By Manuel “Bobby” Orig, Consultant, Apo Agua
THE 16 UNDENIABLE LAWS OF COMMUNICATION
APPLY THEM
And make the most of your message
By John C. Maxwell
Everyone has a message!
YOURS MAY BE a message for the moment or the message of a lifetime. What do you want to say? Do you want to communicate the vision of your company? Speak on behalf of your favorite charity? Wow your classmates with a great presentation? Introduce a product? Deliver a quarterly report without putting people to sleep? Make your living by becoming a professional speaker? Or simply share your heart with members of a small group?
Regardless of the kind of message, you undoubtedly want to communicate it well. You want to be able to make the most of your message. Will you?
John C. Maxwell can help you become a better communicator. And that’s important, no matter what you do or what you desire to accomplish. According to Harvard Business Review, “The number one criteria for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.”
Most people avoid public communication because they feel inadequate. They fear failing. They don’t want to look bad. And they don’t want to let their audience down. The good news is that communication can be learned. Anyone can become a better communicator.
Maxwell started out as an average communicator. Yes, he had talent, but he failed a lot. Every time he spoke, he learned something new and sharpened his skills until he became one of the top speakers in the country. Today he has spoken more than thirteen thousand times to millions of people, and he is in demand all over the world.
Now he has taken everything he’s learned over a long and successful career and distilled it into sixteen laws of communication that anyone can learn and apply to their speaking. Whether you want to speak to two people or two thousand, these laws can help you improve your communication skills. By applying them, you can make the most of your message.
About the author
JOHN C. MAXWELL is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, speaker, coach, and leader who has sold more than thirty million books in fifty languages. He is the founder of Maxwell Leadership – the leadership development organization created to expand the reach of his principles of helping people lead lives of powerful, positive change. Maxwell’s books and programs have been translated into seventy languages and have been used to train tens of millions of leaders in every nation.
John has been recognized as the #1 leader in business by the American Management Association and as the world’s most influential leadership expert by both Business Insider and Inc. magazine. Maxwell and the work of Maxwell Leadership continue to influence individuals and organizations worldwide – from Fortune 500 CEOs and the leaders of tomorrow.
INTRODUCTION
Everyone Has a Message
If you desire to share any kind of message, you want to be able to communicate it well. You want to be able to make the most of your message. Can you?
Communication is vital to our everyday life. Communication is how we influence others. It’s essential to developing and maintaining relationships. It’s at the heart of our social activity. Research analyst and communication expert Hayley Hawthorne says, “Communication is the connective tissue between humans, holding the potential to bring us together, create shared understanding, align on and execute initiatives, and so much more. At the end of the day, communication is the vehicle for transformation.”
Yet at the same time, public speaking intimidates a lot of people. In one of his routines, stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld said, “I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. I found that amazing. Number two was death. Death is number two? This means, to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
I doesn’t have to be that way.
When it comes to communication, everyone stumbles in the beginning. Author John has spoken to more than thirteen thousand times in his speaking career, and he is currently at the top of his game. But his first experience speaking in public was terrible. Why wasn’t he any good? Because nobody’s good the first time! Like anything else, speaking has a learning curve. But if you have solid principles to guide your growth, you can improve quickly. And every time you speak, you get better. As Hayley Hawthorne said, “ Mastering communication skills isn’t something that can be done overnight. Developing communication skills is a journey that takes time.” But that journey is worth every step!
Billionaire businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffet said, “The one easy way to become worth 50 percent more than you are now – is to hone your communication skills – both verbal and written. If you can’t communicate, it’s like winking at a girl in the dark – nothing happens. You can have all the brainpower in the world, but you have to be able to transmit it. And the transmission is communication.”
1 – THE LAW OF CREDIBILITY
Your Most Effective Message Is the One You Live
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF THE “I HAVE a DREAM” SPEECH during the March on Washington in 1963 had been delivered by segregationist governor George Wallace instead of Martin Luther Kind Jr.? Or if the Gettysburg address in 1863 had been made by Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, instead of Abraham Lincoln? Or if the Sermon on the Mount had been preached not by Jesus Christ but by Judas Iscariot? Or Pontius Pilate?
How would the people listening have responded? Would they have rioted? Would they have attacked the speaker? Would they have walked away? At the very least, their messages would have fallen flat. And their words would have been forgotten. Why? because the noble, inspiring, memorable, life-impacting words in those messages would not have matched the people who spoke them. When it comes to communication, a disconnection like that doesn’t work, because your most effective message is the one you live. Anything else is just empty words. That is the Law of Credibility.
FIRST FOR A REASON
The first law of communication is not more important than the others, but there’s still a reason it’s first. As a communicator, if you don’t learn and live this law, the others won’t help you much. Who you are gives credibility to everything you say. As Jamie Kern Lima, the founder of IT Cosmetics, says in her book Believe It, “Authenticity doesn’t automatically guarantee success … but inauthenticity guarantees failure.” If you speak words you do not live, you lack authenticity and your communication will not be successful.
THE QUALITIES OF A GOOD COMMUNICATOR
To know and become your authentic self with others and communicate with credibility, you need to do five things:
1. Be Transparent
Communication is more than just sharing information. It’s really sharing about yourself – your real self. That level of honesty is the key to be able to connect with people. Brené Brown, in her book The Gifts of Imperfection, says, “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true self seen.”
People don’t want perfect communicators, but they do want authentic ones. Speakers who are open and real in their communication are attractive because they share their failures as well as their successes. They can be honest and direct while still being empathetic to others. It takes courage to be transparent, and people admire that in communicators.
2. Be Consistent
Mark Batterson says, “Almost everybody can accomplish almost anything if they work at it long enough, hard enough, and smart enough.” What he’s really talking about is consistency. Since the best predictor of what a person will do today is what he did yesterday, a solid pattern of consistency gives a person credibility. What you repeatedly do, tells others who you are.
3. Be a Good Example
Have you ever been working on a message and you found some material that seemed good or interesting, but you couldn’t verify it through your own experience or observation? That is, it was really someone else’s advice, not your own. Did you use it? Early in the author’s career as a leader and speaker he would. But it didn’t sit right with him. After doing this several times, he made an important decision: he would not teach anything he did not wholeheartedly believe.
Making that choice gave his delivery greater conviction. A few years later, he decided to take that decision one step further. He would not teach anything he was not trying to live. That choice added greater credibility to his conviction because it committed him to being an example of what he taught. As James Kouzes and Barry Posner say, “The truth is that you either live by example or you don’t lead at all. Seeing is believing, and your constituents have to see you living out the standards you’ve set and the values you profess.”
4. Be Competent
Nobody has ever asked the author to speak on the subject of golf. Why? Because he’s not competent in that area. Nor has he ever been asked to speak or write about music appreciation, technology, or archeology. He has no credibility in those areas. What he’s asked to speak and write about are leadership and personal growth.
The “weight” of a communicator’s words is determined by what they have accomplished. You cannot give what you do not have. If you have not yet developed high competence in an area of your life that you want to teach about, then begin by working on that area and learning. Become great at what you do and teach out of the overflow of your life. Competent people earn the right to speak into the lives of others.
5. Be Trustworthy
Trust is a person’s greatest asset. When you have established your trustworthiness, people know you possess good motives, that you genuinely want to help others. People can sense it. Trustworthiness makes leaders and communicators effective because people listen to them, believe what they say, and cooperate with them. Without trust everything grinds to a halt.
2 – THE LAW OF OBSERVATION
Good Communicators Learn from Great Communicators
HOW DOES ANY PERSON LEARN TO COMMUNICATE TO AN AUDIENCE? Hall of Fame baseball player Yogi Berra, became known for his catchy sayings said, “You can observe a lot by just watching.” That is the essence of the Law of Observation. Good communicators learn from great communicators.
In his 2015 letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet wrote, “Much of what you become in life depends on whom you admire and copy.”
Warren Buffet’s statement is also true about communicating. Who you will become as a communicator depends on whom you choose to admire and copy.
BETTER PEOPLE MAKE YOU BETTER
If you start to become good as a communicator in your field, don’t stop there. There’s an old saying: “If you are at the head of the class, you are in the wrong class.” To continue growing as a speaker, expand your view of communicators from whom you learn. Watch highly skilled and experienced communicators in every field. And do it intentionally, not casually. Each time you observe, ask yourself these questions:
- What did the communicator do to connect?
- Why did the introduction work so well?
- What made the structure work?
- What was the best moment?
- How did the communicator create it?
- What made the communication memorable?
- What was his or her best communication quality?
- How much was personality and how much was technique?
- What did he or she do that I can try?
3 – THE LAW OF CONVICTION
The Stronger You Believe It, the More People Feel It
WHAT DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE IN? WHAT DO YOU HOLD SO dear that it’s deep in your heart and soul? What belief is so strong in you that you would be willing to live your life for it, so important that you would give your life for it? That is conviction. As a communicator, you should seek to speak on subjects connected to what you deeply believe, to your strongest convictions. Why? Because the stronger you believe it, the more people feel it. That is the Law of Conviction.
EVERY GOOD SPEAKER’S CONVICTION
If you want to be an energetic and effective communicator, you need to be a person of conviction. That begins with strong positive beliefs about yourself, your audience, and the message you have to offer others.
1. Personal Conviction: I Can Make a Difference
If you want to be a great communicator, your motivation for speaking must be to make a difference in the lives of people. To successfully make a difference, you must believe you can make a difference: I believe I can make a difference. I believe I can change my world. That’s where your conviction must start.
2. People Conviction: People Can Improve Their Lives
For you to make a difference in people’s lives, you must hold the conviction that their lives can be improved. The two go hand in hand. In organizations, you often hear leaders say their people are the most appreciable asset. That is true – but only if you appreciate people by investing in their training, resources, and time. Too often leaders say they appreciate their people, but they don’t show it.
Good leaders and good speakers believe in people, believe they can change, believe they can grow, and believe they can improve. And they help them do those things.
3. Purpose Conviction: When I Know My Why, I Know My Way
One key to strong conviction in communication comes from knowing your purpose. Belief in yourself and your purpose creates a powerful combination. Your purpose is connected to your strengths. But purpose is also connected to your personal convictions.
4 – THE LAW OF PREPARATION
You Cannot Deliver What You Have Not Developed
WINSTON CHURCHILL ONCE COMMENTED ON A RIVAL BY SAYING, “He can be described as one of those orators who, before he gets up, does not know what he is going to say; when he is speaking, does not know what he is saying; and when he sat down, doesn’t know what he has said.” In other words, that person was prone to winging it instead of working it. Whether through arrogance or indifference, that’s what too many speakers do. The reality is that without proper preparation, communication doesn’t soar; it falls flat.
Author, entrepreneur, and motivational speaker Jim Rohn said, “You cannot speak that which you do not know. You cannot share that which you do not feel, you cannot translate that which you do not have. And you cannot give that which you do not possess. To give it and to share it, and for it to be effective, you first need have to have it. Good communications starts with good preparation.”
TWO MESSAGES IN ONE
As a communicator, when the author prepare for an audience, he is always working on two messages at the same time. The first message is specific to them and the situation. He thinks of it as “My Best Message” because he wants to deliver the best content he can. It’s what every audience deserves. This is the message he prepares on paper to be delivered to his audience. It is the message they want and came to hear. It is specifically created to meet their present need and is intended to improve their lives.
The other message is something he tries to deliver every time, everywhere, to everyone. He thinks of it as “My Big Message,” and it’s always the same. Where his My Best Message is prepared on paper, My Big Message is prepared in his heart. It is what people need to hear. It’s bigger than the content because its meant to develop people. It answers four questions:
- What do I want people to See?
- What do I want people to Know?
- What do I want people to Feel?
- What do I want people to Do?
These questions may seem simple, but it took him years to wrestle them down. He worked and reworked them, changed and tweaked them, until his own soul was satisfied. For thirty years, he made sure every message he deliver answer these questions.
5 – THE LAW OF COLLABORATION
Some of Your Best Thinking Will Be Done with Others
Billionaire philanthropist Andrew Carnegie said, “It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job that you could do alone.” In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecke describes how groups of people often solve problems and come to conclusions more accurately than individuals alone, even when some of those individuals are experts in the field.
To become a better communicator, that’s what you need to do. Seek the wisdom of others, not from a random crowd but from a team or trusted groups.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD COLLABORATION TEAM
In the author’s many years of speaking and leading, he learned that success or failure is not determined by the weight of what you need to accomplish or the heaviness of the load you carry. It’s determined by the people you collaborate with to help you accomplish the task. He suggests some guidelines to help you identify the kinds of people you will want to bring onto your team to help you become a better communicator.
1. Good Collaborators Have an Open Mindset
For people to help you improve in communication they need to be able to see possibilities. They need to see possibilities in you, in your potential, in your audience, in your ability to impact them, and in their ability to take what you say and run with it. Negative, narrow-minded people will not help you; only open people will.
When he looks for good collaborators, the author seek people who possess two qualities:
First, they need to be people who think in terms of abundance, not scarcity. They must believe there are always solutions, not doubt that something is possible.
The second quality he look for in potential collaborators is an open mindset. He wants them to be like the old chicken farmer whose land flooded nearly every spring. He didn’t want to sell the farm and move, but he was getting tired of having to move hundreds of chickens every year and losing many of them. After an especially bad flood, he was complaining to his wife.
“Every year you whine about the same thing,” she said. “I’m tired of hearing about it.”
“Well,” he barked, “what do you think I should do?” She looked at him and replied, “Buy ducks.”
OK, that’s a corny story, but it shows the kind of mindset you want from people who will help you. An options mindset causes people to believe that there are many solutions to any problem. And when there is more than one way, that means there’s always a better way.
2. Good Collaborators Ask and Answer Questions
Woodrow Wilson said, “We should not only use all the brains we have, but all the brains we can borrow.” When collaborators ask questions that stir the author’s thinking or answer his questions, it’s like getting to borrow their brains. Their thinking improves his thinking.
He loves questions and learn so much from asking them and listening to their answers. As you work to become a better communicator, you should not avoid asking tough questions you might not like the answers to. You must have courage and be honest with yourself if you want to improve.
3. Good Collaborators Generate Ideas
In addition to being open-minded to asking and answering questions, good collaborators are also capable of coming up with good ideas. This may be the greatest value your team will bring because great speeches contain ideas that spark the imagination of the audience.
It’s important to remember that an idea doesn’t have to be your idea to be good. What’s important is that every idea be brought to the table so that the best idea can win.
4. Good Collaborators Give Honest Feedback
The final quality the author look for in good collaborators is the willingness and ability to give good feedback. That’s important because good communicators never stop trying to get better. John have been speaking for nearly five decades , he speaks around two hundred times a year, and he is still working to get better.
After he has spoken, the first person he asks for feedback is his host. Exceeding his hosts expectations is his first objective. But even when he succeed, that’s not enough for him. He wants to improve, so he asks for feedback from trusted members of his team. Here’s why he’s such a fanatic for feedback:
- I don’t see myself as others see me. Feedback increases my awareness and helps remove my blind spots.
- I don’t see things as others see them. Feedback gives me a broader perspective than if I rely only on my own limited experience.
- I don’t see everything, so I ask, “What am I missing?” I always assume that I am missing something, but if I don’t intentionally ask people to point it out, they may not.
- It shows my team I value their opinion. I want to demonstrate to my team that I value them and care what they think. Everyone feels complimented when you ask their opinion.
- It’s a catalyst for improving. I won’t get answers to questions I don’t ask. If I ask, I learn, and I can adjust.
- It’s the best way to discover the best ideas. Again the best way to get a great idea is to put together many good ideas.
6 – THE LAW OF CONTENT
When You Have Something Worth Saying, People Start Listening
IN JANUARY 1996, MICROSOFT COFOUNDER BILL GATES WROTE AN ESSAY about the future of the Internet. The title of his piece was “Content is King.” He believed the fledgling online world of the 1990s and 2000s would take a path similar to broadcast media had up to that point, where the people who created content would be the influencers, not the technologists. Now, more than twenty-five years later, his assertion has proven true, and his statement about content has been repeated thousands of times by content creators, business executives, marketers, and media moguls.
If content is king, then communication is queen. They rule together and they cannot be separated. What value does content have if it’s not communicated to anyone. And what value does communication have if there is no content?
One of the greatest challenges speakers face is the fact that the average person hears thousands of messages every day. Communicators are vying for people’s attention in this environment. In a world where you can instantaneously access content on virtually any subject, how can you make your content and message stand out? How will you grab people’s attention and hold it long enough to make a positive impact on them? How? You work at it. And here’s the good news: when you have something worth saying, people will start listening. That’s the Law of Content.
PUTTING THE CONTENT PUZZLE TOGETHER
If you don’t want people in your audience to become frustrated when you stray from your subject, you need to become skilled at designing the puzzle of your message. You want people to be able to follow your thinking and see the picture you’re trying to create. Here are five steps you can as you create your content.
1. Start with Your Audience
Great content begins with understanding your audience. In the Law of Preparation, the author pre-call to the organization for which he will be speaking so that he can ask questions about the organization, audience, and event. It’s vital to look beyond their marketing lingo and publicity to know who they are, understand what motivates them, and determine what they need. When you don’t know your audience or don’t craft your content to fit them, you’re in danger of losing them.
Here’s what communication expert and author Nancy Duarte said about a speaker’s audience: “The audience is the hero who will determine the outcome of your idea, so it’s important to know them fully. Jump into the shoes of your audience and carefully look at their lives.”
2. Stay in Your Strength Zones
When you know who your audience is, you begin to get a sense of what they need. What will you try to give them? The danger is trying to give them something they need that you don’t have. That is a recipe for disaster as a communicator. The author’s advice to avoid that problem is for you to stay in your strength zone.
When John communicates, he speaks and writes only in the areas of his strengths. He sticks to the eight subjects he know well and can address with excellence: communication, leadership, equipping, attitude, relationships, success, significance, and faith. These are the things he know and can speak about. His strengths zone allow him to have not only knowledge but also moral authority because he has proven himself in those areas.
3. Develop Your Thesis
Robert Frost said, “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” To help you avoid either fate, you need to develop a thesis for your message.
Your thesis is the main thought, expressed in a single statement, that contains the essence of your message. Every time you intend to communicate through speaking or writing, you should identify your thesis. The hardest people to follow are communicators who are searching for their core idea as they deliver their message. If you don’t know what your main point is, how will anyone else. Your thesis is the box top of the puzzle. It describes what the puzzle will look like when it has every piece in its place. For example, the thesis of this book is: If you learn and practice the laws of communication, you will become a better communicator.
4. Do Your Research
Your next two steps are doing research and creating an outline. You can do them in either order, but John almost always start with research because it stimulates his thinking and lights the flame of his creativity. Plus, he works faster when he start with something, rather than trying to create his outlie from scratch.
He begins his research by gathering material to support his thesis. He pulls together stories, quotes, thoughts, ideas, and illustrations. Today, there’s no end to the amount of material you can access in seconds because of the Internet. Your challenge is not finding material; its finding the right material that not only fits your message but also fits you. He encourages you not only to do research for specific talks you are planning to give, but also to continually look for great material that fits your values and style.
5. Write Your Outline
The other critical part of the message-writing process is your outline. This functions as the bones of your speech. A good outline makes your message solid and holds it together. For example, the bones of this book are the sixteen laws. They provide the skeleton on which the meat of the book hangs. As a reader, you can look at a book’s table of contents and see the bones of the book and judge whether you want to buy and read it. But when you give a speech, people can’t see the bones, so you need to make the outline easy for people to listen to and follow. That’s one of the reasons John always numbers his points. He also try to create a sense of continuity and rhythm in the outline so that people experience a sense of satisfaction as he deliver it and a feeling of completion as he end it.
7 – THE LAW OF CONNECTING
Communicators Know It’s All About Others
WHEN AUTHORS WRITE, THEY KNOW THAT SOME PARTS OF THEIR book are more important than others. Not every idea has equal weight. Some have much greater value than others. May times, the authors leave it up to you, the reader, to discover those most important ideas on your own and take note of them without their bringing any extra attention to them.
This is not one of those times, so John states as clear as possible: The Law of Connecting is by far the most important idea in this book.
Think back to the most important experiences of your life, the highest highs, the greatest victories, the most daunting obstacles overcome. How many happened to you alone? i bet there are very few. when you understand that being connected to others is one of life’s greatest joys, you realize that life’s best comes when you initiatie and invest in solid relationships.
—John C. Maxwell
Why? Because communication is all about others. Too many speakers put all their emphasis on content. They believe content has more value than connection. That’s not true. While both content and connection are important, good communicators know that connection is more important than content. That’s why the author say communicators know it’s all about others. That’s the Law of Connecting.
WILL YOU MAKE THE CONNECTION?
When you listen to someone talk to others, you know immediately what they value: themselves, their content, or their audience.
People who focus on themselves seek to gain attention.
Speakers who focus on content give out information.
Communicators who focus on others make a connection.
Until you connect with people, there will be a barrier between you and them. No matter how good your content is, people will not receive it well as they would if you connected first. Without connection, they may be interested, but they will not be inspired. People will receive more from a communicator with average content who connects than they ever will be from a speaker with great content but never connects. Here’s why: people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you want to get through, you must connect. If you can connect and have great content, it will be a home run!
The ability to connect has become even more important now that we’re communicating virtually more often. It’s very easy for people to get distracted, drift, or tune out when they’re on a video call. The author is very well aware of this when he’s communicating live using technology. Viewers become passive, like dispassionate observers looking through a window at you. He does what he can to “enter” their room and try to be with them so they feel seen and heard.
8 – THE LAW OF LEVERAGE
Good Communicators Lead with Their Strengths and Use Them Often
How can you use your strengths to make yourself a better communicator? First, you need to know what they are. If you’re a self-aware person, you have a head start. If you’re not, the author suggests you begin by examining your ability in three areas.
1. Leverage the Strength That Best Helps You Connect
The best place to start leveraging your strength is to consider four primary connection points of communication: heart, help, humor and hope.
Heart
What is heart? It’s an emotional connection. Heartfelt communication is authentic and personal. It’s vulnerable and open. It comes from your heart and appeals to the hearts of others. It also comes from a place of empathy, not manipulation. If you try to play on people’s emotions in an inauthentic way, it won’t work. People will see through it. But if you are your genuine self without pretense or posturing, it draws people to you and creates a bond with them, a bond of trust. Heart encourages others.
Help
Help is adding value to people by giving them practical tools that can improve their lives. It means equipping people to change what they see, how they think, and what they do. It’s giving people concrete “handles,” especially when you are presenting intangible ideas. When you give your audience help, they are grateful because they walk away knowing how to change, grow, and improve. Help is instructive.
Humor
Of the four connection strengths, humor is the most difficult – unless you are naturally funny. Humor is seeing the funny or absurd side of life. It’s using an unexpected twist to make people laugh. When you make an audience laugh, it knits them to you. When humor is your strength, you can use it to bypass the front door and reach people through the back door. Humor is entertaining.
Hope
The fourth way to connect with people is by giving them hope. It’s breathing life into people, helping them see that today can be better, the future can be better, they can be better. It’s showing people their possibilities, and assisting them in reaching for them.
Which one of the four is your best connecting strength. Perhaps as you read about them, you knew. If not, how do you discover it? Ask yourself these questions:
- Which of the four comes easily to me?
- Which one of the four creates the most when I communicate?
- Which of the four do people most affirm after I speak?
- Which of the four am I using when I experience “magic moments” on stage?
2. Leverage the Natural Talents That Help You Succeed
While your motivational strength for connecting is a huge part of improving your communication, it’s not the only part. You need to use as many of your other natural talents as you can to become a better speaker.
In StrengthsFinder 2.0, Tom Rath explains that every human being has talents that are just waiting to be uncovered. If we use these strengths, we can be successful. As he points out, “You cannot be anything you want to be – but you can be a lot more of who you already are.”
StrengthsFinder helped John better understand his specific talents and use them intentionally every time he speak. His top five strengths are strategic, maximizer, woo, activator, and achiever. Here’s how he use these strengths when he speak.
Strategic
The Big Message that he wrote about in the Law of Preparation demonstrates his strength in strategizing. Here are the components of his Big Message. Every time he speak, he think of his audience and ask:
- What Do I Want Them to See? Their Possibilities.
- What Do I Want Them to Know? Their Value
- What Do I Want Them to Feel? Empowered
- What Do I Want Them to Do? Apply and Multiply
Maximizer
Maximizers always want to do their best, and they want to help others do their best. This is a very high motivation for his speaking. He wants to encourage people to aspire to success, and he wants to show them the best ways to become successful.
Woo
People with woo have a natural ability to win others over. While anyone can find a way to connect with others, someone with woo can do it more quickly and easily. He leverage that every time. The more quickly he can connect, the sooner he can help people.
Activator
Activators have a bias toward action. They like to get things done, and they help others get things done. And of course, without action, people go nowhere. He always finish his speaking by prompting people to act. He encourages them to apply and multiply: apply what they just learned and multiply their effort by helping others do the same.
Achiever
Achievers don’t need motivation from others to get going. They are naturally motivated and they love accomplishment. As an achiever, he starts every day asking himself, What will I accomplish today? And end it asking, What did I accomplish today? This attitude drives him to achieve positive results every time he speak.
3. Leverage Your Skills That Can Help Others Succeed
In the Law of Anticipation, you will read about how the author discovered CLEAR, the acronym for – Communication, Leadership, Equipping, Attitude, and Relationships. He believes these five areas are his most highly developed skills. Just about everything he speak on falls into one of those categories.
What are yours? What are the areas in your life where you have developed knowledge, experience, skill, and success. If you are early in your career, you may not know yet what they are. If you are experienced, you should know. Tap into these areas of expertise every time you speak because each provides you with something you can give others to help them succeed.
Any strength you possess can be leveraged for better communication, and it should be – as long as you wield it to benefit your audience members, not to manipulate them for your own benefit. Discover your strength and lean on them. Lead with your strengths and use them often. That’s the Law of Leverage.
9 – THE LAW OF ANTICIPATION
When You Can’t Wait to Say It, They Can’t Wait to Hear It
IF THE SPEAKER DOESN’T HAVE ENTHUSIASM ABOUT HIS SUBJECT, neither does his audience. And the opposite is also true: if the speaker possess great enthusiasm, so will his audience. That why the author say, when you can’t wait to say it, they can’t wait to hear it. That’s the Law of Anticipation.
BUILDING ANTICIPATION
Because John love a sense of anticipation and recognize how beneficial it can be in communication, early in his career he started looking for ways to build excitement, and then not only to meet people’s expectations when he spoke but to exceed them. What he discovered was building anticipation in an audience came primarily from his own mindset. If he wanted people to be excited he had to be excited.
His advice to you as a communicator is to adopt a growth mindset. Never stop growing and never try to position yourself as the expert. Keep moving your expectations for yourself higher. As you rise in both your sense of anticipation and your skill, your audience’s response will rise with you.
PERSPECTIVE: HOW WE VIEW THINGS IS HOW WE DO THINGS
To help you change your sense of anticipation, you need to change your perspective. We can become only what we see ourselves becoming.
1. Personal Perspective: Believe You Can Communicate
Your first and most important audience is yourself. Your most important tools of communication are the words you say to yourself, about yourself, when you are by yourself. What do you tell yourself? If you say, I don’t think I can communicate, and then step in front of an audience, people will feel your strong sense of doubt. Instead of thinking, This is going to be great! they will be thinking, How long will this take?
Where does a sense of doubt come from? Thinking I don’t think I can comes from believing I don’t think I am. There is a definite connection between self-esteem and performance. You must believe in yourself and your ability to communicate effectively. As psychologist William James put it, “The one thing that will guarantee the successful conclusion of a doubtful undertaking is faith in the beginning that you can do it.”
2. Speech Perspective: Believe You Have Something to Give
One of John’s personality quirks is that he’s highly optimistic and tend to see the best in everything. The negative side of this is that it creates blind spots, especially in the way he sees people. For years, friends and colleagues in his inner circle have made fun of him when he tells them the message or book he is currently working on is “the best I’ve ever written.”
A few years into his career, John became aware of the importance of leadership to success. He discovered that everything rises and falls on leadership. He worked to improve on his own leadership, and it wasn’t long before he started teaching others how to lead. That’s when he recognized the power of equipping. When he started equipping others to lead, his leadership effectiveness and success went to a whole new level. The final piece of the puzzle was something he had been working on from the beginning of his career: communication. What started as a necessity of his profession became his greatest skill and something he could help others to improve.
He began using CLEAR as the acronym that represent the five categories he most often speak about: Communication, Leadership, Equipping, Attitude, and Relationships. He believes that if people learn and improve in those five areas, they will live more fulfilling lives, be more successful, and be better able to fulfill their purpose, making the world a better place.
3. Audience Perspective: Believe People Can and Want to Improve Their Lives
It’s one thing to communicate to people because you have something valuable to say. It’s another to communicate with people because you believe they have value. This is the audience perspective you want to possess. There is no audience, however small, that is insignificant – only speakers who think so. Our attitude toward people determines how we treat people.
Indeed, we get the most out of other people when we believe in them. Research shows that this happens because when we believe in someone:
- We treat them better than people we think will fail.
- We give them more opportunities to succeed that we give those we think will fail.
- We give them more accurate, helpful feedback than we give others, and
- We do more teaching because we believe it’s time well spent.
10 – THE LAW OF SIMPLICITY
Communicators Take Something Complicated and Make It Simple
WHEN VINCE LOMBARDI WAS THE COACH OF THE NFLs GREEN BAY Packers, he appeared at a convention of coaches. Several speakers described their elaborate offensive and defensive schemes in great detail, evidently proud of their complicated playbook. When Lombardi was asked his strategy, he replied, “I only have two strategies. My offensive is simple: When we have the ball, we aim to knock the other team down! My defensive strategy is similar: When the other team has the ball, we aim to knock all of them down!”
When John speak, his strategy is similarly straightforward. When he walks onstage, he sits on his stool, works to connect with people, and moves into his content with the goal of keeping it simple, natural and easy to understand. Why? Because communicators take something complicated and make it simple. That is the Law of Simplicity.
THE SIMPLE APPROACH
Simplicity is a great principle for any area of life, not just communication. When John read the biography of Red Auerbach, who coached the Boston Celtics basketball team from 1950 to 1966, John was struck by his “keep it simple” philosophy. Someone once asked Auerbach what magic formula he had for winning championships. He laughed and replied, “Our secret to success is what I call ‘effective simplicity.’ Nothing complicated.”
Simplicity is a wonderful way to approach life. John try to carry that idea into every aspect of his day-to-day living by focusing his attention in only five areas:
- Values: These are his foundation. He stands on them, and he stands up for them. Decision-making is simple when you know what your values are.
- Principles: These are his “North Star,” the beliefs and guidelines for how he conducts his life.
- Priorities: He keep these in mind so that he can keep the main thing the main thing. Knowing and doing the things that are most important every day makes every day effective.
- Systems: He plan, organize, and work in a systematic way that help him achieve his goals. Systems are freeways that allow him to arrive at his desired destination quickly and maximize his time.
- Intentionality: This is the bridge that allows him to cross over from good intentions to good actions every day. It keeps him focused and brings effectiveness to what he does.
He spent his life working to simplify what he believe and what he does. And he found that the older he get, the fewer things he believe, but he believe in them more deeply.
11 – THE LAW OF VISUAL EXPRESSION
Show and Tell Is Better Than Just Tell
AS A COMMUNICATOR YOU NEED TO DECIDE WHAT YOU WILL DO visually to enhance your presentations. You could rely 100 percent on your voice to carry your message, the way people did in the heyday of radio. But it’s important to note that even in radio, they used music, sound effects, and words to paint pictures. Show and tell is better than just tell. That’s the Law of Visual Expression.
WHY IS TEACHING WITH IMAGES SO EFFECTIVE
Tim Elmore, the founder of Growing Leaders and a gifted communicator, is an expert on generational differences and has dedicated the last forty years to investing in younger generations. His book Habitudes which teaches values through pictures, has sold millions of copies and had made a great impact on high school and university students. He did a lot of research on the power of the visuals related to communication and understanding. Here are some of his conclusions:
1. The Majority of People Are Visual Learners
About 60 percent of all people are visual learners. When most of us hear elephant or red fire engine, we don’t think of those words. Instead, images of those items come to mind. Even our physical bodies are designed to receive visual signals. According to experts, about 80 percent of our sensory inputs are visual in nature. If you want to connect with people and help them, you need to use visuals.
2. Pictures Stick in People’s Minds
Have you ever heard someone joke, “I can never un-see that” after they stumble into an awkward situation? There’s truth in that statement. Behavioral scientists have discovered that people remember pictures better than they do words most of the time. They call this tendency the “picture superiority effect.” Tim points out, “Post-modern society is a world saturated with data. People process approximately one thousand images a day, digitally and personally. The only hope of our message sticking is to insure it contains pictures.” The more visual you are, the more memorable you are.
3. People Are Highly Responsive to Images
It is a cliché, but it’s also true: a picture is worth a thousand words. People stream shows and can’t wait to talk about them with friends. Drivers are drawn to billboards. People who don’t read the news in papers still seek out the comics. Ads use images, not just text. And art galleries continue to exhibit the work of the masters because their images generate conversation. People are drawn to images and react to them mentally and emotionally.
4. Images Engage the Creative Holistic Parts of the Brain
In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink writes about the shift in human society from the Information Age, which was driven by knowledge workers, to what he calls the Conceptual Age, which will be driven by creators and empathizers. In the book, he recounts extensive research on how the different sides of the brain work. He points out that the right brain is good at processing images and faces, is creative, can process information holistically and simultaneously, is able to synthesize, and can see the big picture. When you use visuals, you help your audience process, synthesize, and understand.
5. Visuals Tell Stories in Our Imagination
Tim says, “A simple picture can speak a new thought each time you look at it.” Why? Pictures tell stories. The philosophers of our day are musicians and filmmakers, who paint pictures in our minds and inspire imaginations. If you want to engage the imagination of your audience, don’t give them stats. Give them images. Knowing this, as communicators we should make our presentations as visual as we can.
12 – THE LAW OF STORYTELLING
People See Their Own Lives in Stories
JOURNALIST AND STORYTELLING EXPERT CHRISTOPHER BOOKER WROTE, we spend phenomenal amount of our lives following stories; telling them; listening to them; reading them; watching them being acted out on films or on stage. They are far and away one of the most important features of our everyday existence … These structured sequences of imagery are in fact the most natural way we know to describe almost anything which happens in our lives.
Poet and novelist Margaret Atwood said, “You’re never going to kill storytelling because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.”
If you want to become an excellent communicator, you need to learn the Law of Storytelling because people see their own lives in stories. Cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner estimates people are twenty-two times more likely to remember a fact when it has been wrapped in story. Why? Because stories are memorable, they help us grab the gist of an idea quickly, and they trigger emotion.
MASTER STORYTELLERS
When the author wrote the Law of Storytelling, the first person he wanted to consult was Don Yaeger. He writes and tells a story better than anyone else. This is what he shared.
We can all name them. Who in your organization holds your attention when they speak up. Who can you count on to be the most engaging dinner conversationalist? What speaker do you see on a program who pulls you in?
The names that come to mind are those who tell stories so well that time seems to stand still. And it’s true whether they are speaking to an audience of one or one thousand. Those who most deeply connect with their listeners do so through great storytelling.
Storytelling is part of the marrow of what makes us human. We see it in cave paintings, hear it in ancient songs, read it etched into stones and transcribed onto scrolls. But the truth is that storytelling matters even more today than ever. Think about all of the websites, webinars, podcasts, streaming video, and good, old-fashioned, in-person conversations we engage every day. The way we use these platforms to tell the stories of ourselves, our experiences, our companies, our brands, and our ideas has the ability to reach and influence people to a degree unmatched in history.
The good news on the storytelling front is that great storytelling can be learned. In fact, it has to be learned … Storytelling isn’t a form of magic but of technique – although the effect you can have on others seem magic at times. And becoming a far better storyteller than you believed possible is certainly within your grasp.
13 – THE LAW OF THE THERMOSTAT
Communicators Read the Room and Change the Temperature
PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN SAID, “NOT ALL READERS BECOME LEADERS, but all leaders must be readers.” John believes that Truman also meant that good leaders are always growing, always learning, always reading books to improve themselves. John believes that as a leader Truman also knew that leaders are readers of other things as well:, people, situations, trends and opportunities.
Good communicators are similar. They are also readers. They not only read books and articles and consume information to continually learn, grow, and find ideas but are also capable of reading the room when they need to. That’s the Law of the Thermostat: communicators read the room and change the temperature.
SPEAKERS WHO CAN’T READ THE ROOM
Have you ever been in an audience where something distracting occurs in the room, but the speaker or performer just continues, business as usual, even though the environment is keeping the audience from listening and staying with him? Maybe the temperature of the room is intolerable and everyone is suffering, yet the speaker never acknowledge it. Or music is blaring from the room next door, and everyone is getting irritated, but the person on stage pretends not to notice. Or someone in the audience experiences a medical emergency and is helped out of the room, but the speaker ignores it. Or the audience disengages out of boredom, yet the speaker drones on. It’s terrible. A speaker who can’t read the room is like a tone-deaf singer. His performance is ineffective, and it’s painful for everyone present.
Each of us possesses intuition in the area of gifting. John’s intuition and awareness are at their best when he is communicating; he can see all that is happening around him and sense what people are feeling in the room.
THERMOMETERS AND THERMOSTATS
Bad speakers can’t read the room. Worse, they ignore it and people in it when they speak. This disconnection may be because they’re so afraid that they can’t think of anything else. Or they may not care enough about people. Or they may put the responsibility for connecting on their audience instead of on themselves. Sadly, when speakers do notice that their communication isn’t connecting, their most likely solution is to double down on content. But if people have already disconnected and aren’t listening to the content, more content won’t make the situation better.
Good speakers can read the room. They’re like a thermometer in that they can measure the temperature in the room. After they finish speaking, if their audience was unresponsive or acted negatively, they may think, Tough crowd. Or if the audience was warm and lively, they may think, Wow, what a great audience! Because they are good speakers, they know the temperature. But they are unable to change it.
Good communicators, on the other hand, are like thermostats. Yes, they can read the temperature of the room the way a thermostat does, but they can do more. They are capable of changing the temperature. Good communicators can take a cold room and make it warm and inviting so that people are enjoying the atmosphere. They can create a setting that’s more conducive for communication. And because they can read the room and change the temperature, their communication is able to connect.
HOW TO READ THE ROOM AND RAISE THE TEMPERATURE
1. Read the Temperature in the Room before People Arrive
Because of his experience, John can look at a room and know immediately how conducive it will be to communication once it’s filled with people. Here are the things he look for:
- Lighting: When he speak, he wants plenty of light everywhere because the energy in a room increases with the amount of light. As communicators, we need to interact with the audience. That means we need to see the people, and they also need to be able to see each other.
- Proximity: He wants to be close to the people when he speak. If the room is small, he’d prefer to be on the floor rather than up on stage. In large rooms, his favorite have steps that go down directly to the audience, so that he can move down to the people to have a more personal conversation with them. He doesn’t want any barriers between him and his audience.
- Sound: Few things are more frustrating for an audience than not being able to hear the speaker. Even the greatest communicator in the world can’t engage an audience if the people can’t hear him.
- Screens: If you will be speaking in a large room, there may be cameras tracking you and projecting your image on screens. These screens are your friends. Once audience members sit a certain distance from you, they no longer watch you directly. Instead, they watch the screen. Be aware of where they are and speak to the camera as well as the audience to maintain a connection and let people see your facial expression.
- Staging: If you can see your room before you start speaking, you can make sure your space is set up the way you want. What works best for John is a barstool and high table beside it for his notes. He likes to sit when he speak to make it more conversational. But he also want to be able to move around. Think about what you need and ask for it.
- Watch the People in the Room: You should always strive to build excitement in an audience. But you must also observe the reactions of people in the room from moment to moment while you are speaking. John calls this having 20/20 communicator’s vision: seeing clearly who is there, how they are reacting, how they are responding, and how they are interacting with one another. That kind of vision comes from watching your audience, not staring at your notes. You must pay close attention to the people. How else will you know if you’re getting through them?
- Be 100 Percent Present in the Room: Communicating effectively requires every bit of a person’s focus and energy. That’s why it’s so important to be totally present in the room whenever you speak. When John speak, he gives it everything he has. He always treat it as a main event, the time of day when he must give 100 percent of his effort and focus.
2. “Remarkableize” Your Communication in the Room
There is no word “remarkableize” in the dictionary. John invented it. He defines it as to make something so unusual or special that people are surprised or impressed and take notice. As a communicator, he is always working to remarkableize what he say so that it becomes unforgettable to his audience.
14 – THE LAW OF CHANGE-UP
Sameness Is The Death of Communication
A YOUNG CRITIC GOT EXCITED WHEN AN IMPORTANT CRITIC agreed to attend the opening of his one-act play. On opening night, the critic arrived as promised and took his seat in the middle of the third row. The curtain rose, but within minutes the critic fell asleep and remained in that condition for the rest of the performance.
The playwright was crestfallen. As soon as the play ended, he dashed down to the critic’s seat and said, “I’m sorry you couldn’t stay awake longer. You know how much I wanted to get your opinion of my work.”
The critic rubbed his eyes and with a yawn said, “Young man, sleep is an opinion.”
There’s an old saying: when the audience falls asleep, wake up the speaker! Even if your content is fine, your intentions are right, and your thesis is strong, if your audience isn’t engaged, you need to change things up to get people engaged again.
Real-life playwright Alan Ayckbourn summed up the importance of keeping an audience engaged when he stated, “You’re asking people quite often to sit in the same seat for two hours plus, with just a brief interval for drinks. You’ve got to give them a feeling that if they leave the auditorium at any second they’re not going to be happy, because they want to know what happens next.” As a speaker, you bear the responsibility for keeping your audience excited and engaged, and you can do that using the Law of the Change-Up, because sameness is the death of communication.
EVERYONE LOVES VARIETY
How enjoyable is a play where nothing happens? How exciting is a football game that ends in a scoreless tie? How catchy is a song with no variation? How engaged are you when someone talks to you in a monotone during a conversation? These are the situations we try to avoid, not ones we seek out. Why? Because sameness is boring. And forgettable. It’s like having the same food, three meals a day, seven days a week. We human beings crave change. We like variety. We love to be surprised. That’s true in most of life, and it’s especially true when it comes to communication. Nobody wants to hear a predictable and monotonous speaker, nor does anybody strive to be one. As communicators, we all want to keep our audiences sitting on the edge of their seats.
Changing up your delivery can make what you say unforgettable. What you say can be …
| Extraordinary | Important | Newsworthy |
| Exceptional | Eventful | Significant |
| Enduring | Remarkable | Memorable |
| Meaningful | Lasting | Exciting |
If you desire those words to describe your communication, then you must take responsibility for changing up your delivery and bringing life to your message.
15 – THE LAW OF ADDING VALUE
People May Forget What You Say, But They Never Forget How You Make Them Feel
ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF SPEAKING IS GETTING TO MEET WONDERFUL PEOPLE. John was once in a program with Maya Angelou, the poet and civil rights activist. His time in the green room was unforgettable because her warmth was engaging, her stories were captivating, and her words were insightful. But above all, her persona made an indelible impression on him. Even though she was a larger-than-life figure who knew presidents, TV and movie stars, and civil rights icons, her focus as they talked was on him. She expressed admiration for his work and said it had helped her. He was shocked. He had no idea that she even knew who he was. She encouraged him to keep adding value to others and expressed the hope they could meet again. Regretfully, soon after their time together, she passed away.
That day he left the green room empowered by her presence. Big people make us feel bigger, and that’s exactly how John felt. And that is why he often used a quote attributed to Angelou as the description of the Law of Adding Value: “People may forget what you say, but they never forget how you make them feel.”
LEARNING TO VALUE PEOPLE
To practice the Law of Adding Value as a communicator, you must do two things: First, you much live good values. Living good values enables us to value others. It keeps our motives right. It allows us to do the right things. When we live good values, we have something good to give.
It also empowers us to do the second thing, which is adding value to people. Doing the right things, for the right reasons, with and for people, adds value to them. When a speaker and his message add value to people, great communication can happen.
How does a person come to understand the importance of adding value? Every person’s experience is unique. John wants to share with you his experience in the hope that it will stir the desire in you to add value to others . Here’s John speaking:
1. My Father’s Example
Dad was a people person. He loved people and they loved him. He never rushed when he was around people. He walked slowly through crowds, stopping often to hug someone or to say a few words of encouragement.
I remember a conversation I had with Dad in his office when he was ninety. One of the things he said was, “Son, isn’t it wonderful that the older we get, the more we love people?” I had to laugh. Because Dad genuinely loved and valued people, he thought everyone else did.
The values I learned from Dad? How I value people determines how I view them. That’s a lesson you need to learn and take to heart if you want to add value to people.
2. My Zig Lesson
When I was in my twenties, I went to hear Zig Ziglar speak for the first time, and I heard him say something that grabbed my attention. “If you will help people get what they want, they will help you to get what you want.” That was a life-changing idea for me because until that time, I focused more on how people could help me. I expected them to help me first, and then I would be willing to help them. That day I started to experience a shift. I made adding value to people my number one priority – without expecting anything in return.
3. My Hot Stove Experience
When I was in my twenties, I had a hot-stove experience with a member of my staff. I was a young leader, and I poured myself into developing this staff member. I mentored him and I loved him. But then I had to fire him. It was so traumatic for me. Afterward, I said to myself, “That will never happen to me again.”
I continued leading, but I kept everyone at arm’s length. I built walls to protect myself from further hurt, and as a result, I stopped investing in people. After a few months, I realized that through this process of disconnecting, I valued and loved people less. I was distancing myself because I had experienced trauma, but if I stayed on that course, my life would become a tragedy. I had to get over my hot-stove experience and begin to love and value people again. It took some time, but I regained my trust in others.
4. My Enron Experience
in 2000, a lot of companies went under when it was discovered that their leaders had lied about their company’s success and engaged in unethical accounting practices. The headliner was Enron, an organization that trumpeted its great values while at the same time deceiving employees and investors. The company lost $74 billion in value, bankrupting investors, many of whom were employees with their life savings invested in Enron stock.
In the wake of these scandals, my publisher asked me to write a book on business ethics. I wasn’t sure I could do it. First, I believe there’s no such thing as “business ethics” – there’s just ethics. Second, I had built everything in my life on faith. How could I write a book on ethics without faith and deliver it to a culture that didn’t believe in truth or absolutes.
Exploring this issue caused me to discover the enduring value of good values. They are the foundation on which ethical people built their lives. Without a foundation of good values, people ignore rules and break laws. But with good values they not only obey laws but value others. The key was the Golden Rule, a value present in every culture and religion: “treat others as you would want others to treat you.”
5. My Walk with Jesus
I don’t want to offend anyone who isn’t a person of faith, but I feel compelled to write about the final source of the lessons I learned on good values. If talk about faith offends you, then please skip ahead. But let me first tell you this: you don’t have to be a believer in Jesus to learn from his life.
One of the things that always stood out to me from reading the Gospels was how Jesus valued everyone. He valued people who were not valued by others. He loved a cheating tax collector name Zacchaeus. He loved a Samaritan woman whom other Jews would never have spoken to. He loved a woman caught in adultery whom the law said should be stoned. He loved lepers and other outcasts. He loved the thief who died with him on the cross. While religious people wrote all of them off, Jesus wrote them into his story. While the traditional leaders built religious walls to exclude people, Jesus built relational bridges to include them.
Learning from Jesus, I realized I can’t be like him unless I love everyone. That includes people who don’t like me, act like me, think like me, or believe like me. As a result, I try to love everyone every day. And when I speak, I try to show my audience how much I value them and care about them.
16 – THE LAW OF RESULTS
The Greatest Success in Communication Is Action
Good leaders want to influence people to take action, make changes, and achieve goals to make the world a better place. Good communicators want the same things. That’s one of the reasons good communication skills are foundational for better leadership. If you can’t cast vision, show people a way forward, give them a road map, and inspire them to action, you will have a difficult time leading them.
ACTIONS THAT INSPIRE
Founding father Ben Franklin said, “Well done is better than well said,” but he also knew that well said can be the catalyst for well done. When people believe that they have the ability to take action and to see results, then they feel empowered to act. If no message comes as a result of communication, then the message really never leave the stage. If you want to avoid that, then you need to embrace these four actions as a communicator.
1. Be Committed to Action Yourself
How committed are you to what you speak about. The author started this book with the Law of Credibility: the most effective message is the one you live. That’s where communication start. It continues with your continued committed action. If you are moved to act, your audience will be moved. If you put it into practice when you preach, people will trust you and be inspired by you. It’s not enough to be inspirational in your speech. Your enthusiasm may motivate and excite people about their dreams, but it won’t be sufficient to move people to action. People want an example of someone who has lived it.
2. Reframe the Way People Think
Most people have good intentions but don’t take action, and that inaction often leads to regret. Psychologists surveyed a random group of adults and asked them this question:
“When you look back on your experiences in life and think of those things you regret, what would you say you regret more – those things that you did but wish you hadn’t, or those things that you didn’t do but wish you had?”
They discovered that 75 percent of people had more regrets for the actions they had not taken than for the ones they had. As a communicator, one of your goals should be to help people reframe their thinking so that they shift their mindset from good intentions to intentional action.
Intentionality and commitment are essential for anyone who wants to achieve something of value. When you help people shift their mental framework from trying to doing, it changes their attitude. When they become committed to doing, they have the potential to change their lives because commitment brings dedication, resolve, tenacity, and perseverance.
3. Make Taking Action Seem Irresistible
Early in his communication career, John spoke because he wanted to help people understand. His focus was knowledge. It took him a few years to realize there was another level of effectiveness in communication he should be reaching for. He recognized that understanding changes minds, but only action changes lives. That’s when he made moving people to action his new goal.
There’s a paradox to the way understanding and action work. Most people want answers before they act. They desire understanding. What they don’t realize is that often we must take action to find answers. An unwillingness to move before having all the answers keeps people from making the breakthrough they desire.
Appealing to what motivates people in an audience requires more than a simple call to action. It requires you to paint a picture of the positive outcome they will experience once they take the suggested action. If you put them in that picture and help them see themselves succeeding, they can imagine how good it will make them to take action.
4. Use Communication to Create a Bridge to Action
As compelling as your message may be, and as motivated and empowered as your audience may feel, you still need to help people cross from inaction to action. How can you do that? By building bridges to where they want to go.
Put the Bridge Right in Front of Them
A bridge is of no use to anyone if they can’t find it. When you speak, make action as easy to access as possible. Sometimes it’s as simple as giving directions. Malcolm Gladwell writes about this in his book The Tipping Point when he describes an experiment conducted by psychologist Howard Leventhal at Yale University. Leventhal wanted to see how many of his seniors he could convince to receive a tetanus vaccine at the university’s student health center. He was also interested in seeing how their motivation would be impacted by different approaches to getting them there. As part of his experiment, he gave students different versions of a seven-page booklet about tetanus. One was a “high fear” version with graphic descriptions and color photographs of people suffering from the disease, while the other simply included information.
What surprised Leventahl was that only 3 percent of his students receive the shot. Furthermore, the one who did came equally from both groups. So he did the experiment again, but this time he included a map of the campus with the location of the health center circled, and he included the center’s hours of operation. The result was that 28 percent of his students got the shot, with the students again coming equally from both groups. All they needed was someone to put the bridge right in front of them so that they would be more likely to use it.
Start Them at the Beginning
To get people moving, you have to show them the end result and paint the picture of their better future if they act. But that can also create a problem. After people are focused on the end result, they may not easily see the steps needed to get them there. So show them. Go back to the beginning and show them the first step, and encourage them to take it immediately.
As a communicator, you need to convince people to open the case . If you can get them started, they will be engaged and begin working out the next steps as they complete the first one.
Show the Value of Small Steps
People often think they need to take big steps to make significant change. They devalue small steps and often tell themselves those don’t count or aren’t worth the effort. But that’s simply not true. Nothing happens until something happens. Naeem Callaway, founder and CEO of Get Out The Box, said, “Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life. Tip-toe if you must but take a step.”
Help Them Discover That Action Builds Confidence
If you can get people to take any first step of action, any small step, they will begin to experience the power of confidence building in their lives. Author and speaker Jim Rohn put it this way:
“In the final analysis, it is how we feel about ourselves that provides the greatest reward from any activity. It is not what we get that makes us valuable, it is what we become in the process of doing that brings value to our lives. It is activity that converts human dreams into human reality, and that conversion from idea into actuality gives as a personal value that can come from no other source.”
The more action people take, the more confident they can become. Every time they act and it gives them positive results, they taste success and know they can succeed again in the future. If they act and fail, they realize that failure isn’t fatal or final, and they gain the confidence to try again. Either way, taking action is a win.
CONCLUDING WORDS BY THE AUTHOR
Writing this book has filled me with joy. I hope it has brought you joy too – plus plenty of insights, much knowledge, and many practical techniques. My hope is that this book helps you go to a higher level as a communicator. If you’ll use the Laws of Communication every time you speak, they will help you to connect with your audience, increase your influence, and make a difference.
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