Episode 3 - Improve your communication

Video Transcript:

Lou Quinto (00:21):

Hi, welcome to Q and A on Breakthrough leadership. I'm Lou Quinto, and I'm Craig P. Anderson. Today we're going to take the topic of improving your communication. Something we do on a regular basis. We do it verbally; we do it in writing. We're constantly communicating with everyone. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about three topics. First, one is listen more than you talk. The second one is to pay more attention to your nonverbals when you're communicating. And then the last one is follow up, making sure that you restate what you heard and you clarify it. So first one, listen more than you talk. Stephen Covey said it probably better, okay, but he's not here. And that was seek first to understand then to be understood, and when communicating, it's important that we hear the other person's perspective, particularly when we're dealing with someone with an issue or a problem. We need to fully understand what is going on as opposed to immediately jumping to a conclusion. And then really not listening to what they're saying. And we miss a whole bunch of data and information that could really help us get to the root cause of the problem.

Craig Anderson (01:29):

Oh yeah. And a lot of times is, you know, don't be sitting there in middle of the conversation planning your next common right. So, you know, if you're, if you're in the middle of the conversation, you're listening, but then you're starting to formulate your response before they've finished making their point, you're clearly not listening. It's, you know, I had one person I used to work with, and it was amazing to me that when you'd have these conversations with her, you know, she would immediately reply, she would think about what you said and then make the response. So you could tell she was really paying very close attention to what you were saying. Cause she actually took time to think about it in the context of her response. I don't know if you have to go to that strong of a mean, but, but listening is all about actually listening and paying attention, not trying to figure out rebuttal. A rebuttal baby. Right? So, I'm sorry. Wait, you're saying exactly. Exactly. And we've all done that

Lou Quinto (02:17):

Where someone comes in, and you know, we were good nature people. We want to help them solve their problems, and we immediately leap to the conclusion, and we don't actually hear what they said and active listening really to improve active listening. There's one thing that will help out, and that is eye contact. If my eyes are making contact with your eyes, I can't do other things, right? I can't look at shuffle papers on my desk. I can't look around the room. I'm maintaining my focus on you and say, now when I say eye contact; I don't mean like staring someone down like a dog in an alley, you know, because then eventually people are like, you're weird. I'm not talking to you anymore. Does get a little rough if you're doing it too much. But it's a nice setup for paying attention and non-verbals.

Craig Anderson (03:00):

Eye contacts, a big nonverbal body language. My personal favorite is, it wasn't bad enough that you guys are all looking at your phones. So I'm talking to you now. Everybody's got the watch, and you know, it's, it's hard to be engaged in a conversation with somebody who's just saying, Oh, huh. Yeah. okay. Yeah, there's an actual term for that. No, there's, it's called fuck, I'm not Hubb I N G phubbing. I'm not even going to try and say that. Okay. So next time you look at your phone when I'm talking to you, I'll just say fuck you. Thank you. Great. But I think it is, there's a lot of nonverbal cues and, and what I think, you know, if you really want to prove this point, it's when you're on a phone call with somebody, and you can't read their body language when you're saying something, and maybe you have to bring up something that's a little bit controversial but not uncomfortable for you to say. And you kind of put it out there, and you can't see them. It's maddening because you don't know. It's that, especially if they don't respond right away. Did I make them angry? Are they thrilled? Did somebody walk in, are they standing there shaking their head at the phone? Are they flubbing? But it's, it's really difficult. I, I had a boss who I just, I would do, I would go to huge links to not have a phone call with him and instead of trying to get five minutes in person.

Lou Quinto (04:10):

Yeah. And then there's the other types of nonverbals that we need to be conscious of when we're sitting in a meeting. Particularly, you don't want to sit there; someone's talking to you, you know, they say with your arms crossed because that gives them period, the feeling that you're closed off to anything that they're saying. And so you want to avoid that. The other thing too is a lot of times you're sitting in a meeting and people may be watching you to see what kind of reaction, as you said, you can't see it on the phone, but in a meeting, you can see that reaction. And if your eyebrows go up or you, you squint your eyes like you're looking at someone like they're crazy. Don't say anything. Those non-verbals really start to change the conversation significantly.

Craig Anderson (04:48):

Yeah, it's true. I mean instead of just, you know, text your friends around the table with whatever comment it is you've got in your head. Yeah.

Lou Quinto (04:54):

Yeah. I I tell the stories that I had the opportunity to do some consulting on in the Pacific rim, and I knew who the most powerful person in the room was. He was sitting at the end of the table, and during the course of the conversation to me, it looked like he stifled a sneeze. But the minute he did that

Everyone’s head went down, and all conversations stopped. And in my mind, I'm playing back the tape going, what the heck just happened? It looked like everyone power pack got pulled out at the same time, and they just stopped talking, and I realized that the person that the head of the table didn't say anything juror nonverbal was it looked like a stifled sneeze. And I think that was interpreted by a lot of the peoples. We offended them. And so in our culture, non-verbals don't go that far, but yet they do play a very important part. Absolutely. Okay. The last topic we're going to talk about is follow up by restating and clarifying. Whenever I'm talking to people about communication skills, I always say, you know, restate what you believe you heard the person say. And then if there needs to be clarification, go ahead and do it. And you know, it goes back to the exercise.

Lou Quinto (06:02):

Okay. So let me see if I understand what you're saying. Well, if you say that enough times, you're going to sound like a used car. So no offense to you, but you can come across as phony. Right? And let me see if I understand what you're saying. And so verbally though, if you say something and I say something, I may have some, some assumptions in my mind on what you're talking about, but if I didn't clarify that, I'm assuming now you mean this, and I just go forward with the, okay, that's what Craig means. Then you and I go in two different directions when we leave the meeting because I made an assumption of something you didn't want to do. And so when you're sitting down with people always take the time to, let me see if I understand what you said that would be leading it and then if there's any clarification, take care of it then. And the same thing you'd write to at the end of the meeting. Always follow up. I want to recap our meeting. This is what I might, key takeaways. Do you have anything different?

Craig Anderson (06:56):

Right. And I think it's important to, you know, depending on the stakes of the discussion too. I mean if it's, you know, where are we going to go lunch, you probably don't have to go too deep. So let me see if I understand correctly. You don't really want a sandwich, which I really want pizza. But I think when you're getting into higher stakes conversations and big decisions and big debates around things at the table, I think it's really important that you make sure that you're on the same page with that person before you either a agree or B, disagree with that point. Make sure you understand what it is they want to talk about, and you say, Hey, I was thinking I got this right, I got this right, you said X, Y, Z. I think it's really important in those high stakes conversations in lower stakes too, but probably not to the same degree. And there's certainly varying ways you can do it. You know, you don't want to say after every comment is, I think you said was, but there's ways. So yeah, you want to do this. Here's my question about that, right? Make sure you get those in there. Especially, you know, like you said, some of these meetings were pretty important meetings. You want to make sure you're not walking out of the room thinking you agreed on something that is completely off.

Lou Quinto (07:53):

Yeah, and it's same thing too, is you're in these meetings, people from different departments doing different things. They may say something and mean one thing, and you may take it again. You make that assumption, and you take it another way. And so when you've got people who are different disciplines, you need to stop and say, okay, let's clarify what, what we just discussed and where we're going from here. And so that this way, you can recognize any assumptions that were made and dispel them immediately or get confirmation that yes, my assumption was correct before moving forward. So, all right, so key takeaways, improving communication is something we all can do. And then you and I experienced it both in our business and personal lives. Improving communication can be better for both of us. Yes. And thank you for looking at your watch while we were improving communications.

Lou Quinto (08:42):

Some of the key takeaways, again, it's going back to the basics. Listen more than you talk. Make sure that you restate and clarify and pay attention to what's going on here. Facial expressions, body, the way you're sitting, she's sitting in a meeting, and you're sitting back, and you look like you've taken out a Koa pass, and you're just relaxing someone. I'm going to get the impression that you're not interested in what I'm talking about. And so improving that communication, it all goes back to put everything together, you know, wrap the package up where you've got the good eye contact because we communicate with everybody and the better our communications, the less things we do

Craig Anderson (09:21):

Wrong. And we don't have to do a lot of rework to fix. Yeah. I think it's, you know, my two big tech date, big takeaways are phubbing, which I didn't know it was a thing and now I do. But I also think it's just that importance of not talking past each other right there. There's so much, there's no, exactly, yeah. There's so much communication that goes through from, you know, business communication, social media, and everything else. But you're not taking the time to actually hear the person and really make sure you just want to if you think you're just so brilliant, do you want to jump right to your great point, you're not paying attention to the conversation, and if you want to be successful as a leader or even as a performer in any organization, listening is a key part of that. Well, if you think back to [inaudible] when you ask people about other people that you're working with and usually one of the thing, he's a good, endless or she's a good listener listening really is a characteristics as a competency that people recognize. Absolutely. And so even if you have to do like I do sometimes just by your tone, and you know in your mind though, shut up and listen live. Shut up and listen. You practice do what you need to do to do that. Absolutely.

Lou Quinto (10:23):

All right, well, we hope you enjoyed today's episode of Q and a on breakthrough leadership when talking about improving your communication skills. If you've liked today's video, please click on the light button below, subscribe to Q and a on breakthrough leadership so that you can know when the next one

Lou Quinto (10:41):

I was coming up with my very clever line, so there's your lesson for the day, but do share it with people that you think would benefit from it or passively aggressively sent it out to your entire organization. Thanks again for joining us on Q and a on breakthrough leadership. I'm Lou Quinto, and I'm Craig Anderson. Thanks for watching.