Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. My name is Roberta, and I'm back this week with another episode where we will be joined by Alison Arnolf. She's actually a Chicago native, while I'm based in Chicago as well. Alison has been in the coaching and consulting business for five years. She was in the tech industry for a whole three decades, a whole 30 years.
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as a woman in the tech industry, where most of us thought that nerds were just men. She has a master's in engineering, and in the 30 years that she was in the tech industry, she was involved in seven startups, which had six exits, most of whom were listed. She is here to talk to us today about the four stages of confident communication. The four stages of
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Confident Communication. Brace yourselves and I'm gonna give her a chance to introduce herself as we will talk today about the four stages of Confident Communication. Please help me welcome Alison. Thank you for having me Roberta. It's great to be here. In my career, we learn a lot from our journey and often what we learn and what we need to teach. And throughout my career, realizing that communication is really everything.
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It really is because you can have the greatest ideas. And if you can't communicate that, it doesn't matter. If people don't, if you can't really show up and help the world see what's inside your head, it really does limit what happens in your career. And so one of the areas that I've worked on for myself was how to be a good communicator. And now I work with people to help them solve those unique challenges.
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to get them over the hump so they can really make the impact that they wanna do as a communicator. Right, that's so funny you say that cause that's how I started the public speaking coaching as well and targeted engineers cause I used to work with them. And like you say, if your idea is sitting on your hard drive it doesn't bring anybody any value. So how does that help your career? And that's how my boss was able to go up the ladder cause he stepped out of that.
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comfort zone of sitting by himself in a cubicle and say, I'm going to learn to communicate. So you say that there are four stages of confident communication. How did you come up with those? Is it something that you came up with based on your experience? Yes, well, first let me tell you to define what I consider confident communication is really the merger of confidence because if you're confident,
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but you're not effective, then you're showing up, but you're not really making the impact you want. You might not have the skills or the awareness to know that you're not doing that. And you can be effective, which a lot of people are, but there's so much angst and mental toll it takes to get into, to feel, to force yourself to speak up. So I consider utopia the merger of confidence and effectiveness and communication. And yeah, the four stages is something that I, you know, I came up with just based on
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kind of reverse engineering a lot of the work I was doing with my clients. Right. Yeah, and so that was really how I came about was there seems to be some common threads here and we were able and worked and created this framework. And it's very straightforward. I mean, the first one is just mindset, right? That mindset. That's a big one, yeah. Yeah, and the mindset is simple. It's really just a belief that.
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You know, and it's funny, I did a workshop and this is the one thing that landed the most about it was the belief that what you have to say is worth hearing. Wow. And that's where, as you were saying earlier, when you said, sometimes you do know what to speak about, but because you're not confident, you know, you have this anxiety and this nervousness, it literally, I've seen it happen, it literally blocks your brain at that moment.
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You almost don't have the words, even though you know the material, you almost don't have the words coming out of your mouth because you busy the nervousness and the anxiety just takes over. Exactly. And it was interesting. I was doing, I do workshops and in one of the workshops, I have like a whole slide on all the different pieces for mindset. And one of them was if you were invited to the room or to the conversation, that means the person actually wants to hear what you have to say.
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And it sounds like a simple, obvious thing, but there's so many people, I think that was the number one thing when we did a recap at the end, that it was just a reminder that if you're in conversation with someone, it's because they wanna hear what you have to say. Now, obviously there's always an exception of that pompous person that just wants to hear themselves talk. But for the most part, if you're in a meeting or someone's engaging with you, it's because they feel that there's a value. And just reminding yourself of that.
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gave a lot, you could see all the shoulders just lowered on the call when they realized. And it's funny, isn't that the reason you should even have more confidence? Cause people are saying, we want to hear what you have to say, but how come that doesn't just make your confidence level jump up and say, yes, here I am, speak to me. Yeah. And it's up to leaders as well. I mean, the leader, when you're in like in a group setting in a meetings, it really is up for the leaders to reach out to the introverts.
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or the ones that are maybe a little more hesitant and include them and be like, you know, Roberta, I'd love to hear your, you know, is there anything you would like to add to the conversation? Right. You know, I facilitate discussion groups for a school I attend. And one of the things I always make sure is I think about what are the introverts in the room? So Zoom has the ability to raise the hand because some people aren't naturally good at interjecting into the flow. Exactly, yes.
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And so I offer, I invite them to say, you know, if you're not comfortable into the flow, just hit the raised hand and I'll get to you, right? So it's a way for them to feel like, cause I'm more introverted than people realize. And sometimes it's hard to get into that natural flow of a room. So it's again, it's just for leaders, it's being mindful that some people in the room might need a little encouragement or support in getting their ideas up. Before I just step up and show up, yeah.
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I used to say, I say to my coaching clients when I make them realize how important the skill is, I always say to them, when I used to go to project meetings and we have a client presentation and we're showing them all the things that we've done. There were like five or 10 of us in a project working on this, but a client does not sit there. They just say, oh wow, brilliant work. And they, you know, from our company, from our division but they don't sit there and say,
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I wanna know which part was done by Alison and which part was done by Roberta. They're not preoccupied with that. They will never know your existence of your existence and your expertise unless you speak up. They don't wanna know the nitty gritties of who did what in order for them to have a reminder of who are the experts on the, they just want the final product. Whoever decides to speak up, that's all they're gonna ask for the next time they have another million dollar project.
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Do you want to be a part of that or do you want to just sit there and not be known? Right, great example. Great example. So the second stage is preparation. Okay. And preparation is first understanding, you know, the clarity of what if I, if you know ahead of time, right, let's say you're going into a team meeting to talk about something. What do you want to contribute or what outcome are you looking for? Or if you and somebody else are having a one-on-one.
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You know, I'm a big fan of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. My favorite one is begin with the end in mind. Right, so get very, very clear on that. The other thing is to think about who is in the room and think about how have I seen other people get through to this person before these people, if there's somebody, you know, so it's not always about just how you deliver the information, it's understanding your audience and how they receive the information. Exactly.
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They say, I don't know if you know the acronym WIIFM. Yes. People also ask themselves, what's in it for me? When we moved online to the online business space, they tell you that people don't care about your passion and how passionate you are about this. What's in it for them in the message you're coming to deliver? So if you understand your audience and what they need, you will be prepared in such a way that you bring them.
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most value for them. Yes, one of the other things I encourage in preparation is building, especially if you want to present a new idea, building consensus with some people ahead of time, developing some champions. Sometimes as a woman, especially in tech industry, you might be the only one in the room and you know people, whether they want to believe it or not, women are not always heard or listened to as much as men and I know that there's been you know many times that I would
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and it would be ignored. And then three people later would say that, you know, a man would say the sky is blue and it was the greatest thing they ever heard. Like, and it's true. That's happened. 68% of women say that's happened to them. And it's been the experience. Wow. And so by pre-building consensus and going to some people and say, hey, I'm gonna present this idea on the meeting. I'd love your thoughts on it. And I'd love for you to speak up afterwards.
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to do that. Now, again, if you had a really good leader, he would make sure every idea is explored before the next person's allowed to talk, but a lot of leaders are not, you know, they're okay with the fact that- They have a posting slide, yeah. They have too much going on in their head. The 800 emails that are coming out, coming in the text that while they're in that meeting, right, so if you want your idea to be heard, you need to take the responsibility for it and pre-build some consensus with some people ahead of time.
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so that it can be made sure that it's not glossed over in the meeting. You have the support, that's right. If you've just joined us on the speaking and communicating podcast, today we have Alison Arnoff and she's going to talk to us about the four stages of confident communication. So far we've dealt with confidence and preparation. So- Yes, the mindset and preparation. That's right, the mindset and preparation. So those are the two stages we've discussed.
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Next, let's go on to the third one. So the third one is execution, right? Is actually having that conversation. And one of the things you have to remind people of is that today everybody has so much noise, so much is being thrown at them, emails, texts, challenges at home, you know, a pandemic now you got working at home and kids. Yeah. And so being crisp and clear and concise is more important than ever because people are gonna, you're gonna lose people very, very quickly if you're not concise.
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You also have to work on your tone, right? And you speaking, right? It can't be flat. Are you changing the speed? Are you changing the volume and the intonation on things to get people's attention and to make things? Are you pausing at the right time? So execution, it also includes listening and it also includes modeling the behavior that you want others to model towards you. So if you want people to listen to you and share ideas about what you're suggesting, you should be doing the same.
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And so when somebody else is presenting an idea, you know, hey, Frank, you know, I really liked, what I liked about this idea was this, have you also thought about that, right? So you need to model the behavior that others want from others. The thing about listening, we always say you have two ears in one mouth, use in proportion. When people are listened to, you'd be amazed how much of an extra mouth they will go for you.
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if you do give them a chance to speak up and you listen to them and you really take that idea seriously. It doesn't mean you agree with everything they say, but just knowing that you create a space for them to be listened to goes a long way. Yeah, people, everyone wants to feel their efforts are valued, right? That someone actually took the time to do that. I mean, there's nothing worse than coming out of a meeting frustrated or angry and not feeling like you were heard or appreciated. That's not gonna help your motivation.
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Of course not, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that was number three, execution. So we've done mindset, preparation and execution. What is the fourth and final stage of conflict? The fourth and final stage is growth. Growth is important because this isn't the only conversation you're gonna have, right? Your life is a series of conversations and communications. So, you know, it's very easy for us to be really hard on ourselves.
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and get angry. And I used to do that, you know, perfectionist, what did I do wrong? And instead, now I say, you know, what did I like about what I did? What do I want to improve on? And what did I learn? And that really changes the, you screwed up. It's, you know, we have to be kind to ourselves. That's true. And a lot of us suffer from that. And I want us
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I would like to just explore that a little bit and just find out from you, where do you, because I think there's a very thin line between, okay, no longer being hard on ourselves and being kind to ourselves, but also for growth, you do need to have that feedback. That's gonna help you realize where you've gone wrong and how to do better. So how do you receive that feedback in the midst of being kind to yourself? And...
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being positive about how you are moving forward. What's funny, Roberta, if I would look at a lot of my performance reviews early in my career, I was very defensive. Ah. And that was something that I got feedback on a lot because I get this feedback, but there was so much passion. And I think I developed the thought process that they weren't here to support me. And I just realizing that.
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by realizing that my management is trying to support me. And they might not have been the best communicators, right? Like I had one boss that only told me what I did wrong. And at one point I said to him, do I do anything right? He goes, yeah, if you didn't do anything right, I'd fire you. Well, you know, great. That's not the best example of leadership. Okay. But if you change your mindset and say, this person is trying to help me be better, they are on my side, then you can relax into it and know that they're not saying you did.
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you know, everything wrong, they're saying you did a lot of good. And this is the needs improvement. One aspect needs improvement. And then I ask that is because sorry to interrupt you is because, you know, we live in a politically correct world, everybody gets offended. You want to tiptoe and not hurt people's feelings. And that's why receiving. Honest, so to speak, honest feedback on how you can improve has become such a very.
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dice the situation. A lot of people are even afraid to voice that. Yeah, it's interesting times we live in. And that's why one of the things we talked about in the preparation is making sure you know how your audience receives information. So if you're the person giving feedback, I was just working with a client that has a minority woman who doesn't take feedback well and is a pit bull. And I said, but do you know
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that maybe she's been struggling her whole career, maybe her whole career, she's had to fight to be heard. Maybe she doesn't feel safe. Maybe she doesn't feel safe yet. So instead of making her wrong, can you make her feel safe? And my client had this whole shift of energy and said, I'd never, all of a sudden she went and had compassion for this person instead of making her bad. And making it look like she's always coming with an attitude, so to speak.
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But yes, like you say, maybe the experiences she's had before have been feeding into that. Right, and so how do you make her feel safe so she doesn't need to feel that she has to fight and try so hard? You know, and I heard that in my career too, sometimes trying too hard. I'm the only woman or the first woman. And so, you know, you're able to see that. But it was, what was interesting is that because I was with someone that was committed to growing, when I gave them an invitation to look at this woman differently, it changed her whole attitude from
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Amazing. I don't want to, from I don't want to work with her to, I now have compassion and let's see if we can get over this hump because she really is a valued member of the team. That's right. Yeah. And so it's, it's again, it's that perspective change, right? You know, you get to choose how you want to take the perspective. So you can choose to say, they're out to get me, or you can choose to say, they're trying to help me grow. Yeah.
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And you also have to say, what do I need to let go of? What story or what in my mind do I need to let go of to let this person give me information to be able to receive it? So often we have to learn to let go of whatever we're holding onto so tight to be able to receive. Right, right. So in summary, the four stages of communication are mindset, preparation, execution,
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and growth. Yes. So my question to you, Alison, is now that especially we're talking about receiving feedback to help you grow, what are some in your experience? You've talked to us about your clients, but when you were in the tech industry, is there a story you can share with us of how you... So you said you started being defensive. How is it that you shifted? How is it that you changed? If you can give us one or two practical...
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ideas on how we can do that to find ourselves in those situations? Well, yes. So first, I think one of the reasons it's changed is I learned more about myself and understanding what my values were. I only worked for companies that were in alignment or tried to in my values. And I realized that when I was having trouble in companies, it was because the values in mine weren't similar. You know, like some of these tech companies were winning any cost.
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type of attitudes, which doesn't align with my value of integrity, right? So it's important to try to make sure that you understand your values and you're working in a place that aligns in your values. But the number one thing is, as I mentioned before, is to really believe that people are giving you feedback because they want to help you. And that it's, it's, it's a, and that even though they're not saying the word, not everybody is a very good communicator, and they might not be able to say, Roberta.
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I really liked that presentation. You had some really good ideas here. And I think they'd be valuable to the company. One area that I think we can add to that, right? That's a good communicator. They might just say, hey Roberta, I need you to add this to your presentation. And they unintentionally nullified all that hard work. That I've done. Or just when you think I've done such a great job, instead of them.
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putting it the way you just did, they could just say, why is it that you don't have that part in the presentation? You see how that comes across? It does. So the work on our end would be to sit there and say, okay, this is just who they are. They don't have the tools to communicate effectively. And it's really to work on your confidence to believe that you know you did the hard work, right? It's almost doing your own debrief. I know I did the work. I know these are good ideas.
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And to really, and it's, and we're human, but you know, to really take away, take, to, to start turning down the volume on the need for external validation and turn it up on your internal validation. That's the self communication, the self-talk, the internal voice. How, how do we navigate that? Because for some reason, I don't know why it's a human thing, but usually it's always the negative one that seems to be the loudest. How do we
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make that voice talk differently? Well, it's funny, you almost have to acknowledge. So the one thing, it sounds funny, but when you name that voice, it takes some of its power away. And I'll give you an example. So I, you know, it doesn't matter how successful you are, you sometimes have that imposter syndrome, you feel like a fraud. That's right. And so I thought about that. I'm like, what am I gonna call that when that shows up? So I joked around and said of Sigmund Freud, Sigmund fraud.
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And then, yes. And then when I was a kid, there was a little cartoon called or children's show called Sigmund and the sea monster. So I printed out a picture of Sigmund. And it just so when I get in that mode I look at that segment and I laugh. Mr. frog yes. When you take the name when you name something it does take the power away.
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you should have a champion in your life. People in your life that can see the greatness in you that you can't always see in yourself. And they'll help you eventually build that voice so you can be your own champion, which is ideal. But in that process, make sure you surround yourself with champions. That's right. And a lot of people do not take the time to pay attention to those closest to them to give them that champion energy until they get it right themselves. Because in-
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being hard on yourself and being critical, you sometimes even close off those voices. But no, honey, you're great to your mom, your sister. Sorry, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, yeah, no, one of my biggest things, if you look at a lot of my reviews and what people say is that my job is to be my client's biggest champion and biggest challenger. But as a challenger, one of the things you have to be mindful of is you wanna give people feedback in a way that expands them, not contracts them.
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I think we are more the contracting type in general. Right, so that's why it's really important to say, one of the things in my first session with my clients is, what way can you take feedback that helps you expand and get more curious than make you feel bad about yourself? Because I can be direct if you want, we can do that. So we design it together, because what I never want my clients to walk away from a time with me is feeling bad about themselves.
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I want them to feel curious and open and invite them to see some things from a new perspective. So you need a champion in your life, but you need a challenger because I know in my career, I didn't have anybody that not only said this, you did good, but here are some areas, right? You might not realize you're coming across like this, or have you thought about that? And having that other perspective gives you an invitation to look at things differently and act differently. That's right. So in this two-party-
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process of communication, the champion or challenger can ask the other party, in what ways would you like me to communicate for you to receive the feedback positively so you can grow. And it's the onus is on the other person as well to say, I'm open to receiving feedback. They're not trying to be against me or attack me.
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I'm open to it. So it actually works both ways. I know usually somebody has to start the dance. Somebody has to start, but it actually works both ways. Be open to receiving it, but also the other person giving the feedback can be mindful of how you receive it. If you communicate that to them too, so it works both ways. So very- You know, and as the receiver, you just have to give the person permission to be not good at giving feedback.
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And I love your fan of the four agreements, but don't take things personally. Yeah, don't take it personally. Don't make it a race. Yeah. Just realize that while you are committed to your growth, it doesn't mean that they are, and they might not be examining that they're not really good at giving feedback. So you just have to say, OK, you know what? I'm not going to take this personally. They're not very good at giving feedback. But that doesn't mean the feedback isn't valuable. Let me pick what is here to help me grow. Yes.
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That's right. Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us before we close? Just a reminder that, you know, what you have to say is important and people do want to hear it. And you don't have to be perfect and you can continue to improve and grow, but you know, it's mindset preparation, execution, growth, and then loop. It's a continuous loop and it's a journey. I mean, I'm a better communicator now than I was five years ago or 10 years ago.
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It just takes awareness and effort and you get better and better. So you don't have to be frustrated that you're not where you wanna be. Just be proud of that you're making progress and you're learning. Keep growing and be alert and be aware of how you are growing. I remember someone once said, because we are really quick to jump and say, oh, Alison offended me, this and that. But I remember somebody saying, every time you are on this,
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Oh, people offend me. She said this, she said, just remember somebody is sitting on the therapist's couch because of you. So don't be on this high horse and think you're the one who's the victim. Everybody offends you with how they communicate. It works both ways, like I mentioned earlier. So let's all try and find a way to be cooperative in the way we communicate with others and be just aware, as you said.
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of how we communicate. And then, so for anybody who wants to reach you, would you like to share your social media handles where people can find you? Yeah, so my website is idaretobe.com with the number two and the two is mindset and skillset. And then there's variations of that. If they wanna just jump on a call, they can book, I go to idaretobe now. I dare, so I-D-A-R-E.
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The number two, be.com. Is my website. And then if you go, I dare to be now, if you wanna jump on a call or I dare to be more and you can learn about breaking those, I'll send you an article about breaking the voices in your head. Okay, the Sigmund Freud's. Yeah, yeah, it's really about busting the stories. Actually I use a, I use a Dr. Seuss one.
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What about, you know, because the first step in that mindset is, is stopping those stories that are helping you out. So, I dare to be more.com. We'll take you to, we'll get you that. I'll send you a little Dr. Seuss for a minute story about how to start changing that those voices in your head. Yeah, I'd like one too actually, because even though I am aware and I tried to be very much aware of when they come, I could still use more.
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tools and techniques on keeping them in check. So I would appreciate that also. I-D-A-R-E, the number two, B-E-N-O-W, I dare to be now.com. I'll get you into my calendar. That's the calendar if they want to book a call. And then I dare to be is.com is the website. Yes. All right. And I dare to be now. More.
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will be the download. Everything's I dare to be here. I dare to be. Just remember the two is the number. Right. Yeah, the two is well, it's funny. You find a way after the fact to say two is mindset and skill set, but the reality was Tio was taken by a clothing company. So that's right. Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Alice and Arnold for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating podcast. You've shared some really nuggets with us in
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communicating confidently, which are mindset, preparation, execution and growth. And it becomes a loop and you do it again, if you want to improve your communication skills, both personally and most importantly, professionally. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I enjoyed our chat. Me too. Thank you, Alison. Bye.