Milestones and Mastery: Celebrating 10,000 Downloads & Mastering the Art of Podcast Interviews #165
Experts! Speak English Podcast Milestones and Mastery: Celebrating 10,000 Downloads & Mastering the Art of
Are you ready to party?
Because today is my 150th episode, and I invite you to join me in a celebration of 150 communication podcasts. Today I’m going to give you 150 communication tips. The reason I’m doing this is because when communication goes wrong, it’s sometimes really handy to have like a checklist that you can go back to and think, “Okay, if I was in this situation again, what would I do differently? What could I change?”, and so, this is going to be a really useful tool, not just today, but on an ongoing basis. So, let’s get cracking, shall we?
Welcome to the Experts! Speak English! Podcast! Together we’ll discover how to talk yourself into an international career without the bullshit. And at the end of each episode, I give you an opportunity to try out what you have just learned on the show because I give you Coco’s Communication Challenge and that gives you an opportunity to get out there and try out one of the tools, techniques or tips that you will have heard on the show.
I’m Corinne Wilhelm, I’m a corporate communication coach with over 20 years experience of helping leaders to secure the career that they deserve through intentional communication, intercultural awareness, and the confidence to show up as the English speaking expert.
Well, can you believe it? This is my 150th episode of Experts! Speak English! Now I feel quite proud about that because most podcasters don’t get past episode number 10, and this was a big fear of mine when I first started. It kind of plagued me, really. So, I’m actually quite chuffed today. I’m not always bang on time but punctuality is the 150th point on my list.
This podcast started out as “Clever2gether”, which I thought was clever, but it wasn’t. People didn’t know what Clever Together was really about and so I changed it to Experts! Speak English! because as we say in marketing, “Call it what’s on the can”. So don’t make people guess. The content has always been pretty much the same. My style has changed a little bit over the time. I’d like to think I’d got a bit better. The system’s got better. I haven’t had many interview guests recently because I am working on my interview technique.
But today I’m going to give you a 150 communication tips. Clearly, in a short podcast, I’m not going to go into detail, but they are going to be addressed in future episodes.
Before I start, you could use these if communication has gone wrong, it’s really useful to come back to this episode and listen again and just make note where you think it might have gone wrong. Because normally, if you look at this pragmatically, when you’re not so emotional about things, you can work out where you went wrong. And it’s often not just one thing, not just two, it’s often a combination of things.
So here we go, 150 tips to help you improve your communication and leadership.
Why?
WIIFT?
Who cares?
Why now?
11. Use a prop. Hold something up that adds clarity to your message.
12. Involve your audience. Online we talk about interaction, but in real life, we also need to involve the people around us as well.
13.Reach out. Reach out for help. Reach out for advice. Reach out for support. Don’t do it all yourself, because that’s very, very stressful and it’s not sustainable.
14. Ask for or use examples. Those let you really understand the point that they’re trying to make.
15. Summarise what people have said. This gives you an opportunity to check whether you’ve understood everything or included everything.
16.Use acronyms – that helps people remember.
17. Tell them why. Why are you doing this?
18. Ask yourself what’s in it for them.
19. Who cares? I want you to ask that question.
20. I want you to ask another question, which is: Why now?
21. Eye contact. Now, remember, online, you need to be looking straight into that camera when you speak to people – and that’s not so easy. I have some funny looking eyes on the top of mine and it does look a bit silly, but it does the trick.
22. Use the stage or the screen to go into the audience. Go back from the stage, pull people in, hand them a drink, give them a hug. You can do all of these things on the stage or the screen, of course, but don’t just stay still.
23. Use simple language.
24. Tell a seven-year old what you’re trying to explain. If a seven-year old can understand, anyone can understand.
25. Add some personality. So, for example, a scientist client of mine has a very complex topic to explain, and she recently came back from a short skiing holiday. So she used the example of, you know, the different slopes, you know, black and blue and red to explain her point and this came over really well and she could even use some snapshots from a holiday. And because she’s fairly new to the organisation, this gave people a little bit of an insight into, you know, more about this client of mine. So, she was using personality and she was using analogy. You see how that works?
26. Be clear.
27. Be concise.
28. Be brave.
29. Be unique. Sometimes we spot things, don’t we, on Pinterest or wherever it is. And it’s easy to think that you can kind of just poach it and just change it slightly. But it’s really powerful if you can take that data and think of a very unique way of presenting that data and really communicating that information in a really unique and personal way. A way that people will instantly remember you by. Your model, your personal spin on this, your illustration, your infographic – whatever it is that you need to really own that information and your explanation of that information is what will single you out as a leader in a way that is very, very unique to you.
30. Be positive.
…that subscribers to ‘Coco’s Communication Tips’ also get some vocabulary insights for every podcast episode of “Experts! Speak English?”
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❔ You would love to have a bigger impact on people but don’t know where to start.
❔ You speak English fairly well but people don’t give you the time to finish or interrupt you.
❔ You are ready for something new in your career and want to start raising your profile.
❔ Life is getting expensive and it is time to start earning more but you’ll need to change jobs.
So, these 150 points will all help you to become a better communicator and a better leader. This is a different style of podcast to what you’re used to and I will be going into more detail with these things in the future. But you’re smart, you’ll work it out. And the others I will be having a dedicated podcast too in the next 50 episodes.
I know that some of you are very keen to do a Communication Challenge for each episode, and I love that and I really love it when you let me know how that is going for you and what you’re learning about yourself and your own communication, and this week is obviously a slightly different episode, but I still want to give you a little challenge. So, it’s not ready just yet. But by Valentine’s Day, which in case you don’t celebrate, is the 14th of February every year, which is on Tuesday (oops!) next week, there will be a checklist ready for you to download and use as many times as you like from my website. You can basically just give yourself a rating for how you perform on each point.
So, you would just go to englishspeakingexperts.com/150 (https://englishspeakingexperts.com/podcast-2/) and you’ll find it there. Of course, I’ll put the link in the show notes, but that’s where you’ll find the Communication Challenge for this week.
So, for now, have a fantastic week and be the very best communicator that you can be!
It’s Corinne Wilhelm from Experts! Speak English! brought to you by englishspeakingexperts.com
Goodbye for now!
…that all podcasters find it incredibly difficult to get people to rate their show. It is these ratings that make my show more visible to other listeners, so I would absolutely love you to leave me a rating, you can choose from 1 to 5 stars and if you want to, you can leave a review. Those are literally like gold dust, so if you want to make my day, just take a few moments to leave me a review. That would mean the world to me and could help someone else to discover the show.
You never know – your review could be what convinces them to listen or subscribe – imagine if as a result they got a really cool project, pay rise or managed to talk back to an impossible boss. That would be cool right?
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Experts! Speak English Podcast Milestones and Mastery: Celebrating 10,000 Downloads & Mastering the Art of