307. Finding Your Voice: Overcoming Communication Fears with Salvatore Manzi

What we often call “communication problems” are really clarity problems. Leadership communication coach Salvatore Manzi breaks down why smart ideas stall, why meetings favor fast talkers, and how leaders can make messages land, be remembered, and drive action. From start to finish, this episode focuses on practical moves you can try today.

We explore hidden biases that shape conversations: delay bias that sidelines reflective thinkers, the spotlight effect that inflates self-judgment, and the curse of knowledge that turns expertise into confusion. Salvatore reframes Q&A as a relationship check, showing how to buy thinking time, reflect questions back, and structure discussions so both quick responders and slower processors contribute.

Feeling nervous before speaking is normal. The episode covers reframing fear as excitement, using posture, breath, and focus to project confidence, and leveraging afformations to prime performance. You’ll also learn to craft an emotional journey with cadence, pause, and tone, turn complex data into memorable metaphors, give specific feedback, and use context checks to keep your audience engaged.

🌐 Connect with Salvatore:
• Website: https://www.salvatoremanzi.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvatorejmanzi/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salvatoremanzi

📚 You can purchase Salvatore's book on Amazon:
• Clear and Compelling: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQJ6M6B7

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Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever walked away from a conversation thinking you were clear, only to realize later that the message didn't land the way you intended. Have you ever found yourself frustrated thinking, I've said this already, why isn't it landing? And have you ever wondered whether the real issue isn't what you're saying, but how you're saying it. In today's episode, I'm joined by Salvatore Manzi, an expert in clear and compelling communication, and what this conversation really reveals is this, most leadership communication problems aren't about confidence or charisma. They're about clarity. This is a conversation about how leaders unintentionally create confusion, how messages get distorted under pressure, and what it really means to communicate in a way that people can hear, understand and act on. Hey everyone, and welcome back to the leadership project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Salvatore. Manzi Salvatore is a leadership Communication Coach and an expert in helping people who struggle to communicate, people that maybe feel that they don't have a voice, to find their voice, to help people overcome their fear of public speaking and to unlock the power of storytelling. Well, I'm talking about coaching people how to present in front of the United Nations or impactful scientists that are wonderful in the field, but struggle to communicate their ideas in a way that captivate their audience. And I know that this is something that many of us struggle with. So I'm dying to get into Salvatore's tips and what we can all do to overcome our fears and to become more effective communicators. So Salvatore, without any further ado, I'd love to know a little bit more about your background and what inspired you to do this work to help people like this?

Salvatore Manzi: 2:00

Oh, thank you. It's great to be on the show with you and Salvatore Menzi. I grew up in Kansas, and my father was a public speaker. Inspired me. I said I got to do that when I get older. But when I got on stage, I completely froze. My voice shut down. It came so high pitched, it just lost it, and it set me out on a course like I didn't want to be a person that had a limit. I didn't want to hit the ceiling and not go forward, and I knew if I couldn't overcome my fear of public speaking, I'd never go further in life. So I studied neuroscience, cognitive psychology, organizational behavior, how the brain receives and processes information and how we can shape our communication to be more impactful leaders and sharing our mission. And what I found over the last 20 years of coaching leaders is there's a subset of us, quiet leaders, introverts, analysts, engineers, scientists, who have a lot of data, and in communicating that data, don't always connect with the rest of the audience. So my goal has been helping a lot of people who are brilliant and have complex leadership offerings, but are unable to communicate it in a way that's clear and helps them to move ahead quickly.

Mick Spiers: 3:23

You're really good, Salvatore, I'm going to say to you that listening to those quiet ones in the room, I'm thinking about some work I did with University of Queensland almost three decades ago. One of the things I found was some of the brightest minds in the room, the ones that had the best ideas to share were the ones that were struggling to connect and to express those ideas. And yet, the I'm going to say, the boisterous voices in the room, the quality of their ideas was not as good, but the quality of their communication was better so so who was everyone focusing on? They were focusing on the people that were engaging, that their voice was engaging, but that meant that we left the best ideas on the table.

Salvatore Manzi: 4:08

There is such a joy watching the boisterous communicate in a meeting. Their ideas are just on fire. They're passionate. They're fun to watch. The more quiet leaders are processing and like taking all the variables and coming up with their answer, a real Aha. Happened for me when I discovered or I read I don't remember what book it was in, possibly quiet by Susan Cain, that introverts can take up to 10 seconds to formulate an answer to a question. So if I'm leading a meeting and I'm not allowing the space for 10 seconds of silence for some people to formulate their answers, I'm leaving the floor open to whoever is going to be the fastest talker or the quickest with an idea. And a lot of people are trained to just like i. Can't not be a quick responder. I don't know if you've heard of the delay bias. Have you heard of this?

Mick Spiers: 5:05

No, I haven't.,Salvatore, tell me more.

Salvatore Manzi: 5:08

Delay bias. We all have it. It's an unconscious bias that what happens if the person is asked a question and we don't see them respond in a particular time that we deem is appropriate, we start to judge them as a little bit less than, you know, not quite full deck. And what happens is we turn that lens back on ourselves, and we believe that if we don't have an answer to whatever the question is, or we don't have the most insightful comment, then we're going to be seen as less than so we rush ourselves to have the first thing that comes to mind without thinking about it all the way. Introverts typically will stop and think about it more, and extroverts, it's not that they're not thinking about it. They're used to a different dynamic flow. I'm going to throw out an idea, an idea and idea and idea until I get to one that I want. It's a lovely path, but creating the environment for both spectrums to contribute equally is what really leads to an inclusive, high performing team.

Mick Spiers: 6:12

This is a great takeaway already, Salvatore, we're on fire. From the outset, I'm going to share something with you. I don't know if you saw a look of guilt on my face when you're talking about that. This happened to me yesterday, and I'm going to tell the story and and you can maybe help give me some tips, and then the audience will benefit from it as well. I had it happen in a customer meeting yesterday, where I had one of our most brilliant engineers in a customer meeting. The customer asked him a question, and he had in what my my interpretation in the moment was, was a deer in the headlights look on his face. And I'm going to say I panicked a little bit now. Now, this guy is 10 times more brilliant than me in the technology, but I am a quick thinker, right? So I think on the spot, and I felt like I had to, I had to rescue him. And I interrupted, and I answered the question. I think I did okay, but I would have nowhere near as well as he would have. What do I do there? So I feel like I've rescued him, but was he just, I haven't asked him, by the way, I'm going to ask him today, but did I did? I just interrupt his thought pattern by answering while he was still thinking,

Salvatore Manzi: 7:26

I love this, and it's such a dynamic interplay. And first of all, everyone out there, this is a great lesson. Every opportunity to speak is an opportunity to examine where we're effective and how we can get better. So thank you, Mick for putting yourself out there and doing this already, when I coach leaders, Q and A is one of the cruxes of communication, and the first thing to understand is this, Q and A is not a test of knowledge. It's a test of the relationship. When that person asks a question that gives you a deer in the headlights experience, which is perfectly natural, and thank God for those like test and challenge our thinking and put us in a situation that causes us to look for an answer in a different way. The goal is not to have the perfect answer or the right answer or the quickest answer. The goal is maintaining connection with the person. So in that situation, it's a great question. What you could have done in your position is acknowledge the question. Start there. Let me just acknowledge what I heard you ask, and if I hear you right, what you're asking is something about this, and it's probably related to this, and you're right to be asking because it's related to this, and it makes that sense that it'd be in that I've established connection with whoever's asking the question, in this case, your client, and I've bought time for your engineer or my internal mechanism to spend time coming up with an answer. So the response I would give, the shorter answer, is, in those situations where a colleague is in deer in the headlights and I want to rescue them, the rescue is to create salve between the relationship. Let me just make sure I understand you're asking this question. Is this what you're asking? Just by doing that, it gives the spaciousness for breath, you go.

Mick Spiers: 9:21

It's super powerful on multiple levels, Salvatore, because then if I'm if I'm replaying the question back to the client, the client also feels heard and seen that we actually took the time they've it feels good when someone takes the time to I want to make sure I understand before we respond. It feels good for them as well. And now my engineer has had 15 seconds of thinking time, and then, bang, they're going to knock it out of the park. So yeah, really good. So first takeaway for all of our leaders here, whether you're in your own internal meeting or in the client meeting that I just described there, your role is to create the environment where all voices can be heard, the quick thinkers you. Don't want to miss out on some of that, that repartee that happens with the quick thinkers, but you need that space for the ones that are still processing to and they're going to come up with really rich ideas because they've been thinking about it longer. You want those quick ideas and you want the rich ideas. How does that sit with you, Salvatore?

Salvatore Manzi: 10:20

It's so brilliant. And if I could offer one of the liberating structures, it's a manual for facilitating, if you ever, if you do, lead meetings, worth reading that book. And one of the structures is one, two for all one way that you can accommodate the 10 second rule of giving that space is to have a one reflect on yourself for a moment. Two, turn to a partner, share your initial ideas. Four, turn to two groups of two share their ideas, and then all each group shares their one singular idea that they've come up with. Obviously, you're not going to do this for what kind of lunch we're going to have today. But if you have an important topic that really merits the use of everyone bringing their full brilliance, then a 1,2, to 4, all will make sure that every voice does get heard in the mean.

Mick Spiers: 11:14

Yeah. Brilliant, Salvatore. Thank you so much. This is a great takeaway and something very actionable for everyone already. Let's get back to some of these fears, right? So you you self admitted yourself, and thank you for sharing that that you also struggled when you first took the stage. How did you overcome your own fear?

Salvatore Manzi: 11:32

There's several layers here, and I would offer that I'm still overcoming my fear like I believe it is a it's a valuable human like experience to have that fear show up when I'm about to speak in front of a group of people, it says to me that I care. I care about them. I care about my message, and I'm about to do something important. The quickest way to shift that is to reframe the rush. What I mean by that is reinterpret that rush of feeling not as fear, but as excitement. If I'm on a roller coaster, my body is going through this experience, and I'm feeling that same surge of energy, my mind can interpret this as terror, oh God, we're gonna die, or excitement, oh my God, here we go. It's up to me how I label that rush and so reframe the rush is the opportunity to change my perspective of seeing that as fear and taking it as excitement and then channeling that rush.

Mick Spiers: 12:39

You're really good, all right, so reframing because it is this. It is the same emotional feeling. It's the same chemicals in the brain that are unlocking at this point. And you can decide, you can grab hold of the pen, and you can decide what it means you you can apply meaning to what that that feeling is.

Salvatore Manzi: 12:58

Yeah, applying the meaning a feeling that is going to support you. And in this regard, like a lot of my work with people in around communication, public speaking, presenting, is going to be in navigating self regulation so that I can show up in a way that's going to be in full agency and not from a place of diminished I think of it like a sound board on a music board. Right when I go up to express myself, it's like the juice is going to flow. And if I'm not using the levers on the soundboard to regulate my body, do I have a posture that actually supports feeling agency. Secondly, my breath. Am I using my breath in a way that's fulfilling, giving me space, giving me the air to be able to speak and my mind? Am I presupposing the positive? What can happen in this or am I just looking for affirmation of what I fear might happen, like using these levers of self regulation allows me to show up with agency and project a leadership presence.

Mick Spiers: 14:14

You're really good, and I'm sure that we're going to talk about this more as we go into our conversation today, but that whole way that you're showing up, the congruence of how I'm looking, how I'm standing, that's going to project to yourself and others. Are you confident, or are you scared? And if you're scared, and you look scared, you're going to feel more scared, right? So, yeah, okay, very good.

Salvatore Manzi: 14:41

If I can share a quick story. I have a client who was stuck at the VP level trying to get to the SVP, and the feedback was that she was not reading well in the meetings. Like our communication is multi modal. When I come into a room, my body has said so much. More or, as my friend likes to say, on Zoom calls, you may be on mute, but your body isn't like if we are, I love it. We are getting a whole message about what you are feeling and thinking before you open your mouth to speak. And so it's critical if I want to really make my that leap up into see being seen as a leader. I need to put intentionality around how my delivery is, what my face is showing, how I use my eye contact and such.

Mick Spiers: 15:34

I'm gonna say this is really powerful. You talk about communicating with influence, and we're standing there to convince someone of some kind of concept, idea journey that we want them to go on. And if you're portraying yourself as someone that doesn't quite believe it yourself, Well, why is anyone else going to believe it? And people pick up more of what they see than what they hear. They're watching you. Going, Oh, this. Salvatore guys, yes, interesting topic that he's talking about, but he, he didn't believe it himself.

Salvatore Manzi: 16:45

Right.Or he's really entertaining, but there's really no substance to this.

Mick Spiers: 16:50

Yeah, right.

Salvatore Manzi: 16:51

I see the delivery is there, but I'm not quite capturing the content. I would definitely listen to it again. But right, there's, there's different aspects around one's delivery that are critical. If I want to project the intention that I have towards connecting and persuading or influencing decisions.

Mick Spiers: 17:13

Really interesting. So we've jumped into a key one already, but I want to double down on it while we're here, I use the word congruence before said. Now what I'm hearing from you is you need to embody the message at the time. So that doesn't mean that everything is always I'm going to say robotic, but that sounds wrong. It's not a performance thing. It's a congruence thing. So, so if I, if I stand up on the stage and I'm flippant and light and my topic is heavy and it doesn't match, so there's a moment in time to be flippant and light and funny and engaging, and, you know, oh, that was really interesting. And then there's a serious message. And you might in the same speech, you might start with something that is light, but then you've got an important message to live, and you might actually have to slow down.

Salvatore Manzi: 18:08

You're bringing in all the tools. Yeah, you could use your voice, you can use the cadence, you can use your content flipping. I love the way you're parsing all this up. I apologize for interrupting, but you got me excited to share a little nugget. There. People want an emotional journey every time they listen to you. So you might have a really heavy topic, and you do want to take them up and then take them down to it, and then take them back up afterwards. Or perhaps you want them to feel the urgency, so you take them up and then speak to what is at risk if we don't do this now, like the idea of having just one energy is not what people are listening for. They want that roller coaster and as a communicator, if I intend to lead my team, I need to be able to demonstrate the full range of emotion within a singular presentation.

Mick Spiers: 19:09

Really good, Salvatore. So, so two things or three, I'm going to say. One is some of the feedback that people, too, do get if they if they're not perceived as a great speaker. They might get said, I was a bit monotonous. It was a bit so if we are doing this roller coaster of emotions, we're not going to be monotonous. So that's number one. Number two is it's going to draw people's attention to what was the most important part of your conversation, or of your of your speech, they're only going to walk away with three to five things that you said anyway. Like, even if you think you're telling them 24 things, they're going to remember at most three to five of them. So if you use that pause and you go, and you bring you almost down regulate to go, Hey, this is the most important thing I'm going to tell you today. It's the pattern interrupt for everyone. And go, oh, okay, this is it. This is the gold. And you go, you're channeling people to the thing that you want them to remember. And then the third one is that you you're communicating to make them feel something. If you're inspiring them into action. You don't want them to leave the room at the end in misery. You want them to leave at the end going right, I'm I'm fully charged. I want to get so if you do that roller coaster of emotion, you might have got into that serious part here, but then you might finish a speech with the inspiring. But you know what we can do something about this team. Let's go. It out there kind of thing. So you can recharge them. Even if you brought them, if you brought the emotion down for a bit, you recharge them as you finish. How does that sit with you?

Salvatore Manzi: 20:49

I love it. I want to unpack all of them. I'm going to start with the last one. I go with the phrase leave them lifted. I want everyone, when they interact with me, to leave lifted in some way, even when I have to deliver a harsh truth of some sort. So I like that. Leave them lifted. I would nudge it just a little bit and saying I want to leave them with the intention that's going to drive them to the action that we're hoping for as a group, right? And so lifted is going to be the hope that we can accomplish this. But realistically, there's a lot of work to do, so I don't want to leave them in an unrealistic, lifted place. So if I could caveat it that way, yeah, really good. That second part really gets me three to five points. That's really all you get. There's a lot of recency. There's the law of primacy, and there's the law of repetition. People are going to remember the first thing you said, the last thing you said, and they're going to remember the thing you say most often. That's it. But that leads into my one of my favorite topics, and what I find is a challenge for a lot of people, when they are being told they're not ready for that promotion, when they're being told they're not ready to lead that project, it's because they follow a download versus a dialog In their communication patterns. I'll explain it this way. We all have a brilliant mind capable of presenting amazing amounts of data. And a lot of us may go into it saying, If I can just share with you all the data, and in fact, I'm going to start with all the context and then give you all the data. Then you're going to just follow along. You're going to understand what I'm saying. The brain doesn't work that way. The brain requires novelty and interaction in order to process and that's why we need dialog. So the goal for a lot of people trying to step up is to learn how to be more concise in the data that I'm sharing, and stop more frequently to allow an interaction to take place. You use the word pattern interruption. I like that. I used to pattern disruption. Either way, there has to be some to break that flow in order for their minds to reconnect and keep listening to what you're saying.

Mick Spiers: 23:20

Yeah, really good. So the key takeaway for me is, if we leave it to chance, people will be listening on autopilot, and they'll be just tuning in, tuning out, tuning in, tuning out, and the whole thing will become a blur, whereas if we have these patent disruptions, I'll use your term. It's good one pattern disruptions. It makes them pay attention because, oh, okay, this part's important. Well, this part's important. This is the key takeaway here. Yeah, really good. All right. We definitely want to come back to some of that, how to get our ideas across. In a moment. I want to come back to the fears for a while. So some of the fears that that I hear people talk about, they I'm going to give you two you mentioned before, the fear of what could go wrong, right? So before they stand up, the fear of what could go wrong. And the second one is fear of judgment, the fear of what will people think of us, if someone's listening to this show Salvatore, what? What pattern interrupt or pattern Disrupt? Could you give them before they go on stage, to overcome either the fear that, Oh, what if I forget my lines? What if I forget my key message, whatever? What if I throw up, or the the fear of judgment of what will people think of me?

Salvatore Manzi: 24:38

There's I want to break them apart, because the fear of judgment is rooted so deeply in self judgment. First of all, how we judge ourselves is how we anticipate others are going to see us. There's a there's a book called taming your gremlins. Highly recommend it for anybody who experiences these moments of people are judging me right, something called the spotlight effect. Are you familiar with this? Yeah, we unconsciously assume that people are paying more attention to us than they actually are. It's it's a normal everyday occurrence that we have. If you ever seen somebody trip and then they look around to see who saw them. That's the spotlight effect. Like they're thinking, oh, somebody saw me do that. Right? We all are captive to this belief in the sense that we're we assume that if, if we make a mistake, everybody's going to notice. Well, nobody actually notices. The majority of people and the people that notice, they don't really care. Her right? People that are watching you speak, they're not rooting for you to fall. They want to see you succeed. It makes them feel awkward. If you feel awkward, they want to see you lit up and engaged in the fullness of who you are. So the idea that people are going to judge us just isn't true. They're going to judge you for half beat, and then they're going to start thinking about lunch and that email and that other thing. And the goal of today's world is to get their attention and keep their attention right, like, that's the bigger challenge. Not are they going to judge you? Are they going to keep listening? Like, that's the job. Like, how do you get to that? So that's, that's what I would say for if you have a fear of people judging you. They're not it's not true. Yeah, very good. It's just not true. But I get it. The second part though, is that that part of our brain that is giving us all of the fears like, what if I forgot my line? What if they don't like, what a bit there's taming your Gremlins again, is a great way to look at that. But I'm going to switch and talk about Noah, St John. He created what's called a formation. A formations are not just affirmations. Like, I'm going to be a great speaker today. Like, okay, that affirmations only work if you're already in a positive state, right? If you've ever been in a negative state and said, Okay, I'm gonna use an affirmation. I'm gonna do great today, I don't think so. Right? It doesn't backfire. But a formations change the affirmation into a form of a question, how am I gonna do well today? How will I experience a little something new today. How will I learn how to be a better speaker today? How do I know that I'm ready for today? How do I know that I'm prepared? How do I know I know this topic? How do I know that I'm an authority on that? How do I know my voice is worth hearing? Take yourself down that road of asking yourself affirmations to get yourself into the positive state, rather than just giving the reins over to this little gremlin that wants to tell you that the world is going to fall apart. So in doing that, you can elevate your state. I'll tell you a story from my own life. I spoke I did an event at the World Economic Forum, and beforehand, I was in a my imposter monster was in full Rage Mode, and it was like, I couldn't even couldn't speak. And I called my coach, and he had me marching around the conference room, and the whole time for 15 minutes, he was like, why should they listen to you? Why does your voice matter? Why is this an important message? How do you know? And it was so motivating for me by the time I walked out of that conference room, like, let's do this.

Mick Spiers: 28:31

They're really good at formations. It's great term. What I love about it is it's going to lead you down the path of being specific instead of being generic. So I'm going to I'm going to, I'm going to go on a tangent here, but I think it'll help it make sense. So if someone is suffering from imposter syndrome and and they have these self doubts, I'm going to go wind our way forward all the way to the end of the speech, right? And someone comes off stage and they ask for feedback and say, Oh, how did that go? Telling them, Oh, it went great, if they didn't think it went great, doesn't actually help them. Telling them that you did a wonderful job and they don't think that they did a wonderful job, it actually reinforces the imposter syndrome, and they're not going to believe you. Now, the next time that you give them feedback that they did a good job, and they did do a good job, they won't believe you because of the time that you so called lied, lied to them. The way to pattern interrupt that is to be specific and say, I really like the point in the speech where you did this story, or when you paused at this moment, it was really precious. Or I really like that metaphor that you use, blah, blah, blah, the more specific you are, the more the person is going to believe it. Now, why did I say that when you're doing your affirmations and you're asking yourself those questions, Salvatore, when you answer it, you have no choice but to be specific, and when you're specific, it becomes believable. How does that sit with you?

Salvatore Manzi: 30:04

I love it. I love a lot of things that you just opened up right there to answer the specific question in terms of affirmations leading to specific I believe there's some truth to that, but it what I do believe is it focuses mind, and when mine is focused more on the positive, or at least in the direction, it's going to help. But if I can unpack what you just shared about giving feedback, brilliant, brilliant, what you just shared because we and we know not to trust certain people's feedback, because it comes across as jazz. General, and we don't trust it. We trust specifics. And I would offer to anybody out there who has ever had that moment where somebody asks you a question on the spot and you weren't sure what level of truth to get to, and I'm talking it could be your client, it could be your boss, it could be a colleague. It could be a feedback. It could be they want an update on something, our knee jerk human response is to give a quick answer of a general it's going great. It's going well, it's thing. And I would prefer that my clients not speak in generalities. If somebody asks a question, the answer is going to be the easiest go to would be a dichotomy. Well, what worked for me is this, and what could work better for me is this? Or what we know is this, what we are not certain about, is this, or what we've been hearing is this, and what we hope to hear is this. It makes you sound like such a more competent leader, you're not speaking in generalities as your first throwaway comment. Let that first comment be the dichotomy that you're going to present to them and answering a tough question or responding to a tough call with somebody wanting to where you're not sure where to gage how to hit that answer helpful.

Mick Spiers: 32:10

Yeah, really helpful. Really helpful. So that the art of the specific it can and it can come up in show me so many different ways, and it really will be convincing at that point. It's not a throwaway line. Yeah, well done. Thank you. All right, now what I want to get to because you've done a lot of work in this area, and there's going to be many people in our audience that will resemble what I'm about to say. So you've helped brilliant scientists be able to express their life's work to an audience that's never heard it before. They might have been researching this topic for 2030, years. They're deep into it, and they're about to present their idea to an audience that's hearing it for the first time. This I'm going to say it often doesn't go well. They often lose the audience, and then they get frustrated, by the way they can how are you not getting this and they're forgetting that you've been researching it for 20 to 30 years, these people are hearing it for the first time. That's that's one of the things. But how does someone break something extremely complex and deep into something that you've got 15 minutes to captivate an audience with how does someone go about that, Salvatore?

Salvatore Manzi: 33:25

Metaphors move minds. The best way for you to connect all of your brilliance, your data, your research that you've been doing to a listener's mind is through a metaphor. It's the difference between looking at a blueprint versus seeing a house. The Blueprint has all of the numbers, all of the data. Everything is perfectly laid out. But if you show them a house, I get it, I get the picture. The trick is twofold. Number one, a lot of people tell me, Oh, I'm not good with metaphors. That's not true. It just takes practice. Pick an object, any object, and tell me, how is your project, like that object? And do this as a daily ritual. Takes about 30 seconds. You'll develop the muscle memory of telling your data in terms of metaphors. But more importantly, you want to find a metaphor that works for you. What's something that you're passionate about, something that you could talk all day about, choose that as your metaphor for me to be redwoods or hiking or chocolate or coffee, those four areas, I can turn anything into a metaphor using one of those four. So find the authentic metaphor for you, and you'll develop a brand. You'll become known in the company as that person that talks about Prius to explain the complexity of taking all of the data from this station to this station, because you're trying to put gas on my Prius, and now I get it. Okay, I get it. It it doesn't work, and the Prius has to charge at a certain point, and a Prius doesn't have an oil right? And you become that person that everybody say, Oh, are you talking Prius? Oh, you've talked to so and so. Because they use that, it elevates you both in terms as a leader, but also helps you always connect your data to whoever your audience is.

Mick Spiers: 35:19

I love it. I love it. I love it. I love this idea of practicing it as well. And while I was, while I was listening to you, I just, right, I've got an object in front of me, so I'm going to, I'm going to have a go at this. Yes, I might trip over my own shoelaces, but let's go. So I've got, so I've got a coffee cup in front of me. So I was thinking, right? So giving a speech is a little bit. Like a cup of coffee, it starts off, you know, a really good speech would start off really warm and full, and to get my attention, it might get my brain firing, etc, through the caffeine. But then there's a moment where I want to bring it down. And you know what, the cup is going to feel a bit empty and and I'm going to take someone on a bit of an emotional journey of, Oh no, my my cup is empty, but at the end, I'm going to feel so inspired to take that cup and go and refill it again. So yeah. So they're just, I just tried to do it. Take the advice straighter immediately. Just pick an object in your office or your room and go, Okay, how would I explain this concept? By the metaphor of a of a keyboard. How can I and just practice it, and before too long, it'll become second nature. Is that what I'm hearing, Salvatore?

Salvatore Manzi: 36:30

Exactly, and I just want to applaud you for putting yourself out there, taking the risk and doing this live on a podcast, next level, my friend, that's awesome.

Mick Spiers: 36:41

Thank you, Sir. All right, so now that the next part then, so I love the metaphor. So the metaphor moves minds, and this is going to be a good segue towards, you know, really compelling storytelling as well. What about the fact that the person's got 20 years of data in their head? And this we said before that the people are only going to remember three to five things. How do we condense 20 years of data into the most impactful message that people leave with?

Salvatore Manzi: 37:10

You're discussing something called the curse of knowledge. I don't know if you've heard it used that term before. The Curse of Knowledge is again, the idea that I know my content so well, I'm so steeped inside of it, it's hard for me to see it from an outsider's perspective. And so the key to really break the curse of knowledge is to find somebody who's completely fresh and practice. Do a practice session with them to find out what makes sense. Find out what is the most value. Find out what acronym you use that doesn't make sense to them. This is why a lot of people use a communications coach. Is because I can go in there and I can play completely ignorant to whatever, like nuclear what you're combining. I don't get it man. Dumb it down for me until you can create a complex and concise message that conveys all of your knowledge.

Mick Spiers: 38:08

Yeah, okay, all right. And and that person that we might practice with, hopefully they may be similar to our target audience. Or, how do we pick the right person?

Salvatore Manzi: 38:20

I love this avenue. How do you pick the right person? Right? It's going to be somebody that's not just going to tell you that, Hey, you did a good job. It needs to be somebody willing to give you specific feedback. This is what worked. This is what could work better for me. Number two, it's ideally somebody who has a general sense, but not a specific sense of your knowledge base. So this could be a colleague, but maybe somebody from marketing, rather than somebody within your department, right? This could be a coach, an outside coach, that you explain who the audience is, and you both take a moment to really get to know that audience. What are their hopes? What are their fears? What are they? What do they need to understand, make sure you're both on the same page. That's also helpful for you to get clear on that. So when you're telling your coach, this is what we need to like come from, the coach can do that, and you can do it in general, places like a Toastmasters, my only foundation. If you do go towards a generic coaching pool like that, remember that a lot of the feedback you're going to be giving is not necessarily going to be as specific to what is the particular tick that you have that needs to be addressed to help make you a better speaker. They'll speak more in general. This is how you can become a better speaker with some of these common tools. If I could say I've been coaching leaders for over 20 years, and what I found is every single person has a unique little thing that needs to be addressed, and once it's addressed, their communication gets out. So it takes a trained eye to be able to identify it, and it takes a trained coach to be able to help a person move through and actually develop it. There's a lot of us out there. I am, of course, a coach, but there's a lot of people out there, but finding that person that can identify what is the root and what is the best path to help you get to the next one?

Mick Spiers: 40:19

Yeah, really good. So two key ones I'm taking away there is, don't pick someone that's just going to tell you what they think you want to hear, right? Because they're just going to be, they're just going to be a people pleaser, and they're just going to say, Oh yeah, it was great. That's great. That's great. So it's going to be someone that's going to have the courage to. Tell you actually this bit you lost me, and that's, that's the bit that you need to hear. And then the coming back to they're then attuned to what they're looking for, so they're actually paying attention so that they're ready to give the feedback back. And then it's going to be specific.

Salvatore Manzi: 40:57

Can I offer one thing for any other coach that's out there. The thing that helped me, it's not just like, hey, this is where you lost me. I think that's important, because that's content information that needs to be cleared up. But this is where it didn't look like you believed what you were saying. There's something in that you'll notice, because their shoulders will come up, or their body will sink, or their voice is wrong, or their eyes will look away. You'll notice them in that moment where they're not as completely confident in what they're saying. That's the point you want to point out. What is it about that topic? Or is it because you're saying that topic to that audience. All communication is contextual. What are you talking about? Who you talking to, what's the environment in which you're talking? Those three factors determine what kind of fears are going to come up in a person for that particular presentation. But identifying where you notice a little gap in their energy, that's where you want to point.

Mick Spiers: 42:01

That's really powerful. So the coach is not just listening to what you're saying, but how you're saying it. And I was this part that you looked at your shoelaces, or is this part where you took a step backwards and you confused my mind? Why? Why are you stepping backwards at that point? Or, or whatever it was that they're that they're picking up. That's, yeah, that's really powerful. Salvatore, I'll also love what you just said. The communication is contextual, and a lot of people hear this, but they don't always know what to do with it, right? So they say, know your audience and all these things, but you're breaking it down to know what are you talking about, who you're talking with, and what environment are you going to be talking in? Can you bring that to life? Because a lot of people say this, know your audience, and they go, yeah, and they don't do anything with it. How do we how do we do that like so once we break down those three questions, what do we do with it?

Salvatore Manzi: 42:54

It's such a great path. And if I have a real high stakes engagement that I want to nail. I'm going to take time breaking down those three factors. Who, what am I talking about? Am I creating a structure? Am I structuring my content in a way that's going to make sense, that's going to work with the way the brain works, and make sure it's going to make sense for them. So that's important. How do I know my audience? Who am I talking to? Like, I need to spend a minute asking the questions. What are they hoping for? What are they worried about? What are they hoping this presentation is going to solve for them? What is the feeling that they want to walk away with from this like, get to know my audience a little bit that. And then third, what environment Am I speaking in? Who's speaking before me? How are they introducing me, who's speaking after me? What's the How am I leaving them? What's the stage going to be like? Do I have a mic? Do I have a podium? Am I going to be able to walk away from the podium? Am I on Zoom? Do I know how to use the buttons? Do I know how to, like, create the right emoticon, or respond to a chat while I'm talking like those are the things to look for in when I'm making this particular presentation, I need to know where, where do I need to focus my energy and training so that I'm fluid and I don't have to worry about it in the moment when I get into it.

Mick Spiers: 44:22

Okay. So once we've done that homework, how does it then influence the way we might prepare our either our content or our delivery or or even how we're going to show up? How does it influence right? So think about what you said before you know, unpack their hopes and dreams. You didn't use those exact words, but it was close. What are their hopes, their dreams, their even their fears, once I know who I'm talking to and and where they're, where they are today and where they might be by the end of my speech, but also some of those fears, how is that going to shape the way that I prepare.

Salvatore Manzi: 45:02

In a word, relevance, the more I know about my audience, the more relevant I can make my message and myself to them, to hopefully have my message land and move them forward. And I offer the principle of you than me. Whenever I open my mouth to speak, I need to speak about you. Before I speak about me, I need to speak about your interests, your connection to the topic. Before I speak about my agenda and my idea and my answer to your question. If I can just take one or two sentences. To offer a reflection or validation acknowledgement of you before I get to me, it's more likely you will lower your defenses and be more receptive to what I have to say. And it's not just at the top of the talk. It's at the start of every point that I'm making throughout

Mick Spiers: 46:00

I love this, Salvatore. I'm going to need to double down on this one. So the relevance, and I'm going to throw in the word connection there as well, that if you talk about yourself the whole time, you're not connecting with anyone. But if you start using metaphors or storytelling that resembles the person that they can see themselves in the story, not you. They can see themselves in the story. You're going to A, it's going to be relevant. And B, you're going to start building a connection. And go on an example here that's purposely bad and say so if you if, if you're talking to an audience of blue collar workers, and you stand up and tell a story about, oh, there was this one time that I was in the French Riviera, and we're on a on a yacht, and you're not going to believe it. We run out of caviar. Oh, my god, yeah, you've lost, yeah, I'm being a jerk on purpose there but.

Salvatore Manzi: 46:53

It's, it's classic. And you see politicians do this all the time.

Mick Spiers: 46:58

Okay, yeah, tell you more.

Salvatore Manzi: 47:00

I see it in America really. Maybe it's not as frequent there, but you see at least once every political cycle, some politician uses the wrong comment to the audienc, and it just becomes like, and then it's like all social capital is gone, like no one likes after that. But sorry, I kind of interrupted your flow. It is important to speak in the metaphor that's going to land with them. Easy ones for anybody out there, food and try and traffic, transportation. Everybody understands food, everybody understands structures. We're all impacted by them in some way every day. So get used to using those two metaphors as a go to and you're going to be safe in almost any audience, unless you're talking about my Ferrari. I was driving my Ferrari down right. That could be a little off putting to certain audiences you were heading up to a question, I apologize.

Mick Spiers: 47:54

No, no, that's that's fine. So now I'm going to come back to communication is contextual, and I'm going to go, what are you what are you talking about? Who are you talking with? What environment are we talking in? And now, if I'm going to work on my metaphor or my story, whichever it's going to be, I'm going to pick a metaphor or a story that ticks all three boxes. It's going to go, Okay, this story is relevant to my message. It is relatable to the audience. And guess what? If I'm talking at a conference that's about topic x, or it's in Melbourne, so I'm based in Melbourne, if you're in Melbourne and you can tell a story that has some kind of threat of Melbourne in there. Now you now your story or your metaphor is ticking all three of the contextual boxes. How does that sit with you?

Salvatore Manzi: 48:42

You're taking it to the next level. Metaphors move mind squared like, yeah, if you have the time to prepare your metaphor, do make it contextual. That checks all three boxes. That would be a home run.

Mick Spiers: 48:56

Yeah. Brilliant, Salvatore.

Salvatore Manzi: 48:57

That was a metaphor from America there. I don't know if.

Mick Spiers: 49:02

It's relatively universal. Here is one, I got to say, because I'm I'm sports mad. Salvatore, actually, here's another, here's another one that you can help me with, because I've had this feedback and I've been working on it. I am sports mad. I'm specifically mad about cricket and rugby, but I follow all sports, tennis, golf, you name it, right? I have a tendency because of that, that many of my metaphors are sports related. But when I talk about, who am I talking with, half my audience may not be sports mad. So how do I do a pattern interrupt for me there where I stop using nine out of 10 of my metaphors are sports related, Salvatore?

Salvatore Manzi: 49:44

Well, I think first of all, your self awareness is critical there. I think it's great for a person to have a brand of using sports metaphors. It becomes a challenge when it's a sort of obscure metaphor. I don't know all the rules of cricket, so if you used cricket as a metaphor, if you took a second to explain how that cricket element works while you're doing the metaphor, you're educating me, and you're engaging me and the sports metaphor. So that would just be the thing to watch for if you're going to stick to sports, but I do agree that you want to have several different buckets to choose from when you're reaching for a metaphor, and if it's always sport, it might limit your range.

Mick Spiers: 50:29

Yeah, really good. All right, Salvatore, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm going to summarize a few key things that we've spoken about today so to inspire. People to into action on the key things that were spoken about. So we started off with as leaders. Our job is to help people find their voice and to be very aware of you. Don't want to just have the dominant voices in the room, the ones that are the quick thinkers, to dominate everything. We need to draw out those ideas from the 10 second thinkers, the ones that need a little bit more time to process. So it's our job to create an environment, whether it's in a customer meeting or a team meeting, to create an environment where all voices can be heard. We spoke about the fear of public speaking and the fear of judgment that people are not judging you. They're actually cheer your cheer squad. They're not they're not there to shoot you down. So get over these fears and the fear of what could go wrong. To ask yourself questions and to be specific about, well, why am I the one talking today? And to answer those questions with a formations positive confirmations of why it is you that's that's speaking today, to remember that your whole body is speaking. So your presence is really important here, the congruence of your body movement, your voice intonation, your hand gestures, has to be congruent with the message that you're delivering at that time. And it could be an emotional roller coaster where you start on a high and you down regulate the important message, and then you elevate at the end to inspire them and lift them as they as they leave the room. That communication is contextual, so do your homework. What are you talking about? Who you're talking with, what environment are you going to be speaking in? And that metaphors move minds. So if you want to do this, you got to get it into a thread of a story or a metaphor, and hopefully one that ticks all boxes, because it's relevant and it's relatable to the people that you're talking with. And the final message is, if you're listening to this and going, Wow, this sounds so hard, I'm not a natural at this, is that you can do it too. Anyone can learn this. And to take Salvatore's idea of picking objects in your room, I used a coffee cup pick an object in your room and practice it. How would I explain today's topic, using a coffee cup as the metaphor, and just practice it, and with practice, it will become something that you can master. All right, thank you, Salvatore. This has been wonderful. I'm going to take us now to our Rapid Round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So what's the one thing that you know now? Salvatore Manzi, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Salvatore Manzi: 53:19

They don't care. I have a phrase that is not about me, not about me, is the phrase I use whenever I feel like somebody's giving me a sour face, or somebody is said something that's offensive, or somebody is like, discounted my offering in some way, I just remind myself, it's not about me. 99% of what's happening in the world has nothing to do with me and I as a child. Over, over rotated to people pleasing is too strong of a word, but over rotated towards deflecting to other people's opinions weren't really merited

Mick Spiers: 53:57

Very good. All right, as a best selling author yourself what is your favorite book?

Salvatore Manzi: 54:01

I'm going to mention the leadership and self deception. It is a powerful book that looks at one of the core challenges that a lot of leaders have on their path up the ladder.

Mick Spiers: 54:15

Yeah, very good. And what's your favorite quote?

Salvatore Manzi: 54:18

Between stimulus and response, there is a gap, and in that gap, we have the opportunity to make a choice.

Mick Spiers: 54:27

Yeah, very good. There's a lot of power in that, and that's a good one to remind ourselves every day. All right, very good. Salvatore. And finally, people are going to be enthralled by this. A lot of people want to do better. Want to do better at their communication. How do people find you?

Salvatore Manzi: 54:42

clearandcompellingplaybook.com. My new book is called Clear and Compelling, and it is the synthesis of 20 years of communication, coaching, content delivery, presence, strategies and techniques to help anyone turn their insights into influence.

Mick Spiers: 54:59

Insights into influence. I love it absolutely brilliant, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today. Salvatore, it's been very engaging, but also inspiring of things that we can practically do to get better at this. So thank you so much for the gift of your time and for your insights today.

Salvatore Manzi: 55:18

A genuine pleasure to join you, Mick, to do it again one day.

Mick Spiers: 55:22

As we wrap up this powerful conversation with Salvatore Manzi, one theme stands out clearly. Effective communication isn't about sounding impressive. It's about being understood as leaders. We often assume that because something is clear in. Our heads, it must be clear to everyone else, but clarity doesn't happen by accident. It's a deliberate act of leadership. So here are a few questions worth reflecting on, where might your communication be technically correct but practically unclear, what messages are you repeating without checking how they're actually being received? And how often do you slow down enough to ask, What did you hear instead of Did you understand? Because the responsibility for clarity always sits with the leader. When communication is clear, people feel aligned when it's not they fill the gaps with assumptions. So the invitation this week is simple. Before Your Next important conversation, ask yourself, what is the one thing I want them to understand? And how will I make that unmistakably clear, and how will I check at the end that the message landed the way I wanted it to. That's it for today. The next episode is going to be a solo cast where I reflect on all of our great guests through the month of January 2026 and share what we're learning through our new video series. Lead better. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible? None of this happens without them around here. We believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter, that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing until next time. Lead with curiosity, courage and care.