In this episode, Kristi explores the process of skill acquisition, building fluency, and eventually transferring and generalizing new skills across different contexts. Applying a skill in a new environment requires another stage of learning. Kristi shares why patience, feedback, and low-stakes practice are essential to that process.

In the Communication Tip, Kristi examines the practice of spreading in competitive debate, where speakers deliver arguments at extremely fast speeds to fit more information into limited time. She explains how that training can carry over into courtroom communication and why jurors need something very different from debate opponents. When your goal is to help jurors understand, retain, and recall information during deliberations, clarity matters more than speed.

LISTEN HERE...

Key Takeaway

You can't skip steps when you're building new skills, and you can't expect those skills to transfer perfectly into every situation right away.

First, acquire the skill. Then practice until you develop fluency. Finally, work on applying it in different environments and with different people. Give yourself room to learn through that transition.

And when you're communicating with jurors, remember that your comfortable speaking pace isn't necessarily their comfortable listening pace. Pause often enough to let them process what you're saying.

Favorite Moment

“So...no...you're not a colossal failure. You just need some grace to allow yourself to not be perfect when you transfer to a new platform and generalize your skills to multiple disciplines.”

Links & Resources

FYV #11 - Learning Sucks (But It’s Worth It): https://www.fostervoicestudio.com/blog/podcast11

FYV #17 - Learning to Fail Forward: https://www.fostervoicestudio.com/blog/17

CBS This Morning with Mo Rocca: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=murvOaHB66A

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Remember: building vocal skill takes instruction, practice, and the willingness to keep applying what you've learned in new situations. And when you're presenting to jurors, give them the time they need to process your words.

Until next week...keep fostering your voice.

TRANSCRIPT:

 Helloooooo!!!! Helllo Foster Fam! Welcome to November, the month of intentional gratitude. What are you thankful for this year? There's a lot that's kinda cringy these days (to say the least), but let's take a minute to be grateful, even for simple things. And at the time this is going out, I'm just gonna put in a final plea to VOTE!!!!! Please VOTE and let your symbolic voice be heard.

Now, I talk quite a bit on this podcast about how much I enjoy learning. I'm a naturally curious person who just likes a good educational tour, historic marker, or a thought-provoking reel. Can you blame me? haha! I joke about being a bit of a nerd with things like that. But I really DO like learning.

At the same time, I have also talked about how deeply frustrating it is to work on learning new skills, and how, even though I am willing and wanting to learn, my brain also puts up all kinds of security defense measures to prevent growth and change.

I've talked about this in a number of early episodes. Go back and listen to Ep. 11 titled "Learning sucks (but it's worth it)." That episode talks about the role of resilience as you work through the messy middle.

I'm going to reframe that a little bit today and go a little bit deeper into the process from skill acquisition to transference & generalization.

Okay, what do those words mean? What are the concepts?

Well, skill acquisition is the process of learning new things. Acquiring new skills. Usually, it is pretty effortful. It requires concentration and conscious thinking. It's during this stage that we need a lot of instruction, a lot of attention, and feedback. It's when we make a lot of mistakes and have to have a LOT of grace for failure.

Go back and listen to Ep. 17 about "Learning to Fail Forward" to review some ideas around the benefits of failure.

Once we start getting the hang of these new skills, then we practice them. This is the time where we get a little more coordinated. We start to catch ourselves doing something instinctively and we realize that it doesn't take nearly as much conscious thought to make something happen.

Let me give you an example from one of my clients.

When they first started with me, the idea of the 5 Vocal Building Blocks that I teach (pitch, pace, melody, volume, and tone), these 5 Building Blocks were brand new to them. They spoke kind of in the same pitch range, at a medium but steady speed, not much melody or variation in phrasing, and all kind of the same volume with the same consistent tone. It just hadn't occurred to them that they could do other things.

So, in the early days of working together, we did a lot of stop-and-start, or stop-and-try-again really. Each building block, I taught in a systematic way, giving them exercises and drills to help bring awareness to that tool in themselves and in others. There was a lot of instruction, a lot of attention, a lot of immediate feedback. They had to really think about what they were doing. Even something as basic as breathing, which you'd think would just be instinctive and natural, took effort because it was being used in a new way. So they had to learn the skill of breathing to support their vocal development.

This client then continued their work with me, past the initial sign up package, and that's when we really started practicing. Each session, they brought in whatever case they were working on, at whatever stage they were at. We worked on deposition questions, voir dire questions, teaching sections, story telling, presenting motions, challenges, and discussion around damages.

My task then became about "catching them" when they were doing it right, when they were applying the 5 vocal building blocks, and pointing out "hey! look what you're starting to do instinctively. notice how it's working. Great job!" These practice times were when they got things coordinated. They started to actually communicate ON PURPOSE. Their content was dialed in long before we even began working together, but their delivery was now growing exponentially.

They learned first (cognition), then they built fluency in their performance. Awesome! Love to see it! That's the first goal.

But then something unexpected happened.

This same client sent me a video of a press conference they had to do for a case they were working on that had gained some traction in the public interest. And, wouldn't you know it...NOTHING we'd worked on showed up. Their voice was flat, stayed on or around one pitch level, they didn't project beyond the sounds of recording outside with wind and traffic, and their hands were even in their pockets.

The client came to their next session exclaiming "I mean, it's like I've not done any training at all!"

But here's what happened for REAL. Their skills had been practiced and they'd created fluency within ONE context. But now they'd reached the point in skills development where there needed to be a transference and generalization. They needed to now take a step back in their expectations and have a little grace for themselves when they took their new skills to a new domain. That changes things.

This happens all the time in theater too. You rehearse and build your character in a rehearsal room, without a set, without a costume, without lighting and microphones, MAYBE you have some props or things to hold that mimic props you might have. MAYBE you've had some chairs that stood in as a "couch" to practice with, or a potted plant that just happened to be in the room you've pretended it was a dining room table to rehearse sitting across from someone.

Well, then you get to the ACTUAL theater, and suddenly, there's a REAL couch and a REAL dining room table with a table cloth and a fruit basket and actual dishes and cutlery. And suddenly as an actor, you have to re-acclimate, adjust your expectations, and apply all the work you did to a brand new platform. THIS is why theater companies have a dress rehearsal week. Everyone needs that lead up to adjust to the new environment, and get their characters back.

So...no...you're not a colossal failure. You just need some grace to allow yourself to not be perfect when you transfer to a new platform and generalize your skills to multiple disciplines. You can't expect that from yourself. You can't hold yourself to an erroneous standard.

First acquire (get instruction & lots of feedback), then practice to create fluency in this new language of communication tools, then try it out in other places and with other people. Hopefully you can do that with low-stakes situations. I've talked about this before too. Practice transferring your skills at a dinner party, or when ordering at a restaurant. Try them out with people who don't know any different and who you'll likely never see again. Build up some safety for yourself.

You can't skip steps. This is how you build up new skills.

—BREAK—

When I was in highschool, I took a Speech class (shout out to Mrs. Lacker at Interlake High Schol). We learned the different types of speeches — informative, persuasive, entertaining, demonstrative. You get the idea. Now, at my second high school, as part of my AP English class (shout out Mrs. Wilson at Gladstone High) we had to do debates — capital punishment, voting age, standardized testing, etc.

What I didn't ever participate in was Debate Team. In fact, I knew it existed, of course, but I didn't think a thing about it until last year—some 30 year out from highschool. What brought it to my awareness was my work with a client who, well...simply...just talked too fast.

I'm always curious WHY this is. It's a pretty common thing among attorneys so I'm always interested in the root cause. Most often, it's that their brains are working so far ahead of things that they have to talk fast in order to keep up with THEIR internal processing. Sometimes, it stems all the way back from their home of origin where they had to speak up and speak fast to get a word in edgewise with a full house and lots of siblings.

This client was different though. She had participated in debate team in highschool and then college where they went to national competitions. And as part of their training, and it was INTENSE training, they worked on a technique called "spreading," basically speed-reading.

For those that aren't familiar with this, like me, (and is a simplification of debate practice) debaters speak at about 3x normal conversational speed. Their goal is to get as many arguments into their allotted time as possible. Instead of 5-6, they can get in 15-18 points during an 8-minute presentation, for example. They want to overwhelm their opponent, who is frantically taking notes in a chart they've made (called a "flow"). When it's their turn to respond, if they neglect to address a specific argument that was brought up, they basically concede and the other team gets points.

I've put a link to a YouTube video in the show notes. It's a piece by journalistic reporter Mo Rocca on CBS This Morning. It's an older piece from years ago, but according to how my client described her experience to me, not much has changed. It's pretty fascinating.

Now, in the video, you'll hear how the CBS anchors kind of poke fun at the debaters, which, for the record, i condemn. They are ignorant and they're poking fun at something they don't understand and haven't trained in. Speed debate is a legit training and i respect it.

That said, if you have training in that skill, it's reasonable to think that when you get into debate mode in the courtroom, some of those habits will start to return and you may find that you talk faster than intended.

And jurors aren't your debate opponents. They need you to SLOW DOWN.

I think with educational influencers on social media, we probably have gotten a bit better at tracking a faster cadence. But even then, a social media post is a max of 90-seconds and is designed for continued engagement—meaning, they are made with the intention that you'll watch it several times, you'll touch-pause the screen to read the captions. All of those are "engagement attractors" and they boost their analytics. That DOESN'T mean that that's a good way to teach your audience.

And in a courtroom, your audience is the jury and they need something different from you. They may joke about wanting to get through the trial quickly, but when it comes to their cognition and their understanding, they need CLARITY from you, not speed. Clean endings to arguments greatly improve their ability to understand, first of all, but also to recall the information later in the deliberation room when you need them to advocate for your client with the words you gave them in your closing.

So...SLOW DOWN! Especially if you have a naturally fast cadence—whether from home life or a national debate competition background—with a fast cadence you have to pause frequently and for longer than YOU feel comfortable with. Pause for the jurors' comfort, not yours. If you have a slow natural cadence, still pause frequently, but you don't need to pause for as long.

Until next week...keep fostering your voice.