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Mastering Leadership Communication: Insights from Dimitrios Loukakis · Better Together

• Shawn Sundsvold: Hey everyone and welcome back to Better Together, the podcast that shares the stories, the lessons, and the practical advice from founders and leaders that can help you improve your business. I'm your host, Sean Sonsvold, along with my partner in business and in life, Kelly Sonsvold. Today's guest is someone who helps leaders communicate with clarity, confidence, and real impact. Demetrius Lukakis is a communication specialist, speaker, and UCLA professor who works with companies around the world to improve how their teams present, lead, and connect. From executives and attorneys to sales teams and emerging leaders, he focuses on turning communication into a tool for influence, not confusion. With a background in voice studies and performance, Demetrios brings a unique perspective on how we use our voice, structure our message, and truly engage an audience. So Demetrios, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here. Dimitrios Loukakis: Thank you, thank you for having me. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, this is gonna be an exciting conversation. Cause I remember, you know, we first met at a networking group and you were presenting actually on how to use your voice better in giving a presentation. And I was mesmerized by it, you know, just, and I just, love the way you speak. It's very professional, very clear. And I know you've got some theater background as well in there. So I just, want to kind of set that stage for the conversation here. But let's start with what you're doing right now. kind of describe for our listeners what it is that you do and how you help people. Dimitrios Loukakis: So thank you. First of all, thank you for this wonderful introduction. Very well researched and also the compliment for my own speaking skills. ⁓ actually don't speak as ⁓ much. I don't use as a speaker in some ways, but I tend to make other people speak. But in case, ⁓ I I a voice and communication specialist. I'm a trainer and a coach and I train to communicate in more effective ways. in my field, I very often people whose ⁓ somehow doesn't Sometimes it's because the message itself is not very clear. Sometimes it's because they're speaking to the wrong audience, ⁓ or sometimes it's the way they communicate, the way they use their body language or their voice perhaps, doesn't do the message And this is what I'm fighting to change basically in life is to train teams, sometimes sales teams, sometimes the marketing teams, sometimes they're teams that know the technical stuff really well, but don't know necessarily how to extract value teaching them how to do that in engaging, effective and impactful ways. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome, awesome, thank you. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, that's really good. mean, communication is just so, can be so broken within organizations. So I could imagine if you have a self-aware leader who's going, hey, there's something broken in our communication, our systems. We can, you you're the perfect person to call. problems are you most often solving on that for companies and ⁓ leaders that you work with? What are the most common problems? Dimitrios Loukakis: Okay, so usually the most common problem starts from not understanding that communication happens in the listener's terms. is the golden rule of communication, if you like. What is the, that don't, we think about what we say and how we communicate. ⁓ We really think so much about how the other person receives that information. ⁓ So problem ⁓ that be, for example, that I'm speaking to a group, my team perhaps, or an audience of 20, 30, 50, 500, 5,000 people, doesn't matter. ⁓ even though my ⁓ is very powerful, I don't support it in my non-verbal communication. So things like, for example, monotone, monotone voices. You people speaking on one single tone and... as you're beginning to realize this is incredibly difficult for someone to pay attention to me. Now imagine if I had a presentation of about 20 minutes, I could be saying the most important and interesting things. But as you're beginning to listen and perhaps the listeners themselves can realize that it's very, very difficult for them to pay attention to me. So how I communicate something is actually can undermine the message itself. So to speak in more engaging ways, to speak in more impactful ways, to get people to engage with the audience and speak to them rather than at them has plays a huge role in whether they're going to follow up on that call to action or whether they'll leave going straight to have that coffee and forget about what you were talking about altogether. We're very good at performative listening. which means a lot of the times when we smile and nod without actually listening to what the speaker is saying. that's I'm trying to end. I'm trying to ⁓ create more honest relationship between a speaker and the audience. ⁓ I'm trying to create a more honest relationship between managers and their teams. For feedback, for example, do not be one-sided. but for feedback to be a conversation and a conversation to be not an illusion of a conversation, but a genuine conversation where leader actually listens ⁓ takes feedback, not just offers feedback ⁓ does that in the most productive way possible. ⁓ are some things that I'm trying to address, ⁓ honest communications, more impactful communication and speaking, ⁓ well as a more productive conversations that we can have in a workplace. so that both parties are happy and they can move forward accordingly. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, yeah, for sure. you know, I want to, not in a pun way, but just kind of set the stage for, you know, understanding where you came from, right? The business world was not your first place you started, right? Like where you gained some of this knowledge and put into practice was actually as a stage actor, right? So kind of tell us a little bit about how you got into what you're doing right now. Dimitrios Loukakis: Mm-hmm. So first of all, yes, I did train as an actor. I worked as an actor for about five years. So not a very long time, enough, I think through the training and through my experience to figure out that a lot of the communication does not happen when you speak, but when you're actually being quiet. Sometimes in the silences between the thoughts as you're breathing to speak the next thought. And sometimes when you are not speaking and you are listening to what the other person is speaking through nonverbal communication. was, if you like, a realization early on. I didn't know what to do with it, to be honest, early on. But was curious about communication and I went on to study communication. I got a master's degree in voice studies and I graduated from there two years of studying the human voice. way we use this that creates sound that internal, that is within our bodies and it me just ⁓ what this machine ⁓ but how it how it's connected to our emotions as well because ⁓ we communicate what feel ⁓ and people can if we're nervous or sometimes if we're lying ⁓ or sometimes through machine that is very sensitive, sensitively, intricately connected to our psyche. not this component, but also how to teach it. Because you can know all about the anatomy and acoustics and physics and ⁓ all this stuff about how sound works and how ⁓ we our voices and all of that, that's speed science stuff. But how can you distill that to a few exercises? for someone to go from A to B, that's a whole other practice. And that is, you like, a learning practice. That is how we process information. So humans, that is pedagogy or andragogy, which is technically pedagogy for adults, technically speaking. what to do if you have people in front of you that are neurodiverse, how do you communicate information that way or this way? ⁓ of a sudden, you start opening up to a whole world of learning ⁓ goes beyond ⁓ the use of the voice. And that helped me become a better educator massively because it taught me a lot about learning and how to structure a learning experience, a workshop or a one-to-one experience with someone, learning if you like. So that's what I think really helped me kick it off. Yes, my experience as a stage actor, sure, but my master's degree. in voice studies was the next big stage. And then I opened up my own practice and started teaching and training people, started training actors. And I started training lots of speakers and lots of team leaders as well that way. Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, the part you were talking about nonverbal communication, so much of the way that we speak and the tone and Sean and I have a chat that we have behind the scenes kind of thing and I like a picture was like the Ferris Bueller's day off, like the teacher in there that stands in front of the classroom, he was like, Bueller, Bueller. You know, and like he's just so boring to listen to. ⁓ I'm sure he has really intelligent things to say, but message is just getting lost. And there's, you know, something said to about like the listener. It's not about how communicate. ⁓ A lot of people don't ⁓ think about the listener mind. They just have kind of their thoughts. Is that what you're meaning on that? They have their own thoughts. Dimitrios Loukakis: Yeah. Kelly Sundsvold: They want to get that message out because they have something in their brain that needs to come out of their mouth. But that they don't take in mind what the listener is seeing, hearing, all those, those unknown things. And it really takes a self-aware person to be able to ⁓ speak that I imagine. Dimitrios Loukakis: Yeah. Yeah. There is there is one big difference for me, between a trainer that has been trained to be a trainer, and a trainer that has kind of just figured out how to train people. And sometimes, like you may know something really well. Kelly Sundsvold: Yeah, Dimitrios Loukakis: But in order to train someone, you need to understand the other person really, really well as well. So a good question is to figure out if a trainer is trained really well trained do teach something based on how they learn? Or can they teach the same thing in five ways ⁓ depending on they have in front of them? Because if Kelly Sundsvold: ⁓ Mm-hmm. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Dimitrios Loukakis: For example, let's forget about speaking for now. focus on, I know, swimming or something. don't know. ⁓ you Kelly, do you have a hobby that you like? Kelly Sundsvold: I do like swimming. ⁓ you know, I use, yeah, we'll use swimming. Yeah. Yeah. Dimitrios Loukakis: swimming. Okay, okay, let's use swimming for example, so if I am training someone how to swim I Could be a good swimmer, but that doesn't make me a great trainer and a lot of people say well You know what ⁓ swimming one of gold metals and all the secrets and blah blah. That means they're good at swimming ⁓ doesn't mean they're good at making you a better swimmer and They could say ⁓ the reason why I'm such a good swimmer is because of this Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Dimitrios Loukakis: Do they know that or they're making an assumption? They're establishing a causal relationship there that they're not necessarily qualified to establish it. what they do sometimes, they say, well, this exercise really worked for me. That's what I used to do. That was my training regime. So that's now what I'm gonna do with you so that you can win a medal. And the question is, just because it worked for you doesn't mean that it will work for them. What if they learn in a slightly different way? What if there is a different way of getting to that same result and the different way works better for this specific human? Let's not make the assumption that we're all the same. Our brains are incredibly different. We learn in incredibly different ways. So that to me is what a great trainer does. A great trainer can teach the same thing and can get there in multiple different ways depending on who they have in front of them. rather have the one system that is designed to work with every single human. That to me is a big difference. Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm. Kelly Sundsvold: I love that philosophy. kind of begs the question like, like pushing the swimming thing, which I think was so applicable. Yeah. So taking it to like a business, what do so many smart, very capable leaders, why do they still struggle to communicate clearly? Shawn Sundsvold: You Dimitrios Loukakis: Sure, the analogy. Yeah. Okay, all right. So I mentioned earlier, communication happens on the listener's terms. So the first thing they are not doing is studying the audience or at least up on studying the audience too early. So first thing is study them and study them again. ⁓ not just studying them about who they are. People say, okay, my audience ⁓ Doctors who have recently graduated in the healthcare world like they've just recently graduated They've recently qualified they've just started working in a hospital great, okay but now let's go into their experience of Receiving your information not just like who they are in terms of profession like okay. How old are they? What generation are we talking about? ⁓ are they receiving your information? ⁓ they receiving it in a textbook? they receiving it online? Are you doing a webinar? you in person? Is after lunch? Are they going to a sleeping coma, for example? Do you need to engage them? Do you need to ask them a question? How you can navigate their answer? What if they give you an answer that you were not expecting? How are you gonna deal with that? ⁓ So of circumstances, I think starting with the logistics ⁓ of like, much time do you have? Who are they? What are their concerns? Address their concerns. The audience will tell you their concerns if you ask them. If you don't ask them, they won't. if they don't tell you, there's a good chance you're speaking to an assumption of a concern, not an actual concern. What you want them to feel? What do you want them to do? What is your call to action? What is your core message? ⁓ These things that big mistakes. You asked me about big mistakes people make communicators make these are questions. They don't ask they say the data speaks for itself The data doesn't speak for itself you do You speak for the data The way you read data may be different to the way they read data and how that is being used to build your argument is Crucial if that's not clear to them You're missing. They're missing the point ⁓ a clear understanding ⁓ who you speak into Having a clear understanding of your logistics, the medium, the means through which you communicate to them. Is it live? Is it online? Is it not? Being intentional about what you want them to take away from it. What is your clear takeaway from this? What is your main core message in one succinct message? And perhaps in all of this, figuring out a way to communicate that will engage them, not just speaking the words out loud. speaking to them rather than speaking at them. Being interactive, creating a dialogue with them is a very powerful engaging tool. This would be just the beginning of what I would some concerns that I would address with anyone who's looking at communicating with a group of people in an impactful way. Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah, that's awesome. I love that breakdown and helping, know, just see the different aspects of communication in there and understanding the audience. Because I think so many people, go into it, ⁓ know, they're they're really smart, ⁓ They know their subject like the back of their hand, right? They're they're technically good, right? Like they know all of it. but they get up in front of people and like you did earlier, it was kind of the Ben Stein moment from Ferris Bueller's like, you ah, wah, wah, wah, wah, know, that kind of a thing, right? So when you're working with people, how do you move somebody from that technically good, you know, they know the stuff, right, to being truly engaging and influential and, you know, that confident person in front of people to teach? Dimitrios Loukakis: Yeah. Mm-hmm, okay. I ask a lot of questions at first. the first thing, if I'm working with someone, is at least an element, ⁓ there's an element of acceptance. That's the first thing. We need to accept that there is something that we need to change. If we don't have that, we can't move to the next stage. The second stage is awareness. Okay, we do need to change something. What is it that we need to change? what, what way do we need to change it? Because it's easy to say, ⁓ I want my audience to be more engaged. That's result. Sure. That's the goal. Yes. But what does that actually mean? What do we need to change? Because the, what, what person A needs to change to get to become more engaging is different to what person B needs to change. you can have someone who is incredibly eloquent and has a very monotone voice and you can have somebody who's got a very colorful and expressive voice who is struggling a little bit with finding the right words or you can have people who go on tangents for example you can have people who go too much into the details etc etc so the second stage is awareness of what needs to change Shawn Sundsvold: Yeah. Dimitrios Loukakis: and in what way does it need to change? Okay? what I'm looking for ⁓ the level of investment. And I'm not talking about money here. I'm talking about investment in time and energy from their perspective. So we are the end of the day, ⁓ most coaches, sure we'll tell you, different types of coaches, we're looking at changing habits. Okay, I'm looking at changing habits of communication. Somebody else might be looking to change their eating habits, whatever it is, we're looking to change habits, which means new neural pathways in the brain. Great. ⁓ don't happen just because we decide it. They're gonna happen. These happens through intentional repetition. Okay? ⁓ ⁓ repetition of a behavior is how we create new habits. All right. So what is the time investment for that? Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: I'd say a good time investment, couple of hours a week. All right, we've got couple of hours a week to begin to change our habit. How we navigate that is important. an hour at a time, four times a week. Now it looks a little bit different. It's like going to the gym. You're not gonna go on Sunday for five hours, but if you go one hour five times a week, you're gonna get very different results. ⁓ now beginning to build some sort of a program. We've got this time. Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: And then through questioning and testing a few things with them, I need to know what works for this person, which probably doesn't work for somebody else. What are their learning ⁓ is a good ⁓ way to ⁓ sure they're motivated, that there is accountability perhaps, so that they keep showing up, repeating that behavior. ⁓ I create customized crafted exercises. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: that are designed to recreate real world circumstances. Okay, so what does that mean? We talked about swimming earlier now, Kelly, feel like I'm obsessed. too obsessed with swimming now. You, Kelly Sundsvold: mean, you're the one from LA, so you Dimitrios Loukakis: let's talk about swimming. And in a situation where you swim, you can watch videos on swimming and you can read about it. And this is what people do with speaking. They like to watch a YouTube video and they mix and feel like they've done the work, right? but like swimming because it's a practical thing, unless I'm inside a body of water, I'm not actually practicing swimming. Okay. And if I'm, if I want to do open sea swimming, I'm perhaps showing my, my lack of knowledge in the topic. don't know, Kelly, you may want to correct me, but if I want to practice open sea swimming, I can start with a little bit of swimming in, in a swimming pool, but eventually I may want to feel the temperature of the water, the Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: waves, I may want to see what it's like, what are the conditions I need to prepare myself for. Similarly speaking, a lot of people practice the PowerPoint presentation by looking at the slides and muttering to themselves. ⁓ not practicing the real world circumstances. So a good exercise is to get them to create their ⁓ real world circumstances by getting up and doing it, ⁓ doing it like swimming, doing it. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: because that will give you feedback to your body, to your voice, to your experience, you're creating a memory, you're creating a new neural pathway in the brain. Okay, so that's why I would say first, acceptance, awareness, third, an understanding of how this person learns and sense figuring out the commitment, the time commitment, ⁓ and a customized exercise that is designed to stimulate experiences for that person so that they would create new speaking communication habits that are there to last so that they don't need me every single time they speak. Shawn Sundsvold: Love that, love that. And I wanna take, let's take that a step further, right? Of, you've... you've worked with somebody for a little while, they've done some of that practice, does confidence ⁓ like or sound like at that point in time? Right? Because maybe they came in not a very confident person in how they presented themselves. And on the other side of it, after working with them, what has changed for them in the way they sound and the way they stand and the way they present themselves? Dimitrios Loukakis: Confidence one of the coin. But confidence is experiential. And what I've learned throughout the years is that a speaker may may not feel confident. Shawn Sundsvold: Okay. Mm-hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: and that has nothing to do with how they're being perceived. have seen incredibly impactful, non-confident speakers turn audiences to tears through how impactful they were, how moved the audience were. And they come back to me saying, ⁓ my God, this is terrible, I don't know what, I know. ⁓ Because do, prepare speakers before they go on stage, I'm there, I'm backstage for them. I do lot of that. Shawn Sundsvold: Hmm. Yeah. Dimitrios Loukakis: And very, and I see a lot of confidence speakers who go on stage and their confidence is being communicated as arrogance. So they're not connecting with the audience. Okay. So would like to, yes, there's Venn diagram, they are connected, ⁓ but I'd to make a distinction between confidence ⁓ that you and competence that I focus on. Shawn Sundsvold: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Dimitrios Loukakis: And these are not always the same thing. So let's talk about confidence that comes across, that is competence. When confidence becomes competence, are some results that am looking for. Some metrics, if you like, in a very loose term, because we are dealing with communication. Sometimes it's very difficult to have metrics of communication. What does that look like? That looks like the audience. a first level, they're with a speaker. What does that mean? That means they're actually listening. And this ⁓ is of all, the biggest thing of this has been taken for granted all the time. The audience listening, they're not most of time. Are they following with me? Are they with me? Do they remember what I just said? If I was to stop talking, and get someone to ask them, what do they remember from this talk so far? What would that be? I wonder how much of that would be retained. engage and memory, are they engaged and do they remember some stuff? Okay. That's like the first level that has to do with like cognitive connection to something. Shawn Sundsvold: you Dimitrios Loukakis: Then the next stage is emotional connection. Am I, yes I follow what you're saying, but am I moved by what you're saying? Am I inspired by it? So I have a lot of speakers that start like this, for example, they go, hi everyone. Technology, the way, context is technology. ⁓ everyone, welcome to this presentation. I just want to ⁓ tell you how. ⁓ excited I am and how thrilled I am to be showing you the results of this ⁓ research. My team and I have been working night and day in the last six months to come up with this fantastic innovation that will be changing the way the world sleeps at night. This amazing piece of tech has the capacity to change the quality of life of billions of people on this earth and we are so thrilled to be sharing that information with you. Now, what happened there is that perhaps this was a way in which people followed what it is that I'm saying. But are they? Is emotion being communicated in the way I want it? I want it to be communicated. Is there excitement and thrill that I mentioned in the content of my words? Is that actually being communicated with my audience? Because when we see a lack of congruence between what I'm saying and the way I'm saying something, we believe the way I say something versus what I'm saying. This is a lot of the times how we spot a liar. We say, yeah, I said that, but there was a vibe in how they said it. I'm not quite sure. So the next stage is, yes, you can engage an audience. Yes, you can get them to remember, which is not to be taken for granted. But can you get them to be moved by what you're saying? Can you communicate? And the last stage and most important perhaps for a lot of people has to do not with what happens during the presentation, but what happens the presentation. Call to action. How many people follow through? How many people left the presentation going, my goodness, I need to change a few things, or I better remember this person, or whatever your intention is. What happens after the presentation? Or do they all go, break. Great, restroom, food, coffee, conversation, phone, social media, selfie. Like what ⁓ through their mind after the presentation? That the most skillful speakers have an impact on what happens ⁓ It's like an echo effect. There is an impact in the presentation that carries on to what happens after the presentation of speech is complete. Kelly Sundsvold: what's one piece of advice that you'd give to every leader about communication? ⁓ Or would there be just piece of advice? Dimitrios Loukakis: Can I have two? Am I allowed to have two? No. You can be ruthless with me. I can have two. Okay. They're closely linked. Okay. First, who is my audience? Study your ⁓ and their experience. And the second, intentional with what you want to communicate. Okay. So if we were to translate it to two questions, who is my audience? What am I about? Shawn Sundsvold: You can have two. You can have two. Dimitrios Loukakis: And if you can't express that in succinct way, then we have a problem. The audience won't be either, so they won't remember it. So we won't even go past that first stage. So who is my audience? What is my main point here? If you have these two questions in your head, you will be ahead of most communicators out there. So keep asking these questions and go deep in them. And alone will make you stand out as a communicator. Absolutely. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome, awesome. Well, Demetrius, thank you. This has been an amazing conversation. For those who are listening and maybe want to reach out to you to get help for themselves or a little bit more of how to communicate within their organization, how can people get in touch with you and learn more about what you do? Dimitrios Loukakis: You can reach out on my website. I mean, you can find me on social media. I don't use social media as much as I should, but you can find me on my website by putting my first name and last name together and putting a .com at the end, and that will be my website. I understand I have a long Greek name that is not very easy to spell for people. So thank goodness for copying and pasting whatever you see on your screen, whether it's a phone or a laptop. Shawn Sundsvold: Nice. Dimitrios Loukakis: Just take my first name and my last name, demetriosloukakis.com and you will get through to me. Shawn Sundsvold: Awesome, awesome. And ⁓ Demetrius is on LinkedIn as well. if you know, he, that's a great place to find him also. But this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for your insight and your knowledge. And ⁓ I could sit and listen to you talk for hours. I just love your voice. So thank you. But thank you for being here. It was a great conversation and we'll definitely have you on again. This was really good. Dimitrios Loukakis: Thank you Kelly and Sean, I really appreciate it. Thank you.