What’s More

Activity 1.1 Leadership Communication-in-the-Making

Do you know that the Center for Talent Innovation identified three main pillars of
Leadership Communication: appearance, communication skills, and gravitas?
Learning the Basic Skill: Defining Words in Context
1. Listen to the TED talk of Ms. Laura Sicola on this topic thru this link:
https://bit.ly/2AdoeTw
(NB: Below the activity questions is the full text of this talk entitled “Want to Sound
Like a Leader? Start by Saying your Name: Laura Sicola”)

2. F
i
n
d
 out from this TED talk how appearance, communication skills, and gravitas
interplay in coming up with a good definition of Leadership Communication.
3. Define by using your own words the meaning of appearance, communication
skills, and gravitas in relation to the topic.
4. Scribble down, illustrate, or even draw while engaging with this TED talk and
write down your final definition of Leadership Communication.
5. Figure out how the tips learned from this lesson help you in acquiring the skills
~ the best possible means ~ of the Leadership Communication skills.

Find the definitions of the italicized words.

1. Appearance is
essential in depicting
one’s executive
presence.
2. It is
indispensable for
leaders to enhance
their
communication
skills.
3. In order to
acquire executive
presence one
must possess
gravitas.
4. Leader
Communication plays an
irreplaceable role in growing one’s business.
5. Controlling one’s voice inevitably has a persuasive influence on the
listeners.
TED Talk Full Text
One of the hottest topics in courses and books nowadays, with regard to leadership
communication, is the concept of executive presence. What does it mean? How do you
define it? And can it be taught or learned?
The Center for Talent Innovation identified three main pillars of it: appearance,
communication skills, and gravitas. Gravitas means things like “Do your words have
teeth?”, “Are you able to make the tough decisions and stick with them?” One of the
missing pieces when you think about what’s integrated really between the lines of
broad concepts like communication skills and gravitas is vocal executive presence, as I
call it. It’s the missing link. How do you sound when you’re making those tough
decisions? Does your delivery reinforce your message and establish the image that you
want? Or does it undermine it? What happens if I’m trying to diffuse a tense situation
and I say: “OK, everybody just calm down now, we need to reevaluate the situation.” At
worst, I’m just adding fuel to the fire, and at best, you may later on gently suggest that
I switched to decaf. It’s about how we connect.
I end up working a lot with people who are preparing for presentations and for press
conferences, and they make statements like: “We’re very passionate about helping
children and improving the quality of our schools.” And I think to myself: Really?
Because you could’ve fooled me.” There’s a claim of passion, but there’s no evidence
thereof. The problem is a disconnect between the choice of words and their execution,
their delivery. And this creates a problem of credibility. Now, there’s a historic and
seminal study that looked at feelings and attitudes as a result of the consistency or
inconsistency in verbal and nonverbal messaging cues. And what they found was that
when they ask people to evaluate spea kers as far as whether or not they thought the
speaker sounded sincere, 38% of that evaluation was based on the tonality of the
speaker’s voice. Tonality being things like the ups and the downs in your intonation
patterns. In contrast, only 7% of those decisions were based on the speakers’ words
that they chose, and the remaining 55% were looking at non-verbal cues, were based
on non- verbal cues like your posture, your eye contact, etc. Now, this is a study. We
have to be careful because many people love to misquote it. And you’ll hear people
make grand statements like: “Well, you know, 55% of all communication is non-
verbal.” That’s not remotely accurate and it’s not what the study was talking about,
but what we can take from this study, and a lot of subsequent research in the area is
the importance of sounding credible.
Now, I’d like you to think about this in the
context of how you
personally prepare for
some sort of
presentation. Do you
spend 38% of your time
working on the
delivery? If
you’re like most
people, you probably
spend the vast
majority, if not all of
your time, working
on the content: your
outline, your script,
your PowerPoint
slides, making sure
you got cool graphics
and some snazzy animations,
crunching your data to put into your
spreadsheets. But then, after all that work, we sort of wing
the delivery hoping it will be good enough. And in the end, that’s just comparatively
weak, and it can undermine both your immediate goals and objectives, as well as your
long-term image and reputation. The fact is, if you want to be seen as a leader, you
have to sound like one. You have to demonstrate vocal executive presence. Now, a part
of vocal executive presence is the ability to read an audience and identify the kind of
person from whom they would be most open to receiving your message, and then
figure out what that kind of person would sound like. Now, to an extent, we’re all born
with the voice that we have, but we do have a lot of control over how we use it.
Margaret Thatcher is a great example thereof. She was the first woman in British
Parliament, and she was overtly mocked by a lot of her opponents with phrases like:
“Me thinks the Lady does screech too much” because when she was passionate in her
arguing certain points, her voice would go higher and become rather shrill. So when
she decided to run for Prime Minister, she worked with a tutor from the National
Theater who helped her to lower her pitch in order to sound more authoritative. And
this is really important because the voice has both cognitive and emotional effects on
the listener.
Let’s start with the cognitive. We talked about tonality, that 38%, the highs and the
lows in your voice. And if we use this strategically, we can actually help the listener to
focus on the most important words and parts of the message which makes for a lighter
processing mode and helps them understand and potentially remember what we’re
saying. And this can have a persuasive influence. When we listen to speech, we
process it in what are called tone units or chunks. And we start first by fixating on the
intonation pattern and anchoring what we listen to to where those highest peaks are.
And then, if necessary, we allow our imagination to fill in whatever is in those lower
sound valleys. An example of this is in song lyrics. We’ve all had this situation where
we’ve been singing along to our favorite song and suddenly, we realize that, or perhaps
somebody else not so gently points out, that we’ve been singing the words wrong.

You’ve ever been there? A lot of nodding. There’s a classic song, “What
a wonderful world” by Louis Armstrong. I
think everybody knows this
one. And in it there’s a line
that talks about: “the bright
blessed day and the dark
sacred night.” But when I was
a kid I thought the line was:
“the bright blessed day and the
dogs say good night.” Now, does
this make any sense
whatsoever? No, but I accepted
it, in part because, first and
foremost, it matches those
intonation patterns and it also
arquivos ja j ‘7matches
3 at those pitch peaks, the
vowels, these syllables that are up at the top. And then, in the parts that were less
salient, that were less emphasized, in those pitch valleys, I let myself make up the
rest. This also reflects why effective speakers, when they’re speaking, will emphasize
the most important words with higher pitch.
Now, tonality, if we use it strategically, can have a good influence on our very first
impressions in attempting to establish ourselves as leaders from the moment we meet
somebody. It’s really important, of course, to make a good, strong, memorable first
impression. But this is difficult when a lot of people feel like they’re not even good at
remembering people’s names. You ever feel like that? Well, I’m going to absolve you of
about half of that blame. And that’s because when most people introduce themselves
to you, they pronounce their own names wrong. OK, well, technically maybe not
wrong, but they pronounce them in a way that uses a rhythm and an intonation
pattern that does make it more difficult for you to understand what they’re saying.
And, by the way, I absolve you of only half of that responsibility because the other half
of the time you’re the one introducing yourself to somebody else. So, if I want to know
that I’m introducing myself and helping the listener to really understand my name,
and by understanding, then they can hopefully remember it, and thereby remember
me, I want to start by letting my voice go up, up like this, on your first name, as if to
say, “I’m not finished yet,” and then at the top, we’ll have a little break, that little
pause that will allow for a sound break to indicate word boundary, and then, at our
last name, we want to go down, let the pitch fall, as if to say, “And now I’m done,” like
you’re putting a little local period at the end. So instead of blurring your way through
your introduction, like, “Hi, my name is Laura Sicola,” and bla-bla-blah, I want to
focus and help my listener to understand, and so I’ll do my best to say to them, “Hi,
my name is Laura Sicola.” And you’ll be amazed at the difference this strategic tonality
can make even in something this small.
Now, of course, if we’re haphazard in our use of intonation, and putting it in the wrong
place, we can have the exact opposite effect. We can distract the listener’s attention
from what’s most important, and make it harder for them to process what we’re
saying. And one of the most common and, in my opinion, annoying examples of this,
that’s becoming more and more prevalent in society nowadays, is a phenomenon
called “up-speak,” otherwise known as up-talk or, more technically, high-rise terminal.
And that’s the pattern where people are talking, and they keep adding these question-
like tones at the ends of all of their phrases and sentences, “You know?”, like they’re
implying a bunch of little “OKs” and “rights,” one after another, like there’s some sort
of deep-seated insecurity and pathological need for constant validation? You know?
The problem with talking like that is that what ends up becoming emphasized is just
whatever randomly falls at the end of the phrase. It doesn’t help anyone to process
what you’re saying. And that monotonous lilting upswing time and again can be rather
hypnotic and so, after a while, we don’t really know if the audience is listening to
anything we’re saying, much less what. By the way, I should also point out that this is
not just a “Valley Girl” kind of phenomenon, like a lot of people seem to attribute it.
More and more nowadays, this vocal crime against humanity is being perpetrated by
men and women, old and young, highly educated and lesser educated. So,
congratulations guys, you’ve closed the gender gap. Way to lead!
So from there, one of the other issues is that when people, of course, hear up-speak,
they tend to have a very negative and even visceral response. It’s not only the
antithesis of vocal authority. It’s almost like the vocal equivalent of hair-twirling, you
know? So, when people have that visceral response, this will bring us to now talk
about the emotional effects of voice. Let’s start by thinking about some people who
have really distinct voices. We’ll start with James Earl Jones, perhaps best known as
the iconic voice of Darth Vader. Now, in my opinion, with that deep, rich, bass
voice that he has, he could read the ingredients of the back of
a bottle of shampoo and it would
sound like poetry. But he
probably would not have
been as successful if he had
tried to play the role of Elmo
on Sesame Street. What
about someone like Fran
Dresche with that completely
unmistakable, whiny, nasal
voice right out of Queens, NY?
She was great on TV as The
Nanny, but she probably would
have been less successful as
Darth Vader.

Can you imagine her standing over Luke

Skywalker saying, “Luke, I am your father!” It’s just so doesn’t
work! Now that’s a great voice for comic relief, but it’s not necessarily the voice you
want to encounter when you’re looking for a funeral director. It’s all about context. In
the funeral context you’re looking for someone who sounds sympathetic, who sounds
compassionate, who sounds like you can trust them to take care of you and your
family during your time of greatest emotional need.
And the problem is that when we find someone who has a voice that we find
unpleasant or somehow seems to lack the characteristics of the kind of person we’re
looking for, – doesn’t sound like that kind of person – we can tune them out. We can
sort of shut down, and we don’t even want to hear the rest of the message, no matter
how important the information is.
Subconsciously, we really want the messenger’s voice to fit the message. Now, does
that mean that vocal executive presence is about acting? No, on the contrary, it’s the
exact opposite. You have to be authentic. You have to be yourself. But the key is to
recognize which parts of your personality need to shine through in a particular
moment and how to transmit that through your voice and speech style.
Now, you’re listening to me here today in part because the way I am presenting to you
makes sense to you and will match your expectations for what a TED talk speaker
should sound like. But I can’t use this same speech style when I’m talking to my 3-
year old nephew. He’d wonder what happened to aunt Laura because I don’t sound
 like fun anymore, and he’d probably stop playing with me. But at the same time, I
can’t come here today and talk to you in the same way that I talk to him. Can you
imagine if I started by saying: “Everybody, I’ve got a great idea! Let’s talk about vocal
executive presence!” You’d be like, “Are you kidding me? Who is this nut? What can
she possibly know about leadership or executive anything? And, for that matter, who
invited her?” And by the way, it was them.
I call it “working your prismatic voice.” In the end, I’m not acting. It’s just a matter of
recognizing and being aware of the two audiences’ different needs and expectations.
And then identifying which parts of my personality I want to let come through and
how, in order to ensure your openness to my message. And with regard to the big
Monica Garwo d

notion, the metaphor, the prismatic voice, in many ways, in the same way white light
would pass through a prism and break in all the colors of the rainbow that make up
that white light, when the white light of your personality passes through the prism of
some situational context, you need to look at all of the colors that are available, all the
different parts of your personality, and decide which one you need to highlight in the
moment and how, in order to be most effective and appropriate for that moment. And
if you can figure out how to do that success-fully, then you can create your own,
unique, and authentic sound of leadership. Thank you.