How Graduates Can Leverage Communication Skills in the Workforce: A Conversation with Jeffrey Golde

Career

May 31

School’s out for summer! And for some recent graduates, school's out for good. This time of year, many students are experiencing a transition from their academic experience to the world of job applications, interviews, and brand new settings in their chosen professions. If you are finding yourself at this juncture, it’s critical to consider how you project yourself and how to carry a conversation that will hopefully lead to employment. Within the vast skill called communication, it takes some practice to learn how to showcase your presentation skills, craft a narrative of who you are and how you align with your prospective job, and facilitate an easier transition into a new environment.

Bespoken President & CEO Jackie Miller recently sat down with Communication Consultant Jeffrey Golde, Co-Founder of Deep Breadth and Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, to discuss leveraging communication skills to ensure you are effective in your new role.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jackie Miller: What communication skills are necessary for someone to speak about their value as they embark on their next step after an educational experience?

Jeffrey Golde: When speaking with potential employers, don’t just list the experiences and values. Those are words that thousands of other graduates have also used. The thing that will make you memorable is how you encapsulate those singular words and experiences in narratives and stories. Stories contain a lot more than a linear narrative. That’s where the illustration of why you believe the values you believe are encapsulated, those are what contain the meaning of the experience you had. “I was the captain of the soccer team.” So what? So were thousands of other students across the country. What does that mean to you? What did you learn about leading a team? How does this represent how you think about leadership? That will leave an emotional imprint.

JM: When you’re thinking about applying this advice to someone who is already seasoned, are there any other factors at play that you would couple into the story narrative? Do stories carry regardless of whether this is your first job or your fifteenth?

JG: Absolutely. Our brains work in a way that takes in all the information and produces a narrative, so it’s better to give someone the narrative you want them to have. People tend to be too abstract. Even when they tell a story or list their experiences, it’s at a high level without specifics. As you start to add specifics about what the experience meant to you - “I was the captain of the soccer team, which really taught me how to bring all sorts of people at different levels to perform at a higher level than their individual parts, and because of that, I’ve been able to apply those lessons to other facets by looking for the strengths and characteristics people have and how they can work together.” - that is where you get into the details. Managing that in a conversation is important.

JM: Why do you think people are too abstract? Why is that the natural watch-out?

JG: The ability to go from abstract to specific, some people call it “zoom in/zoom out,” and how to make connections between different things, is not really taught. Another key skill set of going into that [job] interview is to be an excellent listener and being able to hear what the other person is interested in or might be confused about. Do you hear anything in their questions or specific parts of your discussion that make you think you should go deeper here or skim over this? What does that person want to hear where I can now pull three experiences out and connect them in a certain way? That kind of thinking and practice is not taught, and certainly not in the moment. It’s a level of improvisation, but this kind of improvisation is not about making things up on the spot, it’s about preparing your brain to put together what is needed at this moment.

JM: One thing I would add is the presence of stakes and nervousness and how that at times overrides our ability to actively listen. When we are at a frequency of “I just need to get through this and talk about myself,” we’re not finding those anchor moments of “oh, they’re interested in that, I need to go deeper there.”

JM: Let’s say you get the job and you’re meeting the new team, inheriting a new boss, and stepping into an existing culture. How are your communication skills integral to succeeding in this dynamic?

JG: They change over time. There’s non-verbal communication, which you're sending out all the time, when you're speaking, and when you’re actively listening. They’re all entangled, but you may not be as focused on the listening and the non-verbals. You don’t know what’s going on in a new culture, and you’d do best to pay attention to how other people are communicating and how things get done here. Where do you see areas of friction or trouble? What is the language folks are using? Listening and knowing more about other people will give you an advantage, and you can contribute slowly. Have more verbal phrases like “it seems to me…” and “I’m noticing…” to describe the process you notice, and follow up with questions like “what else should I know?” Now you're in a conversation. The key word is curiosity for the first six months.

JM: How does the concept of emotional intelligence come into play?

JG: People tend to process the world through an emotional lens. Try to clarify, because there may be signals cross-culturally in our global world that are misunderstood. Don’t assume someone is mad just because they have a strict or direct tone. That may be their tone and you’re going to have to figure out what it actually means. Should they improve and figure out how to communicate with you? Yes. But what you have control over is how you go about things.

We are human and contain multitudes, and not all of those multitudes are expressible in words. We feel things, we have embodied senses about things, we are more than just our brains. The things we know come from experience of seeing, and we may not even know how we know it. Even if we follow all these wonderful principles and techniques and tools, we’re trying to bridge a delta between the intent of what someone is saying and the impact that they have. That can create so much inefficiency at companies and in life.

Learn how to say things five different ways. Just because you understood the way you put it forth, doesn’t mean the other person did. Add a metaphor or analogy. You might have to do some work to bridge that gap.

For more on how to approach a new career, book a private coaching session to see how maximizing communication and presentation skills can help you put your best foot forward.

Jeffrey Golde is a teacher, executive coach, facilitator and entrepreneur who uses a wide range of skills to help individuals and organizations make an impact in the world. He facilitates trainings with Fortune 500 companies, and teaches executives leadership, communication and strategy skills on faculty at Columbia Business School and with Mentora. Jeff’s recent executive coaching and consulting includes work with Donor’s Choose, SEO, Trusty Sidekick, IndieSpace, Shiseido, IBM and Songs for Good. Learn more at: https://www.deepbreadth.co/

About the Author
Jackie Miller launched Bespoken in 2015 to channel years of professional performance experience into techniques that improve public speaking, presenting, and professional communication skills. She holds a B.F.A. and M.A. both from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.