Show Notes
Welcome to the remarkability Institute podcast. This is Bart Queen , your host. I hope all of you are doing well today.
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00:01:46] I typically get asked how do I go from feeling confident? To not feeling confident to feeling confident to not feeling confident. And a lot of times, people let their emotions drive them if there's anything that I've found out in my experience of helping and coaching folks.
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00:02:07] Is that emotions have no intelligence when it comes to the skillset of communication. Now, as we spend our time together today. What I'd like you to do is open up your mind to the three goals and the five components that will help you become more effective or what I call a more strategic communicator.
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00:02:29] I think if you have an open mind around those things, you'll gain some principles and ideas today in our short amount of time together. That you can immediately, make an application to implement into your life and see the effects. The outcomes and the results that happen from it.
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00:02:47] I want you to go from this idea of how everything feels to a place where you're relying on the skillset to carry you through every single time.
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00:02:59] Now, to lead you to those skill sets, I want to lay one more piece of the foundation that I think is important. And that's the three overall arching goals that each one of us should have in the way that we communicate.
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00:03:12] Now, this applies to whether you're giving a keynote speech. You're doing a presentation. You're doing a one-on-one, you're doing a training class. You're having a conversation with your children. I have found that these three goals go all the way across the board. Goal number one is to build trust. This should be the most important thing that we do when we're communicating with our family, our friends, and our clients.
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00:03:41] There's one important principle in this idea of building trust. Something I picked up out of a book called God is a sales person. Now it's not a religious book, but the author drives this point home. He said that people buy trust before they buy a solution tool or product. You also said that people buy trust before they buy the provider, meaning you or me.
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00:04:06] The CEO of Pepsi once said that the new global currency, the new global currency, is not going to be money. It's going to be trusted. So the question that you have to face and the question that I have to face every single day is how do we build trust between yourself and the people that you're communicating with.
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00:04:29] I think every day before we. Let our feet hit the floor with our families and with our children with our spouses. We should. I ask ourself as a simple question. What's the one thing I can do today to deepen the trust in my relationship with my spouse? I'm up. With my children. How can I deepen that trust between my company and my clients?
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00:04:52] How can I deepen that trust between myself, my company, and the marketplace?
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00:04:59] Now, I believe that there are four key pillars to building trust and how we communicate. Pillar number one. Is that our content must be clear. It must be clear.
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00:05:13] It has to be easy to understand. So here's a principle I want you to make a note. If you happen to be listening or you've got a pen and paper in front of you. I want you to write this down. A confused mind will always say no. A confused mind will always say no. I got that principle out of a book called real leaders. Don't do PowerPoint.
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00:05:35] Tremendous book. If you have not read it, I highly recommend you pick it up. But the author drives this idea home that as soon as someone says in their head, I don't get what you're telling me. They stop listening, and then we've lost all the way through. A confused mind will always say no. Pillar number one; your content has to be clear.
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00:05:58] Pillar number two, your content has to be concise.
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00:06:03] We know for a fact that most people are verbose. You've got somebody that you, you listen to, maybe a friend, and you find a look at them and say, what's the point. W, w. W. What are you trying to get to? What are you trying to tell me? Your information has to be concise. It's easy for all of us to be verbose much more difficult.
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00:06:23] To be concise. I always remember something that Winston Churchill said. He said the shortest speeches are always the toughest because it requires an economy of words. So it's not the idea of how do I tell them more anymore. It's how do I get them to remember more; you remember that and one of the podcasts if you listened to in the past.
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00:06:45] So the first two pillars or it has to be clear and it's got to be concise. The third pillar is critical as you and I communicate about our companies. It has to be consistent.
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00:06:59] One of the companies that I've had a longterm relationship with when I was speaking with the. The CMIO. I said, what's the biggest challenge that you face in communicating with your company. And he said the biggest challenge I face is a clear, consistent message out in the marketplace. So he said, Bart, do me a favor.
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00:07:18] Go out and talk to the employees. Ask five, six, seven, ten employees who we are and what we do and come back and share with me. What was the response that you got? I did just exactly what I wanted. He asked me to do. I came back, and I said, here's what I found. Every single employee gave me a different answer to the question.
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00:07:38] On who they are and what they do. That lack of consistency. Creates confusion in the marketplace. Well, one sales person says the other sales person has to be able to say now that can vary just a little bit, but the essence of the message has to be the same. This is another place for that seven-factor phrase that I've mentioned in the past comes in. That gives you that kind of consistency in your message.
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00:08:08] And the last pillar in developing this sense of trust. Is your competency your competency? Now what I mean by that are your stories, your examples, and your experiences. This allows you to bring your individual Allotey to the company message. This brings your uniqueness to the message. It allows you to tailor that message depending on who you're speaking to.
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00:08:34] It allows you to personalize it.
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00:08:38] That very first overarching goal is this idea that we have to build trust. And the four key pillars to building trust. It has to be clear. It has to be concise. It has to be consistent. And you bring in your competency, your uniqueness. Now, the second overall arching goal that we need to think about when we communicate is you have to be able to build a relationship.
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00:09:03] There are two things here. I want you always to remember people buy from people. People don't buy from companies. They buy from people. And the second thing I want you to think about in that principle is that people buy from people that they like. That they like. So if we look at these first two goals, we have two factors that we have to build. Number one, we have to build a trust factor, and we have to be able to build that quickly.
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00:09:30] So think about if you're giving a keynote speech, you want to build that trust factor almost immediately you want people in your audience saying, wow, I'm just like Bart. I'm just like a bill. I'm just like John. I'm just like Mary. You want that to happen quickly. That's building that trust factor.
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00:09:47] The second thing you want to do is build that likability factor.
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00:09:53] You've you all know someone, or you've met someone where you first meet them, and you go, wow. I don't think I want to build any type of relationship with them, and there are other people that you meet and you go, wow. I want to tell that person in my life story. A lot of times, that can be based on that trust and that likability factor.
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00:10:11] Think about a time when you've gone to a social gathering, it looks across the room, and you saw someone, and they had a big smile on their face, and they were laughing, and you go, I'd like to get to know that person. And then there's someone sending on the other side of the room that maybe has a very stern look on your face and think, Whoa, wow. I probably don't.
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00:10:27] They're not very approachable. That's that likability factor.
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00:10:32] I think we see this evident in the example of people who Cut our hair both for men and women. I know for myself, I go to a very specific barbershop. There are four men in that barbershop. They're all great barbers. There are two. I prefer to cut my hair. And this barbershop, you don't make appointments.
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00:10:55] You just walk in, and you have to wait, and sometimes I have to wait a long time to get to the barber of mind choice.
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00:11:02] Now for those of you who make appointments, maybe you've walked into make your appointment, and the receptionist says, gee, I'm sorry that the person who cuts your hair, they just went home ill. They feel really bad, but they set it up for someone else to cut your hair.
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00:11:17] Most of the time, people are going to say it's okay. I appreciate that, but let me reschedule. That's the idea of that trust and likability factor. I will ask a lot of women in my class. How long has that person been cutting your hair? And they'll say ten years, 15 years. And I'll give that example, and I say, what would you do? Would you reschedule, or would you let the person do it?
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00:11:40] And nine times out of 10. They'll say I'll just reschedule.
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00:11:46] Building those first two factors of building trust and relationships are critical and the way that we communicate. Now, the third overarching goal is this idea of engagement. Let me give you the definition of engagement. Engagement is the ability to. Get the listener to listen to respond, and interact.
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00:12:12] Engagement is the ability to get the listener to listen, respond, and interact. Now, if you've paid attention to some of my other podcasts, I gave you some statistics, for example, in face to face. You've only got 30 seconds. If you're doing something virtually, you've only got eight seconds to engage them.
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00:12:32] This idea of building get engagement in holding engagement. It becomes critical to getting your information out in a clear, effective way. So whatever we're doing, whether it's more personal or more on the professional side. I want you to keep those three goals in mind. Those three goals should drive. Absolutely everything that you do.
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00:12:55] It's going to drive how you deliver the message. It's going to drive how you craft the message, and it's going to drive how you interact with the message, how you interact with your listeners. Now guys, that leads me to those next five components that I mentioned to you. The very first one, when you think about becoming an effective communicator, I'll ask this in class, what's most important.
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00:13:17] Nine times out of 10. Most people go to their content. And if I ask them okay, when you go to craft content. Where do you begin, and most people in the professional world will say, well, I'm going to build some PowerPoint slides. They may say I'm going to do a little bit of research, but they start to put that research into PowerPoint.
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00:13:36] One of my favorite CEOs that I've had the privilege of working through said this to me about PowerPoint one time. You said if you use PowerPoint. You have no power, and you have no point.
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00:13:48] I don't have anything against PowerPoint. I do have issues with how we use power point. Not that we have it. It can be a tremendous tool if we use it correctly.
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00:14:01] So the very first place that very first component that people want to build as their content. Now, when you think about content, I'm talking about certain elements, how do I open? How do I close? How do I craft the body of my content? How do I craft it in such a way that I can speak for five minutes, or I can speak for 15 minutes.
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00:14:22] How many of you have prepped something to speak to an hour for a customer, and you walked in, and the customer said, I'm sorry. I know we plan for an hour, but something came up. You've only got 20 minutes. And now, you look at this piece of content. You look at all these slides, and you think, Oh my gosh.
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00:14:38] How do I boil that down to just 20 minutes? So as we craft content, as we think about those elements, I want to make sure you have a structure that allows you to speak for five minutes or 50 minutes. Cause remember I want to come back to this idea. It's a conversation, not a presentation. It's a conversation.
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00:14:57] So how do I take the slides that I've developed and turned them into a story and a conversation?
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00:15:04] What concerns me most about this idea that everybody raises their hand and says, the first thing I focus on is content. Is this. No one will spend not even five minutes thinking about what does this thing, meaning you, your physical body. How does that come across? Now that component is what I call delivery.
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00:15:29] Many of you will call that body language.
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00:15:33] Some people will call it the ma, the delivery mechanics, it's physically what you're doing. Now in that component, it's everything that you've heard before. It's your posture, whether you're standing or seated. Is it your eye contact? It's what you do with your hands. It's how you physically move if you happen to be standing.
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00:15:54] It's your voice. Is it your volume? Is it your rate? Is it your inflection? Is it your pies?
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00:16:05] It's your gestures. All of those are the physical delivery mechanics that you have to be aware of. But here's where. You get my concern. I want you to remember this make a note of this. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. What you say and how you say it has to match.
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00:16:31] And many times. In the way, we deliver information that doesn't come across.
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00:16:38] A couple of examples. Have you ever shaken? Someone's hand. It looked him square in the eye. You tried to look them square in the eye, but they were looking down.
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00:16:47] Or maybe when you shook their hand, it was one of that fishy kind of handshakes. That's a great example of what you say and how you say it doesn't match. I can look at a good friend, shake their hand and say, I'm really glad to meet you and look at the ground and they'll think you're not glad to meet me.
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00:17:06] Another classic example that I see all the time is someone standing in front of a group of people, and they'll say, good morning. I'm really glad to be here, and they stepped backward. Those two things. Don't match.
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00:17:20] How many, how many times have you seen someone say now? Are there any questions and all of a sudden the person folds their arms, and you're thinking, well, they don't want any questions. Do they. What you say and how you say it has to match. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear.
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00:17:38] Think about a small child. Parents. Have you ever asked your son and your daughter? Did you do that? And your son or your daughter may scuffle their feet a little bit and look at the floor and go, no dad, no, mom, I didn't do that. And you can look at that child and almost know immediately. That they've done what they've done, what they said they didn't do because it doesn't match.
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00:18:39] So the first two big components of being effective is this idea of your content, and the second one is of your physical delivery. Those two things have to match and come together. The third component is this idea of how do you interact with an audience. Those typically falls into two major buckets. How do you answer questions? How do you respond to statements?
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00:19:04] Someone makes just an off the wall comment. How do you work with that? How do you blend it? How do you come back on track? Somebody takes you off track. How do you come back on track? You're going to use PowerPoint. You're going to use a whiteboard. You're going to do a flip chart. You're going to do a schematic.
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00:19:20] You're going to show or give something as a handout. You're going to do a prop. How do I interact with all those pieces now that Doesn't? It doesn't vary whether it's just one on one across the table. Or you're standing in a group of 5,000.
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00:19:37] Those three components and where those three components interact. So imagine three circles driven drawn on a piece of paper. That center point where all three circles overlap. Is what we're striving for. We're striving for balance in your delivery and your content in your interaction.
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00:20:00] Now you've read a presentation book before. You've read a public speaking book before those are not rocket science. You know those things.
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00:20:12] But here's where it typically gets left, and this is where I truly feel like we fail.
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00:20:19] There are two key filters that will bring those to light for you. These two filters will help you decide what the content should be, what the delivery should be, and how to interact with that audience.
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00:20:34] The first key filter is what I call being listener focused. Most of us are really what I call speaker focused. It's that idea of here's what I want to share with them. I am going to show up and throw up.
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00:20:50] Let me give an example of what I mean by listener focused. Parents think about—a small child, a five-year-old before years-old you bought on a business trip. You walk through the door. Your son or daughter sees you and comes running to you, going daddy, daddy, daddy or mommy, mommy, mommy. Physically, what do you sometimes do?
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00:21:12] Well, many times, you may kneel and give your son or your daughter a big hug. Or there may be many times when you pick them up, and you hug them and yo,u tell them that you miss them. That's being listener focused.
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00:21:26] How many of you with your boss? At some point in your career, I've ever said, Hmm. What's the best way for me to approach this with him or her. Do I catch them first thing in the morning? Nope. That's probably not good. I'll do it at lunch. Maybe we'll step off. The campus will walk out of our building, and we'll go, we'll have some lunch, and we'll talk about it.
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00:21:45] Or maybe you've even said yourself. You know what? I'm going to ask them. Let's go out for a beer or something cold to drink, and I'll bring it up then.
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00:21:53] We do the same thing with our spouses. You think now what's the best way for me to address this issue. How do I bring it up? All of those things are being listener focused.
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00:22:04] Now, let's make a specific application to let's just say eye contact, for example.
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00:22:10] Eye contact in the Western world anywhere from three to five seconds is acceptable. We do the way we do business in the Western world.
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00:22:21] Now make an application. Let's say that we had an opportunity to go to class in Asia. Let's say we had an opportunity to go to Japan. Classic Asian culture. Would that eye contact three to five be acceptable or unacceptable? In most situations, that's unacceptable. There are eye contact is more one to three where ours is more three to five.
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00:22:46] Now think about movement. Most Americans or most Western, you'll see people move across the stage. In Asian culture, they're typically more stationary.
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00:22:57] In the Western world, you'll see a fair amount of gestures. In a more classic Asian culture, you'll see minimal gestures. It's not right or wrong. It's effective listener focused in where you're at.
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00:23:14] I remember the very first time I went to Japan to teach. I spent a full solid week with a man from Japan, teaching me the ins and outs the dos and the don'ts. Of how to behave in that culture. I thought I would never remember all the principals.
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00:23:30] I just wanted to make sure I did the best job I could and not put my foot in my mouth when I got over there. The one thing I remember that sticks in my head is how we give out a business card. In a classic Asian culture, you hand the business card with both hands. They will take it with both hands.
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00:23:53] And you treat that like it's gold like a treasurer. We're in the rest in the part of the world. Suppose somebody asks me for my business card. I might just toss it to them and slip it in, and they might slip it in their back pocket, or it's a bit of my back pocket. That would be completely unacceptable in that culture.
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00:24:11] Those are just ideas of being listener focused.
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00:24:16] Now, the second key filter is much more difficult. It's this concept called perception versus reality.
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00:24:25] If I was standing in front of you. And I said,
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00:24:30] Which perception is real, the perception that I have of myself. Or the perception that you have of me. Most people will come back and say, Bart, well, both perceptions are real, and they are correct. The perception I have of myself. I typically see myself as one of those kinds of country boys.
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00:24:50] The second perception, the one that you have of me, whatever that may be, may have been established as you heard my voice, maybe you been to a website. Or maybe when I greeted you and welcomed you into a class, you began to get a perception.
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00:25:07] But here's the more important question. Which one is most important? The perception I have of myself. Or the perception you have of me.
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00:25:18] What's most important in the way we communicate is the perception that the listener has of you.
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00:25:25] Now you and I both know that you never get a second chance at a first impression. And I come back to something that I shared with you earlier. Every single thing counts. Every single thing. Counts. But here's what's interesting what you experienced as my listener. And what I experienced as a communicator.
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00:25:51] How many of you ever run a meanie are given a talk and you wrapped it up, and you walked out the door and went, wow, man, I just crashed and burned on that. I'm probably going to get fired on that. And then someone walks up to you and catches you and shaking their hand and goes, wow. That was awesome. You did such a great job!
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00:26:07] You want to look at them and say, were you in the room? I was because that's not what it felt like. That's not what it felt like. So here's the principle I want you to remember. Do not go with how it feels. Go with the impact it creates. Now the difference between what the listener experiences in the communicator experiences is a concept called disparity. Disparity. And again, let me drive the point that you experienced as a listener and what I experienced as a communicator or two different things.
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00:26:43] So if we were spending time together and a full day full three-day program and I would get you up on your feet, I would get you to remember this because I'm going to get you to do things. Maybe the way I get you to stand or use your eye contact or use your gestures, and you're going to go, Bart, "that just doesn't feel natural."
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00:27:00] You may even look at me and go, Bart, "That is just weird." But then I'm going to say to a listener in the class, someone who's watching you. How did that look? Guys in nine times out of 10, they're going to come back and say, wow, that looks fantastic. And you're going to go. That's just not how it felt.
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00:27:19] I think a great application or a good illustration of this. Is if you golf. How many times when you were first learning to golf, did you pick up that club and the pro is trying to teach her in a while. This just feels uncomfortable. I remember the very first time I took a snow ski lesson. And the coach had me point my toes and bend my knees and put my hands in a certain position with the polls, and he said, okay, Barton. Now all I want you to do is go down the bunny slope.
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00:27:44] And I went, I can't even move for this position. That's that disparity. How many of you maybe try to learn to play a musical instrument, and it just felt awkward and uncomfortable. Now, if you stuck with it, you mastered it, and you got past the feeling.
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00:28:03] I tried to learn how to play the guitar until my fingers bled, and I finally said, I've just had enough. I never got past that feeling.
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00:28:11] Think about in sports, how many times in high school or college that the coach makes you run the plate? Do it again? Do it again? Do it again until you got to a place of muscle memory. Where you just did it naturally where you didn't even have to think about it.
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00:28:28] That's getting past that disparity. So when my three-day coaching program, we walk people through this. I get them to do it over and over and over again. And by doing that, you drive muscle memory, and by doing that, you get behavior change.
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00:28:47] I come back to a statement I made earlier if I could get every 17 and 18 years old. To learn this information. I would. Cause I would. I believe it would dramatically change how they come across. Your ability to communicate is one of the most important skills you can invest your time in.
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00:29:06] I remember someone sharing with me this simple comment that 99% of life is showing up. I also remember my mentor saying this. If you want things to change, you have to change.
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00:29:19] And the other thing that he mentioned to me, that's been a pillar in my life, was this. Work harder on yourself than you do your job. Work harder on yourself than you do your job. This is one of those skill sets. That you have to work hard on to master. Now there's no perfection in this skill set. There's only the pursuit of excellence.
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00:29:42] How do I tell the story more effectively? How do I do the sales information? Not in this many words. But in this many words, how do I say it more powerfully, how I say it more effectively. It's the pursuit of excellence, not the pursuit of perfection. If you want to make your presentations, your talks, and your sales calls, perfect. You want to make your conversations with your spouse and your children. Perfect. You set yourself on a per on a performance treadmill.
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00:30:12] I don't want you to do that. I want you to come back to being authentic. I want you to come back to being natural. I want you to come back to just having a conversation.
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00:30:24] These three goals and these five components. We'll give you the foundation that you can build from. These will be the beginning of the evolution and the revolution on how you come across.
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00:30:40] The world needs what you have to share. And the world will miss out if you don't share it. Your ability to touch the world, your ability to influence the world. Is critical. You have too much to give and too much to share. To sell yourself short.
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00:31:01] And as long as you're involved with me as long as you're involved in this remarkability Institute. As long as you allow me to be your coach. I'll make a promise. I will not let that happen.
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00:31:15] I can't thank you enough for your time today. It's been great. I hope you've enjoyed the remarkability Institute. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great week. I got a little bit.