How to communicate effectively in business (with Amber Daines)
my core belief is that to lead well is to speak well to articulate yourself in messaging well and if you don't do that it's very hard to leave hello and welcome to the culture things podcast i'm your host brendan rodgers and this is episode 57 and today i'm talking with amber danes amber how are you i'm excellent in lockdown like you but uh enjoying the idea of more podcasts so i'm happy to be here today absolutely i'm going to read a bit of your buyer just to give our listeners a bit of perspective on who you are but um we are literally about 10 kilometers away from each other you live up in carry on i'm in springfield but we can't even sit together to record this no those plans that we had to be in studio together so this is the next best thing i guess absolutely absolutely the beauty of technology we're so lucky so look amber is one of australia's most agile communications professionals known for her ability to devise and implement successful strategies across all forms of external and internal communications the sweet spot is improving how leaders from all sectors speak write and advocate for their businesses and beliefs across media internal communications and other forums in the past decade amber has become a crisis communicators expert as an example she was part of amp's communications team during the royal commission into misconduct in the banking superannuation and financial services industry in 2020 amber was named as best business communication specialist and excellence in media training award australasia in the global 2020 acquisition international influence business women's awards the focus of our conversation today is how to communicate and be heard amber welcome to the culture of things podcast great to be here brandon look it's fantastic to have you the other really important question i've got to ask before we get into our topic is how are you going with homeschooling with two young children well i i'm great at teaching adults i've decided and i'm not so great at teaching children particularly my own so i think i'll stick to my day job that's for sure we seem to have a little bit less patience for our own children don't we absolutely and i think it's just not knowing when it's going to end absolutely yeah no i'm really lucky i've got adult adult children's because i'm not sure that i would i would handle it very well but anyway we'll uh we'll put that aside let's get into our topic and but this whole thing about communication and communicating to be heard there's so much noise nowadays so many sort of impacts on people's communication media streams online offline all that sort of stuff so this is a fantastic topic to unpack and to give leaders out there you know hopefully some greater insight greater perspective on communication but what i want to just start with is from your perspective like why is a topic like this so important why is communication so important when you're in a leadership role but my core belief is that to lead well is to speak well to articulate yourself in messaging well and if you don't do that it's very hard to leave because people won't understand what you stand for what your messages are and what you want them to do with that information so you can be a fantastic leader and be an introvert and still communicate really effectively it's not about changing your personality but it's about being flexible in the way in which you communicate so that your audience whether it be your staff or peers or it could in fact be new clients or customers know who you are and what you stand for that's really the crux of it so what's the as far as the leader being a good or great communicator what sort of impact at that does that have for them being seen by i guess the general public out there i think it's about remembering who your audience is and you're not going to appeal to everybody let's be honest so it's about knowing who matters most out of all the people i could be reaching say through this podcast or any sort of channel which i might choose whether it be a blog post or perhaps you know traditional media interview who am i really trying to reach and having all your messages and your examples and your touch points resonate with them so i think it's about not being appealing to everyone because you're not going to be a leader for everyone but you can broaden your appeal by making sure that you are consistent and persistent in how you package yourself what you talk about you know i guess what you own as well so if you're really passionate for example about say environmental sustainability for example you know you are doing a charity fundraiser and you are a leader in in another world being able to share that and why really brings the human side to your leadership uh position to your brand and it actually helps people get to know you which is really the key like people don't always remember what you say or how you say it or your or your sort of great jargon that you know or your great statistics but they will remember the stories you tell them and how you make them feel so whether that be inspired you know you might be motivating someone to do something for a particular cause or even just positioning yourself for your next leadership role or perhaps um expanding your business yeah such great points and the impact how do you get a leader to feel comfortable with whatever their style of communication is and how they how they're portraying themselves because imagine in order to send a message out there and particularly creating a level of authenticity there's got to be some connection with who they are as a leader what their style is and really embracing that so how do you help encourage that in a leader i get people to really spend some time with me and obviously with lockdowns and covert it's all been a bit sort of over video calls zooms and things like that but i really try and get to know who they are and i also ask them how they think they communicate and also where do they want to be so there's always a goal so for some people it's like i want to be a little bit more authentic or i want to be more vulnerable or i want to be a little bit more animated i'm very dry when i speak i'm really knowledgeable but i'm not exciting my audience and motivating them so we kind of start from where they think they are i spend a bit of time with them it's almost like an audit a communications audit and then we get into some coaching and some training which might be weekly it could be a whole big day together it could be a couple of days together and we road test i guess what they think they should be saying and how they should be saying it and we really finesse their personality as well as their communication style i'm not big on changing who people are i'm really about bringing to the fore their best communication qualities and even pushing them a little bit further if they already do a lot of keynote speaking or webinars really amping that up to the next level so for example get rid of your slide deck that's just a crutch be a great speaker you know you wouldn't see a barack obama with it with a powerpoint presentation you need to really be able to rely on your oratory skills or your written skills or your communication in some capacity that doesn't rely just on things like visuals as great as they can be yeah really there is a support flipping this on the other side what sort of impact does a leader with very poor communication skills have for the audience well i think you can see it often um in our political leaders for example and not wanting to sort of call out any particular examples but i'm sure we can all think of our own depending on our political persuasions sometimes when you don't get the message right like maybe what's happened with the roll out of our vaccinations across australia what happens is you create fear and you create resistance and that is far harder to break down than if you had just positioned yourself consistently and persistently from the beginning so if the message had always been it is a race we need to get vaccinated quickly and these are the reasons why we want to go back to the sporting events we want to go back to our normal lives and our workplaces and our social gatherings to do this and the world has shown us this we need to have at least 70 of our population vaccinated rather than that kind of capitulation on okay we're doing well let's not worry about it because now we're almost in catch-up mode and the reality is the first messages you hear sometimes you hold on to those for whatever reason and it's very hard as a leader to persuade people to think differently because they'll hold you to account we do do that with our leaders and we say but you said three months ago this wasn't a race and it wasn't a big deal to be first so i think it's about knowing the end game and working backwards from there really topical point around obviously vaccines and things like that in your experience which is extensive what would what's that one thing that you think could have been done differently which should maybe uh turned a bit more of this negativity into some positivity and and increase the vaccination levels from where at today i think with all due respect we do need to be mindful we are in a once in a 100 year pandemic and i think all our leaders no matter who they are would be struggling with knowing what to say and how to say it but they are relying on experts and i think it's about backing up what you're saying with the people who are the the experts so your health professionals your doctors your vaccine specialists who can actually speak to the science but also back you up on your policies so i think anyone as a leader has to have a great team around them and they also need to be mindful that with their messaging it needs to be simplified people cannot handle four different messages in a week you know one minute you know we don't lock down then we do lock down and if you give them a reasonable reason why you're doing it people tend to kind of come with you on that journey the risk is when you are stubborn you are arrogant and you don't apologize or sort of have empathy in your messaging and you just steamroll through you're not going to bring people on the journey with you so i think that's something all leaders can probably take on board because you think about how you like to be communicated to and it's you like to be a human you don't want to be spoken to like you're just another number that you're just part of a you know grand scheme to get reelected for the next election people are very savvy and they will spot that very quickly and they will stop listening to you or resist the messaging that you are trying to share even if it is really good information and it's going to help you yeah you've touched on that vulnerability piece a bit so let's let's unpack that how important is a level of vulnerability in a leader's communication it's very important but there's times you need to use it and times you probably don't need to use it so i'm thinking when you're in a crisis when something bad's happened and you might be part of the people to blame for example you need to be able to apologize you need to be able to empathize with the people you've impacted rather than skipping the step which a lot of people want to do in in crisis communications and go but we do this all differently now you need to take people on the journey of we've made mistakes this is what we could have done this is what we've learned and this is what i've learned personally and this is how we're going to improve this for the future for you so i think vulnerability is very important on in depending on the situation but there are times when you just want an inspirational leader and you don't necessarily need to be vulnerable all the time so i think it's about knowing the audience understanding where you are in the communications process so are you in a happy sort of we're launching this fantastic product and service mode or are we actually a bit of an issue here and we need to address the issue and as a leader if i can talk about how this experience has changed me or relate to the people in in the audience who might actually have similar concerns that is going to make me much more palatable to the audience and it means people listen to you because we do know most people only hear about 30 of what you're saying say on tv or webinar they are focused on everything else happening in their world your crazy backgrounds you might be having or whatever else they've got going on so to have cut through it's really about having those fantastic moments to know when to be vulnerable and to turn that up and it can be very powerful and it's not about being weak i think if you associate vulnerability with weakness then that will probably turn you off being able to sort of amp that up at the right time but if you can view it from a different perspective and step into the shoes of the people you're speaking to i think it actually makes you a great leader and a very powerful one can you give us an example to help me and and listeners understand when would be a good time or a good example to show that vulnerability in your communication i think when you've when you've mucked up to be honest when you've made a mistake when you've got it wrong that sounds too simple it isn't really well i mean i'm thinking back to say for example in my experience the banking royal commission um there wasn't a lot of apologies really i mean they did come in the end but they took a royal commission they took people being on the stand and even then some of the people in the leadership roles whether they be the regulators or the banks they didn't really say sorry and whether that was for legal reasons who knows but they basically stuck to their guns and i think that made us at home who are already feeling pretty despondent about the banking sector and you know fees for no service charging dead people all those things that happened it really took us to a place of even more distrust with banks and sometimes i think there was one bank out of the four big four who actually took out a one-page ad in all the major newspapers that basically said sorry and that was the most powerful thing they could have done before they rebuild the reputation before they put in a new board and tell you how fantastic the culture now is it's really important to be able to fall on your sword at those at those critical times and timing is everything there is too late for sorry sometimes as well so knowing the timing and if it feels hard it's probably the time to do it um yeah great point is there a specific in your own experience have you identified what stops people from showing that vulnerability at the right time i think it's fear it's fear it's a sense of shame perhaps in themselves it's also depending on who they are in the industry they represent it's also sometimes associated with that weakness and people let's be honest all think about themselves as much as they think about other people they're worried about their position changing they're worried about no longer being a leader or someone that people listen to so i think by digging your heels in sometimes and particularly if you're part of the problem so for example if you've been part of that culture that has you know supported that behavior which is wrong or you've turned a blind eye you've in fact enabled it you are in some ways responsible and i think the responsibility piece particularly when it has a public lens to it so social media or tv or radio or newspapers covering your story it is hard because you are thinking i could lose my job and this may make me a target and i think none of us want to feel like that so it's very understandable why people avoid it but i think in in this in this particular era we're in we are we expect more of leaders we expect them to do more than just break in profits and and return dividends have you got a view on how media may have played any part in the maybe some of these key leaders uh being less open to showing vulnerability in their communication it's an interesting one because obviously my background is in media i was a journalist for a number of years and i still have very much a soft spot for the media obviously not all media outlets operate in the same way but we do as journalists have ethics and values which we we work by and the end of the day i mean the job of any media outlet in some ways is to hold leaders and anyone in a position of power to account that's really what the media should be doing you need to tell the stories when they don't want those to be told because we're truly really trying to inform our audiences of what's happening and give people a chance to make up their own minds so information can be presented obviously with some bias that that definitely exists there are some media outlets which are more left or right leaning or have particular interest groups which back them or you know support them so it's about being aware of that but also realizing that the media's role in some ways um while it can be intrusive there are some of the major stories about of our generation that would never have been broken if you just relied on individuals doing the right thing without the backing of a big organization like a nine newspapers or you know the other outlets as well it reminds me of a statement that one of my previous guests made dave and bacon and he's got a vast array of experience in communication media press galleries all that sort of stuff and he stated a phrase it's not news anymore it's views it's true and look opinion pieces are are important and i think look i i do i think he is i think he was i think he was referring to when it's not an opinion piece oh right when it's actually just it's the way the news is presented yes yes what's your take on that look i don't disagree but i just think of course i mean like everyone has a view like if i as a journalist when you write a story you write about things that you love with more passion enthusiasm and commitment than you do things that you don't or that you don't have a vested interest in i think that's human nature so to think it would be any different would would probably be naive but the same token there's very like investigative journalism really good investigative journalism takes you down rabbit holes that may or may not produce a story but you've got to fund that and you've got to be very mindful that you've got it you've got to pay for really good content otherwise all you're paying for is advertising and that's not healthy in terms of democracy in terms of people making informed choices and understanding you can't just have an echo chamber of whatever you think has been the only thing you consume i mean i'm very big on that i force myself to for my client's sake read and listen to other outlets that are not necessary of my opinion but if i'm going to be informed it's really important i understand what the other side is thinking and saying yeah well i have to say hats off to you well done for doing that because i think there's a lot of us in society that don't take the time to do that absolutely i think it's because it's part of my job often i've got to work with leaders who might be from people yeah well that's political organization so i just have to have empathy for that but also understand that everyone has a valid view and even if you don't agree with it but i think unfortunately with social media people hide behind some of that too to kind of probably be more um passionate and sort of i guess aggressive about some of their thinking than they would be if you were in this face-to-face situation i think people kind of hide behind that a little bit which is unfortunate i think it creates a bit of this community you know amongst people yeah it certainly can and amber it's a great segue you're a professional of this media stuff you've segued into something that's just on my mind online versus online versus offline communication so just to sort of start that uh piece what's what are the key differences from a communication perspective that leaders need to be mindful of when they're communicating online versus offline i think it's about access and it's about timeliness so access i'm for example i mean you know a lot of us have a facebook account or a twitter or a linkedin account so that's access to many whereas obviously a news outlet like nine newspapers or murdoch press for example you actually got to have a paid subscription so there are firewalls which mean that unless you subscribe to that content and pay for it you don't have access to it so understanding i guess the drivers behind that particular media organization but also realizing at the end of the day in my mind it's kind of the same thing i would not want to see any of my clients or the people i work with saying offline or online different things because we are all very smart and we don't just read one particular news outlet or watch one tv station for news most of us will flick around and if i see for example a leader touting their belief in something on one particular broadcaster because they feel like that's going to create sympathy they're going to get people listening and they're trying to just attract ears and eyeballs onto them and then i see them in a completely different publication talking very differently about that topic obviously i'm not i'm going to think that's discrediting their personal brand so it's just being aware that there is continuity between online and offline these days and i think the end of the day i treat them exactly the same okay so treating it exactly the same but is there more of a different strategy involved around the work that you do and and guiding leaders for from an online verse offline strategy only really in terms of timing so the immediacy of social media means that if you have something that's breaking news and you particularly in a crisis you can have something on your community facebook page within seconds traditionally what used to happen before social media those of us who remember that era um excellent well played um i think you know you'd have to rely on the media to actually print that story the next day in the traditional newspaper or get a media release to cut through the 1200 media releases a day which go to the average newsroom to try and get that story out there i think the control of social media means you can control your own message but it's really the timeliness which i i see is differently so sometimes we plan for two or three months for example for a client who might be going on you know 60 minutes or they might be going on for example 7 30 program they're big stake kind of outlets but we've often got long leads homes like when i say long long and journalism land might be one or two weeks whereas with social media it's that minute and even online news outlets you know the story that you read this morning online on abc for example would be completely different by 11 o'clock because there'd be different news feeds coming in and that front page gets refreshed whereas 20 years ago that newspaper was really yesterday's news it was from yesterday printed today so i think the immediacy of online is what you harness in your strategy and you use the other opportunities to reinforce who you are and what you stand for what are some of the pros and cons of that immediacy with those media with those online media platforms the pros are the fact that you can control your own message and people like that idea they like not having to rely on a journalist to tell the story for them because if you're not particularly well media trained or you're not really conscious of how what you're saying might be interpreted the story you think you're giving in an interview might be different because they're going to go to two or three other sources and say well actually is this true and you know it's not a single voice story i think the immediacy of social media means you are in control of that i guess the downside is you can be your own echo chamber you can be too prolific on social media and then you kind of get people not listening to anything you say so a bit of scarcity makes what you say and your currency actually more valuable sometimes so if you were doing a daily blog every day on linkedin i might read it for a few days but then i probably would start to go well i've got so much other news coming in am i really going to read that daily is that too much unless it's bang on in my industry or something that i'm really passionate about so i think what you've got to be careful with social media is that you don't do it just for the sake of getting a message out there because it is a one-way conversation sometimes you might get some supportive comments you might get horrible trolls as well so just being mindful that it's got to be return on investment for everything you're communicating it's not just about having a lot of content and being prolific it's actually about being strategic and sometimes if people know oh i've got to wait a week to hear from you they're more likely to engage with it at a deeper level yeah it's really interesting perspective as well how do you find the balance of that where does the balance sit it's really up to the individual and i think for me personally uh with my own communications i only have a couple of social media platforms that i use regularly one's linkedin and i sometimes use a little bit of twitter just to keep informed i don't tend to post on it and i use instagram as well just to be quite visual and in the moment but i use those all very differently but i don't have 16 social media accounts and then i'm managing all these different profiles i think keeping your personal and your professional profile separate particularly as a leader is very important and having privacy settings and things in place by the same token it's just about working out where your audience plays you know a lot of my business is obviously going to come through linkedin i'm not in a in a kind of industry or a sector in communications training where facebook is really going to work for me it's not it's not about a product or a low-level service that's kind of i have volume it's very much small groups ceos and one-to-one so understanding where will your message more likely resonate will be the key to having cut through and i tell people to measure it measure it completely likes are not a measure by the way that is just i mean we all have like juiciness i had another guest of mine say years ago when you're scrolling you have about five likes and you and then you don't like anything else to put it for that session on facebook or whatever so sometimes likes that make you feel good you get the you know the rush of i'm important and special but does is it converting to business and if it's not you need to rethink your strategy so on that point again if likes and i'm 100 agree with you likes is not a great measure what is a great measure though that your communication is cutting through and actually getting to the the right ears of the right audience depending on what your goal is like if you're a not-for-profit for example it could be about fundraising is this are you actually raising more dollars are you getting more people to stay with you longer as customers or clients are people commenting positively and engaging are you hitting a note because i think when people comment that is a little bit more than a like and that takes more effort so are you engaging at that level and i think sometimes that can be a great barometer of who your clients and customers are who's your audience that you're actually really speaking to and if it's a similar kind of groups of people it's a really great bit of sort of low-level market research you've done to go okay there's a lot of comments here from the superannuation industry on this particular post maybe that's something where i need to pursue and do something more targeted with so you can actually just use your own intel to kind of really quickly gather where people are listening to you and how and who amber i know you do also see align some work around the personal branding space how does personal branding fit into this whole communication communicating and being heard it's about being visual really your personal brand often so i'm really i'm my background is print journalism i have worked in tv for a number of years but at the end of the day i really love the idea that you should be able to do a little bit of everything so i think with your personal brand that's where things like instagram can be very powerful um i'm not into tick tock my 12 year old son is but that's apparently a lot of businesses are doing tick tock now so there you go i'm sure you can dance with the best of them surely i don't know it just feels like off-brand for me but maybe i'll have to get there one day um but the idea that you are you are visually representing yourself and the things that you're interested and passionate about whether that be exercise or that you know you really you love reading a certain type of books or you know you comment on what's ever popular on netflix this week i mean that all adds to your personal brand story so i think for leaders um they have that power to curate that in a way which is meaningful and it's not just a bunch of you know similar photos we don't want to see a whole bunch of corporate headshots or photos of you in your cafe every day doing the same thing we want to make sure that you are relevant but also visual i think it's about telling a visual story and we do know people will even in traditional news we'll look at the picture first the photo that's come up read the caption then read the headline and then decide if they're going to read the story so visual storytelling is a very important part of your personal brand have you got a perspective i'm sure you do a perspective on i guess the balance of letting people in that vulnerability part sort of the personal side of who you are and you know for example i take pictures of say the the home studio for example just let people see you know where we may be producing this show from but then there's that's not my professional brand you know i need to make sure i'm putting some stuff out there that actually aligns with the stuff that i can help people with or whatever is there a balance there that that sits somewhere there's always a balance i think it depends um what are your drivers why are you doing it you you want people to see that stuff and some people are very comfortable with people seeing you know their piles of news old newspapers and tax returns sitting there and laundry that needs to be folded my workspace but i think people love a little bit of humility and i did see one of um one of my friends who actually has an agency which um represents influences for businesses she was posting the other day and she you know she has a great lifestyle normally when we're not in lockdown and does all these fabulous things with celebrities and it was always out and about and she actually posted like this is what you don't see and they showed she showed like she'd eaten all these chocolates because she's usually very disciplined she hadn't used that spin bike for two weeks and um all her grey roots were coming through her head because she hasn't been over the hairdresser for six weeks either um very much first of all problems let's be honest but at the end of the day it probably got more interest than her fabulous post about here's me hanging out with richard branson on necker island because it showed her to be real and it also let people see that she also was having a tough time with lockdown just out of interest when's the last time you had a haircut six weeks i was so lucky i had my hair cut the day before went to lock down but i've had a couple of did you have inside information not really but i am pretty rigorous every six weeks so i've kind of missed a couple now and it's um yeah we're going to have a whole bunch of natural hair very soon i think well i'm sporting the the iso buzz cut or whatever they call it so which my daughter did for me well my daughter did it for me there's a little bit of pain involved in sort of ripping the clippers out of my hair but uh look i survived and it's it's going okay for me at the moment brave man well now i've decided i'm not sure it feels like well why don't i just do that every time now it's just so easy to get on the back deck and just run the clippers over it but anyway there you go side note i'm not sure how that sort of helps with our communication but anyway anyway your personal brand is now the brandon with his buzz cut i'm not sure that's the brand i'm going for amber a little while ago you mentioned around verbal communication and non-verbal communication i think you used sort of 30 verbal so does that do i make that assumption that 70 is non-verbal and what are these sort of non-verbal things or tips that you can share with us that help get the message across well we're doing some of them today so for example we're on this podcast and you've decided to stream us live and record us so for example i'm using my hands a bit i'm talking with my hands i've made sure i've framed myself in a way that even though i can't be in front of you and i love a live audience and i prefer you know being with real humans i can still use my hands to express myself i can use my voice which is very powerful obviously in podcasting and also looking at the camera eye contact so all those kind of i guess it's body language would be the old term we would use for that um the other way we talk about it is presence you create presence and how do you create presence well you have to be totally 100 mindful and i did know in your prep notes for me today you mentioned treat this like a keynote a hundred percent i don't i'm not looking at my phone is off my emails are all turned off and i'm here and i'm present with you and that really is a big part of that non-verbal communication that you can tell when someone's engaged from am i listening to your questions or am i just giving you key messages that i want to share and an audience at home is very savvy on that that will work out pretty quickly that that guest is not listening they're not engaged and they're not personable so it's all about those sorts of things being a great listener is one of the best skills you can possibly have and i must admit when i was younger i was probably typical kind of enthusiastic corporate kind of pr woman who just you know i was quite young when i moved from journalism to pr and i wanted to impress clients and so what do you do you keep talking you don't listen you ask questions just so you can talk but i learned very early on that that doesn't work in terms of winning clients or trust or creating rapport so being a great listener would be something i really encourage all our leaders to to do more of it's a great aspect so how do we become better listeners presence is just being present and mindful and i know there's a lot of you know woohoo talk about mindfulness and i i'm probably the last person in the world that would ever do yoga but i do subscribe to mindfulness and being very present so for me personally for example when i go for a run i do not take devices with me i don't listen to music i just i'm in nature i'm listening to the birds the annoying truck that's going past partly from a safety point of view but secondly just because it's important to be tuning in to those sounds around you and observing like you're seeing it for the first time and i think the same thing can happen in our communication particularly with clients and people that either we know or we've you know worked with before often they are telling us exactly what they think or feel not with their language but maybe with their body language or their tone or their the way they're kind of not listening you can tell their body shuts down they're distracted they're looking everywhere else but to you so being engaged and being a great listener is one of the key skills and actually being heard and generating influence in your in your business and in your life amber have you got a story that you could share with us of your own maybe from a client base again you don't need to name any names but just where the i guess their style of communication their level of communication was can we say low level and you spend some time with them work with them and and it's really doubled down and taken them to another level have you got you got something you can share with us around that absolutely so um i'm thinking of one particular leader who i think was great on paper and that's a really hard one because i had all the mbas and all the bits and all the pieces what they weren't great at doing was being with their staff so they were physically in an office on its own level for example like in a tower called the ivory tower they were you know they kind of do webinars one way so not really any questions so not really a listing never did a floor walk never sat with people who worked for them and really were you know a lot of them being long-term employees never had lunch with them except for the big fancy lunch at the end of the year which you know to be christmas lunch but that often was out of the comfort zone for their staff so what they were finding was no one was actually listening to any of their messages and so when the business went into crisis mode they didn't look to that leader for the answers they were looking to the middle managers they were looking to the people that actually related to them and spent time with them and communicated at a level that wasn't just a whole bunch of corporate speak that didn't mean anything meanwhile you know they're on you know a million dollars a year and you're talking about job cuts it's just understanding how you're going to communicate and the forum you're going to communicate depends on your audience so if you've got a frontline workforce probably a lunchtime webinar where they don't probably check their phones that much they're not sitting on laptops it's not going to fly you need to actually do face-to-face or you need to kind of go into that showroom or that work environment and be vulnerable so what i'm hearing and you tell me if i'm right on this is that really a key element of communication and being heard is that you have to connect with people and you have to use different styles different mediums whatever to really create that connection otherwise it doesn't matter what you say no one's going to listen to it that's right so particularly with internal communications it's important to understand how do people like to be communicated with so for some for some of us who have desk jobs this kind of forum is fine but for other people that are sort of you know they might be driving trucks or they might be you know doing heavy serious work where they're not sort of able to stop and they're clocking in and clocking out and their lives are very different you've got to work out how you're going to get through them how do you make sure that your messages are not falling on deaf ears and sometimes it's about using other people in your organization so the example i gave you know the middle managers the people that actually worked every day with everyone knew everyone by name kind of spent time in that factory environment they were the people that were going to have the most cut through with the with the team not the people in the head office so being mindful you can cascade those messages down but allow other people sometimes to deliver it and then they back up your leadership if that makes sense makes perfect sense the only other thing i want to want you to share on that is that how do you help leaders realize that if they're not at that level already you know what i do i actually get them to do a survey and it's pretty hard for people so either get their hr person or whoever's working with them to do it to talk about you know how many of these things have you attended how many of these newsletters have you opened recently and people are very honest particularly when they're not happy they will tell you when they're happy they don't tell you anything they just go along and you know don't participate but sometimes a you know a pulse survey or something like that just focused on comms two or three questions um and incentivize people to complete it um you know could be having a free lunch it could be whatever it might be food always works really well i find you actually get people to tell you honestly um and you know obviously in that you get a mix of people that are very honest and it's anonymous obviously people will be more honest but it's just about asking and i think that's what we often as leaders forget that we get to a certain level and we stop asking questions and we think we know all the answers and the reality is you've got to be relevant to your audience and the only way to keep doing it is keep asking really good questions keep that reality check happening and don't be afraid to change what you're doing and change can be hard but it can actually be the most powerful thing you can do as a leader so it sounds like seeking feedback is an important first step what you're saying it is absolutely honest feedback and be willing to do something with the feedback that's the other key like the amount of times you'll do a survey and nothing changes well then you're not going to get the same engagement next time you try and do that absolutely so true so true amber i want you to share with us the amber dain's top tips for 2021 and beyond of how to improve our communication and be heard number one get trained of course that's what i'm going to say that's what i do for a living but i was going to say do you know anyone that does that sort of work well communications coaching can help anyone whether you're just in a startup you're going on your own for the first time you you know you're hosting webinars because we're all doing that more and more now because we can't see people face to face get some professional training get some feedback um you can invest in yourself and it will really exponentially grow your business and your brand the second thing i would say is then once you've got that fabulous training done use it like the worst thing people do is they go and get some fabulous speaker training and then they they do one keynote and you don't hear from them again so find opportunities where you can actually practice and improve and get sort of feedback on how you're going and the third thing is do something scary so if your idea of getting up and doing you know a webinar for 500 people in your business is scary but you've been asked to do it do it set yourself that challenge because it's very easy to play safe and go oh i'm a great writer i'm just going to write some articles for the business or i might do a pre-recorded video where it's all very sanitized they can be great stepping stones but do something a little bit scary that pushes you that shows your vulnerability but you'll also be very proud of yourself if you do it and you do it well amber i've known you for a little while and you are a very practical person three very very practical tips so thank you stuff that people can really action and i have to say that thank you very much for the training you gave me just in the preamble to this conversation today i had yourself and mark on the line both of you say i'll just adjust this just as i'm trying my lack of technology around this stuff and making sure i'm placed correctly so i i can testament to your coaching and training early on you gave me five minutes which has been really helpful absolutely well done and but what i'd also like you to share just in in closing is yeah again you've been you've worked with leaders for a long time uh you have your own business uh you're a leader in the community again you've won awards in in media and journalism and stuff like that so what's that one thing that has had the greatest impact on your own leadership journey i think failure i've learned more from my failure that i have for my success and that probably sounds a little bit trash but it is true i think when you're doing well and everything's going great obviously you feel fantastic and there's no learning in that because you're doing everything that you need to do you think what you think you need to do i think when you try something that doesn't work what can you take away from that and what what can you teach yourself and teach others i think the failures of actually in hindsight that sort of um there's a saying that they use in in the dance world which is no pressure no diamonds and i really believe that's true that's where the gold is that's where you actually learn and grow and you actually become a better leader because you've done something that hasn't worked yeah no pressure no diamonds i like that i've not i'm not a dancer so i haven't heard that one before back back in those 1980s leotards that's what my dad's coach used to say no pressure no diamonds and of course when you're 10 you go what does that mean but i really really resonates with me fantastic with your leg warmers on as well absolutely amber it would be a remiss of me too to not mention your own podcast the politics of everything they're great podcasts i'm subscribed to it i love listening to some of the varying views on there which is fantastic tell us a bit about the your own podcast journey and the politics of everything so that started probably four years ago and i had about a year and a half in virtual moth balls as i call it because i was busy consulting to the government during uh the the recent drought we had in new south wales and that was a full-time job and i just didn't have the stability to run the podcast and that break was great because i got to refresh what i thought about the podcast and what i thought the audience might want as well so i did listen to the audience but the podcast itself is just a great channel it's it doesn't it's not a profit generating model um i love to keep it authentic i don't want sponsors because i just want to be able to have the guests that i want to have of various views and experiences in life and some of them are well known and some of them are not but that doesn't matter i think everyone has some sort of expertise and experience which others can relate to and learn from so it's a bit of a passion project for me yeah well said and i guess in thi in keeping with our theme how does the politics of everything help you communicate and be heard it makes me a great listener because i often don't know the people i'm interviewing i they're not necessarily all clients or friends or peers although some of them are and so i really have to relate to them at a level and the first time i'm often meeting them is two minutes before the podcast so it's about being a great listener and realizing that okay i might have this set of questions but if they tell me something really interesting i'll let them talk about that or i think the audience is going to really learn something i'll get them to explore that more so it really helps me be a great listener rather than being always that sort of presenter and that person who you know people are looking to for the knowledge i actually get a lot of knowledge and i guess motivation from some of the people i've interviewed as well yeah well said and i certainly second that my own journey it's a it's quite a challenge and using one of your points you know out of your comfort zone in in actually having a conversation and learning about someone you know that you haven't really known before or spent some time with it's uh it's a good way to go isn't it absolutely challenge yourself absolutely i'm with you i'm with you amber this has been a fascinating conversation and once again you are the consummate professional like your your ability to articulate today your presentation so that that 70 has been fantastic the 30 has also been fantastic i'm probably lucky that i can listen to the recording again and just you know take some take some more notes but thanks very much for joining us today for our listeners and those on the live stream we'll put how to get hold of amber into our show notes so that people get in touch with her and if they want some help with their own communication skills and style and how they can better be heard and even around the personal branding uh you'll know how to get in touch with amber so amber once again thanks very much for being a guest on the culture of things podcast really appreciate it great to be here to lead well is to speak well the ability to articulate your message and have people understand your message is a key leadership skill that can be learnt amber is a communication specialist with a wealth of experience helping leaders learn these skills as she said leaders have to be flexible in the way they communicate allowing various audiences to know who you are and what you stand for it's not about changing who you are it's about bringing forward your best attributes showing vulnerability when needed and embracing your true authentic self being you ensures a solid base for communicating and being heard these were my three key takeaways from my conversation with amber my first key takeaway communication is about connecting with people if you don't connect with people they'll resist the message you also have to be careful that you're not trying to appeal to everyone if you try to appeal to everyone you'll appeal to no one you can broaden your appeal by being relatable and vulnerable tell stories and muster emotion this will strengthen the connection with people my second key takeaway leaders ask great questions a friend once said to me as a team member your job is to have the answers and as a leader your job is to ask the questions i find the best way to ask great questions is to be genuinely interested in what the other person is saying do this and you'll always ask great questions my third key takeaway leaders are great listeners after asking great questions your job is to now actively listen listening is one of the best skills you can have if seventy percent of communication is non-verbal most of this should be devoted to listening be prepared be mindful and be present this will help make you a great listener so in summary my three key takeaways were communication is about connecting with people leaders ask great questions and leaders are great listeners if you want to talk culture leadership or teamwork or have any questions or feedback about the episode leave me a comment on the socials or you can leave me a voice message at thecultureofthings.com thanks for joining me and remember the best outcome is on the other side of a genuine conversation you
2021-08-27 05:09
