Ep 155 | Becoming a More Effective Communicator

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick and welcome to the No Days Off podcast where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Today I want to talk about communication and I want to refer back to episode 149, which was an episode on auditing your leadership. It was a, an episode about 10 different characteristics and you are going to rank yourself or within that episode you ranked yourself as to how you stood relative to those characteristics. Now, just yesterday, previous episode, uh, I talked about the leadership audit at episode 149 and I was talking about preparation. I was talking about the area, uh, of that audit. Where I saw the lowest scores across the board. Today though, I want to talk about communication because this characteristic, becoming an effective communicator, this happened to be the one within the audit that across the board from those that had surveyed and those I'd, I'd kind of given this leadership audit through, uh, with and worked through, this actually was the area where people ranked themselves the highest. So why do I want to go through the area where people rank themselves the highest? Well, while I love to focus on areas for improvement, you know, where were we a little weaker and it's an opportunity to improve, I also like to focus on those areas that we excel or that we're doing really well in and ask the question, how could I double down on this particular area and master it? Double down and become a superhero. In other words, if you're in high school and you get, you know, an A, 3 Bs, and a C during a semester, sure, I want to know how you can improve your Cs and Bs, but I also want to know how you could take that A and get it to an A+. Become a master in that subject. Be known for that subject. I love that conversation. Well, that's why I want to talk about communication today. So the characteristic that was listed in the audit was, uh, was about effective communication. Great leaders must be effective communicators. So how do you communicate? And on a scale of 1 to 10, the average score here was about 7.5, meaning that people rank themselves pretty high. So how can we become even better at communication? How do I become an even better communicator, which which therefore makes me on the path to becoming a better leader. Well, I turned to John Maxwell to help us out here in learning how to become a more effective communicator. Why John Maxwell? Uh, well, John is one of the best, the greatest personal development coaches on the planet in history. And recently, ironically, he wrote a book called The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication. I really liked this book. It's probably one you ought to pick up if you want to improve your communication. Well, if you pick up the book, what you're going to see is the very first undeniable law that John defines in this book is the law of credibility. And I believe that if you want to take yourself from a 7.5 on your score with respect to your, with respect to your communication, if you want to go from a 7.5 to a 9, I think this law of credibility may be a great place to start. So I'm going to talk about the law of credibility and, and how it helps you become a more effective communicator. The law of credibility simply means the most effective message is the one you live. And the reason John says that is, that is true, the most effective message is the one you live, is because anything else It's just empty words. It's just empty words. In other words, if you're not credible, if you're not living your message, the words have no meaning. They're just empty. Now within the Law of Credibility, within the book, uh, our buddy John talks about a friend of ours that presented at one of our conferences, Built How, about a year ago, Jamie Kern Lima. Who, Jamie Kern Lima, is the founder of IT Cosmetics and is an amazingly successful entrepreneur. Jamie has a great quote. She says, authenticity doesn't automatically guarantee success, but inauthenticity guarantees failure. So if you speak words that you do not actually live, you lack authenticity. In my opinion, you lack integrity. And as a result, your communication will not be successful. That's what I think about— that's what I think this Law of Credibility is really about. Communication doesn't begin with your audience. It begins with you. And the relationship we have with ourselves determines the relationships we have with others. So when I think about effective communicators, when I think about quality communicators, They gain credibility through a number of different ways. And I want to get a little bit more tactical here. I want to get in the weeds. How do I increase my credibility if I want to be a more effective communicator? If I want to increase the quality of my communication? John describes this in the chapter, and I'm going to, I'm going to give my, my spin on it. First, in order to increase credibility, You've got to be transparent. You've got to increase your transparency. What does that mean? It means to share yourself, your real self, the real you. People do not crave, they do not necessarily want perfect communicators. What they really want are authentic ones. So from my perspective, that means don't just talk about your successes and your wins, but talk about your failures and your challenges and your struggles. Be honest, be transparent. Now it takes a lot of courage to be transparent. So you're going to have to build that muscle up. John tells, he gives a good example around when he started book writing, you know, John's style as a reader, uh, I'm sorry, as a writer, if you're familiar with his, with his writings, John writes specifically to leaders. Well, well, the perspective of his publisher, was that there's not a huge market to write to, you know, aim your material at leaders. In addition, John loves to write in lists. Like if you pick up most of his books, it is, it's titles like The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication or The 21 Invaluable Laws of Growth. And you pick up a lot of his books, they're all lists. Well, his publisher also didn't like lists, but John recognized that that was what he wanted. That is how he wrote. That was what he was most passionate about and felt like he would not be authentic if he tried to write a different style. And so he married himself to that. And now 30 or 40 years later, he's proven to be pretty successful as a book writer. Now, quality communicators become credible, not just through by being more transparent, but also being consistent. The best predictor of what a person will do today is what he did yesterday. Therefore, consistency gives a person credibility. Simply put, in my opinion, actions are always going to be more powerful than words. So while you can say things, while you can communicate or aim to communicate with others, your message has to be consistent because consistency gives a person credibility and consistent actions over time are equally, if not more powerful than the words being spoken. So to be a greater communicator, more effective communicator, and to gain credibility, you got to be transparent. You got to be consistent. Next, you also got to be a good example. You've got to model the behavior. We talk about this all of the time here at No Days Off. You've all heard me say it many a time, model the behavior expected of those around you. Jon tells in his book, he tells a great short story around Gandhi. And this mother brings her young son to Gandhi and says, I need you to, I need you to tell him to stop eating sugar. And Gandhi says, bring him back to me in 3 days. And so she brings her son back to Gandhi in 3 days and Gandhi says, all right, son, I need you to stop eating sugar. So the mother says, well, you know, thank you for doing that. Why the 3 days? And Gandhi says, well, 3 days ago, I myself was eating sugar. He didn't find himself credible. He didn't find himself to be a good example to give guidance 3 days prior, but he stopped eating the sugar for 3 days and now he was a good example. It's kind of a silly anecdote, but, but a good one, right? Model the behavior expected of others around you. So be transparent, be consistent, be a good example. Next, you gotta be competent if you want to be credible. Speak on what you know. The weight of a communicator's words is determined by what he or she has accomplished. So where have you been successful? That gives you credibility. In the areas where you lack success, be transparent around that, but also seek to gain knowledge and gain expertise in that area. And once you do that, you are now more competent and therefore more credible. Lastly, in addition to being transparent and consistent and being a good example and being competent, lastly, and most importantly, You got to be trustworthy if you're going to be credible as a communicator. Trust is a person's greatest asset. And trustworthy people, they have known motives, which means people listen because people listen to the people they trust. So you got to be trustworthy, competent, you got to be consistent, you got to model the behavior as a good example, and you got to be transparent. These 5 things make you a more effective communicator. If you want to be a great leader, you got to be an effective communicator. So if you sit right now and you rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, and you're not a perfect 10, as I assume most of us are not, or you're not a 9, as I assume most of us are not, but you aspire to be better, the focusing question today would be, of these 5, Which one, or combination— transparency, consistency, being a good example, competency, and trustworthiness— which of these are— which of these should you focus on? How could you up your game in these respective areas such that you improve your score, you improve this characteristic that is known as communication, and you become an even better, better leader starting today? That's all we have for today, the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.