Vocalizing Structured Ideas Confidently to Accelerate Career Growth
Welcome to “Driving Businesses by Developing People” written by me, David Huynh. For those who do not know me, I am a people-focused business professional who builds team members to generate results. Thank you for joining me. If you are not on my email list yet and want to dive deeper into the intersection of business and people with me, you may subscribe here:
During my time working for an international e-commerce platform, I noticed how many individuals with great, structured ideas would not speak up at meetings. As a result, they did not get the recognition they deserved whether through greater responsibility in more important projects or through promotions and elevated roles. These individuals had a reserved vocal demeanor that would potentially stifle their professional career progression as compared with their more vocal counterparts of similar or lesser abilities. Additionally, I also noticed how less competent individuals with a boisterous vocal demeanor would be assigned more important projects or be tapped for promotions. While these individuals tended to succeed in the short term, they would struggle later in their career due to their lack of ability to structure their thoughts and ideas.
Vocalization is essential in any working environment. From one-on-one chats to company-wide meetings and inter-company meetings, ideas need to be communicated clearly for progress to move forward. Whether you are the presenter or a meeting participant, this article aims to optimize advancing one’s career through both understanding confident and structured vocalization as well as providing guidance on how to make adjustments based on his or her current comfort level with confident and structured vocalization.
Structured and Confident Vocalization
To accelerate career growth through our vocalizations, we need to 1) properly structure ideas and 2) express them in a confident demeanor.
Structured ideas are easier to digest because they contain a logical framework which segment thoughts into overarching themes and categories. Messy ideas are the opposite; they do not have a logical framework and fail to connect the dots together. Brainstorming with messy ideas is acceptable, but one should aim to reorganize those unfiltered thoughts into logical, structured ideas. Messy ideas tend to lend themselves to poor vocalization, while well-structured ideas allow for strong communication. Even if our ideas are wrong, if we are able to structure our ideas well, we will be able to make adjustments and learn from our mistakes. However, if our ideas are messy, even if they correct, we will struggle to find repeated success, since a formula or mechanism for solving the problem was not present in our thought process.
While structured vocalization is important, it is critical to consider a person’s individual demeanor as well. An individual with a reserved vocal demeanor will hesitate to voice ideas, whereas an individual with a boisterous demeanor will voice all ideas. Extreme reservation can result in slower career growth, while excessive boisterousness can take away speaking opportunities for others and impart negative impressions of one’s capabilities if not backed up by structured thoughts. We want to strive towards vocalizing in a confident demeanor; that is, we want to aim to voice ideas only when they are significant and relevant to the conversation.
Putting these two parameters, vocal ideas and demeanor, together results in the following chart:
Different people will have different starting points on this graph. If you are not sure where you lie on this graph, pay attention to the share of voice in your meetings, the impact of your comments, and the responses to your comments. For the horizontal axis, a reserved vocal demeanor can be identified by never or rarely speaking up (i.e., ~0% share of voice). A boisterous vocal demeanor and confident vocal demeanor can be separated by listen capabilities. An individual with a confident vocal demeanor will integrate comments from others and work towards finding the best solution. A boisterous individual has a higher share of voice, listens less, and promotes his or her personal agenda as opposed to helping find the best solution. For the vertical axis, messy ideas are followed by clarifying questions from manager(s) and peers. Structured ideas are followed by additional thoughts that build on top of them from other meeting participants. Share of voice, share of impact, and responses to our comments should be reviewed holistically over multiple meetings to identify our starting position.
Now, let us discuss how individuals can make adjustments from their respective starting positions. Then, we will dive into how each adjustment translates to actions for varying starting points.
Vocal Ideas and Demeanor Adjustments
There are three possible types of adjustments to reach a structured and confident voice: 1) escalating vocal demeanor from reserved to confident, 2) toning down vocal demeanor from boisterous to confident, and 3) organizing vocal ideas from messy to structured.
Escalating Demeanor: Reserved to Confident
Reserved individuals typically feel a sense of discomfort and anxiety associated with speaking at meetings. This discomfort often stems from a fear of what other people may think or say. To escalate their vocal demeanor and to make speaking more comfortable, reserved individuals can practice pre-validating their ideas with trusted individuals (e.g. manager, competent peers). Getting their ideas corroborated in advance will reduce the fear of the unknown regarding their audience’s reception and response. These pre-prepared “check-ins” can be conducted through one-on-one meetings or small group settings before being shared to a broader audience.
Potential Starting Point: Reserved & Structured
This is the first person I mentioned in the beginning; someone who has great structured ideas, but does not speak up at meetings. They should practice the “check-ins” mentioned above to increase their confidence.
Toning Down Demeanor: Boisterous to Confident
On the opposite end, boisterous individuals are very comfortable in meetings, such that they may potentially monopolize the voice and cadence of their meetings. Boisterous individuals typically gain this additional share of voice through freely sharing their thoughts. This may be optimal if the shared thoughts are relevant and impactful, but sub-optimal if they are not allowing others to voice their ideas. Therefore, to generate an optimal share of voice and tone down their demeanor, boisterous individuals need to listen more and internally validate their ideas before sharing them. This means asking themselves, "what is the impact of their suggestion" before voicing the idea. Additionally, similar to the reserved individual, boisterous individuals should leverage their trusted managers and peers to help validate the helpfulness of comments that they have provided. This feedback should be used to help guide them on how to make their comments succinct, targeted, and impactful.
Potential Starting Point: Boisterous & Structured
If paired with structured ideas, a boisterous demeanor may be valuable since ideas will freely flow out. However, if share of voice is too high, it can take away opportunities for others to share their ideas. These individuals should look to listen more and refine his or her ideas with additional input from others.
Organizing Ideas: Messy to Structured
Altering demeanor utilizes social exercises, whereas organizing ideas requires intrapersonal exercises. To organize ideas, one must develop foundational expertise and the ability to synthesize ideas, which enhance content and structure respectively. As a result, these exercises typically take more time to refine as compared with changing demeanor.
Foundational expertise can also be referred to as "subject matter expertise" or "knowledge in the field". In other words, one needs to be knowledgeable about their discussion topics. If one does not have enough knowledge, one will not be able to structure their thoughts optimally. There are no corners to cut here. To execute, this means owning one’s subject area by understanding the details, in and out, before the actual meeting. This will help with both one’s own presentations and asking properly targeted questions with the presentations of others.
Synthesizing takes the ideas from others, merges them with one’s own ideas, and generates new ideas that are categorized into logical groups. This will involve both the ability to listen and consolidate the ideas of others as well as the ability to group and consolidate personal ideas. To practice, try summarizing your meetings to concisely capture and group all major ideas. These statements should flow from key point to supporting bullets, which are made up of past learnings, to next steps. These groupings cut the verbal information into digestible and actionable chunks, which can then be dissected one at a time, making conversations more manageable.
Potential Starting Point: Reserved & Messy
The reserved and messy communicator does not know much and does not speak much. Before starting to speak more, they need to develop their subject matter expertise and structure their thoughts. If they begin suggesting actions without a baseline understanding and structured thoughts, they will move towards confident and messy, which is the equivalent of pretending to know information and can result in negative impressions and damaged reputations.
Potential Starting Point: Boisterous & Messy
The boisterous and messy communicator makes irrelevant comments and rephrases without adding additional content or structure. This individual should look to tone down their demeanor from boisterous to reserved. Alternatively, if the individual strives towards structured ideas first without toning down their demeanor, messy ideas will continue to be voiced, detracting from the meetings of others. After toning down demeanor, they can strive towards improving the structure of their thoughts. Then, after establishing a structured through process, they can practice escalating their demeanor to a confident level.
Closing Remarks
I witnessed firsthand how the corporate ladder can be deeply integrated with communication skills and loosely tied with work quality. Those who can confidently synthesize ideas are more likely to rapidly progress in their professional careers. Everyone has their own starting point with regards to vocal demeanor and structured ideas. If we seek to advance our careers, we should adjust our demeanor towards a confident one by validating our ideas with others to determine if our ideas are helpful. Furthermore, we should organize our words into structured ideas by establishing a foundational expertise and synthesizing our own ideas with the ideas of others.
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