 Hello, good evening everyone and welcome to our fourth Marketing Club event expressing your personal brand at work. The Marketing Club was created primarily to help students get the most from their graduate gateway accredited degree and prepare them for a career in marketing. This Marketing Club event is one of five online events we'll run this academic year with the final one on the 5th of May. Of course, CI members and other marketing practitioners are welcome to attend as well as students. As you can appreciate right now, the club exists online only but when things get returned to normal, we hope to provide network opportunities for students and marketing practitioners. For the uninitiated, the CIM Graduate Gateway program enables students to gain a professional marketing qualification by taking advantage of the exemptions Graduate Gateway provides. If you're a student, you can sign up now to receive the Graduate Gateway newsletter. Simply use the QR code you can see on the slide. We'll also send you a link to the sign up page after today's session. Each edition will provide you with content designed to support your studies and actively manage your professional development by keeping you up to date with the latest trends, innovations and concepts in the marketing industry. Before we get started with this evening's presentation, I'd just like to mention that you can download a copy of the presentation slides along with a list of additional reading resources to complement this evening's webinar in the handout section. These are only available to download whilst we're broadcasting so please make sure you download them before the webinar finishes tonight. We'll be recording the webinar which will be available to watch again on demand in a few days time on the Graduate Gateway webpage and the CIM YouTube channel. The presentation will last for approximately 45 to 50 minutes and you'll be able to interact with the speaker during the presentation by submitting questions for them to be answered as part of the live presentation. You'll be able to do this by clicking on the question mark which you'll find on the right hand side of your screen if watching on a laptop or on the top or bottom if watching on a tablet or smartphone. We'll also have a short Q&A session after the main presentation to answer any outstanding questions. If you'd like to share your thoughts on today's webinar on social media then you can use the hashtag CIM Events which you can see on your screen right now. So I'd now like to hand over to award-winning speaker Shola Kay, our guest presenter this evening, over to you Shola. Thank you very much Phil and I'm very happy to be here this evening with all of you. And as you know the topic today is Communicate Your Personal Brands at Work. And I know all of you are marketers so I'm not even going to try and take you on in terms of branding but I am an author of a couple of books and the operative word today is around communication because the books I've written are on communication. So it's how do you best communicate that brand at work, whether it's with your voice, with your words, your mannerisms and so on. So that's the focus of today's session. Let's zoom in here. So our objectives for the next sort of 45-50 minutes or so are to understand how your communication affects your personal brand and also how your personal brand might influence the way that you choose to communicate at work. We'll also look at how you can be more intentional about the way that you come across during your communications, whether that's in person or whether you're speaking on video which many of us are doing a great deal of at the moment as we all know. Also I want to share with you some tools and assessments so that you can take this work further in your own time and help you understand better the way that you're perceived by other people. And as you know, a lot of this is about the way, not only the way you think you come across but the way others around you perceive you and it's important to know both from both sides. So first a very quick introduction to me and why I'm interested in this topic. So I'm the author of a couple of books on communication and public speaking and I'm also a professional speaker. I am a comm specialist and I've got a podcast and a blog also around communication. And early on in my career I had absolutely no knowledge of personal branding, nothing about even thoughts about how I came across at work. I thought you just turned up, you opened your mouth, said something and then that was the end of it. And I quickly learned that that wasn't the case. And in my own situation I started out my career in the United States. I was working for a consulting firm and I was a little bit slow at coding. I've never coded before. It's my first job. I was supposed to be a coder. I was a very, very timid communicator in meetings, very afraid of speaking up in case I got it wrong. And as I said, it was a new role for me. So I had, as I said, no knowledge of personal branding whatsoever. I just thought, well, if you turn up and you just try your best, then everything will turn out okay. And I soon learned that that isn't necessarily the case. And I know that many of you probably have colleagues where you might feel that you perhaps know more than your colleague or you're doing better than them in terms of knowledge, but they're the ones that tend to be well presented. Maybe they package their ideas up really nicely and they perhaps get ahead faster than you do. And so in this particular situation in this role, as I said, I just had no idea how it was coming across. And one day I was called into my managing director's office and they basically sat me down and they said, well, show me your performance isn't up to scratch. And I thought, well, perhaps they're going to send me on the training program or they'll get me a mentor and they ended up saying that they'd put me on probation. So I was on probation, as you can imagine, quite a worrying time for me. And luckily with the help of a colleague, I ended up staying in that role and moved on from there and my career has progressed onward. But it made me realize that sometimes when we have tough times at work, it in part could be because our colleagues and our managers and so on could have acted differently. So in my case, I felt they could have been more empathetic. And I now talk about empathy and diversity and inclusion at work. But also from my perspective, how could I have acted differently? I could have had a lot more awareness of the way that I came across, the way I projected myself in meetings, the way I communicated, the way I varied, the way that I varied my speech, communication, language, depending on who I was with. And that's where my interest in this topic has come from. And I often find that the people are perhaps somewhat stymied in their career, they're being held back, and a lot of it is around the way that they carry themselves. So we're going to have a look at that today. So for me, the keys to change were a few things. First of all, understanding that I needed to keep attending sessions like today's one, or I could work on my personal development. Also understanding that authenticity is the foundation of strong communication. So we can learn all the skills that we want to, but unless there's a grounding of authenticity, then quite often people can see that we're not fully being congruent. We're not truly being who we are. So whatever you choose to say, how you choose to express yourself, authenticity is kind of the foundation. And then of course learning some communication skills on top of that. So now with my current work, as I say, I do a lot of work on diversity, equity and inclusion. And there's a big sort of motivation now for companies to listen, to want to listen a lot more to their employees, because they know that it's important in terms of creating engaging environments. It's important in terms of even satisfying and retaining customers. So if the employers want to listen, we in turn have to get ourselves ready to be heard. And again, I think this comes back to how do you communicate who you are when you're at work. So again, as I said, what I want to do is give you some tools today to help you understand how you come across, help you change the way that you come across, should you want to, and then how you can apply this to your in-person and on-camera communications. And after this session is over, of course, the next steps are down to you. So what I'm going to be asking you to do is from time to time today, reflect upon where you are, upon how well you think you're doing at some of the skills that I share with you. So first of all, this is hopefully going to be a bit of an interactive session. I've got my chat box open or the question box open. So I'd love for you, let's see, so Mehmet said the screen has stopped. I don't think it's from my end because I can see myself here. So I think it must be on your end, Mehmet, I'm afraid. But I'd love for some of you to share in the question box, what is your experience with communicating your personal brand? And also what made you come along to this session today? So just pop into the question box. I'll read out some of them. I know that not everyone will be able to read everyone's response, but I'll read out a few of them. And it's interesting to me to know. So what brought you along here today? What's your experience with communicating your personal brand? Please just pop it into the question area. Okay, I'm not seeing much response at the moment. Okay, if everyone's a bit shy, I'll carry on. But keep the questions coming in. Keep the comments coming in as well. Okay. All right, so the first thing I want to share with you is a little framework, which will help you to become more of an all-rounder with your communication. Because some people are very strong with their content. Oh, here we go. A few comments are coming in. So let me just talk you through this slide and I'll look at some of the comments. So this framework will help you to be an all-rounder with your communication. And it's called the AVID framework, A-V-I-D. So as I talked about, authenticity is super important. So knowing yourself, and we'll look at how you can get to know yourself better a bit later. Also, is the content that you're sharing valuable? Are you sharing something that's useful to people? Also, are you sharing stories? And I'll give you a storytelling framework later that you can use for your personal brand story. And then finally, do you have some dynamism about you? So is there a bit of energy and vitality when you communicate, because that's important also. So let's jump back. I'm seeing the comments coming in now, which is fantastic. So let's see. So Eloise says, as a master student, I've gained confidence in communication, but I want to build upon this. Fantastic. Gefin says, I was asked to define your personal brand in a job interview. OK, great. And let's see if I can expand on that. Realised you weren't sure. Oliver says, trying to improve your networking skills for you're showing yourself off in the best way. And that can help with your networking. Perfect. What else have we got here? We've got Abigail. I'd like to get some tips on being more effective at verbal communication, because you're not lacking confidence a little bit. Suzanne says, not something you considered before hearing about this webinar. Alice wants to talk to people at a more senior level. We'll look at that for sure. So yeah, a good few comments in here. So thank you so much for sharing. Martin, difficulty selling myself. Julia says, would like to be more assertive. Maria wants to start your own business. So you need to be aware of your brand. So yeah, a lot of different reasons. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you for sharing those. OK, awesome. So let's carry on. So you've got this Avid tool, AVID, making sure that you tick the boxes when you communicate, OK? Authenticity, value in terms of your content structure, inspirational in terms of telling stories that help connect people with you. And then your delivery, making sure that you have a little bit of energy to you in a bit of life. And luckily for me, when I wrote my book, it was called How To Be A Dever at Public Speaking, because it was geared mainly towards women, but AVID works equally well. And so now I call it the AVID framework. And it's just a little summary of it here. Again, just about being dynamic, being inspiring, being valuable, and being authentic. OK, so for some reason, the type is a bit faint, but hopefully you can still read it. OK, so I want you now to rate yourself. Just take a moment and jot down on a piece of paper, or you can pop it into the question box. Would you say that you are all four of these when you communicate? Are you dynamic? Are you aware of that? Are you inspiring? Do you try and tell stories or use examples to connect with others? Do you share valuable content? And do you arrange it in such a way that it's easy for people to understand? And then finally, when you do communicate, are you authentic, or do you feel like you're on shaky ground? So some of you may want to share that in the chat, in the question box. Give yourself a red, yellow, or green on these. Not on all of them, but just overall. And some of you may just want to write it down for your own personal reference. But I really do want you to come away having reflected today so that you know exactly what to work on going forward. So anybody want to share what you think you are, red, yellow, or green, for this combination of skills and abilities. So I think there's a delay, so I'll just let you get those coming in, and then I'll carry on for the moment. Are you a red, a yellow, or a green here? Okay, so what I want to look at now is how do you tell your personal brand story? Okay, so I've got a few comments coming in. So Abigail said, red, thank you for being honest there. Yeah, let's see. So Thibault says he thinks he's a green. Fantastic. Sukena says yellow. Suzanne, yellow to green. Junior says yellow. Yeah, Zia says context dependent. Interesting. Yeah, a few yellows. Reds coming in as well. Thanks for your honesty there. And yeah, a real mix. Okay, fantastic. And this idea of being able to reflect and look at yourself and be self-aware is obviously the key to your growth pretty much in every area in all walks of life. So self-awareness is super important. Okay, great. So coming in, someone said orange there. Okay, brilliant. Okay, super. So keep thinking about this while we go on to this next area. So I want to share with you now a little framework that's very easy to use for sharing your personal brand story. And I want you to think to yourself, what's your personal brand story? Now, at the beginning of this session, I shared my story with you. I shared that early in my career, I struggled. I was put on probation in a role, managed to turn things around. But then I learned through that story. And that is my personal story. I share it all the time because of the brand values that I have, one of which is being relatable. It's really important to me that as I come in as a speaker, you might think, well, I have books, but I want you to connect with me person to person. I want to seem very relatable and easy to get on with to you. Hence, I tell that story. So you need to start thinking, well, how do you want to come across? And then you want to pick a story from your background that helps you to convey those brand values. So we'll look at this a little bit more in detail later. But I want you to think, what is your story? What are you known for? And as they say, facts tell. Stories sell. So I could have come and just stood and said, well, I've written these books and on this, this and this. But I'm sure that to many of you I'm much more relatable because I told you a little bit about my story. So we can connect with others better through a combination of vulnerability and transparency. And if we go to Aristotle, who's sometimes called the father of public speaking and persuasion and communication, he said that we need three areas to be strong for us to be persuasive communicators. And those three areas are ethos, logos and pathos. So ethos is all about your own credibility, if you like. What's your ethos when you come to the table? Are you seen as somebody genuine, honest, trustworthy? Logos is about your logic, your arguments, whether you have a decent structure when you speak, does it make sense? And pathos is about human connection. So if you want to be a skilled communicator, you want to have all three of those. So the framework I want to share with you is called the now-then-how framework. And it's excellent for telling a personal brand story. And the way it works is like this. Now the way you start with your story is you start with the present. So instead of going back to the past and saying, well, three years ago, I was in this position, you say today, today as I shared with you, today I'm an author, I'm a professional speaker, and, you know, I do this for a living. But then you transition and you say, but it wasn't always like that. And so this is where you transition to a time in the past where you perhaps had a struggle or a challenge. And it's through sharing the struggle or challenge that you had, that's how you become relatable. And so you might share a little bit about a challenge that you had in the past, something that was difficult for you, something you had to overcome. And then finally you can share how you managed to do that. And so that might be your personal ethos, two or three tips for individuals to learn from you as to how you turn things around. But this combination now-then-how is really powerful for getting across who you are, what you're about, and why people should listen to you. So let's see, Mota said, so your personal brand story is how you reached your current situation. Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely. So there are a few payoffs with this particular framework. Now, one thing it lacks is it lacks suspense because we're not saying, well I'm going to keep you right on the edge of your seat until I tell you what happened, because we start with now. So people know that right now, for example, Mota, they might say, okay, so we know now that you're a marketer for organization X. So they know the ending. But the payoffs with this framework are two, there's two of them. The first one is the difference between the now and the then. Because you can talk for half an hour about how brilliant you are and how many degrees you've got, but people will soon start to get bored. So you want to give them enough to make an impact. But then you want to transition to, but it wasn't always like that. And that's the first leaning moment for people. Because people like, we love to hear stories of individuals overcoming challenge, right? We love to hear how somebody took adversity and knocked it on its head and won out at the end. So you start with things going really well, this is the role I'm in, I'm happy, I love what I do. However, it wasn't always like that. If you see me six months ago, I was unemployed, I didn't really know how I'd pay my rent, you know, whatever it might be. So you transition. Now, the next payoff with this framework is the transition from then to how. Because this is where you're giving people your tips for success, right? So, you might be saying with me, I will show this that she went from she's an author now, but she was once on probation at work. How did she turn that around? And I told you that for me it was about communication skills, personal development and authenticity. So you might say, oh, okay, well, also being authentic is important. Okay, I'll write that down. That's news to me. Okay. So you've got the two pales, you've got the drama between now and then and then you've got the tips, the ethos, the next steps that come when you transition from then to how. Okay. So typically what I'd normally do if we were in a typical meeting, I'd probably unmute one of you and ask you to try this framework out in front of the group and I'd give you a bit of coaching. But instead what I'm going to do, let's zoom in a minute, is just to highlight the fact that you can use this for general storytelling. So let's say that you're telling a story, let's say you work for an agency. Okay. And you're telling a story about a client. So you might say, well, our client right now is doing exceptionally well with their Google ads. They are you know, they're getting a, I don't know, 500% ROI on their spend with us and you know, they're getting five new clients every month. But it wasn't always like that. Before they came to our agency, they were struggling. They almost went out of business. They had no new clients for six months and the the leader of the company was about to just throw in the towel. Okay. So you make, you paint that's the difference between now and then and then you say, well, how do we achieve that? Well, we have a proprietary piece of software that we've designed that sits on top of Google ad words and when we use that software, it gives people amazing results. So please do come talk to us. We'll tell you about our system that we use and maybe we could convince you that you can become a client of ours. Okay. So you can see here that's a very persuasive formula, isn't it? You talked about the success of a client, where they were before they came to you and what you did to turn their fortunes around. So you can use this framework for job interviews. Some of you hear a student say it might be that you'll look applying for job soon. If somebody says tell us about a personal challenge that you overcame tell us about your personal ethos. You can use it then. You can also use it for just communicating with your colleagues at work and this could be the story that goes out before you. So when we get off this call and let's see there's a comment here from Archie. Archie says it's like presenting to the audience what they want to achieve now and then identifying with them saying where they started. Yeah, absolutely. It takes people with you this framework. Okay. And if you watch TV shows like Graham Norton or where they interview celebrities it's very rare that a celebrity will come on and say, oh, you know, I've just bought myself a new Lamborghini. Everything's great. I've got so much money, blah, blah, blah, blah. They'll always say, oh, when you make movies coming out, things are going great but if you were on the set with me you'd have seen this thing went wrong or this thing happened. And so that's their way of being relatable by telling us about things that went wrong. Oh, the light's gone off. Hopefully you can still see me but my light just went off then. But that's their way of staying relatable. So this is how powerful this framework can be. Okay. So can you think of the pivotal moment in your own working or personal life that you can then apply this framework to? That's your little homework at the moment to think about. How can you turn that pivotal moment into a now-then-how story? Okay. Now I want to give you an example. This came from, I think, the Wall Street Journal or something and there was a story about this woman who'd become, I think, one of only three black CEOs in the USA and because I do a lot of work on diversity and inclusion it stuck out to me. But she talks about, the whole article was about how she was so successful in doing so well and then they have this little quote from her and it says I think about the day my dad asked me to help him plan his retirement and I said, dad, your pension is not enough. Now, thanks to his work and sacrifices of other people, I'm in this amazing role. So can you see how this makes her seem humble, likeable even though she's just become this CEO of a massive company? So these are the little stories that you can put together to help to concoct, if you like, to help to put together your brand and then that story can go before you oh, he's the one that did that and that story is working for you on your behalf. Okay. So the next exercise for you is this rate yourself. Do you have a personal brand story that shares your achievements, shares the challenges that you've been through or shares your ethos? So pop in the chat. Do you have one? And you know what? Most of the time people don't. So pop in the chat red, yellow or green. So yeah, do you have one? So Haley says quite honestly, no, I don't read. Thanks for your honesty, Haley. So you should all, your mind should be sort of clicking and ticking right now with what story can I use? You might have more than one and you use it situationally. So Haley says yes. So Cana says red. Yeah, Joe, and you can use it in job interviews. You can use it anywhere, right? It's so powerful. Alexander says green. Oliver Green, junior. Let's see, Suzanne says red, junior. Says green. Okay, so some of you do, some of you don't. Yellow, yeah, someone says I've got the story but need to work on it. Yeah, so mixture, real mix. Excellent. Great. So those of you that don't, hopefully by the end of today you will. And those of you that do, you'll have an even more polished up one by the end of today. Excellent. Excellent, great. So let's move on. Yeah, so I'm just looking at the comments. So Amy says orange, I think I could have one but just difficulty thinking of it. Haley says yellow, I've got one but lack the confidence to share in a compelling way. Thank you for sharing that. Well, this framework will help you. It's inbuilt, compelling because of the difference between the now and the then and then sharing the how, the value that you can add. Awesome. So a few yellows coming in from Rashid, Maria, get in. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, great. So let's carry on. So now I want to give you a few tools for when you're actually in conversation or when you're talking in a meeting. Some tools to actually help convey the brand that you want to show to other people. And these are how you use your voice. Now, a lot of people think when you open your mouth, sound comes out and that's just it. Your voice is your voice. But you can actually work on this. So for example, if you think that you want to come across as being strong, powerful and in control and you speak like this and you sound really timid. That's not going to work, is it? So you might need to work a little bit on your body language, on your voice so that you are congruent. So your personal brand is with the way that you come across. So we'll look at the three different kinds of voices that you can access right now. So the first one is what we call the gut voice. And this is when people speak from the gut. So it sounds quite deep. It sounds quite aggressive. It sounds serious. And if you're a bit of a warrior type person, this might be where you want to speak from. Now if you're somebody who speaks like this and you want to change your brand to control, you might need to be more aware of speaking from lower in your body. Because the lower down in your body you speak from, imagine your body is not a speaker as in a human speaker but like a stereo speaker. So you've got the bass which is the woofer. So that's the real body of the sound. And then you've got the little tweeter at the top. So your head is like a little tweeter in your body from your abdomen, from your guts. So if you want to come across as being powerful, you want to try and use a bit more of the gut voice. Then we have the heart voice which is more about appealing to people's emotions. It's more gentle. It's warm. And the way you can get access to this voice is just by extending your vowels a bit. So if you speak a bit more gently and you make each word last a bit longer then suddenly you come across warmer and more affectionate. So sometimes you're in a situation where perhaps that's the way you need to come across. Maybe people have been arguing and you're trying to sort of calm people down. So this voice might not work. You might instead need to be a bit more gentle. Then the final voice that we'll look at today is what we call the head voice. And this is more intellectual. It's more thoughtful. You're thinking, you're pondering the sounds coming out of here. It's not rich but it sounds intellectual. It sounds thoughtful. It can also sound playful and childish. Okay? So a lot of youth here today probably have never even thought about where the sound comes out from your body. And so I want you to practice this. If you've got let's see. So if someone, a comment just came in. But if you've got flatmates or partners try things out with them. Ask them, what do you want for breakfast today? What do you want for breakfast? Try things out. Look at the response that you get. When you're on a Zoom meeting next time think about different parts of your presentation and how you're going to present them. Which voice you'll use depending on the results you want. So really start to play with this. And one thing that you can do is to perhaps read the newspaper, read a paragraph at a time in the different voices, head, chest and gut. Just to get that practice. There's a few comments coming in. Let's see. So Junior says, I'm not a native English speaker. I think it drains my self-confidence. Do I have any advice? I think you've got as a non-native English speaker I get this question all the time. People worrying that, oh, what if I make a mistake? You've got to think to yourself, okay, I probably speak English better than a lot of English people do. And I speak my own native language. You can't let it hold you back. You might want to work on your language skills in the meantime but don't let it hold you back. Because most of the time people aren't judging you for the way that you speak. We're just impressed that you are multilingual. So don't let that hold you back. Let's see. There are a list of the framework for you to create your compelling story. The framework you will get, it's going to be in the recording and also I think it's in some of the slides if you download tonight. Let's see. That's fine. Let's carry on. We've got the gut voice. We've got the chest voice and we've got the head voice. We can use them depending on what message we have and how we want to be perceived. Typically I do a quick demo using these different sentences. What I'll do is I'll take the first sentence and I'm going to use head or chest voice. I want you to pop in the chat which voice you think I used. Here's the first one. Go and do what I say. To pop in the chat was that the head, the chest or the gut voice. Go and do what I say. Okay. Wow. Someone said gut. People are saying chest. Absolutely. That's quite gentle for me. Go and do what I say. Imagine using that voice. Who would you use that with? You may not use it in a big meeting where you're trying to be to get heard but you might use it when you've just had your way. Someone's trying to adopt your plan and perhaps there's a colleague who's feeling aggrieved or upset. I think we can work together on this. Okay. So everyone's saying chest. Okay. Now let's do this next one. Go and do what I say. Hopefully you heard the difference there. Yeah. So that's coming in now. Some people are saying gut voice. Absolutely. So I want you to practice the difference between the two. Imagine you're a rugby player and you speak like this. Versus imagine that you're someone very gentle, perhaps you're a doctor or perhaps you're a nurse and you speak in a more gentle tone. So that's how you can play around with those. I won't do the head voice because you know now what that one is. That's the defaults, right? It's the one that's left over. Okay. So I'd love you to just take a moment now. Rate to yourself. Are you aware that you have access to different parts of your voice? Can you even access those different parts of your voice with ease? You may have never done it before. So just rate yourself on your awareness. If you're completely unaware, give yourself a red. If you're a little bit aware, give yourself a yellow. If you're very aware of it, give yourself a green. Okay, brilliant. So those who didn't have an awareness now do. Perfect. So Oliver says green, I'm able to access different areas of my voice depending. Yeah, brilliant. Okay, someone's saying green, but I don't use it as much as I could. Awesome. Fantastic. Great. So keep those coming in. So Faisal says yellow. So as you said at the beginning, I want to learn how to speak to more senior people. So I want to look at gravitas and relatability. And all of these areas could be, you know, like a one-hour session just by itself. So I'm really giving you a kind of with bang tour today. We're going really fast, but at least it gives you an understanding. And then you can also always go deeper by yourselves later. So when we talk about gravitas and relatability, we often look at the difference between say a cat and a dog. Pats are very aloof, aren't they? They're very independent. They do their own thing. Sometimes they want to be stroked and petted. Other times they just want to go off being by themselves. Whereas dogs tend to really want a lot of attention. They want you to stroke them, pat them. You know, they're wagging their tail, they're looking at you. And so this is the difference between having gravitas and being more relatable. So let's look at this next slide. Okay. So gravitas is about being a cat. So gravitas typically means that you are more serious, you come across as more weighty and relatability is much more about you're friendly, you want to be liked. Okay. So how do we portray more gravitas? Well, it's very much around stillness. Keeping very still when you speak. Keeping your weight balanced. So you've often seen people when they speak and doing all of this, that takes away from your gravitas because it makes you look like you're uncertain. Let's go back. Also if you watch the news, you'll hear that newsreaders at the end of their sentence or phrase will come down in their inflection. Today, this is the news. Okay. As opposed to they won't say today this is the new because that makes you sound uncertain. So for gravitas you need stillness, you need balance, downward inflection on the voice. You might also have your palms down when you speak. Because when we show our palms like this, it makes us seem more vulnerable. We're saying, hey, I've got, I'm not armed. I've got no gun in my hand. You can trust me. But when your palms are more down like this, it's showing that you're more in control. Let's go back. Your voice wants to send out information and when you listen, instead of making noises like mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you listen in silence. So those are all signs of somebody who's got a lot of gravitas. Whereas if you're more relatable, more like a dog, you might move your head a lot. Okay. Oh, yeah. Or if someone's talking to you, you nod. Yeah. Okay. Making a lot of noises. All these things take away from your personal power. They might make you seem more friendly and easy to get on with. But if you're talking to senior people, you'll often find that they come across as they don't necessarily want you to like them. They just want you to give them information and that they're there to get the job done. So if you want to interface more with senior people, then you need to have more gravitas. Doesn't mean to say when you go back to your team, you can't just go back to being more of a dog and having more fun. But quite often you'll see at the beginning of a meeting, people they'll be laughing, joking. When the meeting begins, they get really still, they switch on the gravitas. So these are some tips and skills that you can try in your next meeting or when you're talking to your boss or just watch people and see how they come across. It's easier in person than on camera but you can still see the difference on camera. Now here's a Ted talk that you may want to watch which is by Amy Cuddy which is called your body language may shape who you are. She talks about this idea of taking up space and one of the things that people often do if they feel timid or intimidated, they make themselves very small. So if you want to project that you're confident you're in control you want to keep your shoulders back you want to take up space and in addition to that you don't want to speak too quickly. So this is called temporal expansion when you speak slowly enough that you come across as somebody who's got something important to say. So we've got physical expansion or spatial expansion and we've got temporal expansion and they both lend more of a feeling of gravitas. Now there's a question from Archie who says would you ever recommend any of the dog trades or would it always be gravitas when with someone senior? I think at the beginning you want to have gravitas maybe once you divert more of a relationship you can relax a little bit but I think it's better to err on the side of caution than be too palli and too lightweight and then you find that you never get that respect back from them. On the other hand some people have got so much gravitas that they're actually intimidating and I used to go to a speaking club there was a woman there who had a very deep voice she physically was quite tall and imposing and she was also super serious and so people were in awe of her but also a little bit afraid to be aware of that sometimes you might actually turn people off because you're too serious so it's about balance and about having access to both. Okay so I want you to think about yourself now what would you say you are would you say that you're more cat or more dog pop it into the chat or into the question box more cat or more dog okay so people are saying dog Maria says what kind of professions need gravitas you know what it's not by profession it's by role it's by role so you might work in acting let's say where it's important to perhaps be very not acting let's say hospitality where in hospitality you want to be very relatable but if you're the CEO of a hospitality company you will still need to have gravitas so don't think about it by profession think about it by by role okay a lot of you are thinking yeah dog more dogs okay a few cats just coming in now Amy says dog Julia says cats yeah so real mixture actually but typically at my sessions there are more dogs who want to learn how to turn on the cat if they possibly can okay so rate yourself do you change up your communication style depending on who you're with do you know how to display gravitas do you know how to display relatability were you doing it before or did you just learn now so pop into the chat how flexible and adaptable are you with your communication would you say so the key here obviously it's nice to share with all of us but the most important thing is to understand yourself so that you can work on this after today's session now the last section I want to look at is archetypes and personas and this really builds on everything we've looked at today now those of you who know about branding and know about archetypes you may want to have a look at this a bit more I don't have a lot of time to go into it but the idea of archetypes are if you like sort of behaviors where we can just look at the way that somebody's behaving and you can do it for branding as well but look at some the way someone's behaving and just kind of almost kind of categorize them so somebody who perhaps has a very gentle voice and is very kind and caring might fit into the lover archetype versus someone who's very regal like a king archetype so I want to look at four in particular today which are important for communication and I'm just taking a subset so you know this isn't everything but these are four so the first one is the king the second is the warrior the third is the creative and finally is the carer now if we look at some examples of each of these let's look at the king so typical king might be somebody like Barack Obama so if you ever go to a nightclub back in the days where we could if you went to a nightclub and you had that friend that came to the nightclub and they were wearing a suit and tie they are typically people who are kings you know somebody who's very formally dressed pretty much all the time and they tend to speak in their head voice they come across as very wise and this is a great persona to adopt when you want people to step back and see the bigger picture so you might say hey look we've talked about this long enough I believe we should now make a decision let's think about this carefully so that's much more of a sort of reason and wise behaviour so that's the king now I want you to start thinking who do you know that fits into these different categories and which one you fit into that's the king the next one people say don't use Donald Trump but he's a classic example there's someone who's a warrior these are people who they'll take on any fight with anyone they don't care they love challenge and they're all about change and taking action and they tend to speak in the gut like whoa let's get this done so they've got that gut voice and you may need to turn up the warrior in yourself when you want to move things forward let's say people have been deliberating over a decision you might say right come on we need to make a decision now let's move this forward so the warrior can be really useful the danger with the warrior is that they can come across as intimidating and bullying the danger with the king is they can come across as being too intellectual the next archetype is the creative and this is the sort of Steve Jobs type someone who's quite quirky you know they like to have a bit of humour and they are quite expressive and this is good if you need to liven things up a bit or make people laugh the danger here is that you can come across as being a bit lightweight and not serious now the final one is the carer and these are people that are warm supportive show a lot of empathy when they speak they speak with that chess voice speak gently and their eyes are warm and soft and this is when you need to get people together perhaps after a disagreement and come on okay let's just let's just move forward together now we had a few difficulties but now let's let's come together and let's move forward now the danger with the carer is sometimes people see them as being too soft so my question for you is this which is which of these do you personally feel that you lean towards which one are you so pop your one into the chat do you think you're more of a king, warrior, creative, carer okay so which one are you and I can see yeah so I've got a couple of kings someone who's a king Camel says king Daniel says carer Jan says carer okay yeah Francesca says Francesca says king Junior says carer Haley says carer it's a real mixture actually and again the key is to know is to be aware of it and sometimes you might not be getting results at work or in a meeting and then you realise oh it's because I'm being a carer whereas I need to be a warrior at this moment let's see yeah mixed between warrior and creative, carer I had a client once that I went and spoke at and they hired a new manager and this client was a spar so as you can imagine a lot of women that work in a spar and the men that work there as well were much more kind of gentle caring but the manager they had hired was a warrior and that warrior manager kept having conflicts with the staff all the time the staff didn't want to work with that person and we were in this workshop and then you could see the this warrior woman, oh I'm a warrior and she got the reason why she wasn't getting also well with her colleagues the next time I went back to that organisation she had left she had left because she could see that it wasn't working for her in that organisation so these are things you can start to look at to analyse your relationship and your success using these different measures and tools okay someone said please show the king again I'll just very quickly show you the king I know I did go through this quite fast but I just want to get through before we finish so here's the king so let's zoom in on the king so king, why is reason subjective formal body language head voice intellectual use when you need people to step back and see the bigger picture so Costeina says when you have been known to be a carer is it possible to all of a sudden to want to be a warrior what a good question I think it's possible I think it might take a while for your colleagues to get used to it so I think you could introduce it bit by bit and then ease into it more but I think yeah if people see you as a bit of a pushover or very gentle and then suddenly you come in like right people might just be taken aback and feel like you're not being authentic so something to think about there but what a good question thank you okay so you'll rate yourself and let's do this so discussion, things to think about which archetype are you does it serve you does it serve you to be a carer if you're a king does it serve you how will you change what will you drop or adopt and what will you reinforce okay so it seems to think about here and in the interest of time I want you to rate yourself so red, yellow, green do you have a bit of knowledge of these various archetypes and are you now aware of whether you're a king a carer, a creative or a warrior or some mixture so some of you may want to look into this in more detail some of you might be happy with where you are with this but as they say awareness is curated so the more you know about yourself the more you know how to manage yourself and manage your relationships the better off you will be okay so the last area that I want to look at today we've got about probably 8 minutes left before I hand back to Phil is authenticity so the numbers Kylie said yellow Kevin said red Andrea said yellow yeah awareness of all three that's Oliver, brilliant okay great so last area is authenticity another quote from Aristotle two quotes from Aristotle but knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom so this is where it all begins so I say let you shine through it's really important to work on the basis of who you are and then overlay all these tools on top but it's got to come from an honest and real place so why don't you start thinking about who you want to be when you communicate if you had three words to describe your communication values what would those be and if you go online and look up lists of values there's like hundreds and hundreds and I'm going to give you a resource in a minute where you can actually look into a lot of this work that we've done today but if you had to choose three words to describe yourself when you communicate what are they and not describe just how you are now but how you would like to be now when I communicate when I speak I always think that I want to be relatable I want to be informative and I want to be engaging so when I judge myself at the end of any speaking opportunity and I speak for a living I always think was I engaging was I relatable was I informative and then that means I can tick those off and then I can add other skills on top of those but those are my fundamentals so I've only got a couple of very small number of words here to choose from but you can find lists with hundreds of these so I suggest that if you do want to take control of your communication personal brand go to those lists and start thinking well who do I want to come across at how do I want to come across and start putting those three together so let's see I'm going to say humorous, honest and informative Suzanne has said same words as you thank you Suzanne excellent like great minds think alike there so yeah it's really about doing it your way and in your own style super super important here and like here's just a screenshot so if you start looking at values you'll see lists with hundreds of different adjectives like this and you can just choose which ones you want to be that's really relatable sorry so Mertus said in control honest and informative Sandra said informative, relatable, honest, engaging Faisal says informative, engaging and witty absolutely so there might be a massive gap between where you want to be and the three words that you've actually chosen and where you are today so if you say witty and in control and then you're really boring really timid right then that tells you you've got work to do but these goals can be aspirational the values can be aspirational and you grow into them or you design your presentation so that they're inbuilt in your presentation or in your communications so you become a lot more what's the word on purpose with the way that you communicate okay so yeah as I said there's tons of resources online there's this one called the personal values assessment I'll give you a link to download a document with about I think 15 or 20 different links to different resources that all will help you with some of the material we've discussed today and I went really really quickly so I want to make sure that you have time to reflect on this properly so the very last rate yourself before we go on to the Q&A is this which is do you feel that you are an authentic communicator do you know your communication values is this something you need to do more work on give yourself a red, a yellow or a green how would you rate your authenticity because you can still be aspirational but authentic as well there's no reason why you can't have goals that you currently don't meet but it's still true to you so as we start to wrap up this is just a little screenshot of the PDF that I have that you can access and if you go to showlake.com slash personal brand just grab a quick screenshot of this now if you want to or take a photo there are I think as I say about 10, 15 different links some of them are my own content some of them are resources about values and branding and archetypes and so on but just grab this link showlake.com slash personal brand and then you can download those for yourselves and then really kind of go into this in a bit more detail in depth and then another thing that you can do which I'd love to hear from you is connect with me on LinkedIn so on LinkedIn at showlake I professionally speak on empathy in the workplace diversity, equity and inclusion communication, inclusive leadership so if you do know of other organisations that could benefit from a talk on any of these areas or indeed on this talk then please connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me an email and let me know, I'd love to hear from you if there's one thing that you're going to do to continue this work what is it, what's that takeaway for you so share that with me in the chat because I'd rather you do one thing well than try and do six or seven things and then do them in a very kind of half hearted way and abandon them so what's your big takeaway is it the different voices is it being more authentic is it the different archetypes is it the avid framework what's the big takeaway for you from today's session and then while you're putting those in the chat I'd love to hear if there are any questions so does anyone have any questions today so let's see, Eloise has said the now then how story is her takeaway Abigail, the storytelling framework Kylie says gravitas being less talk, okay Alice says yeah, I know the area now where I need to improve which is gravitas Faisal, different archetypes Suzanne being more aware of the archetypes, Zia says now then how framework James helped you understand, fantastic excellent, I'd love to be able to download the questions afterwards so perhaps if that can be done, Alice that would be really brilliant okay, great, so any questions from you we've just got a couple of minutes left before I hand it over for any questions so there's one here, how can we be more dynamic in our communication, I'm passionate but sometimes I find it hard to reflect that in my communication there's lots of different ways you can be dynamic you might want to use vocabulary that is very evocative and paints a picture for people it might be about ramping up the energy when you communicate and understanding that you can't be lackluster find a way to just rev things up a bit before you communicate it might be about gestures and using more hand gestures start with talking about things you're passionate about think about where you can get the passion and the interest in what you're talking about and then try and let that reflect out to your listeners okay, thanks Andre, any other questions is that the only question feel free to connect with me on email or on LinkedIn and I'm going to hand over now just done a Q&A to Phil, just to wrap things up for us today, so thank you so much for your time, please keep in touch it's been a real pleasure to be with you and I think time is running out but email me or connect with me on LinkedIn or get the resources and you'll find the answers to a lot of these questions there there's always a balance between giving you plenty of information and having lots of time for Q&A but I hope that it was helpful to you okay, yes, that was brilliant thanks so much, Shola, for a really, really good presentation just by way of reminder to everybody don't forget there's still time if you want to download Shola's presentation slides and the list of additional reading resources you can do that from the handout section that we should see on screen okay, so that's all the time we have for our webinar this evening our final online marketing club event takes place at 12.30 lunchtime on Wednesday the 5th of May where we'll be hearing from a panel of speakers on employer expectations and how to successfully climb the professional ladder you'll find further details listed on the events page on the CRM website where you can also book for the session and finally you'll be emailed a short survey on this evening's webinar and we'd love to hear your feedback it will only take a few minutes and all survey responses are anonymous so please do let us know your thoughts so, on behalf of CRM thank you once again Shola for your excellent presentation and thank you all for joining us we hope you enjoy the rest of your evening good night