TSIC Leadership Development

In our 51 years of working intimately with global leaders, managers, and executives, we’ve learned a great deal about what works, what doesn’t. In a world where the term leadership is tossed around, and just about every management consulting company claims to be able to “teach” people how to be leaders, simply because they consult for companies who already have leaders. Then they take the credit, and sell themselves on being able to develop and create leaders. What they don’t tell you, is after all their consulting is done, their samples of how their other clients found success, is good information to know. But, in the end, it will not teach you what to say or how to say it.

Management consulting firms, are very much like the Monday Morning QuarterBack. They will tell you all about what THEY believe your doing right or wrong, based on their experience with other business. But, the suffer from the exact same blind spot that the top Universities, like Harvard, MIT, BU, Oxford, all suffer from. They don’t understand the people, and the psychology of how people work. And as such, they have very little chance at ever being successful at developing leaders.

Sure, they will be able to tell you how Steve Jobs was a visionary who forced his will on others. That’s great. Now what? OR they will invite some corporate executive to come talk about how she took her company from 1 million to 5 billion over 3 years. But, was that the product? The people? the Market?

So, what they won’t tell you, is that When push comes to shove, it all comes down to what you say, and how you say it. So, you want to work with a coach who has deep understanding of human communication. Leadership, is one simple track in understanding communication. Natural leaders, have a style of communication that works for them. In our experience, it’s not one size fits all. As speech coaches, we can see how people communicate from the mechanics of their speech and articulation to the psychology of word choice, attitudes, and approach.

Simple, you-tube or linked-in tips, will easily provide you with “the sandwich” approach to providing feedback. Start with a positive, then the feedback, end with a positive” Sure, that’s not complex. In the post of soccer, I can tel you how to kick a ball. Run up to the ball, and kick it. But, to be able to score, by kicking the ball in just the top left corner of the goal, takes skill, practice, and a really good coach who can motivate you just the right way to focus on just the right things.

And once you have that skill, of kicking the ball in the top left corner, now you need to understand wether or not you should!

A management consulting firm is great at saying “don’t do this, or research says, that shooting for the top left corner is the most likely way to score” but in the end, do you know the goalie? Maybe that goalie favors that corner? How do you know? Don’t you think you’d want to learn how to listen with the skill to know where the goalie will jump to?

In leadership and management it’s very much the same. IT’s not enough to simply know that research tells us… you want to learn the skill, the real human skill of talking. And talking in a way that allows you maximize the chances that others will see your vision.

Management Consulting firms will tell you that leaders have vision. Aren’t you glad you spent 50,000 to learn that? Thats’s like telling a soccer player, real players can score. A professional speech coach will help you learn how to articulate that vision to your company, individuals. It’s more than just “have a town hall meeting” it goes deeper. WE know, we’ve coached thousands to master those town hall meetings. It goes to the words you use, the tone of voice, your comfort and control of nerves, your ability to motivate, persuade, and overall maximize the chance that your message will get through.

Our Attitudes Become Communication (ABC). As professional speech coaches, we work with all levels of organizations. That means, even the most entiry level through the board members. We believe that this is a significant advantage over business analyssts who offer training, because it provides our coaches with the ability better understand the attitudes of the people you need to lead. This in turn will help us better train you how to use your current style of communication and build on it.

You’ve been communicating since birth. It’s likely that there are things you do well. Our coaches will identify those strengths pretty fast, then supplement them with the skills and tools you need to maximize your effectiveness.

Since the 1920’s leadership began to be studied in the business enviornemtn. In the 1980’s, it became popular to train leaders, aside from in the military. And in the 1990’s, airports were books from companies like McKinseay, BSC, and Bain, claiming to have solved the mystery of why leaders are successful.

Speech coaches work with these leaders, intimately, not on their business plans or strategy, that is best left to the consulting companies. But, in their communication. How they think, how they motivate, persuade, lead, manage! We see their successes and fears. As trusted advisors, we help them to craft communication that is authentic to them, yet powerful and effective.

Just about any training that is considered to be good these days, includes experiential learning. It was (XXXX) 1960) who first conducted empirical research to theories that people learn more effectively through experiencing. So, it’s no surprise that most training companies these days will include components of experiential learning. But, how do they make that experience real? Why do so many managers laugh or complain about training? Why do so many training programs get high scores, and include laughing and fun, but then come Monday morning, it’s back to business as usual?

It’s our belief that this is because most training companies use off-the shelf training that they claim to customize, but they don’t. We believe that their trainings are going through content or data created by someone else, and they don’t have the individual skills to make real the training experiences to participants. As such, the training may be filled with high quality information, but be greatly lacking in the ability to develop long lasting skill.

Speech Coaches are not formal actors. Not former executives or management consultants. But, rather specialists who have studied communication at the graduate level or beyond. A Speech coach spends a great deal of time learning and implementing research on topics related to human communication. Topics such as leadership, management, controlling nervousness, public speaking, giving feedback, handling defensiveness, and many more. Then we implement the learning into the coaching and training. We practice what we preach, so we use the concepts we teach in our daily lives.

We believe that it is because of this deep understanding of human behavior, keen ability to coach and train others to master their communication, and our daily work with people in the world that make us credible. To date, we’ve helped over 1 million men and women in all walks of life. Each year, work with thousands of people in various cultures, industries, generations.

At TSIC, our team gathers every month to debrief in development. We discuss the latest research, and decide if we feel it’s valid. While we work with institutions, such as Harvard University and MIT, we learned years ago, that just because research comes from a place, does not make it valid. So, we test research ideas and concepts with our vast range of clients, and then we discuss which concepts apply or not.

Some concepts we’ve found are repurposed from years ago. For example, the latest fad is “Story Telling”. There is not much new, however, many companies claim to have the secrets to teaching people story telling. However, we often hear from people who’ve gone through story telling training, that after, the training was fun, but they’ll never use it. It feels fake. In many cases, it’s a fancy word for helping people understand an example or case study for your product. In other case, it might be for entertainment purposes.

A good coach, will be able to address and identify that. For example, to come back to the attitudes of the learning. If you can’t help the learning understand the concept, it’s not likely they willl develop the skill around it.

I hope this article has helped you better undersatnd how and why we as professional speech coaches view concepts like leadership and management. They are simply components that fall under the broader category of human communication.

Communication Skills is not a subcategory of leadership training. Leading people, is one thing us humans do with our communication.