Speaking Tips: Confident Demeanor & Structured Ideas
In my previous company, I noticed how some individuals would show up to work and do a great job structuring ideas together, but would not speak up at meetings. Furthermore, they did not get the deserved recognition either in the form of more important projects or roles due to this reserved vocal demeanor. If such individuals want to become decision makers, they may progress at slower rates than more vocal individuals with similar or lesser abilities. In line with this, I also noticed how some incompetent individuals with a boisterous vocal demeanor would receive important projects or roles. However, in the long run, these individuals will struggle to succeed if they cannot structure their thoughts.
Vocalization is essential in any working environment, including but not limited to one-on-one chats, company wide meetings, and inter-company meetings, as ideas need to be clearly communicated to one another. We may be the presenter or we may be a participant. In both cases, this article's aim is to optimize our voice to advance our careers through first understanding structured and confident vocalization, and then learning how to make adjustments from our respective starting points.
Structured and Confident Vocalization
Structured ideas contain a logical framework which segments thoughts into overarching themes or categories. Messy ideas are simply the opposite - they do not have a logical framework nor do they connect dots together. Brainstorming with messy ideas is acceptable, but we should aim to clean up the thoughts by structuring them. Vocally, incompetence can be correlated with messy ideas, and competence with structured ideas. Even if our ideas are wrong, if we are able to structure our ideas well, we will be able to make adjustments and learn from our mistakes. However, if our ideas are messy, even if they correct, we will struggle to find repeated success, since a formula or mechanism for solving the problem was not present in our thought process.
From the demeanor perspective, an individual with a reserved vocal demeanor will not voice ideas, whereas an individual with a boisterous demeanor will voice all ideas. Being too reserved can result in slower career growth, whereas being too boisterous can offend others or unveil your incompetence if not backed up by structured thoughts. We want to strive towards vocalizing in a confident demeanor, which voices ideas only when they are significant and relevant.
Different people will have different starting points on this graph. Let us discuss how individuals can make adjustments from their respective starting positions, then further dive into how each adjustment translates to actions for varying starting points to work towards a structured and confident voice.
Adjusting Vocal Ideas and Demeanor
There are three possible types of adjustments to reach a structured and confident voice: escalating vocal demeanor from reserved to confident, toning down vocal demeanor from boisterous to confident, and organizing ideas from messy to structured.
Escalating Demeanor: Reserved to Confident
As a reserved individual, speaking at meetings may bring us out of our comfort zones. This discomfort typically stems from a fear of what other people may think or say. To make speaking more comfortable and to escalate our vocal demeanor, we can practice pre-validating our ideas with trusted individuals (e.g., manager, competent peers) before the meeting. Getting our ideas, whether about our own projects or recommended improvements on someone else's project, sense checked beforehand will reduce the fear from the unknown of what people might say. These sense checks can be conducted through a one-on-one or at least with a smaller group setting before sharing our ideas publicly.
Potential Starting Point: Reserved & Structured
This is the first person I mentioned in the beginning; someone who does a great job structuring ideas, but does not speak up at meetings.
Toning Down Demeanor: Boisterous to Confident
On the opposite end, boisterous individuals are very comfortable in meetings, such that they may have an out-sized share of voice in meetings. Boisterous individuals typically gain this additional share of voice through freely sharing their thoughts. This may be optimal if the shared thoughts are relevant and impactful, but sub-optimal if they are firing blanks. Therefore, to generate an optimal share of voice and tone down our demeanor, we simply need to internally validate our ideas before sharing them. This means asking ourselves, "what is the impact of my suggestion" before voicing the idea. Additionally, similar to the reserved individually, we should leverage our trusted managers and peers to help validate the helpfulness of comments that we have provided. This feedback should then be used to help guide us on how to make our comments more targeted and impactful.
Potential Starting Point: Boisterous & Structured
If paired with structured ideas, during idea creation stages, a boisterous demeanor may be more valuable since ideas will freely flow out. However, as we shift towards decision making, a confident demeanor paired with structured ideas is more valuable to hone in on decision making.
Organizing Ideas: Messy to Structured
Altering our demeanor utilizes social exercises, whereas organizing our ideas will require intrapersonal exercises. To organize our ideas, we need to develop foundational expertise, which enhances content, and the ability to synthesize ideas, which enhances their structure. Due to this nature, these exercises typically take more time to refine compared to changing demeanor.
Foundational expertise can also be referred to as "subject matter expertise" or "knowledge in the relevant area". Direct put, we need to be knowledgeable about our discussion topics. If we do not have enough knowledge, we will not be able to structure our thoughts optimally. There are no corners to cut here. Executionally, this means owning your subject area by understanding the details, in and out, before the actual meeting.
Synthesizing ideas, like many skills, needs to be developed through dedicated practice. Synthesizing ideas well involve both the ability to listen and consolidate the ideas of others and the ability to group and consolidate our own ideas. To practice, the next time your manager gives you an assignment, try synthesizing all discussed components in your own words, then producing an output that can be clearly stated. Note that synthesizing is not the same as rephrasing. Rephrasing is simply using other words. Synthesizing is using other words AND categorizing the ideas into logical groups. For example, grouping all past learnings together and all next steps together could be one way to synthesize ideas in a meeting. These groupings cut the verbal information into digestible chunks, which can then be dissected one at a time, making conversations more manageable.
Potential Starting Point: Reserved & Messy
The reserved and messy communicator does now know much and does not speak much. Before starting to speak more, they need to develop their subject matter expertise and structure their thoughts. If they begin suggesting actions first without a baseline understanding and structured thoughts, they will move towards confident and messy, which is equivalent to pretending to know information and can result in more negative situations than positive ones.
Potential Starting Point: Boisterous & Messy
The boisterous and messy communicator simply comments or rephrases without adding additional content or structure. This individual should look to first tone down their demeanor from boisterous to reserved. Since as mentioned earlier, confident and messy is simply pretending to know. Alternatively, if the individual strives towards structured ideas first, which may take longer, without toning down their demeanor, messy ideas will continue to be voiced, detracting from the meetings of others. After toning down demeanor, they can strive towards improving the structure of their thoughts. Then, after establishing a structured through process, they can practice escalating their demeanor to a confident level.
Closing Remarks
I witnessed firsthand how the corporate ladder can be deeply integrated with communication skills and loosely tied with work quality. Those who can confidently synthesize ideas are more likely to scale it more quickly. We each have a different starting point with regards vocal demeanor and amount of structure in our thoughts. If we seek to advance our careers, we should adjust our demeanor towards a confident one by validating our ideas with others to determine if our ideas our helpful. Also, we should organize our words into structured ideas by establishing a foundational expertise and ability to synthesize our own ideas and the ideas of others.
Improving our vocal skills requires both self awareness and desire to improve. Where are you on the vocal demeanor x idea matrix?
