Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 307. Accent-uate, Don't Compensate: Why Clarity Matters More Than Perfection

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Matt here. Super excited to share that we just released our latest reading list. Check out Think Fast Talk Smart on any social channel or go to FasterSmarter.io and find our book recommendations under resources. Happy reading and thank you for listening. How do you communicate a process once and know what will be followed consistently? You can improve how you explain something, but at some point, effective communication also requires good systems. That's where Scribe comes. in. Scribe is a workflow AI platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500. With capture, it automatically turns any workflow into a step-by-step guide while you're doing the work. You simply turn on the browser extension or desktop app, go through the process as normal, and Scribe captures every click, step, and screenshot automatically. For our team, that might be showing a new producer how to publish an episode, updating show notes, or using one of our podcast platforms. What would normally take a lot of time writing and documenting is ready to share almost immediately.

Starting point is 00:01:06 Scribe also automatically redact sensitive information, and anyone following along gets real-time on-screen guidance so those critical processes get done correctly. To see what Scribe could look like for your organization, head to Scribe.com. How slash Think Fast. And mention Think Fast for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans. That's s-c-R-I-B-E dot H-O-W-S-ThinkFast. When we communicate, we not only communicate our ideas, we communicate our identity. My name is Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Starting point is 00:01:50 Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I look forward to speaking with Peter Novak. Peter is a former vice provost at the University of San Francisco and former dean at Yale University. He is the founder of the Strictly Speaking Group. Peter leverages his doctorate and background in linguistics and acting to help non-native speakers master clear communication. He has an award-winning LinkedIn learning course on public speaking for non-native English speakers.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Welcome, Peter. I am really excited to bring you to the show and to share what you've shared with my students here with everybody. Thanks for joining. Thanks so much. I've been so looking forward to this conversation. Should we get started? Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:02:30 Great. On the show, we've often spoken about how word choice affects the strength of our messages and the impressions people form of us. Your work highlights the impact accents can have on people's perceptions. Can you share a bit about this? And please make sure you define what you mean by accent bias, because I think this is really important for what we'll talk about today. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:02:50 Let me start with the definition of accent bias. So accent bias is essentially that reflex that we have to trust people who sound like us. And this happens a lot with people who are the in-group and people who are part of the out-group. And the idea of accent bias of who's in and who's out, and what that means, it really affects the workplace. It can affect hiring decisions. It can affect promotion decisions. It often affects how people feel about leadership qualities. And so all of these aspects of accent bias creep into our workplace without us really understanding or knowing. the full impact of it. And we could have our career and our trajectories be affected by something we don't even know.

Starting point is 00:03:35 Have you found that there are advantages to having an accent or that non-native speakers bring to their communication maybe through the focus of the specific words or the way they speak versus those who don't have an accent in a given environment? Or who don't have the accent of the majority in the specific group? Absolutely. And I love the framing of this question around the advantages that non-native speakers have because so often they come to the table thinking it's a disadvantage to have an accent when they're speaking. And so I think what's fun about that is that when you think about multilingual speakers, 75% of people in the U.S. and Canada and Australia and Great Britain don't speak another language. And so when you've got multilingual speakers, their skills in being able to code switch

Starting point is 00:04:21 between language and cultures, in being able to be more intentional, which is part of your question, I think, about that focus that they have about the language choice that they're having is really profound. And I think it's up to native speakers to recognize that non-native speakers are doing hell of a lot more work in the workplace than native speakers are. We tend to take our proficiency in English for granted. We don't think about how we use it. We don't think about ways to use it more clearly for non-native speakers. And I like to say, remember Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the dancers from the 1940s and 50s. Everyone said that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did only backwards and in high heels. And in many ways, that's what non-native speakers are doing too.

Starting point is 00:05:06 They are in the moment involved sometimes in translating what was said into their first language, oftentimes, translating what they want to say from their first language or another language, thinking about tone, thinking about word choice, thinking about all these other things that native speakers don't have to. And I think we need to give them credit for that and then create the structures around that that enable a greater linguistic flexibility in the workplace. And just recognizing that the difference even exists and that you should take the time to reflect and accommodate, I have found that the folks I know who speak multiple languages, some of whom who have accents and some who don't, their ability to listen and discern subtlety

Starting point is 00:05:47 is far superior to mine. Really interesting. I have heard you say in my class, and in things you've written. It's not an accent. It's an identity. What do you mean by this? And how can it help someone who is concerned about their accent to reframe it in this way? Sure. You know, language carries with it culture. It carries identity. It carries individual stories. And so why would we want to try and fix that? There's no reason to really fix that. The goal actually is clarity. And I think sometimes there was a great episode of Modern Family with Ivo Angoria, who said, do you even know how smart I am in Spanish? And this is what happens. If you ask a multilingual speaker, do they feel like different personality traits emerge with the different languages that they speak? They will say, absolutely,

Starting point is 00:06:39 I am so much funnier in my first language, and I don't have access to the same type of comedy in English or in a second language that I do in my first. And so really, there's this interesting part of identity that shifts because of the different languages that we speak. And I think that needs to be celebrated. It needs to be brought into the workspace a lot more than it normally is. You just reminded me, I was coaching a very senior leader who was a native French speaker. In English, he was a little more stilted, a little more buttoned up. But when I actually had him say the same thing in French, he became much more lively, much more connected. and we were able to use that as a tool as a guide to allow him to feel more free speaking in English.

Starting point is 00:07:28 It really is interesting how we have these different compartmentalizations based on language. Before I ask you to share some specific techniques that those with accents can take to feel more confident in their communication, I'd love to ask you to define some foundational principles that I know you refer back to. And in fact, these principles apply not just to people who are speaking in a language other than their native language. apply to all of us. So can you help us understand what you mean by processing fluency, intelligibility, and comprehensibility? Absolutely. So in a nutshell, processing fluency is the ease with which we understand something. And I think the goal of every speaker is to try and make what they say as easy as possible to understand for the listener, for your audience,

Starting point is 00:08:13 whoever that audience is, and it really means getting to know your audience as well as possible. And processing fluency is essentially that. Processing disfluency is anything that gets in the way of that message being understood. That could be content, right? You ramble or you don't have a good structure. It could be delivery, right? Things that make it difficult for people to hear and understand. And that brings us to the linguistic ideas around intelligibility and comprehensibility. Intelligibility is how much I understand of what you say. Comprehensibility is how hard I have to. to work to understand you. It's the effort that I put in to understanding you. Let me put this into an example. Let's say you're on a Zoom call and it's a little glitchy on the other end. But maybe you understand what the person said, but still there was, I'm losing you a little bit and so you have to work harder to do it. That's the difference between intelligibility and comprehensibility. And the best part about this is that there were major studies done 20 years ago and more that say that people who speak English as a second, third, or fourth language can improve both their

Starting point is 00:09:19 intelligibility and their comprehensibility with no noticeable shift in accent. And so there are some really interesting things to focus on to help you do that without worrying about what your accent really is. So processing fluency is the ease with which we take in the information. And there's a whole bunch of things we can do, making sure we know our audience. So it's easier for them. We're using relevant concepts and ideas that they can connect to, structuring the information, making it more concise. And then intelligibility is the understanding and the comprehensibility is how hard we work to understand. And anything we can do to reduce comprehensibility, I would assume, helps with processing fluency. Excellent. So let's get very tactical and practical. What are some

Starting point is 00:10:05 techniques and approaches you recommend to help people who want to work on their accents or increase their intelligibility while not increasing the comprehensibility of what they're saying? Well, they want to do both. They want to have both high intelligibility and high comprehensibility. And so what I would say is that the goal is clarity. That's number one. First and foremost, the goal is clarity. So clarity of meaning. Clarity of meaning, right? And then clarity also of delivery. Got it. So I clearly understood you, but I also clearly heard you. That's right. Okay. Very good. And so there was an interesting study from McGill University in Canada. and basically it said this, your car breaks down in a city that you don't know very well,

Starting point is 00:10:45 and your phone is out of juice. And so you're trying to find a garage that you can go to. And so you ask the first person, they tell you go one direction. You ask a second person. The first person is a native speaker. It sounds like you. You ask a second person, they tell you go in the opposite direction. And they have an outgroup speech or accent, right, foreign or something you don't recognize.

Starting point is 00:11:05 Who are you going to trust more? And in essence, the study found that you trust people who sound like you more. That's what accent bias is. However, if the person who speaks with a different accent than your own speaks with confidence, then it reduces that gap. And so the question becomes, what does speaking in English with confidence actually mean? What are people who speak English as their first language listening for that tells us that person is confident? And so we know this. We know what some of those elements are, and some of them are all related to prosody. So prosody is an element of speech that thinks about the musicality of the language,

Starting point is 00:11:49 which thinks about volume and pacing and the power that you lend to certain words and inflection. It's all of the things outside of the words and the sentences that carry meaning that we often don't think about. When we had Lorone Martin on talking about Martin Luther King, Jr., we talked a lot about prosody and how he was able to leverage that as part of the, one of the many things that made his orations really powerful and meaningful. And every language has its own musicality. It's the biggest return on investment is understanding and really working on prosody of the language. Not individual words, not individual phrases, and if you've got the pronunciation just right,

Starting point is 00:12:29 you don't need to worry about any of that. it's really more about the paralinguistic features outside the language itself that carry more meaning that make us relate better when we're communicating. Can you give me an example or two of maybe an activity or a thing you would coach people to do to really touch on that? Sure. And I'm going to give some advice that is often the opposite of what a lot of speech coaches give. And that is if you're giving a presentation or if you're talking over Zoom even, to prepare by recording yourself into a speech-to-text app. And that speech-to-text app will give you a transcript of what you're saying. So you just have to rehearse it once, and then all of a sudden you've got a script

Starting point is 00:13:10 of what you're doing. You can then put it through AI if you want. You can put it through AI and say, I need this to sound like me still. So keep my syntax, keep the way that it, so it sounds authentic to you. And once you have a script, you score it. And one of the best techniques that I can think of is to underline what are called content or focus words in a sentence. If I have the sentence for you, I never said you should have hired him. If I stress a different word, it means something different. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. I never said you should hire him. Every time you say the sentence and you put a stress on a different word, it changes the context. And if you look at your words and your sentences in your prepared speech

Starting point is 00:13:56 and you start to underline or bold just those three or four content words per second, and focus on those words, the meaning of what you're going to say will come across regardless of anything else. And so if you're stressing just those words, all of a sudden you get a really clear picture of what's being said. So that's one thing that you can do to score your script for what are called operative or focus words or content words. The second thing is to put in slash marks for small pauses,

Starting point is 00:14:26 because people forget to pause when they're speaking. And oftentimes non-native speakers get told to slow down. When that's not always the best advice, what's more helpful is to take a sentence and divide it into thought clusters, groups of speech that have complete meanings on their own, but don't often have the punctuation to make you pause. And these are simple phrases in a sentence, like even when I was just saying a thought group is a group of words that has a complete set meaning on its own that we don't give meaning to. And so when you break up a sentence into those thought groups, it becomes easier to understand and

Starting point is 00:15:05 follow. And so putting those slash marks into a script can help do that. And then the third way that you can really help is to provide intonation assistance in a script, in a scoring a script, using downward inflections, which words to focus on in different ways, how to use inflections. And we have three basic inflections in English. The upward where I'm asking a question, the downward where I'm making a statement, and we do that in two different ways. And then the sustained inflection, which I really like, which is so, it's all on one note. And you're waiting for me to either go up or down. When you learn to incorporate some of those inflections, you're really tapping into, I think, the power of the language in ways that native speakers are listening to. Paralanguage, the things that happen around

Starting point is 00:15:53 the words are so powerful in so many ways. And I love these activities. Using a script as a tool to help you plan and prepare your parolanguage, I think is beautiful. I love this idea of getting a transcript of what you're saying, not to say that you're going to say it exactly that way, but to begin to look at what are those words of inflection, of focus, of that vocal highlighting that need to stand out. And this is a tool that I think will help everybody, not just non-native speakers. Thinking about clustering of the key concepts and how to punctuate them in terms of pace and rate really important. In fact, I believe they found some versions of the Declaration of Independence that had weird marks on them that they finally concluded were actually marks for oration,

Starting point is 00:16:41 that when people would read it, because so much of the population at the time was not able to read. So giving yourself these little cues and clues of what to do. And then finally thinking about how you end phrases and words. Many of us will swallow what we say and get quiet. Some people have up talk where everything sounds like a question and just being able to strategically think about it as a question, although I believe I know the answer, the more you do this, the more it becomes a habit where you don't need to do it. That's right. You have extensive training in phonetics. For our listeners who feel their voice doesn't always carry authority, whether a native speaker or not, what are some vocal adjustments that we can make to come across with the gravitas and clarity that we look for.

Starting point is 00:17:25 There are so many different things that we can do. First and foremost, one of the things that I recommend is to really understand that I talked about earlier intonation and how we end sentences. In English, we do that in two ways. One is we either step down, like on the words, I'm a professor. We notice we go up on the penultimate sound and then come down. I'm a professor. sir, I teach math. And so we either step down or we glide down at the ends of sentences. And oftentimes people will swallow their last few words. They don't end with strength and let me talk about what that means. And so if you combine the strong downward inflection in speaking with slowing down your last few words when you're done speaking, it signals that you've

Starting point is 00:18:14 completed your thought. It signals a strength in the end of your communication. And you can use it almost any time you're finished speaking to make sure that people know you've finished speaking. And it works really, really well. And you can either score that on a script that you've got for text or you can think about ending just by slowing down and using that downward inflection. I love that technique and I loved how you've role modeled it. Thank you. And we can all record ourselves on audio, voice memo, and listen to hear how we're doing it and to become more sensitive to what others are doing. We can work on these skills through reading out loud. I often encourage people reading out loud allows you to focus on how you're saying something because the words are right

Starting point is 00:18:59 in front of you. So I'm not saying reading your script to give a presentation. I'm saying just read your emails out loud, read anything and notice how you can do that to train your brain to be more comfortable doing it. Behind all of it, I believe, is also this notion of breath and breath control. You know, when we get nervous, we breathe shallow and up. So we have to remind ourselves that your voice is a wind instrument and that you have to have the breath behind it. So I often tell people we need to build vocal stamina through breathwork as well, which could be reading out loud, just becoming aware of where it is.

Starting point is 00:19:30 You have provided so much rich information. Thank you. We'll be right back to finish our conversation. But first, a quick word from one of our sponsors. Their support allows us to bring you this show free of charge. This episode is sponsored by SquareSquare. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about communication. But one thing we don't discuss as often is what happens after you've shared an idea.

Starting point is 00:19:53 Maybe you've given a presentation, appeared on a podcast, or met someone at an event. Eventually, people are going to want to learn more about your work. That's why having a strong online presence matters. Squarespace makes it easy to create a professional website that showcases who you are and what you offer. Whether you're offering consulting, coaching, speaking, courses, or other services. Squarespace gives you the tools to present those offerings and manage everything in one place. I also appreciate the built-in analytics. Those insights can help you make smarter decisions about where to focus your time and energy.

Starting point is 00:20:29 A great website helps turn interest into opportunity. Head to Squarespace.com slash think fast for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use code Think Fast to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. As a Think Fast Talk Smart listener, I know you're likely looking to hone your communication skills and level up your career. And if you're looking for your next source of inspiration, I highly recommend checking out the How to Be a Better Human podcast. Its host, Chris Duffy, recently joined me to discuss how to manage anxiety and bring levity to high-stress communication moments. On his show, he talks to psychologists, experts, and TED speakers to explore fascinating

Starting point is 00:21:12 topics, from the effects of doom scrolling to the importance of feeling like you belong. You leave every episode with practical insights to help you become a better colleague, friend, partner, and person. Listen to how to be a better human wherever you get your podcasts. And now, back to the conversation. Before we end, I'd like to ask you three questions. One, I make up just for you, and two, I've been asking everybody for a long time. Are you up for that? You bet? Excellent. You created a national curriculum regarding alcohol abuse and sexual violence prevention that reached over a million students. When you're communicating about such sensitive, high stakes and emotionally charged topics, how do you balance clarity with the necessity of being empathetic and concerned?

Starting point is 00:21:56 A lot of us are in situations where we have to talk about emotionally charged issues. What advice do you have that came from that experience? And by the way, thank you for creating a curriculum like that. It's my pleasure. I was at the Stanford graduate students actually took our program. which is great. And it was throughout, I think over now, 2,000 universities have used it. And it was deeply important work for me, but you're right. It is very emotionally charged. And so what you have to create first and foremost is a psychologically safe space for people to be able to speak. And that requires a great empathy and understanding what happens with trauma. Once you've created

Starting point is 00:22:29 a psychologically safe space, the goal is to not re-traumatize with your language or to retramatize by asking people to contribute their story when they don't feel psychologically safe to do so, and to build in a system of the way that you communicate that has its foundation in trauma-informed ways of communicating. And I think that's an incredibly helpful tool that has empathy at its core and that really helps us understand communicating on a very human-to-human level. So it starts with empathy, which builds to psychological safety, that then requires some intentional thought about how to allow for the kind of dialogue that needs to happen in these emotionally charged situations without re-triggering or causing people to become defensive.

Starting point is 00:23:14 Tricky but possible. Tricky but possible. And you also have to build the structure of all of that into your policies, into your procedures. So it's not just the one-on-one communication. It's also the larger support structure also needs to be framed that way. I like to talk a lot about people process and infrastructure. And you need all three of those to come together when you have emotionally charged issues. Question number two, who's a communicator that you admire and why? I love Trevor Noah.

Starting point is 00:23:40 I think his cultural discussions, his ability to see different cultural dynamics and how they manifest not only from his native country and the way he speaks, but to the U.S. and to Europe and to every place that he tours and he brings different stories. And he does it in a way that is enlightening, that is approachable, that. that is funny, and he has a lot of humility, believe it or not, in the way that he communicates to. And so he's one of my favorite people to listen to. He's got some great stories around accents. He does take on some accents sometimes and talks about them, but he's got some really profound things to say around language and accent and accessibility and what is considered a standard

Starting point is 00:24:24 sound and what isn't. There is no standard for English. There are world Englishes, And I think Trevor Noah gets to that really clearly. He is a very engaging speaker, a great storyteller, and he does a really nice job with some of these paralanguage clues and cues that you're talking about. Final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? The first is comfort, feeling comfortable in being able to, and that's where the psychological safety, I think, comes in as well. The second would be conversational.

Starting point is 00:24:55 And this is all delivery, by the way. This isn't content. This is delivery. would say. So the second part is really making it sound conversation. Like you're actually talking to someone, not talking at someone. And the third, I would say, is conviction or people will say confidence, but having the passion behind what it is that you're saying so that you're making a connection that is important to you. I love things that are easy to remember. The three Cs, comfort, conversational conviction. And those are all helped by the techniques that you have taught us,

Starting point is 00:25:29 and that you teach on a regular basis. Peter, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you highlighting the value that people who speak another language bring and the tools that can help all of us feel more comfortable in our communication. Thank you. Thank you so much, Matt.

Starting point is 00:25:44 It was great being here. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about communication best practices, please listen to episode 82 with Nancy Duarte. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder,

Starting point is 00:26:03 with special thanks to the Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out FasterSmarter.org for DeepDive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our premium offering for extended DeepThinks episodes, AMAs, and much more at FasterSmartter.io slash premium.

Starting point is 00:26:28 You'll also find value by joining our Think Fast TalkSmart Learning community at FasterSmartr.io slash learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quest discussion boards, my AI coach, and book club opportunities. Again, that's FasterSmart.comer.com learning to become part of our Thinkfast TalkSmart Learning community. Before we wrap up, I just want to say thank you for listening. It really means a lot to hear how people all over the world are using these ideas in their own lives. It inspires me and the whole team that brings you this show. If you want more episodes and resources, feel free to follow, subscribe, and explore past conversations. We're grateful for your support of Think Fast Talk Smart.

Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 307. Accent-uate, Don't Compensate: Why Clarity Matters More Than Perfection

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.