Can You Hear Me Now: Mandy Nicholson On Five Strategies Leaders Use to Diminish Distractions & Win in the Attention Economy
An interview with Karen Mangia
Break things down into manageable chunks. Just because we understand long-term vision and planning doesn’t mean every member of the team will. I make a point of communicating to the most junior member of my team which means everyone understands. The last thing we want as leaders is someone feeling less than others. They may never tell us and end up leaving or doing sub-quality work as a result.
We are all competing in an attention economy. From pings and dings to blinks and rings, companies and content constantly compete for our limited time and attention. How do great leaders turn down the noise and tune in to the messages that matter most? What does it take to be heard above the noise? And how do we create communication that cultivates community and connectedness in a distributed, distracted world? To address these questions, we started an interview series called “Can You Hear Me Now?: Top Five Strategies Leaders Use to Diminish Distractions & Win in the Attention Economy.” As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Mandy Nicholson.
Mandy is the Creative Genius Consultant, an Artist, Author and Creative Retreat owner who helps creative women launch, grow and scale their businesses and make more money.
Mandy is on a mission to crush the myth of the starving artist and amplify the voices of creative women, so they no longer feel invisible.
Thank you for making time to visit with us. Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is one of your most memorable moments, and what made it memorable?
There are so many! One of my most memorable moments was the day I launched my book ‘The Life I Won’, under my pen name A. J. King, live at a networking meeting in 2019. It had been such a journey writing the book. I started it in 2013 but spilt coffee on my laptop and lost the manuscript. It was 2018 before I was ready to start writing again and the story just flowed.
What is the most unexpected twist in your career story, and what did you discover from your detour?
I could say the pandemic because it impacted everyone, but I was thriving in my business. It was the death of my husband Gary in April 2020, not from COVID-19 but due to the loss of available resources in the NHS. Gary was born with Cystic Fibrosis and had a bilateral lung transplant in 2004. The life expectancy post-transplant is 6 years but Gary’s zest for life kept him here for 16 years and I shared 7 of those precious years with him. His death had a profound impact despite me knowing he was on borrowed time. However, his influence stayed with me, and I decided to go for my biggest dreams after he passed. I had a castle in Scotland on my vision board as my BIG goal, so I put the house on the market and sold it the same day. We were off to Scotland to create the wealth to buy the castle. But the universe had other plans.
According to a recent Harvard Business School study, the most essential communication skill for leaders is the ability to adapt their communication style. How do you adapt your communication style?
Communication has always been my priority as a leader. I have multiple points of communication in my business. Communicating with my team must be motivational, with my online audience inspirational, with my B&B guests welcoming and warm and at networking events and business meetings I am authentic and professional. Positioning yourself as the expert no matter which audience you are communicating with is vital to building trust.
Clarity is critical as well. What lessons have you learned about how to communicate with clarity in our distributed world of work?
Clarity comes from truly understanding what your customer wants, what motivates them and how they feel. Often how the customer feels can be overlooked by focusing too much on who they are, where they live and their position in society. Understanding how they feel in addition to their status helps to bring a new level of clarity to communication and conversations.
We often discover what works by experiencing what doesn’t. Tell us about a time when your communication didn’t lead to the desired results and what you learned from the experience.
I recently participated in Channel 4’s Four in a Bed and was adamant that I would check the other premises to the standard I checked my own. Watching this back on TV made me look picky rather than having high standards. I had failed to take into consideration the audience and their reaction. I have since experienced some online trolling, but it made good TV so I have shrugged it off and accepted it as part of the process. Learn and move on.
What advice would you offer to other leaders who are struggling to have their messages heard and actioned?
Never be afraid to change your messaging, re-brand or re-invent yourself. Nobody remembers who you were in the online space after a few months anyway. It is a fast-paced world and memories are short. You’re only as good as your last piece of content, but nobody remembers the one before.
Leading a distributed team requires a different communication cadence and style from leading a team in person. What are five strategies any leader can deploy to improve communication and clarity when leading a distributed workforce? Please share a story or example for each of you can.
1 . Include your team in your process. Each year I run a free Planning and Goal Setting Workshop for my online audience, and I include my team. I share the planning methods I use, how I create my vision and mission and how they cascade into goals. This helps my team to understand how I think and what is important to me, then there are no surprises as we move through each quarter.
2 . Show a genuine interest in your team’s goals. Recently my long-time Online Operations Manager decided it was time to follow her dreams. I could tell she was nervous when she told me, but I gave her 100% support and encouraged her to go for it. I also asked her to participate in recruiting her replacement and she was a big help. She decided to stay with me for a few hours a week rather than leaving altogether a win for us both.
3 . Break things down into manageable chunks. Just because we understand long-term vision and planning doesn’t mean every member of the team will. I make a point of communicating to the most junior member of my team which means everyone understands. The last thing we want as leaders is someone feeling less than others. They may never tell us and end up leaving or doing sub-quality work as a result.
4 . Check understanding by repeating comments using different methods. I hold monthly team meetings and create an Agenda even if we are only covering a couple of topics. I make a point of repeating important tasks several times during the meeting, offering alternative methods to achieve the desired results. I follow up with an email summary in addition to recording the meeting and sending the recording to the entire team not just absent members.
5 . Remember that everyone hears and understands things differently. You can say the same thing to three people and experience 3 different results. When I recruited my new team members 3 months ago, I suggested using Chat GPT for ideas and structure. One of my new team members understood this completely but another just copied the content directly from the App. I had to hold monthly one-on-ones with this lady to guide her through using AI without using AI.
What are the three most effective strategies to diminish distractions when there is so much competing for attention?
Stay in your lane. Have confidence in your ideas, strategies, and communication. If you constantly compare you will become confused and so will your messaging. Trust what you know about your customers and ensure you speak directly to them.
Have a strategy for market research and feedback and how you use it to strengthen your brand. Use open questions, polls, and anonymous questionnaires to help people feel they can be honest. Apply the new knowledge to your solid plans and integrate changes as aligned actions.
Have a clear 12-month plan for your business with a simple strategy overview for your team. If you make changes, understand how these fit with your mission, vision and goals. There is only one you, don’t try and be someone else!
What is one skill you would advise every leader to invest in to become a better communicator?
Mindset for self-confidence — banish that Imposter Syndrome!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I am launching a book in October called ‘Beyond The Ordinary’ — Navigating The Creative And Neurodivergent Mind — because it is time the neurotypical folk understood the weirdos in the room!
How can our readers stay connected with you?
I am on all platforms as Mandy Nicholson Creative Genius Consultant and via my websites: www.mandynicholson.co.uk & www.theartbankdalbeattie.com
Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success.
About The Interviewer: Karen Mangia is one of the most sought-after keynote speakers in the world, sharing her thought leadership with over 10,000 organizations during the course of her career. As Vice President of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce, she helps individuals and organizations define, design and deliver the future. Discover her proven strategies to access your own success in her fourth book Success from Anywhere and by connecting with her on LinkedIn and Twitter.
