Communicate To Connect

This article is part of our Mentor-Coach Reading List series. Join the mailing list to receive this and more.

Conversation is communal. The goal of any conversation is to connect. There is a very real human need to be included, to belong, to be heard, to share and to relate to experiences that resonate. There is strength in any conversation that enhances community and meaningful connections.

SETTING THE SCENE

“The fundamental element that defines the quality of our lives is the people we surround ourselves with, and the conversations we have with them … Our results are amplified when our relationships share a sense of community and belonging”- Jon Levy (You're Invited: The Art and Science of Connection, Trust, and Belonging)
“Being open-hearted is a prerequisite for being a full, kind, and wise human being. But it is not enough. People need social skills. We talk about the importance of "relationships," "community," "friendship," "social connection," but these words are too abstract. The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to let someone down without breaking their heart; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another's point of view. These are some of the most important skills a human being can possess, and yet we don't teach them in school.”- David Brooks (How To Know a Person:The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen )
“To communicate with someone, we must connect with them. When we absorb what someone is saying, and they comprehend what we say, it's because our brains have, to some degree, aligned”.- Charles Duhigg (Supercommunicators: The Power of Conversation and the Hidden Language of Connection )
“Connections are vital to how we make sense of the world. Every day, we are bombarded with new people, new places, new ideas. The only way we can make sense of any of it is through quick connections. This person is like that person. This trend is like that trend. This situation is like that situation.”- Simon Lancaster (Connect: How to Inspire, Influence and Energise Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime)
“Adapt to how people consume content — not how you wish they did or they did once upon a time. Then, change how you communicate, immediately.”- Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. (Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less )
“This is the thing: we all like to imagine that we're supremely rational, constantly weighing up the evidence of everything we encounter. The truth is we are not. As human beings, we are fundamentally instinctive and emotional. As we go through our days, zipping in and out of meetings, making quick decisions about budgets, staffing, doing deals, we are thinking through connections. This is like that. Now is like then. That is like the other.”- Simon Lancaster (Connect: How to Inspire, Influence and Energise Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime)
“We lose information when we don't translate numbers into instinctive human experience.”- Chip Heath and Karla Starr. (Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers)
“A community of truth is created when people are genuinely interested in seeing and exploring together. … When we are in a community of truth, we’re trying on each other’s perspectives. We’re taking journeys into each other’s minds.”- David Brooks (How To Know a Person:The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen)
“Some of the most creative ideas come out of people in conflict remaining in conversation with one another rather than retreating or staking out entrenched positions.”- (adapted from Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky (The Practice of Adaptive Leadership)
“The executive and director of the future will need to be a connector, possessing stronger capabilities in building and sharing professional relationships, and to do so more strategically.”- Dianne Jacobs (Excel As A Connector)

Questions to consider

How do we create a genuine connection with another person?
What causes people to connect? Does their level of influence play a part?
How do we nudge someone, through a conversation, to take a risk, embrace an adventure, accept an offer, agree to collaborate, or have a business lunch?
How can we create ‘neural entrainment’ (when we ‘click’ with another person)?
What are the ways to build bridges from the present to the future?
What gives people a sense of trust, community and belonging?
How do you structure and spread stories?
How do you get anyone to pay attention to anything that matters?
If you were having a bad day or had a problem to fathom, who would you talk to and why?
What are the symbolic connections that can lead to dramatically different decisions?
How can we translate numbers and stats to make data come to life?
How can we look somebody in the eye and see something large in them, and in turn, see something larger in ourselves?
How do you communicate to create a tightly knit, highly supportive community?

Happy reading and stay curious!

Here’s more information about Dianne’s mentor-coach book choices.

Connect: How to Inspire, Influence and Energise Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime (Heligo Books) by Simon Lancaster. An expert speechwriter, Lancaster talks about how the secret to great communication lies not in logic alone, but in skilfully connecting with people's deepest instincts and emotions. Through the power of connections, it is possible to transform people's perceptions about almost anything, making the scary safe, the unfamiliar familiar, and even turning a 'no' into a 'yes'.

Supercommunicators: The Power of Conversation and the Hidden Language of Connection (Cornerstone Press) by Charles Duhigg. Through interviews and research it examines how to improve the quality of our connections and the relationships we develop by understanding who we are engaging with and what they are really trying to say. It helps consider the right conversation at the right moment, how to be understood and how to understand others. How can we create neural entrainment (when we ‘click’ with another person)? Duhigg takes us through three conversations which correspond to practical decision-making conversations, emotional conversations, and conversations about identity-are best captured by three questions: What's This Really About?, How Do We Feel?, and Who Are We?

Making Numbers Count: The art and science of communicating numbers (Transworld Digital) by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. While the numbers in our world have become increasingly complex. The goal of this book is to give you some techniques that are going to improve your odds of clarity and meaning. The principles of psychology can help people understand and act on a number. Drawing on years of research into making ideas stick, Chip Heath and Karla Starr outline six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency. Using concepts such as simplicity, concreteness and familiarity, they show us how to transform hard numbers into their most engaging form, and to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions. This book is based on a simple observation: we lose information when we don't translate numbers into instinctive human experience.

You're Invited: The Art and Science of Connection, Trust, and Belonging (Harper Business) by Jon Levy. The people around you define your success (whatever that means for you) and they have the potential to change the course of your life. That’s what You’re Invited is about: The most universal strategy for success is creating meaningful connections with those who can impact you, your life, and the things you care about. But how do you make those connections and build trust quickly? What do you do if you’re introverted or hate networking? Levy guides readers through the art and science of creating deep and meaningful connections with anyone, regardless of their stature or celebrity, and demonstrates how we develop influence, gain trust, and build a shared experience so that we can impact our communities and achieve what’s important to us.

Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less (Nicholas Brealey Publishing) by Axios co-founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz. Brevity is confidence. Length is fear. This is the guiding principle of Smart Brevity, a communication formula built by Axios journalists to prioritise essential news and information, explain its impact and deliver it in a concise and visual format. They discuss how to say more with less in virtually any format. They also share communications lessons learned from their decades of experience in media, business and communications. Smart Brevity is a system and strategy for thinking more sharply, communicating more crisply and saving yourself and others time. It guides you into saying a lot more with a lot less - and that is its greatest power.

How To Know a Person:The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (Penguin) by David Brooks. I’ve included this book in a prior reading list, but I like how it also fits here. The act of seeing another person, Brooks argues, is a profoundly creative act. There is an art of truly knowing another person in order to foster deeper connections at home, at work, and throughout our lives. Driven by his curiosity, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, and from the worlds of theatre, history, and education, to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. It shows how to become more understanding and considerate towards others and find the joy that comes from being seen.

Dianne’s Related MENTOR-COACH INSIGHTS

EXCEL AS A CONNECTOR - The art of bringing like and (un)like people together. The executive and director of the future will need to be a connector, possessing stronger capabilities in building and sharing professional relationships, and to do so more strategically.

CONFLICT, EMPATHY AND OPPORTUNITY - Unaddressed conflict takes on a life of its own, with sides emerging, focus diverted, wrong fights battled and the pushing of competitive bias. In high-trust cultures, people may debate rigorously, but they commit to the best overall future. Constructing the right degree of tension is the challenge.

LEAD THROUGH QUESTIONS - Inquiry and curious questions makes for better problem solving and interesting conversation. They can uplift value, foster learning and the exchange of ideas, resulting in innovation and performance improvement. Underpinned by rapport building and gaining trust, questions can mitigate risks by uncovering pitfalls and forging different paths.

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