Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Harvard Business Review study showed that 94% of people want negative feedback. They think negative feedback can help them perform better if delivered correctly. 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.
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Communication and soft skills are crucial in your career growth and leadership development. Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work, pitch to investors, or are an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us. Let's get communicating!
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My guest today, Emily Sander, she is former chief of staff for corporations, something that we usually associate with politics. She's a former chief of staff turned leadership coach. She's an author and a fellow podcaster, and is here to talk to us about all the experiences she had and how being in those roles led her to the journey she's on and why communication skills played such a big role.
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And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Emily. Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. You have such an illustrious career. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah. So as you mentioned, I'm a chief of staff turned executive leadership coach. So over my 15 year corporate career, I was at places like Microsoft and Amazon.
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I was actually a tester for the original Kindle device. So that's my claim to fame there. And then I worked at a startup and then a series of small to medium technology based businesses. And those were primarily private equity backed businesses. So rapid growth, rapid growth and leading international teams and trying to help our people process and tools grow at a rapid clip. And it culminated in a role as chief of staff.
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for a digital marketing company. And I love, love, love that role. And it was dynamic and fluid. And I got to do a variety of things across the organization, which I loved. And I loved it so much, I wrote a book about it. So I have that book out. But today I am a leadership coach full-time. And I looked back at my corporate career and I said, what is my favorite part?
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of all of these roles and it was the coaching aspect, right? So the one-on-one mentoring, guiding, just helping people up their professional game. So when I realized that, I said, if I can wake up every morning and just do that, I will be a very happy person and I will be serving in the way I want. So that's what I do today. Oh, as they say, if you do what you love, it's not gonna feel like a job. Exactly, yes. Yeah.
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As I was saying earlier, we usually associate Chief of Staff with, you know, when I read your profile and you were former Chief of Staff, I'm like, Oh, Emily is going to bring us tea from the White House. Cause we usually think that title is more political and in corporations, you have somebody like a Chief Operating Officer. What is the difference? Yeah. So the Chief of Staff or COS and COO, they're similar in the sense they both report typically to the CEO.
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and they're both a C-suite executive. However, chief operating officer has a functional group they're in charge of, and most of the time, it's quite large, right? So all the operations, sometimes there's HR folded into there, sometimes there's other pieces like product, depending on the company. The chief of staff is more overseeing all of the company. So they are the right-hand strategic partner.
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of the CEO, so they keep that person focused and on point and helping to get them where they need to be. And then they say, executive leadership team, what are our top three priorities as a business? So not your functional group, but as a business as a whole. And then the COS chief of staff holds them accountable to that and helps them get the resources they need. So if our goal is to grow revenue, COO, what do you have to do to contribute to that goal?
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chief revenue officer, what do you have to do to contribute to that goal, et cetera, et cetera. So they keep big cross-department initiatives coordinated across the company. They keep the executive leadership team focused, which is a huge part of the job because people will get distracted and pulled into different things. And one of the biggest things they do is make sure the information flow throughout the company is working.
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And by that, I mean our messages from leadership getting down through the organization, our messages from the rank and file people getting up through the organization and our teams collaborating across the organization, all of which involve communication skills and strong communication channels. So that's a little bit about what a chief of staff does. When did you start being a leadership coach? Yeah. So that was, let's see, five or six years ago now. So I was doing the coaching and.
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my corporate will in parallel for a few years. And then I decided to move full time to my coaching practice. But yeah. So by the time the pandemic started, you had already left corporate. It was right after that. I remember coaching people through COVID. And that was a very interesting time for leaders and having to step up and communicate really hard messages to their staff. I remember one of the biggest things is coaching leaders on how to say I don't know.
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Like, I don't know what's going to happen. Like, I don't know what the regulations are. I don't know if we're going to have to lay people off and being able to be forthright and transparent in that type of communication. Back to the leaders saying, I don't know. We always say it's a myth that a leader is expected to know everything. Yes. So I always say leaders, the way people do usually think about it is I have to know the answer.
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Like I'm the leader, people come to me, I have to know the answer. And in certain cases, yes, like you should be able to be thoughtful and prepared and have an answer. The vast majority of the times you have to have the best question. So part of your communication is framing a decision or framing a conversation for your leadership team and having the right question can be far more powerful than having the quote unquote right answer. So that kind of flips it on its head. Well, a big part of communication is.
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Let's frame this conversation or let's frame this decision in the most relevant way. And by doing that, you facilitate the team to get to a better answer anyway. I think it was John Maxwell. When talking about leaders, he said, if you have a goal, just put the goal on the screen. Sit there quietly. Let your team come up with ways to get there instead of saying, okay, this is where we're going. And this is what do you think of that?
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I really like that in part because as a leader, if you say, here's our topic of discussion, here's our goal, and here's what I think, you've already biased the entire conversation because people will, okay, well, Emily thinks this, so I don't want to counter that, right? I don't want to speak against that. And in reality, you as a person only have one point of view. And so if you have a team of five, six, seven people sitting around you, well, use...
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their brains and use their background and experience and ideas and creativity to the team's advantage. So it's like set it up, have everyone else talk about it, and you can get good ideas from that conversation. You can also be like, oh, I see how Roberta is approaching that situation. That's much different than how I think about that, but not bad. It's just like, oh, that's interesting. That's how she would.
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come at that problem. And then maybe at the end, it's okay, you know, if we had to come up with some next steps or if we had to decide on the best next course of action as a team, what do we think is the best move here and kind of guide that conversation there. If it gets to the point where people are going in circles or they need a tie break, then that's where you could come in with a, you know, a guiding hand or a decision. But yeah, I love the approach of let me tee this up and then let people.
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discuss freely. I think that's a really good strategy. Because a lot of us would be afraid to go against what the boss just said. Yeah. And then when you became a leadership coach, when your clients approach you and say, I need help, usually, what do they say they need help with? It's some form of, I just need to get through to my team better, or I get nervous or I stumble when I try to communicate. I mean, communication is a large topic, right? So I help people with
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like interview prep and communicating in that way with board meeting presentations. Uh, sometimes it's like, Hey, I have a colleague I'm having kind of a problem with. How do I communicate? I want to, I want to have a conversation with that person, but I don't quite know how to approach it. Or I have a team member who I think would be really good, but I need to build them up. How do I start having those conversations in our one-on-one? So all across the board, communication is important. And I would say.
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One of the biggest themes across all of those that I just mentioned is understanding that you have a certain way of communicating and you like to receive information a certain way and you like to convey information a certain way, which is great, and understand the other person might have a very different communication style than you do and a very different communication preference than you do and just understanding, hey, I know mine.
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And let me be a little bit observant or curious about this other person's. It helps you effectively convey your message in a way that will land with your audience best. So I always want to get that out to people, hey, be self-aware enough and have enough emotional quotient or emotional intelligence to say, oh, I need to get this message to Roberta in a certain way. Whereas Raul over here likes information this way and be able to flex to those different audiences.
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And as you were saying earlier, communication is such a huge, huge concept with so many different facets to it. When I started, I used to just say, okay, this person is dealing with communication skills, let them be on my podcast until I had people reach out to me. So I'm an animal whisperer and the way you communicate with animals. I'm like, okay, yes, in a way she's right. But because I focus on workplace communication skills.
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maybe I need to find a way to sort of zoom in on specifics on what this communication podcast is about because it has so many branches to it. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think in the business realm, you have ample, ample ground to cover there. I would say from my corporate career and from my coaching, if I had to pick one topic that everyone would invest more in.
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It would be communication just across the board. If you do nothing else as a leader, as an employee, as just a person investing in communication only has upside for you. It can't hurt you by getting better at communicating. So I would really encourage people to, if it's a class, if it's a podcast, if it's a book, if it's whatever, if it's just try new things out at coffee or trying to speak up in team meetings and see how, you know, different things go for you. I would highly encourage you to do that. It can only help you.
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Hmm. And we always say that colleges and universities, they will only teach you the technical skill you signed up for, which we need. So it's up to you as an individual to take that initiative to work on your communication skills. And then back to making presentations. Let's say you have to make a presentation to the board of directors. What would be your two key elements to focus on in order to prepare for that type of presentation?
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Yes. So boards are extremely busy people and they want to get to the point pretty quickly. And so get your point out upfront and then fill the data. So people often do the reverse where they build the story and they throw all these data points out. And then at the very end, 25 minutes into their presentation, they say, and here's the point of what I'm trying to say. So flip that around and just start with like, here's my conclusion or here's what I think needs to happen and then go in and kind of reverse engineer.
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that information flow and back up what you just said. So kind of frame it up at the beginning and then fill it out as you go along. The other thing, so I did board meetings and at the beginning, I was terrified. I was so nervous. My voice would quiver and I would start sweating and it's because I was focused on myself a lot. So how am I doing? What am I saying? You know, how do I look? And instead you've got to flip that to, I have information that the board doesn't.
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So I have to get that information from me to them in an effective way, but it's more about I have something they want and need. And so I am here to serve them. It's not like I'm up on a stage with a spotlight and they can see every little thing I'm doing wrong and wanna judge me. They want me to be successful because they want the information I have. So I think switching from like a performance mindset where people can judge you on stage to a...
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communication mindset where, hey, my job is to be a good communicator was big for me as well. Judgment, judgment, judgment. Everybody comes to me with the reason I'm afraid to give a speech is because I'm going to make a mistake and I'm going to be judged. How many mistakes have I made in this podcast since we started recording? You know what I mean? But it hasn't stopped me. Why do people fear judgment so much? I mean, it's different reasons. But the strongest one is we have our old...
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brain that's in the caveman days, right? So back in the day, if people judged you negatively and you got kicked out of the tribe, that was serious. You could die without your tribe. Like you would be eaten or you would freeze to death or what have you. And so a lot of times when people talk about fear of public speaking or fear of judgment on how others perceive them, their reptilian brain is working.
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that amygdala is the part of them that's saying that. And then if you think about it with your neocortex, which is the newest part of our brain, and it has higher level thinking and executive function, we can logic our way out of that and say, yeah, even if I do mess up in that board meeting, I'm not gonna die, you know, it's not gonna be the end of the world. And it's not gonna ruin your career. Was there ever a time where you messed up and you felt like, my boss is gonna call me to his office and say, Emily, you're fired.
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I did feel that and it never happened. Thank you. It never happened. I was still there, but yeah, because it clicks over in people's brain and I think that's why a lot of people are scared of it. It's instinctual almost. You have to have that awareness and you can almost, you can train yourself for your brain to be wired a different way. And that's a whole other topic. I can go into that if you'd like, but that's a useful exercise. But just being aware of that. So for the listeners who've just heard this.
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even if they don't do rewiring of the brain, just by being aware of the fact that, oh, I click over into my instinctual reptilian part of the brain, and then I have to bring awareness back to my higher level function. Just by hearing that, you will be closer to doing that. And I love how you said your audience wants you to succeed. Nobody comes there saying, I have an hour to waste. I hope she messes up and I'll make her go viral on Twitter. I always tell my clients, you're a...
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audience wants you to succeed and they're rooting for you. They're not waiting for you to fail and make fun of you. That's where the judgment hopefully leaves the door. Yes. And there's a thing called spotlight effect, which means like we feel like we have a spotlight or maybe an interrogation light in our face. And so they can see every single stutter of our speech and sweat on our forehead and everything.
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So your internal experience of that is like, oh my gosh, I'm messing up so badly. And then the audience's external experience of you presenting is like, no, she's doing great. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. I had a client who thought he was messing up horribly and he was like, just really upset about things. And I said, you know, so-and-so's name, record yourself.
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So the next time you do an all company meeting, like have your little phone, have someone record it. And he was like, no, no, no, I can't, that's too scary. I'm like, just have someone record it. Like I'll watch it, you don't have to watch it. And he did it. And when we watched it back together, you would not have been able to tell. You would have not have been able to tell he was nervous or second guessing himself, or that he was anxious the night before. He was above average in presentation. And when he watched that, he was like, wait, I messed up at that point.
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That's where I got nervous and messed up. I'm like, yeah, but it doesn't show. And so his saying was like, remember the tape. So when he went into future presentations, he was like, remember the tape, remember the tape, like I am way better than I think I am. So your external experience of your speech, of your presentation is far different than your audience's external communication. So unless you raise that flag and say, Hey, just messed up there. Chances are the audience won't even know. They don't know your material. They don't know you skipped something.
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They don't know you're messing up. They don't know that you have your structure all backwards. Nobody knows that. And it's funny because those are the things that make people scared and yet it's a little secret. Yeah, I remember I was giving a presentation and I knew like, okay, paragraph seven says this. In my mind, I knew I skipped paragraph seven. I was like, oh no, I skipped paragraph seven. And then of course everyone else followed along just fine because they didn't know that paragraph seven was in there.
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And I was like, oh, that's right. They think everything's fine. So if I just continue with everything being fine, I'm in good shape. I always remind people of that and it's so true. And then when you are presenting data, someone needs to present to non-technical audiences. What were some of the tips that you gave them? Yes, that's a big one because a lot of the founders or engineers I work with, very technical and very data-driven, which is great. But if you have a non-technical audience,
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It's actually dangerous because you could just confuse them or frighten them. So being able to translate again, what is your core message in a simple way? So in real life, what does this data mean for someone actually using your product or for someone working at your company? Like, what does it mean in real life? And then back that up with data. I think analogies or metaphors or visuals that help support your data and help just give it a different lens.
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is helpful because some people aren't going to know what the data set means. But if you say like, Hey, it's like a kaleidoscope. And when you turn it, the information changes and we're going to add another lens to the kaleidoscope. So now we have two and we're going to turn them like this. And so more of it changes. Like people understand that as a general concept or, you know, Hey, we have competition and we're going to try to move some of our chess pieces around.
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to make sure they can't get out of their corner. Like something like that where people can understand it and then say, here's our SWOT analysis data, here's our competitive analysis data and go through all the data sets to prove what you just said. How does storytelling play a role in that? Yeah, I mean, the human brain is wired to pay attention when someone is telling a story. So if someone says, let me tell you a story about blah, blah, we're like, we listen in a different way. And even that phrase, you know, once upon a time, like,
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We settle in and get ready for a nice story. And so if you can incorporate stories and that can be about a customer's experience, so, Hey, you know, we had a customer and let me tell you, they started, they started with this. They had this challenge. They used a piece of our product and now they overcame that challenge and are like this. That's a story. That's a great story to tell. If you've got a story to humanize your business. So you mentioned entrepreneurs and startups, you know, you can say like,
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We were incorporated in 2008, and then we moved to this stage of funding, and then we did this. Well, those are the brass tacks, and that's fine. It's factual. But if you tell a story like, hey, me and my friend, we were up late at college, and we were trying to find something to eat at midnight, and no place was open, but we needed something. So we thought of idea for a food truck that was open late at night for students. And so that's how we started, blah, blah, blah, food truck chain. So something like that, where it's a story and little...
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anecdotes along the way can definitely humanize it, definitely personalize it, and make it more memorable. So people might not remember, here's the 2008, here's when they got their funding, but they remember like, oh, they were college students, they were pulling an all-nighter and they were trying to get something to eat. Because even as you are telling it, I'm already picturing the food truck in my head, I'm picturing them walking around trying to find a place to eat. Yeah. Yes, I can hear the funding and all that. But...
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that picture didn't immediately come to my brain. Yes, yes. So stories create pictures in people's minds, which helps it be stickier. So if you're trying to get one point across, tell a story about it. And the other thing I would say there, so in a board meeting or in an investor pitch, start with two to three max big ideas and big concepts, and that can be your layer one.
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And tell them, hey, I'm happy to go into more detail in any of these areas you would like, I have more information, I have more data, but let me tell you the two most important things and then pause and stop talking and get their reaction from their face and from their body language and also pause and just see if they say anything and then might be like, yep, that's good, keep going. Or they might be like, wait, wait, wait, when you said that, like, what exactly did you mean and like, how did you get that and what team is working on that? Well, that's what they're interested in.
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So you know that's the path to go down further. A lot of people give like their whole spiel all at once. Just inflammation dump. Yeah, like just like a waterfall and a ton of bricks coming at their audience. And the audience is like, wait, I didn't follow this. And I have questions about that. I don't care about that stuff, go over here. And so if you do layer one, pause, get some feedback from your audience and then go in the direction they want. Or if they're like, nope, we're good, keep going. Then you can go to your level two, right? Which is the same two or three points, but more...
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detailed information or you expand on what you just said. So that reinforces your two to three main points over and over and over again, which is what you want because most people aren't going to be able to take away 14 points from your presentation. They've got meeting after meeting and call after call in their day, but they can probably remember like one or two or maybe three things if you say them over and over with the story, with the visual in a different way with more detailed information.
23:34
That's a really effective way to communicate. You know, we talk so much about audience engagement, audience engagement, and it feels like we're bothering people and don't want them to get through to this speech. But what you just explained is how much it benefits you to pause and see how they react to what you just said. Because then you go in the direction they're interested in. If you're pitching to investors, that's how you're probably gonna get funding. But if you just say, let me dump as much as I...
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hand to them so they know how much I know and I'm an expert, so they give me the money. Sometimes it doesn't go that way because of that. Exactly. And another thing, I worked with a client who was doing a whole bunch of pitches and he was an engineer by trade and he knew that he was kind of nerdy and dry. And so we said, why don't you make a joke about that in the beginning?
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And so we came up with a couple of joke lines where it was kind of like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm the, I'm the nerd who knows all the data, but I'm going to try to speak to you in human language. Ha ha ha. Or just something like that at the beginning where they knew, okay, here's who we're dealing with. Um, so we did that. And then we came up with a half an hour pitch because sometimes they only give you 30 minutes. Yeah. And then you have a two hour pitch and then you have a half day pitch.
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And so you have to be able to talk about it at all three of those levels. So the initial call with the funder is just like, hey, let me just get to know you, do a sanity check. Are you crazy? Check, check. Now I want to talk to you for two hours. Tell me a little bit more about your idea and your business and your forecast. Check, check. Okay. Now let me bring you on site, meet our team and give us the full spiel. And we want to run through all of the data in a half day workshop type of thing. So being able to have your information in different...
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categories or different versions like that is really helpful too. We apply the same principle when it comes to public speaking. Usually a keynote is 45 minutes. But then if you come to the event and they're running late and they say, Emily, I'm actually, we only going to give you 20 because you're running behind schedule. You should be able to just quickly adapt to the key points of half that speech that you prepared for 45 minutes and say, okay, these are the highlights because you know, your material that well.
25:44
I agree wholeheartedly with what you're saying. And the other piece is I used to script my speeches. So at the beginning, I would like literally write them out verbatim, word for word. In my mind, I'd be like reading that script. The problem with that is if you skip a part or if you have to make a 40 minute speech, a 20 minute speech, or just something else is thrown at you, and you're like stuck on the word for word thing, that's tough because you're like, oh no, I'm getting it wrong. Instead, what I do now is mind maps.
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So you write like, what are my two big themes? And you put them in a little circle and then you just kind of have concepts coming out from that circle, things that are connected or things that you want to relate to. And so you kind of have like, maybe your opening line and maybe, you know, a couple of, of one-liners to get your points across in, you know, one line quips or jokes or stories, but then you aren't tied to a script. You have, I have these two concepts.
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I have kind of my opening part to get me started. And then I have a whole bunch of different ways to go. So all those offshoots, all those things from the main point, all those spokes in my mind map, I can just pull like plug and play and pull different things and use it in different ways. And that makes it more flexible, adaptable, and also interesting to your audience because you're kind of being spontaneous and they can kind of sense that versus reading something word for word. There also I've always been against memorizing, even when I was at school.
27:08
When you memorize, you forget. You should understand what you're talking about well enough for it to just come naturally, no matter which way the questions are gonna come as well. Yes, I had a client who did the mind mapping. She drew pictures, she was very artistic. And so she drew pictures of the concepts and maybe cut out some pictures. They printed something out or a magazine, had a picture that went along with the theme she was talking about. And so when she did her mind map, she had all these visuals. So in her brain,
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During the presentation, it wasn't words, it was pictures. And our brain captures pictures differently like we talked about before. And so she was like, I see the picture of this and I see the picture of that. And I was like, oh, that's so cool too. So, you know, if your mind works better with pictures to represent concepts, then go with something like that. That's why sometimes when somebody's preparing slides you say, have mostly pictures, don't write the whole novel of Emily Sander is a, no. That's how you lose your audience.
28:08
When you have like a giant great wall of text on your slide and you start reading it like word for word, your audience checks out, your audience checks out. Your slide should accentuate what you're saying. So it should just add a visual or add a different way of understanding what you're saying. And maybe it has like five words on it max, but maybe like you said, it's just a picture, it's just a visual of what you're talking about. So yeah, great point. Please, please, please don't have a giant.
28:35
paragraph of text on your slides. That's the worst thing ever. I'm also not a fan of that. I discourage people from the text. And then back to humor. I like that nerd joke, because I always say to people, just because I'm saying you must have some humor in your speech or start that way because you might be a little nervous and you want your audience to relax and you as well. Don't start with the doctor and the lawyer walked into a bar joke. That nerd joke was a good example of it's related to what I'm talking about.
29:04
Yes. So I would have two jokes in the first third of your presentation. Because even if it's a courtesy laugh, even if it's like, okay, okay, okay. It gets kind of people in that, oh, okay, you know, this is lighthearted. This is going to be kind of fun type of thing. So it just sets the tone. That could be anything just to get a chuckle out of them. And then I would say your second one, have it be a joke and have it lead into or...
29:31
be an example of one of your first themes. So use humor to kind of solidify that. But again, you're saying, this is gonna be lighthearted, this is gonna be fun with a general joke. And then pretty quickly afterward, you tell another joke that goes along with one of your themes. People are gonna lean into you. People are gonna like you and they're gonna wanna listen to you. So getting that stuff up front is a good tactic as well. Earlier you talked about how leaders want to learn how to communicate better with their teams.
30:00
What is some of the advice that you give them when they have that request? Yes. So we talked about knowing how your audience likes to communicate. That's a big one. We also go through, hey, when they're going into a conversation, so when most people go into a conversation with another person, they have a lot of assumptions about that other person, about the situation, about that other person's role in the situation. And one of the things I talk about is, hey,
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assume you don't know everything. Because most of the time you don't. So if you go in with a curiosity or information gathering mindset, that really, really helps your communication, that helps you ask good questions, that helps your tone of voice not be accusatory, it's being curious and asking a question, and it helps your body language. If you're like, hey, I'm curious about how Emily was approaching this situation. Like what did she see?
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to make her do that thing that she did. If you're saying like, I really wanna understand her mindset going into that, that will change your communication as opposed to, I know Emily went in there to be difficult. Like I know she was going into that meeting to be difficult and I'm gonna tell her that that's wrong. Totally, totally different communication. So the mindset is a big piece, asking questions. And even if you think you know the answer, at least ask one question.
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And then see if they're like, okay, yeah, I can kind of tell. Like Emily said, like, yeah, I was having a bad day. I was having a bad morning. And they're kind of admitting like, yeah, I didn't show up at that meeting very well. Okay. Then you can kind of go down the path of how do we not do that again? Here's where it costs the team. But if you go in curious, you're like, okay, you know, how did you approach that meeting? And the person you're talking to says, well, off of our last conversation, you said, be more assertive. And so I was trying to be.
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More like, oh, like you were like listening to me and you interpreted my advice to behave in this way. Okay. That's an entirely different conversation. Let's talk about the different versions of assertive or what I meant by assertive. So just going in with a curiosity mindset and going in with good questions and also listening. In both of those examples, it was ask the question and then listen for the answer. And don't assume you know what they're going to say because you don't.
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One of the things that leaders struggle with is giving feedback. What would you advise them to do when giving feedback? The first piece is don't avoid giving feedback. A lot of people are like, I don't want to be awkward. I don't want to make them feel weird. So I'm just not going to say anything. Part of your job as a leader is to provide feedback. A Harvard Business Review study showed that 94% of people want negative feedback.
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They think negative feedback can help them perform better if delivered correctly. And so most of the time your team is hungry for feedback. And so being able to communicate effectively is the next step. What I would suggest for the delivery, you can use the good old compliment sandwich. Some people are like against that for some reason, but I find it to be useful. And what that is, is you start with something they did well. You...
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In the middle, it's a kind of suggestion or a guidance for next time, hey, let's do this differently. And then you end with something positive. So the reason that works, or I think I found that to work, is you ease people in and say, hey, like I recognize that you did this, this, and this well. And maybe next time, you know, you could try this or do this differently. And that's the kind of the corrective piece or the constructive feedback piece. And then at the end, you could say, but my favorite part was this, this, and this. So definitely please make sure to continue doing that in your next presentation.
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that is a holistic set of feedback. So it's not just like, hey, like don't do this anymore. Like don't ever say that on slide 14. You gotta talk about it like this. Yeah, that's like a very different set of feedback than, hey, let me point out the different things that you did do well and make some suggestions. So I like that one a lot. I think it can be used in a lot of different scenarios. The other one is like this Sibin framework. So S-B-I-N and it's the situation. So you describe the situation factually.
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And then the behavior that you saw, and you say that in factual terms as well. And then the impact the person's behavior had, and then the next step. So what you need them to do next. And you can use that for both positive feedback and negative. So if it's like, Hey, I want to talk to you about the Metro project. At the meeting on the Metro project yesterday, I saw you raised your voice and you gave a sarcastic answer to Andy.
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The impact of that was that the team was a little discouraged and a little deflated, and they were scared to ask questions. So as a next step, can you tell me what your thought process was going into that meeting? And that opens up a dialogue. You can also do that in the positive way. So like, Hey, Roberta, like I want to talk to you about the Metro Project. You were super encouraging. Everyone was inspired by your comments in yesterday's meeting. And I just need you to know that that's had a hugely positive ripple effect.
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throughout the department. And if you could just know that we're so thankful and please continue to do that, it makes a big difference. Like that's feedback and a Sibbin framework too. I love both. Yes. The first one I think I first heard about it at Toastmasters, but yes, the Sibbin framework, I think is something that we should all practice, especially in leadership positions. Now you are a fellow podcaster. We're gonna talk about your book afterwards. So tell us a little bit about your podcast.
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Yeah, sure. It's called leveraging leadership. And it's basically for any leader, really, it's primarily for early to senior executives, but I have a lot of universal leadership concepts and tools and frameworks that anyone can use. The leverage point is finding your greatest point of influence and impact as a leader. And so I have guests on to talk about different facets of leadership. I have some solo episodes going through concepts.
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like feedback, that was an episode going through those concepts. Yeah, it's just a great place to learn. I always think of leaders as even if you're not running a Fortune 50 company, you are leading in your community. You're leading in your family and you're leading yourself every day, like every fricking day, you're the CEO of your own life. And so you are a leader if you're listening to this. Self-leadership, which is something sometimes we forget. And then you authored two books. Just tell us a little bit more about it.
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Yes, certainly. So my first book is called Hacking Executive Leadership, and it has some, some really universal frameworks in there. And one of them is about communication. So it talks about different people's styles and also little things you can change, like when you're giving feedback, if you change the word, but for and, it can change the dynamic of a sentence. So, you know, you do this, this, and this well, but this needs work versus you do this, this, and this well, and like, this could be done differently.
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Emily, is that similar to the yes and yes but approach? Yes, similar. Yes, related. But hacking executive leadership has frameworks like that. And then, yes, my latest book is called Insiders' Perspective on the Chief of Staff. And it's all about the chief of staff role in business. And so if you're interested in becoming a chief of staff, if you're interested in potentially having a chief of staff on your team, or you're just interested in the role, and you're like, hey, I've been hearing about this in politics, or I kind of heard about this.
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in business here and there. What is this? It's a quick and informative read on that. Like I said, I thought worst wing, here we go. Emily, are there any things that you thought I would ask you today you were hoping to share with the listeners that I haven't asked you? You covered a lot. You had great questions. Thank you. I think the only other thing I would say is, as a leader yourself, people often discount the impact they can have on people. So they go like,
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Oh, like, you know, the CEO has a lot of influence. You're like, oh, the important people, what they say is important. What I say is not important. People are watching you. People are looking at you. Literally the cashier you interact with, you could make or break their day. You don't know. You're leading people when you interact with them in the hallway, if you make eye contact with them and smile, that smile could mean the world to them. Like you don't know, so don't discount your importance. The way you.
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go throughout your day and the way you carry yourself is noticeable and it has a ripple effect either way. So take great pride in you being a leader and how you show up and know that how you show up matters. How you show up matters indeed. Words of wisdom from Emily Sander, the former chief of staff, turned leadership coach, author and podcaster. What you just said reminds me of when you said one of your clients asked you, how do I break the ice? So I had.
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a bit of conflict with my colleague, how do I approach that? And I would say a lot of us are looking for that. So can we be the ones to initiate and reach out and break that communication there? Because the other person is also thinking, I want this resolved, but I'm not going to be the first one to go to Emily. Yeah. I mean, think about just, you know, any situation and what does not communicating get you? What does like not?
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talking and staying in your own corner and fuming. Like what does that have ever gotten anyplace? You know, nations have gone to war because they don't communicate. And so be a bridge, be a peacekeeper, be the mature one who reaches out and is proactive. Even if you're like, I don't want this to be awkward. This might not go perfectly, but I'm gonna do it. That's better than just staying in your corner. And so try to be thoughtful about the delivery.
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try to think through things, but if you get there and you took initiative to start something and you're like, oh no, it's not going perfectly well, that's fine. That's okay. Just go with it. And if you have that intent of, hey, I just wanted to open up the communication lines and I wanted to try to understand where you were coming at this from and maybe explain how I was, I think that could be helpful. Any, all of that is just going to be good for you. So yes, I would definitely encourage people to be the one who starts that. Yes.
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I have a friend named Katja, she's in the Netherlands and on her website she wrote in big she goes, you know how we say silence is golden? She says talking is golden, silence causes a lot of problems. I love it. Yeah, yeah. Emily, before you go, where can we find you on the web? Yeah, so my website is nextlevel.coach. So nextlevel, all one word, dot coach.
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And then I'm on social media, Next Level Emily on Twitter and LinkedIn. You can find me there. And then my books that we mentioned, so Hacking Executive Leadership and an Insider's Perspective on the Chief of Staff are available on Amazon. Excellent, I will put that all on the show notes. I just want to thank you so much for all that you've shared. This has been a very enjoyable conversation for me. Thank you so much for being on our show today. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
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Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again. If you have a guest that you think would be a great fit for the show, please email me and my contact details are on the show notes. The Speaking and Communicating podcast is part of the Be Podcast Network, where there are many other podcasts that support you in being a better leader and becoming the change you want to see. To learn more about the Be Podcast Network,
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Go to BePodcastNetwork.com. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.