How to Speak Like a Leader: Communication Strategies for Executive Women - with Dr. Laura Sicola

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:00  

Welcome to The Executive Coach for Moms Podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic and certified executive coach.  

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:27  

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today, I want to introduce an amazing guest for you. I'm so excited to have her here. Her name is Dr Laura Sicola and she is a leadership communication and influence expert, speaker and author of Speaking to Influence:  Mastering Your Leadership Voice, as well as host of the global top 1% podcast, Speaking to Influence: Communication Secrets of the C Suite. Her mission is to transform executives into confident, inspiring leaders. She's a cognitive linguist by background, and has trained and coached executives at Fortune 500 companies and nonprofit leaders from around the world, and her TEDx Talk, Want to Sound Like a Leader? Start by Saying Your Name Right, has nearly 7 million views, and I just watched it so that I could learn more about Laura, and it is amazing, so go check out her TED Talk. So welcome Laura. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  1:26  

Thank you so much, Leanna, glad to be here. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:29  

So glad to have you. And I'm so excited for this conversation, because I think that I always love sharing women's stories, and I think you have such an interesting one. And also I love bringing new topics that are really going to help our listeners, and I know that you've got so much to share with us, so let's go ahead and dive in. Sounds good? Can you just tell me about you and your career and your background?

Dr. Laura Sicola  1:54  

Of course, the it's funny, I refer to myself as both a recovering academic and an accidental entrepreneur. I started out as a teacher, which I swore I'd never be, as a kid, because I came from a long line of teachers and was sick of hearing about school all the time. And then, you know, lo and behold, a year or so after college, found myself in education and realized it was definitely where I belonged as far as education in general, maybe just not the traditional classroom forever. So I went back to grad school a few years later, and I did my PhD in applied linguistics and education and looking at how people learn. What is it about the way that we speak, what we say, how we say it, to whom we say it that makes what we say either go in one ear and come out the other or go in and stick, and if it sticks, what does it do in there? And why? And how do you adjust your messaging to make sure that it sticks and does what you want it to do in the other person's brain, so that you get the progress in those conversations, the results that you're looking for? And while that was the intention, of course, going for a graduate degree like that is to become faculty and to be a professor, which I did for a few years. I also realized that the tenure track was not for me. It was not a good culture fit when you were in school. You can tell me if this sounds familiar or not, but my general assessment was that there's kind of two kinds of professors. There are the teachers at heart who also publish research, and there are the researchers at heart who also teach classes, and the big universities want the second one, and I'm the first. I'm a teacher. I just am. That's why I love coaching. It's why I love training. So needed to find something else, and sometimes what is the saying, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I think a third component in that equation is that and you're paying attention.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  3:49  

Absolutely. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  3:50  

That's because you can miss those opportunities no matter how prepared you are, if you're not looking for them. And up at a fourth ingredient, chutzpah to borrow a I think it's a Yiddish term, but the, you know, a little bit of Moxie, a little bit courage, you have to be willing to take a chance every now and then. So I was at my cousin's wedding and talking to someone who just happened to be sitting at the table next to me. He asked about the research that I was doing, and he says, You know, I've always had an instinct and an interest in that, but I never had the data to back it up. You have the data, and I think it's relevant. Would you want to come to a training for my team? I thought, well, training, you know, I'm a teacher, I'm an educator. So same thing, different label, different audience. But sure, why not? And it turned out that he was the vice president of government programs at IBM. And of course, one thing leads to another, and okay, I have that contract there to do a consulting opportunity for a massive corporation. And while it sounds easy in that decision, in the moment, we had the follow up conversation afterwards, and after negotiating what it would look like, I hung up the phone and thought to myself, What did I just agree to do? I'm not corporate. I don't know, you know. And I ended up speaking to 75 global leaders from IBM, huge. Something else similarly happened about that same time, but just with Chase the bank, and all of a sudden I'm going, okay, so this was not an accident twice is a little bit more than a coincidence. This is the universe telling me I was looking for a different alternative to the tenure track, and it looks like this is it. That required one of the biggest leaps of faith I've ever taken, because I don't have a business background. I am not corporate trained. I don't have a business degree or anything along those lines. So trying to figure out, what does it mean to hang out a shingle? What is it what do I call myself? What do I call what I do? It was a very long road trying to figure that out, but that was also 17 years ago, and here we are. So apparently, you know, tenacity and grit and scrappiness, I think are some really important and a good thick skin, being able to take hear a lot of no's and keep trying to grind your way out of first and second gear until you gain some traction, all necessary things for anybody to make that career shift. So there we are.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:08  

Yeah, you know, I think you brought up maybe some questions that I think whenever people are thinking about switching careers, and I talked to so many people who are kind of midlife and just like this career that I'm in, you know, it's kind of just what either was set up for me or what was expected of me. And now I think I don't know that this is actually how I want to be spending my time. I, you know, once I'm in it, I realize that's for the rest of my life, that's I don't know if I want to be doing that, yeah, but, but I think a lot of times the fear of, you know, kind of the sunk cost fallacy, where it's like, I've already worked so hard to get to where I am, you know, I'd be starting over. That, as well as, kind of like the fear of, this is something I know, and then going out into the great unknown. And it sounds like you were able to overcome that and really kind of make that shift from education into entrepreneurship and working with businesses. So I'm just curious how did that look for you?

Dr. Laura Sicola  7:11  

It was definitely a lot of trial and error and a lot of attending back then, every kind of networking meeting I could attend, every kind of small business development seminar, whether it was government sponsored or through a local organization, it doesn't matter. I attended everything, I read everything. You have to. You can't just sit there in your bedroom and yes, you have to think, but you can't just think. You have to talk to people and learn from other people's experiences, get their advice. You know, one of the hardest things for me in the transition was again, coming out of academia, and after doing a PhD and whatnot, where they spent seven years beating into my skull how to think, talk and write like a professor. Well, in corporate they don't want you to think talk and write like a professor. They want you to think talk and write like them. So it was a very big shift for me from an ego perspective, from an identity perspective, but I finally learned this superpower. I finally learned to do this. I finally got taken seriously and and was respected as an equal in this space and now all the stuff that qualified me for that status is no longer a value. Yes, they did. The PhD label itself did help, because it was a credibility marker, because otherwise, who am I? Nobody knew who I was at that time, so at least that gave a little boost of confidence that, okay, maybe she knows something that might be valuable to us, but even things like just learning what what I had originally labeled the work that I was doing, which has evolved quite a bit since then. But the original labels were coming out of my academic space, and they were either not phrases that the corporate world recognized or not ones that they put a significant dollar value on and they were labels that made people think much lower price tags, not realizing, no, actually, what I'm doing for you is an elite skill that took me a decade to learn. I have publications, research, all that kind of stuff. That is why you want to hire me, but you don't want to pay me for it. Oh, it's because I'm calling it this. Got it. So eventually I realized that there was an interest in leadership development, leadership communication, those kinds of things. Oh, that's different. That's something that there's a whole industry. There are whole divisions, people have titles about leadership development and whatnot in the corporate space. So okay, you gotta package it in a way that your target audience understands it and sees it as something that they are willing to pay for, and the amount that you need them to pay labels. It feels like marketing. It feels like salesy, whatever. But, you know, get that out of the way. Call it whatever you can call it chocolate ice cream and sprinkles. Doesn't matter if that's what they're willing to pay for. One of the biggest traps of the entrepreneur is that we fall in love with our product or our what our service. Instead of falling in love with our client, fall in love with the client and create what it is that they not only say they want, but that they are willing to pay for. And those are often people say, Oh, I love this. Would you do this for me? I want it. I want it. And by the way, can I get it for free, or almost free? The answer is no. There's lots of stuff.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:30  

Yeah. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  10:30  

And you have to be willing to say no to that too. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:32  

Yeah. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  10:32  

If you don't honor yourself and what you're worth, no one else will.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:35  

Yeah. And what about the personal side? Tell us about you personally as much as you want to share

Dr. Laura Sicola  10:42  

Sure. Part of what enabled me to do, the degree when I did it, and then the way that I did it, and to start on that entrepreneurial journey. And for the record, Leanna, I didn't just decide one day to stop teaching and jump into entrepreneurship, you know, cold turkey, so to speak. It was more I was teaching part time and doing the business part time. So the teaching kept the lights on while I was trying to figure out the rest. And then eventually, as the business took off, I realized that the teaching part was holding me back from taking the business opportunities that were being offered. I was turning stuff down, and that was the moment when I realized I had to, you know, burn the boats, as they say, and commit 100% in one direction. So, you know, we all come to that precipice, which is scary, but we do it. But part of the reason that I was also able to do that without as much trouble is I was still not married. I didn't meet my husband until I was 40, and which is a whole lot longer, like, a good 10 to 15 years later than I had always hoped and imagined that I would have a chance to get married and have a family. But as long as it was just me, I didn't really care if I had to eat peanut butter and cereal first, you know, three meals a day for a while, until things took off. It's different, of course, when you have multiple mouths to feed, you know, bills to other bills to pay, medical expenses, etc. I had my own bills to pay, but nothing massively scary, sure. So it wasn't until it kissed a lot of frogs along the way. But my husband and I did finally meet, and it's not like it was my second husband or something. It was my first and only to this day. So we got married about 10 years ago and had amazing stepson who was 12 when I entered the picture. Love him to pieces, and had my own biological son about three years later. So you know, it is very possible to find love and have families and get life together after 40 or whatever stage. So you know, for those out there who are hoping, still don't lose hope, it's just a lot of blessings that come with that too, a lot of freedom to do what we needed to do in the process. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:50  

Yeah, and how did that change? Or did it change how you worked, how much you worked, it was like you had a long time to kind of build your career, and then that was probably your primary or sole focus, and then enter family. Then what did that do for you? 

Dr. Laura Sicola  13:11  

I was really blessed as a service provider. I didn't have to be on site someplace. It's not like there was an office I had to attend. It's not like there was a factory I had to show up for, a store I had to to run. So I was already working from home at that point. But, you know, I had an early inspiration. Back when I was in high school my neighbors, it was a husband wife team who had their own little graphic design company, and they were running it out of their house. And I remember going in one day and seeing how they'd converted their dining room into their office, so to speak. And they had three very young children and an au pair. And I remember her saying to me, the mother the neighbor, saying how she loved that she had managed to create this lifestyle where the office was at home. She could hear the kids in the basement playing with the Au Pair. She could take a break and go see them when she wanted to. She could, you know, if she wanted to have lunch with the kids, she could do that. If she just needed a hug at some point, she'd go get it, and she didn't feel like she was missing out on as much of the childhood that she would have had she worked. And that just stuck with me at the time. So I was when I'd gone into teaching, I remember thinking, Well, okay, that kind of works along those lines, because at least I'll have summer vacations and Christmas, winter, whatever holiday breaks. And so that would align better with kids schedules and be facilitative of a family lifestyle and then being independent. It also allowed for that, and we were fortunate enough, financially and otherwise that we were able to hire a nanny to come. She didn't live with us, but she was here during the work day, and so it was nice. I could hear them downstairs. I could go have lunch with them. And it was everything that my neighbor had described. So she had always been that sort of little role model in the back of my head. And you know, how much was by design versus by I decided, you know, I wasn't a factory worker or something where a surgeon or clearly I'd have to be on at the office or in court as a lawyer. You know, everybody's got their their roles and their desires, so I was fortunate not intended to guilt or shame or otherwise judge anybody else who does have those jobs. Thank you for doing them. We need you to do them, but we recognize the sacrifices that we make as parents when the job does require us to be away. So I was very blessed to not have to make the choice between spending more time with my family or on my career, which is not to say, by the way, that I don't work a lot of late nights. You know, if I'm up until 11 or midnight, well, that's kind of the norm more often than not, but I'll knock off at five, make dinner, have some family time for a few hours, and put my little guy to bed, and then somewhere around nine o'clock, probably get back on the computer for another two to three hours to get more work done. But it works for me, and everybody finds what they need for themselves. So I feel like I get everything that I need, except for the amount of sleep that I would like,

Leanna Laskey McGrath  16:02  

Well, I love that, and I think that it's so important for us to see examples of that, like you had with your neighbors, so that we can see what's possible for us, you know. And maybe, you know, I'm sure there were plenty of people who lived on your street who saw that and were just like, Oh, cool. And maybe, you know, aren't living that way in their lives now, but you saw it, and you were really inspired by it. Something about it spoke to you. And I think that that is so cool to see different types of working styles, working environments, just ways of doing life, and to know that different things are possible for us. I think that's so amazing.

Dr. Laura Sicola  16:40  

And it's never easy, and it's always scary, and even though it's exciting, but you know, you look at what are your options, there's risk either way. You mentioned earlier things like, Well, okay, but I've spent all this time in all these years. Okay, so the question is, when you get to the end of your life and say, Well, I spent 20 years doing X, and then I shifted for another 20 years doing y, or are you going to look back and say I wasted 20? I didn't have to waste the next 20, but instead I wasted 40 because I was too afraid to change. I could have been so much happier doing something else. Is the grass always greener? Don't know depends on your fence, but I think it's worth if you have the support, emotional or otherwise, to make the change. If you know you're unhappy where you are, there's no one else to blame but yourself. If you're staying there voluntarily, there's always risk and there's always challenges, there's always sacrifice. But I'm a big believer in find what gives you purpose and passion and find a way to incorporate that. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  17:38  

Yeah, well, I love how your career, it just makes sense to me. Maybe, I think sometimes at the time when we're making decisions, it's like, Does this really make sense? This feels kind of disjointed. And then whenever you zoom out and look at it, you're like, oh, okay, I see how this all fits together. And looking at it with my vantage point, which is, you know, after and zoomed out, it's like that makes so much sense. You learned all about how to effectively communicate, and you studied that, and got your PhD in that, and then you taught it, and you got all this practice teaching it, and then you continue to teach it to different audiences. Instead of students at a university you're teaching it to workers in corporate who need to know this as well. I mean, it makes so much sense to me, and I would love to hear more about when I was listening to your TED Talk, one of the things that kind of stood out to me, that was really interesting, is that when you are presenting, most people will focus on the content and building the PowerPoint or the slides that you know, making sure that everything looks nice, that you've got the right graphs and content and graphics and everything, and spend very little time thinking about the most impactful part of it, which is the delivery and how you're speaking. And so I'd love to hear more about your perspective on that, because obviously you are an expert in tonality and thing, I mean, you brought up things that I haven't really thought about that are so important. Kind of you talked about, like the importance of sound incredible. And I think the quote that you said was, if you want to be seen as a leader, you have to sound like one.

Dr. Laura Sicola  19:25  

Yes, that's absolutely true for everyone, no matter whether you're talking personal, professional or otherwise. Can I go back for one second before we address that piece? Because you said something, and I wanted to just clarify one point, to give everybody else a little freedom and encouragement the idea of looking at my career and saying, Okay, what makes sense and what seems from the zoomed out perspective, et cetera, what I was teaching back in my public school days and then in the university days and whatnot, was not identical to what I train and what I coach now. So if someone out there is thinking, well, but what job or what could I do that's a perfect match? That's like, these are not Legos that fit together perfectly. This is something where, metaphorically speaking, it's like, when you when you do a PhD or any sort of thesis, you have to study all this stuff, and then you pick one little thing, and you write narrow and deep on that, so that you're kind of the only person on the planet who's bothered to look at that niche of elements. And so that niche is what I was teaching at the university, this stuff, but what I coach and what I'm training on is looking at all the rest of the stuff that informed that piece. But my older son is now. He's about to graduate college, and a few years ago when he was trying to apply to schools and thinking about, what would he want to major in? What kind of career might he want, he asked me, Did you always know that what you do now was what you wanted to do. And I looked him square in the face and said, Sweetheart, I didn't know what I do now was a thing until somebody offered to pay me to do it. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  21:07  

Yes.

Dr. Laura Sicola  21:09  

Executive coaching? What is that? I didn't know.Again, I'm not corporate. So you learn what people need out there. You listen and you hear different complaints and different challenges people are experiencing. You go, that's not technically what I said. I didn't study leadership. There are degrees in educational leadership and those kinds of things. I didn't get one of those. But I did realize that when you look at all the skills, all the knowledge, all the experience I had, you could, I'll go back to my Legos model, rearrange all the pieces and create something totally different from what's on the box of the set that you bought. And that's what I did. I figured out how all of my what skills I had that were transferable into this new space, and I created my own model out of it. So you can do that too, anybody who's out there and going, but what job? If I tried to go back to getting a regular job now, I have no idea what I would do. What am I qualified to do? I don't know. I can't imagine what classified ad I would respond to, like, what label, what job title would match. No idea whatsoever. You make it up as you go along, and you have the freedom and the permission to do that. Don't just wait for someone to say, here's the perfect match for you to jump into. Look at it. Say, Do I have the skills to do what this is? And can I, to the extent that I don't have some sort of knowledge, experience or whatever it is, can I figure it out as I go along, or find someone else who has it, who can compliment me and fill in the blanks from there? Those are your two options, and if it excites you to do it, then go do that. So there's my soapbox.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  22:44  

Yeah, thank you for pointing that out, because I think it is our careers can iterate, right? It's like we iterate what we're doing.

Dr. Laura Sicola  22:44  

Yes. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  22:46  

And I think it also goes to one of the things you said earlier, about like focusing on the client versus the product or service-

Dr. Laura Sicola  23:00  

Yes 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  23:00  

-is kind of another way to say one of the things that you talk about a lot, which is to consider your audience and then decide how you want to deliver. And you might deliver differently to different audiences. Communicate differently with different audiences.

Dr. Laura Sicola  23:14  

100% so all right, back to your most recent question, as far as presentations and delivery, people love to talk about the you know, which is more important what you say or how you say it, and the what's most important is that those two pieces are congruent, that they're in alignment with each other. Because if you think about it as a you know, you're building a house, the message itself, the content, the words you choose, the stories you tell, the diplomacy that you include, how much jargon or background, et cetera, all of that is your foundation, and then the delivery is the house, the building that sits on top of the foundation. So you can be artful in your delivery, but if your foundation is lousy, it's not gonna stand.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  23:58  

Sure.

Dr. Laura Sicola  23:58  

It's all gonna fall. So we definitely need to have not just making the PowerPoint slides look pretty, but being very intentional in what the message is and how we articulate it. But then the delivery component also matters, because the best content without good delivery falls on deaf ears, just disappears. When thinking about how you deliver, we tend to fall into what I like to call the experts curse, and we get stuck in our heads and we're trying to remember, okay, here's the things I needed to say next, and we look up because somehow we think that there's the script that's going to magically appear on the ceiling and remind us what our fourth point was that we wanted to make, we're not connecting with the audience. We're connecting with our content on a very superficial level, and the audience can hear it, and that's what makes us sound boring, frankly. And it's not that the goal is to be uber entertaining, super extroverted, theatrical dramatic but it is also on the flip side not to put people to sleep when we're talking or talk over their heads. So variety in delivery is most important. The energy that you use in your speaking. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  25:18  

And I don't just mean frenetic, high energy, but there's actually four energies. I didn't talk about this in my TED talk, but there's four major energies that we should be using and seamlessly, kind of weaving in between, as we are talking and presenting, contributing anything. And they are, I like to use the simple mnemonic head, heart, fire and fun, and the head energy is the power energy. This is the facts. These are the a little bit of disruption. This is the stuff where we're laying down what's most important. The heart energy is empathy. Whether it's happy or sad, whether it's, you know, enthusiastic or whatever, there's some other kind of emotional connection that you're having with the audience. You're sharing that piece with them. You're conveying that emotion to them in a way that they'll relate with you. It's the relatability piece. Fire is the aspirational, the galvanizing by setting the vision, telling people what's possible, making people want to join in with your vision and then the fun. I probably shouldn't need to have to explain what that means, but a little bit of levity, at least a little bit of something enjoyable, make people smile, give them that little dopamine hit. It doesn't have to mean be a clown, be a comedian, but even in something serious, I mean, you think about a eulogy that you hear that you may have to give for someone, heaven forbid, but when you do, it's supposed to be a celebration of the person's life, not just a mourning of their passing. So you can be sad and you can share those things, but also sharing some of the funny quirks that they had make the people laugh in the process, to break the the heaviness of those moments. It doesn't have to be 25/25/25/25% of each energy. Think about the recipe for baking a cake. There's gonna be a lot more flour than there's gonna be salt, but you definitely need each in their right proportion. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  27:13  

So when you're talking, where is there any any energy at all, and then how much does it vary as you're talking, or are you just flatlining your way through and thinking, is your driving force just, I hate talking in public. I hate being the center of attention. I just want to get this over with. If that's what you're thinking, I guarantee you are conveying that message to them first and foremost, and that's the one thing they will take away from it. Gee, I guess you really wanted to get this done with as soon as possible. Or we go to the other extreme, and our nerves will often have us overcompensating by using as many big words as possible and giving as much technical detail as possible, because a little imposter syndrome might kick in, and we're very afraid of having someone think we're not smart or that we didn't do the work. So we try to prove that we're smart and that we've done all this work, and we try to show it all to them. And the one thing that everyone leaves with is, well, I guess she must be really smart. Looks like she did a lot of work, not that I understood any of it, not that I was compelled by any of it, but I guess she's smart. So the irony is, the best way to make someone believe you're smart is to make them feel smart by making your argument as clear, as concise, as compelling as possible. So when they listen to it, no matter who they are and how much background they do or don't have in your world, they go, Oh, well, that makes sense. Got it. That's what makes you seem smart to them. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  28:37  

Yeah. Well, it's interesting, because when you're talking about, you know, only sharing the knowledge and not taking the time to connect with the audience, or kind of break it up with some fun quips and things like that. I was thinking about what you said earlier with like the researcher who maybe isn't the teacher, and I'm sure we've all had professors that we might remember who, yeah, were very smart, and had so much information, and it was like, I want to know all the things you know. But could you like, maybe-

Dr. Laura Sicola  29:08  

not bore me to tears

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:11  

-make it a little more interesting.

Dr. Laura Sicola  29:14  

A little more accessible, a little more like, help me process the fire hose of information that you're sharing with me. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:21  

Yeah. So you talk about tonality. Tell us more about that. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  29:26  

Yeah. Tonality is one of the greatest conveyors of energy. Tonality is the melody of your speech, the highs and the lows in your voice. And when there's lack of tonality and everything is kind of mono tone or monotonous, that's where you just sound like you're droning your way through like you're indifferent to your own information, and you're just going through the motions of conveying whatever the basic information is. But you'd rather be effectively anywhere but there.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  29:49  

Yeah.

Dr. Laura Sicola  29:50  

So being able to emphasize things the most important words, with higher tone, without an up speak, which is where you just rise. And end all of your phrases and sentences on a high point that a, is annoying after a while, but also it's distracting, and on a cognitive level, it makes it harder for the audience to process what you're saying, because it's just imagine like a boat bobbing on the water, very routine. There's no meaningful reason for what ends up on those high peaks, but the way that we process speech, the way that we process what we hear, is that in great part, we listen for what's at those peaks. Because part of in English and many other languages, we emphasize the words that are most important with higher pitch and greater length, as we're talking and in utilizing that strategically, then with the peak, as it were. So it's not what's most important, it's what's most important. So stress it and come down off of it. That's what gives it the gravitas. This is the declarative tone that says, I know what I'm talking about. Vocal period, make a statement, as opposed to, I know what I'm talking about.

Dr. Laura Sicola  31:07  

I don't believe you. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  31:10  

I hope. Is it okay? Are you gonna question me? Please don't. So when we have that up, speak where, aside from the subjective nature of, Is it annoying or not? And some people will say yes, it is, and some people will say no, it's not. But the fact is, it mimics that tag question. And a tag question is when you're making a statement, and at the end, you say, right, you know, okay, something along those lines. And it's one thing to do that once in a while as a rhetorical device to kind of get the audience's buy in, but if you do it over and over, either deliberately and explicitly saying, right, you know, or just implying through the inflection of your voice, you know, you know. Okay, is that right? Then it sounds like you're perpetually begging for validation, and that undermines your own authority, because you have just given away your power by shifting the roles and implying, apparently, you are the expert, and I need your validation, which is why I keep seeking it. You're supposed to be the expert. That's why you're the speaker. So allow yourself to use a period, not a question mark at the ends of all of those phrases. Don't give away your power.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  32:19  

Yeah, yeah. I love that. And I think, I mean, not even in a presentation, but in the boardroom, in a meeting, conversation, yeah.

Dr. Laura Sicola  32:28  

Yes. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  32:29  

That makes so much sense. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  32:30  

And it's not to say that your voice should never go up, because there are times when it is logical and rational and it it is the linguistically right thing to do. I mean, if I'm asking you a yes or no question, do you like coffee? That should go up, it is a question. Or if I'm suggesting something, well, we've got options, like, you can have coffee, tea, soda. There's that like, dot, dot, dot, implying there's more to it. That's a natural time when your voice should go up. Or perhaps you are hinting to someone trying to give corrective feedback to someone who you know is a little on the sensitive side, so you don't want to make them feel like you're crushing them with the feedback. So you might drop a few hints, like you might want to take another look at that and just give it a try. It's okay, not a problem. Just like talk them down off the ledge. It's it softens it. So if you're doing it intentionally, for a purpose, it is a tool that you should be able to use. It's just your voice. It's just a question of when the tail is wagging the dog and you don't know that you're doing it all the time, and it's owning you, and it's making you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. That doesn't serve you when you're blindly falling into habits that you're unaware of. You want to be utterly clear and intentional about how you use the power of your voice as the delivery mechanism for the message for which you want to get buy in. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  33:59  

Yeah, I don't think that that's something I've ever thought about. And you know, if we haven't studied linguistics, maybe most of the audience hasn't either. And so I think that's really helpful to think about, because it's like, if we don't have awareness of it, then we can't choose intentionally and strategically, how do I want to use my voice and my tonality? And one of the things I think that you and I talked about a little bit as we were preparing for this is the idea of authenticity, like, what is my authentic voice? And the idea that if I'm right now having that upswing at the end of all of my sentences, and I've just-

Dr. Laura Sicola  34:40  

Which you're not, by the way, but hypothetically, right? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  34:42  

Yeah, thank God. After your TED talk, I was like, Oh no, but I just wonder if that's how I normally communicate, is it like, it's like, that's just my communication style. And now I'm hearing this and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I need to change this. What are your thoughts about that? About balancing, you know, what, how I show up, what I say with my unique style that I feel comfortable in? 

Dr. Laura Sicola  35:10  

Yes, there's like five or six issues that all like are coming to mind at the same time. The first, yes, authenticity is essential. So I would never talk somebody out of that. However, authenticity is not a black and white thing, and this is where we really tend to hold ourselves back, especially as women. But men do it too, where it's like, well, if we think this is me, that's not me. That's extremely binary. Right now, you're not an entrepreneur out there. If you're working a corporate nine to five job. Do you want to be an entrepreneur? Then you're not going to say to yourself, well, that's not me, right now, that's not authentic, because I am a vice president of whatever it is. Well, if you choose to make that part of your identity, then your identity should expand into it, right? You want to study a foreign language right now, you don't speak that language. That's not you, but you want to learn to speak that language. So you're willing to have your identity expand to include that we're all if you're willing to learn, then you're willing to expand your identity to incorporate all of those things. And we also get stuck because we think about authenticity, we mis conflate authenticity with comfort zone, because we think anytime we're trying to do something that's hard or that's new or that we're not so good at, it's like, Oh, this feels really inauthentic. No, no, no, don't mislabel. It's not inauthentic. You're just not good at it. Go back to that, learning a new language. I speak four languages to varying degrees of how much I can get myself in trouble, but I'm not as good at any of them as I am at English, which is my first and native language. But I'm not being inauthentic when I'm fumbling my way through one of them somewhere else. That's just I'm doing my best. I'm not as good at it, but it's not an inauthentic experience for me. So do not hold yourself back, please by saying that, Well, I'm not comfortable doing this. I don't like that. It's not authentic. That's different. You know, if you're being coerced into do, into faking something, that's a different space. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  37:15  

But from there, let's, let's go back to the voice where we started with this question. There is also a difference between what is truly identity versus just unconscious bad habit. And there is nothing genetic or biologically ingrained in us that makes you use upspeak. Your voice is an instrument. It's a tool. It's like your hand. Use your voice the same way you're able to use your hand. I want to go up. I want to move it down. I want to want to move it across. I want to take something I choose to do that. Anybody who's out there who's raised children knows that children's hands regularly are in any orifice of their face they can find. That's their go to, that's their love, that's their conscious and unconscious habit and we're constantly saying, take your fingers out of your whatever hole it's currently stuck into. Lovely though it is. Are we telling them to be inauthentic? No, they have a habit that is not sanitary. It's not socially acceptable. It's going to cause trouble later, but they're not going to argue with us this is their authentic self, mommy, don't tell me to be someone I'm not. No, get your fingers out of your whatever it is. So, you know, we make that same excuse well, but so I use up speak, that's how I talk. Well, yes, it is how you talk. It has become your unconscious habit. I'm now just pointing out to you that you're doing it. I'm making you aware that you're doing it. Now what you have to do is remove the ego and say, Where am I using this? And is it serving me or not? Because to change and learn. And by change, I don't mean change who you are. I mean change how you use a muscle group that you have, which is no different from learning how you change your what you do with your hands, and saying, is this an appropriate use right now? Is it going to get me the response that I want? I want that person to take me seriously, to be respectful to me, to give me the promotion that I deserve, to recognize that I'm a leader the way I believe I'm a leader. Well, do you sound like you're scared? Do you sound like you need everybody else's validation? Do you sound like you're not really sure about what you're saying, or that you're kind of indifferent towards your own ideas? Well, that's not a leader. It sure doesn't sound like it, and it's going to make others question whether or not you belong there too. So to the point, if you want to be seen as a leader, you have to sound like one. A leader is one who is intentional and decisive, not to say dictorial and saying, I'm the leader, so you have to do what I say, No, take everybody's advice into consideration if you want to then decide commit lead, as opposed to decide commit lead. Well, are you asking? Me or telling me I don't want a leader who never is totally sure or is afraid to commit to something without external approval. So pause there for a second and see what your thoughts are. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  40:13  

Yeah, well, I think it comes back to that point that you made earlier about congruency. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  40:17  

Yes. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  40:17  

That we can have the best ideas, and I think so often we do. There are so many times where I think I've worked in mostly male dominated spaces, and so sitting around a boardroom, being the only woman in the room, my ideas were often so different than what was being discussed. And I think for anyone who's in that situation, this gives maybe some things to think about, some tools for how to take those great ideas and then have congruency for delivering them in a confident sounding kind of way, right, where we're saying this in a way that will be heard.

Dr. Laura Sicola  40:59  

Yes.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  41:00  

And potentially considered.

Dr. Laura Sicola  41:02  

Yes.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  41:03  

You know, rather than kind of like you said, you know, asking, oh, what do you think about this? Or, you know, we add all kinds of qualifiers a lot of times about like, this is probably a terrible idea, but, or whatever you know that we might do. And so it's just kind of like another tool, another way to make sure that our amazing ideas are articulated and listened to and heard.

Speaker 1  41:27  

Yes, all the time that I've been doing this kind of work, the single most frequently cited experience of complaint that I hear from women is like, I'm in the room and I make my suggestion, and it gets glossed over, and then five minutes later, the guy in front of me says the same thing, and everybody thinks he's a genius. What's going on here? And to the extent that there may be overt sexism or covert sexism going on, okay, that's we won't dismiss that possibility. But another possibility that I have frequently seen is that when women are together, we have our own discourse style. We have our own language, things like we don't want to overly assert ourselves to each other. You know, we make suggestions, and we tend to, and I'm making gross generalizations here, of course, but we tend to be a bit more collaborative, and we understand suggestions, but when we try to use that language, especially to your reference a moment ago, sometimes when if everybody else is male, if everybody else is has been there longer, is older, whatever, there's can be a little imposter syndrome that may manifest consciously or unconsciously through the way that we make our suggestions. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  42:34  

So I had a client who was mad because she'd had that experience, and I said, Well, you know, what was your, what did you say? What was your suggestion? And they were deliberating on on possible actions to take. And she said, Well, I said to them, Well, what about x? You know, has, has anybody, has anybody brought that up? Or could we look at that? I said, Well, okay, so we understand topic X was your suggestion, but let's look on the surface level of what you have officially offered, and what you did was, rather than purely surface grammatical level, what's called a little cushionary force of your speech is you technically posed three questions. They were already trying to answer a question, and you just gave three more. And while you may say, well, but I but it was supposed to be, you know, I was suggesting something, they should know what I meant. Yes, they should, but that's not the point. And anyone who has perhaps a significant other who is male will probably be able to attest to the fact that when they are focused on something, they're working through a problem in their own head, or they're just mulling over something, you could tell them the house is on fire and they won't really register and process even if they've asked you a question, they may not hear what the answer is that you are just giving them to themselves, if it's sometimes, depending on how it's phrased, sometimes not, regardless. But there is a difference in the way that men and women think and process information. And so where she said, What about X has anyone looked at that? Could we do that? She's asking permission. Would that work? Could we do that? That is a permission seeking question. So now they're thinking about, could we do something along those lines, in their brain, their one to one mathematical spreadsheet space, they're not considering an answer. Their brain's going, I'm already working on my own question. I'll get to your question later. So then when the guy across the table says, Hey, let's talk about x. We haven't talked about that yet. Let's and then he digs into it, and everybody else goes, Oh, that's an interesting idea. I heard a statement. I heard a suggestion officially offered. Again, there are those of us who are going, That's so stupid. Why should that make a difference? That should not matter. I tell my clients all the time, see this, it's a pen, not a wand. I don't make the rules. I just identify them, and I teach you how to play by them to get the results that you want. So when you understand the game, again, that's there's that authority piece. You're making a statement. Let's look at x. I haven't had anybody talking about that yet, and then go into the you know, what are the questions about x that you specifically want to explore? There's a statement they're saying. I think this is important. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  43:12  

Yeah.

Dr. Laura Sicola  45:16  

I believe we should look in this as opposed to seeking the boys permission. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  45:20  

Yeah, I love that. I think that makes so much sense. It's like we're in this room trying to answer a question. We don't need to add more questions to the mix. Let's add some answers, and that's what people are going to be more likely to hear. One of the ways that you talked about this, I've heard you talk about this, is your prismatic voice and thinking about, you know, the audience that you're talking to, and I love the way that you describe that, so I'll let you say it, because you probably you've said it way more times than me, but I would love to hear your take on that, and then kind of how we can apply that. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  45:55  

It's such a great metaphor, and I love the visual that goes along with it, and you did a great job of setting it up. It goes back to that discussion we were having a few minutes ago about authenticity and the balance between authenticity and adaptability. Because at that intersection between being you and being flexible, so that you can convey what you need them to hear in a way that they can hear it and still be you all at the same time, that's where power is found, and that's really where we tend to leave it on the table. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  46:24  

So think of it this way. Have you ever seen one of those little crystals, maybe hanging from the rear view mirror of a car or hanging in your kitchen window, and when the sun hits it, there's like little rainbow that you see on the wall or on the seat across the way? Well, the crystal is the prism, and you are the sunlight. The sunlight is white light, and in that white light, when it refracts through the prism, you see all the colors that are an inherent part of that white sunlight. So just like in us as that white light, we have all of those colors in us. We're working moms. That's what this podcast is about. So we have our mom voice, and really our mom voice says, because there's the I love you so much I don't know what to do with myself and the I'm going to kill you with my bare hands, Mom voice, that we all switch between from time to time, and those sound different. And when I'm in my coaching voice, I've been giving a lot of guidance here. I've been giving a lot of a little hard, tough love on some of the topics, and a lot of suggestion and encouragement, those voices, but they're different from the way that I play with my eight year old, more being silly or being cuddly or being what. So it's not that any of those is the real me, and the rest are a fake version of me. They're all me. I just like to ascribe colors to them. So maybe I'll call this my purple, and I'll call my happy mom cuddly voice my yellow. And if you make me say this to you one more time so help me that that part of the mom voice we'll call that green, and there's no rhyme or reason to the color. I'm just working with a very broad metaphor here, but pick and the idea is that when you're in any given situation, you're in the boardroom, you're in that client pitch, you're in your job interview, you're in your whatever space, we need to tap into the right color. Think about it as turning up the color that is the most relevant one that's already in us to have that audience hear that message. I'm not going to use my eight year old cuddly mommy voice when I'm pitching a new client. It doesn't work. It's not being inauthentic, but it would be inappropriate. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  48:40  

Another way to think about it is, when you think about your wardrobe, you're going to dress your body differently for any context, and in the same way, you're going to dress your message different by the words that you use and the way that you deliver it, your voice, your body language, etc. We all have a full wardrobe at home. We've got our jeans, we've got our business casual, we've got our cocktail dresses, we've got our sloppy sweats and all those pieces, and we may prefer the sloppy sweats, but we know if we're going to go into a business meeting, sloppy sweats are probably not the right choice, so we're not being inauthentic by wearing a suit or whatever you choose, dressing it up a little bit beyond the slop. But we just realized we've gone into our own closet. We've picked our own version that's our taste, and that fits and suits us of that business casual, business professional, where we've chosen the style based on the context. We picked the blue instead of the orange part of our prism. It's still our style, but it's, it's our version of blue, but it's to meet that context, you have to dress your voice differently the same way you address your body differently, still your own way, but in the contextually appropriate manner to get the results that you want to be treated the way you want to be treated. So how does that resonate with you, Leanna? 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  50:07  

I love those metaphors. I also kind of wish that you had used your cuddly mom voice this whole time so we could see the impact. Maybe we could re record. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  50:17  

It would definitely be a slightly different and less compelling, perhaps more entertaining on some levels, but less compelling from the advisory standpoint experience.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  50:28  

Yes, well, I've learned so much from you. I know everyone is going to have so many takeaways from hearing from you. Is there anything else that we haven't covered that you feel like, oh, I want to make sure that they know this?

Dr. Laura Sicola  50:41  

Yes, I think going along with that prismatic voice and wardrobe metaphor, one of the biggest challenges that I also hear from women in particular is things like, well, I've got a reputation of being too aggressive or intimidating or too soft or too whatever it is. I've tried being nice, or I've tried being direct and blunt, and that didn't work. So what am I supposed to do? And where we also tend to get stuck is again, looking at that black and white like we're throwing a switch. I can be strong or I can be nice. Those are my only options. Well, of course, you're stuck, if that's what you're thinking. It's about figuring out how to finesse the message and how to adjust certain things to your voice and the way that you can use it. If you think about it like a DJ's mixing board. Have you ever seen one of those in the recording studios or something? There's a billion levers and dials. It's not just a giant power switch on, off. There's the treble and bass and reverb and all these kinds of things. And they're nudging, maybe from a 3.2 to a 3.6 to just adjust a little bit of that energy, whatever it happens to be, they're going to move the volume on the gain, the input, from a 4.1 to a 4.25. It's little bits of nudges. So similarly, if you're coming across as too strong, too aggressive, there are so many elements, so many different levers on your board. Maybe it's about the volume, maybe it's the speed, maybe it's about the tonality that you're using. Maybe it's the jargon that you're throwing out, maybe it's the fact that you haven't given someone credit for something they've done well before you come down on them with something that's not good. There are so many little things that you can nudge slow. I'm a Jersey Italian. We're loud and we talk fast, so I know that I can dust an audience, and if I don't want to overwhelm them, I need to slow down a little bit, give some more pauses, maybe take the volume down a bit if we're in very close proximity, it doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly go into my late night FM DJ voice and have our long distance dedications. I'm not putting people to sleep, but just somewhere in which he nudged that dial or that lever just a little bit. It's the smallest changes that make the biggest cumulative difference. And so just recognize how much range we all have that we don't tap into on that mixing board, and how many different levels and levers and dials there are. Identify those, and that's where you find magic that can happen.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  53:23  

I love that. Yeah, I think with our black and white all or nothing thinking, we think it has to be all this way or all another way, the opposite, and there's so many, so much gray area in between to play with. Love it. Awesome. All right. Well, Dr. Laura, where can everyone find you? What would they want to come find you for what you offer? Tell us more about that. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  53:44  

Thank you so much for the invitation to share that, and, of course, to be on the show in general, Leanna. You can go to my website, which is laurasicola.com, not very cryptic, so easy enough to find. If you are looking for executive coaching, in particular, about how to be more persuasive, more influential, looking for the promotion or looking for a new job of sorts, I have a quantum leap program in particular, also that is really helping people figure out what they want that next step to be, and how to find it, and then how to prove that you are not just a good candidate, but the obvious choice.How to negotiate for what you want and get it all that kind of good stuff on the career journey. You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn and see lots of programming that's available there as well. If you do reach out on LinkedIn, please tell me that you heard me here on the coach moms podcast with Leanna and how much you loved her show, because it is amazing, and that helps me know where we connected, and will allow me to accept your invitation as well. But otherwise, if you're looking for trainings for your corporation, for your team, or if you're looking for keynote speakers for an event coming up, I would love to hear that as well. And all that is available on the website laurasicola.com,

Leanna Laskey McGrath  54:58  

Wonderful, and we'll link everything in the show notes as well. And of course, like I mentioned at the beginning, be sure to go check out Laura's TED talk, because it is full of more wisdom. And I'm sure after hearing her today, you're going to want to hear more and more from her. 

Dr. Laura Sicola  55:15  

And the easy thing too, of course, is if you do want to go a little deeper into it, the book, which is available in paperback on Amazon and Kindle, as well as Audible if you like to listen, is called Speaking to Influence, and it's available everywhere, in whatever format that being said. If you're already sick of the sound of my voice after this podcast, don't do the Audible version. I read my own book. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  55:34  

I love that. I love hearing books whenever the author reads it, because it just sounds so much more, I feel like I get more from it, because I'm hearing it from in your own voice, in your own words. So.

Dr. Laura Sicola  55:45  

I think the Audible version is particularly good for this one, simply because there is a lot of discussion about voice, and it's one thing to read about voice, it's another to hear it. So as I'm modeling and describing things, as I'm explaining them, I think it just helps it to sink in a little bit better.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  56:01  

That makes sense. Well, thank you so much, Laura. I really appreciate your time. So happy for everyone to hear this episode. I really appreciate you being here. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  56:10  

Thank you so much for the invitation again at the Executive Coach for Moms, of course, is the show, and I hope everyone out there has already subscribed and shared with friends, because, you know, you've got other friends out there moms who need her wisdom. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  56:23  

Thank you so much. Thank you so much everyone for tuning in today, and we will see you all next week. Bye.

Leanna Laskey McGrath  56:34  

If you're loving what you're learning on this podcast, I'd love to invite you to check out The Executive Mom Reset. It's my six month coaching program for ambitious, success driven, career focused women who are ready to stop surviving and start thriving. Together, we'll tackle the stress, guilt and overwhelm that come with being a high achieving executive mom. You'll learn how to set boundaries, prioritize what truly matters, and build the confidence to show up powerfully at work, at home, and for yourself. Head on over to coachleanna.com right now to schedule a free discovery call. We'll spend an hour talking about where you are now, what you want to create, and how I can help you get there, because every woman deserves to live the life of her dreams. Let's create yours together.