An Interview with Tiziana Alamprese, Marketing Director at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Japan
I was tickled when I attended Tiziana Alamprese’s presentation about pumping more passion into the workplace at an event organized by FEW (For Empowering Women) in Tokyo.
Talking with Tiz after her presentation, I felt like we were close friends even though we’d only just met. What was it about her communication that made that possible?
I was intrigued to know how she would answer my interview questions about her communication successes, struggles, and advice. And I’m deeply grateful that Tiz took the time to respond.
Some absolute gems in here.
Learn and enjoy!
1. What sort of communicator do you want to be?
Communication is essentially connecting and sharing. Therefore, I value whoever has a positive and intriguing message to deliver, shows clearly her passion and her belief, has a true, big heart, and isn’t afraid to be herself. There are too many people who are just good at speaking, but aren’t able to communicate. For sure I don’t want to be in that list of snake charmers!
2. What is one communication success that you can share with us?
Among my recent experiences as a lecturer — mainly about my marketing strategies and women empowerment-related topics — I particularly remember my closing speech at the Career Day of the International School of Sacred Heart last year.
The challenge was to deliver a powerful, inspiring — and especially not boring — message about the importance to be ourselves in pursuing a career, using as an example my story as a leader in the male-dominated automotive sector. I had less than ten minutes and an audience of more than two hundred high-school girls — including my hyper-critical daughter!
The result was delightful: lots of friend requests on Facebook and almost a week of “sure, mum, love you mum….” I keep learning that creating the right empathy and adapting to every different audience is key for a real communicatio
3. What is one communication failure you can share with us?
The best learning is about understanding the priceless contribution of failure to the learning process!
Having said that, the hardest failures for me are all those misunderstandings, biases, presumptions, and hidden words that often affect our daily communication with family, friends, partners, and co-workers. They all cause so much unnecessary pain! Even if I apply my Zen and my yoga practice, I still have to work hard on improving this
4. What is most challenging for you in communication right now?
My dream is to change the communication style at work: too many emails, meetings, tons of slides, and words, words — so many empty words!
I’m continuously trying to improve the face-to-face communication and especially stop the email flow between people sitting in the same space. At the same time, I want to increase the quality of our meetings. Making them shorter and to the point isn’t enough, so I’m adding some fun, like quick and simple team building exercises. I don’t want to steal the job of wonderful coaches like Helen, but I must admit that the Internet is a rich source of nice games. Why don’t you try and use them to recharge your team during the work routine? It works magic!
(Note from Helen: Absolutely! You can learn almost anything from the Internet these days, so make the most of it. The if you then decide to work with an expert for group training or individual coaching, you can use the time more efficiently.)
5. What communication skill, resource, or advice would you offer to our readers?
My recommendation is to build your own communication style regardless the examples you can see on TED 🙂
Jokes aside, the important thing is to feel comfortable in your own personal, beautiful, imperfect way of connecting with the others.
Therefore, please treasure that special little speech impediment, that special little tic, that special facial expression, your own way of smiling. That makes you unique, different, and easy to remember!
