2026 - Studying Great Speakers Episode 2: Robin Roberts

0:00Welcome to the Speak by Design Podcast, where we study personal style, message structure and message strategy, so you can become a consistently compelling force. Let's dig in. Robin Roberts. Robin Roberts. If you don't know Robin Roberts, you should look up her Emerson commencement speech or even clips of how she speaks in her master class on authentic communication. Now Robin has been around my entire professional career on the air, inspiring me in my own communication, and she is with me when I am coaching other leaders on their communication. She is the perfect example of trustworthy warmth. She is incredibly trustworthy and expressive, and many people think that warmth is going to be weak or a sign of weakness, but she shows you that expressiveness and warmth is a power.

1:15She is open, but not sloppy. She is expressive, but not chaotic. She is strong and never, ever cold. She has this rare ability to make you feel seen. So when she is interviewing someone, she begins a sentence with, you are, you have, you did. And so the person feels championed, and they feel so visible and understood that they open up, and that's not accidental. It is because of the way she uses her personal style, her body language and voice, her message structure. She does some poetic things with the way that she speaks, and then she has a lot of great strategy that she employs as well. What can we learn from Robin's style? Her style is trustworthy warmth. It's saying to us, I'm here with you. I mean what I say, and you can trust me with this very sensitive topic.

2:17What I just love about Robin is her warmth is not vague. It's vivid, active, embodied. Even when she's seated, she's moving with purpose. She'll shift in her chair, she'll lean forward, she'll pull back. She's not frozen. She is loose. Yet she knows how to use stillness. And when she leans in, she is purposefully intensifying the moment. And when she pulls back, she's questioning the moment. Everything she does with her body is sending a stronger clue to us as to how we are supposed to feel and interpret what she's saying. If you watch her in an interview, she often is sitting back to leave more space for the other person because she is such an intense creature herself that if she wants to, she can easily overpower the other person. When she's straight on looking at the camera, her eyes are magnetic. She's not vacant in the eyes. She is there. She is home. Her eyes are always communicating. They carry her feeling. They reveal her reactions. Her eyes help deliver the message for us.

3:35And that really matters because truly gifted communicators are not only speaking with their words, they're speaking with their face, their posture, their timing even. And Robin is emotionally available. She'll use a heavy sigh and say, I wasn't sure I was going to share that. And she will ask the people that she's interviewing, she'll say, why did you want to share that with people? Why were you comfortable sharing that with people? And that is why people trust her. But this voice of hers, and I'm going to try to replicate it, but she's questioning. She goes down in pitch and then she'll come up and say, why? Why? And the voice is always telling us, is this a matter of fact or is this something intriguing? She is a master with her tone, pitch, pace, volume. She'll act out her characters. She'll drop into a dialect and then come out of that dialect.

4:36She is not monotone, not flat, not distance. Her voice has shape. And it has intention. And that's exactly why she was chosen to speak about authenticity in that master class she put together. Her vocal style, her volume is high. So when we look at a voice, we look at pitch, pace, volume, variety, weight and direction. Well, for pitch, she is low until she wants to show enthusiasm or intrigue. Her pacing, she goes slow and fast, slow and fast. And she slows down when she wants to make her content memorizable. Her volume, she is loud. She is on the louder side and it's easy for her to get louder than the person she is speaking to. So she'll take it down on purpose, but then when she needs to be powerful, it is on the intense higher edge of the range.

5:38And then variety, a ton of variety, but it's never frantic, never chaotic, super engaged, always alive, always invested. She sounds like she cares so much. And she's comfortable bringing her whole self. You detect no self doubt in the body language or the voice. So professional speaking, professional style doesn't have to be neutral. It can be vibrant, textured. You can watch her smile a big, huge, toothy smile and then scowl in the next sentence. She shows high contrast and high intensity. She is comfortable with a serious face. She doesn't look like she's seeking our approval. She is wanting to share, wanting to help you reach a higher purpose in yourself. And that mission is always speaking through her stories.

6:43If emotion serves the moment, it always strengthens the message. She gives herself permission to be fully present. You never feel like she's reading a script. In fact, her Emerson speech, she came up notes free, no teleprompter and spoke from the heart. And people who wrote about that speech, they said that that was the standout aspect is that it was not scripted. Even visually when you look at Robin, she is dressing to create a mood. Occasionally, she will match in an interview exactly how the other person is dressed in formality. But when she is alone and she knows that she is the center of focus, she always pops a color. And I want you all to think about that. Do I need to show up neutral and fit in and look like everybody else or do I need to command and grab the attention and then where can I pop a bold color.

7:48And I just love what she wears in her master class where it's a bright purple silky blouse and it's got asymmetric shape. So you see one arm and it's got triangular shapes in it which always signal a more powerful and credible look to someone triangles do that in our clothing versus circles. Circles always make a person look warmer, friendlier, more heart focused, but Robin is heart focused. I mean, I don't want to take anything away from that. She is definitely a great example of how to lead powerfully from the heart. Let's look at her structure. One of the most interesting things about Robin's way of speaking is she uses poetic tools like a iteration, make your mess your message. And then in the Emerson speech, she speaks about the power of proximity that you have to be where opportunities can emerge, put yourself in good places.

8:53She loves rhyme, don't compare your despair is one of her phrases she uses. She loves humor, she loves a quick story and she can tell a story under 30 seconds and she drives the moral of the story home. Sometimes storytellers forget to tell us the takeaway from their story, not Robin. She always makes it crystal clear what we should learn from what she just shared. She's not interested in leaving the lesson buried. She wants you to get it, feel it, remember it and use it. And that's what I love about her make your message, make your mess your message speeches. She likes a phrase that can travel. That's really one of her gifts, but that can be any of our gifts. Go gather your slogans, your mantra statements that you and put them in a punchy title, think like a marketer in many ways.

9:54And that's why she has so much resonance to. So Robin is always thinking human first, lesson second and leaving us with hope at the end. And she builds messages that people can feel, repeat and live by. And that's not informing. That's really imprinting ideas and people's mind and changing people with the power of her words. And she's so good at that. But from a strategy point of view, because what is she doing that's making her easily connect with audiences? And it's that she's genuinely interested in the people she interview. She's genuinely interested in the audience. And even when she's staring directly into the camera, eating the camera with her eyes and expressing so much feeling through her eyes, we just know that even though she doesn't know who's going to watch these videos, she cares so much about that mysterious stranger who's listening to her story.

11:00It seems as though she's never met a stranger. Can you borrow that? Yes, you can borrow that. Next time you go into a meeting, pretend like you already know these people. Channel your inner Robin Roberts. And who is your inner Robin Roberts? It's that version of yourself that loves the audience, believes in your experience and expertise that it is a value to others, believing that you are making the world a better place, leaving that audience better than you found them, and that you are making progress, meaningful progress every day. And when you bring that into your personality, it is very easy to channel the behaviors of Robin Roberts. She is winning because she's genuinely interested in people. She's not there to perform, she's there to connect. And that's how she is cultivating trust with the person she's interviewing and with us, those of us who are watching.

12:05She's not speaking just to speak. She's speaking to help, to uplift, to calm down, to reveal, to move people towards something better. And that's why her warmth never feels fluffy. It has a mission inside it. Now Robin, because she is a high intensity person, she can overpower a conversation. So strategically she has learned how to adjust her intensity. So when you see her leaning back, when you see her going to a lower volume, more of her whispered tone, that's her taking her intensity down. But she's never passive, and she's always driving. It may not look like she's in charge of the interview, but she's in charge of the interview. And she does it in such a lovely way that the other person is empowered the entire time. We don't feel her ego ever. So sometimes people ask me about charisma, and I'll say watch Robin Roberts.

13:08She has the ability to create attention and affection, like love for her and love for the person she's interviewing, and also belief at the same time. So that is the best definition of charisma, the ability to create attention, affection, and belief at the same time. And there's not one way to show charisma or be charismatic, but it is these inner beliefs that I shared around loving your audience, believing in your expertise, fighting to solve a serious problem, and believing that you're making progress every day. That ends up creating charismatic personalities. What can we learn in a nutshell is that warmth is power. Warmth is power when you use it like Robin. So how can we borrow this? First, practice with your face.

14:08Can you show more of your emotion, your positive, and even negative emotion in your eyes? Can you show it in your voice? So that you are adjusting your pitch, pace, volume, variety, weight, and direction with the voice to achieve the emotion that you are wanting them to feel and feeling yourself? And then can you package it up in a way where you're using alliteration and your repetition, where you say things at the beginning, middle, and end? They hear the same phrase, maybe five times in a speech. It's just like using some of the elements from Shakespeare. Brutus is an honorable man. Robin Roberts is saying, make your message many times. And this is how you will achieve trustworthy warmth. And that is why Robin is a great example for us. She is leading us to a better version of our own expressiveness.

15:12There are things that Robin has said that are imprinted in my mind. Her concept around the power of proximity, make your mess, your message, and relentless optimism. Robin has been a great teacher for me, and I know she will be a great one for you. Thank you so much, Robin, for putting your style, your way of communicating and questioning and seeing the world out there. So we can study it and learn from your example. And one thing that helps is practicing these tools with a group, with a guided tour by me. And we are hosting people in Chicago this year on July 15th at the Thompson Hotel. A registration is open. You can find the link in the notes on this podcast. This is a one day immersive experience for leaders who want to communicate with real presence and agility.

16:19And by agility, that is the skill of being able to find the right level of detail for the right audience. And to be able to think on your feet. In the morning, we're going to build your presence, working on visual leadership, vocal presence, finding your authentic way of being your best self at work, and expanding trust with all those around you. Then we'll spend the afternoon helping you think on your feet, handle pushback, communicating up and down and across and diagonally with more impact. Registration is limited. We don't have a large space. This is an intimate room. And it's designed to help you become a consistently compelling force. So if that's of interest to you, and this is timely, join us. And you can check out the information at SpeakByDesign.com. Look for a sharpen and elevate. Hope to see you on July 15th.