IDL97 Season 2: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect
Where do most leaders fall short when it comes to creating genuine connections? What can you do every day to build credibility and trust with your employees? How is forming a connection a skill that you can develop?
I’m excited to share the last book of the 2022 IDL bookclub with you, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, by John Maxwell. At the end of the global pandemic, it seemed that there were a lot of people yearning for connection. Despite all the effort that people were going through to communicate, it still seems that few of us connect meaningfully. Today, I address this idea, and via John’s book, offer insights on how to grow your connection with others.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Spend time with your people - 04:29
John’s five principles for effective communication - 05:45
John’s five practices for creating connection - 12:16
Spend time with your people
As a leader, if your goal is to foster genuine connections with the people within your company and the clients that you serve, then you need to be willing to show up and invest time and energy into getting to know who they are and where they’re at.
Do not place all your focus on hitting the agenda points that you have in mind.
If you are more interested in listening to your own voice than the voices of the people that you work with, then something needs to change quickly, because your leadership role could fall.
John’s five principles for effective communication
1 – Connecting increases your influence in every situation.
When you focus on building a genuine connection, you will have more influence in each situation that you are in, because those people will feel that they can relate to you and therefore trust you.
2 – Focus on others.
Show people that you are listening to them by reflecting on what you hear, and letting them know through both your actions and your words that you are intent on creating a space where they can fully be seen, heard, and appreciated by you.
3 – Connecting goes beyond words.
Your body language is vital. People may assess your ability to lead based both on what you say and how they feel around you. Express your welcoming energy both in the warmth of your voice and in the energy of your body.
4 – Connecting requires energy.
You need to know how to take care of yourself so that you can show up fully for others and those that you lead.
5 – Connecting is more skill than talent.
Share your stories, and your experiences, and do it with confidence. You aren’t born knowing how to connect because it is a skill that you can develop with intentionality.
John’s five practices for creating connection
Connectors:
1 – Find common ground
There is an undeniable and comforting balance in differences and similarities between places and people.
It doesn’t matter where you come from or where you’re going, because even if someone has a different direction to yours – at your core – there are similarities.
2 – Keep it simple
Don’t talk about yourself, and get to your point. Repeat what is necessary because people sometimes need to hear something multiple times to fully understand it. Say it clearly and say less.
3 – Create an experience that everyone enjoys
In practice, bring the thread of all these principles and practice together to create spaces that are welcoming and listen to each person’s story equally.
4 – Inspire people
5 – Live what they communicate
There’s nothing worse than someone that says and doesn’t do, and that is all talk and no action.
When you live what you communicate, you build credibility and trust, which are the cornerstones of effective leadership.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | John C. Maxwell – Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently
Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com
January 9th and 10th workshop: sign up over at www.theimpactdrivenleader.com
Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com
Check out the Practice Of the Practice
Visit theimpactdrivenleader.com and sign up for the workshop!
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
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When we live what we communicate, we build credibility and trust.
Tyler Dickerhoof
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader Podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. If you're watching on YouTube, good to see you. Glad you're here. It's probably good to be seen for me. It's good to be seen. I'm glad you're listening in, tuning in. Wherever you're listening to this, wherever you're taking in this information, excited to be here with you today. Just as this podcast is releasing in the first week of December, 2022, I want to let just finished up the Awaken the Leader within workshop, great reviews, amazing opportunity to really engage with people. Letting you know I'm going to have another one of those workshops, free workshops, January 9th and 10th. You can go to theimpactdrivenleader.com to learn more about that. I would love for you to join, I'd love for you to take part in that two-day workshop. It's something that I'm going to try to do quarterly, if not more often, to add value to people to let you know a little bit more about the Impact Driven Leader community and learn grow. The great thing about it is in that workshop, we do it together, much like we do everything in the Impact Driven Leader community.
I'm excited to kick off and share in this podcast episode the last book of 2022. This will be the 24th book that we have gone through now over the last two years. What's really fun for me, I get a lot of feedback, obviously from the round table. I'd love to get emails, I'd love to see reviews if you've never reviewed, I'd love to know that. Love to know what value what books maybe have really impacted you the most. This book is a book that I read several years ago. It's an oldie, but in this time in our world, one thing that I've continued to see from our round table, from other interactions with people, this whole idea of connection. See, we went through a global pandemic. I'm not sure if you knew this, but that happened, everything's been a blur for the last couple years.
Trying to remember back, I just saw something that we're trying to remember 2019, what were we doing then? We're almost to turn over the calendar to 2023, four years later. One of the reasons why we're so trying to yearn and get back is we're looking for connection. This is what I've learned, and this is what I've seen, is there's a lot of communicating going on, but there's not much connection. So I'm excited for the Impact Driven Leader Book Club to discuss today a great classic from John Maxwell, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. I'm going to dig into really the nuggets, we'll call it the high points, the learning elements of this book in this podcast but I'd love for you to read the book with our book club or if you're interested to learn more about the round table, you can submit an email, hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com and we'll make sure we'll get set up included into learning about the round table. It's probably the most fun that I have every single week where I learn the most to be a part of that community.
So let's kick it off right now. In the book written by John Maxwell, he talks about communicating, connecting, and really this falling short of like we put out information, but we don't take time to connect. I view it like this. If I were to sit here, if we were in person, I'm looking at you in the face and I would take a few moments to learn about you, to learn why you are listening to me, why you're in the room, now, it's hard to do that on a podcast. My guess is you're listening because one, I've had interviews with past guests and shared some pretty valuable information. You're like, I want to keep coming back and to see what Tyler has to ask questions or information that they share. There's that part of it. You're a leader who is like so many others, like, I'm just trying to figure out how I do this. Or maybe you're like, a lot of people that I talk to that you're like, I want to be a better leader, but I know I need to grow. I'm not sure really what growth looks like, but I'm willing to be a part of a community to grow with people and in that figure out where I need to grow the most. But really that is the community of the impact driven leader.
But one of the biggest areas that people fall short when discussing that, as I just lay that out, gave you reasons to connect, is spending time. Instead, people will show up at an event, speakers, maybe a executive boardroom, and they have an agenda and they want to get through that agenda. They want to make sure they hit all those points in the agenda because they don't hit all those points in the agenda their job's not done. As I encourage someone who's in our round table who sits at the executive table, I said to him, what's the most important thing, the most important thing that you could do in your time in your meeting is to hear people, connect with them, to understand what's really important to them.
So if you walk out of a meeting and you didn't hit your 10 agenda points, but you made sure that you connected on the one thing that was most important, people are going to walk out of that executive meeting and they think that was the best meeting ever because I was heard. People actually felt like I mattered. In our world today, post-pandemic, it's where we're struggling. That's where I wanted to finish this year, 2022 with this book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, let me kick it off. There's five principles that John shares. I'm going to share them real quick and then we'll dig into each one of them a little bit more and when we're going to finish up with five practices.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
The first principle is connecting increases your influence in every situation. Number two, focus on others. The third principle is connecting goes beyond words. Fourth, connecting requires energy. The fifth is connecting is more skill than talent. Well one piece that I've really, I would say been influenced by this book and where it's just been meaningful to me is that I enjoy connecting with people. There's a curiosity to connecting and learning about people. Imagine like this, you're at an event, say you're going to meet people and you just start talking and maybe there's a little flirting. That's natural connecting of learning about people and smiling and engaging and letting them know that what they're thinking about is curious, pokes curiosity to you. That's simply connecting.
Yet so often in so many of our relationships, from our spouses to our kids, to our coworkers, to maybe those people that we lead, we don't choose to connect as it gets in the way. We have more important things to do. See, connecting influences your, increases your influence in every situation because you're able to actually relate to people that you're just not this talking that's going to spew information that you actually value other people. See, it's that first principle that leads into the second focus on others. Instead of worrying about ourselves and worried about and what we're talking about, don't see yourself as the center, but yet focus on others.
Zig Ziegler said, if you help people get what they want, they will help you get what you want. It's that focusing on others. It's not correcting them, it's connecting them. If you're a leader and say you have an opportunity to work with someone and mentor someone, maybe they were doing a sales call and you happen to be with them and listen to them and you're like, oh, okay, we need to work on some areas here because we're not right here. Instead of choosing to do that, look at the opportunity to connect with them, understand what they were thinking in this situation, how they felt it went. Choose to connect. It's called the poop sandwich. I'll save the choice language here, but it's called that because the opportunity to give them positive connection, then critique and still connect with them. People respond with connection.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
The next thing is that connecting goes beyond words. So much of communication has nothing to do with the words. if you're watching on video, I'm using my hands, I'm using my face, I'm showing what I'm trying to communicate with my eyes. I had the opportunity this fall, I was watching several sporting games between each of my kids and going and watching others and one thing that I found continually I was doing was watching, watching the body language from the sideline, to watch the body language. Even when I was coaching different athletes, watching the body language, one area that I was really focusing on was their confidence, knowing that however their confidence went so with their performance.
When you're trying to communicate, if your body language said, I don't believe any of this, I'm just here to be the messenger, no one else is going to believe it either. But if you take the opportunity to connect, you actually use the words and tone to say, I don't know what I'm doing here, but I'm going to give it my best effort. You know what people are going to do? They're going to respond positively rather than you trying to just wing it, make it up, figure, oh, I'll just say all the right words and they'll understand. The reality is with all the right words and not the right tone, not the right body language, the words don't matter because our brain is saying, I see something and I hear something and they're totally out of line. So I'm going to focus on what I see, not what I hear because I can be deceived by what I hear, but not so much by my eyes.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
The next principle, principle number four is connecting requires energy. There's so many people that I know that introvert, extrovert, whatever. Connecting requires energy. My view on that is people are worth it. Now, as I've learned and I've seen in so many situations, find how to recharge your battery. Find how to get energy to go use energy to connect. Here's the other thing that I found. If you can talk to people or say you're communicating about something that you enjoy, that you believe in, that you think is impactful, this is what I've seen, may not be absolute, but this is what I've seen, it builds up your energy. It charges your batteries. If you're excited, if you are energized, engaged in it will energize you. People know that, they see that. The biggest thing is just slow down. Go with people at a pace that they can go and take them with you. That is energizing. If you're trying to race away from people just to communicate and you're not choosing to connect, that pulling apart, that separation will zap your energy.
The next thing, this is an encouragement to everyone as it was for me when I heard first heard this, connecting is a skill. It's a skill more than it is talent. That talent is something you inherently have that you can't really develop or make better. But a skill is something that you can work at and you can make better. A few ways to do that is have some passion, ask questions, be curious. Share your own stories, your experiences, connect with people through those. That's been age-old as long as people have been around. The next one is be confident. I spoke about this earlier, talking about body language. People pick up on confidence from so many other places other than our words. Then be excited about what you're sharing. Make everything you say sound new. I'm going to jump now to the practices.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
So there's five practices that John shares in the book, Everyone Communicates Few Connect. I'm going to go through them here, much like I did with the principles, come back then and dissect them, share a little bit more about them. Connectors find common ground, connectors keep it simple, connectors create an experience everyone enjoys, connectors inspire people. Then lastly, connectors live what they communicate. See is this first one, the common ground that I really utilize as a tool here? Here's something interesting. If you've been listening to this podcast for long, you knew that I grew up in Ohio. I grew up on a dairy farm. I went to school in New York, I moved to California, then Washington. I moved around the country. I knew a lot of people from all over the country before I ever went to college because of my experiences through 4H and FFA and other engaged, breed associations, cattle.
But it was from those experiences that I've been able to learn about a lot of different places in the country. There's two things that I've learned. Everywhere is different, everywhere is the same. Everywhere is different, everywhere is the same, meaning every region of our world has differences, different customs, different temperaments, different cultures, different everything. But yet the one thing that I know, and for me it was from the background on cows, everyone has cows and cows are all the same. It doesn't matter what part of the world we're in. A cow is the same. This is what I know too and I've experienced this working with people in South Korea, in Australia and the US and different North American countries to Europe is a smile is a universal language, a smile.
I think that's one of the biggest tools that I use. I've shared this before I use the tool of a smile to soften my intensity. I use a smile to connect with people. People don't have to know. They can't even, they can see and not speak or hear and a smile goes a long way. It's one of those tools that I believe is really important that if you share a smile, people will connect with you. It's as simple as opening up the door and saying, I'm here to connect with you. But it's then choosing to use that common ground, ask questions. Don't assume, don't be arrogant that you already know, I don't need to feel or want to know and feel what others feel. I may be indifferent, insensitive to it. I just want to control the situation. Those are not connecting tools. Connecting is being available. Say, hey, I want to connect with you. I want to listen.
Ask questions, be humble, be adaptable, and see things from their point of view. You will learn a whole lot. I shared this on one of my daily coffee chats, the difference between a window and a mirror be a window. A mirror is good, but a mirror gives you a reflection that's not a reality. The only person that sees what you see in the mirror is you. But if you choose to be a window, that's humility. That's using adaptability to say, hey, what does it look like to sit on the other side of me? Maybe use that as a connecting tool. Oh my goodness, I never knew that. Thank you for sharing that with me. I see it this way because it's the mirror. You see it differently because you look through the window. That's extremely valuable.
Always know what questions to ask when trying to find common ground. Do I want to know? Do I want to feel what they feel? Do I see what I want you to see before I ask? Do you see what I see? Do I know what you know before asking? In other words, know what you're going to ask. Do I know what you want before asking? Do I know what you want? It's those little things that help people dream, sing, and cry about. It's so understanding what they dream about. It's understanding what they sing about and it's understanding what they cry about. Those are common ground tools.
The next one is keep it simple. The second principle of practice here, let's just keep it simple. People love to talk about themselves. If you give people the opportunity to talk about themselves, they will do that for hours. Next is get to your point. If you're going to ask somebody a question, I am tremendously guilty of this. I did this this morning. I asked three questions all at once. I have written it down, I know I need to ask one question on time. Podcast listener, you've heard me do that with certain guests and I have to almost restate the question sometimes. Like, all right, let me keep it simple. That's in my own head because I'm thinking of so many different questions I want to ask.
The next is say it over and over again. I've heard this when it comes to communicating, connecting and serving people, once you're sick of hearing it, you're about 50% of the way there. People need to hear it over and over and over again. Here's where I've learned that, every time you say something, it's already gone through your brain twice. You first had the thought and then you had the thought to say it. So when you're 50 sick of hearing it and you're 50% there because you've already heard it two times as much as everyone else, even if they've heard it every single time you've said it.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Next piece is say it clearly. we have this idea of a jigsaw puzzle of our life and I can see the puzzle, but not everyone else can because it goes back to the mirror in the window. They're looking through the window, I'm looking at the mirror. I see everything through the mirror. Even though it's a reflection, I see it. They're looking through the window. They can only see what I show them. Understand that is how people see you in your life. The next is say less. Don't impress people. Just give clarity and simplicity. The best message is the clear message, not the beautiful, elaborate, over-spoken. Get to the point quickly.
The next connectors create an experience everyone enjoys. I've been a pleasure of this. I've learned from some of the best that create tremendous experiences. It's those experiences that you think back reflect and all the lessons that you learned came from that experience. Whether it was, a trip a few years ago, my wife and I went to Israel. I can think back about the experiences of dancing in front of a Syrian tank that was abandoned along the Israeli Syrian border and it was dancing in front of that that reminds me of why that part of Israel, the Golan Heights is so impactful in history. When I think about different experiences I've had with my kids going on trips, and I can remember several years ago we went to a baseball game when we were there for a soccer event and it was all three kids and I, and we went to this game and we had a fun, great time because it was an experience that just, we had. I don't remember how my son's soccer team did, but I exactly remember what the baseball game was like because we had a different cool experience.
It's those experiences that everyone walks away with and that's what they learn from. It's the responsibility that you're taking from people listening to you to create an experience out of it. It's communicating in a way that they can communicate. My kids wanted to go to a baseball game with something different and fun. It was outside of the norm. We did that. We had their attention from the start because they were excited to be doing something new and different.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
One of the other pieces here when we talk about experiences is it's telling these stories. It's being visual with your own facial expressions and movement like I've tried to do here if you're watching on video. But it's also sharing through the stories and sharing the eyes wide open moment so people get to experience that. Be a master storyteller. I tipped my hand a little bit. One area where we're going to spend a lot of time learning and growing in 2023 is storyteller. Why? Because I believe storytelling is the greatest way to communicate and connect.
It doesn't matter where you, it doesn't matter if you're a speaker, doesn't matter if you're a parent. It doesn't matter if you're a leader, doesn't matter who you are. Learning the skills of storytelling will help you connect, communicate, and lead better because connectors inspire people. That's our fourth principle here. Connectors inspire people. Why? Because people need to see, they need to feel and then the opportunity to call people to action. We live in a world that people act out of either inspiration or desperation. My guess is the people you're leading, you don't want them to act out of desperation. Now, you can quickly say, I want to inspire them, but inspiration without action doesn't do anything.
Inspiration comes from what people know, what they see and what they feel and only then can it lead to action. But it's understanding what they know, what they see and what they feel. And as a communicator and a connector, that's a great opportunity is to help them through that process, to help them see what they need to see, to feel what they need to feel and then jump into action. It's saying the right words at the right time. It's giving people an action plan. Just as much as there's an opportunity to inspire them, what do they do next? See, I believe this, that if we can understand our opportunities and places to create and innovate, then all of a sudden creation and innovation becomes a lot easier. But if we just follow a pattern, do this, do this, do this, then we're not going to see opportunity for innovation and creation.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Inspiration by helping people understand what they know, what they see, and what they feel not only leads to inspiration, at least do innovation and creation. Those are the two greatest tools to use when your backs against a wall, when you're lacking opportunities. So if we have a society, if we have those that we lead that are encouraged to be innovative and creative. The opportunities that come out of that are amazing. This is the last piece, this is number five, practice, as I get close to wrapping up this session, talking about the book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect by John Maxwell and it's this, connectors live what they communicate.
There's nothing worse in the world than someone that says and doesn't do. They're all talk, no action. They're all hat, no cattle. When we live what we communicate, we build credibility and trust. One of the biggest areas that I see right now going on our world as I'm recording this that there's a tremendous lack of integrity and everyone's integrity is being challenged by the actions of others. We see business after business of takeovers, of layoffs, of reductions of these mini crises that are all going on. Where is it challenging people the most, is people are saying one thing and doing another. One day, they're telling you to go make sales the next day they're closing down the company. It's hard to be that way and you lose trust. Here's what I want people to understand that I share. It's hard to me that people don't understand it, but it's human nature.
It's if we see it happen somewhere else, we're just expecting it to happen in our house. If we see our friends who you know are going through marital issues, then all of a sudden, we start to see all the marital issues that we have in our life. If we see friends who got laid off of their job, who seemingly last week they were going to get this big bonus and their company was doing great, then our company then maybe is, eh, okay, we expect to get laid off too. It's that that we have to understand that everything that we see comes from somewhere else and unless we condition ourselves that that isn't the case and we give proof to that, then we inspire to that, then that's the story we're going to tell.
Without information, people are going to develop a story. So live what you communicate, be the person that you want to connect with. Accept yourself and appreciate who you are. Yes, look in the mirror, but look in the mirror to say that's a reflection and now let me go look through the window and ask somebody else what's it like to sit across from me? Am I living what I'm communicating? Then this, just own it. If someone tells you you're not living what you're communicating doesn't do any good to tell them they're wrong. The reality is you need to accept what they're sharing and say, okay, how do I correct that? How do I live what I communicate?
Man, I'm excited to wrap up this episode of the Impact Driven Leader podcast. I hope you got value this last 20, 25 minutes sharing information, sharing from the book. That's a quick, that's a lot of the book, but this is what I encourage you, not just listen, maybe share this, share it with someone else, listen with them and ask, hey, where can I do a better job connecting? How can I do a better job communicating? Those two tools will help anyone anywhere anyhow. I'm excited to be able to share this with you and read it with so many people in our book club at our round table as we finish up 2022.
I'm excited. The next few weeks I'm going to share some of the most downloaded and viewed episodes of the Impact Driven Leader podcast. You're going to hear again from Caroline Leaf, John Maxwell, and one of my great friends Steve Miller as they share. I'm going to share little special at each one of those episodes, so make sure you tune in from that, listen to it, you'll get a little bit extra fun. But I want to share with those with you as we wrap up this time with the Impact Driven Leader podcast, second year as we close out going to episode 100. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing. I do want to share this and I appreciate it. I was told by my podcast producer that last month, this month hasn't come in, last month was the highest downloaded month yet of this podcast.
I'll be honest, I don't look at the number of downloads, I have people share that with me, but that's encouraging, that's encouraged that you're getting value, that you're sharing with others, that they're getting value and that makes this fun. So as we wrap up, as we get closer to the end of 2022, I hope you can use this information. I hope you can grab the book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, listen on Audible, grab a hard copy and learn how can you connect with people to do a better job communicating. Till next time, have a good one and I appreciate you.
