On the evening of July 18, 2016, Melania Trump made a speech in Cleveland in which she showed how much she admired Michele Obama' s communication skills. The problem was doing it the wrong way: plagiarizing her.
They were two paragraphs about the education given by parents and how to pass on values to the new generations, nothing controversial at the high point of the electoral campaign, but the controversy was sparked by the great similarity of their speeches. And yet something is clear in the background: even a political adversary recognized in public Mrs. Obama's communicational greatness.
Moreover, she recognized the great leadership of the First Lady, who in eight years knew how to build herself as a strong and confident voice beyond her status as the wife of President Barack Obama. She is a leader of women, students, new generations and other populations. She has achieved this by knowing how to discover herself, working hard and trusting in herself.
Michelle Obama has been able to develop her leadership style by communicating with all the resources at hand, her well-structured messages, her authentic and empathetic body languageHer well-structured messages, her authentic and empathetic body language, her human sense and the occasional visual resource that technology always offers. In the end, she inspires, which is the prelude to persuasion and convincing.
She summarizes what Professor Julián Reyes, from INCAE Business School, explains when talking about communication and persuasion of women in the business world in the 21st century. There are no secrets or recipes, just as there are no stage fright. But there is room for improvement, for growth and for success in whatever we work on, if we dedicate time and care to it.
"We all have a voice, but we have to know how to discover it. To have voice projection, presence. In women's environments there is a certain tendency not to project the voice, and that is educated," explains Professor Reyes from his experience of several decades in Spanish Television, the communication of sporting events and numerous communication coaching exercises for leadership.
The ideal communication is the one that persuades, insists the professor, but for that you have to know how to connect with the audience and that is not achieved only with the rational elements of the left side of the human brain. Intuition, imagination and emotions are distant on the right, and that is where you have to go to achieve the necessary empathy.
That is why Reyes states it with complete certainty: "there, in empathy, women are a step ahead". What is necessary is to have the confidence and devote the necessary efforts to develop skills and enjoy each stage. It is even possible to copy, to have references and role models. And Michelle Obama can be one of them, but be careful not to plagiarize.
