Speaking and Communicating Podcast

I just know when I get in a room, people are connected to me and I'm connected to them. And I feel as if I'm playing an instrument. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. 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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Whether you're about to speak in public, make presentations at work, pitch to investors or an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us. By the end of this episode, log on to Apple and Spotify, leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on this podcast. Let's get communicating.
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The King himself is in the house. King Mufasa from The Lion King. Welcome to the show, John White Kiss, the first Canadian-born actor to play Mufasa in the Disney musical, The Lion King. John is an international speaker, speechwriter, and public speaking coach.
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who helps leaders find their rhythm when they get up to speak. And I'm so excited to be joined by the King himself on the show. Na, tigwayyyaa, mabagayyitibaba, ingwayyama, ingwayyama, ingwayyama, mabala. I'm Zulu by heritage. So that's why I should have welcomed the King on stage. Ha ha ha. I love it. The background, he says,
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So Zulu language has got the cliques, the cue, you know, Miriam Makeba, if you were familiar with the late legendary Miriam Makeba, she sang the cliques song, which was a global phenomenon as well. Ah. Yes. I could never get the cliques. I always tried. We had people try. Yeah, they're from, they're either Zulu or Costa. So Zulu or Costa are literally sister languages. It's like a dialect of the other.
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And so the Q is ka. My dad's name was Tom Sanga. So the third syllable was N-Q-A. And that just makes my heart feel good every time I hear it. Oh my goodness. And then the X is the ka. In Zulu, a frog is ikoko. You know how people sign off X-O-X-O? That's literally the name of a frog in my language. Really? Yes. X-O-X-O.
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And then the last click is the C sound which is if I say John may I ask to ask is to Ella C-E-L-A Ella that's the three clicks that's it. I didn't know there was more than one click.
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And then, so when you auditioned and you got the part, obviously you're from Canada, but where were you then assigned to go and do the play and be Mufasa, King Mufasa? It was in Toronto. At the time, New York had a show. I believe London had a show. And I'm not even sure if LA had a show yet. This was back when they weren't traveling. It wasn't a traveling show at the time.
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So this was the original Canadian cast. What was interesting about it all, I told you I just showed up and I auditioned. When I got there, because the ad said, we want you to do, I can't remember how many bars of acapella, no music. I thought, okay, I'll show up with no music. And when I signed up, they said you have three hours. Do you have your music with you? Uh-oh. Okay.
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But I had three hours, so I went to the music store and I bought a copy of I Just Called to Say I Love You because that was my karaoke song. Right. I figured that is what I'm going to sing for the audition. So I had no plans, bought my music today of, when I sang, they gave me a script from Mufasa. Yes. And I was shocked. One, I liked Scar.
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I always want that's the role you wanted to be the bad guy, right? That's exciting. I'm sure if you're an actor to play the bad guy, there's so much so much nuances to scar. And he's such a wonderful character. I saw myself more as Scar. Life's not fair, is it? You see, I I shall never be king. And you, you shall never live to see another day.
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Long live the king. I love that. Right, right. So that was the energy that I went in, but they gave me the script for Mufasa. Okay. Also, if you saw me at the time, I look young for my age. I was 30 then I'm 53 now. You do look younger than 53. Yes. I still look like I was in my 20s and not necessarily someone who would be a father. Not that I wasn't a father. Don't get me wrong. My son was maybe five.
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at the time. In fact, my eldest son is an actor, though he had been in commercials at the time that I auditioned for the show. And when I first went in, the casting director, she said, what kiss? Do I know you? And I said, no. She said, have you auditioned for rent? I said, no. He said, I know your name. Wait a second. Joshua. Do you know Joshua
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He came from me. I said, yes, he's my son. He's like, oh, I hire Josh Walker commercials all the time. Is he trying out? No, but I'd like to. It was one of those scenarios where he had already been there, they recognized my name, but when they gave me that script, it was okay, this is real. And at the time, as I mentioned, I had just released a book. It was called, Don't Bite the Hand That Feeds You. And it was based on customer service because that is what my background was.
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And when I finally got the role, I was told by them that I couldn't take days off to do any speaking because you had to rehearse during the week and you did eight shows a week. So even when the show was on, there was still rehearsals which meant that I had to put my speaking career on hold for a year. Let's be honest, the Lion King.
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Something about the Lion King makes us not get enough. What do you think that is? There's the connection to ourselves is what it comes down to. We all see in ourselves Simba and Simba who that character who is meant to be a king, but he's living the life of a pauper. When Mufasa says to him, remember who you.
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That is a line for all of us. That so many times in the midst of what we're doing and the activities we're trying to accomplish and the status we're trying to achieve, we forget who we are on the inside. We forget that we are royalty and we're not acting like it. And so I believe we're all connected to that theme that we have to live up to our potential and be who we were intended to be.
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That is so true. And a lot of the time we do drop the ball, don't we? Then the next question becomes, who's going to be our Pumba and Timon to take us back to our royal, a royal heritation to remind us that, hey, wait a minute, you don't belong here. Yes, absolutely. And so there are all these things that are running through it that we connect to. Of course, the music is wonderful. The visuals are wonderful.
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And there's also the underlying story that we can all relate to. Who doesn't need to let something go from their past? Who hasn't failed, made a mistake, had poor judgment, and years later, decades later, a lifetime later is still letting it hold them down. All these lessons are there. And so, yes, it helps to be surrounded by people who remind us of who we truly are.
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And so when you got the part, so you had to now have the voice of King Mufasa. And that's why you now do the voice coaching, which we'll touch on later. But then how did you train yourself to you are John in regular life and you sound like how you sound, but then when you're on stage, Simba, remember who you are. I spent a lot of time growing up imitating voices.
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wrestlers. I followed wrestlers all the way up. So well you know what I mean brother, the Hulkster, I would imitate the Hulkster. I would imitate oh yeah, Monchumi and Randy Savage. Stone Cold Steve Austin and all that gang. So I did all of these that way when it came to Mufasa. I could do Star Wars, it doesn't matter. My buddy Timon here says in times like these,
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You gotta put your behind in your past. So Mufasa was just taking me to where I was comfortable, which is imitating a voice. I had that James Earl Jones voice in my head, and it's one of my favorite voices. So it wasn't a stretch to do the voice. What was a stretch was to walk like him. Well, not walk like him, walk like a lion. Because the...
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the lion walks with the arm and the leg together. And so I had to match that. And because I had been in corporate for so long and wasn't used to being on a theatrical stage, I had put that away since my younger days. I was a theater arts major in high school, but I was very self-conscious about doing the lion walk. So I had to channel the physicality of it, not so much the voice side of it.
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That was something that I've been doing my entire life. Mm. So there's the physicality and the voice itself. So does that mean with that skill, because you grew up imitating, you know how you have these SNL actors like, who's, Jay Farrow, oh, my favorite. Jay Farrow would imitate Obama, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart, and he literally both the physicality and the voice.
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It's almost like he transforms into being these people. Absolutely. And that is something I've now learned at a later stage that I didn't know back then, which is when you change physicality, you automatically change your voice. And so if you follow those mannerisms, it makes it easier to duplicate what you are seeing. You fully embody the character, the person. Exactly. Say even when I do voiceovers,
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you won't see what I'm doing behind the microphone, but I will be changing my hands and doing everything else in my power to visually give off the energy that I wanna come across through the voice. So you have that skill growing up, which a lot of us don't take time to practice it that way and imitate. So is there hope for us if we want to mold our voices in...
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Two scenarios, one, some of us don't like how we sound. You know how you send a voice note and you play it back, like, ooh, John is gonna think I'm weird. Is this how I really sound? Or if you want to do it as part of your art, like you, you ask yourself, if I sound too soprano, do I even have a chance of auditioning or is the voice going to be the barrier for me to have those kinds of opportunities? Is this something we can learn?
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Using your voice is absolutely something you can learn. It does take dedication because right now, everything you do with your voice is habitual. You've learned it over time, you've reinforced it, and so you no longer even think about it until, as you said, you hear yourself on that recording or on that voicemail, and you think, is that how I really sound? The issue is when we're hearing ourselves when we speak, we're hearing ourselves through the vibration in our skull.
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When someone else hears us speak, they hear us through the airwaves. And so it's a completely different sound. That's why you go, is that me? That's not me. Yes, yes, that's you. It is. You're hearing what other people hear. And my recommendation is start recording yourself. Listen to yourself to hear how you sound. Let's talk first about the professional front, depending on what you want it to do. If you were to do voiceovers, you don't need to have a deep voice.
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In the voiceover industry, what's happening right now is there's a trend towards being conversational, just having a regular voice. Yes, there are some areas where they want you to have in a world type voices, but that is on the rare side, they might want you to have youthful, energetic, relatable. It all depends on which audience you're speaking to, but there's no obligation to have this deep voice.
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being said, you can add more roundness to your voice. You can add more depth to your voice. You can add more authority to your voice that you can practice. And a lot of that has to do with the way you breathe when you speak, the physicality when you speak, and then the intention when you speak. You wanna be aware of what you're trying to convey. I always think, what emotion do I want people to feel when I say something?
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And based on how I want them to feel, I inject that emotion into my voice. I can say sorry and really be sorry. I am so sorry. Or I can say, I'm sorry. Okay. And that emotion changes the meaning. Even the voice sounded different in those scenarios. That's right. Yeah. And that was all from the emotion. If you can inject and be identified with the emotion that you want to have, but you want that person to
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feel when you speak, that will change your voice without you having to think about it. Is it a myth that the deep voice is perceived as more authoritative, more of a leader type of voice? It is not a myth. It is absolutely true that we tend to pay more attention to deeper voices. Even if you look at Amaya Angelou, when you hear her voice, it had more depth to it.
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And as a result, we feel it's more authoritative. That is a human brain neuroscience element that we're not going to change. Whereas, if you hear someone out the way you hear, it can actually grate on your nerves. If that is your voice, you need to find a way to breathe with it and to make it sound a little bit more pleasant. And usually if you simply slow down, you can lower the range of your voice.
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And if you breathe properly, you can lower the range of your voice. It doesn't have to be deep. It's just that you want it to be acceptable. Now, I have to say this. Women's voices are naturally higher. Women's voices are judged more harshly than men's voices. And we see that across the board where you can have a man and a woman speaking for the exact same amount of time. And this has been done in studies. And when they've asked the people about the speakers,
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Across the board, they thought the woman spoke too much when they spoke for the exact same amount of time. Yes. There are some norms and there are some practices and there are ways that we have been cultured and nurtured that tend to skew our preference towards male voices. Hmm. Yes. Wow. We are perceived to speak much longer even if the time is the same.
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That is amazing. And also, when you're a leader of a team in a company, obviously the male one, in most cases, will have a deeper voice than his female counterpart. So would that also be a factor in those circumstances? It can be. And we go back to it's simply the way that we've been nurtured and cultured, that we will pay more attention more often than not. Now, that doesn't mean a woman can't lower her voice.
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and create more presence by using the right words at the right time in the right way. The hill is steeper. There is a privilege for men in that case. Studies will show you that there are, I believe it's 6% of the population is over six foot three, yet 25% of executives within organizations. And I don't know that I have the statistic completely right. Someone can correct me in the comments, but you have fewer men or people.
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in general, over six foot three, yet the majority or a high number of CEOs is disproportionate that they are taller. So we do attribute leadership qualities to height, to sound, even though there's no real correlation to it. There shouldn't be anyway. Maybe I should shut this podcast down because we always tell people it's the communication and the soft skills.
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That will give you those opportunities. That's very interesting. Even the height as well. Even the height. Wow. This is where it is so important to overcome those limitations or those roadblocks through the ability to tailor your message in a way that makes people want to listen. Let's talk about that. Earlier, you mentioned executive presence.
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There's an interesting analogy from one of your previous YouTube videos where you compared Darth Vader and Pig-Pen. Would you please walk us through that one? Yes. We all have some sort of presence. In other words, when we enter a room, we bring a feeling with us. And when we leave the room, people can sense that feeling leaving. Now Pig-Pen was a character in a cartoon called Charlie Brown.
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dirty, he always had a cloud of smoke around him. Whenever he walked into a room, people would start coughing. It was automatic. And when he left the room, people had a breath of fresh air. We have people who are very much like that, who they walk into the room and you feel the negativity when they walk in. And when they leave, everyone goes, That took a long, yeah. Yes.
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And then you have the Darth Vader type. They don't even have to be in the room. You just know they're coming. This is a coworker, a boss, a family member. It's someone who you just know they're on the way and you go, oh no. Because you can't stand to be around them and maybe you're even fearful of them being that way. That's another way, a type of presence that we have. Not to make myself a hero.
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I did have an experience this past weekend. There's a conference that I've been attending that I had attended in Florida for two years in a row. It was a woman's conference. Last year, besides the videographer and the person doing the audio visual, I was the only man in the room. I spoke as well. Of this year, I got messages. We miss you. Where are you? Everybody's talking about you. My presence was still in that room.
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Wow. We all have presence. It's just whether that presence is anticipated and enjoyed or whether it is resisted and feared. We want to have the type of presence where when we're in the room, people say, it was nice that they were here. Oh, they added so much to it. Oh, we miss them now that they're gone. We really want to happen is that our presence is missed. And that doesn't come with height.
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It doesn't come with a vocal quality. It comes from the way you treat people. How do people feel about being around you? Do they feel respected? Do they feel valued? Do they feel heard? That is when people wanna spend time with us, regardless of our physical attributes. And in that you mentioned it's what you say, when you say it, how you say it, all those factors. Would you like to explain that more for us, please? A lot of times we...
22:04
Choose words, not recognizing that those words have the ability to stop a conversation or to help the conversation move further along. One example of that. You've told me something that is of concern to you and I say, I understand your point, but. And what but means is that everything you just said. It just counts as the first one. The first one is gone. Exactly. So that's one word.
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That word choice changes the flow of the conversation. If I say, I understand your point, and you can see why you would feel that way. That and continues the flow of the conversation. It's one word that changes it. It also changes the whole dynamic. It changes how you feel about me and how the rest of that conversation goes. Well, that's what you say. Then there's a how you say it.
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We go back to that story. I can say it in such a way that you know I really mean it. I can say it in a way that comes across as I'm frustrated and I am saying the right words, but my actions, my physicality are inconsistent with the words. And when there's inconsistencies, people will always believe what they see versus the words you say. And sometimes it's the way you say it. So this is the how.
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Are you saying the right words? Are you saying them in the right way? And just as important, are you listening to what they're saying? Or are you answering their questions? Stephen Covey, the late Stephen Covey said this best. Seven habits. Yeah, seven habits. He said, most people listen in order to respond when they should be listening to understand. I'll listen to you to see if I can answer your question. Very rarely will I listen to you to see if I understood what your question was.
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I understood what your question was instead of jumping to let me respond to it. Absolutely. Does that mean I should pause a little bit to process it and to see if I understood it the way you intended for the question to be asked, or should I even say, John, is it my understanding that this is what you asked just to make sure that I heard you the first time the right way before responding?
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Yes and yes. That yes, you should pause. And then you should say, is this what you were trying to say? Because you need time to process it. One of my favorite old quotes is, I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize what you heard was not what I meant. Yeah, please say that again. I was going to. I know you believe you understand what you think I said.
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I'm not sure you realize what you heard was not what I meant. Because the reason I might not understand it that way. Remember I'm using my own processor now. So my CPU, my internal CPU is decoding what you just asked or said based on my experiences, belief system, how I view life.
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It doesn't necessarily mean it will translate into the way that John meant. Absolutely. And I could take it one step further. I may not have expressed myself correctly. And so the words I used may not have adequately adequately expressed what I really wanted to communicate. So then is that when I check back with you? Absolutely. And then I can say, when you say.
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am I understanding you? And I say, wait, that's not what I meant. Or I say, yes, that's exactly what I meant. So you have a background in speech writing for politicians and whoever else needed help with their speeches. How did you get started on that? This was an interesting turn for me. And I can talk about it now because I processed all of this. When I finished The Lion King, it was a very challenging period for me on a...
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personal level was going through a marriage breakup at the time. And I was talking about lessons in the circle of life and being successful. And I felt anything but successful. My compromise on that was, all right, I won't speak. I will write for people who are more worthy so they can speak. And that is when I channeled my energy into helping other people tailor their message so that when they spoke.
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others would remember, repeat, and respond to what they said. That is what got me into this speech writing mode. I joined the Canadian Writers Association. I started advertising myself as a speech writer, and it eventually flowed out into me getting clients, both on the corporate level and then on the personal level, and for some associations, for those who were raising funds, for the nonprofits, and even to the degree that I started, although it didn't go well.
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the first online speech writers round table. Didn't last long, but at least I started it. You always got to start. So congratulations for that. Because my pleasure. That's one of the things actually that makes us not do a lot of the things we would want to do. We are afraid that, oh, what if it doesn't last? I would have wasted my time. I'm gonna look like a failure, but it's the starting that counts. And I bet there were lessons from there too. Absolutely.
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I have, I'm always taking lessons and we get our best lessons when we, the word is fail, let's call it that. When we don't get the result we want. We've learned maybe what doesn't work or maybe we've learned what order doesn't work. We may learn what we enjoy or what we'd rather not do. And in all of that, we may make connections that we didn't expect to make. The head, I'm not even sure what his title is now, might be CEO.
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of the National Peace Writers Association. I contacted him not too long ago, and he said, I'll always remember that you were the first one to get this started and put it online. So it's still amazing that that connection that was made over a decade ago still lives in memory. You never know what's going to happen. Failure says you're trying. It says you're making attempts. It says you are doing an activity. You're trying to move forward.
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the only time you will not fail is if you're not making an attempt. Our schools, unfortunately, our education system focuses more on your failure than your success. You get 99 out of 100 and there's a big different X mark behind the one you got wrong instead of focusing on the 99 that you got right. So that you can take that strength and just go with it.
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Absolutely. You learn by doing but absorbing everything internal and not doing anything. It's almost like language learning. That's when you lose it as well. Yes, I speak French. That's all I got. Oui, oui. I learned it for years because in Canada it's a two-language system. You have to learn French and English at least up to the 10th grade. So I learned French. I was in French class daily.
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And now, as you mentioned with the language, because I don't use it frequently, don't speak it. I have a few phrases. It's the application, it's the continued application of anything that we do that helps us to become successful. And along the way, you will fail. One of my favorite sayings is anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. The first time you do something, you won't do it well. Have you listened to my first few recordings of the podcast?
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I had to do it poorly to get here. Exactly. And now you can look back on it and you can see the growth. Yep. If there's no growth in what has been happening, you've grown, you've learned, you've gotten better. And so that was your training ground rather than waiting like the perfectionist that I am so often and thinking about doing it as opposed to finding yourself in the arena and doing it.
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What is the fear? Why do we wait to be perfect before we start doing something? For everyone is different. I know for me it is being judged and there's so much in our self-talk about worthiness, whether we are worthy, whether we are valuable, whether we belong. And we don't wanna do it if anyone can criticize it because the criticism to a large degree, even though we may say, I'm not bothered by criticism.
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If we're not doing an activity because we don't want to be criticized, then we are bothered by the criticism. There's that saying sticks and stones may break my bones and names will never hurt me. In reality, consciously, that's true. Subconsciously is very different. And what we're learning through neuroscience now is that what we do and what we say on the surface is mostly controlled by what's happening underneath. It's like that iceberg. The tip of the iceberg is our conscious.
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And the base of the iceberg is our subconscious controlling everything that comes out of our mouth. So while we are responding to the criticisms, some of that response might be, I'm not gonna do it at all. And we may not even see or understand why, but early in our life, we didn't like criticism. We were traumatized by criticism. And so we have developed a pattern, much like with our voice, a habit of responding. And for many of us, it's not to do it at all.
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You've mentioned the word worthiness two times. Yes. Is it something that is sometimes like our crutch from not doing what we are supposed to? I think a lot of the time, and you can correct me with this, a lot of the time it becomes the barrier for us to do what we're supposed to because we feel, oh, I'm not the person for it. Oh, I'm not worthy. Oh, you know what? There's better people out there.
32:40
Yes. In fact, I believe it was last week, I did a video, a short video, talking about how persuasive we are and that we underestimate our persuasiveness. But if we were to take a look at how many times we've persuaded ourselves not to do something because of the idea was good, somebody else would have done it. Someone else is more qualified for the job. So we're always sending these messages to
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exactly what you just said. We are talking ourselves out of doing what we wanna do. We convince ourselves we're not worthy, we're not able, we're not capable, somebody's better than us. And so we watch as other people do it and we feel frustration, anger, whatever the feeling may be when we know that could have been us, if we had walked through the fear. You know what's worse about that? One, sometimes, and I've learned this in the online space,
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Sometimes the people who have the courage to do it, it's not like they even do it better than you. Wow. Exactly. And that makes you have this loop and kick yourself even more. I can do that. I'll tell you the irony in the video that I posted last week, is I had to talk myself into posting it. I recorded it twice. And the second time I thought, this is not good enough.
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I'm going to record it again. And then I had a conversation with myself, you don't need to be perfect, put it out there. And it's been one of the most well-received and most responded to videos where people said, I needed to hear that. And here I was still talking myself out of putting it. Persuasion. On my side. Persuasion. Persuading yourself, John. Persuading yourself out of not posting. And look what happened. Right. I had to follow my own advice. Oh yeah.
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The persuasion voice is always there. The persuasion is there. So when you are on stage, what are some of the things that you feel like when I do this or when I present myself this way, this is what connects with people more. For me, it's a feeling. This is one of those elements that I admittedly cannot explain. I just know when I get in a room.
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people are connected to me and I'm connected to them. And I feel as if I'm playing an instrument. Because I can tell when the mood is gonna shift. I know when I'm going to make them laugh. I can feel when I'm gonna take them into being contemplative. I just, I feel it. And that's not something I can teach. It is though, because I love what I'm doing. I'm deeply connected to what I'm doing. And it is more about
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getting that message and that feeling in that, not transformation, but light to the people who are in the room. And I know when the light goes on, I see it and I feel it and the energy shifts. It's not even a set of techniques, it's an intention to bring what I've learned over the decades and share it in such a way that I'm open and that they can receive. I'm an introvert by nature.
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That's the other part of this that for most people. No, not you, John, come on. I am an introvert. I will, at a networking event, if you allow me, I'll stay in the corner, I'll eat food, and I won't talk to anyone. I would prefer to spend time in my own head, reading, listening to a podcast. That's where I get my energy from. I like people. When I am done being around people, I am exhausted. So when I'm out,
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speaking, I am giving I am emptying myself. And then I need to go back and refill. Recharge. Yes, what happens in the room is me emptying myself, me giving what I have. And I feel that connection. I have no other explanation for it than I'm just giving who I am in the moment. And the energy, it works that the energy connects and I feel people. I don't want to say I'm an
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empath that might sound a little woo woo but I do have empathic qualities. I can feel what people feel. Does that have to do with being present? Be fully there not just physically? It does. I have, I don't want to say been blessed because it's it's it's felt like a curse but I have hearing loss. I'm wearing hearing aids right now. For the past two years I've been wearing hearing aids.
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I have been reading lips when people speak to me. I can hear them, yes. I can hear them, but not completely. And so in order to get the full message, I had to watch their lips to get it. As a result, I am very present when people speak to me. And so that comes in line with the public speaking. When I'm in a big room, I still am very intent on being present with everyone in the room. Because there have been times
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when I'm not present, people ask me for something and I bring them something else and they look at me, what is this? Because I heard them wrong. You hadn't heard them, yeah. Yes, so yes, presence, and that's why I say blessed because even though it is hearing loss, it has given me the gift of paying attention and being present with people so that I hear and feel what they're giving to me.
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Yes, I think that is much more with communication. If you can read lips, yeah, it forces you to be present and to understand what the person even means, as we mentioned it earlier. Yes, I'm not just taking words. I'm watching how did they look when they said it? Was it with a client's job? What was in their eyes? I have had people tell me that they have gotten unnerved or
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because I was looking at them so intently. And then I explained, oh, it's hearing loss. I go, oh, wondering why are you looking at me so hard? I had to. Is that an indictment on us as a society that we don't pay that much attention when people are speaking? It is. It tells you that we don't look at one another and become fully present. And with the cell phone and the iPad,
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and the video, all of these other distractions, the email, the texts coming at us at once, we're fighting all of that information here while you were right in our purview. And that's why we, it is an indictment because we have so much information that we have to filter. It's very challenging. And even if there's no information coming at us, we're thinking about what we have to do when we get home or what happened last night. Makes it very challenging to stay present with what's happening in the moment.
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King Mufasa, John Watkins from The Lion King. Any last words of wisdom on how, one thing you said, you said communication can change the world. Yes. And just like you, I don't believe that's an exaggeration, but can you just talk more on that before you give us your closing remarks? Our words are so powerful. My oldest son is now 30. I have a granddaughter.
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Wow, you don't look like a grandpa. I keep hearing that. I'm a grandfather proud. My granddaughter was gonna be four on November 8th. When my son was young, and I wasn't cognizant of the messages that I gave him, again, learning from your failures and your mistakes, there was something that he did incorrectly. And I said to him, why would you do that? And he looked at me and he said, because I'm lazy? Those were my words. Oh.
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That was the only answer he had. Those were the tapes he was playing. That was the message he was receiving. If we start early, giving the right words, and I love to hear my son and his wife talk to my granddaughter because if something happens, she spills something. Let's say that was a mistake and mistakes, and she finishes, mistakes happen. Not home. There's a different conversation happening in her head. She gets older and she makes a mistake. She's not gonna say, oh, you're so stupid. How could you do that?
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Which is sometimes what we say to ourselves. Yes, yes. But that's not the tape they're teaching her to play. Now the tape is mistakes happen. If we change the way we speak to ourselves, if we're more compassionate with ourselves, we become more compassionate with others. And it all starts with how we say and what we say. Because the right words at the right time in the right way.
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can change the dynamic of any conversation. And that is where the key is. One of the lessons I've learned in communicating, I learned this as a speechwriter, is treat the conversations like a game of chess. In order to win a game of chess, you can't just think about your own moves. You say, if I move my piece here, how are they gonna see that on their side of the board? What will their response be? What have we communicated that way? If I say this, how will they respond?
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and how will they feel? Because in chess, we're literally trying to get inside their head. In our communication, we should be doing the exact same thing. Seeing it from their perspective, because if I can have a conversation from your perspective, your defenses are down, and we're not able to have a conversation openly and honestly, rather than just defending our points. I'll start with saying the right words, but even that goes back to having the intention of having a conversation.
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that will go in the right direction. The right words at the right time in the right way. Communication can change the world. King Mufasa, thank you for gracing us with your presence on our show. Thank you, and if I may leave you with the words of Dr. Miles Monroe. Oh, I used to read his books when I was growing up, yes. Yes, and you'll recognize the power of potential. Dr. Miles Monroe says,
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All that you can be, but haven't become yet. How far you can go, but haven't gone yet. And who you really are, but no one knows yet. And I remind you with those words from Ufasa, remember who you are.
43:45
Long live the king. John Watkiss, thank you very much. Thank you Roberta. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I've enjoyed this immensely. Before you go, where can we find you so we can talk to the king more? You can find me on all of my social media at John Watkiss,
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or you can find me on my website, johnwadkiss.com. John Watkiss, I will put all of that on the show notes and I will stay in touch with you so that when we publish all the links for this episode, you can share it with your Lion King audience as well. I would love to, thank you so much, Roberta. It has been a pleasure. My absolute pleasure. Thank you for being here today. Thank you, Roberta. Appreciate it.
44:42
Thank you so much. Bye. Bye-bye. 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.
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To learn more about the Bee Podcast Network, go to beeepodcastnetwork.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.