Tag: communication

Own the silence

FabrizioLeave a comment

It’s ok to be quite.

There is no rule that tells you should be taking your turn in meetings, dumping words in an email threads, using a stopwatch to measure how long has been since you have said something.

Relevance is not measured by how loud or vocal you are.

It’s ok to be quite, and it’s ok to take a break from the constant hustle of demonstrating you know.

Try any of the following to better direct your effort.

Is there anything in particular you would like my input on?

I am not familiar with the issue, so I feel I can’t contribute much.

This is a topic I would like to discuss separately.

I agree with what was discussed so far.

Silence can be valuable, once you take ownership of it.

One and many

FabrizioLeave a comment

You have one single product and multiple ways to tell about it.

That does not mean that you have to tell a different story every time you talk to a different audience. It means that you need to be sensible enough to adapt your story to match the language and the background of the audiences you care about (i.e., that make you money).

The drill goes like this.

  1. Work on your story.
  2. Identify your audience.
  3. Research your audience.
  4. Translate your story in a language that your audience can understand (without changing it).

You can’t have 2, 3, and 4 if you have not started with 1. And at the same time, you can’t pretend 1 to be effective if you are not following up with 2, 3, and 4.

When you get to 4, that’s the time to be consistent, over a period of time, to see if you have worked, identified, and researched well.

It’s a tough job. It is long-term.

Shades

FabrizioLeave a comment

Feeling ineffective is very different from feeling worthless.

Being down is not the same as being miserable.

If someone irritates us, it’s not the same as if they would enrage us.

When we feel regret for a situation, that does not make the situation humiliating.

Language is made of shades. And when it comes to emotions, in particular, being able to verbalize the different levels of intensity can make the difference between seeing options and getting lost.

We can get better at expressing how we feel, and this vocabulary of emotions by Ed Batista is a fantastic tool for that.

How are you feeling today?

No bad experience

FabrizioLeave a comment

Three questions to unlock learning.

  1. What happened?
  2. What worked and what did not work?
  3. What will you do differently?

When you do this regularly and consistently, no bad experience will stop you.

Rather than starting your next meeting with “I have heard”, “I have noticed”, “The numbers say that..”, try kicking off a conversation with the first question, and keep your mind open by supporting it with the other two.

People do not want to be told what they did wrong and what they should have done instead. People want to learn. Guide them in doing just that.