In other words, you think they're encroaching on your territory. So here's what people do. Everyday life, I know who I am. I'm Mike, I'm this person. I'm the type of person who does this. And then I get up in front of people and everybody's encroaching on my space. And there's a fear of what they're taking away from you. There's a fear of what they're pushing into your boundaries. So what do you need to do if you're that landowner in Montana? You need to get a survey. you need to define your borders instead of just trusting what the land developer says your borders are. Because you might realize that actually that wasn't part of your territory. You thought it was, but it's not. You might realize that, yeah, indeed, they're taking away a full acre of your territory. And you need to define yourself instead of letting someone else define you. And one of the things that happens is when we stand up on stage, We often are wondering how people are defining us. Do they think I'm this? Instead of going, I know I'm this, do they think I'm this? Will they like what I have to say? Instead of saying, I know that what I have to say is valuable, we're wondering if they think it's valuable. So I say this again and again, when I'm working with clients, it's actually in my book, Speak with Confidence, label yourself before you wonder what labels people put on you. Label yourself before you wonder what labels people put on you to your question, what fear do people have? They fear what labels people might be putting on them. They fear what criticism people might be leveling towards them. They fear what people might be thinking about them. They fear what value people might think is coming from that speaker. So instead of wondering what might be decide what is Now don't just come up and go, I'm the most amazing, whatever it is that you are. No, we don't promote arrogance. No, no, arrogance is a quick track towards not having nervousness, but also not connecting with your audience. Instead, you want to have grounded reason. I know I'm valuable because of this. I know that I have something good to say because of this. I know that I will do well because of this. So you have grounded reason to believe that what you're going to do is going to be said the way you want it to be coming across versus what you might be coming across as to the audience. So the first thing is the labels that you think they put on you. The second thing I've heard people say is the fear of being judged because when you were delivering your speech, you made a mistake. Something went wrong. Isn't that what happens to all of us? And we still do it anyway. Yeah. perfect, the fear of failing. There's a lot of different large fears that come in. And even to that first one, the labels, that's a sense of judgment, a fear of judgment, what will they judge? What will they come across? The second one, that fear of failing is a sense of, am I going to do it well enough? Am I going to do it and measure up to my own expectations of myself? I know what I can do. But in this area, maybe I can't do this well. We see this a lot in sports. And so for example, my nephew is really good at football, really good. And he's really good at some other sports. But when we would put him in a new sport and he would go try skiing, he wasn't natural. He didn't pick it up like that. And so as a result of that, he didn't want to do it because he was falling short of his own expectations. He was failing in his own mind, even though he was brand new. He shouldn't be good at skiing. He was brand new. Of course. Yeah. And a lot of people just feel like, well, because I've done well here, because I've done well here, when I get up in front, I should do well. I know I'm not going to do as well as other people. And so I'm falling short of my own expectations and my abilities. Or to your point, they're just failing. They feel like, oh, I mean, I got stuck in all my words right there. They do something like that. All of us, which happens to all of us. And instead of just brushing it off and moving on, and with confidence, they get stuck in that moment. A lot of the fear and the struggles in communication comes from what you're thinking about. Have you had something when you were speaking and something goes wrong? Like whether it's a technical difficulty, fire alarm, car alarm, something goes wrong that wasn't planned and how did you handle it? A thousand times. My favorite one though actually happened to my dad. He was speaking in Mexico and he was speaking to a group of people and a drunk man came up and punched him right in the middle of the speech. So I've never had that happen. but I did preaching for years too. And I was preaching one time and as I was preaching, I was telling the story about how Jesus interacted with a woman who may or may not have been a prostitute. And so I said, let's just pause right here. I think there's something that we can learn, which is interesting. I usually don't think a prostitute has anything to teach me. And then I paused and I realized I was a single man and I just said a prostitute has nothing to teach me. And I just thought about the irony and I lost the entire room. But he's coming up after going, so you're super experienced. Are you Mike? I'm like, Oh, my god, it's so embarrassing. I just thought, in the moment, what do you do? I pause, I let people laugh. My dad in his moment, he paused for a moment, he let someone else take care of it. He knew he had some guys who would help out with that situation. And then you pause, you let people respond, you embrace that moment for a moment, and then you move on. It's just not the end of the world. Think back at the countless mistakes that you have made in so many different areas. My first book, I write about seven strategies to overcome fear. And one of them is imagine the worst. A lot of times people imagine the best and they're setting themselves up for failure. They're like, okay, I'm going to be there. Everybody's going to be paying attention. I'm going to deliver it. This is going to go well. And they're trying to psych themselves up. I tell people. Yeah, believe the best. Absolutely work and practice and get there. But here's what you want to do. You want to practice not in a sterile environment. You want to practice in a dirty environment. Why is it that when my team practiced, we practiced outside soccer? Because that's where we were playing in dirty fields. We didn't practice indoor clean. We practice outdoor because that's where we were playing in your performance, in your practice practice, dirty practice like. Everybody's making noise. Imagine the worst. Imagine you're there and you're going into the conference room and everybody's on their phone. Nobody's paying attention and you're delivering. Now practice, practice like your alarm goes off and set an alarm right in the middle of it. And just keep on talking over the alarm. Practice dirty. Now what happens is you are now ready to perform if the situation gets messy. A lot of people practice to a sterile room and they're like, okay, here I am giving my speech and here I am giving my speech. Well, then that's not real environment. But when you practice dirty and dirty things happen, like someone punches you or you say something that's awful or I had a fire start on stage one time in the middle of a, of a wedding that I was doing. So what do you do if you're only used to sterile environments, you're going to panic. But if you can put yourself in the spot like, hey, things are gonna go wrong, this might happen, this might happen. And then you practice right when your heart is elevated and you're thinking about these things and you're imagining it. Then when you show up and people are actually paying attention, you're pleasantly surprised. Isn't that how we prepare for life? You say prepare for the worst. And then you find that life exceeds your expectations, so to speak, which is much more pleasant than thinking everything's gonna go smoothly then you get disappointed. And you're not prepared. Believe the best. Prepare for the worst. In other words, believe that you are going to rock it, that you are going to bring value. But prepare as if right now a dog is going to come in and start barking in the middle of the podcast. So what would I do if our dog was at home right now? I have my mouse hovering over the mute board and I would quickly touch that, let Roberta take over while I would quickly deal with the situation. So I'm prepared. even though I'm believing that I'm coming and it's going to be good and all that. Right. You said you coach people on their sales skills and also their careers. First, let's talk about the sales. We always say that we love to buy, but we don't want to be sold to, which makes it very hard for the person who's in the sales job. How do you coach someone in sales to be confident, to communicate to the potential customers so that hopefully they get the sales that they're looking for? Yeah, there's so much to it. First of all, I tell people, how are you helping people? Any speech, any sales has to come down to how are you helping people? And if you don't believe that what you're selling helps people, then you probably need to switch over to doing something else. I was in corporate sales and consultative sales for a long time and we sold medical devices and vaccines and things like that. I would sell the things that I really liked. We had like 200,000 SKUs, we were a distributor. And so we had lots to sell. I didn't sell every single thing. I sold the things that I really believed in. and brought those out. Those were the ones that I highlighted. I knew how they helped the people that I was telling them to. So find out how what you have helps people. One of the things I like to do in podcasts and interviews is to promote my book, Speak with Confidence. I spent three years working on it. I've walked hundreds of people through it individually and thousands of it, people through it in workshops and more. I know it helps people. So I can confidently say buy my book because it will help you. So how are you helping people? And often we think how they're helping us and people read through that. But if I go and I say, I got this gadget and it's gonna help you by eliminating this and you can really find out what it is that it helps them in then that's a great starting point. Then the second starting point is to find the gap. In communication, we often think sales, we often think that if you're a good talker then you're a good salesperson. No, no, no. If you're a good listener. you can be a good salesperson and you want to find the gap. So if I'm selling a gadget right now to Roberta and we jump on and I say Roberta how you doing Roberta says I'm doing great thanks Mike how you doing and then I go good and then here's the gadget you need to buy it because it's going to help you hear Roberta goes oh man eloquent. And maybe I impressed you, but I didn't impact you. But if instead, I go, Alberta, how are you doing today? We build that rapport classic. And then I go to the issue and I ask, you know, how is your whatever working? And then I go through a system. So the system I write actually talked about this in my book on emotional intelligence, it's about empathizing, connecting to classic system. And so it's where you ask a question, you listen. And then instead of responding, you acknowledge their heart. And then after you acknowledge their heart, you ask another question. You explore more. So this would be, for example, if you were buying a car, I might say, Hey, welcome, we have the premier car place and such and such place. What kind of car are you looking for? So there's my question. What would you say, Roberta, in this big situation? Alexa's SUV. Perfect. Now. What a lot of people do at that point in time in the sales journey is that then they point down to their Lexus SUV. They point down to their product. Perfect. I have that. In fact, it's great. Here's how it's going to help you. Here's how it's going to do great for you. But really what you should do is you should acknowledge what they're looking for. Oh, okay. Lexus SUV. Those are nice, aren't they? So I'm acknowledging what she has. And I like that they're reliable. I like that Toyota is known for cheaper maintenance than the other reliable brands. And that's, that's important to me. Perfect. And then I'd say, Oh, that's important to you. That's great. Is there a reason? And I'm going to explore more and I'm just going to keep on exploring. I want to understand really what she's looking for because I have 20 different Lexus SUVs and maybe I bring her to the brand new one, or maybe I look at her and think, maybe I should bring her to the two year old one. Or maybe I size up my audience and go, oh, this person right here, they're coming in jeans and an old t-shirt. I'm gonna bring back to the 20 year old one. And so often we're making judgments and we're bringing them straight towards the answer when we should repeat this, listen, acknowledge, explore, listen, acknowledge, explore, listen, acknowledge, explore. And then once we've listened, we've acknowledged, we've explored, once we find what the gap is. Ah, Roberta's looking for a three-year-old SUV. The reason why is because she wants to be able to go off-road. And I understand, then I can go, okay, I have three different SUVs that I think fit. Two are Lexuses, but one is another brand. And I think this one is good because of this and this and this. And I show her, and then we continue this process. But it's not about talking, it's about interacting. Communication is not necessarily talking. communication can be very slow on the mouth or very small on the mouth of words and very huge on the mouth of listening. That's why when I first labeled the podcast, I called it the speaking on communicating podcast and I said, isn't that the same thing? I said, no, speaking is one aspect of communicating. Yeah, everyone speaks, but not everyone communicates. Yeah, that's a big one. Everyone speaks, but not communicates. And then the second thing, let's talk about the career progression when it comes to communication. You get hired on your technical skills, but nobody tells you that to climb the corporate ladder, the communication skills are just going to be as crucial. So what then? So let me reinforce this to the entire audience by saying this. And if you're watching me and watching the YouTube portion of Roberta's show, you'll see that on one hand, I'm raising up my right hand and this is leadership on the right hand. Meanwhile, my communication is low. If my leadership is high, my hand is up, and my communication is low, my left hand is down, then my leadership will actually be brought low because my communication is low. In other words, if your leadership is high, but your communication is low, is it will bring down your perceived leadership. People will think less of you as a leader. Now, let's raise up the communication hand. My left hand is up, but my right hand is down. Communication is up, leadership is down. If your communication is up, but your leadership is not, if you're a great speaker, but you're not a great leader, people will actually perceive that your leadership is higher. Isn't that incredible? If your leadership is high, you can get things done through people, but your ability to speak is low, it will bring down your perceived leadership and you will not advance your career as high as you could. However, if your communication, if your public speaking ability is high. Even if your leadership is low, it will bring up your perceived leadership and you will get opportunities merely because you can talk the talk. We've all seen that. Right. The person who is great at speaking and communicating, connecting with people, but can't do jack squat. We're like, why is that person leader? Well, because they can communicate. Yeah. Meanwhile, we watch someone else and we're like, I can get things done and one on one, I can lead people. Why am I not climbing the ladder? because your communication is lacking. But when you have great communication and your great ability to get things done, that's when you become the CEO of the company called Apple. That's when you become the CEO that you respect and admire. That's when you go, ah, executive presence. So you need both the ability to get things done and those who have great ability to talk and such, sometimes they just ride on that. Others, they got great leadership, but they don't have great communication. I've seen this again and again and again. I, one guy come to me. Oh my goodness. Oh, it's a train wreck. This guy shows up. He's like, Hey, I want to do a consultation with you. I do some free consultations. He jumps on the consultation with me. This is several years back. And he goes, Mike, I just don't know why I can't get hired or get a raise, get promoted. And he says, I work at Amazon. I do this and this. And he goes through his experience and his education. And it's amazing. Like we're talking like top-notch education. We're talking top-notch experience of what he knows and how he does it. But as he's going through, I don't know why I can't get promoted. I don't know why I'm thinking to myself, I don't know why they keep you. His communication was awful. Let me just emulate a little bit of this. Okay. He's leaning far back. in something he's on a call with a professional coach. I'm dressed up, I always have a collar on and he's leaning back, he's just kind of talking over here, he's muffling, he's eating chips. I mean, the guy just looked like a total slob. He's repeating himself over and over again. He's complaining, he's whining, I'm like, dude, you know, I don't think I'm the guy for you. Because for him, I said, are you aware of some things? And he goes, well, you know, some people said this. It was just crazy. Now I've had other people come in, not as bad as that, but they were oblivious to some of the things that they did in communication and how they came across. And I pointed to them, I said, do you realize that when you're looking around, or when you're speaking, you look around and you never look at me? I just know I didn't. I was working one person, high politician, and every single time she was asked a question, she would get lost in her own train of thought. And she would look up like this. And it just looked like she had no idea what she was talking about. So we worked on their communication, their nonverbals, their verbals. We looked on their physicality of their nonverbals, the tonality of their nonverbals, and as we worked with this, they got to a spot where they had an awareness, they have a path for improvement. And then often what happens is I'm working with somebody, they'll have a promotion mid program. I've seen it again and again happen. I was working with one guy, I'll just call him E, and he comes in super nervous, pretend to zoom lost contact, lost wifi that his computer crashed, just because his nervousness was so high. We worked on getting him confidence, changing the way he thought, helping him understand his identity as speaker, in that he got promoted. And then, because his leg, going back to the analogy of the broken leg, because it was set, he was able to start walking on it more and more. to the point where he started asking for every opportunity to speak. So he went from one area where he got paid less to work on his communication, be aware of what he was doing, changing it, overcoming insecurity, gaining confidence, getting promoted and speaking all through the entire organization, which is super well known, so much so that they reached out to me to work with some of their other team members. So when you improve your communication, and you already have that leadership, that technical ability, the ability to get things done. Man, it is amazing to see how far you can go. That's right. That awareness part though, isn't that something that also leaders can bring to the attention of their subordinates? We've had stories of where a leader would say just before you leave his office, he'd say, Mike, you could be more confident. When you leave that office, do you know exactly what to do if that's the feedback you receive? No, in fact, people reach out to me at that point in time go, my boss told me I need to be a better communicator, more confident. What do I do? Because if I said, Roberto, where do you live? And you said, I live on earth. That doesn't help me at all. Okay, great. But if I said I live in Seattle, Washington, or Fairhope, Alabama, it's like, okay, now you don't know exactly where my house is. You haven't pinpointed it down. It's not about that. But now I've given you a way, an anchor to understand where I'm from or where I live. When you say confidence in communication, when you say, yeah, Mike, you need to be a better communicator. Cool. That's saying you need to live on Earth. Or Mike, you need to have more confidence. Great. Thank you. I need to live on Earth. What is it I need to do? So people come to me and go, this is what my boss said. What do I do? And to be fair to the boss, the boss doesn't know either. Everybody that looks like a human is from Earth. So you need to get better. Okay, great. What does that mean? What does that mean? And really even in confidence and communication, it actually comes from three sources. This is actually the main thrust of my book, Speak with Confidence. And I published it through Wiley, big huge publisher does Patrick Lencioni and stuff. And the big framework is this, confidence and communication. If you wanna be more confident, here's where it comes from. Your speaker identity, your messaging, what you're saying, and then how you say it, your skills. And so you can actually dissect and go, oh, actually I'm really bad at this, or I'm really bad at this, and I'm really bad at this. Okay, which one do I need to work on? And then you can break it down. And you can break down the sub parts. You're not anchored on your identity, or you're bad at impromptu messaging, or you ramble in your messaging, or you don't take pauses in your skills. And now you've demystified, you need to become a more confident communicator. Now I will say this too. In the business world, we often don't give people advice on their communication because it feels too personal. So if I say, Roberta, I have noticed that you always arrive late. You don't feel like, oh my gosh, Mike just said that I'm this type of person. Now you're like, OK, that's true. That's fair. I'm not. Yeah, OK, I can get better. Or if I say you don't turn your working on time. OK, it's fair. we can separate that. We don't see it as part of our identity. We just see it as something we do at work. But if I say, John, you're not a great communicator. You just told me I'm not a good person. I mean, people take it so personal. And so we tend to not do that because we feel like it's like saying, you smell bad. Oh, you don't know how you do your job. Sometimes is that how they they personalize it more. So job is like, okay, I don't know how to do my job. You're actually right. I'm really bad at spreadsheets. I'm sorry, I'll work on it. Teach me the technical skill. But we don't see communication often as a technical skill. We think of it as a personal attribute. We have a way that we see ourselves and someone just took a huge chunk out of that territory. And so the person giving the feedback often doesn't say it and the person receiving it often sees it that way. Now I know this very personally because I've trained lots of communicators and nowadays I have different ways I do it. But early on when I was 20 something, I had gotten to a spot where I was speaking in front of large groups and I know I'm not a 10 in communication. I know I'm not everybody's cup of tea. And I know that I'm okay with that. I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm bad at. However, at this point in time, I knew my skillset and I knew this person's skillset is one of my employees. And I just went straight to it. And I said, Look, you're not going to advance because your ability to communicate is really poor and you need to work on it. And I've told you some different things that you could do kind of passive aggressively. You could do this, you could do this and you've done none of them. As a result of that, I'm taking you away from any opportunity currently to speak because you're not doing that well. And oh my gosh, it devastated this 26 year old devastated him because it's personal. And in some ways he's a great communicator, right? great relationship with his wife, amazing communication there, but he can't separate it from a skill that he was doing. And you know, as a result of that, he never did anything about it. Now I could have done something different. I could have been better about it. But you can see why bosses shy away from saying something. Yeah, it's a very thin line to toe. I can understand why. Yeah. And obviously a lot of them have never even been coached on how to give feedback in the way that it's supposed to be given. received by the subordinate. Yes. Right. So instead of giving him, Hey, you need to live on earth. If I had said, you need to be a better earthling, what kind of feedback is that? If I could have said, you know, look, I've been listening to you speak and here's something that you need to do better. You need to use higher tone and then show them how to use it or lower tone or whatever it was that you need to work on. Now I gave him one specific thing. So then he comes back and I'm I said, yeah, you did here and I'm giving them something measurable or you need to have three points instead of 15 points. Okay. Every single time you go into speak, you need to write out what is the one thing you want to make sure they walk away with. Oh, okay. And so I'm giving them very specific things or before you go speak, I wanted you to make sure that you stand and talk with three people and you understand the needs of that person. Okay. Now I'm giving very specifics all things that help in this speaking. Now He's going, that's a technical thing that I can do instead of, Oh my gosh, I'm a bad communicator. I'm a bad person. I'm just not as good as everybody else. That is amazing. What a confidence killer, huh? Especially in the way that bosses don't do it. I would tell people that this again and again, Roberta, that the business communication in America, the bar for business communication is extremely, extremely low. That's because we're afraid to receive that feedback and we're afraid to give that feedback. and we don't help people. As a result of that, a lot of people are here. So by just improving your communication a little bit and getting below that bar, and right now imagine like the bar at like 20% of 100% scale. And most people are down there. Now some people are just awful communicators as though they're like a five or a 10, like that one guy I told you from Amazon. But most people in the business world are around the 20%. What that means is if you're around 20%, you're average. So. You're like most people. Right. Which should take away some of the nervousness because everybody else is as bad as you. Yeah, if you improve one step at a time, I mean, think about let's go with weight. So let's say that if you look at all Americans, and there's all kinds of charts, I don't know what they are, let's just pretend that 80% of Americans are 50 pounds over what they should be. Okay, okay. Now, if you are also 50 pounds over what you should be your average, you're the average American. So let's say that you lower it down to 40 pounds over what you should be. Hey, you're in better shape than most people. Let's get you down to 20 pounds over weight than what you should be. You're in pretty darn good shape. So then you get down to actually a good healthy weight that the doctors say, and now you're top fitness. Okay, let's go back and translate that over to the speaking. Most people are 20. So if you get to 30, you're better than most people. If you're a 40, you're a lot better than most people. If you significantly work on your communication and you get to a 60 or 70, which is pretty darn good, you will see that whole thing I said about leadership and communication go hand in hand. If you, like Steve Jobs, can get your communication to that top 90 and you have ability to get things done, I mean, really the sky's the limit. Conquer the world literally like he did. Now Mike, before you go, please give us one last word of wisdom on how to improve our communication skills, especially in the workplace, or if we want to get over the nerves, if we're thinking of speaking, what is it that we can do after we listen to this episode? Well, I wanna say you could buy my book, Speak with Confidence. Oh sure, yes. Please, actually you can introduce all three. I'm gonna put them on the show notes as well. Yeah. But let me give you a mindset change, and then let me give you something very practical to start doing. First of all, where you are is not where you have to stay. So if you're at 20, or 15 or 40, you don't have to stay there. You can get better. I mean, I see it again and again and again and again that where you are is not where you have to stay. I had a friend who was on the cover of People Magazine for losing 170 pounds. And the reason why she never lost pounds for years was because she just thought she couldn't. And then she went to Scotland, she walked around Scotland a whole bunch. This is all in People Magazine, so I'm not sharing any secret. And she didn't eat processed food. and she lost 30 pounds and she got, oh my gosh, it's possible. And she went on to do amazing. So where you are, there's not where you have to stay. What is one thing you can do better besides buying the book is pause. One of the number one things that people need to do is just learn to pause. I was working with an executive group in California. One of the founders said, what is your number one thing that you tell people to do? And I said, pause, pause. It lets people lean in, allows you to gather your thoughts. allows you to remember what you're doing, allows you to cut off rambling and on and on. Pause. We always say you've recited your speech and practiced it for however many times. The audience is hearing it for the first time. Give them time to digest by pausing. So your books, give us the titles and the summary of what each book covers and I'll put it on the show notes as well. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually have something like 16 books with workbooks, but I'll just mention The newest one that came out, Speak With Confidence, and that one's published through Wiley. It's all about a framework for you to understand and demystify confidence in communication. It's really more than just speaking. It can be confidence in life. Speak With Confidence just came out in December. Another one that I mentioned was Connect Through Emotional Intelligence. Yeah. And that's really about building relationships. And it's been super popular on Amazon this month. And then Speak With No Fear has well over a thousand ratings on all its different platforms. It's the top rated book in the world on overcoming fear speaking. And the second edition came out last year and it has about 150 ratings. So there's audible book on that and all kinds of different ones, but those three books, huge way for you to jump up in 2023. 16 books authored. That's amazing. Mike Acker, thank you so much for being on our show today. This has been amazing. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Roberta. And to all the audience, thank you so much for being a part and listening to Robert's show and for having me on it as well. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Mike Acker, the executive communications coach, author and speaker. Please make sure that you like and subscribe and give a rating on iTunes and we'll be with you next time.