Camille Rapacz: Communication just might be the number one problem I hear from leaders. The problem shows up in both directions. They seek out support for how to better communicate to others. And they struggle with a lack of communication to them from others in the organization.
And let's be honest, communication can be a very tricky skill to master, but all the more reason to focus on it. Because if you can improve your communication skills, you will not only improve your own experience at work, you will stand out as a high performer.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful business.
I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille Rapacz: Hello, George. Hi, Camille.
I just did a little intro here that said communication might be the number one problem that leaders experience. Does this resonate with you?
George Drapeau: To me, it's the number one problem for sure, but that's because I'm smart and a good thinker and a great manager and a good leader.
And I like communicating.
Camille Rapacz: So says the man whose team is probably listening in.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I do think it's the number one problem. I think everything flows from that, but I'm trying to think what other answers people would give, like, especially people who are real drivers in business that maybe aren't the best communicators, what would they say is more important?
I don't know.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, it's tough because business is complicated and there are lots of things that are important to it. But the thing I find over and over again tends to be at the heart of these challenges, it's often just around communication and here's why.
I think it's because communication means so many things. So on the one hand, there's a lot of different forms of communication. There's written, there's verbal, there's non verbal, and now we have video conference, we're all learning how to communicate in this new mode. So there's these forms of communication.
We have to master all these different things. Then there's types of communication. So we're delivering feedback. We're doing presentations. We've got conflict resolution, collaboration, negotiation skills, coaching, mentoring, crisis communication, networking motivation. There are so many. Yeah. So you look at this list, right, of all these different types of communication and no wonder we're all struggling to be really good at this! Because I might be really great at giving feedback and horrible at my presentation skills.
Does that mean I'm a good communicator or a bad communicator? This is the challenge.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm tired.
Camille Rapacz: You're tired. Just thinking about all the communication skills you have yet to master? Let's start in my favorite place, which is, I mean, I'm either starting with the definition or I'm always starting with why.
So this time we're starting with why I think I just laid out the, what communication is.
So, why this matters, I think it's obvious, but let's just be crystal clear. If you're experiencing confusion, chaos, misalignment, increased conflict in your team, tension, unproductive disagreements in your team, low morale, low engagement, these are all things that can be caused by poor communication.
And by poor, I mean either there's a lack of communication, like there isn't communication happening or the communication that is happening is not effective in achieving its intended goals. So that's when I say poor communication. It could be that it's either non existent or that it's just not done well.
George Drapeau: May I add something to this that just occurred to me as you're talking? Yes. It's a very unstudied, informal thought. So, Take it with a big grain of salt. I think as humans, I mean, not only I'm stating the obvious, we're social beings, but communication for us is where it all starts. I mean, it's in our lizard brain.
If you think about how you want to punish somebody, give them the silent treatment. Be quiet for a while. Don't talk to them, be with them, but don't talk to them. It freaks people out. When you're just not communicating, not answering questions, not replying to them really angers people. I mean, basic lack of communication, it just shows you how much we crave it.
So I think, you know, at just a base human level, we need communication. We need to be communicated with. And it doesn't take much to get us uneasy, to drop morale, nervous, agitated. All that stuff.
Camille Rapacz: I think you're right. Again, not scientifically proven, but yeah,
George Drapeau: but it's true.
Camille Rapacz: But you heard it here on this podcast. So that makes it true.
So what I really wanted to talk about today, because we're talking about communication and we always want to help people with, well, what do I do about it? It's one thing to say how important it is. I thought maybe we could focus on a few things that you can do to improve.
The first thing I think when it comes to being a good communicator, one of the most important things is clarity. So do you know what message you want to deliver before you start talking?
Do you clearly articulate your message? Do you avoid using jargon or filler words? Do you avoid ambiguity? I think about this one all the time, especially in this very moment as we are recording a podcast. Yes. Cause I find that doing this with you, it gives me a place to practice because even though I have notes, it's not verbatim.
So I start talking and sometimes I think, Oh, am I talking too much? Or am I getting unclear the more that I talk? You think you're trying to clarify your point, but you're just talking more. So I have found that doing this and listening to myself on the podcast has been very helpful in hearing filler words and jargon.
What do you notice in others when they're not communicating clearly? What are the indicators that you can tell, oh, they're lacking clarity in their communication right now.
George Drapeau: One thing I come back to all the time, and sitting with me recently, is lack of crispness.
Just people running on. One indicator to me is when I hear people ask questions, the questions just go on and on and on, when it could be a five word question. And it doesn't have to be mean or terse, it's just succinct. So I guess I would say, which I'm doing right now, running on and on is one indicator that the communication isn't so clear.
Another one, if I hear somebody presenting and it's just clear they have not practiced what they've presented, they've not run through the thoughts in their mind. You could tell they just thought, I know kind of what I want to say. I'm just going to start talking once I get up there. I'm sure it'll come out fine.
And it does not because they have not really thought through clearly what they're doing. Those are two things that really. Look at me all the time, jargon is a big one for me and I'm going to try to avoid talking about that because I have many pet peeves about language uses and jargon and people doing that in business speak and I'm not sure why.
I don't know if it's laziness or people wanting to do the language, the vernacular of the day or what's going on, but it really, it really bugs me. And oftentimes the jargon is more complicated than just speaking plain English. I don't know what's going on with that.
Camille Rapacz: Those are great. When you were talking about the run on conversations to run on people that are just like about 30 minutes ago. Yeah, that we both also have done. So, yes, we are all susceptible to this. But I do notice it. It's something that I think about a lot, when I'm hanging out with my other fellow business owners and they don't necessarily get an opportunity, depending on what their job is to really talk about what they do or how they do it.
And so if they are given the floor in any of these events, they tend to ramble or they just aren't clear and concise, or it's like, wow, somebody's listening to me for a change and they don't want to stop talking. There's something in there about not being able to get right to the point and just not understanding even what the point is of the communication that they're laying out. We all have this challenge, no matter what we're trying to do, we have this challenge right here on this podcast. So the nice thing is we can edit stuff out when we think it's taking too long. So maybe people don't notice.
George Drapeau: I have a theory about questions when people ask questions that go on for too long. And just one of the reasons I suspect that people ask us long questions is because they don't feel empowered. They don't feel like they have the right to ask the question. And when you're feeling nervous about that, you tend to go on and use a lot of words instead of just saying.
Can I have this, please? Or can you explain this to me or a quick question? Because when you succinct in your questions, there's a certain power that comes with an authority. And I think some people feel like, I don't know if I have the authority to ask this question. So if I say just what I want, that's going to sound rude or something.
And so I'm going to cover it up.
Camille Rapacz: And related to that, I think another reason is that some people use asking a question to actually make a point they want to make without being direct. Yeah. So their point is built into the question. And so it gets long.
This is related to also when I think about clarity. What you were just describing, it's tied to confidence as well. So sometimes people are clear about what they want to convey, but they just don't have the confidence to do it clearly and succinctly, whether they think it's going to sound rude because they're being too short, maybe it won't be well received, whatever the reason is, they lack some confidence.
And we add words, most of us, when we're nervous or anxious or don't feel confident, we talk more, which is kind of ironic, I think, but yeah.
So this is another space when we think about having clarity where confidence is really important, and it leads me to the next area of improvement, which is emotional intelligence. The second thing to focus on in developing better communication skills is do you know how to read a room?
Are you practicing empathy? Are you aware of and managing the expression of your own emotions? While also being aware of others? And this is really important because if you want your message to land well, if you want it to be effective, you need to be aware of how it may be or is being perceived. Either by the way you're conveying it or by knowing your audience and the various perspectives within that audience and how they're going to perceive what you say, because what you say, you need to remember that every single individual in that room has a different perception. How they're receiving your message is different for every single individual.
It might be really small for some people, but there'll be bigger gaps for other people. And I think that's something that's really easy to forget is, well, I sent my message out, so everybody got it, And yes, but there are nuanced differences in how people are receiving it. And you have to remember that that's what's happening, all the time.
George Drapeau: Completely agree. It reminds me of something I think about. As you go up the management ranks, especially at large companies. I have this kind of rough rule of thumb, which is the higher up in management you go, the less funny can allow yourself to be. Maybe sound weird, but it's because your words have much more power than you ever think they do.
And at the CEO level, everything you say gets scrutinized by many people all the time. They're picking apart every single word, much more so than you are. I've seen this happen where I've seen people get promoted to director level and they keep their same smart aleck sense of humor and it destroys them because at director level, everybody's taking them seriously and they don't realize it. And they're saying things that, it's just, it's crazy. They're not reading the room. They're not thinking about the impact of the words. They don't realize that it's context dependent. And the context for them is, I'm a senior leader now.
Everybody takes me seriously, even if I don't.
Camille Rapacz: It makes me think about how we talk so much about being an authentic leader. And this is where people screw it up. Being an authentic leader doesn't mean I'm still my same old jokey self as I become a director or a VP. I need to have the appropriate thought process and filter as I talk about things, and I don't mean filter things out like, keep secrets.
I mean, you want to keep, of course, your corporate level secrets, but you know what I mean? It's not that. It's really that I'm thinking about, okay, what position do I hold and how do I need to present myself? What is the proper way for me to show up in this role that I have now that I'm, carrying a bigger level of responsibility and that means I need to show up differently.
There's a real thing about executive presence and that comes from how you communicate and engage with other people. And yes, recognizing, I think, as you go up, that's a great example, just thinking about that. How do you use humor? And how do you still stay connected with people when you can't joke around in the same way you would have when you were just their peer working down at a manager level?
I think it's really hard as people are moving through those ranks to understand and recognizing themselves because to themselves, they're like, I'm not any different. I'm still the same person. I still enjoy the same jokes. How do I operate differently at these other levels?
*This is why a lot of people go get coaches, executive coaches. They come to people like me for help because they want to know how do I show up and demonstrate not only that I have the skills to do this, but I also have the presence to hold this role? Emotional intelligence is a big part of that. Understanding that managing and the expression of your own emotions, it becomes more and more important the more responsibility you get in an organization to be able to manage that. *
How teachable do you think this is?
This is teachable to anybody who genuinely wants to understand it. I kind of feel that way about most things. Anybody who's like, hey, I really want to get better at this. There is a path for them to improve.
Now, is there a ceiling for some people on just how good they can get? Sure. But I think everybody can learn how to do this well. Some people it comes much more naturally to, like they're just kind of built this way. And other people really have to practice. They just haven't maybe seen good examples of it or been around it a lot, and they need to have more practice.
But I think anybody who wants to learn how to, have more emotional intelligence in their work, yeah, absolutely.
George Drapeau: What do agree with you. I'm listening to what you said about components like, do you read the room? Do you practice empathy?
Between those two, to me, teaching empathy is easier than teaching somebody how to read the room. And I have to think about why I think that way. I wonder if that's just way for me or for other people. I don't know. But I do think it's all teachable.
Camille Rapacz: It is all teachable.
Let's talk about number three.
This is very related. And we've talked about this before, but it's active listening. Related to emotional intelligence somewhat, but it's a very specific skill and it's an absolute must. You cannot be a clear communicator if you can't listen well.
Sometimes I think we think of communication as I'm sending information to you, like one directional. But even if you're presenting or you're teaching and something is primarily a one directional communication, it's still a two way street.
George Drapeau: Oh, an experiment we should do is going to mess with you though is sometime when you're talking, I should just be still like, people can't see me now, but I'm reacting all the time.
I know you pick up on it cause you know, brother and sister, but what if I were just stone faced. No physical reaction to anything that you said. It'd freak you out, wouldn't it?
Camille Rapacz: It'd be weird. It would. I would probably take my notes page and I would slide it over the zoom window so I couldn't see your sad face.
Yeah.
George Drapeau: You would think something's wrong.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. He's not helping me at all. I don't even want to look at him. Yeah. Very true. Very true.
That's just one way of active listening is your body language. I know we think listening is like the words, but the reading the room is the watching the body language too.
The importance of listening. And you don't have to think about responding in a physical way. If you're genuinely listening. It will be happening.
I've had people react this way where, you know, if you ever had somebody's talking to you and they'll say, Oh, what made you smile just now? And you're like, Oh, I did? You weren't really super conscious of the fact that you just got a little smile or a smirk on your face or tilted your head, or you made some sort of little small physical gesture that they noticed, but you didn't really think about. That's because you were actively listening and you're just naturally responding to what they're saying.
That's what you want to get good at. I think of this is, I wonder what I could learn from this person or about this person, just by really listening and not trying to think about what I'm going to say next.
I also think of this as, in order to get good at active listening, this is a way to get smarter. And I think we underestimate the value of that. I really could get smarter just by listening to this person, genuinely listening to them. I have an opportunity here. So if you're going to do that, you get into this mode of, you know, either get ready for, occasionally you might be in an agree to disagree moment.
So you might discover something there like, Oh, we're on different sides of the fence on this. Okay. But what's even better is when you get ready for someone to potentially change your mind. That's when you're really all in on what somebody has to say. Doesn't happen that often, but it does happen. And I love when people are open to the idea that, I don't know, I could be convinced. Let's talk some more. That's when some really good exchange with active listening in both directions is going on.
George Drapeau: I have a driving question that I think helps me with mine. I think I'm pretty good at listening, pretty good at active listener.
And I think it's because I have a naturally inquisitive nature. Always have with very few filters. But if you're not that way, I think one thing you can do as a technique to help you be an active listener is before you go into a conversation or a meeting, ask yourself, what do I think I want to learn from this interaction?
And if you come with this, that thinking I'm, my goal is to learn something, you're going to tend to do two things. You're going to tend to pay better attention and listen. And you're going to tend, if you're good at it, to come with some questions. You're actively studying, you're actively listening that way. All just from asking yourself, what do I want to learn?
Which I don't think is a common mindset for people coming to a meeting. They don't often, ask what I want to learn. They ask, what do I want to accomplish? What do I want to get done? Or what do I want to tell people? I don't think many people come into meetings asking what they want to learn.
Camille Rapacz: I agree with this so much. I think when we think about active listening as a aspect of good communication, it does get skipped over for this reason, because we think communication is I need to go in and get something out of these people. I need to accomplish something, not in a bad way, but just like I'm supposed to, like, I'm supposed to get stuff done when I go in this meeting or in this conversation or whatever it is.
And my communication is how I'm doing it. I'm presenting something, or I'm facilitating a conversation, whatever that is. And so we're only thinking of this one way street. We're not thinking about the two way street. Because you can do both. I need to accomplish this decision, but I also want to learn something in the process.
Both of those things happening will actually make it easier to get to whatever outcome you're looking for. Because when you seek to understand first, when you really do that active listening, you are also building trust in a really huge way. And that makes anything that you're trying to accomplish easier. Whether you're trying to make a decision as a group, or you're trying to sell people on an idea or whatever you're trying to accomplish. When you're actively listening, and you're really there to genuinely learn something, and it has to be genuine, because people know the difference. But if you do that, you're building trust, you're building respect, and all the other work gets a lot easier.
George Drapeau: Completely agree.
Camille Rapacz: Let's move on to number four.
Number four is adaptability. So your ability to adapt your communication style is critical to being able to communicate successfully. Often I'll see leaders who are great communicators in one way, such as motivating their team, but then they're really inadequate when it comes to something like presenting in front of a room of colleagues, they don't adapt their style.
They're just kind of stuck in the same mode and you've got to adapt your style and your approach to all these. Kind of relates to when I was saying, there's all these different types of communication that we need to do. Yeah, well, these require different types of skills and approaches, and you're going to need to practice these in order to get good at them.
So having some deliberate practice around this, knowing which areas you want to work on. And then doing some very thoughtful, deliberate practice. By deliberate I mean, what does good look like to you? And then how am I going to get some feedback? How am I going to get some coaching that will help me improve on how I'm doing? Whether I'm, improving my presentation skills or improving my one on one feedback skills, whatever it is, you're trying to work on doing some kind of deliberate practice will help.
But I think this idea of thinking about adapting your communication style , and you're going to do it multiple times a day as a leader. You're in all sorts of different scenarios. The first thing I would say is just be very conscious every day of the fact that probably every hour in your day, there's some different mode of communication you're moving into. Just having an awareness is the first place to start, just thinking about that.
George Drapeau: That really, really makes concrete what you said we're talking about earlier in the podcast about all these different modes of communication and different things that we're doing. Making an ask of somebody, communicating organizational information, informal information.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm thinking about myself. Somebody made a comment to me yesterday that they said, well, I really like how you write email. This is somebody new to me. I asked him, do you mean? That's very nice of you to say, but why? Thank you. And what he said was you know, because it sounds like you, it sounds like it's coming from your heart.
I know what he's talking about.
I write conversationally. The way I write is basically exactly how I talk. It tends to be not very formal, because pretty fluid, I think I speak pretty fluidly, but I write like this too. So when you read me, you can hear my voice talking, I think more than most people. But I don't write that way when I'm reporting status to somebody higher up, for example, it's not appropriate.
It's too conversational. I explicitly think about changing and making everything shorter and more terse and forceful if that's a way to think about it. do adapt. I have to.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. I love this example because you just brought it down to the level that I think is most important and that I didn't make clear enough and you just did.
So thank you. Which is that it's not about adapting just like I write emails differently than I present in front of a room. It's that you're adapting your communication style just for email. So I have one style when I'm writing this type of email, I have another style of writing when it's a different type of email.
So it's about what you're communicating as much as it is about the format that you're using. So email by itself, it just requires a different style of communication than, talking to people in a room. But even within that you're adapting, like I have different styles that I'll use depending on what I need to get done through this email.
Whether it's going to be more personable or whether it's going to be a status update. Or like for me, it's a, I have actual assigned tasks in here for people that they need to respond to. That'll look very different then a conversational meet and greet email or a thank you email. All of those things have sort of a different look and feel and you can start to templatize these things for yourself of like, Oh yeah, when I do this email, it kind of looks like this.
These are my standards for how I'm going to do that. Which I think is important and it helps it make it easier for you to just adapt your style and makes communication easier for everybody.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Think about like this, you don't write a love letter the same way you write a thank you note.
Pretty different. Not hard to understand. You need to write them differently.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. But I find people don't think about it often enough. We see leaders where like, man, all their emails are the same weirdly terse. I don't really have time for this.
Cause I'm just like trying to respond to all my emails as fast as possible. I think that's probably why you got the comment you got, which is like, most people are just doing that and there's no personality in there at all. Also, most people can't type as fast as you do. So that's true. There's that.
That helps. Those one, two finger typists they're suffering.
This last one is right up your alley. Technology. Oh, yeah.
So the reason I wanted to touch on this one is, I see people underutilize and overutilize technology tools for communication all the time. Whether it's using messaging platforms like slack or teams, project management software, video conference tools, simply just shared folders and documents. Like there's all sorts of different tools out there for communicating. And they're really powerful tools.
But I hear over and over again from people how not useful the tools are that they have in their business. I'll hear, yeah, we have that, but we don't really use it. And I think, wow, that's really interesting. I wonder why you have that tool if you're not using it ?Or, you know, all everybody uses this thing and now it's useless because it's just kind of flooded with junk.
Like there was no structure or process or guidelines around it. And so now it's just flooded and been overused and now it has become useless. Yeah. So I find this a really interesting problem. And this is just my theory, which is that I think that because we have all this great technology that we think we should use, but we don't really use well, because we don't take time to figure out the best way to use those tools I think our default ends up, then we end up in a meeting.
So instead of using some, great tool to update everybody on the status of a project, we have a meeting. Instead of, using some great Slack channel to communicate back and forth with my team and keep everybody in line, I have a meeting.
Making sure you that you have the rules of engagement for these tools is really important in order for them to work effectively. The tool by itself is not magic, and this is what we get wrong. Like you have to set the rules and the guidelines and expectations for how everybody will use this tool together.
Otherwise, it really does become useless. So I have this idea in my head that tech businesses like the one you're in, George, do this better than other. Most of my clients are not tech companies. And so I had this little idea in my head that, Oh, I'm sure though the tech guys don't have this problem.
Am I wrong about that?
George Drapeau: A great question. I have to think about that. There's still room for improvement. I can think of two specific examples. Long time ago, I was at Sun Microsystems, and we were collaborating with Netscape. And at the time, Sun and Netscape were very different companies. Netscape was a completely open source company.
Published all the stuff they did to the web and this very, very open, loose culture about how they did engineering. And Sun was much more buttoned up and structured about how we did engineering and my engineers were supposed to work with the Netscape engineers. And we used Sun style communications to try to influence the Netscape people or get things done.
And after not very long, they came to me and they said, you're good people, but you're pissing us off because you're just coming to us with a bunch of stuff. You're not doing things the way we want to be communicated with. First of all, if you want to make changes, we want everybody to see the conversations because we're trying to recruit more people to do stuff.
But you guys are always coming to us at our desk and talking to us one on one when we're busy and then nobody else hears the conversation. So can you please use the IRC channels, the chat channels that people are using? That's how we do it.
We're like, well, what happens all the time is I ask a question, there's no answer and then it goes away.
Like, I'd rather use email or go to somebody's desk. You're voting there. If it's important enough, somebody will answer. If it fades away, it wasn't that important, make a better case. Repeat your question, do what you need to do. We just have not grokked that whole style of communication to get things done.
Eventually we learned, but I had to go back to the team and have a talk with them about like, okay, we've got to change how we're doing this. Those more successful ones of you will adapt. And I could see it was fascinating watching which people from that quick talk immediately adapted and which people were just dragging their feet.
They could not make the change, they never became effective. That's one story.
The other thing I'll say is I do think generally the tech companies would latch on to new technology. And if it's instituted in the company, people get it pretty quickly with some wailing and gnashing of teeth.
But I also find that because there are so many methods of communication, one of the things that I do when I'm introducing myself to people across or down one of my early questions is how do you like to be communicated with?
And if they don't know what that means, I'll say, look, there's different ways, phone calls, email, texting, slack, whatever prioritize them for me. How do you like to do it? And that helps because people will think about it and say, Oh, I love phone calls. Just get on the phone.
Or like me. I hate phone calls. Please do that last.
And then when they can answer me more, they'll say more like, well, you know what, for some things, just send me a Slack message. I'll usually respond to it right away, but for something that requires more thought or whatever the condition is, use email.
And so if I ask them that question, I will find most people, if they think about it, they have a framework for what tools they use for what kind of messages they get, but they've just never had an explicit conversation about it. And in the tech companies, I think generally. We have common implicit knowledge about when to use slack versus email versus a video conference. Not completely, but generally we do.
Camille Rapacz: Interesting.
What I'm hearing is, I think tech companies generally are better. You still have room for improvement. The non tech companies where that's not a primary tool that they're using in their job, I think they struggle more with it, because it's not a front and center for them all the time.
Like also, I think if you're in the tech world, you tend to be interested in that stuff more like, oh, there's this new tool. Let's all learn it. But even that example you gave of, oh, some people on the team took to this, new way of communicating and others didn't so much. I think that's really important when you think about communication is setting those expectations within your team of how we intend to use technology to be effective.
And it can't just be a, you know, I don't like it. So I'm not going to use it. I see this happen a lot. And I'm like, well, no wonder your technology is not being used well. You let people opt out. You let people end around the process and no process is going to survive that.
So you really do have to make some choices. And commit to how you're going to communicate as a team internally. That's how I feel about technology. I think it's an incredible useful tool that people are screwing up all the time. And so they're like, Oh, I hate technology. It's not the technology's fault.
It's our fault. We're not creating the right processes to use it effectively. So yeah, I agree. Anybody pooping on technology, stop it.
All right. There are many other things that you could do to improve your communication skills, but I'm going to just stop with those. We'll probably have plenty more conversations on this podcast about communication.
I have so many ideas. Awesome. Now I'm going to leave it there. Any last words that you have, George, about communication skills?
George Drapeau: No. I think this is great. This covers a lot of ground. I do have one last word. For all these things, I think they're all teachable and improvable if you pay attention, as you said earlier. If you feel like you're not particularly good at communication, fear not, it's something you can get better at.
Camille Rapacz: I hear people all the time who are, now speaking at like a TED talk or, getting in front of rooms. I mean, I feel this way myself. I never used to be comfortable with getting in front of a room and doing a presentation . I was never comfortable with that in the beginning.
I didn't just like start out this way. It took me time and practice and getting feedback to get good and feel comfortable with it. And I'm an introvert. So even that, like terrifying of being on a stage, I overcame all of that just by practicing and getting really good feedback about what I was doing.
So anybody can learn how to do this. And if you want to stand out as a leader, it's a number one thing you've got to be good at. You've just got to be good with crisp, clear communication, lots of different styles and modes. You just got to be able to do all of them well. So put this at the top of your list on your journey of continuous improvement, your leadership skills, set a goal for yourself for the year.
Pick one aspect of communication that you want to start working on. Whether it's about how you communicate with your boss, how you communicate in front of a room with presentation skills, negotiation skills, whatever it is, just pick something that you think would make a difference and, get to work. It's going to bring you so many other benefits. It's amazing. Yeah.
If you need help, you know what I'm going to say, you should book a call with me and we'll talk about it because this is what I do. So you can go to CamilleRapaz.
com slash book a call. There's a link in the show notes and we'll chat about it and see what kind of support you might need. Yes. Do it.
All right. Thank you, George, for this lovely podcast.
George Drapeau: It's lovely spending the time with you as always.
Camille Rapacz: Thanks for listening and we will be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See you next time. Hope you have a good week, everybody.
