Are you tired of being overlooked in meetings because you struggle to speak confidently on the fly impromptu, with no preparation?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high-performing introverts, including you, social introverts where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host, Flora Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
And by the end of today's episode you will know a powerful mindset and communication tool that introverts can use to gain visibility, of course, without changing your personality.
How OKRs, otherwise known as Objectives and Key Results, can help you speak with clarity and impact, even in high stakes executive meetings.
Why working in public meaning inside your organization is a secret to being seen as a leader before you are promoted.
I know you're going to enjoy this episode.
So, Philip, this is so good to have you here.
Everybody listening, I'm welcoming you to Framework Paradise.
You are absolutely going to love today's episode.
Our guest, Philip Shett, is talking to us from Berlin.
How glamorous is that?
So Philip, I know you've been around, you've worked with top companies in the world and you and I are both introverts.
We both know the awkwardness and the the feeling in your stomach and all those things that keep us from speaking up effectively or speaking up at all.
But once you reach like the middle part of a company, as far as the hierarchy, say a director, senior director, certainly it depends on the size of the company.
What are the ripple effects of that?
Besides, the world's not hearing from us, but how does that affect what?
Have you seen, as far as careers go, being affected by this?
It's such an important skill for a career, or for any career, to develop the skill to make your ideas heard.
Because if you don't do that, your ideas will not be implemented.
And if your ideas are not going to be implemented, it's probably someone else's ideas that are going to be implemented.
And then those people are getting the recognition, getting the rewards and probably making the career.
So if you are not able to make your ideas heard, then you are going to be an implementer on someone else's ideas.
And it's not only that that has negative impact on how you're being recognized.
It has negative impact on your own energy as well.
Because if you're going to introduce and implement your own ideas, ideas that you are proud of, ideas that you have brainstormed with others and in ways that you can shape, then at least I personally show up with a very different energy.
If you're constantly just implementing someone else's ideas, then you're most likely not going to show up with the same energy.
And over time, that compounds.
You're showing up with a tiny bit less energy.
You're a tiny bit less motivated.
You're a tiny bit less, well, even incentivized to show up at 100%.
And therefore, you're ending up Again, slightly below your capabilities.
And that, over time, just has ripple effects.
Philip is so smart.
He connected these two concepts.
And, you know, that's what Steve Jobs says.
I think that genius is like when you can make connections between concepts.
And what Philip has connected is using a structured approach to which is you know, from Aristotle.
So that's not new.
But what the new thing is to connect that structured approach of communicating to OKRs.
There may be other terms, but it's basically the criteria for which you are graded on your performance.
Right.
And so tell us how you came up with this and how it works, how it can be our introvert secret weapon for executive presence.
You hear my accent, right?
I'm always even more nervous when I do interviews in English because I'm German and I move.
But it all happened and all started when I moved to the US in 2014.
So I moved to Silicon Valley because I was always in love with technology.
And I always wanted to be at the new innovations and new technology.
And so I moved to Silicon Valley is to structure my own thinking and to also prepare my presentations and prepare my speeches.
And whenever it was my turn to speak, I wanted to be as clear and as convincing as possible because again, I wasn't a natural speaker and I wasn't really great in bringing my concepts across.
So I found that OKRs, what they helped me to do was...
They helped me to provide clarity and energy for the concept that I had and that I wanted to bring across.
Whenever you talk to anyone and you try to convince anyone, let it be your team, or let it be your peers, or let it be higher ups.
I think you need not only clarity.
Clarity is an absolute must, right?
You need to be able to speak the language of your listeners.
You need to be able to bring clarity. bring across what you want to bring across.
But you also need to bring in some energy.
You need to generate some energy within yourself, but also with your audience.
And so I found that OKRs do that much better than maybe KPIs only or a balanced scorecard, because they combine those two aspects.
So they combine objectives, the qualitative statements of intent, and then your key results, your clearly measurable aspects of well, of success, of progress.
So in the objective, you're communicating okay, this is what we're trying to achieve, and you're communicating it in a way that is aspirational, maybe even inspirational to to some, And that way you're creating that excitement, you're generating some energy.
And then well, you're talking the language of the business, but you also have important stakeholders in any discussion.
You are going to make sure that the impact isn't just qualitative, but the impact is clearly measurable.
And that way, OKRs give you a clear syntax of how you communicate those goals.
And then they have some more nice little features that make sure that that impact isn't only communicated once, but that you constantly communicate it to all stakeholders.
That is so interesting.
I want to speak to our listeners for a second.
And Those of you who only speak English, you are loved and we appreciate you.
But a lot of people listening speak several languages or at least two.
And a lot of you feel awkward about your English.
And I know because you tell me all the time.
And I want you to listen to Philip.
Philip has this beautiful German accent.
And I find it delightful.
Whatever accent you have, 99% of the people will find it charming and interesting.
It makes you stand out.
And you know, like in Phillip's case and a lot of you, it makes you work a little bit harder at communicating because you perceive that you have this hurdle to overcome.
Anyway, I wanted to point that out because it's just a beautiful explanation.
And it's this whole concept of connecting the OKRs to delivering a message came from somebody feeling awkward.
So those of you listening you know, and even if your English is your first language, there's something that makes you feel awkward or you're unsure about presenting yourself.
You see, it can become a secret advantage, an unfair advantage if you want.
So, Philip, why don't you give us an example of using OKRs to structure a message?
Let's imagine you're proposing a new internal project in your organization.
And, you know, you want to increase team satisfaction maybe or employee satisfaction.
And now maybe you have different ideas how to do that.
But you know, if you say I want to increase employee satisfaction, then maybe that brings the point across.
But most often than not, that idea has been heard a lot and it's not really something new and it doesn't really matter generate any excitement and it's unclear why we would invest into this right now and why it's urgent and important.
And so, instead of saying that, we are going to maybe say that in the objective a bit different worded differently, and so you could say that we are becoming the magnet for talent in our industry so that we can and that again brings the point across of why this is important, so that we can deliver the best customer service again in the industry.
You can word that depending on your, your circumstances, and depending on again your, your audience, but you want to bring across Well, why this is awesome and why this is not just again, business as usual.
And then also you want to make sure that it's absolutely clear on why you're doing this.
So this isn't just a project for project's sake, but you have the business in mind and you have in mind why you want to do this and why it's important for the business.
And then the key results make clearly measurable that what impact this has.
What's important about OKRs is that you're not just writing it down once.
You are then making it transparent to the rest of the organization.
And you know, that's scary, of course, for any introvert.
You might be thinking oh, I would rather I don't know work on this project for six to nine months and then talk about it.
But you know, six to nine months later, most people will have forgotten about it and maybe even debudgeted it or fallen through the cracks.
And so you're using OKRs.
And I love that about OKRs also.
It forces me to work in public.
And again, scary, but sometimes you need to go down the scary route, right?
Sometimes you have to pull yourself out of that comfort zone.
And so you're working in public.
And so you're making that progress transparent.
But that helps not only your own motivation, your own energy, but it also helps rally the troops right.
You're going to make the work public and you're going to make sure that everyone's impact on this project is public.
You want to be sure that again, you're celebrating everyone's impact, because that makes it much more likely that they will support your future endeavors and your future project and this project.
And so you're making your own work.
You're celebrating your own work obviously but, even more important, you're celebrating everyone else's impact and you're making sure that the leadership sees that the project is progressing.
And even if there's no no revenue impact maybe after a week or two, which of course there isn't.
But you see that there is going to be impact.
And so you're going to make that very, very transparent.
I love that.
So I want to segue a little bit Philip to talk about preparing for meetings, because one of the Achilles heel that we all are worried about is speaking up in meetings when we are not able to prepare.
How can this OKR framework help us in that situation?
You know, OKRs should give you an agenda almost for a meeting, because you have.
You have the objectives that you've set and typically it's not only one, but it's two, three or five.
Those should give you preparation for the agenda for your meeting.
And then those key results as well.
And so ideally, you prepare at least a couple minutes before the meeting, within the meeting if necessary.
While somebody else is rambling.
Yeah, and then you use that time to, yeah, to again, go over that.
But I also found it, especially after I became a manager.
I also found it very, very important to use OKRs and then distribute ownership of those key results within teams.
And you don't necessarily need to be a formal manager to do that.
I honestly think that I became a manager Because I was setting and I became a director later because I was setting OKRs with a team, with a cross-functional team of colleagues, of peers.
But we used that to make absolutely clear, OK, who's owning what.
And then in the meeting, you were, again, basically using the OKRs as an agenda point.
So we discussed that. the objective and the objective might have been become the talent magnet.
And then we had like three or four key results.
And each of those key results had a clear owner.
And then I was moderating the conversation.
Honestly, that was my my little trick.
As an introvert, I was facilitating a discussion which was putting a lot less stress on me, because it wasn't that I was put on the spot every like 15 minutes or so or had to wait until I was put on the spot by someone else, but rather I was leading through the conversation.
I was using these OKRs as my agenda points.
And I was doing that equally in our team meetings, where we had a few objectives and then a few key results, as well as later on in meetings and reports upwards.
Yes, tell me about that.
Give me an example of how that worked out.
That's the kind of meeting that really intimidates some of us. we've set those OKRs.
Let's imagine a situation where we just did that.
Again, it might be the talent magnet example that we just discussed.
And then after a couple of weeks, we want to report on progress on this.
And so obviously you're going to again reintroduce the objective and you're going to Then talk about the different key results and then progress on those different key results.
And then I love to sometimes reframe the OKR framework into OKRA, which stands for Objectives, Key Results and Actions, which gives all the project work a place.
And so, especially in those update meetings, you're going to use that framework to give an update on the objective as a whole, then on the metrics and then on all the projects that are going on, all the different, different tasks.
And then ideally, you're going to use that leadership meeting not only to report but to have some very clear ask to the audience.
Because again, if it's just a status report, then that is most likely not going to be very exciting and not generating a lot of energy.
You can probably do that in a Word document or a Google document async before that.
So rather, I use it to have some...
Not too demanding, but some clear asks for leadership.
So, instead of again using this as a status report, I'm going to use it as five-minute status report.
And then rather go into okay, and here we have this roadblock because the cross-functional team that we worked with Susan in marketing, just doesn't want to prioritize this project.
Can you help us clarify the importance of this project?
And so again, I'm using these OKRs early on to make sure that we are getting the leadership support and that everyone in the organization is clear on those priorities that we have set before.
OK, so you are, you know, German.
Your country is known for being precise.
And yet you went to the cowboy world of Silicon Valley.
So what is more important to be that we can do anything or the German?
Like, how are you going to do that?
What's the best of both worlds?
I try typically to combine the two worlds.
I try to combine some German precision and precision.
Sometimes some German overengineering.
But I try to again combine the German precision with the American energy and the American optimism and just the American urgency and drive right.
And so for me, all of our amazing places, I honestly prefer to work in the US a bit more, just because it's typically I don't know.
I feel it's a bit more satisfying when you make progress in and and are moving faster than if you are just overthinking.
But again, i i think both have their absolute strengths.
You know it's almost like yin and yang almost every person and every successful person for sure.
You need to be able to balance both right.
If you're just moving fast without thinking it through at all well, that doesn't really work for a long time.
But if you're just thinking and never moving, that doesn't work either.
So yeah, find the balance.
Right.
And whatever culture you come from, if you're working in the US or with an American company, that's what you want.
You want to find the value that you bring from another location.
So I want to recap some of my main takeaways from this amazing conversation.
And then I want you to answer the questions that I didn't ask you.
And to me, the main takeaway from this conversation is a way for anyone to speak up, to sound like you have it together, to sound convincing and even to energize yourself.
It's to start with an objective that is not just quantitative, but also that energizes yourself.
If you're not excited about it, then I can promise you nobody else is.
And I even know from working on different, I have a body of work of 470 something podcast episodes.
And if I am not excited about the topic, then I just can't put it together.
I have to find again the excitement of helping someone come up with a different way of viewing their work.
So your objective needs to be both quantitative and qualitative.
And then the key results are, how is this helping the company?
And then the actions come after that, like, what are you going to do about it?
And just speaking up in a meeting.
And we all know that leading with purpose and what is the objective, but the purpose, that's the number one question in people's mind is, why is this person talking?
And this framework is flexible enough where you can take a very complex topic and really break it down for the children, the idiots and the executives.
So it's the combination.
It's generate excitement but also bring structure like one two three, number.
The things don't just start going on and on.
And that's going to help you be precise and persuasive.
So what did I not ask you?
Or what else would you like to tell this audience of extremely intelligent and very good looking listeners?
You were spot on.
And I think that If your listeners can use this framework, then I'm sure it will help them to become more clear and more energizing in their messaging.
And then I would just recommend everyone to start working with transparency and start working in public, because that's like in public, in your company, in your organization.
Right, right, right, right.
So don't start posting about this on LinkedIn right away.
Nobody cares.
And you might get in trouble.
It might get you in trouble.
And so, yeah, work in public within your organization.
Start maybe doing that with topics that you feel reasonably comfortable with.
That Don't maybe try something?
A new methodology and a new topic, right?
That is maybe a tiny bit too difficult often, but try new methodology and a known topic.
And that way you can yeah, you can get comfortable and use it to yeah, use it to Bring in allies for your topics, celebrate their wins and make sure that you are behaving as if you were already a leader in an organization.
And very often, I've seen that promotion happens very quickly afterwards.
There you go.
You're welcome, people.
I'm bringing you the best.
Thank you so much, Philip.
This has been delightful.
Everybody, you'll have his contact information in the show notes.
It's just such a privilege to be able to talk to leaders all over the world about improving our communication and executive presence.
So speaking off the cuff or impromptu or when you're not prepared for a certain question.
So something that a lot of us struggle with.
And I really appreciate Phillip's objectives and key results as a framework for presenting your ideas successfully.
Once you have a structure in place, then that's half the battle of getting your ideas across in a compelling way.
And if you find yourself stuck in meetings where you're holding back, you're not saying what you really think, you're not moving the agenda forward.
You're watching other people with less experience get credit for ideas that may be related to your ideas.
It's going to eat up your energy and even your sense of identity.
That is exactly why i created the executive presence mastery system to pinpoint exactly what's holding you back from getting that recognition that you have earned for being seen as the strategic leader, or maybe becoming the strategic leader in the structures.
You need to show up with clarity, confidence and impact.
If this sounds like Something that would be useful to you, if you are interested in moving towards a promotion in senior leadership, maybe to vice president.
Let's talk.
We can have a chat to see if the executive president's mastery system would be helpful to you.
In any case, have a fantastic day and I will catch you on the next episode.
