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What do real, human conversations look and sound like in the workplace today?
Claire Pedrick joined me for this fascinating discussion where we explored the nuances and signals of professional communication that make or break human connection.
Uncover the power dynamics that shape our interactions and why status is the default in professional introductions, even in some less hierarchical cultures.
Plus we explore why being human in your workplace interactions is key to creating more inclusive and authentic connections.
From the art of improvisation (an acting technique) to the significance of non-verbal cues, this conversation is a deep discussion about the essence of human communication to enhance engagement and connection in your professional conversations.
What you will learn in this episode:
- The impact of status on professional introductions
- How improvisation techniques can enhance your professional communication skills
- The role of power dynamics in conversations and how to navigate them
- Strategies for creating inclusive and safe communication spaces
- The importance of vulnerability in leadership
- How to facilitate effective conversations in multicultural settings
Find out more:
Discover Victoria’s global leader communication coaching.
Discover Victoria’s team communication and cultural intelligence training.
Find Victoria Rennoldson online.
Connect with Victoria Rennoldson on LinkedIn.
Visit Claire Pedrick’s website.
Find out more about Claire Pendrick’s Books.
Connect with Claire Pedrick on LinkedIn.
Transcript:
Hi everybody. Welcome to the show and it’s really, really lovely to have Claire joining us here today. Hi Claire, how are you?
Hi, I’m good, thank you. Thank you for having me.
I am super excited to have you on the show. And particularly because I remember when I first looked at your profile, somebody shared your details with me and I remember that you have human as part of your description. And I’m really curious as to why human. Like why is that so important to put in a profile these days?
That is such a great question. Nobody’s ever asked me that before. Good. I think we live in a world of work where status matters or status is perceived to matter. And when we introduce ourselves to other people, we do a status introduction. So my name’s Claire and I’m going to give you a sense of how important you think I am. But the challenge about that is, particularly on your LinkedIn profile, is that everybody that you’re talking to has a different status. So what somebody would expect as a status introduction isn’t going to work for somebody else. So I can add, I can say a lot of things that will make you think I’m a powerful person in the industry, but actually they’re all things underneath. I’m just a human being. And when I put too many status things in an introduction, you give me all sorts of power that I don’t deserve. Because actually I’m a human. You’re a human Victoria. You lovely listener, you’re a human. We’re just, we’re just ordinary people who happen to do whatever we happen to do. So it’s kind of a way to, to equalize. I’m just, I’m just a woman.
Yeah, I love that so much. And I, I think your point about status is really fascinating to me particularly because I sort of also think about it from the cultural angle of people have different relationships to status and how important that hierarchy is. But you know, we’re not in a sort of ancient world where status was about, you know, your, your relationship into, I don’t know, the king or the queen or the most important person of power. So why does status still matter, do you think, to us so much?
Well, I just, I think that’s a really good question. Why does status still matter so much? And why do we introduce ourselves almost always with our status first? So you know, one of the things that, for me is that being English and being white, that that starts giving me status. So as soon as my eye open my mouth and you hear that I’m English. That gives me. Well, what’s different about me from somebody who’s German or Indian or Brazilian? You know, just because I speak in. In England, they call it received pronunciation, don’t they? Just because I speak with this accent doesn’t make me any more special or different from anyone else. But it can give me power. My colour gives me power. It gives me privilege. I might not want that, but I can’t not have it because it’s. Because it’s there. We did, an improv. We run some presence training using improv. And, one of my colleagues came with me on it the other day as a delegate. And afterwards, well, I think it was a coffee time. She said, I’m really struggling to relate to people because I don’t know what they do. And that’s where I got the idea of status introductions from. So it’s very new. Very new. But actually, that’s what we. That is what we do. I’m Claire. This is my rank. This is my role. This is my company.
And, so how should we perhaps introduce ourselves? Because I love the way that you do it. I think it’s incredibly unique to say, I’m Claire and I’m a human. And yet in some ways, it shouldn’t be unique. It should be what we can all say, but is there some other flavour we should be adding then to the kind of introductions we make? Well, actually, I’d quite like to not have to say I’m a human, but I feel I have to say something. my colleague on her LinkedIn profile says, I’m Sue and I’m quite normal. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could get to the point where when we meet somebody, saying our name is enough to make the connection. on another improv course, when I had that in my mind a week later, I was running online with somebody. And at the end of the training, people still didn’t know anything about each other. They didn’t know where they lived in the world. They didn’t know their rank. They didn’t know any of those things. And, all of them said how connected they felt with each other. So we do these long introductions to feel connected, but what we know is that you can connect in other ways and feel more connected. I find that really interesting because we kind of do make this assumption. We have to share some certain types of facts with each other to feel that connection in place. And, I just want to actually also connect it to what you were talking about. So improv just. Would you mind just explaining for those perhaps. I don’t know if all listeners are kind of familiar with what that is and why you’d be learning about improv to help with presence, because I also find that fascinating.
So improv is short for improvisation. So, they teach it in drama school, in theatre school, where you learn to speak when you don’t know what to say. So it’s often seen as comedy, but it’s not necessarily comedy. It’s just a way of learning through games, through playing, how to engage with others. And I have to tell you that of all the training that I’ve ever done, received, it is the most useful training that I’ve ever done. And I didn’t learn any knowledge. And I learned a lot of knowledge because basically, you have to step in and you have to say something. So improv has a whole lot of principles. So one of their principles is make an offer, which has actually transformed the way I do coaching. One of their principles is everything is disposable. So I say something to you and it doesn’t work, so I just drop it and say something else rather than trying to get you to understand what I just said. Because actually, if it didn’t work, it didn’t work. It needs to go, I need to bring something else in. one of the principles of improv is make your partner look good. You know, often in dialogue, we try and overpower ourselves in order to get the status that we need to be in a dialogue. So I need to tell you I need to try and match your power in my introduction. So I tell you I’m Claire and I’m queen of the world. Whatever. If I think that that’s the, status that you require me to have. And sometimes that actually means that people aren’t exactly being truthful because they’re trying to up power themselves in order to match the power of the other person. So power and privilege and presence have been things that I’ve been learning about probably for the last 10 years. And every time I learn something, I realise I don’t really learn. I don’t. I still got to learn some more.
Well, it’s an ongoing journey. The whole learning and the improv thing is really fascinating to me because I’ve heard of somebody else, another coach, a friend who’s been doing a lot of improv to help with that in the moment presence, in the moment awareness. And yet I’d always associated it in my mind with comedy. I hadn’t really thought about it as what does it bring to dialogue? And something you just said really has kind of sparked my curiosity because I’ve never thought about dialogue as being competitive before in the sense of power matching, or even in some situations, trying to overpower or level up or take it over a level. So do you perceive that is what is happening often in conversations?
Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Let me tell you how powerful I think I am. And then of course, you try and match me. So I say to you, this isn’t true, by the way, every holiday I go skiing in Switzerland. And you say, oh, yes, I’ve been to Switzerland, actually, I’ve done mountain climbing. And you kind of start escalating the thing. And actually I’ve just, you know, my name’s Claire. I’ve just had a really bad week. It’s a fine introduction too. I haven’t. Yeah, I might have. Yeah. And one of the things that I think is really interesting about improv is that, is that, some of the games are not in English. So there’s a word called gibberish, which is basically you just make up sounds. And a lot of the games that we play in improv might not even use words, but we learn to communicate through not using words. And it’s fun and it’s funny. So we have a game where, I go and then you have to respond to me, but we have a third person here who has to translate what they think is going on in our conversation. But it learns. It teaches us to notice, it teaches us to sense, it teaches us to see. It teaches us that actually often communication is about the sound rather than the meaning. It’s fascinating.
I love that. I love that because for me, I live in a world where I. I really like to think about communication as a, as a 360, like a proper sort of 3D experience. And words are very logical. Right. So words are, we think, are, the thing that gives meaning to what we’re saying. And yet it is like what you just said, the sound of the voice, whether it’s going up or down or raising towards a question. And I assume sort of body language comes into that as well. Yeah. Although you can’t diagnose from body language because everybody is different. And. But it’s about. It’s about using that, I think, as part of the communication. One of the things I absolutely love about my work, although I really annoy people, is I teach People that they don’t need to speak in complete sentences and that, in order to have a really good conversation with someone else, you need to make an offer, then an offer back, then an offer and an offer back. So we build the conversation together. And so I’ve had feedback from people whose first language is not English, saying how releasing it is for them to be able to hear somebody talking and not have to form a complete sentence from. From what they’ve heard in order to give it back. and I’m just, I’m learning Spanish on Duolingo, and they’ve got this video thing where you talk to them and, and you can, you can have a whole conversation with this AI bot without ever making a full sentence, because you just offer back a word and then, and then, and then it builds back and then it builds and it’s built and it’s builds. So I had a lovely conversation this week about food I have eaten in Spain was the subject of the conversation I love. That is a really interesting idea, isn’t it? Because, particularly when you think about communication in the workplace, putting it in that context, I think there are many, many people who’d be listening to this kind of going, well, I think I have to say complete sentences. I have to make sense. I have to say it even if I use the word perfectly, which I know sometimes crops up in my world. So this idea of, you know, being able to express it fully. But why does half a sentence, or is it more about just getting the nuance across? Or what do you mean by sort of not completing sentences more exactly.
I’m trying to do it in response to what you’re saying, and it’s not working. But you said, is it about the nuance? So I might go, the nuance. Got it. So, like the reflection. Yeah. And there was a moment where I could have done that, and then you put a question on the end of it and then I couldn’t do it anymore. But, but it’s about, it’s about the build. And we rarely need to understand all the detail in order to be able to have the conversation that we need to have. Now, clearly there are some situations where the work that we’re doing is technical and, the detail is all necessary, but in most conversations, the conversation is relational about the thing, and therefore we don’t need all the words. Yeah, I think that makes, yeah, makes a lot of sense. Right. So you could have then said to me at the end of that, you could have gone, the words and Then I would have built on it rather than saying, Claire, please can you explain to me what you mean by the words? Because a great conversation builds and it flows, and every time we stop and we think, what happens is we stop the flow and that can freeze the conversation. And then they make the conversation really tricky to have because it goes. It’s like driving down the road with the handbrake on. Whereas actually just getting it into flow can make a really, a really big difference.
So, it’s that flow? Yeah, I think so. Nice question there, Victoria. I’m learning, Claire. I’m learning as we go along. This is a learning session for me as well. And, how does that work virtually? Is it the same? I think it’s easier virtually. So often one of the things that happens when we’re in dialogue is I need to say as much as I need to say for you to pick it up. So for those of you who are on video, Victoria just closed her eyes as I said that. So that would be the point for me to let go. Because it’s almost as though you’ve gone, yeah, I’ve got that. And then I leave you to build the next piece. So. one of the things that I teach people is when you’ve offered enough and, the person that you’re talking to has picked it up, then you don’t need to say anything else.
So with that, do you think sometimes we’re in danger of saying too much, of over responding to what others are saying to us?
Yeah. Because if I offer and it makes sense to you, and you start thinking and picking it up and getting ready to respond, if I keep saying another hundred words after that, like I am now, by the time I stop talking, you’ve completely forgotten where you were and you have no way of picking that up again. And if we’re not both speaking in our first language, not only have you forgotten the response you were about to make, but you are lost in trying to understand the last hundred words that I’ve just said.
Yeah. And, I know that when I talk to people, they say that’s a big cognitive load. That’s a lot to hold in your mind, basically, just to think about, well, I was going to go over there, but now I’m distracted by what was coming next. Yeah. And now I can’t. And people who are speaking the same first language will blank and forget. But when you’re doing it in another language, then there’s the normal blanking and forgetting of, of age or thinking style or whatever it is. Plus the fact that you’re. Yeah. That your cognitive load is higher.
Yeah. And I think one of the things I, I remember, you know, I’m told that by some people is that actually sometimes it’s so much easier being in a room where nobody has English as their first language, where everybody is speaking globally. they’re talking in a global English, which makes it so much easier to communicate. And I think that is a really good point, which is they are responding to each other in ways that make sense to them, that they’re not having to hold too much in their mind at one point. Yeah. And sometimes, I think we create a language that works for us as a community in this space that may be completely unable to be understood by anybody else. I walked the Camino in Spain two years ago and the language that would be spoken on different days would be different depending on who was in the room and where they were in the world. And we would find a common language which was the language that everybody could understand.
And usually it had English in it, but it also had Spanish in it. People would laugh and call it Spanglish, but it often also had other things in it that related to the, to the, to common language. That some of the people in the room would have. Common language really interests me. And particularly in the context of work because I wonder how often people misunderstand or miscommunicate because actually we don’t have a common language. What do you think? I think it’s because we think we have a common language and we don’t. I would, for me, I think that’s the issue. And I think people who are first language speakers, I’m personally blaming the English right now and myself I think because in a conversation, in a multicultural situation where there are lots of languages in the room but yet we’re all communicating in English, I’m going to think that everybody understands what I’m saying. But they’re not, they won’t. And if I have a regional accent, or even if I don’t have a regional accent, if somebody is used to a regional accent and I don’t have one, that’s going to cause some interesting things. I was a teacher in Kenya years ago and we visited, I visited, where a friend of mine was teaching and they were Scottish. And there’d been a whole series of Scottish, of Scottish teachers go to that local Harambe Community School. And when I spoke, people didn’t understand me because I didn’t speak with a Scottish accent because they, they had, they had, they were just using. You know, you, you learn to speak how you learn to speak, don’t you? And you learn to listen. How you learn to listen.
I find that really, really that interesting because actually that isn’t something we kind of, we make a lot of assumptions about what is the common language or the common accent or what is understood. So how do we establish common language? I know this sounds quite a basic question, but it feels like there’s almost a question that comes before a conversation which is, are we even talking the same language here? One of the things that I do on our international training. So all of our training is international. Now, when somebody uses a word, usually a noun, a describing. No, the name of a thing, I will often put it in the chat because I think that I’m probably the person there, who most easily understands everything that everybody’s saying because I’m only doing one leap. Yeah. So with everyone in the room, I’m doing one shift, I’m not doing several shifts. So, you know, if somebody comes from Japan and somebody else comes from Brazil, they’re doing several leaps. So in the chat, I will pop in the, the nouns, the words for things and also the verbs, the doing words. If it’s clear that this might be something that’s not easily understood. Because I don’t want everybody to have to go, I don’t know what that means. Or to experience that they don’t know what that means and they’re not going to say they don’t know what that means.
Yeah. It takes a lot to put up your hand and say, I don’t get it, I don’t understand. I’m not sure, particularly in a situation where people, again, back to status, don’t want to degrade their status in any way. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so finding ways where we can just really facilitate that. you know, we talk about being on the same page and actually being on the same page is a challenge for anyone in dialogue. You know, you and I need to work, work to be on the same page. Yeah. But if, if so if we were speaking in Spanish. So I’ve been learning Spanish every day for two, for two years, and I can understand quite a lot of Spanish, but I’m not very confident about speaking it back. But if you put the words for me, I would have much more of a sense of being able to get involved in the conversation a bit more.
So asking people, you know, what would actually make this conversation easier? What are the things that we could do that would make it, would make it more straightforward for you? And it’s also, I think not using big words because I just noticed I used the word straightforward and actually I wish I’d used the word easy. And I think that insight into being a language learner yourself is a really great insight into this. And I equally am using Duolingo at the moment. And I think it’s just the idea of what it feels like to not understand. And I really particularly like your way of establishing the commonality and the common understanding through the bridging the scaffolding of the words in the chat. That is something actually quite simple, isn’t it? But perhaps something we don’t think about or we as people don’t think about. What can make this conversation easier to understand. And on zoom, I think there’s learning to look and there’s learning to look around the room at everyone and then to notice what do I see when this person is fully engaged in the conversation? What do I see when they’re disengaged? Which could be for any reason, but what do I see when I think they’re engaged? And I wonder whether there’s, that there’s something that I could offer or that we could agree together that would just make it a little bit more straightforward. Yeah. And of course that’s in a room where everybody is fully virtual. And then you have situations which seem to be the, kind of, seem to be more and more common for people I’m working with where actually you’re on a screen but the majority are in the room and their back is to the screen. They’re not even looking at you because you’re on the periphery. I’m sort of curious, like in that kind of situation, how do we create that kind of connection and that conversation, do you think? What a beautiful question to ask them. Yeah. Yeah.
Here we are. We’ve agreed that some of us are in the room and some of us are not. What do we need to do for everyone to feel included? Because it will be different on different days and for different reasons. So I’ve got someone at the moment on a course who, whose preference is to not have the screen on. But they, they, they know they’re there. It just doesn’t suit the way they process information to have the screen on. I make sure that everyone else in the room has got show non-video Participants so that that person has their own square that’s the same size as everybody else’s square. And every so often, I talk to them directly because I can’t get the can I talk cue because I can’t see them. So it’s different for all of us in every con, every different context. But I think that the art is to. To ask people, you know, how do we. How do we make everybody feel included here? That, is such a simple question, and yet it gets missed so often. And I think my sort of reflection when I listen to this is. It sounds so obvious, and yet I, feel like the pace of conversation and the pace of doing means we don’t often ask that question. So is this about slowing down to speed up again, or how do you see it, Claire? I think I’m going to slightly change the subject, if that’s okay. Sure.
So Timothy Clark has wrote the book the Four Stages of Psychological Safety, and he said that the person who’s perceived to have the power has the first mover obligation to be vulnerable. So that’s such an interesting thing, because I think the first step is to say who’s perceived to have the power here, because I might say to you, it’s not me, but in this dialogue, I have more power than you because it’s about me. It’s all about you, Claire. Whereas when you come on my podcast, it’ll be all about you. So. there’s something about. But it’s your podcast, so then you’ve got the power there. So who has the first. So he, he describes it as the first mover obligation. So an invitation, if you’re in a room with a team, or if you’re in a room with a group or if you’re online with a group, is to think about who has the first mover obligation to talk about this being safe, useful, productive, a place where I can be heard, where I can communicate. And it might not always be where you think it is. Because I was about to ask you that, is it automatically the person who is the named leader in that room?
It’s definitely not with the person who is struggling to communicate the most, because people will go, well, you could have said if you want to. No, they could not have said, because we haven’t made it safe enough for them to say. Yeah, for sure. And so I’m going to also slightly move topic and come back to something we talked about right at the beginning which is about being a human. And I’m really kind of interested in this idea of if we have created the environment for it to be safe for people to say, how do we have this conversation, how do we have this common language, how do we create that connection then as humans in that space? I’m really kind of interested from a team perspective how we approach this. As you’re talking, I’m thinking who approaches it because not everybody is able to or feels they can show up as human. Kim Scott, who wrote Radical Candor, she’s written a few books. In one of her books she talks about sometime in our 20s we’re told to be professional and then we put on a shell. And then we go around being professional in this shell. And then the more we get promoted, the bigger the shell is. But the human inside is still the same size. So the distance between what the world, what I’m projecting onto the world, what the world thinks I am like, and who I am gets bigger and then I get much less able to be human because it feels as though it’s so different from the shell that you think I’m like. So for me, I think I probably had a shell, but I think I threw it off a long time ago. So for me to say I’m human, to turn up as human is actually quite easy. But if you’ve been in an organization and you’ve got status and shell, and this is how you’ve been, this is how you’ve been for years and years and years, and you’ve got more than one of those in the room or many of those. And some people are doing work on, how do I, how do I communicate better? What do I need to do in order to serve my colleagues and the organization better? And some people go, well, I’m fine how I am. You’ve got an inequality of vulnerability, I think in the room that makes it really difficult. And if you go back to Timothy Clark’s First Mover Obligation, how does the person who’s perceived to have the most power demonstrate their humanity in a way that enables it to be a little bit safe for others who are able to, to demonstrate theirs?
Wow. The shell, the shell is a really like. That is something I recognize. Like I know that moment when I decided I needed to be more professional in my 20s. And actually, you know, it takes a lot to sort of deconstruct that, to kind of move it away, particularly if you’re very used to showing up in a very specific way. And to be successful in, in that as well. So how do we start moving through? I’m starting to pull away the shell a little bit because I imagine it’s not just one shrug and it’s off. Well, I think there’s something that says where is a safe place to try not having the shell on? So if I can go back to the Camino. The thing that I love the most about the Camino is that nobody asked anybody what they did. So I could have been next to the Prime Minister of somewhere walking and talking and not known that. So there’s something about being in places where status isn’t a thing and where everybody is just accepted to be themselves and, and intentionally putting yourself in those places. And that might be quite hard work because it might mean that you have to wear different clothes, be in a different place, whatever. you know, it might be you’re always going everywhere in the car and you decide to go on the bus. You know, it could be lots of things but, but unless there’s somewhere in your world where you aren’t showing up in your shell and in your uniform, you’re never going to experience that. There’s a terrible TV show in the UK, which is called the Secret Boss or something where I don’t think Undercover Boss is called. And so they take the CEO, of the organization and they make up on them and they make them over to look like somebody else and then they get hired much lower down their organization and then they experience it in that way. I can remember somebody talking to me. He was a neighbour in our office and he used to work in a cereal company that make breakfast cereal. And he said that when he became the CEO, the first thing he did was decide that he was going to work in every department as. And do the job with them. And so on the first day he went to the, he went to the place where the oats. Cereal. Oats come in and he shovelled oats all day. And at the end of the day he said to his colleagues, so where do I shower? And the colleague said there isn’t a shower. There is now. I can well imagine.
And so his way of his first move or obligation to be vulnerable was actually to go around and to do the work with people as they were doing it. Not as a let me look at it and see what you’re doing, but let me actually inhabit this space. So I think there’s a huge amount of courage required if we’re going to take that Space seriously and we’re going to expose ourselves to places that feel really uncomfortable. But unless we do that, we’re just not going to see in a way that’s going to enable us to grow and develop and to make it safe for others. Yeah. And I think that for me is that idea, of we have to even know we have a shell going on. Because I think for a long time I’m not sure I did actually, I didn’t realize it was there. This is just fascinating. I mean I literally could talk to you all day. Claire. I find this really, really amazing insight from talking about being a human. But also the understanding of power dynamics within conversations is a very big and important part of, I think what goes on and that recognition of who holds the power is really critical. From what I understand of our conversation here today to who takes the action, is there any sort of final thoughts or final idea around communication that you’d love to share here today?
I think it’s not all about. This isn’t about you. This is about everybody, listeners. Communication isn’t all about you and how you feel about the communication. Actually good communication is about how it’s received by others and how we facilitate them to offer back. So how we set the climate to be able to engage to and from. And I think sometimes in seeking to win and in seeking to demonstrate that we know what we’re talking about or that we have status or whatever, what we actually do is we block the other person. And that might be true when we both speak the same first language. And I think if that’s true, then it’s even more true when the people that we’re speaking to have a different first language from us. So how do we communicate? How do we offer in a way that somebody else that makes it easy for somebody else to respond? That is a fantastic last thought. The idea of offering and responding, making it easy. Thank you so much Claire. I’ve greatly enjoyed this conversation. It’s got my brain ticking over and thinking about things differently and I’m sure it has done as well for everybody watching or listening. If people want to find out more, of course we’ll put all the links in the show notes. But is there anything anywhere particular you’d like people to connect with you or talk to you about? Right now LinkedIn is the place to go. And if you want to know about the offer and the response, and the sound of conversations, The human behind the Coach is the book. Excellent. Thank you so much Claire. For joining us today, and, very much look forward to seeing everybody next time. Thank you for having me.