Finding Your Voice in a Complex World

Rachel Cossar: Welcome to another episode and conversations in the future of work. Today, I’m really excited to welcome on the show, Margaux Haglin, who has a fascinating background as a professional figure skater, which of course makes me think of my experience as a professional ballet dancer, and she’s now a communication voice coach. And so we’re gonna be focusing on that aspect of the future of work and how AI and tech comes into play. In those areas. So without further ado, I’d like to introduce Margaux Hagland. Take it away. Hi, Rachel. Thank you so much having me. I’m just so happy to be here.

Margot Haglund: Well, I’ve, like I said, thrilled to have you.

Rachel Cossar: If you wanna share just a little bit about you know, your background. We’ll we’ll get into it at more in a second, but just just high level. Like, what it is that you’re up to now? What kind of coaching you focus on?

Margot Haglund: So I am a voice and communication coach, and I love that you and I have the shared background of professional performance in the arts I came to voice coaching from, professional figure skating. I was a competitor in my early years and then coach and then eventually a principal performer for Disney on ice. And so much of that work opened the door for me getting into this career I realized that I wanted to integrate my love of performance and teaching from the coaching aspect into a modality outside of the ice. And after, a really fabulous career in event design for weddings and events, also a very creative field, I decided to realign with those 2 passions of teaching and performance. And go back to school and get my master’s degree. So I now have a master’s in voice teaching. It is a fabulous program in London. Where it was a deep dive into everything from the voice. How do you be expressive? How do you embody the voice? And our whole program was about teaching voice for actors. And so now in my profession, I take all of that training from the performing arts space and translate it into the business context. So all of my clients are are business oriented, and I really am so So happy to share these very powerful techniques that have been useful in my own life to voice in the professional space. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: So a lot of a lot of what you just shared makes you think of my transition from the stage as a ballet dancer into the corporate world of learning and development and communication coaching. It’s funny because both ballet and figure skating are nonverbal pursuits. Right? It’s all nonverbal body language expression. And now and now you’re focused on the voice. So I’m just curious, like, how does your career as a professional figure skater? How has it actually influenced your coaching?

Margot Haglund: That’s a great question because there’s so much there of, I think, the coach that I am today that stems from figure skating. In my early life as a competitor, so much of my training was all about the mental component. How do you train physically, but also get your mind in the right state to perform well and consistently. And so on a daily basis, I was practicing tools like visualization, self talk, what’s running through your head as you’re on the ice in practice. I I even as a young skater would watch in the mornings videos of Michelle Kwan and Tara Lepinski back in the nineties. Of them performing well and having that soak in on a subconscious level in prep for training. So all of these elements really were tools of Sports psychology. Yep. And as a coach now, I integrate a lot of those tools into speaking confidently. How do you go into a meeting with your team, a high stakes presentation, and utilize visualization for your voice, mental self talk to get yourself ready to perform well. So there’s a really beautiful bridge between the sports tools that were trained as a young skater and then used, of course, in Disney. And that’s a big part of my coaching today with clients. Yeah. Absolutely. That makes a ton of sense.

Rachel Cossar: Do you ever get pushback from people being like, well, I’m not a performer. So How’s that relevant? You know, that’s interesting.

Margot Haglund: If that ever comes up, what I would say to someone is, well, no matter if you are in a one to one conversation, or speaking to five hundred people at a conference, there is still an element of requirement. Sorry. Sorry. That was my husband calling.

Rachel Cossar: He’s the only one who can get through on do not disturb, by the way. Yes.

Margot Haglund: Well, see, this is a beautiful example. Let’s say that you’re on a Zoom call and a phone rings. All of a sudden, there is an element of being flexible to the performance space. And I never want to be moving anyone to be someone. They’re not. So you’re not performing in an inauthentic way. But you’re treating conversations and engagements as a performance space where you’re bringing a certain energy you’re bringing a certain presence. And I would offer that that’s maybe the same even if it’s, an interaction just between two people. Right. No. Absolutely. I it’s just funny.

Rachel Cossar: Sometimes in my coaching, I’ll have people say, like, or or relate this idea of training as a performer to somehow like acting or like being someone other than yourself. Right? And and so I just always find that that’s an interesting con I’m glad that it hasn’t come up for you yet. But if it if it does, it’s an interesting moment to kind of separate those those elements and kind of give them equal weight in their own space, if that makes sense. Absolutely.

Margot Haglund: And, you know, voice is so highly specific. It’s so much about your identity and your value. And so it’s always important to me to clarify for clients. You know, we’re using tools of performance to engage and connect, but your voice That’s you. That that can change. It’s it’s can float with whatever is happening in that that space in conversation or on the stage. Yep. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: So switching to focus more on your your clients today, like, what are the biggest challenges that you find they’re facing in terms of finding their voice.

Margot Haglund: Well, one of the things people often say to me is I know I need to have executive presence. I want that that tangible energy, that tangible feeling that I can feel from other people, but I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know what it is and I don’t know the steps to achieve that. And so a lot of what I do is blending mind, body, and intention in our speech coaching work. And those 3 elements in tandem create presence for yourself that is very authentic. So I work on a way that is physical. So we do a lot of embodied exercises, whether you’re practicing using your voice in many different ways. And then we do a lot of of exercises that are mental. We look at what are you caring about? Why are you speaking? What is that kind of foundation for getting up and presenting, getting up and having that conversation? Yeah. So I I think a lot of people, it feels like this very nebulous concept of what is executive presence, but just like training a sport. It happens each session, one session at a time where you build, okay, here’s some physical techniques. Here’s some mental techniques, and here is what I deeply believe in my values. And all of that comes together to build a presence. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: It is interesting because do you ever find that people sometimes come to you and they’re like, I wanna work on my voice and then you’re like, alright, we’re gonna start with the body. Like, do you find that people disembody this concept of their voice from their physicality? Oh, absolutely.

Margot Haglund: And I think people forget that your voice is such a key element of how you show up in the space. So for example, women often. You know, all of us have different resonances in our voice. And I see a trend with women of speaking very much up in their head, shall we say? Like, using that kind of head resonance. And the minute we start breathing, getting into our body, Our breath expands, our voice opens up. And all of a sudden, we activate a different level of resonance that actually in turn conveys executive presence in a very different grounded way. So I I’m gonna imagine that you find this and your work with virtual sapiens too that all of that presence begins in the body including your voice. Your voice is casting the body. So, absolutely. It’s it’s always fun to see people go, oh, see the connection. I see why this is important to work on just as much as anything else. Right. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I mean, when we see a lot with virtual Sapiens is because we focus so much on the video interaction, a lot of people view their own physical experience as secondary because they’re on a screen. Right? But in actual fact, like, the the video is or video is the only digital channel communication where your physicality is front and center and is actually featured. Right? I mean, and I would argue that if you’re, like, writing an email, your physical is important. If you’re on the phone, your physicality is important, but definitely for video, it’s important. Absolutely. And, you know, just as much voice as well.

Margot Haglund: The sound of, you know, I’m thinking about the the video component in the virtual world. Yeah. Volume and the level of taking a space in your voice really makes a difference of how is the listener perceiving you on the other end of the camera just like body language? Yep. Absolutely.

Rachel Cossar: So how do, how do you see technology coming to influence the way, like, the way we communicate specifically in the years to come? That’s the fun question.

Margot Haglund: And one of the things I’m most excited about that I’ve actually experienced in your tool through virtual sapiens is the ability for AI to simulate high stakes situations. So let’s say that you are giving a presentation, and you really need to practice the feeling of having all eyes on you. And that’s really hard to do when you’re standing in your living room. Practicing this with your spouse or a friend. AI has that amazing ability to be a as you say in virtual Sapiens, a mirror for you to cognitively and physically step into that space of I am on I am under the spotlight. And then because you’re practicing, your habits come out. Your body language will do what you normally do under pressure. And that’s a really rich space to work with in private coaching. So I I see AI as this kind of incredibly powerful additive tool. Do kind of that cognitive behavioral work of what does it feel like being in the spotlight?

Rachel Cossar: And how do you, like, where do you sit on the spectrum of as a coach, leveraging AI as as as you said, an additive tool versus, you know, having the AI kind of encroach on what you would do as a coach? Like, how do you, like, where do you sit with that? Yeah.

Margot Haglund: I sit, I think, right in a balance with it where I see all of the incredible benefits of practicing on your own and getting feedback that’s very concrete and really analytical. I have a lot of clients that are that are in the technology space and the finance which is a very analytical very analytical industries. And so, I think having a concrete breakdown is really helpful. And then I would offer kind of our world’s bridge in this great spot because the mindset component comes in working with one with a coach. Yep. And so I see the AI as this powerful reinforcement that can enhance a deeper conversation and deeper training that’s highly specific with individual coaching. Right. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: And and we that’s what we really work hard to Mhmm. That, like, that balance, as you said. We really work hard to strike it at virtual Sapiens because there are things that the AI can do that human coaches can’t do. Like, the scalable nature of feedback that we are able to provide through our AI, the on demand self serve quality. Right? That’s, right? Like, as amazing as it would be to just, like, have someone like you on call anytime I want to get some feedback, like, that would be really hard for you and also probably pretty expensive for the individual in question. Right? So but what we can’t replace is that level of contextual, you know, personalized nuance based on something in that exact moment. You know, we’re we’re we’re finding little idiosyncrasies in people’s behaviors that, like, might not be as obvious to a trained AI. Right? Absolutely.

Margot Haglund: And, you know, sometimes AI kind of raises the flag. And then looking through that flag could maybe be a little bit of a a journey of selling. Okay. That behavior that I’ve been exhibiting Oh, wow. I realize with my coach that it goes back into patterning that I learned from a different work environment that I’ve been conditioned to maybe from my family or my upbringing. And so I I see this balance as being, you know, so useful for people and and the authenticity element can only be refined with a coach. Yeah. Agreed.

Rachel Cossar: It’s like the tool can be reflective like a mirror. Right? And the tool the tool actually can also, in some cases, better than than humans actually just reflect back all of the behaviors that you did. Right? Like, this is what you did. And and the AI can almost con not almost can prove it. And, like, with I with screenshots, or, like, you look back through the video recording and be like, oh my god, I did do that.

Margot Haglund: You can almost kind of object if there’s an objective lens that you and I think there’s something really accessible about that. You know, it’s always hard to get feedback and especially if when it’s something so personal about communication And I can imagine with the virtual safety and AI, there’s an element of detachment and neutrality to it. Yeah. And it’s not like yeah.

Rachel Cossar: I was concerned about that actually when we first launched. I was like, people gonna literally hate getting feedback from this AI, but we found that if you present the feedback in a specific way and you always go back to the behavioral metrics, that led to that score or whatever, people do find that it’s a little bit easier to receive the feedback from an AI. They feel less judged because they’re like, oh, it’s just something that I did. It’s not like, you know, I I it’s it’s not like I’m feeling this judgment from this human coach Right. Nitpicking my behaviors, you know. And that’s been like a helpful surprise, I think, because then as you said, the AI can report out on the behaviors and then it’s in the interpretation of that feedback that you get to make the decision in terms of how you’re gonna move forward. Right? Like, and and the way that one person might integrate the feedback could be very different from how another person integrates the feedback. Absolutely.

Margot Haglund: And you know, Rachel, the same principle absolutely works for individual coaching. There may be things that I will offer exercises that we’ll do and I really appreciate when someone adapts it to themselves and say, you know, I tried this and it didn’t feel quite as authentic, but I realized that from trying this, it opened the door to something else and this is what resonates with me. And so I love that because I’m really co creating people’s speaking style. It’s absolutely not me saying, you know, x, y, and z, this is the path. Yeah. We are we are doing this in a cocreating way. Yeah. That’s awesome.

Rachel Cossar: So to finish, if there’s, like, one message that you think might help our audience members like, immediately improve their communication effectiveness? What would it be?

Margot Haglund: I would say be a fierce noticer of communication. So there’s so many elements that go into how we deliver a message. Our tone of voice our facial expressions, our eyes. And so if you can take 1 week, almost treat it like a game, 1 week of saying, I am going to turn up the volume on my observations of how people communicate. And then how I communicate. How do people receive? If I say something this way, how do they receive something if I change my tone slightly in the And what that does is it it trains what I like to call your muscle of awareness because when we are aware, we’re able to make choices that more more are incongruent with the message we want to deliver. So the more we can notice and be curious as a listener and as a speaker, the more you’re building that muscle and strengthening your ability to really communicate on point when you want to. It can be fun.

Rachel Cossar: I I find that people come back to me and say, oh my gosh. My world has opened up.

Margot Haglund: I’ve noticed so many different things that I do and that others do. That are creating a certain atmosphere. Yeah.

Rachel Cossar: And I think the two way street of that observation is so critical. Right? It’s I think sometimes at least in nonverbals, people are very preoccupied with observing and decoding other people’s nonverbals. Lie detection and, like, whatever. And it’s like, I mean, okay. Yeah. Sure. It’s cool to be able to maybe understand a little more about what someone might be thinking or feeling or how they might be staging, but you can never remove yourself from being an active party in the way they’re showing up. Right? And so you have to also make sure that you’re spending just as much, if not more time. On your own self awareness and noticing the way that you might be influencing those same people that you’re observing. I love that because you’re right. I mean, that that zone of presidents.

Margot Haglund: I I think about being in the zone from an athlete’s perspective where everything is just flowing. Things are working. And I’m sure you can think of many times in your life, even listeners on this talk show of when things just clicked. And I think about that in the sense of, you know, being a conscious communicator of how often do I step into that place where I’m completely present and I’m aware. And then all of a sudden just like you said, it opens up that channel for you to connect beautifully with others and others receive that. It is that 2 weeks. Straight. Yep. Awesome.

Rachel Cossar: Well, listen, Mario, thank you again for coming on the show and for sharing your very unique expertise and experience with our listeners. If there’s a way for our audience members to get in touch with you, they wanna learn more about your coaching, where where would the be the best way to do that. Absolutely.

Margot Haglund: So you can find me on LinkedIn, Margot Hagland, and also via email, margot@margohaglandconsulting.com. And, Rachel, thank you. I just always love talking to you and it’s been a pleasure to be here. Awesome. Thank you so much. And as always, thank you to our audience members for listening.