Are you great at what you do but still struggling to be heard, respected or promoted onto the global stage?
Maybe your communications instincts are outdated.
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high performing introverts, including you, social introverts, where we reveal the charisma and the communication secrets of the A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host.
Laura Camacho, your magical executive presence coach, godmother and strategist.
And in today's episode you will learn why even top, top talent can be held back by outdated communication instincts.
How cultural missteps like eye contact, tone or saying no can quietly derail your leadership presence.
And the power of pre-engagement storytelling and even strategic confession to earn trust and influence across cultures.
All right, everyone.
I have a special guest today who is going to help us with our communication, not just to be better communicators, but to attain and lot global influence.
So we're the people that are deciding how things go in the world.
How does that sound?
So Matthew, welcome to the Speak Up podcast.
And I know you've worked a lot helping leaders to transform so that they're able to communicate better.
Why don't you start with a story about one of your clients, So we can, you know, really see the difference it makes in a person's career when they are able to express themselves more effectively.
Very good.
I used to live in the Czech Republic and work there as well.
So that was all good fun.
And we had a character for one of the big American firms, one of the biggest in the world.
And this character's leadership style was old school.
If you remember the Soviet Union, that was old school.
So, chipping away, we managed to get it from a factory supervisor to what we might call a modern coaching-based team empathic, active listening, individual.
It wasn't a quick journey, but it was a very successful journey.
So he was there for his connections and his knowledge and expertise, but his communication was somewhat lagging behind.
And so it was wonderful just talking with him, subtly steering it in the right direction, and his leadership absolutely blossomed.
So from being an essential worker, he became a respected leader.
And the results were extraordinary.
That was an extraordinary time where anyone with any competence at all could rise rapidly to the top.
And that's exactly what he did.
And that encouraged me to just understand the power of good leadership, leadership theory and practice, and coaching.
And the fact, you know, I'm fairly optimistic that most people can improve radically.
Absolutely, absolutely.
The thing is the people that are listening.
They're all high performers, highly attractive, of course, but they've studied some domain like I don't know, something easy like software engineering or multinational finance or something like that.
And they haven't spent as much time thinking about how to get something across, because of course it To one logical way of thinking.
You know my work should speak for itself.
The results should speak for themselves.
But coming from a Soviet-style economy, I guess communication wasn't important.
That just reminds me of a funny little tidbit I heard from somebody doing training at McDonald's in Moscow right after the Soviet Union became not Soviet anymore.
And they were trying to teach them to be friendly and welcoming to the guests.
And one employee said, well, why do we need to do that?
We're the ones that have the food.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Honor was a cultural tip.
And I was involved a little bit with the McDonald story.
It's the meaning of a smile.
The meaning of a stranger to stranger smile is an indication of mental instability within the Russian context.
So smiling America, look at my expensive teeth.
Smiling north of England, great south of England, less so, not on public transport and in Russia a bit of a no-no.
So, imagine quite a large trading gap to be overcome there.
Absolutely.
Wow.
So if we have, you know, I would say a fair amount.
If not, the vast majority of the people listening are working on international teams.
You know, they may all be in the United States, or maybe not.
So does that mean we should rethink smiling or what is your take on that?
It's how to do things appropriately.
So there's things like eye contact.
There's three versions of that, which is constant, intermittent and avoid.
Again, if you go to certain places in Africa, I picked this up in a training I was giving in Paris.
This guy from Niger in Africa said if I stared consistently at my father he'd probably get up, cross the room and hit me.
So that would be a power challenge.
I have my Danish friend, who will remain nameless, and you go out for a beer with him and it's all great, except he won't stop burning your retina with a constant gaze as an intermittent eye gaze holder.
It's absolutely exhausting.
So when you have a mismatch of smiling and eye contact or just verbal forms, it's very distressing.
So it's really about...
Doing your homework.
Who am I speaking to?
And of course, if you've got a number of people, then you can sort of fudge it and do international English or second language English or something.
Right, right, right.
If you're leading a team or so or several, and you're having trouble with an individual, you might at least want to entertain the idea that there may be cultural differences in terms of speaking up Eye contact smiling, hand gestures, vocal variety, all kinds of things.
You just triggered on another one.
So I do a global launch for graduate programs for a very famous American pharma company.
And of course, you know, you don't expect too much from, say, Asian women.
So you've got two factors there, which is zip.
There's a hierarchy thing.
If there's a leader in the room and you ask the junior for their opinion, you have committed a social faux pas.
They're not going to give you an opinion where the boss is in the room.
So there's lots of things.
So power.
Speaking up, I like that.
Saying no.
So I do a webinar where we teach across Central Europe to India, bizarrely.
Slightly cruel trick.
I will ask an Indian person, a services person, who's probably more educated than me.
Say after this if I give you my bank details, will you give me a dollar or ten dollars or something?
And they cannot say the word no.
Oh, I'd have to give that serious consideration.
Well, I'm sure we can find a way around it.
They will say anything but the word no.
They mean no.
They don't want to do it.
It is a no, but they won't say no, because that would be giving a loss of face to me and themselves.
It would be showing a disrespect to me. someone of some sort of standing.
And so it's so strange.
So yes doesn't mean yes.
A British yes doesn't mean yes.
A French no means tell me more or convince me.
A Russian no is not now.
Come back in five minutes.
We have so much variety.
So a bit of intercultural homework will go a very long way.
What do you think is most important for our listeners to think about when they want to get visibility with the top people in the company?
The concern of being asked something that they're not quite sure.
The complete answer although, between you and me, they will know 95 of the answers.
What are some of your tips that help people speak up to senior leadership?
Oh, yes.
OK.
Well, yeah.
One, let's get that from 95 to 96 by doing your homework.
Perfect preparation.
OK. prevents pathetic performance on the day.
So that's one idea.
I would say it's pre-engagement on that.
I don't want to put anyone under full pressure that they're asking for the nuclear codes or the winning combination and have to deliver a perfect James Bond answer.
I would say it's pre-engagement, which is about listening and empathy.
And if they can understand here's a clever thing for everybody if they can listen for the values of this senior person and then start to speak in the language of those values.
Rather like what is your yes, what is your good, what is your power, what is your... Right.
And so I'd say pre-engagement is going to relax you then you have full access to your brain.
If you're freaking out, your brain will empty and nothing will happen, nothing will come out.
So one, relax yourself.
And if you've built up a few trust pennies Stephen Covey's trust pennies in the trust bank account, then if it goes wrong it doesn't quite matter.
So go high level, go meta.
Overall, I'm looking at this.
I think the common purpose here, so you work around it, then you might go there.
I can't fully remember.
I'll look it up and come back to you.
But what I think it is, is X. Exactly.
Give a partial answer or say what I've observed, or what I think, or my you know, based on my experience, I would say blah blah, blah.
It's OK not to know.
It's OK not to know, but not every week.
Some of the most powerful people have done the I don't know things.
If you know a thousand things, you could say, oh, I don't know, very quickly.
That's the trick as well.
Oh, I don't know.
And then it looks authentic.
It is authentic.
It's real.
And it shows confidence.
We can say to the best of my knowledge, that is a very true answer.
Oh, let me repeat that for the people in the back to the best of my knowledge or as far as I know.
Absolutely.
And that triggered on a passion of mine, which is the Socratic method.
OK, we are all getting very polarized, mainly by the media we choose to favor.
You know, I call it plus 10 minus 10.
Do yourselves a favor for that embarrassing video in 15 years time that they dig up.
15 years ago which they dig up.
Understand the other point of view.
If you can't write down 100 words of the other point of view, the other side, then you haven't done your homework.
And so for that leader asking you well, I think other people would say bloody bloody, blah minus 10.
But I'm thinking plus 10.
That shows a credible human being.
Actually, that's a great way of disarming people if someone is pushing back on your brilliant idea, to repeat back their point of view right before you address it.
So are you seeing any trends since you're working all over the world? post-COVID, even with Trump in power right now, you know, things are shifting.
Are you noticing anything with leaders around the world that would be interesting?
No well, I tell you what, with COVID, with woke anti-woke, with all this sort of stuff we're?
I tell you what we're getting we're getting a lot of fear, we're getting a lot of silence.
We're getting a lot of private Full human beings.
Public, partial human beings.
People are just not stating it anymore.
I think that's incredibly dangerous.
We're not living our lives.
And in the business context, you're missing it.
If everyone's pretending and faking it in a meeting, this is a form of groupthink.
And I think it's terrifying.
This is, again, my Socratic method.
Let us all have, learn to be courageous and have this hashtag no debate nonsense is so dangerous.
Let us have very polite. across the aisle discussions about absolutely anything.
I've just been on holiday with my lads and I thought there's about 40 topics.
Let's not go into them now, but there's about 40 topics where there are two sides and no conversation.
So that's 80 cases, 81 pages left, right, you know, plus 10, minus 10.
If we could sort that and educate people to learn the other side, learn the factual side of their case and articulate and debate, we could solve quite a few of the problems.
You might notice that a lot of, say, the political problems aren't getting solved at all.
Oh, absolutely not.
To be successful in business, you have got to be at your best, which means listening.
It means disagreeing.
It means this robust synthesis idea of the best of your bit and the best of my bit probably will be the best we've got at the moment.
And we need to be brave.
We need to speak up.
We need to speak out.
We need to challenge.
We need not to get rid of the fear within the workforce that speaking up equals instant cancellation.
Not either hold it in and not speak up, nor be, you know, ugly about it.
No, very good.
Some psychological safety in the rest.
Confession of mistakes.
When leaders confess to stories of mistakes, I used to think A, now I know better, and it's B.
I tried a, you know, the fail fast, fail often and move on.
So an idea of expressing, getting rid of a blame culture.
Blame is such a waste of money and time and resource and career.
Start from the top and cascade down permission and confession.
And see what happens.
Don't sue me, guys.
I love this confession of mistake.
It's inspiring, I think, when somebody I admire says you know what?
There was this time that I screwed up and this happened, and it wasn't pretty, and here I am today.
Yeah.
And I think everybody listening, like your people, will be inspired to hear your confession of mistakes, and that will give them courage.
There was a chief executive of a huge German company who said you know, someone made a million dollar mistake.
Say you know, this was 20 years ago.
So it was it was it was a lot.
Oh, it's cappuccino money today.
OK, well, that was that's a training budget.
That mistake, you're not going to do it again, are you?
No, I'm not.
Also the joke, if I make a fresh mistake every day, promote me.
If I make the same mistake every day, sack me.
Especially when speaking.
I mean, I think...
People want to say the thing perfectly, and that perfectionism, I think, is the enemy of really strong communication.
And I say fake it till you make it a lot in my trainings, and people look horrified.
Well, give an example.
Give us some examples of...
Faking it, what you mean is not really to be fake.
It's just to go for it.
No, you're on lesson one and you pretend you're on lesson five.
Now, in public speaking, there's a couple of tricks that you can do, which is quite easy.
Get a good night's sleep two nights before the public speaking.
Really relax yourself, however you're going to do that with meditation or breathing or this or that.
Practice like crazy.
Practice it 10 times.
Go in there, meet the tech guy, make sure the thing pre-engage with people and do a Hillary Clinton.
Do you know she always came on stage, hi, look at me, hi, see you later.
She always did that thing.
So a bit of pre-engagement and practice the hell out of the first sentence.
Speak slower than you would.
Everybody, whatever sex you are, just calm down, take it down a quarter octave or a half octave.
Put a bit of space between the words and imagine you're on the radio and people will be amazed.
Here's the punchline about presenting.
People want to love you.
People want you to be a success.
People don't want to watch a meltdown.
Because that's a waste of time.
It's cruel and it's a waste of time for everybody.
So what do you suggest for your opening statement as your first sentence?
Do you have a recipe?
Provocation.
So I have a word which sounds negative and it's not.
It's interruption.
So a positive interruption.
People are thinking of My next meeting, that last irritating email, what I have to do today.
What am I going to eat in the evening?
So we have to interrupt people normally with a provocation.
So that can be and I go negative.
I go I go a negative start.
Sounds shocking.
I know American culture is positive words only.
I go negative.
I go provocation, interruption, something like future or risk or danger or challenge.
But give an example.
If you're going to give a talk on I don't know the results of this quarter for years, part of the business, and let's say they think we are doing well, but are we really question mark, and then that's going to get people thinking of competition and so it's a bit scary and it's.
It's not, it's definitive, it's not making a statement.
We are a disaster.
Here's a very quick one.
In the bottom of the cycle, everyone gets nasty with you when you actually need support.
At the top of the cycle, everyone is throwing money and praise at you.
That's when they should be making you work harder.
So we've got the cycles wrong.
So on the good side, be tough and on the bad side, be supportive.
Let's do a counterintuitive idea.
Then you've got their full attention.
We are two or three times more motivated away from pain as opposed to towards goodness.
Then you have to do a mend.
The best mend is a compliment or a connection.
So, again, if we've listened for values, then we can make a values based statement.
So some people are into speed or quality or growth or sales or spontaneous, whatever it is, or innovation or something.
And then you make a connector there and then get into your content.
Throw away the slides.
Death by PowerPoint is history.
Use charisma.
Work on your voice.
Know who's in your audience.
Pick on real people and get them to be from critical observers to participants.
Everyone think about X. OK, share Y with your partner in pairs.
And then Z, OK, who's got to share?
Oh, here's a very clever one.
Who heard something good just now?
And then you don't have to speak up.
You just point at Bob.
You stitch up Bob over there and then he has to.
But if you do the self-share and then group-share, then you can, Especially if this works for an introverted audience.
You don't overly taser them with instant pressure and then something works there.
So we want full engagement.
No one's a passenger, everyone's involved.
A bit of confession i always start with a joke.
If you're a professional comedian, that's great.
If you're not, please don't.
Please don't, because it really won't be funny.
You've got people without a sense of humor.
They're not there to laugh, they're there to learn, and then always end with a call to action in the us is better, but outside the us, This sort of passive nothing.
You know, the worst thing.
Any questions?
No, no, no.
Fail.
So you end with a call to action.
People remember the first note of the opera and the last note of the opera.
Right.
But what if you're sharing like, your vision for process improvement and that we need to make these three changes to start there?
Well, there's two things.
Let's do the change thing and let's do the culture thing.
So, yeah.
What are the types of change?
There's there's urgent reactive change.
Which is what it is.
We've got to do it.
And that works very well with the U.S. culture.
So the U.S. culture is a culture of urgency.
So it's when.
But other things you have change for improvement with this.
There's less urgency.
It's the 2.0.
It's the innovation there.
It is competitive threat is a great story.
If we don't do 2.0, someone's going to eat our lunch.
And that's very powerful.
And that's meaning.
And culturally, that's sort of French.
It's the why.
And then you've got the other, which is sort of almost a technical explanation, which I quite like, your procedural, operational ideas, which is the context, which is the what.
This is what we're going to do.
And this is the improvement we expect.
So again, that would be sort of German culture.
So we've got a cultural idea and a type of change idea.
And then what we're looking to do is instill, through subtle leadership, constant change, constant improvement in power of people and a speaking up culture.
So then what would the CTA, the call to action would be that?
Yeah, let's start.
Let's have any ideas.
I quite like marginal gains.
Okay, it's a 20-part process.
I want suggestions on each of those parts that are going to be 1% to 5% improvements.
Come on, guys, now or later.
And that's fun and that's dynamic and the result will be extraordinary.
But also we've got the psychology of change.
85% of people want to resist most change because it hurts them.
Oh my gosh, this has been so interesting.
Okay, so I'm going to go through some of my takeaways and then I want you to just Say Laura, you forgot the most important thing, or what I left out.
So, as far as preparing for a meeting or a presentation, you know the pre-engagement.
As far as you paying attention to your, you know whoever you want to impress or affect, like what's important to them, tie and get into them, be courageous, like speak up.
You don't have to have the whole footnoted answer.
You can be directionally accurate.
Remember that term directionally accurate.
If you are a leader, matthew's given you the keys to the kingdom, the confession of mistakes.
If that will motivate your team like nothing else I can think of, to know that you made mistakes and you learned from them.
If you're speaking, remember that people want to love you.
So don't make them nervous and dart with something extremely provocative, even if it's a monthly or quarterly business review.
And Hello, here's a fill in the blank.
We think we're doing well, but are we?
I mean, just that for a monthly business review.
That's so good.
And then end with a call to action of some sort.
And if you're having weird, weird sensations with people on your team that are from another country, maybe you need to do a cultural check.
Very nice.
Very nice.
And to summarize it, I would say it activates the whole person.
I take us down to a V. It's a British V, but it comes up again.
The most disappointing day in most people's lives is the first day on the job.
They're only using 3% of what I've studied.
How very, very sad.
Okay, so I'll have to occupy the 97% that I'm not using elsewhere.
Why don't we use so much more of every individual?
And that's a beautiful thing.
That's modern leadership.
And introverts will be much better at that.
And that's growth.
You know, you could have fewer people doing a much wider expert role.
So we introverts should be controlling the world by now.
By the time you hear this.
Well, we should be pulling the strings of the mouthy leaders.
I love it.
Well, thank you so much, Matthew.
This has been so much fun.
To those listening, all I can say is you're welcome.
I bring you the best.
You should have some several ideas noted down to crush it at work today.
And I will catch everybody on the next episode.
Thanks, Laura.
Of course, I love Matthew's point about preparation is key.
Remember he said perfect preparation prevents pathetic performance.
And I know you guys love to prepare.
Sometimes you don't have time, but you need to have your opening strong.
You need to really understand your audience so that you don't have anxiety and have more credibility.
And I also really appreciated his point about how introverts have a strategic advantage.
If you like this episode, I suggest that you get on my email list by visiting my website at wwwspeakupwithlauracom.
And please have a super duper incredible day and I will catch you on the next episode.
