Cultural Communication Confidence

Next in the summer re-release season- week 2 of the top 4 podcast episode topics from the last year. This week we are going back to 'The Future of Work- working cross culturally', a topic from June which many of you had views on. In this episode, I explored the critical skills for working cross culturally in the future of work, navigating a culturally diverse world with AI, and how to develop your...

And now for something a little different…. I have covered many varied topics on my podcast in the last year, and so in this episode and the next 3 episodes I am sharing my summer season of re-releases. These are the top 4 topics which were most popular when they first came out, and are also among my favourites, and this gives you a review time to listen back on episodes and get greater learning, o...

Influencing through concise communication is a topic which comes up time and time again with my clients.  In our coaching conversations, they tell me they want to sound professional, clear, to the point, and like a leader, so people listen and act.  However they worry they end up speaking too much, or only think afterwards how they could have said it better, or see others who influence effectively...

As you progress your career, the way you engage senior stakeholders will not only be critical to delivering your objectives, projects and business results, but also impacts your personal reputation and opportunities to be promoted. However, I know from my coaching clients that issues can come up all too often, when you need to align stakeholders with different views or priorities, and in some situ...

Your voice is a powerful tool which we can use for impact when speaking, whether for presentations, public speaking or talks. We need to know how to use it well and the techniques to use it more effectively, so you can amplify your voice as part of your communication and be heard.  In today's episode, learn how to amplify your verbal communication with these voice techniques. What you will learn i...

Vulnerability is a hot topic and seems to be spoken about everywhere. Leaders are being encouraged to be vulnerable with their teams for teams to be vulnerable with each other, and yet there is also a sense of wanting to be a leader.  A client, who is a senior leader in their organisation, was recently asking me in coaching about vulnerability and how they found it challenging to know what it mean...

When you are job searching, you want to communicate professionally and confidently in your interviews, and also when you start your new role. You want to know the key cultural dynamics so you can make a great impression and connect well with recruiters, managers and your new team when you start. These were the themes of a recent workshop I did for Roehampton University for their postgrad students....

Feedback is a gift, according to the old adage, and yet sometimes that gift is unwanted, rejected or causes problems we did not anticipate.  We have to understand when we give feedback, this is our observation of the situation in the moment from our point of view. We may not be aware how our culture influences our perceptions of the context, the drivers, motivations and intentions, and that might...

Collaboration tools are great for productivity and efficiency, and although we have more meetings than ever, they are becoming shorter on average and there seems to be less time to connect, get to know each other and have the human touch.  The benefits of conversations are well researched for the individual- they can improve your mood, feeling of connection and belonging to a group, and can also b...

"It is the long history of humankind... that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." - Charles Darwin Charles Darwin shared these words almost 200 years ago, speaking about ancient human history, and yet these words resonated with me when thinking about the future of work.  The emphasis on our ability to collaborate and improvise is as true today, as it was...

Do you worry about how you sound and come across at work?  Do you feel like you're not fully heard or visible? I often meet international executives who feel blocked in their communication confidence. They are on their journey to the next level and want to elevate and amplify their communication to leadership levels. They are knowledgeable, talented and expert at what they do. Yet somehow their co...

World Cultural Diversity Day promotes dialogue and development and is on 21st May in 2023.  I am grateful in my business that I get to work with a huge diversity of nationalities and cultures, from a range of almost 40 countries to date and my goal is to work with people from at least 100 countries! I am incredibly curious, which is why I love what I do. I help my clients to develop their communic...

No matter how good your relationships are usually in your team, with your customers or external partners, conflict can happen, sometimes when we least expect it. So how do we handle this when relationships matter to us?  I was part of a panel recently sharing my perspective on why conflict happens, how we can overcome it to achieve greater alignment and understanding, and the best practices for ef...

Imagine you're at an informal networking event, conference or team event, where you don't know anybody else.  You're by yourself, you walk in the room, you smell the coffee, and you hear laughter from groups already deep in conversation. How do you ease into mingling and socializing?   How do you feel confident in opening the conversation, even if you are introvert? How do you feel relaxed, join a...

How can we maintain a uniquely human edge in this period of rapid evolution of ChatGPT and AI? How do we remain relevant and offer a compelling difference in the workplace compared to AI? How do we communicate, connect and create in this new world? I was part of a panel recently, sharing and listening to the latest perspectives on the human difference in AI and what skills are essential for our fu...

There tends to be a universal view of leadership, and that a good leader has a pre-defined set of skills and characteristics. However, the way people want to be led as a team may vary from culture to culture. What has worked for you as a leader in the past may not transfer across, and there may be issues when you relocate or start a new role heading up a diverse team based in different countries....

How do you feel about being interrupted when you're speaking? When do you feel it is appropriate to interrupt others? Apparently we only wait 17 seconds on average in a conversation before interrupting. And yet you may feel frustrated, when you are interrupted yourself. In this episode we explore if it is appropriate to interrupt others, and strategies to manage being interrupted when we are speak...

What happens when you disagree with others? Sometimes we feel we have to prove that we and our ideas are right and the other person is wrong.  You might keep putting forward new arguments to support your idea and to gain support.   And yet what happens? You keep meeting resistance and counter-arguments back!  Like magnets we might end up constantly repelling each other, finding no way through, dig...

Standing up and sharing our voice is a key part of being heard, whether you run your own business or work in a company, and yet this is a major fear many people experience. I sometimes describe this fear as communication stress, which causes anxiety and can stop us from putting ourselves forward and showing our full potential. Most of us want to move through this and find a way to get more comfort...

Are you aware of the amount of business jargon and buzzwords that you and your team use?  Are they helpful to your communication?  Do they add value to what you are saying? Jargon in theory is a shortcut, a way to explain what you mean, often using a metaphor or image, to help illustrate the point.  But the question is why did we start using them and do they make us sound more professional in our...

20th March is the UN International Day of Happiness. The call for the day is that we can create a happier and kinder world together by adopting a simple, daily practice: Be mindful Be grateful Be kind In our world today, we definitely need this more than ever. It also got me thinking how this relates to my business, as it happens to be my 8th business birthday this week.  In these episodes I usual...

"Knowledge about other cultures will make the difference. I only need to know what people from the {fill in the culture} do in this situation. For example, how they start meetings, do small talk, make presentations, negotiate and give feedback." Awareness about other cultures is powerful to help us in culturally diverse situations, and yet we are all also individuals, shaped by our personal contex...

Listening is a radical decision.  Did you learn how to listen at school? We forget sometimes that hearing is one of our senses, and listening is a skill. We might have been told to 'be quiet and listen', however not actually taught how.  In our busy world, focused on delivering at speed and with efficiency by multitasking, we are judged by what we say. So to listen properly requires a radical deci...

According to the Harvard Business Review research, a vast majority, 92% of employees consider meetings costly and unproductive. Although the pandemic years have led to shorter meetings, the same research says that the number of meetings overall have increased +13.5%, leading to even more 'Zoom fatigue' and technostress.   In 2023, it's not just business as usual, and meetings have fundamentally ch...

Are you a networking fan? A surprising number of people say they're not! They find it awkward and don't know how to build the conversation, balance what we want to talk about, close the conversation and then appropriately follow up. Even if it's for internal events, I know that some of you find this challenging and find yourself putting on your 'networking' persona, rather than connecting authenti...