participants to “get in the game!” Rich and Judy knew that, like an athlete in “the zone,” when professionals take the attention off themselves and pay attention to the broader picture, their impact in business and in life soars
Introduction: Focus on Others
Twenty-five years ago, I was wandering through a department store in Quincy, Illinois, carrying my five-month-old son, John, on my arm, while my wife was busy shopping. Like all kids, John had been babbling since shortly after birth. But as I carried him through the store his babbling changed. He started to shout in short bursts, and after each outcry he'd stop and look around, searching for the sound. He'd shout again, and grow quiet. Then something clicked, and he smiled. He realized the sound was coming from him, and his world had suddenly changed. He had found his voice. After that, there was no stopping him. For the rest of the time we waited for Mary, John shouted, stopped, giggled, and shouted again, louder and louder each time.
Many of us spend our lives in a struggle to define ourselves and how we relate to our surroundings. We each endeavor to find our voice and our personal “message to the world.” This book can't help you know who you are. But it can help you communicate your message – your talents, your ambitions, your goals, your perceived contribution to your community – to those around you – and to do so simply and clearly.
None of us exists in a vacuum. Human history isn't the story of individuals; it's the story of how individuals have interacted with others. Our identity is determined, to a great extent, by how we see ourselves impacting other people. In short, your simple and clear message is dictated in part by the world around you. Your message to the world is, of necessity, your message connecting you to the world.
We are all basically self-focused. That's an innate human trait. That's not a bad thing; in fact, it helps us survive. But it is also the leading cause of our miscommunication. Our instinctive approach to communicating is to speak to others from our own perspective rather than from theirs. Conversely, we also listen to others through our personal filters, making assumptions and hearing ideas through the prisms of personal experience. Because each of us has a unique path through life, communicating from that personal experience immediately creates a disconnect between us and others. This disconnect is what leads to miscommunication.
If we want to improve our ability to connect with others, to understand them and to be understood more clearly, the easiest and most effective way to do so is to focus less on ourselves and more on the other person.
This is the single most significant differentiator we can apply to our communication skills to improve our effectiveness. When we communicate, instead of thinking, “What am I trying to convey?” we should ask ourselves, “Why is he reading my email or attending this meeting? What does she hope to get out of this presentation?”
If we put the focus on what the other person is trying to gain from the exchange, we will do a better job communicating, because we will select more pertinent information, drill down to the desired level of detail, and make the information we are sharing more accessible to our audience.
It's easy to say, “Focus on your audience.” But it's hard to put that concept into practice.
At Exec|Comm, we have spent more than 35 years helping people clarify, simplify, and deliver their ideas to those around them. In this book, we'll give you straightforward tactical steps you can implement immediately to communicate more effectively by focusing less on yourself and more on other people. By putting simple steps into practice, over time you will intuitively start to communicate from outside your personal framework and apply the concepts in settings beyond those covered in this book. That's the bigger win – for you and for those with whom you connect.
We have organized this book into five main sections:
1. Your Content: the substance of what you want to convey.
2. Your Oral Communication Skills: the way you convey your substance.
3. Your Written Communication Skills: the way you represent yourself when you're not physically present.
4. Your Interactions: the settings in which you engage your audience, whether it's an audience of one or one hundred.
5. Your Leadership: the way you set the tone and relate to others.
In each section, you'll learn to ensure that what you say and how you say it help you connect with your audience.
Overall, when you communicate with people, you can talk about one of three things:
● You can talk about yourself.
● You can talk about your content.
● You can talk to the audience about the audience.
News flash: Your audiences don't care about you. Nothing personal, but they don't. In fact, they don't really care about your content. They care about how your content impacts them, which is different from your content itself.
If you want to connect with your audience, minimize how much you talk about yourself or your content, and only talk about those things to the extent that they impact your audience's needs.
What does this mean in execution? Listen carefully to speakers at the next meeting you attend. I guarantee that almost every speaker will start with the words, “What I want to talk about today is..” Think about that line. “What I want..” Almost every speaker starts talking by telling his or her audience that this meeting is all about the speaker and what he or she wants. You can't get more self-centered than that. Think about the subtle but impactful change in tone if instead of starting with, “What I want.” you start with:
“You're all here today because you're concerned about X. I thought it would be helpful to you if we spent a few minutes talking about..”
The minute we start with “helpful to you,” we have told our listeners very directly that we have put all of our energy into serving them. We're focused on them, not on ourselves. More importantly, as we plan what we are going to say, structuring our notes or putting together our PowerPoint slides, if we keep thinking, “helpful to you.” we challenge what we share and the way we share it. Am I sharing this information because I know it and find it interesting? Am I sharing it because I did all this work, and I'm too busy to change it for this audience? Or am I sharing this information because I genuinely think it's helpful to this audience?
Being helpful to the audience is the only legitimate reason for sharing the information.
If you think of what you have to share in terms of how it impacts others, your message about yourself changes. Your message to the world is not about yourself, but about how you impact the world.
The weighty ideas are done. The rest of this book is about how to put this very basic concept of focusing on others into practice in your daily business life.
Let's get started.
SECTION ONE
Your Content
In this section, you'll learn how to structure your thoughts. You'll learn to start with a key message, based on what the audience needs to hear, tell engaging stories that reinforce your key points, and organize your content for the greatest impact, depending on your objective. Throughout, you'll learn to keep the focus on your audience – your listeners or your readers.
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