Leadership Is About How You Communicate

Rhonda Bowen joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a rich conversation about the communication skills leadership actually requires.

Rhonda helps leaders reach their audiences. She explains why technical brilliance is not enough, why communication is a bridge you build on purpose, and why respect and a kept word matter more than being liked.

Rhonda Bowen helps leaders and organizations communicate more effectively, focusing on reaching audiences, matching expectations, and building trust. She shares her resources through her Linktree.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard: Hello. I am Richard Lowe. And this is the leaders and their stories. Podcast I’m the writing king and ghostwriting, Guru. And I’m here with Rhonda Bowen, and we’re going to talk about various things. And, Rhonda, why don’t you tell us about yourself?

A Leader Who Helps Leaders Communicate

Rhonda Bowen: Well, thank you very much for having me in today, Richard. It’s it’s great to be able to speak to the people in your audience, find out more about them, and hopefully give them some tips that will be helpful. My name is Rhonda Bowen. I am an American by birth, but have lived in Germany since 1983, and I’ve had my own business here since 1987.

I’ve done numbers of things in my business over all those years, of course. But the most important thing of what I’m doing now is I work with people I call best professionals, people in business, engineering, science and technology, all the things I’m not and help them communicate better across cultures across cultures means 2 things for me, not just one.

The one is the one you would normally think about like people from different countries, or living in different countries, or different passports, or whatever. That’s the geographical part. That’s 1 part. But the other part, which for me is even more important, is the organizational part. So why can’t engineers talk to salespeople? And why do finance people always get in trouble with people in marketing? Those are also cultural differences, but organizational cultural differences. So I work with a combination of those 2 things. I’ve worked in person with people from more than 70 countries around the world. I’ve had my business online since 2019 before the pandemic.

So I’ve been to lots of places, but now I do everything remotely. Have a remote team as well. 2 people in Africa, one in Asia. and among us. We make sure that we help co-create solutions for companies and organizations who are working on something and just don’t have the expertise to be able to be doing that themselves.

And so what we try to do is bring in what I call myself. I’m the cwio which you’ve never heard of, which is the chief wisdom and inspiration. Officer. I am.

Why She Is Not the CEO Type

Rhonda: I don’t call myself. Everybody says you’re the CEO. I said, No, because I’m not good at executing, so I’m not. I’m not the chief executive officer. Then I have a strategy officer, a Cso. Then I have an Operations officer, a Coo, and I have a technical officer, a CTO.

So the 4 of us together help with organizations and companies that are working on something and realize that there’s something missing, either they don’t have the expertise in house. They don’t know exactly what it is that they need. They would like to go on and do something bigger or better, but they’re not quite sure how that works.

And as a team, we come in and give them the opportunity to sit down and talk to us and say, Okay, how could this work. And recently, just to give you an example, we worked with an organization called World Speech Day. and this organization sponsors, speeches and speech giving in over a hundred companies every year on the 15th of March.

and those people who give speeches, the whole thing needs to be coordinated. And since the pandemic, a lot of this has moved online. Well, they didn’t have all the capacity to do things for the websites, to do things for social media, to do things for what they needed to actually be getting out into the world.

And so we assisted them with that, and we co-created the solutions that they needed to make sure that their message got out, so that on 15th everybody could be involved with this, and, as I said, people from over a hundred companies, 100 countries, gave speeches on that day to inspire the world.

Richard: That’s fascinating. That’s an interesting background. I do a similar thing with my ghostwriting, and that one of the 1st things I do is, find out. Their audience. So usually who comes to me is, say, a CTO, and he speaks CTO speak, which is usually technical. I might be a Vp.

Might be even a director, and what I do in the book is, I translate their language into something that the business will understand. So they talk to me about blockchain and bits and bytes, and how blockchain works and stuff like that. And I’m basically I don’t care. What I want to know is, what does it do for the business?

Because that’s what the leaders care about. I’ve even been in. When I was at Trader Joe’s I was there for 20 years as their director of computer operations. Been in meetings where the CEO, said Richard. I’m sure that’s all good you need to leave now, because you’re not helping because you’re too technical.

He didn’t understand a word I was saying, and that taught me something about learning your audience and learning the culture, and definitely. Don’t go to the CTO with your flip charts and things. He? He doesn’t care.

Rhonda: Well, and that’s the reason people come to me personally, because I am none of those things. You know, I am not terribly business, technically scientifically engineering minded. But when people come and say, But, Rhonda, I have to give a talk. or I have to talk to the other people in the C-suite, and I’m the tech guy.

But nobody understands to pick up on what you’re saying, I said. If you can explain it to me. and if you can answer all the questions that I ask you about this. You will be very well prepared, then, to go to talk to all those other non techie people like me, who are and who are adult and intelligent enough to understand, but need to hear it from you in a way that makes sense to them. and not in a way that only makes sense to you and the rest of your technical team.

Why Technical Leaders Struggle to Connect

Richard: So can you break that down? Why, a leader, somebody who thinks they’re a technical leader like a CIO CTO cdo Why do they need to learn how to communicate like that. Why, why, what’s important about that? Why can’t they just talk their own language.

Rhonda: Well, I mean they can, but it depends on who they’re trying to reach. It depends on what outcome they’re trying to get to when they’re talking to the rest of their team, and everybody speaks tech speak. That’s great, because that’s what they all need to be saying, because it’s their jargon.

It’s their way of looking at the world. It’s their way of finding their outcomes. But as an example, I work with a lot of scientific people, and they normally do research and produce products, you know, for the whole world. But one day they came to me and they said, Rhonda, we are having the local community is having a town hall, not a corporate town hall, a real town hall, the way it used to be, you know, way back.

and they have asked us to come, because they have questions about what we’re doing in our company. and how it is affecting the environment in the town. And all of a sudden all of those scientific research people had to go and talk to John and Jane DOE on the street and explain what was going on in the company, and how that was affecting what was happening in their neighborhood.

There was nobody scientific in the room. but if the company didn’t come across. Well, in this, then, there were going to be political repercussions from the government, because people would all go to the mayor or the city council, or whoever it was, and say, we have to get rid of this company.

So there are many times in life that people who are in a very, very good way in their own technical or their own scientific or their own jargon, whatever that is, the minute they have to talk to people who don’t understand that. Then they really need to switch gears.

And they really need to think about what do those people need, and what is a way to explain it that they will understand.

Speak to Your Audience

Richard: But it’s talking to your audience, even in a relationship like a family relationship, or even male and female, you know, when you’re married, not necessarily male and female, I guess. But when you’re married you you have the same thing. You have another person there who may a man and a woman or somebody from a different background or culture.

You’ve got different communication styles. I know my my wife was from Guatemala, and I’m from California and, man. We had a communication rift that was interesting. I still have scars and.

Rhonda: The interesting thing is, I mean it’s the geographical one. But even things like my husband and I. I’ve lived in Germany so long. I study German. I speak perfect German. You know. The language isn’t the problem for us, and the culture isn’t the problem for us, because I’ve been here for over 40 years. But the interesting thing for us is that I’m an extreme extrovert, and he’s an introvert.

Rhonda: Sit down and talk to him and say, Oh, what do you think about this? Or I’d like to have your ideas about that, or whatever, and we’re sitting at the kitchen table, and I’m saying these things. The 1st thing he does is pick up a pen and a piece of paper and start writing things down.

And then he says, I’ll get back to you. And 3 h later I get an email with this much information because he’s the introvert. He’s had the time to process. He goes through everything the way he sees it, and then he gives it back to me, but not in the moment.

Which is the way an extrovert would like to have it so. Whether it’s it’s not always just because everybody who is in your C-suite team. Even if each of you has your own specialty in what you’re doing. As far as your language and your logo and your jargon is concerned, you could still have very different personality styles.

You could still have very, very different ways of processing information. And if you’re only putting out in the way you do things and not realizing how the people on the other side are processing it. then you can get into the same kind of of difficulty. So that’s why, I said, culture is not only you know where your passport is.

Communication as a Bridge

Richard: Well, the wife and I found out that one of the things we had in common was wwe world wrestling entertainment.

Richard: And we we both liked it, and we use that as a bridge. And it was funny, you know, we we watched all of the pay per views and everything. After she passed away I went to the I actually went to the shows myself live, and we could talk about it.

And then that let us talk about other things, too, because we were night and day. We were opposite sides of the coin, and finding that bridge was important, and that was one of our bridges. That was non. It wasn’t something we would argue about. So it became something we would.

You know how it is. So. That’s that’s 1 thing that I found is making bridges that let you communicate with other people find something common people like men. A lot of men in the United States, at least, likes football and baseball. Personally, I’m more of a I like fencing and wrestling.

So you can use football to bridge to a lot of men in the room, some men you know, but then you might get down to say some geek level people, and they’re more into D and d dungeons and dragons, so maybe use that as a bridge. So. having this knowledge about doing your homework and knowing who these people are.

maybe doing a pre-interview with a couple people and getting their personal life can help you communicate with them and and build up that rapport. Is it rapport? Yeah. With them to to be able to communicate what in a business setting? Now they know you.

Build the Bridge Deliberately

Rhonda: And especially in a business setting. What you need to do is make sure whatever the bridge is. The bridge could also be something about the business, but in the end, in a business as opposed to in your family life. you’re there to produce an outcome. And it’s not only for you and the other person you’re talking to.

It’s for the entire company or the entire organization. So keeping your eye on the outcome and saying, When we sit down and work on this, and we talk about this. It’s not only how I like to do it, or with the way you would like to hear it, or how we process it.

But what’s going to happen in the end? What is this actually going to be a benefit to the people in the rest of the company who are going to be able to take what we’ve discussed, and actually use it to make better profits, you know. Save time, you know, whatever it is that you’re working on in that particular conversation.

But the outcome has to be clear, and there isn’t just talking for talking sake. People have to be able to take things with them and be able to implement those and use them to the better good.

Richard: I remember one of the most interesting communication failures that I was involved in. We. We had a project that was computer development, and we hired a company that was in France. and the French lady who was in charge. A nice lady. She had her own view. So the the software went in.

And it it was so slow things that would take. We were converting from an old system things that would take a minute on the old system took an hour and a half or 3 h on the new system, obviously not acceptable. so we brought it to her attention, and she was like.

Well, you know, that’s just the way it is. She was very laissez faire about it. It just didn’t matter to her. Well, after talking to some other people from Europe and France. They’re in America. It was here in Cal, or we were in California. It was very like urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent to get bread on the shelves from her point of view, with her French background there was no urgency.

It’s just bread, and we we never did get through that we actually wound up firing them. But Because they couldn’t bridge that gap. They couldn’t understand that to us it was nuclear materials going out there, and it needed it was melting down. And we need to get it fixed to them is like, that’s only bread.

You know what? What’s the problem. So it’s so so it’s, you know, a day late. Whoop! Do you do? And we couldn’t bridge it. We we tried. and my boss was. Oh, so I’ve I’ve never seen him turn purple before, and he was purple, which was a neat.

Match Expectations, Do Not Just Set Them

Rhonda: It’s the thing I talk about with everybody where I say, a lot of people talk about expectations, and the classic terms you hear are. Somebody sets expectations, or somebody meets expectations for me. What I try to do with my own team and with all the clients that we work is we try to match expectations.

Rhonda: Because that’s well. No, but match meaning at the beginning we sit down, and it’s not one side saying, You must do this and the other side, saying yes or no, but what didn’t work so well with your French lady was obviously her expectation of what urgency meant and what how much. Something was important to you in the way that it was. Those 2 expectations didn’t meet.

Rhonda: You didn’t match.

Why Clear Agreements Matter

Rhonda: But then see, the expectations are clear on both sides from the beginning, because service level agreements are usually in writing, and anybody can go back and then refer to those and say, this is what we agreed on. This is what it says. If it works, this is what happens if it doesn’t work. So you’re in. You’re definitely in the safe zone. There.

Richard: There’s a there’s a author and coach named Larry Winget. He’s he’s he was pretty famous. A few years ago he wrote a book called People are Idiots, and I can prove it. It’s great title, I think, and it’s a great book. It will very much annoy you if you if you get if you take offense at that, because he liked that through the whole book.

But he says, If you make a promise, you need to keep that promise to your kids if you say I’m going to. I’m going to put ground you for a week. If you don’t do this. If they don’t do it, you have to ground them for a week, or you teach them.

You’re a liar. If you have a service level agreement, and the the vendor doesn’t meet it. You have to do the penalties you cannot make an I mean, you can make an exception. You talk it over with them and say, Okay, this time we’re making an exception, but you make it really clear.

But you have to make anything you promise, or they promise must be fulfilled. Promises are sacred. This is what he says. If you let them slide. you’re training them, that it’s okay.

Respect Over Friendship

Rhonda: Well respect. I think that the word that I would use in that case that was missing was respect, and whether I like somebody or not is totally immaterial. But if I’m working with someone and it’s a professional relationship, respect has to be there and being on time for me is one part of showing respect.

A Boss Who Keeps Their Word

Richard: I want a boss if I have a boss again, who, if I know that the boss is going to carry through. So if the boss makes a promise boss is going to keep it. I had one of my 1st bosses. He says you work 80 HA week for this.

Get help us get this company started. I will give you stock a year later. and he also said, If you bring in a nice big ticket client, I’ll give you some stock options, you know, 20% or something. Year later I came in with a hundred $1,000 client, which for this company was huge. and he said, No, you get paid a salary, you know. I’m not going to give you anything.

Rhonda: Yeah, that’s true.

The Leaders Who Floored Me

Richard: I remember that and then I remember John Shields. He was the CEO of Macy’s. And then he came to Trader Joe’s and became CEO of Trader Joe’s. And I I’m trying to get some equipment. I’m getting $70,000, and with my old boss, who left before that it would have been a nightmare I have would have had to get all, do all the research, do all of the the financial backing and everything else, and then walk into my office to get shot down.

A few times I walked into John Shield’s office. I’m all nervous, because, you know, he’s this big CEO blah blah, and he says you’re the tech guy. I’m the finance guy, you understand. Tech. I don’t understand tech. I understand finance, and I’ll bet you don’t understand finance. So let’s stay in our lane.

Do you think this is what we need? And I says, Yes, have you done the research? And I says, Yes, good! How much do you need? And I said $75,000! And he said, approved my boss before. That would never have done that.

Richard: It absolutely floored me. And it’s that respect that you’re talking about. It’s like this is your job. And then, a few days later, I came in, so I need an employee, he says, well. tell me about it, and blah blah, he says, you know, based on what you’re saying.

I don’t get that. You’re that. You have confidence in that decision yet. So go away and do some research and figure it out and come back with that confidence took me another few weeks, and I came back and said, Yeah, I still do. And here’s what I need.

Blah blah blah, he said. Okay, approved. And both of even though he disapproved me once he gave me the backing. He didn’t just shoot me down and say, you’re being stupid like an old boss. You’re being stupid. Just go, you know. You don’t need a person here. We don’t hire people here.

He gave me the leeway to do what I needed to do, because he understood that. And and then to have the lesson of Okay, I didn’t. I? I tried to take advantage of maybe if in his mind the second time. So it was interesting. It was interesting learning he was.

He was the one person in my entire career that I would call better than a C minus average, a liter. I. He’s the only one. He was probably an a minus. and he’s he’s the only one who was a leader of any kind in my entire career. I had one mentor and one leader.

They’re different people. Steve Davis was my mentor early on, and he was an excellent mentor, but he was very young at that time. and John Shields was the leader. He wasn’t a mentor because he was a CEO. He had. He didn’t have time for a little director, you know. Anyway.

Rhonda: Well, but I mean having the time for things. And and you’ve mentioned something very interesting which now in today’s world would be much easier than it was back then when you had to do this is because we now have AI to help you get all of that research in.

Working Alongside Your People

Rhonda: There are so many wonderful advantages as a leader of being able to not only work with your people, but also to work with your AI. I listened to an interview 2 days ago, where a gentleman said, I have a social media team that has one person, one human person and 6 AI.

Agents. and we looked at a campaign that we had done. And I said to them, the 6 Aa. Agents show me all the data. Show me the open rates. Show me the click through. Show me all the nice things that you would do with social media. And then once they did that, he said so, and not what or do as telling, but coaching the AI and saying, This is the result.

We have at the moment what the result we would like to get is this and this. what things could we do? How could we improve what we have, what measures, what new measures, maybe, do we have to include. And the AI actually produced through the coaching the answers to these questions, and he did that totally with 6 AI agents and no people in the room right? And it took him about 35 min, and he got a brand new campaign out of it.

Where to Find Rhonda

Rhonda: Well, what I’m going to provide for you all is a link to my link. Tree and linktree is a very wonderful thing. If you’re not using it yet, because you can put in all of the things you would normally think of. Name bio information websites, all of those things, but also links to projects that we’re working on links to other things that I’m doing, together with my team.

As I mentioned at the beginning, with the co-creating the solution. So I think the easiest way is, I’ll just provide my linktree link, and you can open that up and go through it and see which things are appropriate for you.

Richard: Awesome. I’ll put that in the description and thank you for coming. This has been the leaders in their stories, podcast I’m, Richard Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting, Guru, and if you need my services you can go to thewritingking.com, or ghostwriting, dot guru, and thank you, and this is pretty much a daily. Podcast so come again tomorrow and there’ll be some new stuff for you to watch. Thank you.

Rhonda: Thank you for having me.

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