Mastering Your Communication

SUMMARY

As a leader, one of the greater skills that you can have is the ability to send clear, convincing, and credible messages to others and be able to accept what they're putting down through the lens that they're sending it through.

Communication is a powerful tool to bring people together in a common cause and move forward towards the results that we want. Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges is that in our workplace, we think that communication has taken place.

This week, I will unpack how you can think differently about communication so that it can become one of the most valuable tools that you have in your leadership toolkit.

TRANSCRIPT

Do you sometimes feel when you're communicating that people aren't picking up what you're putting down? They’re giving you these looks that say:

“I can see your lips moving, but I'm not real sure of what it is that you're trying to say.”

Well, that's okay because communication is one of the biggest challenges that we have in being able to master. People are different. Therefore, we need to develop our skills in this area.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach, and today I want to jump into the first competency in this quadrant of relationship management by helping you to be masterful as a communicator.

Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about relationships and the fact that they're everything in business and life. We are human beings, and our interaction with other human beings can create some wondrous things. However, it doesn't come without a lot of conflict and stress because we are different. We have different ideas and opinions, we have different ways of looking at things, and we have different ways of communicating and understanding.

As a leader, one of the greater skills that you can have is the ability to send clear, convincing, and credible messages to others and be able to accept what they're putting down through the lens that they're sending it through.

Communication is a powerful tool to bring people together in a common cause and move forward towards the results that we want. Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges is that in our workplace, we think that communication has taken place.

To those watching the video or listening to the audio: If my voice sounds a bit different today, it's because I've got a bit of a throat thing going on. However, that's okay because there's more to communication than just my voice, and hopefully, you can hear the passion and the emotion that comes through.

If you are watching this on the video, you'll see a lot of hand gestures and movement that also communicates.

As I said, a lot of people think they're communicating because they think that communication is one way. They think that saying or projecting a message is communicating; however, it’s not; it’s way more than that.

What I want to do today is unpack how you can think differently about communication so that it can become one of the most valuable tools that you have in your leadership toolkit.

Think about the challenges that you've had in meetings and in times when you're together with other people: Is it because they don't understand? Or could it be because you're putting it down in a way that you need, not the way that they do?

This is a lesson that I had to learn many years ago, and I continue to practice as a leader to realise that what I have to do is to communicate in a way that they need me to so, in turn, they can give me what it is that I want.

To do this, we need to grasp some concepts around communication.

The first one is it's a process. It's a process of mutual exchange rather than just one-way exchange where a person encodes a message that they're going to send, and they send it out in some sort of a medium (I like to call it a channel which can be an email, voice, text, hand gestures etc.) and they send it to the other person.

Unfortunately, between where they send it and where the receiver is, there's a lot of noise that goes on:

There's this VUCA environment that we keep talking about of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

There's the work that they're trying to get done.

There are the thoughts that are crowding their brain.

There’s advertisement and marketing.

There’s family and things outside of work.

So these are some of the things that communication needs to cut through before they receive the message.

Just like you encode what you're going to say, they (those who receive the message) filter that and decode it through their own uncertainties, limiting beliefs, and their own ways of looking at things. Then, they have a reference of what they think you said, and now, they are going to respond.

So, they encode what they're going to say, and they send it back to you through that same noise (or indeed your noise — the things that are going on for you), and you interpret what you think they said, then, it goes on and on.

There's little wonder why there is miscommunication and confusion.

How do you do this differently?

The first thing you need to do is celebrate differences.

It's okay that people aren't like you and have a different opinion from you. It doesn't make either of you wrong. It's okay that some people need to see things, other people need to hear them, and others need to feel and touch them.

All these things are okay.

So, you need to celebrate that diversity rather than look at it and go:

“Why do these people not understand?”

“Why are they not like me?”

They’re not like you because we need that collection of all those unique individuals to be who we need to be as a group.

By celebrating that diversity, you can be curious and learn to understand those people at a deeper level rather than just on the surface.

In a lot of work that I do in corporate, I get to work with people and help them understand their communication and behavioural style to go deep into who it is that they are and, through their experiences, what they've learned to do, to be able to take on information.

It's fun to work with a group and help them to realise:

“Okay, that's you. This is me….”

By doing this, each individual in the group gets to know more about each other.

For example, checking out things like how people speak in emails.

If they say:

“What do you see in this for you?”

So, that tells me they're visual.

They might go:

"What do you hear in this for you?

That tells me that they're more auditory.

“How do you feel about that?”

Tells me that they’re more kinesthetic and operate more out of feelings.

So, being able to delve deep into an understanding of what makes people tick rather than just throwing out bits of information, hoping that if you throw enough out, some of it sticks. You also need to realise that communication is way more than just words.

The tonality that we use.

The Phrasing.

The inflection.

Pausing.

Body Language.

All these things come to it as well.

You also need to remember that as a leader, you are communicating even when no one is really even looking (or so you think).

So communication is not just something where you speak or type and put out a message.

In fact, I would say communication starts with active listening.

Listening at a deep level to hear and understand what is being said and what's not being said.

It's not starting with sending the message; it's being attuned to what's going on around you in your world.

I know it all sounds like it's very complex, and it is because we are human beings, not "human doings".

We are emotional beings.

We have our own limiting beliefs, uncertainties, and goals (everything as an individual). And that's what gets portrayed in our communication.

We hear what we want to hear.

We hear what we think we hear.

We hear what lines up with how we feel about ourselves.

All these things make communication such an important cut-through to be able to build strong, sticky teams that work together with less conflict and stress and get the results that you want.

I want to challenge you to listen more intently, to speak to the way that people need to be spoken to rather than the way that you do.

I want you to be really curious, to listen for signs and cues, and to look and read what is going on in that moment.

You see, this is why I said that these relationship management skills need to be developed after you've built the foundation of your own emotional intelligence and your own social awareness, and then building these wrongly named “soft skills” will be a lot more effective because when you communicate with others, you’ll feel okay with who you are because your personal power is strong.

Allowing others to have an opinion is not something that goes against what you believe. It doesn't upset how you feel about yourself because you know that perception is reality, but it's still only their perception.

I could speak for weeks about communication, and if it's something that you're interested in knowing more about, get in touch.

I would love to come and work with you and your team and run a session where I get up on a board or a flip chart, and we just have a conversation. Then you learn more about who you are as an individual so that you look at the strengths within your team and look at how it is that you can communicate with each other so that confusion gets left behind, and clarity reigns supreme.

Well, I'm going to give this throat a rest right now, and that's it from me for another week.

Join me again next week as we continue to delve into these ten competencies of relationship management when we look at interpersonal effectiveness.

I'll see you then.