Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant at influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. We'll be talking about all the different topics that affect you as a woman leading today. Think of it as personal development meets professional development, and I want to become the leadership BFF you didn't know you were missing until now.

Welcome to this episode of the influence and impact podcast. I am going to be talking about strategic speaking for results with my guest, Elizabeth Buckman. Elizabeth is the go to person for advanced level training in topics including speaking presentation skills, sales and leadership. With a lifetime spent perfecting the art of presenting, she helps high level clients master a message that brings them the funding they need, the Allies they want and the recognition that they deserve. She's a sought after speaker and strategist in Silicon Valley, nationally and internationally. And she's the host of the International podcast speakers who get results and I've recently been a guest on her podcast. Her background is super interesting because she spent 30 years directing operas including directing Pavarotti and Placido Domingo, and she's up directed more than 50 operas around the world. So she now brings those tools to presenting. And she's particularly interested in working with professional women and women in business. So we have a really interesting conversation about her background, about what does transfer over from the world of opera to the world of business and work. We talk about the glass cliff, and how women and others can often be set up to fail in that situation. And we talk about her strategic empathy approach, which is super interesting, and aligns with lots of the stuff that we talk about here. So delighted to have Elizabeth on the podcast. And I hope that you really enjoy the episode. As usual, if you have not yet watched my How To Become An influential leader, without letting self doubt hold you back free masterclass. Go to my website and pick a time that works for you and invest 45 minutes in yourself for once, because I bet you would happily invest 45 minutes in any member of your team. But you probably rarely take that time for yourself. So you find that at Carla Miller training.com forward slash leader. Right, let's roll the episode.

Carla Miller 03:09
I'm delighted to welcome Elizabeth to the podcast. Welcome.

Elizabeth Bachman 03:14
Thank you, Carla. This is really fun. I love that we can do this internationally. I just did. I just so grateful for the Internet and for all these video conferences that we get to do this.

Carla Miller 03:27
I know it's perfect, isn't it. And I was on Elizabeth's podcast recently, as well. And her podcast is called speakers who get results. And we were talking about grab a TAS and the leader within you. So if you haven't checked out her podcast, go and do that. But today we are talking all about speaking for results, and particularly as it applies to women. So Elizabeth, your background is super interesting. Tell us how you came to be focused on this area.

Elizabeth Bachman 03:58
I like to think of my being dedicated to the art of great communication since I first walked on stage in a school play at the age of five. And afterwards, my mom said that I was the best goddamn bunny rabbits ever to grace the stage of the hillside school. I heard her saying this to her friends. And I thought, Oh, this is for me. I went from acting to directing to directing opera singers for 30 years and running a small opera company that was really mostly about giving young singers an opportunity and I did it in Austria. So it was a bilingual programme. It was actually an educational exchange programme disguised as a training programme. They they mostly didn't figure out until afterwards, that, Oh, if you're living you're working with people who look just like me, but have totally different assumptions of how the world is supposed to go, but After having done that, for over 30 years, I was beginning to burn out, and I realised I had to stop. If I didn't stop, I would lose the ability to be moved by the music.

So I never thought I would leave opera. I never thought I would. But that oh, it happens as as one gets older is when it gets more experience. And now I can listen to it and love it, I confess, I still analyse it. So it's 30 years of experience doesn't go away that far. But what I've discovered is that about the time I left, I had already started training business professionals, as speakers. And the more I worked with speakers, the more I realised that the skills you need, are not that different between opera and business. The difference is just vocabulary. But when I also realised there's the rest of the, the whole of my experience as a producer, as someone who wanted to run an opera company and kept hitting glass ceilings, as a presenter, the more I started doing that, the more I realised that what I'm really about is teaching leadership and executive coaching, especially on how to get through the glass ceiling, through the lens of presentation skills, because basically, presentation skills are how do you show up? How do you show people who you are. And so that feels like all the parts of my life coming together in service of getting more smart women into positions of authority, and helping them do really good jobs while they're up there. And getting more women's voices out into the world.

Carla Miller 07:00
I love that we're on the same mission just through slightly different approaches. Now, you mentioned that there wasn't a huge difference between what you were doing in opera and what you were doing in business, what are the things that you brought across from the opera world into your work with business women,

Elizabeth Bachman 07:17
when I started trying to describe to business clients, I realised what the opera experience was, I realised that for 30 years, my job in opera was about having a vision. Having a group of people that I hadn't necessarily chosen, but to know the people, I was working with a bunch of smart, talented, really opinionated people, most of whom thought they could do it better than I could. And to get them all working together, going in the same direction. Over the course of the time, we work together pulling the best out of each person, and then delivering the result by a deadline. So I've always been project based, because eight o'clock, Saturday night's gonna roll around, and there are gonna be people sitting in the audience who've paid a lot for those tickets and are expecting a result. That's where I realised it was the same. And really teaching singers how to do an audition. It's presenting together results.

Now you're basically you're showing the best of you and how you can how you could interpret these ideas to get the part. And then once you get get the part, then it's to show up and present the material in a way that's going to move the audience to tears or to laughter which is harder. Getting people to laugh is way harder than getting people to cry. So I looked at that, and I said oh, it's the same it's just and multiple languages regularly working with teams from from multiple countries. So everybody's, most people are working in a language in their second or third language. And that has taught me a whole lot about our international business, you know, business these days is very international. So fortunately for me, English is the standard language of business so I can help people for whom English is their second or third language, I can help them pronounce English better. And actually working with Australians or Scots, or, or English. It's also about pronouncing, so that's a lot, a lot that I learned.

Carla Miller 09:55
It's interesting the idea that most of them are communicating in their second or third language. Does your presence then become more important? Because perhaps you're not as articulate in terms of your use of the language?

Elizabeth Bachman 10:06
Yes. And presence and practice. So when I'm working with people who are speaking English, and this is what I do when I speak German, because I live half the year in Austria. So I'm, I'm speaking German a lot. I practice the key phrases, so that I'm saying it. So I know that I'm pronouncing things correctly, that it flows off the tongue, that it's easily it comes through easily. Presence is a big part of it. But if you can't understand what I'm saying that it doesn't do you any good. So, and also, speaking as a physical act, you have to you have to train the muscles of your lips and tongue and your breath to pronounce these words even in English. I can't tell you how long it took me to be able to say, international opera director and presentation skills trainer.

Carla Miller 11:06
I still struggle with the word phenomenon. I can't say it because I talk a lot about impostor syndrome. I know you do. And it originated from a paper called the imposter. I mean, maybe you can say it properly, but phenomenal. And but yeah.

Elizabeth Bachman 11:21
It's knowing the difference between n and m. And that's another thing I learned from working in opera because you train in diction. I actually spent a year teaching diction at a university. My one professorship didn't last very long, but it sure was fun. Well, I've had well, it did.

Carla Miller 11:41
You talked about being passionate about helping women to break through glass ceilings, tell us a little bit about your struggle to break through glass ceilings, and how you help others.

Elizabeth Bachman 11:52
In the late 90s, early 2000s, I was actively looking for a job running an opera company. I knew I wanted to run an opera company. I mean, even as a director, I was always thinking about the greater picture. And, you know, if, if we instead of just having any old extra walk the part of the mayor in Carmen, which is a non singing role, why don't we get the real mayor and then have the PR department, publicise it that brings more people in. That's the sort of thing that I've always thought about that as a as the whole part. The mistake I made was that, I thought that doing a really good job, in my business in in what I did, was going to be enough. And what I didn't realise until much later, was that I wasn't marketing myself to the right people. I wasn't marketing myself, to the people who are actually doing the hiring. And it's the functional equivalent to business step, if you're really well known in your company, or in your division in your department. Or maybe you're running a division where everything works really well. And so nobody notices you because you don't, your department doesn't have crises. You have to actively promote that. The fact that I did really good work and it didn't have crises and we didn't have people having temper tantrum, temper tantrums, meant that the people who were involved my peers, loved me. But the people who were actually doing the hiring, didn't notice.

Carla Miller 13:47
I see that so much back then. And often because you're focusing downwards on delivering, yes, not focusing on promoting yourself. But then I mean, I call it influencing you call it marketing. I read an interesting book. I don't know if you've read it called why men win at work. And it talks about how women believe in a meritocracy like we will be noted for our great performance throughout shouting about it all the time.

Elizabeth Bachman 14:14
Yeah. And because, because of the way we are socialised as children. Men are socialised to announce their successes and to be brave and to try things. And Western business is built around valuing what men bring. And I know there's a big conversation going on now internationally about not just about getting more women in the door, but valuing the strengths that women bring, which were never they were always taken for granted before. It's the it's the noticing the little things that the people who are multi focused instead add up single focus though the multi focus people who will say, Yeah, this is going to be a really cool new venture. But you know, our competitors are already selling it. It's been on the market for three years, did you notice that? Instead of just being excited by the idea, and at also valuing the connections and keeping the teams going, and then no drama, no crisis skills. I think we are just beginning to learn how to quantify that value, people value it, but we couldn't really define it before. And of course, in order to for the single focus people, the men, the people who are, who think in terms of statistics, we've got to figure out a way to quantify that. And there are some people who are talking about it. I haven't. That's something I think about a lot. I haven't completely solved it yet. I don't quite have the answer for that. But it is. It's a conversation that's ongoing, and I'm waiting for it to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Carla Miller 16:15
Yes, it was. So here in the UK, one of our big four accountancy and management consultancy firms is called Deloitte. I don't know how national they are

Elizabeth Bachman 16:22
They're international. Yes, they're global.

Carla Miller 16:26
They brought out a report during COVID, basically saying the skills that we need from leaders right now our empathy, compassion, flexibility. And I was like, yes, these are the skills that have not been recognised or value for such a long time that women are trained to develop from a young age like you say. So hopefully, things are starting to shift in terms of that glass ceiling, because you've been doing this coaching for a long time now, have you seen things improve? Is it getting easier?

Elizabeth Bachman 17:01
The thing that is that I'm seeing that is really exciting in the last few years is bringing more women on and giving them power. So there's always the Glass Cliff Phenomenon. So I don't know if you've talked about that on your podcast, but I'll get to that in a minute. But giving women power and support, making sure there's more than one woman at the sea level at the end, and especially at the board, because the magic number seems to be three. So one of the things that I'm very excited about is the groups that are getting women on to company boards, both you know, in various in, in the UK, in the US and internationally. There's a lot about teaching women how to apply, which means you have to say you have to talk about who you are in a fashion that the that the nominating committee can actually understand. And I was actually be unafraid to say, oh, yes, I have created and sold three different businesses. And I was at a board workshop where one of the one of the participants was putting together her board bio. And she had the fact that she had created and sold three different businesses was down in paragraph seven, or eight. You know, that's another thing that women tend to get into the Yeah, I did that no big deal. Instead of Hello, this is huge. You shouldn't be talking about this.

So getting more women, at least three, onto the team, whatever level of team you're on, getting women in decision making capabilities. There was a very interesting article some years ago, about five years ago now about where all the women's CEOs think it came out in the Wall Street Journal. And one of the things was that women tend to go into the soft skills department. So you'll have women who are head of marketing or HR or something. But the CEOs come from the departments that have profit and loss responsibility. So if you're a woman who wants to rise, you've got to get involved in the money part. And so many women go, oh, who get into this sales division, get into a position that where you'll have p&l responsibility. That's really what is gonna position you for ultimately running the company. Because fundamentally, it's all about the money.

Carla Miller 19:50
Interesting. And let's talk about the glass cliff. I've been reading about this, but actually, I've never mentioned it on the podcast, so I'd love to hear your take on it.

Elizabeth Bachman 19:58
Thank you Glass Cliff is I can't remember who first mentioned it. But basically, it's defined as promoting a woman into a position a woman or someone, a minority person into a position of great visibility, with very little chance of success. And basically, it's promoting somebody because you've got to promote somebody, but you're expecting them to fail. And that's why it's a glass cliff, that you get the title, but no support. No, no support, no allies. No nothing. And then, of course, you fall over the cliff. And oh, gee, that just shows that women can't do this. Let's, let's promote a guy instead, let's promote my friend by mail, my buddy who plays sports with me?

Carla Miller 20:55
Well, you do do it, but you completely break yourself in the process to make it harder.

Elizabeth Bachman 20:59
That is, yeah. And then, you know, of course, not only is it is it terrible for the company, but it's terrible for the person, you know, the bad it's, it's also men have, you know, men, minority men often say, Oh, great, you know, we'll have, we'll have this Indian gentleman, or we'll have this Asian gentleman or we'll have this black person, look at us aren't weak, right, we've got so and so in this great position of authority managing this great initiative. With no help, no support, no one to say, here's how often is promoting somebody a couple of levels above their comfort zone. And so there they are, there they are, all by themselves at the top of the cliff, and no one actually helps them, figure out how to do what you need to do.

Carla Miller 21:55
So why why would an employer do that?

Elizabeth Bachman 22:00
I don't think it's conscious. I think it's an unconscious thing of saying, we need to try to fix this problem. We have to show that we're doing this for the sake of our stakeholders. But we don't think it's going to work. We'll be thrilled if it will, but we don't really think is going to work. So let's put a sacrificial lamb out there. That's it. Why don't we give this job to Carla? Because, you know, if Carla crashes and burns, we aren't gonna care.

Carla Miller 22:36
Like kind of thing. Depressing. Isn't it so depressing?

Elizabeth Bachman 22:39
And the thing is that I don't think people notice it, you see it in politics, do you see, you know, you'll see in politics, especially in Europe, where, you know, a woman gets promoted to a very high position, leading a political party, where you know, she's going to be eaten for lunch. No, she's going to be chopped up. Often you see it happen. Also, in terms of historical patterns, you'll see it happen when a very influential person has been forced to step down. And influential person, like they who's really put their stamp on a on a party, on a country, on a business on a company on an organisation. Once they finally stepped down, the next two or three people are probably transitional figures, until you get the next the one who's going to who's going to stick. And that part, I think, is just human nature, you have to give people time to adjust to adjust to the change, so that the next person who comes in number three, number two, or three, will be able to come in as themselves instead of a person who's not the leader.

Carla Miller 24:03
So it's not that that women or people of colour are not capable of those roles. It's simply that they haven't been prepared. Companies that do want to be genuinely diverse. It's got to be about developing the talent in your organisation long term, and sponsoring and mentoring and making sure that as women and others move up that they're building their network of support along the way.

Elizabeth Bachman 24:29
Exactly. And nobody does it themselves. One thing that women often women try to do everything all by themselves, because again, this is something we are socialised to do very early in our lives. But there is no CEO out there who doesn't have advisors, you know, even if you're running a company, you have to answer to the board. You have people you talk to you have a team when people get promoted out of there are normal sort of promoted a couple of levels up, skipping up. And you've left your team and your advisors behind. It's really hard. It's really hard. It's, it's changed management. An example that I know from I've seen in the past was somebody being the VIP comes in, say the vice president comes in and says, Oh, we're, we're going to have this great new initiative. And we have Suzy who's coming in, she's taking care of everything. And then the VIP disappears until the day that the initiative was supposed to be delivered, or the projects supposed to be delivered. Give Suzy no help on the way Susie's has not been trained in change management. But I think the development of change management, as a practice as an arch is one of the things that Thank God, we have that now. Because that makes such a huge difference. teaching people how to do these things. And you know, you see someone who hasn't been trained in change management, who doesn't understand and then yes, of course, the project is going to fail. There are many pieces of it, but that's one of the pieces, make sure you have a network and have a network who's capable of helping you.

Carla Miller 26:21
Absolutely. And one of the other things that you often talk about is strategic empathy. And I saw that and I was like, I want to know what that is. That sounds like my kind of thing. Tell me more?

Elizabeth Bachman 26:33
Well, strategic empathy is, is a tool I use for basically putting yourself in the shoes of your listeners. Who are you talking to? Then, if you're talking to people who don't speak the same, who don't think the same way you do, which is men and women, often, but it's not just male and female? It's, it's, who are you talking to? Who do you need to convince? What do they care about? For instance, I have a client, Janet, and she, she was a division head, she has a great solving problems really good at solving problems. And she had one of those departments where things didn't go wrong. And so they took her for granted. She was angry, because she kept solving big, nasty problems for the company, with no recognition, no raise, no promotion. So she came to me and she said, they've given me another problem to solve. It is a project that's going to affect the entire company. I know what I want to do, but I'm tired of just the oh, we'll give it to Janet, she'll fix it. So the strategy that we came out with was strategic empathy. We made a list of the people who had to be convinced as basically the entire sea level, she went to each one of them individually, laid out her plan, calling it a strategic plan. This is my strategy for doing this. Each time it was it was aimed at what was it that they cared about? The CEO, it was how it was going to show up in front of the stakeholders. For the for the finance people it was this is what's going to help our return on investment. For the marketing people says, here's a cool thing. We can mark things like that. And then she also had something specifically for them, and then something to ask them about, that they could care about, you know, oh, you know so much about more about these people than I do. Will you make this introduction. So she enrolled them. It was sales as enrollment, basically selling the idea, but really enrolling them in going on with her idea. So that they got excited. And they got so excited about it that they called her up, she got a call. And she said, the sea level has just just had an executive committee meeting, and we're creating a new position for you sea level. Because we think you should be you should be sea level in order to fix this problem. So she was able to do what she was gonna do anyway, she already had the plan. She was able to do it with the raise the promotion, the recognition.

Carla Miller 29:21
I love that there's a great phrase for it. I often talked about understanding people and building relationships with them, that you can speak their language. I really like the active enrollment. It reminds me of my fundraising day. So I'm sure you did plenty of fundraising as well.

Elizabeth Bachman 29:34
I ran an opera company. I did a lot of fundraising.

Carla Miller 29:38
It’s the same kind of techniques, isn't it? I think it's really interesting what you were saying as well about how she presented it as a strategy. I was working with a group of women and a few of them are at leadership team level and they said they notice that they will present their work as this is what I've done. And the men would present it as strategies and get lots of praise so they just started throwing the word strategy instant, yeah. And they were getting lots more praise for it, it was crazy. It was just reframing and repackaging. Basically.

Elizabeth Bachman 30:11
The thing about presenting what you've done, versus presenting your strategy, that's the difference between an individual contributor who's doing a job, and a manager who has an overall view of where the company is going. So if you talk about your strategy for doing something that's recognising the whole company, how everything, how it all fits together, and how it will move forward, as opposed to just this is my job, and I have done my job. It's the big difference between being a member of a team and leading a team. That's one of the things it's really hard to learn as you become a manager is, how do you not just be a contributor? But actually, the overall view?

Carla Miller 31:05
Absolutely, I think what was interesting is they were doing all of that they just hadn't put that label on it so that other people could tick that box in their head, it was really fascinating.

Elizabeth Bachman 31:14
Well, then that's probably a matter of presenting yourself in a way that they can hear it. They know that you've done all this. But if they can't hear it, it's not language that they are going to take in. It's not going to help.

Carla Miller 31:31
And one of the things that I worked with them on and work often on is your personal leadership brand. So being intentional about how others perceive you, which I'm sure aligns a lot with what you do as well. This has been super, super interesting. I've probably talked to you all day. If I asked you for one piece of advice that you wish that more women leaders knew or put into action, what would it be?

Elizabeth Bachman 31:57
Are you single, focused or multi focused, and are the people around you single focused or multi focused single focus people, often men, but women as well, will think of one thing at a time. And if a multi focus person, often female, but not always, can come in and say, well, we've got this and this and this, and this, and this is this, the single focus person won't hear it, because they actually can only hear one thing at a time. So be be brief, be concise. Think of bullet points, bullet points are great. And you may hate them. But if you can say what you need to say in a concise way, that someone who can only think of one thing at a time will get that will make a huge difference.

Carla Miller 32:49
Brilliant. I love that. And if people want to find out more about you, and how they can work with you, where should they go?

Elizabeth Bachman 32:56
You can go to Elizabeth bachman.com. I have si que se come to my podcast. And you can hear Carla on that. You'll find that on Elizabeth bachman.com. Or reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm very visible there.

Carla Miller 33:13
Perfect. Well, it's been a pleasure talking to you having you on the podcast. And I'm sure this is gonna be super practical and inspiring for people. So thanks very

Elizabeth Bachman 33:21
Thank you so much, Carla, it's been a pleasure.

Carla Miller 33:29
If you're new to the podcast, I wanted to share with you some ways that we can potentially work together. So if you've listened to this, and you're thinking everything she says resonates with me, and I think I might need a little bit more influence and impact as a leader, then these are some of the ways in which we can work together. So the first one is my influence and impact group coaching programme is a 12 month group coaching programme. And that is aimed at women in leadership roles. So essentially, middle and senior managers, it's not for Chief execs. And it's not for brand new managers because it's not teaching you how to be a manager. Instead, what it's doing is covering the three areas of my influence and impact framework. So strengthening your inner leader increasing your impact and influencing for success. And there's an amazing community of incredible women. There's over 170 of them. Now, that make up part of that programme. So there's the influence and impact programme. Your organisation can fund it, there's a discount for charities or there is also a self funding discount as well. So if you want to find out more about that you can look on my website or you can contact me directly. You can also work with me one to one so I work one to one with a small number of female leaders, but they tend to be at the senior end of the scale so direct It is and chief executives and we work together for a six month period, working on whatever challenges they are coming up with, it tends to be people who are new to a particular role or organisation or getting ready to step up to the next level. So again, you can get in touch about that. And I also have an online programme called lead from within which if you're not interested in the influencing side, but you do want to work on your inner critic, your inner leader, how to tackle self doubt how to set some boundaries, and develop a growth mindset. Then I teach all of that within myself guided lead from within programme, and you can purchase that on my website as well. And then finally, I work within organisations, too. So I've started to do quite a lot of keynote speeches for women's inequality networks. So if you've got one of those in your organisation, do put them in touch with me, I've got a series of really popular talks for that. I also run influence and impact in house either as a full programme with a cohort of women, or covering particular topics within it. And we'll say I work, one to one in house and as an executive coach, as well. So those are all the different ways that you can work with me. And I love the fact that people get to know me through the podcast, I think it gives you a really good sense of who I am and how I can help you and the sort of topics that I work with women on. So if this is resonating with you do get in touch. And you can always book a quick call with me if you're not sure what's the right fit for you. You can always book a quick call with me on my website, and we can chat about what's going on for you and how I might be able to help you. If I'm not the right person for you. Or if I know someone else's programme that is a better fit, I will absolutely refer you to someone else. For me, it's all about trying to help you get the support you need, even if that support isn't me. So if you're thinking of working with a coach, and you think I might be the right person in one of these formats, then I would love to hear from you. I have set myself a mission of empowering 10,000 women in their careers by 2030. So if you'd like to help me with that mission, there's a couple of things you could do. If you haven't already subscribed and rated and reviewed this podcast, please do so that would be brilliant. It really helps bring it to other people's attention. And I'd also really love to know what you have taken away from this episode. Take a screenshot of yourself listening to this episode, and post it on social media and tag me I am this is Carla Miller on Instagram, or on LinkedIn. I'm Carla Miller one I would love to know what the main takeaway you got from this episode is so take a screenshot tag me and tell me what your main takeaway is.