Transcript:
Dave Bricker (00:02)
Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by speakipedia.com. I’m your host, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk, smart strategies, and amazing stories from speakers and thought leaders. My guest is an international award-winning communications trainer, coach, advisor, keynote speaker, and multi-award-winning blogger.
As a communication expert, she works with professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and leaders to amplify their influence and improve business results. As the founder of Rethinking Business Communications Limited, she offers customized programs on nonverbal communication, public speaking, interpersonal communication, business writing, and leadership. Her bestselling book, Influence and Thrive,
is an evergreen business communication resource that educates, challenges, and empowers. And it’s backed by research, relatable scenarios, and interviews. In 2024, Global Gurus ranked her the number eight communication professional in the world. And in 2023, the International Association of Top Professionals from the USA named her the top communications trainer of the year.
decades she has provided deep insights and practical techniques on effective communication in her multi award winning Rethinking Business Communications blog. And since 2017 it has been the only Africa based website to rank among the top 40 in FeedSpot’s authoritative list of communication blogs. Lucille Ossai, thank you for joining me today.
Lucille Ossai (01:50)
Thank you, Dave. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here.
Dave Bricker (01:53)
Likewise, great to finally connect. So Lucille, what inspired you to pursue business communication as you’re speaking in training field?
Lucille Ossai (02:01)
Believe it or not, I stumbled onto this field by accident. Yeah. And that was about 12 years ago. I was a stay at home mom at the time. I had previously worked at an embassy. So I needed time to expand my family and to concentrate on my family life. So I resigned and I was a stay at home mom. And during that time, I just kept reading newspapers, watching videos and so on and so forth. And just seeing how poorly
people, leaders and professionals communicated, know, emails, articles. And I just developed this interest. And I kept on saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then one day I just decided to start writing a blog. And I started writing the blog and the more I wrote and researched, the more interested I became in the field. And then fast forward a couple of years later, I landed a role at a business school, a top ranked business school in Nigeria and ranked globally.
and I became the communications coach and that just cemented my obsession with business communication. And then I went into lecturing, coaching, training set up my own business. And over the last, should I say 12 years or more, I’ve become increasingly obsessed about communication. So I’m the kind of person that I would read articles.
I would debate, would discuss with my husband, no, no, no, can you imagine what happened? know, this isn’t right, this isn’t written right, this isn’t said right. And I just developed that passion for business communication and for helping people, especially professionals to hone their communication skills. And in a nutshell, that’s just how I became steeped in business communication. But I did not have a formal, should I say,
degree. I didn’t go to university to study business communication. In fact, I went the other way. I studied languages and I did a master’s in management based course. So it was purely by accident and purely by, should I say, an obsession to just right the wrongs that I saw at the time in communication. And over the years, I’ve just continued to hone my skills and work with people to help them improve their communication skills.
So that’s how I became steeped in communication.
Dave Bricker (04:16)
And that’s not an unusual story. It’s not one of those fields where when they go around the elementary school classroom, what do you want to be when you grow up? And somebody says a doctor, a nurse, a lawyer, a fireman, a business communication expert, never going to happen. So it’s definitely something you start observing your world and you say, there’s a lot of stuff that needs fixing.
Lucille Ossai (04:20)
Mm.
Yeah.
Never. Yeah.
Dave Bricker (04:41)
What are some
Lucille Ossai (04:41)
Exactly.
Dave Bricker (04:42)
of the most common communication problems you encounter? What are people missing?
Lucille Ossai (04:47)
Okay, so I’ve narrowed them down to two. Interpersonal communication and business writing. Interpersonal communication because over the last, should I say four years, I’ve increasingly gotten requests for training or for coaching one-on-one interpersonal communication. I’ve just, I don’t know why that is. I think it was after COVID. Yeah, something happened after COVID.
Yeah, and I just started getting a lot of requests for interpersonal communication and across all levels from the junior professionals to the most senior professionals. And the request for communications training and interpersonal communications tend to be as a part of an overall communication package. So not separately, but just inherent in communications training. So that’s the first.
The second one is something that I had noticed for at least 10 years, and that is poor business writing. Yeah. And it’s never ended. It’s every, every year there is some elements that I get from people, or, you know, could you, I’m having problems writing emails or the tone of my emails are not quite right. I don’t know how to write reports and so on and so forth. So I would say interpersonal communication and writing business writing would be the two most.
Prevailing communication problems that I’ve come across recently How do we fix them For interpersonal communication, I think it’s really important for us all to have some Cultural awareness. I think that is really important because now we’re in a global village and we’re unlikely to just work with people in our locality I mean you’re logging in from the US. I’m logging in from Nigeria and in Africa
And again, since COVID, the world has become smaller. So you have more collaborations and so on and so forth. And inevitably, you’re going to be interacting with people more and more. So I think just having the cultural sensitivity to know that, OK, the way I communicate with my peers, for example, in the US, would need to differ from the way I communicate with professionals in Nigeria and so on and so forth. I need to be a little bit more sensitive.
of their cultural norms, you know, and the acceptable practices so that I can tailor my communication accordingly. So that would be one really important point to note. And another is just to consider the audience, which really ties into the first rule of effective communication. Who is it I’m communicating with? What is the preference? What do I need to know? How should I communicate in a way
that will make them receptive to my messages. So these are considerations that I think we need to do to improve our interpersonal communication skills, whether it’s one-on-one or one-to-many, really important. And then when it comes to writing, I think it just basically being aware that even though we’re educated, we can read and we can write, communication changes over time. And the way we probably used to communicate maybe five years ago,
would not be as effective today. Things are changing. We have the millennials coming into the workforce and so on and so forth. So we need to, again, just prioritize the audience and then take very specific steps to improve our writing. We need to yeah, read well written materials and we just need to undergo some sort of training to get a structure into the way we write and to just continue to hone our craft.
So I think in a nutshell, just being intentional about our communication skills will really make us communicate better. One-on-one again, interpersonal relationships and in the writing. So those are the two most common challenges I think that we face today in communication.
Dave Bricker (08:40)
Right? And social media is not helping anyway because most social media is a great landfill of poorly written gossip. Opinions. There’s not a lot of craft for people to get exposed to there.
Lucille Ossai (08:50)
Absolutely. Yeah.
Dave Bricker (09:00)
So this may sound like an oxymoron, but unless you would like to do an interpretive dance, talk a bit about nonverbal communication and its importance.
Lucille Ossai (09:10)
Okay, so nonverbal communication. It’s one type or one aspect of communication that is often underrated until there comes interpersonal conflict. So it’s one of those things we just say, no, it’s fine. And then when there’s a problem, we then begin to interpret the nonverbal cues. And sometimes these behaviors end up
making the situation worse. So nonverbal cues and behaviors, are behaviors we don’t, we, could be gestures, could be facial expressions, it could be even the character of a voice, the tone of a voice, the pitch, the volume, the pace, all these things communicate certain things to different people. And I think just having a good understanding or at least a decent understanding of the fact that
nonverbal communication can be interpreted in different ways and can impact communication in different ways would be really beneficial. And I came across some research, I find it from Amy Cuddy. I know she’s a very big deal. She’s a Harvard social scientist and she did some research with some of her peers. And she came up with this really interesting
Findings, yeah? And basically, it was the dilemma, warmth versus competence, yeah? So is it better basically to be liked than to be competent at what you do in a nutshell? And what she found was really interesting. Now, both are necessary, but the order in which they appear is really important. So for you to be able to connect better with people, you need to appear warm. You need to prioritize warm first.
before stressing your competence because being warm and being perceived as likable, having that agency of being a likable, even tempered person and adopting all those nonverbal cues would lead to increased trust, which leads to people accepting your ideas and supporting you. So I thought that was that when I learned about that research, the heavens just opened and it just became really, really clear because we tend to think that
or their soft skills and they’re not really as important as technical skills. But I believe that if we’re able to have a good awareness of body language cues and adopt certain body language cues to facilitate good relationships, we end up being more effective as professionals and leaders. So body language, nonverbal communication, very, very important, I would say. Really important.
Dave Bricker (11:48)
Absolutely. what I’ve seen a number of times is where people are not aware of the expression that is on their face when they’re not consciously making an expression. And I’ve heard so many stories of speakers who had somebody in the audience who had this angry face on the whole time, and they were really unnerved by that.
Lucille Ossai (11:50)
Mm.
Right.
Yep.
Dave Bricker (12:11)
And then that person came up after the presentation and said, you were wonderful. I loved it. You inspired me. You changed my life. And the speaker was thinking, wow, this person’s going to come and murder me after the performance. People have no idea what their resting face is. And that can absolutely sabotage them without even knowing it.
Lucille Ossai (12:19)
You
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, absolutely. the, wouldn’t really say the excuse, but the explanation that I tend to hear was like, I want to be authentic. You know, I’m not really like that. I just want to be myself. And I say that that’s actually a dangerous way to think about it because you are more than one version of yourself. Yeah. So why don’t you assess the situation in which you’re going into and say, okay,
This situation calls for somebody who is credible, somebody who is warm and everything, then display those behaviors that make people more favorably disposed to you. It has nothing to do with being inauthentic, you know, because the way you are possibly at home would differ from the way you are at work, would differ from the way you are with your childhood friends, for example, and then with people who you’ve just met for the first time. So.
So I think it’s a shift, it’s a mind shift shift that I think will be really beneficial to us. And Mark Bowden, I don’t know if you know him, he’s fantastic, he’s a body language expert. And he put this in a nutshell, which was, I think, really, really interesting. One of his many podcasts that I listened to. it was like, put on the body language of the person you want to be.
So put on the body language of the person you want to become. And I add in specific situations. Once you do that, then what happens is that you put on the best version of yourself in specific situations where you are likely to get more positive results. So again, body language, nonverbal communication are critical to your overall effectiveness as a professional or leader. And I think it’s really important that we all are called
that aspect of communication as much attention as we do with public speaking and writing, for example.
Dave Bricker (14:22)
I completely agree with that. Coming back to writing, cultivating a love of reading is just a starting point. How is business writing different from other types of writing? And how can professionals, especially women professionals, hone their business writing skills to get ahead in their careers?
Lucille Ossai (14:30)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, very important point. So business writing is different in the sense that it is the way you write in a clear, concise, persuasive way, yeah, to get an outcome, a business outcome. And that’s in a nutshell is what business writing is. it’s professional language is written in a way that is professionally acceptable.
So it differs from other kinds of writing like creative writing, for example, poetry, where you can break grammatical rules and so on and so forth. And you could really express, you know, certain things, you know, that is a different field and that is a different, different form of writing. But business writing is basically the writing we tend to use in business in a day to day interactions, for example. So that would encompass sending emails, writing reports, memos, minutes of meetings.
you know, all those forms of writing that we do for a specific, preferably positive business outcome would all be encompassed in business writing. And I’m glad you brought out the point of what female professionals can do because I think there’s basically an understanding globally that unfortunately females are a bit disadvantaged when it comes to leadership positions and ascending the C-suite and so on and so forth.
And depending on whom you listen to, if you listen to the angry females, you would hear comments like, we have to work twice as hard to get half the results or half the recognition that our male counterparts would get. But what I say is that regardless of the system being against you, either as a female or as a minority, you can use your business writing skills to get ahead, to get noticed.
and to be taken seriously. And this has happened to me personally over the years, even in situations where I had no connections or I had no clout, yeah, I didn’t know important people. The fact that I was able to write persuasively, I found that I was being checked out. Yeah, I didn’t always get what I asked for or what I requested, but I always got some, should I say, some indication.
that I was taken seriously. Sometimes my request granted, sometimes politely declined. But without being able to write persuasively, I wouldn’t have been able to tap into opportunities, business opportunities, collaborations. I wouldn’t, for example, be able to be sitting here speaking with you because everything depended on us connecting on LinkedIn and you’ve probably seen my content, the way I interacted and the way I wrote and so on and so forth. So my advice to…
females in particular would be, regardless of whatever disadvantage that you have, whether your background or the systemic disadvantage on everything, if you deliberately hone your business writing skills and work on your craft, you will be noticed. Yeah, it helps differentiate you from your peers. and three simple ways to do this. You know, the first one, again,
is to read, and you touched on this earlier, reading extensively. This is critical. And people always ask me, hmm, what is the correlation between reading and writing? And I said, there’s a huge correlation between reading and writing because when you read well-written materials, you expose yourself to what good writing looks like. Yeah, so you begin to notice structures, you begin to notice expressions, you begin to notice the way punctuation is used and so on and so forth.
you enrich your vocabulary and then all these things that you see in good writing begin to sip into your writing without you really noticing. And the more you do it, the more varied constructions you are able to make and then it helps to define your voice online as well. That’s number one. So reading is really important. And then writing, writing, you cannot become a better writer if you don’t write. It’s like learning how to swim.
And I’ll say, you know, I know all the techniques and everything. And then you just, you know, dip yourself into the pool maybe like once a month. You’re not really going to improve as much as somebody who is swimming every day or multiple times a week. So I think reading and writing would be the two best ways to get traction on your writing. And of course, update your grammar. I always say know the rules of grammar so you know when to break them.
Yeah, but if you don’t know the rules of grammar, if you don’t know that there are non-negotiable rules that you can break in business writing, for example, capitalizing the first letter of, a sentence, capitalizing the pronoun I, anytime you see it in a sentence, all these things communicate to the reader that you know your craft. It indicates that you are knowledgeable and that you should be taken seriously. So my advice to…
female professionals and leaders is please become intentional about building your writing skills. Take very specific actions and just keep at that craft. The more you write, the better you get. And start a blog or a newsletter or something. That would really help, you know, to get your reps in, just like speaking, you get your reps in with the writing and it becomes better over time. But you do need to educate yourself. You do need to expose yourself to good writing.
Yeah, and update or refresh your knowledge of grammar along the way.
Dave Bricker (20:19)
And Lucille, I think part of it is that we’re all taught these kind of basic persuasion techniques, but if we want to sell products and services to smart, educated people, because let’s face it, they’re the ideal clients for the kind of service that we offer. If we’re content creators, if we’re consultants, if we’re coaches, we’re selling to people who are smart, educated, and have had sales training.
Lucille Ossai (20:21)
Yes. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dave Bricker (20:49)
And we can’t use the usual techniques. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received an email from, for example, a book editing service. And the grammar is terrible. And there are spelling and syntax mistakes. And I’m thinking, well, maybe they’re going to get a bunch of unaware people to trust them with their book. But they are scaring away their ideal clients because
Lucille Ossai (21:02)
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Dave Bricker (21:15)
Their language is technically mediocre. But they don’t even know it.
Lucille Ossai (21:20)
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of the problem is, and I have noticed this problem in my country, Nigeria, and maybe you could shed light if you’ve noticed this problem in the US. But part of the problem is that after secondary lot of us, went to universities, we went to study different things. We did not have, should I say,
we were not compelled to improve our writing skills. So a lot of, and when I do courses or when I do lectures or my training programs, I sometimes, and I deal with really smart people. These are leaders and professionals, sharp as nails, really smart people. And then when I start to tackle the writing, I sometimes need to go back to almost the foundational level grammar.
And I get comments like, wow, this is what we did in secondary school, but I can’t remember. Or is it this? Is it that? And I’m like, what happened after secondary school? All the years you were in university, some of them went to the field, some went to PhDs and so on and so forth. And they like, you know, we just not had time. Or I have not had time to read and I’ve not had time to refresh my grammar. So I have to go back to the foundational level, you know, to say, okay, what is a pronoun? What is a…
what is the difference between a common noun and a proper noun and so on and so forth. So I have noticed that that is a problem. Yeah, they’ve not had the opportunity to refresh your courses in grammar, since secondary school. And you just got into the workplace and then got into a career path and they continue to climb up the career ladder. Probably hired secretaries and all those people to write for them. So they didn’t really need to. And that became a problem.
curious to know what have you noticed in the US or in your training business or your interactions with professionals? What reasons do you think would have been the issue?
Dave Bricker (23:18)
find it’s really the same. One in five Americans reads below a fifth grade level. And I meet many professional people, leaders who never read. I know business owners who’ve read two or three books in their lives. I’ll give you an example. I was a university teacher for 15 years. And I quickly realized that if I were to give written assignments,
Lucille Ossai (23:38)
Mm-hmm.
Dave Bricker (23:44)
to my students, I was teaching graphic and web design. And I realized if I were to give them written assignments, they would all have to go back and take remedial classes and I would soon be out of a job because the overall literacy level was so low. And the high schools are inheriting these problems from the junior high schools who are inheriting it from the elementary schools. And you have a lot of underpaid overworked teachers
Lucille Ossai (23:58)
Right. Yeah.
Yeah.
Dave Bricker (24:13)
You’ve got young people who are not exposed to reading at home, and these problems just get kicked down the road.
Lucille Ossai (24:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Bricker (24:23)
And it’s really a shame.
Lucille Ossai (24:25)
It is. And in the business school where I lecture part-time, it’s a similar problem. So when I take courses like the writing or writing workshops and everything, we often need to go back. we start with grammatical exercises and I say, okay, these are the resources, they’re free online. Please go familiarize yourself with the punctuation marks and so on and so forth. And I do see some improvement.
It’s quite encouraging because especially with the executive MBAs, because they are pursuing an executive MBA program at the same time that they are working. So they can actually see. So they attend those classes and they are able to apply. And I get encouraging statements like, since the last time we did, I’ve done this. I’ve noticed this in my writing. People are commending me. I am teaching.
my colleagues or my direct reports and correcting their work and so on and so forth. And I think that’s brilliant. And only because they are in the program where they are compelled to take a certain course and they are compelled to take writing, like you said, remedial writing classes, you know, until they graduate, and it’s a shame that we don’t get, and professionals don’t get that opportunity. But again, I think
If you are an ambitious person and you want to go high up the career ladder, you want to expand your business and so on and so forth, I think you owe it to yourself. Just like you have self study and stuff like that, you owe it to yourself to at least take some steps. to improve your writing. And you would always benefit from excellent writing skills. You would always, always benefit. Even if you don’t know anybody, you don’t have connections. So.
I think if anyone is listening today, I think it’s something that I hope they’ll be encouraged to start to take seriously after this session. Yeah, because writing skills will open doors for you.
Dave Bricker (26:14)
And if you’re just putting your toe in those waters and you don’t have a love of reading, then listen to audio books. There are plenty of ways to read, but get yourself exposed to quality language craft. It will only boost your career and your influence.
Lucille Ossai (26:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.
Dave Bricker (26:35)
So
speaking of careers and influence, let’s move into leadership communication. What does that encompass and how can that impact a company’s culture and success?
Lucille Ossai (26:49)
Ooh, that’s a big one. So leadership communication is basically communication that leaders use. You can include the different kinds of messaging. Yeah. And to inform people, to persuade and to share the company vision, the culture and so on and so forth. So it could mostly top down. Yeah. But it could also encompass any kind of message sharing. It could be emails by emails in town halls, meetings.
Dave Bricker (26:55)
WAH-WAH!
Lucille Ossai (27:17)
you know, speeches, videos, and so on and so forth. But it’s very specific communication made by the leader to the, I would really,
the followers, yeah, to people in the organization, to inspire them to think a certain way or to do certain things in the best interest of the organization. And it’s really important because I think those people who end up being excellent communicators,
signal themselves for leadership opportunities. Yeah, people begin to see you as somebody who is a leader, who is someone who can clearly communicate, articulate a vision and so on and so forth. And interestingly, there’s a research I think from, I think this was in 2014, Ketchum Communication Monitor Group. So they sought to find a link.
between good communication and leadership communication, between leadership communication and effectiveness. And they analyzed the perceptions of, I think, 6,500 people across 13 countries. Yeah. And what they found out was that open communication was really important to great leadership. Yeah. And it was ranked, I think, the top ranking, should I say, indicator of leadership effectiveness. And if I’m not mistaken, I think
76%, I think it’s 76%, tied good communication to effective leadership. with some people saying that they would buy more from a company that had good leadership than the ones that didn’t. that was really interesting because it just goes to show that if you’re able to do that, if you’re able to show leadership communication and you’re able to speak persuasively,
concisely to inspire people to action. People want to work with you. Your company becomes more attractive in getting top quality people and you end up impacting positively your business results. So I think good communication skills would really compliment you as a leader. Yeah. And effectively, the whole empire inspires people to action. Whose leadership will be directly
beneficial to the company and will be able to improve the overall corporate image. And that’s why sometimes you have these celebrity business leaders. You know, sometimes CEOs of big corporations and all that. On the flip side, and this is something I think we should all be aware, if you are a poor communicator and you are a leader,
Yeah. And you don’t get the training and all that you do yourself and your company deserves, you know, because it’s difficult to inspire trust. Yeah. It’s, and once you don’t have the trust, it’s difficult to get people, people who don’t trust you are less likely to support you, you know, it’s supporting a meaningful way. So I think it’s, it’s one of those things that leaders should take very seriously. There’s research to show that there’s very good link between good.
communication and leadership effectiveness and leadership effectiveness and business results. I think it’s something that’s especially aspiring leaders. think it’s something that you should take seriously and not just see communication as a soft attribute because that tends to be the misguided and I think is really misguided, but that tends to be the misguided impression that communication is just a soft skill and all that. And LinkedIn this year,
Communication was the most desired skill, yeah, in the LinkedIn 2024 report for this year. Over the last couple of years, it’s been at least one of the top five since
but this year it was the most desired skill. So I sing this all the time. did you know that LinkedIn has already, you know, I sing this all the time, that this really, really important that it’s taken seriously. So hopefully more people will be inspired.
to take steps to improve their communication skills.
Dave Bricker (31:15)
And of course, there’s also public speaking, which is perhaps the ultimate form of leadership communication. And these days, it seems like everyone has tacked Life Coach and Keynote Speaker onto their title, even though they’ve got no training in either one. So what do professionals need to know about speaking beyond, pretend you don’t have imposter syndrome?
Lucille Ossai (31:27)
You
Yeah. Yeah.
The good thing is that. Effective speaking is not reserved for a select few. Yeah, so.
that is the biggest myth that I tend to want to debunk. Anybody, anyway, can become an effective speaker. You you just need to be intentional. You need to expose yourself to the science of speaking and to the art of speaking, because it is an art and it is an science. So science, you have all the techniques. Yeah, you have the techniques.
there’s the whole neuroscience of it all. And then you have the art, you have the rhetoric, have, speaking this, speak, you use the rhymes, do this, speak, vary your speech, vary your length of words and so on and so forth. But I think if when you become intentional, I tell people, you you could even start small, because some people are really reserved. I don’t like.
to speak in groups, I feel terrified and so on and so forth. it’s perfectly natural to feel that way. And if you are very, very apprehensive, you could start small, but please start. and now on the internet, there are so many free resources. have TED Talks that you could watch, for example, and free of charge, yeah? You have books, you have blogs, you have all sorts of things that you could do, but it’s really important to start. And I actually…
advise people, if you can join a Toastmasters Club, for example, because you would be supported in a conducive environment and then you could see other people speaking and you’d be encouraged and you’d be supported along the way. Having said all that, there very specific rules So the first one, again, and I think this is the number one rule of effective communication in general, is to know your audience.
So if you’re gonna speak, are you gonna be speaking in a small group? Are you gonna be speaking in a conference? Who’s in the audience, for example? Are they gonna be C-suite people? Are they gonna be your colleagues? Or are they gonna be, millionaires or whoever? Just know your audience, ask questions if you’re gonna be speaking externally and just get as much information as possible because then you are able to tailor your communication accordingly. So that was the first one. The second rule is,
a rule of three. So keep your communication simple, keep it brief and keep it clear. So simple so that a 12 year old would understand. It doesn’t really matter what the topic is. And yes, even if you’re talking about robotics or AI or climate change or anything that is considered to be really, complicated. keep it simple, keep it brief, get to the point. Yeah. More important now because there’s so many things.
vying for attention and so many distractions, especially if you’re going to be speaking to influencers and important people. They have very, very short time. Sometimes you may be given 15 minutes and then when you get there, we’re really sorry. Could you say it in five minutes? So you have to know how to make your messaging concise but impactful.
And then the third one is to be clear. What do you want your audience to know, to feel or to do? Otherwise you give a fantastic speech and you get the applause, you get the standing ovation, everybody goes back home and then nothing gets done. The needle doesn’t get moved in your favor. So just keeping those beacons. And then the final one is feedback. ask for feedback, give feedback as much as possible.
And if you, if it’s not possible to get formal feedback, but you do have a recording of, your speaking activity, then, play it and then just watch, turn the sound off and just observe your body language. Then, then listen to the sound and turn the video off and just listen to your voice. Does it sound interesting? Where you’re waffling on all those things. So if you are intentional doing those little things,
it becomes easier and it does really help if you commit to speaking because You could have all the tools, all the techniques and then when it’s time to speak, even in a team meeting or if you start small, you’re like, I don’t really feel like, I’m not really prepared and so on and so forth. It’s not going to happen. So sometimes you need to do it afraid.
Yeah, you need to do it even if your heart is beating really fast or even if you feel you’ve made a lot of mistakes. Last month, there was a very big presentation and the business school that I attended and it was the MBAs were given industry presentations, group presentations. So we had industry presentations on the banking industry and the oil and gas and so on and so forth. And understandably,
Some speakers were better than others, were better prepared. But one speaker was so nervous I was in the audience and when she kept speaking, she was waffling on, she was running out of breath But she managed to finish the entire presentation. And even though she wasn’t the best speaker, she got a lot of encouragement. I could hear people commenting, like, she did well, at least she finished.
And after the presentation I went up to her and I said, well done. I said, that was not easy, but well done. And you could see she was just relieved to have gotten it over and done with. But that’s the point. We wouldn’t always give a stellar presentation, but it’s very important that you stick to it, no matter how bad you think you have performed. You just go through the process, get feedback if you can, and just continue to.
continue to practice and over time you become better. But you do need to speak again. It’s just like swimming. You need to swim, so you need to Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
Dave Bricker (37:01)
completely agree with you. Just get that feedback.
And also, there’s a philosophy, if you’re not afraid of something, is it really worth doing? aside from going out to get groceries, which is worth doing because the alternative isn’t very nice. if you’re afraid of speaking and you know that it’s not going to hurt you, it’s just going to make you uncomfortable, then go out and speak. There are a lot of things that we need to do in life that challenge us.
Lucille Ossai (37:15)
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah. I speak.
Absolutely.
Dave Bricker (37:36)
You’re not
going to experience physical harm. And audiences will really appreciate that you tried. Even if you stop, you forget your lines, whatever happens.
Lucille Ossai (37:42)
They do. Yes. Yes.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, you would see people, you see people not applauding. Yeah, they understand that it’s really tough. They do. So they would encourage you That’s why you see the underdogs, getting the applause and all of course they understand it’s it’s nerve-wracking The bigger the stage, the more nerve-wracking it is. So just do it.
Dave Bricker (37:49)
Because they’re afraid too.
Lucille Ossai (38:09)
go out there and do it. That’s all I’d say.
Dave Bricker (38:11)
Yeah.
I agree. And after a while, it turns into a rush for people. They enjoy that dopamine rush from getting ready to get up on stage. So Lucille, tell us about your bestselling book, Influence and Thrive, and about your Rethinking Business Communications blog.
Lucille Ossai (38:19)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Okay, so thank you. that’s, there it is. So yeah, so Influence and Thrive I usually say it’s two or three books in one because it covers public speaking, business writing, nonverbal communication and organizational communication. And in my years of lecturing at a business school and training and coaching and all that.
I just realized that I never really saw a book that had all three or four elements in one. I usually see books on public speaking, on writing, on this. And I just thought it would be useful to just pull information, my experiences and research have come along the way, have come across along the way into one resource that people can use and hopefully get a better understanding of all these aspects of communication. So.
That’s why I wrote it. And I specifically wrote it for the people I tend to interact with the most with professionals, leaders and entrepreneurs, just hoping that they would get at least some good information in there with some tips on how to improve their communication skills across those four areas. So that was my main motivation for writing the book to help people, to help people and to help organizations use communication effectively to manage.
to manage their assets, the employees, to boost their reputation and to record all those lovely business results that they want. So that was my motivation in a nutshell. And Rethinking Business Communication blog basically started off the whole obsession with communication. So again, taking you back to what I had said in the beginning, yeah, prior to 2012, I had some experience in communication. I worked as a commercial officer.
at a foreign embassy. I did quite a bit of writing and so on and so forth. But it was not until I started writing the blog that I really went deep into the communication field. And the more I wrote and the more I read and the more I researched, the more passionate I became about the subject. So when I started the blog, I started mostly management issues, know, human resources and so on and so forth. And I sought to, should I say,
to highlight the link, the importance of communication in management, in the workforce and so on and so forth. And then over time, I just started to get more and more deeply into the field of communication and continued. And over the years, I’ve been blogging now, I think for 12 years, I think 2012, to 12 years, every month for 12 years. And I can say that it has really, really helped.
It has helped to increase my knowledge, to expand my network and just to give me a better appreciation of communication. Cause it’s such a wide field. It’s really, really big. You will think that have, after writing every month for 12 years, I’ve run out of what to say, but no, no, because you know, I, I draw from my experiences, something could happen today and I’ll blog about it, you know, tomorrow or something. So I think.
it’s been really helpful and more importantly it’s free yeah it’s free and people can go on the blog and just pull out information and I just wanted to help as many people as possible so hopefully it will continue to become relevant to professionals and leaders across the globe.
Dave Bricker (41:58)
and that book is called Influence and Thrive. And apart from the book and the blog, tell us a little bit about your speaking and training programs. Who should contact you? What challenges will you assist them with? And how can they get ahold of you?
Lucille Ossai (42:17)
Okay, so my yeah, thank you. So my the people I work best with are professionals, entrepreneurs and leaders. because they are rock stars, in my opinion. I mean, everyone’s a rock star. But these these groups of people are particularly because at that level, they understand they have come to know their experience people very sharp, very smart people. And they’ve come to realize and they’ve come to appreciate that their communication skills
could have taken them higher, but they need help with. So those are the people that are already willing and already committed to the process of learning. So those are my ideal audience to work with. And I do training, I do day training, I do corporate trainings, I do one-on-one coaching programs. Although because of the limited time I’m considering group coaching, because of the time, there just so many hours in the day.
Yeah, but for specific people, I would do one-on-one coaching and coaching and then training. So I’ve expanded my communication segment. Initially, it was business writing because that was my forte. But now I’ve expanded it to speaking, to speaking interpersonal communication. And then since last year, leadership, communication, persuasion and influence. And I found fascinating, fascinating. And it’s always a delight to work with people.
Those people who are interested, I’m always on so they could connect with me or they could send me an email or just go to my blog and just read the articles. I’ll go to my book website. There’s already a free chapter of my book on the website just so that they could get a sense of the value that I bring. yeah, so connect with me on LinkedIn or send me an email.
Dave Bricker (44:00)
and tell
us that
Lucille Ossai (44:02)
so on and so forth.
Dave Bricker (44:06)
and your website address one more time.
Lucille Ossai (44:09)
So Lucille Ossai, L-U-C-I-L-L-E-O-S-S-A-I. So my name and my surname as one word.com. So I think that’s quite it. I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you for having me. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure. Thank you.
Dave Bricker (44:21)
Wonderful. So Lucille Ossai, thank you so much for being my guest.
Lucille Ossai, thank you so much for being my guest today.
Lucille Ossai (44:33)
Thank you, thank you, was such a pleasure, Dave. And congratulations on Speakipedia. There’s nothing like it on the web. So I think it’s going to be a fantastic resource for speaking and all things communication. So fantastic resource. Well done.
Dave Bricker (44:42)
Thank you so much.
I’m Dave Bricker inviting you to explore the world’s most comprehensive resource for speakers and storytellers at speakepedia.com. If you’re watching this on social media video, please love, subscribe, and share your comments. If you’re listening to the podcast, keep your hands on the wheel, stay safe, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Speakipedia Media.
