Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:00:03.280 - 00:00:40.730
Study was done, oh, back in the 70s, and we've misquoted these statistics for 50 years.

Dr. Moravian says in his book Silent Messages that when we're communicating face to face and when we're communicating feelings and attitudes, and that's the parameters. When you're communicating feelings and attitudes, 7% are communicated through words, 38% tone of voice, and 55% nonverbal.

So that's why we start with the visual. The gestures is a major part of that.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:00:42.490 - 00:01:48.370
Hi there and welcome to the Step up podcast. I'm your host, Kent Knievel.

Every week I talk to experts who focus on helping leaders step up their leadership game and leaders telling their stories of growing up through the ranks. If you're new to the show, do me a favor and subscribe so you never miss an episode. One last thing.

As a leadership development consultant and executive coach, focus area of mine is supporting newly promoted leaders.

One in three promotions fail because we never teach newly minted VPs how to stop being a director or a newly promoted director how to stop being a manager.

If that's you, or if you support a leader who has been recently promoted, I encourage you to visit my website at Kent Coach Toolkit and download a free copy of the Promoted Leader Toolkit filled with practical advice and tools to help new leaders stick the landing and truly step up to their new leadership level. All right, I've dillied and dallied long enough. On with the show. Welcome, everybody.

Today we're going to be talking about communication or presentation and influence. And with me today for this conversation is Brian Flanagan, salesman, also CEO of Flanagan Training. Brian, thanks for being here today.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:01:48.990 - 00:01:50.190
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:01:50.910 - 00:01:58.110
So for the guests that don't know you, walk us through a bit of your, your career history and, and how you landed into what you're doing today.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:01:59.870 - 00:03:03.830
Pretty, pretty short resume from the standpoint that I spent 14 years with the IBM Corporation and sales, Sales Management National Training Center. But I met a man named Zig Ziglar when my.

When I got my first promotion with IBM back in 1978, I moved from my home in Louisiana to Dallas, Texas, and met a guy named Zig Ziglar. Read his material. It literally changed my life, gave me a different trajectory and very, very happy that I did that.

We're trying to leave IBM after 14 years and I decided I'd knock on his door. And so I'm. I put together a program for you. It's a presentation, skilled program. You don't have to be there.

We have a corporate Training division which goes out and sells it and delivers it. I've designed the course so that led to a 29 year career with the Zig Ziglar Corporation.

The last few years I've been in a witness protection program for ex leaders. Have been on my own for about the last 10, 11 years.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:03:04.150 - 00:03:14.720
Okay, nice. Awesome. Well, and I think as we were sort of talking about, I know a big focus for you is sales. Right. And presentation skills and.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:03:14.800 - 00:03:15.240
Yes.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:03:15.240 - 00:04:01.470
And I think while this show is not about enforced sales, I think as we were saying, and I think we both know being kind of on our own and having been in enough rooms with leaders, pretty much everything is sales, particularly leadership.

Even if you're in an internal role, you're often trying to sell people on your own vision or a project or an initiative that you want to get support for and budget for, whatever. Right. So I think these are the kind of presentation, communication, sales. But I'm going to say influence skills. Right.

That, that you spend a lot of time talking and teaching about are relevant for pretty much everybody. I mean, what's your take on that? I guess before I jump, Robert, Robert.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:04:01.470 - 00:04:51.940
Louis Stevenson had a great quote. Everybody makes a living selling something. Yeah. And it may not be on your business card.

But Ken, one of the things I work with are corporations who have people within their organization. No matter what the circumstance is they don't want to be professional salespeople, but they have to be professionals who can sell.

And that may be bringing in the C suite to talk to a potential customer. And it is influence.

But it's also because they don't wear that sales hat every day, their chances for error are very broad because they're not accustomed to it on a day to day basis. So during that time that they've been asked to come in and be an influencer, they better be good. Yeah, yeah.

Because, because they don't get many opportunities.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:04:52.740 - 00:05:15.350
So maybe, maybe let's focus some of our conversation on people who don't think of themselves as being in sales. Because I'd imagine you probably have worked with a number of those when you hear that. Right. When you hear from a leader like.

But I'm not really in, I'm not really in sales. Where, where do you a. How do you try to dissuade them of that thinking?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:05:15.990 - 00:07:21.510
And then what we know what they do on a day to day basis basis to motivate their team or to introduce new, new programs. In my case recently a new sales compensation plan and the CEO was selling because of that institution.

They, they had a lot of advertising going out, but they weren't converting the same ratio that they thought they should. So what he was coming into doing is that I'm going to increase your, your, your percentage on your commission, but I'm decreasing your salary.

Of course, I had to speak after that. So that was a very, I wouldn't give that spot to my cleaners.

So what he was doing, what Jerry was doing, was telling them on, hey, this is a situation. Here's what's impacting the company and here's what we need to do to move forward and be profitable.

And when you start talking to salespeople's pay plans they raised, they get a little awkward. So he was in a selling mode the whole time. And if selling is influencing, he was certainly doing that.

But he was also trying to get people on board to say, it's okay, it's okay. And he did a great job. He did a fabulous job of it. Until, until it came to the question and answer.

During the question and answer session, he was not, he told me he was not prepared for some of the questions and all of his body language changed. They went from here, here, we got to do this, we need to deal, we got to do this. And then anybody got any questions and they attacked him.

Had he said, I know you got questions, I know this is new, we're working through it. So what are your questions? They would ask the question, but maybe in a different manner, in a different attitude and tone. And he saw that at lunch.

I said, what happened during the Q and A? I prepared the presentation. I didn't prepare for that, but it's because his body language shifted. I knew something was wrong.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:07:22.070 - 00:07:50.800
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe we can talk about that. Right? Because. So for, for the listeners, right.

I think you were kind of demonstrating his animated, possibly Italian talking with his hands kind of approach. And then you had kind of physically clammed up and, and you got small hand in front of.

Yeah, got small, put his hand in front of his fist, in front of his face. And so maybe let's start there. Do you. Is that something that you tend to work through with people as body language in presentation?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:07:51.360 - 00:10:01.680
Yes, I have a two day presentation skills course. I do one on one coaching. I modified it to a one day course. But primarily what you say and how you say it has to be congruent.

So my alliteration of the day is make movement, match meaning, make meaning match movement. And too often I work with, especially, especially senior leaders. I like your course, Flanagan. I'm Gonna, I'm assigning my, my VPs up for it.

And then I will say, well, which course do you want to come to? Oh, I don't need it. Oh, really? Why? Because I'm comfortable in front of people and I want to ask them if I've seen them in action.

I want to ask them, oh, really? You're come. Have you ever seen yourself? Because one of the biggest accounts I had in Dallas, a huge distribution company.

And the president, the new CEO, was the son of the old CEO, the son was the cfo. So he was behind the scenes. He wasn't in front of people.

So his first, the VPs invited me to go to New Orleans, look at him and give him some, some feedback on talking to 600 distributors. Well, he was so nervous that he brought his golf club out, he put it down and he just swayed back and forth.

The only other person I've ever seen do that is Bob Hope. When he would entertain the troops, he'd have a golf club for some reason, but because he was so nervous, it showed.

And he's the new leader of the company and he's talking to the people that can provide him profit, the livelihood, feed his family. And he wasn't very good at it. So I try to tell people from the standpoint of is it comfortable or it's effective.

And if I'm going to lead a group of people, I don't want a comfortable leader, I want an effective leader. And we try to teach the skills necessary, the body language, the intonation, stop saying. Or all of those things come into what we teach.

Yeah, both at the. Anywhere in the organization, but especially at the leadership level.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:10:01.840 - 00:11:32.450
Yeah. I'm curious just from like a broader sort of themes, one might even call, say, competencies perspective, what are the key sort of.

Well, let's just call them competencies or skills. Right. What are the key skills that one needs to master when it comes to communication? And even more importantly, I guess I'm curious in what order.

Cause I feel like it's.

People probably get the order wrong and think like, for example, I would imagine people have their going in position is maybe that they need to work on their hand gestures.

When perhaps the first order or first principles or whatever you want to say is like maybe the content is the most important thing to think about first.

I'd imagine in your work with people from a communication perspective that, you know, there's probably a set of skills or competencies, however you want to think about those that, you know, you think about when you think about Presentation skills. And I'd imagine people probably. I'd imagine that there's probably an order of priority to start working on them in.

And I'd imagine people get that wrong frequently. Like in.

In my own mind, I imagine that people think hand gestures are the most important thing to start working on when perhaps it's content or what have you. So I'd be curious from, from your background on how you teach this. What are those key skills and what's the priority?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:11:32.850 - 00:13:40.570
I think it's spot on when, when I work with people who have been in their job for any amount of time. And you've seen this in your past corporate life, they have content confidence. They can tell the job description.

What they lack is delivery confidence. So we try to help them on the delivery, not the design. And although that's an offshoot. But on presentation skills, there, there are three keys.

There's the visual, the verbal, and the validation. So you're right. The visual is that. That's the impact. We're visual billboard society. So under the visual, the five skills you need to master.

Your, Your appearance, your stance or posture, gestures, arm and hand movement, eye contact, which is a big deal. And then the last one in that area is facial expressions.

So if I know when I stand in front of group, if I know what to do with these things, it's in my sleeves, I don't have to worry about. Yeah, you don't have to be Italian to be able to. But too often people move air. They don't move meaning. So they're doing this.

But this doesn't say things. I like to talk about three things. Funding, fundamentals. And we're also talking about having fun. Three things, number one, number two, number three.

And that solidifies, it reiterates, and it supports what you just said. A study was done. Oh. Back in the 70s, and we've misquoted these statistics for 50 years.

Dr. Moravian says in his book Silent Messages that when we're communicating face to face and when we're communicating feelings and attitudes, and that's the parameters. When you're communicating feelings and attitudes, 7% are communicated through words. 30, 30, 38% Tone of voice and 55% nonverbal.

So that's why we start with the visual. The gestures is a major part of that. You're absolutely right.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:13:41.610 - 00:13:45.970
So where does the, the PowerPoint visuals come into play? Because so far you're.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:13:45.970 - 00:13:49.370
You're talking primarily when you need support.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:13:49.770 - 00:13:50.290
Okay.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:13:50.290 - 00:14:05.530
Not when you, not when you need to be bailed out. Please look at the PowerPoint where am I going? What am I look at here. So what happens is it's misused. It's a great tool if you use it correctly.

And there's been great strides since I've been around been great strides in how people use power.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:06.170 - 00:14:06.410
Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:14:06.410 - 00:14:26.650
But the major concern is your read. A major concern. That's too much my major concern. You talk to the screen which already knows what's on itself and you're not talking to the audience.

But. Yeah. That it comes into play when it can support you. You don't support PowerPoint. PowerPoint supports you.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:14:26.970 - 00:15:10.760
Yeah. Yeah. Well, since, since I asked that question, we're kind of barreling down that road because I, I see and some of.

Some of the leaders that I have both have the opportunity to be kind of in the audience for, you know, and being a consultant and coach for. In my own experience, I think the thing that I see happening the most, the biggest mistake, I guess I would say that I see leaders making. With.

With PowerPoint for example, is too many words. Right. That. That you should be the words. Right.

Because when there's more words on the PowerPoint they are reading that no longer paying attention to you.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:15:11.560 - 00:16:11.570
There are a couple of rules of thumb. One rule is depending on where you are. But when I go out and present sometimes venues, I don't know what they're going to be like.

There may be a post and on each side of the room.

I spoke recently over in Mobile to a chamber of commerce it and it's a beautiful ball room, but it was not configured for the speaker to stand on the stage they had because there was a blockage, your line of sight was impaired. The rule of thumb usually is six lines per slide. Six words per line.

If you're in a room with a high ceiling and you have a screen, it's projected or it's elevated, then you can get by with violating that. But I don't know what rooms I go to sometimes. If it's a conference room at a hotel and the screen is literally off the floor, then you got 12 lines.

People in the back can't see.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:16:11.730 - 00:16:12.730
Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:16:12.730 - 00:16:25.160
So there's a little bit of caution there. If you know your audience, if you know the venue, you can vary that. But if you don't have six lines.

Six words per line is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:16:25.320 - 00:16:32.320
Yeah. Love it. So I know, I know that's not a major focus area that we were but I just decided to kind of.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:16:32.320 - 00:16:43.420
Barrel down that everybody doesn't everybody look your. Your day in my Day consists of making short presentations throughout the day. Some are formal, some are informal.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:16:43.500 - 00:16:51.980
Yeah, yeah. But the visuals that we were really talking about is sort of body language. Right where, where you're standing, how your posture, your smile.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:16:52.700 - 00:16:54.300
You are the message. Yes.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:16:54.300 - 00:17:09.150
Yeah. So just for the, the listener who's like, I would like to improve some of my presentation skills.

What's the, what's the one that you see most people needing to work on the visual side?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:17:09.390 - 00:17:11.710
It's hand movement.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:17:11.790 - 00:17:12.230
Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:17:12.230 - 00:17:45.280
That don't say anything. And I've got several of these. We have the praying man as well. Get me out of here. And my all time favorite, a spider doing push ups on a mirror.

These are distracting. When you're, when your hands move, you got, you're guiding the eyes of the audience. And the eyes of the audience go toward three things.

Color, movement in light. So if I want to look over here and I turn, there's a tendency to do that.

But if I'm doing this at some point in time, people are going to notice because the energy is here.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:17:45.440 - 00:17:48.720
Yeah. If you're like energy out here. Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:17:49.520 - 00:18:28.330
It's an easy mistake. And oftentimes we think because we're moving our hands that we're saying. So that's the biggest thing on the visual side.

The biggest thing on, on the verbal side is what we call padding. P A D D I N G. Filler words. I mean, kind of like er. And nobody's going to tell the CEO that he's got a filler problem. Jokingly, but in jest.

If you want to listen to filler words, listen to the interview of any professional athlete or anyone in Congress.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:18:29.450 - 00:18:29.850
Right.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:18:30.090 - 00:19:19.240
You know, on the athletic side, there was a guy named Claudell Washington, played baseball for the Outfield braves. In a three minute interview, he said 49 times, 180 seconds. He dropped. I go to Congress.

In 2009, President Obama takes Hillary Clinton out of the Senate and makes her Secretary of State. There's an opening for the senatorial spot. Caroline Kennedy stepped forward. Daughter of jfk, Pick me, Pick me. She's never been in politics before.

There was an article in Time magazine, full page. And one of the paragraphs said she is hardly a compelling speaker. During this interview, she said 142 times, hurt your heart.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:19:19.720 - 00:19:32.840
Yeah, I would say. And frankly, probably anybody that listens to my podcast. There we go. And hearing me, I probably say, and quite a bit. So how does one work on that?

What, what is the key to hit me with it?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:19:33.320 - 00:20:13.850
Number one, become aware of the tendency to Break a habit. You must become aware of the tendency. How do you get that feedback? Have somebody tell you, record yourself.

Nobody else when the best way to do it, because it's a jet check. If you leave a voicemail, if you'd like to listen to you, hit that button, listen back, and would you.

Would you respond to that voicemail if you heard what you just said the way you said it? If you're really serious about this, put it on speaker, turn to your keyboard, and type everything you just said.

Hack, split whatever, sound it out, print it, and it'll scare you. Yeah, yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:13.930 - 00:20:28.650
I'd argue record. Start a podcast and edit it yourself, because you have to get pretty. Pretty used to your own.

The sound of your own voice, which I would say, historically, I hated. I hated the sound of my own voice.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:20:29.370 - 00:20:30.170
How do you do that?

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:20:30.170 - 00:20:42.010
Until. Until I started my podcast and about three, four, five recordings in, I just got used to it. Right. All right.

Well, obviously, no one's ever told me my voice is like nails on a chalkboard.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:20:44.010 - 00:21:30.700
But what happens. Your voice is your verbal signature. But most people don't like the sound of their voice because we hear it differently.

When you're speaking, I hear it from the natural acoustics, but you hear to the vibration, the bone in you. I'm not calling you a bonehead, but you hear it differently than the audience does. Yeah.

But once you understand that and get accustomed to it, again, we ask, when you hear an announcement, when you hear a commercial, you don't see the celebrity or the actor, who do you recognize? And it's James Earl Jones and it's Morgan Freeman. They learn to speak the same way we did. They had.

They had training, don't get me wrong, for acting, but we all learned to speak at some point in time, and it's an identify. Yeah, yeah.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:21:32.380 - 00:22:14.890
The thing I'm trying to lean in on more, both in recording the podcast and in general, in my own sort of networking meetings, when I'm leading a training is I'm trying to personally get more comfortable with and utilize silence more because I realize that my ums, Oz and you knows, are air filler. And so I try. I. I try to employ more comfort with just shutting up and just being silent for a moment.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:22:15.290 - 00:23:07.650
People are hesitant with. With dolls, with silence, with pauses, because they assume that the audience is going to. You lost your place. You don't know, didn't rehearse enough.

When in fact, if you put all these other skills together and you have silence, you have pause. There are four benefits when you do it right. Number one, the first benefit of you pausing, it allows the audience to catch up with you.

Number two, it allows you to catch up with you. Just a short break. I'm doing pretty well. The slides working okay. And it's just a quick little mental information.

The third reason when you pause adds impact. And the fourth reason you can use is the transition. Much like your keyboard. Enter twice you separate paragraphs.

The pause allows you to do that in verbal communications as well.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:08.370 - 00:23:10.290
I feel like there it is. Right?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:23:10.290 - 00:23:10.490
Like.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:10.490 - 00:23:16.610
But I think people use the filler words to think about what they're saying next versus silence too. Right. So it's.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:23:17.760 - 00:23:24.080
But the cure is silent. Think inside. Don't take the out. And throwing in another.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:23:24.080 - 00:23:24.520
Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:23:24.520 - 00:24:00.259
If you really need to pause, then I tell people that the old actor Jimmy Cagney said, here's how you act. You walk in, you toe your mark, and you look the guy in the eye and you tell him the truth.

So if I need time to think about something, I want Ken, I want to give that the right amount of thought. I remember reading about this. I've just told people verbally and now visually I read about this. I think it was time. I just. I need time to think.

But it's better than saying, well, that's the sound of your search engine. The audiences need to hear the sound of your searching.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:24:00.580 - 00:24:01.020
Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:24:01.020 - 00:24:02.340
Search in silence.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:24:02.820 - 00:26:09.920
Yeah. I, you know, I've worked in a number of Fortune 500 or Fortune 500 style, you know, organizations. And I think my time with.

With General Mills that I was able to see a lot of leaders on stage. We had, we had a conference hall, like, and there were different opportunities to see, you know, I was in HR at the time.

So the quarterly HR meeting or the annual company meeting where you're seeing this, you know, probably all. Almost the entire C suite on stage, or, you know, the annual sales meetings for retail and food service.

So I had a lot of opportunity to see different leaders at different levels on stage. And I think a, you know, shout out to gender mills. I think they do a really good job of prepping their senior executives to be on stage.

Cause I would say, you know, one thing I've noticed from the C suite, because there would also be people they were giving opportunity to be on stage that were manager level, director level, you know, as well. I feel like I noticed a. And I don't even want to assume it's comfort. I'm going to assume it's intentional.

And it was trained, but a slower pace, more use of silence. Right. From the senior executives than I did in more, maybe more junior people, right. Who. This is their time to shine.

Maybe there's more nerves, maybe not. And they're kind of rushing through.

When I think the thing that I think I noticed the most in the C suite executives, at least at General Mills, was they took their time on stage. They took their time to walk. Walk up to the podium. They took their time to make their points.

And to your point, I think the silence where we all assume, oh my God, I'm gonna lose the audience if I don't keep making some kind of noise, I, I think it causes people to sort of lean in.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:26:11.200 - 00:27:13.940
The, the silence is awkward for us when we haven't accounted for it. When I say this point, I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna let it sink in. I'm gonna let them digest it.

The, the other side of this is much like, where do you insert gestures in your presentation? Where do you insert the pause?

So as I'm going through my presentation, when I say third quarter versus second quarter, 73% of budget, that's important. I wanted to nail that down. I want to reiterate that I'm going to insert a gesture there.

When I say that we've had a great quarter due to the fact of abc. I want to stop there and let it sink in. And sometimes tell one of my, my henchmen clap for me.

There'll be some applause going on because you're celebrating what these people did. And sometimes you have to have somebody that leave the applause. Yeah. Especially when you're introducing people.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:27:15.620 - 00:27:51.310
The other thing, which, which I don't think you brought out with the visual art, but there's also like sometimes there you can work the room or the stage a bit too. Right. And I, I know I've heard this with at least one speaking per guru I heard years ago. Right. When you have like a whole stage, you can utilize.

One thing I heard them say was like, if you got, if you have your three points right, you can say point one is on stage, right. Point two is center stage, point three is stage left or something like that. Like, how do you use that space here?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:27:51.310 - 00:29:59.890
Here. A couple of quick hints on that. Movement is good if it's meaningful and intentional. So number one, plant your feet for a paragraph.

If you're walking with three things we're going to talk about today, funding, fundamentals and having fun, well, you become a moving target and you're not user friendly to the audience. So if you step up to the audience, say, we can talk about three things. A, B, C. Let's begin with funding.

So you walk over to stage left and you fill up a paragraph or more. You can always pivot, stay in the same spot and you can look at people on stage right.

So just because you move over here does not mean you're trying to captivate everybody. You still have to entertain and involve these people. Once you finish those 0.12, three paragraphs, move.

But when you move in too much, you become a moving target. And it says you may be a little bit more nervous than you think you are. Why are you moving that much? Tom Peters? You're almost young enough.

Remember Tom Peters in Search of Excellence? I was in Alabama with the Chamber of Commerce in Tuscaloosa. They were having at the student union.

Tom Peters would come speak to the community of the school. So the Chamber of Commerce had tickets and they brought me out there and Tom Peters was a hero. And I'm going to take some notes.

And he started off, he bellowed from point to point, figure, whoa, what's this now? This is a long time ago when he got to his slides. Not as powerful. When he got to his slides, he was unbelievably great.

He stood there and just hit it and was comfortable. He knew what he's doing. His skills were good. He wasn't distracting.

But two people while he was doing that in his introduction, they said, what's wrong now? The untrained now I looked for that. But for the untrained, they noticed it also. And he was on such a high pedestal in my thought.

He's not very good at this. He's better writing than he is speaking. Once he got into his. To his baby wig. Yeah. It was unbelievable. He was great.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:30:00.050 - 00:30:39.240
Yeah.

One more thing before we sort of get into the final portion of the, the show, I'm curious because one thing I feel like we didn't touch on, but it's something I hear about frequently is voice modulation and how one works on that. I know I've gotten some feedback that often I end sentences kind of on question, kind of going up. Right. And I, I try to be cognizant.

I'm trying to work on that one. But I'm curious from a voice modulation perspective. A, what what do you see people do? B, how do they work on it?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:30:40.040 - 00:33:06.630
And we, we talk about three things. Volume, inflection, and of course the pacing in volume. We talk about loud, normal song.

Because you need to have some type of variety when you're speaking to people. When you drop your Voice. And I did this earlier in my career.

I had a buddy of mine that sat in the back of the room on my first or second paid engagement, and he said, you dropped your voice to the front row, and the people in the back were frustrated because we couldn't hear you. Great. Lesson learned. So even if you say something like.

And I use this as an example, Mark Twain once said, if you want somebody to listen to you whisper. Well, some people that they don't hear whisper. They. They see you drop your voice, but they. They guessing at the last word.

And when I saw that, I come back with a sentence that supports it. Mark Twain once said, if you want somebody to listen to you by whispering, you get people leaning forward mentally or physically.

I had to go back there and reiterate it with a regular tone and volume. We work on those three. The other thing is inflection. Where do you inflect words? I did not say soul or money can be changed several times by saying.

I didn't say stolen. I didn't say. So you can modulate your voice. And the piggy is. Is the pacing and the pause. And I.

And on the PowerPoint slide, it has woman without a man is a savage. Well, that gets him attention. And then I'll say, different reading, same sequence of words.

Woman without her man is a savage, or woman without her man is a savage. That's how strong your voice is. It can Change the meaning 180 degrees. Where in. In your presentation do you insert your gestures?

And where in your presentation do you pause, do you speed up, you slow down, do you lean forward? All those. You don't want to be choreographed per se, but that's part of learning how to present yourself in an effective way.

Not acting, not being a pulpit speaker, a professional speaker, but a business communicator that they want to come here. You speak. If you're making a presentation, oh, it's Ralph again. This will take forever. Versus. Hey, it's Ralph. Let's go.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:33:06.790 - 00:33:14.980
Yeah, yeah. I just have to share because it was in my head. My favorite string of words is eats, shoots, and leaves. I can't remember the full.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:33:15.940 - 00:33:16.660
It's a book.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:33:16.740 - 00:33:17.900
I can't remember the full saying.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:33:17.900 - 00:33:23.780
Yeah, it's a book on that. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Watch your commas.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:33:24.100 - 00:34:15.170
Yeah, watch your commas. Well, Brian, thanks so much so far. Right.

So one of the things that I focus on a lot in my own writing and my own thinking and just from my own experience and observations. Right. Is that the leadership development industry is A billion dollar industry or whatever that number is.

And all of that money is spent in bringing, coaching or bringing groups of leaders together.

And what, what I saw in my own time was that we don't spend a ton of money the day after someone's promoted, their first day on the job, teaching them how to unlearn their old job and learn the new one. We leave, leave them to either figure it out or we leave their boss, who's already busy, sort of responsible for teaching them.

So in that spirit, I ask everybody to provide a couple pieces of advice or think through a couple pieces of advice for the audience. And the first one is, what's your advice for leaders who are seeking their next promotion, who want to get to the next level in their career?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:34:16.210 - 00:35:14.880
Big believer that your peers promote you. And I say that because again, it's much like Ralph is going to speak Ralph, you know, promotion. In the end, IBM, the branch office went great.

About time. He's great or Ralph, he gets, how are your peers supporting you? How are you getting along with your peers?

And sometimes IBM was a great company of the day. I grew up there. I was a delivery boy for my second senior year in college. So I have a great deal of respect for them.

But even in those days, we made mistakes on promotions and sometimes the peers knew it, but the leaders didn't.

One of the things be aware of, your peers promote you and you need to have a working relationship, whether it be friendly or whether it be professional, it doesn't matter. It needs to be some congruency there as well.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:35:15.120 - 00:35:15.600
Nice.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:35:16.800 - 00:36:07.720
The second thing, and I learned this the hard way when I was taking a job in, in San Francisco as a manager. I told my buddies, what is a sales manager? What makes a good sales manager in your perspective?

And they said, well, you're going to ask them if they sold anything today, but also ask them how was the weekend. You understand, you guys took a long weekend. You went so and so with the family. And here's what I learned.

Know your teammates as people, not just as units of production. And, and Zig Ziglar was the best at that. He, he drove that into the company, certainly drove that into his teaching.

It's still a people business and the technology is getting in the way. We got high tech, but low touch. And I think that's a disadvantage.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:36:08.040 - 00:36:19.520
Yeah, yeah. So what's one piece of advice you have for leaders who maybe were just promoted? Right.

They're in the first week, month or so of their, their new level. What's one piece of Advice you have.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:36:19.520 - 00:37:35.870
For them at some point, Tom, earlier in your manager or your leadership career, you need to have an inner view with your people, not an interview. Because most of the times you get promoted, you inherit your team. You don't go, go sort of go, go start something in St. Louis from scratch.

It's usually not the case. An interview allows you to find out why this guy find his wine, make Simon. Cindy got to the chase.

What I want to do in an interview is let them know I'm on their side. I'd like to know your goals. Well, I want to make my numbers. No, no. What's under that? Because if.

If I'm helping you get here, but you really don't want to get there. You want to go this way. I thought when I was a manager, I thought everybody wanted to be a manager. Everybody from sales wants to go to wrong.

And I tried to get this guy say, look, I want to put you on the promoter bullet. She said, you know what I want to do? I mean, you can go to Denver if you go to. You go to New Jersey. You know what I want to do?

I want to live in Oakland, California, play so slow pit softball and fish. Yeah, I don't want to go. I don't want to go to New Jersey.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:37:35.870 - 00:37:36.350
Yeah.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:37:36.670 - 00:37:50.050
And I was, I was going to put this down the promotable list where that's the wrong way. He can be promoted and stay in his area. So if you know your people as people, not as units of production, that interview helps you do that.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:37:50.210 - 00:37:59.090
Yeah, I like it, Brian. For people who would like a little more Brian Flanagan in their lives, where should they find you? How do they get a hold of you column?

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:37:59.170 - 00:38:14.860
We got a website that needs to be updated and revised, but Flanagan Training. F L A N A g a ntraining.com. My email is very simple. It's Brian at planningandtraining.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:38:16.620 - 00:38:19.700
Brian, thanks for being here today. I really appreciate it. This was a very fun conversation.

Bryan Flanagan (guest)
00:38:19.700 - 00:38:21.860
You made it easy. Thank you. Appreciate it, Kent.

Kent Kniebel (host)
00:38:21.860 - 00:38:46.340
All right, take it easy. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thank you for listening.

I'd encourage you to head on over to my website, Kent Coach, and start a conversation with me there. Or check out my promoted leader toolkit at Kent Coach. Before you go on with your day, please take a moment to leave a rating and a review.

Wherever you listen to podcasts, click the five stars. That helps put this podcast in front of more ears. Till next time, take it easy.