This is surely an auspicious roll around the rolodex.This is a good time to evaluate your connections, your peers, your network. This is a good time to ask yourself the following questions:
·How well do you “take care of” people who are most important in your life?
·To what degree does your communication style and content vary from person to person?
·How much awareness to you bring to the way you communicate to each individual, to the fine-tuning you could bring to really open them up, so that they feel heard and empowered in your presence?
The answer to that question directly relates to your effectiveness as a business leader.
Adoring fans, the rubber really does meet the road someplace, and that place is in HOW YOU COMMUNICATE.Notice this is very different from “what” you communicate.Content is everywhere, all the time, Google-enabled and voluminous.”How” you communicate is different…How you communicate occurs only once, every time.It is unique to the moment, and has everything to do with your own inner strength, your sense of self, and your compassion for your audience.It happens to be the key to success in today’s lightning-bolt business environment.
Notice also how this holds true if you are speaking to one trusted confidant, or 1,000 audience members. Its as old and tested as any rule can be:How you listen to people, is how they listen to you.It’s the Golden Rule, and it’s absolutely infallible in business conversations.Infallibly valuable if you get it right.. and infallibly devastating if you get it wrong.
Why? Because communication can be so very damaging when we neglect to consider the emotions of our audience, and begin making assumptions about their listening skills.If there is one place where business breaks down, it’s the place where assumptions obliterate clarity.Oh!What did he say?Yes people, your content can be the clearest, most significant information known to humanity, yet your “message” that delivers that content can be rife with false assumptions, thereby rendering the content meaningless.
This is such a strange, mysterious and macabe blessing:To be solely responsible for the effectiveness of business communications.Only with great faith and enduring fortitude will you find the grit and grist to grow these muscles. You must know by now that you are surrounded by idiots, incompetents, braggarts and bone-heads.People that barely make it into the general category homo sapiens, let along contribute to what YOU are up to! They primp and preen and puff up their Ty Bo chests, but to what end? To serve themselves, to further their own agenda. And guess what? You are surrounding THEM!
You’re in the same category. And so am I.
This blog entry comes from the honest coals of life’s all-you-can-eat bar be que.It’s always been too hot in here.And only our dedicated conscious awareness can cool it down…Yes, you guessed it: This is your chance to be cool…to chill out and ice the joint.Or not .It’s up to you, every time. The question is: Will you ask yourself the question? Will you step up and dig in and take the time to prepare? Will you devote yourself to the sacred obligation to deliver your communications to real, deeply feeling human beings? We’re counting on you to say “yes”. We’re counting on you to lead.
Why do I posture such obscure writing in a business column? Because my great discovery is that there is no such thing as a business column. There are only intelligent people striving to further their own interests, as best as they define, them. That is the first priority. That is the prime objective. What happens next is up to both the audience and the author. Let’s all remember: The come-from is as important as the go-to.
So… where are you going?
The Meeting Guy
November, 2012