302. The leadership communication blind spot

You can be an exceptional communicator and still miss one of the most important leadership skills: understanding the person in front of you.

In this episode, I explore the leadership communication blind spot that highly self-aware, growth-minded leaders often have — focusing so much on improving themselves that they overlook how to read, support and develop others.

Transcript

Welcome back to That Voice Podcast and we are diving right into it today.

This episode is called The Leadership Communication Blind Spot.

And the fact that you’re here listening to this tells me you’re going to resonate.

As a voice and communication advisor who’s worked with hundreds of leaders through my career, many through team workshops too there are lots of skills to learn around what to say, how to say it, how to cope with pressure, how to handle those tricky conversations and especially the people who work with me one on one, there is a focus on themselves.

Stay with me… I love that, We need to focus on ourselves, invest in ourselves and I love that my clients are self aware. They have a growth mindset, I can learn. They’re in player not victim. They’re asking what can I do in this situation, not complaining about what happened to them.

These are the attributes of the people who’ve signed up to my new 8-week course The Certified Voiceprint Leader. They are highly self-aware and ready to grow.

NOW…. This brilliant attribute is the very reason they have this leadership communication blind spot….

They’re asking how can I communicate more effectively with my team, with my managers, with my clients.

How can I improve the way I give feedback, constructive criticism and can I motivate people.

Me me me. I I I. Radical self responsibility, which can cause the blind spot.. which is looking at the other person. Note I am not in any way saying blame the other person.

NO. It’s about being able to read their communication style. Understand what emotions are running under their words. Having empathy for where they’re at, and be able to coach them, develop them – do what a great leader is meant to do. And that’s what you’ll learn in the Certified Voiceprint Leader course.

Because you can be a text book great communicator. Use the proven frameworks for giving feedback or getting the point to share a message, be in total command of your vocal tone, your breathing your body language…. That doesn’t mean your audience, or the person in front of you is. They’ve likely had way less training than you, if any.

For example… I had a client who was struggling to give feedback to a team member who was in her 20s. She hadn’t prepared very well for a meeting. And generational differences do come in here. And my client delivered the feedback by all reports calmly following the frameworks and was met by defensiveness, hostility, a bit of snappiness. And she said what did I do wrong? And I said you didn’t do anything wrong here. She might not be experienced in how to take feedback and her defensiveness is likely because she feels shame, embarrassment, she’s let you down. So the next step is to coach through those feelings. Now you might be like Sal, I got enough to do I can’t become a therapist for all my team. And I get that. There was an article that came out about burnout from all the emotional caretaking by managers. But if you had some skills around recognising what’s underneath the response and language around what to do next – that’s when in the long run you’ll get better results. Because you’re helping people help themselves, you’re lifting them. I think a lot of the exhaustion comes from managers absorbing all the emotional troubles and not knowing what to do with it. So learning these skills makes your job easier – and you get to genuinely help someone’s personal growth.

This is how The Certified Voiceprint Leader course is a little different, because you get clear on this blind spot. You’ll learn how to interpret the person or people – it is more challenging when there are more voices, but you learn how to read the response, adapt and coach.

Another example is with a client who’s a marketing coach and she’s trying to encourage her client to do social media videos. And if you’re a leader in an organisation this story parallels perhaps wanting to put someone forward for a presentation or a pitch.

And this client has all the data, all the marketing reasons why video is working, akk the technical knowledge on how to film how to edit, but all she had for her client in terms of the confidence conversation was ‘you can do it’ ‘don’t worry about what people think.’

And she actually reached out to me and said Sal. I think she needs you.

Well there’s one of me. And my goal is to help you help others. So we can collectively raise as many voices as possible.

Now if you’ve ever felt deep fears around being seen, being heard, fearing judgement, rejection, not liking how you look how you sound. Then ‘don’t worry you can do it’ probably isn’t motivation that’s going to cut it.

There needs to be a couple of deeper questions and guiding support to shift that clients behaviour, to get them to say YES I am posting that video.

Now I mentioned questions, there’s also techniques likes reframing, entertaining the opposite, body exercises and more. All techniques you’ll get good at in The Certified Voiceprint Leader. So if you are a coach, consultant and leader in an organisation you don’t need to send someone to specific voice coaching (unless you want to) you are in a position to help facilitate that transformation. A jargony way of saying you know what to say what to do, and your value increases because the person feels fully supported. Wow, she’s so much more than a marketing coach, she’s such a great manager, that advice really helped me!

These are the results from The Certified Voiceprint Leader course. It’s 8 weeks we start in October. Places are limited. There is a playment plan and an upfront payment option, and if you click the link in the show notes you’ll find the page with all the info including the content.

Come and join us in cohort 1. It’s going to be the best professional development you do this year and the networking … meeting other people who are looking to better themselves in this way is priceless. If you’re not surrounded by people who help you grow and are doing inspiring things it’s almost impossible for you to develop in that environment.

And being able to coach makes YOU absorb the information more. There’s the Seneca quote – Docendo Discimus’ which basically means “by teaching, we learn.”

It’s The Certified Voiceprint Leader. Let’s do this.