Talk Like You Mean It: Showing up to Conversations as Your Best Self

Think back to an interaction you had with someone this last week that didn’t go as well as you’d hoped for.  Maybe your kiddo left their legos on the hallway floor (again) and you lost your cool. You and your partner fought about money,  your VA missed a date on an email campaign or a customer gave you some tough feedback.

Whatever the conversation, there’s a high chance that you didn’t show up in those moments as the best version of yourself and there are things you could have done differently.

You can’t change the past, but of course, you can learn from it.

Connection with others is the richness to our lives and business, so today I’m giving you some tools to help you show up in these critical conversations with more intentionality so that you can nurture the relationships that matter most.

I’ll introduce to you my framework for snapping out of the trance of the daily autopilot to engage in richer, more aligned experiences with others: my Intentional Communication Model.

Additionally, I’ll share with you 4 power questions I use daily during my “Daily 10”. Each morning as I plan my day, I spend ten essential minutes focusing on the people I’ll engage with that day and how I can show up with purpose:

1. Who needs me at my best today?
2. Who am I interacting with today? And do I want to show up for these interactions?
3. What might get in my way?
4. What’s my “get back in the game” plan?

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Heather Sager and you're listening to Finding your It Factor- Episode 29. Now, I want you to think back to an interaction you had with someone this last week that didn't go as well as you'd hoped it would. Maybe your kiddo left their Lego on the hallway floor again, or you and your partner had tough conversation about money where you didn't exactly see eye to eye. Maybe your VA missed an important date on an email campaign or a customer gave you some super tough feedback. Now, chances are you didn't show up in these conversations has the best version of you, and looking back, I bet there are some things you wish you could have done or said a little differently. Now we both know that we can't change the past, but we can learn from it. These conversations and connections with others, they're the richness to our lives and our businesses. So today I'm going to give you some tools that will help you show up in these critical conversations with more intentionality. Here we go.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words, they have this spark that lights you up when you're near them. They have the It factor. And while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to binding your it factor.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Welcome back to another episode, friend. Oh my goodness. It has been such a fun last couple of weeks talking to so many of you about your speaking goals for this year. And you know, today I figured we'd take a little bit of a different approach when it comes to speaking. We're not talking about speaking on stages or on camera or any of those things. I want to talk about how we can be more present and intentional with everyday conversations. You know, I say this all the time that I think it's really important that we all train and get better at public speaking. So that way when those moments come, we can show up as we intend to. But the way that we get better is if we do the little things every day to get better on the daily communications with our team, with our employees, with our spouses, our partners, our kids, our clients, our audience. Like we talked to people every single day and it would serve us and it would most definitely serve those around us who we care for if we come more intentional with how we showed up. Because I think you and me, we can both agree that sometimes the people that are most important to us get the worst version of us. I am guilty of this for sure. And what it's led to is me developing a lot greater awareness for the mismatch between how I intend to come across and how I actually come across. And years ago I struggled with this a lot. I have this condition. You might have it too. The RBF condition, resting not so nice person face where I have to really work hard to. I had a lot of warmth in my voice and make sure that I'm smiling with my eyes as Tyra Banks would say smizing. I have to work really hard because I think sometimes I don't come across in the way that I feel like I come across and so I had to work hard for this. But what I also learned is sometimes when I am running around from thing to thing to thing, from meeting to call, to childcare, to cooking dinner, to picking up the phone for a sales call, like rushing around, I stop or I don't stop and I bring the energy from whatever I was doing into the moment in front of me. So for example, if I am racing to get my kids out the door in the morning and then I have a, let's say a client coaching call at nine if I don't give myself any space between those two things, I'm not going to show up as the best version of me which is what my client needs at that moment. So luckily I learned this, I got this awareness a years ago that you have to be more intentional when you show up to the moments that matter. And there's a couple things that you can do to be more present and intentional so that you can come across in the way that you actually intend and can build the connections that you aspire to build.

: 5:06

So what I'd like to do for today's show is teach you a framework that I taught at a leadership communication workshop. I hosted back in January for a team of labor leaders. They were leaders in a very large hotel chain. They brought their leaders of all of these different hotels into this meeting focused around leadership and they asked me to come in to help these leaders get better with how they communicate to one another and their teams. And I led this workshop around body language and being more intentional with that communication. And I taught them the framework that I want to teach you today because even if you're not a manager at a hotel or a manager at all, let's say you're a business owner and it's just you and maybe a VA, maybe you have a couple of contractors, maybe you have a team, I don't know. But I think this application works on so many different things including how you talk to your partner and children. I'd like to introduce to you my intentional communication model and there's four parts and I want you to imagine that these parts are like like a circle. It's like a cycle, four pieces of a pie and there's like a circle drawn around it where you keep moving through these over and over and over again. So this is a cycle that you work through and it's a framework for you to show up in conversations more intentional and as the best version of you. So I'm going to walk you through the four parts. Here we go. Okay. Let me give you a little context right before I jump into the framework. I got a little excited here and I want to make sure that I set the stage around why this is so, so important. So when we think about the idea of leadership, typically we think about the idea of leading others, which is true. Also, I want you to consider that leadership is a quality that we all have to have to lead ourselves and accomplish and achieve the goals that we have set for us. So if you want to be a leader to your team or let's say you don't have a team, but you do want to be a leader to your audience. If you're listening to the show, you have aspirations to have other people follow you, whether that's literally following you online as in like clicking that like and follow button or having people buy into your programs or services, but you're wanting people to follow you, which means you are aspiring to become a leader or you already are a leader. What we have to think about is if you want to elevate the quality of relationships that you have with the people that follow you or the people that you work with or surround yourself with, you have to elevate yourself because if you want people to engage with you at a higher level, you have to elevate that engagement. So that's why this idea of working on yourself, working on your communication style, working on how you react to things, working on how you frame things, working on how you get ideas out of your head so they make sense. All these things matter because you have to be the one to take responsibility for how you show up so that way you can influence how other people engage with you. You can't just cross your arms and say, you know what? It's not my fault that other people are bad communicators or it's not my fault that other people are in bad moods. It's not my fault that other people don't ask good questions. It's not my fault that other people don't show up to my Facebook lives. It's not my fault that people ask whatever questions. Whatever the narrative that you might be having around how other people are not engaging with you or working with you at the level they could if they only just knew what you had to offer. I hate to burst your bubble here for a second, but I'm going to do just that. It's because you're not training your audience for how you want them to show up. You're not laying down the foundation and the expectation around how you want other people to ask you questions. You're not creating clarity around what you want for people and probably what you have to offer. It might be that you're so, and I've done this too, so in what you do that you can't see it from the outside. I think that's a really powerful thing that we all need to consider sometimes when we're having those moments where we're like, Oh, why don't they get it? Or why is that person so difficult? If for a moment you stepped outside of the viewpoint that you have and consider another angle, I think you might be able to answer that question and it's not that there's something wrong with them or that they're in a bad mood or whatever it is that the narrative that we created our minds. I think sometimes we're just so focused on how we think and how we see things that we lose sight on our inability to communicate. I know that's rough, that's rough, but let me teach you. Let me give you a way for you to match up a little bit more how you show up and communicate the right message, but also in the right way. All right. I'd like to introduce to you my intentional communication module and there are four parts and I want you to think about it like four parts of a pie and it's cyclical, meaning we're going to go through these four phases over and over and over again and keep cycling through them in every interaction we have with another person. So let me walk through the four parts and then we'll detail them out a little bit. Phase one, set your intention. Phase two, increase your awareness. Phase three, take action. Phase four, reflect. Start over again. Set your intention. Create awareness, make action, have reflection. Those are the four areas. Let me talk through what I mean by this. In every situation that you come across. Let's say you have, let's use a personal example and a work example. Let's say that you have a sales call coming up this morning and he's the first call of your day and you have a tendency like me to have your morning be a little rushed as you're going through it and then you dive in your desk and 10 minutes before the call you're trying to rush around, answer emails, do whatever the things. What I want you to think about is setting your intention for that call. Take a moment and get really present. Who were you talking to? What are you talking to them about? How do you want that person to feel during your interaction? How do you want to come across? What kind of energy do you need to bring? Do you need to be vivacious? Do you need to be vibrant? Do you need to be compassionate? Do you need to be present? What are the feelings that you want to invoke? What are the feelings that you want to evoke? What do you want to bring to the conversation? And more importantly, what's the goal? Taking a moment to put some energy into visualizing that call and getting present. You'd be surprised of how much of a difference that could make. That's phase one. Phase two, develop an awareness as it's happening. So what that means is you need to be aware of how you communicate. So if you're talking too quickly, boop, boop awareness. You need to understand, am I talking too quickly? How can I slow it down? You need to be aware of, are you coming across aggressively? Are you coming across compassionate? Are you coming across as low energy or too high energy or whatever that looks like. What I mean by having awareness is you have to have the sophistication to acknowledge your own presence when you're in it. Now, have you ever heard the expression here for a moment? I don't know what the expression is, but I've, I've hear people say this all the time and I've been guilty of it too. You get up to present in front of a group and you're like, Oh my gosh, that happened so fast. I kind of blacked out a little bit. I didn't even know what I said. Yeah. A lot of us have said it before. I'm not really proud of that because I don't know, it's a weird thing. It's kinda like when you get in the car driving and you're driving to the store and then you get to the store and you're like, Oh my gosh, I don't remember that commute. Oh, it's so crazy. But what I want you to get present with is you have to be aware in the moment of how you're communicating. Now this might be a hard one to do and it's going to take practice, but a tip I'll give you for how to become more aware in those moments. Watch he facial expressions and the body language to the person you're talking to. If they start becoming closed off, if they are only answering one word answers, if they're not talking at all and you're dominating the conversation, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's a flag or a bell evidently according to the sound of my voice, that you need to maybe try something different or become a little bit more aware. Change your technique to get them to open up or maybe stop dominating the conversation and start asking questions.

Speaker 1: 14:19

So awareness is really, really, really important. And let me be really clear on this. Most people are unaware of what's happening around them when they're speaking because they're so focused on what they're trying to say and how to get their ideas out of their head that they lose sight around what the other person is even doing or thinking or feeling. You have to be able to listen and speak at the same time. And I may listen by looking. Use your eyes. What's that person seeing? And then use your ears and actually listen. Don't wait for your turn to talk. Actually listen. This is where I'm awareness comes in. Let me do some episodes in the future around more active listening and reading body language of others and also picking up on signals, if that's something that interests you, you shoot me over a direct message on Instagram@theheathersager,. Let me know cause I think this is a topic that might be really valuable if you want to geek out over this, but I won't go in any more depth right now. But you get the point here, right? You need to start becoming more aware as you're communicating because later when you're scratching your head going, man, that didn't go. I don't know why that didn't go as good as I thought it would. You can reflect on it. Great, and we're going to talk about that a second. But also you have to start increasing your awareness in the moment.

: 15:37

Phase three, action. So action. What do I mean by this? This means you need to actually start doing things differently. So let's say you listened back to one of the prior episodes where we talked about vocal mechanics, getting better at pauses and your pitch and your pace and and putting more oomph into your voice and more compassion or more passion, whatever that looks like for you. The things, the techniques you're learning to become a better communicator, you actually have to apply them in conversations. Now, I bring this up because a lot of times we apply these things to the quote unquote important conversations. So if we're giving a big presentation or if there's a very difficult conversation we have to have. We put a little bit more for, a more thought into this. We put a little bit more intention behind this and we plan and we might even practice a role play, but when it comes to everyday conversations or sales calls or maybe debates with your spouse or telling your kids to pick up their Legos for the 17th times. A lot of times these conversations have become more routine where we abandon the skills that we've been learning, the personal and professional development that we've been embracing in our business. We forget to apply it in the moments that actually matter. So action means you actually have to do these things. Try out smiling with your eyes. Try out actually smiling when you talk. Try opening your body language so that you're not as closed off when someone's sharing their ideas. Whatever the tips or skills that you've been taking notes on week over week from the podcast, which by the way, if you want to go back and get some really practical ones, I'm going to link those to the show notes below. I think the episode around the pace and the pitch, the vocal mechanics, I think that would be an exceptional one for you. Also the episode around how to get your ideas out of your head and how do your mouth to tell them to other people. You need to be practicing those things and then take action on them in the conversations that matter. Now, don't try to do them all at the same time, but like when you get to the conversation, say, Hey, today's a day that I am going to ask more questions than actually give my input. Oh my gosh, what would that day like be like? Or let's say this is the conversation that I'm really going to focus on slowing my pace and pausing between sentences. Oh, what would that be like? So thinking about actually applying these things, one, studied enough so you can have the awareness and then two, taking the action on these steps. These are very, very powerful things. They seem simple, but just because it's common sense doesn't mean it's common practice. I've used that quote many a times. Shout out to Will Rogers, one of my favorite quotes. Something really important here. Okay, so remember phase one, we set our intention. We got really clear to be present in the conversation. Phase two, we have done the work to understand what goes into communications so that we can become more aware of how we're coming across and we're listening with our eyes and our ears. Three, we're actually implementing the communication skills we've been learning into step four. We reflect on every single conversation. Now, this doesn't mean you have to get a big journal out and write down every conversation that you have, though that would be a very fast way to apply this stuff. But what I mean by this is after you leave a conversation, you should ask yourself a couple of questions and ask these questions. They can be quick, they can be in your head or a bonus points if they're on paper, if you really want to make significant progress and how you communicate with others. But these questions can be like simple. How'd that go? Huh? Did I show up as my best? Did I really listen? Oh, did I ask good questions? Did we come up with a resolution that works for both of us? How do I think they felt at the end of that conversation? Did it match what I intended? Did I show up as my best? Asking yourself, it doesn't really matter what the questions are. Those are just some samplings, but just reflecting for a moment and then asking yourself the next time I have a conversation like that, how could I show up even better? Just a simple question. This exercise of thinking through things, it does wonders for the next time you show up in conversations. I don't think we give ourselves enough time to just think and reflect. We're always on to the next thing, onto the next thing, onto the next thing. So what would it look like if you built on a little buffer right before a sales call and right after. What would it look like if you, instead of jumping from one call to the next, you booked 30 minutes of time just to digest and then take a break, whatever that looks like for you. I think this idea of creating space and allowing yourself to put into practice the things that you've been learning in the online courses and programs, you're participating in, the content you're consuming, put it into action. Don't just read a book or listen to a podcast and be like, Oh, that's nice. Stop and give yourself time to put these things into action. Now, this communication model, this intention to awareness, to action, to reflection. I want you to think about, you can use this two ways. Way number one, is you can use it on the micro level, which is you take this to every single interaction you have. So the action is a meeting, a phone call, a conversation with your spouse, whatever that looks like. You're taking this right before you set an intention. You bring more awareness into the conversation. You take action in the meeting or in conversation, and then you reflect. You can take that to every single three minute conversation, 20 minute conversation, full day, whatever. You can bring this in anything. That's at the micro level. I also want you to think about what would it look like for you if you wanted to increase the quality of the relationships, increase the way that you or elevate the way that you showed up as the best version of you every single day from every interaction. What would it look like if you applied this to the macro level by sitting down and thinking about this, thinking about this from a, how do I phrase this, for more of a philosophical level. Sitting down and saying, generally speaking, how do I want to come across and how do I want to be perceived by people? How do I want others to be feeling when I engage with them? How do I want my family to feel when I show up for them? How do I want people to feel when we have tough conversations? Asking questions around how you can get better at greater awareness. So asking on a more general perspective of how you are now, how you could show up and being hypothetical in the types of situations that might arise for you and planning ahead for how you could reflect. Having a more global stance, if you will, an overarching way for how you approach communication in general, both personally speaking and for business. It's more of, I call these like a speaking mantra. Getting really clear, clear on your brand persona. Go back to the first episode where we talked about that you can do this at the macro level so you have more intention every time you show up, so that's what a macro thing. You can do that one time, which if you haven't yet, go back to episode one and get more clarity around your persona. Do this now. But I also like to bring this on a daily basis, especially when I have a day full of calls, coaching, trainings, meetings when I'm going to be on interacting with other people on behalf of my business. It's really important for me to sit down that morning and set my intention. Create awareness as I'm going through those each and every meeting or calls or trainings and practice what I'm practice what I'm preaching, and then reflecting on it. I bring that every single day. I'd love to give you a bonus here and actually share with you some questions that might be valuable for you that you could use to get ready for a day of live interactions with people. Okay. Now I know how that sounds. That sounds really kind of funny. How to prepare for talking to people. You talk to people every single day. I want you to do it with more purpose. I want you to do it with greater alignment, for it being a living representation of who you are and who your brand is, what your brand stands for. So let me give you a couple of questions that you might ask in the morning of yourself to help you get in the right head space that day. I call this, by the way, my daily 10. It's 10 minutes every morning that I take that before I start my work day I reflect on these things so that I can jump in as the best version of me. I called the daily 10 because I spend 10 minutes on it, not cause there's 10 things. There's actually only four. Ready. Number one, who needs me at my best today. I answered this question by looking through my calendar around what meetings or calls or engagements I have coming up and identify who's the person that needs me at my absolute best today. Question two, who am I interacting with today? Again, perusing the whole calendar. Who am I interacting and how do I want to show up for those people? So I find who needs me at my best, but then I also just glancy glance at the calendar to see who else I'm going to be interacting today. And I take a moment to visualize each person and understand, okay, what are we talking about? What might they need from me? What could that look like? Then I go into question three, what might get in my way from showing up as my best self. This is a good one. This is a good one, and sometimes it's much easier to answer than others. But an example of something that might get in my way is let's say I have a coaching call. Somebody that might get in the way of me becoming my best thing is I might get a little excited and want to give all of the details around telling somebody how to do something, how to fix it. Well, that's not coaching. Coaching is helping people come to their own realizations and having them help solve some of their challenges so that they can elevate and get better. So somebody might get in my way. It's my own ego of wanting to jump ahead and solve it for them. So this might help me become more intentional thinking like, Ooh, I need to think about these a little different way. This brings me to question four. What's my plan to get quote unquote back in the game? So let's say I know I have a coaching call coming up and I'm like, Oh, I might get in my own way by talking too much, giving more solutions where instead I should be asking questions to help guide them. Okay, so how do I address that? Well, I need to show up the call with questions. I need to have an idea of what I might want to teach. And instead of coming up with statements, I need to come showing up with questions so I can actually be a coach. Powerful. Let's give you an example. Let's say you have a not so favorite client that you're working with and you have a call with them today. What might get in your way is you not being very excited to talk to that client today. So how can you get back on your best? Well, I don't know. You have to come up with a couple of things for you. Maybe, you reminding yourself why you work with that client the first place. Could you visualize that client as the best version of themselves? Could you assume that they have good intentions and maybe they're just getting the worst version or you're just getting the worst version of them? I'm not sure, but you have to think about like what are some other ways that you can reframe it? Or actually, do you even want to keep that clean at all? That's a conversation for another day, but thinking about if there's a difficult conversation or something coming up on the calendar, if you can anticipate what could happen and play some scenarios in your head, Oh my goodness, it changes things because when you show up to that conversation, you're more prepared and while you still have to be able to think on your feet and you have to be able to be present and engage with them, you've done the work in advance to at least think about what might be coming so that you can show up more prepared and more aligned with how you want to show up. That's it. Those are the questions I ask. I'm sure there's more that pop into my brain each day, but those are the ones that are most powerful to help me ensure that how I show up is aligned with how I want to be seen. It's aligned with my personal brand. It's aligned with my vision of being a coach, a compassionate friend, and mentor. Someone who provides exceptional value, someone who doesn't take themselves too seriously. A person who is going to be a constant rock- cheering you on. Those are just a thing. A couple of the things that I think about when I think about the kind of brand I want to be putting out into this online space, I have to be asking the questions so I can show up in that way every single day because there are days when I don't want to do the work. There are days, but I just want my husband to read my mind. But that's not fair. You and I both know it. The people closest to us in our teams and our spouses, like they, uh, they don't always get the best version for us. So I would encourage you to use these questions, not on them, but use these questions so you can be better show up for them because ultimately that'll help you better show up for you. I hope that this communication model was valuable to you. I hope that at a minimum, just got your mind thinking around how you can show up with more intention in your day and start living the brand that you have on paper. You start showing up in that way every single day for your audience. I think it's a beautiful thing. So if you liked today's episode, would you please take a screenshot, tag me, post it to your Instagram stories. I would love to give you a shout out. Also, while you're doing that on that little screen capture, it would mean the world to me if you just scrolled on down and hit that, leave a review button. These reviews are life in the podcasting world. When you subscribe, when you share, and when you leave a review that indicates to other people that this is hot content and it's something that more people should listen to. If you could be so kind and leave a review, it would mean the world to me. So I'll be back next week with another episode. Same time, same place. I'll see you then, Friend.

Speaker 2: 30:17

Guys, thanks so much for listening to Finding your It Factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called Nail your Next Talk, 10 must ask questions before taking the stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event, so the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or 80 snags. Turn the Q&A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager. com/10questions[inaudible].