Creative Coaching

Two hacks for flexible authenticity

How do I respond to the needs of my audience, or flex to accommodate a colleague’s preferred communication style, while remaining true to myself?  This is a question often posed by participants in our Communicating Compelling Messages and Vision to Impact workshops. Let’s take a look!

When flexing our style, the pitfall we instinctively want to dodge is ‘putting it on’ - that is acting in a particular way to communicate ‘correctly’.  Think about a politician standing with their legs a little too far apart in a pantomime of the power pose. Or someone acting ‘down with the kids’ when they are anything but.

We know that ‘putting it on’ is jarring. It creates tension and disconnect with those around us. The opposite of what we want.

At the same time, most of us naturally alter our tone of voice, body language, facial expressions and vocabulary in response what’s going on around us. Imagine helping a distressed, small child versus bumping into a senior colleague in the street. We code switch naturally.

So, what’s the happy medium for being more adept at flexing our style?

The keys are awareness and range.

For awareness let’s consider that distressed small child. Crouching or sitting down to be at a child’s level can be a great way to connect with children. But unless we know this, it might not occur to us. Once we’re aware of the effect, we’re likely to just do it naturally, as appropriate. We’re not ‘putting it on’ it’s just what’s obvious to us to do in that moment.

Being a student of communication, watching what’s effective and what’s not, is the way forward here. As is the kind of feedback one receives in our workshops. How can we know our incessant gesticulation can be distracting, until someone gently points it out to us?

What to do about it though? Here’s where we want to stretch our natural range.

Once we can see there’s an area of communication we could improve upon, we tend to pay more attention to it. This is where we might trip ourselves up through over thinking. It’s the effect of trying hard to say a sentence without any ‘ums’ or ‘ers’ or other filler words. They creep in more readily the more we think about it.

Here’s where some intentionality is helpful, when stretching our range.

We can practise ‘off line’. 

• The hand waver, can spend some time talking to themselves (or on an audio only call) while sitting on their hands.
• The ‘um and er’ champion can do the chair exercise (a practice we run in the workshops).
• The waffler can apply the simple 3 part structure they learn in the workshops, to their interactions at the supermarket checkout and similar.

This practice in low stakes situations allows the extension of range (using hand gestures more mindfully, eradicating ‘ums and errs’, being more succinct) to establish in the individuals’ natural style. So when they next come across a high stakes ‘live’ situation they can still be themselves, with a wider communication palette.

The more we can develop our awareness, and extend our range (and it is a lifelong endeavour), the wider our scope for being ourselves whilst flexing to suit the people and the situations we encounter.

If you want to hear more about Communication Compelling Messages, or Vision to Impact, OR learn about the chair exercise for eradicating filler words, drop us a note on tania@twcreativecoaching.com.

Photo by Anupam Mahapatra on Unsplash

Posted on Thu, February 27, 2025 in Coaching General Leadership Personal Development
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