Speaking and Communicating Podcast

00:00

Speaker 1
It's not helpful to go in to a manufacturing plant and talk to them about high level strategy. It's really helpful to go in and say, "When you do this, this, and this, and we keep our cost per unit to this, and you know, your labor productivity is this, it contributes to what we're trying to do at an enterprise level strategically. You know, your outputs feed the rest of the organization."
00:23

Speaker 2
(Intro music) 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. 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 our guest today. Joining us from Florida, Greg Kaiser Sr. is the founder of Management Mastery, who went from the mail room to the C-Suite. He's here to show us that in order to have your best career results and to get promoted and noticed, you need to have some skills that we will be focusing on today during this conversation. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Greg.
01:29

Speaker 1
Hi, Roberta. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
01:32

Speaker 2
My absolute pleasure. Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Why do you think that after all your experiences you wanted to bring to the attention of your clients that there are some skills that they need to have in order to accelerate their careers?
01:55

Speaker 1
Okay, I'll, I'll, I'll stay with the communication theme. I, I was just recording some videos earlier today, and one of the lines, communication is the most important thing managers do. You know, because managers typically think of, "Oh, I've got my goals, I've got my objectives, and I've got to put these plans together," and, and they get it all jumbled up. I'm like, "Well, those are nice. Everybody else needs to know about them." You need to spend a little bit of time clearly communicating those to people so that everybody's like, "Yep, got it.
02:33

Speaker 1
I know, I know exactly what it is I'm supposed to do, and more importantly, I know why I'm supposed to do it."
02:40

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
02:41

Speaker 1
You know, so there's a big difference between telling somebody to do something, go do this, and giving somebody direction. Because when you give them direction, you build into that the why part. People don't get motivated by being told to do something. They get motivated when they say, "Oh, if I do this, this is the outcome that we're going to get." Okay, I can get behind that.
03:07

Speaker 2
Right.
03:09

Speaker 1
So, and, and I keep circling back to this, be- because, don't, don't misunderstand me, I like the technical parts of management.
03:19

Speaker 2
Of course, we all do. We got to get the work done. (laughs)
03:22

Speaker 1
(laughs) You know, I, I, I like the technical parts of it.
03:24

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
03:25

Speaker 1
But to make those effective, you've got to wrap communication around those and say, "Okay, I just spent the last eight hours creating this beautiful plan. And between me and my computer, it's the most beautiful comp- plan ever. Now maybe we should go tell somebody about it." (laughs)
03:47

Speaker 2
(laughs) Don't, don't let it be a secret between the two of you.
03:51

Speaker 1
Yeah.
03:51

Speaker 2
Because here's the question we always ask, and maybe, Greg, you can shed some light on this.
03:57

Speaker 1
Okay.
03:57

Speaker 2
Who is responsible, from the time that you are in college or university and you study your craft, who is responsible to add that communication piece to your technical training? From studying, to graduating, to the workplace, to managerial, to leadership, who?
04:20

Speaker 1
This is part of why I do what I do. 82%, which is a pretty big number, 82% of new managers, and I don't know if it was Gallup that took this, I forget who did the poll, but it's fairly recent, it was a 2024 poll.
04:37

Speaker 2
Right.
04:37

Speaker 1
Said they were never trained on how to be a manager. It's like, I ran some of my own polls a couple of years back be- I wrote a book, and before I wrote it, I was putting polls out to get information and said, "How did you learn how to be a manager?" To your question, guess what the number one answer was? Painfully.
04:59

Speaker 2
Hmm. That's not fun.
05:02

Speaker 1
Trial...
05:02

Speaker 2
And therefore, who's responsible to take away that pain along the path to becoming a manager?
05:10

Speaker 1
Yeah, the number one answer was trial and error. I did things, they didn't work. Somebody told me it didn't work, so then I went and tried something else. Instead of saying, you know, had you done this, let me sit down, show you how to do this thing. If I was in HR, I'd call it development.
05:30

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
05:31

Speaker 1
And train the people. It, it... Quick side story. So my stepson got a job in a, in an industry he didn't know that much about. He's an outstanding salesperson.
05:43

Speaker 2
Right.
05:43

Speaker 1
But he moved into an industry that he didn't know that much about. So he, he's there about two weeks. He goes to his manager and, and says, "Hey, you know, I, I need to learn about the product line, you know, it's a pretty technical product line." And the guy's like, "Well, just go figure it out." (laughs) Like, like what do you- you-
06:03

Speaker 2
They don't even give training on the actual product they're selling?
06:07

Speaker 1
Yeah. A- And he's like, "Just go figure it out." I'm like, "Uh, I don't know. Maybe the guy could have taken half a day and said, 'You know, in this portion of our portfolio, this is what the products deliver. In this portion of our portfolio, this is ... Here's a bunch of technical manuals and, you know, here, here's the information that we use for marketing. Look these over and then ask me specific questions.'" Nothing.
06:31

Speaker 1
"Just go figure it out."
06:32

Speaker 2
Wow.
06:32

Speaker 1
And I have, I have seen this a bunch of times, you know, forget about that industry, in other industries. You know, "Just go figure it out," is not training. That's trial and error. A- A- And when you have a front-facing job like sales, it really matters what you say.
06:51

Speaker 2
Of course.
06:51

Speaker 1
'Cause you have these people that, that are gonna send you money, buy from you, and they're relying on what you tell them. And I'm like, "Oh, geez. (laughs) Just, just go figure it out."
07:03

Speaker 2
Sounds like it is a tough problem.
07:05

Speaker 1
It's a tough problem in a lot of organizations. My observation, this is over decades, right?
07:12

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
07:12

Speaker 1
In working with a bunch of different organizations. Organizations tend to do their training in these tight little silos. So under the umbrella of communication, they would say, "We need to train our managers on conflict resolution," which is a super-
07:31

Speaker 2
Okay.
07:31

Speaker 1
... helpful thing to do.
07:34

Speaker 2
Right.
07:35

Speaker 1
My brain goes to, "What was the cause of the conflict?" Maybe you should train them on that. How do you avoid conflict with your employees? You communicate well with them so that there's no misunderstandings that you're gonna argue about later. Conflict.
07:54

Speaker 2
Right.
07:54

Speaker 1
But that typically i- is what I've seen. They, they get narrower and narrower in focus, and there's a point in time in your career where you need that. And so let's say you've now gotten to middle management where you're interacting externally, outside the company.
08:13

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
08:14

Speaker 1
Then you need to know things like, okay, I need to know negotiation skills. I, I probably need to have some public speaking skills-
08:23

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
08:23

Speaker 1
... 'cause you're interacting with the public. Prior to getting into middle management, you should have these, I call them foundational, you should have these foundational parts of management pretty well down-
08:38

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
08:39

Speaker 1
... before you tar- start launching into these really surgical applications. They're easier to market because it's very easy to do a problem statement around something like conflict resolution.
08:55

Speaker 2
Right.
08:56

Speaker 1
Everybody's had conflict at work. Their hair's on fire and they're like, "Oh, I'd love to fix that." (laughs) You know?
09:03

Speaker 2
Right. (laughs)
09:04

Speaker 1
A- A- And-
09:04

Speaker 2
But you, you highlighted a very good point when you said, "It's better to nip it in the bud. It's better to create the kind of environment where the conflict is minimized to begin with."
09:17

Speaker 1
Yes.
09:18

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
09:19

Speaker 1
And that's ... You know, one of the other things, I, I have a course on business communications. A- And one of the things that I talk about is, companies want to have a good culture, they want to have a healthy culture.
09:33

Speaker 2
Right.
09:34

Speaker 1
And culture is a function of consistently communicating. You're on, on-message is a term that, you know, some people use.
09:44

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
09:44

Speaker 1
But you're c- consistently communicating with your employees and your teams, "Hey, this is where we're going, and this is ..." Uh, I'll never forget, a lady said this to me one time. I was in, doing a consulting engagement and I'm asking her like, "So what's the culture here?" And she's like, "I, I don't know. I can tell you how we do things around here." (laughs) I'm like, "That's what I need to know."
10:07

Speaker 2
(laughs)
10:07

Speaker 1
"How do you do things around here?" (laughs) And, you know-
10:11

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
10:11

Speaker 1
... because sh- she didn't think in terms of culture.
10:14

Speaker 2
Right, right.
10:15

Speaker 1
She just knew how things got done in the company.
10:17

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
10:18

Speaker 1
And I'm like, "Well, I'm a consultant. I would call that culture." (laughs) And she laughed and she's like, "Ah, it's more important to me to know how to get things done around here." (laughs)
10:27

Speaker 2
(laughs)
10:27

Speaker 1
I got it, okay. (laughs)
10:28

Speaker 2
Like you were saying at the beginning that (laughs) you know, the actual communication also is to why we do what we do, so that it, you can understand-
10:37

Speaker 1
Yes.
10:37

Speaker 2
... how it fits into the bigger picture. Whatever-
10:40

Speaker 1
Exactly.
10:40

Speaker 2
... you do, your little piece, how it fits into the bigger puzzle. So now when it comes to whatever career that you aspire to have and how you'd like to grow your career, when an individual contributor, really brilliant at their job, is now promoted to lead people, what are some of the skills that you've realized they really need to have to not just do trial and error and painfully make the transition?
11:13

Speaker 1
Yeah. So there, there's a couple different ways you can look at it. When you're a really good individual contributor, typically, you're functionally focused. You have a job. I'm a software developer. I'm a salesperson, you know, single salesperson, and I'm really good at that. I have really good skills around writing code and developing software. I have really good s- skills around closing sales, overcoming objections. Once you move the people to the next level, those skills are not nearly as important. Now you, now you have to back up and say, "Oh, geez. Now, now my job is to get other people to do all these things, so I need interpersonal skills." The way I try to explain it to people, I'm like, "O- Okay. You, you moved up to the managerial level.
12:01

Speaker 1
You're, you're ascending this ladder, right?"
12:04

Speaker 2
Right.
12:04

Speaker 1
You go from functional, individual contributor, then you go to manager, first line, then manager, manager executive.As you move through those levels, you have to look at the company internally and externally, depending on the level you're at, and I, I try to wrap this into two things, intersections and interactions.
12:28

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
12:28

Speaker 1
So, so the simple example I give, if you work in a, even a medium-sized company, you have a computer on your desk.
12:36

Speaker 2
Right.
12:37

Speaker 1
There, therefore, you have an intersection with the IT department. You don't really interact with them. You just, you have a computer on your desk and IT manages that infrastructure, so you have an intersection with them.
12:50

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
12:50

Speaker 1
When you have a problem with your computer and you have to call the help desk, now you're interacting with the IT department and people are like, "Oh, yeah, it's an entirely different relationship." I said, "You have to go through all these other levels-"
13:03

Speaker 2
Right. (laughs)
13:04

Speaker 1
... and say, "Am I intersecting with this person or am I actually interacting with this person? Because I'll behave much differently once I, you know, classify it one way or the other."
13:14

Speaker 2
Mm.
13:15

Speaker 1
A- and it, you know, you have to paint a picture for people, a- and the IT one because pretty much everybody's experienced being on that phone with the help desk.
13:24

Speaker 2
Right, yes.
13:24

Speaker 1
And they, they understand that one. Or if you're, like, a first line manager, your intersection with the finance department is you get a paycheck.
13:36

Speaker 2
Okay.
13:36

Speaker 1
When you go to the next level, your intersection, you now interact with the finance department to negotiate a department budget.
13:45

Speaker 2
Mm.
13:45

Speaker 1
Well, that's a really different conversation. You know, it's not a one-way conversation. Now it's back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
13:52

Speaker 2
Yeah.
13:52

Speaker 1
And you start to understand a bigger context for the business. While I have my budget, it's the most im- important thing to me in the world. Well, the person one department over's budget is the most important thing to them in the world.
14:06

Speaker 2
To them, yeah. (laughs)
14:07

Speaker 1
And the finance team is the one that's gotta manage that mess.
14:10

Speaker 2
(laughs) And try to satisfy everybody's budget with a limited budget.
14:14

Speaker 1
Yeah, well, or, or slightly dissatisfy everybody and then, you know... (laughs)
14:23

Speaker 2
(laughs)
14:23

Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:23

Speaker 2
Yes. What was that in economics class? Um, the, what? The, the... Then it creates viscosity, and the, uh, you know, and then the opportunity cost of, "Okay, Greg, if you get this, you're not gonna get that." (laughs) It's almost like this-
14:36

Speaker 1
Well, that's-
14:36

Speaker 2
... trade-off every single time. (laughs)
14:38

Speaker 1
Yeah, that, that's the key word, it's a trade-off discussion, and until you're a little bit more mature as a manager-
14:44

Speaker 2
Right.
14:45

Speaker 1
... you get offended. You're like, "What do you mean I, I can't have this thing that I, I told you I need?"
14:50

Speaker 2
(laughs)
14:50

Speaker 1
Like, "Well, if I give you the thing I told you you need, I can't give the R&D people the money they need to come up with our next product." "Oh, oh, okay. Yeah, got it." (laughs)
15:00

Speaker 2
(laughs) Right, exactly. That's right. So, and now talk to us about, you say there's a, a way in which you move from strategy to execution. How do businesses do that?
15:15

Speaker 1
Principally rooted in communication, and the word I use to describe it is, you know, strategy's an idea.
15:24

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
15:25

Speaker 1
"This is what we aspire to be, this is how we're gonna compete and how we're gonna win." Execution is a series of actions. So, you start up here at the strategy level, you have to translate that strategy through the different levels of the organization. Translation is the word I use.
15:44

Speaker 2
Right.
15:44

Speaker 1
And the reason you translate things is so that the person you're talking to understands it. I, I spent a fair amount of time in manufacturing plants over the course of my career.
15:54

Speaker 2
Mm.
15:55

Speaker 1
It's not helpful to go in to a manufacturing plant and talk to them about high-level strategy. It's really helpful to go in and say, "When you do this, this, and this, and we keep our cost per unit to this, and, you know, your labor productivity is this, it contributes to what we're trying to do at an enterprise level strategically." You know, your outputs feed the rest of the organization. You have to translate it down to a level that when they go to work, they say, "I'm important.
16:25

Speaker 1
I know what I do is important to the whole company."
16:29

Speaker 2
Right.
16:29

Speaker 1
And that's motivating. You know, so it's, it's that translation aspect that you can't just deliver these lofty statements from on high and think everybody's gonna understand them. That's just not what they do every day. You know, the guys from McKinsey, they could go into any company and understand the strategy 'cause it's all they do all day long and they're really good at it.
16:54

Speaker 2
Right.
16:55

Speaker 1
(laughs) But, you know, you take the average person in a company, they, they may see the company strategy once a year, but the rest of the, the rest of the time that they're at their job, doing their job-
17:08

Speaker 2
Hmm.
17:09

Speaker 1
... it, it's, it's pretty far removed from that, so you have to personalize it for them. You have to translate it-
17:15

Speaker 2
It's a-
17:15

Speaker 1
... so, so that they-
17:16

Speaker 2
Oh.
17:16

Speaker 1
... feel good about what they do.
17:19

Speaker 2
Because they can see how what they do on a daily basis connects to, as we were saying, the bigger picture?
17:27

Speaker 1
Exactly.
17:28

Speaker 2
They don't have to be experts in the bigger picture, but just a general understanding of it, but they need to be experts in what they do on a daily basis.
17:39

Speaker 1
Right. To go, to go back to your question one or two back, as you're moving people up through the different levels in an organization, this is also something organizations, some do well, some don't.
17:53

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
17:53

Speaker 1
They don't train them to think that way.
17:57

Speaker 2
Mmm.
17:57

Speaker 1
When you're at level A, this is your world and this is what you have to understand and this is how we're gonna measure your effectiveness in that role. When you go to the next level up, you're now at level B, okay, your bandwidth has to expand because now you have to consider all these other things, all these other interactions with the rest of the organization.And, and people... It, it's difficult for people that haven't experienced it to, to like intuitively understand that you have to sit down and show them this. And it's always fascinating to me to talk to chief executive officers.
18:35

Speaker 2
Right.
18:35

Speaker 1
You can ask them about any part of the organization and they can speak intelligently about it. And I'm like, "How do they get that bandwidth?" Well, they worked really hard at it for probably decades. You know, they understand sales, they understand marketing, they understand R&D. They, you know, they understand all these different parts of the company.
18:53

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
18:54

Speaker 1
They know how to pull them together and provide direction to all those different parts of the company. And that is not an intuitive skillset. You're not born with that. You have to be trained-
19:07

Speaker 2
Right.
19:07

Speaker 1
... to do those kinds of things. You know, and I... So I have an MBA. An MBA is not a good training to learn how to do those things. I can tell you this as somebody who has one.
19:18

Speaker 2
(laughs)
19:18

Speaker 1
Getting an MBA will train you how to tear apart a balance sheet and take it back through the income statement and the cash flow statement and tie them all back together. You know, so it gives you good financial literacy.
19:30

Speaker 2
So it, it prepares you to be a CFO, not CEO?
19:35

Speaker 1
Yeah, they're different skills.
19:37

Speaker 2
Hmm.
19:37

Speaker 1
They're d- Now, some CFOs do eventually go on to become CEOs.
19:42

Speaker 2
Right.
19:42

Speaker 1
It's not a real typical path. You know, the, the CEO, th- they're, they're interested in everything. They're curious about everything. That's one of the things, you know... You know, wh- when you, you're talking about communication-
19:58

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
19:59

Speaker 1
... how curious are you? If you're not curious, you won't ask a lot of questions. So... And, and having tr-
20:07

Speaker 2
I think Tony Robbins does say it's the quality of your questions?
20:13

Speaker 1
It... Part of it is the quality of the question.
20:15

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
20:17

Speaker 1
But, but if you're genuinely curious, you ask people about what they do. "Well, tell me about what you do."
20:25

Speaker 2
Hmm.
20:25

Speaker 1
"Why do you do it that way? Oh, what else have you tried? Oh, okay." A- and you, you'll have a much more interesting conversation than, "This is how you..." You know, i- it's very difficult to go and tell somebody else how to do their job.
20:40

Speaker 2
Yeah.
20:40

Speaker 1
They do it every day. But if you go and you start uncovering how they do their job, a- and when you're at different levels you can say, "You know, I, I've seen this work other ways other places. Have you ever thought about looking at this?" So o- one of the weird communication habits that I picked up very early in life, if I see... And I read a lot. If I see something that looks interesting, I email it to people. "Hey, I know you're in this space. This might be interesting to you." You know, and some of them get back to me and say, "I had never seen that." A- and, you know, some of them don't because their mailbox probably has 300 emails in it.
21:24

Speaker 2
(laughs)
21:24

Speaker 1
It's difficult to wade through it.
21:26

Speaker 2
It happens. (laughs)
21:27

Speaker 1
But, but that was, that was a little tip I picked up from a consultant actually.
21:32

Speaker 2
Hmm.
21:33

Speaker 1
He said, "This is how you teach yourself to think about other people broadly." So you're not in the marketing department, but the people in the marketing department think about marketing a lot. So you read an article about marketing and you send it to somebody in marketing and say, "Hey, I thought you'd be interested in this," because you're in marketing-
21:53

Speaker 2
Hmm.
21:54

Speaker 1
"... what do you think? How does this work in our organization?" And they'll either pick up the phone and call you or they'll send you an email back. But it's a good way to learn because you're instigating, you're instigating the exchange. You're, you're initiating the conversation.
22:11

Speaker 2
Right.
22:12

Speaker 1
Otherwise they might never... You might never interact with that person. It's an outreach model.
22:19

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. You interact, uh, even though you're not intersecting with them.
22:27

Speaker 1
Correct.
22:27

Speaker 2
There's no intersection because you're from different departments.
22:30

Speaker 1
You're jumping over that, right.
22:32

Speaker 2
But you created... Yeah, you created that interaction with them.
22:36

Speaker 1
But once you, once you've created the interaction, you have also simultaneously created an intersection.
22:42

Speaker 2
Oh. Okay.
22:42

Speaker 1
Because now they know you're interested in what they do.
22:46

Speaker 2
Hmm.
22:49

Speaker 1
A- and I learned this from a... I was a salesman earlier in my career and my sales manager said, "Pay attention to what the marketing people do." I said, "Well, okay, why?" And he said, "The better they are at their job, the easier our job is." (laughs) And I'm like, "Okay."
23:06

Speaker 2
Hmm. That's a good one. Yeah. (laughs)
23:08

Speaker 1
(laughs) And I, I'm like, "I gotta get to know these mark-
23:10

Speaker 2
You don't have to do much sales. They're already taking care of this.
23:13

Speaker 1
Yeah.
23:13

Speaker 2
Most of sales and marketing. (laughs)
23:14

Speaker 1
I'm like, "I gotta get to know these marketing people. The better they are at their job, the easier my job is." (laughs)
23:19

Speaker 2
Very effective. That's actually very true. Yes. Yes. Hmm. Right. So Greg, what can you... Any professional who wants to accelerate their careers and they're really good at their jobs, what recommendations could you give to them in order to add some skillsets to make that possible?
23:42

Speaker 1
Yeah. Uh, you and I talked about this briefly offline. Um, the, the one thing you can do... And th- this is... It gets easier the higher up you get in the organization.
23:52

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
23:53

Speaker 1
When you're moving up through the organization, it's all new territory for you. So I- I put together this tool called the Communication Compass.
24:05

Speaker 2
Right.
24:06

Speaker 1
Use a compass to figure out where you're going, right? (laughs) So if, if you're communicating at the same level you, you're currently occupying, there's a way to do that. If you're communicating to levels above you, there's a really different way you need to learn how to do that. A- and typically-People learn this through, like, painful experiences of getting in front of somebody in the C-Suite, and they're like, "I don't need that much detail. I don't need that much detail. Summarize this for me, summarize this for me. We have a lot to do." (laughs) You're like, "Ooh." You can train people how to do that.
24:41

Speaker 1
They want-
24:41

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
24:41

Speaker 1
... an executive summary and they want a proposal for what you think should be done. Then you let them ask you questions and you can supply more detail. Don't give them all the detail up front. They just don't have time for it, and it's really difficult unless you've been in one of those positions, that's hard to understand.
24:59

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm. We actually do highlight that, especially when you talk about presentations and slides and what should be in there, too much of this and not enough of that. That when you first understand who your audience is gonna be, you will know exactly how, what, what to put in there, how summarized-
25:18

Speaker 1
Yes.
25:18

Speaker 2
... it should be. If you just need to give them the headline, or a summary, or details-
25:24

Speaker 1
Yep.
25:24

Speaker 2
... depending on who the audience is. So when you know that you're gonna present to the C-Suite, just, you know, headline information, you're not gonna put a whole lot of detail in that. It's probably for your peers.
25:37

Speaker 1
But, but this is what you train people to do, right?
25:40

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
25:41

Speaker 1
This is what your organization trains people to do. Well, until you got there, they might not know that.
25:48

Speaker 2
Right.
25:49

Speaker 1
These are people that are super enthusiastic about their jobs, they love what they do, and they want to tell everybody about what they do. And they don't really understand the jobs of the people that are levels above them.
26:03

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
26:04

Speaker 1
And, and it's also like, "Well, I have my chance. I'm in front of the chief, whatever, officer."
26:08

Speaker 2
"Let me impress them. Yeah."
26:10

Speaker 1
Yeah. "I'm gonna tell them everything I know about this subject." Like, ah, you know... (laughs)
26:16

Speaker 2
(laughs) He's only got five seconds. (laughs)
26:18

Speaker 1
Yeah. Like...
26:19

Speaker 2
Right.
26:20

Speaker 1
If you're having lunch with them, they might find it interesting.
26:23

Speaker 2
Hmm.
26:23

Speaker 1
If you're in a meeting room and it's a 30-minute meeting, they don't have time. (laughs)
26:27

Speaker 2
Five seconds-
26:28

Speaker 1
They just don't have time. (laughs)
26:28

Speaker 2
... each person gets, for sure. (laughs) So yes, those communication skills, I think you've managed to just highlight, in different aspects and different roles, how much of a, uh, uh, how crucial communication skills are when it comes to the workplace, especially. Any last words of wisdom for any of our listeners?
26:51

Speaker 1
Sure. So I, I'll go back to what I said at the beginning.
26:54

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
26:54

Speaker 1
Communication is the most important thing that managers do. So the better they get at that, that is the super career accelerant.
27:04

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
27:06

Speaker 1
Because when you're able to concisely convey a message that you're actually transferring information to the person, that they, when they receive it, they're like, "Well, that was valuable."
27:17

Speaker 2
Right.
27:18

Speaker 1
They're going to come back and talk to you a lot more. Versus people who dump all kinds of stuff on them that they don't find a lot of value in. Uh, they're probably not gonna spend a lot of time with them. But if you can concisely deliver them information that they find valuable-
27:35

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
27:36

Speaker 1
... they remember who you are.
27:38

Speaker 2
Always. Yeah. I, I still... (laughs) Even people who taught me so much that, especially it was my first time hearing a little, "Oh, goodness, I need to do that."
27:47

Speaker 1
Yeah. (laughs)
27:48

Speaker 2
Yes, you remember those people. (laughs)
27:50

Speaker 1
Like, "Ah, I, I said this-"
27:51

Speaker 2
You certainly do.
27:51

Speaker 1
... to somebody the other... I said this because I try to learn new things every day. And I said this to somebody the other day, I'm like, "Geez, I wish I would have learned this 20 years ago. I could have been using it for the last 20 years." (laughs)
28:03

Speaker 2
(laughs) It's never too late. Greg Kaeser Sr.-
28:06

Speaker 1
Exactly.
28:07

Speaker 2
... uh, Founder of Management Mystery, thank you so much for being on our show today. Do you have a website or any socials where our listeners can find you?
28:17

Speaker 1
I, I do. Thank you. So our website is called managementmastery, that's all one word.
28:24

Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
28:24

Speaker 1
.Solutions.
28:27

Speaker 2
Okay.
28:28

Speaker 1
We solve problems. So it's managementmastery.solutions. Uh, and then I post regularly on LinkedIn primarily. I have some content out on Medium, and it's all under Greg Kaiser.
28:40

Speaker 2
Okay.
28:40

Speaker 1
LinkedIn is under Management Mastery, that's a business post.
28:46

Speaker 2
Right.
28:46

Speaker 1
And then I also post some stuff on Facebook under Management Mastery.
28:51

Speaker 2
Okay. We'll put all those, we'll put that all in the show notes. Greg Kaiser Sr., thank you so much for joining us today. Founder of Management Mystery, who was here to highlight how crucial communication skills are at any level in the organization. Thank you, Greg, for this wonderful conversation.
29:10

Speaker 1

Thank you, Roberta. That was a lot of fun. And thank you for taking me along the path and steering me to where we needed to go.
29:17

Speaker 2
My absolute pleasure. (laughs) Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify. And stay tuned for more episodes to come.