In this episode, we're kicking off a new series on Effective Communication by challenging you to benchmark your current skills! Think of it as setting the baseline in a fitness test, where understanding your starting point is the first step towards improvement. In this series, we'll explore why sharpening these skills is beneficial and essential for any business leader. Effective communication can be the bridge between confusion and clarity, the answer to misalignment within teams, and the tool for forging stronger connections.
Whether you're a seasoned CEO or a budding entrepreneur, enhancing your ability to communicate can transform the way you lead and grow your business. Throughout this series, we will focus on becoming not just good, but great communicators.
Episode Highlights:
In this episode, we're kicking off a new series on Effective Communication by challenging you to benchmark your current skills! Think of it as setting the baseline in a fitness test, where understanding your starting point is the first step towards improvement. In this series, we'll explore why sharpening these skills is beneficial and essential for any business leader. Effective communication can be the bridge between confusion and clarity, the answer to misalignment within teams, and the tool for forging stronger connections.
Whether you're a seasoned CEO or a budding entrepreneur, enhancing your ability to communicate can transform the way you lead and grow your business. Throughout this series, we will focus on becoming not just good, but great communicators.
Episode Highlights:
Hey there Business Builders. Today we're kicking off a new series on effective communication, where we decode the essential role communication plays in helping us achieve our business objectives. We'll focus on improving our communication skills, exploring the foundations of effective communication, and today we're benchmarking our current skills to identify areas for development throughout the series. Welcome to the Business Builders podcast bi, your host Hi, I'm Brenton Gowland.
Ron Tomlian:And I'm Ron Tomlian.
Brenton Gowland:And Ron, we've just come to the end of life work balance series. And we had Tim Bishop here, and he was great talking about mental health. What did you think of that?
Ron Tomlian:That was fantastic to hear it from somebody who's been through it, and is helping others get through it. It just gave such clarity to the importance of looking after your mental health and leaning on others to do that.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah, I thought Tim was remarkably honest, I was really impressed with the fact that he's now got so comfortable talking about it, because it's very difficult for people to talk about their mental health until, and this is the interesting thing until you actually start to talk about your mental health. Because I've found that when we normalise talking about mental health, and I've done the same thing myself got honest about that in the past, and this was a while back, it then makes it much easier to talk about.
Ron Tomlian:Well think about. When we talk about our physical health. People say how are you feeling? I've got a bit of a cold at the moment. Or I sprained my ankle and really hobbling around. We don't have any problems talking about that. In fact, we quite like talking about that. But when it comes to mental health,
Brenton Gowland:So you've met my mother, I love my mom. But every time I ring her, I'm like, Hi, how are you, mom, and she's like, Brenton, I've got a problem. I'm not so good. My hip is really hurting and look, to be fair, she does have aches and pains. But I hear about it a lot. So I'm very comfortable hearing about that from my mum.
Ron Tomlian:ago and a case in point. But we don't talk about feeling sad. We don't talk about our mental health in general. Maybe some people do. But I found that people, especially in business contexts, tend to steer away from that sort of thing very easily. And it's not right, we should be comfortable talking about that type of thing, without burdening others.
Brenton Gowland:Agred. Now I'm gonna give my mom a ticket credit. My mom does talk about a mental health issue as a problem. But she or we talked about this with Dr. Samantha young during the lifework balance series. And that is my mum will say when she's not doing right in her thinking, and she's actually developed mechanisms to cope with that. And part of it is talking with other people about it. So tick Mum, I hear about her aches and pains a lot. But particularly she does that because I want to have her around in like good modelling another good 10 or 20 years, and she's going to be getting towards 100.
Ron Tomlian:Online. Let's not let's not go there.
Brenton Gowland:I want my Mum to live past 100 I reckon she will. Anyway, we were going to have a nutritionist and a trainer or trainer. Now we haven't quite got there yet. So we may have a hangover from the lifework balance series in the next few episodes. You've got a
Ron Tomlian:Nutritionist/dietician, I think on the line on the line. Yeah, but
Brenton Gowland:Those two people have been the hardest we've had to find.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, well, I think the difficulty is finding someone who understands the business context. Yes, yeah. So that that might be our Achilles heel.
Brenton Gowland:Okay, so in the next, in the course of the next series, we do, you'll probably get a couple of little inserts from the lifework balance series. And if you've been a keen listener of the Business Builders podcast, you'll realise that we've had a very slow start to the year. And it's mostly been because of other commitments. But we now back on track, we're going to have this two week cadence back for the rest of the year, hopefully. And we're starting with a new series today. And Ron, our topic is communication and effective communication. So can you talk to us about how we got to communication.
Ron Tomlian:Well one of the things you and I do on a regular basis, maybe not regular enough, is look at what we've done in the past, recognising that people can go back and listen to podcasts. So one of the things we we've done is looked at what is missing? What where can we go. And it occurred to me that the only time we've really touched on communication, to a large extent, is the podcast we did on the origins of storytelling. It was all about brand way back in the day. Yeah. And we've talked about branding and so on, which was
Brenton Gowland:That was in our first year, series one.
Ron Tomlian:Yes, it was.
Brenton Gowland:Well, series one, season one, season one.
Ron Tomlian:So under those circumstances, it jumped out like a deer in headlights, though maybe that's the wrong analogy to use. But it became very clear that communication was something we really haven't tackled too. will age extent. And once you open that Pandora's Box, communication suddenly becomes this, in a business context becomes so broad that I think it warrants a series to talk about why is this important? And what are the aspects of communication that business leaders Business Builders should be thinking about in terms of their practice as people who are building their businesses.
Brenton Gowland:Agreed 100%. And communication is such a broad topic, humans operate almost exclusively on being able to communicate and interact with that outside world, to talking about the fact that we have five senses to help us navigate the world around us the environment that we're in, and those senses our sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, so five. And when you think about it, those five senses enable us to get data and understand the environment around us those senses communicate to us what's going on. I do this thing with businesses and their staff, sometimes where I talk about effective communication, the difference between poor communication and effective communication. And I use a comparison between Helen Keller so you remember who Helen Keller was?
Ron Tomlian:Hearing impaired and sight impaired, blind, and deaf.
Brenton Gowland:I think, a very young age got an infection, and it sent her blind and deaf. So she removed those two sensors. And we talk about that when senses go that the others take over. But you think about it as a young child losing your ability to see and your ability to hear, she had to interpret what was going on around her from her parents and so forth by the interactions was all through touch, predominantly. And she would not understand what was going on and lash out at people and be very aggressive. And so they had to be equally strong with her to be able to care for her and love her until of course, the nurse came along and helped her learn to communicate, and it was all through touching. And a lot of time was spent there, I suppose smell as well. You think, wow, that she had this perception of the world that was marred and then we as able bodied people, we get to see so much more clearly. And I like him. When we don't communicate effectively with people, we leave them in a similar position to where Helen Keller was, where she was left to interpret the world around her what was going on without all the correct information. And therefore she got aggressive and she struck out. And so in a business sense if we don't communicate effectively, and we leave a whole heap of things that are left on the table that we haven't made clear, the people are left to interpret what's going on for themselves. And sometimes that means they'll get completely the wrong idea. So effective communication becomes really, really important. If you want people to really clearly understand what's going on and be on the same page as you and going in the same direction. And you want to be able to see your business grow, people got to very clearly understand what's going on, you can't leave them in that position of being marred in their senses, and not communicating effectively. Because when you are in the fog, like Helen Keller was your left to join the dots yourself in effective communication says, I will help you join the dots in the correct fashion. So that you understand clearly what's going on is that that was a long winded way of saying communication is really important. We got five senses to work with.
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, then there's the opportunity to use those five senses. But there are two predominant senses that come to the fore hearing and sight that even though we interpret the world around us, mainly through their senses, people aren't necessarily all that adept at thinking about how people will use their senses to gain an appreciation of the world around them. And what I'm talking about there is we're talking about communication, and it is the basis of relationships, and therefore the basis of any business. But people make assumptions because it's something that is so in intuitive so ingrained in us. We often don't think about it too much. I mean, we don't as an example, don't think about our breathing very much. It just happens. It's it's autonomic in the, in that sense. But communication. I think we treat the same way. I know how to speak to people. I know how to listen to people. I know how to write to people. And I don't think we think enough about what it's like on the other side, even though we're often on the other side for other people. And our default is if we don't understand what's going up, they're a bad communicator. What about us? How good a communicator are we and at the end of this podcast, I'm going to take you through a little exercise where you're going to consider how good a communicator you are. And, and people can do that while they're listening to the podcast at the end. Because it's important that we get some self awareness about what are the things that we want to improve in our communication? What are the obstacles? Or what are the roadblocks to us becoming better communicators? And the one that's obvious when if I were to say to you, what's one of your greatest fears in business? Or you talk to other people their greatest fears business? What would it be?
Brenton Gowland:Public speaking?
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely. Now, the truth of the matter is, it shouldn't be any problems with public speaking, because it's a form of communication, but it is a fear for people. And we'll we'll cover that in the podcast. This is what
Brenton Gowland:I heard something once, that you had a series. Yeah, sorry for cutting you off. But I heard once that the fear of public speaking is more than that of dying.
Ron Tomlian:For a lot of people with this. It is because yeah, I suppose dying is vital. Public speaking, the embarrassment could go on for years. And you hit her experience? Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. So why are we so fearful of scenarios like that, where we have to get up in front of a group of people? Another one is conflict. Why do we find conflict so difficult? We should be good at it. Oh, we should at least have mechanisms available to deal with conflictual situations when we're trying to communicate and yet people have fears about and I think part of that is we avoid. And then if we keep avoiding those situations, we don't get good at it. There's one way to get better at public speaking, do more public speaking.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah. So you were talking about public speaking, but let's take it right back to a normal business sense. How do I navigate a meeting?
Ron Tomlian:Oh, one to one speaking, one to many speaking, many to one speaking. And this is another aspect that I'd like to cover in the series is, when we talk about communication, the immediate connotation is I've got to get what's in my head out to someone else, right. But the truth of the matter is effective communication involves first understanding who I'm talking to, and the context in which I'm speaking, or I want to get my communication out, and that's listening. And the whole art of questions, using questions to listen more effectively, is something that I don't think is well understood. And I think we need to cover in this series as well.
Brenton Gowland:So there's a lot to talk about, I've just thought of a definition for why communication is so important. You know, how we said that our senses help us navigate the environment around us. I think effective communication helps us navigate our business environment, effectively, something like that. Effective communication helps us to navigate effectively in a day to day lives and business. But I'll think about that, because I reckon there's a some sort of definition here for what we're doing that could be quite good. Does that resonate with you?
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely. Using the analogy of Laredo communication, two way is, though, so know, for navigating your business situation.
Brenton Gowland:It's interesting, because earlier, you talked about our sight and our hearing being some of our principal communication tools. But what are they? And I'll caveat that with, you haven't mentioned our ability to speak yet. So you've talked about eyes and ears, what do they do?
Ron Tomlian:They take in information? They?
Brenton Gowland:Well, no, no, no, you just highlighted listening, eyes and ears, particularly eyes and ears smell, touch, pretty much everything in our mouth is not a sense. All of our senses are for receiving think about that. That the speaking the ability to speak is not a sense. It's an ability, we have to be able to communicate that all those receptors that we were talking about, help us to listen, only. So that highlights the importance of a whole body. All of our senses are about listening. And one thing, well, actually, not one thing, we'll talk about that later, because his body language, all that kind of stuff, but our ability to speak, and the ability to move our body and to dress our body and to look a certain way, the way we look the way we speak, or what we communicate to other people. But all of the senses of a human being are to do with listening. That should speak volumes.
Ron Tomlian:Well, there's the old adage you have one mouth, two ears. So when you're communicating using that proportion, I'm not a great fan of those simplicity, I think, to my way of thinking it's 90% about listening and listening with all those senses. Yeah, and it's 1% getting your message across and thinking about how you're getting administers across so what In this series, we'll talk about things like persuasion, navigating difficult conversations, nonverbal communication, crisis communication, because that becomes incredibly important. Building a brand through communication, digital communication, because that's now a new medium that wasn't available before. But sure if we can go a new anymore, well, maybe, okay, that's a medium cultural sensitivity and global communication, because whether we like it or not, there are different cultures. And we need a sensitivity those cultures, and what we communicate through that cultural lens, is not always the way we want it to be. Unless we have that sensitivity, listening. I definitely want to do an entire podcast on that public speaking. And I've got some people that I'm already thinking about, we can get on and talking about talking about that. And let's get Craig Brisbane back to talk about the future of communication and business.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah, okay, if you're not aware who that is, go back a few episodes. And we had futurist Craig respin, come and talk to us about the future, not just AI, but about where things are going. Everything from think he was talking about nanotechnology, where we use organic matter as storage through to, of course, the evolution of AI, which we're all in the midst of at the moment.
Ron Tomlian:So yeah, I'm really looking forward to this series. But what I'd like to do, as part of that is start with something that our listeners can do. And I'm going to use you as a guinea pig.
Brenton Gowland:I love being a guinea pig. Okay,
Ron Tomlian:so let's do a quick, a self assessment tool, just 10 questions are on four categories. Yep, those four categories are listening, clarity, and conciseness. empathy and understanding and response quality. Okay, so I'll take you through this. And what I'd like you to do, and I'd like our listeners to do is get a piece of paper and a pen out. And just on a scale of one to 10, where one is strongly disagree, or very poor. And 10 is strongly agree or excellent, depending on the question to rate themselves.
Brenton Gowland:So this is a benchmarking exercise
Ron Tomlian:This is a benchmarking exercise. And what I'm going to challenge our listeners to do is when we start this series, benchmark yourself, and then as you listen to the series, and hopefully at the end of the series, benchmark yourself again, and see if as a result of what we've talked about, you've improved your communication skills.
Brenton Gowland:Okay.
Ron Tomlian:So let's get started.
Brenton Gowland:I've got my keyboard, so I will keep track of how many questions are there?
Ron Tomlian:10.
Brenton Gowland:Right. Okay,
Ron Tomlian:So it's gonna be really easy to do a rating for yourself.
Brenton Gowland:Is it Ron. So you just want me to give the answer you, I'm gonna give it a narrative.
Ron Tomlian:Just give me a score from one to 10. Okay, okay. So, number of question. Statement number one, when someone else is speaking to me, I focus fully on what they're saying, without formulating my response, until they finished speaking scale of one to 10,
Brenton Gowland:I'm gonna give a bit of narrative on this, I'm gonna give myself a seven on this, if you had asked me this five years ago, I would have said about a three, it has been a beat, I'm an extrovert, my partner is an introvert, I have improved a lot because I've had to, and it's made a huge difference. But I now actively think about this when I'm talking to people think about listening. So seven, so I'm gonna give myself a seven. That's been a huge progression for me over the years.
Ron Tomlian:Excellent. Number two, I noticed nonverbal cues such as body language and tone of voice, to understand the speaker's emotions and intentions.
Brenton Gowland:Oh, that's hard. I've improved in that again. But I would say I'm gonna say six, because that's something I really need to work on, put
Ron Tomlian:down six. Number three, I asked questions for clarification or further information. When I'm listening to someone speak.
Brenton Gowland:I'm going to give myself an eight for that, because I'm reasonably good. But I know I can improve because I have a special someone in my life who tells me when I'm not asking questions,
Ron Tomlian:Very good. Clarity, and conciseness. Number four, question number four, I express my thoughts and ideas clearly, and directly using appropriate language for my audience.
Brenton Gowland:Pause because there's a lot to think about here. I use appropriate language from my audience. But sometimes, I think as I speak, this is me understanding myself. So if you catch me at the top of that cycle, where I haven't thought about a topic before, I'd say I'd be in the fours or threes, because I'm all over the place. But once I've had time to process, I'm really good. So I'll give myself a six for that. Okay.
Ron Tomlian:Number five, I'm able to condense complex information into a concise summary that is understandable for others
Brenton Gowland:That I'm very good at. So I'll give myself an aid for that, because that's part of my job.
Ron Tomlian:Okay. empathy and understanding. This is question six. I make an effort to understand things from the other person's perspective during a conversation. Yeah, I definitely. Okay. Number seven. I recognise and appropriately respond to others emotions during a conversation.
Brenton Gowland:Now I'm good at that. I will actually give myself a nine for that.
Ron Tomlian:Okay. Wow, you're in touch with your feminine side.
Brenton Gowland:Possibly.
Ron Tomlian:That's very good. Okay, response quality. These are last three questions. My responses in conversation are thoughtful and add value to the discussion. Eight, nine, I provide constructive feedback and positive reinforcement when appropriate, and conversations. Nine, okay, I am comfortable with and capable of adapting my communication style to suit different situations and people.
Brenton Gowland:Nine,
Ron Tomlian:Okay.
Brenton Gowland:I've been called a chameleon before.
Ron Tomlian:There you go. Now you add up those 10 questions, all you do is add up and divide by 10.
Brenton Gowland:Okay, give me a moment, yanking time here. So 7.8
Ron Tomlian:7.8. Okay, so to interpret your score, if you're one to three, you're in the emerging communication skills category. You've got significant improvement required, and you've got a road ahead of you. But at least you know that now, if you're four to six, you're developing communication skills effectively. But there are areas for improvement. And you can look back and see what those are. If you're in seven to nine,
Brenton Gowland:which is me,
Ron Tomlian:Wow,
Brenton Gowland:7.8, I'm just just you're proficient communicator,
Ron Tomlian:you've got minor improvements. And you can see where those minor improvements are. Maybe well, it is
Brenton Gowland:part of my job to be a communicator, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised.
Ron Tomlian:Oh, yeah, absolutely. Man, maybe in the Listening side of things. I would say from what what your response is definitely, yeah. And if you're 10, which means you got 10 on everything. You're a savant here. Well, you're an excellent communicator already. And you probably are a little bit, how would I say? Not self aware, because I suspect more than anyone who would bite themselves as 10 for all those things, I'd be a little bit suspicious of,
Brenton Gowland:yeah, I'm gonna ask you these questions, because we may as well both have a benchmark to start with. And listeners, if you're with us, get your pen and paper out. I'm going to ask these questions again. And we'll do this one quickly. I gave dialogue because I can't help myself because I'm a chatterbox. Wrong. You can do what you want to do. But we'll start with the listening. So when someone is speaking to me, I fully focus on what they're saying without formulating my response until they finished speaking six, six, right. So the second question is, I noticed nonverbal cues such as body language and tone of voice, to understand the speaker's emotions and intentions seven, I ask questions for clarification or further information. When I'm listening to someone speak eight. I express my thoughts and ideas clearly and directly using appropriate language for my audience. Seven listeners, how are you going? We're up to question five, I am able to condense complex information into a concise summary. That is understandable for others.
Ron Tomlian:I would normally say something like a seven but just someone recently told me that i i waffled too much. So I'm going to say your six.
Brenton Gowland:Oh, empathy and understanding I'm making an effort to understand things from the other person's perspective during a conversation. Yeah, I'd say seven, seven questions. Seven, are recognised and appropriately respond to others emotions during the conversation.
Ron Tomlian:Five.
Brenton Gowland:Really?
Ron Tomlian:Yeah, I'm not. That's one of my weaknesses.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah. Okay. Question Eight. My responses in conversations are thoughtful, and add value to the discussion. I'd say 711. Right. I provide constructive feedback and positive reinforcement when appropriate, and conversations eight and last question I am comfortable with and capable of adapting my communication style to suit different situations and people.
Ron Tomlian:Six,
Brenton Gowland:Six. All right, so you are 6.7
Ron Tomlian:I think I've got plenty of room for improvement.
Brenton Gowland:So what's your goal to get to a seven by the end of this series,
Ron Tomlian:I'd like to get it up to a 7.5
Brenton Gowland:7.5. So I'm going to put that down here is 7.5, 7.5 Is your goal. I'm feeling the pressure here. I'd like to be an eight but I'll put 8.2 I do a lot of public speaking and all that kind of gear. I got comfortable with it years ago. So I still do a lot of thinking about that when I do a gig. I've got some speaking gigs coming up shortly. So I know that communication is one of the things that I try to be good at. I mean, maybe our listeners should possesses from an outsider's perspective, I would never ask people to do that, because I'd be afraid of what's going to come back.
Ron Tomlian:Absolutely right. You can we'll talk about this, for instance, the fog index when we're talking about business writing.
Brenton Gowland:Yeah, well, that the thing I talked about with Helen Keller is actually a workshop that I do with staff at in different places like to compare. Helen Keller was a child of this age who had these difficulties to deal with. And she ended up being a great writer, go figure, right? So that just proves that anyone can improve, really, that I use that fog index that you were just talking about that you're going to be in a clear, effective communication, or you're going to be in the fog. And if we think about the fact that what we're trying to do here is improve the way we navigate the environment around us to achieve our goals. So I just progressed, that definition I gave earlier and it might be a business goal, it might be a, I want to do this, but to be able to communicate is our ability to persuade our ability to see our dreams from the past to see our businesses grow. So communication, I think what we're trying to communicate here is vitally important in every function of our lives. So therefore, it really does require a bit of thinking. And if you're a business leader, you lead through communicating.
Ron Tomlian:Well, you lead other people, and the only way to get your message across to other people. Well, my definition is communication. So you your stock and trade his people, your mechanism is communication.
Brenton Gowland:I'm going to share a quick story about nonverbal communication, just in finishing. I've been listening to this audio book, and I always highly recommend, listen to podcasts, listen to audiobooks. I've been listening to this audio book by a guy named William Goldman who was a screenwriter in America. And I was listening to a marketer on I think, what it's called the marketing made up podcast. And this guy was talking and saying, Look, if you're a creative writer, you'll get more out of listening to William Goldman talk about screenwriting, then you'll potentially get listening to marketers talking about how to market your business to someone and I thought, You know what, that's really interesting, because the heart of innovation is to take people in similar kinds of places, but in different streams or different industries, and compare and look at what they're doing to see if I can get insights. And sure enough, I've been listening to this book called Adventures in the screen trade by William Goldman. And he was actually talking about Richard Attenborough directing a bridge too far a movie that was I believe, in the 70s. I think Robert Redford was the lead star. And then Sean Connery was in it. And Laurence Olivier, and all these really big actors, the Second World War. Yeah, that's correct. It was basically about these joint forces were coming in to save these people who were trying to take these bridges who got into a bit of strife, that they they got to within one mile, and they couldn't get any further. So the whole thing toppled. So it was a really interesting story and a bit, a bit confronting really a bit of a tragedy. But for authenticity, they wanted to use the actual bridges that were part of the story. So they wanted to use this bridge in Holland, and I forget the name of the place, and they call it the million dollar hour because they couldn't shut down this bridge for weeks of shooting. So they would give the bridge to them once a week on a Sunday for one hour between eight and 9am. That was the only time they could use it. And of course, Robert Redford was being paid a fortune and they had hundreds of extras when doing the scenes. And they said the pressure on the director is so massive, and William Golding gold man was talking about the fact that Richard Attenborough could not show the stress he was under, because if you showed the stress or the fact that you weren't in complete control of everything that was going on, the whole thing could fall apart, and you've got one hour to shoot these massive scenes. This This was their last weekend with the last day long story short, they got it done. But he talked about how Richard Attenborough had these ways of conducting himself that when the pressure was on, he would start whistling. And he would walk in these concentric circles that meant nothing to anyone else but himself but he would always keep his demeanour, upbeat and positive. And in the midst of all that was going on, he was able to instil a confidence in all the people around him that is communication that is a leader communicating, and we could look at all sorts of examples of that. That communication is so important in everything you do in as a leader as business leaders. The eyes are on us all the time, not in the things that we necessarily say and do but in all of our actions.
Ron Tomlian:All the interesting thing is people talking about communication is a car punches thing. But the truth of the matter is by communicating whether we like it or not, whether that what was the message we're getting across is the one we want or not depends on our capacity to control our communication in all its varied form.
Brenton Gowland:So for the those of you who are listening, this series that we're starting right now is on effective communication. And we want you to do the benchmark tests that we just went through. And we want to see if by the end of this series, we can shift the dial on our communication skills from wherever you're at. I'm at 7.8 Ron's at a 6.7. We want to shift the dials in a northerly direction to see if we can improve our skills and navigate our business environment with greater skill. There ya go.
Ron Tomlian:So its goodbye from me,
Brenton Gowland:And it's goodbye from me and we look forward to talking with you in a couple of weeks.
Ron Tomlian:Communicating with you.
Brenton Gowland:Well, we look forward to communicating with you about our topic on effective communication. Goodbye.