You can be excellent at your job and still be overlooked if you cannot communicate your ideas when it matters.

Speaking skills affect far more than stages and TED Talks. They shape who gets heard in meetings, trusted with responsibility, remembered by decision-makers, and considered for the next opportunity.

In this episode, former Procter & Gamble communications trainer and filmmaker turned public speaking coach Nausheen Chen joins Cindi Baldi to explore what helps people communicate clearly and confidently under pressure.

Together, they break powerful communication into three separate skills: confidence, messaging, and delivery, and discuss why learning to communicate under pressure can change the trajectory of a career. Nausheen shares the speaking techniques she uses with overthinkers and perfectionists, how to pull a distracted audience back, and the Stanford research that explains why some people build confidence faster than others after the exact same experience.

Whether you are leading a meeting, presenting to executives, appearing on camera, or stepping onto a stage, this episode offers practical tools to help you sound as capable and credible as you already are.

Episode Highlights:

• Why confidence and speaking skill must be built separately
• How improv helps perfectionists stop overthinking
• What to do when you realize you have lost the audience
• What body language reveals and the first steps to mastering it
• The one question every speaker should ask themselves about the audience
• How to turn past speaking experiences into future confidence

About Nausheen Chen:

Nausheen I. Chen is a 3-time TEDx speaker, a Public Speaking instructor for the Executive MBA program at Central European University and Wesleyan and a content creator with 500,000+ followers across LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok.

Nausheen coaches leaders at Google, Amazon, NASA and the UN as well as startup founders to speak fearlessly. Her clients have raised more than $115 million through winning investor pitches and successful exits.

Connect with Nausheen: Website | Linkedin

Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gK7racEvoW0

Get your copy of The Uncertainty Playbook: 14 Strategies for Work Success in a Chaotic World here.

→ Use code PLAYBOOK20 for 20% off.

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Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:

• Monarth, Harrison. "The Irresistible Power of Storytelling as a Strategic Business Tool." Harvard Business Review, March 2014. https://hbr.org/2014/03/the-irresistible-power-of-storytelling-as-a-strategic-business-tool
• Stephens, Greg J., Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson. "Speaker-Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Communication." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 32, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1008662107

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Looking at your competitors can feel like a smart strategy.

But it can also make your organization think exactly like everyone else.

This week on Management Muse, Cindi Baldi and Geoffrey Tumlin use POM Wonderful as a case study in thinking beyond the obvious. They explore how the company turned an overlooked agricultural byproduct into a premium category, and reinforced that decision on every step along the way.

They also look at Southwest Airlines and the other side of differentiation: what happens when competitors catch up and a once-distinctive company starts to look more like everyone else. Along the way, they unpack why managers tend to stop at the first plausible solution, how analogy can help leaders think beyond their own industry, and why competitive advantage has to be continually defended.

Episode Highlights:

• Why looking at your competitors can actually narrow your strategic thinking
• How POM Wonderful turned an overlooked byproduct into an entirely new category
• Why analogy can help you find answers far outside your own industry
• How to avoid the ‘first plausible solution’ trap
• What Southwest teaches us about how competitive advantages eventually disappear
• Why analogy can help you find answers far outside your own industry
• What leaders can do to avoid becoming another commodity in the market

Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VirzVP2Ew5A

Get your copy of The Uncertainty Playbook: 14 Strategies for Work Success in a Chaotic World here.

→ Use code PLAYBOOK20 for 20% off.

Get Science-Backed Insights and Exclusive Perks Straight to Your Inbox:

→ Sign up for our newsletter and get a FREE chapter of The Uncertainty Playbook.

Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:

• Kim, W. Chan, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy, Harvard Business Review Press, Feb. 2015, https://link.amazon/B02GpG6RT
• Rumelt, Richard. Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Crown Currency, 19 Jul. 2011, https://link.amazon/B04cQz30w

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After interviewing hundreds of workplace experts, Pete Mockaitis—host of How to be Awesome at Your Job—has distilled what makes someone exceptional at work down to one word: care.

That does not mean loving every part of your job or turning your profession into your life’s passion. It means connecting the work to a group or outcome that makes it feel important. And when talented employees lose that connection, disengagement is not always a sign of laziness or a bad attitude. Sometimes, it is a rational response to the workplace around them.

This week on Management Muse, Pete and host Cindi Baldi explore how organizations unintentionally train good employees to stop trying, and how managers can reconnect effort to impact. Pete also takes the 80/20 rule further, explaining why your most important initiative may be the one no one is requesting and why a handful of activities can be 16 times more valuable than everything else competing for your attention. Plus, he shares the $1,500 mistake that taught him to ask two deceptively simple questions before making an important decision.

Episode Highlights:

• The one trait Pete Mockaitis believes matters more than any productivity or communication technique
• How companies unintentionally train good employees to stop contributing ideas
• What separates healthy commitment from caring so much that you become exploitable
• How managers can help employees see the impact of their work
• Why your highest-value work could be 16 times more impactful than everything else
• Two questions that can expose a bad decision before it becomes an expensive mistake

Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OyC9G0jVolY

About Pete Mockaitis:

Pete Mockaitis [Muh KITE iss] is an award-winning trainer and coach who helps professionals perform their best at work.

Pete has delivered 1-on-1 coaching to over 700 leaders hailing from world-class organizations (such as LinkedIn, Google, FedEx, Amazon, Apple, Anheuser-Busch, and the United Nations), 50 countries, and every Ivy League university.

He began his career at Bain & Company and currently hosts the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast. The show has been downloaded over 25,000,000 times and regularly ranks as a top business show in Apple Podcasts.

Connect with Pete:

Podcast | Linkedin

The Uncertainty Playbook: 14 Strategies for Work Success in a Chaotic World:

→ Get your copy here.

Get Science-Backed Insights and Exclusive Perks Straight to Your Inbox:

→ Sign up for our newsletter and get a FREE chapter of The Uncertainty Playbook.

Want to Go Deeper? Check Out Our Recommended Reading:

• Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts, Penguin Publishing Group, May 2019, https://link.amazon/B068pQOEU
• Koch, Richard. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less, Crown Currency, Oct. 1999, https://link.amazon/B0he9ImyK
• How to be Awesome at Your Job Ep #867 with Richard Medcalf: How to Stop Being Busy and Start Being Strategic: https://awesomeatyourjob.com/867-how-to-stop-being-busy-and-start-being-strategic-with-richard-medcalf/

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