Mastering the Message: Dr. Laura Sicola's Guide to Effective Communication

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about leadership and communication. Have you ever wanted to get an idea out, but once you finally laid it out, how you thought you wanted to lay it out, you're like, uh, that didn't come out as clear and concise as I thought it did. Well, Dr. Laura Satola has spent over 15 years helping leaders and people, you know, communicate and uh master the three C's. She's going to be talking about what those three C's are. She is a leadership, communication, and influence coach. And she has uh work with Fortune 500 executives and nonprofits. She's also a pitch coach. She's a former professor. So we're going to be talking to her about you know how we can uh make sure that we can uh communicate better and do what we need to do and gonna be talking to her about everything that she's up to and gonna be up to. So, Dr. Laura, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Thank you so much, Curtis, for inviting me.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Curtis, I come from a long line of teachers. So teaching is in my blood. I started out teaching in south central Los Angeles and then was teaching overseas for a while and then moved to the uh University of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia to do more focus on teaching, but this time on research and really understanding what is it about how we talk, how we teach, that makes what we say either go in one ear and come out the other, or go in and stick. You mentioned that a moment ago. The sometimes you you say something and you're going, okay, inside my head, that made a lot of sense. But some here, what I just heard come out of my mouth, not so much. And that can change how people receive the message. So whether we're in a traditional classroom like where I started, or in the boardroom in corporate or anything in between, like where I am now, the principles still apply. So you have to figure out how to massage your message, how to adapt what you say and how you say it so that it can translate right for the person who you need to hear it. And that's really the secret sauce that I love to help people do.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Well, talk about what which is more important, what you say or how you say it.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

That is the question that everybody is asking themselves, and everybody's got a theory, but the truth is they are both equally important. It is not just the like the expression says, well, it's not what you say, it's how you say it. That's if they don't match. And that's the key. If you want to know where credibility starts and how to get people to lean in and trust and be curious to learn more, your words, your voice and your body language, in other words, your words, which is what you say, and your voice and your body language or the delivery, which is how you say it, if they match together, then that's perfect. That's when people in their unconscious mind and in their gut are going to trust you more. But if what you say and how you say it don't match, then that's when people are going, wait a minute, something's off here. So for example, if I say to you the difference between nice haircut and nice haircut, do you hear something a little different?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, the second one sounds like uh you're not, you're you're not sincere. You're just kind of saying it's kind of butter me up.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

At best, at best, or uh, you know, if you're one of the friends hanging out, maybe just mocking you straight to your face, if you're a good sarcastic uh drip here and there. So in that case, what you say, the sound of the words completely changes the meaning. And in other ways, okay, maybe if I say to you, you know what, I think this program is ridiculous. And I don't know why people would listen to it, but you know, no offense. It's a great, you're you're great. So what's you'd say, I'm sorry, what? It doesn't matter that you said it nicely to me, because what you said was straight up offensive. Why are you on my show, Laura? Get off. Click, goodbye. That's so both what you say and how you say it matter. That's where diplomacy comes in, right? How do you get someone to receive maybe some not so happy feedback, to receive a message that's not gonna make them super happy without wanting to shoot the messenger? That'd be you. So this is where being able to frame it in a cautious enough way, that's gonna matter. Then of course, you have to deliver it right. So it really is both.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Well, what does it take to become a hypnotic storyteller?

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Hypnotic storytelling has a number of pieces to it, but the you know, when we talk about hypnotic, what does that mean? Have you ever been maybe doing something, whether you're cooking dinner or you're going for a ride in your car and you're listening to a podcast like this one, or a book, an audio book of some sort, or a sports game on the radio, and you suddenly get to your destination and you think to yourself, oh my gosh, how did I get here? I don't even remember the drive. I don't remember the time I was so sucked in to what I was listening to. I forgot about the world around me. I forgot that I was driving. I forgot that I was in doing something else. You're doing it unconsciously. And that's because you've gotten people so engrossed in what you've said that they their brain kind of disconnects from everything else. There's a trance-like state. And there's a number of things that helped us to do that. So, for example, um, the ability to use analogies or metaphors, those make a big difference. If you're trying to explain something and you give a real simple example, like have you ever, if you ever tried to build a house, well, you think about your house. Your house needs to have a foundation and it needs to have walls. You can't just build the house on dirt, it's not gonna do very well over time. So your foundation of your same thing when you're talking, your foundation is the what you say, and the walls are how you say it. You need both. And so as long as you're listening to that in your mind now, you're picturing that house. You're picturing a cement foundation of some sort, you're picturing whatever the walls are made out of, whatever your house may look like, or your dream house. And as long as you're with me and your mind is imagining some image, then that's where you're engrossed with me. And um there's research that shows that when you're a good storyteller, and one of the things is using tools like analogies and different kinds of energy, like a little fun energy, a little humor, and some really serious drop the mic right here, disruptive thought process. And then something a little more empathetic, et cetera. And if you can shift in your energies and not just be speaking through your head the entire time, kind of droning on, okay, here's fact number one, here's fact number two, but shifting energies, using the um using the analogies and metaphors like I talked about, and one of the more uncommon uh tools or tricks is speaking in the first person and present tense, or at best third person, but not second. What do I mean by that? If I'm telling a story, I want to make sure that I'm saying I and I did this. Here's what I was thinking, or here's if I'm telling it in present tense, go with me here. I'm driving down the road, it's dark, I'm imagining, I'm trying to get through, but I can't see because it's really rainy. You are now imagining it in my shoes. You're living it, you're reliving it and experiencing it with me as we go. But if most people, when they're trying to explain something, they shift into the you language or second person. So, and they say things like, well, you know, when you're driving and you can't see very well because it's a that loses people. And that's most people's default. They go into that on autopilot. But if you keep it in the eye, then people are seeing the story through your eyes, they're associating with it, and that creates a light trans-like state where they're in it. And research has shown that a good storyteller who can do that kind of thing, when they hooked up the little electrodes to the head, to the mind of the person who is listening, and to the mind of the person who is speaking, that a good storyteller, within a few moments, you would have the brain waves of both speaker and listener syncing up. That's the mark of someone who's mastered all those tools. You want people's brain waves to be in sync with yours.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Well, you know, there's a lot of people out there that say, Oh, I like, I like speaking, I like telling my story, but I don't like my voice. So talk to the listeners about how they can get around that issue.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Number one, it is completely normal to feel like you don't like the sound of your own voice, because if you're we're all so used to hearing our own voice when we're speaking, but it's different from what others hear or from what we hear when we hear a recording, because think about it as the difference between uh monosound and stereo sound. If you've got your surround sound in your uh in your man cave, if you've decked out your living room, or you just have really good earbuds you're using. If you just hear, so when you're speaking and you're hearing yourself in real time, it's not just the words and the sound coming out of your mouth and going into your ears. It's yes, that's part of it, but you're hearing the sounds coming right from your own voice box and you're feeling it reverberating through your chest cavity, through your head, through the various, your sinus cavity, and from the inside vibrating into your uh into your eardrums. So you're getting the sound from the outside in and from the inside out. That's your stereo sound that you're hearing. It's like 3D. So of course it's going to be richer, fuller. You've got your subwoofer, you've got your tweeter, you've got all these, uh all your graphic equalizers turned on and in the right settings. But when you listen to yourself on a recording, you're just hearing that one channel. And so it's going to sound a little thinner, a little tinnier. And you sit there and you go, is that really what I sound like? Well, yes and no. But know that your natural voice is always going to be richer than you're hearing it come from the outside that way. Um, but what's most important is not so much what instrument you're born with, because we're all born with an instrument. Our voice is an instrument. So it, you know, it sounds like you were born with a baritone horn, right? You were born with a with an upright bass. You've got this great deep, rich resonance. Now, you would probably have to work really hard to try to put on Elmo. If you got a kid, if you got a uh, if you have a niece or nephew trying to imitate that sound, you could do it for a minute or two if you tried real hard, but it'd be hard to sustain. James Roll Jones, Darth Vader, you got that down pat. Me, not so much. I was not born with that double bass. I was born, I don't know, whatever you want to call it. I was born with a trumpet or a clarinet or something a little bit more in the middle. I played alto sax for 10 years. So we'll say I was born with an alto. But I can learn to play it in different ways. I can fake the Elmo, I could attempt to do Darth Vader. It's not going to be pretty, so I'll spare your listeners. But what's most important is that whether you were born with a flute or a tuba or something in between, you can learn to master it. Master how you play your instrument. And all of the stories, all of the tools, all of the techniques, all of the tips that I talk about in my book in speaking to influence will help you learn to master your audience so that no matter what that instrument is, people listen because you are the master player. That's the key.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

We'll talk about the uh let's talk about the three C's of vocal executive presence and why they are necessary for every leader.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Absolutely every leader for sure, Curtis. The people want respect, right? This is the key. They want people to listen, to sit up and pay attention when they talk. But executive presence doesn't just have to mean for technical executives in some business context. Executive presence is the idea of do you have that it factor, that that presence about you that makes people sit up and take notice and pay attention when you talk. So if you're trying to build that, I like to say you need to master those three C's. And that's the ability to command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal. So very simply, to command the room means from the minute you click join meeting, from the minute you walk in the door and sit down, from the minute that you open your mouth to speak, there's something in your presence, in your confidence, not arrogance, in your relatability, in your expression that compels people to lean in and pay attention. Number two, connect with the audience. It means that no matter how different we are, our backgrounds, our interests, our pressures, our priorities, on some level, we're going to establish a mutual connection that says to both of us, on this level, if nothing else, you understand me and I understand you. And we're going to move forward on that together. And then number three is closing the deal. Close the deal does not necessarily mean selling, signing on the dotted line. I mean, it could if you happen to be in that kind of a job, but really what it means, Curtis, is simply moving the needle forward together, taking a step, coming to an agreement, coming to a decision, coming to an understanding. In many situations for our work, I mean you're in cybersecurity. I'm sure there are many conversations you have that are not one and done. You're working with clients, you're working with coworkers, you're working on projects, you're having a conversation now, but it's part seven out of 37 that you're going to have to do before you get to the end of this discussion. So in today's conversation, when you're making your points, can you take one step forward together? That's closing the deal. Command the room, connect with the audience, and close the deal.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Well, for people out there, because you've done this before, you know you're also a speaker. So for people out there looking to uh give a killer TED TEDx talk, uh, what's the secret?

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Number one, you gotta speak from your heart. It cannot just be something where you're explaining your technical expertise and giving people advice. A good TED talk needs to have one very, very clear theme, and everything that you share, all of the stories that you include, have to lead up to that one thing. And in it, when you're sharing your if it's some of the there's two main kinds of TED talks. There are TED Talks that are about your story and how you came to a particular lesson and you share different experiences along the way that taught you this major life conclusion lesson. Or there's a point that you're trying to make and it's not about you. Maybe some details are, but it's how you learned the lesson along the way from other experience, from other people's experiences. So my talk, my main talk, it's got about 7 million views now, is the latter. It's not my story, but it's clients and coworkers and friends and family and understanding with lots of little examples how to do exactly what you just described, how to master those three C's and find your leadership voice. So the TED talk has to be crystal, crystal clear on exactly the one thing that you want your audience to walk away living. And when you're clear on that, as you deliver it, you have to not only make them understand it, you have to make them feel it. And then you need to figure out exactly what you want them to do as a result of it. So if you can get them to believe something new, change their mind, feel something in the process, and make clear to them exactly what they should do as a result of it. That's where you're going to connect. That's where it's going to take off. And that's where you're going to make not just an impression on the internet, an impression on your audience. That's the key. Oh, Curtis, there are so many pitfalls that people do. It's I tease my clients a lot and I say, once I have taught you some of these things to look for, some of these little habits that you will now realize have been sabotaging you as you go along, you're going to hate me for a little while because you're now going to hear how many other people in the world are doing it where you hadn't recognized it before. And now you won't be able to unhear it or stop noticing it. But the the first one that people tend to do is called, uh, well, very simply, it's going to take you back to elementary school and you're your grammar teacher, but run on sentences. Oh my gosh. Um, run on sentences. Most people talk in stream of consciousness. Have you ever had someone, if you've got a friend or a sibling who sends you those text messages that are huge missives, that are barely decent grammar, terrible spelling, no punctuation. It's just this run-on. And as soon as you see it or you hear it start to go, you just hit stop and you just text them back and say, I can't read this, call me. Have you ever had one of those or heard one of those run-ons where you just stop them midway and go, I can't listen to the rest of this? Sure. So most people talk like that normally. So when they're in that stream of consciousness mode, it seems like you're not confident and not focused and not truly sure what you're saying. So that automatically undermines a lot of the people's perception. We talked about the what you say and how you say it. That's the perception of confidence, which ruins their ability to trust what you're saying. The second one, especially when there is a run-on sentence, there's something called up speak. And up speak is that pattern that I'm sure you hear a lot of people do, like I'm imitating now, where it sounds like you're asking lots of questions at the ends of all your phrases and sentences. Can you hear the difference?

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yep, I sure can.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

And it's something that if I kept doing it, would probably drive you insane. So I won't. But a lot of people don't realize that when they're talking, especially in that run-on sentence, their brain is in what I call mental list mode. So it's like, well, I want to talk about this and this and this and this, comma, comma, comma, comma. We need periods where the voice drops. We are making a statement, not asking a question. And that when you're in the run-on sentence, it's going to sound like those ongoing questions. And the problem, aside from the fact that it'll drive people crazy, is that it also sounds like you are uncertain. It's like you're inflecting, is that okay? You know what I mean? All right. And why do I need to keep saying to you, yes, you're right. It's fine. Okay, I get it. You're giving away your power. When you do that, because it makes the other person the expert. And it sounds like you constantly are begging them for validation. So it's like if you don't trust yourself, if you're not confident in what you're saying, why would I be? So up speak is another major pitfall. Number three is what's called vocal fry. And vocal fry is that habit that I'm demonstrating now, where maybe you start okay at the beginning, but again, you went on that run-on sentence and you're kind of running out of air, but you're not really allowing yourself to stop and breathe. So you get this crackly, froggy kind of sound. And number one, it's bad for your vocal cords, but it also kind of sounds many people have different interpretations of it, but most find it relatively unpleasant and kind of either indifferent or haughty or like you're not feeling well or you're not even interested in what you're talking about, and it's coming out of your own mouth. None of it says, I'm passionate about this, I believe in this, I'm confident in this. So the vocal fry habit is another one that's really tough. Uh, number four is drowning in data. Way too specific, way too many details, way too much information, and it's going over the other person's head, or they're just waiting for you to get to the point, or you're too stuck in what I call the expert's curse. You love your data, you love your area of expertise. They're not where you are. They don't need all this. You're missing the point of what they need to know this for. So not getting lost in the details. Uh, and number five is the ability to tell is not using the stories and the analogies like we talked about at the beginning, especially for people who are in tech. And again, Curtis, you're in cybersecurity. I'm sure you know a lot of guys, a lot of women, a lot of people who are very confident in their intellectual abilities and in their technical skill. Would that be a fair generalization?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

And when we get stuck in our intellectual comfort zone, and I'm just as guilty coming out of a world of academia and professorship and all that kind of stuff, I had my own strong suit that was my pride and ego initially. But I realized in order for it, it wasn't just about talking in a way that helped others think that I was smart. That's not an end result that's of value. The idea was to make them feel smart. And the best way to make them feel smart is not to dumb down my stuff, but to make it as easy and relatable and digestible as possible. So to simplify my point and get it down to the bumper sticker, get it down to a story, get it down to an analogy, and then fill in the blanks with some data afterwards. But starting with those tools, you may feel like, well, am I just dumbing it down? Am I just no, Einstein is the one who said, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. And that is a mastery skill to be able to do. And most are afraid to do it because it's so counterintuitive. But simplify with analogies and stories, and it will make you seem smarter because it will make them feel smarter and help them just get it.

SPEAKER_01 25:38

We'll talk about the relationship between your words, your voice, and your body language.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Well, ultimately, that's like what we talked about in the beginning. It's the alignment that matters. If you want to be seen as credible, you want to be trustworthy, it is the match in those three channels of communication. Because the words are the what you say, and the voice and the body language are the how you say it. And when one is out of line with the others, then your brain, the listener's brain, is gonna fixate on what doesn't whatever part doesn't seem to connect with the others. Now, if we're talking here on a podcast, when there's no when there's no video involved, the body language, the visual component, is not going to be a factor. So far more of the audience's engagement, and when I say audience, I mean whoever you're talking to, whether it's one to one or one to a hundred or bigger, but the listener is going to put a lot more weight on interpreting the sound of your voice and drawing conclusions about you, your message, your credibility, based on whether the sound of your voice, your vocals, matches your verbals, which is your words. So just because you're uh either can't see somebody, either you who aren't able to see in general, but and anybody else who's listening to podcasts, the the voice carries so much weight. I mean, Curtis, you must have the most incredibly honed hearing. I can just imagine you can infer so much from someone's voice tone when you're talking to them, can't you?

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

What's something that you've realized that you can hear when people are talking that most other people can't or don't notice?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Well, they're like you were talking about earlier, the the tone of their voice, or you know, if they're being sarcastic or or you know anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah. So here's the trick your words speak to the listener's conscious mind. Your voice and your body language speak to the listener's unconscious mind, to their subconscious. So internally, when that conscious and unconscious received message don't gel, that's when your intuition goes, it's off. But when they reconcile and they integrate, well, that's where you start nodding your head. That's where you're going, okay, I feel this. This makes sense. I may not even agree with them, but I'm still understanding where they're coming from. And that's where credibility is at the core.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

Well, talk to the listeners about your podcasts and your books because you're also a podcaster and an author, which I forgot to mention in the intro.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Uh, that's all good. Uh, my book, all of my work, book, podcast, et cetera, is called Speaking to Influence. The book is Speaking to Influence, Mastering Your Leadership Voice. I welcome anyone to take a look. You can get it on Amazon, either in paperback, in Kindle, or on Audible. And I do read it myself, so it's a lot of fun, especially on the vocal channel and some of the vocal chapter, excuse me, and the uh some of the other sections where we get to demonstrate a lot of the techniques that are described. Uh, it's fun to be able to demonstrate those as I am reading those chapters and those sections aloud. Uh, and the podcast is also called Speaking to Influence Communication Secrets of the C-suite. I interviewed about 225 senior leaders of for-profit and nonprofits, large and small, uh, around the world and having them tell their stories about how they learned to be effective leaders through communication, the lessons learned the hard way, the easy way, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Um, right now we're looking at the sequel to the next book. So if we um I can't give you the title yet, but it is based on the foundations of speaking to influence. And we're gonna take it to the next level and we're digging deep into authenticity and adaptability and figuring out how do I still be me and still get through to you, no matter how different we are. That's what we're gonna dig into. So stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Well, so people can stay tuned. I I know you were talking about a gift that you wanted to offer the listeners, but throw out your contact info so we can keep up with everything that you're up to.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Oh, thank you. Well, definitely go to my website, which is very simply laurasicola.com. And uh you can sign up for the newsletter that I just sent out once a week. No spam, just tips every week, stories, ways to master that leadership voice, ways to find your voice, find your power, get your message across, build your influence, um, some stories, some new resources, podcasts like this one will always be announced in uh the weekly podcast and any other events uh or opportunities will be announced there. So I would invite everyone to join and uh check out the Tuesday morning newsletter that comes out. And as far as the gift is concerned, I would be very happy to share the first two chapters of my book, Speaking to Influence. So I'll give a link. We can perhaps share that in the show notes, and people can just click it to get that copy of the first two chapters and dig in for themselves to see where it makes those head the head nod and go, you know what? I can totally relate to that. Yep, that's definitely happened to me. Yep, I'd like that to not happen to me so much anymore. And yep, I'd like that to happen more. Okay, let's find out how to do it and then see if you want to read the rest of the book.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

Yep, they will. The link will definitely be in the show notes. Wonderful. Close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yes. The most important thing to remember, Curtis, is that you can both be authentically you and adaptable and flexible enough in your conversation to connect with anybody. And it's not about acting, and it's not about trying to be somebody that you're not. It's what's called your prismatic voice. And in the same way that if you are out watching a football game and with some of your friends at a bar and your team is having a lousy night, chances are you're gonna use a little bit of language that might be different from what you'd use here on the podcast. Would that be a fair assumption on my part?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah, most definitely.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

But it's not that one of those two styles is the real you, the authentic you, and the other one is faking it. They're both you. It's just what color, so to speak, in your spectrum, in your rainbow, would naturally come out. So maybe in that the football space if you're Louisiana, a little purple, a little gold coming out there. You've got those that we'll call it your purple. But here in your podcast space, we'll call it your blue. Okay, so you know based on who you're talking to and about what topic and for what purpose, you may need to tone down the purple and use a few less of those fun little four-letter words that might slip out once in a while when you're watching football, and tune up something else when you're in your podcaster mode. We do that kind of, that's called healthy code switching. And it's a skill that we all have. And when you choose to do it and you learn to recognize when you're doing it naturally and master that skill, the person who has the greatest flexibility in their communication style is the person who's going to have the most influence in the end. It's the person who is unnecessarily rigid and says, nope, I gotta be me. This is me, always everywhere. This is my only me, and I'm not gonna flex it at all. That's the person who will be very limited because that one style, whatever it is, will only resonate with a very limited type of person and type of context. So if you can master more than one style, more than one, uh, more than one code of sorts, more than one, you know, I've got my academic code from when I was a professor and a researcher. I've got my corporate style, I've got my and I've got my mommy style. I've got a nine-year-old at home. I don't talk to him like this. But I've learned to master all of those different colors in my spectrum, colors in my rainbow. And I learned to shift fluidly between all of them because I own all of them. I embrace all of them. I may prefer one or a different one, but I own all of them. And that's where your power lies. Master that prismatic voice, and the world opens up to you.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

So if you're looking to uh be able to communicate better, be a better uh speaker, uh Dr. Socola is the uh go-to person to do that. LauraSocola.com, check it out. Check out the podcast, check out the book. I'll be putting a gift in the show notes and uh check out everything that she is going to be up to in the future. Also, for all things living the dream, please visit www.curveball337.com and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Dr. Laura, thank you for all that you do by helping us all, you know, be better uh communicators, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Thank you so much, Curtis. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.