Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

All effective communicators have a certain style. They use their tools in a way that establishes them as unique. They have signature mannerisms - think Bill Clinton's pursed lips when he wants to convey how profoundly he is moved or the smirk that George W. Bush had to eliminate in order to win the 2000 Presidential election. Effective communicators have their own delivery style, or a way of carrying themselves, or a way of relating to their audiences. The best communicators use their personal style in every encounter they have with an audience, whether it's an audience of one or one thousand. 

But that doesn't mean that you need to sit down and study Martin Luther King, Jr with an eye towards adopting his most powerful style. You need to discover your own personal style - the one that works for you. The style that taps into your strengths - strengths that you can build on. Don't concentrate on how the person before you did it, concentrate on how you're going to utilize your uniqueness to get things done. Stop comparing yourself to others.

In addition to finding your strengths, you'll want to zero in on the quirks in your personal style that limit your effectiveness, that turn listeners off, that inhibit your power to teach, persuade or lead. These quirks are a big part of your personal style, too; but they're the parts you can work to eliminate or downplay.

At Ty Boyd Executive Communications & Coaching, we are going to do our best to help you become as effective as Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook or Steve Jobs - perhaps the best communicator of the decade, but we are not going to turn you into them. Learning to use your personal toolbox is not a cookie-cutter process. We're here, instead, to scrape away all the veneer. To reveal the essential you. And in that way, you become the most powerful communicator you can be.

Challenge Yourself

You will never achieve a fraction of what you are capable of by sticking to the safe and comfortable. Being content at work is no way to advance your career. Instead, take on responsibilities that are not normally expected of you. Put yourself out there and you will reap the rewards.That is why the third item on our holiday list for you is:

#3) Challenge yourself.

Challenging yourself is one of the best ways to grow as a person and to increase the quality of your life. Whether you challenge yourself mentally, emotionally or physically, you will change as a result of stretching yourself beyond your comfort zone. Start small - choose something that lets you test the waters of uncertainty, but feels doable, and then dive in. Once you accomplish the challenge, choose another.

Your confidence will grow each time you challenge yourself and succeed. But accept the fact that some of challenges may not end with the results you want. Even when that happens, the challenge will still serve as an opportunity to learn from and persevere.

Looking back and saying, "I wish I had..." will haunt you forever. Besides, you won't know if something is truly outside of your skill set until you actually try it. Challenging yourself ensures that you won't look back and regret being too scared to try.

Hold Yourself Accountable

You owe it to yourself to take charge of your professional development. Leadership roles are often given to the people who look and act the part - and looking and acting the part is conveyed through your communication skills. That is why the first item on our holiday list for you is:

#1) Invest in communications coaching.

With all the job responsibilities that you manage, staying focused on your career development can easily be overlooked. Working with a communications coach is the best way to increase your commitment and hold yourself accountable. A mentor will make you aware of your performance and provide insight and expertise on how to correct, adapt and improve. 

One of the many benefits of communications coaching is improved self-awareness. Working with a coach will make you aware of the areas that need improvement, but perhaps more importantly and even more beneficial, is that you will learn specifically where you are viewed as a successful communicator. With the help of a coach, you can then enhance those abilities and put them to work for you more frequently.

Ty Boyd Executive Communications & Coaching offers private coaching face to face, by phone or video conference. Common coaching topics include executive and management communications, voice improvement, presentation confidence, conversation savvy, body language analysis and professional image development.

Spending a few hours with one of our executive faculty members is an invaluable gift to yourself.

Be Kind to Yourself When Juggling Your Career and Home Life

In her book Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, Cali Yost reveals strategies that she uses to help clients achieve a better work-life fit. "Twenty years ago, the clocks on the wall told us when work ended and the rest of life began. Now there are no boundaries, so people can't figure out when to finish a project vs. when to go to the gym, or when to follow up with a prospect vs. when to send a birthday card to their mother." Cali adds, "Knowing how to manage your day-to-day work-life fit is a modern skill set that you need in order to succeed."

We all have expectations that we think we need to live up to and when we feel that we've missed the mark, we tend to get overly judgmental with ourselves. That is why the second item on our holiday list for you is:

#2) Be kind to yourself when juggling your career and home life.

Your home and work worlds are constantly changing and colliding; try as you might, there is no perfect balance. But there are ways to organize your career to bring more harmony to your home so that everyone is happy - especially you.  At Ty Boyd, our faculty coach our with clients to do something everyday to improve their communication skills. It may seem small when you are in the thick of it, but daily consistent practice will amount to something big down the road. There is no doubt, communication skills become more polished with practice. The same can be said of a work-life balance. It can be achieved through small, consistent, everyday changes that cumulatively will optimize your job performance and overall well-being. But keep in mind that achieving a work-life balance is a journey and that your needs will be different at different times in your life.

Set aside some time to reflect on your current work-life balance. What you would like it to be? And what is the plan to get there?

Making the Grade: Interview Skills for Students

By Sophomore year, most college students start to consider their major and look for an internship as a way to try things on and see what fits. Internships are an opportunity to take the knowledge learned in the classroom and apply it to the workplace - a great way to truly test drive a career. Aside from gaining experience, skills, perspective, and professional connections, an internships is a foot in the door and can be a giant step toward a post-college position.

But landing an internship is a highly competitive process. The hope of gaining an advantage for future employment has increased both the number and quality of internship applications. Companies eliminate the first round of candidates based on their resumes and then use the interview process to make the final cut. So, if a candidate is lucky enough to be granted an interview, it's important to step it up and make it count. Students are given general advice and resources at their college career centers, but at Ty Boyd, we are taking it to another level.

Responding directly to feedback received from our clients, our faculty worked extensively to develop an interactive approach to student career development. In our newest course, Making the Grade: Interview Skills for Students, we provide a career toolkit; an opportunity to practice mock interviews and elevator speeches. Our classroom atmosphere provides a safe environment to try out and improve interviewing skills before applying for an actual internship or job. With the help of our coaches, students who have great stories to tell will learn how to articulate their abilities in the best way possible. The key to getting the job is knowing yourself, knowing your strengths, and then being able to articulate your value.

College students are juggling school work and other commitments while applying for internships, but it's important to set aside productive time to prepare and practice for the interview process. It can make all the difference in the world as employers hire students who are confident, relaxed, and ready to meet challenges.

Making the Grade is being offered as two consecutive afternoon sessions on December 18th and 19th in Charlotte. The class is limited to 12 college students to ensure that each participant receives one-on-one coaching, as well as practice and training in a group setting. Throughout the course we will get the students up on their feet in front of an audience, as well as a video camera. The feedback they receive will show them where their strengths lie, and where they may need to improve their performance. If you have a college age intern, family member or friend who wants to get a leg up on the competition, please tell them about our course.

How They Will Benefit:

• Learn to make a good first impression
• Stand out from the crowd
• Think on one's feet and become more fluent in the ability to answer questions
• Envision a future and articulate a plan without sounding scripted
• Strengthen overall communications skills both verbal and non-verbal
• Become more self-confident through plenty of practice and candid feedback
• Recognize strengths which will result in greater self-awareness
• Become more passionate about who you they are and what they have to offer

Visit our website to register for December's class. Regardless of where a student interns or where he or she might go after graduation, the time spent with the coaches at Ty Boyd working on  communication skills will put any student on the road to a lifetime of professional success.

The Pursuit of Eloquence

Knowing how to speak well is one of the most important skills that you can learn. Speaking eloquently means communicating all that is necessary with simplicity and grace, with enthusiasm and passion, and with an underlying force of persuasion. Eloquence is being fluent in not only what you say, but how you say it so that your audience is captivated, inspired and motivated.

Whether you are trying to grow a business, raise money for a charitable organization, or present to your colleagues, when you speak eloquently with confidence and clarity - people listen. Not everybody is born with the ability to speak eloquently, but as we've mentioned before in this blog, everybody has the capacity to improve their skills. Leaders who rest on their laurels without making an effort to refine and develop their communication skills will not be leaders for long. Those who can communicate eloquently are more likely to become leaders - and eloquent leaders are the ones who become respected and revered.

The good news is, the language of leadership can be learned. At Ty Boyd, Inc. we have the communication resources that you need: classes to attend and professional coaches to increase your capabilities. Your goal is to maximize your skills though knowledge, preparation, rehearsal and performance and our goal is to help you every step of the way.

Aaron Sorkin: Mr. Conversation

Do you find that when listening to an articulate speaker, you not only admire that person, but you also feel connected and almost attracted to that person? Don't be alarmed, it's not as weird as it sounds. An articulate speaker is self-confident, self-assured, charismatic and creates a rapport with the audience - a connection. If you are a sucker for linguistic brilliance, you may already be a fan of (or maybe even attracted to) Aaron Sorkin.

Sorkin is an Academy and Emmy-award winning screenwriter whose works include The West Wing, A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson's War, The Social Network, Moneyball and The Newsroom. His trademark dialogue is highly literate as well as funny, reflective, and chock full of facts. Most of us would be thrilled to sound half as lucid as one of Sorkin's fictional characters; his brand of brilliant rapid-fire dialogue makes his audience feel smarter for just having heard it. In fact, Sorkin's ability to take a complex concept and have his characters discuss it in a way that his audience understands it is one of his finest skills.

At this year's Emmy Awards on September 24th, Jeff Daniels scored his first Emmy as lead actor in a drama for his role as acclaimed but troubled news anchor Will McAvoy in Sorkin's HBO drama The Newsroom. When asked what it is like to perform Sorkin's words, Daniels admitted that after two seasons he still grapples with managing the rhythm of Sorkin's heavy-detailed dialogue:

"Every two weeks, we get 80 to 85 pages. We want it to feel like these words are just falling out of our mouths. That's the trick. But we work hard at it to make it look natural and spontaneous."

Asked about his ability to talk like one of his fictional characters, Sorkin has this to say:

"I haven't met anyone who can. When I write these things, I'm alone in a room for a very long time, and I get to rewrite them, and I get to think for a long time about what's going to be said. If I get on a roll, then I can write a conversation like that without stopping, but I can't do it when talking to a real person. That's not who I am in real life."

Over the years Aaron Sorkin has given us a vast array of sharp, witty characters who have not only mastered that snap, crackle, pop dialogue, but are able to deliver it with a blend of humor and intellect. Vulture, the entertainment destination from the team behind New York magazine, has ranked Sorkin's TV characters here. Enjoy.