If you think exhibiting your vulnerable side in the workplace is a sign of weakness, think again — especially if leadership is in your career plan.

Forbes contributor David K. Williams said:

“We all know leaders who are filled with the kind of bravado that takes great pains to hide any hint of misgiving. No matter what happens, they ‘knew it all along.’ At the very essence of their strategy is the fierce belief that showing even the slightest hint of vulnerability would cause their teams to see them as weak. They couldn’t be more mistaken. In reality, vulnerability is a strength. Every leader has vulnerability. The greatest leaders have the self-awareness to recognize this fact. They also recognize that showing their vulnerability is a sign of courage and strength.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkwilliams/2013/07/18/the-best-leaders-are-vulnerable/#6a61613c3c1d

In a previous blog post, I defined FOLS as the “fear of looking stupid.” A lack of vulnerability is a core trait of those who suffer from this anxiety. They try so hard to look and sound like the brilliant expert they want to be, yet they shun opportunities to grow and learn from those around them.

Author and TEDx Houston speaker Brene Brown says, “Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability.”

Showing that you are vulnerable demonstrates that you are not perfect.  We like leaders who are like us in that they have blind spots and yearn for learning opportunities. If you can be honest about yourself with those who look to you for leadership, you will establish yourself as a lifelong learner and thus be a model for those who follow you.

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You may have heard of FOMO: fear of missing out. It’s often caused by social media posts promoting a flurry of happenings you can’t attend.

There’s another kind of anxiety that plagues bright business professionals like engineers, scientists and other technical professionals. I call it FOLS: fear of looking stupid. Do you suffer from FOLS?

Here’s how to tell. First, you are extremely intelligent and can connect the dots quickly.

Second, you cannot tolerate being wrong. You are very competent and worry about being seen as incompetent. If you are having trouble admitting to this, do you agree with any of these statements?

I avoid speaking because I am afraid I will say something stupid.
I don’t speak up in meetings because I am afraid of looking stupid.
I don’t want to be asked to share my thoughts because I may appear to lack knowledge in my subject matter.
I share as much information as possible to show how much I know.
I avoid asking questions because others may think I am incompetent.

Those who struggle with FOLS may have difficulties dealing with change, adapting to new ways of thinking and demonstrating vulnerability. They may have what author Carol Dweck (in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success) calls a fixed mindset, instead of a growth mindset.

A fixed mindset comes from the belief that your qualities are carved in stone – who you are is who you are, period. Characteristics such as intelligence, personality, and creativity are fixed traits, rather than something that can be developed. Criticism is seen as an attack on your character, and to be avoided.

A growth mindset comes from the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through effort. Yes, people differ greatly – in aptitude, talents, interests, or temperaments – but everyone can change and grow through application and experience.Criticism is seen as valuable feedback and openly embraced. https://alexvermeer.com/why-your-mindset-important/)

If you have a tendency toward FOLS, just a small shift in the way you view your abilities can have a significant impact on your ability to learn from others, accept new ideas and create new solutions to problems. Moving toward a growth mindset could keep you from being the bottleneck in a new process at your workplace. It could also be the key to growing and thriving in your career field.

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I was two weeks overdue with my firstborn son. Thankfully, the doctor said the words I wanted to hear, “We are going to induce labor.” Early the morning of September 27, 1989, my husband and I strolled into the hospital. (Stick with me here; I won’t get into the details of the labor.) Out of nowhere, I started feeling lightheaded and dizzy. The nurse at my bedside started barking orders to others, pushing buttons and making a phone call. I was quickly transferred to another bed and rolled down the hall. No one was telling me what was happening. Finally, a nurse said they would need to do an emergency Cesarean section because of heart rate issues for the baby and me. HOLD THE PHONE! This was not the way I had envisioned having a baby. I was worried—really worried. My husband was somewhere else and everyone was talking around and above me.

Once in the operating room, a blue screen was set up so I could not see the events unfolding. My arms were restrained and I wore a lovely, cafeteria-style hairnet. I was scared. Again, no one spoke to me. Tears began to drip from the outer corners of my eyes. All at once, I hear a female voice behind me saying in a soothing tone, “Mrs. Boswell, you are going to be fine and so is your baby.” She continued to utter little confirmations that calmed my spirit. Next thing I heard was a baby screaming. My firstborn! His little purple face was whisked in front of me and then off he went. I was wheeled into recovery and reunited with little Stevie in the hospital room. Life was good. Everyone was fine and we had a baby boy!

Fast-forward two months. I am lying facedown on a beach chair by a pool on the Gulf Coast. I am almost asleep when I hear a voice. THE voice. It was calming. It started stirring up memories. I lifted myself up, expecting to recognize the speaker, but I had never seen her. Still, there was something about her voice. I stood up and walked over to her.

“Hi. Can I ask you a question? Are you a nurse? Do you work in Birmingham? Do you possibly work in labor and delivery?”

She replied, “yes” to all three questions. I grabbed her and hugged her with all my being while telling her that she was my labor and delivery nurse and that she would never know what her voice meant to me. We stood there, locked in an embrace with tears streaming down our faces. It was a powerful moment. Her voice was what I needed in a time of fear and uncertainty. I never saw the woman in the operating room but I knew her voice.

Our voices are a reflection of who we are. Have you listened to your voice lately? If you aren’t happy with it, you can make changes in the way you sound. But take good care of your voice because its sound is probably special to someone, and it should be special to you!

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A great deal of my business and interpersonal communication coaching is with intuitive, technical professionals – analysts, engineers, scientists and the like.  Some might use the word “introvert” to describe them, but I have been made aware that many recoil at being labeled in that manner. These individuals are often subject matter experts (SME) and are not always self-aware when it comes to communicating with a wide range of people in the workplace.  This can make them difficult to work with and for.

Speech language pathologist Michelle Garcia Winner is credited with coining the phrase “social thinking.” In her book, “Social Thinking at Work: Why Should I Care? (2011, co-authored with Pamela Crook), she defines it this way.

“Social Thinking is what we do when we share space with others and when sending an email, sitting in a classroom, lining up at the grocery store, reading a work of fiction, watching a funny video clip, participating in a business meeting, driving in traffic, and a host of other daily activities that involve our social interpretation and related reactions.  We consider the context; take in the thoughts, emotions and intentions of the people with whom we are interacting and use that information to determine how we respond. How we think about people affects how we behave, which in turn affects how others respond to us, which in turn affects our own emotional internal and external responses. It’s an incredibly complex process that most of us take for granted.”

I once had a client who was a proven SME and he told me very emphatically that he valued logic over emotion every day of the week. He was raised to discard emotion in favor of logic. To him, emotions were weak and touchy-feely. All that mattered was reasoning assessed according to strict principles of validity.  When this kind of person is up for a management role, their people skills will come under significant scrutiny, because when you manage people, it’s no longer just about what you communicate but also how.

What about you? When you deal with various kinds of people at work do you often have these kinds of questions swirling around in your head?

• What does he mean by that? I have no clue what he is thinking!
• Why are you bringing emotion into this conversation?
• Why does he look at me that way? What’s wrong with him?
• Why don’t you just stick to the facts?

If so, it may raise serious concerns about the way you think about, work with and relate to others: your social thinking. But don’t worry. Social thinking can be learned at any age and self-awareness is the first step.

The post Social Thinking: What are You Thinking About What I am Thinking? appeared first on Executive Speech Coach - Deborah Boswell.

Through my clinical experience as a speech pathologist, I have been blessed to spend 25 years getting to know and learn from people who stutter.

I’ve wanted to put down on paper what I have learned from them over the years, so I started this list on the back of a napkin while sitting at a restaurant the other night. Here’s what I have so far:

• Listen for the message—not the way it is delivered
• Listen more, talk less
• Courage is really all about facing your fear and slaying it—over and over and over again
• We don’t need sympathy, we need respect
• The spoken word is powerful—and beautiful
• Words should never be taken for granted
• Wearing a chip on your shoulder invites negativity
• Embrace that which you cannot change
• The human spirit has its highs and lows
• Weather the lows; tomorrow is a new day
• Resilience is there inside each of us; hard times and support will bring it to the surface Avoidance of that which terrifies us weakens us
• We become prisoners of what we allow to control us
• Embrace everything that makes you unique
• Together we are strong

As I continue to work with people who stutter (along with business communicators who may have other communication challenges), I’ll continue to learn from them and help them celebrate the unique talents they bring to the table—not bemoan what they might lack.

The post What People Who Stutter Have Taught Me appeared first on Executive Speech Coach - Deborah Boswell.

These slides are an attempt to avoid designing a powerful and meaningful closing. It’s the lazy person’s exit from a maze of countless, convoluted slides spewing confusing charts and bar graphs. At the end, the presenter is exhausted from reading all the content on the slides (think how the audience must feel) and doesn’t know how to end the presentation. Hence the stick figure or the “thank you.” It’s enough to slap your hand to your forehead and say, “Never again!”

Here are some tips for closing your presentation:

• Black out the last slide, (or strategically place a black slide here) step front and center and close the presentation with your own words spoken with conviction, passion, gravity, enthusiasm or some combination.
• Close with a story that will make your key idea stick (you could have a photo for the last slide that correlates with your story)
• Provide a verbal summary of your key points.
• Step to the center of the stage and provide a strong call to action followed by a verbal “thank you” and then let them know you would enjoy answering their questions.

Your closing as well as the opening should be the very last step in the speech writing process.  You don’t know how to begin or end until you know the core message of your talk.  Once you have that core message teased out from all of your content then you can begin thinking about how to grab the audience’s attention at the outset and finally how to have the audience heading out the exit doors with your message on their mind.

A presentation with an unsatisfying ending is like a gift without a bow or a phone call without a goodbye. Spend time thinking about how you want to leave the audience feeling when the talk is complete then design an ending to make it happen.

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Teleconferences (conference calls) are notorious for inciting boredom and creating misshaped or mishandled messages. I heard recently about a manager who was in the room with executives while the manager’s direct report was offsite communicating with the group via phone conference. While the direct report got in the weeds with too many details that took too much time, she could not see the facial expressions or sense the nonverbal cues that the executives were sending to move things along. This embarrassed the manager, who finally helped her wrap things up.

Obviously, when electronic communication suppresses nonverbal cues, a communication train wreck could be ahead. A subtle shift in voice tone or inflection can convey an important meaning that is lost on a cell phone connection or conference call. A rigid body posture or facial grimace cannot be observed and addressed. You often won’t even know who your supporters are in a technology-driven presentation because you can’t see their heads nod in agreement!

The lack of human connection in an email, for instance, makes it easier to be perceived as hurtful or too direct. Assumptions about the intent and meaning of your message may run rampant if you cannot engage the communication partner face to face.

So what do we do to manage communication technology so it doesn’t manage us?

Stop and consider which mode of communication is best suited for the message we want to relay. Get up and go to another person’s office. Drive somewhere so you can connect with someone in a personal way. We may, however, find a phone call is best to convey the message. Email or a text may be just the right fit. But what we shouldn’t do is automatically default to electronic communication. When the message calls for it, face-to-face communication is the gold standard!

The post What Happens When Business Communication Gets Impersonal? Part II appeared first on Executive Speech Coach - Deborah Boswell.

Have you ever said this to yourself? I have. Communications technology is wonderful and I enjoy the freedom it brings. I’m able to quickly communicate with people from all over the world at all hours of the day or night.

But what are we losing in the process of multiple methods of communication? Is technology so pervasive that we are heading toward a time when there’s no place for live conversation, small talk and the nuance that person-to-person interaction brings?

In many ways I fear that time is already here.

According to Kira Makagon, EVP of Innovation for RingCentral, employee desire for freedom and flexibility in the workplace is driving and enabling a lot of the trends we see in business communication today. Among those trends are:

• Use of multiple devices
• Demand for instant communication
• The fall of face-to-face communication
• Wider adoption of internal communication systems

The fall of face-to-face communication begs to be addressed. Often, when wanting to communicate a business message, most of us default to technology: email, texting, phone conferencing, instant messaging, posting on social media. Yes, we gain speed, but what are we losing?

Electronic communication robs us of the richness and fullness of the message. When I can’t see you but can only hear or read what you are communicating, I am missing some of the important context of your message.

Take email. You write a short, direct response to an email you received. But then you get to thinking: will the reader misinterpret my message? Is it too strong? You can waste a good bit of energy second-guessing yourself.

The person who reads your email can’t hear your voice. There are no nonverbal cues shared in an email. There’s very little nuance. And trust me when I say: most attempts at being cute or playfully sarcastic in an email (unless you know the person well) will likely backfire!

We’ll talk more about fall of face-to-face communication in the next blog.

(Some information from a recent survey conducted by uSamp Research on behalf of RingCentral and published in Business Communications are “Always On” in 2015) http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/4-trends-in-workplace-communication-infographic-027762.php

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For better or worse, the truth is: yes, that’s the way you really sound—to others. The good news is that, with professional coaching (or, if required, speech therapy) you can make changes to the way you sound. But in the meantime, let’s take a quick look at why your voice sounds so different from what you hear in your head.

When we talk, others hear us by sound waves passing through the air to their ears. However, we hear ourselves through not only sound waves in the air, but vibrations through our bones, muscles and other tissues. Put the fingertips of one hand on your throat, and the fingertips of the other hand on your face. Count to ten aloud and feel the vibration of the tissue of your throat and face. These vibrations go directly to your ear combining with the sound waves from the air. That’s why you can only hear yourself as others hear you by listening to your voice on a recording.

This video from Business Insider does a pretty good job of summing it up.

The best way to improve your speech is to record yourself and listen closely and honestly. That’s when the real work begins. But with time and work, you can achieve speech that sounds educated and professional.

The post Hate your speaking voice? Here’s why. appeared first on Executive Speech Coach - Deborah Boswell.

After a few minutes, I noticed that Woman B had asked Woman A a question, and Woman A started to respond. What happened next is something I have observed many times in my life: Woman A began her response and Woman B stopped listening, talking to the waiter instead.

Did Woman B ignore her conversation partner on purpose? I don’t think so. It all had to do with the Woman A’s delivery. She responded with too much information. Not only did she go into too much detail, but she told her story in a soft tone of voice and a slow pace. She did not use big hand gestures; she did not punctuate her experiences with strong verbs or a strong voice. Not being heard was probably a blow to Woman A’s self-esteem. But I bet it wasn’t the first time.

Practicing active listening skills is important, regardless of the speaker’s delivery. But if you want to be heard and your words respected, learn how to deliver your message with power and panache.

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