Why Smart People Fear Speaking | John Vautier | Sean's Learning Adventures

I sat down with communication coach John Vautier of Vautier Communications, and this conversation completely reframed how I think about fear, confidence, and the way we talk to each other. 

John breaks down why even brilliant, capable people freeze up in front of an audience, walking me through the four stages of competence and why public speaking anxiety has almost nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with reps. 

We get into why comparison is quietly wrecking people's confidence, how executive presence is built in the first ninety seconds of any interaction, and why the pause, not the words, is often the most powerful tool a speaker has. 

What's one time you stayed silent when you should've spoken up, and what would you do differently if you had that moment back?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yeah, it's such a great question, Sean, because we see it all the time. And to your point, it's some very smart minds who have what many refer to as stage fright, or yeah, I do a lot of golf analogies. They get the yips, right? It's all of a sudden like I forgot how to swing, I forgot how to putt. I forgot how to chip. I believe that after 15 years of doing this, three things generally cause it. First, fear or judgment. Obviously, it's a vulnerable, vulnerable position to be in when you've got to speak in public. There's that phrase, I think it's Seinfeld. Many would rather be the one in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. And it's like people have this fear of public speaking. They're deathly afraid of it, truly. Two, they don't know what they want to say. They've got it up here, but there's some type of disconnect between I've got it here. How can I organize it to get it out of the mouth? And then third, I think it's this idea of is my message going to get misinterpreted? I understand it. Am I able to get you to understand it? Because sometimes people say, John, I love to talk. I'm great at speaking, I'm great in front of people. And then I'll hear from their leader, manager, boss. And it's like, yeah, John speaks a lot. He doesn't get much out. We don't make sense of it. Or the audience that's interacting doesn't understand it. And so it's this idea of is what I'm sharing getting misinterpreted.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

All right. Well, welcome everybody to the Sean Trace Show. My name is Sean Trace. I am your host, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Can you tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:38

Yeah. Sean, thanks for having me on. I'm John Vautier. I work for Vautier Communications, which is a family business. My dad started back in 2004. Really, we've kept it in the family. My twin sister and I have now taken over, and I've been doing this for 15 years, based in Denver, Colorado. But we coach communication skills and catchphrase we like to use speak as well as you think. That's what we coach people to do. Most of us fantastic thinkers. Then when we have to get words out of the mouth, things become a bit more challenging. So it's been a fun business. It's been neat to coach thousands and thousands of teams, of individuals. We really work across all industries, but it's a fun skill because everyone uses it every single day. And it's not only a skill that's going to help us professionally, but something we would like to take advantage of personally as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

I 100% agree. Like I'm actually going to put this episode on two podcasts because I have my Sean Trey show, but I also have another podcast that's called Shalom Song and Adventure. And it's based specifically for people who are non-native speakers who are looking at how you can communicate easier. Or even if you're a native speaker, like how can you communicate more easily? Because I was fascinated by when I taught English for many years, living overseas for a time. And one of the things that I found was this. There's a very interesting thing with regular communication. We go, hi, how are you doing? My name is Sean. Nice to meet you. But when you start working with business English, there's something that's interesting that happens. Everything is transactional. Whenever you're talking in a business situation, every conversation, you're trying to get something or achieve something. And if you are not sure how to communicate, my daughter was trying to communicate something to me yesterday. And she's like, I've got good news and bad news. And I was like, okay, then my wife knocked her drink over. My daughter was running around and I was just like, and she's like, and then she kept coming over, and like three minutes later, she goes, I got good news. And she's like, Oh, and her mom calls her to help. And then she's like, I'm just like, I just need to know what the good news and the bad news are. I don't give a both. It's it's been 10 minutes. Tell me what the good news and bad news are. I need to know now. And she's like, Oh, I forgot. I'm just like. Hopefully, not that important then, right? It wasn't. It was literally like, you know, I found some stickers and the stickers weren't sticky anymore. It was something like that. It's the 10-year-old stuff. But I want to ask you this because as I try to teach her to be more confident with speaking, luckily, I got my daughter into YouTube early. So she's got her own channel, and I kind of coached her with it. She has like more subs than I do on any of my channels. She's got like 11,000 subscribers on her Alani's little world channel, which is awesome. But what was really cool today is that her mom, my wife is a celebrity in Vietnam, is a famous singer, and we got to go to the medium's premiere. And then they sent over my gift pack for my daughter. And I'm not, they don't want me to do the opening. They wanted her to. And so she sat down. She's like, all right, guys, I'm gonna, and then I bumped her and she's like, okay, wait, wait a second. And she's like, three, two, hey guys. And I was just like, and I was like, that's something that I taught her. I taught her when we made a mistake, you gotta stop, you gotta reset, you count three, two, one, and you go at it again.

SPEAKER_02 5:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

But it was like this training that we've been working on how to talk, how to be comfortable in front of a camera. But I also see, because I work with people doing media and content, many people, many smart people are afraid, not just afraid, but terrified to speak in front of others. Yeah. And why is that? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear from you. Why are these people so scared of this?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

It's such a great question, Sean, because we see it all the time. And to your point, it's some very smart minds who have what many refer to as stage fright, or I do a lot of golf analogies. They get the yips, right? It's all of a sudden like I forgot how to swing, I forgot how to putt, I forgot how to chip. I believe that after 15 years of doing this, three things generally cause it. First, fear or judgment. Obviously, it's a vulnerable, vulnerable position to be in when you've got to speak in public. There's that phrase, I think it's Seinfeld. Many would rather be the one in the coffin than the one giving the eulogy. And it's like people have this fear of public speaking. They're deathly afraid of it, truly. And so I think it's this judgment in fear of being judged by others. So certainly vulnerability to it. Two, they don't know what they want to say. They've got it up here, but there's some type of disconnect between I've got it here. How can I organize it to get it out of the mouth? And then third, I think it's this idea of is my message going to get misinterpreted? I understand it. Am I able to get you to understand it? Because sometimes people say, John, I love to talk. I'm great at speaking, I'm great in front of people. And then I'll hear from their leader, manager, boss. And it's like, yeah, John speaks a lot. He doesn't get much out. We don't make sense of it. Or the audience that's interacting doesn't understand it. And so it's this idea of is what I'm sharing getting misinterpreted?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Right? Like, that's interesting because the other day I was trying to communicate something to one of my team members, and uh there was a language gap. And I said something, I was like, we're good to go. Came back, something completely different had happened. And I turned to that person and I said, What happened here? And they said, Well, you said this. And I was like, That's not what I said. That's amazing that you heard that because wow, we went a whole different direction than we wanted to. I wasn't angry, but I sat there and thought about how I had said something and I assumed it had been understood. And it it hadn't. Yeah. And it was one of those things that as I sat down and thought about it, I was going, well, how can we be better at communication? Because, you know, it is a skill that you can learn, but it's also something that we don't always know how to develop, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Yeah, it makes total sense. It's a it's a physical skill, Sean. And so when we talk about physical skills, it works through four levels of competency. Think swimming, running, golfing, tying a shoe, brushing your teeth. It can be the most simple of tasks. But if it's physical, unconscious incompetence would be level one. This is where people say, John, I don't know what I don't know. I've never hunted before. I have no idea how to go hunting. I've never fished before. I don't have the slightest idea how to fish. Then there's conscious incompetence. You and I go out on a boat and we try to fish, and I start to realize, wow, okay, I'm very aware, conscious. I have no idea how to do this. Incompetence. Then we've got conscious competence. As we get a fishing guide, he or she begins to teach and they start to help me understand, you understand, we understand. All right, we have to bait, we have to use a fly, we have to decide are we going to fly fish or cast fish. Now I'm consciously competent. I'm aware it's causing me to be overly mindful of things. And this is where people say, John, it feels sticky. It feels rigid, it feels uncomfortable, it feels awkward until you flip into unconscious competence. Unconscious competence is basically autopilot. It's to the point where you say, I've done this skill so many times. I've rep repeated, repeated, repeated. I could do this in my sleep. And you look at the professional golfers that are out there. They've swung a club so many times, they rarely think about the act of swinging a club. They're thinking about all these other tiny little intricacies that you and I wouldn't think of at all. But it's because they've gotten to the point of all these repetitions that they're executing the skill at a point where it is on autopilot. They're really not conscious of it. It's just happening in the background. But it's because it's turned into more of a habit and behaviors have the opportunity to turn into habits, and that's why we have a lot of these 30-day challenges. I want to break an old habit. I hesitate to use bad habits when we think about communication skills because it's not exactly good or bad. It's more, am what I what I'm doing, is it is it effective for me, or is what I'm doing causing me to become ineffective or less effective? But the way we coach and teach the skills, it's across those four level levels of competency. And when people recognize that pattern and that step-by-step approach, it does two things. It helps get people bought in to understand, wow, okay, this is a learnable, teachable skill. And I do have the ability to get to a certain degree of competency where these things happen really smoothly. I know how to control my controllables. I also recognize there are things out of my control that I'm not going to spend time or energy on. And then it helps them understand where am I in this process? Where exactly do I fall on this learning curve right now?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

See, I love that because I think at the end of the day, when you're trying to learn communication, when you're trying to become a better communicator, there's a couple of things that play in, but like I think people start getting hung up on the mistakes. Yeah. They start getting hung up on like, what did I do wrong? And you get shut down and you say, Oh, I never want to do that again. And we got up there, and I just I see this with people when they start doing a podcast, right? And I start working with people on creating their own podcast or creating their own content. And they get up and they said, Sean, you know what? I did that, but I left feeling absolutely horrible and people didn't respond. You know, I only had a hundred people download that. I said, You imagine you're sitting in a room with a hundred people. Like you just had a hundred people watch your video. Like, good for you. Good for you. That's a big number. Yeah. It's a big number. Like, that's like a room full of 100 people. Is that a lot? Well, yeah, that's a lot of people in a room. I said, good. Now, one of the things that I was pointing out, and she's like, but I still made this and this and a mistake. My daughter and I went out in public recently, and she was like, Dad, I don't like what I'm wearing, and everyone's gonna judge me. And I said, No one's paying attention to you like right now. Like they're all focused on how they look and things like that. So just get out and have fun. But I want to ask that because we get stuck in our head. What's the biggest communication mistake that quietly holds people back in their in their lives and their careers and in their communication?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

I I think you just touched on. I'm gonna I'm gonna touch on two. One, thinking it's a skill that can't be developed. I hear a lot of times people will say, John, I don't have what you have. I wasn't born with this. I wasn't born with this set of skills either. I was developed through an environment because it was in the family for so long. I just grew up speaking. That's what I did, that's what my dad had done forever. For me, it wasn't something I thought differently about, where, oh my gosh, I was born with this set of skills. Two is fear of doing the thing, fear of executing. And I think you just touched on it a moment ago, being so overwhelmed with thinking other people might be thinking about me. And it's a bit of a harsh, harsh truth, no one's really thinking about you. You are thinking that other people think about you. And I don't mean it in the sense that no one cares about you, no one's thinking about you, you're not going through anyone's minds, because that's not true either. But to the extent of I'm being so judged at every moment, everyone else is so much in their own little bubble, their own little worlds. They're hyper focused on where their attention might be needing to go. The last thing they're thinking is, oh my gosh, look at Sean and that black shirt he's wearing. That's outrageous. No one's thinking that. And it's it's what I call self-inflicted wounds. It's easier said than done, but I coach a lot of folks get out of your own head. Step up, swing the golf club. Let's see what the what the swing looks like. Let's see where the ball goes. But we need to execute so that we don't fall into this paralysis by analysis. I'm overthinking, I'm overthinking, I'm overthinking, and then I'm frozen and I'm stuck and I can't do the thing I'm trying to go and do.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

That's it. That is the cornerstone of all of this, man, is like to get out of your head and to get creating, you know? Yeah. I think one of the things too is like when people start communicating, I knew this kid in school, and I'd love to figure out. And if anyone listening knows where this guy's at, his name was Pago. And Pago was this Korean kid who came to the US and was learning English at a high school in America. He went to my high school. And I have some friends. I have one of my friends, and she is the sweetest person on the planet because she studied in America like 30 years. And she lived there. She still can't speak English well. Like, and one of the things is that she was very shy. And bless her heart, she did the best she could. Pago is the exact opposite. Pago also like binged watch classic American movies. Yeah. And he was a com he was like, he was a comical guy. And so he'd walk in the room and like he got he went through this whole John Wayne phase where he watched all these old John Wayne movies. He was like, and like he had this thick Korean accent. He's like, well, hey, that's all greedy. Like he didn't, you know, like I'm John Wayne. And he had this accent. But you know, one year in, people were joking. First year of Pago making all these impersonations, everyone was laughing. People weren't laughing the next year when Pago walked in. I remember I came back to a reunion a year later, and I walked up and Pago, who was very broken English, a year later was like, Hey Sean, how you doing, man? And I was just like, what happened? Yeah. He was like, Pago, I just kept practicing. Yeah, I just kept practicing. I kept practicing. And he didn't worry. Pago had this superpower. He didn't worry about sounding stupid. He didn't care. He just wanted to try to sound like people. Yeah. And he was playing for that sound. And one of the interesting things is like whether you're learning a language, whether you're talking about cooking, whether you're doing workshops about resilience, a lot of people have a core fear about sounding stupid. And I want to ask you, why do so many people worry about sounding stupid when they already know what they're talking about? You know?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Yeah, I think it's again twofold. Knowledge doesn't mean that I'm going to be able to help people understand. And so I do believe there are some brilliant minds out there who are brilliant at what they do functionally. Their inability to communicate, meaning their inability to make it make sense to others, right? Simplify this so that Sean's 10-year-old daughter can understand it, not the astrophysicist that you might be interacting with because that's your world, that's your role, that's your industry. I think it's this I know versus I want to help you understand, and that gap or disconnect could exist. And I also think, Sean, you touched on this just a few minutes ago. We've all heard the phrase or the quote before: comparison is the thief of joy. If you are constantly comparing to others, to other brilliant minds, to other great speakers, to other podcasters who you say, I have 100,000 subs a month, but man, look at modern wisdom. Look at Chris Williamson. He's doing a million plus. I'll never get there. It's like if you keep telling yourself that, you're right. You never will get there. But Chris Williamson's not thinking about you. And you can look up to the modern wisdoms, the uh pick a podcast, fill in the fill in the blank there. But it's almost like, how are you doing? How are you staying in your lane and doing the thing that brings you joy, that you're happy with? But if you're always chasing down the next big thing, it's going to be a tough way to live because you're always going to find yourself wanting more, wanting more, wanting more. And this isn't a statement on don't set goals and don't set new goals to go and chase new goals once you've accomplished something. It's more about being present. I like this quote: be where your feet are. But too often we're so forward thinking that we think, ah, that talk or presentation did not go as well. I saw so-and-so give this similar talk last week, and he or she nailed it. He or she might be 10 years ahead of you in repetitions. His or her content might have been wildly different than your content. His or her audience might have been wildly different than your audience. Their purpose might have been different than your purpose. But this comparison game is a hamster wheel of potentially disappointment, where you say, I did execute on the thing. I should be happy. I should be proud. I should be okay with where I'm at. But if we're not, then that's more again that self-inflicted piece of get out of your own way and let the things that you're trying to do, let them happen naturally.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

I love that because like sometimes, you know, that comparison will make you crazy. Oh my god. Sometimes very, very often. Yeah. And, you know, one of the challenges too, because everyone talks like, oh, we're in this very connected world. We're no, we're not. We're in a very isolated world where everyone sits there and stares at everyone else's like pictures all day. Yeah. And you look at your phone, you're looking at your device and going, wow, look how perfect their life is. And like, you know, Chris Williamson is doing, dude, I guarantee you, he has aches and pains. I guarantee you he wakes up and has days that he doesn't want to be doing this. And like you said, you have the reps in. Like two years ago, I was struggling to get one of my podcasts up regularly. Now I've got five simultaneous podcasts that I run three episodes a week on two of them and two episodes a week on the rest. That wasn't just me getting there by chance. That was me putting in the reps, building the systems and getting to the place where now I have a machine that runs those things. And who's to say where it's going to be in two years, three years, you know? But right now, I look at Chris Williamson and go, man, I want to be there. I look at Stephen Bartlett, I want to be there. But I'm not going to get there unless I sit there and go, eh, sometimes I get to look like an idiot. Let's see what we can do, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

You have to, I mean, everyone is a beginner, and everyone is a beginner at one point. And Chris would be the first to say, I'm sure when he first began, I don't really know what I'm doing yet. I think all great performers, at some degree, you look at sports, look at musicians, look at actresses and actors, they get to a stage where they say, I need an opportunity. I need to go and execute on said opportunity, and then let's see where it goes. But it's almost like studying the habits of the ultra successful now can be a disadvantage. Study the habits of where they were 20 years ago before they became ultra successful, right? You want to run a four-minute mile. Don't look at what Steve Prefontaine did when he ran the four-minute mile. Look at all the things he did leading up to him being able to go and run a four-minute mile or the best marathoners. Again, pick your pick your hobby. But it's almost like people hyper focus on what are they doing now. It's like what they're doing now isn't necessarily what got them successful. Rewind the tape and go and look at what systems did they put in place in order to get to where they are now.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, right. It's interesting too, because like you have, we we look forward, but yet, you know, or we look at where people are at, but we forget to look back. But I, you know, it comes back to my question. Like, have phones and screens made us worse at talking to each other?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

I would say yes. In short, I would say yes. I think it has had us become more distracted, less focused. Because we've got a device in front of us at all times, two things are happening. We're just flooded with content, information, good or bad, or it's, you know, we we hear that phrase doom scrolling. You're stuck on your device or phone for 20 minutes. If you actually sat and asked a person, what have you been looking at for 20 minutes? You might get a response. Honestly, I don't know. I'm in a trance. I'm staring at something. I'm just going up like this, or I'm flipping through pages or panels or whatever it might be on the device. So I do think it's caused us to become more distracted, which in turn has us less focused. From a communication standpoint, we know how important listening is in order to be effective at communicating. And so I do think it's a two-way street there. If I'm not focused and I'm not listening and I'm not actively listening and paying attention, how can I be an effective communicator when the conversation flips? And Sean asked me a question. And it's me sitting there, uh huh. Sean, you got to ask again. I I I blanked. I'm sorry. I was out in a different lane. And it's almost like, okay, I've been talking to you for a couple minutes here. What's are we not on the same page? Are we not in the same room together? So I I think the, of course, great successes with technology. I do think, like anything else, it's a double-edged sword. And there have been people who have become so obsessed with technology that it has inhibited their ability to recognize I forgot how to just do this. I forgot how to have an interaction, a human touch point, even if it's not you and I in the same room, Sean. Obviously, we're across the world from one another. But can I stay focused and in my lane here to be listening to you, to be paying attention, to acknowledge your questions, to have a genuine conversation? Or am I sitting with a screen over here, my phone here, my iPad here, my email open underneath, and I'm kind of listening back and forth, but not really participating.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Right. I um I think that we have this challenge that everyone is super distracted. And we've got a 10 million different things in front of us at all times. And knowing what to focus on is one of the biggest problems as well. You know, it's one of the things I tell my daughter is, you know, how can you focus? And when people are trying to communicate, I think that um trying to teach people how to listen is so important. But also uh that it's okay to make mistakes, that it's okay to, you know, be doing the wrong thing. And I want to ask you this too, because like, what do you think is more damaging? Saying the wrong thing or saying nothing at all?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

I would say highly context-dependent, scenario dependent. But uh if I had to answer the question based on coaching these skills professionally for 15 years and living for 38 years personally and professionally, saying nothing at all, more damaging than saying the wrong thing. Now, again, context and scenario dependent. Saying the wrong thing when stakes are high, you've got a statistic, a data point, a fact that you should know from a business or background standpoint, and you intentionally say the wrong thing, or you say the wrong thing thinking I'm not prepared, I'm just gonna guess. Yeah, that could damage your reputation, that could damage your company, that could damage people. But I believe saying nothing is what's gotten the world into some bad situations historically, and we can look at short-term history, we can look at long-term history. But the world operates on communication. That's how we exchange thoughts and ideas, that's how we solve problems, that's how we heal, that's how we engage and interact, that's how different cultures have come connected to one another. A lack of communication or no communication tends to be a massive, massive negative. I'll put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

It's interesting too because um let's take it to simple things. I remember when I was in high school, I had a crush on this one girl. And for days, I wanted to ask her to the school dance. And everyone knew I wanted to ask her to the school dance. And I hung around outside and I circled and I smiled at her. She worked in the school library. I went in, smiled, and walked back out. My friends like, Did you ask her yet? I was like, no, I couldn't ask her. I just was so and I just was terrified. Uh and I circled around it and circled around it. And finally, I just was like, I waited all day and I was like, I'll ask her tomorrow. And the next day my friends came in, oh, you know, this other guy went in and asked her to dance already. And I was like, but I was gonna ask her. And they looked at me and they said, but you didn't. But you didn't. But but you didn't. You didn't ask her. You sat outside the library all day like an idiot and just stared in there. Obviously, she knew you wanted to ask her. She would have said yes, but you didn't ask her. Yeah. And at that point in time, you know, do you expect her to just sit and wait? Yeah, that's not how it works. That's not how it likes to.

SPEAKER_01 26:53

I saw Sean sitting outside the window. I think he might want to ask me. It's like, you have to act. You have to do the thing, you have to rip the band-aid off. As uncomfortable as it might feel, two things are gonna happen. She's gonna say yes, which is the win for you. She'll say no, and you'll know, and you'll ask the next person that you are interested in taking. But doing nothing gets you no closer to the dance.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

100%. Doing nothing gets you no closer. That is a great title for this episode. Doing nothing gets you no closer to the dance. But I want to ask you this though, because there are some people. I had an interview uh yesterday with the amazing supermodel here in Vietnam, Hanvo. And we talked about this. She walks into a room and people just go, and I said, What happened? She's like, first of all, I'm really tall. Like, that definitely helps. You know, it definitely helps, you know. But she says also, you don't have to be super tall. You can enter a room with confidence, with presence. But I want to ask you this like, why do some people walk into a room and instantly command attention while others disappear into the background? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

It's what you just said, it's executive presence. That's what we call it. The term for us in our communication programs, executive presence. Everyone has it. Every opportunity, every person has an opportunity to develop his or her own executive presence. We boil it down, Sean, into what an audience sees from you physically and what they hear from you vocally. And I don't necessarily mean core content. So you and I talk about a message and we get into the details 10, 15 minutes in. But my executive presence or your executive presence starts within the first zero to 90 seconds. But it's when you enter a room, how are you making eye contact with people? How are you standing or sitting physically if you're in the room and you're already sitting and people are joining into a room? How are you using your hands when you're talking, when you're interacting? Maybe what are your hands doing when you're not speaking or interacting? And then the vocal components, there's four of them: volume, which is how loud or soft you speak. And we all know that you don't command a room by just walking in and yelling. I work with plenty of great speakers who do an excellent job of bringing volume down in order to bring people in, to engage, to get intrigued, to get folks bought in or interested. But then they know how to modulate that. I explain it like this: it's working through stick shift. It's not just getting in one gear and saying, I'm going to go zero to a hundred now, and my voice is gonna be at a nine on a zero to ten scale. That might not work for every rumor in every audience. Inflection is what we call it its emphasis. It's highs and lows, it's peaks and valleys, it's ups and downs. It would be the opposite of monotone. We hear speakers who have a very flat affect, they come across monotone. They're not overly interesting to listen to. And an audience hears that, and they don't need to hear a lot, but they'll hear a little and think, not really interested in that person because he or she doesn't even sound interested in their content. Yes, is the rate with which we speak. You walk into a room and you put yourself on a mile a minute because you just want to get out of that room, audience senses that. They hear it, and I tell folks the audience only gets what you give them. That can help us, that can hurt us. If I'm nervous to all get out, and I get into a room and I put myself on fast forward because all I want to do is now get out of said room, it's obvious to the audience. They hear that pace. Most people recognize a nervous pace versus an energetic pace. And as soon as they hear the nervousness, they think John's nervous. John's uncomfortable, John wants to get out of here. The fourth component to the vocal side would be nonwords. I would beg to argue this female supermodel likely doesn't use an abundance of ums, uhs, likes, you know's when she opens her mouth. If she does, again, that's that gets dismissed. For better or worse, people hear that and they think, I'm not sure John knows what he's talking about. I'm not sure Sean is coming across confident based on how he's interacting in a very simple and social setting, because every other word out of his or her mouth is an um or an uh. Now, all of these items end up making an executive presence. But people, again, don't always recognize I've got control over what I do physically and vocally. And as soon as I understand how I can control my own executive presence, I can turn it up, I can turn it down, but it's always with me. It comes with me every step of the way, any room I walk into, any podcast I join, that executive presence shines through. I would argue that's more important in most instances than what you're saying. It's how you say it. How are you showing up physically and vocally? Content's important. It's not me dismissing the message, but content is only as important in the way in which it's deliberate or shared. I 100% agree.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

And it's interesting too because your present, you might I got to meet um true story, one of my favorite actors, and I got to meet him in Hollywood, uh, Jeff Goldblum. Okay. And, you know, Jurassic Park fame. He was in so many great movies. And he was sitting there, and what was wild is that I was in line at the supermarket, and there was this Holly in Hollywood, there was this really good Whole Foods, and they made the best steak burritos. They were so good. And no one knew at the restaurant, like no one knew they had this burrito bar. Like it was all like make your own burrito. This was back before Chipotle was doing all this, and I could walk up and just pick whatever I wanted, throw it in there, and it was just delicious, juicy steak. And I was just like, oh man, I would roll in there and get these burritos, you know, once a week. They were expensive, but they were delicious. And so I got one and I'm checking out and I hear this sing songgy sweet voice, like, what is that? You know, and I'm just like, is that Jeff Goldblum voice? And he was like, and he just is like, do they have burritos here? And I was like, yes, yes, they do, Jeff Goldblum. They have burritos here and they are delicious, Jeff Goldblum. But I mean, it was wild because he starts talking to me about my burrito. And I'm just like, but he did it with that Jeff Goldblum y presence. And don't ask me to do impersonations. I can't. But it was like he commanded the checkout line, and everyone wanted to go get a burrito after that because Jeff Goldblum asked them. And I was just like, I will tell you about the greatest burrito on the planet, Jeff Goldblum. Yeah, I didn't know. Right. You know, and I wanted to ask you a question, because like we live in a world that evermore so these days. Your personal brand is so important. And you want to start a company, great. Do you have a personal brand to go with it? Do you have a story that anchors it? Because right now, that's a huge thing. Yeah. And if someone has a brilliant idea but can't communicate it, have they really had the opportunity to change the world, you know?

SPEAKER_01 34:00

I would say no, Sean. I think it's an interesting question because you might be able to pinpoint people who have had great ideas and have ultimately changed the world. If you can't communicate it, it means there's not really execution on it. And so everyone has brilliant ideas. I'm certain of that. Uh, we're all very unique. We're all likely incredibly interesting to some capacity if we really boil it down and get curious and ask great questions and listen and genuinely be interested in other people versus worrying about being interesting to other people. But I do believe if you've got a brilliant idea, you have to be able to package it so that it gets out. Because if a brilliant idea never gets out, it's a dream. It's something that lives inside here. And if it doesn't get the ability to be shared to others, have others connect with it, resonate with it, it's just an idea with nothing else tied to it. And it's not to say that those folks that are younger and have brilliant ideas need to go out and build these massive platforms. We live in a world now where everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and everyone wants to do their own thing, which I think is awesome. That being said, we need to understand and focus how we can bring some of these brilliant ideas to life. And a lot of that has to do with action and execution and maybe less strategizing on the back end. I think we're overly obsessed in today's world with strategy, strategy, strategy. If we can't execute on a strategy, it continues to stay in strategy mode forever. And that's where great ideas go and die, is when they just sit in strategy mode and no one ever has the ability to execute on it to bring it to life.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

I 100% agree. And you can be doing everything right, but it doesn't go anywhere. Can anyone become a confident speaker, or are some people just born that way?

SPEAKER_01 35:56

I would say anyone can become a confident speaker. I believe some people are born with certain personality characteristics that allow them to be more extra extroverts by nature. But I don't think that great communicators are always or only extroverts. I hesitate to use absolutes. It's not always, it's not never. I work with plenty of introverts who have a great ability to communicate and message. And when they're done communicating, communicating and messaging, they're very much introverted again. But it's a muscle like anything else. It's a skill that can be developed, it's a skill that can be learned. I will argue it is an uncomfortable skill because you have to get out of your comfort zone in order to develop said muscle. But most great things happen through discomfort or being in uncomfortable situations. That's where change exists. And if you look at anything change related, going through change, especially behavior change, is going to feel awkward before it starts to feel good and natural. I'm working with a running coach now, Sean. I signed up for a half marathon at the end of September locally out here in Boulder, Colorado, Boulder Thon. I'm not a runner. I'm 6'5, I weigh 225 pounds. I'm not a runner by background. I grew up playing sports, but it was basketball. It was, I played golf recreationally, I still play golf recreationally, but I have no running background. So I went and did what most people do when they're novice and they're starting. I went and hired a coach. I don't know enough about running to think that I can just do it on my own. Sure, we think running, very simple. John, put one foot in front of the other. But I'd like to enjoy what I'm doing, and I'd like to do halfway decent at this race. So I get a running coach, and a lot of what he is sharing with me are simple tactics. But I told Quinn when I started working with him, everything feels a little clunky. Shortening my stride makes me feel slow. Trust the process, John. Running really slow so I can get my heart rate down as I do these easy runs feels like it's counterintuitive. It's counterproductive. I'd like to run fast on race day. In order to run fast on race day, you've got to run slow through training. Light bulb moment, had no idea. But it's these things where, again, if I don't know enough about it, you hire a coach to help guide you through that process. And after now working with Quinn for about the last two and a half, almost three months, a lot of the running technique pieces that felt foreign and awkward two and a half, three months ago are starting to feel a lot more automatic and natural now. And it, they're minor tweaks. I say the same thing when I coach speaking skills. I will change some habits and behaviors. They will be very small changes on the grand scale. We're not reinventing the wheel. Many of these small changes will feel awkward and uncomfortable to begin with, but a lot of these small changes end up having a profound impact on how you are received by those you're interacting or communicating with. And as soon as people buy into it, it's that light bulb moment again. Wow, I had no idea that changing just this subtle component would have such a positive impact on how I'm perceived by others.

SPEAKER_00 39:03

It's so true, man. You don't know. Like, I that's one of the things too, is like we were talking earlier about my daughter and how she is like people aren't paying attention to her. But yet if you do certain things, you can get them to pay attention. Yeah. And it's a superpower when you can capture that attention in the ways that you want. And I wanted to ask you this because, like, what's one communication habit that could change someone's life if they were able to figure out how to use it right?

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

If I had to pick one, it would be getting comfortable with the pause. We call it when we coach these speaking skills the power of the pause. Most speakers, even if they don't like to talk, they don't like the silence even more. And so they think, yeah, because I don't like that pause, I'm just gonna keep going. And they'll ad lib, they'll fill, they'll use the non-words, the ums, ahs likes, you knows, they'll ramble, they'll talk in circles. So I truly believe one of the superpowers when it comes to great communicating is your ability to be okay with silence. Can you take that pause on purpose? Those listening have likely heard very few ums and ahs from Sean and myself over the course of this talk. It's because the two of us are using a pause when we speak. We pause to listen, we pause when we're interacting so that we can take a breath, we can think about where that conversation or thought might want to go next. But so much happens in that pause that would be powerful for you, the speaker, and also have a connecting point for your audience where they recognize I'm not sure what John did during that talk, but it really resonated with me. It really connected with me. I think he or she did well. If we boil it down, a lot of what went well lives in a speaker's ability to take pause or be okay with silence.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

It's interesting too, because silence is something that I was reading about these silence rooms that they have and like these sensory deprivation chambers. Yeah. And people go into it, and they say that people can only spend a certain amount of time in those sensory deprivation chambers before they start feeling absolutely overwhelmed. Yeah. And they start feeling very stressed. And what's fascinating to me is that we have a hard time with silence. Yeah. And yet, silence is so, so, so important because if you can learn to be okay with silence, uh, you can learn to harness it. Like what is this great? I don't know who said this quote, but it it was something that stuck with me for a long time, is that music is not defined by the notes. Music is defined by the silence between the notes, which is a huge thing. And so, you know, we all want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to be heard. But the reality is, is sometimes we need the silence so that we have space to be heard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Yeah. Space to think, space to observe, space to absorb. We live at home right now, Sean. We have a three and a half year old who turns four in September, and we have a seven-month-old that turns eight months next week. We're short on silence in the house at this point. But my wife and I love that 8.15 to 8.30 p.m. hour that we get before 9.30 when we generally shut things down for the day, where it's peace and quiet. She and I can talk, and don't get me wrong, we love the talking from Jack, the noises from Lucy. We wouldn't trade that for anything, but there is a lot to be said about the silence that exists at the end of a day, at the beginning of a day when Jack is still asleep, Lucy's still up in her crib, and it's just my wife, myself, and the dog, and it's quiet. And so I do think you and I touched on it earlier in the episode. We live in a very noisy world today. With technology, it's only made things more noisy. We're always connected, we're always on our devices, we're always, we've always got a headset on. And I would argue many people would do a lot better with dedicated silence in their day, whatever that might look like for them. Go for a walk for 15 minutes out in nature and don't bring your phone. Don't bring your AirPods, don't bring your headset. Just listen. Just be okay with the noises that are existing. We try to encourage a lot with Jack this idea of boredom versus constantly having him stimulated by something. Jack, go out in the backyard, go on the turf and play with something. Figure something out. Use your imagination. You can bring a car out there, you can bring a truck out there, I'll set the basketball hoop up for you. But then just figure out what you want to do from there. And I'll come out and I'll join you. But I do like this idea of having him be. Able to be bored and then be able to figure out how can I entertain or engage myself, right? How can I make myself not bored, but not with the use of devices, screens, something else that is only going to make it noisier in a very young, three and a half, almost four-year-old mind. So true.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

And one of the questions I had was tied into that. If a parent wants to help their child become a great communicator, where should they start? I mean, because we live in a world where kids are not being taught to communicate. They're, you know, parents are handing off those devices that are the nanny, uh, the digital nanny, you know, and it's not helping your kid down the road. But I want to know how can we help our kids become great communicators? Yeah, it's simple, Sean. Speak with them.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

Talk to them, interact with them. We have a rule at our house at the dinner table, breakfast, lunch, dinner, whatever it is, but at the table that we eat our meals at, no devices come on the table. So my wife and I, phones go in the other room. Jack, obviously, three and a half, four years old, he doesn't have a phone, but no devices come with him, no toys that would be electronic, sounds, things to interact with. Again, he's obsessed with trucks right now. So he'll bring a car or a truck. Dad, this is your favorite color. It's a blue Mustang. I'm gonna bring this with, I'm gonna eat dinner with it. Great. But then we talk. We ask him questions, we listen. He asks us questions, we listen. He gets curious because his mind is a sponge right now and it's going in a thousand different directions. But I really truly believe the advantage I had growing up, I didn't have the technology that he has available to him today. Now, this is not me saying we're gonna live in a stone age under the Vautier household, but the ability for Jack to be able to interact with adults, the two of us, my wife and I, will go to a restaurant and I'll have Jack order his dinner. He has to interact with a waiter or waitress. He has to look that person in the eye and say, I'd like the chicken tenders, please. But having human interaction is only gonna help long term down the line. When I was growing up, I didn't have the ability to hop on my computer and message you, Sean, on AOL, AIM, whatever they're using today, to say, hey, meet me at the cul-de-sac. We're gonna go and shoot hoops. I had to go to Sean's house. I had to knock on Sean's door. I had to talk to Sean's parents and say, is Sean home? I want to go and play hoops. But I had to do these things at a very young age that just became normal and natural. And now I work with a lot of organizations, a lot of teams where they're getting some of these younger adults out of schooling, out of college. And the biggest thing that I'm noticing is this increase in training in early career development. And it's tied to communication skills because some of these young adults, again, brilliant minds, they have a massive gap in their ability to do this. Have a simple conversation, have an interaction. Some of them took the jobs and were interviewed just via teams. They didn't meet their boss in person, they didn't meet the hiring manager in person, face to face. It was behind a screen at the comfort of their home and the comfort of the person interviewing's home, but they lacked that ability to have human touch or humanize the experience. And so for any parents listening to the podcast here, easiest, lowest hanging fruit for you to develop great communicators with your kids, have them communicate more often, listen to them more often, and allow that interaction engagement to actually exist.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Right. Where can people go to learn more about you and what you do, my friend?

SPEAKER_01 47:31

Yeah, voutiercommunications.com, and I'll spell it out V-A-U-T-I-E-R, and then communications plural with an S dot com. But again, small family business. We position ourselves, Sean, as communication coaches. 10, 15 years ago, I would have argued it was using the pre the phrase presentation skills more frequently. When I joined on the company in 2011, I noticed a big shift out of folks saying, John, I'm presenting, I'm presenting, I'm presenting. It's more, John, I speak all the time. I speak daily personally, I speak often professionally. In some cases, I will have to give a formal presentation. But even the informal talks matter. I can make the argument. Informal talks matter more than the formal talks because they happen with more frequency, which means your ability to influence and change and inform and update happens on a daily basis. Your ability to go and present out content, project results, maybe it's once a month, once a quarter. For some folks, they tell me, John, I present like twice a year. It's once in the middle of the year and then once at year end. And I ask them, how often are you communicating? I do it all the time. So a lot of our coaching is learning by doing, meaning it's highly interactive. There's a lot of hands-on. It's very much driven by touch points to allow you to understand how can skills can start to shift and change across that competency model I talked about earlier. We also pride ourselves in having fun experiences. I grew up with training. I grew up teaching swim lessons. I grew up coaching swim teams. I've been in coaching and training scenarios my whole life. I find the highest return on investment, the highest levels of engagement, the highest marks at the end of courses or experiences are those ones that people say, I enjoyed it. It was time well spent. It went a lot quicker than I thought it might have gone. It was a lot less daunting than I thought it might have been. But having people go through a speaking skills course with us and then saying, oh, that was no fun. That really, that was really hard. I don't want them feeling like this wasn't time well spent. It was pulling teeth the entire time. I want them leaving thinking, I wish that would have gone longer because I enjoyed myself doing whatever it was that I was doing.