Leading People
Gerry Murray talks to leading people about leading people. Get insights and tips from thought leaders about how to bring out the best in yourself and others.
Leading People
Is Your Presence Helping or Hurting You?
What does your body say about you when you walk into a room?
And how much of your leadership impact depends on something you can’t see — but everyone else can feel?
In this episode, Kate Walker Miles of RADA Business — a trusted advisor to senior executives and leadership teams — reveals how posture, breath, and voice shape credibility, confidence, and influence.
Drawing on her background in experimental psychology, acting, and behavioural coaching, Kate explains how to use your body as an ally in communication, especially when the stakes are high.
And in a unique five-minute guided exercise, she helps you experience what authentic presence feels like in real time — offering practical tools to:
- Ground yourself and manage nerves before high-stakes moments
- Use breath and alignment to project calm authority
- Speak with clarity and conviction
- Reconnect with your physical presence to lead with impact
If you’ve ever wondered why some leaders hold the room while others disappear into it, this episode will help you understand — and change — what’s really going on.
A practical, engaging conversation that proves leadership isn’t just what you say — it’s how you show up.
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Welcome to Leading People with me, Jerry Mermaid. This is the podcast for leaders and HMR decision makers who want to bring them the best in themselves and others. Every other week, I sit down with leading authors, researchers, and practitioners for deep dive conversations about the strategies, insights, and tools that drive personal and organizational success. And in between, I bring you one simple thing: short episodes that deliver practical insights and tips for immediate use. Whether you're here for useful tools or thought-provoking ideas, leading people is your guide to better leadership. What happens when your body tells a different story than your words? How can your posture, breath, voice, and gestures build or break your presence as a leader? And what can we all learn from the stage that helps us show up more powerfully in meetings, presentations, or even difficult conversations? In this episode, we're joined by Kate Walker Miles, an experienced actor, senior trainer, and client director at Rada Business, the corporate arm of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Kate works with senior leaders, high potential managers, and teams to help them communicate with greater impact by tapping into the full expressive range of their bodies and voices. She shares practical insights into how your body language and vocal tone affect how others perceive your authority. Why grounding and breathing are essential tools for confidence and clarity. What actors know about presence that every leader should master. And how to recover when nerves or tension hijack your performance. To give you an experience of these insights, Kate will take you through an interactive exercise. So if you're driving, riding your bicycle, or operating machinery, whilst listening to this episode, you might want to pull over or stop. This is a conversation packed with powerful reminders that your body is not a passenger in your leadership, it's a co-pilot. Kate Walker Miles, welcome to Leading People.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Jerry. I've got to say, I'm having a fangirl moment here because I am a massive podcast fan and I have been massively enjoying yours. So the pleasure is entirely mine.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, the check is in the post, okay? As they say. Anyway, um, Kate, uh, so it's great to have you here. Uh speaking of podcasts, uh, I first heard you on the Bus Class podcast with Andrew Palmer, who has has been a previous guest on this podcast. And I just thought, I mean, Andrew was gracious enough to kind of almost just make you know, he set himself up a bit to go through this process. And he's so self-de-deprecating at times, this witty humor. And and at the same time, it occurred to me that uh how he was interacting with the the tools and techniques you were explaining to him and putting him through his drills, that a lot of people perhaps could identify with that, and and therefore I thought this could be a great topic, and it's a topic I I you know I've explored myself. So let's start with you trained as an actor, and now you're working a lot of the time with businesses to unlock the potential of individuals, teams, and organizations. But what was the journey that um brought you from stage and screen to boardrooms and leadership coaching?
SPEAKER_00:I've always been fascinated by people. Right? So when I was a kid, I was so torn as a child. Was I going to go down the academic route and become a psychologist, or was I gonna become an actor? Because I loved trying to figure out what made people tick and then inhabiting them, being them, plus being in the spotlight, I have to say, I always found quite attractive. And around the age of 18, I really didn't know which direction I was going to go in. And where I was from, I didn't know any actors. I didn't know anybody in that kind of profession at all. So I ended up going down the safe, the academic route. Uh found myself, luckily for me, but but but unluckily for me, doing experimental psychology at Oxford. And what I actually was doing was training to be a research psychologist. And that sort of dimmed my light a little bit because really that was about analysing data, uh, not as much about understanding people and what makes people tick. Carried on on that route, trying to become a clinical psychologist, worked with homeless people and people with challenging behavior and learning difficulties. But really, the light had gone out for that world. And at this point, I was my head was turned by telly, and I ended up going and becoming a producer in a company called Planet 24, which was a very company staffed by quite young people, making shows like The Big Breakfast, The Word, if you remember that sort of those sorts of shows. And I was at a very young age leading big teams, producing very creative and innovative content with quite small budgets. So you can imagine no training in leadership, big pressure, a lot of fear, but a lot of playfulness. So I learn a lot there about behavior, my own and others, what to do and perhaps as strongly what not to do. They sent me to LA, lovely. Um, did lots of red carpet stuff, lots of, you know, the big award shows, lots of movie junkets, fascinating behaviours that I saw there. But on the side, I did acting classes, didn't tell anybody. It was always been running through me throughout that I wanted to become an actor. And I went off to Rajah at the age of 30, taking a massive, like a huge gamble. People thought I was absolutely, completely and utterly conquered to do such a thing. But it was the best thing I ever did because I learned so much there about behaviour. Acting is, it's entirely about taking a microscope to human behaviour and taking a microscope to your own behaviour and creating massive awareness about the impact you're having on people. And I'll come back to that as we talk through leadership, Jerry, because it's so much that I did there that's so important to what I do now. But my specialism after Urada ended up being improv comedy. Whole long story, didn't want to do it, terribly, utterly terrified the entire time. But for some reason, the industry liked me in that place. So that's what I became, really, a specialist in improv comedy. And that's the most important thing I've ever done in terms of what I do now with leaders. Because for me, leadership is about being in the spotlight without a script and feeling your way through it, listening like an improviser. That's the key to being a good improviser, being in the moment and listening. And for me, that's one of the major keys to leadership. So now I'm at Radar Business, um, where I am bringing all of that crazy, checkered history together. And I it's the only place in the world I can think of where my past makes complete and utter sense and is really valuable to other people. So it's it's I've just found this beautiful sweet spot.
SPEAKER_02:And just for our listeners who may not know who Rada is, it's not a person, right? So it's a it's an organization, and there are we may need to make a distinction between Rada, the academic part, and Rada business. Maybe you could do a quick press of who Rada is and the two parts and what they how they're different from each other.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Well, so Rada is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and I'm actually sitting in one of their buildings now in their sound studio. Uh it was established 120 years ago to train professionals for the acting profession. So it trains um actors and all sorts of other theatre practitioners, directors, lighting designers, costume, etc. Um, it's one of our heritage institutions in this country, but it's also what I massively respect is it's a seat of innovation. So Rada is always looking at what does the industry need and how can RADA keep servicing it, keep moving forward, keep providing for actors in this country and providing actors for this country and elsewhere. Rada Business was, I keep getting told off for this, but I say it sprung from the loins of RADA about 25 years ago. So it came from again from the from industry making requests of Rada. Can you give us a bit of what you train your actors to do for our workforce? We need a bit of that skill. So Rada Business was created. And it it what its mission really at the time was to provide work for actors and income for radar. But it's massively evolved over those 25 years. And now we really see ourselves as specialists in human performance and leadership. And we do it by using the foundation techniques from RADA and the evolved techniques from RADA, but also marrying that with a really deep understanding of theory. So a deeper understanding of what people like like you are teaching, Jerry, what LD professionals, organizational development people are teaching, uh, management consultants, what is it? What are people learning? And how do we use the skills of those actors or the skills that we use with our actors to make it absolutely real, embodied, and lived in those people out in different industries, completely sector agnostic. Because for me, acting is being, right? That's the first thing that we learn when we become a professional actor or even amateur actors. It's not showing, it's not pretending. You've got to be that character, you've got to embody that character so that you're utterly credible to the audience and utterly credible to you. So you believe what you're saying. Well, that's the same for me, particularly in leadership. We've really got to be the leader, not pretend to be the leader, not not ape other leaders. We've got to be it. So, how do we use this vessel of ours and this mind of ours to feel credible in ourselves and credible for other people?
SPEAKER_02:Okay. That's what Rider Business does. So we're going to explore this vessel in a minute, I think. Yeah, lovely. As we go through, and um it it's it's a lot of great things you touched on there, and um the performance and leadership aspect. And my own personal experience of training in presenting, for example, in public speaking, was we spent, I would say, 85% of it on platform skills. And we didn't do that much on content. We had small chunks, we weren't even allowed to use content for the first part because we had to do things like project energy, we had to stand in ways that you know meant that people paid attention, etc. And um that type of training has helped me dramatically understand that dynamic as as I've gone out into the world. And those those platform skills that we just called them platform skills, but those those are the things that make the difference. And even if you go to all that misquoted research by Moravian about okay, that was in more conflict social situations. At the same time, the content part, the words, it was 7%, right? So so this that whole meta communication stuff is so important, and that's manifesting itself in behavior or lack of behavior, whichever way we want to look at it. And and that probably gets me into the next kind of key question to get things moving is why is behavioral awareness, like how we use things like voice, body, breath, so important for leaders, and particularly those who want to have more impact and influence, and what's at stake if we don't or leaders don't develop this kind of awareness. On Leading People, the goal is to bring you cutting-edge thought leadership from many of the leading thinkers and practitioners in leadership today. Each guest shares their insights, wisdom, and practical advice so we can all get better at bringing out the best in ourselves and others. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share a link with friends, family, and colleagues. And stay informed by joining our Leading People LinkedIn community of HR leaders and talent professionals.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Gosh, you've you've touched on so much here. I mean, really, I think everything is at stake. Your own resilience, but also the performance of everybody around you. I'm gonna go right back to core fundamentals and think about how people make decisions, whether to follow you, whether to do what you're trying to influence them to do. And there's, as you'll know, Joey, there's masses and masses of research about how people make those decisions. And the huge proportion of it is emotionally. People make decisions emotionally. People buy from people, all of that good work. Advertisers have known this forever, haven't they? So if I want to help people make those decisions, if I overload them with just pure fact, they're not going to be able to make the decision in the way that they might, if I help them to feel what I need them to feel. And they're gonna feel things based on my behavior. Similarly, the other part is that we're pack animals. So if my my behavior is bleeding through to people, I have an agenda here, I I need my thing, it's coming from a place of fear and grip, I'm gonna be creating that in other people. So they're going to be reading themselves and they're gonna be feeling fear and tension and grip. So they're not going to make the decisions I want them to make. My behavior is everything when I'm influencing. If I'm in a state of ease, then I can think really effectively. I can create thoughts that are clear and concise, and I can give voice to them in a way that moves people. They believe what I'm saying, and they're affected emotionally by what I'm saying. So they can move quickly to where I want them to go. I don't then need to overload them with more and more and more reasons, more and more facts to push them along that line. I'm gonna pull them with the emotion. And that comes from my behavior.
SPEAKER_02:Once again, some wonderful um uh moments there in what you just said. Um, I'd like to come back to the step management bit a bit later on because it's not just within us, it's it's also out with us, as Scottish like to say out with us, you know. Uh so it's something that comes out. Uh just before we get into like really getting into the the specifics of how we can how our behavior comes across, how we can perhaps explore that and improve it. Um, in in the work you you've been doing, what what are some of the big aha moments that people have when they first become aware of their habitual behaviors?
SPEAKER_00:It's it's so different for different people. So there's gonna be a key to unlock each individual, but there are loads of commonalities. So there are some common themes that we see all the time. Um one that the main one for me is that, and I'm gonna nick from Amy Cuddy and probably paraphrase her a little bit, so you'll forgive me, won't you, Jerry? But that the body affects the mind. And the mind affects behaviour, behavior affects outcome. So if we're gonna think about outcomes, we need to start with the body. People, it's amazing how much people sort of nod, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yep, yep, get that, get that, on day one of a program, for instance. And by day two, you'll suddenly hear them say things like, oh, so what I do with my body is really important. And you think, yes, that's that's the whole of yesterday that we were doing. So, yeah, getting in this sense of um if I can, as you've talked about, manage my state, then I can think clearly and I can affect people clearly. That's one of the huge parts, getting into a state of release for loads and loads of people, if they can simply get the concept of how I use space and how I use time. So physical space and giving space to others, physical space in my body, as we've just talked about. But the other one is the pause. You know, I like this expression, I think comes from um Peter Hall, the theatre director. Uh, powerful people leave space around their thoughts. And what he was talking about there is if you're playing the king or queen of England, you're gonna enter the room and you're gonna take your time before you speak. And you're gonna leave loads of time after you speak for all your courtiers to get the huge value and weight of your words. Well, all of us can nick a bit of that. If we want people to process what we're saying and have that opportunity to have an emotional response to it, we need to leave them some time. We also need to leave ourselves some time to plan what we're gonna say next. And it gives such weight to what we say and such an opportunity for connection with other people. So I think for me, the two aha moments I'm gonna I'm gonna nick two, if you don't mind, Jerry, is space and time.
SPEAKER_02:And for those who listen to that, you might want to rewind because there was a great example of how to do that in that delivery, wasn't there?
SPEAKER_00:In pausing and um it took me a long time, I've got to be honest. Having worked in tele under that pressure that I was talking about, when I arrived at Rada, I noticed I was very different. I was 30, and then a lot of people were much, much younger, but I noticed I was very different to the rest of people. And I noticed that a lot of people were looking at me like they didn't quite, couldn't quite work out what I was. So I sort of got this look. I'm sort of pulling a face and cocking my head here. Like, what are you? And I realized now, Jerry, it's because I spoke like this. Oh, hello everyone. My name is Kate, and I and I'm I used to work in television and I made these big, big TV shows, and it was really like God, it was so intense, and it was so I spoke incredibly quickly with no space around my thoughts at all. And what happened for me as the speaker was that I just saw confused faces, disengaged faces around me. And I just simply learned at Ryder very quickly slow down, leave space. Suddenly I felt really powerful. It was utterly transformational. One of the biggest things for me with people that I'm coaching, particularly when I'm working one-to-one, is as soon as possible get them to appreciate those two things space and time. And they just have laid a foundation now that everything else can sit on top of. Every other behavior sits on top of those. And the the way that you feel about yourself, your resilience completely transforms. I really encourage anybody listening to practice it today. Just practice. Imagine that you're almost playing each each utterance back in your mind before you say the next one. That amount of space. That really allows people to get the value of what you're saying and to be influenced by you.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, everybody, you've had a chance to process that. Great. Um, so let's now segue and let's just keep with this notion of state because one of the things that comes up in a lot of stuff I'm doing, even if it's not explicitly part of it, is um what is the most useful state you need to go into to get the results you want. And that then implies that you can choose your state, right? And you can only choose the state when you know what that state is, right? So we have to know what it is, we have to know when we're in a resourceful state and when we're in uh uh less resourceful state, and we have to be able to get back into resourceful state uh if and uh or the appropriate state for what we're trying to do. Like, I mean, you don't want to be in a very placid state if you're trying to get people out of a burning building, right? And maybe that state doesn't work very well if your children need time to do something and you're getting too impatient with them. So perhaps we can start with this idea of let's let's just look at um, let's just take the concept of mindfulness and do the body scan and kind of work our way down because when you were on Andrew's podcast, you started talking about all sorts of really interesting things, which we're going to do now. Um, and just little practical things, let's start with maybe the head and then work our way down through the body. And just as for my listeners, maybe it's a chance to check in now as Kate walks us down on some of the things that you can experience and do to start to understand better the state you're in and the state you want to be in. Would that be uh okay?
SPEAKER_00:That would be beautiful. It in fact is exactly how we work, with one little tweak, if I may.
SPEAKER_02:You're listening to Leading People with me, Jerry Murray. My guest this week is Kate Walker Miles, senior trainer at Rada Business, where she helps leaders and teams develop authentic presence and vocal impact. Coming up, Kate explains why your feet might be the most important part of your body when it comes to executive presence and how to use your breath, voice, and gestures to land your message with impact. If you're driving, riding your bicycle, or operating machinery whilst listening to this episode, you might want to pull over or stop now.
SPEAKER_00:We start with the feet. So we start at the ground and work up. Yeah, because being grounded does extraordinary things, as you'll know, Jerry, to your nervous system. And we're looking at now the marrying of our physicality, our external physicality in our nervous system. So we start by thinking as performers, we need to be in the moment. We need to be present in the here and now. And if this body is tight and held and gripped, my brain is in fear mode. I'm in my my sympathetic nervous system. So I'm in fight, flight, freeze or the potential to flip there quite easily. As you talked about, sometimes that's useful. If there's a fire in the building and I want everybody out, I want that massive burst of power and adrenaline to go, right, everybody, let's go. Control, let's go. But if I want to be building relationships and reading people and influencing their minds to make decisions for themselves and the way we discussed, I need to be in my parasympathetic nervous system. I need to be in a state of release. So that's what we talk about: release and grounding. By grounding, we are accessing the parasympathetic nervous system. So it starts with the feet. So let's do it. All right. What we talk about is having in the soles of our feet a three-pin plug. It's like a British uh, you know, electrical plug that you plug into the wall. You've got one underneath your big toe. Have a little feel of that. I've got my shoes off actually here. Um, we work a lot with you'll have noticed Andrew, I made him take his shoes off. He was very perturbed by that, but he was very compliant.
SPEAKER_02:Um, I'm just getting my slippers off.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, take your slippers off. Everybody, kick your shoes off, kick your slippers off, give your feet a bit of a playtime. So I want to think, notice that big bony spur underneath your big toe. And I want you to think about that, that making contact with the ground, whether you're seated or standing. And then the bony spur underneath your little toe. Think about that pressing into the ground. And then in your heel. The massive bony spur of the heel is designed to take our weight. Can we think about plugging that into the ground? What we've got now is a nice triangle shape between those three points. So we want to think about the weight being distributed evenly between those three points, dropping into the center of our feet. So take a moment and in the mindfulness way, put your mind into your soles of your feet and let your weight drop as your feet spread across the floor. Even if you're seated, you can still do this. To achieve it well if you're seated, it's not going to be very helpful to be sitting with your weight falling into the back of your chair. So you might want to bring yourself forward, so you're sitting in the front third of your chair, and the spiky bits of your bottom, we call those the sitz bones, you can see why. Bottom of your pelvis are pressing into the chair as well. So we've got that nice connection now between the feet and the earth. And we've got a sense with through the soles of our feet that the earth has got us, it's taking our weight, and we can start to release. I'd like you to scan up. Can you just let go of your calf muscles? The tension there is no longer necessary, especially if we unlock the knees, if you're standing. Just take the knees off lock. Really vital that we think about release, and the knees are terrors for gripping and sending tension up the body, which translates all the way up to the brain, and we don't need it. Let it go. We can stabilize through our core rather than our skeleton, rather than gripping in the knees. Now, I'm actually gonna now, Jerry, if I may, I am now gonna take you to your head, and we'll meet up in the middle in a moment. I'd like you to imagine that from the crown of your head, where your spine would end if it came through your skull, there is a golden thread attached. This is from Alexander technique. And that golden thread is long, strong, it will never break, and it's attached at the other end to infinity. Those are Alexander's words, not mine. So that is lifting you. Now it's not from the front of your head. So, Jerry, I think you could bring your chin down just a millimeter, or there you go. It's from your crown. So notice the difference in me if you're if for Jerry, this is if I take it here, my chin comes up. If I allow it to be attached to my crown, the whole of my spine will lengthen. We want to be creating space in our body so the body can be used in the way it was designed to be, used free of tension. And those are the principles of Alexander technique, and those are the principles and techniques we've been using with our actors for generations. So you're lengthening up through the spine, at the same time, your weight is dropping either into your feet if you're standing, or into your um into your pelvis in the chair and into your feet. Now, so with that sense of length in the spine, I'd like you to think about the neck feeling free. So could you let the head just gently rotate on the spine? So by by rotate, I mean we're just giving gentle movements to the right, to the left, and then we roll to the back, we roll in the opposite direction. We might just gently roll forwards and then let the head float up. As if it's a helium balloon, it's tethered by your golden thread and by um gravity pulling you down into your feet and your pelvis. So it's tethered, but it's free. Nice sense of freedom in the neck. Now I'd like you to think about the upper chest and the upper back expanding into space. The way Alexander says it is that the outer edges of your upper arms are moving away from each other. I just think release and expand across the body laterally. Now imagine you've got tiny little airbags under each armpit, but just not allowing your arms to clamp down. So your arms, you might want to lift one arm and drop it, they're just floating by your sides in a state of release. And what we've got now is we've got forces working in opposition that allow our body to take up its rightful space. We've got the golden thread lifting us, we've got gravity dropping us down towards the earth, and we've got the lateral forces across the body. So we've got a nice cross, an intersection of forces that allows this body to expand and take its rightful space. Now, if we add into this that we're going to let the belly release, so just put your mind now into the area below your navel, below your belly button. You might even want to just take your hands, put your thumbs in your belly button, and let the rest of your hands span the area underneath. I call that my pot, you can see why. And let that soften. Everything underneath your fingers, can you let the muscles there just let go, release, and can you let them start to respond in sync with your breath? What we want to experience is that when we breathe out, the muscles just gently move towards the spine, and then when we need to breathe in, they'll just let go and move towards the fingers as we fill up with breath. We're gonna take a moment together and think I'm breathing out. As we do that, we'll notice the muscles move backwards towards the spine. And then think I'm breathing in. Notice the muscles move outwards to fill the space. What we're doing now is creating a vacuum free of that tension that we tend to hold in the muscles in the abdomen, which create this sense of urgency and grip. We don't need it. The golden thread is creating activation in the core that supports the spine. We don't need to grip with these muscles of the abdomen. And then we can center the breath. We feel that the motor for breath is behind the belly button. And that we're creating space for that breath to fill the body and energize the mind and give fuel to the voice. So space and time. How are you feeling? Good. What we we tend to do in our work is this is sort of to allow us an experience of being centered and grounded. And we hear those words banded around a lot, but that's this physically is what it means. Being grounded to the earth, being centered in the breath. What it also do, what it also does is allow us, as you said earlier when we were chatting, about what do I do when I notice I've got out of state? When I notice I've been triggered. We've got to have awareness in our body so we notice it physically. We can almost give name to it. We can start doing something about it. We need to notice the feelings in ourselves first and then know what to do about it. And for me, it starts with grounding. Feel the earth beneath your feet, whether you're seating, seated or standing, lengthening your spine, expanding your body, notice where you're holding tension, and just we say in acting, just say no to that, let it go. And then center your breath. We have a great uh mantra. It's it's very short and sweet. If in doubt, breathe out.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:If in doubt, breathe out. So that moment when you're triggered, breathe out.
SPEAKER_02:It's quite interesting sometimes. I just I sometimes joke about that because some people are doing exercises and they're just like this.
SPEAKER_00:Oh gosh, I know.
SPEAKER_02:And and their whole body, they don't know, they say it's not working. It's not working because your whole body's now gone into a sort of state of it's tensed up. And by the way.
SPEAKER_00:Tension is the enemy of gravity, right? Uh sorry, tension is the enemy of gravitas and credibility and creativity. Tension is the enemy, unless there's a fire. If there's an emergency situation, we probably want people to be a bit tense, so they get into cortisol and get going. Otherwise, let's get rid of it.
SPEAKER_02:Great. Um, and I will probably have said this already in this podcast. If you were driving your car, maybe you should have stopped. I hope you're still safe.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, operating heavy machinery, maybe not.
SPEAKER_02:It came with a safety warning, that one. Uh so uh we'll we might put that into the show anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Um Jerry, can I just can I do one more thing quickly, actually? Because I'm just thinking when we were talking earlier, and I and I I'm going to listen to your uh your band, and I was I heard you on one of your previous podcasts talking about creating space within the band for everybody to bring their part, for everybody to play their part well. What what and I asked you, do you tend to do a warm-up before you what do you take care of on your preparation? I really want to encourage everybody, whether you're an artist or not, leadership is an art, if you ask if you ask me anyway, think about what I could incorporate into my day that's gonna help me be able to access all this stuff we've just done really easily. Now, if you're carrying loads of habitual tension in your body from being at your laptop, dealing with the kids, driving in, getting on public transport, that's rammed, all that stuff that builds tension in our body we might not even be aware of, we're gonna struggle to access those things we've just done. If we spend five minutes only, go to the loo, take five minutes in there and do some stretch work, get notice where you're holding that tension, usually the shoulders, and really squeeze that tension out, rotate the shoulders, um, rotate the hip, all that stuff I was doing with Andrew about cleaning his wok. Um if you can get rid of that tension in your body, then you're gonna be able to access being grounded and centered much, much more easily. And other people aren't gonna read that tension in you, which you might not even be aware of. And as we're pack animals, if my shoulders are up by my ears from my habitual tension I've been carrying because my kids wouldn't get to school on time, then I'm gonna create that in my team. Everybody's shoulders are gonna end up round their ears because it's contagious as anything.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So if I can let that go, doing what actors do before they go on stage, then I'm setting up the conditions for everybody to have a better day.
SPEAKER_02:There there is this, uh, I mean, it's not just actors. Oh, hope that's not coming to get one of us, that that siren.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yes, it's an ambulance.
SPEAKER_02:It was an ambulance, yes.
SPEAKER_00:You can hear that.
SPEAKER_02:I can hear it. I hope my listeners appreciated it. Sound effects. Um many of us who've done, maybe in our younger days, even sport and athletics and that, there is a warm-up ritual. You you know, anybody who's been in a team dressing room before they go on the pitch, um, your talk about acting. I did a little bit when I was young. Uh my musical experiences, you don't just kind of say, Oh, where's the stage and walk out? Uh, it it doesn't tend to work. Maybe some guys are good at it. I have seen a few cool characters in my day. Most musicians and performers will go through some ritual that uh helps them get into that sense of groundedness they need for the first five minutes. It's often that first five minutes that once it goes well, you're in flight, you you get into the flow of the this the situation, and yet I it has surprised me constantly when working with people who want to be better presenters, for example, and their lack of willingness or whatever it is to rehearse is and to to prepare fear.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's fear.
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk about that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I it's this is my own theory, Jerry. So don't please attribute this to anybody other than me. But I think that that and I recognize it in myself. I've had to fight it. I think it's a fear of finding yourself wanting and startling yourself, and you trust that in the moment you're just gonna find it. You'll you'll it'll it'll happen and it will be okay. But if it's not okay, it's not your fault because you didn't rehearse. And if you well, not it's not not that it's not your fault, but it doesn't mean you're useless. Next time you'll rehearse and be better. So it leaves you somewhere to go. It's a fear of finding yourself wanting, is my feeling. There's that great expression, and and you'll know this, that that you know, creating the container in which you can play jazz. That's what rehearsal is. It's not that I'm wedding myself to doing it a particular way, unless I'm performing Shakespeare and the director wants it exactly that way. But even then, it'll still be alive in the moment. So it's creating the conditions that I can be in the moment when I'm with an audience. The audience might be somebody I'm presenting to, but it might be my team that I'm talking, I'm leading them through a difficult piece of change material, whatever it might be, I really need them to be on board. If I've if I've plotted it through in my mind, I can be in the moment with them as I work through it, not scrabbling either for the the script or the next thought.
SPEAKER_02:And and the rehearsal, it strikes me, is is the easiest form of feedback.
unknown:Go up.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, you unless you're really good at beating yourself up, I mean, it it's you're less exposed if you rehearse it and it goes wrong than you are if you're in front of the room and then it gets then you're feeling the heat. You know, the contagion works all different ways. You're feeling the heat of being in the moment and saying, Oh my god, I wish I'd prepared better. That that apart from anything else, that thought pattern isn't going to help you stay present. Um you're gonna break connection because people are gonna go, where did he or she go? They went somewhere. So so there's a tremendous value in doing that. We had an important presentation recently to a client, and we had to work with a team, and we had to present stuff that people knew about on our side, and I insisted that we rehearsed it. And we did rehearse it, and it was clunky as hell the first time, and the second time it got better, and by the third time we had flow, and that's what we wanted. And in the moment it was slightly different, and at the same time, looking back, I thought it was so valuable to us to have done that.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, why wouldn't you do that if you can do it? Sometimes you can't, and you've got to go out there and find it in the moment, but as you've just described, it risks being clunky as hell, and the psychological pressure that you're under to do that. If you have the opportunity to carve those neural pathways in rehearsal, they have an opportunity to become, you know, move towards being that sort of neural superhighway where things just feel easy. It blows my mind. The difficulty we have getting people to rehearse. My my feeling as well, and I don't know if you agree with this, but it's I think it's partly how we've been trained through our schooling and university systems. I think it's changing now, in particular in universities, but the focus on the what and not the how, the focus on the content. And I think people don't want to rehearse because they want to keep working on the content, refining the slides, refining the script, forgetting that's not what people are gonna respond to. People are gonna respond to you, how you show up, how you are. Do they trust you? Do they in those first moments when you walk on, do they feel this is somebody I believe and want to listen to? And if you're all bound up in tension because you're trying to work out what you're gonna say first or remember what you planned a few weeks ago, a few days ago, you they're just gonna read it's all gonna leak out your body, all that grip and tension. Let yourself do the rehearsal and go through the pain there and get the feedback as you said.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's actually probably as good a way to articulate as as as any. Um, and there is this just talking to this point, because I think it's really important, uh, and I want to just explore it slightly. I'm gonna segue it into something uh else that you know something about, and that is there is this kind of macho view that I'll I'm I'm just gonna wing it, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I know the winging it thing.
SPEAKER_02:The winging it thing, you know, you know, I I'm so good I can wing it. Now let's just reframe that into I love that you said that's macho, Jerry.
SPEAKER_00:It is interesting now that you've said that, and I think I I coach loads and loads of people, and and I coach groups. I've got to be honest, I think you're right. I hear it, I do hear it more from men than women. Oh, I just wing it. And I just say, why? Sorry, I interrupted you, but I just thought that was really interesting that you've said that.
SPEAKER_02:It's okay, I'm a man. I can take it.
SPEAKER_00:Are you winging it?
SPEAKER_02:Um, no, but I'm going to get to this next piece, which is um, I've had some uh limited experience of improv. Oh good.
SPEAKER_00:What do you do as a musician?
SPEAKER_02:As a musician, no, in life.
SPEAKER_00:No, but genuinely.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, genuinely, no. I I had I did some improv. I I did I ended up doing some improv workshops over 20 years ago. I went to I went to an event, uh kind of people-centered event up in Finland, and I this thing looked kind of cool. It was a Danish organization, and we did all these wonderful improv from yes and to giving gifts to all that stuff, and I came away completely like I thought I got exposed to so many things, but that was the most meaningful thing for me. It was like so fantastic. And then I went off and I've done some stuff even with my my kids who are now in their 20s when they were teenagers, and I think they thought I was mad, but they keep coming up to me saying, That was really brilliant. I still remember that weekend we did, and they ended up on the stage um at a part of the thing which was kind of like, oh my god, you know, like young teenagers going, Oh, what am I doing here? And yet they said it it was one of the most beautiful things they did, and they always remember that. And at the same time, and I know some of the people uh near me here who uh work a lot with the improv, it yes, it improviser makes it look uh easy, and there's a lot of work goes in to being good at improv, right? So let's maybe segue from winging it into how to be a great improviser rather than a winger. Could we make that distinction and work with it? Or is that stretched too far?
SPEAKER_00:Repeat the question. How to be a great improviser rather than a winger.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. Because the improviser um is is not making it up totally. Yes, we know the response, we know taking everything. They have it's like a jazz musician who who who is given a, you know, they interact, um, and they covered this off in boss class as well in one of the episodes. They're they're building it on a very solid foundation, all this improv. Like they know their key signatures, they know their core progressions, it's just that they're now taking it. So maybe we can you can share some things that come from that world that other the people listening to this now might say, Oh, that's a really interesting thing. I've heard about that. Maybe we explain a few techniques that people can use. Because when you're in a team dynamic, let's talk about it in the team dynamics way. When people are interacting with each other and you want people to listen to each other, you want people to build or become innovative, there are lots of great things that come out of the world of improv that enable people to establish those connections and flow that they need to be open to exploration. That's probably where I'm going with this. You can maybe take it where you want, but whatever.
SPEAKER_00:Uh uh just so much delicious stuff in there that I couldn't agree with more. And I can see that you really do get improvisation. You've used loads of words that are really important to me. You've used the the about listening, about yes and. We've also covered before about being present. And those are the three most important tenets of being a good improviser. Let's make the distinction first about winging it and then improvisation, and then let's move into what makes a great improviser, if that's all right. So for me, the difference between winging it and improvising is if you're winging it, you're in your bubble. You're there's that you're under pressure, and so you're going to be very focused in. Uh, we use a phrase um about turning your camera out. So you not being on selfie view, like a little, you know, you imagine you've got a little iPhone camera in your head, and it can focus in on you or it can focus out on the world. If you're winging it, my feeling is you know that you haven't done your work. So you're you're slightly in fear mode, and not for everybody. Some people love this feeling of winging it, but they're in that adrenalized mode, and the camera is in on themselves. So, how am I doing? How am I coming across? What am I going to say next? For me, improvisation is your camera is out, you're in curiosity and listening. So you're working to be interested, not interesting, which I think you're trying to do when you're winging it. And you're trying to get through your material, make it fun and or make it interesting and get out. When you're improvising, you are so attuned, so very present, very in the moment, and very all your senses are tingling. They're alive to what's going on outside of you, slightly what's going on inside me too. I've got to be aware of myself and my state, I've got to keep my state calm so that I can stay focused out. As soon as we get tense and scared, which is what lots of happens to lots of people when they don't have a script, because we think through school, we're supposed to know what to say in advance. But if we're fearful, our senses start to diminish and that camera starts to swing in. So we want to ground ourselves and center ourselves first as improvisers, so that we can now start to put the cameras out and start to turn on our senses and our listening. There's a phrase, listen like an improviser. It was the most important thing I ever learned as an improviser. It takes all the pressure off me. I don't need to be clever, I don't need to be interesting, I just need to listen really, really well, and it's all there. And audiences love it when they experience you bouncing off what's coming to you. It makes you feel very alive and and and alive to the moment, real, a human being in front of them. The other thing you talked about was yes and. So I'm sure it's very obvious, but just in case. We can go into, if I want to prove my expertise and somebody brings me an idea, you know, somebody from my team says, why don't we? Let's I use the example of a party. Why don't we have a party on the big roundabout in the center of town? Let's close the street and all that. What we can often do is go into yes, but as you'll know, Jerry. Oh, yes, but it shows my expertise, doesn't it? Yes, but uh we've done that before. Or yes, but you'll have to close the road. Yes, but have you thought about the budget, etc.? Now that keeps me safe because no matter what happens, if it's a success, uh I was, you know, yes, but give it a try, I'm safe. I'm a success. If it's a failure, I'm safe because I said, oh, there might be a problem. It's not putting myself out there and collaborating. If instead I flip to yes and, I might say yes, and let's also have a helicopter. Well, that might go completely out of control, but we might end up with some really creative ideas. In my improv world, that's great. In the business world, sometimes can be a little bit uh a little bit stretching on the budget and the health and safety. What I want to encourage people to think of at work is a yes and attitude. So I might say to this person who I want to feel safe and included, and I want to give them the space to bring their contribution, like you talked about, so they can really show up. I don't need to have all the answers, I want to encourage them to bring their best, but this isn't the right idea. I might say, I'm gonna say no to the roundabout for these reasons, blah, blah, blah. And I want to know what was behind the idea. So, what what made you think about the roundabout? Now I'm respecting that they've got a different life history and a different brain to me, and the key to what we need to do to come up with a solution that we want might be right here in the air between us two people or this team together. So I'm taking a yes and attitude. Yes, what is it behind that? And they might say, Well, it's it's it's iconic, the roundabout. And I'll go, Great, we're an iconic brand. Let's use an iconic location. Come on, everybody, let's build on this. I like this iconic idea. What else is iconic? So I'm taking a yes and attitude without actually affirming the particular idea. I'm affirming the individual and I'm affirming an offer that they've made. And in the world of improv, it's all about offers, curiosity and offers. Yeah. I make an offer, I make it, I make it with gusto, I commit to it, but I'm very flexible if my offer doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02:And it's also a very elegant way to disagree, uh, without necessarily pushing back in somebody's face, because we can say yes, and there could be another way of looking at that, for example. And yes, and have you considered this or that without pushing pushing it back into your face and saying it it reminds me of this notion of advocacy and inquiry. So I can advocate for what I want. Yes, and if I'm not curious enough to receive the other person's response and understand the response, um yes, but is going to shut that off very quickly. And anybody listening to this, it's not easy to incorporate yes and into your world. It takes a lot of practice, and and after a while, you start to get natural at it. And you know what happens is you notice your butts. And sometimes you're you I find myself, everybody. And I'm using my butt. Sorry for the analogy. I'm using my butt deliberately in this context because you start to choose butt when you think it's effective, and that's probably what plays into your idea of the yes and attitude is knowing when a but might be useful and not making it your default reaction to protect to protect yourself.
SPEAKER_00:And it it is it it's so weakening and yet such a power play, isn't it? And I it's really interesting once I was coaching somebody, um, and this woman, it was years ago now, but it really struck me, and it really struck me, Jerry. Not but uh, I'd been working with her for a while, and she'd come to me because she had every qualification from every top university you can imagine in across Europe and America and couldn't get a job. She couldn't, she'd get to the interview stage, she'd get a couple of interviews in, she never got the job. And I and yeah, and I was noticing in myself, you know, as coaches and leaders, we need to really notice our responses and really try to work out what is behind that response, what's the belief, the story? And then suddenly I it just dropped into my head, everything I said was received with yes but. She had no idea. I mean, it was astonishing how much yes but she used. And I think it's because she'd been so highly educated, she was in this very academic way of thinking and not in this relational way of thinking. So she was in critical mode, not creative mode. And once I explained this, you know, the brain sort of works a bit like a swinging door around criticality and creative thinking, and that she was shutting me down constantly with her yes but just flipped her into practicing yes and. I can't remember, it was years ago now, so I won't I won't make this up. But shortly thereafter, she got a big job. She had to practice this yes and, like you said, for quite a while, but she flipped. And it was, I actually looked forward to seeing her. And then shortly after she left me because she was suddenly really successful.
SPEAKER_02:And how did you feel about that? Wonderful when she left you.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, oh no, no. I love, I mean, look, I never disliked the woman. I just didn't look forward to coaching her because it felt like the door just kept slamming in my face. Uh I was so delighted that she got this job. I mean, first of all, it made me feel like I'd I could do my job well. And secondly, to see that trip change in somebody when they'd put so much investment into a future they just couldn't grab hold of. And it was one simple behavioral change. It was so exciting.
SPEAKER_02:And and it also demonstrates the power of contagion in that. I mean, one of the challenging professions, maybe people don't realize this, the coaches will realize this, but coaching can be quite a it drains your energy if the other person saps it because they stay in a very negative energy space. As a coach, you're you your your your aim is to practice some empathy, but at the same time, you need to be able to sometimes come out of the empathy, otherwise you can get suck, suck in. So it's actually a very great example of how somebody else's behavior, let's get back to that, was impacting your ability to do what do you your best work with them because they kept draining that, uh draining your energy as as you were interacting. That's what I heard anyway, something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's so you're right, it's so contagious. And you know, the first job of a coach is to check in with, I I believe, is to check in with themselves, the check in with your own body. So if what is well, I know you great coaches do this. I'm noticing this feeling coming up for myself. That's part of my toolkit to work with the client, but it's also my toolkit to work with myself. I'm having this response to this person. What can I actually do about it to change my own state? And in doing so, I'm hopefully going to affect them and find a key, a little crack to get in to help open them up.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, coming to the end, right? So already already, uh, I know it's uh there'll be a we we we'll have a sequel. Um we just don't know when we don't know whether anybody died at the end of this one yet. Um, so we'll have a sequel, uh maybe at some stage. Uh and I suppose I always like to sort of allow or encourage my guests to share a couple of key takeaways after we've had this conversation, particularly something that anybody listening out there would could just start to do. And we may have covered it off already, but just as a reminder, what what is something, one or two things you think people should at least explore that would help them become more aware of their behavior? What impact is that having? Uh what can they do maybe to change some things if they feel they need to?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, this is not specific to my world, but absolutely seek feedback. Seek as much feedback from people around you as you can. Remember that behaviors are habits, so they may require some self-awareness and some practice, and we can have it stack. Tiny little things that you can do to start shifting yourself are things like we talk about in acting, opening up your peripheral window. So we can run through life with sort of blinkers on, tunnel vision just in front of me. What's my laptop saying? What's the next meeting, etc.? And actually walking from meeting to meeting or walking to your transport in the morning, imagine that your peripheral windows go from that sort of tunnel vision to a bit like a mountain goat. You know, you've got peripheral vision huge round the sides, and you're going to really open that up. The way that the way we were trained to do that as actors was to open up our arms wide and like to their full extent to our sides, and then wiggle our fingers, see our fingers while looking straight ahead. So see them in your peripheral vision and then drop them. And then keep that window as you move through the world until you need to be in later focus, otherwise keep open. And what you're doing then is creating openness to other people, but you're also stimulating your senses in a much wider way. So you're more open to what's out there in the world. And that can really transform some of the stuck thinking that we have and can also start to impact our behavior. So that's one of them. And the other is incorporate some release work into your day every day. So let your shoulders go, shake your body out. I call it an Elvis, where you just shake out your whole body from top to bottom what you're standing with this sound. So get all of that tension out of your body. And if I may have one more, Jerry. And that you talked about this before. We spend a lot of our life in virtual meetings. So energize your spine. So sit on that front of the chair, lift up through your golden thread, and then as much as you can, try to bring your eye to that little green, red, blue dot of your where your lens is on your camera. And when you're delivering the important parts of what you're saying, introducing yourself at the beginning of a meeting, for instance, bring your eye to that green dot. And then people will really feel seen by you. And that is a fundamental human need to feel seen. The brain doesn't know that you're on a digital medium, the brain just experiences a sense of being seen. So we're all going to get a lovely oxytocin hit. We're all going to feel better and we'll feel that connection.
SPEAKER_02:And on that note, because we are coming to the end, there is a nice little video of you demonstrating this that people can check out. I just I you did it, didn't you? Yes, it was. Yes, I will have done. During COVID, it was.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, yes, yes, years ago.
SPEAKER_02:Years ago, yeah, when you were young. Okay.
SPEAKER_03:And beautiful.
SPEAKER_02:Or younger. Um, the other thing is uh you are somewhat famous for your spoof video, uh, which got 10 million hits. We never got to it, but that's for the sequel, I guess. Or people can watch it, look it up on what is there a title? Oh, actually, no, I know what. Um, how how do people get in touch with you? Can they reach out to you on LinkedIn? Because I think there's a link to it on your LinkedIn profile. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:There there should be, yes. Um, yes, I'm on LinkedIn as Kate Walker Miles. Uh Rada Business, the ask at Radabusiness.com. Um, and thank you, Jonathan's now bringing me. So we've got your ask at radabusiness.com. Uh you can also email me uh at KateWalkerMiles at RadhaBusiness.com uh or LinkedIn, yeah. And on LinkedIn, there should be the link to that. It was for a charity called Compassion in World Farming, and Jerry, it was the most terrifying thing I've ever done in my entire life. It was the one time, the only time in my life that I nearly ran away. I'm I am the most courageous person you'll meet. It's one of those things of being an actor, you've got to be courageous. But I very nearly Ran away from that. When you see it, you'll know why. But the audience were clearly going to hate me, and I was pretending that this occasion to be somebody that I wasn't. So it was supposed to be a real person, but it was actually acting, and the audience wouldn't know that. And they were going to loathe me. And it it was utterly terrifying. So that was an occasion where all these techniques I've been talking about, I couldn't have survived. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I couldn't have survived without my grounding, my breath, my physical release, releasing in my jaw, so the tension for my brain that it wasn't going straight to my brain, really centering myself.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, and I'm going to play this back now. So anybody out there thinking I'm always terrified when I have to do some of these things. And I gonna put a link to I'm gonna put a link to it in the show notes so people can watch how beautifully elegant and articulate a terrified person with the right pro appropriate training in front of an audience that was vehemently at one stage becoming somewhat hostile at some point. A little bit, yes.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, they hated me.
SPEAKER_02:And I you carried it off. I have to say, uh, in my research, I do do research for these programs. In my research, I thought that was pretty cool. And I'm going to say to people, go watch this. Um, it it might even touch on some of your values, maybe not, and uh enjoy it for what it is. And it's a great example of Kate um walking her talk and doing applying the techniques, and then there's a whole bunch of little videos on the RADA website of you giving tips like you did during this particular uh episode. So I'd like to say thank you, Kate, for sharing your wisdom, insights, and tips with me and my listeners here today. My pleasure. Coming up on leading people.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not saying it's easy. Uh I'm not saying that grief should be uh pure joy, that not at all. But there are ways, there are tips and tricks to make it lighter at times, recognize it when it needs to be recognized, get it out, do the crying, do the do the sadness, do the anger, do all of that. Um, and then return to this beautiful thing called life that someone like Dixie doesn't have anymore.
SPEAKER_02:My next guest is Julie Brown, a returning guest and one of the most listened-to voices we've ever featured on the podcast. In this deeply personal conversation, she shares how the tragic loss of her husband, polar explorer Dixie Donsacor, led her to rethink what it means to lead through adversity. Her new book, Discover Your Pivot, How Strong Leaders Can Adapt to Any Situation, captures these lessons. And in our conversation, she brings them to life in a way that's honest, inspiring, and ultimately hopeful. It's an episode about change, resilience, and rediscovering your strength when everything shifts. You won't want to miss it. And remember, before our next full episode, there's another one simple thing episode waiting for you. A quick and actionable tip to help you lead and live better. Keep an eye out for it wherever you listen to this podcast. Until next time.
