Speaking and Communicating Podcast

the worst trial lawyers get up and tell their jury, this is a complicated case. You've lost them when you start. It is your job. If there are a gazillion charges, you're going to make it a simple case. That's being persuasive. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela.
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If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. 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 an entrepreneur looking to showcase your innovation to a wider audience, you'd be glad you joined us.
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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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My guest today is a former prosecutor, which is gonna be fun for me, because I love legal dramas. She has a TV background and she's the owner of Tribeca Blue Consulting Group. Laurie Gilbertson, haling all the way from Colorado, is here to talk to us about how to engage your audience, how to best prepare for presentations, be creative and persuasive.
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And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Laurie. Hi, Roberta. Thanks so much for having me on today. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. How's Colorado today? Colorado's good. It is sunny as always. We get about 300 days of sun and today is one of them. That sounds like a Caribbean island. I'm kidding. It does, it does. But don't ask me about the winter. Oh yes.
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Yes, the snow is beautiful and it's a wonderful place to live. For sure. Yeah. Glad to have you here. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. My pleasure. Yeah, well, I am a former New York City prosecutor. I prosecuted sex crimes, homicides, and organized crime cases. When I did that work, turned legal educator, where I worked on litigation programs and
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helping attorneys be the best communicators they could be and learn all about being on trial and then turned media legal analyst, turned entrepreneur. So I've had a bit of an unexpected career trajectory and that's kind of led me to where I am today. And when I was deciding what to do after being a prosecutor, something that I loved,
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I really had to sit down and think, well, what kinds of things have I done in my career that have really been exciting and fulfilling and what do I want to continue doing? And it really led me to thinking that my whole career had really revolved around storytelling, around developing compelling and persuasive and engaging narratives. And that was in the courtroom where I did it for a while.
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that was in the boardroom when I was working in legal education, and that was in the media when I did television work. And so with that kind of overarching theme, it led me shockingly, because I never expected to be an entrepreneur, to starting my own company, to bring that kind of knowledge and that kind of form of expression to other people, so they could really learn how to communicate well, because it is such an essential skill. If you can communicate well,
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If you can be comfortable getting up and speaking, if you can learn to get your ideas across, you can have success personally, professionally, and just learn to be comfortable and confident in so many situations. So that's a little bit about me. You just described our podcast. I think we should just rip this up. We died, Laurie. All right then. It's been great. Thanks, Roberta. You're welcome. But seriously, that's exactly what we always emphasize.
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With regards to storytelling, it's funny that we're always associated with, you know, your business presentation. If you're an entrepreneur, you're presenting your idea. Even though, like I said, I watch a lot of courtroom dramas because usually you are just telling the jury, please take my side of this. How does storytelling come into that equation? Oh, Roberta, we have so much to talk about.
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I love this. Being an advocate in court, doing a trial, presenting a case is all about storytelling. From the moment you begin to speak to jurors or a judge, actually from the moment before that, when you even start your case, it is all about what is this really a story about? What are the big themes here that will resonate with people listening to it?
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so that ultimately when you get to the part, like you said, please find this person guilty or give this defendant money or find for the plaintiff here that they didn't do anything wrong. It really is all about that story. So from the time when you're picking a jury or talking to a judge, that theme is kind of emanating through your trial. If you think of it in a super simple way, like think, Little Red Riding Hood.
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You know, think back to some of these fairy tales that we know about, that we hear about, that when we're kids, you know, what's it about? Is that about, you know, a girl who went out in the woods and encountered evil in the form of the big bad wolf and that changed everything? You know, so you're telling the story. And so in a trial, it's very similar. You know, you could have any kind of case and you have to think about, well, is this the story of
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little guy fighting a big corporation, you know, a David and Goliath kind of story. Is it a murder over something that was trivial or a murder over something that was simmering for a long time? How are you going to get people to remember it? So you do that starting in your opening statement. You get up in front of the jury and you let them know, kind of weave these facts together, use really evocative language, you paint really visual images. And then as you
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question your witnesses, you let them tell their stories and you kind of keep bringing it back to your themes. When you cross examine witnesses, you're asking them questions that also resonate with those themes. And then the big thing is like you said, when you're asking the jury what you want them to do, you go on closing arguments and you're putting it all together and you're saying, this is the story I've told you and here's all of the evidence that fits into it. And that's why the only thing that makes sense.
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is for you to find the way that I'm asking you to. So it's all a story all throughout and you just keep it going the whole time because people, we remember stories more than we remember facts, right? Or numbers or figures or statistics, we remember stories. So you wanna couch it in terms of a story so that people remember it and they also resonate. The emotion will resonate with you and that's how it would resonate with the jury. So good trial lawyers.
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are good storytellers. So the evidence is more the logical side and the story will bring out the emotion. And that's why you need to have both. Absolutely. And the evidence is woven into the story. The evidence are the details of what fills out the framework of the story. I'll give you an example. One of the last cases I tried before I left the district attorney's office was a school shooting.
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a very tragic school shooting where there was a fight at a bar near campus and it was a college and people involved in the fight came to the campus. They were out looking for the people they'd been fighting with and one person pulled out a gun and just started spraying bullets into a crowd of kids. People ran and one of the people who ran ultimately became unfortunately the true victim of this
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horrific shooting and he got shot in the back. And he went down and he was a very promising football player and it changed his life forever. So the story that I told the jury and the way I started it to kind of know who I was speaking with, know that I wanted to evoke emotion and bring them and put them there instead of just saying, you know, this man went on this campus, he pulled out a gun, he shot these people.
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pretty emotional anyways to hear it. But I wanted to personalize it. I wanted them to feel it. I wanted them to feel what it was like for this very promising young man who was just struck down in the time of his life. And so I started it with the victim and I said, he was running, but he wasn't running on a football field the way he used to every Sunday for his college. He was running on a college campus and he was running away from shots being fired by a gun.
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called by the defendant, shots going right at him. And one landed in his back, took him down, and his life would never be the same. Or something around, like around those lines, it was many years ago, just to bring them into the story. And then as I would question the witnesses, they would bring up the details that would fill in that framework. What happened that night? Who was there?
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you know, where was everybody standing? How could they identify the person who did the shooting? And you let them tell their story. And so it's the color, you know, to the story. It's the details. That's what the evidence brings in. So you set up the framework of the story and then all the evidence fills all that in until it's strong enough at the end to hold up for your jury so they can go back and find the verdict that you are asking them to.
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Yeah, it reminds me, I don't know, because it was a long time ago, I think it was the 90s when Matthew McConaughey first became famous and he was with Sandra Bullock, I think with Samuel L. Jackson, in A Time to Kill. And he won the case because he said to the jury, close your eyes. He told the story of what had happened, which is which was the court case, but making them close their eyes and also making them
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feel what this Samuel L. Jackson character, the father was feeling instead of just saying, listen, if your daughter gets raped, you must convict the guy. You know what I mean? That would be very different. Yes. Right. Yeah. I, I remember that scene and I had a couple of emotions about it. The first emotion I had was, wow, this is, this is great storytelling in the movie. This is amazing. The other is you can't do that. You can't do it that way. You can't.
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would have been ejected to and kicked out of court and absolutely not, but for a movie, awesome. Totally awesome. Ha ha ha. Because we always wonder, like a lot of the courtroom drama, like I said, I watch all of it, I love it. We always wonder, which is allowed in real life? Can you just say your own name, you walk around the court and, no, Laurie is giving us the tea. No, I can't. Oh my gosh, you know, I.
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I have a son, I have a son who just started college, who loves the idea of being a trial attorney. He's very into Law and Order and a lot of shows and we'll watch them together. And he got so sick of watching them with me because I would go, no, you can't do that. It doesn't work that way, that's wrong. And then eventually he just had to say, mom, no talking, no talking mom. It's like when somebody watches the bloopers before the actual movie, now you know the plans.
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Do that? You want it for me? Right, right. There's a lot of poetic license with legal dramas. There really is. Exactly. And now let's take that into speaking and engaging with your audience. So in this case, like for instance, the parallel is the jury's your audience. You say whenever you're assigned to speak, you find a creative way to present that idea. Because a lot of ideas we've heard before, we've heard all of them almost.
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How do you do that to find this creative way to present your idea? So it's almost like what Laura is saying, I've never heard of it before. Right, well, I mean, look, you have this entire podcast with all these amazing guests and a lot of listeners who I imagine come to you and listen because they're really terrified of getting up and doing this, right? It can be really scary.
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And even when you start to do it, I still get nervous before everyone. And I'm unhappy I do because I know that then I care and the adrenaline is going and I'm gonna get into it. So if we're gonna get up and do all this, we're gonna do presentations or trial work or be on TV or do a podcast, we should have some fun with it because that's gonna keep us from being as nervous when we can get really involved and really creative.
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So what I do and what I encourage clients and the people I talk to to do is don't wait until the last minute when you're getting up to do a presentation then you have to plan it even a month before, a couple of weeks before. Start looking in your daily life about things that resonate with you. Did you see a great video and that resonated with you? For whatever reason, okay? Whatever reason, it doesn't have to be related to anything. Just what if you saw a great meme or a great picture?
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and that visual spoke to you. Create a file or however you do it. If you work with paper, put it on paper, Google Drive, whatever you like, start saving these things. Because when you have the time to start creating a presentation, that's when you go back to your file of all these really creative things and it's gonna start sparking things in you of what you wanna use and how you wanna engage your audience and how you can use these things to share your ideas.
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And there are so many creative ways. I mentioned a couple of things here. You can use visuals. You can use videos. You can use props. You can ask your audience questions. You can think of fun ways to do things with them. You can see other things that other people do and adapt it to yourself. Because like you said, there are very few original ideas, but you make it your own, right? You take something and you make it your own. And so it's...
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a couple things, it's the overall idea of trying to think of a presentation creatively. It's not that the biggest way you can do it and how is how you start, you know, it's not I am Laurie. And today we're going to talk about public speaking. And I'm going to tell you my top five tips for public speaking. I mean, the audience is asleep, right? They're they're like, it sounds awful. And they've tuned out. Oh, it's almost like she sounds like everybody else. What's unique about her. Right. So
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I use a joke that I found that I saw one day that I thought was great. And I later learned that lots of public speaking trainers use this joke because it, it's very resonant, but people use it all different ways. So I'll get up and the way that I want to creatively start a particular presentation about public speaking, I'll say, well, who likes public speaking? And I'll raise my hand and I'll see everybody else raising their hand. And that already I'm engaged in my audience, right? Cause I've done something a little.
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unexpected. And then I'll say, who doesn't like public speaking? Who gets really scared? You feel those butterflies. You don't want to do it. It's like the last thing in the world you want to do. And I raised my hand again too, because sometimes I feel that way. It's scary. And you see, right? What everybody's doing. And then I say, well, if you get scared or you fear public speaking at all, you're not alone.
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Right? Public speaking is known to be the number one fear of most Americans. And then I'll ask, does anyone know what number two is? Right. So then I'm engaging the audience again, right? What could be number two, Roberta? What do you think? Is it death? Spiders? Ding, ding, ding. Spiders and death. You got two and three. Awesome. So I'm engaging the audience again, right? And they're wondering what is going on here. I thought we were going to talk about
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And here we are, we're just talking about, you know, fears. So it's something different. And then so when I let people go around, I let them give all the answers. And then I say, whoever has gotten it. So here, Roberta, you got it. Number two, it's death, right? And then I say, which brings us to Jerry Seinfeld, who has a very famous joke. And I use a picture of Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian. I might put it up there, right? And I don't know if you've heard this one. Maybe you have, who said,
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Public speaking is the number one fear of most Americans. Number two is death. Does that make sense? That means to most people at a funeral, they'd rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Oh, that's a good one. That's how I start. And so it's, you know, there's one way of starting. It's creative. It brings people in and it shows them
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I'm thinking about you and making this interesting for you. I wanna know about you. And I've given thought to bringing you as my audience into this with me. And now we're gonna continue the conversation. And we're gonna talk about why it's so scary and why it can be so challenging. You know, and then we'll talk about some ways you can, creative things you can do to make it even more interesting. So that's how I try to bring creativity into it. And I think that bringing it in, in your introduction.
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doing anything besides saying, hi, I'm Lori and I'm going to talk about public speaking, is going to make you stand out from everybody else. And it's going to also get your audience with you. And it's going to make it exciting for you. Because it's a whole lot more fun to ask people if they know what the number two fear of Americans is than to just reel off some stuff about public speaking. So.
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Everyone can be creative. People often feel that they're not, that maybe if you're not in an artist or a writer or a musician or something else that maybe you're not using your creativity, I think people are really starved to use their creativity. And speaking and presenting is a way to show your uniqueness, show your creativity, to bring it out. Take something you love and use it. I have clients like who love golf.
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They know golf trivia or they find some golf metaphors or a golf story and they tell it and it's creative and it brings their audience in, it's unique. I don't know golf. So I wouldn't be telling a golf story. It wouldn't be creative for me, but it's creative for them. And that also calms them. It takes some of the fear away and it makes it really fun for everyone because as much fun as we can make this and have doing it, we really should.
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And you know what you just described? Be yourself. They want to know you, the unique you, but at the same time you take a little bit of everything that you can use to be creative, but you bring yourself into it. Like you said, you use the sauce in your own way. Yeah, because different things speak to different people. You know, I'll give you another example that I was watching the Tony Awards.
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you know, years and years ago, the Tony Awards to give awards for, you know, for theater, you know, the musical Hamilton. Yes. Yeah, so one of the actors in the musical Hamilton won a Tony Award for best actor, and he gave the best acceptance speech I think I'd ever seen. And so I went back and I found it on YouTube, and now I use it all the time as an example of storytelling. And I'm gonna send it to you after, Roberta. Please do. If any of your audience wants to look it up.
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just Google David Diggs, Tony Awards acceptance speech. I will put it on the show notes as well. Yeah. It's amazing. He tells a beautiful story in under 30 seconds. It is the best example of storytelling I have come across. You never know when any kind of inspiration is gonna hit you. And I saw that and I made a note, I put it in my creative file to save three, four years later.
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I used it in a presentation and it's a hit with people. They always love it. It always really resonates. And so just think about it in your life. Don't think about it, you know, necessarily at the time when you're nervous and you're getting ready to do this, just see where that creativity is flowing in your daily life because you're going to be able to bring that into your speaking too. Right. So you can always find a story everywhere. If you really can, you really can.
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It doesn't have to be something grandiose. Daily life, the audience will find it relevant and they can relate to it rather than, because a lot of people are under this idea that I don't have a story because I've never had a traumatic event or I've never gone through something big. That's not what that is about, no? No, there used to be a series, and I don't remember the name of it, but many, many years ago of a journalist who used to just take a map of the US
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and he would like put a pin, you know, just randomly somewhere in the U S and then he would travel there and just talk to the people there. Cause he said, there's always a story. Everyone has a story. And it was really beautiful because, you know, from the cities to these little small towns of rural areas, urban areas, everybody had a story. So that's what you want to bring to your speaking. You want to bring your stories. You've experienced things that other people haven't.
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and you interpret the world in a way that is different from others and bring that uniqueness. You talked about being yourself. And that is my number one. That is more important, I think, than any other advice you could ever give people is to be yourself because you come to speaking, whether it's a conversation with a friend, a big presentation, something at work, doing media, or just telling your kids a story.
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telling coworkers story. We do this every single day, we tell stories and we tell them in our own unique way. And we have all the tools with us to be able to deliver them beautifully. You know, we have our facial expressions, we have our bodies, we have the way we choose to hold ourselves, we have eye contact, we have a way of moving that we can make it very purposeful. And we have our voices and we bring all of that.
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to all of these stories we tell. So you already have everything you need. This isn't go out and buy something. You have everything you need to be a great speaker. It's just a matter of tapping into it. You know, earlier when you explained how you have that strong opening of asking the question and getting the audience to answer, it makes it a conversation rather than the example you gave of, hi, I'm Laura Gilbert, and I'm here to take you to the five. Then you just information dumping.
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becomes a very different setting altogether. And more than anything, I think the audience becomes very curious about what you're gonna ask them next. Because you started with asking them a question and getting them engaged. Whereas if just information dumping, oh, they know, yes, yes, she's gonna tell us this, yes. Half the time their minds won't even be present. Yeah, you use such a great word and you talk about being curious. And if you can get your audience to be curious,
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in that conversation with you, you've won. I mean, you've created something really beautiful wherever you're speaking, wherever you're having that. In that particular presentation that I used that opening, when I talked to the audience about opening strong, I talked to them about how important that is, I go back and I ask them, because I'm curious, and I said, look how I started with that question and that joke, and I asked them, did that work? Like, what do you think?
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How'd that land for you? They tell me, yeah, that's good, that was interesting. Or some will say, you're not funny, Laurie, please don't try to be, or whatever. But they're curious and we're having a give and take. And so if you can model for your audience exactly what you're trying to teach them, that's going to impart the information to them much more because you're showing them, you're not telling them. And...
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If you're arousing that curiosity, like you said, and having it be a real curious two-way conversation, that's gonna help them learn even more too. We've talked about being creative. Now, what about being persuasive? How do you make your presentation be persuasive? Yeah, they're very intertwined because being persuasive and engaging, creativity can be a real tool to bring that across.
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And some of the other tools are things that start before you even go into the delivery of your presentation. And so that persuasiveness has to really be in a very well organized, well thought out presentation that you have some emotion about, that you care about, that you're going to bring yourself to that way. So before.
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any presentation, I sit down and I have to think about, what am I bringing to this audience? What am I trying to persuade them of? What am I trying to teach them? What value am I bringing? And I think about that. I think about also, how do I wanna make them feel? What emotions do I wanna cultivate in my audience there? And then I also think, persuasive, what do I want them to be doing? If people are doing pitches,
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Maybe they're trying to get money from investors. If you're in court, you want your jury or judge to do a certain thing. If you're in sales, right, you're trying to get people to buy. If you're teaching, you want people to learn, you know, and take that information away. So think about those things beforehand, okay? Because if you're not organized and you don't know where you're going with things, it's very difficult to persuade people of anything because it doesn't sound like you've persuaded yourself.
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You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know where you're going. So why should they follow you there? So that starts ahead of time. And then, like I said before, it's all those tools of persuasion that we have, that we already have within us. It is your voice. How do you wanna pause to bring that audience with you and listen to you? How do you wanna hold their attention with eye contact? How are you gonna move around to emphasize various points in order to be persuasive?
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How do you want to use your voice? How do you want to modulate it? Be louder, be softer. And then what language do you want to use to be persuasive with them, to kind of bring them into your story? Being persuasive is really about carrying that audience along with you, bringing them kind of along for that journey in the conversation, like you said, Roberta, and then knowing at the end, what are you trying to persuade them to do? What do you want them to do?
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I am often trying to persuade people to just try something different, right? Try a fun intro, use a video, do something a little differently, get out of your comfort zone, have a little fun with it, you know, so they can be better communicators. And so at the end, you know, I have that persuasion, I have that call to action. I tell them exactly. And I tell them in a simple way, you know, I asked the audience, well, what are you taking away from here today? And we continue the conversation.
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People will tell me things I'm saying, what can you do today? That's going to change your communication, right? Can you do this in a phone call? Can you have a great intro in the next meeting? Can you use silence or your voice to really be engaging? What can you go out and do just one thing? And so when you make it super simple, that's also a way of being persuasive. So I'd say it's planning. It's using all those tools at your disposal.
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And it's making it super simple for your audience. You gotta do the work for them. You gotta make it easy. The worst trial lawyers get up and tell their jury, this is a complicated case. I hope Roberta says the right place. Right? You can't tell them. I mean, like, Roberta, I bet we've all been watching what you do. You've lost before you start. Why would you do this? Right? You've lost before you start. It is your job. If there are a gazillion charges.
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you're going to make it a simple case for that jury. Hey, that's your job. That's being persuasive doing the work so that you make it really easy for them to do exactly what you're trying to persuade them to do. So we know, I hope nobody says that. So we've talked about a strong opening, you know, I love Matthew McConaughey's act in the closing, but obviously you say you don't approve of it because it's not real cultural.
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So what would you suggest as strong closing? You are speaking my language Roberta, because those are my favorite things, opening strong and closing strong. And that speaks to these concepts of primacy. You remember the first thing you hear and recently you remember the last thing you hear. So you've got to use that. So my favorite thing to do is what's called bookending. So...
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However you start with that strong intro, you wanna tie it back in at the end with your closing. So let's say I start with a story, okay? And I tell a story of whatever, but I leave out exactly how the story ends. And the audience thinks they know how it ends, but I've left out something important. I come back to it at the end and I can end with, oh, remember when we talked about X, when I first came out here?
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Let me tell you what happened with that and how it really ended. And then I tell them, just think about like the great legal dramas you like to watch or other movies. They're masters at having openings and closings that are so strong. Another way is the same kind of topic. If you ask a question in the beginning, you can answer it in the end. If you start with a statistic on something, you can share another one that's related at the end to kind of pull it all together.
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If you start with sometimes maybe asking about certain things that you want to cover in your presentation. So let's say, you know, what are some challenges people are facing with X, Y, or Z whenever you're talking about? Come back to it at the end. Okay, we had X, Y, Z, and we've covered X, Y, and Z. And now you all know how to handle those and let them end the same techniques that are great for intros are great for endings, you know.
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We'll give Matthew McConaughey another one. The emotion, right? The emotion. Yes. Bring it back to emotion. You can have them close their eyes. Think about something, imagine something, the same way maybe you did that in the intro. You can use a visual, tell a story, ask another question to wrap it up. But the only thing you can absolutely not do is end by saying, that's all I have. Any questions?
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Come on, Roberta, have you not heard people do that? Right? I played the fifth on that one. Look, I'm guilty of it myself. I mean, I don't even want to know what my first talk looked like. I didn't even want to think about it. I say the same thing about my initial episode. Yours are preserved. You can go back if you want.
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The same way people say like, oh, what do I do if I'm not introducing myself? Like how you start a presentation. It's so new, it's so different to think of doing it differently. People say to me, what do you mean I can't, I am not ending with Q&A. I have to end with a question session. And I will tell people, just like having a great intro, having a great ending, when you have worked hard on a presentation, when you had...
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bringing your whole self to it and being engaging and persuasive and communicating with that audience and you control What emotion they leave that room? you control how Persuasive you are in getting them to do whatever that action is at the end of how they're leaving you what they're doing How they're feeling why on earth? Would you? Feed that control and authority
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to some random person in the audience who's gonna ask a question or to nobody and total silence and no question, you control how you end and you need to retain control of that so that you finish as strong as you started. So if you feel, I tell people, if you feel you have to have questions and answers and often we do that, there's two ways to do it. And one way is that you have your ending prepared.
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However that's gonna be, it's gonna be the story, it's gonna be a question, it's gonna be a video, it's gonna be a real creative way you've thought about how you wanna end. And you say to your audience, okay, before I conclude, we have time, I'm gonna take questions for the next five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever. Take your questions and then you say, now we're gonna conclude. And then you go to your strong ending and you do that. Or you tell people,
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Before I conclude, I wanna let you know that I'm gonna stay after and I'll be available for questions. And then you conclude. Don't give away that prime real estate that you've worked so hard for. And it's another way to really make your presentation stand out. And you don't have to memorize things that you gotta know how you're gonna start. You know, those first 30 seconds to a minute when you're super nervous and you're on autopilot. You gotta know how you're starting. Then you gotta know how you're gonna end.
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Gotta know that last 30 seconds a minute. You have to know it. Those two, you really need to know cold. Everything else can flow when you know those two things. Strong start and strong ending. Lori, can you give us one example? You said earlier that communication skills really improve you personally and professionally. Can you give us one example for professional and how they improved your personal life as well? Sure. I mean,
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Professionally, what it really allows you to do is communicate your ideas and take advantage of opportunities. For me in particular, the ability to be able to go out and be comfortable talking about myself and what I do is really the way for me to get business and be able to help people do that themselves. And I see so many people who are very afraid to do that.
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And I totally understand that, that the world is missing out on what they have to give if they're not getting out and doing that. So I had a client who had a presentation and he had the opportunity to do something and he had done, he's my best example of this. He'd never done it and somebody bowed out and he had the opportunity to do it. And it was in two weeks and it was high stakes and he had never spoken in front of people. He was a transactional attorney, meaning he did contracts and stuff like that. He had never.
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been in a courtroom, spoken to people, and he somehow said yes. And then he called me and was like, oh my gosh, Lori, what do we do? I need to meet with you right now, help. And he got ready and he did it. And he did so incredibly at it that he got this amazing feedback. He got asked to do more. And ultimately got hired by someone who heard him speak who was so impressed at the knowledge he had and what he was sharing that it just led to like stratospheric things.
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in his career from being brave enough to just jump in and do that one. So I think it can really open up opportunities because if people aren't hearing your ideas in a engaging way and you're not putting it out there, as scary as that can be, you know, the world is missing those things. And you're not getting the benefit of it. And, you know, personally, I have three teenagers and, um, that's fun.
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I'm sure. Right? And part of communicating is what you say and being able to be direct and speak your mind and have productive conversation. And I think that's a really important, like you said, to have that conversation, that give and take. And I certainly try to do that with my kids, but what I've learned most of all is that a huge part of communicating also is knowing when to listen instead. And that listening is a huge...
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underrated, underused skill for so many people. And you need it when you're listening to your audience and curating that conversation like you talked about. You need it when you're speaking in meetings or pitching or anything, this is a two-way thing. And so personally, learning that has made my relationships with three teenagers, which is not always easy, although they are the most amazing kids, just knowing when to listen.
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because we learn so much when we listen and we're then able to give back even so much more. And so personally, that's how communication has made a huge difference in my life. Mm-hmm, two ears and one mouth used in proportion. Oh yes, I am giving you the two thumbs up. Thank you, Lori. Is there anything I didn't ask you today that you were hoping to share with the audience?
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Oh, nothing I can think of. This has been just such a wonderful conversation. And I feel like I've learned so much from you. So it's been a pleasure. You've certainly been the teacher. I had so much fun during the lessons that you gave us. So thank you. And before you go, where can we find you on the socials and the web? Yes, the best place to find me is probably on LinkedIn, under Laurie Gilbertson. And you can also find me on my website with Hedge.
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all sorts of information about me and ways to contact me really easily. And that is Tribeca, like the place in New York City where I used to live, blue consulting.com. Tribeca blue consulting.com. Laurie Gilbert. And thank you so much for being on the show. We had so much fun. Oh, we did. I can't wait to go watch that movie again and think about you, Roberta.
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Matthew McConaughey should write us both checks. We're promoting a time to kill again about what? Three, 30 minutes? Oh, so long ago. Okay, you see about that. We're gonna have to talk. We're gonna have to talk indeed. Thank you for being here today. I really appreciate you taking the time and teaching us so much. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure. Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating podcast once again.
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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, go to BePodcastNetwork.com.
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