Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. By the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. My very energetic guest today, Katja Schleicher. who is based in the Netherlands currently. She's a very global phenomenon. She speaks three languages, is a communications expert who is also a keynote speaker, a communications coach, a trainer, especially an intercultural trainer. Is here to share with us so much more, drop so many nuggets when it comes to communication. As I said, she is an expert in the field. So please help me welcome Katja to the show. Hi Katja. Hi Roberta, how are you doing? Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. I'm so excited. I love your energy. I love your perspective on communication. This is gonna be an exciting conversation. I think so too, yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself. You know, there was always when you follow a conversation with people, you have moments where you feel comfortable and then you have moments where you totally feel and it's like ahhh. And with me, with people, it has been always when I have the feeling from, oh my god, he said it so beautifully. Already when I was a little child. When you are a child, you feel a couple of things without really knowing them, without really owning them. But the beauty of words, that was always something that came like a miracle to me easily and that never changed. And the cringing part always has been there too, when someone had a beautiful idea and was talking to me about that idea. And then someone else asks and say, Hey, could you please explain that idea to a group? And nothing, like really nothing comes out of that beautiful hat. That always made me like, Oh my God, no, why? Because you can do so much better. So, and over the years, this is how I basically. owned the talent I have studied communication, linguistics, psychology, all the things you study. Right. I turned that feeling into a talent and into a business. And so I've worked for corporates for 20 years as their spokesperson, PR, marketing, all that. And in 2006, I started my own company as Indeed what you said, as keynote speaker, trainer, coach, everything. about communication. So if you need a presentation done better, if you have a panel discussion, you have to go to and to make a good impression on the person to go to. And what you said, indeed, my absolute pleasure is to work with groups or individuals that incorporate different cultures. There could be different countries, there could be different continents, but it could be different cultural clusters. Like, okay, there's a marketing person that has to explain things to people from procurement or legal, right? These people, even if they speak the same language, they don't speak the same language. In the corporate field, yes. Exactly. So this is what I'm doing. I do that mostly for corporate clients, for business clients. What happens frequently is the people who work with me on a corporate scale come later on into a coaching and say, Can I ask you something about my private life? Yeah, but usually I'll be asked to speak in front of bigger groups to enhance their communication and I do that in trainings too. Yes, I love that. And especially like you said, when we talk about intercultural differences, we always think different nationality, different language, these big corporations are becoming more global. So they have offices in other countries or they have staff. in the same department from different nationalities. A lot of us don't think about one department being culturally different from another. Always, if you sit in a meeting with marketeers and let's stick to finance department or procurement, it is like really, they come from two different planets. And in my work, it's beautiful if I can mend, if I can bring them closer together. Because both of them have beautiful ideas and both of them are right in their own perspective. Job descriptions, yes! Exactly. There is not just one way, there are millions of ways. And if I can support these people to understand each other more easily and to enhance the result by that, then everything is fine. You mentioned doing a better presentation. So let's say you're a marketing person and you want to do a presentation so that the procurement or finance people get the buy-in of what you're trying to do, why you need the money to do the marketing campaign. Give us three top tips of what you should incorporate into a presentation for it to be fully convincing. Let me expand a little bit to four things, the four areas you should look into. And one of the areas you could use from out yourself is everything you can do for that particular audience you're addressing that has to do with body language. So if you prepare your presentation upfront, even before you open up any PowerPoint slide or whatever support you're going to use, have a look at your own body language and check what is for that audience for that surrounding appropriate. What is impactful? Do I need to stand up while the others are seated, which is a strong signal? Or do I sit down while everybody else is seated as well? These are decisions you should not leave to the moment. This can be prepared and should be prepared up front. So body language is one of the biggest points where you should look to read. What are my gestures? Where do I stand in the room? Many things can be adapted, can be adjusted to our needs, to the needs of our presentation. The second quadrant is everything that has to do with the structure of the presentation or the talk, whatever it is. How do I start? How do I lead through? What are my main messages? What are my anticipated takeaways? If I do not plan that ahead, I just have a follow-up of a couple of graphics in my presentation. I might not end up in my audience where I want to end up. That is the second one. So how do I end? How do I want them to take away? Yes. So, and you can anticipate that one question I always consider a very helpful one is that you imagine that people leave your talk, your presentation, the conversation you had. And imagine there would be the next day a headline in a newspaper or a news website. What would that headline be? How would that headline sound or look like? A headline is never long. And let's assume that the 200 people who were just listening to your talk, everybody has a different headline. And then, ah, probably your key message wasn't clear. Was all over the place. And third one is. Everything language, we call it lingus. So this is something you should prepare up font. And you were mentioning that the clusters, right? And then I'm speaking to accountants. I probably use different language. I do use different analogies. I use different key visuals. Right. Where's my intonation? Do I intonate where it's important or do I just have this modulation that never changes? This again, you can prepare. You should. It's nothing that you should decide on in the moment, nor. Quote number four, we call census. Every time an audience graces you with its presence, they are there for you and for what you have to say. This is a source of energy. These people bring their life experience. They bring their daily experience. They bring their experience in the moment. So when you have a presentation, let's say at 8.30 in the morning, and you're the first to present in a long day, in a long row of presentations, that's the difference than when you were the last one, when everybody is hungry, and thirsty, and cranky, and tired. Exactly. Right? So that requires a different interaction. I'm not saying that you should present in the morning or in the evening. That's not important. But my point is you should have a look at the circumstances and the frames around you. Who's speaking before you? If you are coming after the CEO of the company, it requires a different opening. If the CEO speaks after you, it probably requires a different ending. These four quadrants is something you can do upfront. And I'm German. I love planning. Everything that can be done upfront in a presentation, in a talk is well invested time. Because on stage, in a conversation, there is rarely room for anything, really. Planning actually reduces the fear, whatever anxiety. The more you plan, the less afraid, if at all, you are about your presentation and your speech. So it actually helps you feel much better and much more confident about yourself. Yeah. Yes. Even if things go wrong, you have probably prepared a scenario B or a plan C. And all of a sudden, if you have practice, you can fall back to that. Then the nervousness is not that strong anymore. You don't panic. Yes. You can be flexible. You can find that moment to play around with your audience, connect with them. Yeah. Which brings us to that big word connection. What makes us connect with our audiences and why is connection so important? Let's start with the second part of the question. Okay. Do you do it for them? This is such a preliminary important point you have always to be aware of. You are not in a presentation or on stage for yourself, or for your boss. No, there is an audience that invests time and energy. And this is worth your best efforts. And the first part of that is, and the beauty of it is that your audience comes with the wish to connect to you. They want to be entertained. They want to be informed. They want to be integrated. They want to be connected to. So this is an open door. And we as presenters, as communicators, we better live up to that. Because in the end, if you plant the seed of your messaging into someone else, if you anchor your message, then you'll have a chance that the person, the group of people is talking about what you have said to others. And that's what we call spreading the word. Right? Yes. So that is the only way to achieve that is. to connect to your audience. And that's why audience connection to have a conversation on eye level. Even if you're on stage and the audience is sitting somewhere down below in the dark, it should still be a conversation. The moment you leave that conversation and start explaining or preaching or all the things that make a presenter fly away and leave the audience behind. That is the moment where the connection is getting broken and where you simply lose. That's what we always call you lose your audience then. Because now you make it about you and not about them. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it should be to a certain extent, even if you are the expert in the field, that's why they asked you to give that presentation. Right. It is, you do that for them. It's indeed, you're totally right. It should be always. and us, even if you were the person explaining things, it's never me and you. Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of explaining things, let's take examples of things like data or stats or very tech, high tech language, and you need to explain to an audience how it's going to benefit them. What are some of the things that you should take into account when doing that? Because not all of them are going to speak tech. or are going to speak that high level data stuff and you have a ton of numbers on your slides. What should you be cognizant of in order to try and get them to understand? We shouldn't speak tag. Behind the numbers, there is always a message. Behind every graph, there is the idea for a story. Let's assume you have to present the result of a research and In your research, it says that the percentage of this and that has been improved by 20% over the last six months. Now the number per se doesn't help us. What helps us if you make that relate to what has happened in the past, what is the projection for the future? Is 20% a lot? Is it little? Is it more than you expected? less than you expected. And from there, all of a sudden, there is a communication cluster built up that we can turn into a story. Let me give you an example of an insurance company. They had a research and for them terrible results was that they had personal contacts, like face-to-face contacts with their clients statistically only once in seven years. Once in seven years they spoke to their clients? Telephone and everything fine, but once in seven years. One-on-one. They were like, oh my god, we are so bad. Now the number seven was all of a sudden raised as the most important number. Now we had to, in this presentation I was working on, we had to translate that number into something that was really meaningful to the employees. that had a connection to what procurement could do, marketing could do, communication could do. So everybody, the number per se, didn't say anything. But the moment you relate that number- There's a story behind it. Exactly. Two goals and build a story out of that, then it becomes a narrative. And the narrative is most likely the thing that people are going to tell further. The numbers are cool, but they're just the beginning. Yes. They're not the full story. This is why we emphasize the importance of storytelling. Yeah. You know, I'm an advocate of storytelling for more than 20 years now. Let me put it carefully. Everybody says, oh, it's the storytelling while they mean content marketing. Content marketing is no storytelling. Content marketing is content marketing. Content marketing. So the narrative build-up of whatever it is, a website, a presentation, requires a couple of things. For instance, it requires a conflict. If you don't have in what you are going to tell, present, if there is no conflict, the audience cannot relate to it. The audience cannot relate to the hardship of your task. They cannot relay that it was complicated to overcome all the obstacles. And that is why in the end they cannot applaud your success. So you have to take your audience on this journey. Yes. What was the moment where you all of a sudden realized, okay, we can't go on like that or we are bankrupt? For instance, the audience needs emotionally to understand your pain. And only then they can connect to the solution you offer emotionally. And that process is very often, at least what I see, is absolutely in appropriation of communication underestimated. We should take more time and energy and put it into that particular aspect. But that's why we love movies. The storyline has conflict. Exactly. So in your storytelling, one, I think the conflict also makes you relatable. Because everybody's got problems. So if you start with this was tough, this was the conflict, and this is the journey I went through to overcome or to get to the point where there was success in the end. Everybody can relate to that. Or two parts of it. And all of a sudden you're emotionally connected, right? The audience has to feel what happened to you. Amazement, pain, and all the emotions we have, your frustration. If you do not show that, they will not so easily connect to your solution, to your idea you're going to present. We always say storytelling is like the door opener. It's nothing without the facts, the research and all the stuff you have to do. But on the other hand, if you bring it with a story, it is much easier for the audience. digest what you say, to relate to it and to act accordingly. And that is the most important part. In the end, we want your audience or our audience to do what we intended them to do. That was making us impactful and successful. Yes, to take the necessary action after the listen to your message. Yeah. Now, when it comes to communication, we say on this podcast, It will benefit you both professionally and personally. Have you found that with some of your clients, even though you coach them in the corporate arena, that even personally, sometimes that translates to them having better relationships? It always does. Even if the first meeting or the source is a professional one that people find me, it is always because we are human beings. We do not leave our personality in the office or in our workspace, wherever that is nowadays. And then we, we stripped down the personality and then we go home and are a different person. I don't believe that this is the case. We are human. We are one, we are whole. And we like the same things. We like the same things in front of a computer and in a meeting and privately. So most of the tips I have for my clients with my clients are helping. privately. Let me use the example of asking proper questions. Yes, please. An easy tool that mostly works business-wise and personally. If I'm asking an open question that always is right at the when or how, at who, it's always better than a yes or no question. Of course. Works privately as well, because I learned so much about the emotional state, the person is. is in that moment and if that is your children or your parents or your best friend, it is always an easier connection if you know about their state of mind and this state of mind or state of heart is easy to be asked. And not just in how you're doing, but if you ask something what was the most exciting thing that happened to you today, they probably will think about the excitement and then they will come up with something. And while they answer, you will see how they feel about that. You will get access to that emotional state of mind and heart. That's different from, Oh, Katja, did you have an exciting day today? Yeah, exactly. And then I say yes or no, and then that's done. It doesn't make my brain work. My brain works. If you ask me, Hey, what was the most exciting thing? Huh? Hmm. This morning when I got my coffee, there was this absolutely fascinating young lady behind the counter. Oh, and all of a sudden I know that for whatever reason, and I can ask you now, what made this lady fascinating? I don't know, her blue eyes or the way she talked or the way she whipped the cream to the coffee. And all of a sudden we have a conversation. And due to time, because we think we have to be fast and we should not. bother people. Indeed, we just say, did you have an exciting day? Oh, yes. Okay, good. Bye bye. Done. And then we're very fast instead of engaging in a real conversation. So asking questions is something that works like a charm, private and personal and in business. Just using one example, and let me add one more thing. If you ask non-judgmental questions, very often the phrase Why didn't you wear the red dress today? Right. Because for whatever reason, I think the red dress, something is wrong with what you're wearing, the red dress would have been the winner. There is this implicit thing when we phrase the question like that, something is wrong with the dress you're wearing. Well, we don't mean it like that. It's just in our mind that's, ah, I like you're wearing the red. So if you rephrase the question. How about you wearing the red dress tomorrow? All of a sudden, there was a dance floor opening for you and for me. Now we can have a conversation, a true conversation about the red dress. And you would probably say, oh yeah, that's a good idea because tomorrow I'm on stage and you know, what kind of heels shall I wear with it? And it would not be judgmental about what you're wearing today. It would be very positive about the red dress and tomorrow. Because you know what happens when I feel judged? Sometimes I'm gonna rebel and wear that dress even more. That's how humans do. Sometimes with the pushback of, okay, if Katja is judging me, I'm gonna show her that I'm still a grownup who can make my own decisions on what I wear. I'm gonna wear that dress just because. Well, most of the times we have good intentions, exactly. But the way we phrase the things we say very often. have this judgmental thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of good judgment. Of course. It's important. Imagine we wouldn't judge. No, I want to judge politically. I want to judge economically. Absolutely. But very often we enter a conversation already with a judgment in our mind. Oh, hang on. Now this is not working and you haven't even started yet, right? Especially when we talk leadership communication, this is what happens frequently. Because very often everybody who is doing leader or is in leadership today, isn't a tremendous pressure. You know, it's, it's hard. And then managing of people where the communication skills kick in. And usually they were not hired for communication skills. Never, hardly ever, hardly ever. So we should do that much more, but we don't. So. All of a sudden then daily life kicks in a daily KPIs, procedures, products, whatever. And all of a sudden there is a huge pressure, which makes it very often, absolutely hard to ask a non-judgmental question because a judgmental one would be so much faster. To get to the point. Exactly. But on the long one, it damages the relationship you have built up with your team, your peers, with management, right? So very often it helps just to take a tiny baby step back and use a second to think about proper phrasing for this particular moment, for this particular situation, having looked at the person you were talking to or the group of people. And we do speak a lot about leadership in this podcast. What else besides asking quality questions? should leaders remember when communicating, especially with their teens? What people probably would expect me to say is all you have to listen. Yes. But let's tick box that for this particular podcast. I'm pretty sure many, many people spoke about good listening skills. But let me dive into something different. One of the things I would wish we would take more time for more energy and would practice it more is true presence. Let's assume you called a meeting with the manager, you're the boss, you lead a group of, and you called a meeting of 20 people. And sometimes it's very small science of body language, of belonging, of how you open this meeting, how you lead through that meeting, that show the people that you were there through the whole process. Very often what happens is okay, meeting kicks off and then boss says okay good thanks everybody for being here and you know and the mind is not with the work at this moment. The mind is already with agenda point one because time is ticking. If you have a leadership position, if you would really took the effort to be more in this tiny little moment, then we will even before one word has been said, they'll connect to each other in a different level. So this is something I really would wish leaders would do more. Like we say, we're not judging them because you know, they're under a lot of pressure and they were hired for their technical skills. So this is new territory for them and they get thrown in the deep end. Oh, you get a permission. Great with the bonus and the higher salary, but then managing a team is a whole new skill. Yeah. One thing that I recommend is shadowing. Just let someone could be a coach, could be someone else. Let this person shadow you as a leader in the management. Let them walk with you for a day and then share the observations afterwards. It should be someone you like or you trust. And the second one I love is the principle of reverse mentoring. Because when you hire, if you ask someone who is coming from a different cultural cluster. Could be that you ask the marketing junior and you're the leader of the group and you're maybe in legal, you're managing, let's say 250 people and you've done it for the last 25 years. Now that would be called to be reverse mentored by someone who just joined the company, second job and has no legal experience whatsoever. It's just doing social media marketing. Just by being together with the person who is completely from a different orbit, just having a conversation with that person once or twice, having a lunch a week or a month, it doesn't really matter. It will really, really break a couple of patterns that you're as a manager, as a leader, probably not even aware of anymore. The shadowing and reverse mentoring sounds to me like they bring more self-awareness. Absolutely. Because sometimes you don't see yourself, you don't see the impact you're having on others or your patterns as you say. So how important is self-awareness? To me the starting point, because if you're good with yourself, if you have regular conversations with yourself that are not beating yourself up conversations, but that are... realistic or encouraging, you should be your best buddy. Me, myself, and I waking up in the morning and getting the day started and it's going to be all right and we make the best out of that. Right. So the self-awareness part helps you and it's especially when it comes to mental health is an important one as well because self-awareness helps you recognize and realize what kind of day is that today. Is it a day where I say like, come on, today the world is mine, right? So give me whatever it's going to be perfect. And then there is days where it's like, maybe today is not 150% day. Or maybe last night I had a, for whatever reason, tiny unpleasant experience. Let's assume we've been rejected by a group of people and you do not feel that self-assured the next morning. That's good to recognize. That's good not to judge, but to recognize. Yeah, acknowledge that this is what's happening and why I feel this way. Then react appropriately. Always my example is there are days where I do not pick up the phone. Because I'm awful. I know this is a day when I'm angry. I have anger days where it's like, ah, nothing is running like I wanted. Oh my God, this is not a very good day to pick up the phone because I would. be in people's faces immediately. Right. And then I talked to myself, I was like, you know what, do some writing work, do some conceptual work, and only bother yourself. Yes, but today is not the day to communicate with others. Or at least not picking up the phone, maybe an email sign. So now, many, many managers and leaders will say, yeah, I do not have that luxury because I have to do that every day. Yeah, but not to that extent as you've been doing it up to now. So if you find that balance, I think you get a great deal forward in, uh, in self-awareness. Is it easy for people to get into self-awareness and trying to look into themselves? Has that been your experience? Is it something they willingly do? We are improving. We are improving a great deal. Looking back when I started my professional career, It was a disaster. It was deliver, team player, team player, team player. That already improved over the years. And with all the new generations that are coming into the labor market, it's getting better and better. And we realized that we are in incremental part of the success. It's getting better. A huge deal of people think like, oh my God, how do I do that? Oh, do I need to go to the shrink? By this, it's not a case, but befriending yourself is a very good precondition to become a very good communicator. Right, that is so true. Ketcha, Schleicher, I could speak to you all day if I could. Thank you so much for sharing such great insights with us today. You're so welcome. Please leave us, my pleasure, please leave us with some words of wisdom before you go. This is always such a, you know, a wisdom. Make sure that whatever you say, whatever you write includes three things. It includes yourself and includes the audience and it includes the greater good. All of a sudden, one plus one is not just two, but three. And I think when we all do that a little bit more, the world is going to be a better place. Words of wisdom from Katja Schleicher. Thank you so much. And before you go, where can we find you on social media? You can find me on all social media because I'm a social media maniac. Oh, yes. Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn, of course, and there's only two people with my name, so you'll find me easily. Find me on Twitter, we're on a media coaching. You know, find me on Instagram, where I'm the shoebiscuit. And recently, you'll find me on TikTok. I'm still testing and training. But I think we should not let TikTok be in the hands of the young people alone. There's no reason to do that professionally. So if I'm your TikTok under my name Katja Schleicher as well. I will write everything from your links on the show notes. Thank you very much for your time today. You're so welcome. Thanks. Thank you. That was Katja Schleicher, the communications expert, who's a keynote speaker, a communications coach and trainer. Remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review and we will be with you next time.