Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep22: Are you a fast talker? Slow down!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I want to talk about why you should pace your chatty chatter and not go on and on and on as an extrovert. Hi, welcome to day four of my five-day, five-part Extroverts Connect series.

Starting point is 00:00:46 I'm so happy to have you here again with me today. Back to extroverts. As extroverts, you guys are extremely enthusiastic, always very inspired by interesting topics, interesting people and interesting experiences. And that all is great. I have a lot of extrovert friends, and I always find it very amazing that they are always so enthusiastic and always so high energy.

Starting point is 00:01:19 And as an introvert, I don't always behave like that. So I think it's something that's so fascinating to me, how extroverts operate. And I think that's awesome. What I really want to talk about today is sometimes the flip side of being so high energy and so highly extroverted is that as an extrovert, you sometimes will just go on and on and on when you speak just because you really want to connect with the other person. And that is good. Something that you will really want to take note of is whether you are pacing up your conversation and not bombarding the other person with all sorts of information and every single thing that you have on your mind. And I share this very specifically because as an extrovert, there is just so much on your mind because you're very easily stimulated and you speak as you think.

Starting point is 00:02:24 Or rather, you, I guess, think as you speak. So what that means is that there's just a lot that's going on in your mind. And sometimes, you know, you don't really reflect or be very thoughtful about what you have to say just because you just want to share. And it very quickly gets blurbed out and the word i like to use is um it's like a word vomit moment um to the other person so ask yourself what what is the impact right because if you're talking to a fellow extrovert it's probably okay because you know what maybe both of you guys are busy talking no one's really listening i mean that that is a separate problem uh separate thing on its own and if you want you

Starting point is 00:03:12 can always check out my top 10 soft skills series where i talked about why listening matters a lot so if you guys you know are both extroverts probably it's all right you know the the pace would be very quick as i would imagine but if you find yourself talking to someone that maybe is not as highly extroverted as you on the spectrum or maybe an introvert where they would operate quite differently from the way you speak and the way you think so I'll share this one story with you because I'm currently mentoring several, I guess, high potential undergraduate students at one of the top universities in Singapore. And I have a mentee, a very highly extroverted guy, has very, very big ambitions,

Starting point is 00:04:03 like truly brilliant guy. So one of the challenges that he has is that he's highly, highly extroverted. So he just has a lot of information and a lot of knowledge to share. I think all of that is great, right? You know, the fact that, you know, being so young, you know, he's very keen to share his knowledge with his friends and other people and on social media. I think all of that is great. What is worth recognizing is the potential drawback because he shared with me that even if he gave a lot of information, right, a lot of tips and whatnot, in most instances,

Starting point is 00:04:40 his friends don't always do what he advises them on. He doesn't understand why. Because he really gave it his all, right? He was very enthusiastic, high energy, spent a lot of time sharing his knowledge. So what I told him is this. It's because you just went on and on and on that they couldn't absorb what you have said. So if someone can't absorb or cannot catch what you're saying,

Starting point is 00:05:17 essentially it's a monologue because it didn't translate. So that's why I talk a lot about it takes a lot of self-awareness to realize how you come across to the other person. So expressing yourself in your unique way, that's great. But a lot of times when we're communicating, we're always communicating with another person. So in his case, it was his fellow undergraduate a friend but it's the same if you're talking to your manager your boss your client your vendor even your husband your wife your girlfriend boyfriend it's same because at the end of the day it's the art of communication

Starting point is 00:05:58 so the advice i gave to him was you need to pace your chatty chatter you need to pace it and more importantly you need to observe non-verbal language and see whether the other person has gotten what you said that's when you know whether your pacing is right or not or you're pretty much bombarding the other person with a bunch of information that they can't process anyway, so they walk away from that conversation feeling really inspired by your energy, but it just dies off. And I'll give you another interesting example. So, you know, motivation speaking is right now such a big thing, and I see a lot of it online, a lot of conferences and whatnot. I think all of that is great. What I noticed is that in such motivation conferences,

Starting point is 00:06:52 a lot of times the energy is so high that everybody just, the key takeaway everybody got from that is that, okay, I just need to be pumped up. I need to listen to awesome music. I need to tell myself I'm amazing every day and it's all about mindset. Okay, great, I just need to be pumped up, I need to listen to awesome music, I need to tell myself I'm amazing every day, and it's all about mindset. Okay, great, right? But I want people to pause, and especially extroverts, right? You guys need to pause more often than not, and if you are not pausing right now, you should start. The advice I give is to pause and really ask yourself, what are you trying to get out of the conversation, the engagement or the communication? What are you actually trying to get out from this thing? That will allow you to think deeper so that you are also aware, you know, how you can communicate in a better way to the other person.

Starting point is 00:07:47 So in terms of your chatty chatter, how much is enough and how much is considered overboard that you just piss the other person off? You know, I'm a big believer in like getting along with people and creating win-win relationships. So if you really want to build an authentic, genuine, deep relationship with another person, and this is a very common challenge that extroverts have, you need to pace yourself. Yes, you are very enthusiastic, you have a lot of information, but you don't have to share all of it at once. Like we all have time, right? We all have time. Because it's better to give you know bits and pieces and nuggets of information that the other person can really absorb and say huh that makes sense that's

Starting point is 00:08:31 something that i would like to try and they actually go and try it so that's where you know that you have truly inspired them just by the fact that you know they are taking action and not so much you got them the rah-rah-rah and they got so excited, but they take no action. So I think it's about carving out the impact of what you're saying versus what you're saying

Starting point is 00:08:56 to just make yourself feel good. Because it's always fun to give that rah-rah-rah and get everybody's energy hyped up and then you walk away feeling really good, right? But what is that person, what is the other person walking away from? Like, did they get it? Like, did they just get the energy or did they get the essence of you, right? The essence of the insights, knowledge, perspective or opinions that you so enthusiastically shared with them so that's two parts of it right that the energy and the actual practical strategies that and action that they need to go and take so this is the same as a coach right because there i understand that there are a lot of um

Starting point is 00:09:39 coach coaches working on motivation and mindset and i think all of that is great because i truly believe that there are people out there who need that so what you need to be focused on even if you're a you know highly extroverted coach where you just pump your your clients up with a lot of energy is how much are they are they getting what you're saying in terms of like the the insights the knowledge and how much is it it's just energy rah rah rah and then they crash and then they come to you again with the exact same problem the next time so so this i'm really really curious about okay so so ending today with this question, I want you to, I guess not I want you to, ending with this question that you should ask yourself,

Starting point is 00:10:36 when you are busy chitty chattering, how much do you focus on the other person? And how often do you focus on the other person and how often do you pace yourself to make sure that the person that you're talking to really really get what you're saying so i'll end with this one today and as usual till next time see ya

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep22: Are you a fast talker? Slow down!

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