Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Then I no longer cared how my peers were criticizing how I was leading.

As long as my team felt loved and understood and felt like they were a vital part of the solution, then that's all I cared about.

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.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Vicky Noethling, who is in the same town as me in Atlanta, Georgia.

She is a speaker, an author, and a coach.

And one of the other things we share is that we both have been on a Toastmasters journey.

Today, Vicky will talk to us about servant leadership and the work that she does with you in this regard.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Vicky.

Hello, how are you, Roberta?

Thank you for having me.

I'm doing fantastic.

How are you today?

Thank you for being here.

It's my pleasure.

It's a beautiful day in Georgia.

It certainly is.

So please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I have lived in Georgia, actually longer than I lived in Pittsburgh, but I'm originally a Pittsburgh girl.

And my husband and I moved here when the steel mills closed in Pittsburgh.

He was a teacher.

So I worked for 27 years now for UPS, retired in 2018, just in time, to enjoy a couple years before COVID hit.

And after COVID, I decided to start my own business.

I had during COVID was a region advisor for Toastmasters and used all of my skills from being a project manager and having remote teams to be able to convince my Toastmaster groups in California that we could do this and be able to be able to coach people, to counsel people, to encourage and motivate people, whether they're next to us or in a room across the world.

And so that inspired me to start my own business, to be able to coach people on public speaking and how to be a leader in the 21st century.

That is absolutely amazing.

And the reason I say that, I remember when Toastmasters, the pandemic started and Toastmasters went online, I asked myself, I said, are we going to give speeches sitting down?

Because you get some of your energy sometimes, just by mere fact of the fact that you're standing.

So we're going to sit on chairs and give, how is this going to work?

And a lot of us had those questions.

How did you have the vision to say, this is actually a great opportunity and we can make the best of it?

You know, it was really funny in 2019.

I actually met a lot of my districts.

I had five districts in California and I met with a lot of the district leaders in person.

And they complained, and you know California, so they complained, well, we can't grow.

We can't find people because all of the traffic keeps us from being able to get to our sessions and there's such density.

We're just locked in and we can't grow.

And I said, well, you should try hybrid meetings.

If people can't make it to your meeting in person, let them join online.

Oh, Vicki, you can't do that.

Nobody's gonna be able to do that.

And I said, well, you know, I've started three clubs that way.

I manage my teams that way.

I know you can do it.

And then God said, okay, Vicki, I'll give you a hand.

And they gave me a pandemic.

And all of a sudden, it was like I was a genius.

And so my co-region advisor and I started to do every week meetings and sometimes daily meetings with the leaders to help them get comfortable in this and be able to then coach their people on use of the camera and being able to be engaging with your voice as well as how you move.

And you were talking about sitting.

And so I have a standing desk, but before I got that, I just stood back further, used my camera, whatever I could do to be able to stand and give some of those presentations.

But I wanted them to see what it was like, how you could be engaging, how you could be using that camera on your phone or your laptop to really make the people feel like you're talking to them and not be disconnected.

And it's really all about what we talk about, even in person, is the eye contact.

Right.

How do you use the eye contact to engage?

So you have the voice that engages as if you were on the radio.

People can't see you, but your voice connects the audience, makes them feel something.

And that's all that you want to do in this environment is you want to use your gestures naturally.

You want to use your eye contact so that it does connect and make you feel like we're just talking across the table from one another.

And then use that vocal variety and the tone of your voice to really make them feel something.

And when you do all that, people forget that they're online.

The feeling, indeed, which we will delve into later, speaking of the hybrid model.

So I was one of the nervous people of the nervous ones, which, as I mentioned earlier, I thought, how's this going to work?

But then the wonderful thing about hybrid is that I've been able to join meetings in Canada, and I've never even been to Canada.

They happen during different days of the week, different times of the day.

You can literally join a meeting.

I joined one in Croatia, you know what I mean, while in the US.

So that is the beauty of this hybrid model, is that there's so much opportunity and access now, even though at the beginning, it seemed like it would have been a barrier to us having the usual in-person meetings.

It's really what's changing the world.

I belong to ATOS Masters Advanced Club out of California that is global.

We have people from Australia everywhere, all over the world, India.

And we meet late at night, so it's convenient-ish for all.

So I meet at 10 o'clock my time, but there are people that are one in the morning in Asia.

It just removes the borders.

It allows you to become more culturally evident and aware, which I think is really important to leadership so that we understand how different cultures do things.

It's giving a skill set to the employees of businesses, so now it does allow for you to be able to work from home remotely or hybridly, and that changes the whole landscape of how businesses are today.

And for coaches like me who teach leadership, it's also another skill set that I needed to be able to share with my folks that I work with because you can't lead, shut the door like the managers used to do, and when they walk by my office when they need me, or every so often, I'll walk by theirs, and you have to be more intentional, and you really have to show up authentically to make your team feel needed and loyal to you.

That is absolutely true.

So many organizations are now global, so you have these different cultures, languages, ways of doing things, and we've always discussed how leaders need to be inclusive.

Most organizations would be English-speaking organizations, and then they have people from non-English-speaking countries joining, being part of the team, so all of those people need to feel included.

What are some of the things that leaders can do in order to accomplish that?

I always say you first need to reincorporate, and I'm not a coffee drinker, but still just the idea of it is every day you should have a coffee break with your folks.

Again, when we met in person, we would take our morning break, if you will, and that would be a time where we chatted and got to build relationships with the team members, or even our managers, our bosses.

And it was a time where you could problem solve some things that were coming up that you forgot that you should mention, but the conversation was such that it brought things out.

You need to be able to do that organically in this online environment.

So that means the managers need to support their team, either on the phone or I like to do it in Zoom so they can see our faces, but just to chat, you know, just how you're doing, how things go and how was your weekend, maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just like your break would have been.

And that is impactful.

And also, whenever you have to do a review, whether it be quarterly or every six months, depending on what your culture has, but you need to do that in this virtual environment where they can see you, you can connect with the person.

That tone that you use is complemented by your eyes and your smile.

Whereas sometimes whenever you just have a call to do a review, people might misinterpret how you're saying things because of the tone you're using or their inability to connect with you.

So first and foremost, I think you need to find any corporate ways to have a connection that not only is for business purposes, but to build a team, to build that relationship that will make that employee, that team member, feel like they're part of the mission and solution.

I'm glad you mentioned the tone, which is why we live in this age of emojis, because there's a lot of written communication with Slack and other software that teams use to communicate.

You know, sometimes they feel like, oh, Vicky is a little harsh.

If you had put a smiling emoji at the end, it might have softened the tone.

You know, there's so many intricacies with regards to communication nowadays, especially written communication.

Now, let's go back to making the attendees in your virtual meeting feel included and making them feel something.

Because we always say, even when you speak, it's not just the message and the information, it's making them feel a certain way.

What are some of the strategies you can apply in order for them to feel?

One of the things when you're in businesses, a lot of times, we have those wonderful PowerPoints.

I do give kudos to PowerPoint for their designer feature because it really encourages more creative slides, if you will.

But it always amazes me where you see a slide that's just full of bullet points.

So if you think of that in this context, that as you're talking to someone, if all you're giving them is the bullet points, the facts, no stories, nothing to relate back to that fact, to make it memorable, to make it clearly understood, to allow for questioning as you're speaking to them.

If you just get in this virtual environment and dump data on them, you aren't engaging them.

You don't connect with them, and you will not really be impactful.

But if you are speaking with them in a way that's pulling a picture, so when I do PowerPoints, it's mostly pictures, that a picture is going to make you remember not only what is being said, but that emotion that the picture will bring to it.

And even in business, you can find illustrations and things that will make a person understand what you're trying to say.

That is one of the tricks that I always have is if I'm going to be meeting with someone and I want to get a point across, then I'll use PowerPoint in a way that will just be able to be turned off and on so that the picture could come up.

And then let's discuss, what did you feel?

What did you hear?

Engaging also needs to be these various exercises you can do, almost like icebreakers, you know, that we used to do at start some meetings where the person feels like their voice is heard, that you are asking them to contribute to this conversation.

It's not like some of the meetings that I've been in where the manager talks the whole time, and we sit back and we take notes, but there's never a clear indication if what he's saying is resonating with us or is being absorbed and understood by us, or if we're just taking a bunch of notes and we'll never look at them again, and we won't be successful in what he or she is trying to get from us.

So how can you engage with those open-ended questions?

Pictures do create that, and they say our brains think in pictures.

When you write a whole novel on your slide, and some of us read very quickly, we can read faster than you while you're busy reading your PowerPoint, and then we'll start thinking about other things.

We lose concentration, and you've lost us.

And that's another good point that you made there, because if you have a bunch of words on your slide, a lot of times you tend to read that, and we know we read faster than we would speak without reading.

And so now you're going ahead, and the person may be stuck on something you said two sentences ago, but you don't take a breath.

You don't take a pause.

So that's the other key thing is, how do you use powerful pauses?

And that's something that I've perfected over the years.

To give people time, you have to be able to allow them to really absorb what you're saying, to be able to think, how does it relate to me?

Or, oh God, yeah, that is a problem.

Or, I never thought of it that way.

But if you just zoom through with the facts, and the statistics, and you don't allow them and their brains to catch up with you, to absorb it, then you aren't engaging.

And part of engaging is reading the faces, the reactions, if you say something.

So if you're busy reading, obviously, you're not even giving yourself that opportunity to see how the audience is responding.

Because one thing about your presentation, you know it.

You've practiced it, you know everything.

If you need to take a detour, if you need to tweak it somehow to fit whatever the audience needs at the time, you can.

But if you're not paying attention and not engaging them and reading their reactions when you say something, you won't be able to have that opportunity to do that.

And you know, in this podcasting environment, that's why I like to do the video, I call them podcasts, because I can get to see how is that person that I'm conversing with reacting to the questions that I'm giving.

And whenever you get to something that really, when the organic conversation grows and builds, then you start to feel the excitement that they feel, and it's pictured in their faces, and it just makes for a better experience for the audience.

And so the facial expressions, I think, are something that sometimes, whenever you get into a business environment, you think you need to be stiff and proper and perfect all the time, but it doesn't really make you feel authentic.

It doesn't make you really engaging and interesting if you don't allow yourself to be yourself.

I think it's the myth that leaders sometimes buy into, which is if I'm going to be respected for my position, I need to come across a certain way.

And so they put on this mask sometimes.

Yeah, that's true.

I remember way back when I first started in management, and all of my managers and directors were men.

At that time, I was a supervisor, and they'd always hesitate to promote me to manager because they said, well, you're too soft on people, you're too this.

And I'm thinking, but my team will do anything I ask them.

Yes, because of the relationship, yeah.

Yeah.

And so that's where my whole premise for how I teach leadership today, leading with the heart, the head, and the hands came out, is I knew after I turned 50 and graduated finally from college that what I was doing was the right way to lead.

Then I no longer cared what people thought or how my peers were criticizing how I was leading.

As long as my team felt loved and understood and felt like they were a vital part of the solution, then that's all I cared about.

If it wasn't the way you do it, that's the way you do it.

But I know that this works for me.

And I'm sure your team was able to produce the goods because of the environment that you created.

Now, let's talk about the work that you do with the youth.

So you also teach them leadership skills.

And we always say the schooling system does not incorporate that in addition to the usual academics.

How did you get started on this work?

So in 2011, I was at a Christmas party with my teacher husband, and one of his friends, teacher friends, was interested if I could help her out, because she had started a new program the year before at her school.

And it was during Obama, and he had to do budget cuts.

And unfortunately, the curriculum for her program was part of the budget cuts.

And so she said, do you have anything that we could do with the youth and Toastmasters?

I said, well, yeah, they have a youth program.

And this particular group already had the leadership piece.

They're not a ROTC, but they do dress up in uniforms and do parades and things like that.

But they're called Junior Corps.

And these are kids that were on the edge.

They had the potential, but they weren't living or working up to their potential.

And they could have been lost in our system, in our schools.

They could have been lost easily.

They have chips on their shoulders or whatever.

And so I said, sure, let's look at what we have.

But I'll modify the Toastmasters a bit because they spent like the first three or four sessions building leadership roles and things, which this group already had.

So we went right into teaching them how to be a speaker.

And to me, to be a great leader, you have to be a great communicator.

It's a no-brainer.

There's no getting around it.

You have to be a great communicator.

And so for me, that was the missing piece that they needed.

And the thing that was so magical is this very diverse group of 28 kids when they had to do what we call the icebreaker.

So it's a speech just to talk three things about themselves, just for us to get to know them.

In the way that I always present myself, it's like open book.

I'm here to help.

This is a safe place.

And these kids did their four-minute speech about themselves and told us things about their lives, families deported, families, broken relatives in jail, all these stories that a middle school kid shouldn't have to deal with.

But they were.

But the thing that was amazing is that some of these stories that they shared in front of their classmates were ones that the teachers didn't really realize fully, nor their fellow students.

And it changed the vibe of the room.

It changed the way that the teachers thought about them, no longer thinking, oh, they just a bad attitude or chip on their shoulder.

But now to start to understand the impact of what their lives were doing for them or against them.

And the fellow students were impacted by that.

But the thing that really impressed me is after each of the speeches, I give a two minutes evaluation.

So for a lot of them, what I heard from them is, that's the first time that anyone listened to them intently enough for four minutes to give them feedback of what they did well and where they might improve and why.

And it was just so much of a eye opener for me that I knew this is what I have to do.

Because there are so many kids that have a story to tell that needs to be told.

But they also needed to know that their voice is a tool that really will help them anywhere in life.

After 12 weeks, these same kids that were shy and unable to hardly make the three minutes first time speech or the table topic, which is just one to two minutes, were giving us heartfelt, impactful stories of about who impressed them or inspired them.

So much so that now every year, I do a contest for the best Youth of the Year speaker.

What it showed me was that now these kids could be a solution to some of the problem in the schools, because they talked about how bullying affects them.

They talked about how their situation impacts them, or they talked about how a person or a group really is inspiring them to be more than they thought they could be.

And it's just a great stepping stone.

So we do the program in middle school and high school, and the middle school program prepares them for debate and other things, discussion questions in school, in high school.

And the high school program helps them job interviews and college interviews in preparing for college.

So it's a wonderful asset.

So we've had thousands of kids now go through the programs.

That is amazing.

When you think of how we always say everybody wants to be seen, heard, and validated, and we think of all the grownups who never felt they had a voice or never felt heard, and how they act as a result of that.

So these kids at that age are starting to realize that, hey, somebody actually is willing to listen to my story.

The thing that really also kind of pivoted me to want to do this is when I was in management school for work.

So to become a manager, you had to do three weeks training offsite.

So we were 25 of us, and there was a kid who was probably just 30, and I was in my 40s at that time.

And this guy at 30 years old would be sick at the thought that he had to talk in front of just our small group of five people, let alone the fact that to graduate from this course, he had to speak in front of the 25 or 28 of us, and just for three minutes, talking about the sports weather or news.

That's all he had to do was do a three-minute talk.

And every time he had to talk, he would be in the men's room being sick.

You know, something happened to him in his childhood where someone embarrassed him, someone told him he wasn't good enough, and that stayed with him.

And there's so many people that that story is their story.

And so my whole wanting to work with the youth is, I don't want you to wait until you're 30 to realize that you have a voice and that you can overcome this terror and this feeling of you're going to throw up if you have to speak in front of people.

So I went to the teacher and I said, this kid is great, he will be a wonderful manager, but he needs to know that he can do this.

And the teacher said, I got this.

And so the next day, we all got there, we're all networking, and the teacher just goes up to him and he says, hey, did you see the game last night?

And he starts talking about, oh my God, yes, it was so awesome.

And he tells about the quarterback, what he did and all the different plays he made.

And he's animated, and he's using gestures, and he's like so excited.

And after three minutes, the teacher said, thank you.

You just gave us a speech.

That impact for those of us that knew the issue that this kid had, you know, our team just brought tears to your eyes because you knew this was going to change his life.

He would remember that moment, and any time he had somebody in the same situation as his, he would be able to coach them and counsel them to do the same.

And so when I work with the kids or adults, that's what I do.

I want you to just have a conversation.

I love and believe that so much.

I bought the URL.

So it's just a conversation I own.

Yes.

And here's the thing about that is the impact of the career coaching.

Like you were talking about the interview and all of those things that lead up to you building a life as a grown up.

Some people cannot speak at an interview despite having great college credits, and they cannot get the job.

Or if they do get the job, then they're not able to get promoted despite being brilliant at the job because of that.

And therefore, it just becomes this layer after layer of, if you don't work on your communication and speaking skills, it will affect your life.

That's for sure.

Yes.

Thank you for that, Vicki.

And then please tell us a bit about your podcast.

So my podcast is Find Your Leadership Confidence.

And the goal of it is really to empower you to become a confident leader.

I think of myself not as an influencer, but more as a connector.

I like to connect you with resources, people who have been there, done that, have got the t-shirt, and are thankfully willing to share with you the secrets and the tips and tricks so that you can be successful.

Through my life, I've always had people that lended a hand, that shared their skills, their ideas, their wisdom, so that I could maybe not have as rough of a road as some others.

You know, you always have to give back.

And so for me, this is a great way for me to be able to connect people with other folks that can help them grow their business, their career.

The best thing is, as you know, is you get to meet some awesome, wonderful people.

So I've got now, I think I'm recording this week almost 290.

It's in just two years now.

That is amazing.

You've collaborated at least on authoring six books.

What are the main themes in the books that you've written with your co-authors?

So some of the books I talk about that overcoming the fear of public speaking and how important it is to be confident as a speaker and the tricks and tips and things that can help you maybe feel more confident.

And then the other books are related to like the Game Changer behind me just came out in November, and it is where I talk about that leadership with the heart, the head, and the hands.

Because as I said, the 21st century leader cannot lead the way I learned to be a manager in the 80s.

That hammer method is no longer doable, and you have to be able to be pivoting and adjusting, and you need to know it can't be one size fits all.

Yes, it's more work for managers and supervisors to have that, but the thing that makes people care about you is when you care about them.

And so we want to make sure that you first, as I said, lead with your heart, be able to understand and lead with empathy and emotional intelligence.

What does your gut tell you as you get to meet this person?

I had a supervisor who I thought she would be great before she was a supervisor.

She was a programmer, and I thought you would be wonderful as a supervisor.

And I knew financially she could use that boost in her salary.

But every time I asked her if she was ready to do the paperwork to do that, she always said no.

And she was a very sort of sheltered person.

And so finally, I made it my mission that I was going to try to break that shell on a more personal level to get to know her.

And finally, she let me know that her son, who was high school age, was having issues.

And she felt if she went into management, her pull from the managers and the other responsibilities would take away from her being there for her son who needed her.

And I respected that.

And so I went to my managers and wrote in her file that she would be a great manager, but not yet, and just to be patient.

And so when her son got through college and was doing okay, they approached her and she said yes, and she became a great manager.

She's retired now.

But it's just one of those things where you cannot just have these people come in.

As we did in the 80s, you came to work, you did your job, you shut your computer off, and you went home and you left work at work.

And there was no personal things, you know.

I remember where people didn't want to do social things because, no, I work with you, I don't want to hang with you.

Once you have that relationship with your team, it's so much easier to be able to explain to them how they fit in this, you know, as a cog in the wheel of the mission and the vision, and how what they do is important to us being successful as a business.

So now that strategic part is easily understood.

So that's the heart, the head.

And then the hands is you have to give back.

I learned more lessons from my volunteering than any of the jobs I've ever had.

And so that servant leader has to be part of your ability to really grow as an individual and as a leader.

I think that it makes us humble.

It allows us to be vulnerable and authentic as we approach it.

Again, if you're a leader, you need to really lead, as I said, in your heart, your head and your hands.

Words of wisdom from Vicky Noethling, the speaker, author, and coach, who most especially works with the youth and leaders to help them lead with the heart, the hands, and the head.

Vicky, thank you so much for being here.

I really enjoyed my conversation with you.

Thank you, Roberta.

It's been so much fun, and I loved having you be such a wonderful host, making me feel so comfortable.

You are so kind.

I appreciate that.

And before you go, where can we find you on the socials and on the web?

Well, you can find me everywhere.

So on the web, it is findyourleadershipconfidence.com.

I also have an app.

You can go to Apple or Google Play to just search Vicky Noethling LLC.

I am on Facebook as Victoria Ann Noethling, and also findyourleadershipconfidence.

On LinkedIn, I'm Victoria Noethling.

Instagram is Vicky Noethling.

Pinterest, Vicky Noethling.

So you find me everywhere.

And on YouTube, you can subscribe, and it's Vicky Noethling LLC to subscribe.

Findyourleadershipconfidence and Vicky Noethling.

I will put that all on the show notes.

Thank you very much for being on our show today.

Oh, it was my pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

My absolute pleasure as well.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally.

And stay tuned for more episodes to come.