Speaking and Communicating Podcast

And it looks like we're live. Welcome and welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast where we talk about problem solving. Now, often I get asked, Hey, what kind of problems do you want to solve? Or like, what is problem solving about? And I mean, it can be about so many things and some people, they might have a problem really properly expressing themselves, especially when others are listening. Like we are right now, maybe on a live screen, or I always get a little bit nervous about what to say and how to say it. Right. And so for that, we got a
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special guest today who's got a really interesting topic. And she's actually saying that you can get a promotion by improving your public speaking. So how can you advance your career by becoming a better public speaker? And what does that look like? How is it all going to work? For that, I have with me Roberta and Leila. Thank you so much for being on here, joining us from Chicago. Roberta, please tell us what is the connection to getting a promotion and being a better public speaker?
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I mean, I don't have to hold a Ted talk to get promoted. So why would I need to learn public speaking to get that raise? Hi, Oliver. Hi, listeners. Thank you so much for having me today. So I started working in corporate middle nineties and I worked with engineering companies. Now what I've realized is there's a difference between being a subject matter expert and
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being able to communicate with either your colleagues or clients. So when I was working in the nineties, I remember there's a joke, I always share that my boss said, he used to say to me, you know, Roberta, I started engineering so I can sit on my desk quietly, not talk to anybody. Now all I do is talk to people. But here's the thing. When he took time to overcome that, he got promoted to more leadership positions. Cause here's the difference.
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If you just do your job, you just get stuck in doing your job. Whereas the more you get promoted, you lead people. So you must be able to communicate with them, have conflict resolution skills, be able to motivate them to do what they are supposed to do for everything to come together. So you do less of the actual technical work. And when he overcame that whole, I don't want to talk to people. That's why I was studying engineering.
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He got promoted to even become a divisional director. Now, I don't know what the setup here in some companies, but the company that I worked for, when you're a divisional director, that's when you start to participate in profit sharing. And I'm sure his wife was very happy at the end of the year when he came with those paychecks because we could speak, right? So that's how that worked. And I've always used him as the example for if you can just learn the technical skills,
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And then in addition to that, you add the communication and interpersonal skills, it would really, it would really take you far. And I've observed that with my subsequent clients as well. That makes so much sense. Really, as you were describing that, I hear that you that you refer to public speaking to more than just being on stage and like holding a TED talk or something like that. Right. Because for me, that's the initial association.
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public speaking, I'm thinking, well, being up on stage and of course, everybody is nervous and all of that. But it really sounds like it has so much broader implications. And I like the connection you make too, between the subject matter itself and being competent and knowledgeable about it and then actually communicating it so that others can understand it. And we separate between scientists and science communicators as well in that community, right?
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make certain information available to the public or to different stakeholders. So I can see how they connect. Now, tell me a little bit the difference in terms of public speaking and communication skills. Where do you draw the line between having, let's say like a scripted speech on the one hand, but then also being able to just communicate freely, intuitively off the cuff? Where's the difference?
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So usually, so there are two with the ones that you mentioned. So those are two different things. So if you're a keynote speaker, let's say there's an event, they will have on the agenda somebody talking about something else. And then they'll ask you, they'll say, oh, can you be our keynote speaker? We have this event and this is what we're trying to achieve. So your job is to just give your keynote speech. And I don't know if you've noticed most of the most
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well-known speakers in the world, their keynote speech is usually the same thing over and over. They recycle over the same thing over and over again. You know, they might tweak a few things there, but usually a keynote speech. So that's one aspect. That's public speaking. When it comes to presentation skills, if you work in the tech or engineering industry, most of your customers don't speak tech and they don't speak engineering lingo. So,
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The challenge is how do I take my expertise and translate it for this person to understand what I'm trying to sell them? Because no matter how brilliant you are, if you sit on your computer and the product is just there and it's not out to the market, what is that gonna do? So how do you translate it? Because if you speak too much tech for your customers and they don't get it,
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what's the likelihood they're going to buy your product, you know, and what's the likelihood that you're going to convince them that, hey, you need this, this is good for you. If they don't even understand what you're talking about, if it all sounds quick to them. So that's one, that's a different aspect. And then interpersonal skills, especially in the workplace, you don't work alone, no matter, even if you see what my boss said.
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You know, I didn't want to talk to people. I wanted to just sit in front of my computer. You don't work alone. You know, offices have cubicles. Your colleague is right across you. And if you are putting a project team together, you're gonna have to speak to each other. And if you're bad heads, which we all do, we're grownups, we're human, you're gonna have to learn to find ways to have conflict resolution skills and not be, oh.
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Oliver pissed me off, he said, I don't want to see him. I have to talk to you, we have to put this project together for the client. So those are the different aspects and how they apply in different situations, basically, of communication.
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That makes so much sense. And I see how this field, how you're really putting clarity on this right now, how public speaking is presentation skills, but also marketing and branding skills, but also communication skills and interpersonal communication skills. So this whole, this whole aspect, so this whole big problem of communication and expression, you're really helping it, helping us break it down right now into the sub components. That's, that is so cool.
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Now, we chatted a little bit earlier and you told me that you've lived in several countries around the world, including, you said, I think, South Korea, right? But you are from South Africa and now you're in the US. So what do you see, I mean, globally, culturally, what are the differences maybe across different cultures and communication? And what are some of the similarities? What can you share with us about that? My first... So I've lived in South Korea for the last...
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10 years before coming here last year. The first thing I noticed was, you know, us South Africans are loud and we talk to strangers. I remember when we hosted the 2010 World Cup, Soka World Cup, everybody said, you know, I've traveled to so many countries following the World Cup everywhere. South Africans are the freelest because we just, we speak all the time. And so when I went to South Korea, that was one of the culture shocks that I experienced. First of all,
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If I introduce myself to someone back home, you know, handshake. In Korea, people bow, don't touch me. You know, not in a bad way, but in that that's culturally just how you bow. That's the first thing I had to immediately stop extending my hand for a handshake because then the people on the other side, they, they try not to offend you as the westerner, but they don't.
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shake hands, so I had to quickly learn to stop doing that instinctively because I've been doing it all my life. And then secondly, as soon as you move to another country, I know as humans we have this propensity to say, you know, this is how we do it back home. But as soon as you move to another country, you need to quickly learn how they do things, whether it's comfortable for you or not. You know, obviously situations are different, but
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learn to respect how they do things within their territory. For example, I remember one time we were as, I come from South Africa, that whole ladies first, we don't live heavy stuff, it's for men, men must live the heavy stuff. So we were teaching on the third floor on our English level, where kids used to come up to school. And they had these huge flower vases at the bottom that were delivered. And they were for our floor.
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So the admin lady calls us, our Korean co-teacher translates for us and says, Hey guys, we're supposed to come down, get the flowers. We're all ladies. We go downstairs and look at this. I'm like, aren't they going to call the male teachers to come and pick this up? Take it up to the third floor because there's no elevator, you know? And she said, no, we have to pick it up ourselves. I was like, wow. Okay. By the way, I'm not in South Africa.
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You know what I mean? You know, you have to learn how they do things and it benefits you to be that way, to be adaptable, to be flexible. Because I have witnessed and seen people who say, hey that's not how I do it in my country. How's that working out for you? So it's up to you. Do you want to make your life easier and have a better experience where you travel?
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Do you wanna just say, hey, I don't do that? It's entirely up to you. But I just found one, if you are adaptable, if you respect people's cultures, then a Korean contract is 12 months and it's up to them to decide if they're gonna renew your contract, meaning bring you back another year. So those are the little things that they look out for, not just your teaching ability, which is obviously the first thing they look out for, but those little things.
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they count in them deciding, are you easier to work with? Do you cooperate? Do you respect our culture? Because when you respect our culture, you respect us as a people. And those are the things that help them decide whether they want you back another year or not. So that makes so much sense. That's one of the big questions for me, yeah. And I really, as I'm listening to this too, I'm relating it to, you know, what we talked earlier, the workplace and how it relates to team culture. I mean,
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Doesn't the same mindset apply? Like, let's say you go to a new company or your company is interacting with some other company that, you know, that, that same type of interaction is happening there, you got essentially two tribes that are then, you know, kind of mingling or whatever, and, you know, we're, we want to make sure it works. We want to collaborate. We don't want to, you know, be like, be crazy about or anything. We want to be mutually respectful.
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flexible, adaptive, but at the same time, sometimes, you know, we have to also know when to be assertive and introduce the way that we might do things because it's beneficial for both parties involved, right? And so all of that going back to communication skills, that's, yeah, that totally goes into that. And then also public speaking, being able to to express it in the right way with the right language.
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Right? Because at the end of the day, it's just language that we're using in any culture and all of that. So Roberta, you have a lot of expertise. Go ahead, go ahead. Exactly what you are saying. Each company has a culture, right? You know, same thing. Each company has a culture, which means when you leave this one company, you will turn to another company. Like you say, you learn their culture. You learn how they do things. For instance, when I worked in corporate finance, we used to dress up in suits every day.
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And then on the day we go into a client meeting, we must wear a black suit. It can't be any other color. If it's a client meeting, it's a black suit. Any other suit can work as long as you come to the office. And then I worked for SA Breweries, the number one brewer in the world. Think they're number one? Are they still number two? Anyway, South African breweries. When I worked in South African breweries, used to wear a South African breweries t-shirt and jeans and come to work, see?
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I can't work, I can't wear that in corporate finance, you see. So every company has its own culture. You adapt to the culture, you focus on the work and it makes your life easier. Exactly. And that's funny, right? We talk about culture, like in countries, we think of like the traditional outfit or traditional dress of a nation or of some, you know, some culture. Same thing applies again, as you were just saying. Well, if I'm
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If I'm at this job, I'm going to wear a different costume, a different outfit. So with all the expertise that you have, I'm curious, I mean, what do you do right now? You said you've been a teacher previously, but you're here on my podcast talking about public speaking. So what's your mission right now? So with everything moving online due to COVID, I've been doing a lot of virtual public speaking.
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You know, they have this virtual public speaking summits where different public speakers come together and we have a theme and, and we share ideas. Some of the platforms, we just share ideas on how to serve people better, how to teach people, how to coach people in speaking, in overcoming their fears. You know, glossophobia. I don't know if you've heard of glossophobia. Which one is that? The fear of public speaking. Oh, that's what it is. Okay.
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I didn't know the proper name for it. How to help people with glossophobia. So everything has become virtual. So there's a lot of virtual public speeches that I give. Some of my Korean students have followed me online now that I'm here. So I teach them through Zoom.
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I see. Nice. And so is there like, I mean, with all your knowledge and expertise, it really seems like something that you could help somebody out with. Do you have currently an avenue where somebody could interact with you, learn a little bit from you, or do you share content or have any resources for us? Right. So I've just started a Facebook group called Eloquent Speakers Club, Eloquent Speakers Club, where, you know, I don't come from a tech...
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background because when we started working there was no Google. You know remember when we had hotmail addresses? Oh Oliver is young. So I just started recording videos and you know like I said remember just before we started I said Oliver you just got to show me what to do right when we started this life. So I just started recording videos and I'm sharing tips slowly on how people.
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can start to find the inner public speaker. And I recently started a podcast as well where I'm sharing these ideas. The podcast is called Speaking and Communicating Podcast. Speaking and Communicating Podcast. The Facebook group is Eloquent Speakers Club. The podcast is Speaking and Communicating Podcast. And then you can find my name in a lot of social media platforms, Twitter.
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Instagram and Facebook. So my name, you probably want to write it on the chat. Remember how we practiced my last name. Yes, actually I'll be sure to I'll be sure to drop your links below in the comments and tag you and everything so people have easy access and can find that. That group sounds really valuable and interesting with with the public speaking tips and videos that definitely something I would want to check out.
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Yes, definitely. And I think we spoke about inviting you as well. Yeah. So that's the group where I'm going to post. I do post my podcast links as well for people to listen on the same group. Yes. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, you find me in all of those social media platforms. That's so cool. Well, we'll make sure to get everybody connected so they can become better eloquent speakers and up level their careers and
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It might take somebody out of their comfort zone, like you said, especially if somebody is more like an introverted person and kind of likes things a little more than people. Honestly, I'm a little bit like that person. I enjoy puzzling and kind of doing things quietly and interacting with people and speaking all of that. It takes a little bit of energy for me. So afterwards, I always need some peace and quiet, but it is such an important skill. I mean, you know, you can't.
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can't just live in your own head, right? You got to connect and get out in the world and make that stuff happen. And I actually do learn things as well as I speak. I get to learn from the feedback, whether the feedback is from the audience or it's from my other fellow public speakers, I also learn as well. So it really does help to get out of your own head. And one thing I will leave you guys with before I finish. So when I was growing up, if you were in the same job for like 30 years,
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and then it's retirement age is 60. They used to give you this expensive paka pen on a nice little box, you know, paka pens. And they say, thank you for your service and we have this whole retirement party for you. I remember I used to think to myself, for 30 years of your life, that's all you get, a paka pen? That really sucks, you know? But you will be a paka pen.
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retiree if all you do is just sit and not talk to anyone. It's because you're going to be stuck in the same job. Whereas if you are like my boss, you might start that or is it, Oh, I hate talking to people. That's why I started engineering. But when he started to speak, he got promoted to a prof. The company used to make millions and he would get a percentage of that at the end of the year. So you got to decide, do you want to be a parka pen retiree or a profit share? It's entirely up to you.
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Love it. Love it. Yep. That's a good choice that you're posing here for people. We'll leave it at that. That's a great way to end it. Roberta, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for sharing your insights. Thank you everybody. All right. We'll talk soon. Okay. Take care. For sure. Okay. Bye.