Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. My name is Roberta, and today I have Laura Barker. She is a coach. She spent more than 20 years in human resources for big corporations in Toronto. And she's here to talk to us about interview skills, communication and interpersonal skills at work. And what is it that we can do to be not only expert communicators in the work.
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place, but in our personal lives as well. And before I go any further, help me welcome Laura. Hi, Laura. Hi, Roberta. I'm excited to be here. Good to have you here. I'm so glad we're finally able to speak. Yeah, me too.
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I'd like you to take us back to your first 20 years experience as a human resources professional. What are some of the things that you noticed when it comes to work environments and work interactions? I think over the past 20 years, one of the big things that's happened is much less formality in the workplace. I would say that when I started in HR in the 90s, people for the most part would dress up for work using...
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That is a simple example. People were in the office every day. I did not know a single person who worked from home when I was starting out in the nineties. You fast forward that to today. And I know people, we used to use the term telecommuting. That was the term for people working from home, but even it was rare. It has become more and more popular. And of course, with the pandemic, there's been that huge shift to working from.
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Same as me, I said my first job was in 1995. I find that also the differences between now and that era, and this is something that I sometimes coach people on, is not just the formality of the dressing, but the formality of the lingo. Correct. The business lingo, right? Yes, yes. When you used to write letters, correspondence to clients or to your colleagues, how did you address those labeled letters compared to how they were written today? Yeah, they were much more formal.
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I might type it out on a computer, but I would still be printing it and it would be mailed to the person. And yes, we did use email, of course, but I think as we moved more digitally, things became less formal. So from writing a letter to using emails and then to texting, all these different formats have changed how we communicate with each other. That is so true. We used to say, hello, Laura. Now we say hi. Correct. Yes, that's true. If I'm sending you a picture.
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Back then we used to say, attached, please find here with the photo. We used to say photo as per our telephone conversation. There was much telephone, right? Now here's the pic. So true. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And there's something that that reminded me of my first job. I was in recruit. I was recruiting. I worked at a pharmaceutical company. I was recruiting. I was on the phone all.
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day long. I was doing the phone interviews, I was doing reference checks. It's interesting because people were used to phone conversations all the time. I was used to getting interrupted all the time with a phone call, no matter what I was doing. And when I moved that to my later HR career, working in a corporate office, no one used the phone. I mean, it was rare.
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get a phone call. All conversations were done by email or they'd set up a meeting to have a discussion if they wanted to do it face to face. But the phone was the least used communication medium. That's right. Yeah. Just before you ended your human resources career, did you find that speaking of this formal communication, because now we have texting language, the abbreviations, you know, half the time I have to Google what people are saying to me. So you have executives our age now and they're hiring graduates who come with texting language.
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Have you noticed if there's any breakdown in communication because of that or is everything just smooth sailing? No, there's definitely communication styles for each generation of the workplace and preferred mediums. So the boomers who are older than us, they don't want to do pre-reading. They want to go into a meeting and talk about it there.
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That to them is the way they communicate. It's through the medium of the meeting and the thinking, the brainstorming. GenX wants a PowerPoint, the pre-reading, and millennials like the sidebar conversations in the meeting. So they'll often try talking to the person beside them as opposed to speaking to.
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the lead facilitator of the meeting. So it's important to understand these different styles of communication because they impact our understanding of what came out of a meeting. And also of each generation and the millennials are having their side conversation, you're gonna feel disrespected. Correct, yes. So how do we bridge that gap? It really comes down to communication. I mean, how powerful is it for a boomer to know that when a millennial is doing a sidebar conversation, they're not intending to be disrespected.
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That is their mode of communication. And for me as a Gen-Xer who likes to come to a meeting with a PowerPoint and to make decisions, it is helpful for me to understand, you know, when you go to a meeting with a boomer, they're not going to do the pre-reading. I don't feel so frustrated that I'm wasting time explaining something to a boomer because I don't feel as a Gen-Xer that they've done their work ahead of time. And speaking of PowerPoint presentations, what's your style? Do you write the entire novel or?
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Are you a bullet point type? That's another thing that's changed in the last 20 years. We've become so much more visual. As I've gotten older and we're experienced, particularly in HR, I've learned that what people remember are the short bullet points, the visual images, and then I can talk it up when I'm there, but when I have too much verbiage on the screen, I lose my audience. That's what I advise people on. I always recommend that. I say, you know...
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what you're going to talk about anyway. Your slides are going to be your sticky note. Just bullet points, if you're going to put about two or three words. But if you read the entire novel, I'm not going to look at Laura, I'm going to be reading. And I read much faster. So by the time you are done reading your slide.
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You've lost me. I'm already thinking of something else. Yes. And you know what? The other thing, Roberta, I'm thinking of my most recent job where we had people from all over the world and I had to do health and safety training. A lot of them, English is their second, third, fourth language. So the visual images really help. So when I can do a visual image of explaining a concept in health and safety, it goes much farther than writing a whole bunch of words that they may or may not understand. We think in pictures. I spent almost
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concept, let's say you're in IT because a lot of my clients are...
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tech people who are brilliant, they just don't know how to present to their potential clients to say, Hey, my brilliant innovation is going to help you take your company to the next level. Instead of all this programming language, the Amazon directors are not going to understand. You can simplify it by having a picture to explain how they are going to benefit from your program. Have a graph that shows them if you don't have my program, this is how far your company can go statistics and not too much. They understand that way better
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especially if they're not religiously advanced people. So what made you get started on your own company? I had worked in lots of industries, small companies and really big companies. I'm talking 200,000 people.
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but I've also worked in small companies of 10 people. And there are pros and cons to big and small companies. And it's fun to learn different industries. I worked in hospitality hotels for many years, which is a fun industry, let's face it. I'm fine. But I think that I had reached a point where I just wasn't satisfied with HR anymore.
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I had changed, I think the HR function has changed in the last 20 plus years. I was ready for something different. So I did try project management thinking, you know, if I shift career focus, I loved doing projects when I worked in HR. That was fun. That's why I thought I'd do project management. But when I did it every day, I realized, no, that's actually not what I want to do. What did you feel did not meet your expectations? Yeah, I would say the thing with
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Project management that I did not know going in is that project managers have all the responsibility without the authority. Sometimes that experience is I need to get X implemented by X date. And I need to enlist the support of IT, of marketing, accounting, the backend. There's all these different teams behind this. You're like a producer. Yeah. And you have to coordinate all that.
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You know, like a conductor, you're coordinating all that. And sometimes it is time bound. That's the nature of project management. I can't move ahead with X until that's done. So then it's chasing people. A lot of this is people stuff, right? Some of it is just pure administration. Correct. So I think I didn't know that going in. I thought I think I just knew it intellectually. But when I did a day in and day out, it was a different experience. It can be stressful because project management is so time bound. It is.
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Yeah. Yeah. And ultimately my customer needs, needs something implemented. They don't care that I can't get such and such team behind the scenes. Problem. Oh, it's not. It's mine. And so when you left human resources and you started your coaching business.
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What have you realized as some of your patterns when it comes to careers? What I realized is what I was drawn to is people, but I love people. I love understanding how they tick. I love understanding what motivates them. And really ultimately what I found and what I want everyone to find is to feel that their life has purpose. And in this day and age, what's happened is we are so identified by what we do that understanding what our career is, it's not just a nice thing.
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to do. It's integral to feeling aligned with who we are. For me, I've decided to focus on career coaching with my background in HR and because of what I just described to you. The people that I'm seeing in general, the themes that are coming out are around the great resignation, that the pandemic has forced a reckoning, trying to figure out who they are and what they want. Which they probably never thought of until they were forced to work from home. For me, it's like a ball of yarn. Like this whole...
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Work, family and home life, it's all tangled up. I think there's been a lot of frustration because people have been, had to stay inside for extended periods of time. It's forced them to think about, am I really happy doing this? Why am I doing this? Because pay or your salary is only gonna take you so far. And I do know from working in HR for so many years that pay, I'm not saying it's not important, but in the end, that's not why people.
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leave jobs. And the number one reason is communication and relationship with the supervisor is actually the number one reason. The other thing I used to actually be, I specialized in compensation for a number of years. And so what would happen is people will complain about their pay and say, I need to give so and so an extra whatever it was 10,000, 20,000, because I can't afford to lose her or him right now. And what I learned
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And the time then again is when you give that person the money, they still leave. The money is not the problem. Yeah, so you know, you might keep them for six months a year, but they leave. Because there's other factors at play that they're not talking about, and they're using money as the thing to focus on, something tangible. And so that's why it doesn't satisfy over a period of time. When you were talking about this point earlier, you touched on communication skills. Tell us more about that.
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What I see happening is I think over the pandemic, I have seen somewhat of a coarsening. I hate to say it, but I have seen somewhat of a coarsening of communication skills. It is through that regular interaction with people, communication skills get better through practice, general exchange. People talk about it all the time, about that water cooler conversation, about what do you do on the weekend? And it sounds silly. And yet those are the skills that keep you.
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connected with others and help you to improve your communication skills. And in this day and age, after two plus two years of COVID, Zoom meetings for all of us coming out our ears. We don't have at the beginning of meetings that same kind of water cooler talk, because with Zoom, if I'm talking, you can't.
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The one-on-one conversations have changed and the group conversations have changed. And I also know from HR that hiring people during the pandemic, it was harder to get them integrated into the organization. In my last HR job, we would have, because as I mentioned to you, we had people from around the world. So we would do monthly lunches. People would host and the company would pay for food from their home country. So either they would make their own food or they would bring food in. They'd order it from a Turkish restaurant. Bring the food in. We all got a chance to try these different foods.
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from around the world. Like it's simple, but it was fun and a great way to communicate, to learn about language and culture through an easy way because food is something we can all relate to. That is amazing. I don't know if your new experience you realize how important it is because you're going to work with people who have different skill sets.
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that all need to come to this project, you need to be able to work with different personalities in order to bring this together. So if you lack on communication skills, what's the likelihood you're gonna have a managerial or directorial position if you don't know how to work with people? Oh, huge, because bottom line is for a project to succeed, you need everyone on side with you. So how do you do that? You can't just have one communication style. You have to meet people where they're at. And you know, if I'm talking to an engineer,
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What I know is based on my experience, I'm gonna be given bullet points. Keep this very matter of fact, I will likely do a follow-up via email with those bullet points stated. It may be a preferred communication spot. Now, that depends on the person. You get to know their personalities and what works with them.
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one person versus another. If I'm working with a salesperson, it's gonna be talking. So when you're talking about people presenting a potential project, talking about features and benefits, or why an IT product should come to market, you're gonna be presenting to people who like the verbal, who want to hear people talking a lot. They're not necessarily going to be impressed by a sheet with full of technical details. They will be impressed if you can talk to them about it. When you're on the other side of it and you're not that technically inclined, it's kind of scary.
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because you feel like you might not really fully understand it. And if you don't fully understand what they are selling, are you going to buy it? Exactly. And some people might be scared to ask because they don't want to look stupid. No matter how many times our teachers told us to ask the stupid questions, we're still not courageous enough to do so. I could tell you I love that idea. But in the real world, not everyone has that courage, Roberta, to be straightforward about it and say, I'm sorry, I don't understand.
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Can you explain that to me? I recently learned something where the golden rule says, treat people the way you want to be treated. But the platinum rule is, treat people how they want to be treated. Oh my God!
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And the same applies to communication, just like you said. Communicate to people the way they want to communicate it to, in their communication style. Yeah, and that varies by the role of the person. It could also be age and stage of life. Sometimes with an older person in the workforce, a phone call might be preferred. You know, if I'm dealing with someone really young in the workplace, Gen Z employee, I will just do a text message. That's going to be the preferred communication. That's what I prefer. Yeah. You've worked in both big companies and small companies.
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one or two differences that you noticed? Think that in big companies, that's where I did the compensation job, for example. Such a big company that I could do a dedicated role within the HR function, dive really deep and really understand compensation, benefits. Nowadays, they call it total rewards. You could get really deep into that subject matter. When I've worked at small companies as the HR director, I'm wearing every hat. So I'm doing compensation, benefits, performance management, recruitment, determinations.
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The whole shebang. In the end, I loved being there from the beginning to the end, the whole employee life cycle. For me, I like having my finger in many pies and that's my own style. So, you know, when I'm mentoring people who are coming into HR, for example, one of the things I think they need to consider is what do I actually want? Do I want to be in a big company, perhaps specialize in a certain area, or do I really want to be more of a generalist and learn lots of different things? My first job, five years, big company, so.
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Only did the transportation planning job that I was hired to do. Worked for a small company. You have your hands on many different platforms because they don't have a Laura who just does HR.
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What do you think of people who would say, oh, I went to Harvard, I don't do photocopies? It makes me sad because that's how you learn. We can all choose our attitudes. For that Harvard person who doesn't want to do the fax machine or some sort of menial job that they feel is beneath them, we can choose how we want to respond to that. And in the end, that's how you learn.
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When you're doing that photocopying, read what that's about. Ask questions about it, because that's the kind of stuff that you're never gonna learn in school. And you may not even hear about in office conversations. When you read that stuff and you could ask so-and-so about it, that's how you learn to move to the next level. It's actually really advantageous to do so.
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It is. Have you realized having your own company? It's like a whole production, all the behind the scenes stuff. If you didn't have the best of attitudes when you were working in corporate and said, oh, I only do my job description, is the stuff that you went assigned to do when you start having your own company. Those are the things that you do. Yes. In terms of moving up the ladder, ultimately, your skills are only going to take you so far. I can say this with honesty, after 20 plus years of HR, that you'll get to a certain level with skills.
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technical skills, but really what moves you ahead, it is those soft skills. It is knowing how to communicate. It is understanding how all the different aspects of the organization are run and how they work together. That's what makes the difference. The entire production. Because the way you're gonna learn and the way you're gonna grow is by experiencing all sorts of other things. So that's the advantage of a small company, having your finger in many parts.
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And then when it comes to interviews, since you're a career coach, the interview panel, do they only focus on the skills and what you graduated with from Stanford? Or do you also sort of study the person's personality and see if it's going to merge with the company's environment? You know, that's a great question. And I actually think that the way the interviews happen depends on the type of company you want to work at. If you're applying for a big company like a Google or an Apple, they've got a whole system in place in terms of what they're looking for.
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And you can Google it to find out. What I've learned works best is if my hiring manager focuses on some of the technical things that need to get done, talking about, if they're gonna be managing others, talking about career growth, if they can focus on that, what I can do is what we call behavioral interviewing, which is past behavior predicts future behavior. Right. Tell me a time when, tell me a time when the reason they're asking you that.
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question is because more often than not, we work on autopilot and we tend to do the same behaviors again and again. If I'm seeing some red flags, I will make a note of that with the hiring manager. But if I'm not, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. Yes. Your job is done. So before we conclude two or three things for you to start mastering when it comes to communication, soft and interpersonal skills at work. You know, I heard a quotation from the Dalai Lama that I think is
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So I would love to share it. He said, when you talk, you're only repeating what you already know. I say this to you and to myself, to all of us. I think sometimes we are in a society that likes to talk, but doesn't always listen. And the most effective communication requires both. You know, a balance. And I think right now talking weighs more than listening. The best setup is when there's a bit more balance. Two ears and one mouth. Use in...
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Yes, again, talking about communication styles, what lands for one person doesn't land for another. So it's meeting people where they're at. Sometimes we're saying the same concepts in three different ways because one of them will connect. What can you say about an employee who feels unheard by their supervisor? So what usually happens is they come to talk to me about it because they're not happy.
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that their supervisor is not listening. So what I will do is I will listen to them to find out what's going on and ask them, what is the outcome that you're looking for? Because more often than not, they just don't feel heard. It's not even that they need that answer right away, but by helping them see that they've been listened to, I can help facilitate that conversation then with the supervisor. I would sit down with the supervisor, I'd be the facilitator. This is what Jane is saying. Jane, is there anything you want to add?
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that I haven't explained here. I will have also talked to the supervisor separately and explained supervisor, Jane, this is what the supervisor is telling me. Do you understand what's going on? Do you have any questions about it? And then usually there's some defensiveness on one or both.
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What helps I find is to focus on the outcome so then it becomes less about blame. That's how the conversation can move forward. Focus on the goal. Laura, this has been wonderful. And before we go, please tell us where anyone can get more of your career coaching. So thank you, Roberta. I have a website, www.laurabarkercoaching.com. I've created a YouTube channel, also Laura Barker Coaching. I do a weekly blog.
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You can sign up by going to my website. But what I also do is video versions of the blog. I have learned that some people are visual learners. Everybody's different. And it's okay. Just because I have a certain learning style doesn't mean everyone else does. Laura Barker, thank you so much for being here today. You've shed some real nuggets, and especially with those who are still looking for guidance in their careers, this has been invaluable. Appreciate you being here. Thanks, Roberta. I appreciate it.