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Celeste Headlee will be kicking off our Sales Leader Forum conference on November 13 in Washington DC. Celeste is an award-winning journalist, professional speaker and the author of We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter and Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving. She is the host of “Women Amplified,” a podcast from the Conferences for Women, the largest network of women’s conferences in the nation, drawing more than 50,000 people to its annual events. Celeste is also the president and CEO of Headway DEI, a non-profit that works to bring racial justice and equity to journalism and media through targeted training and interventions, and she serves on the board of the National Center for Race Amity.
HSMAI staff had the opportunity to interview Celeste about her upcoming keynote address.
Q&A with Celeste Headlee
1. To start, could you give us a brief overview of your session at Sales Leader Forum?
My session will focus on communicating in a post pandemic world. I’ll address the challenges of communicating in a world in which people are often tired and stressed, as well as the fact that we are often blind often to the areas in which we need to improve our own communication skills. Research shows that most of us tend to blame other people when communication goes awry, which means that we are missing those signs. There are skills that we can improve in order to be better communicators.
One of the key takeaways will be how important it is to have authentic communication that happens either in person or over the phone. We will talk about the effect that digitally mediated communication has on all of us, including e-mail, slack and video conferencing – and why we should limit the use of those tools and embrace the phone more. And I’ll use evidence backed up by science and research to show the benefits of making changes to the way that we communicate.
2. Can you share the unique perspectives or insights you bring to this topic and explain their significance for today’s hospitality sales and commercial professionals?
Hospitality and commercial professionals will either succeed or fail according to how well they communicate, and it’s not just this group which is so forward facing it’s pretty much every group. The number one cause of project failure, for example, is poor communication. And the number one cause of poor communication in business is overuse of e-mail. That’s just an example of the ways in which we can sabotage our own success by not investing our time and our energy into improving our communication skills. This has been my topic of
research for more than a decade, but it’s also my profession. I have been a professional interviewer with national public radio and PBS and other organizations for over 25 years.
3. What practical takeaways will attendees be able to implement after attending your session?
My speeches are also always focused on practical takeaways, so I always explain the benefits of changing behavior and then explain how to change behavior. So attendees will be leaving with skills that they can improve, but also new tactics and new tools that they can start using immediately, as soon as they walk out of the event space. They can start using these tools in their conversation with other attendees. The skills that I teach are also useful in every part of somebody’s life, not just your professional life, but in your personal life as well.
4. What future trends or predictions will you be addressing in your session?
Things have changed a lot over the past five years, and although there is a real urge among some to return to normal, there is no normal now to return to. So what we need to do is adjust. That’s really what I’m going to be talking about, how to adjust to a new reality and why that’s actually a pretty great thing. The future trend that I’m hoping for is that people will hit a reset button and see the disruption of the past few years as an opportunity to rethink not just the way that we communicate, but the way that we work with each other and the way that we interact with our clients. Let’s explore what is useful to us that we’ve done in the past and what is not useful to us now.
5. For those looking to deepen their understanding or application of your session’s insights, what resources or reading would you recommend? The first reading would be my book We Need to Talk and the second one is Speaking of Race. Although Speaking of Race is focused on difficult conversations related to race and identity, every single skill that I teach in that book is applicable in all other areas. It’s not just about difficult conversations on race, it’s about difficult conversations. Whether that be with your boss, with an employee, with a client.
6. Anything else you’d like to share?
One thing that I will emphasize in my message is that communication is not a soft skill. If we think in terms of practical skills, communication is the most crucial skill, and improving your communication has the benefit of giving you the largest impact. We have to start thinking of communication as core to everything that we do. When you think of what services you deliver, communication is the foundation of all of it. Anytime that you’re having issues, anytime that you want to improve your productivity, improve your morale, reduce
turnover improve services to clients, the first place to look is communication. It is a hard skill, not a soft skill.