Welcome to Business Analysis Live.
I'm your host, Susan Moore, community engagement manager
with the International Institute of Business Analysis.
I explore topics with industry guests about the work of
business analysis professionals and how their work helps
organizations achieve better outcomes.
And yet, we take your questions, too.
Thanks for listening. Let's get started.
We don't just talk about business analysis here.
We also talk a lot about adjacent skills, things about
business analysis that maybe you don't think have a direct
relationship but impact the way that you perform the work that
you do. You see what I did there?
Let me tell you about your voice.
When you are thinking about getting ready to talk with your
stakeholders, or having workshops, or getting ready to
communicate with someone, you probably think about the
logistics. Have I reserved the room?
Do I have the right people on the invitation?
Do I know what the purpose of the meeting is?
Do you think about your voice? Do you think about how using
that instrument can help to convey calm authority or how it
might hurt you? Maybe you haven't, but maybe you
should because sometimes some of those stakeholder issues we have
can be remedied by a really good awareness and use of our voice.
And for that, I am super excited today to introduce a guest who
is an educator on voice and an opera singer.
And we're going to ask him about that.
So I want to welcome to the stage Elias Mogul.
Hey, Elias. Well, you've you've just done my
whole talk. There you go, I feel.
Like you've got a lot more to offer today.
The, the broad strokes are the, the, not the challenge, right?
The it's it the individualization of each of
these skills because everybody processes those things a bit
differently. Now, as you said, I'm an opera
singer and when I was, I've had, I've got about 800 performances
across the globe for a number of years.
And it doesn't matter every time the downbeat happens, it doesn't
matter what we've prepared or what we haven't prepared.
It's what we do at the moment. And sort of the skills can help
you when other things hijack it, like you were talking about
inner, you know, challenges, right?
So when I went to go prepare for this and I did an Instagram
post, I found a wonderful the power of the voice, the graphic.
I found a wonderful recording of a famous singer, one of my
favorites, named Lantine Price. And I thought, OK, she's got
this refined skill set that I know from hearing her talk that
she's worked on. But she is able to communicate
this in a way that connects to anyone who's listening.
And it makes me think of my experience with you in May, the
talking about the babock and all of the information that ABA has
to assimilate to get a a certification.
Yes. It it's about assimilating that
in front of a stakeholder in the same way that connects to them
because we can't give them everything.
And so that's basically who I am.
And what I've been able to do is take the skills that I've gotten
as an educator and a performer and realize that the outcome for
ABA is different, but there are core skills that we can all
practice that I still practice that it isn't just, oh, I, I
think about breath now I'm done. That's that's my, that's my sort
of preamble. Now, so you mentioned you and I
got to meet at BA and beyond in Copenhagen.
So you did a keynote in Copenhagen and then you also did
you did a keynote in Utrecht as well.
I did in espresso. You did?
Oh, that's right. Which was great because I
learned from my keynote because the audience was different,
right? So I changed that because the
energy of the folks in Copenhagen was very different
from the energy of those in Utrecht, so.
Yes, yes. Well, so that's where I and by
the way, Phillip Hendricks, who organizes that conference, I
think I'm sure there was a team of folks, but they did such a
great job in in bringing you because you did give us
something different to think about.
So first, I know that, you know, I've, I've introduced you and
you've kind of talked about your background.
I don't know, do you want to add anything else about you before I
before we dive into this conversation, as you can see,
we've got some folks that are already.
Well, I the person is really, really small, so I'll have to
trust you. Hey, let's see if I can make it
bigger. This is a new feature that
Stream Yard has and I I. Haven't.
Why are you doing that? The only thing is that that I
grew up with parents that owned a restaurant, so that work ethic
skill is something that helped me in my performance skill.
I'm second generation Lebanese and foreign languages were
always something communication words.
I adore words and I, I think I, I help people and myself take a
breath and let people let myself listen to what they're saying.
So that's really I've got a thing called develop your
authentic voice. And the whole thing about
authenticity is each of us have a private our own personal
vibration and you know, that's how we interact with the world.
So that's, that's kind of who I am in a core and I love to
laugh. So that's.
Good. All right.
I know we we shared a lot of laughs.
So all right, so now let's talk about I.
By the way, I tried to make that text a little bit bigger.
Is that does that work? I guess I can make it really
big. Can you tell I'm I'm doing this?
Well, you know, one of the advantages of wisdom and sage
age is that, you know, you can go things like this and go.
Oh, oh, yeah. OK, cool.
Yeah, I can see the mostly. Excellent.
All right, And so the title of, of today's talk, right, you
listen, I totally, I totally stole your, the name.
You said your, your blog is developing your authentic voice.
And so that's where the inspiration for today's episode
title comes from. So let's talk a little bit about
voice and why some of the tools that that you have used as part
of your opera singing, why they're important and, and why
we as business analysis professionals might might be
able how we might be able to benefit from some of those.
So if you understand an opera singer or someone who's teaching
a course where we deal with, we've said the same thing over
and over again. Many of the opera texts have
been around hundreds of years or poetry.
I also like a leader, Schumann, you know, Schubert, Brahms,
These are texts by great poets. So I have to memorize the poet
poem and then internalize it. So I don't I, it doesn't sound
like I'm just reciting a poem that it becomes part of who I
am. And there are several different
ways I've managed to do that over the years, You know,
kinesthetically writing it out with technology.
There are all kinds of ways with AII can have interesting
conversations about the words and find immediately a way to to
to do a nuance to a word, a color, and the color transfers
to, you know, how we vocalize something and the whole idea
about taking pauses and letting an idea land.
In music, we're lucky because we have rests and silence and music
are about as important as the music.
If anyone's listened to Beethoven Fifth, one understands
the rests have as much power as the.
So these are core skills that I have adapted to teaching, to
presenting, to helping others find what they sound like.
Because the last thing I'll say about that is nowadays with the
proliferation of recordings of someone with a good voice as a
singer can watch a master and imitate it.
But that's external and that's of value.
But finding ways to connect what you liked about a person and
what you wanted to change about your voice means that you have
to be self aware and know what your skills are and what your
strengths are and then maybe what you want to enhance.
And listening to oneself, Pavarotti, if you know who
Luciano Pavarotti is, one of the things that hit me is that every
time he said he heard himself in the beginning, he cried because
we don't hear ourselves and we're critical, right?
It's very even now. I, I mean, I recorded my session
at BA and beyond on my iPhone. I can't tell you how long it
took me to listen to it because you know, my imagination of Oh
my God, Elise, did you say, Oh my, you know, that's what we do.
That's the mind satter. But we have control to stop
that. And a stakeholder or an audience
member picks up on that negative mind chatter, even if they can't
see it. I'm talking to you and I'm
thinking, Oh my God, what's Susan going to say to me next?
Oh, no, am I going to say this? Is she going to ask then?
And I can imagine when you're presenting to a stakeholder, you
have lots of things you have to adapt with what they say.
Yes, yeah, you've got to be able to as you are hopefully
listening to what they're saying, right?
You've got to be able to adapt. And so sometimes that it can
almost be an out of body experience because now I am
inhabiting the space of why did they say that like that?
Are they mad? I don't know.
Did I say something wrong? What happened?
You know, and so that's that happens to that happens to
everybody, not just singers, not just business analysis
professionals. So if I were to kind of
paraphrase, maybe step one in this is self-awareness is
probably the number one thing that we can bring to the table
as we are thinking about how we want to speak to whatever
audience and and to prepare ourselves for having that
conversation. So being self aware, I think is,
is 1 good, one good area. What does that mean when you're
when you're work? What does that mean?
I'm going to stop. Well, I mean, there are so many
because that encompasses so many things, right?
Yeah. And, and, and I mean, knowing
your material is one thing, right?
Of course, and, and then letting go of it once you're in the
meeting and not trying to stick to your, this is what I'm going
to say. And you, even if you imagine
that a stakeholder is going to say this self-awareness is also
about noticing how you're reacting to what's being said at
the moment. The reason I was smiling when
you were talking before is because it made me think there
was a tenor who I won't mention. We always called him back to you
because even if like you asked me a question like Elias, tell
me what you're about to do. And we could see with this
particular guy that he was already not listening and
thinking about his response to what you say.
And that's a very slippery, that's easy to do.
So self-awareness involves that sometimes we can record the best
way with these, these smartphones, they're ubiquitous
now. I mean, we've had mirrors
forever to see what we look like.
But now in casual ways, we could record a texts, you know, for a
week, record what we sound like in a non scripted way to just
hear what the quality of our sound is and mostly what's good
about it. That's what I help people do
most because they tend to be hypercritical, you know, and go,
oh, I hate listening to my voice.
Like we said about Pavarotti, I mean, that is a common response.
My voice isn't high enough. It doesn't sound this enough.
It doesn't sound bad enough. Or I'm so good at it that I can
just wing it, which which is sometimes useful, but we're only
as good as we are at the moment. That kind of a thing.
So those things all play into awareness, and it's sometimes
that you need a guide because it's a lot.
Yeah, I, you know, we before we got started today, we were
talking about, well, how do you learn to be a good speaker?
How do you learn to be a good singer?
And you can train and you likely might take courses or in in your
case, right, you are training, you are giving vocal training,
right, and coaching. But to get good, you have to
practice like you have to do it. There's not just I'm going to
read a whole lot and then one day I'm going to be great.
And some of that practice means you've got to be able to listen
to yourself. Now, I can remember my dad was
in television when I was growing up.
And so one of the things we got one of the very earliest VCRS.
And so it predated the remote control.
So Susan Little Susan was the star.
Recording, pause the recording and I heard my dad on television
because every night when he came home he would watch himself.
So that watching himself is how he got good with interviewing
people, his on camera presence. And he would not have improved
any other way but for the fact that he would watch himself.
So it's important. Yeah, it is.
And when I think about the 45 minute keynote I had to do in
Copenhagen, I had to sort of put everything into it and I
couldn't say everything. If I said everything, everybody
would have been overloaded, right?
And Phillip wanted to be interactive so it couldn't all
be lecture. I can't tell you how many times
I spoke it and practiced it in my head and then recorded it so
I could hear what, you know, what I thought maybe I wanted to
say and what I didn't want to say.
And you know, I've had a lifetime of this and it's still,
it doesn't matter how experienced you are, there's
still value in, in, in that sort of self, self, self piece, self
listening piece, you know, especially when it's not
scripted, especially if you're not thinking, I am going to
record now because we do things with our instrument that might
sound better. We have something that we used
to call radio voice, right? You know, an announcer can sound
really smooth and wonderful and performative and theatrical, but
then you can't remember a single thing they've said after they're
done because they just, you know, like those movie trailers.
We, we talked about this before the idea of you don't have to be
extroverted or performative to be understood.
And one of one of our colleagues I spoke with after the BA and
beyond online talked about, you know, what she called junior
BAS, that they're not as experienced, you know, they're
not as comfortable with one-on-one intimate
conversations because those are hard.
And, and, and, and it isn't because they don't have the
skills, but they haven't done it that much.
And they don't know what part of the pie that they need to maybe
enhance rather than I can't speak very well.
I'm, I'm shy, I don't really like to talk to people.
And I get that, but I think most people, if they're introverted
still have, if they're in a position where they still have
to communicate can be equally or even more effective as you
talked about your own experience where it makes you key in to
each individual and that's how you get authenticity.
So, you know, one of the things that you've said a couple of
times, here's how I've interpreted is that one of the
one of the things that we can do for ourselves is to stop
comparing ourselves to what we think.
It's a great communicator because it may not be in our
skill set. It may be somebody who is very
extroverted and totally OK being performative or theatrical on
stage. And while that might get our
attention, it might not be right for us.
So, yeah, you and I were talking about, well, what about the
introverts, right? Our profession is filled with
them. And I feel like sometimes we do
ourselves a disservice by saying, well, I'm an introvert.
I can't. Yeah, I can't really talk to
people. Yeah, you can.
You can. And so part of that is how can
you leverage that thing that introverts have, which is to
have very deep conversations with one person.
How can you leverage that to to get the most out of your
communication style? And I think you nailed it.
Part of that lends itself to a certain authenticity that maybe
people being over the top and theatrical that they may not be
able to get across. It's like a recipe I think of
like cooking, right? I mean, each of us has a core
set of, you know, recipe ingredients of who we are.
And it's about enhancing what we have rather than say I need to
be more extroverted, I need to be more introverted.
It's that both sets of people have skills and can be maximized
to the most potential. But if we're not thinking about
it and we're we slip into judgmental terms.
You know, I'm to this or to that.
And one of the things that mind chatter is a very important part
when I would teach young students or even myself, when
you're getting ready to speak, you think, Oh my God, am I going
to remember all of this what's going on?
It's very we can control what we think, but it takes some energy
and the greatest mentor I had her name was Margaret Harshaw.
She had was credited as having the most roles son at the Met.
One of her things was singing. She transferred this to speaking
is 95% mental. We will our voice to do what we
wish it to do. But that being said, we have to
know what like AI, we have to know what commands.
If we don't put the right commands in, we're not going to
get the most efficient response anyway.
Yes, yeah, I let me tell you something else.
I think that that I was telling you about a a webinar, a really
fun webinar that we did last week.
And it was on working with stakeholders.
And we had a a panel of characters who were half dressed
for Halloween, half like the stakeholders from like your
nightmares. And one of the things that the
speaker, who's the Jamie Champagne, who's been a guest
here and who's fantastic, one of the things that she said in her
approach to this cast of characters was the your purpose
needs to be fixed, but your methods are adaptable.
And so that like I wrote that down because that meant like she
nailed it with like just that. And I yes, Sir, I feel like
you've got something to add. Well, I mean, the reason I want
to add is because it, I've got these 4 pillars, right?
Intention, breath, tone and connection.
And that feeds right into what Jamie was saying.
If you have a clear intention when you're taking your breath.
That changes how you take the breath and then how you use the
tone as it vibrates over the vocal folds.
And those natural vibrations are what connect you to whomever
you're listening to, who's listening to you, right?
And so it's been around forever. They're just so many ways to
express it. But one of the things that you
and I talked about in addition to that is I got to when I was
out in, I think it was in Utrecht, because I had more time
to be a part of things. And I was part of Louis and
Imtiaz's murder mystery. And one of the things when I
heard them talk about that, which is similar to what you
said, Jamie, as you guys did, is that they created that because
there was something they called death by PowerPoint.
And the fact that the tendency and I even noticed it when I
went when I was in Copenhagen, but I was just listening to a
stoic modern stoic week and they had all these really intelligent
academic speakers. But the tendency for them to
read off it on a video, one way video was strong.
And I didn't remember much, but there was one man who was soft
spoken who wasn't really an extroverted personality by my
estimate. And I wrote notes because he
was, he sort of internalized his message.
He wasn't looking at notes. He wasn't looking at a prompter
on a screen. And you know, it it, it takes
that kind of intention, as Jamie said, to then adapt and then
trust. Like you I were talking about,
we knew that this was going to go someplace interesting.
Voila. Oh, you should pass.
This yeah. Well, and and you know, I think
I think that's just it because you, you also said that a good
portion of it is about being prepared.
And I know business analysis professionals in our audience
today will feel that to their core, like we might over
prepare. But then the problem becomes
that we are so prepared that we don't let loose that we, and
it's in that moment of I, I know the topic, I know, you know, I,
I am confident in the skills. I know that I can, I can handle
it. And I'm just going to get in
front of people and I am going to be there in the moment with
them. And where it goes, it goes.
That takes confidence, I think. And you build it by practicing
it and believing in yourself. So that sounds kind of, you
know, warm and touchy feely and I believe it.
But if you set up an iPad or some kind of device and just
start, you know, don't look directly into it, just start
talking about what you might say, you gain confidence because
you go, oh, some of that's pretty darn good, right?
If you don't know, the fear of not knowing is pretty strong.
I mean, that idea of faith, believing that you're going to
be able to please, I know this. You know, you get in front of an
orchestra, 500 people have paid lots of money, and the conductor
goes like this. And you're like, OK, I worked on
this. Is it going to come out tonight?
Because it's only the moment that is the crucial part, right?
And that's where I identify with the BA community is I over
prepare and I've had to learn to go.
You know what just we said this morning when you said technology
was challenge? Breathe and breath is an amazing
reset if we access that tool. I can't tell you how long I was
a singer and learned about diaphragmatic breathing before I
connected it to this kind of thing and realize that when
we're nervous, the flight or freeze takes over and it causes
high breathing, but we can reset it.
That's the part that I forgot was that, oh, I know this.
If I'm aware that I'm doing, Oh my God, Oh my God, inside, even
if it doesn't show physically that there are breath exercises.
When I talk about my blog is a guy by the name of Farinelli who
was a a singer in the 16th century who uses what now is
called box breathing. They've adapted it, but
basically it's practicing how much air pressure you need for
an inhale, how much you release for an exhale, what you do when
you suspend. And it can reset you in a way if
you're anxious at all, even when you're about to deliver
something. So.
Yes, you know, I do. So I do yoga and I'm, I'm at the
stage of my yoga life where I just want to do the one where
you lay on the floor and breathe.
I don't want to do all the stretchy, bendy stuff.
You know how? Good.
Can I do yoga? Yeah, yeah, I do yoga.
That's what it looks like these days.
And so, you know, they are often trained in breath work and you
know, they talk a lot about when you do that deep breathing, one
of the things it can do is it can stimulate the
parasympathetic, which can help to calm you down.
And in the moment, right, if you're, you're dealing with a
tense situation or something comes up that you didn't plan
for and you start to feel, we all know what that feeling is.
You, we may have a personal, it may be, it may look different,
but you know, for me, I can, it's like my voice starts to go
away. That's that's how I know I'm
starting to have that moment. And I know in that moment I need
to take a bit of silence and I just need a good full deep
breath. And you know, I would encourage
business analysis professionals understand what that thing is,
what it feels like when you start feeling a little bit out
of control, and then take that deep breath.
Breath has been over, has been talked about a lot in a certain
way, but basically it's good to reduce that we're an instrument
and how we create sound. It's good to think about that,
not in a a very analytical way, but the idea is that the air
comes over the folds and creates A vibration, right?
Like like a read for a clarinet. You know, it's A and a violin is
the one that I equate most of singing because of the strings
that they vibrate and that's what causes it.
But breath is basically if you're thinking about when you
take in air, you're filling up the lungs and then what other
parts of your body react? Not judging that, but noticing
what reacts when you take a breath.
Does your throat react to your chest?
Does your chest come up? Do you do you think lower in
your, you know, your back muscles?
And it's not about judgement of it, as I've heard so often in
when you hear meditative, when people leave meditations, they
say don't think, oh, this is wrong.
I suck at this think. Just notice what you're doing.
And then once you notice it, you can decide for yourself or with
someone like me or Jamie or you, is it the most efficient way?
Are you getting across that intention?
Is that, you know, is this going to be the most efficient way
rather than I need to be more of this or more of that.
So that's when you talk about self-awareness, it comes back
down and the core is always Brett Harshaw Margaret Harshaw
said problems with vocalism like you losing your voice, that kind
of thing come down to two things.
She said how we take the air and what we do with the air once we
got it. Just those, but you need an
outside because they're so nuanced.
It's helpful to have, but that's really what it because if we
hold, they keep saying hold your breath, it causes you.
And a stakeholder may not consciously notice that, but on
some level they're going to notice that much more than if
you said, oh, I, you know, you didn't say exactly the right
thing, which makes you more human.
And they can oh, good. Oh, good.
OK. That we put a lot of pressure on
ourselves, right, in order to communicate correctly.
Yeah. And I feel like what happens is
we lose that bit of humanity. So I have done here.
I don't know. Did I tell you?
Maybe. I don't know if I told you this.
So a million years ago, when I was a kid, I had a speech
impediment. In fact, I still have a little
bit of it. But I did a lot of, I did a lot
of work with a speech therapist when I was a kid.
And every once in a while when I start talking real fast, you can
kind of hear it. But I got used to speaking in
front of people, and now I've completely forgotten where I'm
going with this. Well.
It'll it'll it. It but, but I think that
exercise of feeling like I'm not a good speaker and then and, and
knowing that I'm like I'm working with a speech therapist.
So clearly I've got an issue by the way, I was like 6 or 7, but
that having to speak in front of somebody just got me out of my
head because I was doing that speaking in front of somebody
that was going to help me and who was going to guide me and
who wanted the best for me. And so that thinking about, you
know, getting caught up in the what we aren't doing, what we
aren't, what we aren't doing correctly, what we aren't saying
that's correct can be a lot of pressure on us when really, if
we just I know what I know and I'm going to communicate it to
you. And if it sounds weird, let's
have a laugh. Let's let's have a discussion.
Exactly. I mean, what you talk about with
your speech therapist is the good ones, and I'm sure this one
was or a good BA is about, not just is about taking technical
concepts and listening to the person talk and figure out how
to best communicate that in a language that is going to
connect or interact with them, right?
Acronyms or technical language can sometimes distance people if
they don't know what it means, particularly for those of us who
are so used to using these terms that they are second nature for
us. You know, kind of like the
beginner's mind thing. Every time I teach someone who
tells me that they oh, that they hate their voice or they were
told they couldn't do this, it's because they've been repeating
that story over and over in their head.
And what I can help them do is figure out how to transfer that
to a language that is useful and can get them to whatever their
intention is. I mean, I usually have people
tell me First off, what is it that you want to get out of
this? You know, like a stakeholder.
What, what, what's the reason for what do you want to find
out? And then work backwards.
And course, just they call it create backward design, that
kind of a thing. And I found that that that's,
that's that's pretty useful to just go, you know, in the trust
that you can't, you can't know everything.
I mean, we try. I mean, I like to do as much, I
want to be prepared, but. But you're, you're right, we've
got to give ourselves a little bit of grace because we can't
know everything. We can be prepared and we can
still get a question we don't know the answer to.
And then we can say, I'm not sure what the answer is.
We got to get comfortable with that.
And that may make us feel a certain way because we've got to
admit that. But trust is built in those
spaces where people see you as on the same team and that you're
human and you're willing to just be a little vulnerable.
And that we might learn something.
I'm always excited when people that I work with come up with
something that I didn't know about or that connected the dots
of what I said in a way that it never occurred to me.
And I'm like, I want you know that there's a book called Steel
Like an Artist. And it's the idea that we borrow
things from like I listen to you and I learned so much from
watching you facilitate and go, OK, these are things that I want
in my own style. It doesn't mean that I want to
imitate Susan. But there if there are aspects,
if I can identify them, that's kind of what I'm good at after
all these years is diagnosing how to say it in sort of concise
terms and help that that's helpful when you're when you're,
when you're working with people who think that they don't know
or are intimidated by whatever your title is.
You know, they think I've heard, I've heard the stories about BAS
and stakeholders. It's like, oh, they don't, they
want us. They never answer our calls and.
Right, right. They, they don't know what I do
or any of that kind of stuff. Yeah, that's, I think that is
very common. Well, hey, let's see.
So I did. So we we are Live Today and I
think I added a little banner at one point to ask any questions
if anybody had any. Let's see, let's see what we've
got. I've I've grabbed a couple of
things. Let's see.
All right, so we've got Christy. Practice makes all the
difference, she says. I've learned, I've learned that
the hard way. That's anything you want to do.
Well, you got to practice. And it has to be intentional
practice because I remember my undergrad days when I was at
Cleveland to the music, there'd be people who'd spend four or
five hours in a practice room. The the time and what you get
from it, you know, it exercises should come with, OK, here's
what I want to get out of this. And being intentional.
It could be 5 minutes. You know it if if you're
thoughtful about it and you really sort of spend some time
being self aware. So, you know, and I had a
graduate student once who said to me, oh, do I have to know
what the words mean every single time?
Do I have to practice this? And I said, yeah.
And what's more, you have to learn.
You have to find a way to enjoy that that process.
I do. I love it.
I, you know, I love, I love the, the end result, but the sort of
the beginning part, the structuring, the figuring out
the plan, the thinking about how I'm going to practice it in, in
bites is sometimes frustrating, but almost always enjoyable for
me now. But it took me a while to get
there. You, I mean, you're making me
think about what I love about dance.
And because like you also practices is an essential part
of what we do. I mean, you for years probably
do a lot of building techniques. I'm doing lots of small
movements because when I put them all together into
choreography, I want to do them well.
I want to do them without hurting myself.
I want to do them in the way that that they are functionally
intended to move. When I get to the stage of
learning choreography for me now what I'm doing is Yep, I'm going
to need a couple of a couple of go throughs where I'm just going
to get the choreography down. And that for me, that's always
three times. I just need three times right
and. The key thing is 3 times seems
to be for members. And I kind of get it in my
muscles and then I can start to listen to the music.
I can start to listen to the words of the music.
And I can then begin to put my own imprint on that because I
might be doing a way, a move a particular way, because that's
what my training is. But I might do that move very
differently if I'm listening to some Latin music or if I'm, if
I'm doing something to hip hop. The style is very different.
And so I see. But but you got to be able to
love all that stuff in the middle where you're putting it
together. And the thing that you bring up
the, you know, for example, I, when I moved to France, I
learned that, you know, of course plie means to bend.
You know, I would see it on post office, new plie pod.
Do not bend the envelope. But I classical dance ballet.
And I thought, OK, why do these people study bending?
They know how to bend. But it's these small actions
that help you be more expressive and commutative with with your
body. And that's the same thing that's
true with voice. We don't have to spend time
thinking about how we phonate. We know how to make sound.
What we need to spend time doing is directing that sound towards
a specific or creative intention.
And and that's super important to remember because when you see
these listicles on these articles that list the five top
ways to be a good communicator, not they're not, they're
wonderful tips, but they're not contextualized and each one so
individualizing it for your skill set.
And I think a lot of this can be done, each of us with ourselves.
I mean, I think people aren't you've, you said this in the
beginning. I think people know more about
how to communicate, particularly if you listen to somebody talk
about someone they've heard. But the objectivity is what
listening to the recordings helps you do.
It isn't just, you know, learning the skills, but
learning to champion that unique vibration that you have in your
vocalism that only you have. Yes, yeah, and that's and that's
you're so right. I mean it's it's in that's why I
think it is. We do need to listen to
ourselves if you can your. Father's ask you, why shouldn't
we? That is true if.
If nothing you've said today is true, that is the most true
thing you've said today. All right, let's see.
OK, I here, here you go. So Vadim gives us a little more
to think about. So you might get caught being
over self aware of what and how you say things.
People will forget 90% of what you say by the next day.
They will not forget what you made them feel.
So true. So if you make an impact with
your message, nobody will remember how you delivered the
message. Yeah, exactly.
There's there's truth to that, but if you don't overload with
how much you say, like you said, if this is the one thing I'm
going to remember that you said today, Elias, the feeling part
is wonderful, but that comes from the intention and that
comes from clearly communicating.
You know, it isn't about just remembering every single thing
you wanted to say because that's a lot, right?
And that's helpful to remember. I have these this list of things
that I wanted to say to you today.
Will I say them all? Is it?
Is that really the important thing?
The important thing is maybe a couple of things will spark
someone's curiosity to ask more questions.
And. And so, you know, I would invite
the audience are, you know, the questions about how you view
your own voice. Do you like your sound?
Do you, have you listened to yourself?
Do you know what you sound like? Do you enjoy it?
Yeah. No one's biting, huh?
I, I guess not that's a that's a question for you guys.
Well, on that note, what I was going to say is probably for
those that are watching watching our live stream today, they will
see that down below your title. You have shared your blog.
I have gone through I when when I see your LinkedIn post I I.
I dive in and take a look and I was going through a couple
recently and I think what business analysis professionals
who find you will notice is that you talk about a lot of things
that we think about and then you talk about them slightly
differently. So highly recommend.
There it is. For our YouTube listeners
watchers, I'm going to drop this over into YouTube, and for the
LinkedIn folks, I'll make sure that you get this link or if you
can see it, grab it. There are two things.
The thing that's on there is away from LinkedIn is a blog
that I've been doing weekly insights that I started.
I can't believe today will be the 64th.
I've also do it on Wednesdays. And then I started to notice
with LinkedIn that you could create an addition and I've been
duplicating them with the LinkedIn edition where people
can actually subscribe to be notified when a new, when a new
article drops if they're interested in it.
So either way, but even if you see it on Thursday, it's still
the same thing that it is on Wednesday.
So that's just mostly for me. I mean, some of the topics that
that you've covered are things like bias and you've talked, you
talk about tone, you talk about breath and and how you know that
can draw the connections between the words like it's it is it is
the stuff that we do in communication, But it but it
really takes it to a deeper level and it gets it away from
just the logistics of communication and to really
being a good authentic communicator, which is different
it. Is it is I mean, and lately I've
encountered doing work, I'm creating a reflection journal
that takes a specific Stoic philosopher, Epictetus and
connects it to voice concepts. The thing I liked about
Epictetus is that he he was born into a background where he
really had to figure stuff out. And his, his, his sayings are
practical. And one of the ones that I wrote
down today to help bolster me to remember these more technical is
don't just speak your training. Embody it, live it.
And yeah, that's good. But these these are technical
ways to make that happen. You know, to think about, you
know, we heard this as little children think before you speak.
You know, that concept of taking it might feel like an hour.
I've you've been on the stage as a theater person, but I remember
when people drop a line and it might seem it might only be a
second, but for them it feels like an hour.
Yes. How pausing is If you're
preparing something for a stakeholder, it's OK to have
pauses because that lets the idea land and let's give people
a chance to speak. Maybe you do.
You don't do 90% of what you had to say.
Maybe you only do 70 and the other 30% is them if they choose
to, but it's easy to stream. I remember one time we talked,
you were like, oh, Elias, I'm breathless after talking to you
because I get so excited, right? And it, it can be an overload,
right? I get that with myself.
I practice that. I mean, particularly if I'm
excited and passionate about something, that sort of
extraversion comes out in that way where it wouldn't
necessarily in another way. So.
Yes, totally agree. All right, well, you're not
going to believe this. We're we are coming up at the
end of our time together. Not not forever, just for now
that's. What if I appreciate the
opportunity? Because what was helpful about
coming to Copenhagen was seeing that, because often when people
hear you're an opera singer, they only think about the
performative aspects. Oh, I don't want to.
I don't want to sing. These skills could also be good
for karaoke. You know, it's useful.
And I think that karaoke has, if people transferred those who do
that, who aren't performers, if they transferred the skills that
they're getting from being good at that to something like they
might be doing at work. But it was happy.
I was very happy to see when I was there in May that many of
your colleagues and the people that you work with found this
intrinsically valuable, not just as an external performative.
Oh, Elias. He's our opera singer.
Well, because they can see that it is really practical.
And I think because you are so good at putting it into plain
language, it's not a bunch of a bunch a bunch of fancy
techniques. It's like it's it's real stuff
that people can do that benefits how they communicate.
Whether you know, we talked earlier about right, it's the
same instrument. Maybe sometimes I'm using it to
communicate technical things or maybe sometimes I'm using it to
sing. It's the same instrument.
And those techniques, if we are intentional and we are self
aware and we can employ them, they can help to make us better
communicators, whatever our music is.
Exactly. Every language has its own
music. You hit it on the head when I
moved to France to be curious about how we sound and that will
make us better at listening to others.
The more we know about our own communication style, the more,
the more grace we give to others, especially if they're
speaking in a way that maybe we, we, we don't agree with or we
find it. It's confusing to us, but it
gives us a chance to do that. And Margaret Harshaw, who I
mentioned quite a lot, was the latest teacher I had and she
spoke like this. This is where I learned it.
You know, lots of people can throw, I'll tell you in the
voice world, they can throw jargon at you.
And it's very intimidating. Italian words like passago and
opajo and you know, and voucher D taste of voucher D, you know,
it can be kind of, it can be kind of intimidating, but all of
those things can be said in, in a way that they're, they're our
body. We understand them.
We just have to know what we know.
Yes, exactly. All right.
And with that, I want to thank you again.
I feel certain you're going to be hanging around our our sphere
a little more often. So folks can find you on
LinkedIn, they can find you on that blog.
Highly recommend. And if you see his name as a
keynote or as a speaker, in any event, you're going to like go
because he's going to he's going to take you in a different
direction. It's not your usual business
analysis talk. So definitely you got to check
out Elias. Well, a big hug from Duluth, MN,
where we're starting to get our warm wet, our cool, our cool
fall weather. And I wish you, I wish you a
excellent day and thank you so much for allowing me to come and
talk to talk to you. And it's a pleasure.
Anyway, it feels like just we're on the phone.
It's awesome. I know, I know.
All right, Well, thank you so much and we'll see you in a
minute. Hang around for me.
And that is the end of our session today.
Hopefully we've got you thinking about your voice and how you can
be more intentional with it as you are communicating.
When we see you in two weeks from today, we're going to be
talking about human skills in the tech world.
For this, we're going to go completely to the opposite end
of the spectrum. And I've got it, Microsoft MVP
who does a lot of talks about how human skills are essential
for that tech work. I hope that you will join us in
two weeks. Thanks again.
Bye, bye. If you're hearing this, you made
it to the end of the episode. Thanks for listening.
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