Speaking and Communicating Podcast

We all have conversational blind spots, very heavily influenced again by emotions, such as fear, for example. When we are fearful, we hear different things than when we are trusting. Fear and trust are mutually exclusive. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host, Roberte and Leila.
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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 hailing all the way from Germany, Regina Huber is a transformational leadership coach. She's here to talk to us about so much that goes into communication and trust building. And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show. Hi, Regina. Hi, Rebecca. It's so lovely to be here with you today. I am delighted to be here
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inspire your audience together with you. And hopefully also mine is I'm going to share this with my audience, of course, as well. I love that last part, especially. Thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. I'm excited as well. Please tell us a little bit about yourself. Yes, people, of course, usually want to know what makes us different as a coach. And because there's so many
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coaches out in the world and everybody's different. So how did we get to where we are as a coach and why did we choose a specific coaching modality? I think that's what people usually wanna know, right? How did we get to where we are today? So I had done lots of coaching intrinsically during my time at the Boston Consulting Group when I was an employee. I was leading teams with individuals with very
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different profiles and needs in several different countries and continents, you know, in Spain, in Portugal, in Brazil, Argentina, the US, in California. So coaching and mentoring was really a part of my job in the past already, although we didn't necessarily call it that. And then when I moved to New York City in 2012,
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And I was trying to figure out what to do with my eclectic experience that I had gathered on several continents. First at BCG, the Boston Consulting Group, and then where I had some leadership roles and then also as a business owner in Argentina and Brazil. So all those experiences and different countries and cultures, my holistic studies, my transformational studies, my languages, etc.
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different experiences, puzzle pieces. And I wanted to do something meaningful with them, something that would make a difference for people. And that was, you know, that was also aligned with my passion. So in my very own way through who I had become as Regina. Right? And this is how I decided to join the coaching world and to do coaching, training, and speaking.
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And my company, Transform Your Performance, was born. So initially, Roberta, I worked mostly with performing artists because of my passion for dance. Then also other entrepreneurs. I consider performing artists entrepreneurs as well, of course. And they are, yeah. Yeah.
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Exactly. So, you know, among my first few clients, there were actually some dancers too. And later I shifted more toward leaders in employment situations, as well as business owners who have teams, really any leaders. I personally love to work with value driven and people centered leaders, whether they are employed or whether they are business owners. And I help them create more engaged and happier teams.
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And also at the same time, elevate their own careers or their businesses as well. You know, get the visibility they want, the promotions they want, all of that. And also of course, and this is our topic today for the most part, improve their communication skills, improve their trust building, they go hand in hand. Transforming performance as a transformational leadership coach. I help my leader clients reach their.
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next career goal, so to speak, and also level up their leadership skills so they can better lead self and others. Because I believe that leadership always starts with self. For sure. Yes, that's basically the path of how I got here. So when you said that you were coaching, even though you were working, we just didn't call it that. So if anybody's in a corporate job,
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Who would you say is doing that coaching job right now in their corporate environment? Ideally, it would be their manager. Ideally, the manager is also a leader. It does not always happen, of course. But when managers are good leaders, they would also take on this role of a coach for their teams, for their team members.
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Sometimes it's also somebody else that people trust. If I'm, for example, an employee and there's somebody in the organization that I trust a lot, I could choose that person, have a conversation with them and then ask them if they want to mentor me, if they wanna coach me in certain situations, of course. Sometimes we also have to take that initiative and find our coach, our mentor. And at other times, it's an external coach. People hire coaches or companies hire coaches
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for their employees. Unfortunately, Roberta, I think most of the time that only happens for the highest leadership level. So we see a lot of executive coaching, but where we really would need more coaching so that leaders can feel better and more secure in their leadership roles is I believe at the.
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lower and mid levels of leadership, because sometimes people are promoted because of their great technical skills, because they are awesome at what they do in their jobs, but they are not necessarily good leaders because they have never been in a leadership role, which was actually my case, Roberta, at the time. I had never been in a leadership role, I was, so to speak, I was thrown into the, into cold water at the time. I had no relevant background. I had no relevant studies.
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Gladly somebody saw that potential in me and I took this role extremely seriously. However, a lot of people also have a lot of pressure in terms of goals, you know, financial goals in their jobs. And so they, they sometimes think they have to choose between the two, right? They have to choose a certain focus to reach those goals. But in the long run.
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they would probably also be more successful with their goals if they were able to engage their teams more, but more easily and to keep the best people, retain their top talent. And that requires an investment from a leader. That requires time. You said something very key, which I've heard a lot on this show as well, that a lot of the time it's the executives who receive coaching.
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you know, organizations invest in their coaching, but not the employees. Should then employees maybe take the initiative to find these skills, learn, find their own coach, invest in themselves, or should they wait for the company one day to say, Hey, you are great at your technical skills. We want to promote you one day. How about we start helping you with your communication skills and people's skills?
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Well, sometimes they do get training, but they don't get so much as coaching. But I do believe that it's also up to the individual, to the employee, to ask for what they need. We need to be in charge of our careers as we really take the steering wheel of our careers. It is first, it can be a bit more challenging to speak up for ourselves, but it does pay off. For example, I've had clients who did ask for their coaching programs to be sponsored and they got
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paid coaching. That's not always going to be the case. I realize that. But you know, if you invest in yourself, and if you if you have asked and they don't pay for it, it's always worth investing for yourself. What's important is to find the right fit for you in the coach you're hiring. That's also why we do strategy calls or discovery calls before we decide whether you know we want to work together.
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right, to get to know each other, to get a feeling for each other, but also to determine whether that coach has the right preparation to work with you, et cetera, depending on what your specific needs are. Now, I believe that organizations would do good investing more at different levels as well. Because the sooner you really take advantage of somebody's...
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potential in a more powerful way, in a more extensive way, the longer you will benefit from it as an organization as well. Right. And also I think one other thing that's important here is the higher up you are in an organization, the easier it actually gets for you to pay for yourself. Right. Because usually the salaries are higher. So it allows for it. Yeah. But yeah, it's a bit more, it can be a little bit more of a challenge.
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The reason I ask this is because we've had this long corporate careers, how crucial these communication skills are as you go up the ladder especially. Now the next question becomes, especially with the leaders you've worked with, when they come to you, what do they say is the main problem they want to solve? And that's why they are enlisting your services. Well, there are two different main topics I would say. One is to
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get recognized more easily. So it's about visibility, getting recognized with your unique brilliance as that brilliant leader, that brilliant employee you are, and they're not always seen and heard as easily as they want to be seen and heard. So we work on their visibility, on their presence, on whatever needs to be added. For everybody, it's different, Roberta.
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because some people need to work more on their presentation skills. Some other people need to work more on their internal networking skills. Some need to more work on on their confidence so that they actually do reach out and ask for what they need. Some people want to get recognized with a raise or a promotion, right? And they are sometimes afraid to ask because they think they risk
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something and it's oftentimes not a real risk. It's just a perceived risk, you know, because our subconscious is weird. It wants to keep us safe from things that are not even real risks sometimes. And we need to break through those blockages and then I help them also position their promotion, position their race. Oftentimes of course, a promotion and a race will go hand in hand, sometimes not.
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It depends on the situation. So that's one major area I would say. And then the second one is really leadership skills, communication skills. I also studied conversational intelligence because I had built two frameworks that are specifically for leadership. One is the powerful leadership transformation, which I've had for a longer time now.
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And a more recent one is a new paradigm leadership, but I also wanted to bring in that verbal component that we need for trust building and to just navigate more successfully and more smoothly through team conversations, negotiations, and really any critical conversation that we have to face on a daily basis in business. So these are the two big areas, I would say. So.
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driving their own careers on the one hand and then improving their leadership skills and communication skills on the other. Right, when you talk about people asking for what they need, especially employees, probably leaders by then have mastered the art. First of all, do they know exactly what they need sometimes? And if so, is there a fear of, if I ask for what I need, I might...
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jeopardize my career, might lose my job, my leader may look at me funny the next time. Because we've never actually delved deeper into that part of, you know, take initiative, if it's your career, ask for what you need. How do you do it? And do you know what you need? Absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes you know what you need and sometimes you just know what you want, right? So ideally those are the same things, but that doesn't always happen. So what we also do is,
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a deep discovery process whenever that is necessary. Sometimes people just know what they want and need and they just are really afraid, as you mentioned, or better to ask because they think they, if they ask for a promotion, for example, and the answer is no, then their relationship with their manager might be affected in a negative way in some way.
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But oftentimes that's not the case because actually when we do not ask for what we want, our relationship can be affected much more easily in this negative way because we get frustrated. We get frustrated with ourselves, but also we get frustrated because other people do not.
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figure out what we need and want without us saying it. And we just need to say it sometimes. Exactly. But in a way we build up this resentment and that's really what can harm a relationship. So it's worth thinking about the consequences of not asking. Should you also have the mindset of, okay, let me ask, cause I feel that I'm qualified for the next level. Should you have the mindset of, if they don't think that I'm
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qualified for it, I should believe in myself enough to think another organization will see the asset that I am. Well, there are always several different options. It's never just one or the other. I think it depends on whether the person really is willing to and wanting to change organizations because sometimes if we do not resolve something in one place, it's not going to be resolved in the other and it follows us.
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So if it has to do with us, this is something we need to figure out. Does it really have to do with our management, with the organization? Maybe there is a rigidity in the organization that cannot be overcome. Maybe there is some type of a hurdle or maybe there's even toxicity in the work environment. Then yes, it may be the best option to look elsewhere and to leave.
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that doesn't mean that you cannot also ask first, right? You can do both in parallel. Now, if you absolutely would like to stay in that organization, if you, you know, everything else is really pleasing to you, then why not just improve your positioning skills a little bit and take a no for a not now.
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follow up. A lot of people take a no for a never, and then they never follow up. And then they miss out on an opportunity to get that promotion or that raise. I've seen this with my clients, you know, those who follow up sometimes get one three months later. It is a lot about positioning. So what we really want to focus on is how do I position my own brilliance, my value? I like to talk a lot about knowing.
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owning and showing value because you cannot own your value as we're so often told to do if you don't know exactly what it is. So we need to take a deep dive into what our value even is. And this does not only include our past, our achievements, because going forward we want to be paid for our next level.
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So why would we only talk about the past? We need to talk about the potential we bring to the next level. We have to bring that up in the conversation. How am I going to contribute value if or when I get promoted? Maybe sometimes it's something different. It's just a different role that we want. Well, how can I add value in that role and give maybe some specific examples of that? Right. In this conversation,
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We mentioned trust. What does it take to build and maintain trust, especially in the workplace? Well, trust building, a lot of different elements play into it, so to speak. It's of course the verbal component, words matter. We know that. But we also know that in communication, the verbal component is the smallest part. So if we have a conversation and our energy is off, then
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we might not be able to build trust because we might not even come across as authentic if we feel, you know, too insecure, or maybe we just are not focused enough with our energies. I always also recommend to optimize your energy because we so often hear that it takes seven seconds to make a first impression. But the reality is that it only takes
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0.07 seconds, 0.07 seconds for our brains to figure out whether we can trust someone. And that's mostly about the energy. And then of course, we also have our body language, all of that, right? We also know that our energy flows into everything. It just really is, is that one element that flows into everything we think we do.
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And we say, it's a very, very important aspect that a lot of people don't even think about. And it can really give you that edge. It can give you an advantage before a specific meeting that might be challenging for you or before any negotiation. If you also prepare energetically, which is what most people do not do, you will always have an advantage. And all of this, Roberta, is also about authenticity.
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In our first conversation, we talked about authenticity and about not imitating others. So really staying authentic, true to who you are. We want to know who you are, what you stand for, whether we can trust you because of who you are, right? This is not about acting someone else's part. This could even estrange people, alienate people, because we feel it.
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don't tell us that that you actually mean something different, we can feel it. Again, that's a lot about energy, but it's just really important to stay true to who you are, be yourself, and ideally be the best version of yourselves. So when we talk about presence, for example, when we help people enhance their presence so that they become more visible, or when we give them tips,
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about how they can improve their presence. That's never about imitating somebody else. It's about bringing out their best selves. One thing that's really important, I think is to not use canned body language that is so obvious, right? And that really will not allow you to come across as authentic.
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So having said that, we can learn about body language and we can prepare some body language as a speaker, for example, right? If you want to have a certain effect and we speak on a stage or in front of a room, we can have a few moments where, yes, changing directions, for example, or changing our walking direction can have a special additional impact. So that's a good thing to use in certain situations, but just...
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Don't make it look too rehearsed in terms of your body language. You still want to see who you are, right? Hmm. We always say, take the tips and the strategies and the tools, incorporate them, but the bottom line is be who you are. Right. Exactly. For example, some very successful speakers like to sit on a stool on stage, but they still manage to be very charismatic without a lot of movement.
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It's just through their presence, not even only through their words. And others really like to use their space on a stage or in front of a room. That would be me because I'm all about movement. I'm a movement person. I love to dance. So I have to actually control myself a little bit so it doesn't get too distracting when I move too much.
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there are certain things especially also as leaders we want to have an open position we want to project openness we don't want to cross our arms right that we're approachable yes exactly there are certain things that definitely are important to take into account but at the same time we want to see who you are we want to see through who you are whether we can trust you and when you do your
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coaching, what does it take to be transformed as a leader? When you work with your clients, what does that look like? I believe it looks different for every single person. As I always say, being transformed is not about becoming somebody different than that you are not. It's not about becoming someone else. It's still being you, but bringing out the best version in you so that you can
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make a bigger impact so that you can enjoy your work more, so it becomes smoother and not so forced, and you have more fun with it, and more success with it at the same time. So for example, one of my clients, she was in a vice president position, okay? So relatively high up, so mid to high level, and she was dealing with a couple of difficult team members.
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Each of them difficult in their very own way. And in fact, they were very different personalities and they were in two different offices as well. So now with some specific support in terms of how to show up to those meetings with the two people, and they were online meetings, and with some examples of what language to use for specific scenarios, she got them to a level where.
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they started to be more excited about contributing more and paying more attention to their own performance again. One of them was a long-term employee, so he sort of thought maybe it wasn't necessary anymore because he'd been there so long, and the other person was a very junior person, but they hadn't been managed very well by her predecessor, by the previous team leader.
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And so now my client who was there, a new manager, had to deal with these situations. And she knew that if she couldn't get this fixed, then she'd have to probably let them go. So they were valuable because they were knowledgeable, right? And they had solid skills. They were just not really excited about their work anymore for whatever reasons. One of them was also going through something personal and-
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Roberta, we all have those moments when we're less excited. We need a little extra nudge sometimes. Right. Yes. So after a couple of one-on-one conversations with these two people, they really started showing some nice shifts. Now, one thing that I recommended to my client is to involve them more, to ask them for input more, to really make them feel like their perspective and their contribution were valued and valuable.
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So she asked questions like, if you had complete authority to lead this project, what would you do differently? Or you could also ask, what's your suggestion of how we can make this work together? Right. Sometimes it's important to use more we-centric language. It depends on the situation. It's not always the right thing to do, of course. We need to use discernment. But the question of...
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how can we make this work together? Or how can we improve the situation together? Oftentimes goes a long way. It's a very simple and basic question. And it was partly about asking more open-ended questions and partly by using more we centric language in this case. So this is how she could turn the situation around pretty quickly and bring them from a more resistant attitude to a more collaborative.
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and co-creational attitude, which is also what we talk a lot about in conversational intelligence. We use what we call a conversational dashboard and we look at the different levels of trust on that dashboard. So that's a bit technical right now, but this is just a little insight into this specific modality, right? Once people move more toward the side of co-creation, that's when
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They show increased willingness to make a greater contribution, to show more enthusiasm for their work. And they also actually start feeling better themselves and having more fun with their work again. I think that's an important part of it too. What is the difference between conversational intelligence and emotional intelligence? Okay, so they play together. Emotional intelligence is when we are aware of
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our emotions and when we are able to manage our own emotions, when we are aware of our triggers, it requires self-awareness, self-leadership. And sometimes as leaders, we need to go very deep with our self-awareness because this actually pays off big time. When we get to know each other better, we can more easily understand others. As we understand ourselves more, we understand others.
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more easily, right? As leaders, that's very, very important. But also we understand our emotions more easily. We know where our triggers come from when we have gone on a journey of self discovery and self observation and introspection. And we can catch ourselves before we react impulsively to a situation or we burst out or we explode like a...
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pressure cookers. Natural tendency, which is really not a natural tendency. It's a program or condition tendency most of the time through previous experiences. subconscious remembers those experiences that angered us or that upset us and so some way and it says, oh, there's this thing again, right? And it triggers us.
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So we need to catch ourselves and realize, oh, here's this trigger thing again. Let me just take a step back, take a deep breath and figure out what to do now rather than reacting it and really responding in a more mature way instead. This is a part of it, of course, only. Emotional intelligence is very broad. Right, yes.
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implies that we understand other people's emotions to a certain extent. Yes, as leaders, especially, and that we acknowledge them, that we do not just suppress our emotions or other people's emotions. Emotions are an important part of what we are, who we are as human beings. They're part of our experience. We just really want to use them more wisely. Now, conversation on intelligence is about
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our verbal communication for the most part. How do we use our language? What type of language do we use? When do we use questions rather than statements? When, what can we do to include people more easily in the conversation to inspire people to participate in team meetings, all these different situations? It also plays into positioning into negotiations. How can we win
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our conversation partner over how can we make our point while also acknowledging their perspective, their position, and come to a win win situation, really, that's what we really want. Right? Not about competing with each other or one person is right. It's also about recognizing that we all have conversational blind spots. These blind spots are very heavily
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influenced again by emotions, such as fear, for example, like when we are fearful, we hear different things than when we are trusting fear and trust are mutually exclusive. Right. And we already don't hear every single word the other person says, because our brain has to process as we listen. So what happens is that as we talk to people, we sometimes assume that they
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understand everything exactly the way we say it, but they have their own filters. They have their own way of understanding what we are trying to communicate. That is a potential blind spot. Or if I receive a message from somebody, let's say I talk to my manager and I'm in a fearful situation because I fear that something might happen to my position or whatever it is, or maybe we're in a review meeting.
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and I feel that I might get negative feedback or whatever it is, right? Then I will hear the message differently already, because I will watch for different parts of the message and I will remember it differently. So if one negative thing is said or one thing that I don't particularly like, then this will gain more weight as well. Oh. You know, as it often happens in review situations anyway.
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Sometimes we receive 99% of positive feedback. And one thing that wasn't so great, we remember that one thing. We remember the 1% for sure. That's just human nature. You know? We certainly do, yeah. Yes. Conversational blind spots are really important to take into consideration, to remember that we all have them. And that we're always influenced by our emotions, by our conditioning, by our own beliefs.
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and all of that, right? Right, which is very key, especially when you lead teams because there's so much that can be lost in translation. Regina, is there anything you were hoping to share today that I haven't asked you yet? There is really something that I would like to share with the listeners that they could do. Please do. You know, I always like to inspire people to take action because the conversations.
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that we are offering them should be actionable in some way. Of course. Right? So what I would like to inspire you to do today is to identify and implement one technique or strategy that can help you build trust through communication. Identify one way.
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And whether you decide to pay more attention to your energy or learn a technique to optimize your energy or whatever it is, or whether you look into conversational intelligence and experiment with new language, or whether you focus more on communicating more clearly, being more transparent or more on your body language, whatever it is for you, think about what could potentially create the biggest shift for you
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right now and start with that. Take action. That is more important than even having a conversation. It's the action that brings the changes. Regina Huber, thank you so much for being on our show today. I had a great time conversing with you. Thank you so much for having me. There's always so much more, you know, and so many different studies, examples that we could share. There's so much, so much about communication. It's a huge topic.
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But I know that your other guests also are contributing tremendous value. So I so appreciate this opportunity to be here with you and have this conversation. My pleasure. Thank you for being here. And before you go, where can we find you on social media or on the internet? My website is transform your performance like the name of my business.
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My LinkedIn is Regina Huber. I have a career growth strategies newsletter on LinkedIn that you can subscribe to, get lots of free resources there. I write mostly about career and leadership related topics, sometimes some unexpected topics as well. They are definitely also valuable for entrepreneurs, for business owners, not just for employees. I wanna point that out. And I have a YouTube channel with more free resources as well.
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It's at Regina Huber. My book, Speak Up, Stand Out, and Shine is on Amazon. It is all about how to mentally, physically, and energetically prepare for speaking situations, for any challenging situations in business that you might encounter. Check it out if you feel a need for that, if you feel inspired to. And for those among our audience who are committed to leveling up their leadership communication and their presence,
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and their overall leadership of self and others, I'm offering you a complimentary 30 minute leader up level session, where we strategize about your leadership and your specific challenge or goal in a confidential setting. And I think you will share that link. For sure, all of them will be on the show notes. Yes.
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So if you feel inspired and you're really committed to making a difference as a leader with your communication, with your skills, with your unique brilliance, then reach out to me and I'd be more than happy to support you. TransformYourPerformance.com, Regina Huber, the Transformational Leadership Coach. Thank you so much for being here. 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. Don't forget to subscribe, leave us a rating and a
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view on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.