To best communicate an idea, wrap it in a human experience. Words can be superficial aspects of communication. Accurate communication happens through deep, human interactions that transcend words (relatable experiences; stories). Even though words may be exchanged and sometimes necessary, they are not sufficient to explain or promote communications through Aaron's aggregate opportunities. To best communicate an idea, wrap it in a human experience. For instance, you are arguing with someone. You are getting angry. You are saying things. You're hardly aware of something to defend yourself and attack the other person. You feel injured and want to justify yourself, make the other person see your side, and maybe even hurt that person. You are borne along on a current of hot emotion. Later, you may regret the words you used. Or you may get even angrier over the terms the other person used. You may think of something biting you should have said. The point is that the words, like froth on the roiling river of your being, were a partial aspect of your experience. The comments may have provoked anger in you and the other person, but the anger itself, the experience of it, the pain of it, the all-consuming nature of it, and even quite possibly the perverse pleasure of it goes beyond words.
This is a leadership lesson. Collaborating with leaders of all ranks and functions worldwide for the past 22 years, I have seen that most either misunderstand this truth of human nature or miss it altogether. When communicating with others, they primarily go for a narrow band of information dissemination and overlook what can be of tremendous benefit to them, the broadband of human relationships and the rich development that can take place in those relationships.
The irony is that as human beings, we swim in relationships --good, bad, or indifferent relationships --every day. We grasp at meager bubbles all around us, and beneath us lies an ocean teeming with results-engendering opportunities. However, relationships are so familiar to us that we ignore their uniqueness and importance in driving leadership results.
How do we seize these opportunities? I teach a process to do just that. That process is the Leadership Talk.
The Leadership Talk has one aim: to help leaders get impressive results -- far more results than if they do not use it. I call it "More results faster continually." Leaders can only get more-faster-continually by mining relationships through Leadership Talks.
The Leadership Talk is based on the idea that leaders speak 15 to 20 times a day: across a desk, at a water cooler, at lunch, in meetings, etc. When those speaking opportunities are manifested through Leadership Talks, the leader's effectiveness is dramatically increased.
My articles and books have explained the leadership talk's inner workings and personal and professional benefits. Suffice it to say, whenever you intend to communicate as a leader, you should assess not only the information you want to impart but also the human relations aspects of how you will go imparting it -- and then use the Leadership Talk to further those relationships and the results they engender.
For instance, the Leadership Talk teaches that the best way to get results is not to order people to do a job but to motivate them to choose to be your cause leader in doing that job. This is an obvious point. What is not clear is how you do it. One way is to transfer your motivation to others.
A critical Leadership Talk process tackles this challenge. The process is called "motivational transfer." It aims to interact with the people you lead so that they become as motivated as you about tackling your challenge. You can make that transfer happen by:
1 - Imparting information to the people.
2- Make sure that what you must communicate makes sense to them.
3 - Making your experience their experience.
The latter is the most effective way to promote a motivational transfer. You have your experience become their experience simply by remembering those experiences in your life that had a substantial impact on you and supplied a lesson to solve the problem of their needs - then simply communicating that experience and the address.
When your experience becomes their experience, you are on your way to delving into those deep, human, emotional aspects of their realities, which trigger impressive results.
You are the absolute expert on your own experience. When that experience becomes a solution to their needs, it will become their experience; when it does, you will have laid the groundwork for becoming an exceptional leader.