Improving Communication Skills In a Virtual World

Hi, welcome to Insight Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. Today we're talking about communication. It's always been important, but now that we're in this virtual digital world, it's even more important because you want to be able to get your message across wherever you are, whatever device you're using, if it's your iPad, your, you know, camera, who knows? You're just not in the same room with people anymore. It is a different, different kind of life that we're living. And so we're going to be talking all about how to improve your communication skills in a virtual world. And I have an amazing expert to bring on to introduce you to in just a minute who knows all about this. And she'll help us to be able to, you know, fix our communication. She calls it Communication Rx. And throughout the broadcast, at any time, if you have questions, please leave them here. You know, we'll be able to answer them for you throughout. And tag a friend, tag somebody, share this. With people who you think will really dig this conversation. We would love to be able to chat and talk to as many people as possible. So absolutely please do that. I also have a freebie that I think you'd be into. If you go to paularizzo.com/checklist, you'll be able to get my checklist to become a go-to media expert because we're talking about communications. And, you know, my background is as a TV producer and I've helped people for years to be able to speak speak distinctly on camera when they're doing media interviews, you know, TV, radio, podcasts. And now it's so much more. It's your daily Zoom calls as well. So I work as a media trainer, but I have a lot of tips and tricks on how to do video better. And if you're interested in doing media, how to get the media to pick you and how you can continue to get your message out in the world. So that's at paularizzo.com/checklist. And I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and I have a whole bunch of courses on lists and note-taking and how to be better at all these productivity things. Because as you know, I'm a crazy list maker. I have two books about list making and setting boundaries and protecting your time is a really important one. And it's really interesting because the conversation that we're going to have today about communication, it makes sense because this course actually talks to you about how to say no, how to, how to set boundaries and protect your time. It's not an easy conversation to say no, to say, to, you know, have those conversations with people. This course will help you, but also, you know, I have an amazing expert here who will be able to help us to navigate those difficult conversations as well. So I'm thrilled to bring on a friend of mine. There she is, Ms. Robin Hatcher. Thank you so much for being here. Hi, Paula.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

Me too. Me too. And I'm pushing all the buttons here so everybody knows in the background, this is me. I'm the, you know, technical director, all of the above. So I'm just looking to— there we go. There she is. Robin Hatcher, there you are, communication expert extraordinaire. Fantastic. So why don't you give us a little bit of an overview about, you know, the differences now, now that we're in this virtual world, what are the challenges that people are facing? Yeah.

You know, one of the biggest challenges is that there's something that neuroscience has discovered. Like we have a need as a tribal species for proximity and we have a, and we have a response that's called resonance. And proximity means like we really like to be together. You know, it's like we learn from being together. And this resonance is like we pick up different cues from each other when we are in close proximity. And so those clues are things that help us to understand and navigate the conversation and understand each other instinctually. And virtually, a lot of that is gone.

That's so interesting because we're just, we're not in the room. We're not feeding off each other's energy in a way. You know, I find that to be, you know, when I do media training for a lot of people, I've always done it virtually. I've always done it over video, because I think it's important to be able to treat the camera like it's a person. And it's a lot harder because when you're in a room with someone, you can feed off their energy. You know how they're feeling. It's a lot easier that way. So you talk a lot about communication Rx. What does this mean and why do we need it?

I feel like so many times my clients will talk to me and think of me as a doctor. Because I will go in and diagnose what it is that's going wrong. You know, it's like somebody will come to me because they're not getting promoted or they are having difficulty with certain people on their team or their managers or their direct reports. So I have to diagnose what it is that's going on. And then I open up my bag of tricks, my medical bag of tricks, of prescribing some things that might be going amiss. Like sometimes it's mindset. Sometimes it is languaging. Sometimes it's body language and gestures. Sometimes it's vocal tone. Sometimes it's all of the above. So I have a lot of different prescriptions, I like to call them, to help people to navigate and heal whatever issues might be happening in their communication.

Ah, that's interesting. Okay, so there's so much more to this than just the words that you're saying, right? It's your posture, how you're— so talk me through those other elements.

Totally. There is so much more. And as you know, as a media trainer, so much of communication is visual. You know, that visual and vocal are some of the strongest, and that all comes from evolution. You know, it's like we want as human beings, our brain wants to make sure that we are safe. And the ways that we make sure that we're safe is if we see something that makes us feel comfortable or see something that makes us feel like, oh, this person is going to help me survive even longer. And the other thing that makes us feel safe is if we see something that we need to run away from, you know, or if we see or hear something that we need to run away from. So that's why the visual and vocal are so, so connected and intertwined with actually what you have to say. And they can't be separated because, um, you know, my favorite quote in the whole world is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, what you do speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you say.

Oh, I love that. I love that. It's so interesting too, because I've noticed with people through the years of doing this work, sometimes their face won't match their words. And then I'll say to them, I know that you're passionate about this, or I know you're really excited about it, but you couldn't tell from looking at you because I feel like you just told me that your dog just died. And it's something that's supposed to be really— So how do we get people, or how do you coach people to be able to match the two? Because I find that that's a big issue for a lot of people.

Yeah, and you know what, Paula Rizzo, it's also vocal too. People will— people's voice. And I just had this experience recently, and I won't— I'll try to get as much detail as possible because, you know, I'm somebody who can be really passionate, and I love passionate people as well. And some of the people that I work with have a tone that are kind of monotone. So they are saying good things about me, but I don't hear them as good things. You know, so one thing that we want to do is like, one of the things that I work on is like, I video record everyone. So that video recording them and then playing it back in time and thinking, okay, so what does your face look like here? To answer your question, it's like, and so a lot of people just do not know what their face is doing. It's funny, I have a fellow speaker who will say in the front of the audience, if you find this funny, can you please tell it your face?

You know, because it's true, right? Like, you know, get on board with it, body, mind, and soul. Come on.

Exactly, exactly. And the more I think about it, I think that it has to do with our conditioning and our mind. And, and that's why a lot of times I work on the mindset too. It's like, you know, if you're coming up in an organization that doesn't really promote or encourage a lot of emotion or not emotional or dynamic and that kind of thing. If all you see are these monotone leaders, you're going to start to assimilate and conform to that way of speaking. And so we need to know that. We need to unpack that and think of where are you? And one of the things that I love to start with all the time is what's your why? You know, when you get in touch with your why for being, your why for existing, the why for doing what you're doing, then you get better, more in touch with your feelings, and then are able to express them better.

Yeah, it's so true. It's, you know, it's also about understanding and knowing your intention, right? What are you trying to get across with this meeting or whatever you're doing, this video or whatever it is, like, what would you like the outcome to be? Okay, have that in your mind ahead of time so that you can work towards that, you know, and really have that be in everything that you, that you do. Um, talk to us a little bit about, you know, the different kinds of conversations, right? Uh, it could be a difficult conversation or a happy conversation or whatever, but, you know, the, the— what should we be doing before we have any of these Should we practice? Should we make a list of notes? What's a good way to have a difficult conversation?

I think the most important, the first step is to be curious. Curiosity is a lost art right now. And it's like, and listen for that item or whatever, that emotion that you can be curious about. And I heard this recently, which I love. There are 3 ways of listening. That people engage with. Some people listen to fix, and that means that they're listening so that they can find something that they can give feedback on and fix the person. Some people are listening to win. That means they are listening to so that whatever— oh, they get to that point, it's like, oh yeah, I can win this conversation, I can win this argument because I have something that tops what you're saying, right? Right. What we should be aspiring to is listening to learn. You want to listen to be able to learn what that other person is actually saying, feeling, or thinking. Because what we're doing when we're listening to fix and listening to win is we're cutting off that learning. We're cutting off our curiosity. We already jump into, oh, I know that. So if you have a conversation that you think is going to be difficult coming up, you want to think about, You want to get curious. Why? First of all, you want to get curious about yourself. You want to get curious about the other person. Right. You know, so curious about yourself is, why am I having this feeling right now? What is going on? Why am I so triggered by this conversation or this experience? And then you get curious about the other person. Why is that person saying that? Why is that person so angry at me right now? Why is that person so withholding? And so you may not know the exact answers to the other person. You may not even know the exact answers to yourself. To yourself, yeah. But that curiosity is getting that ball rolling. And it makes you think that, you know, this is not a black and white issue. There is more underneath. And that's the place I really want people to come from is listening to learn. Because then once you listen to learn, I have other things that you want to start to listen for.

Ah, yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean, it's really— look, I love curiosity. I would say that is my number one trait that I— people always say, you know, what's one thing about you? I'm like, I'm curious. I mean, that's why I became a journalist, really, right?

Exactly.

So to think like a journalist in every conversation that you have, to really be saying, you know, how can I pull something out of this and understand and learn and know, and not go in that you already think you know the story, because maybe there's something Right, there's something else that might be going on that you have no idea, right?

Exactly, yes, yes, I love that. Think like a, think like a journalist. I like that.

Yeah, yeah, you can, you can use that. That's good.

Yes, and sometimes I do. I have a whole presentation where the whole outline is what, why, when, where, and how, you know. It's like think like a journalist. I have this little journalist and that's part of my slideshow. So yeah.

It definitely, it's definitely a good trait to have, I have to say. But what about, you know, we've had some questions come through here. Let's see. Oh, well, someone is saying, "Thank you so much for Listful Thinking, for my book." So thank you for watching from India. Amazing. That's awesome. We have someone else who's just here to say hello. Hi. Thank you. Welcome. If you have questions, please leave them in the chat boxes. And even if you're watching the replay, we'll check back and we'll be able to answer these questions for you and, you know, go from there. So Robin, people are going to eventually be in person again. We'll be able to leave the house and we'll be able to do— maybe, you know, I got my shot. I feel good. I feel like, okay, a new lease on life. And many more people will be getting the vaccine soon. So when we go back to having in-person and speaking engagements and being out in the world, we're going to be a little rusty. You know what? Advice do you have for people who have not done this? So basically the whole world have not done this for the past year, right?

I know, yeah, isn't that interesting? I feel like we're gonna have to go in steps, you know, we have to go slowly because it is going to be overwhelming after for a while because just human beings are tribal but we're also adaptable and we're very, very well adaptable. So what happens is We have adapted some qualities from being isolated that we may not be aware of. You know, so we may be more triggered by certain things. We may be— we may have more stress around certain situations. So you want to really take it slowly and not think that you're going to just jump right back in and be exactly as you were before. So I would go with like smaller events at first or smaller interactions to get your sea legs again to really, really know what that proximity means and not have that immediate fear reaction that our brain may start to go in. We may not even know that it's doing that, right? But it could go into this reactive thing, that, that fear. And once fear starts in our brain, it lets out all these hormones that makes us do really stupid things or say things or do, you know, act differently.

I think I may You're back.

Good.

I lost you for a second, but you're back. You're back. I have a question about, um, you're good now. If, if, you know, how— there are certain people, when you, you know this, when you talk to them, it's like you feel like you're friends with them forever. You feel like you could talk to them about anything. They're so easy to talk to, right? How do you become that person? How do you, you know, uh, it's different traits, but how would you say that people can, can do that?

Yeah, one of the things, and that's what I talk about a lot, is knowing your own communication style, needs, and triggers so that you can also know the other people that you're talking to. When that happens, it means that what we are sensing each other, we have rapport, and that rapport is created because we have similar styles. We may even, like, sometimes rapport is really can be physically created. You know, like I did this trick once at a networking event. Like, if you mirror somebody, they're gonna feel as though you are part of the tribe. Sure. And surely enough, I tried this at a networking event. The person came right up, turned around immediately, and started talking to me. I thought, wow, this is so cool. Because this is what I teach at this networking event that I wasn't comfortable at for some reason because there were a lot of people I didn't know. So I mirrored them, they mirrored me back, and we got into this conversation. And you mean mirroring, sort of like if they're like this, you do this? Exactly. So what was happening is she was leaning on the bar like this, and she was talking to somebody else. They were very engaged. And I came up and I leaned on the bar similarly, not exactly like them, because then you look like a freak, but similar to them. And sure enough, within seconds, she turned around and said hello, and we started chatting. Then the other thing that I noticed is that we, I teach is like feet tell a big story. And so one of the ways that I was able to invade that too, because I saw that some of their, one of their feet were open. So they were open to new people coming in. So as I entered that conversation, we started talking, but we started creating this rapport because we had mirrored each other. We had had this great conversation, then our feet got closed. And so one of the women said, oh, I love what you do. Tell me one of the tricks of networking. Yeah, I love it. At which point I said, I confessed what trick I just used. And then I gave her another tip, which is like just touching somebody lightly on the elbow, which might be a little touchy now when we go back.

Yes, right. Yes.

But just touching them on the elbow. And so we talked about that. We started laughing. We opened and we looked down. Our feet were closed. We opened our feet. Within 2 seconds, a guy came up and said hello, and we just started—

there's these—

laughing. The poor guy thought that he was— oh, right, we were being laughing at him.

Oh, you're like, please.

And then I took— I explained the whole thing. And, um, so that's one way is like mirroring their body language, and you can also mirror the way that they speak. The word choices that they use. Some people are much more visual, so they're going to use word choices like, "I see," or, "This looks good." And you can go really deep down and use similar word choices or use similar gestures. That's going to create rapport. And the most important thing is to actually know, like I said, listen to learn what their needs and triggers are. And these are— if these are people that you are with a lot, you might be able to discern that. You know, some people need to feel like they're important all the time. You know, that's one of their big needs. So when you talk to them, tell them how much you appreciate something that they did, acknowledge something that they said, acknowledge something that they are doing. That's gonna immediately say, "Oh my goodness, you like me." You know, so those are the kind of things that you wanna look for. Some people really like relationships. Some people like to want clarity. So if you want to have rapport with them, you talk to them in a way that is extremely clear, crisp, and speaking their language. Because that's what I love, communication. Like, even like you and I both speak English. It doesn't mean that we speak the same language when it comes to communication styles.

Totally, totally. And it reminds me of that book, The Love Languages, so that you know the love language of your significant other or even of your coworkers. And if you know that they will really respond respond if you give them gifts, right? Like, that's going to go over really well versus if you give them a hug, you know, like, they might not be into that, and especially now these days.

Um, but yeah, I call it my ICU needs, and that's in the handout that I have. You should go to the show notes. I've given a little pamphlet on some communication insights and styles, but I call it ICU, and it's both a play on Emergency ICU, the initials. Yes. But it's also I see you because people do not connect or respond or engage or get persuaded by you until they feel seen. Yeah. And so when you can know and understand the other people's needs and triggers, then you make them feel seen. And when they feel seen, they're gonna go a much longer way with you. Than when they don't feel seen.

Yeah, absolutely, for sure. And it just reminds me of my days in TV. There was tons of anchors, I have to say, who did not get along, or reporters, or people who— but you'd never know it because they're there to do a show. They're there to inform people. They're there to have a good rapport on camera together. You don't want to send a bad message. So what about when you are talking to somebody that you just don't like, and you just kind of have to put your game face get on and do it. But are there any little tricks in there for that kind of, kind of stuff?

Yeah, a great trick that I like to share is to reframe it. So your brain is, is very supple and very easily influenced. You can't like make up stuff, but one thing that the brain will believe sometimes is if you reframe the story from a completely different fictional perspective. So you could say like, I don't like Henry over here. He is obnoxious, blah, blah, blah, all of this. Then you make up a story about Henry. You know, Henry was an orphan and because he was orphaned, he doesn't have the same sensitivities and the same ability that other people have, which is why he's like this. You know, so this story is something that your brain will then utilize and think, Yeah, let's be nice to Henry.

Oh, I love this. I love that. That is such a good way of thinking of this. That is so, so smart. I love that.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's fun.

I love it. That's so great. Well, this has been amazing, and we've gotten some good comments. Uh, outstanding interview. That's awesome. Glad to hear it. And if you have any other questions, you know, please leave those in the chat box. Below, and we'll be sure to get in there and answer those up. Anything communication-related, obviously, living in a, you know, virtual world. Um, any last, last details, tips, or something you, you know, want to, to talk about that you're excited about?

Well, I'm excited about everything right now because things are going so well. I love doing this. I love sharing my knowledge around communication because it's so vitally, vitally important, and there's so much going on in this world with the racial disparity, the, the, you know, there's still— I'm so tired of reading so much domestic violence and so much racial violence and so much hate that I really am on this mission to see what I can do to heal that through the power of communication. So please, if you have thoughts, if you have ideas, I have a membership club, which is a membership site. Reach out to me and I'll see if there's an opening where we get together twice a month to go over whatever communication ills you might have. And I also do one-on-one coaching and I do a lot of presentations and conversations around this topic of CommunicationRx. So reach out to me if you need a little bit of healing.

I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate all of your ideas and I just, I love that making that story for someone you don't like. I'm definitely going to use that one. So thank you, Robin. And thank you everybody for joining us. Being here. I was so happy to see you again this week, and, uh, we will see you— we'll see you soon.