English Archive - Page 21 of 100 - The Art of Communicating

10 thoughts on focus

The best communicators find the courage to cut to the core, separate the signal from the noise and direct everyone’s energy on what matters most.

Where others are overwhelmed with choice, leaders who master focus point us in the right direction. Where others are torn between alternatives, they make us see how to make that choice.

I’ve written down 10 thoughts on what they do differently and I’ve assembled a free workbook to help you apply these thoughts to your own communication.

Check it out at https://michaelgerharz.com/focus.

PS: If you find it useful, please share it with a friend!

How is this different?

When you’re building a new product, the question “How is it different?” is mostly pointless.

Because “different” can be hugely misleading as a metric.

Business developers love “different”. But the customers couldn’t care less. Customers care for specific.

In fact, many customers have no sympathy for “different”. They prefer “familiar”. Familiar is proven and safe.

Customers do care very much about whether your product solves their specific need.

Therefore, a better question to ask is: “What specific problem does this solve that isn’t solved properly, yet?”

(And, by the way, when you have an answer to that question, you’ll get the answer to “What’s different?” for free.)

When clarity emerges

When clarity emerges, it immediately dissolves.

Clarity invites new possibilities and opens up new directions. Which inevitably push clarity away.

If you pursue the possibilities, you’ll have to figure them out and seek clarity again.

If you resist the possibilities, you’ll never know what’s behind and loose clarity.

Onto a new quest for clarity. It’s an infinite game.

Clarity is in the eye of the beholder

No matter how hard you try to make your statements as clear as possible, you’ll only ever know whether they are actually clear once you say them out loud.

Miles Davis framed it beautifully: “If you understood everything I say, you’d be me”. People have different experiences, they attach different meanings to the same experiences, and they map their experiences to different contexts. That’s why what’s clear to you might make little sense to them.

Ultimately, clarity needs the feedback of the audience. If you never ask them how they understood what you said, you’re missing out on some of the most reliable information regarding the clarity of your words.

Two comedians

Recently, I’ve been to two shows by two different comedians.

The first show was sold out in a large event hall with 1500 seats. The second show sold only 50 tickets in a hall that can easily seat 500.

What a heart crushing moment that must have been for the second comedian. The hall was basically empty – it seems like no-one was really interested, right?

And yet, that’s not how she acted. She delivered as if the hall was full. She delivered a terrific show, interacted intensely with the people who were there and got standing ovations at the end.

The first comedian, the one in the large hall delivered, too. He performed brilliantly and he, too, got standing ovations.

Two things that are easily overlooked:

First, big acts usually start small, too. The sold-out comedian had his smaller shows in front of tiny crowds several years in the past.

Second, and maybe more importantly: great performers perform regardless. They don’t care whether one person shows up or a thousand. The ones who do show up deserve their best performance. And so they deliver their best performance.

The thing is this: Although it felt like no-one was interested due to the nearly empty hall, that’s not true. 50 people were interested. They might come back – and bring some friends.

Top speakers

Top speakers excel at speaking thanks to repetition.

They deliver (basically) the same speech hundreds of times. If you listen to them multiple times in a short period of time, you’ll notice two things:

Most stories, jokes, and punchlines are the same.
They are not exactly the same.

Great communicators tweak their communication and refine it. They don’t try to come up with ever new ideas and ever new ways of saying the same things.

They try to find the best way of saying that thing. If a story works, they’ll refine it until it’s the best version of that story to make that particular point (and, of course, if a story doesn’t work they’ll look for better ones).

The best speakers speak so often that they have many opportunities to test this.

How can you create situations to test your stories and refine them?

Would they agree?

When you think that this little detail is crucially important in your communication and can’t be left out under any circumstances, would your customers agree?

I mean there’s no doubt that it’s crucial to building the service but is it crucial for your communication?

Your customers don’t need to know everything you know and neither do they want to. They reached out precisely because you are the expert. They want you to know all the details.

If they cared as much for the details as you do, they’d probably build it themselves. But they chose not to … quite likely for a good reason.

So, what’s crucial when looking with your customer’s eyes?

The urgent and the important

Some things are urgent, others are important.
Some things are both, others are neither.

If you’re managing a project, spending your time on things that are neither urgent nor important can quickly turn into a disaster. Most time management tips aim at limiting – if not eliminating – time spent on non-urgent and non-important tasks.

If you’re managing your personal time, the opposite might be true. Spending no time on those things can turn into a creativity disaster.

It’s often the non-urgent, non-important tasks that provide us with unexpected insights and new ways to connect the dots.

This allows things to become important, things you didn’t even know would ever be important. Things that only in hindsight turned out to be the most crucial part of your path.

How do you manage your time when it comes to seemingly unimportant and non-urgent things? Do you allow yourself to procrastinate?

Your problem

People love to turn their problem into your problem.

“I got a call on the phone so I’m late to the meeting.”

“My parking lot was taken by a stranger so I’m taking yours (I gotta park somewhere!).”

“It’s harder for us to get the supply to make the product we promised to deliver on May, 2nd so we’re delaying the delivery (See, keeping the promised date would reduce our margins).”

Perfectly reasonable from their perspective. Somewhat reasonable from my perspective (sometimes): After all, I might prefer having you at the meeting late rather than not at all. And I want your business to make a healthy profit so that I can rely on you as a supplier far into the future.

But you’re still turning your problem into mine. That’s ok if there’s really no alternative. It’s not ok if you’re just being lazy. Or inconsiderate.

Where have you been on the receiving side of this? But more importantly where have you turned your problem into someone else’s problem? What would it have cost you if you hadn’t?

What if?

“What if we were only allowed to use environmentally friendly supply?”

“What if we had to cut the price by half?”

“What if we had to double the price?”

“What if we had no ad budget?”

“What if our account would be suspended on Instagram (or whatever platform you’re most active on)?”

“What if we had to tell the truth in our marketing?”

“What if?” is a great question to identify possible leaps. At first, it feels like you’re constraining yourself. But if you play it seriously the constraint can become a powerful creativity booster that leads to unexpected paths that allows you to leap independent of the constraint.

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