Going Public
Companies encourage workers to hone speaking skills

Mary Mayotte's communication and consulting firm, based in New York with offices in Cherry Creek, has kept Mayotte busy consulting executives who are frantically searching for ways to position themselves at the top, she said.

"With all the cutbacks on bonuses and salaries, executives have to communicate better with people and maximize their abilities," Mayotte said.

Mayotte has designed her seminars around what she calls "speech fitness." Her focus is not only on communicating a message, but also on connecting with an audience, connecting with a vision and putting the fun back into business.

Mayotte is launching a four-day communications "training camp" in Fraser during the last week of June. The seminar focuses on getting executives "back in touch with their own reality."

According to Mayotte, people make 11 assumptions in the first seven seconds of meeting someone and most of them are false.

Her seminar and philsophy aims at showing people how to stay in tune with themselves so they can communicate honestly and get the best results, she said.

An essential quality to communicating successfully with people is charisma, Mayotte explained. The best way to obtain charisma is not through fancy verbiage, but through creating connections with people.

"There is a credibility that comes with making a connection," she said. "Rather than wowing the audiences with words, executives need to connect."

Getting back to the basics of high school speech class is one of the most effective ways to create an honest connection with an audience: Making eye contact, researching the audience and engaging the audience, said Mayotte.

And with the corporate recent scandals, the word "trust" rings like an oxymoron and skepticism plagues the market, which is another reason executives are honing in on their communication skills as a point of sale. Building trust is now the ultimate sales pitch according to Mayotte.

"Most of us our pretty skittish right now," Mayotte said.

Mayotte, using Enron as an example, said there must have been signs about what was going on, but people were not paying attention.

"We are all moving so fast and not listening to each other and the key qualitites to communicating trust are missing," she said.

Beyond communicating with employees and clients, people wanting to climb the corporate ladder need the ability to think on their feet and communicate well.

A mumbling response to a boss's question instead of an articulate answer could result in the loss of a promotion, said Alfred Herzing, a former Toastmasters' president.

Tina Hubis has learned this lesson. Hubis was told years ago by her boss that she had great ideas but needed to communicate them better. Hubis enrolled in a speech class and then joined Toastmasters. She has been a member ever since and is currently senior project analyst in IT for Qwest.

"Part of being an executive is about inspiring a team and getting them in line with your vision," said Herzing, IT director at Beckman Coulter in California. "It does not do any good to have a vision if you cannot communicate the vision."

The information technology field, which has long been assumed the field of introverted geeks behind closed doors, is now forcing its way into a world of team building and communication.

"Many of the behind-the-scene departments [such as IT] are having to get out there and communicate," Mayotte said. "They can't just sit in the background anymore."

The number of technical businesses her company serves has increased in recent years. Mayotte said those businesses can no longer rely solely on marketing departments because they have the specific answers that people are demanding in this business environment.

And Denver is no stranger to the recent move toward communicating differently with people. The two mayoral candidates have received national attention for their non-negative, down-to-earth approach of communicating visions in order snatch voters.

But Mayotte, who works closely with the Denver business community, said it "needs to have a shot in the arm" to boost creativity and that Denver has the potential to compete nationally and internationally as long as people start paying attention to how they communicate.