A communication framework called EVOLVE helps you navigate tough conversations during a recession. The six steps—Empathy, Vision, Opportunity, Listening, Value, and Experience Sharing—focus on listening more than talking, finding what matters to the other person, and suggesting tiny first steps instead of telling them what to do.
I share a communication technique with you because right now, in crisis, we are all in the business of communication. In fact, at any time. But there's a specific way to communicate. I was at a seminar once and the host or MC said that you have two ears and one mouth for a reason to listen twice as much as you speak. That is the essence of this process. But I want to give you a mnemonic I wrote up here called Evolve. That are the elements. I use these six elements and, and you'll see, actually the first five are all about listening, absorbing and learning. And the last one is about sharing. So let's go through it. E is empathy. We must have empathy for the people we're talking with to understand or at least appreciate what they're experiencing. I'll tell you this, if you walked the exact path the person you're speaking with verbatim, had every experience they had, you would be feeling and experiencing exactly what they have. So we can understand that and appreciate it. Empathy is key. Vision is asking them, what is their vision? What do they want the outcome to be? So we want to get clarity on where they want to move to. This gives you an understanding of where they are, where they want to move to. O stands for opportunity. What are the opportunities that they can take right now to move toward their vision? Now you ask them, understand this. Opportunities for some people could be big movements. For other people, it needs to be micro, small steps. In fact, most people I'm working with right now is about the smallest tangible steps. The opportunity is to write that first line of that email. I need to get out to tell my clients about a new offering or whatever it is. But you should, during the empathy phase, get a sense of what kind of bite sized piece they can bite off. Now that's an opportunity. Ask them about that, document it for them and say, okay, here's the one thing you feel you can do. Listening. Listening is part of empathy. But listening is just allowing them to have a relief valve. Just by speaking about their struggles and the challenges they're facing gives them a sense of relief and focus. Blowing off that steam. In fact, I have a personal experience with this, with journaling. I journal to write down the challenge I'm having to let things out. You can be a listener and just let them speak. Value. What do they value? This is the biggest motivator to get people back on track. So they're struggling to move them forward. You need to know their values. It's very difficult under duress to speak your values or even adhere to them. But there's a special technique. As you listen and learn all these things, ask again your client say, what are your values? Around that. And another probably more effective way of positioning saying, if you had to teach your children or direct your children what to do in the situation, what would you tell them? That's the easiest and most powerful way to reveal their values. Once you've gone through this process, or as you actually go through, it's not a linear process. You move around to elements in delivering your insights. Deliver it through experience sharing. The biggest mistake I'm seeing is people saying, this is what you need to do, or here's what you should do that brings about automatic resistance because you're telling the receiver information they made a mistake, they did something wrong, and there's a defense mechanism that automatically and subconsciously kicks in. Experience sharing is simply saying, I had an experience similar to this and here's what I did, or my client, my other client had this experience. And here's how we walk through it with them. Instead of giving advice what you should do, how you should act, instead share here's some experiential information that you can put your own judgment on by freeing them up from a you should. You take them out of the defensive and they become a listener now to you. Use this technique involved in any communication, particularly in this crisis, and and it'll serve you. It'll build a bond of trust, it'll build a bond of understanding, and it'll give you a way to be of service to your clients and your colleagues. Oh, and for more tips like this, go to mikemotorbike.com.
