Transcription
What if I told you that people who speak with confidence weren't born like that? They just figured out how to improve their speaking skills so people pay attention and stay engaged.
As an instructor at Columbia University, I'm going to share with you for the very first time the four things I did that transformed my own speaking so you can now walk into any room, any situation, in front of any kind of audience and know how to command their attention. By the way, the best part about it all? The freedom. No more fear or nervousness, just pure certainty of what to do and what to say. Because in this video, I'm going to take you through the exact journey of how I figured it out. The real turning points, the research behind why they work, and what you can start doing differently today.
In fact, all of this can be found in my best-selling communications book, Smart Not Loud: How to Get Noticed at Work the right reasons, where I teach smart and ambitious professionals like you how to get the best opportunities without being loud, rude, or obnoxious about it. Because I want to be clear. I didn't wake up one day and suddenly become a good communicator. It happened because of specific lessons, some of them painful, that completely rewired how I think about speaking, presence, and influence.
By the way, make sure you listen to the third point in this video because what I did there is truly the one that changed everything for me and I think it might do the same for you.
So, here's the first thing I did that completely transformed my communication skills. I stopped trying to impress people and started thinking about what other people needed to hear. Let me take you back to when I first started working on TV. I was young, I was ambitious, and honestly, I thought that in order to get people to respect me, I had to put on this armor of bravado, so people would take me seriously at work. But here's what happened. I failed big time.
What I was doing was walking into meetings desperately trying to impress people. For example, I would speak like a robot, use tons of technical words, load everything with data and proof to build credibility, and make myself sound intelligent with sophisticated language because I thought it would make me look smarter. I tried this for a few months like I had something to prove, but one day my boss noticed this, and she did something that shook me to my core. After a meeting one day, she pulled me aside and said, "Jess, I know you're smart and hardworking. It's why we hired you. But it would really help you a lot if you could just simplify your points before you speak."
Imagine hearing that from your boss. Honestly, while that sentence hit me so hard at the time, in retrospect, I think it was one of the best advice I ever got. Because I realized that up until that point, I hadn't just been talking like a robot, really stiff, really unnatural, just to get people to think of me a certain way. But as a result, every time I spoke, it wasn't resonating or connecting.
Now, if you're a smart person, chances are you're like me. You do have all the data and the facts prepared before a meeting. But the problem is what psychologists call the curse of knowledge. And this is the idea that once you know something deeply, you lose the ability to imagine what it's like to not know it. Meaning, you skip steps, you assume context. You go into your meeting speaking in a way that assumes everyone knows what you're talking about. And that was exactly what my boss meant. I needed to simplify my points, uncomplicate them, and really put others at the center of what I was saying.
So, here's what I actually did to change that. Before any important conversation or meeting, I would ask myself two questions. What do the people in this room already know? And how can I share my points in a clear and concise way? That's it. This was a huge reframe. And now all you have to do is go into your next meeting not thinking you have to impress your boss, your team, or even your clients. It's what do they need to hear? And how can you say it in the cleanest and clearest way? In fact, I'll tell you, when you start speaking like this, impressing people will happen because they actually understand the point you're making.
Which brings me to my next point. The second thing that I did that completely transformed my communication skills was learning that how I said something mattered just as much as what I said. Here's something nobody tells you when you start out in your career. The words you say really, at the end of the day, are only a small small small small part of the equation. The bigger part, the part that determines whether people lean in or tune out, is how those words feel when they land.
So, why did I have to learn this? Let me take you back to the kind of environment I grew up in. My parents were pretty traditional. They immigrated from Asia to the US for what? To achieve that American dream in hopes of creating a better future for themselves and their children. And to them, that meant my brother and I, we We to work hard, study hard, get a good job, find a good career to have that success. But not once did they ever talk about learning the importance of communicating, or more importantly, how to communicate. They never talked to me about politics of work or how to influence people. So, you can imagine when I started working, it was a huge culture shock, just trying to figure out how to speak in a way that was both professional and authentic. And truly, what I realized was communications, it is about words, but that's not everything. And that's when I realized I needed to rethink this.
So, as a reporter when I was working on TV, we actually had time working with consultants. And they trained us on how to be better communicators. One day, the consultant I was working with told me that adjusting my tone could help me develop more executive presence and give me more gravitas. What? I had honestly never heard about this, and I was hooked. So, this is what she taught me. Your tone has five elements. There is your pitch, how high or low your voice is. Your intensity, how loud or soft your voice is. Your rate, how fast you're speaking. Your inflections, what works what words you want emphasized. And finally, the quality of your voice. You know when you call someone you know it's them? That's the quality. Well, the consultant told me that if we modulate our voice, sometimes speaking in a lower pitch to show depth, speed up to convey excitement, or soften our voice to get people to lean in, it could completely change how a message lands.
In fact, there's research to back all this up. In 2014, a study published in the Psychological Science magazine found that intentional vocal variation can make speakers measurably more persuasive and memorable even though the content of their message was exactly the same as a monotone delivery. So, that completely changed. Just that modulation compared to a monotone can completely change the impact even though the words are the same. So, the difference in me learning to do this was immediately. Not because I suddenly had better ideas, but because I could finally communicate in a way that was resonating. So, just this one change not only changed how I communicated, but more importantly how I was perceived. And just know that communications isn't just the words you say, it's how you say it. And your tone of voice including those five elements can help get you there.
Which brings me to my next point. The third thing that I did that completely transformed my communication skills was treating public speaking like it was a skill I could actually train. And by the way, that changed everything. Here's a question for you. What is one skill that Warren Buffett says can increase your value by over 50%? Public speaking. And that is exactly why this third point is so important because I wish someone told me this earlier in my career. Public speaking is not talent, it's a skill. And like any skill, it can be practiced, studied, and improved if you're willing to be honest with yourself about where you actually are right now.
You know, I remember the first time I saw myself giving a presentation. Let me tell you, it was so awkward. I was pacing back and forth, I was talking so fast, and my hands, I literally did not know what to do with them. So, they were just hovering around awkwardly, and I was so uncomfortable watching it. But here's what I did. I kept watching. And I started to audit what I was doing. Why did I rush? Why did I lose eye contact? Where did my energy just drop? Which sentence landed and which one just kind of like floated away? And then I made a decision. I was going to make one small adjustment the next time I had to give a presentation. And I kind of made it like a challenge where I would say, "Okay, I have a presentation coming up today and I'm going to deliberately speak slower more than I think I need to." I remember I even put a post-it note on my notebook so I would remember because this visualization actually helped. And I made this improvement kind of like a game. It was a small change, a small improvement. And I will tell you the results were not crazy dramatic overnight, but they were consistent. And that compounded.
In fact, what I was doing with this practice is what psychologists call deliberate practice. Psychologist Anders Ericsson spent decades studying how people develop expertise and what he found was that it's not the amount of time you put in that makes you better. It's the quality of focused, feedback-driven repetition. His research showed that top performers in virtually every field, musicians, chess players, surgeons, they didn't just practice more, they practiced specifically. They isolated it and they worked on it over and over again. And that's exactly what you can do.
Public speaking is one of the best ways, by the way, to be seen as a leader because most people don't want to do it. So I guarantee if you become a great public speaker and you do it well, you immediately position yourself above everyone else on your team, even within your own company. In fact, there's something deeply psychological about being seen in the position of a presenter. It shows that you're not only good at your job, but you're articulate. And that, by the way, is a secret sauce to career success. And by the way, here's another piece of research that I love about this. It's called self-modeling, like visualizing yourself as a great speaker, because that can also help you become a better communicator. Research shows that seeing yourself executing on these things can change the way you perceive yourself. So, if you start to see yourself differently, and when you start to perform in that way, that's actually who you become. So, I guarantee if you focus on this one area, you can 100 times accelerate your growth. And I think Warren Buffett would agree with this compounding effect, which brings me to my next point.
The fourth thing I did that completely transformed my communication skills was stopping waiting to be noticed, and starting to make myself visible. This is the one I'm almost kind of embarrassed to admit, because it took me a really long time to learn. For the first several years of my career, I genuinely believed that if I worked hard enough, the right people would just notice, that the quality of my work would just speak for itself. But time and time again, I watched myself get overlooked and overshadowed by my colleagues who were definitely not smarter than me, and certainly not more hard working.
In fact, the moment that I really just realized this and broke down was a story that I wrote in my book Smart Not Loud. If you've read my book, you'll know what I'm talking about. This was when I was working at the NBC station in Reno, Nevada. And one day, my manager announced that one reporter at our office would get to fly with the US Air Force Thunderbirds. They're basically an elite air demonstration squadron that travels from city to city, and they put on these air shows. And as part of their PR campaign, they were going to let one reporter fly with them. Now, if this was you, would you raise your hand for that opportunity? I thought this was the coolest thing ever, so I did. My boss saw me and said, "Okay, Jessica, we'll get you a media pass."
Now, a few days pass and it's the day before the air show and we're all sitting in our morning meeting when my manager goes, "All right, the Thunderbirds, that story is happening tomorrow. Well, Bella, you get to do it." >> [snorts] >> My gosh, I can't even describe that feeling of when I heard that. Because I remember it was like the whole room stopped and I was just sitting there. My heart sank to the pit of my stomach and my manager just kind of went on with that meeting like nothing unusual happened. Well, it bothered me so much that at the end of the meeting, I courageously decided to ask him what happened and I will never forget what he says. He goes, >> [snorts and clears throat] >> "Oh my gosh, Jessica, I'm so sorry. I completely forgot you mentioned you wanted to do it. It was just that Bella, she kept talking about it and she was top of mind." Top of mind.
Now, my colleague, Bella, she was great. It wasn't that she was better than me or that she was smarter. What she did though was what I didn't do. She was great at making sure that she stayed top of mind for the things that she wanted. Because I will tell you, during those days before the air show, I had thought about reminding my manager that I wanted to do it, but I didn't do that because I assumed asking one time was going to be enough. I assumed reminding him would be bothering him and I was basically creating this negative narrative in my own head of the worst-case scenario if I kept communicating what I wanted.
I share with you this story because this experience truly changed everything for me. I realized that if I didn't learn how to build strategic visibility around my work and what I wanted, how many more opportunities like this would just pass me by. And by the way, there's a lot of great research that backs this up. Visibility is not vanity. It's a strategy. Psychologists Adam Grant and Wharton has written extensively about how the most influential people at work consistently share their knowledge, are enthusiastic, share their ideas not to show off, but to stay connected and relevant in the minds of people who make decisions. Research in cognitive psychology also helped me reframe this because studies show that people need to hear information five to seven times before it resonates. So, that means following up and building visibility isn't about being annoying. It's just how human memory functions.
So, for you, here's what you need to do. Say the thing. Say it again. In an email, in a meeting, in a hallway, in a conversation, in a follow-up. It doesn't have to be the same way every time, but consistently enough so that people know who you are, what you stand for, what you want. And I guarantee it keeps you top of mind for the bigger and better opportunities because here's what I want you to know. The journey to becoming a better communicator isn't about finding a magic phrase or perfecting your posture. For me, it was about unlearning these four things that I had been getting wrong for years and working on the things that actually moved the needle. I stopped trying to sound impressive and started thinking about what others needed to hear. I learned that how I said something was just as important as what I said and I started treating public speaking like a skill I could improve because it can be. And I stopped waiting to be noticed and started showing up consistently and visibly. None of these changes required me to be louder. None of it required me to be someone I wasn't. It just required me to be smarter in my approach. And that is exactly what my book Smart Not Loud is all about.
If this resonated with you, share this video with someone in your life who deserves to be heard more in rooms that they are in because I guarantee they already have what it takes. Now, if you want to go deeper on any of these things, my book Smart Not Loud is linked below. And if you want the notes that come with the book for free, comment the word smart below and I will send them to you directly. Don't forget, if you liked this video, if you enjoyed this video, if you found it helpful, be sure to subscribe and like because that is how you will get notified of all our future videos coming out to help you get promoted, build visibility, and of course, communicate with confidence. I look forward to seeing you in our next one.