Every Breath You Take: Rethinking Communication for Senior Leaders

Spencer Levy
Every facet of the real estate business presents an opportunity to tell a story. Think about pitch meetings for development and investing, brokerage and sales efforts, leading operations and talent, you name it. The skill of storytelling is an essential tool for communicating, building successful relationships and, these days, sustaining a sense of vital humanity in businesses where the use of AI is growing. On this episode, a noted leadership expert and author returns to share more about these ideas and to expand on her new book, with a focus on the concept of persuasion.

Esther Choy
What I want to try to get people to think about is: where do they direct their attention? Because where you direct your attention is where the rest of your resources, your energy, and everything else goes to.

Spencer Levy
That's Esther Choy, CEO of the Leadership Story Lab, a boutique executive coaching company, and the author of a new book called Winning Without Persuading. It's a follow-up to her first book about business communication, Let the Story Do the Work. Esther's portfolio is dedicated to training executives on how to use storytelling in any line of work. Coming up. Esther Choy with new ideas about crafting and cultivating stories – an undervalued yet increasingly vital business skill. I'm Spencer Levy and that's right now on The Weekly Take.

Spencer Levy
Welcome to The Weekly Take, and we are delighted to have Esther Choy. Esther, welcome back to the show.

Esther Choy
Thank you so much for having me back.

Spencer Levy
Delighted to have you. Just love your book. Tell me about the new book. What's different about it than the old book?

Esther Choy
There are lots and lots and lots of books nowadays about the importance as well as the how-to of telling great stories and I think there's a really big hole in the collection. And that is, while it's important to tell your story, it's just as important to get other people to tell you their story. And so that's the impetus of me working on a second book. And I call it Winning Without Persuading to take the inspiration from a book that many listeners might have heard of and that is called The Art of War by Sun Tzu. And a phrase that is quite well known from the book is something called “Winning Without Fighting”. So the best, highest form of winning is to win without even having to fight. And so my inspiration from that is that it's important to win. we want to win. And there is a huge, huge missed opportunity of winning without persuading.

Spencer Levy
And to use another Sun Tzu quote “Every battle is won before it is fought” and there is a tremendous amount of truth there, certainly in the pitch context where so much goes into it far beyond just the substance of what you're trying to sell.

Esther Choy
Can't agree with you more.

Spencer Levy
When you wrote this title, Winning Without Persuading, it struck me as unusual because we're in the real estate business. Many of our colleagues are in the brokerage side and winning is the most important thing.

Esther Choy
On the surface, it might seem like I'm contradicting myself because I help executives become more persuasive. That is still something that is shared by most people, that the only way to win is to be persuasive. And I am trying to say through my second book that you can win without the only way to win to be persuasive. Winning is still important. But we don't have to win only through persuading.

Spencer Levy
The way I took this book versus your last book – and again, this was my take on it – was that your last was more tactical, meaning that you're winning in the moment. This book is more strategic. You're winning by having better relationships. That was my summary takeaway. Did I simplify it too much?

Esther Choy
I think relationships and trust is at the cornerstone of every win, and I think in that sense, that is a very fair summary. What I want to try to get people to think about is: Where do they direct their attention? Because where you direct your attention is where the rest of your resources, your energy, and everything else goes to. And where I'm trying to direct attention, people's attention, is not only on themselves. What is my story? What do I have to say? What winning strategies do I have to offer and instead direct it to their clients, through their teams and sometimes even to their adversaries because when you direct your attentions at them and worry less about what is the perfect thing to say in the perfect moment, you can surprise yourself and everyone else by other possibilities and ideas and ways to win. So that's what the book is about.

Spencer Levy
You use a line here very early in your book: “Use listening not as a courtesy, but as a creative act.” What does that mean?

Esther Choy
When you think of listening as an obligation, that's what well-trained, well-mannered, polite people do. We take our turns and it's not our turn to speak, then we listen. But when you think about listening as a creative act, then not only does it take the obligation, the must-do out of it. And listening is a way to discover stories that oftentimes your audience doesn't even know, that they need to tell and maybe sometimes even don't have words for it. But when you're the one who is responsible for discovering it, then you and your audience win. What I am also encouraging people to think about is that when you are present, then you can notice things that most people just don’t even register. And when you notice things that most people don't register, then you can have the doorway open to you that other people don't t even see is there.

Spencer Levy
When you talk about the power of curiosity, what does that mean?

Esther Choy
The power of curiosity isn't just about satisfying a need to know, or in some cases, being nosy. I think the power of curiosity is suspending what you believe to be true and exploring whether there are other possibilities, even at times when it might make you uncomfortable.

Spencer Levy
So I'm glad you used that word, uncomfortable. There's a quote here from the book, “Workplace norms complicate things”. There's a wall that's created by the workplace. How does being in a modern workplace complicate your lessons about being a good storyteller and a good story listener?

Esther Choy
Well, I am speaking mostly from my life experience in the U.S. And that is we want to be inclusive and sensitive to other people where in a generation or two ago, what is appropriate to say or ask is no longer in present day. And so a lot of people feel like maybe they’re walking on eggshells because you don't know where sometimes the boundary is. However, even knowing that, I think there are some ways, very effective ways to be curious. Number one, being present, meaning that you're not trying to multitask. It's fairly obvious when we are multitasking. And so that intention of being curious is already taken. And then the second thing is when you are listening, do you listen to find the moment to say what you want to say, or do you listen to discover?

Spencer Levy
You hear so often that data is the new oil. You hear so much about data being the most important thing. And I'm reading right here in your book about “the ladder of inference” – about how data really is important, how it isn't important, but it's just a tool to get you to the point of storytelling. Tell us how you get from data to storytelling about data.

Esther Choy
The ladder of inference is trying to peel back the onion of why people hold certain opinions, why they show up at work a certain way, why they have certain perspectives, why they believe in certain things. Whether you're in a deal, whether you are working with someone closely or whether you're just getting to know someone, all we can observe is the surface level stuff. And so if we understand data is just the source of the beginning of the shaping of behavior, beliefs, point of views, interactions, then it gives us that room to be curious. I love this phrase from my colleague and friend, consumer anthropologist Gina Fong. She said, “People may not make sense to you, but they always make sense to themselves.” And so every day, whether it's at work or at home, it's to everybody's benefit to be curious, to get to where did the data start from you to get you why you are, why you say, why you believe the way you do.

Spencer Levy
So let's go back to our audience here for just a moment. We have many audience members that are brokers or aspiring brokers. We have many that are institutional investors. And there was a section here in the book of how you were coaching an institutional investor on how to present at a meeting to get new capital for their fund. And
the quote here is “His first instinct was to default to the familiar: performance, people, process.” But then the winning formula for this individual in your book was he told a story about his grandmother. Tell us about that.

Esther Choy
As large institutions, you do have to have process and standards. And they are very successful. They use that formula, so why shouldn't they default to it? In that case, because the mandate had something to do with establishing a first social security fund for its aging population, and that client happened to have grown up in Germany, where even today it’s regarded as one of the golden standards of social security. And so he told a story of his hardworking, divorced single parent grandmother who used to run a corner drug store but got driven out of competition when the big box arrived. She couldn't even buy her products at the price level that these big boxes are selling. So she had to close her business. But because she had paid in, the great social security system of Germany kicked in and took care of her and helped her maintain her livelihood and her dignity. My client was a youngster at the time and that left a strong impression on him. And now standing in front of these final–this group of people who make the final decisions against seven other competitors who all looked very very accomplished and competent but they all looked the same to the decision makers. But this story stood out to them. He could tell their body language literally changed and softened because to him here's a chance for him to help create a system that helps retirees maintain a safety net and dignity that was afforded to his grandmother.

Spencer Levy
And it was a personal story and it resonated and it was the winner, not the formulaic approach that they might have otherwise taken. And there's so many lessons here about communication and leadership. You mentioned an interesting one. In honor of the wedding of Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, you had some lessons learned from Taylor Swift. What were they?

Esther Choy
Yes, yes. That was in a section of why so many people are reluctant to tell their stories. It's not because they don't know it. It's because they are not proud of it. But in many, many cultures, this is where the phrase top poppy syndrome comes in. You can become an easy target. And so when Taylor was so successful, even many years ago, There were a lot of people who did not wish her well and who was trying to cut her down. And I brought her story up in the context of, you know, there's only one Taylor Swift in the world, or maybe ever. And despite the pervasive tall poppy syndrome, she survived it and she thrived and she became the global mega star that she is. But it's not easy. And most people would go a great length to avoid being cut down by staying small, by not telling their stories.

Spencer Levy
In that very same section, you quote legal scholar Kenji Yoshino, who calls it, quote, “covering.” That's the term. And the definition is the act of softening or downplaying your identity so you can blend in not to deceive, but to belong. And again, this comes right back to the culture in which you are working. How do you, to quote Frank Sinatra, toot your horn in the appropriate way?

Esther Choy
So that section, I wrote not only for readers for themselves, but also as leaders who might have people on their team who they suspect have important things to say, but they won't say it. Or it takes a lot to pry out of them or to nudge them. And I think to your point, people come to work showing up with many, many, many, prior experiences that we cannot undo. As much as we want people to toot their own horns, there are a lot of forces working against them. So my philosophy is don't work against it, work with it. These cultural, personal, professional, psychological forces that work against tooting your own horns. Don't work against it, work with it. For example, if you're brought up in a culture where talking positively about yourself, sharing simply about your accomplishment feels like bragging, that's a real psychological hurdle. And so this is where that phrase that I truly believe in is that sometimes the best way to get someone's attention is by giving them yours. So if you're someone who is uncomfortable bragging, tooting your own horns, why not share that attention? Why not get other people to tell you their accomplishments, their struggles, their challenges? Because you know what the beautiful thing is that it's human to reciprocate. So oftentimes when you bring attention to someone else, the attention bounce back to you.

Spencer Levy
I think nudge people to speak up more, that's the job of a leader. The job of leader is to nudge people to be the best themselves they can be. And sometimes you gotta push them a little bit. You don't shove them, you nudge them. The point is, is that leaders make everybody around them better by finding their voice. Is that a good way to put it?

Esther Choy
Yeah. Can I bring up the three levels of speaking up?

Spencer Levy
Absolutely.

Esther Choy
Usually people who don't speak up, they know the detrimental consequences of them perpetually not speaking up. So it's not about knowing. It's against their many, many, many obstacles that have worked against it. So think of it as a ladder. If you wanna climb up to the top of the ladder, you don't leap, you don't jump – not only because it's a big expense of energy, but oftentimes it's impossible. So you start with the first rung. And so the first rung of speaking up is why not just ask clarifying questions or summarize, because people think things are clear when 99% of the time it's not. So it's the least risky but the most rewarding. Once you get comfortable with it, the second level is add and subtract. This is riskier, but also a similar reward in that oftentimes something is missing that needed addition. And vice versa when we're trying to accomplish too much or there are too many priorities, everything is important, nothing becomes important. So speak up to subtract something. And then the last level is challenge and change. You're directly challenging someone or something. That is risky. That's why it's the top rung. But once you get used to hearing your own voice making a positive difference, that positive reinforcement, self-reinforcing mechanism will enable the person to speak up more, taking on a little bit more risk at the time.

Spencer Levy
So there's a selfish element to this. Being a leader, if you want to learn more and use some of this for yourself, pay attention, be a facilitator and not a teacher. And the difference between being a teacher and a facilitator, as you put it, is if teaching is driving the bus, facilitation is directing traffic. If presenting is a solo performance, facilitation is jazz, improvisational, co-created, responsive to the beat of the group, sounds unstructured, sounds unbusiness-like, how do we persuade people to do that?

Esther Choy
If you have moments in your career where you don't have the answers, you couldn't possibly be the only one who has the answer and the best answers lie in pieces that your teams as well as your clients hold, then that jazz analogy of playing it together, listening to one another. Getting the best out of each other, being facilitative instead of directive is the way to figure out the best answers available so that this is not a burden that is solely resting on your shoulders alone.

Spencer Levy
This book and your prior book is about storytelling, it's about persuading, but it brings up the power of silence. In the very first moments of teaching people public speaking, I tell them silence is your single most impactful tool of persuasion. And it's right here in your book, “Silence communicates.” Tell us about that, Esther.

Esther Choy
Words, messages, visuals, everything moves at a speed that is hard for us to truly process. You might have heard everything, but you didn't get everything. You couldn't possibly. So, silence, or I'd call it strategic pauses.

Spencer Levy
I call it the “pause-pause” but strategic pauses, same definition.

Esther Choy
It's almost like if you have a very important text, but it's so dense, there's hardly any white space. It's really hard to process visually for your eyes. For our ears, it's the same thing. If we don't have silence and we don't have the white space to truly process – and that's why we might've heard everything, but didn't get everything, far from it. And so having pause-pause, or strategic pauses, creates that breathing room for people to truly get it. Give them a chance. And secondly, this is also where you put emphasis – because we can agree that if everything is important, then nothing is. So having that silence creates the audio hierarchy of importance. And to those who are maybe a little reluctant to share, to speak up when there's silence and you know it's their turn, they will speak up if there's silence. But if we constantly fill in the silence ourselves, then they don't have to.

Spencer Levy
I remember the movie about Mr. Rogers starring Tom Hanks and there's a scene in the movie where Tom Hank addresses the camera and says just let's be silent for one minute. And a minute's a long time. But I remember how powerful that was. It reinforced to me the power of silence, the power of reflection, and that reflection can happen in a few moments it could in a minute.

Esther Choy
And it’s done so rarely that if you do it you are handing out gold.

Spencer Levy
I have some dear friends all over this industry, and I hope I don't embarrass her by naming her. She's been a guest on the show, Barbara Perrier, one of the very best industrial professionals in the world. So Barbara and I had a difference of opinion, and the difference of opinion that we had was when you're pitching something – let's assume you're pitching to sell an asset – do you put the value of the asset at the end of the pitch? Do you put your value of your services at the end of the pitch? Or do you do what I advocate, which is up front? You tell them the day before. And then I read your book, and you talked about the power of suspense. So this is a shout out to you, Barbara. I think Esther is more in your camp than in mine on the power of suspense when you're pitching. Your book advocates for suspense and maybe there is some value to not leading the audience along, but waiting to the end. But she felt that if you told them upfront it will make some of them tune out.

Esther Choy
If you would, for a moment, picture this with me: a seesaw on a playground. On the one end, we have curiosity. On the other end we have clarity. If your goal is to keep the seesaw going, the momentum going, or in this case, I use this as an analogy for what keeps a story going is the toggling between inspiring, arousing curiosity and providing clarity. I think your stand and Barbara's stands–I think they're both valid, but you have to think about if you have too much suspense, you can lose people. You can create unproductive frustrations, but you've, on the other hand, you have too much clarity, you're signaling they don't need to pay attention. It's the toggling between the two that keeps the story going.

Spencer Levy
Well, it's the storytelling that matters. And to go from one end of the spectrum to the other, I often use the example of the children's show, Scooby-Doo, which I know is both of our favorites here. And Scooby Doo had the same plot in every episode. It was always some real estate person building condos in the amusement park so they could dress up in a ghost costume to scare people away so he can build. But you watch every Scooby-Doo episode anyways, even though you knew how the story was gonna end, that there was those rotten kids pulling the ghost costume off this guy. But the bottom line was you listened because of the storytelling, even if you knew the ending.

Esther Choy
Well, we have seen some of the best blockbusters, movies, and award-winning films like Apollo 13 and Lincoln. It's not because we don't know what happened to Apollo 13, right? We knew what happened to the Civil War, but we still love that story. We still love listening to those stories. And sometimes people watch the same movies over and over again, and this is not like the same show, but different episodes. This is the same movie, but they still watch it. It's because when the suspense is there, even though you know what comes around, it's a delight. It's like we appreciate beauty. We appreciate good food. We appreciate friendship and great conversation. We appreciate suspense. I'm not a neurologist or humanist, so I can't explain why, but I just know that we do.

Spencer Levy
Let me tell you a story. I couldn't go this whole episode without using that phrase.

Esther Choy
Time flies!

Spencer Levy
So one of the best speakers I ever hired for an event was Ben Stein. He was better known to our listening audience as the guy who was “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller” in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Also had a TV show, Win Ben Stein's Money. He also was an economist for Richard Nixon, so this guy had some creds beyond just being a funny guy with his unusual personality. But the reason why he was the best speaker I ever hired for an event was because he worked the room. And this comes directly out of your last chapter here. He didn't just give a speech. He went to the dinner the night before. He went the breakfast the day of. And he learned about the audience. He learned their names. He learned where they were from. He learned the backgrounds. And then he used some of it on stage. He owned that audience before he got to the stage. And you talk about priming the room, working the room knowing that audience. Owning that audience, maybe that's too strong a way of putting it, is the nature of winning. Tell us about that.

Esther Choy
I'd actually like the phrase, owning the room. If I could add one more word, it's like owning the dynamic of the room, they're not things for people for you to own, but the dynamic of the relationship, just even for an hour maybe of them listening to you as a keynote speaker, you own that piece. And I'm not surprised that Ben went to dinner, went to breakfast, got to know people, worked the room, learned people's names, because that creates relationships, that creates context. And those things in capable hands like Ben's, like you, like a lot of great speakers, then are used as glues to things that you wanna make sticky. Not just wishing they're sticky, but you actually create the glues for your story and your message to stick.

Spencer Levy
You have a device which you call, and correct me if I'm wrong, Ella AI, which helps people. Tell us about what Ella AI is and how it helps people communicate.

Esther Choy
Well, I think we've all seen, if you use LinkedIn even a little bit and you notice a lot of posts are very clearly written by AI because there are certain words and cadence and phrasing. I don't know about you, it's a turn off.

Spencer Levy
You do know about me and you know I'm totally against that. So you knew me well enough to know that I'm right with you.

Esther Choy
Because the assumption is if you use a machine to do this for you, why do I need to listen? And that maybe is too harsh, but I'm trying to capture what a lot of people feel. And so what Ella AI, when we invested in creating it, I would work with a development company to do it is using my 15, 16 years of body of knowledge, building on top of the capability of AI, LLM, to help users find their stories. Now, it can write your stories. I don't advertise that, I don't encourage that, because using my content only then makes it feel like I'm in the room with you, guiding you, nudging you, coaching you. And it's in that reflective process that makes your story truly you and not something that some machines create for you.

Spencer Levy
And I think that the most important thing you have is your voice. And your voice is you. You and you alone. And AI smells like AI. And I'm not saying AI is bad, I use AI. I use AI for ideas and for organizing my thoughts and things like that, but never ever to substitute for my own voice.

Esther Choy
I would caution everyone, myself included, because I've fell down that slope very rapidly myself, is that it’s so fast that it's so tempting to use just a little bit more, just a little bit, more, just a bit more until you don't have your voice anymore. But what it churned out sounds good, but not you. And so that expediency of AI and what you're trading in, what you are giving away – your voice, I couldn't agree with more – it's really hard to get back. It's just like, well, my data, my personal data, but trading it with convenience or my attention, well giving my attention away to some apps and some social media. And then one thing leads to another, you're giving more and more of it before you even know it. So that's the same kind of danger or caution I share with you, is that your voice, we have to be very vigilant guarding and nurturing and growing instead of outsourcing.

Spencer Levy
The bottom line is you have to keep your ability to have your individual voice, because then, ba-dum-bum, you'll be heard.

Esther Choy
Yeah, it's the–I think the dynamic of not either/or, but yes/and. We need AI. That ship has sailed. There's no turning back. We need corporate expectations, but it's not either/or it's yes/and.

Spencer Levy
What are your final thoughts for a commercial real estate audience listening to Esther Choy talk about her terrific new book, Winning Without Persuading?

Esther Choy
I would say the harder you try to grab on, hold onto something, the faster you lose it. So the more desperate you are of winning a deal, the more you want to come across as confident and convincing. Sometimes it can backfire. The more you want to win, the more you want to persuade by persuading, the less likely you're going to win. And so my best piece of advice is that let other people have your attention and chances are very high that they would want your attention in return.

Spencer Levy
In short, voice is a two-way street. Maintain your voice, but make sure you are not just listening, hearing somebody else's voice, but absorbing it, getting it. Listening is the key from being a great storyteller to being a greater leader.

Esther Choy
A hundred percent. I couldn't have said it better.

Spencer Levy
So on behalf of The Weekly Take, what a pleasure to have book author Esther Choy, second time on the show, will certainly not be the last, CEO of the Leadership Story Lab, most recent book is Winning Without Persuading, which I can't recommend highly enough. Esther, thank you.

Esther Choy
Thank you for having me.

Spencer Levy
And thanks to you for tuning in. We'll be back with a big real estate story that's going to be hot off the presses next week. Namely, our annual Mid-Year Market Outlook powered by the expertise of CBRE's research team and top economic thought leaders. It'll be available on our usual podcast channels with a full video version on our YouTube page. Check it out. In the meantime, you can find more information on our website CBRE.com/TheWeeklyTake or wherever you listen. Hope you're having a good summer. I'm Spencer Levy. Be smart. Be safe. Be well.