The Leadership Vision Podcast

Mastering Your Leadership Voice with Dr. Laura Sicola

• Nathan Freeburg, Linda Schubring, Brian Schubring • Season 8 • Episode 41

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What does your leadership voice communicate—before you even get to the content of your message? In this episode, Nathan, Brian, and Linda talk with Dr. Laura Sicola, cognitive linguist, executive communication coach, and author of Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice.

Laura has spent over two decades helping leaders transform technical brilliance into real leadership impact. Together, we explore three big themes:

  1. Personal branding as a promise,
  2. Authenticity and the “prismatic voice,”
  3. How leaders can create engagement, clarity, and connection in virtual settings.

This conversation is full of practical tips, mindset shifts, and language tools that help leaders show up with presence, confidence, and intentional influence.

🔑 Key Themes & Takeaways


1. Your Brand Is a Promise

A personal brand isn’t a slogan—it’s the experience of you. If you don’t intentionally create it, it will create itself.

2. Authenticity Requires Flexibility

Genuine authenticity isn’t rigidity. It’s being able to flex different facets of yourself depending on context—your “prismatic voice.”

3. Avoiding Leadership Binaries

“Strong or kind,” “direct or approachable”—these false binaries limit leaders. Laura shows how to break free from either/or thinking.

4. Language Patterns That Undermine You

Words like “always,” “never,” and “everyone” trigger defensiveness and derail conversations—often without leaders realizing it.

5. Leading in a Virtual World

Engagement doesn’t happen by accident. Expectations, vocal presence, audio quality, and meeting structure all shape the room.

6. Fear of Judgment, Not Fear of Speaking

Most communication fear isn’t fear of speaking—but fear of scrutiny. Leadership requires the courage to take calculated risks.

📚 Resources Mentioned

🎉 Unfolded is a National Bestseller!
#1 in Business & #5 Overall on USA Today
#17 on Publisher’s Weekly Nonfiction
📘 Grab your copy + get the FREE Reflection Guide!

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The Leadership Vision Podcast is a weekly show sharing our expertise in discovering, practicing, and implementing a Strengths-based approach to people, teams, and culture. Contact us to talk to us about helping your team understand the power of Strengths.

SPEAKER_04:

It's not technically a fear of public speaking. It's a fear of public judgment. It's a fear of public scrutiny. It's a fear of being shut down in public, which is why people are then afraid to share their genuine thoughts and feelings, whether it is one-on-one or one-to-many, virtual or in person, on the stage or on camera or you know, whatever the situation is. There's an old expression that I think too many people have latched onto, which is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Which is a very old-fashioned expression. But that doesn't help as a leader. Because to lead, people need to know what and who they are leading. If they don't know what you stand for, why would they get behind you?

SPEAKER_01:

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about our work, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello, everyone. My name is Nathan Freeberg, and today on the Leadership Vision Podcast, we are talking with Dr. Laura Sakola, a cognitive linguistic leadership communication expert and author of the book Speaking to Influence, Mastering Your Leadership Voice. Laura has spent more than two decades helping leaders translate technical brilliance into real leadership impact, and she brings a sharp practical lens to how we show up when we speak. In this conversation, we dig into three big ideas. First of all, your personal brand. Laura defines brand as the promise of an experience and the experience of a promise consistently delivered. We talk about what that means for leaders and why, if you don't intentionally shape your brand, it will quietly shape itself for you. Second, we explore authenticity and what Laura calls your prismatic voice. Instead of getting stuck in false binaries, strong or kind, direct or empathetic, she shows how great leaders flex different facets of themselves for different contexts without losing integrity or becoming an imposter. Third, we get very practical about leading and connecting in the virtual space. From the language habits that accidentally trigger defensiveness to expectations around cameras. Laura offers small specific shifts that make a huge difference in how others experience you. Now, whether you speak to a team of just five people or an organization of 5,000, this episode will help you think more intentionally about how you sound, how you show up, and how you read. This is the Leisure, this is the Leadership Vision Podcast. Let's jump in with Dr. Laura Sicoma. Laura, welcome to the show. And what would you add or subtract or tweak from that intro?

SPEAKER_04:

That was pretty solid. So uh Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

Good job.

SPEAKER_04:

You passed.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. You passed. Well, what can you tell us about yourself that we can't find online? Like, uh are you a Phillies fan? Are you an Eagles fan? Are you we already got your recommendations for restaurants at the beginning? Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh well, the funny thing is, of course, the uh Eagles just played the Giants last night, and uh I am in a culture you talked about intercultural um communication spaces, Linda. Uh I am in a mixed marriage. My husband is an Eagle sense. I was raised a Giants.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh.

SPEAKER_04:

So it is a true meeting of the minds. And uh nights like yesterday, I just have to you know fly my flag very quietly. There you go. There you go. But uh I was raised in in northern New Jersey, so uh near to the Meadowlands and all that kind of fun stuff. But at the moment, frankly, uh it's been so long since I fought since I followed football.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Can't uh stay there. Except when your team wins, you gotta you gotta bring that together.

SPEAKER_04:

You can celebrate. You know, you do the little happy dance and then gloat for a moment and then move on.

SPEAKER_00:

Move on to the next thing.

SPEAKER_04:

Other things.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Laura, it's so great to have you on our podcast today. One of the things that I think would be a great place for us to start is on this idea of brand. I think that there are so many people that are concerned about how they show up, um, what they're sounding like, and they're concerned about the way people are interpreting them. But I often feel that there seems to be this um indecision or even a collision of how people express themselves. What are some of the observations you're making on this idea of people and how they present themselves as brand?

SPEAKER_04:

And first of all, uh Brian and Linda, uh, Nathan, everybody, thank you so much for having me uh on the show today. The concept of personal branding is something that is, per definition, personal to so many people, but they forget that they have to make the decision intentionally. Because if you don't actively choose to create your brand, bad news for you, it's gonna create itself for you. And then you're gonna have to work a lot harder to intentionally fix it. And that's one thing we want to avoid. And to me, I think the easiest definition of a brand is that a brand is the promise of an experience and the experience of a promise consistently delivered.

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh, why the word promise?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, well, when you are interviewing for a job, when you're trying to get a group of people to trust you, when you are trying to convince people to lead to follow you voluntarily, not just because you outranked them on the org chart. You're making a claim of one sort or other that when working with me as your leader, as your vendor, as your whoever it is, you I promise you that you will always experience what? And being able to fill in those answers for yourself, I think is really important because then you're thinking about it. Most people just go, well, because I'm smart and I'm good at my job and we do good work at my company, so you should hire us. Well, that's table stakes. Anybody who doesn't think that, why would they be doing what they do? So what else is it that makes you different, special, and most importantly, exceptional, not just as an expert, but as a leader? That's something we need to intentionally define.

SPEAKER_00:

Laura, in your experience, how often do you find people get that right? Like what they're saying, like you know, like you're you're asking people to make a bet on you. How often do people get that that right? Because I feel if you're making this statement of here's how I'm going to show up, that could be misconstrued from you know the the person saying it. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04:

Sure. And part of it is not so much that you need to have it written out on a business card or on your LinkedIn profile, uh, that but you do need to think about what you want to convey. So even one of the things that I work with in clients, an exercise I have clients do often right from the beginning, is to write a list of three to five personal qualities that you want your target audience, your clients, your uh executive leadership team in the board, your uh director ports, whoever it is, to perceive in you. And they single words, nouns or adjectives, and only one of them, by the way, can be a synonym of the word smart because everybody defaults to, well, smart and knowledgeable and expert, and yeah, I have a thesaurus to find something else. The uh it's almost like those words are if you remember the old game show um Wheel of Fortune, at the end they would have the at the bonus round or the whatever round it was, and they just give you the R-N-S-T and E or something along those lines. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know you're gonna pick those. Now pick something else. I'm gonna give you smart at your role. That's table spit takes. Now, what else? Do you want to come across as confident, empathetic, approachable, relatable, relatable, authoritative, uh, you know, funny. What doesn't matter, but what do you want that brand to be? Now you cannot walk up to a person, introduce yourself, and say, hi, I'm Laura Sakola, and I am confident and approachable and relatable and authoritative. They're gonna go, uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03:

Sure you are. Sure.

SPEAKER_04:

I'll I'll be the judge of that. Yeah. And that's the thing. All of those qualities are their subjective interpretations of my objective speech behaviors and not so speech behaviors at times. So I have to figure out if those are the qualities I want them to perceive in me, how am I communicating with people to get them to conclude that I am indeed those things. That is the challenge.

SPEAKER_02:

So, as an expert in linguistics, I gotta be able to say that. As an expert in linguistics, help us and our listeners tie in uh the speech and how we come across our authenticity with that sense of brand and personal brand and delivering on that promise.

SPEAKER_04:

I think an important point for people to recognize is that branding, authenticity, being yourself, uh executive presence, they are not these monolithic, mono you know, black and white, monochromatic constructs. We have so many different aspects to ourselves. We still want to maintain our integrity, which doesn't just mean honesty. Integrity is about wholeness. That's comes from the Latin root, same like the word integer, it's about being a whole to integrate. But in that wholeness are many colors. I mean, I'm in my executive coaching mode right now. I also have a nine-year-old. Probably won't surprise you to know that I don't talk to him like this, nor would I come on your show and talk to your audience the way I talk to him. You would have hung up on me a long time ago, unless it was just strictly for comic effect, but certainly not for modeling leadership communication. Right. But it's not that one of those styles is the real authentic me, and one of those is fake. It's contextual appropriateness, right? You adapt, just like you change your wardrobe for different contexts. You have when you need to wear your gym clothes, when you need to wear your business casual, when you need to wear your fancy formals. It's all you, but it's different facets of you. It's what I call your prismatic voice. So just like the little crystal-y thing in the uh window, you see the sunshine that shows that uh refracts into all the little rainbow, all those colors are inside. We have all those colors. We'll call this my my pink today, my red. With my nine-year-old, we'll call it my green. Just depends. In this context, when I'm going through the prism of situation X, which color needs to shine brightest? I'm gonna turn that one up, tone the other one a little bit down, but it's still me. Authenticity must be flexible and adaptable, or it is just rigidity and that can't grow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Do you work with people around their fear to have that level of flexibility in the demonstration of who they are?

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's like it tends to start with a mindset shift and recognizing that flexing is not being inauthentic and is not trying it may be uncomfortable insofar as learning something new. You try and learn a new sport, you try to learn a new foreign language. In the beginning, you're gonna be terrible at it.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

That's just the nature of the beast. So it's okay, and it's not that you will necessarily be terrible in the beginning of coaching uh and becoming a better leader, but growth by itself means getting good at something that in the beginning you're not an expert at already. So you have to be willing to go there. But often the what I have to do with clients is figure out how they can look at the two sides that they're wrestling with internally, and sometimes more, but it's typically they can kind of bucket it into two, like how can I be both strong and effective and approachable, night, nice, likable, whatever. If anything, I get the the false binary of, well, you know, I've got a reputation of being too aggressive, too intimidating, too strong. I tried being nice and that didn't work. So what am I supposed to do? Where'd the binary come from? Where'd the all or non-black or white? So it's about looking at, okay, well, what are the values that you have that say, I need to be strong, I want to be good at these things. Good. Let's identify the good in those intentions. Now let's look at the good in wanting to be the other and wanting to be approachable and wanting to be likable, not in the high school popularity content sense of likable, but just in you want to like your boss, you want to like the people you work with. And then there's a way to kind of chunk up. I do some work in neurolinguistic programming and whatnot that helps people to integrate those two kind of when you when you hear people say, well, you know, on the one hand, part of me wants this and part of me wants that, and they feel stuck. So how can I my work ends up being how do I start by helping to show them where that really is all just one them? It's not part of them and part of them. They all are linked with the same internal core values and drive. When they can let go of that, then we can work on the skill to help them have those conversations in different ways.

SPEAKER_00:

Laura, a couple questions. Did you say one them? A one them?

SPEAKER_04:

There's one them.

SPEAKER_00:

There's one them. There's not two, there's one. Did you say that?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't recall the exact words, but the idea I may have, yes, because it was it's the idea that there's not like it's not this part of me and that part of me where there's two sections of or there's two sides, like what's the right word? Um bifurcated or yeah, where they feel like there's two parts of them that they can't reconcile. There's only one person, there's only one of them.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. That's why that's what I thought I heard, parallel to some of the ways I think. Second, do you this is a question, and sometimes as a shoe bring, my last name, we don't know how to ask questions as just a family trait. Okay. This is a question. Um Do you Unless you married in?

SPEAKER_02:

Unless you marry in. Like those are commands, those are not questions.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. Question. Yes. Are you seeing any correlation between between people in that binary mentality and the binary reality that's sometimes presented within our culture? Do you want to speak to that at all? Voice. Because part of our work. That's why I'm asking. And I'll give you like 15 seconds of background. So much of the work that we're doing is in part recognizing the context within people are existing and what that's doing to their mind and how it is that the brain needs to create a binary reality to make a choice. One choice that's safe, one choice that's not. How do we and so part of our work is how do we stand in the middle as our authentic self, not needing to take a side and be okay with that? Because there's those those pressures that sometimes I believe that leaders are taken by surprise at how binary their teams are, and they're caught in which side to choose.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. Um we can spend the whole conversation on that, and that's such a great topic because So you're picking that up.

SPEAKER_00:

So what I'm saying is you're feeling that that same thing.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, absolutely. Yes. And I think that's a social um it's a natural human condition, and it's one that in today's without getting political, in today's climate, uh is unfortunately being encouraged.

SPEAKER_00:

Correct.

SPEAKER_04:

And that makes it really hard to do your job well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so when you talk about language, I think that people when you're talking about language, we're finding that leaders struggle with the language of how they're communicating because they are unintentionally offending half the crowd while trying to align with all the crowd. And it's not an intentional I I don't think leaders are mindful of what's happening until it's happened. And then there's this retreating of what they've said to try to create a connection with people.

SPEAKER_02:

And the more they swing to the polarities, the more people feel the imposter syndrome. Which I think is that they're not. Which I think if people held more of the paradox and they help they held more of the both can be true mentality, or I'm somewhere in the middle, or it depends on context, then they wouldn't necessarily feel like an imposter.

SPEAKER_00:

Because you're talking about so many things, Laura, that we are swimming in these waters on a daily basis. And our focus is on how do we help people understand who they actually are within a context that's either they can control or that they can't control. How can they be authentically them and not need to choose a side?

SPEAKER_04:

Am I answering the question now or are we gonna go back and I would love to hear you just what how about a comment?

SPEAKER_00:

Like, what are you hearing when when we say that? Does it ring true to your experience?

SPEAKER_04:

Absolutely. Uh on gosh, so many levels. The question of things like, well, can both be true? Before we answer a binary uh, you know, two option question with a binary answer of a yes or no, I think what's important is to challenge ourselves to dig a little deeper and challenge the assumption that it's really a binary question in the first place. That why don't we look at what is what are all the conditions? What are the intentions behind it? What are the competing factors that have created this? I mean, anybody who does work in negotiations will tell you that when you go for zero sum, that's never going to work. And it's also to Chris Voss and many of the other uh negotiator, negotiation masters points, it's not about splitting the difference. That doesn't help necessarily. And so looking at how much can you back out, and NLP would refer to it as chunk up, or other things to figure out what are some of the truths involved that we can all agree on? What are the fundamentals that we all want? If if finance is arguing with development on budgets and whatnot, is it that both, you know, does one side have to win? Okay, way up at the top, what do we both want? We both want the company to be successful. We both want to have a peaceful work environment. We both want to be acknowledged for the good intentions of the arguments that we're making and what we're trying to achieve. Okay, there's there's so many ways. I of course I'm generalizing at very s basic levels to start, but sometimes you do have to go up that far to begin to find common ground and then back out. And that goes for any political situation, that goes for any sort of work situation, that goes for any family situation. People are people, no matter how much we'd like to think otherwise.

SPEAKER_02:

I like your thinking.

SPEAKER_04:

It's the binary, and so one of the challenges, I just got off a call uh with a new client about maybe an hour ago, and that was one of the first things that we did, because she was having one of these challenges as far as reconciling the strong and the nice. And she asked uh she made a couple of points, and I said, Well, number one, we need to go back. And did you hear in just the last 30 seconds worth I heard three binary absolutes all of this, never that, everyone X. Is that true? Because when we use when we and she didn't even realize she'd said it. And she was just, you know, making generalizations, but at the same time, that shows a mindset. And those are the kinds of things that other people trigger or get triggered by, I should say. And so they will totally ignore the underlying premise of what you're discussing and argue the validity of the absolute. Is it really always, I don't always, you're not always, we don't never, we'll some and it's that's it's not about whether it's truly all or never the issue that we want to focus on. But now they're gonna argue the semantics of the adverb. So being mindful of those kinds of habits that we have and where we end up tanking our own efforts because we don't realize that we've used some of those patterns unconsciously. Boy, it's amazing. Small details can make a huge difference in your effectiveness as a leader and otherwise, for that matter, to me, it's all about the finesse of the language, and that's where you thread the needle.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. Is that what you did this morning on the call? Yes. Because because we find that it's just sometimes a gentle mirroring back, like, whoa, I heard you say that. Yes. Or I'm I was noticing this. And then they they're making the own their own connections as they go. Yeah, okay. And was there an aha or was uh even just Oh sure.

SPEAKER_04:

As soon as I pointed that out, she went, Oh my gosh, I really did. And realized where she will tend to do that with her people, and okay, this is going to be something we're gonna work on. How to be mindful and framing things, either omit the adverb or any adverb of time and frequency, whatever, completely, just address the thing, or acknowledge, you know, this is something that often happens. Or I've seen this uh three times in the last week from you be as concrete and specific in your examples as possible. But just be careful not to allow generalization to turn into hyperbole or stereotype. Because that's where you're gonna learn, lose people. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00:

So many of these communication patterns that you're speaking of, it seems to us that it that can be complicated by the virtual role that we're playing as as leaders. Because we're now we're not you know present with people in the same room. How have you found leading in a virtual world either more cumbersome or what challenges is that adding to a leader's effectiveness?

SPEAKER_04:

I think one of the biggest challenges for leaders in the virtual space is one of engagement. It's hard enough to read people's thoughts and minds if they're not proactively explicitly articulating their thoughts in person. But when they're in the virtual space, often people speak even less, or somebody else will dominate at that point, allowing other people to speak less. There are uh I I there are teams that I work with where their default is no cameras ever.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, okay, I get that. And the excuses I hear are we're we're tech. Nobody wants to have cameras on. Nobody ever has cameras on. And if you could try it, but you'd have to force them and then they'd mutiny, and then we'd have this whole problem. Okay, well what is the understanding of why? And where are people going with this? And then we have to have all sorts of other conversations about long-term culture, branding, where do they want their careers to go, uh, et cetera? So but how do you engage if you're trying to talk to a group and you don't even know if anybody's there? They will all admit that when you're talking to a room full to a whole screen full of black squares just with names in the corner, what's the one thing that's going through your head? And they will all immediately say, Is anybody there?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Is anybody listening?

SPEAKER_03:

Yes.

SPEAKER_04:

Well, what does that say? What what do you expect to come out of that? So the people will rise to the expectations that we set for them. And that's even more important in the virtual world. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02:

Because I'm old enough to remember conference calls, you know, and maybe being at a table with six leaders and someone saying something on the conference call and someone's rolling their eyes, but also but saying a really politically appropriate response to whatever happened, even though they just rolled their eyes. So I'm wondering, from your perspective, how has the Zoom or the video conferencing changed some of the virtual connection? Because it's that not there and they don't use it, and then people aren't taking it.

SPEAKER_04:

Like anything else, video conferencing is a tool and it can be used effectively and it can be used ineffectively, uh, assuming it's used at all. And I mean hybrid situations are complicated. I just got off um a call just yesterday or the day before with someone who was complaining that the these two partners were often the ones video conferencing in to board meetings that were in person. And so they were expected to participate, you know, when the time call came. But half the time the board members were just like mumbling to each other, having these side conversations, and nobody was speaking loud enough for them to hear while their faces are plastered on this giant screen for everybody else to see, every eyebrow flinch, every nostril flare. But they just saw a screen with a bunch of black dots around a table. And they weren't really being included. And this is where leadership comes in, because I think when you're leading a virtual meeting, especially a hybrid meeting, it is absolutely incumbent upon you to ensure that everyone is included in every aspect of the conversation. So you need to be conscious on a kind of a metacognitive level and say, gee, you know, Bob, Jane, can you two hear the conversation? Can you hear? And if they say no, then keep telling, okay, Marsha and Harvey, you two need to, if you're gonna have this conversation, great, but please speak up so we can include everybody in it. And if not, then hey, Marsha and Harvey, I know this is the board meeting and not seventh grade, but could you just stop acting like it's seventh grade and having the side conversation and include everybody in the room? This is part of the challenge. I would do it a little more diplomatically than I just suggested, uh tongue in cheek, as it were, but it is a explicit conversation, explicit instruction guidelines, expectations, acknowledging when someone is or isn't meeting those expectations and getting them to adjust as necessary. That's all part of leadership in the virtual world, and the standards need to be held higher for the results to be just as good as in the personal space, because otherwise the technology will sabotage us, and most people are sinking to a level of unchallenged mediocrity.

SPEAKER_01:

Most people are sinking to a level of unchallenged mediocrity. Wow. That should be on a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_04:

I sink to a level of unchallenged mediocrity. Proud of unchallenged mediocre and proud of it.

SPEAKER_00:

That's good. Laura, it's funny you ended with that phrase because I was gonna ask you if you have an example of this being done well, of virtual leadership being done well.

SPEAKER_04:

Um yes. I mean, to the extent that when when uh COVID was in its heyday, let's put it that way, and everybody was now officially on camera all the time, still freaking out, hair on fire, and doing it really, really badly. There was a chief strategy officer that I worked with at a healthcare system. And uh he, to him, it was important that his team learn how to do this well because they had a lot of influence that they needed to get a lot of buy-in across a lot of different verticals through this uh whole healthcare system. So we did some intensive training, worked with the team as a group, and then some ongoing coaching to make sure that they were able to really not just command the room in person, but command the screen in the virtual space so that they were still projecting the authority, getting the buy-in, making sure they were connecting with the audience as necessary. And um, when we finished, the there was a big board meeting that they were preparing for, and he called me after it was done. And he said, Yeah, we got some interesting fruit feedback from so and so. I said, Oh, yes, what was that? He goes, Yeah. He said, Why don't your people suck at this?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh. Thank you. Is that what a compliment?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, exactly. You know, it's like, well, what did you do? What happened? Because they all and many of them were not particularly high-ranking on a relative level to the board, but they were brought in to do their job. And they they mastered what I call the three C's, and that's all throughout my book and everything I've done since the ability to command the room, or in this case the screen, to connect with the audience and to close the deal, and they nailed it. They was managing up at its very best. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

I love that. Um we do so much that's online and and virtual, and still one of our goals is to create an emotional connection with someone in a virtual way. So, Laura, how is it that people are creating meaningful connections while leading in a virtual environment?

SPEAKER_04:

The the beauty, Brian, is that I think we tend to overthink this a lot and imagine that it's much harder than it is. And often it's small details that we can do that make another big difference in that. One of which, frankly, is the quality of your microphone. I think all of us are on the similar level. Looks like a sure SM7B, which is you know a nice Lamborghini of a microphone. But you there's a little plug for sure I should get royalties for recommending it. But the the quality of your microphone, you don't need a Lamborghini like we're using, but you shouldn't be on a tricycle either. And most laptop, most people just use whatever's embedded in their laptop where they use their earbuds or even AirPods for that matter. And for as expensive as they are, the microphone is lousy. So do not go in that direction. But to upgrade, you know,$100,$150 for a decent mic makes a huge difference because otherwise you sound like this.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And most people And this is a cognitive, I mean, Brian, you should be able to even talk to this more than I can. But when when the sound is hard to parse through and it's like you're looking through fog, it creates a level of a cognitive processing burden for the listener. And let's face it, people's attention span is pretty abysmal, abysmally short nowadays. Well, and they barely pay attention if they are interested in what you're saying. But if you're going to make them work, first and foremost, to just understand what the words were, much less to understand, do I understand what they mean? Do I agree with them? How do I want to respond to them? They're going to go, ugh, I can't be bothered, and they're going to go multitask, which is, I believe, the new definition of multitasking is paying attention to everything except you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So how do we get them to stay focused? And the you don't want to be the person where when everybody else sounds like this and then you talk and you sound like this. And you sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, everyone immediately goes, Oh, I don't want to listen to that. And they tune out. You want to be on the flip side where most people, again, hitting that unchallenged level of mediocrity, most people sound like this, and then you cut through the fog. And it's like, wow. I did a a virtual training for the um executive leadership team of a client company a little while ago. And they had already been on a virtual meeting for maybe two hours before I got on. So they were a little zoomed out, as it were. And the person introduces me, explains what the training was we were going to do virtually. And I got through about 30 seconds of introduction opening and before one of the VPs um interrupts and goes, Wait, wait, Laura, what are you doing? I said, I'm I'm sorry, what? What do you mean? And he said, What are you doing? What are you doing with your voice? I don't know what you're doing, but all of a sudden you started to talk, and I just sat up and I zoomed, focused in, and I realized I was hanging on everything that you said. What are you doing with your voice? And are you going to teach us how to do that? Yeah. And I thought, it's actually both. Yes, it is part of how I'm speaking and the way that I'm doing it, as opposed to the laundry list, and now I'm going to read off the ingredients on the back of my shampoo bottle. Uh like how most people seem to go through their talking points of a meeting. Correct. Correct. But at the same time, yes, my microphone is laser clear and nobody else's was. And it did help. It's like a jolt of energy that came through their systems. Uh, so it's a both and. You can't just have one and not the other if you want to maximize your impact.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's interesting you start talking about microphones because at the end of the book, you have some very specific recommendations for how to hold a microphone, where to put the lav pack, like what kind of clothes to wear. I'm wondering if you have any specific tips you could leave our audience with about, you know, like a takeaway from your book. Like, yes, commanding the microphone like is a skill. What are like the softer skills? Or like if there's one thing that you could leave us with that would help some kind of on that journey to mastering their leadership voice, what would that be? I know it's hard to summarize it all, but okay, how to narrow that down. I know, right?

SPEAKER_04:

What's I'd be curious to know what's the biggest hang-up you tend to hear from your clients? Any of you?

SPEAKER_00:

Ooh. Okay, I'm gonna go first and just pave the way. A fear to authentically speak their perspective. Like this is what I see, like authentically for someone to say that out loud. Um, because I feel that people are actually asking for that because when someone speaks in their voice, it tends to be that penetrating truth that creates a space for others to hear.

SPEAKER_02:

I would also say that what we're hearing now is that when people are trying to lead or direct or manage a group, they are competing with phones. They're competing with mobile devices. And so even the sit-up and like, what did you do there? Sit up and talk, like what happened. People are looking for that quick fix. And I just wonder if it's like rooting into their authenticity. So that's another thing that we we are hearing and seeing.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm hearing and seeing from people, just a fear of public speaking. And I have air quotes because I I think in your book or somewhere I heard you say public speaking is anytime you're speaking to someone or two or anyone other than yourself. Right. Right. And so sometimes there's just that fear of like I clam up, I get nervous. Uh some of you know, I think that's just practice getting over that, but just telling someone, you know, picture everyone in your underwear, that doesn't necessarily help help ease that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. Um would love to address um all of these, frankly. It's like a whole separate podcast. Whatever's interesting. Yeah, right. I guess two things. Maybe three. And you can delete the ones that you don't that are less interesting. Um as far as the fear of public speaking is concerned, it's not technically a fear of public speaking. It's a fear of public judgment.

SPEAKER_03:

Oh.

SPEAKER_04:

It's a fear of public scrutiny. It's a fear of being shot down in public, which is why people are then afraid to share their genuine thoughts and feelings, whether it is one-on-one or one-to-many, virtual or in person, on the stage or on camera or you know, whatever the situation is. There's an old expression that I think too many people have have latched onto, which is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

SPEAKER_03:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

Which is a very you know old-fashioned expression. But that doesn't help as a leader. Yeah, because to lead, people need to know what and who they are leading. If they don't know what you stand for, why would they get behind you? Did you ever see the show Hamilton?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, great show. And uh there's a line that Aaron Burr has it multiple times. It's about you know, smile or what is it, talk less, smile for, don't let them know what you're against or what you're for, something along those lines. And but that's why Hamilton at the end cast his vote in favor of Jefferson, saying, No, I can't, I don't know what you stand for. So why would I follow you? I don't trust you as a leader or as an individual for that matter. So we need to be able to take some calculated risks and share our perspective. If you want you can't get a yes if you don't ask the question in the first place. Oh as far as the things like competing with phones, competing for attention, competing for respect, competing for uh for yeses, et cetera, this goes back to that same challenge where you have to ask or you can't get the yes. And that also means you have to give people expectations. You have to ask them, you know what, tomorrow, maybe not in five minutes, like, hey, it's great that you all joined here today, turn your cameras on now. Because okay, maybe they didn't shave, they didn't, you know, they are still in their pajamas, who knows what's going on if that's the expectation that cameras are never on. But I can say to you tomorrow, when we join this meeting, I need the cameras to be on for the first 15 minutes. So that expectation, and you may need to talk them through it or deal with other things, but if you just assume that they won't like it, so you don't ask, then the tail is wagging the dog. And you're getting exactly what you are asking for, which is nothing.

SPEAKER_01:

That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_04:

They are rising to the standard that you set.

SPEAKER_00:

The second part of that t-shirt. Laura, this has been phenomenal. I feel that there are just so many different trails that this can lead to. Um because so much of what so much of what you're talking about is the lived experience of many of the leaders that we are currently working with.

SPEAKER_03:

Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

The current struggles that most people don't know they're in the struggle. They feel something's off, but they really don't have the words yet to articulate it. So what I like about our conversation today is the way that you are giving us some language and some examples of how to really understand what's going on, whether we are conscious of it or not. So that leaders can pay more attention and be more aware of how they're being perceived and how they can really lead others in a way that brings life to everybody.

SPEAKER_03:

That's great.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much. It's uh you know, all the prep I did, other podcasts, TED Talk and stuff, and and even your book, just like the consistency of message and the authenticity that I sense throughout that in the now here today. I just I really appreciate that. And so thank you for uh giving us your time and sharing your wisdom with us.

SPEAKER_04:

Thank you for the opportunity. I've that the conversations have been great. I love being able to talk to someone who's in the space as well, as opposed to whatever other angles that my work might be relevant, but you know, it's it's a little bit different.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. If you found value from this episode or any of our other materials, we'd appreciate it if you could join a free email newsletter. Uh, subscribe and follow us on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get any of those things, leave us a review. Also, another big thank you to Dr. Laura Sakola for taking the time to chat with us. It was very interesting and such a great conversation. I loved hearing not only her examples, but just the interplay between Brian, Linda, and Laura and just how our work seemed to be so complimentary. So thank you for listening. My name is Nathan Freeberg on behalf of our entire team. Thanks for listening.