Communication Skills & BLOOPERS - Let's talk

Let’s summarize the first 12 episodes with key learnings, a peek behind the scenes, answers to a few of your questions, and Bloopers!

? FIRST – Let’s hear some bloopers in this week’s podcast !!!

This week’s podcast is the 13th and final episode of the first season of TalkAboutTalk. (Don’t worry – we will be back in a few weeks!) In the meantime, this episode summarizes the first 12 episodes with key learnings, a peek behind the scenes, answers to a few of your questions, and…bloopers! This is an opportunity for you to hear a little bit so you can choose which episodes you might want to listen to later. Or – if you already listened to all of the episodes, this will be an efficient review for you – with extra insights!

This week, the Shownotes include some fun photos…..As always, the ShowNotes are available on the website if you click on the podcast, or separately as a PDF if you scroll down on the podcast page to “ShowNotes / Transcripts.”

I want to thank all twelve of the insightful guests who shared their expertise with us over the past few months. You educated and entertained us – you guys rocked it! I also want to thank YOU for subscribing to this blog, for communicating with me, and for all your support. I ❤️this gig and I couldn’t do this without you!

Are you curious about the bloopers? Well, how about:

sirens and helicopters?
technical difficulties with this blog?
not clarifying my relationship with the Talk About Talk audio producer?
trying to record an opera singer with my portable microphone and recorder….?!

You will hear all about these bloopers and more in this week’s podcast. You will even hear baritone opera singer Bradley Christensen sing. For the record, his voice sounds phenomenal. (The best of all bloopers!) It’s just that my audio equipment was not intended to record an opera!

? ENJOY! ?

TALK & LEARN ABOUT COMMUNICATION SKILLS

The central tenet of Talk About Talk is that COMMUNICATION is at the heart of everything we do and plays a role in determining our relative success. The good news is that communication skills can be learned! Consider what we learned already this season with the Talk About Talk podcast and blog. Whether you are a seasoned public speaker, a teacher, a coach, a manager, a parent,…. your communication skills are worthy of your attention. While this has always been the case, recruiters and economists argue that nowadays, soft skills such as communication are even more critical.

Harvard Business Review: “In a world where U.S. adults’ total media usage is nearly 12 hours a day, on average, communication skills are essential for getting people’s attention and moving them to action. The most basic form of communication is constructing a compelling story.… the ability to communicate compellingly will always be in high demand and hard to automate.”

McKinsey: “Workers of the future will spend more time on activities that machines are less capable of, such as managing people, applying expertise, and communicating with others. They will spend less time on predictable physical activities and on collecting and processing data, where machines already exceed human performance.”

Fast Company: “…recruiters place a higher value on soft skills. From an ability to communicate well to being organized, these intangible qualities can be tough to measure, but they affect everything from productivity to collaboration.”

Forbes: “We can use science to study why certain techniques are more effective than others, but ultimately communication is more art than science and, like mastering any art, it takes practice to sharpen the craft… Communication levels the playing field. If you can speak well, you can outshine the competition in so many ways.”

Bloomberg: In a job skills report, Bloomberg highlights that relative to other skills, communication is one of the most important, and it sits right at the sweet spot of “less common and most desired” (click to see the report):

?QUOTES WORTH TALKING ABOUT

This week we focus on…. COMMUNICATION!

Sir Richard Branson sums up his leadership credo with these five words:
“Listen more than you talk.”
Here are some more of Sir Richard Branson’s favourite quotes about communication.

? I hope you enjoy this week’s
podcast.

And the bloopers! And I hope you are inspired to focus on your communication skills. As we say in the Talk About Talk podcast trailer:

“We are all communicating all the time –
sometimes purposefully, but mostly not.”

Now, we are going to take a few weeks to re-group, and then we will be back, ready to TALK all things communication, with Season two. I have already started a few interviews and I’ll be doing lots more over these next few weeks (artificial intelligence, profanity, girl talk, typography, …)

If there was a “best” time for you to connect with me, it’s NOW. Please email or connect with me on social media. I would ❤️to talk! I appreciate your suggestions, your topic ideas, and anything else you would like to talk about.

Again – THANK YOU for being a Season One Talk About Talk blog subscriber! We have so much to celebrate… including the 12 podcast episodes and a 5/5 rating on Apple podcasts! (Not bloopers!) Here’s to an even better Season Two. ☺️ PLEASE forward this email to anyone you think might be interested in learning and Talking About all things “Communication.”