pronounced.ca

Hope.
My last coaching call of 2025 may be the one that has me most hopeful. (This is not a picture of the client, this is me and my mom, for reasons that will come clear soon...)

This particular client had been referred to me because he'd made some comments at work that raised some red flags.

But his company believed in him. They knew him well enough to see these as communication problems, not indications of a deep-down deficit.

One issue was that he'd cracked a joke that was a little off.
After receiving feedback about it, he completely shut down because he didn't trust that he could 'be himself' at work, at all.
Full filter on, all the time.
That would be unsustainable.

We came up with some homework that had him reflect on his judgment.
Each time he thought of a joke to tell, for 2 weeks, he would continue to refrain from telling it, but he would document the joke offline and judge it as:
🔴 red light: obviously inappropriate
🟡 yellow light: seems okay to him, but might be problematic; or
🟢 green light: safe joke, no one would be offended by it, might get a laugh.

After 2 weeks, he felt a shift.
I don't think he actually documented it (no shade here; ask my physio how good I am at doing my exercises).
But he mentally considered each joke that came to mind.
He said that the challenge made him feel more empathy.
He didn't just think 'this is a joke that'll get a laugh from a few people here'. Instead, he thought, 'Might this joke offend anyone here?"

That shift might seem obvious to many of us (especially us women), but some people haven't spent a lifetime being encouraged and rewarded for consistently considering others' perspectives.

He said it was transformational. He said it gave him more empathy.

I'm a coach who mostly works with women, helping them peel away layers of social conditioning so they can be more themselves out loud.
But sometimes my work with men shines through as most memorable.

I will admit that I wondered if empathy could really be taught later in life.

I'm entering 2026 with hope.



?

(Picture of me and my mom, the best empathy teacher ever.)

There, at the Elk's Lodge in Oliver, I'd been a bride for two whole hours when I suddenly realized I *probably* should have written a speech. 😳

I rummaged a pen and wrote some thoughts on a paper I'd found at that head table. It was over 20 years ago (3 kids, 2 stone and 3 provinces later), and I have no memory of the exact words I said.
I highly *do not recommend* this strategy, but these pictures bring me comfort.

These pictures tell me that the people there felt...love. The message I wanted to send out that day was one of love—for my (brand new) husband, for our families, and for all of our friends who'd shown up for us.
Love, plain and simple.
And on that day, of all days, I felt like an expert in it.

Back then, I was a relatively run-of-the-mill type of speech pathologist. I didn't know that I'd become someone who would help people with 'public speaking'. I knew the science of speech and the voice, but I didn't know much about speechwriting, key messaging, influential storytelling, etc. etc. etc.

Still, I did know how to be a human. And I mustered the courage to do that, imperfectly, up there that day behind that mic.

Communicating as a genuine, flawed-but-knowledgable human, connected to deep-down you—behind the microphone, at the board room table, in a high-stakes conversation—is what I coach.

Being prepared with 'all the words' [crazy waving arms] is a part of it, but you can get up and say a few words with very little prep if:
➡️ you draw on your expertise
➡️ you know your audience, and
➡️ you're connected to who you deep-down are.

Being open to imperfection helps, too.

Thankfully that day, surrounded by the people I love, I was able to find all that.

You can, too.



Photo credits to the late great Blair Polischuk.
Thank you, Blair, for perfectly capturing our imperfect humanity.

A real-life in-person workshop! Come and find your stories, Ottawa!
Find out more at www.pronounced.ca

Take two minutes to watch this tear-jerker. It perfectly illustrates the reason we created our "What's in a Name" workshop to help people become better listeners. Speech science can help everyone make respectful attempts at saying unfamiliar names, so that you can become "one of those who try."

P&G | The Name from Goh Iromoto on Vimeo

Do you have a name that people never seem to get right?
You can add an audio file to your email signature letting people know how to pronounce it!

Mary Houle's NameDrop No name should ever be mispronounced and that includes my name! Learn how to say it

Just let her talk.
Kamala Harris perfectly navigated the tightrope many women need to walk in every meeting.
She shouldn't have to, and here's how we can help.

Kamala Harris: how about we just let her talk - Mary Houle, M.Sc. The morning after the Vice-Presidential debates, "I'm speaking" is trending and for obvious reasons. (Along with memes about the fly, but that's not covered here.) Women across twitter are celebrating Kamala Harris' reaction to being interrupted. Because we have all been there. "This is unfortunatel...