Effective communication is often as crucial as the brilliance of your idea or the quality of your work. Sadly, even a brilliant concept can lose its value without the ability to convey it effectively. How can you become a proficient communicator to ensure your exceptional idea is recognized?
In this episode, we were joined by Megan Heffernan, the Founder of Megaphone Coaching. Our discussion covered the nuances of effective communication skills, their application in diverse settings, and the importance of self-awareness in public speaking. Megan is passionate about assisting individuals in improving their presentation abilities, whether in public speaking, sales demos, webinars, and beyond.
Tune in to unlock your communication potential today!
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Delivering Powerful and Confident Presentations with Megan Heffernan
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the lessons I learned many years back is that, sometimes, just as important as the quality of your idea or the quality of the work that you do is how well you communicate that with others, how well you convey it. And, most unfortunately, sometimes, you could have a wonderful idea but if you don’t have an effective way to communicate that with others to get anyone else on board, whether it be investors, whether it be customers, whether it be people within your own organization if you’re more in a kind of a large corporate role, then that idea ends up not really being worth that much, even though it could be a truly genius idea, it could be something truly amazing. My guest today, Megan Heffernan, the founder of Megaphone Coaching, helps people with the communication of their ideas and communication of their work as well as building relationships.
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Megan, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much. I am honored to be here. Super excited.
Super excited. I’m always excited and I always love it when my guests are excited. Anyone out there in the audience listening, I hope we can get you to that point too where you’re in a place where you’re excited to be doing what you’re doing and you’re excited to be talking about what you do. So, Megan, tell us a little bit, just get us a little oriented about the people you work with and how you work with them.
Thank you, Steven. I love — the operative word here is “quality.” I heard you say it a couple of times and I’m in the business of elevating quality communication. That’s the currency I trade in, helping people think better of and put a little more time in and take greater care in their communication. And I use “care” actually as a product and an acronym of have your communication be clear for the C, aware for the A, regardful and refined for the R, putting the little polish on that communication, and engaged, connected to who you’re talking to. I think a lot of people walk around waiting for an opportunity to foist an idea onto a person rather than connect with them deeper in idea and I love, love, love helping presenters, any kind of communicator but presenters in particular, prepare for their upcoming communication, whether that’s a webinar or a gala or a town hall or a sales demo.
And so I love the gift of communication too because there’s this exchange of a person to person or a group to a speaker that won’t ever be replicated really. And I think we’ve fallen back, we’ve gotten away a little bit from protecting that connection and we’re relying on our mediums or our platforms, our resumes, things like that, to deliver our message for us and I think we could do better.
So, now, what’s the difference between communicating in a formal sense, so your bread and butter of I’m about to go and give this presentation, I’m about to go give a sales call even or TED Talk or something like that, versus some of the more informal communication patterns that we see where you’re just at a bar, at a restaurant, at a gathering and you’re just trying to get people engaged in what you’re talking about?
That’s great. No, thank you. If you were to look at my website and see a product list of services, I help with the formal presentation, presentation skills, storytelling, virtual effectiveness, and then it also says that I help with interpersonal communication, relational awareness as well, but what I ended up trying to impart onto people is there really shouldn’t be that huge delineation between that type of communication. To make the larger, grander front of formal presentation feel more informal, more interpersonal, more relational is what we’re after, where we were trying to replicate that one-on-one feel to a larger quantity of people. And there’s some tools that I’ve learned in coaching training and that I’ve practiced at the communication firms where I’ve worked and, now, as a business owner myself, one of my main principles is drawing that to people’s attention, that you already have the skills at your fingertips because you do it all day every day, we’re doing it right now, interpersonal communication, that we need to extend and we need to extrapolate out into these more formal settings and the goal is to kind of demystify that “other than” feeling, that public speaking is elsewhere, out there, different than, that it’s something to prepare for, that is something different in feel than how you and I might feel right now in this one-on-one interaction, because communication is like breathing, we’re doing it all of the time and I want people to feel like they have access to that, not just at the time, which when you have that date circled on your calendar of, “I have an event coming up,” it’s hard not to give it a lot of power and a lot of sort of mysticism and our physiology feels that, our body manifests that. So, I think our interpersonal communication gets us ready for that thing that’s on the calendar and we can be practicing every day all the time so that it doesn’t seem like, “Ready, get set, go,” it’s like, “Oh, I’m just doing this on a larger scale.”
That makes sense. And so the same principles can apply, your CARE acronym, of being engaged, being polished, being — sorry, I’m having trouble remembering with the first two letters were —
Yes, clear.
Clear.
You got it, clear, aware.
Yeah, so all that stuff can apply the same when you’re just kind of talking with your friends casually, you just met up and you’re just having a conversation versus when you’re on stage in front of hundreds, thousands of people, potentially, it’s the same idea, the same methods need to be kind of applied to both situations.
Absolutely. And there’s a methodology or a principle that I learned in training called the levels of listening or the levels of awareness. So I didn’t brand it or copyright it, it’s actually a principle I believe that has roots in the Navy SEALs or Marine Corps where they’re trying to teach self-awareness but also other centered awareness and then situational awareness. So, you can imagine if you are in a squadron or you’re out on the front line, you have an awareness of where your fellow soldiers are around you. And in community with that, there’s an energy etiquette type of thing where I take some of the oxygen when I speak but there’s the both of us here so I want you to have your fair share as well, in terms of that levels of awareness, and I give away this little teaching to my clients that has a two-way mirror film inside this little plastic holder and so the two-way mirror film is my kinesthetic, tangible way to illustrate this principle of levels of awareness because you can see yourself in the film, it’s self-reflecting, but then you can see through it to whomever you’re speaking to or your audience that you’re in connection to so they’re in existence all the while and then you’re holding on to it so there’s this idea of what is the gift we have in our hands? Well, the level three, and I can walk through the levels if you want. The level three is the situational.
So these levels of awareness, this is something that, as you said before, applies to both the formal “I’m giving a speech to a thousand people,” as well as, “Me and my four friends are all out to dinner,” and every kind of other conversational communicational in between. Does it also apply to written communication? Does it also apply to like, if I’m going to write out a document or if I’m putting together a PowerPoint presentation or something that people are going to consume asynchronously, this kind of applies to pretty much any form of communication, right?
It does.
What do they need to hear in this moment? Because they’re there after all, we don’t want to begrudge them the learning. If we wanted to just write a white paper article or an opinion piece and post it and not have any kind of interaction, that is the medium of communication. But when there are others present, when it is intended for an audience, that audience must be accounted for. Otherwise, it’s not public speaking. So I kind of put the public back in public speaking. And sometimes they’re forsaken. So the level one, level two, level three is associated to me the speaker level one, what I know of this topic, level two, what I want you to experience and explore of this topic, and level three is our event. So, the speaker, the audience, and then the event. You can you can kind of break it down one, two, three like that but then there’s also some more granular levels I’d be happy to explore with you now.
Sure. So what does a level one conversation sound like?
Yeah, level one is self-focused, what I know of a topic, my experience with content, my experience with the information and it’s, actually, incidentally, where our nerves reside. So when we’re really in our way, when we’re really in our head of, “I’m so nervous. What is this audience gonna think of me? What do I sound like? What do I look like?” We’re almost debilitated by our self-focus. In language, it is, “Hi, I’m Megan Heffernan, and I’m here to talk about the levels of awareness.” So it’s one direction.
Yeah.
And in interactions, more social interactions, it sort of sounds like this, may I use you, Steven, as an example?
Sure, go ahead.
Okay. So, let’s see. Here we are Tuesday into the week, tell me something that you did over this last weekend that was interesting.
I had two different meetups on Saturday night, both with friends that I knew from past and friends that I met during Startup Week recently.
Oh my gosh, I had a really awesome meetup too on Saturday night. In fact, I got to meet up with a dear friend and I got to go see Amy Poehler and Tina Fey live in concert and it was so awesome. Meetups are great because you can kind of share an experience with somebody else but you can also put a notch in the belt of your friendship storytelling and I just love meeting up with friends, it’s so much fun. Okay, what did I just do to you?
Sounds like a really good show. So, essentially, what you did was you made it about yourself kind of, like, okay, I took what you said and I thought to myself what did I do that’s of a similar vein?
Absolutely. I basically was like there’s the topic, thank you very much, I’ll take that and run with it, I kind of hijacked the conversation and brought it back to myself. Sometimes, being level one is necessary but you can see how and you can probably picture a person in your world who does this. Energetically, it’s a little frustrating. It’s kind of like, “Man, I was about to tell you about this Denver Startup Week thing and you totally took the conversation away from me. Why did you ask in the first place?” When we need to have level one, that’s instances like you’re at a doctor’s appointment and they’re like, “Tell me how you’re feeling, Megan,” I’m going to probably talk about myself rather than be like, “How are you?” Or in a job interview, there are instances where you need that self-reflection, you need that, “I’m the subject matter expert. It’s all about me, and I’m going to kind of hold space, take out that energy etiquette space,” as if there’s like a percentage on a pie. So that’s level one. Level two, imagine that I have like a cable, like an extendable cable from my heart and I reach out and hardwire into you and I plug into you. Level two is other focused. It’s where curiosity is piqued. It’s where innovation starts to occur. I step outside myself, incidentally, my nerves kind of wash away, melt away, because I’ve hardwired into you. So let’s take that same scenario, you can say the exact same thing and I’m going to ask you again what was something this last weekend that was interesting?
Oh, Saturday night was really interesting because I got to meet up with friends I had known for years and then also meet up with some friends I had met at Startup Week.
How was Startup Week?
Oh, Startup Week was really nice. I operated my own panel discussion, got to attend a lot of really great workshops and meet a lot of really great people.
What was your panel discussion about?
Oh, it was about every generations’ experience with our social media and technology addiction.
Oh, my gosh, fascinating, more relevant than ever, right? Where did you meet up? Where did you go?
This past Saturday? We’re at Rhino, first it was at someone’s house and then it was at a silent disco.
Oh, my gosh, so you had those headphones on?
Yeah, the ones where you have the three different colors?
What was your genre of choice?
You know, it was all over the place and I think one of the three went out halfway through the whole event.
I have never been one of those before. I would love to attend one of those. I think that they’re a fascinating concept. Okay, so this time, what happened?
Yeah. So this time, you followed up with kind of further questions about essentially what I was talking about, meeting up with friends, going to Startup Week and all that stuff.
Absolutely, and this is where the learning starts to occur because I allowed that curiosity to take up space. I learned that you participated in Startup Week. I learned that you did a panel on engaging in technology and the different opinions of generations about that. I learned that you went to a silent disco in Rhino. I learned that you met up with old friends and also got together with some new contacts. There’s like four or five things that I did not learn the first time around.
Yeah, you just went right to your experience.
Exactly, yes. And now the tricky thing about level two, even though I most prefer it in interaction, is sometimes it can be a little bit myopic. I can have like blinders on where I just keep peppering you with questions so sometimes people can be like, easy.
Yeah.
Take a step back. And I can also lose track of time. I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience where you’re meeting someone, like that first date syndrome, where you’re at a restaurant and you’re like, “Tell me more. You were born and then what happened? Tell me your whole life. And then what? And then what? And then what?” and the server’s like, “Have you decided what you’re going to order?” They need to maybe turn the table or close the restaurant and you haven’t gotten back to them in five hours, that type of thing can happen, so we can be very intent on curiosity into the other but we can kind of lose a little bit of our awareness on our sense of time and place. That makes sense?
Yeah. For some reason, when you were saying that, all I can think of is the scenario where someone goes on a first date and it’s like, “Yeah, I was born, and then the Berlin Wall came down,” and then just starts bringing up like events that have nothing to do with their lives.
Exactly. I know.
I don’t know why that popped in my head.
Yeah, tell me everything is maybe too wide, let’s rein it back in. So that’s level two, you’re hardwired into the other. And then level three, picture a radio station, picture a broadcast field that’s like a satellite where the signal is just out there and it’s the ether and it’s kind of the matrix, you can kind of see the ones and zeros around you and it’s an energy that is felt, you’re looking you’re watching, you’re observing, you’re sensing what’s going on, and this is what I think they teach in the military, I think they have people sit back to back in no dialogue and they just sense, they just be in community with each other.
What ends up happening is trust is built and a connection is built. Click To TweetI do this activity with groups where we illustrate one, two, and three by having people stand facing each other and just behold one another without words. It’s very weird. People kind of usually hate it because we’re not used to filling the space with words, but when we take away words, that’s the only time I know, and I’ve learned this through who I’ve worked with too, that we can replicate the feeling of what’s going on in our operating system, what’s happening with our physiology when we take away words. And so if we’re nervous, when we’re facing that person, like, “Oh, God, what do I look like? Where do I look?” That’s level one. When I usually give people a job to do or an assignment of really focus your energy without words on the other, be curious about them. How did they get here today? What’s their life like? What’s it like to be them? What do you want to be curious about right now? Suddenly, people forget how much time has gone by. Sometimes they get emotional because they’re just held in a moment with each other. And then it exponentially increases bonds among two people. “I’ve got your back. I’m here for you. I’m with you.” So it’s amazing for team building and they end up loving it. They hate it and then they like, this exercise of — I call it the stare down. The language of a level two speaker is, “Today, you’re going to learn more about the levels of awareness. I’m Megan Heffernan.” So, do you remember how I said my intro with level one?
Level one is like, “I’m gonna tell you about the levels of awareness.”
Yes. “I’m Megan Heffernan and I’m going to talk about the levels of awareness.” Most everybody begins their presentation that way. I guarantee you if you learn one thing from this podcast, that is to switch your language into, “Today, you’re going to explore the levels of awareness. Hi, I’m Megan Heffernan,” and just simply flip flop it, it’s just this huge invitation to your audience that you’ve accounted for them before you even begin speaking. And then level three is we. Level three is the global we. “Today, we’re going to explore the levels of awareness. I’m Megan Heffernan, I can’t wait to be here.” And level three is, “Oh, my gosh, what’s gonna happen in this moment? Nobody knows.” I mean, I kind of have to know because I’m the speaker, but it’s a gift to everybody. It’s a present, the presentation. Level three is when you had to moderate that panel. Steven, you probably have a sense of time.
Yeah, for sure. I had to like look at my watch and plan out the number. I planned out the number of questions based on the amount of time and having room for a Q&A for the audience.
And you probably had to design ahead of time with your panelists when we need to move on from panelist to panelist, I might hold my hand up or I might say this, to design that ahead of time as a moderator is huge level three because you’re honoring the energy of everybody.
Yeah, for sure. So, I didn’t end up having to do that, I had the scenarios in my head of what would happen if one of the panelists was like kind of going on and on for too long but, luckily, I selected such an amazing panel that nothing like that actually had to be used.
Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I love that you didn’t have to have that. There’s an awesome book I read by Priya Parker, I highly recommend it, it’s called The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker and she talks about this idea which is very level three of generous authority, where when you’re the moderator, when you’re in charge of that event, it’s on you to be kind of like the bouncer and the keeper, to keep it on track, to keep people on track, but you got to kind of design that ahead of time with your panelists. So, level three is thinking about the event the same way you would decorate and put food out for a party. You’re the host and those people are coming to your home, what do you have for them? What’s it going to be like? What’s it not going to be like for them? That’s level three. Are people sitting way far in the back? If so, how do you move yourself to them so that you can be heard and seen? Or could you bring them in to you? Is it freezing in the room? Could you ask to shift the thermostat? That’s level three, it’s the global awareness. It’s like you ran out of chairs, how as a servant leader do you elevate the event? So level three is like what do we want this experience to be as a global whole? And so, in conversation, level three could look something like this. Let’s do the exact same scenario. Steven, tell me about something that was interesting this last weekend.
Well, Saturday night, I really enjoyed going to two different meetups. I met up with some friends I had known for a while, several years, and then I also met up with new friends, new connections I had made during Startup Week.
And how was Startup Week?
Startup Week was really amazing. It’s one of the best ones in the world. Denver Startup Week, they do a great job organizing it. And in addition to my panel discussion around different generations’ experience with technology, there’s so much other great stuff from the founder track, the people track, the product track that I got to go to.
They design that brilliantly, don’t they? And they had such a great turnout. That is awesome. Where did you go for your meetups on Saturday?
My first one was a pizza place and then we kind of convened at my friend’s apartment and then the other one started at his apartment and then went to a silent disco.
Oh my gosh, the silent disco. I am so curious about that. You know what I’m thinking about? We have our annual meeting coming up and we’ve all been charged with designing our team retreat idea. What if we took our team to a silent disco and used that as a metaphor of we may have different genres playing but we work for the same company and we can have that as the umbrella mission over us all but still have a great time together. What do you think about that idea?
That’s a wonderful idea and there’s actually a person I can help get you in contact with. If you scroll back down through episodes of Action’s Antidotes, I actually interviewed Jason Gorley of CiferNoise who runs a silent disco company.
That would be fantastic and maybe our company and your company could do some kind of partnerships thing since you’ve been there before, you can kind of bring us into the fold a little bit. Maybe we could do some, I don’t know, partnership and innovation and resource sharing or something collaboration, if you will. Anyway, blah, blah, blah, so level three brings it like way out to what of it? What can we make of it and how cool can it be with each other? So, you can see how this really takes a person outside their own experience. In actuality, when we’re speaking or communicating, most people are in their own experience. And so when we have this thought of, “Oh, my gosh, how do I look? How do I sound?” most other people aren’t really paying attention to that. We think they are. We think we’re being very, very heavily scrutinized, when, in actuality, it’s most of the time the case that somebody else is very relieved that you’re up there and they’re not, that you’re taking one for the team, that you’re the speaker, the spokesperson, the message keeper and teller and they’re not.
Yeah.
And so the first words out of your mouth could be, “You’re welcome.” It’s just a mindset shift of getting out of your head and into the other and then really making it about what do I want them to leave with? What do I want them to look at? What do I want them to listen to? What do I want this experience to be? And really curate that for them. Because they’re there. They came. They came to see you. Honor that time and send them away with a parting gift, like a party favor. They’re at your house, you’ve just opened your doors, you’ve shown them the delicious things to try, you’ve given them a tour that is centered around their needs and then you’re sending them away with what to do about it. That’s kind of the trajectory of level one to level three. Does that make sense?
That makes perfect sense. I think what you’re getting out a little bit is that we tend to spend too much time in level one and not enough in level two and then especially level three. Is there a proper ratio? Because you do mention certain scenarios, it sounds like when you’re going to your therapist or your doctor, maybe it’s okay to be in level one because that’s all about your problems. When you’re on a first date or a second date even or even doing like kind of an informal interview of a specific person for a job candidate, maybe that’s a good time to be in level two because you’re really trying to get to know that specific person. But then in scenarios such as Startup Week, TED Talks, all these other types of events, even gatherings, parties, and stuff like that, it’s a better idea to be in level three. Is there a proper ratio and do you know anyone that spends too much time in level three?
If they did, they might not be super clear in that taking care in their communication, clear in their messaging, and only there to assist the other rather than the value adding in what they can contribute and so they may feel that they fall short in terms of substantive evidence of things. I don’t know if you can ever be too level three, though. Because level three also encompasses the other two. I forgot to mention that. Level three is there’s also a little bit of level two, a little bit of level one in there. But without the level three, I think that’s where the risk is because your audience walks away, like, “I didn’t really feel like they saw me or spoke to me or cared that I was there,” and we’ve all had that feeling. We’ve all definitely also had the feeling where we’ve been in like a funeral or a wedding or a church service and we feel like the words were made for us. We feel like, “Oh, I got goosebumps.” There’s just this energy, there’s this static spirit, that’s when we’re really rockin’ at our best with level three, when we open our hearts and our eyes and our ears to the spirit of the moment, the gift at hand. I think of like a map more so than a than a percentage pie chart, that’s Venn diagrams. So the speaker, the speech, and the audience in three different quadrants overlapping. And you can even draw that image for yourself, just do three intersecting circles, speaker, speech, and audience. Of course, in the very middle is where you’re rocking all levels evenly, effectively across the top. It’s enough to just know to start off with. Know without judgment or be aware without judgment. I love that offering in yoga, like just be there without judgment. And carry that map around with you and just start to observe events where put a dot, like a “You are here” arrow, this is where the speaker feels right now, they’re totally into themselves, the speaker, and they are forsaking the rest of the map. Or maybe that dot moves. Now, they’ve traveled over here, now they’ve traveled over here, I think that there is a level of movement and fluidity with that map. I couldn’t say for certain a hard and fast number or percentage. I think your scenarios are exactly right. If it’s a panel and there’s a public watching, you have to be very level three. I use this image of you are a mirror, a bridge, and a clock.
That’s a super level three experience. Going to a doctor’s appointment, very level one experience. Going to an interview can be level one, although you can make an interview level two, coming prepared with questions for them, asking what success looks like, asking about the leadership model in place there. That shows a company that you’ve done your research, that you don’t want just a job, you want that job. So I think any instance can have its level of level two and three.
Given the focus on STEM for the last quarter of a century, we want everything to be like an algorithm, if/then/else, right?
Yes.
And that’s not how some of the most important things in life work. So, my quasi-ridiculous question of the day is going to be that I’m a big hip hop fan. I know about rappers such as Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Big Sean, who will make these raps and even recently I’ve gotten really into Jack Harlow and they’ll have these stories that are about themselves and it’s a very autobiographical rap song, yet you also feel a part of it. So, question is, how does that fit into the levels where they’re telling a story about themselves but it’s a story that so many listeners can see themselves in?
Hmm, that is such a cool question. That’s not crazy at all or whatever word you used. I love that. Because you’re talking about like the biopic, the autobiography, we watch these documentaries, there’s one coming out with whoever that awesome actor is portraying Bob Marley. I think it’s essential to know these people beyond their output, to know a person beyond what they produce, and I think that that invites us into seeing the multidimensionality of a person, either part of a movement or that they’re not just what we’ve ever perceived them to be, they’re so very much more. Take a step into my life with me and into my shoes and walk a bit with me, I think is essential. And I don’t think it begrudges the audience at all of attention on to them. I think that that becomes a very personal exchange between the reader or the learner or the listener and that person who had the bravery to put themselves into their hands.
And then now that we’ve had so many different methods of communication blow up over the last quarter to half a century, are there certain methods of communication that naturally lend themselves more to level one, level two, or level three?
For sure, I would imagine, like I said, a white paper article or a written blog post or something like that is pretty level one because there’s no exchange, it’s just unidirectional — one direction, rather. Level two, you and I are on a Zoom call right now which is also being recorded, I feel connected to you right now, but if we were wanting to open this up to an event, obviously, I wouldn’t want it to be on a platform, I would want it to be in person somewhere. I think that it’s very difficult to garner the same connection and feeling among a group of people digitally. I get the need, I understand and appreciate the necessity, for sure, but it has changed our connective tissue. Because, on a meeting, the camera comes, man, I’ve got to like fill my time with stuff of import, so it makes it a little bit more level one because I’m on camera, I have to fill this time with just me talking head talking. Whereas if we were sitting around a table with each other and we had kind of the energetic spirit around us, it might lend itself a little bit more to a side comment here and somebody noticing a furrowed brow and picking up on that and taking a second pass at what they were saying. Online, it’s just a little manufactured, it’s a little stiff, it’s a little, “I’m on camera so I’m gonna take my place here and fill this,” and then in order to query with my audience, they’re going to have to come off mute and turn their camera on and then there’s all kinds of hiccups and so it doesn’t lend itself great to a large group, collective. It depends on what the meeting is about, though, right? Like are we making decisions? Are we collaborating or are we just announcing something right now? What is this for? And I think that’s an important question to ask. Yeah, what is this for? What is this? This is an announcement. This is an invitation. This is a discussion. Those are three very different needs, which I think would require three different mediums. What do you think?
Well, one of the things that I’ve become kind of concerned about with some of these platforms is that thinking about it in the context of these levels is whether or not social media as a platform, whether it’s Instagram, Twitter, X or Q or whatever it is now, or Facebook or TikTok is somewhat encouraging people to go back into level one in a way because you’re asynchronously just exposing, “This is what I did.” It’s all about, “Here’s a picture of my trip,” “Here’s my thoughts on this particular topic,” until you get to the part where you’re commenting back and forth and then that could become a little bit more level two, but what I’m concerned about is whether or not they’re training our brains a little bit to be a little bit more level one and then that starts to show up in our everyday conversations as more and more you see people talking to each other but are they really talking to each other or are they talking through each other in a way.
And what’s the function? Is it to post something or to learn something? If I went on to LinkedIn right now, would I feel compelled to write a frenzy and get in there and post something? Or what if I challenged myself today where I was simply beholding information and maybe liking things or commenting on things but today was just a day of intake and not of putting something out there. Maybe today was just a day of, “Really nice article, thank you for your time and talent.” Maybe today is just about connecting two people to each other. That might be a really cool challenge to put on ourselves so that we’re not passively receiving something or using something only for our own promotional purposes. I like the idea of that. I like getting on social media to thank, connect, and collaborate more than promote. And tomorrow maybe I’ll promote. Maybe I think that is scheduled.
You still need to.
Yeah, exactly. So many people just promote. There’s always more we can be doing with any interaction. There’s always more you and me both could be doing to extend ourselves further, to learn further. It’s scary. If we ask a question, we might happen upon a topic that we’re uncertain of or an area where we’ve never been before, we’re suddenly a tourist in this foreign land, so I think people maybe keep it to themselves because that they know, and I think they think they’re relating but instead they’re just staying safe. But I get it. There’s a lot of vulnerability and stepping outside yourself into the other because you’re not quite sure what you’re going to get —
Yeah, for sure.
— but I would hope for you that what you’re going to get is great.
I mean, it’s wonderful to step out of our comfort zone and part of that is, and this is something I’ve covered on previous episodes, this is something that was covered in Startup Week, is also making a conscious effort to connect with people that are a little bit, quote-unquote, “outside ourselves” because there’s a whole notion of like attracting like and if the people you’re sitting with, the people you’re talking with are always people that are exactly like you, you’re less likely to be stepping out of that comfort zone than if you consciously try to find a way to connect with someone who’s very different than you for all the various reasons people can be different.
For sure. I think that’s all that unconscious bias is about, right?
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, the best — I think the most powerful phrase a person can say to another person is, “Tell me more.” If you don’t agree with something, tell me more. If you do agree with something, tell me more. If you are curious about something, tell me more. There’s just so many ways that that can be used and it’s such an invitation. And a consolation too of like, “I’m with you, I’m here beside you.” So I would recommend in addition to trying out the level two and level three is trying that phrase out too, “Tell me more.”
“Tell me more” is a great thing to hear.
There’s this icebreaker game I heard about one time where it was underwhelming news so everybody kind of opened up the floor and they were like, “I swapped out the shelf in my kitchen to put heavier stuff on the bottom than above.”
Yeah.
It’s very underwhelming but we don’t often, especially online, make space for really neutral stuff, it always has to be of import and we have all this pressure to produce. What if we were to just, “How is everybody? Tell me more. Let’s have an agenda-free item.” “But we don’t have any time.” I get that too.
And you get that feeling like this is a waste of time, like if I were to tell you the less interesting story from my weekend, that I lost one of my lighters and I had to go to the 7-Eleven and buy a new one, my impression of the average person would be like —
Right, tell me more.
— like that’s a waste of time. Exactly.
I know. But the audacity to be seen or heard, man, I mean, it’s rough stuff being a person. If we cut ourselves some slack and be like, “Oh, this last weekend, I went into my backyard and noticed all of the upkeep I haven’t been doing.”
Yeah, yeah.
As opposed to taking a picture of anything after the fact, taking a picture of something, this very much is in need of improvement. Yeah, I mean, there’s a level of authenticity there that might feel welcoming to people. Level one, level two, and level three is just an invitation to step outside yourself and into the other, to learn more, to collaborate better, and to create awesomeness.
And I love the whole thought about giving yourself some slack and also giving each other some slack, because maybe someone’s story that they’re telling you, maybe you do think it’s kind of a waste of your time but maybe that person doesn’t, maybe that person is in a different spot and maybe that person is genuinely just trying to find a way to connect with you and just had a swing and a miss and just kind of, if there’s a way we can kind of move on and just let that happen and just continue trying to connect with one another.
We’re just people. We’re just people milling about each other in small talk all the time. I mean, and then these presentations have expectation to have nothing like small talk, just this is important, all important talk. I’m trying to make that big bad other feel like every day so that we can kind of take it down a little bit off of its pedestal, and I do have an algorithm for you, actually. I’ve been using this recently and it’s the transitive property. Do you remember that one? A lot of times, people say, “Public speaking really isn’t part of my job. I don’t have to do that much but I’ll look into hiring you for individual coaching or a group program another time when I do have an event,” and I’ll say, “Oh, public speaking isn’t just something you have to do for your job on occasion. It is your job. You’re doing it all of the time. All of the time you’re engaging and you’re trying to transfer knowledge or impart it on to somebody else, that’s public speaking. That’s the exchange of information happening in real time.” And so the algorithm is we choose our jobs ostensibly because we like them and we’re hired because we’re good at them so we’re kind of connected and sort of synonymous with our job, so you are X, you chose your job which is Y, and then your job also Y equals speaking, public speaking, Z, then transitive property would have us understand it X equals Z. Did I just explain that horribly?
Well, A is the —
X equals Y and Y equals Z, X equals Z, do you see what I’m saying?
Yeah, the transitive — I’m remembering my fifth grade math or whatever it was.
I know. Whatever it was. Exactly. If your job is public speaking and you like your job, you like public speaking, yay.
Nice. And then one final question, one of the things I bemoan kind of the most about this current era is the prevalence of loneliness, how people don’t feel connected to one another. What is one thing anyone in the audience can do today or tomorrow, whatever time or day you’re listening to this, to be better communicators to hopefully facilitate better connections and produce a less lonely life and a less lonely world going forward?
You’re making me feel emotional here. You’re so right, that is definitely top of mind and on our hearts is our connection, our lack thereof. We had a time here where we couldn’t be together and now we can. So one thing we can do is what are we going to do about it?
The gift of being in the moment with another person is fleeting, apparently, and amazing. Click To TweetSo one thing we can think about is what dish we’re bringing to that party. Don’t come empty handed. Show up to that meeting, show up to that event, show up online and leave something at the table. “Here’s what I have for you all today,” and then the phrase with whatever you hear back, “Tell me more.”
Excellent. “Tell me more,” and I think you said it before, you said it again, “Tell me more” is something that I hadn’t thought about because I’m always thinking I need to ask you a specific follow-up question, kind of level two, if you know what I mean —
Yes.
— but just tell me more because there’s also this discussion about open-ended questions and how they can actually facilitate way more learning, like what color silent disco, what was your favorite part, what did you like about it, what did you not like about it, did anyone get in a fight, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, you’re super good at this, Steven. You’re level two and level three. I mean, you have to be as a podcast interviewer.
Yeah, for sure.
You have to facilitate the conversation with me, the interviewee, but when you hosted that panel, some people have a real knack for it of community connection and making space for a topic that might not be kind of in your lexicon, vocabulary but I really admire you for bringing people on to talk about their topics and how you can converse about so freely and warmly. You have a real talent there.
Well, thank you very much. I always love hearing how much the guests I bring on to the show enjoy the interviews, enjoy the interview styles and enjoy being able to kind of talk a bit about what you all do, in your specific case, what you do but talk about it from kind of a specific perspective, from a specific point of view, point of reference of like really just trying to help people with kind of a little bit of a mindset of society at large because that’s a little bit of like level three in the panel, level three was of course the whole audience but in something that you’re putting out to the entire world potentially, anyone can go on to Spotify, anyone can go on to Apple and download this podcast episode or go on to the website, you’re almost thinking about the whole world.
You’ve harnessed that medium for that exact opportunity. That’s really cool, and I hope that it reaches that large of an audience. It’s a great aspect of digital media, for sure, and I really appreciate it that we can have meetings with people all over the world and global connection, makes a ton of sense. It’s great.
Yeah.
Let’s see, I was just going to say something. Anyway, this has been great.
Thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling us a little bit about how we can be better communicators and what we can do to bring something to the people that we’re meeting up with, whether you’re going to your friend’s party or whether you’re going to go up on stage, and I would also like to thank everyone in the audience for taking time out to listen to Action’s Antidotes today. Hopefully, you got a lot out of this discussion and, hopefully, you can find this story and a bunch of other stories that I also share something to inspire you to go out there and build the life that you truly want.
Love that. Be well, everybody. Let me know where I can help.
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About Megan Heffernan
Speech and Media Coach, Megan Heffernan, puts the public in public speaking, helping business presenters connect with their audience and revitalize their meetings, gatherings and events. Fusing her production and performance background together into dynamic coaching, Megan offers individuals and teams a full-body preparation process for any communication and transformative interpersonal tools that benefit workplace culture and beyond. Book your 1-1 coaching package or customize your next group program today! www.megaphonecoaching.com