If you want to become more effective as a leader, more successful in meetings, or more confident while resolving conflicts, become a better communicator.

On the high end of the communication skill spectrum, you find that great leaders — like Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jr — are often great communicators. On the low-end, research indicates that poor communication skills can contribute to family disputes escalating to domestic violence. (Check the discussion section of this article.)

Evidence from research, experience, and anecdotal observation points to higher levels of success and satisfaction and lower levels of stress and frustration as your communication skills improve.

With that backdrop, here are four ways you can improve almost all of your communications (presented roughly in the order I suggest you follow):

1.  Learn how other people might hear, see, or interpret your messages

One concept that often surfaces in my communication workshops, is that communication comes from the Latin word that also gives us the English word common. This observation implies that communication makes ideas, thoughts, and concepts commonly understood — even if not agreed upon —  between two or more people.

In order to make ideas common, it becomes important to understand both sides of the communication. You need to understand both how your idea sounds to the other person and what the other person means with the words they use. What you say might mean something other than what you intend to the other person. What the other person says might mean, to them, something other than what you hear.

Long-time readers of my blog know that I use and recommend the DISC model as one tool for accomplishing this step. There are factors to consider other than communication style (e.g. – culture, gender, age, etc.). Still, it’s a great place to start.

The goal of this “step” is to get a clear picture of how the differences between you and the other person might affect your communication efforts.

2.  ”Observe” your perspective

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I have not yet mastered this concept. It’s really hard to do, and I’m not sure that any of us will ever truly perfect it. It’s a good goal nonetheless.

Here’s the idea, learn to step back from your first interpretation of a statement or behavior and look for how your perspective, or filter, might be affecting your response. There’s more to this one step than I can effectively cover in this post, but David Rock shares exercises you can do to build your skill in this area in Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long.

As you develop this skill, the next two steps become easier to do.

3.  Listen actively

If the goal is to make an idea common, you must work to understand the other person’s thinking before you can truly communicate. Active listening involves much more than just hearing the words. It involves total focus on what the other person is attempting to communicate. For more thoughts, you can check this post on listening skills.

4.  Get and give feedback during the communication process

It’s easy to say something and assume that the other person heard what you meant. It’s also easy to hear something and to assume that you understood what the other person meant. Until you confirm mutual understanding, you will be operating on assumptions and interpretations rather than on facts.

Well phrased questions (combined with some active listening) form the basis for effective feedback, and a mis-communication could happen in either direction. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post with some ideas for confirming that the other person understands your words the way you intended them. To confirm that you understood the other person they way that they want to be understood, you can use the questions listed here.

Frankly, communication can be difficult. We do it virtually every day, and we often do not communicate as clearly as we think or intend. One of my favorite quotes on communication (I think I have quoted it before on this blog) is by George Bernard Shaw: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

I find that I have to frequently remind myself of key communication concepts in order to apply them with any consistency. For the next week, I encourage you to consciously focus on these four ways to improve your communication and watch the positive difference they will make in your communication effectiveness and the reduction they will make in your stress and frustration levels when you interact with others.

(I recently wrote a special report that amplifies these ideas a bit and presents a five step model for better communication. You can get a copy here.)

Related posts:

1. Seven Ways to Improve Your Communication During a Conflict
2. Beware of Labels
3. Three Critical Factors to Consider Before You Choose a Communication Technique

When you feel that you have been verbally attacked, it is incredibly difficult to think of the right words to calm the situation and disarm a verbal aggressor. Developing power phrases for use in various situations can help you get past this mental roadblock so that you can respond calmly and quickly in a wide range of situations.

In working with workshop participants and coaching clients to find good ways to address specific, emotionally charged situations, I have learned three power phrases you can use in a wide range of situations to disarm a verbal aggressor and turn the direction of an escalating conversation.

Here they are…

If I were you, I would feel exactly the same way.

Let’s say someone expresses a strong emotion and it looks like that emotion could be a barrier to effectively communicating with them. Acknowledging their emotion is a powerful tool to show that you understand their perspective even if you do not necessarily agree with it.

Part of the power in this statement is that it is absolutely true in all cases. If you were the other person, you would feel exactly like they feel because you would have their life experience, education, culture, gender, etc.

You may be right.

When someone comes at you with strong words of criticism or condemnation, you can often disarm the attack by acknowledging that they may be correct in their judgement. You do not necessarily have to agree with their assessment to say that they may be right.

If necessary, you can add to this statement to also offer your counter perspective by bridging from your acknowledgement of their position to your position with the word and. It would look like this: “You may be right, and…” (Important note: beware of the tendency to use but in place of and in your statement.)

Of course I am.

This statement is a new addition to my verbal toolkit by way of my colleague John Little.  In a recent Ultimate Communicator workshop, we were discussing how to respond to strong personal attacks. For example when someone says: you’re an idiot, you’re totally wrong,  etc. In our discussion, John suggested the phrase: “Of course I am.”

I love it! This approach totally removes the push back you offer the other person when they verbally attack you, and it gives you room to turn the tide of the aggressive conversation.

As is true with most communication techniques, the specific words you use will depend a great deal on several factors. For example, some of the considerations are:

• The relationship between the two parties
• The political or social environment surrounding the communication, and
• The physical setting of the parties during the communication.

So, while I do not believe that these phrases are completely universal, they can be great additions to your communication repertoire that help you better respond to verbal aggression in a positive way that leads to resolution rather than escalation.

Do you have some phrases that help to turn a heated conversation in a positive direction? If you do, please share them in the comments section below.

Related posts:

1. Be Careful What You Assume
2. Exercise Your Power of Choice in Conflict Resolution
3. Beware of Labels

One of the common questions I get as I lead workshops and work with my coaching clients is:

How do I decide if a conflict is worth the effort to resolve?

I think this is a great question. Honestly, resolving a conflict can take lots of emotional energy. While I think it is generally a good idea to work with other people to productively resolve conflicts, I recognize that you do not need to invest this energy to resolve every conflict you might experience. Here are a few times when you might decide to avoid the conflict rather than work to resolve it.

• When you do not care about the long-term health of your relationship with the other person.
• When you have little concern about the outcome of the situation.
• If you are concerned that the other person will resort to physical violence if you engage in a resolution conversation with them.

I’m still thinking through other situations when it might be reasonable to avoid the conflict rather than resolve it, and I think this represents a pretty good short-list of considerations when you make the decision.

As I said, in general I suggest that conflict resolution is worth the effort even though some situations might lead you in a different direction.

I would love to see your thoughts on this topic in the comments section.

Related posts:

1. Conflict Prevention: Just Fix the Problem
2. Conflict Resolution Tips: The Power of Patience
3. Do This If You Want to Guarantee Conflict Escalation

From what I could tell, he was engaged in a bit of a conflict conversation.

I could also tell that he was making a common mistake that rarely, if ever, leads to conflict resolution and almost always leads to conflict escalation. Based on the bits and pieces of conversation that I overheard, I think the person on the other end of the phone call was making this mistake as well.

The symptoms of the mistake manifested as:

• Justifying behaviors
• Explaining why he was right
• Showing the other person why he was wrong
• Rehashing what had already happened
• No focus on what to do the next time this situation occurred to make it turn out better

The root cause of the problem stems from focusing on the past rather than the future. I wrote about this challenge previously in my post about the 7 Deadly Sins of Conflict Resolution.

If you want to guarantee conflict escalation, keep revisiting the past — past statements, past actions, past reasons, past thinking, etc.

Talking about the past is like throwing out an anchor. It stops forward progress and keeps the conversation stuck in problem discussion rather than problem solving.

Problem discussion becomes negative and accusatory, if it goes on too long.

Problem solving is about finding ways to set and meet mutual expectations and how to interact with and behave towards each other so that conflicts do not recur.

If you want to productively resolve conflicts, move quickly to a future focus. Only stay in the past long enough to understand how the miscommunication or misunderstanding happened, and then look for ways you can interact with the other person in the future to stop the problem from happening again.

Related posts:

1. Three Words to Guarantee Conflict Escalation
2. Conflict Resolution Tips: Don’t Assume You Know What Someone Will Do
3. Effective Communication Skills: Acknowledge Emotions Before Solving Problems

I am also reflecting on the fact that today marks the twenty-seventh anniversary of my commissioning as an ensign in the United States Navy.

Many things have happened in that twenty-seven years. I…

• Completed my service as a submarine officer.
• Married my amazing wife.
• Became the father of two fantastic daughters.
• Worked in research, technical service, product development, and process development in both the plastics and coatings industries.
• Launched a consulting, training, and coaching business.
• Edited and contributed to several books.

Along the way, I have met and worked with some incredible people. More than my experiences, it is the people I have met that come to mind today as I reflect on the last twenty-seven years.

As a result of these relationships, I have the opportunity to do what I do today. For example…

• I am in the Chicago area because of a relationship that began about seven or eight years ago when the contact I have with today’s client worked with a different company.
• I co-authored a book (From Bud to Boss), co-created two workshops (Ultimate Communicator and Bud to Boss) that will be delivered across the country in more than fifty cities next year because I had a cup of coffee with my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry almost ten years ago.
• I have enjoyed dinner aboard a yacht in Seattle harbor because of friendships I formed in the Navy.
• I have traveled across North America, parts of Asia, and Western Europe because of personal and professional relationships that created business opportunities.

I could continue this list with other opportunities and experiences I have had over the last twenty-seven years because of people I have met and relationships I have developed over time. I won’t do that because the list is long, and I run the risk of leaving someone out in my rush to move to my next task.

As I reflect today, I see that technical competence has been a part of the opportunities I have had, and that relationships are the bigger part. It has usually been a relationship, not my skill, that got me “in the door” for an opportunity.

I also see that, in the rush of daily activities, it is easy to move quickly from task to task without investing the time to honor and acknowledge important relationships.

Today, I encourage you to remember the value of relationships in both your personal and professional lives, and to do something in the next 24 hours to honor and acknowledge at least one of those relationships.

Related posts:

1. How Much Margin Do You Have?
2. How to Take Charge of Your Life – General Principles

Today, I led a DISC communication skills workshop that ended with a role-play exercise to allow participants the opportunity to practice the skills we had been discussing.

For many of the people in the class, this was their first in-depth exposure to the DISC model and how to use it to more effectively communicate with others. The class was lively, engaged, and energetic with everyone in the room displaying a highly positive approach to learning. And, the role-play exercise brought to the surface a common frustration many people feel as they learn to apply the concepts I teach for becoming a better communicator.

As people attempted to “put on” the style of another person during the role-play, many of them felt awkward. Their role-play partners sensed this awkwardness. As a result, the participants attempts to connect with people with a different natural behavior style actually decreased the connection between them rather than increasing it.

They were frustrated. I was encouraged.

I was encouraged because they were making a genuine effort to connect with other people in a way that would make the recipient of the communication attempt feel most comfortable. Even though the results were not all that great initially, the effort to bridge the difference gap encouraged me.

They saw their efforts as failures. I saw their efforts as natural parts of the learning process.

A model for learning I often use speaks of learning happening in four stages:

1. Unconscious incompetence
   The “I don’t know that I don’t know” stage.
2. Conscious incompetence
   The “I realize that I don’t know something” stage.
3. Conscious competence
   The “I understand how to do this, and I have to think about it to make it work” stage.
4. Unconscious competence
   The “this has become natural to me and I don’t have to think about it any more” stage.

In attempting to apply the learning from the session, they were confronted with both the difficulty and awkwardness of learning to apply a new skill.

When I talked with them about the skills and they asked me questions, my answers seemed rather simple and effortless to them. For me, the answers were simple and effortless. In many situations, I have achieved (after much struggle and many failures) the unconscious competence level of learning for this material.

They are at the uncomfortable level of learning somewhere between conscious incompetence and conscious competence.

To break through this frustration, I encouraged them to keep at it even though the communication approach felt odd. I also encouraged them to seek feedback from other people about how their communication efforts were progressing. For example, I told people with Dominant traits to seek feedback from people with Supportive traits and vice-versa.

If you want to master using the DISC model to become a better communicator, I encourage you to do the same thing. Keep practicing and getting feedback on your efforts. You will eventually break through the awkwardness of trying to put on another person’s communication style to the comfort of authentically communicating by understanding their communication style.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
2. Using the DISC Model: Focus on Needs More than Behaviors
3. Using the DISC Model: How to Create Stress for Other People

I’m sitting in an airline lounge at LAX, and I’m reflecting a bit on my week as I wait to board a red-eye flight back to Indianapolis.

I just finished co-facilitating a single day training session with my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry that was part of a longer four-day training program. As we spoke with the participants, we heard about some of the other skills they were learning, and we encouraged them to look for ways to integrate what we were teaching with content from other parts of the program.

We suggested that they study the overlaps and connections between the topics so that they could develop the ability to easily move between different situations and work with different people effectively

As I reflect on this experience and think about getting back home to practice my guitar, I see a direct correlation between my guitar practice and the development of mastery as a leader and communicator:

The secret to mastery is in the transitions.

As I said when I wrote about the difference between doing and mastering, much of the work to become really good at something comes after you learn the initial concepts.

On the guitar, I now know how to make my left hand do the finger positions to do a number of chords, and I can play them acceptably. Sometimes I can move smoothly from one finger position to another. Other times I struggle. Guitar master’s know how to transition smoothly from one finger position to another so that the sound is smooth and melodic.

A similar thing is true for skillful leaders and communicators.

Different situations call for different behaviors. Communicating the same message to different people might mean using different approaches.

Masterful leaders and communicators know how to read the situations and people around them and how to smoothly move between different leadership approaches and communication styles or modes.

Related posts:

1. The Difference Between Doing and Mastering
2. Effective Communication Skills: Acknowledge Emotions Before Solving Problems
3. Three Critical Factors to Consider Before You Choose a Communication Technique

The DISC Model of Human Behavior is, as the name implies, about behavior. And, to apply it well, I suggest looking beyond behavior to the needs behind the behavior to really use it to connect and communicate with other people more effectively.

To illustrate the point, consider the refrigerator shown above. While this one has no food in it, I imagine you can think of a time when you opened a refrigerator door to check the contents. I also imagine that many of the times when you have stood with the door open were times when you were hungry and looking for food.

Looking in the refrigerator (the behavior) was the expression of an unmet need (you were hungry).

And, if you found an empty refrigerator enough times, you just might decide to escalate your behavior by leaving your house to get food.

People tend to behave in ways that get their needs met. When their needs are unmet, they will continue escalating their behaviors in an increasingly intense effort to meet their needs.

Food is a physical need, and we will act to get food when we do not have it. Likewise, we all have certain emotional/psychological needs, and we also act to get them met.

The DISC model is one tool that you can use to get an estimate of another person’s emotional/psychological needs so that you can take positive, intentional actions that increase your ability to effectively connect and communicate with him or her.

I only plan to hit some high spots with this post, and I certainly do not want to present this brief article as a comprehensive guide. There are many other factors to consider when it comes to understanding other people’s needs. And, the DISC model is still a good tool you can use to make an educated guess.

With that caveat said, here are some general needs you can consider as you work to understand yourself and others:

• Outgoing, task-oriented, Dominant individuals often need:
  choices, challenges, and control.
• Outgoing, people-oriented, Inspiring individuals often need:
  recognition,  approval, and admiration.
• Reserved, people-oriented, Supportive individuals often need:
  appreciation, security, and assurance.
• Reserved, task-oriented, Cautious individuals often need:
  quality answers, value and excellence.

When you work to understand these needs and to see other people’s behaviors through the filter of their needs rather than your own, you can make the adjustments to  your communication style that allows you to meet — or at least not challenge — another person’s needs so that you can create an environment for mutual gain.

Related posts:

1. DISC Model FAQ’s: Is Changing Your Behavior Phoney?
2. Applying the DISC Model: Breaking Through A Common Frustration
3. DISC Model Frequently Asked Questions

In conflict situations, many of us struggle to maintain a fair and objective perspective about the other person.

We assign all kinds of bad motives and intentions to their behaviors before we slow down long enough to really understand their perspective.

This weekend I found a quote that offers a way to avoid this problem.

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.

– J.M. (James Matthew) Barrie (1860–1937), British playwright. Rectorial address, May 3, 1922, St Andrew’s University, Scotland. Quoted in Times (London, May 4, 1922).

I don’t have much to add to this quote. I offer it today as food for thought the next time you find yourself in a conflict.

Related posts:

1. Conflict Resolution Tips: Don’t Assume You Know What Someone Will Do
2. Conflict Resolution Tips: The Power of Patience
3. Conflict Resolution from John Wooden – What’s Right Not Who’s Right

What creates engagement? How do you build it, spread it , and maintain it?

I don’t propose that I know the definitive answer to these questions. I do have an observation…

People get engaged and enthusiastic about something they believe in.

You’re probably thinking: “Really Guy. That’s all you’ve got?” And my answer is, pretty much.

It’s not really rocket science. It’s not a mystery. It’s not the Holy Grail. It really does exist. Engagement happens when people believe in what they are doing.

Without that belief, the work is only about the paycheck.

So, the follow-up question becomes, how do you create the belief that leads to engagement.

My answer to this question is also pretty simple: build relationships.

Here’s a quick story to illustrate my point…

It’s nearly 10:00 pm on a Sunday night, and I’m working to get everything ready for the official launch day, now two days away, for the book I co-authored with Kevin Eikenberry, From Bud to Boss: Secrets to a Successful Transition to Remarkable Leadership. While the picture above is not my desk — my desk is far to messy to show to the public right now — it does represent what’s going on in my workspace.

I have both my desktop and my laptop computers working. I’m converting video files on one and writing this post on the other. My whole weekend has been like this. I’m pretty well chained to my computers and my phone. There is a lot to do when you’re trying to successfully launch a book into the marketplace.

The surprising thing is not that Kevin and I, the authors, have been working almost non-stop on book launch activities since the middle of last week. You would expect the people with their names on the cover to have a heavily vested interest in the success of the book.

Here’s what is rather surprising: several other people have also been working with nearly the same intensity and focus.

And it’s not just the people close to us. We also have a very long list of bloggers, podcasters, promotional partners, and others rushing to get their blog post, audio, video, or article posted to help with our launch.

Buried in this experience is a great lesson for leaders who want to know how to create that magical ingredient of organizational success called “engagement.”

How did we create this engagement? What steps did we take? What activities happened?

It’s simple. We built relationships.

Yes, we did lots of technical work, writing, and web site building. And, in the end, it was relationships that created the engagement.

We built relationships using phone calls, Skype calls, emails, text messages, letters, tweets, blog posts, interviews, and meetings. On the surface, these activities seem to be about the book and “getting the word out.” In the end, the activities were about building relationships more than they were about getting our message out.

The relationships gave us the opportunity to share our excitement with others. The relationships built the bridge that let other people catch that excitement. The excitement built belief, and the belief built engagement.

The lesson for leaders? Start with relationships, and you’ll likely wind up with engagement.

Related posts:

1. The Carrot Principle – Book Recommendation
2. Employee Motivation: Interesting Ideas to Consider
3. Employee Motivation Tips: Their DISC Behavior Style