This is my 99th consecutive week of writing this newsletter.
I guess I have 99 problems but writing a newsletter ain’t one. Hit me! Drumroll…crickets!
Too soon for Jay-Z jokes?
Anyways….I was talking to an advisor earlier in the year and giving her a run through my regular 2-minute pitch when I meet people for new business opportunities. Once I got done, she paused and said: “With your engineering background, perhaps this is how I can help.”
I was surprised but it wasn’t the first time. So I asked her: “I talked about my entire journey into entrepreneurship, how come you only picked up on the engineering part.”
She responded: “Good question. You told your story linearly and it started with your engineering background.”
I was like: “ah, word”
She continued: “People latch on to the first few things you say in an intro, so they can quickly assess whether they can help, work with, or swerve you. Start with the most important line of how you want to be remembered and then tell your story to lead up to that point.”
I’ve been doing that ever since.
But it’s not the first time, nor would it be the last, that I thought I was saying one thing but someone was picking up something completely different on the other side.
Miscommunication is a tricky business. Is it the source of a lot of conflict?
What you sayin’?
The world is filled with noise. Too many people talking over one another. The cacophony ain’t that funny.
It’s hard to make progress when you are not aligned with the people you work with. The real issue at hand is poor communication skills across the board.
That and the inflated ego. The reality is clearer lines of communication get us to shared goals faster. To improve the communication landscape, each one of us has to get better for collective progress.
The responsibility of communication starts and ends with you.
Being a good communicator is about awareness, emotions, and identity.
3 Tools to Become a Supercommunicator
I recently listened to a book called Supercommunicators.
The author, Charles Dugg, shared tips on how to unlock the secret language of connection. It reminded me that we are all possible sources of disconnect and conflict. You and I can reduce this conflict by improving our communication skills.
It will help in business, family, relationships, communities, and in life.
Communication is a daily practice. You have to work on it by speaking, writing, and asking for feedback.
When you become a supercommunicator, you learn how to cut through the noise, you pay attention to what’s happening in the room, and improve your points of connection with others.
Here are three things I learned from the book supercommunicators.
1. Be aware of conversation goals
For a conversation to be meaningful you have to be willing to listen, learn, and talk.
Have you ever gone to a meeting with no agenda?
How about meeting with a manager that just wants to ram their thoughts through?
Most people leave those meetings tired, more confused, and unheard.
It’s quite unproductive.
What we miss in conversations is clarity of what type of conversation we want to have and the different goals and feelings each person wants.
Humans crave social connection. Conversations are glues for these connections. When you have meaningful conversations, neurons fire together, and different biological responses happen in coherence.
Supercommunicators have a skill that foster environments for meaningful convos. They are curious. To have a meaningful conversation, you have to think about them as learning conversations.
Here are four rules to a learning conversation:
- Rule 1: Understand the type of conversation you’re having. An easy way to remember this is to ask: “Do you want to be helped, hugged, or heard?” When people want to be helped, they want you to brainstorm solutions. When they want to be heard, they just want to vent. If they want to be hugged, they are looking for empathy. Learn which of the three before moving forward.
- Rule 2: Share your goals in the conversation and ask others for theirs.
- Rule 3: Ask about how people feel and share how you feel.
- Rule 4: Confirm whether there is a type of social identity each person is striving for?
Conversations are more meaningful when each person comes in with the goal to learn from the other person.
Make conversations learning opportunities.
2. Know emotions talk too
No emotions, poor communications.
“Keep your emotions at home.” That’s what they taught in 19th century managerial handbooks. Throw that relic in the trash. It’s 2024.
In conversations, it’s important to unearth how people feel with curiosity. People’s emotions communicate without words. The two main things to focus on is the person’s mood and energy. Once you surface the emotions in the conversation, it is important to make sure the person feels heard.
You can achieve this by following the these three steps:
- Repeat what they said in your own words.
- Distill what you understand from what they said. “What I understand is that you would…”
- Ask whether you got it right.
In a few iterations, you will get to a mutual point.
The goal of this is to reinforce that you care about building empathy with the person. This process breeds emotional reciprocity, an important ingredient for clear communications, and is particularly helpful for communicating with people that have opposing views and to resolve conflicts.
Don’t bury the emotions.
Bring them to light in your communication.
3. Find shared identities
Conversations are more productive when we have mutual identities.
And we are more alike than different.
A lot of times we are having conversations based on the attachment to certain identities.
I’m a boss, a parent, a doctor, an investor, you are a subordinate, a child, a patient, and aspiring entrepreneur. These identities can limit the scope of a conversation, one where there isn’t a shared perspective because of attachment to our fixed expertise and what we think we know.
Finding shared identities leads to more productive conversations and that’s why in your communication, it is important to establish them.
Here’s how:
- Understand that each person is a multitude of interests and identities. Start the conversation to tease these different identities out.
- Do not go into a conversation with a fixed identity and “expertise” because this forces people to do the same.
- Spend time finding social similarities before delving deep into the conversation.
I’ve found this to be very helpful, whenever I’m on a sales call, I try not to talk about business until I’ve explored all different options of similarities with the person on the other side of the call.
Sometimes it’s a shared interest in music, other times it’s destinations we’ve visited, or mutual acquaintances we’ve worked with.
Before you go deep, go broad.
Find social connection points.
Become a supercommunicator.
Final thoughts…
Your communication skills might be the main thing between your current expertise and your future goals.
It’s an important point of leverage.
Develop it by being aware of the goals of a conversation, unearthing the emotions of what’s really being communicated, and finding shared social identities to have more productive conversations.
Improving your communication skills is a daily practice.
I hope you try one of the tools above today.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
P.S. I tried my best to communicate my thoughts on where we are in society and where we’re headed in my latest novel. I’d really appreciate it if you checked it out here and got a copy for yourself (or a friend).
