Success Secrets and Stories
To share management leadership concepts that actually work.
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Success Secrets and Stories
Interview: How to Make a Difference, Not Just a Point...with Elizabeth Bachman
Join our podcast with John and Greg as they interview Elisabeth Bachman. Elizabeth Bachman is THE go-to person for advanced-level training in Speaking, Presentation Skills, Career Development, and Leadership. With a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presenting, she helps high-level clients get the promotion/job/recognition they deserve — within an organization and within an industry. “Change the way you are perceived by changing the way you communicate.”
Drawing from her unique career in directing more than 50operas around the world and founding her own company, she now helps professionals overcome communication barriers that prevent them from being recognized and advancing in their careers.
At the heart of Elizabeth's approach is a profound insight: men and women often struggle to communicate effectively because they're essentially speaking different languages while using the same words. She reframes this challenge by distinguishing between "single-focus thinkers" (traditionally men) who process one task at a time and "multi-focus thinkers" (traditionally women) who maintain multiple threads simultaneously and value relationships and context. This isn't about gender politics but rather understanding different communication styles to bridge the gap.
The stakes are high—Elizabeth shares research showing organizations with diverse voices in leadership achieve up to 35% higher profits, yet many senior women become so frustrated at not being heard that they exit companies, creating substantial costs in lost talent and recruitment. Through her "Visible and Valued" program and upcoming book, she teaches professionals to adapt their communication style without losing authenticity, using the principles of "awareness, adaptation, and allies."
One compelling success story involves an IT specialist named Janet who had been stuck at senior director level for 13 years despite consistently solving problems. After working with Elizabeth to frame her contributions strategically and engage stakeholders individually, Janet's company created a vice president position specifically for her, later promoting her to CIO.
Whether you're a woman fighting to be heard, a man wanting to be a better ally, or anyone looking to communicate more effectively, Elizabeth's insights transform how we understand workplace dynamics. Her message is clear: strategic speaking gets results when you learn to translate your ideas into a language your audience can hear.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, welcome to Success Secrets and Stories. My name is John Winovsky and I'm the host, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody, yeah, and today we're going to speak about presentation and presentation skills, and I think we're going to have some fun with this subject. I'd like to introduce Elizabeth Bachman, the go-to person for advanced level training in speaking presentation skills, career development and leadership. With a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presentations, she helps high-level clients get the promotion, the job, the recognition they deserve Within an organization and within the industry. Change is the way that you are perceived by changing the way that you communicate. Strategic speaking for results when you want to make a difference, not just the point. Welcome, elizabeth.
Speaker 3:Thank you, John and Greg. I'm delighted to be here.
Speaker 2:So a little bit of your background. That was truly intriguing is that not only have you helped people in terms of their presentation skills in the industry world, in the CEO world, in the business world, but you also have started 30 different operas, if I'm correct.
Speaker 3:I directed 30 different operas. Far more important to direct I was an international opera director, and I did that for 30 years around the world, directing people such well. The names you would have heard would be Luciano Pavarotti, placido Domingo and hundreds and hundreds of others.
Speaker 2:One moment where you had a call late at night and in 24 hours an individual was going to give a presentation and maybe talking about how that presentation to an expert and a coach was so important that the person who called you called you at three o'clock in the morning. Maybe you could talk about that one.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, this was a very well-known client of mine and he was really nervous. He had a big presentation to give and he was thinking can I still do it? Will they still like me? And I said, well, let's practice, that's what I'm for. And he said, oh, no, no, I'm too busy, I'm just going to wing it.
Speaker 3:And you know, I couldn't force him to practice and he worried and he waited, and he waited and he worried until finally, the night before the presentation was due, he called me up at 3 o'clock in the morning Because you know he couldn't sleep, so why should I? He was that kind of guy. But anyway, we met the next morning and since the presentation was that night, I just gave him three things to do. So two of them were about the way he was delivering the material and one was a physical gesture he was doing that was sabotaging him and he didn't realize it. Gesture he was doing that was sabotaging him and he didn't realize it.
Speaker 3:And that night I got to watch him walk out in front of a packed room and be brilliant. He was great, he did everything right and the audience loved him. They jumped to their feet, standing ovation, all of that, but the expression on his face as he took in the applause made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt. This is why I do what I do. And that client was Luciano Pavarotti, singing the role of Radames in Aida at the Metropolitan Opera.
Speaker 2:Wow, so many presentations that I have struggled through and it was kind of interesting, greg and I. I gave a presentation and I asked how did I do it, greg? And it was really entertaining. The best he could do was yeah, it needs work, man.
Speaker 3:Well, let's talk, John. Yeah, really.
Speaker 2:Well, we are. This is what.
Speaker 3:I do.
Speaker 2:This is your moment, so I want to make sure I'm doing the best I can to present what you have done. Tell me what was the physical constraint that he had in presenting what was sabotaging him physically?
Speaker 3:had in presenting what was sabotaging him physically.
Speaker 3:It was a very long story, but it was all about he would turn upstage when he wasn't singing and he'd put a cough drop in his mouth and then, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see he sat there listening with this cough drop bulging out of his mouth and then, when the soprano was mouth, and then when it was when the soprano was singing, and then when it was his turn to sing, he turned upstage and sort of spat it out onto his sleeve and he was using Ricolas which are black on a gold sleeve. So I went now and I found him some yellow sucrets. So I went out and I found him some yellow sucrets. So you know he was terrified of running out of saliva, of his mouth drying out, which is a big deal for opera singers. So I went out and I got him some yellow cough drops. That, would, you know, keep his voice and mouth functioning the way it should. But it was a very odd. It's just one of those very odd stories.
Speaker 2:No, no, it was. It's actually intriguing because public speaking isn't one of the easiest things that I've done. I have learned over time to do a better job of it, but you've done a lot in terms of developing women and their ability to speak. Men have the same issues in terms of speaking. Practice obviously is the key, but understanding how important words are in that connection with the audience and making sure that your message is being received maybe talking about some of those high points on how you've helped communicate that process.
Speaker 3:Well, I call myself a presentation skills trainer and executive coach. Mostly what I do, however, is people come to me women especially and they say I'm so frustrated, Can you get them to listen to me? And because I studied languages early, so I've lived and worked internationally since I was 17 years old and I'm fluent in five different languages, so I'm used to working in multiple languages. I see it as a language thing. So, really, what I do is I. My motto, my mission, if you will, is to get women's voices heard in places of power, and a lot of it comes from my history in the opera business, which I can tell you about later. But because what happens is that we get senior women, get up to a certain point and then they get so frustrated because they aren't being listened to that they quit. And this is a big deal, because I mean, not only is it expensive for the person who gets, who finally has had enough and walks away, but it's expensive for the organization too, because you lose a senior person. You lose minimum three months of work on whatever projects they were working on, not to mention $50,000 plus for a recruiter to hire somebody new, and maybe it takes you six months to hire somebody new.
Speaker 3:It's very expensive to lose your senior women, and statistics show us over and over again that organizations that have diverse voices in leadership make better profit. You know, basically they have a better return on investment. Basically they have a better return on investment, and when I first started talking about this, I worked very closely with a group called how Women Lead. That's one of the best trainingsey report on women and progress and so forth would say maybe 20% better profits if you have women on your board. Now it's 35% higher profits if you have women and other diverse voices on your board. So what I'm all about is helping men and women learn to speak and speak to each other and listen to each other so that you can actually get the senior. You know, the senior people don't get frustrated because they aren't being listened to, and and then some of that comes out of my earlier experience with glass ceilings.
Speaker 2:You also had some experience that I'd like to talk about in helping an author write a book.
Speaker 3:I basically help authors who have written a book talk about it. I do that a lot because written language and spoken language are different and when people often don't recognize that. You can see that if you've ever sat through an incredibly boring presentation where somebody puts a slide full of data up on the wall and then turns their back to the audience and reads you the slide with, like you know, 200 words on it, that's someone who doesn't understand the difference between written and and. Okay, john, I see you're waving it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that was me without it idea Boy. Do I need a coach?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well it's. You know there are reasons why people do that and there are many reasons why people do that, but boy does it turn an audience off. I mean, we've all cringed through these kinds of things. So that's one problem that I help to solve. And also, how you present, how you speak, is as important as the words you use. So I work a lot with the melody of the message and that I learned from 30 years in the opera business, learning how to shape the music, thinking about tempo and pacing and the shape of a show, the arc of a story all of that. I learned it in the opera business to be good at what I was doing. And then, when I started working with business professionals, I discovered that the issues are pretty much the same. They aren't that different, it's just different vocabulary, but pretty much it's the same issue of how do you keep the listeners entertained, and that goes for an audience who's sitting in a theater or someone sitting in a conference room.
Speaker 2:And what I found interesting is I've given only a few presentations and every time I've done the presentation it's changed because I'm getting more and more in tune to what you're talking about. I would have done a much better job if I was talking to you first, but I understand you're also working on a book to try to capture some of these concepts working on a book to try to capture some of these concepts.
Speaker 3:So I have a program called Visible and Valued, which is presentation skills to help women's voices be heard, and it's a course, it's a mastermind, it's an ongoing mastermind, and then the people in the course are helping me write the book Awesome.
Speaker 2:So the book is in process. Mastermind, help me understand that concept.
Speaker 3:So the concept of a mastermind is when you meet once or twice a month. In my class it's twice a month. You meet at breakfast. I mean it's got to be the morning because you know so if you've got to get kids off to school I'm sorry, but if you wait till evening, something always comes up to derail it. You know there's always some problem.
Speaker 3:So we have a working breakfast over Zoom and we work through the various concepts of how you can be heard, how you can not sabotage yourself, what's really going on, and then different people weigh in with their ideas and I have a lot of things that I've learned from people I've talked to. But if you can get six or seven people in a group and this is why they do breakout rooms on Zoom you get, you know, three or four people in to discuss issues. And I'm a participant in several masterminds and you know somebody will say that's the perfect thing that you hadn't thought of because you're too close to it. So that's part of the visible and valued masterminds and it's very satisfying. We get a lot out of it.
Speaker 3:And the other thing is, especially for women, it really matters to have your cohort, to have your group, your cohort to have your group because women well, I don't know. My grandmother always used to say good girls, don't brag, don't say too much, don't be too loud, and the tendency is to not volunteer to speak up because there are consequences for not being perfect. And so having the group around you to say no, no, no, do that, take that, say yes to that speaking gig, be on that panel. Yes, this is something worth it For women in particular because women are relational thinkers, particular because women are relational thinkers mostly. It's very important to have the group behind you.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of men are supposed to be. Well, let me step back for a second. I started off as an engineer, and engineers really don't speak. I'm considered an exception of somebody that likes to talk and I have found trying to help people who are in the engineering side do a better job of presenting themselves. I think some of the elements of being able to bring in other voices and I've actually had the pleasure and the opportunity to bring more women into a engineering environment, a facilities department, and it's so entertaining to see them moving up and just challenging the other people in the room, which are a whole bunch of guys sitting in a room, saying really, you guys don't understand how diversity works. Well, there's a reason why you don't understand is because you haven't practiced it. Until you actually make the effort, and we started to see some of the other managers, some of the other directors, making that inroads to try to be more inclusive and it does pay back instantly.
Speaker 2:There's a wonderful opportunity and those particular individuals that are basically held behind, to see them accelerate. There was moments in time where I had to take them to decide, saying yes, you are capable, you're competent, don't you know that programming piece and trying to stop the programming piece, punch ahead. This is your opportunity, this is your moment to shine. And doing that encouragement, I've had them come back to me saying that no one's ever done that. You were the only one. Yeah, but I've taken it and I've run with it. That's real satisfaction. So one of the sidelights of why Greg and I wanted to do the podcast was to continue that, because it is very satisfying and it's very encouraging to help people.
Speaker 3:It's very important to have the right allies, and especially if you're the only woman. So as an opera director, I was one of the few women. I was one of the early women in America and to the point where the like the first 10 years or so of my directing career, wherever city I was in, they would always send out the local arts reporter and invariably I would say so. How is it different with the? How is the story of Carmen different when you see it from a woman's point of view? You know, is it different? And sometimes I would say yes and sometimes I would say no. You know Carmen. You know Carmen fundamentally is like a Law Order episode. It's a girl meets boy, they have a fling, she moves on and he stalks her and he kills her. So it's the Law Order without the cops.
Speaker 2:Basically, I've never heard it explained that way.
Speaker 3:No, Okay, yeah, universal way no, Okay yeah. Universal stories yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:No, that's awesome and I think, when we are looking at things in terms of how we write and how we find that motivation, when you're looking at the different things that you've done and and maybe you can talk about all the breadth of the different things that you've done and maybe you can talk about all the breadth of the different things that you have supported, the different elements of the business that you- do.
Speaker 3:It's fascinating the reach that you have, move full-time into presentation skills. I knew a lot about how do you show up, how do you show up in front of a group, and also I founded and ran an opera company for 11 years, so I knew the business side of it. I mean it's not as if I'm working for Johnson and Johnson or or GE or IBM you know Google maybe, but I certainly know the basics of the business. So, putting all of that together, I also could see where I made so many mistakes. And you know, if I people say you know what, what would you do over? And I think I wish I had known the me of now back 25 years ago, because basically the glass ceiling that happened to me was I worked my way up from acting to directing in theater to then directing in opera, and so came to it from the theater side rather than the music side, because I love to listen to it, I love languages, I love opera has music, theater, languages and travel, and glorious when it's glorious, there's nothing like it. So I loved that, doing all of that and really moving an audience to tears or moving them to laughter, which is much harder and I wanted to run an opera company. I knew I could do more and so I decided I applied.
Speaker 3:The next time there was an opening, I applied to run an opera company and they loved me. They brought me in for the you know on the short list, flew me in and the job went to a man and then the next time around it happened again, and it happened over and over again for about three years. These positions open three or four times a year and for about three years I was always on the short list and my colleagues all said, wow, you know, any opera company you run, I'm going to come Absolutely, you'd be great. Come Absolutely, You'd be great.
Speaker 3:What I didn't understand at the time was that I was being beloved by your colleagues is not the same as being recognized by the people who do the hiring, and it also never occurred to me to ask for help to apply. I could have asked someone to teach me how to apply for a job like this. I didn't realize that was possible. That's certainly something that corporations are much better at now helping people learn how to apply and that's why I do career development, because I was marketing myself to the wrong people and I didn't figure that out until I started doing the work, the training as a coach and the work I'm doing now. So that was my glass ceiling and ultimately I founded an opera company, because no one would give me a company to run. So I made one, but it was in.
Speaker 2:Austria.
Speaker 3:So it was an Austrian-American joint project focusing mostly on training young singers, and we ran for 11 years until I burned out and I thought okay, I've been doing the same thing for 30 years. Time to do something, time to walk away, while I still love the music.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like you were a wonderful mentor for people. Did you have a mentor? Or did you find, after all this experience, that you did a better job, that hindsight of being able to pull other people forward, that you found the role of mentor as part of that process?
Speaker 3:I had some mentors. One of the myths that they teach girls that little girls are socialized is don't ask directly, Don't ask for help, and so I could have gotten much more help if I had dared to reach out and be vulnerable and ask. And I didn't know to ask. I didn't know to ask and because of all the way we're socialized as children, I don't think anybody does it on purpose. I think society does it?
Speaker 3:I think, history and socialization. So now what I do is I act as a mentor to people. Hopefully they just won't make the same mistakes I did. It took me a long time to evolve. Where I am now, with Strategic Speaking for Results, feels like the culmination of all the things I've done over the years. That all fits together and I can use the opera experience and the business experience and then what I know about the way people communicate and that's it all comes together in this um doing this work and it's incredibly satisfying when I see um my client Janet, for instance.
Speaker 3:She was an IT person, so a software engineer and IT specialist, and she worked for a very well, very prestigious research firm and she was always solving problems. She always solved problems and they would say great thanks next. And so she was talking to a friend who was frustrated. She said I'm getting no recognition. I've been stuck at senior director for 13 years. I can't get any further. And the friend said talk to Elizabeth.
Speaker 3:And so we worked together and the next time they had a problem they wanted her to solve which was company-wide I mean it affected the whole organization we had her go to each person in the C-suite individually and pitch her idea by saying this is my strategic thinking on how to solve this problem. And then for each person she knew something that they cared about and said and will you help me with this piece, will you? Or this is to the CFO. She said here's how this is going to save us so much money. Or the guy who'd been with the engineers forever and ever, she said I'm going to have to get the engineers to help this, and you know them so much better than I do. You know, will you do that? And they were so excited that at the next executive committee meeting they created a vice president position for her.
Speaker 3:Wow After 13 years of being stuck and it's because of that, and that just took us like three, four months of work and changed everything, and actually six months later they made her the CIO. So it works.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, some of the suggestions that I had heard for my career is that if they don't have the, the particular career or advancement created, well, that that. That was the first time I've heard somebody actually talk about the process of creating that opportunity. That's outstanding.
Speaker 3:It's how this is. This is where you change how you're perceived, by changing the way you communicate. Right, basically.
Speaker 2:I think you're a great coach, but who do you think of in terms of motivating or or a person that gives you an example of motivation? I have motivation phrases that I don't think I want to bring up because I've, like I have. One of mine is from John Wayne, not exactly a kind of motivating coach. That's in the business world.
Speaker 3:Whatever works for you, you know. Whatever works for you, I have exactly a kind of motivating coach. That's in the business world. Whatever works for you, you know. Whatever works for you, I have. There are a lot of people I follow and I there are quite a few people I follow on LinkedIn. As I said, I work closely with a group called how Women Lead, which is national and beginning to expand internationally and that's run by a wonderful woman named Julie Castro Abrams and it's very much about women's empowerment, many different ways of empowering women, and there are many people that I follow. You know, as much as I can.
Speaker 3:The thing I haven't heard anybody else say and the thing that really matters, that that I've talked about a lot, is why men think women. So women think men don't listen to them and men think women go on and on and on, think women go on and on and on and they never get to the point. And both are true and it's not that simple. What I've noticed in my years of thinking about different languages, looking at different languages, is that I think it comes down to we're using the same words. It comes down to we're using the same words but we're speaking two different languages and historically it's been men's language and women's language. That's the cliche, because for centuries, up until about 40 years ago, women never took an equal place in business, in the business world or in the political world. It really hasn't been that long, if you consider the centuries of civilization. I mean, I was a theater student. There are plays from the 16th century about why men don't listen to women.
Speaker 3:So you know it's been going on for a long time. What I see now, though, is that women get frustrated because men aren't listening, and that's a gross generalization. It's not nearly that binary. There's a whole range. I prefer to think of it as single-focused thinkers and multi-focused thinkers. So the single-focused thinkers are historically men, traditionally men, but not always. More and more women are single-focused, and they're the people who do one thing at a time, task-oriented, get it done. They don't care about the details much, they just want to get it done, and they do one thing at a time, and the advantage of that is you've finished the project. The disadvantage is that can lead to tunnel vision. So on the other side, you've got the multi-focus thinkers, who are traditionally women, historically women, but not always. More and more men actually are admitting to being multifocus, used to be not okay, so men wouldn't say that, and again, it's not really gender-based. It's more society-based, I think.
Speaker 3:But the multifocus thinkers are the relational thinkers, so they're the people who can keep five things going in their head at once, and they're the ones who are going to notice a side issue that might derail the project that our friends at the Tunnel Vision aren't noticing. You really need both. You need to have both to work together to make a suggestion. What gets in the way is resentment, and you can find men who you know the cliche is ah, women. You know, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. You know from the musical, the musical and the music band. You know, pick a little, talk a little, pick a little up things like that, making fun of it, where actually the women are weaving a web of relationships. When they talk that way, and for the people who are relational thinkers, it's context is everything and details are everything. So to them stories don't make sense unless you start it 20 years ago and then work your way up.
Speaker 3:But, the single focus. Thinkers don't care, they just want to know what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to fix this or not? When the two sides think they're communicating but not, that's where the resentment comes in. And it's as if men spoke Spanish and women spoke Italian. And if you're speaking Italian to a Spaniard, they're going to understand more or less what you have to say. They're going to understand more or less what you have to say, but really you're going to know that you're speaking a different language and allow for that.
Speaker 3:And what I like about that is that it means it's not people are being obnoxious or bad to each other, it's just a translation issue. And if you think of it as a translation issue, anytime you're speaking to get a result that's why my company name is Strategic Speaking for Results anytime you need to convince somebody, that's marketing. That's marketing your idea. That's marketing your idea. And the first lesson is marketing is speak to the customer in a language they can understand. So I don't think of it as betraying who you are. I think of it as saying what you want to say in a language they can hear. And then there are tools and tools and tools and lots of ways that you do that, but that's the fundamental concept and then how exactly you go about it. That's what we do in the Visible and Valued Masterminds.
Speaker 2:I think your comment about having a rhythm of speech and how a presentation is actually performed, which is words I haven't used before, but it makes so much sense. Greg, I've kind of monopolized our conversation a little bit. Do you have anything that you would like to ask, elizabeth?
Speaker 1:Just one quick thing Elizabeth says I mentioned before I spend a lot of time in human resources and senior HR roles different companies over many years and one of the things that I saw a lot of was Toastmasters and executive coaching and executive presentation skills very valuable. So thanks for doing that work and keep it rolling. And I also saw that there were a couple of things that were a little disheartening. One was sometimes we used to call the sisterhood wasn't always there. Not every woman was supporting every woman.
Speaker 1:Right and not much to say except that was divisive. But I thought it was very helpful when the senior men would be advocates and they would say hey, janie had a point there. I think she got cut off. Janie, what was your point? And actually, in a meeting, open up the gateway, the doorway to let a person who was very qualified and very talented let her voice be heard. So I guess I'm a pitch for continuing to have other folks be part of the process.
Speaker 3:Well, a large part of what I do now is not just with women. But so if you think of single focus and multifocused and John, engineers are kind of a category of their own in between.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 3:In their own category, but I work a lot with scientists and engineers to help them humanize their stories. If you bit, the thing is that if you're aware that the other person isn't hearing you and it's not because they hate you, it's because you're not speaking their language, then you can adapt and you can also teach the single focus thing. So the easy one to think of is if you are single focused and you have people on your team who tell long, rambling stories, if you know the relational thinkers, they need to be acknowledged because they see the world in relationships. So it's okay to say I care about you, I want to know what you have to say, I believe in your information and I just don't have time for it right now. Let's make an appointment and then I can give you my full attention and you can tell me the whole thing. And the relational thinker needs to know that. The single focus thinker cannot understand If you're gonna tell a long, rambling story. They're not gonna be able to follow because they only have one thought in their head at a time. It doesn't only do one thing at a time. So simplify it, you know, tell them in a language they can understand, which is actually marketing 101. It's just never I haven't heard anybody else but me apply it to the conversation within an organization.
Speaker 3:And then allies are the crucial piece of it. If they're not listening to you, who are they listening to? And the reason why we listen to men more often than to women is because of centuries of socialization We've been trained to. You know, society has trained us to listen to men more than to women, and that is changing, that's adapting. So those divisions are dissolving little by little. At this point I think 20 years from now it's going to be different. By the time my great niece grows up and has her kids, she'll be dealing with a different issue. It won't be this one. I think this is slowly going away.
Speaker 3:For the single focus thinkers to recognize that there's well, actually just say you know. There's well, actually just say you know. Men, if you would say you know your standard white men of with some authority have an easier path. There's a wonderful book called Good Guys by David Smith and Brad Johnson. That is for men, to help men become better allies and to learn to notice. And what you have to do first is awareness, is to notice what's happening, and then you notice it, and then the more you notice, then you can do something about it. And that's a little bit of awareness training on both sides. I mean cliches on both sides. Women have their own cliches and their own ways of just dismissing a situation, because it's easier to do that than it is to actually take it apart and fix it.
Speaker 2:I think, Greg and I both have daughters that we both admire and are leaders in their own rights. My daughter is into teaching and she made a wonderful statement. I made a typical engineer's observation. She stopped me, she went. This is a career, this is a calling.
Speaker 1:This isn't a job. What do you say at that point?
Speaker 2:It's like you know, nevermind Scratch everything. I just said. My work is done. My work is done. That's a perfect answer. You clearly got it from your mom because I wasn't bright enough to come up with that one.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it is something where I have found myself in a position of championing that voice for a woman to be heard, to champion other people that aren't being listened to. And a part of that is also being an engineer, and I think I'm the exception, because usually they don't listen very well. They like to do the talking, they don't like to do the listening. So that's the other challenge of some of my peers that I had to basically change them at the same time if I was going to get across an idea.
Speaker 3:That's habit. That's habit that is that we're so used to, that's habit, that is that we're so used to, we take it for granted and we don't actually recognize that this is something that can be changed. But if you think of it just as a habit, then most of the time it's habitual. It's not intentional. I mean, yes, there are the ones who are out to get you there Most exist too yes, but most, 95% of the time, it's unintentional.
Speaker 3:I mean yes, there are the ones who are out to get you there. Most exist too, but most, 95% of the time, it's unintentional. And so if you can make someone, the first step to changing a habit is to become aware of it, and you know, no matter who you are. And so that's recognizing that, that's the first step is awareness, action, allies it's one of the ways. Awareness, adaptation and allies are three ways to think about it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, elizabeth. We could talk for hours on end, but we do have a little bit of a time limit. I so much want to talk to you further and and I got a feeling we will I could use some coaching. There was an interesting thing of how to get speaking gigs. It's like, okay, putting the effort is the is kind of like the bottom line of what you were talking about and there's a path to that. But as we close, is there anything that you would like to talk about the contact information or a little bit more about your book, because I find it intriguing? Is there anything that you would like to add as as we close up our our time?
Speaker 3:well, the book's not ready for publication yet. I've got I've got some work still to do, so I have to make sure I I finished that, but talking to you is going to make me go blow the dust off it if you will Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn and that's where I have my most recent ideas. I have a website at ElizabethBachmancom, but, frankly, linkedin is a little bit more up to date, so I don't always do what I recommend, but I don't always take my own advice.
Speaker 2:Well, that's pretty much a wrap. My book is available on amazoncom and Barnes Noble Building your Leadership Toolbox. The podcast is what you're listening to. Thank you, that's awesome. It's also available in other popular formats like Spotify and Apple. The way to contact us I have a website, authorjawcom. You can get a hold of me through. Get a hold of Greg and I through that format. Music is brought to you by my grandson and it's been a real opportunity to share some great ideas. Elizabeth has a wealth of knowledge. Look her up on LinkedIn. It would be a great investment of your time. So, greg, thanks, man, thanks.
Speaker 1:John, as always.
Speaker 2:Next time yeah.