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Speaker 1: Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office,

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Speaker 1: the podcast where we share strategies for thriving in the

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Speaker 1: new world of work, where location and ours are more

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Speaker 1: flexible than in the past. Today's tip is to learn

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Speaker 1: the phonetic alphabet. It's just a little trick, but it

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Speaker 1: will have a big impact in helping you be understood.

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Speaker 1: When you work virtually, you soon notice this. You spend

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Speaker 1: a lot of time on the phone, and while sometimes

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Speaker 1: your cell services sparkling clear, sometimes it isn't. If you

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Speaker 1: have a hard to spell name, or you're relaying particular

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Speaker 1: codes or websites or anything of the sort, miscommunications can

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Speaker 1: be common. I know I have had to track down

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Speaker 1: all sorts of things that have come to some version

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Speaker 1: of Laura Vanderkam, even though I thought I spelled my

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Speaker 1: name clearly. But there's a simple solution to this. As

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Speaker 1: a listener named Lindsay recently pointed out to me, now

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Speaker 1: that we are all on the phone more often, it's

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Speaker 1: a great time to leverage the official phonetic alphabets. She wrote,

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Speaker 1: this is the list of twenty six words that start

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Speaker 1: with each letter of the alphabet and make it very

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Speaker 1: clear which letter you mean as an alpha, B as

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Speaker 1: in Bravo, SI, as in Charlie Diaz, and delta. Just

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Speaker 1: google phonetic alphabet and you'll get the list. This alphabet

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Speaker 1: was devised for radio communication, which was plagued with fuzziness

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Speaker 1: long before modern sophisticated cell phones developed the same problem.

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Speaker 1: When I used to drive into the office, I sat

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Speaker 1: beside the support team that assists our retail store teams,

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Speaker 1: Lindsay says. One day I heard my desk neighbor rattling

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Speaker 1: off a series of words to convey a ticket number.

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Speaker 1: Lindsay recognized that her neighbor was using the phonetic alphabet,

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Speaker 1: and she saw how useful this was. She also realized

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Speaker 1: that her name, which is not the traditional spelling of Lindsay,

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Speaker 1: by the way, was different enough that she needed to

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Speaker 1: spell it to people, and there might be miscommunications, so

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Speaker 1: she decided to commit the phonetic alphabet to memory. Fast

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Speaker 1: forward about three months, and here I am working from

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Speaker 1: home and on the phone a lot more, she says. Now,

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Speaker 1: instead of stuttering around trying to think of a random

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Speaker 1: word for each letter of my name, an acronym or

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Speaker 1: whatever else I need to spell, I can rattle off

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Speaker 1: this universal code. It makes me feel super confident, and

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Speaker 1: it really beats just accepting that people think my name

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Speaker 1: is Nancy. I think this is a great idea. You

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Speaker 1: probably know many of the words already echo foxtrot, golf,

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Speaker 1: but if not, give the phonetic alphabet a look today

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Speaker 1: and figure out if there are any letters you always

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Speaker 1: find yourself repeating. For instance, my last name is vander

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Speaker 1: Cam v A N D E r K A M

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Speaker 1: as in Mike, not an N. But it's hard to

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Speaker 1: tell the difference if the kids are shouting in the background.

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Speaker 1: The phonetic alphabet means people get it right. In the meantime,

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Speaker 1: this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and here's the succeeding

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Speaker 1: in the New Corner Office. The New Corner Office is

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, visit

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