This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

communication, words, communicate, leaders, inputs, email, podcast, people, intentionality, recipient, outcomes, listening, output, workplaces, mindset, energetics, leadership, culture

Erica Mills Barnhart 

Welcome, welcome, welcome to the first episode of the Communicate I/O podcast. If you’re listening, and you’re wondering where the heck the Marketing for Good podcast went, go back and listen to the previous episode. The short version is, I’m shifting away, Claxon is shifting away from focusing on words and marketing, toward words as a way to revolutionize workplaces and, of course, by extension, the world. That’s what’s happening, so much more in the episode immediately prior to this. So I want to dig in to Communicate I/O, and what this podcast is all about. So who it’s for is for leaders, purpose driven leaders in particular who like to get results and who want every tool in their toolbox to get them. Communication is I mean, it’s clutch right when it comes to leading and leadership, you know, that. So it’s interesting, right? I’m curious why there is such ineffective un-leaderly communication happening. This cost companies millions of dollars, it’s a big, big, big, big deal. So why does keep happening? I always say like communication isn’t rocket science, right? It’s not. But look, the reality is, most leaders get promoted because of subject matter, expertise or experience. Not because they’re fabulous communicators, per se. And in fact, that very thing that gets people into leadership positions, like being super smart about technology, or immunology, or anthropology doesn’t need to be something that is an ology, that’s just how that came out. This can work against them in terms of how they communicate as a leader, right? It can be very technical, and being able to translate that technical expertise, or you know, whatever the expertise is and transition that into leadership communication, that can be really tough for a bunch of reasons that we will talk about on future episodes. Also, a lot of what we’re all taught in school about communication creates chaos and confusion and a business context, both of which are costly. So yeah, I mean, the way that we’re taught sort of installs teams out rather than helping them to accelerate forward. So all of that’s happening. That is Erica’s has hypothesis on part of why communication isn’t prioritized. And why we have I mean, let’s look, let’s talk about these numbers about the cost of ineffective communication, because they are, they’re staggering. So according to research done by Rogen International, ineffective communication costs small businesses, includes nonprofits, with 100 employees $420,000 a year. $420,000 a year. At the other end of the size spectrum, if you have 100,000 employees, you’re flushing $62.4 million down the toilet every single year. Isn’t that staggering? Just to put an even finer, scarier point on it, that research only factored in email communication, which is still super important, but one form of communication and also it’s dated it was in 2009. So was the nerd in me tempted to like adjust those for inflation and a few other things? Yes, yes, the nerd in me was but that wasn’t going to be a good use of my time and I stopped myself from doing that. Because we don’t really need it to be that specific, like close enough for horseshoes. The point is, that’s just a ton of money that could be put towards something else. When I speak and coach it’s primarily to and with people in leadership positions and that’s because every word that comes out of a leaders mouth or fingers is amplified because of positional authority and the power that leaders hold. So the ripple effect of shoddy communication at the executive level, it’s massive. The higher up the corporate food chain, you go, or you find yourself the more poor, effective, shoddy crappy communication costs, like there is a correlation there, a cost correlation. Also, leaders, not exclusively, but to a great extent, have power to shape organizational culture, their words can create a culture where people feel included and inspired, or demoralized and deflated. I think we can all agree that we want the former not the latter, right? Workplaces where people feel included and inspired, those are their workplaces that are changing the world, whatever it is that they’re doing. One line of code, one randomized controlled trial, one sale, one sale boat, whatever the company does, they’re changing the world by changing the workplace. And whether they know it or not, they’re doing the change one word at a time, the aggregate effect of communication shapes culture. It’s important to, I just think, pause and realize that the aggregate effect of words and the ripple effect of that. So there’s the organizational impact, that’s what we’ve been talking about, and cost of poor communication. There’s also an impact on individuals. It feels crappy, to communicate crappily. When you’re a leader who cares about your work and your team, you know, you want to do well for them, and by them, and I’m yet to meet a leader who you know, wakes up and is like, “Today is a good day for chaotic, confusing communication. Yes, today’s the day let’s do this thing. That sounds fantastic. Let’s do that”. I guess as I’m saying that I will sidebar and say Yes, sometimes there is intentional miscommunication that happens. So apparently, there are leaders maybe who wake up and think that but, I mean, I haven’t met those people personally. And I think that’s not the intention. It’s not the intention. And here’s actually something important for us to talk about, which is unless you have like a big presentation, very few leaders proactively think about communication at all, or very much, you know, they jot off emails and posts on Slack and Team and convene meetings. I mean, they’re using words in all sorts of ways throughout every single day and since they are adults, they’re using 15,000 words on average, because that’s how many most adults use in a day. And in my experience, very few of them bring a level of intentionality to their communication that is commensurate with the intentionality they bring to strategy and planning, and you know, all the other elements of their work. And yet note, communication underlies so much of what a leader does. Now, I am being a bit harsh, I realize it sounds like I’m harshing on the leaders mellow, some leaders, maybe you, dear listener, pay attention to your communication on the regular, just part of what you do. But many, many, many don’t. And I think we can extrapolate from the information that research that I mentioned earlier, I kind of know that to be true. Because if there was that level of intentionality, we would not see all that money going out the door because of ineffective communication, right? So many don’t. And many, many companies do not have a culture that prioritizes and systematizes, effective, happy making productivity inducing communication. So I’m not like laying this at the feet of individual leaders. This is again, this gets back to this is a culture issue. And oftentimes, communication is kind of like a free for all. Organizations are increasingly identifying channels to use. So you know, maybe you’re primarily an email organization still increasingly might be Slack or Teams or something like that for internal communication. But there’s little guidance on the content, even if that’s in place. Little guidance on the content that goes into those channels. It’s really very interesting. And this, this is where Communicate, I/O comes in. This is a different way a systematizable way, a predictable way to communicate effectively. It’s so simple. I mean, it’s so flippin simple. And it’s it’s highly effective. Anyone can learn Communicate I/O. Literally everyone. It takes a little effort. Yes, especially at first. I mean, as with anything new, it takes time to develop the new habits and skills and ways of thinking and doing so I’m not saying it’s instantaneous. It does take a little effort. And it is a communication mindset as much as a skillset and I’ll tell ya, it’s that mindset that gets the real results. Mindset equals money in the bank and happiness in the heart. There are skills to learn, like I said, and I’ll keep sharing those on this podcast, they will be specific and practical and things you can use as soon as you hear them, as soon as you hear them. That’s my promise to you. But a skill set without that mindset isn’t going to be as effective. So that’s why we’re going to talk about both. So let’s break this down a little bit more. What is communicate I/O? So Communicate I/O, the I/O refers to inputs and outcomes, I is for inputs O is for outcomes for my tech and clan leaders who are listening. Yes, I/O usually refers to inputs and outputs spot on, we’re gonna talk about outputs too, they do factor in. But to get results when it comes to communication, the O that matters is outcomes. What are you hoping to achieve? From there, you can reverse engineer based on what your listener, your audience, your who, your listener, your audience your recipient is. So communication is always you know, there’s always two things going on, right? What is sent or said, depending, and then there is what is received. Okay, so what is sent, what is received, your goal is to get as much alignment between those two things as possible. This means intentionally asking, how will the person on the other end of my communication best receive my message? Whatever the message may be, right? If you don’t ask this, you’ll project meaning you’ll go with your own preferences. And this is where so much communication goes awry for the recipient or recipients sometimes plural. Right? Like, again, this is about how will they receive it? Do they prefer email? Maybe they’re an in-person person? Is this someone who likes to get a heads up? Or to set meetings in advance? Or are they good with you popping in? We all have different preferences, right? We’re going to talk about communication styles, a whole lot more on future episodes, knowing the communication style of your team is imperative. It is communication gold. So we’ll come back to that. But you need to get clear. So first, you’re saying what are the outcomes, and then who is receiving the message and get clear on how the message will best be received, you can think of this as the output, okay, emails and meetings and all of these things, use your outputs. And then with great intentionality, then you’re going to turn your attention to the inputs themselves, the words, the syntax, the grammar, the fonts, the all of that stuff, right? Also things like, you know, getting granular, like if it’s an email, how are you opening and closing it? Are you consistent? And if there’s a deviation from that, how is that going to be received? Ditto with memos. And then of course, always paying attention to your verbs, always verbs. More on this again, in future episodes, I’ve talked about it in past episodes, but we will come back to it verbs are the superheroes of every sentence after all, so they’re really important. So, really focusing at that level on the inputs. And then you know, you have different inputs depending on the output. So if the output is going to be something verbal, right, so a presentation or a meeting, you have other inputs to work with, tone of voice, gestures, both of those are part of para language, your pacing, your pauses, you can get very strategic with silence, there are so many options, so much opportunity to up the odds that your message will in fact be received as you intend and hope it will be and clearly based on the aforementioned cost of crappy communications, so much opportunity for mishaps and mistakes really for the message to completely or mainly miss its mark it can go both ways. And I think that’s the power of Communicate I/O is its simplicity. Now maybe that sounds like a lot maybe you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with the prospect of this much intentionality. I want you with me to take in a deep breath, hold it, and then we’re going to exhale for longer than we inhale. Why did we do that? You’ve just calmed your central nervous system, congratulations. What this allows is your mind to open up a little bit, your body to calm down so your mind can be open to change. It’s your way of saying your mind like it’s okay to be open to this newfangled Communicate I/O thing, we’re gonna be okay even though maybe we’re going to do things a little bit different. Because otherwise that reptilian part of our brain is gonna like, no, no, no to the new thank you for very much. That reptilian part of our brain likes to do things just as we’ve been doing them, even though there’s a way to get better results, we really have to do that mind work. This is part of the mindset work that comes along with it right to say, like, no, no, we’re gonna do this thing. We’re okay. We can try this. Now, if you listen to this podcast, in its previous incarnation. You’ll know, and by that I mean, when it was called Marketing for Good, you will know about the energetics of language. Say it with me, words matter, because they are matter. They have physicality, they make an impact. They create grooves in our brains, right? So we know this to be true. And if you know about the energetics of language, you know that every word has its own energy, and it puts that energy off into the world. So this is another piece of Communicate I/O is really being able to channel the energetics of language which gets really fun really fast. And you’re busy, right? So like, if you’re sending like, Oh, holy doodle, Erica, I cannot possibly I just don’t have time for this level of intentionality. Of course, you don’t. Not every text and email and Slack or Teams message or whatever needs to be like a work of communicative art, prioritize communication opportunities, and that’s how I want you to think about this as opportunities that will bring the most value to you, to your work, to your team, to the world, over time. Each day, here’s an invitation, each day, maybe starting today, depending on when you’re listening to this, but maybe it’s tomorrow, identify one opportunity that you want to prioritize, that if you get that opportunity, it will get you those outcomes, those results that you want, just one a day. And you know what, if you don’t want to start in the workplace, you can try this at home. Really, you can, just one a day. That’s it start there. Okay, and you’re going to work this system, what is the outcome I want or need to achieve with this opportunity? Who was the recipient or recipients? How did they prefer to receive messages? Based on this which output is best suited to this opportunity? This is going to mitigate projecting, send an email, huddle, in-person, Slack message or text, signal. I don’t know? Do I need to call a team meeting? All outputs, okay. So decide on your output based on who the recipient is. Once that’s decided, and again, note, this can be fast, right? Like, once you get into the groove with this, you will be able to identify your outcome and your outputs faster than it has taken me describe this to you. Which is kind of ironic and funny. In the spirit of teaching something new, I’m going to stick with it but just know, like, once you get the hang of it, this can go really quickly. Okay, so you’ve identified the outcomes that you want to achieve the output, and then it’s about the inputs, right? Like, what are those words? How are you going to say it? Are you going to strategically use silence? I don’t know. How can you up the odds of your message landing? That’s where the inputs come in. That’s Communicate I/O, it’s simple, it’s a little different, it’s effective, it can be fun. You know what makes it fun? Because like I said, once you get the hang of it, like, yeah, this is mindset and a skill set, you get better at it, as with anything that we you know, work on, and you get better results. I mean, you get better results. That feels good, right? That’s fun and it’s energizing to be a leader who knows how to communicate with clarity and confidence. And who was modeling that for your team. This again, a conversation for another day for a future episode, but really important in terms of leadership and communications to be mindful what you’re modeling. I want to say this, I want to come clean. I’m on this communication journey right along with you. I’m a “communication expert”. I study words. I’ve been working Communicate I/O for a long while. I still slip up and mess up all the time. We all have  go to things we do communication wise, that are that are not I/O-esq. I’ll share two of mine. Okay. The first is I create chaos and confusion. I just did this earlier today.  I know I did. And I do it because I get so excited about something. I get so excited about things, like Communicate. I/O, I mean, I’m excited. So, I know what the outcome looks like And I’ve been clear about communicating that right. It’s things like we launched the website and the podcast so we can serve and support 1 million leaders. 1 million leaders. Very, very clear. But I get going and the ideas start flowing so fast, so furious, that can be really hard for people on my team to keep up because I’m just not sequencing things in a way that that makes it clear. And that’s not because they’re anything other than awesome, amazing, rockstars. I have incredible people who support me. It’s because I’m over here bobbing and weaving so fast with my words that it’s like, oh my god, Erica stop, wait, which version are we using? So, I really have to mind my mind, I need to assure myself that It’ll all get done. I can take the time to pull together clear communication, a comprehensive email or Google Doc or whatever it’s going to be. You know, it’s like impatience plus enthusiasm kind of works against my best intention sometimes. And so that happens, right? And when I’m doing that I’m not working, Communicate, I/O. The other thing I do, and I’ve gotten consistent feedback about this. So I know it’s an issue. And yet I persist. I’m aware of it. I’ve noticed, it step one. And sometimes sometimes, like, you know, I catch myself, I use big words. I mean, I like big words, I cannot lie and I use them when a simpler one would be more effective. Right? Like, our brains don’t want to work hard, it is almost always in our best interest. Just to pick the simplest, the simplest words, easy enough to communicate, because then the recipient doesn’t have to use precious brain cells and brainpower to understand it. And again, there’s a difference between simple and simplistic, okay? That doesn’t mean the recipient doesn’t know big words. It’s just like, you know, that takes up energy. When I’m really on a roll, I don’t just use like one big word, because I’m gonna talk about this actually, sometimes a very intentional use of a big or unexpected word can be super effective because of novelty. Yeah, I just start using big words. And I’m stringing them together. And this is the downside of enthusiasm. I am not saying that’s a reason for doing it, my enthusiasm, but it causes confusion and consternation, and it’s costly. And it’s costly in the same way that using jargon is, right? Somebody genuinely might not know what I’m talking about. But it also makes people feel yucky, when they don’t know what you’re saying, what I’m saying when I’m on a roll and doing this thing that I do. And that if we link this back to culture, it’s antithetical, big word, to create a culture where people feel included, right? It goes against that value that I hold, so it’s out of values alignment, so it’s a really bad communication thing that I do like to have big words. You know, the movie, Say Anything? And the young woman, I’m forgetting the actor, but the young woman puts a mark by each – John Cusack is like in a room, and he’s looking at a dictionary, and there’s all these marks in her dictionary and he’s like, “what’s that about?” She’s like, “Oh, well, I put a mark by each of the words when I look them up”, and most people, including the John Cusack character are like, “okay, that’s kind of weird. I don’t know what to think about that”. Well, I want to confess something, which is, I mean, just when you thought that that couldn’t get any geekier. Let me just up the geek factor a little bit here for you. I put checkmarks in a dictionary, but it was in my French English dictionary, because I was a French major in undergrad, I toted this thing, I’m holding it right here, I am, to France and back and I’ve had it for okay over half a lifetime at this point that really boggles the mind and I put a checkmark. So for fun I did I just pulled it out. Okay, and I’m just gonna I’m gonna read the first word that has a checkmark by it because there it is créneaux. Now I don’t know what that means, maybe at the time I remembered what it meant. Fair un créneaux. Oh, is to reverse into a parking space. J’ai raté mon créneaux means I parked badly. I don’t know. I never took a driving test over there. I don’t know why the heck I was looking at the word WORD. But now I know. I did. Does anybody else do that? I’m not sure. It resonated with me. Right. So this is, I have a long, long history, which I’ve talked about in previous episodes and I’ll probably share more about it, with language and words and the role that it’s played in my life. So I have a soft spot for them. And especially when I’m in a leadership role, which you know, I am, I find myself there, I need to be minding my words, because like, big words do not serve, like I said, that’s not in alignment with my values of making people on my teams feel included. So it’s something I have to work on. So this is my long winded way of saying, I’m on this journey with you. Sometimes we misuse our inputs, it is rarely the end of the world. In fact, the world is still here. So it’s never the end of the world. But it really can have big impacts, especially again, there’s the aggregate impact of words and language as it relates to individuals within your organization, and also the culture that you’re creating. So that’s Communicate I/O in a in a nutshell. It’s a mindset. It’s a skill set. And I want to close with an invitation just for you to be thinking about, are you open, are you up for changing up how you communicate? In starting with how you think about communicating? Are you open to prioritizing communication as you do other things on your leadership docket? Is there the readiness there? Like I said, a lot of what we’re gonna cover on this podcast, you don’t have to like embrace the entire thing and do it all the time. I’m going to keep things practical, because that’s how I roll. But I hope you’re open to it and that you’re open to just being on the journey and we’re gonna have some fun. Like I mentioned earlier, my goal is to get at least 1 million leaders fluent in Communicate I/O. I’ve seen the difference that can make, I’m excited to see leaders go through their transition from chaos and confusion to clarity and confidence, that just never gets old. It’s wonderful for everybody involved. So if you’re up for it, join me on the next episode, we’re gonna take a look at a word that is near and dear to a lot of our hearts and put it under the microscope as it were. So I’m excited about that. If you are as excited as I am, you know what, you don’t even need to be as excited as I am, you could take it down a couple notches. If you’re lowkey excited about this and you think it will be helpful to other leaders, leaders like you who are looking and open to ways of growing and expanding and upping your leadership game. If you will share this episode rate, review, do all those things. I would I was so appreciate it. It’s a big deal and I would appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sharing and listening and doing what you do in the world which is amazing work. We are just getting started on this communication journey together and I cannot wait to bring you and for you to hear the next episode of Communicate I/O.

The post Ep 47: Communicate Like A Leader appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

feelings, communicate, inputs, brain, leader, people, message, communication, desired outcomes, positional authority, outcomes, negativity bias, intangible, reasons, amplified, safe, nervous systems, mistake

Erica Mills Barnhart 

Hello, hello, welcome back to Communicate I/O, the new name for the formerly known Marketing for Good podcast, where we are all about teaching leaders how to communicate with clarity and confidence so you can get the desired outcomes you want. With Communicate I/O, we’re focused on which inputs, the I’s, the words, the language, the emojis, the exclamation points, whatever the case is going to be, right? What are the inputs that can produce a desired outcome? Outcomes come in all shapes and sizes. You know that right? Maybe that’s sales targets, or fundraising goals, or developing a new product or service or creating cultures where people feel included and inspired? Outcomes can be both tangible and intangible. So, one of the important things about Communicate I/O, which was a bit of a mind shift for some, is you want to start with the outcomes. And again, both tangible and intangible, yes, yes, I am foreshadowing here to the rest of this episode and the mistake. Okay, you’re going start there. And then you’re going to reverse engineer into those inputs. And I say, this is a mind shift, because you are so busy, as a leader as a human, that oftentimes we just sit down, we’re like, “okay, I’m getting it out”. You know, we’re in the habit of thinking about the output. Yeah. But not necessarily consistently, the outcome, to the extent that it behooves us, especially as leaders, that is part of your job, when you hold positional authority, or you have that title, yes. With communication, there are always two things going on, there’s what is being sent or said, the message, but then there’s how the message is received. Your goal is to get as much alignment between those two things as possible. This means intentionally asking, how will the person, or people, on the other end of my communication best receive my message? Now, you’ve likely heard of asking this question, what do I want someone to know or feel? And what do you want someone to know, feel and do generally, not in that order? And maybe you’re somebody who is consistent about this practice of first figuring that out, you’ve really been starting with the desired outcome of your communication, if so, hats off to you. That’s pretty rare, and partially, again, by a function of how many things you need to get through in a day, right? So, here’s the mistake, okay, and it’s a biggie, which is we prioritize what we want people to know and do. And we don’t spend sufficient time figuring out how they need to feel for their brains, their heads and their hearts, to be open to receiving your message about the knowing and the doing. In our society, we are very focused on productivity, about getting those results by getting them as fast as possible. All those things. And feelings are intangible. I mean, sure, they take up physicality at times, but we kind of demote them, which for reasons that we will cover in a minute, it’s not strategic. It’s really not strategic. Now, before we go any further, I want you to hearken back to the last communication or recent communication you sent or set and you know, maybe it was an email or a Slack or Teams message, maybe update at a team meeting. Think of something sort of daily that you do every day, like not high stakes. And the reason I say that is because if you’re going to give a big presentation, you generally will put in the effort like you’ll bring that intentionality, at least twice you want people feeling, so there is this nuance of there’s a difference between how we want people to feel, we can’t control how anybody feels. We can only control our own feelings, but what you want folks to feel is different than how do I need people to feel in order to receive my message and at a minimum, to the odds that the message is received, we need them to feel safe and secure, and calm, and a bunch of things that give them what we’re coming off of do not come easily. So we’re going to get into that now, with your example, What process did you go through to get from, “I need to communicate X thing to Y person or people” to crossing it off your to do list, like I said, oftentimes, and again, this is just an efficiency play, we go from it do the thing to writing and saying the thing, boom, crossed this off, high five, and moving on to the next thing, which is all well and good, except it’s possible that there are some very unintended consequences that create a ripple effect that leads to chaos, confusion, loss, labor, and that’s expensive. Chaos is costly. Chaos is costly. So here’s the mistake just to state very clearly: leaders skip over or don’t put on equal footing with what you want someone to know and do, you don’t put the feelings that need to be there on equal footing. Okay, this is a critical mistake. Now, you know, it’s an addressable mistake. So that’s great. I just want it like if any of you, you tend to be fairly intellectual as listeners, right, you’re super smart, you’re logical. And you’re like, oh, my gosh, she’s going to talk about aliens. I am going to talk about feelings. And we’re going to talk about when we’re going to talk about feelings. And you can be like feelings are a waste of time, let’s not get squishy and woowoo, and no, thank you. I get it. I totally get it. I’ve been there before. But when you actually look at the data with your mind, you know, with your brain, it really makes the case for shifting and prioritizing this idea of what does someone need to feel in order to receive the message? Okay, because here’s a fun, not so fun fact, organizations are losing on average $12,506. Let me say that again, $12,506 per person, per year, because of poor chaotic, confusing communication. Okay, this is addressable. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. But importantly, and for the purposes of this episode, I think a big piece of this is that is the inadvertent negative consequences of not taking the time to do this. What do people need to feel now, by making this shift? You go from possibly confusion and chaos, to communicating with clarity and confidence and compassion. This saves you money while making your people feel better? Right? It boosts your bottom line, so that’s a win win, I think seems that way. So, Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, they will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel”. Right. And we know this intuitively. We’ve all had experiences, right? I’m sure we can think about any number of experiences in our past, and we can’t remember the specifics of it. But we surely remember how we felt. Right? So, there’s definitely something to this. Our feelings are powerful, right? And so neuroscientist, Antonio Damasio puts it this way, we are thinking machines who feel sorry, backtrack, we are not thinking machines who feel rather, we are feeling machines who think, he’s a neuroscientist. Why would he say that? Why wouldn’t he be on board with we were thinking machines do like on occasionally feel? No, he’s not. And here’s the deal. We are actually blissfully unaware of most of what is happening to us and around us. It’s possible. The human body, unbeknownst to us, most of the time is sending 11 million bits of information per second to the brain for processing. This is like information we get through our senses. Okay? That’s a lot of info that is going into the brain, yet the conscious mind seems to only be able to process about 50 bits, five oh, versus 11 million. A lot of information is just lost, you know, it’s lost and then there are emotional reactions, that those occur automatically and unconsciously. So a lot of this is getting absorbed. There’s a million bits in our subconscious, but we’re not consciously aware of that there’s a stimulus and our nervous systems are like, I know what to do. I’m here for you. They kick into high gear, they’re sending out messages, chemicals are released, all sorts of things are happening. Yeah, sometimes after we’re like, Oh, I feel in a feel. And because we’re human, we think that there’s you know, there isn’t a space between the stimulus and this reaction. You know, Viktor Frankl famously spoke to like, you can’t, if you become aware of this, you can honor that space and really go from reaction to response. But most of us are like a feel on the feel. Especially, especially, we notice these feels in Western culture, when they’re like, what we have deemed bad feelings, you know, anger, sadness, you know, mad whatnot, then we try to do this really cute thing, which is we try to stuffed them away as if they’re not happening, which of course, we can’t do, it doesn’t work. What we resist persists as the saying goes. And so we’re kind of a hot mess with all of this. But here’s some good news. Some good news, with some caveats. Our thoughts are mega powerful, some would say all powerful. I’m not like willing to go there. But for a variety of reasons that we’ll go into future episodes. But they are so powerful, right, like, once you notice a feeling, if you can get a little distance from it, right? Like notice that space between, you didn’t get a handle on it, you can regulate your reaction, your response, your thoughts, your feelings, you can create an entirely different pattern. Okay, a neural muscular pattern. This is called thought work or the thought model. And we’re going to talk a lot about it in future episodes, because it is super dope and helpful and powerful. It has changed a lot of things in my life for the better. And for many, many, many other people. And I want that for you. If you’re not already familiar with it. I’m sure many of you are. It is a powerful leadership tool and a powerful life tool for that matter. For this episode, here’s what I want to point out. And this is sort of the buzzkill transition from like, it’s so flippin cool, that when you get you know, on top of your thoughts, you can change how you feel. And you can also reverse engineer by the way, you can say, How do I want to feel? What thoughts do I need to have in order to feel that way? So again, it’s very cool. It’s very powerful. For this episode, the power gets tougher, the more stressed we are, and we’re coming off COVID, we’re all stressed in that way. And then if you’re a leader, and you’re communicating with your staff, employees, you know, your team, your messages are amplified, and they create more stress because you hold power, okay? Our brains are just, they’re, like, so sweet. They’re just constantly trying to keep us safe. And as a result, they do all sorts of really kind of odd things. They’re always on high alert. So, we’re feeling this like low key sense of danger. And you add to that power dynamics that is heightened, okay? And what we want, what we need, if we want our messages to land is for people to feel calm, for them to feel safe. And what that does is it opens up the prefrontal cortex, that executive function, and allows the message to land and for them to like, know the thing, and then do the thing, have a conversation, whatever. And, and it’s efficient, actually, it’s quite efficient. When you’re feeling in danger that’s not available. The prefrontal cortex is like, I’m out. I’m passing the baton to you, reptilian part of the brain. And the reptilian part of the brain only has four options fight, flight, freeze or fawn. I hadn’t heard of fawn before, it means play dead. I think it totally if there hadn’t been fight flight and freeze the F’s, I think would have been called playing possum, which is basically what it is. But those options are not great. You do not like if that’s how somebody feels they are not receiving your message, right? They’re internally focused. They are just trying to survive. They’re trying to survive. You’ve experienced this, I’ve experienced this. We’ve all experienced this, right? Because we’re human. We are not our most evolved selves in these moments. Okay. Again, this has always been the case. But we are coming off an unprecedented pandemic. I know, we’re all tired of saying that and we’re all tired of hearing it. And yet it’s true. So, what has been left is our nervous systems are they’re just fried. And our default now is to be on high alert. I mean, like, going to the grocery store used to be a perfectly safe activit, I wasn’t like, oh, no, I have to go grocery shopping. I mean, I don’t love grocery shopping. By the way. It’s not my favorite activity. But I didn’t feel like fear about it. Now, I mean, literally, you go in and you pick up a kumquat and then you put the kumquat down because you don’t really want the kumquat and then, you know you’re like oh my god, I just touched the kumquat do I use hand sanitizer now? Oh my god, I’m probably going to die, like our brains move very quickly. Oh, there. We’re coming out. We’re feeling safer, right? Like that was a bit from like 11 months ago or whatever, a year ago. And those neural pathways are now there. Right? So we’re just elevated in that way. So as a leader, as a leader who is trying to communicate, you need to get messages across. It’s about community. It’s about a host of sorts of beautiful things, right? And producing together and individually desired outcomes. So, communication is awesome. I mean, I’m biased, of course, but you have an uphill battle. Especially as a leader, again, your voice is amplified that angst and fear is amplified when people are on the receiving end of your communications, if they are subordinate to you. We have the COVID. And then we have the great resignation. Even if people are leaving, for great reasons, dream jobs, I’m going to start my own business, I don’t know, I’ve always loved candles. Now I’m going to go be a candle maker, whatever the thing is, for the folks who are still there in the organization, even if they know that consciously, they are still left with this reptilian part of their brain that it’s like, Hmm, right. Well, now we’re not safe because our tribe has disappeared. Yeah. I’m just layering it layering it. Okay, so people’s brains aren’t calm. You can’t assume that as our starting place, we actually have to assume that what we need people to feel is not entirely calm to high bar, but calm enough, safe enough. Right, safe enough to receive the message. Okay. Let me give you an example. Because I do actually, I do actually do the things that I talked about on the podcast. Now, I don’t do it with every single missive that I send, to be clear, I don’t pause every single time think, how do I need that person to feel? You know, especially me for whatever was not my personal life, right? Like I jot off text all the time. But when it matters, and in particular, in particular, prioritize when you know, you hold positional authority, and or when you know, you’re dealing with a team that’s deflated, right? For whatever the reasons, then then this like, starting with what are the desired outcomes, what do the inputs need to be and are those desired outcomes, really been about an intangible with it, which is the feelings. So, I am a professor at the University of Washington, Go Dawgs. So, I teach a course called Capstone. This is a two-quarter course. So, it’s, it’s lots of credits. And all second year students getting their Master’s in Public Administration have to complete this to graduate. And they do a portfolio for clients. So, this isn’t like a hypothetical exercise. It’s, you know, it’s applied. So, the stakes are high. I am their professor. I hold positional authority, right? I have power in the situation. So, when I communicate with them, I’m really mindful of this. Because what do I know? I know, that their brains are going to want to protect them. Right? They’re going to be in high alert, because I have power. And that’s just the deal. So that’s always on my mind. So, when I’m going to communicate, and I do this pretty consistently, because of that power dynamic, when I communicate with students, if any of my students are listening, and this is true, I don’t always nail it. No, I have gotten wrong very, very many times. But I do generally start with like, okay, baseline, especially the graduate students, they are very stressed. Yes. They have gone through their graduate experience through COVID. Right. So again, to these layers, these layers and these layers, so I start with, okay, what do I need? At a minimum? I needed a minimum for them to feel calm, safe. Yeah. So, then what are the inputs that can get me there so that they can hear whatever the message is, you know, so recently, I changed something that was on the syllabus. And it was it sort of a big deal thing-ish. They were supposed to give final presentations in a couple of weeks. But they had given the students, student groups and working groups had given presentations a couple weeks ago, they were really good. They were in great shape, right? And then I’ve seen the work that they’re doing. And I was just like, you know what, their time is so precious, they’re going to be in the homestretch in a couple weeks. Why not liberate that time? You know, let them use it for something else. So, I needed them to feel calm and safe. Yes, I wanted them to feel relieved. But again, you know, we can’t control how anyone else is going to feel about anything. But that was a hope that I had, right. And so, I factored all that in into my inputs into how I wrote what ended up being an email to announce the update. Now. If I had done that, if it was just like a status update. I could have just said final presentations are canceled. Right. They’ve, you know, in theory, I’ve communicated with them. But I would have been unconvinced that that message would have been received without possible negative consequences of them wondering why. Why in our brains you know, it’s called negativity bias. This is to protect us, aren’t our brains so sweet? It’s to protect us. But if I don’t share Why like the rationale behind it, they might not in this case, the students, might not feel safe enough to like hear it. And then they’re spending their time wondering why this has happened. Why is there is this change, it’s so late in the game, when really the reason was, and so this is what I started with your presentations were so good. You’re in great shape, I don’t think it’s the best use of your time. Therefore, we’re going to cancel those final presentations. Okay? That just this is a small nuance, and then how I close things are very attentive to how you open and how I close, trying to be consistent. So if you’re somebody, your leader has consistent way of opening like, hey, or Howdy, or Hello, or whatever it is, being consistent matters in these moments. And I always close with the same offer, which is like I’m here to serve and support you, you know, holler if I can be of service. Now, do I know for certain that 100% of students were like, Oh, my God, yay, you know huge sigh of relief? I don’t. I do know from some that they were like, yippee skippy. You know, thank you for that decision, it’s one less thing of a very long to do list for them. I don’t know, that was 100%. But I do know that I did what I put the inputs in, in a way that I fill up the odds as much as possible to get that desired outcome of at a minimum, them feeling safe and secure. And hopefully relieved, you know, I really did want that for them, they work so hard, I would like to create a little bit of spaciousness, but that’s, and that’s sort of like extra credit. Oftentimes, it’s like, how do we want people to feel. So that’s my example. Recent example. And again, you know, notice, it’s not like a high stakes example. It’s sort of a mundane example. And if I was an attentive over the course of a course, you know, a quarter a year, those little things really do add up, there is a law around the litany of little things, and they add up for better or for worse, so it’s worth being attentive, especially again, when you know that you hold positional authority when your voice is going to be amplified. And, or when you have a team that’s for whatever reason, just in a place where that negativity bias is going to be fierce. It only takes an extra kind of minute, and you are savvy communicators, right? We can, we can always all improve, I certainly am always learning. But you will naturally this is what I found with working on coaching. Leadership is like once you start there, you really naturally know how to adjust your inputs. And we can talk more about that right and, and sort of straightened, strengthen that habit in your writing or in your speaking. It’s a skill builder. But just by just by pausing and thinking what do I need them to feel in order to be open to what I want them to know? And do so a little bit of resequencing. Right, you avoid this mistake. And again, trust yourself, you know how to do this. And you will do you will readjust those inputs quite naturally. Okay, so do you still have your example in mind? I hope so, that was a lot. It’s just like, take a breath. There’s a lot left, but brains and stuff and feelings, which is sort of funny, because some of you will be like, Oh, it wasn’t really feelings, but the brain stuff was cool. And they’re all related, right? It’s actually it’s all the same thing. I hope you notice that. So, with your example of how you apply this reordering this idea of the needing them to feel in order to do what you want them to. That was terribly phrased. But hopefully by now you know what I’m talking about? Because I’ve said it about a gazillion times in this episode, yes. How do they need to feel? Start there, like and if you already did that, I just want to say super big high five to you. If you didn’t, and this isn’t a habit for you. This isn’t about good or bad. It’s not about you being like, oh, I’ve blown it. This is about curiosity. It’s about learning. It’s about growing. It’s about expanding. It’s about modeling something for your team. That’s huge. Just modeling it for your team. Okay, so learning evolving. It’s about communicating as a leader by learning and using a plan with Communicate I/O. Thank you for listening. Thank you for leading. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and I hope you have a fabulously terrific day.

The post Ep 48: #1 Communication Mistake Leaders Make appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

exclamation points, reply, office, people, fullest expression, communicate, unprofessional, email, words, leader, expectation, professional, leadership style

Erica Mills Barnhart 

It’s summer. And that means what? Vacation or holiday or however you’d like to say depending on where you are in the world. There’s something sort of fun or posh feeling about saying I’m going on holiday. I don’t know why,  maybe it’s me. Okay, so you’re going to take vacation or a holiday or go on holiday or whatnot. And that means you’ll be crafting an out of office reply, most likely. I know, in some environments, also this is true in many academic environments, nobody puts on an out of office, which is interesting. But I think an out of office is important. It allows you to manage expectations, it can diminish anxiety for people who are like, “Oh, they’re gone. When are they going to be back?” these types of things. And out of office can do so much more. So, let’s talk about those replies. You may not think of an out of office reply as a way to convey your leadership style. But it is. It’s a little thing that can say a lot about you. In episode 49, the one immediately prior to this, I talked about the law of little things. This is one of those little things, out of office reply, that over time add up to big things like for instance, how people perceive you, as a human, and also as a leader. So, I’m going to read them to you, obviously because it’s a podcast. 2 or 3 different replies I got from the email I sent out about the law of little things episode, which if you’re new to the show, one welcome and also, and or if you missed it, I encourage you to listen to that you don’t need to stop and go back or anything. It’s somewhat intuitive, but I would definitely give it a listen because there’s so much opportunity, overlooked opportunity, in these little things. Okay, I’m going to infer with my tone of voice, just harnessing some paralanguage, hear how these emails sounded when I read them in my head. I didn’t read them out loud. But this is how they sounded. All right, the first one “Hello beautiful people! I am on vacation through June 6, please contact so and so at such and such. If you need assistance during this time, if you leave a message, I will reach out to you upon my return. Thank you.” Alright, that’s number one. Number two. “Greetings, greetings! Thank you for contacting me. I am out of the office until Thursday, June 2, and we’ll be back in the office Monday, June 6 for immediate assistance call so and so. Have a wonderful day.” And then number three, “Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office Thursday, June 2, and Friday, June 3, I am unable to respond at this time, I will be happy to get back to you when I return on Monday, June 6. If this is an urgent matter, please email so and so if you wish to make a gift to our organization, please visit and then there’s the URL”. Okay, now, so three, three different out of office replies. Number one and number two have a pretty similar vibe. There are some exclamation points especially number two, we’re going to come back to that. They’re upbeat, they’re pretty open, accessible, yet they also set a clear boundary about when they’re going to be out so don’t expect to hear from me and manage your expectation about when you can expect when you are likely to hear back from them. Now let’s look at the inputs a bit more. Number one open with unexpected words. The words beautiful people, hello beautiful people, you don’t see or hear that much in the business world. And this was from a business email address. Right? So it might just be deemed “unprofessional”. I would counter if anybody were making that case, I would counter that the reply is totally professional in every way, all while giving you a clear sense of this person’s personality. Like, you can also visualize or feel what a personality would be like with this person, because they are somebody who in their out of office reply says, Hello beautiful people. I of course, also read it as Hello beautiful person, as if this person, were talking directly to me. Upon rereading it, I see that’s not true. But that’s how it felt. Let’s linger on this idea of what’s professional and what’s not for a second, I feel like this is especially important for women. And even more so for women in in leadership. So yes, clearly there are some lines that have crossed just are going to be, you know, straight up unprofessional, not showing up in your pajamas, for instance, or to a meeting without pants, or a skirt or something on, so there are some bright lines. But on balance there’s this whole other realm, right. And I’ve worked with many, and when I say realm, I mean, like, there’s a lot of gray area and a lot of people with opinions about what’s professional or not, I’ve worked with many, many a woman leader, who felt like they needed to, like tone down their personality in order to be professional, or, you know, change in some way, or to some extent, where they had to, in a way where they had to like, think about how they were going to show up because it was counter to how they would naturally show up. Right? So, changing who they are, rather than showing up as the fullest, most awesome version of themselves. This is a double whammy. Bummer. Number one, it’s not a good use of resources. So, for the pragmatists among us, myself included, like this is a bummer. Because it’s inefficient, it means that you’re diverting mental energy to showing up in a way that’s “acceptable” or “professional”, but not necessarily who you naturally are. So, it’s that’s energy, right? And anytime, you know, any of us have, and I  think most of us have experienced this, you’re like, okay, I have to show up in this way. And then you have to remember to talk in a specific way or not talk or you know, any of these things. That’s just a lot of energy. Right? So, it’s directing energy in that way. As opposed to the way you show up like your most awesome self, and then you can focus on the content or the other people in the room or a whole bunch of other things. So that’s, that’s bummer. Number one is efficient. Number two, it robs the world of the gift that is you being you. Hate. There’s no other you like, and I know that you’ve heard this from other people. There’s some very famous quote that I’m forgetting right now. But it is true. The reason it keeps coming up is because there’s only one you and if you think about it, I mean, it can get existential pretty quickly. That’s so flippin cool. Right? That’s so cool. And why? Why is our work, work? You know, with ease, why isn’t it to just fill up but show up as the fullest expression of ourselves, right? So, there’s a whole other conversation we can have about why that happens, the socialization, but I want to invite you into that line of inquiry for yourself, are there ways in which you’re contorting or adapting? Changing who you are, rather than just being like, this is me. This is the fullest expression of me. So, I have this little lovely little letterpress card on my desk with this quote from Anne Rand, which reads, which reads and she says for dramatic pause, no, not really. I just actually lost my mind there. I could just look over it literally is on my desk, which reads, “The question isn’t who is going to let me it’s who is going to stop me?” Who is going to stop you? Who is going to stop me from showing up as us the fullest expression of myself, right? Who gets to decide who is and what is authentic to you? That’s a loaded word authentic. What is professional? What is allowable or acceptable? Yes, there are power dynamics that are lines not to be crossed. There are hierarchies and a whole bunch of other things to factor in. And you get to decide who you want to be as a human, as a leader. As a mum, as a partner, you get to decide, right? And then you get to show up accordingly. Yes, we need to show up differently at our dinner table than we do at, you know, in the boardroom. Absolutely. And you can fluidly move between contexts and still beat you when you dim your light. You’re not doing anyone any favors, especially yourself and this has the real thing to do with your out of office reply. Oh, you thought I forgot No, no, no, yes, I went off on a little rant there. And I want to come back to the law of little things and your out of office reply. Now the law of little things, says that little things add up to big things big impact over time. That’s why it’s worth work in the Communicate I/O protocol, even with your out of office. So, what does that mean? That means you start with the intangible outcome you want to achieve. And you do that by asking how do I want someone to feel when they receive this out of office or whatever it is, whatever it is, name it, then figure out which words and grammatical flourishes or not depending on if your grammatical flourishing type of leader and person, what do you want to include? And then write the out of office reply, right. And this does not need to be a tome unless that is your vibe and how you generally communicate. You can do a lot in a little amount of space, as we saw with these out of office replies. Now,  you are going to use the word beautiful, beautiful people? How about the exclamation points? That’s the second email. Greetings, greetings, two exclamation points. Also, it was on two separate lines, rather than on the same line. So, there’s something about it, I was like, “Well, hello, yes. Welcome to me into your email”. The two separate lines was a nice touch. Exclamation points, say women in particular, get this feedback, because we are somewhat more prone to using exclamation points. Most of the time when I work with folks, and I say “what are your exclamation points trying to say?” Or like enthusiasm, or I don’t want someone to feel badly. We also do that, like if I just add an exclamation point, maybe that will lands more softly, sometimes true, sometimes not. Folks who historically have used exclamation points tend to be much more comfortable using emojis, the rationale behind it remains the same. Sure, sometimes all of this is received as unprofessional. And again, that’s your call. If you’re someone who usually uses a lot of exclamation points, including them would be consistent with who you are. If all of a sudden you go from like emojis and exclamation points to you know, just like periods and semi colons very, very formal, right? That’s what is gonna make people be like, did she read this? Who is this? This is the first thing that I thought I was getting in touch with. And consistency is key when it comes to leadership and specifically, to communicating and like a leader. Consistency increases trust, speaks to integrity. So, it is worth really diving into and figuring out is your leadership style, how can you align your communication accordingly. Now, let’s circle back to the third email, I’m going to reread it, because I’ve talked a lot and you might have forgotten it. Here it is, “Thank you for your email. I’m out of the office Thursday, June 2, and Friday, June 3 and unable to respond at this time”. Note the boundary, you’re not going to hear from me. “I will be happy to get back with you when I return on Monday, June 6. If this is an urgent matter, please email so and so. If you wish to make a gift to our organization, please visit insert URL”. I’m an analyzing these things. Because I for obvious reasons, nary an exclamation points to be seen. And the tone is more straightforward, like a material more formal than the other two. But this one has an end like a surprise ending twist ending of sorts, as it includes a call to action to donate. This is genius. This is a great use of your out of office reply. Okay, and no, that’s not a long that is 4 sentences all short sentences. So even if they don’t get a single donation this way, this very savvy human is planting this seed, right? And setting the expectation that you will give at some point, right? Maybe not today, but someday. They’re just planting that seed with this little out of office reply smart, smart, smart. Okay, so when you go to write your next out of office, here’s what you’re going to do. Recap. Number one, start with how you want the recipient to feel and then to figure out what information you need to convey. Number two, manage expectations, what and if you’re someone, and this is pretty common, who if you’re out of the office, there’s somebody else that is there, so if it’s time sensitive all of that stuff that who they should contact, all of those things and then three, write the out of office in your voice. The factors are number one and number two, align the inputs with the outcomes in the tangible that you want to achieve. Alright, I hope that you will be taking time off this summer to recharge your batteries and reconnect with yourself and your friends and your family and have fun and laugh a lot and do silly things and whatever you do vacation, all the things that get to happen on vacation that don’t generally happen. When we are working away, I hope that that is on your docket. That time is so important. It allows us to show up as our fullest selves in the other moments of our life. And now you can take that time off knowing that you’re out of office, because you’re going to craft it in a way that we just talked about, you’re out of office is communicating exactly what you want. And in a way that reflects the style that is you all you, 100% you. Putting the law of little things in action. Thank you for listening. I hope this was helpful. And I hope that you have a stupendously awesome day!

The post Ep 50: What does your out-of-office say about your leadership style? appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

thoughts, communication, negative, human, words, important, talk, noticing, hear, public speaking, clients, neutralize, negativity, positivity, life, listening, recharge, positive, psychological safety

Erica Mills Barnhart 

Well, hello there. When we talk about communication and leadership, often, we naturally think about the words, this makes sense, that other people end up reading, hearing receiving, right? The words that we say, speak, put out to the world. And that makes sense, as these words are important, right? The words we put out to the world are important because words matter, as they are matter. But the words that ended up making it out into the world, start silently, they begin in your mind as thoughts. And that’s what I want to talk about today. Now, it will be tempting and comfy, really, to keep this episode focused on say, the lifecycle of an important memo or talk or something that you’re going to give. How you mull it over in your mind for days, trying out ideas, see what feels right and striking, anything that doesn’t strike your fancy before it ever sees the light of day. This part of the communication process is important. I do not want to diminish it in any way. I am, I’m right there with you. I’m not running these days, which breaks my heart because I love running. But now I don’t want to walk you but I used to write all of my talks, all my speeches, do all my lesson planning all of it while I was out on the run. However you do that, that sort of internal work to get to the external, that’s important. And that’s not what we’re gonna talk about on this episode. No, no, it isn’t my friends. On this episode, we’re gonna talk about that on another episode. In this episode, we’re going to talk about what I refer to as your inner communication. It includes, and it’s often referred to as self talk, right. And this impacts everything in your life, including how you show up at work, how you show up as a leader, etc. So in this particular sense, the I in Communicate I/O refers to inner communication, and the O is outer communication. It’s simply not true that how we talk to ourselves has no bearing on how we show up for others, the more attention and the more intentional you get about your inner communication, the more effective clear and confident your outter communication will become. The single most important relationship any of us have, is with ourselves. It’s the relationship with intentionally or unintentionally invest the most amount of time and energy into, right, we are with ourselves all day, every day. And like whenever I hear someone talking about this, I’m like, well, that’s so obvious. And yet there’s something, there’s something existential about that because, you know, we’re not thinking that all day every day, like, look at me, here I am. It’s just me and Erica, again, that is not how we experience ourselves. And yet it’s true, right? So we have a more lively dialogue, simply by virtue of proximity to self with ourselves than we do with anybody else. It’s constant. And for many of us, it’s never ending that dialogue. It can almost be like white noise, because we recycle most of our thoughts day over day. I don’t have the statistic in front of me, but it is something like 90% of our thoughts are repeat thoughts, right? So the thoughts that we’re having today about our productivity, how we parents, our bodies, how we lead a meeting, whatever the case may be, we had very similar thoughts yesterday. Okay, strung together these thoughts which reflect the beliefs we hold about ourselves, create a narrative, this narrative, these narratives, there’s multiple narratives, these dictate our lives. They dictate our lives because our thoughts becomes feelings, feelings, well, you can loop back to thoughts. This is thought work, right? But that’s what leads to action. Okay, so so they really do dictate and impact our lives. So let’s look at those thoughts, shall we? Think back, if you can, on the last three things you’ve said to yourself. If you can, if you can only rummage up one, that’s totally cool. Start with the one. I mean, again, we often don’t notice because it’s kind of like white noise. It’s like what what’s I’m saying to myself? I don’t know I made that cup of tea. It’s my fourth cup of tea today. I’ve just anyone who was podcast for awhile knows I’m a tea drinker. Sometimes when I’m sleepy during the day, I have a fourth cup of Earl Grey tea. It just it happens. And I have opinions. And unless I’m attentive to these opinions, judgments, not super sweet, kind, compassionate words that I’m saying to myself in my mind, I could get carried away with as well like, Should I have a fourth cup of tea? A third? I only had three yesterday, you know, there’s a lot, totally not helpful. I’m gonna have the fourth cup of tea and I really don’t need to judge myself for that. Right? It just is and yet I still have a lot of dialogue not so much anymore, actually. But that is one of my ongoing thoughts, right about about many things, and it’s a judgmental thought, right? Were those thoughts kind, compassionate? Were your thoughts, that previous three that you had the previous based on the previous three things you said to yourself? Were they kind and compassionate? Or were they just possibly going on a limb here, negative, judgmental, harsh, anything in that category? Now, here’s the kicker, the follow up. Would you say those things to your bestie? Or your boss? Would you even say them to somebody that you didn’t like all that much? You know, for the most part, the answer is? No, most of us wouldn’t, because most of us are not super nice to ourselves. Right? And there are loads of reasons for negative self talk, again, inner communication being the norm, almost all self talk begins in childhood. And so many things do. And somehow and you can unpack this with you know, a counselor or a therapist is it is work worth doing. But somehow it keeps us safe, right? There’s a perk to this negative self talk, right? So for instance, if you’re a high achiever, now, you might have started saying things like, and, you know, at some point, oh, come on, you can do better than that you had 11 things on your list, and you only got through 10 today, really, that’s your A game. Right? And everybody self talk sounds different. It focuses on different things. And by the way, that was a real life example of something that I used to say to myself, somewhat regularly, until I got really on top of and turned around my inner communication. I value working hard achieving a lot doing what, there’s nothing wrong with this. These are my values. The problem is how I was talking to myself to get these results. I would never ever in a gajillion years say one of those things, anyone other than myself, like, I just wouldn’t say that to anybody. Why? Because they’re not nice things to say. That’s just not nice. So isn’t it interesting that somehow our norm, and what we have chosen to accept we are available to this negative self talk all the time we open ourselves up to it, and yet we are our most important person. So importantly, any self talk or inner communication, this shows up in your outer communication in some form or fashion. Again, words are matter whether they’re thoughts in your mind or words on a page. So once you have a thought, it takes physicality. Yes, I know that for some of you this, this may be new, and this is going to make your brain cramp or break or something. But they do they take on physicality. This is how we get neural pathways. Literally, they take up physicality and our brains. So if your self talk is negative, it’s going to generate negativity. If they’re positive, it’ll you guessed it, generate positivity. Neutral thoughts are actually relatively rare or more rare, then positive or negative most of them have a charge either way. And we’re going to talk about how neutrality can be a powerful tool hear in a second, but the same holds true neutral thoughts neutralize. Okay, so if you’re someone whose inner communication mainly circles around things that we consider to be and I hope not related to work, guess what? It’s still gonna have an impact. It’s still going to show up. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes and I’m going to repeat it here we are humans. We are humans. Okay. Full beautiful, awesome, messy humans. There are no fractions when it comes to humanity, we bring our whole selves wherever we go yes, we learn how to shine a light or bring forward different aspects of who we are in different settings you know, there’s there’s growth and that that has to happen. I’m not showing up as a professor at book club you know, or you know, bike club or whatever it may be, that’d be weird. I’m still my whole self, you’re still your wholesale so it’s an erroneous belief it’s a comfortable with you actually in some ways that like you could have all this negative self talk it will never show up in any way shape or form. So if in your thoughts you are spending a lot of time, if they’re like hammering away about how you really need to lose weight or workout more or eat only super healthy food but you ate a nutty buddy, a delicious ice cream treat and if you’re not familiar with it, do yourself a solid and go familiarize yourself with a nutty buddy, delicious. I mean anything else related to body image that vibe is going to show up it’s going to find its way into your outer communication. Is this apples to apples, this can be like apples to kangaroos, right? You don’t exactly know how it’s gonna show up. And you know when I coach clients, we dig into all this, right? Because it’s so important. We can’t banish thoughts, we don’t want to banish thoughts, you know, thoughts take on physicality thoughts are important, what we do want to do is first become mindful of them so that we can, you know, harness them in service to ourselves and to those in our lives. So they’re gonna make their way into your outer communication, it’s a universal law. And you can use up a lot of energy mitigating the extent to which these negative thoughts show up. I mean, you can do it, I know I have clients who have gotten pretty good at this, but a better investment of your energy rather than being like, I’m going to keep those all inside and I’m only gonna show positive like that. It’s just a lot of effort. Maybe a more fruitful, a better investment of your energies, turning those thoughts around, you end up happier and healthier and so does everyone in your life and world. So there’s a lot of talk these days about boundaries, and that is fan-freaking-tastic. One thing I just want to point out here, again, just noting, almost all of us as we are human, have thoughts. And many of those thoughts are negative, but just like I just have to put my hand on my heart because that makes me sad. It makes me sad for myself, it makes me sad for you and for anyone else who still has this going on. The most important boundary, you have to set time and time again, is with yourself. The most important boundary, if it’s the only boundary you set needs to be between you and thoughts that don’t serve you. I keep saying negative thoughts, but I want to actually rephrase that. Right thoughts that don’t serve you need a bright line for yourself between you have those thoughts? Okay, so how does one turn these well worn thought patterns that are not serving you into ones that are serving you? For shorthand, just because I already know I’m going to do it, I’ll end up saying negative and positive. But hopefully you’ll hear through that too. Like lots of serve you right? You want everything in your life to serve you. One word, one sentence, one minute, one hour, one day at a time is how you are going to repattern your patterns, right? How you’re going to transition and move out of those, they’re gonna be deep grooves, right? I mean, if you’ve been repeating 90% of your thoughts day over day, every day, and you’re like, oh, I don’t know, 50 just to just a random example. Those grooves are deep, right. And I’m here to say this takes time, right. And I’m also here to say it’s totally doable. So I write in my ebook, which is free, Recharge, the link to that will be in the show notes, you just go to https://claxon-communication.com/recharge/ and get your copy. If you haven’t read it yet, I go over this in more detail. Also, if you prefer to listen to it, I did a three part series about recharge. So if you just head on back to those episodes, I go into all of this in more detail. But the fundamentals are the same, right? And it starts with the sounds so bland yet it’s so important: Noticing your thoughts. It all starts with awareness. It starts with noticing. So next time you find yourself saying anything negative, just notice. That’s it. You might have a propensity to judge that’s normal, you’re human. Allow yourself to really hear your inner communication. If you’re journaler, you might write down the thoughts, this is tough work, I would like have some hankies handy if you’re gonna do it, but there was so much power in and there’s a ton of research to backup, taking the words out, the silent words, they’re still gonna stay silent, unless you tell them to someone. But you’re gonna put them on the page. There’s so much healing in that, yes, you do that. No judgement, just observation. Remember, for reasons that are unique to you, yet universal to all these thoughts have served you somehow they have protected you they have kept you safe. And so your subconscious is very invested in these thoughts because they’re “keeping you safe”, or whatever the story is, right? They offering you a benefit of some sort. On the safety piece, psychological safety is so important, right? I mean, we’re trying to create cultures where people feel included and inspired in the workplace psychological safety is I mean, that just has to be in place. But the question, you know, kind of an interesting question to play with for yourself is, who are they keeping safe? The you of today or a previous version of you, a you that was you long ago. Most of us have ages that we repressed to in different situations. So for me, my ages are 7, 19, 25, 32, and 42. If I’m having a moment of feeling like frumpy or lumpy bumpy or whatever in my body I’m instantly like it is in a flash. Although now fleetingly because I’ve done the work, like I said to like change my need to become aware and changes this pattern. But when I’m feeling that way, there’s going to be a moment where I’m seven. Why? Because of the first time someone, a boy, on the playground in Vancouver, Canada, overtly teased me about being chubby. Yeah, it didn’t feel good. I forgive that boy, he was doing what he needed to do, right. But his words set into motion a narrative that stuck with me for a long, long, long, long time. And it didn’t serve me. It protected me somehow. And you know, happy to chat about that. But it protected me somehow those thoughts no longer serve me. They’re not they’re not doing me any good. So I released them forgiven that boy, I release them. Do they wiggle their way in some days? Yeah, we all have bad days, right? Sure. I’m human. But most of the time I can and remember I said it was going to get back to neutralizing. I can neutralize them. At a minimum, I can neutralize them on a good day, I can, you know, harness my inner Kristin Neff, who is sort of though, not sort of, a leading expert, if not the world’s leading expert of self compassion. And I could turn around and really show myself self compassion and turn it into like positivity. But neutralizing is kind of your first line of defense, right? We have long worn grooves of negativity, it’s tough for our minds to flip the switch to positivity. It’s actually almost impossible neurologically for our brains just to go like negative, negative positive. Now, I mean, there’s a lot out there about replacing negative thoughts with positive so just I would introduce this idea that there needs to be a bridge. Consciously, we can go from negative to positive, logically, consciously, we can but our subconscious is like no slow your roll. Right? That No, I’m comfy. Even though it’s negative, I’m comfy here. So they stay embedded. Okay. So the first step to positivity is often neutrality. So let’s play this out. Let’s just say like, hypothetically, because it applies to almost all humans, I am totally the anomaly in this regard. But let’s just say you’re afraid of public speaking. As you know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, I love public speaking. I just, you know, I grew up doing drama. I love public speaking, I have like zero fear of it. But that’s really weird. So let’s say that you’re gonna, you know, you’re afraid of public speaking and you’re going to be hard pressed to go from like, holy freak out I have to talk in front of a bunch of people, oh, my God to I’m a rock star speaker, oh, yes, I am. Like, that’s just probably not going to happen. That’s too much for your brain. And again, your subconscious is gonna flip out and then you’re going to be right back to freak out. You need a bridge. That bridge may sound like neutrality. It may sound like, of course, I’m afraid to talk in front of these people. Most of humanity has the same fear as I do, this reaction is human. I am a human, not good or bad, just human. It might sound something like that. If you say this with your hand on your heart, it’s gonna call on your nervous system. It’s gonna, like reinforce that right? And then you just repeat I am human. You’re probably still going to feel jitters and again just be like, I don’t even know. I haven’t seen it happen that many times when somebody goes from freakout to like, no, I’m good. I’m good. I’m totally fine. But here’s the trick, right? If you’re still feeling the jitters, which you may, when you start your talk, say that out loud. Public speaking is fear, second only to death for crying out loud. You are truly not alone. And I make a suggestion to many of my coaching clients because I work on public speaking or you know, delivery with many of them, because it’s something that leaders are expected to do. I say, most of the time, when I make this suggestion, they’re like, Mmm, hmm, I don’t want to do that. Right. There’s resistance, because it feels like admitting to failure. And also, it’s super vulnerable. But guess what, it works. It works like a charm every time it creates connection, like actually just take a second and imagine that you’re in the audience and someone on stage comes on and they’re like, Hey, I’m gonna talk to you about insert awesome topic, right? But I have to tell you, I’m nervous right now. I’m nervous because I love this topic. I’m so passionate about it. And I don’t like talking in front of groups, right? So if I flub up or whatever, you know, hear me out. I imagine if you’re on the receiving end of that, like I have witnessed this many many many times and it creates this connection, whoever your audience may be because again, being afraid of public speaking is a universal for the most part. And if you do that enough times you’ll gain confidence in your speaking it helps, of course, to be working with someone so you’re improving your skills along the way, that’s the combo that we’re going right with skill building and competence building. And then as you feel ready, test out a positive thought okay, right. So we bought from negative freak out to neutral I am human to I’ve done ten talks, and they actually went pretty darn well. I think I’ve got this. You’re not busting out the pom poms, even that that might be too fast of a trajectory, you know, you, you know you, you will know what pacing you need and also get support, right. These are these are big transitions, so get support. So there’s that. Another tip is something I got it ,again, just in the neutralizing thoughts. And I got this from the amazing Hades Torino and her awesome book Body Talk. And it’s one word and it is life changing. I’m telling you the word is Nope. N-O-P-E, nope. Once you’ve identified a negative thought, right, especially when it pops up all the time, so you’re like, Oh, you’re gonna come back. I know you. You’re going to try to make an appearance. Okay, as soon as you notice it, so you’ve noticed it before, no judgement, you just like wow that thought comes up a lot. The next time it comes up, again, you’re just noticing and you’re not judging. You’re not shaming yourself for the thought. You’re just gonna say it out loud, by the way sometimes that could be awkward, you’re just going to say nope. Nope, I’m not available for that thought. No, thank you, and get back to whatever you were doing. Okay, you don’t even need to replace it in that moment. You don’t need to replace it. You’re just saying I’m not available for that. Nope. I mean, it’s kind of goofy, right? So like, nope, sometimes the timing, you know, isn’t always right for like, How can I replace it? You know, note it and try to come up with like something else to say. But for some indefinite period of time, you can just get out of the habit of having the thoughts. Just get out of the habit of having a thought, noping negativity frees up so much energy for all the other things that you want to do in your life. Right? Noping negativity is where it’s at. Alright, so to recap, your inner communication has ripple effects. It makes it’s way to your outer communication. And listen, depending on the role, you hold in an organization, like if you’re in a leadership role, those silent thoughts make their way all the way into your external communication and messaging, yeah, they sure do. I mean, I’ve seen this so so many times in my 20ish years of working with purpose centered clients, like the number of meetings, or retreats or talks or whatever you’re giving, where we’re talking about external communication and I’ve had to steer the conversation because I am noticing body language, I’m hearing something come out. And it’s actually usually energetic. Right? So it might go consciously unnoticed, but because I learned to tune into this, right, I can now, you know, have this moment where I’m like, Ooh, what, we’re not gonna get that mission statement, you know, to where it needs to be organizationally until we’ve cleaned up this inner communication that’s happening for some folks, right? So for clients like, are they always like, Hey, open arms, hearts and minds, I love this idea. Let’s clean up or inner communication. Let’s clean up our self talk. No, if you can imagine this is sometimes not met with wild enthusiasm. But for clients who are open to taking the time to explore how their inner communication just may be showing up in their outer communication, external communication, this openness and willingness pays huge dividends, just huge dividends, okay, I’m gonna put a whole bunch of links in the show notes. For some of you, you may be like, long past this, yay. For others, you may be like, this is the first time you’ve heard some of these ideas, this idea that your thoughts, have physicality, your thoughts create feelings, right? You know, and then that leads into action. If that’s new, I just want to open the door to this to the sort of piece of communication that I’m hoping we’ll hear and talk more about when it comes to leadership. Because it’s powerful, right? It’s powerful. So I’m going to put a whole bunch of links in the show notes. So go look there, I was listening to a fabulously geeky, yet very accessible podcast episode about inner critic, as that’s very related. So I’m gonna pop that in there, you know, I’m not gonna say this work is like, easy or fun, necessarily, and just want to really say I still want to invite you into this work, because the rewards on the other side, like living from a place of mainly positive self talk and having agency over your inner communication is this life changing. That’s being the master of you. That’s being the master of you in so many ways. If you liked this episode and if you think others would benefit I would so appreciate you sharing that if you haven’t clicked the stars to rate the podcast, I again with deep gratitude in advanced love it if you would do that, I want as many people as possible, as many leaders as possible, but really just people as possible to really have the benefits of being the boss of their inner communication and all the benefits that that brings. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for listening amazing human, and I will catch you on the next episode.

The post Ep 51: The Secret Life of Self Talk appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

goals, team, word, guilt, episode, feel, tone, objectives, language, conversations, recharge, celebrate, grounded, voice, achieve, purpose driven, year, leader, matter

Erica Mills Barnhart 

Hello hello, I’m Erica Mills Barnhart, Founder and CEO of Claxon Communication and I’m coming to you while hopping on the “it’s halfway through the year, how are things going bandwagon” with this episode. It is a natural time to take inventory of how things have gone so far and ask how might we want to of course correct or what might we want to do differently in the second half of the year? Those are perfectly reasonable questions. And words matter because they are matter, right? Give episode 41 a listen for more on this if you’re like, what, what? So listen to that, but words matter because they are matter. So the words you use to frame up these how are things going discussion, the conversations matter a lot, especially right now. I’m hearing consistently from the purpose driven leaders I’m in contact with all day, every day is something along the lines of this: we still want to do so much this year, we have a big vision and this work important and we have to keep going, going going, and I’m tired, my team is tired. Everyone is kind of sort of lowkey burnt out, but we can’t take our foot off the gas because of the aforementioned big vision and goals and commitment to achieving those big vision and goals. So what’s a purpose driven leader and team to do? So This isn’t the focus of this particular episode, but there’s merit to the idea of slowing down to speed up. Just want to mention that it’s summer prime time to slow down so it can feel scary to take your foot off the gas. That’s totally a thing but you can’t take a road trip, you can’t go anywhere with no gas in the tank, either actual or proverbial. And I feel you on this, I have to remind myself all the time of this like slow down to speed up. It’s counterintuitive to purpose centered high achievers like us. So I get that I feel you and yet, it’s a thing, right? There’s a lot of research backing this up. So if you and your team need like quick recharge, check out the free ebook I wrote cleverly titled Recharge: Energize your employees one word at a time, link to download it is in the show notes. Okay, so that’s the recharge. Back to revisiting goals and looking at the balance of the year ahead. Let’s wave our magic wand and everyone on your team, or those participating in these conversations have enough in the tank that they can engage. Yes. When we talk about strategy and goals and objectives, we tend to default into standard language, we tend in general, by the way, to default to understand the language, but we’ll leave that for another day. So I’d like to suggest one small tweak to the standard language that will do two things. One, create more clarity for your team and clarity is kind, it also saves you money, time and energy making it a win, win win. And number two, it’s going to make your team feel more motivated and inspired. Okay, so it’s related to the sub point in number one arounf run energy, but this one small tweak could just makes such a huge difference in terms of how people want to engage in the conversation. So before we get to the word, I know you’re just like on the edge of your seat with that, let’s distinguish between goals and objectives. I did dig deep on this in episode three, oh my god in the way back time machine, episode 3, titled: Don’t Set Marketing Goals, Do This Instead. Relates to goals in general cliffnotes version of that if you’re not like up for listening to that full episode, goals are the end game, and objectives or the milestones along the way, they let you know that you’re making progress, sticking with our summer travel metaphor, because why not? Goals are your destination and objectives are the milestones along the way. The milestones let you know that you’re making progress headed in the right direction. The goal, however, is to arrive at whatever destination you have identified for your summer vacation. So like for my family, you know, I’m based in Seattle, Washington, and we go to a place called Lake Chelan, which is central Washington state. It’s about three hours away and we’ve gone almost every summer for forever. So for us, that’s the end game sitting there and relaxing on Lake Chelan. Along the way, we go over two mountain passes, so we’re gonna go over Snoqualmie Pass first then Blewett Pass, then we’re gonna get into Wenatchee and from there, we know it’s about 30 minutes to Chelan. So if I find myself on White Pass, I’m gonna be like, Nope, that’s the wrong milestone. We are not making progress in the direction that we need to be going. Ditto for an organizational context, right? So there’s a difference between these two things. I know that they’re kind of used interchangeably and maybe to you, it doesn’t matter. But, you know, the more clear, clarity is kind, so clarity of the language in these conversations can be very, very, very helpful. So once you’ve taken inventory and figured out where you stand visa vie your goals, and each of the objectives that are going to add up to achieving that goal, the standard question that follows and says something like, what should we do differently the second half of the year to make sure we achieve our goals by the end of the year? Seems innocuous, right? That question, however, is ot innocuous. There’s a sneaky word in there that I’d encourage you to eradicate generally from your life whenever possible, and especially when talking strategy and goals with your team and that word is should. Should is a judgy little word, judgy, judgy judgy little word. And there is an etymological reason for this. So within the history of the word, we find out why it’s so judgy. It comes from German or Gothic Skulan, that’s the first time I’ve seen that. So anyway, Gothic Skulan, meaning to owe or be under obligation. That alone isn’t fantastic, right? In the context we’re talking about, but it gets worse. Oh, no, there’s more related via past tense form to Old English, it meant guilt. And here we get to why should feels like it’s like waggling its finger at you. It’s grounded in guilt. You don’t want to should on your people. Like do you want your team to feel guilty about what hasn’t been accomplished? Or energized about what’s possible? Now, I understand there is a philosophy that believes guilt is to the path to results. I just personally I don’t buy into this in general. I’m sure I can think of exceptions to this rule. And sure any might give you a little kick in the pants, but who wants to be kicked in the pants, and guilt, especially when it is brought to us from somebody else or you know, it’s mainly an extrinsic motivation. So it means the performance of your team will be reliant on you guilting them via the word should inadvertently, not say that you’re like, oh, I know that it means guilt, so should, should should. But it’s an external force. Research tells us that intrinsic motivation is much more effective. So that’s the source people can always tap into. So instead of the guilt laden should, here’s the question I’d suggest you ask and listen for the word switch. What could we do differently to get the results we want? Of course the operative word here now is could, you from should to could. Could harkens from Old English, originally, and then to be able. So now we’re getting somewhere. Like if we’re to paraphrase that it will be what are we able to do to get the results we want? No blame no shame an invitation to wander, to get curious, to get creative, to brainstorm, while of course, stay grounded in reality. What are we able to do? Implies a little bit of realism. You’re not like greenlight brainstorming the whole thing, right? Grounded in what’s possible. The law of little things, which I talk about in episode 49 is at play here. This is a one word tweak, a little tiny thing that could be the difference between your team joyously slaying it this year, or crumping along so crumping or joyously slaying? You pick. A note, of course, tone of voice, which is part of paralanguage which also matters. The tone you use to ask these questions is key. So if you’re like, What can we do? What ideas do you have? Like, that’s still not gonna feel awesome, right? It’s probably gonna shut folks down, make them feel defensive again, about what has not happened. This sounds obvious, of course, I’m like exaggerating the paralanguage in my tone of voice, but what’s interesting is we’re actually surprisingly unaware of our tone of voice a great majority of the time. So when I coach leaders on their communication, one of the things that I’m listening for, so that I can sort of mirror back to them or reflected back to them, not mirror it, but reflected back to them is insights on their tone of voice that they may be unaware of. That are having unintended consequences. So it’s really worth like paying attention to your tone of voice. And so it’s important that you as a leader when you’re entering into these discussions about what have we done and what’s possible going forward in order to achieve our goals, that you show up from a place of openness, abundance, curiosity. I suggest listening to episode 51 The Secret Life of Self Talk to make sure you are in that place. I have some very concrete practical tips for getting there, because if you’re not there, and you’re fooling yourself about that, no, I’m in this place, really, I’m not. That’s what is going to sneak out. So, bottom line on this, we are halfway through the year, don’t should on yourself and your team, it’s not nice and it won’t get you those amazing big bold results you want. These conversations can be straight up tricky to navigate again, especially the context that lots of teams and organizations are finding themselves in. If that’s what’s going on for you, reach out to me, we can work through it together. We’ll figure it out. There’s a there’s a booking link, you can book time with me and that’s in the show notes too. With all that said, I’ll just close with whatever you have accomplished, it’s fantastic. Please celebrate what you have accomplished.  Look at the abundance. It is so tempting. I do this all the time, I’m with you, to focus on what hasn’t been achieved. But what has been achieved? I know for you and your team, it’s a long list. Please start there. Please tap into that again and again and again. High five, virtually, whatever. It’s a fist bump. I don’t know what it’s going to look like for you. Take time to celebrate it does all sorts of beautiful wonderful things for our brains and for connection between people on your team and then to other teams and within the organization as a whole. I celebrate you. I know you’re amazing and awesome. And with that, do good, be well, I will catch you on the next episode.

The post Ep 52: Don’t Should on Your People appeared first on Claxon Communication.

This is a transcript of Erica Mills Barnhart on the Communicate I/O podcast. You can listen to the episode here and listen to more episodes on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. Enjoy!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

decision, messaging, discernment, second guessing, brain, question, mental loops, guessing, trust, team, energy, thinking, organization, leader

Erica Mills Barnhart

Hello there, Erica Mills Barnhart, Founder and CEO of Claxon Communication. Want to talk to you today about decision making. And the last episode I offered a one word swap to have more energizing and productive conversations about what you could do differently to get the results you want between now and the end of the year. I’m recording this in July that one was also recorded in July. So it’s kind of a halfway point, a pretty logical time to be like okay, how are things going? And do we want to stay the course do we want to change course, all of that. So in this episode, I want to dive into how you decide whether to stay the course or stick with your goals or switch them up. So the end of my three part masterclass with marketing guru Guy Kawasaki, which were, by the way episodes 38, 39 and 40, so this bit of conversation happened at the end of episode 40. Where we talked about, in broad strokes, the future of marketing. It was it was a free range conversation, all three of those, that masterclass was, but so many good nuggets, so definitely worth listening to. And at that point we were discussing, how do you know, when you should change your mission and vision and when to stick it out? My response to Guy was a paraphrase from someone I really, really wish I could remember who but can’t. But that paraphrase went ‘be unapologetic about your vision and willing to change up your mission’. Or put another way, don’t pick a different destination, but as new information becomes available, or the landscape changes, be open to changing up how you get there. Now, quick refresher on terms of this podcast how we define vision, mission and purpose. Vision, mission values, purpose. Vision is where you’re going and why. Okay, purpose is why do you, why does your organization, why does your team exist? Every existential. Mission, that differentiation allows your mission to be about what you do and how you do it. So a bit more grounded a bit more in the weeds. And then your values are the principles that guide your work. Okay, so vision, very big picture mission, obviously, you don’t want to be changing that up too often. Underneath that are your goals, right? So these are big picture choices and decisions. How do you make these decisions? Here’s the thing. How you make these decisions is as important as the decision you make, let me say that, again. How you make these decisions is as important as the actual decision you make. What do I mean by that? Here’s the question as you’re making these decisions, and you’re in the process of the decision making, right? Here’s the question to ask yourself. First, ask yourself, especially if you’re if you’re a leader, ask yourself this first. Am I second guessing, or using discernment as I make this decision? Eventually, you might want to ask, no shame no blame approach to posing this question, the same question, to your team, or whatever group is making the decision. Are we are we second guessing our decisions? Are we using discernment? Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference really hard, right? So let’s look at what does discernment mean, originally it meant keenness of intellect, perception insight, acuteness of judgment. Sidebar judgment without the E every single time and I was a paralegal, so I wrote this word a gajillion times, still I just I want to add the E it feels awkward that it goes G to M. Anyway, okay, so discernment is an act of perceiving by intellect. So when you make decisions from a place of discernment, you’re using your prefrontal cortex primarily and making, let’s call them logical decisions with your conscious mind. Cool. Now, by the way, this doesn’t mean you have to have a robust data set or have done a randomized control trial to make a decision, lived experience matters, it counts your gut or intuition holds loads of information. And you could tap into that to what’s important is your conscious mind is driving the bus. Right? You can well and good say, my gut instinct says to do this, your conscious mind is noticing that gut instinct, yes. Okay, so that’s who you want driving the bus when you’re making these decisions. Second guessing is when your subconscious mind is driving the bus. Remember, your brain cares about one thing and one thing only really when you get down to it, and that is safety, not strategy. Unless strategy keeps you safer. Not joy, not any of the you know, good life stuff. Fundamentally, it wants its job is to keep you safe, because that was its original job was to keep you safe. For more on this, so highly encourage Britt Frank’s book on the science of stuff, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. So much goodness in that book. Okay, so second guessing often leads to leaving things undecided for longer than they need to be. So this is fundamentally a question about trust. Do you trust yourself to make the decision? Whatever the decision may be. Do you trust your team? Does your team trust itself? Your board? Again, whoever is making the decision, it really it comes down to trust. When you’re a second guessing, it means you don’t trust yourself or you don’t trust the decision you were making. So let’s look at a few concrete examples. I’m going to start with just a little, little individual example, a little story. So recently I was in a town called Wenatchee, it’s in Central Washington, state where I live, thanks to Beth Stipe of the Community Foundation of North Central Washington to who I am forever grateful for introducing me to the most amazing baguette in North America. I don’t need evidence to support that. I don’t need to you know, look on Yelp, I have lots of lived experience. So I trust this statement that I have just made. It’s the most amazing baguette in North America. In addition to being delicious, the experience was delightful. They wrap each baguette in parchment and tie it with a bow. Oh my gosh, I felt so like jaunty carrying this baguette back to the picnic. I thought my daughter would find this delightful as well. So I brought home literally the last crumbs of this baguette didn’t need to come home? No, but it was so good. And just the packaging, you know, this bow was delightful. So it brought back the baguette bow and all. And when I was cleaning up later, I set the both side. Then I realized this created an open loop in my mind, as I need to remember to tell my daughter about the baguette. Open mental loops are a huge energy drain, even if it’s something minor, right? Like like in this example, do I keep the bow? Or do or do I not keep the bow that was my decision. Open mental loops are a hallmark of second guessing. I personally have great big, audacious goals. And so I’m always looking to close as many mental loops as possible, because I want my brain to be focused on the really juicy important stuff. And I have this firm commitment to myself to quickly weigh the pros and cons, you know, what am I going to do and then close the loop. So in this particular instance, I weighed the pros and cons and decided to recycle the bow and close the loop. It just wasn’t worth keeping it open. Now you might have made a different decision as your pros and cons may have been different. But either way, you’d want to close the loop either by committee to tell me the story of the baguette and the bow. Oh my god, someone please write a short story with that title, the baguette and the bow, pretty please. Or the other decision might have been recycling the bow, which was which was my decision. I’m not suggesting one decision was better over the other, rather, I’m advocating for decision to be made so you can allocate your precious brain energy to more important matters. Okay? So when we leave these open loops on, you know, pretty minor stuff like that it is so worth noticing so you can ask yourself, so you could have that awareness, so you can ask yourself, Is this the best use of my mental energy? Like who’s driving the bus? So is this the best use of my mental energy and who’s driving the bus? Now two examples from a more professional context. Not everything can be about the baguette and the bow. By the way, for anyone listening in Wenatchee that baguette is at that adorable bakery called La Vie En, which for any of the Frenchie’s out there it’s a riff on La Vie En Rose. So good. So two examples moving on. Second guessing how you handled sort of a situation, where was you individually communicating. And then also second guessing new messaging, which that happens a lot. And we’re gonna talk about why that happens. Okay, so on the first we’ve all been there, you have some sort of interaction with someone, and then you replay that interaction in your head again, and again and again. And this is human. Whether or not it’s at home or at work, right, you’re wondering if you handled something well, you know, and that sometimes can be helpful, you can sometimes learn from it. However, just we don’t learn a lot by playing out all the comebacks or zingers we wish we thought of in the moment, that can be like fleetingly gratifying, but again, is that the best use of your limited mental energy? It can help you process sometimes, but you got to put a time stamp on that mental activity, right, that time stamp that like set a timer and then move on. Because again, your brain only has so much energy, and there’s likely higher level things for it to be focused on. Now, I work on this with a lot of my coaching clients. You know, so I’m doing communication coaching with them and my question to them again, is, Are you learning? Is this decision to keep wondering about this coming from a place of discernment? Or are you just straight up second guessing yourself? Right, so a place of discernment would mean, there’s actually high stakes, this conversation, and the way I handled that I believe, might undermine our ability to make a good decision or it might have a ripple effect that really is not in the best interest of my team, of the organization, of our mission. That’s discernment. That is your logical mind, you know, you’re just driving the bus. Yeah, second guessing looks a lot like this rumination and just continuing to go on and on. Right, so a client, this is pretty common, might have given a board presentation, and gotten like a muted or a less than enthusiastic response, especially, you know, when you’re doing this on Zoom, or Teams or whatever online, this is a toughie. Like, we have very limited biofeedback and so absent additional information, you know, this leader might think the response is negative, that that is the default setting for our brains, negativity bias. So that’s because of our brains wanting to keep us safe, right? So a couple of things there one, like, actually just a technique, suggestion, if you are virtual, I mean, in person as well, but you have so much biofeedback, what I really encourage clients to do is I should pause and say, Gosh, I really want to know your response to this, you know, or whatever your prompt is going to be. I’m not getting enough feedback. Can you pop in chat or come off mute and really, let me know what you think about this? I really want to hear it. Right. But what’s your take, but pause the conversation and proactively elicit the feedback. I’m not quite sure why we don’t do that more often. I think it’s a fear of conflict, or, you know, anyway, there’s lots of reasons again, I work with my clients on that as well. But I definitely encourage you to do that because otherwise you were setting in motion, this negative mental loop. And so the questions I’d ask here are one does muted necessarily mean bad or negative? Do you have like hard evidence of that? Or is there a different interpretation? Yeah, to what action can you take to find out what the deal is, again, I just offered you one, you know, technique, but you could follow up with your sort of key people on the board or you know, the board as a whole and then, you know, we are so like I said, we’re so worried about asking follow up questions, but it’s a fast track to clarity. So I really do encourage that. Number three, does it serve you to keep thinking about this? Is there more to learn? Like really, is there more to learn? Is there something in this that’s going to help you grow as a leader? If so, terrific. If not, move on, timestamp, the rumination and move on. Yes, some of you are probably like, that’s really hard. It is really hard. And that’s where the word nope, which I talked about in the last episode, thank you, Katie, Sturino for that. So go listen to that, because you can nope your way out of this. Third example, I’m doing a lot of messaging refreshes or upgrades these days. So you want your messaging to be what I refer to as COVID compliant. I’ll talk about more specifics about that in future episodes, but basically, our brains have changed, you know, through through COVID. Whether or not you had COVID or not just the experience of a global pandemic has really changed our brains. We can’t absorb the same amount of information we take information in differently. There’s all these things that you want to take into account and kind of have to take into account if your messaging is going to work for you. And if you’re not, you’re losing time, money, energy, trusts, all the everything every day, so it’s really worth taking some time and doing the refresh now the refresh or an upgrade, isn’t a full blown overhaul. That’s a different thing. And some organizations this is a time to do that. But let’s just stick with what every organization needs to do is a refresh. Is it COVID compliant? Okay, so even with a refresh, even when we’re changing just a few words, especially since our central nervous systems are like wackadoodle right now, lots of things that are perfectly safe and would have been like ho hum before, put our brains on high alert. Where do you think I’m going with this? So using different words can feel uncomfortable, aka unsafe, and so let the second guessing begin, because again, second guessing is our subconscious mind trying to keep us safe. Now I work with high performing purpose driven clients, they are smart, they are whip smart. They’re so smart. They set a high bar. Okay, so they want everything to be at that level. Nothing wrong with that. It’s easy, however, for them to convince themselves that there’s something off about the messaging before they even start using it. And just for context, you know, yes, I have an accelerated way that I work with clients because the stuff doesn’t have to take as long as we’ve convinced itself, I can get through a ton in a day and a follow up session, which generally takes six to nine to 12 months we can get through in a day with a little bit of follow up. So there’s a process it’s a rigorous process, we get input in the process. So sort of assuming that something along those lines has happened, usually, the messaging is pretty solid. Maybe there is something wrong, but until you start using it, you’re not going to know and what happens is, even before the client starts using it, they’re already poking holes. You know, they’re like, oh, it’s off. You know, you’re second guessing, not the messaging, but yourself. Right, I mean, that again, this is getting down to trust, trusting the choices you’ve made as a leader and as a team. When this happens, you have to like calm your subconscious mind, thank it for keeping you safe. Let it know you’re good. Yes, that sounds weird. And woowoo. Yes, it works. It’s based on neuroscience, and then bring that prefrontal cortex back into the driver’s seat, right? Is it second guessing? Or is it discernment? Is leaving this, when it is a team, this is a whole bunch of mental loops. This is so much mental energy, that is going to wondering if this message will work rather than shifting gears and being like, let’s find out, right? Let’s find out. But the only way you’re gonna find out, because you are not the target audience, the author of the messaging is most often not the target audience. So when I’m working with a team, I can nip this in the bud pretty quickly. But if you don’t have an objective, like tough love Coach like me on your team, it can be really tough to discern whether it’s discernment or second guessing. So two pieces of advice here, one, just try it, put it out there, right and start using it verbally, the stakes for this are very low or update your website. Again, the stakes are low, and what you’re looking for before you go into printed material, right, which is hard cost, but either way you want to move from creation into it’s in the world, okay? And you’re not going out to your target audience and saying we have new messaging, what do you think? That hops you down a bunny trail that is not useful, unless you have the budget to really do it in a way where you like are getting it a 95%, you know, you have a 95% confidence interval that you’re getting back high quality information. Instead, there’s another way to do this, you start using it, and you see what questions you get. And are those questions moving people around your engagement cycle? I talked about the engagement cycle, I think it’s back in episode three. Just the basics of it are everybody needs to move around engagement cycle from know, knowing you, knowing your organization, to understand, to engage. Are people moving around the engagement cycle more quickly, more deeply? Like whatever your goals were, are you getting the results you want from the messaging? Okay, so that’s number one, just start using it. And number two, ask a better question. Just like in the previous episode, I pointed out the what should we do is a lesser quality question than what what could we do? Similarly, do we trust this messaging will resonate is a higher quality question and do we think this messaging will resonate. Think is going to keep you locked into second guessing nine times out of ten. Stop thinking and start trusting. So in other episodes, I dive deeper into how do you know your messaging is working? So if you’re curious, go back. But again, are you seeing people ask questions and move along that engagement cycle? Okay, so that’s the two things on sort of nipping second guessing in the bud. And, you know, as a leader, if I’m counseling you, I’m gonna say, literally add up the hours, add up the hours of the second guessing versus, like, what are the stakes? What are the pros and cons of maybe it won’t resonate? Okay, what’s, what’s the true downside of that? Unless you have like committed to these, you know, big fixed cost investments, it’s low. And then you tweak and you course correct and you realize, oh, maybe when we use this word, we’re asked better questions. So, back to our original question, whether you shift gears or stay the course, it’s up to you. Just make sure your discernment is driving the bus, as a individual, as a leader, as a team who is making the decision. Make sure it’s discernment, and not second guessing, and some of being successful with this is having created a culture where people feel included and inspired and they feel safe back to that, to point out that it might be second guessing. That’s an act of courage. And a lot of settings and in others, t’s like, oh, cool. Wow. Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get it out there. Okay. A few key takeaways. Close as many mental loops as possible, start by noticing and then asking, from a place of love and compassion, no shame, no blame, is this a mental loop, I need to leave open? Does it serve me to leave it open? What will be gained by leaving it open? You can also try out on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 5 or whatever you want it to be, How important is this decision? Like oftentimes, it feels like the decision about the bow and the baguette is the same about buying a car is the same about whether or not we rewrite our mission, vision, value statements, or fundamentally, course correct our strategy. All these things are not created equal. Just pointing out the obvious, right? So how important is the decision? If it’s not that important, if there’s little to gain and much mental energy to lose by leaving it open, the longer it’s open, by the way, the more mental energy you seep out, close that loop, open up the energy for higher level stuff. Second, second guessing keeps you safe. Discernment and action move you forward, true individually and organizationally. Third, trust more think less. Yes, that is ironic coming from someone like me, someone who loves them some thinking and some overthinking, I have walked the path I’m inviting you to walk on, I wouldn’t invite you on this path if I didn’t know personally that it yields better results. Trust yourself, trust your decisions. If you learn it wasn’t the very best decision, course correct. But don’t constantly course correct before ever leaving the station, right? Don’t get stuck in the station, you want to get the train out of the station, and see how things go. I want to share one last thing, which is I have been doing some thinking, actually, I sort of took a big step back and have been really, you know, once I started noticing how long things are taking and just had that awareness of like, it doesn’t have to take this long and the sooner I get clients results, the better they feel, the faster they’re getting the results they want, you know, they’re saving time, they’re saving energy, they’re saving money, because they’ve gotten through this piece of work a lot more quickly. I mean, I’ve been working with high performing purpose driven clients for almost 20 years so I have a lot of experience with this. I no longer second guess the advice I offer, whether they whether they take my advice is up to them. But I trust I’ve given excellent counsel, because I have a lot of experience. So one of the things I say to clients is, you know, just again, and again, it doesn’t need to take as long as you think. I don’t actually know why, where, when, how, we convinced ourselves that creating new messaging, or up leveling how you communicate as a leader or any of that needs to take 6, 9, 12 months? It doesn’t, I’m here to tell you it does not. Every once in a while there is an exception, right? So the more input you need to get, sure, but that can that can happen upfront, and then you can accelerate the decision making. So it’s not that I’m saying rush the process, the process matters, I am saying accelerate the decision making. Now the amount of progress you can make as an organization is a direct reflection of how much each individual team member can handle and your team and aggregate. Change is hard. It’s not for the faint of heart and we’ve been through so much change the past couple years. But there are ways to make the change feel less scary, less change-esq. And so I have developed a new suite of offerings that I’m really excited about and this is exact they what they do: they allow you to make decisions more quickly and with more confidence. So if you have morale, retention, culture, getting better results faster, advancing towards your mission, with more confidence, with more clarity, if any of these things are on your list, these accelerated fast track options may be perfect for you. So let’s hop on a call, you can book a free consult with me that link is in the show notes. Let’s figure it out for you. And if they will work, I’ll tell you, and if they won’t, I’ll tell you. Right. But if they will work, I’d love to see your organization, I’d love to get you to communicate internally and externally, individually, as a team, and as an organization as fast as possible. The momentum is so energizing, and something in motion will stay in motion, something not in motion, will just stay not in motion. So we want to get you and your team in motion, feeling fulfilled about their work, being able to communicate externally, internally, really having that communication fluency is key and I’m just going to belabor the point just a little bit more here. It doesn’t have to take that long. We can do so much in a short period of time. So the booking link is in the show notes. And let’s chat. As always, thank you so so, so much for listening. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. I hope you’ve gotten some nuggets out of today’s episode that you can immediately implement maybe some different food for thought. I’d be very curious to learn what mental loops you decide to close. Do good, be well, and I will catch you next time.

The post Ep 53: Who’s driving your decision-making bus? appeared first on Claxon Communication.

The post Ep 54: The Fallacy of Productivity and the Future of Leadership with Dr. Sara Murdock appeared first on Claxon Communication.

Resources Referenced 

Communication Leadership Quiz

Ep 3: Don’t Set Marketing Goals. Do This Instead. 

Recharge eBook

Ep 49: The Law of Little Things

The post Ep 56: Do you have a plan for your communication plan? appeared first on Claxon Communication.

Resources Referenced 

The Surprising Gift of Doubt by Marc Pitman

Ask Without Fear by Marc Pitman

Ep 51: The Secret Life of Self Talk

About Marc:

Concord Leadership Group founder Marc A. Pitman, CSP® helps leaders lead their teams with more effectiveness and less stress. Whether it’s through one-on-one coaching of executives, conducting high-engagement trainings, or growing leaders through his ICF-accredited coach certification program, his clients grow in stability and effectiveness. He is the author of The Surprising Gift of Doubt: Use Uncertainty to Become the Exceptional Leader You Are Meant to Be. He’s also the author of Ask Without Fear!® – which has been translated into Dutch, Polish, Spanish, and Mandarin.

The post Ep 58: The Leadership Journey with Marc Pitman appeared first on Claxon Communication.

Resources Referenced 

Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra: https://amzn.to/3ylLVnz

The post Ep 59: How do you navigate transitions? appeared first on Claxon Communication.