Confident Communication Techniques for the Workplace With Mike Acker

Hello! It’s Kristine here with the Express to Impress podcast. This week, I am excited to share a conversation I had in March with Mike Acker, a communication coach, and author. We dive into many topics related to confident communication, particularly in American business settings. Mike shares personal experiences and insights on public speaking, Mexican and American business cultures, impromptu speaking, and body language. One of my favorite parts of our conversation was sharing embarrassing stories of our communication mistakes.

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Mike Acker Introduction

 

Kristine:

 

Let’s go ahead and get started. All right. So welcome, Mike. I am so happy that you are here with me today on the Express to Impress Podcast. It was really fun to discover somebody who is also a communication coach and has also lived in Mexico. So that was really awesome. And I want to learn more about your journey. I want to learn more about what you’re doing now and explore how our theme of how to communicate confidently in an American business environment. So let’s kick off with you telling the listeners what it is that you do.

 

Mike:

 

Absolutely! So, first of all, thank you so much for having me on the call. And it is crazy all those kind of connections right there. So I love that we can do that. And 100%, let’s give something to the audience that’s going to be hugely beneficial. Every day I start with a simple prayer: “Help me help people.” So that’s my goal for you, Kristine. It’s my goal for your audience–that ultimately people go, “Man, that was helpful.”

 

So who I am. I am a communication coach and author, and Tedx Speaker, and I actually train people to become public speakers to get up there and help build their career, and I have a speaker agency as part of that. So that’s all part of what I do.

 

And then more so, who I am is I’m a person who helps people realize their potential, starting at home with my wife and my son, and then with my friends and beyond. Really, ultimately, everything I do stems from that. Furthermore, my history is part of my parents, and so my dad was a drug dealer. My mom was a witch, and then they became missionaries.

 

Kristine:

 

That is such a unique background. I read about that on your website, and I was hoping you would bring that up!

 

Mike:

 

Okay, so can you tell me where to go from there? Well, here’s what I’ll say that’s so interesting about that. And why I went from just beyond the do, and then who I am and my mission. And it’s because really when you look at confidence and communication, whether you’re interviewing for a job, whether you’re going to become a paid professional speaker, or anything else, you are part of your message.

 

So if I say something that someone else says, it comes across differently because my own life and my own experience and everything that I am colors that. So one person gets up and says, you think about someone like John Maxwell, a leadership guru. For years his books were the only leadership books at Barnes & Noble, and he says, “Leadership is influence, nothing more and nothing less.” Now, when he says it, it has a whole different depth than when someone who just learns it gets up and says, “Well, after all, leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.”

 

So 100%, who you are and how you see yourself covers what you say.

 

Mike’s Experience Living in Mexico and Adapting to the Culture

 

Kristine:

 

Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for sharing that, and it’s helpful to have that context, and I wish more people would share some of those personal details that can allow us to connect and understand a little bit about where the person has come from.

 

Mike:

 

Absolutely.

 

Kristine:

 

All right, so can you tell me a little bit about your experiences abroad? I know you lived in Mexico for many years. Can you tell me a little about that?

 

Mike:

 

Yeah. So the fun part about that is that when I moved to Mexico, I absolutely didn’t want to. So it was not fun, and it was a tear-inducing move. I had just gotten to a spot of confidence in the United States. I had just overcome some speech impediments, and I was able to get up in front of people and was doing really good for the last couple of grade school years. And then we moved to Mexico, and I had to start all over. No friends, no language ability.

 

And some people pick up languages really fast, like my dad does and my sister does. But my mom never did, even after going through immersive Spanish-speaking schools, and I took after her. Luckily I was young enough still. So it was really hard. And after taking a lot of classes, a lot of schooling, and speaking Spanish, I still couldn’t do it. So I had the idea that I would do what my friend Andy did. Andy enrolled in an immersive school program. It was a private Mexican school. A lot of them spoke English. They were enamored by it. Wow! This is 1988 when he did it. So it was a while back, right? It was very different than it is, you know, today in Mexico.

 

Movies came out six months later, so I thought I would do the same thing that Andy did. And my dad knew someone at an inner-city public school in Mexico, and he enrolled me in that school. And I was bleach blonde hair, very pale skin, blue eyes, tall, buck teeth that would make a horse jealous, and I was immersed, literally dropped off. I mean, literally, my dad and I drove there, and he put me in the courtyard, said, “I’m gonna go talk to the principal. And when I come out, you can decide whether you want to stay or not.”

 

Kristine:

 

How terrifying!

 

Mike:

 

Oh, I actually later on processed it with counseling how dramatic it was. The entire school gathered around me and my Run-DNC-inspired clothes and literally formed a half circle around me because I backed up to a wall to protect myself. And the entire school pointed fingers and laughed at me and said stuff and yelled at me. We’re talking kindergarteners through sixth grade. I’m in fifth grade. AND the teachers! And then they would run and send people and they’d poke me and say, “What’s your name?” So I stood there going, “Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.” My dad comes out, I’m like, “I’m not leaving, dad. Come rescue me.” That whole deal, and my dad said, “Alright, Mike, I’ll pick you up when school’s out.”

 

Kristine:

 

Oh no!

 

Mike:

 

I was enrolled, and even though it was my idea, I was stuck and couldn’t leave. I literally had psychosomatic fevers that were created by my pure nervousness of getting up in front of people or even showing up at all. So it was this very, very scary feeling out of my ordinary.

 

So when people who are coming from another place, I have lots of clients from around the world as well. So when they’re coming from South Korea, or they’re coming from China, or they come from India, or they’re coming from places in the Middle East, and they’re talking about them, I’m like, I get it. That’s not fun. It’s not fun to feel like, what are they saying about you?

 

And that expression that they had about me, those thoughts that they had about me, the things that they told me, I started leaning into. So by the time I was in seventh grade when I would get up in front and butcher my Spanish and speak in front of people, everybody would laugh, and the teachers thought I was doing it on purpose. They thought I was a class clown. Now I was actually more of a teacher’s pet, but they would think I was a class clown. So I started getting in trouble. So I started leaning in. If you’re going to label me a troublemaker, I’m going to be a troublemaker. If you’re going to label me a class clown, I’m going to be a class clown. If you’re going to label me a jokester, I’ll be a jokester. So I shifted my identity to match it.

 

Now, thankfully, I persevered through that and eventually got comfortable and just had to do it. Thankfully, there were some wise people in my life. Thankfully, I had some resources that I held on to, books I read, things like that, helped me cultivate an idea of self. And by the ninth grade, I was able to really lean into, “Okay, this is who I am. I’m going to be who I am.” And if you say that, you know, whatever you go, you go ahead and say that. And that really helped me because that was a year I got bullied extremely by a senior in high school. But even though I was having some difficulties with that bully and such, that was a year that I leaned into Mexico and fully embraced it. And by the time I left Mexico, I was more Mexican than I was American.

 

So there are cultural influences still with me today. There are songs I love still today, and I absolutely love Mexico and the Mexican people. And it was a very interesting aspect and made me feel this. I know what it’s like to be on the outside.

 

Kristine:

 

Absolutely. Wow. Well, I’ve never heard something like that, and that’s a really unique life experience. And I imagine it comes through in all of your work, and you have so much to pull on when it comes to communicating, especially in another language and a different culture. And I love that you came out on top, that you had those resources you pulled on. You hung in there, and things turned around for you. It’s incredible.

 

Mike’s Path to Coaching Confident Communication

 

Kristine:

 

So we’ve touched on this a little bit, but was there anything in particular that sparked your interest in coaching others to speak with confidence? That’s a big theme in the work that you do.

 

Mike:

 

A lot of what I’ve done is throw the mud at the wall and figure out what sticks, and unfortunately, that’s how I kind of got to speak with confidence. It was just through a pure, sheer drive to push myself through grit, resilience, those kind of things. Lots of trial and error, some horrible stories of just doing the worst faux pas that you can do type of stuff. And I got there.

 

So by the time I got there, I started taking it for granted that I could speak with confidence, that I could get up there and do well. And what I realized was not everybody had that same thing. And maybe they were even further along in age, but they still didn’t speak with confidence, or they were younger, and maybe if I didn’t work with them, they weren’t going to get to the spot they needed to.

 

So I started coaching just my team and helping them out, and then some business leaders were like, “Hey, Mike, I got this presentation. I know you’re good at this. Can you help me put this together?” Yeah, sure, let’s grab a coffee together. So I did it like that for years, and I would volunteer for some high school stuff and volunteer for some college stuff. So I’d help people do that.

 

And then I needed some extra money on the side when I was living in California, just thinking, you know what, we’re not going to rent out our place and just make some extra money. And so I just started doing it outside of that normal network I’d done, and it was really fun. I was doing it enjoyably. And then it started growing and growing and growing, and more people started reaching out. I wrote a book, and that catapulted the outreach that people were having towards me. I was actually working in executive sales at that point in time, so I wasn’t really coaching people. So this is a fun place for me to do it. And then we got to a spot where the two were competing, and I chose coaching.

 

Stories About Communication Mistakes

 

Kristine:

 

Awesome! You mentioned you had some trial and error along the way, and mistakes are some of our best teachers. Can you tell me one of those stories of when you were speaking and something went terribly wrong?

 

Kristine:

 

Please indulge me!

 

Mike:

 

I was serving as an intern at church when I was 18 years old, and the pastor was invited to speak to a nursing home and kind of give them a devotional type of speech, a small little sermon. So he said I should go do it because he could see that I was gearing up for this.

 

So I went in, thinking that I am just amazing, and I wrote a kind of devotional speech on Psalm 23, which is one of the most well-known Psalms. And there’s a part where it says, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” And so I went in there and pretty much told all these people, “You’re about to die, like death is impending.” It was just the most somber, depressing, mournful speech. I basically led them in their own eulogy, and I didn’t really realize it until afterwards. It was like, “Well, that was really somber,” and I really thought through it and thought, “Oh, that’s what happened.”

 

There was another time, and I was actually speaking at a church. And someone thought a lady was my wife, and I was single at the time. I was 26, and she was 50, but she’s just super young and vibrant, and I’m energetic. So this guy thought we were married, so for some reason, as I’m preaching, I decide to include this very relevant fact. And I said, “Yeah, so-and-so thought that so-and-so and I were married because I totally go for women twice my age.” And then I was like, “Oh, I mean, not that you’re old. I mean, it’s just that, well, I’m…” And I just kept on backpedaling, and her husband, who was this extremely stoic and great guy, just goes, “Mike, just move on.”

 

I swore without knowing I was swearing one time. I didn’t know, kind of grew up in Mexico, so some of the words I didn’t know, and I said it. It was a fun one.

 

I meant to do a really creative speech one time where I was applauding this one guy, but I thought I was going to do it in a very creative way. So it was in the third person, and the whole way I’m talking about instead of saying, “You know, Mark, is this… Marcus,” I did it like, “So they said this one guy was this and this guy…” And everybody thought that I was just talking about myself the entire time. My mom gets up afterwards and says, “Mike, that was SO embarrassing.” And she said that it just seemed like I went up there and bragged.

 

Kristine:

 

Oh wow!

 

Mike:

 

There’s many more!

 

Kristine:

 

Yeah, well, thank you for indulging me. And yeah, I mean, you’ll never forget those lessons, obviously. And I’m sure your speaking is better today because of it. But that first story really resonated with me. I’m gonna share a quick story here of my own.

 

When I was about 16, our youth group delivered the sermon at church, and I was in the preacher capacity. And I don’t remember exactly what we were preaching on, but I remember when I was reading, or when somebody else was reading because we all took turns reading, somebody said a word that was vaguely sexual. And it was the funniest thing in the world to me, and I knew that in this moment, you can’t laugh. But just because I couldn’t laugh, it made me want to laugh so hard. So I was the preacher, and I was back there giggling and trying with all my might to stop laughing, you know.

 

But I did learn a valuable skill. I learned that you have to think of something really awful and sad immediately to shut it down, you know. But everyone got to see me up there giggling for a while.

 

Mike:

 

So, probably my worst one that I’ll share with you since you shared that. Once again, I was preaching, and I was talking about the spot where Jesus is talking to a woman who is very loose. Many people believed she was a prostitute.

 

So I said, “Now, this is really an interesting story right here, so let’s pause here and unpack this because there’s a lot that this has to teach us, which is interesting because I usually don’t think that a prostitute has anything to teach me.” And I was single, and I paused, just like, “Oh, that was an interesting comment right there,” and the whole room lost it. I mean, it was done. I pretty much just wrapped up a couple of small little things and then was just done. It was like, “Alright, well, alright, let’s pray and be done.” Because there was no way, there was no way. When I started moving on, people would start laughing again. It was just pointless.

 

Kristine:

 

Well, I’m really glad to hear that you had that trust and relationship with the audience, that they knew there was humor in that, and they weren’t left there scratching their heads.

 

Mike:

 

Yeah, there have been other moments that are just embarrassing, but not any funny things.

 

Confident Communication Tips for ESL Professionals

 

Kristine:

 

As you know, I primarily work with professionals who speak English as their second language. Many of them struggle with confidence. Even my clients who are just amazing, and their English is great. But they know they don’t speak English in the same way as they speak in their native language, and maybe that’s a source of pride for them–is how articulate they are in their native language. Maybe they are worried about their accent when it’s not a problem at all.

 

So, how do you empower your clients to speak confidently? And do you have any unique recommendations for professionals speaking in their second language?

 

Mike:

 

Yeah, absolutely. So, a quick little tip for a lot of people on that is when you are going back and forth between languages, you’re teaching your mind that when you get to a stumbling point, to take a shortcut. So, a lot of people who are in that situation, they’re saying, “I just feel like I’m not articulate in the sense of I can’t grab the right word. I don’t have the right word,” and then I’ll ask them, “Do you speak another language or switch at home?” Yeah, I do.

 

Do you switch back and forth? And they go, “Yeah, I do.” So, Spanglish too. Like, here I am talking like this, “Estoy ahora hablano en español.” It is still on the… and so you go back and forth. And often what happens when you speak two languages, and the other person does too, you just switch when you get to a hard spot. But what you teach yourself is you teach yourself that you don’t have to find the word. And then, when you’re speaking in English or whatever language and you get stuck, you don’t know what to do.

 

So, this is a little tip for people who are bilingual.

 

Kristine:

 

Yeah, thank you. I love that. I love that. Thank you.

 

Mike:

 

And not that you can’t switch, but make sure you finish your train of thought completely. Y ahora estoy hablando español. So, make sure that it’s not just in the middle, and it’s because it’s convenient. Typically, what’s convenient doesn’t make great strong habits. It’s convenient to sleep in. That’s not a great long-term habit if you’re going to work at eight o’clock in the morning.

 

So, a quick little note on that. I write a lot of books, and the newest book is called “Speak with Confidence,” and in that, I talk about my filter or really identity. See, a lot of times, what happens is we experience criticism, but more often, we perceive that we’re criticized. So sometimes people say, “I can’t understand you.” So that’s received criticism. Sometimes, though, we talk, and people scrunch up their eyes and move their heads to the side, and we perceive that they can’t understand us, or we have a personal criticism.

 

So, we have this criticism, whether it’s received, perceived, or personal. We have this criticism, and what do you do with that? A lot of people either fight it like, “Well, it’s your problem that you can’t understand,” or just run away from it, or they just feel it. And that’s what you’re talking about here. People are feeling that inadequacy, feeling that perceived criticism. They’re feeling even some of the received criticism. What do I do? “Oh, my gosh! I’m just not as good.” And we know that when we sit in that pity party, it just gets deeper and deeper and deeper. So what do you do? You need to filter it out.

 

So, in the book, I provide a filter, and the filter goes like this: What do you appreciate about yourself? What do you need to accept about yourself? And what do you need to improve? Let’s say accent. Now, I have an accent when I’m talking in Spanish, so I appreciate the fact that I can speak Spanish. I accept the fact that I will always sound like an American because my mouth movements are trained, and my mouth muscles are trained to speak American English. Improve? I can make sure that I am enunciating more and making sure that I am articulating, in the sense of my tongue touching my teeth, touching my lips, etc., so that I am articulating everything that I need to say and strengthening my mouth muscles.

 

So, a lot of people, what they do is they just feel it, and they don’t know what to appreciate, accept, or improve. So if that’s been done towards you, appreciate the fact that you have a great, unique, different heritage. That’s cool. You should appreciate that. And even if you don’t like something that your country’s doing, there’s something to appreciate about where you came from. There’s something you appreciate about being a bilingual person. There are things that talk about what your mind does differently when you can speak multiple languages. So what can you appreciate? What can you accept? Why fight against something? Why fight against something that you really can’t change?

 

By the way, my skin is pale, I’m slowly balding, and I am six foot two inches. Those are pretty much set in stone. And there are some things that are pretty much set in stone, or there’s such high-level hanging fruit that they’re really hard to change. Yeah, I could go get hair plugs. Okay, cool. I mean, I could, but I don’t want to. I could hunch or carry myself differently to be smaller. I don’t know, I could do something, but it’s so drastic that for most people, it’s not worth it.

 

However, you can improve it. So what can you improve? For those people, I encourage them to really focus on strengthening their mouth muscles and grabbing hold of the phonemes they can’t pronounce, working on those a little bit more and making sure that they’re clear. But when you walk through that, then you filter that perceived criticism, and it turns to confidence.

 

Kristine:

 

Absolutely, so many great points there, and I think what stood out to me most is that some criticism is perceived, and it’s not even real. And yet, that influences how we feel about ourselves and the thoughts that come into our minds.

 

One thing I’m frequently talking to my clients about is that there are many native English speakers who are not excellent communicators. They are getting coaching to become better communicators because it will help them in their careers. But just because you’re a native speaker doesn’t mean you’re a great communicator. I tell them it is way more important to be a great communicator than to be great at English. So noticing when somebody gets lost, being able to navigate that situation, or explaining something in a different way, showing you’re a good listener, and nodding your head, not interrupting people, presenting your ideas with confidence. That’s so much more important than speaking with perfect grammar or a perfect accent. So, keeping that in mind, giving themselves permission and having a more holistic view of what it means to be a great communicator and speak confidently.

 

Mike: That’s fantastic. Very good.

 

Tune in For Part Two and Get More Confident Communication Tips!

 

That brings us to the end of the first episode about confident communication techniques for the workplace with Mike Acker! I invite you to tune in for the next episode to hear the rest of my conversation with Mike. You will hear Mike’s excellent tips for conveying confidence and authority through verbal and nonverbal communication. Our conversation also touches on Mexican and American business environments. We explore the relationship aspect of Mexican business culture and how it differs from American business culture.

 

In addition to sharing information on my podcast, I host LinkedIn Live Workshops on a range of communication, cultural, and job search topics. I invite you to connect with me and check out my recorded workshops that interest you, like How to Prepare for an Interview More Effectively With AI, How to Use ChatGPT in Every Step of Your Job Search, and How to Manage Your Nerves During an Interview.

 

Thank you so much for listening to the Express to Impress podcast. If you found this episode useful, please remember to share it with a friend! See you next time. Bye!