Simple Shifts To Turn Average Speakers Into Expert Communicators

Simple Shifts To Turn Average Speakers Into Expert Communicators written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Michael Hoeppner

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interviewed Michael Chad Hoeppner, a political communications expert known for his work with Andrew Yang during the 2020 presidential election. As an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Hoeppner has conducted deep dive research on the speaking habits of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden, Gretchen Whitmer, and others.

Hoeppner is the CEO and president of GK Training, a firm dedicated to giving individuals, companies, and organizations the communication skills necessary to reach their highest goals in work and life. He has worked with some of the world’s most influential companies and their leaders. Hoeppner is also the author of “Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life.”

Our conversation spans the art of effective communication, uncovering actionable public speaking tips and simple exercises to transform average speakers into confident, expert communicators. Whether you want to eliminate filler words, speak with intentionality, or learn how to engage an audience effortlessly, Hoeppner’s insights offer practical tools for anyone looking to become a better speaker and communicator.

Key Takeaways:

• Effective communication starts with intentionality
  Hoeppner emphasizes shifting focus from yourself to your audience. Understanding that speaking is about serving others, not showcasing yourself, can immediately elevate your communication skills.
• Filler words aren’t the enemy—lack of clarity is
  Instead of obsessing over eliminating “ums” and “ahs,” focus on increasing linguistic precision. Choose your words intentionally to ensure your message resonates.
• Public speaking is an extension of everyday conversation
  Hoeppner reframes public speaking as simply communicating in front of an audience. By breaking the false divide between casual and formal speaking, you can bring authenticity and confidence to any setting.
• Use practical exercises to master intentional communication
  Techniques like the Lego Drill or finger-walking exercises can help you slow down, organize your thoughts, and speak with clarity and impact.
• Tolerating silence is a game-changer
  Pauses give your brain time to think, your voice time to breathe, and your audience time to process. Learning to embrace silence can be a transformative skill for better communication.

 

Chapters:

• [00:00] Who is Michael Chad Hoeppner?
• [01:58] Why Every Conversation is Public Speaking
• [03:22] Shifting from Self-Focus to Audience Focus
• [04:20] Understanding Filler Words and How to Replace Them
• [07:41] The Lego Drill for Organizing and Slowing Down Your Thoughts
• [10:29] Why You Should Unitask Instead of Multitask
• [16:18] Tolerating Silence and Embracing Pauses
• [18:57] Practical Exercises for Better Speaking Habits
• [20:06] Balancing Rehearsal and Spontaneity in Public Speaking
• [23:12] Navigating Mistakes with Confidence and Humor
• [24:48] Tools and Resources from Don’t Say Um

 

More About Michael Chad Hoeppner:

• Don’t Say Um: How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life by Michael Chad Hoeppner
• Check out Michael Chad Hoeppner’s Website
• Connect with Michael Chad Hoeppner on LinkedIn

 

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by

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Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00.878)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duck Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Michael Chad Hoeppner. He is a political communications expert known for his work with Andrew Yang during the 2020 presidential election. And as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, Michael Chad Hoeppner has conducted deep dive research on the speaking habits of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joe Biden, Gretchen Whitmer and others.

He's the CEO and president of GK Training and author of a book we're going to talk about today. Don't Say How to Communicate Effectively to Live a Better Life. So Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (00:41.068)

Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here.

John Jantsch (00:43.578)

Okay, I have to start with the big promise. How is this going to help me live a better life?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (00:49.484)

Yeah, well, it will and I'll tell you why. Because you speak and you communicate so much more than you actually recognize. I know that seems obvious, but we say, depending on the day, between five and 10,000 words a day. So if people think of this kind of training as compartmentalized into public speaking, it's a total waste. And it's not even true. I mean, I often joke that...

Every time we're speaking it is some form of public speaking. If there's an audience we're speaking and it's theoretically in public. And actually breaking down that idea, that very false distinction between what is public speaking and what is the rest of your life is an important task because it allows you to recognize how much of your life is actually influenced and determined by how effectively you can talk to other folks. And by the way,

If you learn to talk a little bit better too, you're moving your body differently, you're breathing differently. So in a very microscopic way, it's actually a tiny moment of exercise and health and wellness in your day. So those are some of the ways it makes your life better.

John Jantsch (01:58.626)

And I suspect most people, I know I do, I most people do what we do almost unconsciously sometimes, especially we're having a conversation with a friend one to one. It's just like, you know, I'm slouching, I'm saying, I'm doing whatever. And a lot of it really is intentionality, isn't it?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (02:16.204)

Yeah, yeah. Go farther with the metaphor you just talked about. On the one hand, we can kind of have fun with a thought experiment of if I'm talking to my friend, I'm slouching and just being really casual. But there's a different version of that too, which is think of the really engaging conversation with your friend or even more of the point, think of it when your friend's having a hard time and you're trying to help them. And in that situation, how you communicate is entirely

because of your ability to be other focused. You're not thinking about your presentation skills and am I moving my hands too much or not enough? You're just thinking about them, which to your point is exactly why we're able to do it so freely, so dynamically, so unconsciously. And then what happens is we cross this very fraught divide when we shift into self-focus.

whether that's from giving a speech or being in an interview or any other high stakes communication situation, and it all becomes really problematic as we fixate on ourselves as opposed to the other person.

John Jantsch (03:22.222)

funny, I've done a lot of what you're calling public speaking over the years. And I remember early on, had a mentor, somebody, you know, kind of helping me. And he said, the minute you realize it's not about you, you know, you will be a better speaker. And it took me a long time to figure that out. It's like that they're not there to see me entertain them. They're there to get some sort of transformation or some sort of message. And boy, it takes a little while, but now I

don't even think about, you know, speaking to public. I'm like, how am here to serve?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (03:53.174)

Yeah, that service mindset is really powerful. It's really powerful.

John Jantsch (03:59.002)

So let's go to the ums, which thankfully now AI can just edit right out. We don't have to worry about. But we call them filler words, right? And there's a whole list of them. I'm right is another one. What does that tell about somebody's communication habits?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (04:20.172)

Yeah. Well, I call my book, Don't Say It's a trick and the reader will learn that on the first page when you just look at the preface. It's a trick because don't say is the worst advice you can give yourself. It's self-focused. It's thought suppression, which we're terrible at. But I knew because people really want to address this pain point, I knew it's a way to help them actually recognize I should get this research and I should try to help myself improve in these ways.

I often say that I'm not the police, okay? I'm not saying it's a sin or a commandment that one can never say In fact, let's say you say every, I don't know, 20 seconds, 25 seconds when you're in that situation with your friend we just talked about trying to help them. Fine. You're probably using it in the middle of a free form conversation. You're searching for a word. But what I am very interested in...

is if when you get into the more self-focused situation, the interview, the big presentation, if the number of ums skyrocket and all of sudden you're saying one every three seconds or five seconds, those ums actually are worth looking at because what they're coming from is essentially you feeling some kind of pressure to fill silence or speak at a certain rate of speech or strive for some kind of vocabulary to demonstrate how smart you are or something. They're coming from a not so useful.

So the tool that I often talk about when it comes to is that what you're really trying to do is develop your linguistic precision. Meaning not the UM's I'm trying to avoid, but what are all the useful, accurate, potent words instead of the that I'm actually trying to grab onto. And I will often even use what's called embodied cognition, learning by using your body, to have people walk their fingers

across a desk like this, like I'm doing now on the... You can't see this if you're just listening on audio, but if you're looking at the video, of course, walking your fingers across the desk, step by step, forcing yourself with those small little finger steps to actively choose language. So as opposed to policing yourself to never say any filler, my point really is, sure, you're probably going to say some filler, but the real battle and the real joy actually is hunting for those words that you do want to choose.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (06:45.292)

as opposed to the little sounds you're trying to avoid.

John Jantsch (06:49.186)

And a lot of it has to do well if it's confidence or comfort level I mean a lot of those things like you said they come out when people are nervous more so so that a lot of times they naturally come out when somebody who is a nervous in front of an audience does it but you know, do you and I actually I was gonna go to your Your exercises and I love the attaching a physical thing to doing that because it really does bring you you know right there to where you're thinking about the fingers

I had another one up there that I'd love for you to go to the exercise. can't find it here. lay the Lego drill, for again, enhancing kind of memory and, and, and I love, cause I think a lot of people just feel like, I just got to get out there and practice and do it a lot, but there actually are techniques, right? Right. Practice. that gets you there. So talk a little bit about, the Lego drill.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (07:25.879)

Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (07:41.932)

Yeah, sure. You're 100 % right to call that distinction about practice. I mean, you've heard sports coaches talk about this. There's very much a difference between just practicing and then also practicing in the right way. So if you're listening to this, if you know about yourself, when you're in high stakes speaking situations, you talk a mile a minute, you talk as fast as you possibly can to try to fill out any sounds at all, just practicing doing more of that is actually not gonna help.

So the drill works like this and the preferred tools are in fact Lego blocks. And the reason is, is because of that little clicking function where they click together. First of all, it's very satisfying. Second of all, it takes some time. You can't rush it. So it enforces a little tiny bit of time discipline. The way the exercise works is this, is that you're going to share some content, whatever it is, it could be, you know, an elevator pitch or the beginning of a presentation or really anything.

John Jantsch (08:19.96)

Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (08:37.152)

an essential answer to an interview question, whatever you want. And as opposed to just opening your mouth and seeing what comes out or trying to remember all the smart stuff you're gonna say, no. You're gonna say one idea and then you'll say another one and then another one, but you're gonna start with a single idea. So you have a number of Lego blocks with you, five, seven, whatever it is. Before you even begin, in silence, you pick up the first Lego block.

And then you say the first idea you want to share. You could think of this like the first sentence, but humans, think in ideas or thoughts, not so much sentences. anyway, you say the first idea or sentence, and at the end of it, in silence, kind of like where the period might go at the end of that sentence, you put the Lego block down on a table or a desk. Now you have to remain silent as you pick up the second Lego block. Once you have that second Lego block in the air,

Then you can share the second idea, whatever that might be. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the end of that idea, in silence, you click the second Lego block in place with the first. And that's where that moment of clicking takes place. Third idea is the same thing, fourth, fifth, et cetera. Now the brilliance in this, and I don't mean to say brilliance meaning I'm brilliant. I mean that you're brilliant, you who are reusing it. The brilliance in this is that it

John Jantsch (09:55.205)

Hahaha.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (10:01.666)

gives your brain the opportunity to unitask rather than multitask. All you have to do is think of one idea you wanna share. Not 25 you're trying to remember to get through as fast as you can so you don't forget them. One, confident that at the end of that idea your brain will do what it's miraculously good at which is considering a next idea you want to share. And so what this tends to do is A, slow you down, B,

John Jantsch (10:07.546)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (10:25.412)

Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (10:29.886)

structure your thoughts much much better and see make you oftentimes much briefer to a more concise

John Jantsch (10:36.238)

You know, as funny as I listen to that too, I know that as I've gone from say a 30 minute talk to a 90 minute talk, but maybe on the same topic, it does become sort of bits that connect together and you just have to get to the end of the bit, you know, is all you have to remember. And then it's like, no, now it's the next bit. so it really helps for that kind of structure too, doesn't it?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (10:48.515)

Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (10:59.405)

for sure. I mean, I would go one further, which I would say the great impromptu speakers of all time, they have mastered this skill. It's what allows someone to speak for 20 minutes, totally free form, but looking as though they have memorized this incredibly polished speech. They have just built this ability, almost like an athlete, to share one idea, knowing full well at the end they have a moment to think about what to say next.

John Jantsch (11:26.702)

So you actually start out the book talking about people being that speaking itself is an innate ability pretty much everybody is born with. How do you, I there'd be a lot of people that would disagree with that. So how do you get people back to that, that sort of, you know, starter state that, everybody's born with, if they just have this fear like, or they society has somehow taught them that they're not a good speaker.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (11:52.064)

Yeah, well, let me tweak a little bit the question because I actually don't suggest that speech is innate. I would suggest that the ability to learn speech is innate and that we certainly learn speech over a period of time. But here's the test of it. If you drop any kid in any culture anywhere as a newborn and let them grow up to age five or 10, they will speak the language fairly fluently. Writing is the proof point.

If you don't instruct the kid how to write, they don't learn that. It doesn't just automatically kind of sink in. There's a bunch of processes we go through to learn how to speak by watching each other, by mimicry, things like this. Now, to be clear, audience, I am an expert in many things that I do. very good at what I, I should say, I like to think I'm very good at what I do, but trust me, I do not do everything. And there's a bunch of stuff I'm bad at and I'm not an evolutionary biologist, okay?

So I'm not saying necessarily what our evolutionary trajectory is. What I will say though is when you listen to a six-month-old kid scream all night long and wake up the next day with vocal cords that are ready to scream for 12 more hours, and you think about a full grown adult doing that same exercise and knowing how they would be completely hoarse. And if they did that for a few days, it would begin to already develop vocal nodes.

There's something going on about how we create sound and language as little kids and how we do it much, worse as adults. So to get people back to speaking how they do when they're much younger, which is freely expressing and make it very basic, turning air into sound and sound into words, we have to unlock how people talk when they're at their most other focused. Last thing I'll say about that, by the way, is

where there's really interesting crucible moment in our society, which is partly because of devices and screens, some kids aren't learning as much how to communicate face to face as in previous generations. So even some of what I just said in that answer might actually change over the next half decade, decade and more.

John Jantsch (14:06.626)

I'm curious, and this kind of touches on that, how much of your coaching, of course, is the words that are said and how they're said, but how much of it is not the words? It's who you are, who you're being, your presence, all those things, which again, comes across different in person than it does across the virtual screen.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (14:24.12)

Yeah.

People who are interested in this, as a preview, the entire book is on delivery. This book doesn't even touch on content at all. So to answer that question based on this book, would be a hundred and zero actually. But in my actual practice, I would say it's, know, typically of two thirds, one third. So the majority is on delivery, but more than even just the balance of the two or how much time is spent in either one, the thing I'm really just obsessed by

and fascinated about is how, as opposed to fighting about which one matters more, how you can unlock a virtuous cycle in which each one makes the other better. And that you can enter that cycle really from either side, from content to delivery or delivery to content. And you can enter it from delivery to content. In other words, if you just practice speaking with more breath, more vocal variety, tolerating more silence,

John Jantsch (15:19.289)

Mm.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (15:21.954)

Your voice sounds better because it has the fuel it needs to actually sound resonant and full. But with that breath, with that silence, your brain has what it needs to think of smart stuff to say, which is oxygen and time. So the two things exist in this very complimentary dynamic that really can go into a virtuous or also, by the way, bad news, a vicious direction.

John Jantsch (15:48.058)

You mentioned tolerate silence. And I want to go there for a minute because I found that in my speaking, one of the hardest things to do, let alone learn. When I started speaking, you know, and I had a speaking coach and he was like, you need to give this like three seconds before you say another word. And I was like, when I did it the first time, that was an eternity. And I think that a lot of people struggle, but I've heard more and more folks like yourself talk about how important that is, how impactful that silence can really be.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (16:18.102)

Yeah, I'll give you a few things to frame this. The first is that people get all hung up on rate of speech. How fast should I talk? And it's incredibly intuitive if you actually think about it. Rate of speech is really just three things that frame it or that anchor it. One, how much time you need to think of smart stuff to say. Number two, how much time you want to give your audience to digest the smart stuff you said.

And then number three, how long it takes to enunciate those smart things. That's what determines it. So pauses when we're at our most other focused come from this very organic place, which is I need a moment and think about what I want to say or powerfully, I've just said something hopefully important to the person I'm talking to and I want to give them a moment to digest it. And I'm watching them like a hawk to see when they are...

demonstrating to me comprehension or acknowledgement or recognition, and that cues to me, okay, they're ready to digest the next idea. That's where it comes from. Now, when we're at our most other focus, we do that seamlessly. And then when we feel like it's all about us, to your point, we talk a mile a minute and we never pause. And our perception can be off on this, by the way, dramatically. And if you don't believe me, in some video software tool, run some meeting that you're very nervous about, all right? Lead the meeting.

record the whole meeting afterwards, watch it back, and tell me how long you thought the longest pause was, and you're gonna see it was like a quarter of a second, and it felt to you like an eternity. So to your point with the speaking coach you work with who made you tolerate this eternity of time that was three seconds, there's a bunch of tools you can do to actually quite quickly.

John Jantsch (17:48.878)

and

John Jantsch (17:54.104)

Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (18:05.41)

Build some skill with us. I'll give you one. And this was actually, we had a nice little feature in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks back on this where they used this as one tool that we suggested. On video calls, when you're asking people questions, do this little trick. At the end of the question, draw a question mark on your desk and be completely silent while you do that little activity. No one can see you're doing it. Cause we have this, you know, as I'm just demonstrating right now, this.

what I would call a digital cloak of invisibility. People can't see your hands, but it gives you this physical intervention to force you to actually live through that silence. And it gives you something to occupy your attention, which is drawing the question mark. But here's a second quick idea. Anybody with a smartphone, you can do this. Open your notes video, you know, not video, what is it called? the voice memo app and record yourself talking.

John Jantsch (18:36.121)

you

John Jantsch (18:57.434)

Right, right, right.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (18:59.852)

and then look back at it and watch the little wave file that has those kind of spikes and valleys. Now look at what is the longest pause in your whole span of speaking. And you probably felt like three seconds, four seconds, bet you it's half a second long. And so that's a very quick way to see, wow, these are not nearly as long as I thought. And I actually could afford to have more of them in lengthier.

John Jantsch (19:25.828)

A lot of folks you talk to about speaking, know, practice, practice, practice, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse is, know, especially again, talking about the public speaking. But I've found that some of the best moments I've heard public speaking is when something happened and went off the rails and I reacted spontaneously. know, those are always the moment that everybody looks back on. Do you feel like people that

that actually practice makes those happen because you get so confident or, know, I mean, again, what I'm really trying to ask, let me get to the question now is how do you keep spontaneity when you know that you have to rehearse?

Michael Chad Hoeppner (20:06.572)

Yeah. This comes down to a little bit of actor training actually, which is people, if you're trying to really become very solid on some content and you do care that it's close to almost word perfect, or I'll give you an example, if you have a three minute pitch, it really does need to be three minutes, it can't be three and a half as an example, then your script has to be pretty tight. But people memorize the wrong thing. People memorize the wrong thing. People memorize the wrong thing.

People memorize the wrong thing. And no, by the way, don't stop listening folks. There was not a glitch in the audio. I repeated the thing four times in a row. What they memorize is what actors call a line reading. So they memorize the delivery. They don't just memorize the words. So their pace, pitch, pause, power, and placement, those are the five P's of vocal variety, their pace, pitch, pause, power, and placement becomes identical every single time.

John Jantsch (20:39.544)

Ha ha ha.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (21:05.304)

they practice saying those words. So what happens? They stand up or they attend the meeting or whatever it is to do the actual thing and they sound totally robotic because they've beaten all the life out of these words by practicing these kind of relentless line deliveries. So if you want to learn the content, practice the content, but this time folks, you have to change the delivery every single time to keep that loose and spontaneous.

Walk around the room and swing your arms like a big slow elephant. And then the next time, say it as though you're speaking on the top of a cliff to a giant army of people who are extending way back. And the next time, talk into a phone as though you're at a library and you're trying not to be overheard by the library. I know this sounds extreme, what I'm doing, but you want to break that muscle memory of

I'm rigidly clamping down on how I talk for the purpose of making sure I remember every word. It ends up sounding robotic. Now to your point about spontaneity, then if you rehearse those things in that way with some freedom of delivery, you've ingrained a looser experience of speaking, so it sounds more spontaneous. And then mistakes, we can get to how to deal with that if you want to. That's a second thing, but that will help come across much less like...

overly rigid and overly polished.

John Jantsch (22:30.434)

I always love those videos of comedians that they'll just be asking people questions and then they'll just go on a whole thing, know, based on some of that they build up library, you know, because people ask the same questions, but I always find those really fascinating.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (22:43.79)

Yeah. Yeah. You want to talk for a second about how to navigate mistakes? Is that useful? Yeah, sure. Sure. So people often go into these three F's when it comes to mistakes, when they're in an adrenaline response, when public speaking or something. And of course the three F's are the human threat response, which is, you know, fight, flight or freeze. And so I will often suggest to clients that they replace those three F's with these three F's, which are fake it.

John Jantsch (22:48.248)

Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (23:12.952)

feature it or fix it. And so the fake it means if no one knows, but it's not throwing off, fine, fake it. You don't need to tell us every time you make a mistake in life. But if it is threatening to throw you off, then you can either fix it, which means you just acknowledge it, address it and keep going. Or you actually feature it, which I would guess is what you have developed the skill to do. Because you mentioned sometimes these moments happen and they're some of your favorite moments that I bet

whether it's via humor or kind of rapport building with the audience that you actually feature those moments in some way, you spin them as a slightly good thing or a positive accident. But I'm just guessing, does that resonate with you?

John Jantsch (23:56.29)

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I definitely try to lean towards humor. Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (24:01.228)

Yeah, yeah. And those moments can create as much humanity as anything else, know? Create tremendous moments of spontaneity and also empathy, because the audience relates very much to you.

John Jantsch (24:13.851)

Yeah. Yeah. Some of them were just as nervous as you, right? About your performance. I've always found that too. They want you to succeed. It's great. Yeah. It's funny on the mistake thing. I had a music teacher early on in life that said, you know, if you make a mistake on this part, just make sure you make it again. The next time we go through, nobody will notice.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (24:18.52)

for sure.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (24:35.106)

That's good.

John Jantsch (24:37.207)

Well, Michael, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there somewhere that you'd invite people to learn about your work and certainly find a copy of Don't Say I'm

Michael Chad Hoeppner (24:48.0)

Yeah, it's really simple. You can just go to don't say um.com. That's where to find me, where to find the book, where to find all that stuff. And I will say that the site is a great place because we give not just information and access to the book and things like that, but we also have a whole bunch of video drills and exercises. So if the ones I was talking about, the Lego drill or the finger walking or even the drawing of the question mark, if these are interesting, you actually get guided videos about how to do them.

So you can just check them out at don'tsayum.com.

John Jantsch (25:21.218)

And we'll have that URL in the show notes as well. Again, Michael, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Michael Chad Hoeppner (25:28.088)

Sounds good. My pleasure. Have a great day, okay?

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How To Sell Customer Experiences Not Customer Service

How To Sell Customer Experiences Not Customer Service written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Jeannie Walters

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeannie Walters.

Jeannie Walters is an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker, and Founder of Experience Investigators, a firm that helps companies increase sales and customer retention through elevated customer experiences.

Trailblazing the movement from “Reactive Customer Service” to “Proactive Customer Experience,” Walters is the leading authority for improving employee and customer relationships.

Walters is a founding member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and a trusted advisor to numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Orangetheory Fitness, SAP, Comcast, and JPMorgan Chase. As an educator, her LinkedIn Learning courses have inspired over 500,000 learners worldwide. A Certified Speaking Professional and proud Professional Member of the National Speakers Association, Jeannie has captivated audiences of tens of thousands across three continents with her expertise and insights.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of understanding and improving customer experience—not service, experience! We also discuss the relationship between customer experience and marketing, the role of technology, generational differences in customer expectations, the significance of speed (how soon is “soon”?), and the necessity of building a customer-centric culture. Jeannie emphasizes the need for organizations to adopt a mindset focused on customer experience, implement effective strategies, and continuously test and adapt their approaches based on feedback.

Key Takeaways:

• Marketing and customer experience are complementary but distinct.
• Customer experience encompasses the entire journey between a brand and a customer.
• Technology should enhance, not replace, human interaction in customer service.
• Generational differences affect customer expectations and behaviors.
• Speed is a critical expectation in today’s customer experience landscape.
• A customer-centric culture is essential for delivering exceptional experiences.
• Organizations must define success metrics for customer experience initiatives.
• Testing and feedback are crucial for refining customer experience strategies.
• Customer journey mapping should involve frontline employees and customers.
• Transparency and alignment with values attract modern consumers.

Chapters:

• [00:00] Understanding Customer Experience
• [02:50] The Relationship Between Marketing and Customer Experience
• [05:51] Navigating Technology in Customer Experience
• [08:57] Generational Differences in Customer Expectations
• [12:01] The Importance of Speed in Customer Experience
• [14:46] Building a Customer-Centric Culture
• [18:10] Implementing Customer Experience Strategies
• [21:11] The Role of Testing and Feedback in Customer Experience

More About Jeannie Walters:

• Check out  Jeannie Walters‘ Website
• Connect with  Jeannie Walters on LinkedIn

 

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Nobody does data better than Oracle. Train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive at Oracle.

 

Duct Tape Transcript

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(01:05): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Jeannie Walters. She's an award-winning customer experience expert, international keynote speaker and founder of Experience Investigators, a firm helping companies increase sales and customer attention through elevated customer experiences. She's a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association and having worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Orange Theory Fitness, SAP, Comcast, and JP Morgan Chase, just to name a few, we're going to talk about customer experience. So Jeannie, welcome to the show.

Jeannie Walters (01:44): Thank you so much, John. I'm thrilled to be here.

John Jantsch (01:47): So I start a lot of my shows asking if people to fine terms, and I find that there's a lot of terms out there that we use every day that maybe people, they have a misunderstanding or I think, well, at least I like to get your baseline. So when somebody says customer experience, how do you define that?

Jeannie Walters (02:06): Well, I'm so glad you asked because it is a term that gets thrown around a lot and often when I introduce myself and I say something about customer experience, people immediately make the mental jump to customer service.

John Jantsch (02:18): And

Jeannie Walters (02:18): They love to tell me their worst customer service story as a customer. And customer service is part of the experience, but the way that we define customer experience is it is literally what happens throughout the entire journey. Every interaction you have between a brand and a customer from before they even know they need you to all the way to when they leave you or become a lifelong customer. And I also like to remind people that your customers are having an experience whether you talk about it or not. And so what we try to really help our clients with and what I've been dedicated to for all this time is really helping get more proactive and intentional about designing the customer experience so that you can really relate to what customers actually need in that moment and then give them that so that they keep going through the journey with you.

John Jantsch (03:16): As I listened to you, describe that there would be some, myself included that would argue that sounds like marketing. I knew this was coming. So where is customer experience a subset of marketing? Does it walk alongside marketing? How do you fit that in?

Jeannie Walters (03:34): So I look at it as two different lenses that compliment each other. So marketing is really an act inside the business to help connect with customers and help actually kind of guide them to where we think they should go next. That's what we're trying to do. Customer experience is more about understanding from the customer's perspective, what is it they need when so that we can actually design that inside the organization. A lot of the work we do in customer experience is helping really us as business leaders understand how to even understand the customer journey because we are taught to think about our role and our org chart and all of those things. Customer doesn't care.

John Jantsch (04:21): Plus, I think a lot of it goes on today without our knowledge, right?

Jeannie Walters (04:24): Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We have so much less control than we did

John Jantsch (04:29): 10,

Jeannie Walters (04:30): 15 years ago for sure.

John Jantsch (04:34): A lot of times when people think customer experience, they'll say like, oh, we need to wow our customers, which that could be good, but how do you first align? I know with marketing plans and marketing strategy, we always try to align them with business goals. I assume that there's a role for that alignment when you talk customer experience isn't there.

Jeannie Walters (04:53): Yes, absolutely. And this is one of the, I think persistent myths out there is that as customer experience leaders, we need to care about our customer satisfaction rate or our net promoter score or things like that, which absolutely, but those are measurements, they're indicators, they aren't outcomes. So what I like to do is look at what are the organizational goals? What are we trying to do here, and what are the levers we need to pull within the customer experience to help us both understand how to get there and also look for opportunities and challenges and ways that we can just make things a little easier for our customers? A little less friction. I personally don't believe we have to wow every customer every time because that's not realistic either.

John Jantsch (05:43): It's exhausting.

Jeannie Walters (05:44): Yeah, it's exhausting. And some of those things that are held up as those wow moments, they're not scalable. They're things that are pr, they're great PR and marketing, but they're not necessarily scalable. So what we to look at is really understanding what does your customer need in this moment and how do we know? Because sometimes humans say one thing and they behave differently. So you can have all the surveys in the world and you could still get it wrong. So you really need to be savvy about understanding customer behavior, operational metrics, the indicators that are out there to help us get the business outcomes that we're aiming to get.

John Jantsch (06:22): Yeah. What was that Henry Ford saying? If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would've set a faster horse.

Jeannie Walters (06:28): That's right. That's right. That's right. And innovation is a huge part of this, and it's a huge opportunity, but that means that you can't just ask because humans don't make any sense.

John Jantsch (06:43): Well, and a lot of the greatest innovations out there, the iPod for example, I mean, nobody was even thinking about that as something that they needed, right?

Jeannie Walters (06:55): Right, exactly. Exactly.

John Jantsch (06:56): So what role do you see increasing role? There's definitely a role, huge role for good or bad technology playing in customer experience. I mean, you have technology that I think at one point sometimes people look at it as, oh good, we'll never have to talk to those damn customers again because we've got this technology that'll do it. And then there's also places where it's like, no, the example I always love to use is when I go see my eye doctor, I don't want to have to call somebody. I want to go on there, schedule my appointment, and they've got my record there. To me, that was a better customer experience, but when I'm getting examined, I want somebody who's very listening and different experience. So how do you help people navigate technology?

Jeannie Walters (07:42): Yeah, it's a great question because I mean, one thing to keep in mind is technology is a tool on the toolkit. You still have to figure out what is the overall strategic vision that you have, what are you trying to do, who are you serving? All of those things. But what I really am seeing that I get excited about is actually exactly your example. We want more self-service options. As customers, we want to be able to have choice based on context. Sometimes I hear people categorize people like, well, the big one before the pandemic, the big one was, well, anybody 50 plus, they're not a digital customer, right? Well, and of course that is not true. It's all about context. There are times where you don't want to call. There are times where you need to call and we need to give customers options. And technology gives us so many great ways to, again, proactively think about this and design those touch points. So if somebody gets stuck with that technology, do they have an option where they can call somebody who knows that they've already been through that? Because the most frustrating thing that can happen is you spend your life telling a chatbot your life story, and then they can't help you and you pick up the phone and call and they didn't know that happened. They have no visibility.

(09:02): And that's the technology I'm seeing that I think will vastly improve the customer experience, is connecting the dots inside the organization and giving the right people the right visibility so that when you call and you're already angry and you're frustrated because you just went through that chatbot thing, somebody who is answering that call understands that's where you are in your journey and can respond immediately and say, I have all your information. I know exactly what to do next, and I'm sorry that happened. So I think we have to blend the ease and efficiency of technology with the understanding and empathy of humans on a regular basis, and look for ways that we can basically jump in at either point and give customers the options that they are asking for.

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(10:46): That's oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape. You bring up a good point though, the cliche of the generational thing that you used there, but there are realities in some generational differences into how people want to be treated, or at least what their expectations are. I always kind of tease my kids if I can be cliche, I'm just a lot more patient than they are. If something doesn't work the way it's supposed to work, they're out of there. And I'm like, okay, let's try another path. Do companies need to try to understand that? Is it possible to understand the generational differences?

Jeannie Walters (11:25): Absolutely. And I think a big one that I'm seeing is that the way we behave as customers is very different. And part of that is, I mean, there used to be an expression that if your mom used tide detergent, you used it, right? There was just no question. And now the younger generations are much more likely to, number one, align their values with who they do business with, and they're very serious about this. There have been other generations who about it, but aren't necessarily acting on it. These younger generations are acting on that. So you need to make sure you're visible and transparent with your values in a different way in order to attract the right customers. The other part of that is to your point, there's some irony in some of the behavioral assumptions we make because some of the younger generations are actually more savvy about when to call.

(12:20): So they reach a certain point and they know the only way I'm going to get this solved is by calling, but they're prepared for it. They're not, not frazzled, they're just solving their problem in a different way. So we have to again, figure out what's the best way to serve them in that moment within this context, because I really believe that all of us as humans, I mean the world is changing at such an incredible speed, and we have to learn new things every single day. We can't just do what we did last week, and we have to keep up with that for customers. But it's all about the context of the need and where they are in their journey, and also who they are. There are some people who they want quick answers, they don't want a lot of empathy. They just want you to tell 'em what's wrong and move on. There are other people who, they want the whole thing. They want to tell you everything that happened. And so we need to figure out how do we recognize those people and serve them in the best possible way in that moment. And some of that is generational, and a lot of that is contextual now.

John Jantsch (13:24): So I'm going to come back to that point, but you mentioned speed, and I would say speed has become a huge driver today of customer experience or at least expectation. I was watching a movie the other day and these kind of teenage kids, their mom had died a few years ago and they found a camera of hers and they had film in it. And so they took it to a place and the guy said, do you want the one hour service? And they were like, it's going to take an hour.

Jeannie Walters (13:51): That's a great example.

John Jantsch (13:52): It really is. And I do think so how are you factoring in the idea that speed is just become an

Jeannie Walters (13:59): Expectation? Well, I think in a way it's always been an expectation, but we've learned as customers kind of how to be complacent about it. And so one of the things that I always look for is what are the assumptions we're making about time? And what I mean by that is, for instance, one of the things I love to ask in these workshops we do is, okay, what do you do really well here? And a lot of people say, well, we get back to people we're really friendly. And I'll say, okay, so what's your definition of soon? And you get 18 different answers. Because if you don't define what we mean by those time indications, we are going to set the wrong expectations for customers. And that's where disappointment comes in. So some of this is about setting the right expectations and being proactive when we don't know something, when we have to call back and say, Hey, I don't have this yet, but I will. And so I think part of what customers are expecting is the worst. You're not going to call me back when you say you're not, or what do you mean it's going to take an hour? That's a great example. That's crazy to them. And so we need to make sure that when we talk about time, we are all speaking the same language. And sometimes that's just not the case right now.

John Jantsch (15:26): Yeah, because so much of success in life, let alone in business, is just meeting expectations, right? Absolutely. If you thought it was coming Friday and it came Thursday, you're a hero. But if it came Saturday, it was like, no, the whole thing failed. So how much of this in an organization, when I heard you describing people making decisions about, oh, this person's already angry, so I need to handle it this way. How much of that is taught? How much of that is just culture?

Jeannie Walters (15:57): Oh, that's a great question, John. I think, I mean, it's definitely a combination of both because we can teach and train to so many different scenarios, and somebody will show up with a totally different one the next day because humans have all sorts of crazy stuff happen. So we have to both develop a culture where people feel empowered by a similar value structure. And what I mean by that is we use something called a customer experience mission statement. And the reason we started developing this is because we saw that a lot of people said things like, well, we want to deliver exceptional customer experiences, but you and I might handle those things differently based on our life experience and our judgment and all of that. And neither one is wrong, it's just different. But if you are inconsistent, that actually chips away at the trust with the customer.

(16:50): So we want to make sure that we are really aligned around a culture that empowers people to make the right decisions in the right moment. Having said that, we need to spend some time on teaching and training and alignment, because otherwise we are just asking everybody. I mean, one of my favorite examples of this is I was looking at the goals of an organization, and one of their big goals was we need to deliver friendlier experiences for our customers. And I said, well, how do you know if you're succeeding at that? And so we have to spend some time figuring out what are we really saying? What are the stakes in the ground? What are the milestones? How do we know if we're successful? Because then you can bring that back to the culture and say, this is what we really mean. This is who we are no matter what, and this is how we show up for our customers and for one another. And that alignment is really important too. We can't treat customers one way and treat each other a different way.

John Jantsch (17:49): And that's really to the culture point. You're absolutely right. I mean, a lot of times, I used to say years ago that any way, shape and form in which your business is coming into contact with a customer or prospect, that contact is performing a marketing function. And a lot of times as organizations grow, the leadership has no contact with the customer anymore.

Jeannie Walters (18:10): Yeah, it's very true.

John Jantsch (18:11): And yet those people are probably treating the customers about as well as you're treating them, right?

Jeannie Walters (18:20): Yep. Yep. That is definitely something that as people get further up in the org chart, they get further and further away. And to your point, the opposite is true where all of the behavior rolls down the org chart too. And so it is really important that people feel, again, that alignment with values that's just so important in any culture.

John Jantsch (18:41): Yeah. I know in our organization over the years, I've had people that customer, they have a bad experience with a customer, and they're kind of bad mouthing the customer in front of the team. I'm like, we just can't do that ever, ever, because it's not acceptable for them to do. And if we're saying that's the behavior, but especially in smaller organizations, that takes intention, doesn't it

Jeannie Walters (19:05): Does for sure.

John Jantsch (19:06): Tell me a little bit. So if I came to you and I said, Hey, this customer experience thing sounds awesome, you need to customer experience us. How would that start? I mean, are we going to map out journey points or touch points? I mean, what's the process look like?

Jeannie Walters (19:21): Yep. I always think of customer experience work and really setting the foundation for it in any organization as a three step kind of foundational process. And then we move into, we've got all these tools in our toolkit, like customer journey mapping, but I like to start with the idea that it's a mindset, it's a strategy, and then it's a discipline within your organization. So you kind of have to think about it. Any other part of your business, you would never say, for instance, we should really do sales, so let's bring in somebody, do a workshop. And if that doesn't work, I guess sales doesn't work. That would never happen. But we do that a lot with customer experience. We think it's a magic wand. So we like to think about it as to get the mindset you need that customer experience, mission statement, something centralized within your organization.

(20:09): So we do workshops and strategy and executive coaching on that, and then we go into strategy, which is really what are you trying to do and what are the efforts that we're going to put into this to achieve those outcomes? So we define those outcomes and all of those things. That's with something we call a strategy success statement. And then we move into the discipline of it. How are we going to get this done? Who's involved? How do we actually work together? How do we get our leaders involved and how do we know if we're successful? And all of those things. So that's kind of the foundation of it. And then there are things like, yeah, we want to map out what is the ideal experience. I really believe that innovation is experience driven right now. You think about the disruptors of the last 20 years, they've all been experience driven. And so we do something called experiential innovation where we help people think about how do they disrupt their industry with experience. So there are all these different ways, and it's all based on what are you trying to do as an organization and how can we help you be the most successful you can be, while at the same time making it a win. So your customers, your employees, and all your stakeholders love you. That's really what we're trying to do,

John Jantsch (21:19): How important. We're going to run out of time here. So I'll wrap up pretty quickly. I'd love to know, so I've got this roadmap. We've identified things, processes, campaigns, whatever that need to be put in place. How important is testing and monitoring and analyzing, this worked, this didn't work. Let's try something. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are senate, forget it people, right? It's like, this is our process. Here's our SOP go.

Jeannie Walters (21:43): Yep. Yeah. It is important, and I like to think about it less about testing and more about pilots, because a lot of times you want to test things in a way that you'll know yes or no, and humans just are very unpredictable. And so what I like to do is take a smaller kind of subset and say, okay, let's learn from this pilot, because we always get feedback. We always learn something in that. Then you can start applying at scale and see what works and what doesn't. So we do that as well as inviting customers into the process, making sure that if you're doing customer journey mapping and you never talk to a customer, you are missing a huge opportunity as well as your frontline workers, your cashiers, your customer service reps, your salespeople. Sometimes they're left out of the process mapping, and I'm like, no, we need them. So we think about it as customer collaboration. You need to have that along the way every step of the way,

John Jantsch (22:44): And even customer or units inside of an organization. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to a leader of marketing and sales and customer service, and they're like, wait, after we get an order, you do that.

Jeannie Walters (22:55): Absolutely. That happens. Absolutely. Yep.

John Jantsch (22:57): So it's pretty incredible. It's like, oh, nobody bothered to talk to each other.

Jeannie Walters (23:01): Great. That's right. That's right. And that's what I love about things like journey mapping and service blueprinting, because you get people together and just the act of that can create real change in an organization.

John Jantsch (23:13): Yeah. Well, Jeanie, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there some place you'd invite people to connect you and learn about your work?

Jeannie Walters (23:20): Sure. Yes, please join us@experienceinvestigators.com. We have a ton of stuff there in our learning center. And then you can also find me on LinkedIn, and I've got a few LinkedIn learning courses out there too. So I'd love to hear from you.

John Jantsch (23:33): Again, appreciate you taking a few moments, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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Weekend Favs November 23rd

Weekend Favs November 23rd written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but I encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one I took on the road.

• Notta is a transcription service that converts audio and video into text, facilitating easy note-taking and content creation.
• SurveySparrow is an online survey platform that transforms surveys into engaging, conversational experiences, aiming to enhance response rates and gather actionable insights.
• Deckoctopus is a presentation tool that streamlines the creation of professional slides, offering templates and design elements to simplify the process.

These are my weekend favs; I would love to hear about some of yours – Connect with me on Linkedin!

If you want to check out more Weekend Favs you can find them here.

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How to Ask The Right Questions Using Thoughtful Curiosity

How to Ask The Right Questions Using Thoughtful Curiosity written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Dr. Amber L. Wright

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Amber Wright. Dr. Amber L. Wright is a communication expert, coach, facilitator, and former communication professor. She helps organizations improve how they make their people feel seen, heard, and valued. As an executive coach and speaker, she guides leaders to express their highest selves with authentic authority and grace. Her popular TEDx Talk, “Ask Better Questions to Build Better Connections,” has inspired people around the world to become stronger communicators in their everyday lives. Dr. Wright has been featured in Fast Company, Essence, and Mashable, and is the creator of Can We Talk? Cards – 50 questions designed to take the guesswork out of small talk.

We talk about the importance of asking the right questions to foster better connections and how self-awareness and active listening are crucial in effective communication, especially in business settings. Dr. Wright’s emphasis on making others feel seen and heard and how thoughtful curiosity can enhance interpersonal relationships. Our conversation also touches on navigating different personalities within teams and strategies for resolving conflicts.

Key Takeaways:

• Every relationship begins or ends with a question.
• Asking open-ended questions invites more profound reflection.
• Self-awareness is essential for effective leadership.
• Listening to understand is more important than listening to reply.
• Thoughtful curiosity helps in asking appropriate questions.
• The relationship with oneself is the most important.
• Questions can help challenge limiting beliefs.
• Understanding personality differences improves team communication.
• Conflict resolution requires understanding the other person’s perspective.
• Engagement in conversations can be enhanced through thoughtful questions.

 

Chapters:

• [00:00] The Power of Questions
• [03:06] Feeling Seen and Self-Awareness
• [05:54] The Art of Listening
• [09:02] Engaging in Business Conversations
• [12:06] Intrapersonal Communication and Self-Reflection
• [15:03] Navigating Different Personalities
• [18:02] Conflict Resolution Strategies

More About Dr. Amber L. Wright:

• Check out Amber L. Wright’s Website
• Connect with Amber L. Wright on LinkedIn

 

Duct Tape Transcript

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John Jantsch (00:00)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Dr. Amber Wright. She is a communication expert, coach, facilitator and former communication professor. She helps organizations improve how they make their people feel seen, heard and valued. As an executive coach and speaker, she guides leaders to express their highest selves with authentic authority and grace. Her popular TEDx talk, Ask Better Questions to Build Better Connections has inspired people around the world to become stronger communicators in their everyday lives. So do I call you Dr. Amber, Dr. Wright? Either way, welcome to the show.

Dr. Amber Wright (00:41)

Thank you. can call me Dr. Amber. Amber's just fine as well.

John Jantsch (00:45)

So let's start with referencing your TED Talk. Why questions? Why are questions so powerful? Or why do you suggest that's the medium for better connections?

Dr. Amber Wright (00:58)

That's because every relationship that we ever enter into, personal or professional, begins or ends with a question. What's your name? How are you? Are you single? Are you hiring? In the middle of it, what are we doing? Is this working? Is this not working? Is it over? So having that realization is the impetus of my work and in the sense that knowing that right why aren't we better at asking questions since they're so important.

John Jantsch (01:28)

Yeah. So as I listed that list of questions you gave as examples there, I mean, in some cases they're almost punctuation to conversations, right? They're almost not real questions. Like when somebody says, how are you? Do you ever really give that some thought? Well, let me think about it. But you do talk about the right questions though. can you give some examples of what you would suggest are powerful sort of right questions? I know they're probably different different situations, but let's go there for a

Dr. Amber Wright (01:52)

Yeah, I frame a better question or a right question, a good question as one that is open ended, obviously, and that also serves as an invitation. It invites the person to reflect. And I tell often, and I say this in my talk, my TEDx about how when my teenager now, when she was in grade school, I'd pick her up and say, how was your day? That's technically an open ended question, but a better question is, what was the best part of your day?

John Jantsch (02:30)

Yeah.

Dr. Amber Wright (02:30)

today. That gives her an invitation then to reflect on her day and we can have a richer discussion as a result.

John Jantsch (02:38)

It's much easier question to answer too, right? I mean, how was your day? I don't know. Let me think. What did I do all day? Whereas a very specific question, I think, I mean, in a lot of contexts is easier for us. One of the pieces, you know, it's in your bio and I know you talk about it in the talk is this idea of feeling seen. And I think that's, it seems like that's become a pretty common or almost trendy thing to say.

Dr. Amber Wright (02:42)

Dude, yeah.

John Jantsch (03:06)

And I wonder if you could make that practical for us. What does that mean?

Dr. Amber Wright (03:12)

I think when you make someone feel seen, there's something about kind of quietly saying, I see you. And that comes by way of just paying closer attention. It's noticing that, you know, someone on your team is tearful on a call or maybe they are off camera for some reason consistently. It's noticing when it's the drop of the shoulders non-verbally. It's the role of the eye in a meeting. It's being able to kind of notice the things that are happening around you in both times of chemistry and in conflict and be able to say, I see how you might be feeling disappointed by X, Y, and Z thing. How can I support you?

John Jantsch (03:40)

Thanks

Dr. Amber Wright (03:58)

To see someone is to acknowledge them.

John Jantsch (04:02)

So what are some of the kind of most, well, let me back up. was going to ask you for most, like, there's lots of applications, lots of uses for this technique, if you will. But what are you, what role does self-awareness play in this? Right? I mean, as I listened to you talk about that idea of, I mean, you have to really be very aware of yourself, I think, to understand what's going on in the other person's world.

Dr. Amber Wright (04:32)

Absolutely. And that is the harder work that's at play. I give keynotes and talks to leadership teams all the time. And to be a good leader, think the first thing, the first rule of order is to know thyself. You got to know who you are as a person because then that impacts the way that you show up as a leader. So then just interpersonally, who am I as a person?

John Jantsch (04:50)

Right, right.

Dr. Amber Wright (04:59)

How do I take in information? How am I energized? Do I prefer introversion, extroversion? That's why personality assessments are so popular because they help give us language to grow in our self-awareness, to describe what it's like to experience us as people. And I like to encourage people to do that work because it can be such a good investment in all of your interpersonal and professional relationship dynamics. Self-awareness is so key.

John Jantsch (05:26)

So I could create a list. In fact, I have created a list of questions that I plan to ask you, or at least something close to those.

Dr. Amber Wright (05:32)

Yes.

John Jantsch (05:37)

Equally important, as important as, maybe more important than the question is actually hearing what the person said. Right? I mean, so most of us are, I would say the majority of people are not great listeners. How key is that role?

Dr. Amber Wright (05:54)

You're on a roll here, John. think after self-awareness, it's listening. I always say we have two ears and one mouth for a reason so we can listen twice as much as we speak. And that is another layer of the deeper work. Are we slowing down enough to pay attention and to listen to understand, not only to reply. Many times we were just listening for that on-ramp to be able to say whether that person is right or wrong about whatever they're telling you. And that's not true active listening. And I think that's why some people are so bad at it because it takes intention to say, I'm going to look you in the eye. I'm going to be present with you and pay attention to what you're saying so that I can respond thoughtfully.

John Jantsch (06:37)

And let's face it, you have to kind of care about what they're saying.

Dr. Amber Wright (06:44)

Yeah, I think that's relative. Because you might not, but it's still worth it to pay attention.

John Jantsch (06:50)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to give a couple examples? A lot of my listeners are business owners, entrepreneurs, or they work in team leaders and things of that nature. What are some examples of the different places, say, in a business that this is important? mean, we've got customers, some of them are happy, some of them are not so happy. We've got team members, we've got prospects in selling environments.

Dr. Amber Wright (07:14)

Okay, cool.

John Jantsch (07:19)

You know, is this what you're talking about? Questioning a skill that we ought to bring to every one of those situations.

Dr. Amber Wright (07:25)

Absolutely. You can't solve the client's problem if you're not listening to what they tell you. When you ask them the question, what's the biggest challenge you're having right now? And listening intently for the answer. And then that's where we paraphrase and say, well, what I hear you saying is you're struggling with your marketing or your messaging isn't landing with your potential clients. This is how I can help you with that. So listening is paramount just as much as and asking really thoughtful questions as well.

John Jantsch (07:58)

Yeah, and I know just in my own selling situation, certainly in my own leadership role with my organization, if I just lecture, people check out pretty fast. And so certainly questioning is a way to keep engagement, keep attention too, isn't it? mean, we all, it's almost like in school, like if you think the teacher's gonna call on you, you're gonna pay more attention, right?

Dr. Amber Wright (08:10)

Yeah. Yeah.

John Jantsch (08:24)

Even if all they're doing is repeating back what you said. I mean, how much of that is almost a tactic in some ways to keep people engaged?

Dr. Amber Wright (08:34)

It's a lot of it is and I think that's why it's important for us to be thoughtful about how we show up and how we engage. You mentioned earlier the example of how we say things like, how are you doing? Even though that's a question, we use it as a punctuation statement. I don't answer. My answer to that is I'm good, thank you. Because I want to pause and say, do I really want to ask this person how they're doing?

John Jantsch (08:55)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Amber Wright (09:02)

If I know that I don't have time to actually listen. And that helps me to kind of slow down enough to be thoughtful about that. And that's what I think that can be of service to us as business owners and entrepreneurs. Again, are we asking thoughtful questions and are we listening intently for the responses?

John Jantsch (09:20)

How much awareness may be the right word, but I know sometimes people, they're clearly, they've clearly listened to you or had coaching from you. So they're asking me questions, but I don't know them well enough to feel like that's a question I should answer to you. know, somebody before I meet them or even on LinkedIn, you know, will say, what are you most excited about, you know, this year in your business? And I'm like, I don't even know who you are.

Dr. Amber Wright (09:32)

Hahaha! Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John Jantsch (09:50)

That seems like too far of a reach. So, you know, how do you kind of meter out like what's an appropriate question given the level of our relationship?

Dr. Amber Wright (10:01)

That I think comes down to being able to just keep your finger on the pulse of the environment. know, that's such thing as reading the room and engaging. Or if I'm at a networking event or if I'm at a conference, I'm meeting somebody for the first time. I'm not going to tell them my whole life story. I some people do, but you know, I'm going to be thoughtful and going to be mindful. So I use what I call thoughtful curiosity and that is to inquire without being intrusive.

John Jantsch (10:07)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Amber Wright (10:24)

And that takes, it goes back to that big I word of intention, that takes me thinking about like, all right, if I'm going to this event, how do I want to show up and how do I want to engage with people? And then let that inform the types of questions that you ask. So for example, if you're meeting someone for the first time, instead of just the, what do you do? You can say, what inspires you about your work? It's a more thoughtful question, but it's not intrusive. And it's a better question, just, so what do you do? Right? So it's that kind of intention that I'm speaking of.

John Jantsch (10:56)

All right, so let's say your intention is awesome, and you ask a question like that, and it really goes to like a dark or negative place, you right off the bat. And you're like, wow, I really wasn't trying to go there. How do you handle situations that kind of go off, you know, where you were intending to go?

Dr. Amber Wright (11:17)

That goes back to being just a good human, I think. If someone responds and they're just like, well, you know, I threw my back out, my wife left me, I'm having a bad day. You know, I'm sorry to hear that today's not going well for you. I hope that it gets better. And then you let it go.

John Jantsch (11:20)

well, we're done here. If that's your answer, we're done here. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Right. Okay, so we're talking about asking questions to others. I do a lot of meditation practice and a lot of the teachings around meditation are getting kind of the questions we ask ourselves out of the way or at least not holding us back. How do we frame questions we ask ourselves in a way that are going to be the right questions?

Dr. Amber Wright (11:53)

I love that you asked that question, John. It's one of my favorite things to do, to talk about, because I say so often we focus on interpersonal communication. We don't think enough about intrapersonal communication. So the number one relationship that you have in this world is the one that you have with yourself. So these same principles apply to how we talk to ourselves. I don't meditate heavily, but I'm a journaler.

John Jantsch (12:14)

Right.Mm-hmm.

Dr. Amber Wright (12:31)

And that's my opportunity to say, what's going on girl? How are you really feeling about such things or about whatever is going on in your life? what do you want to do about it? What are you thinking about it? And just again, it's another invitation for reflection so that I can grow in my self-awareness. I love communicating with myself and I talk out loud that, you know, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I talk out loud and I think that all of those things are in service to us getting to know ourselves better, which informs the way that we show up.

John Jantsch (13:04)

So let's stay on that track a little bit. I mean, some of the questions that I think we ask ourselves, they're sometimes deeply rooted in what all of our stories have been, right? And some of those really are limiting, that come from limiting beliefs. How do we, let's say we're saying, I want to stop doing that. I want to get out of that. Are there questions or are there practices that we can use to challenge our own limitations?

Dr. Amber Wright (13:31)

wow, that's an excellent question, John. I think is the answer to that. And what I mean by that is what's my issue? Really? How am I feeling? Really? That's when we can dig a little deeper and get to the true heart of the matter. And a question that was very helpful to me that I listened, I heard in a book that I listened to last year, the author said, when it comes to defining or deciding what your true wants are, she says to ask yourself. If I knew that it would work out and I knew nobody would be mad at me, what would I want then? Wow, it was such a powerful tool to get me to reflect. So that's when you can get as honest as you can because you're the one that has to live with your truth. Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:28)

That's what's holding us back, right? All right, so let's go back to teams again. Sometimes teams are made up of people that have vastly different personalities. So are there ways to, like some people, man, you come in, you ask them the most direct question you can, and they're all about it. And then there are definitely other people that are like, no, we got to go through about eight layers of this before we're to get anywhere deep, right? So how do you...

Dr. Amber Wright (14:38)

Yes.

John Jantsch (14:55)

How do you approach those situations where you've really got vastly different personalities that you need to communicate?

Dr. Amber Wright (15:03)

This is why I love, again, personality assessments. I'm a certified MyArch Greggs practitioner, for example, and we use those tools because if I'm onboarded to your team and I'm working at Duct Tape Marketing now, we're sitting down, we're having this meeting, and I say, you know, the way that I like to take in information is I need a lot of details, but you as the CEO are an idealist person, it's helpful for me to know that.

John Jantsch (15:06)

Yeah.

Dr. Amber Wright (15:26)

I think sometimes on teams, don't spend enough time talking about our individual selves and our individual approaches to the way that we work. And then we end up with some misunderstandings, miscommunications, challenges, conflicts, because I'm taking it personally that John is a big ideas person and he doesn't give me the details that I need in order for me to feel secure to do my job. So I think carving out spaces for us to actually say, what is your communication style? What is your conflict style?

John Jantsch (15:55)

Yeah.

Dr. Amber Wright (15:55)

What is your leadership style? And being able to talk about that, I think can then empower and equip teams to work more efficiently. We just, we're so busy we don't have time doing it.

John Jantsch (16:03)

Do you think people know the answers to that? Like, have you asked me what's my conflict style? I don't know. Do I know? It's usually like to run, but...

Dr. Amber Wright (16:14)

Also, you're an avoider. Avoiding, competing, collaborating, compromising, accommodating. My avoiders are my runners.

John Jantsch (16:26)

Actually, I've gotten much better about that. So let's talk about conflict for a minute. are there particular, I mean, in situations where, you know, sometimes there's emotions involved, but sometimes there's just really deeply not agreeing opinions. For example, tomorrow, depending on those of you when you're listening to this, tomorrow's election day in the United States, and there seem to be really differing opinions, very strong on different sides.

Dr. Amber Wright (16:43)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

John Jantsch (16:55)

You know, is there a way to mitigate conflict or to try to, you know, try to be seen and see, you know, that other person when you have really strong differing opinions.

Dr. Amber Wright (17:02)

Yeah, that's a loaded question. But I think that my answer to that is no. I think when comes down to, when we were talking about handling conflict effectively, like a mature grownup is one to consider the other person's perspective. I don't think we do that enough. And taking a moment to think about like, if I'm this person or I'm in their shoes, can I see things from where they're coming from?

John Jantsch (17:10)

You don't have to name any names.

Dr. Amber Wright (17:38)

Having the wherewithal to name what the issue actually is, because sometimes we get caught up in the sparks of conflict, and that draws us away from the actual issue. And if we can stay focused on what the issue actually is, and name it and frame it in such a way we use this device called iStatements to say, I felt this way when you did x thing.

John Jantsch (17:47)

Yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Amber Wright (18:02)

It's less about the behavior of the person themselves, but really about how you reacted to the choice that they made. That allows for more fruitful conversation, but we've got to tamp all of the sparks down a little bit so that we can get to the heart of the matter and actually resolve the thing. But we're so impatient. We want to yell. We want to argue. We want to be right. Those are my computers in conflict. Someone's going to lose and it's not going to be me, right? So understanding.

John Jantsch (18:26)

Yes.

Dr. Amber Wright (18:28)

There's such thing as time, place and manner for everything, but just kind of also then making a point to say, I didn't really enjoy what happened in the meeting the other day. Things got heated. Can we circle back and come back to this tomorrow at two o'clock and have a discussion about it when we've been able to both think about our differing perspectives. But, you know, that takes more effort than sometimes we have the time to give.

John Jantsch (18:51)

So you're saying name calling is like off the table. Is that what you're saying?

Dr. Amber Wright (18:54)

If you want to, you write that in your journal. Write the name calling in your journal. That's where you can tell yourself the whole truth. Just for you and you alone.

John Jantsch (19:02)

All right, so I'm going to put you on the spot. What is your favorite question to ask somebody, particularly maybe somebody you're just meeting for the first time?

Dr. Amber Wright (19:13)

It's the question that I used earlier, what's the best part of, what's been the best part of your day today? Because you're gonna get a different answer every time. So I'm gonna ask you that if I can. What's been the best part of your day today, John?

John Jantsch (19:17)

Yeah, you know, I live in the mountains, and we got about eight inches of snow last night and, I just think that, well, it's, it's pretty magical to wake up and have eight inches of snow if, unless you just really don't like it.

Dr. Amber Wright (19:30)

Wow. There you have that. I love that. And that then is going to come from me to ask you more questions like, wow, you know, how do you manage living? Exactly. You got it.

John Jantsch (19:45)

That's right. I've invited you now, right, instead of you prying. Instead of you prying. Absolutely. Well, Amber, it was awesome having you take a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Is there someplace you'd invite people to connect with you and learn more about your work?

Dr. Amber Wright (20:02)

Absolutely. The hub of all things, Dr. Amber Wright is wordswellsaid.com. I'm also active on LinkedIn. If you search for my full name, Dr. Amber Wright, you'll see me there, my little pink sweater. So definitely connect with me there. And I've had such a good time talking to you today.

John Jantsch (20:19)

Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments and maybe we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Dr. Amber Wright (20:25)

Not in snow in the mountains.

John Jantsch (20:29)

Not everyone's cup of tea, that's for sure.

Dr. Amber Wright (20:32)

Absolutely. Thank you, John.

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