Communication

Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead.

Do not write them on their tombstones, speak them rather now instead.

Anna Cummins

Steps of the Communication Strategy:

1.                  Communicate with your heart

2.                  Communicate now!

3.                  Invite others to help.

Twenty-four hours before the tragedy, Cynthia had never looked quite so beautiful.  Smiling gently, with a warm August sun radiating through her blonde hair, Cynthia had the glow they say all pregnant women achieve -- only she had more.   I looked at her sitting there, tummy bulging from seven months of carrying our miracle baby—Hunter James—and I knew our world was right.    

We had tried for eight years to have a second child and only when we accepted the single blessing of our nine-year-old son, Ryan, did Providence smile on us with another.  Cynthia was beautiful—so content, so happy, so filled with love and life.

She must have sensed my admiration because she tipped her head slightly, glanced down, and then looked back up into my eyes and smiled.  In that moment, we smiled at each other in a way that husbands and wives sometimes forget as the years go by, smiled as we did when we were high school sweethearts. 

Now, twenty years later, she still had that look, the one that reminded me I had fallen in love with my best friend and soul mate.  In that moment, she found words that echo in my mind every day, “Honey, if we never have any more than we have right now, we have everything we ever wanted.” 

How important are her words to me now?  How much does it mean to me to know she was supremely happy and content with the life we had built together?  What impact did that one sentence have on the rest of my life? 

The answers are immediate and profound. 

STEP ONE

Communicate with the heart.  By sharing her heart, Cynthia helped me find peace with what would follow.  By not assuming that I knew these feelings, she painted an indelible image in my mind of how much she loved me, our family and our life -- right up to the last day of her life.  The power of emotion is in its expression.  The power of true Communication is learning to speak our hearts with the same ease that we speak our minds.

Communication is the third Strategy because it conveys both Expectation and Affirmation. 

It is about projecting what we feel, what we know, what we believe.  It gives voice to those values, dreams and inspirations that we have affirmed and articulates the Expectations we have established.  Communication rails against the silence of assumption.

Communication is not about talking.  It’s about sharing. 

People talk constantly but rarely communicate.  The act of merely talking moves words, facts, and figures in order to receive something.  Communicating, on the other hand, shares feelings, emotions and trust in order to give something.    

Communication removes misconceptions, assumptions or doubts and refreshes the bond between people.

            It is often difficult for some individuals to become comfortable expressing their feelings.  It is easier to say what we think than share what we feel.  Why?  Because we don’t practice the art of Communication.  It’s embarrassing. It’s awkward.  We fear a negative reaction to our expression of how we feel.  We are shy or we think the other person already knows our feelings.  There are endless excuses to keep our feelings to ourselves.  Communication is not something we take time to practice, but the sooner we start building the habit, the better we will be. 

Practice, especially protracted practice, does make perfect as a study of Olympic athletes reveals.  One difference between athletes who took home the gold and those who did not was that the top achievers started practicing their skills earlier in life.  The implication is that the longer we practice something, the greater our chance of excelling at it -- and that includes Communication.

There is another critical aspect of skill development that is applicable here and that principle is called “over-learning.”  Learning something to a minimal level of proficiency does not help us retain that skill over long periods of time.  To master something requires more practice than would seem necessary—or over-learning the skill. 

To apply effective Communication skills under pressure, a person needs to feel comfortable and natural with those skills.  This comes from using those skills repeatedly.  It is the same reason world-class musicians still begin practice sessions by playing the musical scales they learned as children—repeated practice creates a second-nature hand movement when mastering the notes of challenging pieces. 

The reward for practicing Communication skills is that you will feel better about yourself and your connections to the people around you.  It also prepares you to face challenging circumstances with more confidence.

In my work as an executive coach, it is amazing how often my efforts are focused on helping a manager communicate with his or her staff, customers or peers.  These are bright, talented, high performing professionals who either resist -- or are unwilling -- to express themselves among colleagues in anything other than a calculated, logical or unemotional manner. 

As a result, they lack the power of leadership that comes when the true leader makes an emotional connection with the follower and creates a bond that drives exceptional performance.  These leaders genuinely believe that the workplace is no place for emotions and, indeed, the thought of having to share what they “feel” is an extreme “Fear Factor” to many of them. 

These Communication shut-ins try to tackle professional adversity with a minimum of emotional expenditure because they fear something they have not mastered.  As a result, they try to motivate without sharing, to inspire without emotion, to build teams without building a connection.    Inevitably, they fail. 

Why? 

Because conquering adversity is all about heart.  Communication—the art of sharing what we feel—gives our heart a voice.  We call it passion and no winner lives without it. 

So how do we get started?  How can we build a habit of Communication in our work? 

Start with sharing what we already feel strongly about.  Talk about the vision of the organization with your colleagues.  Speak about the pride you have in your work and in your team.  Share your passion for doing a job well.  Tell people when they do something that you respect, admire, or appreciate.  Learn to verbalize positive thoughts as they occur. 

Keep a box of “thank you” cards in your desk and write a quick note to someone who helped you finish a project on time, found information you needed, worked extra to cover the workload or just did something to help the team. 

If you lead a team, keep a box of thank-you notes available for team members to use in similar situations.  If you don’t want to write a note, then call the person and thank them.  Don’t add any other business to your call, just express your appreciation and recognize their efforts.

STEP TWO

The second part of the Communication Strategy is to communicate now! 

This aspect of Communication injects a sense of urgency to express what we feel.  It is a reminder that the heart speaks loudest in the moment.  Many times we “save” our emotions for “the right time” only to find when we get around to sharing how we feel, the impact has been lessened or the opportunity never comes. 

We must learn to communicate at the first opportunity we have when something strikes us as important.  Consider this illustration:

I presented Conquering Adversity for the first time on August 10, 2001—three years to the day that my wife and unborn son were killed.  The presentation was to twenty top executives of a communications company and was a favor for a friend who asked me to set aside the obvious trauma of the date and speak to this team of professionals. 

One hour into my seventy-five minute keynote, the CEO stood up and left the room.  He came back about five minutes later and stayed until I had finished.  Afterward, every person thanked me for an unforgettable message.  The CEO was last to leave the room and I made a point to apologize to him for what I interpreted as my having missed the mark with my message, given his sudden departure.

“Quite the contrary,” he replied. “I left to go back to my office.  I closed my door, picked up the phone, called my wife, told her I loved her and that I would be home early tonight.  I haven’t done that in 25 years.”

We make a habit of missed opportunities to communicate with our colleagues.  It isn’t that we don’t “think” about saying something to someone—passing on a compliment, congratulating a success, expressing our enjoyment at working with them—we just don’t act. 

Intentions become regrets when tomorrow doesn’t come.  We speak our mind about the job so why don’t we speak our heart about the people?  At that first presentation, it was the husband who stood up and acted on the message he heard, not the CEO. 

What should you communicate today to someone in your life or at your work?  Who is waiting to hear how you feel?

The actions required of this insight are relatively simple. They cost almost nothing, take virtually no time and yet are so uncommon to most of us. 

You don’t need to be a CEO to call your significant other and tell them you love them.  It takes only courage to open your mouth and tell a colleague you are proud of something they did or that you appreciate working with them.  Surprise your colleagues with coffee and donuts, invite someone from another department to have lunch, send a “thank you” card instead of an email the next time someone does something to help you or your team. 

The opportunities are in front of us every day to hone our Communications commitment.  We just have to act on them. But skillful Communications saves us more than missed opportunities to speak from the heart.  Communicating with a sense of urgency helps build strong teams at work, teams that produce bottom-line results for the organization. 

Cultivating an environment where team members feel empowered to openly share their opinions, feelings, reservations, pride, and creativity accelerates the team building process. 

Communication brings people together.  It builds trust and trust is the foundation of any high performing team.  People need to know their teammates respect who they are as much as what they bring to the team.  Skill, expertise and experience are valuable assets on any team but no more so than trust, respect, and passion.  It is passion that is the catalyst to good chemistry in teams tackling tough problems with confidence and cohesiveness.  It is passion that leads teams to meet deadlines and causes teams to deliver the best solutions. 

The difference between dysfunctional teams and high impact teams is rarely an absence of knowledge but more often an absence of chemistry—chemistry formulated by timely and sincere Communication among members.

Available online at www.Amazon.com  or www.cornerstoneleadership.com or by phone (888) 789-5323. There is also a link at my website www.summit-team.com

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