Lessons - Why You Suck At Communicating

Welcome to Lessons episodes of Success Story, part of the HubSpot podcast network. These lessons episodes will be shorter conversations with past guests, valued members of the success story community, and myself. They'll be focused on teaching you actionable, insightful takeaways that you can use to upskill your personal and professional life. So today I want to talk about communicating. I want you to just stay with me because this is one of the most important videos that I've ever done because myself, like all of you, you all think you're good at communicating. But most of us really suck at communicating, and I'm very fortunate because I have a podcast and that gives me the arena to test out different ways to communicate effectively as well as my entire working career. But the point is, I think most of us think we're way better at it than we actually are most of us suck at it, because I want you to just think about this for a second, raise your hand if this sounds familiar. You're in a meeting, your friends venting about their job, you're on a first date, whatever it is. The other person asks you a question. You give a response, they share their thoughts, so on, so forth, back and forth, like a tennis match. You serve, they return, but it lacks so much depth. There's no real understanding, there's no connection being built, and yeah, I get it. You all have friends and you've all been building these relationships for years, but that's not the most effective way to communicate properly, because you've been friends with somebody for 10 years, is not a practical way. You don't have 10 years to build connection and depth with everybody. In theory, you should be able to do it the first time you speak to them, but most of us are so absolutely awful at communication. It takes two, three, four, five, 10 times speaking to somebody before we pierce that surface level. And why is this? It's because everybody, I do this, you do this. We listen to respond rather than to understand, and this ruins our relationships, is massively hurts our success. One of my favorite quotes on communication is from the basketball coach, Dean Jackson. He said, Listening is an art that requires attention over talent, spirit over ego, others over self. See the quality of your listening and communication ability directly impacts almost everything that is currently going on in your life. Your sales ability, your leadership skills, your overall life enjoyment. So why do we all suck so bad at simply talking and listening? So today, I'm going to go over the root causes for communication breakdowns that I've discovered in my life and five critical frameworks to fix them. If you master these, you are going to transform the way that you build relationships and influence people. So to start it off, why are we so bad at talking? Well, to mix in sports metaphors because I love doing that. When I first started podcasting, it felt like being thrown to the deep end. I was forced into these conversations with brilliant people, authors, entrepreneurs, psychologists, philosophers. And like most people who dive into interviewing for the first time or even jumping into a conversation for the first time as somebody they don't know, they really just defaulted these exceptionally shallow questions. And it was like verbal tennis back and forth, but no depth or connection. And this isn't really my fault or your fault because from childhood, we are conditioned to approach communication like a match rather than a dance to competing sides rather than a cooperative flow between two people because we're taught to avoid vulnerability. We're taught to avoid exposing too much. You play your cards close to your chest rather than putting your real self out there. But real communication requires openness and honesty. You have to let your guard down. And on top of this, there's so many cognitive biases that lead us astray when we're trying to communicate. See, we filter the information that we receive through our existing beliefs and then we jump to these conclusions rather than carefully considering the other person's viewpoints. So when we have these biases and we have these walls up and we're preconditioned and we have this verbal jousting, this leads to communication breakdowns. But frameworks, beat breakdowns, frameworks will always be frustrations if you know what to do. And with the right mental models, you can level up your communication, your listening and your speaking ability. So again, I mentioned I'll give you five. Let's start with the first one. This one is called climbing down the ladder. So we all know communication involves speaking and listening, but too often, we just wait for our turn to talk rather than focusing intently on understanding what the other person is saying. There's a model called the ladder of inference that explains why we take in information and unconsciously, we select the data from that information. It fits our existing beliefs and we interpret what we select based on our biases. We draw conclusions from the input based on our existing worldview and we develop beliefs based on those conclusions and then we take action aligned with those beliefs. And this is like a hamster wheel from hell. This loop just repeats and repeats and repeats and our actions impact the data that we select next time fueling our biases. And if you look at the ladder, you can see how this loop just keeps repeating on itself. And this all happens subconsciously without us noticing. So as you can imagine, these sort of mental shortcuts that our brain does, they wreak havoc on mutual understanding. So what we have to do is we have to climb down the ladder and we have to focus on how our beliefs color our incoming information. So we have to observe our internal voice, judging and reacting and we have to question our own conclusions and assumptions. And then we actively have to reprogram our reactions, makes a ton of effort, but it's worth it. We have to suspend disbelief and approach conversations with this open, curious mindset. Basically, as if you haven't already formed an opinion based on your entire life of what the person's speaking about, very difficult to do when you can do it and you're aware of it, it is amazing at what you'll actually hear from the other individuals. And framework, the five wise, you may have heard of this one before, when you're having a conversation with somebody in a topic, peaks your interest, resist the urge to settle for surface level discussion. You go deeper by asking why five times, here's an example, if we were going back and forth, I'd say, why do you feel unfulfilled at work, they'd say, well, my manager doesn't support my goals. I would say, well, why don't they support your goals? And they'll say, well, they don't align with upper management objectives. And then I would say, well, why aren't they aligned? And they would say something like, well, the executives are prioritizing short-term profits over long-term vision. And then I'd say, well, why are they prioritizing short-term profits over long-term vision and so on and so forth? It's peeling an onion, it's asking why it exposes layers of meaning, gets to the heart of issues. This builds understanding, this builds rapport. And to be honest, sometimes you will hit a dead end, like I don't know where this is how it is, but other times you will strike goal. I do this a lot in the podcast. It avoids all this superficial, small talk, it forges real connections. People are scared to go deep, so you push them there and you give them this psychologically safe environment to keep adding more and more and more and more and you'll get to some really awesome information and this will make much stronger conversations. Third framework, frame the conversation. So teachers use this strategy and this framework as an instructional design technique called effective framing to basically plan their lessons that they teach over to students. The idea is tying course content to student values and motivations which increases engagement and information retention. We apply this concept to communication. So you start conversations by clearly stating what peak you're interested in the topic. Why are you curious or concerned about what's going on? What you hope to learn or accomplish, how it aligns with what you care about as an individual. This frames the dialogue and provides these guardrails to prevent from drifting off course but it also shows you're genuinely interested in the discussion and you're not just exchanging platitudes. This encourages vulnerability, honest sharing from the other person and you regularly throughout the conversation, reconnect with your original motivation if the conversation is sort of veering off course. All you're doing is aligning the conversation with what both of you actually care about. This helps you maintain focus, it helps you go deeper, it helps you build trust, it helps you build camaraderie, it sort of checks all the boxes. The next framework, the fourth framework is cutting through the noise. So beyond poor listening, we also fail at explaining our own thoughts clearly because every discussion we take part in has two pieces to it, signal and noise. Signal is the core message or idea that you want to get out and noise is anything confusing or distracting or diluting the signal. See, noise screws up the communication. You add all these other stories or facts that are really not relevant, they're not supporting your point, you lose people's attention and interest. So if you're going to communicate, cut through the noise. You boil down the concepts that you're trying to discuss to simple, simple. You use clear language, you avoid jargon, you ask focused, one point question is not repeat questions. I still have to remind myself because I do that, it's human nature, but you ask focused. One point questions, you repeat back what the person has said to you to verify the accuracy and to understand better. This prevents misunderstandings, this prevents endless back and forth clarification. It prevents messy conversations or obscure points like it just makes sure that what you're saying is well received by me, what I'm saying is well received by you. And the last framework, the fifth framework that I like to apply to communication, conversations and listening is the Pareto principle, it can be applied to a lot of things, but the Pareto principle at its core means that 80% of the outcomes are the result of 20% of the activities. So the vital few dictate more than the trivial many. This applies to conversations, we waste tons of time endlessly debating trivial details at the cost of discussing critical issues. You always want to prioritize the 20% of the facts or the questions or the uncomfortable things that have to be discussed that produce the most value. Address the hardest, most important topics first in a discussion and a debate in an interview, even in casual conversation, like cut this stuff that doesn't add value. Everything becomes easier when you lean into the things that people actually care about that will actually deliver the most value to both parties of the conversation. And when you lean into the most important topics, the other person realizes that you actually care about things that are important and they'll lean back in as well. Outside of all of these different frameworks, I mean things that are also important are active listening. This is not a new concept. I mean, active listening helps you internalize with the other person saying, I sort of touched on it a bit previously. It strengthens relationships. Well, actually, all these frameworks would strengthen relationships, but people that communicate with me most effectively are the most vulnerable with me, have the most real important conversations with me are my closest friends. My closest friends in particular are the ones that ask the most thoughtful questions they intently listen, they share openly. This vulnerability builds bonds and what I'm saying is all these frameworks are supposed to help you build that level of trust with people that aren't even your closest friends. But you do know that if you have that close friend, you're already applying some of these techniques, even if you aren't thinking about it. In fact, just to highlight the importance of communication, conversation, active listening, speaking properly. Most of my business relationships in my life began as conversations where I simply listened with care and simply actively listened to what the person was saying. A lot of the people I do business with now are people that I built relationships effectively with over the podcast. I would have not had those relationships if I didn't apply some of the frameworks that I've unpacked in this video. These are things that I actively do to build relationships with people to have better podcasts, to build better rapport. And on the back end of it, some of those actually turn into business transactions. People that can communicate better also become better leaders. I mean, leaders who listen effectively, they unlock new ideas. They earn the buy-in of their team. Nobody wants to follow a leader with all the answers, like a leader that is committed to understanding the people that work for them. It's the best leader to work for, and it's the leader that's going to get the most commitment from the people that are reporting to them. A great quote from former Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, he said, The best way to persuade people is with your ears by listening. Another reason why these communication strategies are very important, sales, revenue. If you are selling a product to anybody, clients want to feel heard or understood, people that communicate effectively rather than relying on these persuasion gimmicks, connect with people on another level that creates this trust, this bond that will turn into closed one deals. Again, apply these frameworks in your sales discussions, in your customer service discussions. If you're a podcaster and your podcast interviews, apply these frameworks with your wife, your peers, your parents, your kids. Being able to communicate and conversate better, being able to speak clear, being able to listen better, it just improves your life to be quite honest. Every single interaction you partake in with another individual will be improved if you focus on some of these frameworks and communicating more effectively. So just to summarize, listen to connect versus simply respond. Apply the five frameworks I just discussed. Suspend reactive conclusions, approach every discussion with openness, ask why five times appeal the onion, frame the conversations by tying the conversation back to your motivation and the desired outcome, identify the signal in the noise, prioritize the 20% that accounts for 80% of the value. Remember, communication is something that is going to improve if done properly every single area of your life. It is the one thing that we all think we're good at that we actually suck at. So please spend some time even applying a few of these frameworks to your next conversation, your next interaction, just notice how it improves the relationship with that person and I would highly recommend starting to incorporate these into all conversations. These frameworks have changed my life. I've applied all of these and more to the conversations in my podcast to the relationships I've had. It's created a massive amount of trust. It's accelerated my ability to build connections with people. Apply some to your conversations. To start, see how effective you communicate and the level of trust that you can start to build with people around you, it will change your world for the better.