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Each episode is hosted by Ray Sanders, an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years of experience in both print and broadcast media.
As a CEO, he has grown multi-million-dollar organizations, led an award-winning financial institution, served in a nonpartisan role with the United States Senate and pioneered international efforts to bring clean water to remote regions of the world.
Sanders is the founder of Coaching Leaders an executive coaching and business consulting firm that provides CEO’s with valuable input from a team of seasoned business leaders who have served at the highest level within successful multimillion-dollar organizations.
The Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast unpacks inspiring insights from inspiring people.
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How to overcome adversity.
Ways to live a life full of meaning and purpose.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them.
What makes a purpose-driven business unique, different and successful?
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What industry tips and tricks do listeners need to be aware of?
How cause-minded companies give back through Edify Leaders and other great causes?
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Have you ever experienced a failure to communicate? Do you ever feel like you're misunderstood? Does communicating ever frustrate you? If so, stick around. I think you'll like what you're gonna hear on this edition of the Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast.
Speaker 1:Hello, everyone. I'm Ray Sanders, and you're listening to the Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Ray Sanders, and I'm your host here on the Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. I know you have a lot of choices out there, so it really tickles me that you stop by and let me just kinda join you on your journey today.
Speaker 1:You know, I don't know where you're at. You might be traveling down the road, working out at the gym. You might be where I was a few weeks back, hanging out at the beach, and you thought, you know what? I'm gonna check on in on old Sanders and see what he's up to. You know, recently, I had the opportunity to be with one of my clients, and they asked me, how can we better communicate on our team?
Speaker 1:And we developed a little presentation, something we call fuel, filling up every leader. And during fuel, we unpack this whole idea about communication, and how challenging it is, and how confusing it can be. So let's talk just a minute about communication. You know, what is communication? Well, if you look it up in the dictionary, there's a lot of different descriptions that come along, and there's a lot of different things that they say.
Speaker 1:But the bottom line is it's about using words, sounds, or signs to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings. Are you with me? So let's think about it. Most of the time, we use words, whether verbally or on a page, to communicate with those that we want to talk to or express ourselves to. Sometimes we'll use sounds.
Speaker 1:One of the examples I gave in the meeting that I shared at was the thought of being, you know, at a basketball game or something when you're in high school, and you see a pretty cheerleader and you go, that'll get some attention. What are you hoping? What does that mean? All it is is just a simple sound. But if you're the right girl looking at the right guy and you're up in the in the bleachers, and you see him, you might give him another signal.
Speaker 1:You might wink at him, or you might point your finger at him, and then curl it up and say, like, hey, come here. I want to get to know you. So we use words and sounds and signs to express ideas, thoughts, and feelings all the time, but here's the deal. Communication can be confusing. Let me give you some examples.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about different words that have the same meaning. You know, I grew up, I grew up here in Oklahoma on the on the plains, were people from the prairie, and believe it or not, you may not know this about me, but there was a day that I actually used to ride bulls. And let's just say this, I wasn't very good at it. But growing up in a farming community, it wasn't unusual that we would go to a a rodeo or ride horses back in the day, but if I wanted to get my horse to go, there's several things that I could say. I could say giddy up, or or how about just go?
Speaker 1:All of those giddy up or go, were communicating the same meaning, but with different words. I could say, woah or stop, and those would be the same words. They would be different words but with the same meaning, different words but with the same meaning. So what are some words that are different but also have the same meaning? Now if I told you bat, would you think that I meant a baseball bat or a bat that flies around at night out of a cave?
Speaker 1:Same word, different meaning. Or what if I said, I see you, or let's go to the sea, or read and read. Which is it? Same words, different meaning. Let's face it.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of barriers to communication, a lot of barriers communicate to communication, and I think there's at least 4 that I wanna unpack. The first one would just be a lack of clarity, a lack of clarity. Sometimes it's just not clear what somebody means. Do they mean see, see, read, or read, or read, or bat, or bat? What do they mean?
Speaker 1:I mean, in Spanish, I could say a llama, and I that would mean call, or it could mean fire, or it could mean an animal. I mean, goodness sakes. There's a lot of opportunities where a lack of clarity can confuse communication. Another barrier to communication would be poor listening. You know, I think it's interesting.
Speaker 1:If you just if we just look at each other, isn't it obvious we have 2 ears and one mouth? If we would just listen twice as much as we speak, a lot of times our communication would be a whole lot more clear. But what do we do? We get into a conversation, someone begins talking, someone begins sharing, and what what happens? We begin to formalize, we begin putting together our own thoughts, and we don't necessarily interrupt them, but we kind of check out and we prepare what we want to say.
Speaker 1:I would call that poor listening. Or what about prejudices or assumptions? So many times we have someone speaking to us, and based upon the way they look, or their gender, or where they come from, we make some assumptions about them and their ability, to get the job done, so to speak. So we can we have these we have these prejudices and these assumptions that make their way into our everyday life. Not necessarily always bad and they might be innocent, but they do get in the way.
Speaker 1:Here's another barrier to communication. How about the misuse of technology? Now here's the deal. So many times, especially among younger generations, I have noticed that people don't speak or they don't talk, they text. And what do we leave out of the conversation when all we do is text one another?
Speaker 1:We we can't look into each other's eyes. We can't discern each other's voice, but what do we do? We think that we're the master writer, and we're gonna write out a beautiful text, and then all of a sudden we're misunderstood. Did I mean come here? Did I mean come here?
Speaker 1:Or did I mean come here? I mean, all those things play into what could be meant by something as simple as a text. We just simply rely too much on text and technology in that regard. But then there's times that we actually just use the phone. We use the phone, but even that can be limiting because what?
Speaker 1:We can't see body language. We don't know if we're frustrating someone. They could be totally ignoring us or doing something else. They have us on speaker phone, and who knows what they're doing. We've all went in the bathroom and heard the guy talking on his phone as he was in the stall, so to speak, and you're thinking, does anybody really know where he's at?
Speaker 1:And how many of us have actually made a call, maybe in the privacy of our own home, doing the very exact same thing? So, you know, the cell phone is great, but texting and calling can be limiting. So what's best? Well, let's not misuse technology. Certainly, we could FaceTime or we could do a Zoom call or something like that.
Speaker 1:Anytime we can add the visual, we can look someone in the eye. We can look at them and see what their body language is saying in addition to what they might be saying in a text or otherwise or with their mouth, it's gonna help us communicate and get rid of some of these barriers to communication. I'd like to talk about what I believe are keys to great communication, and I call it the 3 c's. The 3 c's are these, and I want you to remember them. The first one is call, the second one is communicate, and the final one is confirm.
Speaker 1:So what do I mean by call? What do I mean by call? If you're going to communicate, do I mean pick up the cell phone and call? Well, sort of. What I really mean is engage me, call on me, get my attention.
Speaker 1:So remember call and get my attention. If I don't have your attention and I don't know you're listening, how do I know that I'm ready to begin the next c, which is communicate. The second c is communicate, and when you can when you communicate what you want to do is inform me, but you don't want to assume. You want to communicate. You want to lay out the details.
Speaker 1:You wanna make sure that I understand. You don't want to assume that I know what you mean. How many times have you been speaking to someone, maybe it's a coworker, maybe it's one of your kids, maybe it's your spouse, and you say, you understand? And what do they always say? Yes.
Speaker 1:I never will forget being in a client meeting one day, and I was helping a president of a company begin to realize that he thought people were understanding, but they weren't always really getting it. And we were sitting in an executive team meeting and one of his executives was there and he'd finished with, this meeting and he said to the executive as as he began to walk out the door, he said, do you understand? And classic. What did the executive say? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I got it, boss. I understand. But then I said, how do you know? And I said, ask him what he understood, and what do you think happened? He explained what he understood and it wasn't it was close, but it wasn't exactly what the boss wanted.
Speaker 1:So it's one thing to call on me, it's one thing to get my attention, it's another thing to communicate, but we don't want to assume that people really understand. Which leads us to the 3rd c, and the 3rd c is this, confirm. So number 1, I'm going to call on you, I'm going to engage you, I'm going to get your attention. Number 2, I'm going to communicate, I'm going to inform you, but I'm not going to assume you understand. So then what do I do?
Speaker 1:I confirm. And how do I confirm? Tell me what you heard me say. Say it back to me. Tell me what you heard.
Speaker 1:Ask clarifying questions. Ask me a clarifying question. So what's the first c? Call, engage me, get my attention. What's the second c?
Speaker 1:Communicate, inform me, don't assume. The third c, confirm, Tell me what you heard me say and ask me clarifying questions. Did you catch the pattern? Call, with the a, attention, communicate, the a, assume, don't assume, and confirm, ask. These all work together to help us communicate better.
Speaker 1:So the next time you have a communication breakdown, and trust me we're going to have failures in our communication, We're going to have a failure to communicate. There's no doubt. It happens. We're human. But the next time this happens, kinda run these questions through your mind.
Speaker 1:Did we call? Did we call on the person? Did we engage them? Did we get their intention? 2, how clearly did I communicate?
Speaker 1:How well did I lay it out? Did I give you enough details, or did I assume that you already knew or you understood? And then finally, did I confirm? Did I ask you clarifying questions? Did I ask you to tell me what you heard?
Speaker 1:I believe that when we use the 3 c's to help ourselves communicate with other with others, the 3 c's can make a great difference in helping us communicate clearly. Hey. Thanks for stopping by today. I really appreciate it. I hope this has been a good program for you, and I hope you put into practice the 3 c's.
Speaker 1:And remember, we're in your corner for life and work.