Your Intended Message

Take Control of Your Executive Career: Martin Buckland

How to package and sell yourself as a desirable product

Why you need to be the brand manager of your career

Episode 185 (repeat of #14) Martin is based in Horseshow Valley, Ontario

In this conversation with Martin Buckland we explore:

• The most common and most damaging resume mistakes 
• The pivotal mind shift that career builders need to face
• How to identify your key benefits and sell yourself
• Why accomplishments are far more relevant than responsibilities
• How to tell your STAR stories
• Get your resume past both computer and human screening
• And much more about career transition and building

About our guest Martin Buckland:

As a globally acclaimed Executive Career Coach and Executive Resume Writer, Martin has helped thousands of individuals across the world manage their careers, climb the corporate ladder, and land the job they deserve.

Martin is a Subject Matter Expert in nurturing the careers of EMBA candidates and alumni, ambitious professionals, mining executives, and the C-Suite community in over 74 countries since 1993.

After a distinguished Law Enforcement career, specifically with the renowned London Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard, Martin retired and started Elite Resumes. Martin provides career management services customized to the client’s job level, sector and career goal.

Learn more about Martin Buckland and his services at the website: https://aneliteresume.com/

Follow or connect with Martin on Linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mbuckland/

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Martin Buckland:

Martin Buckland. What's your personal brand?

I am an expert in helping nurturing coaching senior executives and other business professionals with a lot of ambition to reach their career goals. Now,

I noticed a lot of specific words in there. So you're looking senior senior executives, and you're only looking for ambitious ones you're not looking for you don't want to help the lazy ones. lazy ones can stay away. Exactly. So if they come to you, they right off the bat. They're saying that okay, I'm willing to work at this.

Yeah. So career management is a full time gig. You know, especially when you're in career transition. So you have to work at your career management.

Sadly, people don't they have no idea on career management. So when you're when you're gainfully employed and you should always be managing your career, I don't want to see you disappear off LinkedIn, you don't have to be on LinkedIn as much as you did when you were in career transition.

But once in a while, show me you're there it shows, do some activity, share some content, share a blog, or comment on something, or publish your own blog.

------

Be active on social media. If you avoid social media, I can't find you and you can't find them. On social media. If you haven't got LinkedIn profile, you're committing career suicide, but then not only just having a profile, you need to be active on that profile, you need to fill it in from top to bottom because it's, it's it's scroll, you can scroll all the way down.

So make sure you're active on social media. Convert to the sales mode, which we talked about earlier.

You are selling yourself to the market. And then make sure you have an up to date resume or CV ATS friendly. And then just keep up your network, your network you need to network network network. We're in a network age. If you don't network, that's going to bring that's going to diminish your chances of getting up to the top level.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

Persistent and Consistent Communication: Jeff Blackman

How can you be more persistent and consistent with your messages?

What does intelligent valuable repetition feel like?

Episode 184 (repeat of #11) Jeff is based in Chicago

In this conversation with Jeff Blackman we explore:

• The correlation between intelligent repetition and execution
• The challenge of a first grade boy unable to pronounce "listen and rabbit"
• The lifelong impact of that first grade teacher
• How not to sound like everyone else when opening a first conversation
• How to instantly connect when you answer, "What do you do?"
• Critical words that enhance your credibility and perceived value

About our guest Jeff Blackman:

Jeff is a speaker, author, success coach, broadcast personality and lawyer. He heads Blackman & Associates—a results-producing business-growth firm. Jeff’s clients call him, a “business-growth specialist.” His customized Referrals: Your Road to Results learning-system, helped one financial services client—generate $230 million directly from referrals, in only 23 months!

His bestselling books include; the new 5^th edition of Peak Your Profits!®, Stop Whining! Start Selling!, Opportunity $elling®, RESULT$ and Carpe A.M. • Carpe P.M. – Seize Your Destiny™.

Learn more about Jeff and his services and obtain free resources at the website www.jeffblackman.com

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Jeff Blackman:

I really work with my clients on an ongoing basis with the significance of intelligent valuable repetition and I tell them that repetition and reinforcement is what eventually drives internalization and internalization is what drives execution.

-----

George: Jeff so what do you do?

Jeff Blackman: George my clients’ say, I’m a business growth specialist. I help folks like you CEOs, your senior leadership team, sales people and other executives sleep really well at night and then I pause and typically what happens is they say - well how do you do that?

George everybody is different what’s cooking in your business. So, I make it all about you. It is not about me and that's when it leads into the ability to ask really good questions.

So, at a minimum I’m going to encourage your listeners now to develop what I call their dynamic dozen and a dynamic dozen Georgia’s at least 12open-ended need development questions or power probes they begin with a who, a what, a when, a where, a why, a witch, a how or a tell me more about. They cannot be answered yes or no.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

The Dirty Dozen Words and Phrases that Sabotage your Intended Message: George Torok

What are the words that sabotage your intended message?

Stop saying these words that label you as a poor communicator

Episode 183 (repeat of #138)

In this episode George Torok offers his insights about:

• Why your words matter and how to weed out the landmines
• The common phrases that we use without thinking about their meaning
• What perceptions people might form of you when you use these words
• Why you need to be in control of what you say and stop blaming others
• The dirty dozen phrases to stop using now!

George Torok is a specialist in communication skills. He coaches executives to deliver their message more successfully. That might be in conversation or presentation.

Learn more about his programs and the results of his clients at 

https://www.speechcoachforexecutives.com/

-----

Excerpts from this episode:

Another one that might come under this category is - everybody knows.

Well, maybe not. Maybe everybody doesn't know. And by the way, who is everybody?  Who is the everybody you're talking about here, which is a vague reference. What does that mean? And when you say everybody knows what if someone in the audience doesn't know, how did you make them feel? So avoid these insulting phrases?

The next category comes under self diminishing and false modesty, self diminishing and fall modesty. What does that mean? Well, how do you feel when you hear the speaker using these phrases?

In my humble opinion? Are they really being humble? Are they being humble? If you say you're humble, you're not humble. The Dalai Lama is humble and never says, in my humble opinion. 

If you stating an opinion, then state your opinion. If you're stating a position based on your experience, by the way, your experience is more valuable than your opinion, in my experience in my observations, but my humble opinion, you right off the bat said, Okay, it's a humble opinion.

So we might as well just not listen, a variation of this is my two cents worth. If all you've got is two cents, we don't want to hear it, keep it Keep the change. And we're only looking for the big dollar ideas here. Forget your keep your two cents to yourself, you're wasting your time.

Another variation is, well, I'm just saying. I'm just saying. And people say that, almost as if they're apologizing for what they said, I'm just saying, well, if it's valuable, it's valuable. If it's not, you don't have to add saying I'm just saying adds no value it doesn't modify does nothing to make the point stronger.

-----

If you're looking for more ideas on presentation skills, and you haven't yet, be sure to sign up for the weekly tips on present superior presentations.

And you can do that at  www.TorokTips.com

Remember to come back every week because most of the time we interview guest experts on communication from around the world. So far, we've had guests from 14 countries, which gives us a terrific perspective.

And every once in a while, you can tune into one of these solo shows where I will offer you some of my insights.

Remember, if you want to get your message across, get rid of the dirty dozen words and phrases that sabotage your message so that you can deliver your intended message.

If you liked what you heard, tell your friends and post your five star review on Apple podcasts because that helps more listeners find us come back every week for more practical insights to help you deliver your intended message.

I'm your host, George Torok

If you found this helpful and entertaining, be sure to listen to the upcoming Weed Word Alerts. They are short rants about silly words that people say.

-----

What other silly words and phrases do you add to this list?

 

Read the rest of this entry »

How to be more in control of your business: Erin Marcus

How to clarify your direction and stay on track

The magic formula of intent, responsibility and action

Episode 182 (Erin is based in Chicago)

In this conversation with Erin Marcus we explore:

• The importance of being more in control of yourself
• The need for black and white language in a grey world
• How to develop and employ litmus tests for yourself
• The importance of debriefing every event, project or activity
• The role of both emotion and logic in every buying decision
• Recognizing the dangers of insecurity and desperation
• Aligning your marketing plan with your personality
• A powerful daily exercise to keep you moving toward your short term goals

About our guest Erin Marcus:

Erin Marcus is the founder and CEO of Conquer Your Business, an
international company helping driven entrepreneurs and small business
owners get the financial and emotional freedom they need to build a
business and a life they're proud of.

Having made the successful leap from corporate executive to
entrepreneur, Erin uses that experience, along with her MBA education and
street smart upbringing, to help her clients reach heights they never
dreamed possible. And have fun doing it!

She is host of the podcast, Ready Yet?

Learn more about her podcast and her services at

https://conqueryourbusiness.com/

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Erin Marcus:

You're either moving towards your goal or away from it.

-----

And one of the things that I learned being immersed in that world is soft language and euphemisms, just give you an out rate soft language and euphemisms for the reality of your situation makes you think you have more time to take care of something makes you think things might not be as hard as they are.

And so to your point, it's a test. I use very bumpers in my gutters, strong litmus tests to set my stage for better decision making.

And that suggests that we need to be willing to make bad decisions and admit that.

I make tons I do. Oh, my God. You can't screw things up more than I've screwed them up. However, it's your decision. And you can't sit back and say, well, it's not my fault. I tried. And they didn't let me.

Yeah, I mean, and I watched that play out over and over and over again. Because the truth is, there's a lot of things in, you know, just, let's just keep in careers and business. There's so much that has to change.

There's so much that has to change with discrimination and access and representation and opportunity. There is so much that has to change. However, you as one individual do not have time to sit back and wait for that change, before you create the life you want for you.

That type of systemic institutional change can take a while. Why would you wait for it? Why would you give that much power away? By waiting for things to happen waiting for change. And I know it's you know, it's an outcome of different dynamics in our society, it's easier to blame other people than take responsibility to wait, you know, the litigiousness of if that's where it is that it is now.

Right, the litigiousness to repeat a potentially new word of our society, like there's this thing we have done to create blame. And it doesn't have to be so myopic, right? It doesn't have to be you whether or not this institution is right or wrong doesn't mean that I don't have to take responsibility for myself.

-----

And I'm a big fan of debrief. I analyze everything, as we record this, we're coming into November, and there's a lot of people that are going to be doing their business planning. Business Planning is something that happens daily.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

The Secret Language of Success: Jeff Buehner

How to leverage the power of imagination

What is your super-power that you might have forgotten?

Episode 181 ( Jeff is based in Utah)

In this conversation with Jeff Buehner we explore:

• Lessons from the writings of the richest man on earth (its not who think)
• How to direct your self-talk for better results
• What are the seven secrets of Sultan Musa of Mali
• The special language that you can use everyday
• Why the words are less significant when using this language
• What can you find 'out there somewhere'
• The magic of an "out of body experience"
• Understanding the role you are playing and why
• How your subconscious mind controls your life
• The impact of your imagination, beliefs and feelings
• How to guide your feelings to boost your success
• How to create and maintain your vision
• The lesson metaphors from Aladdin and the Magic Lamp

About our guest Jeff Buehner:

Jeff is author of the bestseller, The Sultan's 7 Secrets. He started as a struggling concrete contractor who didn't like talking to people. Within a year of learning the secrets, he had a $20 million dollar company.

You can buy his book on Amazon or get a free copy of the video version here

https://sultans7secrets.com/

 

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Jeff Buehner:

 

Unless you're speaking this special language in a way that attracts it. So we're going to jump into that, because that's the intended message. And right now you are sending a message to the world. And you're getting back exactly what you're saying in this language. So if there's anything in your life that you're not happy with, you need to change your intended message.

-----

The next thing he learned is that not only did he have two bodies, but he had two minds working simultaneously.

So there's the conscious mind, that's the part of us that we think of us second. But then there's something called what he called the Veiled mind, the hidden mind. But we can relate to this, because we've all kind of been made aware of this concept of a subconscious mind.

So if I use those two terms interchangeably, you'll understand the Veiled mind, and the subconscious mind. And he said, The veiled mind, is the mechanism that really controls and steers your life, it determines what you get out of life, what your personality is, where you're headed, what you experience, what how much money you're going to have, how many friends you're going to have, how energetic and vibrant you're going to be. Or if you're going to be like really tired all the time and sickly, it determines all of this.

Now, it makes all these important decisions about your life, based on one criteria, and that is what it believes, is true for you.

Or, in other words, what role you're playing what it believes your role is. Now, this is the part that really struck me, all of us are simply playing a role that we're dedicated to, we get into character, and we stay in character.

So if you think of the conscious mind, as an actor, and the subconscious mind as a really good stage manager, that's what you're dealing with. Now, the stage manager is going to set the stage of your life, cars, houses, friends, money, career, all of its going to set the stage of your life with everything that it believes to be congruent with the role you're playing.

And it will pretty much keep everything off the stage that isn't congruent with that role.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

How to look more confident when you speak: Dianna Booher

Convey more confidence in a meeting or hallway conversation

Be intentional with your body language

Episode 180 (Dianna is based in Dallas, Texas)

In this conversation with Dianna Booher, we explore:

• Techniques to convey more confidence when surprised
• How to speak up in a meeting with more intention and confidence
• Nervous body ticks that can sabotage your message
• How to train your body to send positive signals
• How to slow down a conversation while demonstrating calm and comfort
• Handy transition phrases to keep audience attention
• How to handle a brain freeze
• How to encourage your team to participate more readily in meetings

About our guest, Dianna Booher:

Dianna Booher is the author of 50 books—all published by major US publishers (Penguin Random House, Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, McGraw-Hill), with these available in 62 foreign editions.

As a communication consultant and presentation coach, Dianna has among her clients more than one-third of the Fortune 500 organizations.

Dianna hosts Booher Book Camps, where she helps professionals develop their own bestsellers to get their “intended message” out into the world.

www.BooherBookCamp.com

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Dianna Booher:

How people how business leaders can feel and look more confident when they are speaking whether it's a presentation or whether it's simply a meeting discussion, when you work with your clients to help them look and feel more confident.

-----

One that sort of universally applicable is in your body language.

When you start to speak. If you picture somebody right now standing up to give a briefing or something in your conference room. If they look like they're conferring on their notes, their their eyes are downcast, they're fidgeting, they're stepping back and forward, stepping back and forth. That's nervous movement.

And that tells you that they're not confident about what they're about to say, that may not be your intention, that may not be what you're thinking. But that's how people interpret they interpret monotonous, or repetitive gestures.

Like some people just swirl their hands around often, or they'll put their hands in the pocket out of the pocket in the pocket out of the pocket, or they take one step forward, one step back one step forward, one step back, I used to call that when I was teaching classes on presentation skills, the dance step, you know, the two step,

Your body language communicates, I'm confident, I believe in what I'm about to say, I have some great information that's going to be useful to you. Or it says, I'm really not quite sure that this is going to land correctly, or got the right points with the right audience. They're picking up all of that, from the moment you stand up from your chair, to walk to the front of a conference room, to being on stage, seeing you walk up, you know, I don't care if you're a celebrity speaker walking down an aisle to music, you either look confident and like you're relaxed and going to enjoy the time with them. Are you down? And that communicates a great deal.

-----

So larger movements look more confident.

Yes, taking up more space. You walk into a room and somebody who's walked in, they put either their iPad or their their laptop right in front of them.

And then they throw a jacket over the next chair, and then they pull that chair back so that they can see the angle, they want to be their perspective, they choose that they're taking up space.

But I'm just saying that body language communicates attitude.

------

Read the rest of this entry »

How to leverage body language to be more persuasive: Melinda Marcus

How to read the body language of the room

Master your body language to be more persuasive

Episode 179 (Melinda is based in Dallas, Texas)

In this conversation with Melinda Marcus we explore:

• Why it's important to show  and move your hands when you speak
• The perceptions of freeze, fight or flight response
• What are the myths about body language
• How to detect the hidden message by combining verbal and nonverbal
• How to notice and decode hot spots or stress signals
• What do self self pacifying movements suggest?
• How to clarify a suspect stress signal from a meaningless fidget
• How to ready body language of people in a Zoom meeting
• How to use your body language to program your self conscious

About our guest Melinda Marcus:

As a consultant, Melinda has helped executives open doors and close multi-million-dollar deals by showing them how to leverage body language and persuasive psychology strategies.

She is one of 5 people to earn her Master certification in Body Language from Joe Navarro, (the former special agent who trained the FBI).

You can order her book, Read the Zoom here

Find and follow Melinda on Linkedin

https://www.linkedin.com/in/melinda-marcus-m-a-csp-6816484/

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Melinda Marcus:

 

When we are confident we tend to be big. When we are being more aggressive. We tend to be big. So again, privately, I like to do very big things, because nonverbals are a two way street, they are communicating to others, and they're communicating to your own brain. 

-----

Hotspots is referring to when I see stress signals every time, I asked you a question that is a hotspot for you. Okay, so I may just say something like, Where'd you go to lunch today? And if for some reason, you didn't want me to know about that?

You may answer, but you may not tell me the truth, or you may dodge it, but you will probably show some stress signal with it. So once you know, I'll give you an example of a stress signal.

One thing may be if you were asked me the same question, where did you go to lunch today, and who were you with or something, and I went, Oh, you know, I just went to a place locally around town, it was nothing. I mean, just like a hamburger, the hand coming up to the neck, that tends to be a very clear sign of stress.

Now, it doesn't mean a lie, it means I have stress around that topic. And the reason we do that is the neck is very vulnerable part of the body. And our hand being there protects it.

But also did you notice I started rubbing it, okay, we have something called the vagus nerve that goes down here. And if you massage that, it actually lowers your blood pressure and your pulse rate. So it will come you know, when I see people, when I ask them a question go in here, I know there's a little stress around that.

 

Ah, so that's a self soothing move.

-----

So a test of a stressful topic is to talk about it go away and come back later and look for a stress signal.

-----

Your brain, your unconscious, is always trying to go to comfort. So it does little things to make you feel more comfortable.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

How to communicate within your organization: Alicia Webb

Keep the communication open within your company

People need to know and want to know

Episode 178 (Alicia is based in Chicago)

In this conversation with Alicia Webb, we explore:

• How do discover gaps in internal communication
• Lessons from the pandemic to stay in touch
• The danger of out-of-sight on out-of-mind
• Why people leave when they don't feel connected
• The need to stay informed
• How might you keep your people engaged
• What options and tools might you consider?
• How to communicate major change to everyone effectively
• How to build trust, align goals and reinforce direction
• Why more meetings might not be the answer
• The importance of telling a story

About our guest Alicia Webb:

Alicia is founder and principal of Bright Spot Public Relations. She began her career as a general assignment reporter at an ABC affiliate. You can learn about her services at

https://brightspotpr.com/

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Alicia Webb:

they were leaving, because they felt like they weren't part of the team. So internal communications is a good place to start. It's a good foundation, to get people keep people engaged, get them to stay

-----

And I can see that failing to keep your employees informed demonstrates that one you don't trust them. You don't respect.

That's a great way to put it. Now, what about the use of a video message from the CEO on a monthly basis?

That's awesome. Great. I think I mean, that we've got great tools. That's the other thing. We're where we've come in our technology, those there's great tools out there that you can use, just make sure using them appropriately.

A video message from the CEO announcing a brand new initiative, that type of thing, a very positive message, I think is great. I would not use a video message to announce significant layoffs or some type of organizational overhaul, I wouldn't do that.

But if you've got some big exciting news and your your stock price has done well or something like that, absolutely, video was a great tool. And honestly, video was a good tool. And I think you know, the short, people don't read as much anymore. People have very, very short attention spans.

So if you can put together a minute a minute 30 video, absolutely, it's a great way to still get your message out in a good way if your leader is is comfortable with it. I know some leaders don't particularly like video.

So be mindful of that get to know your leader and how they feel about being on video because it's not everybody's favourite thing. But I think that this Brian, there's so many great tools out there monthly newsletters, there's so many great ways you can engage your your audience.

And I suppose that you need to engage your audience in more than one way more than one channel. It's too easy to say well, didn't you read the newsletter?

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

The Amazon Way on leadership and leadership: John Rossman

Leadership and innovation lessons from Amazon

The communication tool that Amazon used to think clearly

Episode 177 (John is based in Washington state)

In this conversation with John Rossman, we explore:

• The Amazon principles of leadership
• How to drive innovation successfully
• The launch of Amazon's marketplace business
• How to build a trusted-customer experience
• How did Amazon push past the online ecommerce leader (EBay)
• Clarifying the mission and purpose of innovation
• How communicating and debating by memos leads to better thinking
• How Amazon made their meetings more productive
• Apply meeting hygiene
• Jeff Bezos' communication style

About our guest John Rossman:

A leadership and digital transformation expert, John Rossman is the author of four books on leadership and business innovation including the best seller "The Amazon Way". He is an early Amazon executive who played a key role in launching the Amazon marketplace business in 2002.

His next book, Big Bet Leadership, will launch in Feb 2024. You can get a free copy of the ebook by registering here

https://bigbetleadership.com/

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with John Rossman:

Communication, I believe is one of the oftentimes forgotten, or underplayed elements of what makes successful innovation or transformation.

Amazon has this culture of memo writing. And what we would do is we would write out any new proposal, any problematic situation, any new idea we wanted to do, we would write out and debate in memos. It takes both the writing and the debating to make these things work.

And so Amazon, they call that approach working backwards. So starting with the customer, starting with the outcome that you want, and working backwards.

And a lot of the work that I've done some since Amazon has been taking that philosophy and molding it and mixing it and adapting it into the client's situation. So I have a new book coming out in February of 2024, called Big Bet Leadership.

Part of the underpinnings of Big Bet Leadership is about thinking about outcomes and using memos to help articulate what we believe the problem is that we are solving - what we believe the future state is that we are going to create - what the couple of critical assumptions or operating capabilities are there doing that and then debating those that is essential communication within a core team that has to decide is this the right Innovation?

Is this the right idea? Is this the right big bet for us to do. And so that Amazon philosophy so back to 2002, the market the launch of the marketplace, I wrote the future press release for the marketplace business, there was one line in it that made all the difference to that line was...

A third party should be able to register, sell an item fulfil an order and delight a customer as though Amazon the retailer had done it without talking to anybody in the middle of the night.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »

How to Profit from Your Trade Show Exhibit: Anders Boulanger

Get a better return from your trade show booth 

How can you people to work the booth for maximum results

Episode 176 (Anders is based in Winnipeg)

In this conversation with Anders Boulanger, we explore:

• The importance of sticking your message to a visual metaphor
• How to find your visual metaphor
• How to grab attention and attract the right people to stop at your exhibit
• How to harness the power of engagement drivers
• How to leverage the power of inductive learning to stick your message
• Mistakes that booth staff make and how to avoid them
• How to attract prospect to stop instead of repelling them with your behavior
• To sit or not to sit in your trade show booth?

About our guest Anders Boulanger:

He has performed at over 200 trade shows. His exhibit clients average a 54% increase is trade show leads.

As well as performing at trade shows, he offers Trade Show Infotaining to prepare your staff for a more productive trade show experience.

Visit engagify.ai

-----

Excerpts from this conversation with Anders Boulanger:

We bring in our unique form of entertainment, that is often magic, mentalism mathematics, martial arts demonstrations, different visual metaphors that we can hang messaging on, to make it memorable and making it exciting and build crowds of people are.

So that's kind of how we help our clients is by attracting attention, keeping them there qualifying the people that are qualified leads and then sending them on through the booth so that they can have that deeper, richer experience.

-----

if you could sit down with a team leader that's about to head off to a trade show with their team, and they haven't been wise enough to hire you to help them out. But if you could still give them one, two or three pieces of advice that they can share with their team. What might be that one, two or three pieces of advice?

Yeah, I would definitely say that, you know, to do a little talk before the show to talk about expectations and goals and unite the team around what is that?

You know, what is the the objective that they have in front of them, if they want to kind of mention a few do's or don'ts to do at least a basic training, that would be a good idea.

And then the last piece I think I would say Georgia is to really go for it. It's like swinging for the fences, the entire show, because so many people on that last day, they phone it in, they phone it in and nobody tries.

And I find the last days my favourite day, because we still go for it. And we can build sometimes bigger crowds than we did on the other days because everyone else stopped trying.

So you know really wring every dollar of value out of your tradeshow investments by working the entire three or four days however long the show is powerful advice.

-----

Read the rest of this entry »