Football Victoria held their Community in Business (CIB) Kick-Off Breakfast event recently, with a topic of discussion being on responding to the preferred communication preferences of an individual transmitting a message via email or phone call, as well as talking about the significance for The Home of the Matildas.
One of the panel representatives present at the event was women in sport advocate and communication expert, Carol Fox. She discussed her book Confident Communication for Leaders that she was the co-author of – providing the most effective methods for confident communication, including the ability to communicate through various platforms on the phone and email.
“Emails are really interesting when talking about communication because the problem with an email is you never get to see how it actually lands, so one of the reasons why we need rapport with our team members and our clients, if we ask a team member to do something if they like us they will do it for us, but emails are actually the one place where we lose rapport and we don’t even know,” she said.
“My lesson over the years in watching audiences has been in an ideal world you mirror how they start their email, how they finish their email and just leave the ‘cheers’ until someone cheers you.
“When talking about communication styles, there will be some people who would much prefer an email to a phone call, so it really comes down to what we enjoy and l think that’s the key with rapport – enter your clients model of the world, so if they like emails use email, if they like a phone call even if it’s not my favourite way of communicating then l pick up the phone.”
Fox then spoke about The Home of Matildas which is the largest football-specific infrastructure project in Australia’s history, the significance it will be for the sport, an elite facility made by women and for women.
“The most important thing is that football is competing against other sports so we need to be up there and providing facilities so that this sport is attractive to athletes.
“For our young girls to go there and see the Matildas, for them to see that and say ‘that’s what l want to be’ will be huge to have a stadium that’s being built for them, it’s about attracting them to the game and keeping them.”
Carol Fox remains a prominent and vocal advocate for an individual to be self-assertive when it involves tools for leadership giving women a platform to stand on and a presence on the field, in the workplace and in the boardroom.
Her book Confident Communication for Leaders can be ordered here.
