LISTEN TO THE LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

How to Communicate Effectively

SUMMARY

In this episode, we will discuss how we can communicate effectively and be able to shift people’s thinking. To get your point across to someone else’s mind you have to communicate in a way that is consistent and its effectiveness is measured by the results you get.

The challenges that we face if we don’t get this right is that we’re not heard, we have no impact and ultimately we end up not being fulfilled. On the other hand, if we get it right, it is music to our ears, and in the process you can shift people’s thinking and build a movement.

Here are the important things that you need to know:

  • Forget your bias and communicate beyond it to get your point across.
  • Need to touch all of the preferences and perspectives out there.
  • Use the right tools to bring it to life.

The Communication Pathways

In this framework, in the center of it all is insight. Then you will find detail thinkers versus big thinkers on the top and bottom respectively. Similarly, on the left and right respectively there is low emotion and high emotion.

Now, let us take a look at the four different communication pathways:

  1. Data Wonk: These are the people who are detail thinkers and want to see data, proof and numbers, and their choices are made from a low emotion standpoint. They are grounded, systematic and analytical.
  2. Storyteller: They are detail oriented but are emotional as well. They give a lot of detail and descriptive information that are memorable and compelling.
  3. Visionary: They have high emotion and are big thinkers so they are very passionate and idealistic. They are ready to take on problems or situations as they are visionary.
  4. Architect: They are the builders who are practical and will find simplicity on the other side of complexity. They will use processes and diagrams in their communication.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, Mel Abraham here, the author of the #1 bestselling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize what you know, the ideas, the insights that you have, the unique perspective that can change people’s lives so you can have greater impact, income and more freedom.

And welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this episode, we’re going to talk about:

  • How to communicate effectively?
  • How do you shift people’s thinking?
  • How do you get them to start shifting how they think about things?

And I’m going to introduce you to a framework that I call The Communication Pathways; that when you get a command of this, when you get an understanding of this, you have that capacity and the ability to navigate communication

  • Whether it’s negotiation
  • Whether it’s speaking
  • Whether it’s with a spouse

Think about this—a spouse, a loved one, a child to understand the different ways, the pathways to get your point across, to shift someone’s mind and so, that’s what we’re going to walk through in this episode and if you want to get the downloadable framework and everything of the communication pathways, just go to MelAbraham.com/session075 and you can download it there or if you are not at your computer and you happen to be running around, just text me MYLEGACY one-word to 38470. I will make sure that I send you the download link and get you going.

So, let’s get on with it. Let’s touch on this whole thing about shifting people’s thinking. How to communicate effectively?

Now, why is this important?

And I know for me, I didn’t get this straight. Listen, I’m a left-brain thinker. I’m a CPA, an accountant so I am into columns and rows and numbers and analysis and data and all those statistics and what I didn’t get when I was going through school, when I first started going into this, is then thought that numbers were the only thing that mattered. And the actual thing is that the numbers actually don’t matter at all. It’s the communication of what the numbers tell you to the people that it matters to. So, the communication to me is one of the greatest skills that we can nurture because

  • We can move people
  • We can shift people
  • We can motivate people
  • We can effectively change societies
  • Change communities
  • Change dynamics

We can change global change because of our ability to communicate.

So, if we don’t get this right, the challenge is that we’re never heard.

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Think about this. Now you may not be in business or you may be in business. This can be in a business context; it can be in a personal context. If you are in a relationship or you’re a parent, think about what it’s like when you’re not heard. If we don’t get the skills right, if we don’t understand the communication pathways that exist, we’re not heard and when we’re not heard, guess what? We’re not going to get anywhere with the things that we’re trying to kind of get out here.

And if we’re not heard, the other thing is that we have no impact.

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It means that, the challenge is that we’re not getting them to change their behavior. Remember, the idea behind thoughtpreneurship, thought leadership is that I want to take people from one state to another state. In other words, I want to get behavior change and the way we get behavior change is to get thought change first. And the way to get thought change is understanding the communication pathways. So, we need to have an impact on them with the way we communicate.

And if we don’t get that right, we ultimately end up not being fulfilled.

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Because we’re struggling all the time, we’re not getting our point across, we’re not getting our insights across, we’re not having meaningful conversations and discussions that move us in the direction that will fulfill us.

Here’s the cool thing that when we do get this right, it’s music to our ears.

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When we start to have a dialogue that’s meaningful, when we see that our points are resonating with the people we’re talking to, that it’s moving them to emotion, to change, to action, to doing things differently, to doing things or maybe not doing things differently, maybe doing the same things but doing more of it; whatever it is. Maybe, it’s just simply getting your kid to clean up their room or you’re negotiating a big deal. It becomes music to your ears because all of a sudden, it’s resonating in the point.

You get a chance in the process to shift people’s thinking.

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The idea is to get some lights to go on. The idea is to get them to see things maybe from a different perspective, maybe from a different ideal. It’s not about maybe we’re going to change your mind but maybe we just open them up just a little bit that maybe down the road things shift and change. So, if we get it right, we get to shift people’s thinking.

And if we really get it right, we build a movement.

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People listen to us, people jump on board and now what we have is an army of soldiers, a family unit that’s going in the same direction based on values and alignment and congruency or maybe it’s a team in your organization whether it’s a multi-level network marketing organization in your down line or maybe it’s a big billion-dollar company or multi hundred-million-dollar company or a small startup that we get alignment and we build a movement to move them towards a specific goal.

And so, this whole thing is really, really important. It’s the crux of your success. It’s the crux of you being able to shift and build and move people to allow them and entice them (if you will) to be part of your journey.

So, if that’s the case, what do you need to know? What are the things that are really important to you, you need to know?

So the first thing that you need to know is you need to forget your bias.

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We all come to a communication process with a bias. In other words, like I said earlier, I’m kind of a data guy. I’m a left brain thinker. I’ve numbers. So, I have a bias towards statistics and data and those types of logical processes that will create something in that way. And so, I had a tendency at one point to communicate from that perspective only.

So, what we need to do is evaluate where we are, what is our bias?

  • Are we someone that is focused on data or science or statistics?
  • Is it focused on more process?
  • What is your bias?

And then, forget it. Now, I don’t mean forget it completely. What I mean is that we need to make sure that we communicate beyond our bias because if we don’t then we’re only going to touch a little bit of the audience and if our audience happens to one person—spouse, significant other, business partner, negotiation and that isn’t their bias, you have a problem because their communication won’t land.

So, it’s similar to if you haven’t read it, it’s a great book to read. Gary Chapman’s Love Languages. In other words, if you communicate with a love language that isn’t consistent with your partner’s love language although you think you’re showing love, they don’t receive it in the proper way. So the key to it and you hear of this is that the effectiveness of your communication is the results you get.

And the fact of the matter is that I believe that communication isn’t a two way street, it’s a one way street. In other words, it’s my responsibility to get my point across. It’s my responsibility to communicate effectively. If they don’t get it, it’s not their fault, it’s mine. So, I need to communicate beyond my bias to move through it.

The second thing you have to realize is that I need to touch all.

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In other words, I need to understand all of the biases, all of the different perspectives and preferences that are out there and I need to touch all of them because I don’t know who is in my audience especially if I’m public speaking in a big, big venue or I have a group of people because I don’t know everyone there. Now if one-on-one, I may really understand what’s driving that person and it may drive it home but the pathways, the communication pathways will help you with this.

And then, the third thing is you got to use the right tools.

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Each type of bias, each type of pathway has different tools to bring it to life. So, you need to understand the tools. I’m not going to be able to get it into all the tools in this session but we will at least get you to understand the pathways to do that. So that’s what you need to know.

  • I need to get rid of my bias.
  • I need to touch all. In other words, I need to be able to be full spectrum, and
  • I need to use the right tools.

So, how do we do it?

Well, let’s talk about The Communication Pathways and once again to talk about the communication pathways I’m going to jump to my iPad. We’re going to draw this out for you. We’re going to walk you through the communication pathways so you understand what drives them and the types of traits that each pathway has so you can communicate to them in their love language, in their bias, in their language per say. So, let’s jump to the iPad and we will get started.

Alright, so let’s jump to the iPad and let’s get rolling and now to help you out, this will help you out if you focus on one idea, one insight, one concept that you want to get across to someone and not some global element to begin with. Just so you understand this because there’s going to be different things that you want to deal with from time to time and I’m going to ask you to consider the different communication pathways for each and every insight that you come up with.

So, we’re going to start off with an insight.

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Now it could be, like for instance: For me one of the big things that I say is work-life balance is a myth. So, that might be the insight that I’m trying to talk about. Now the interesting thing is that you’ve got four different communication pathways.

Now, you’re going to find that in many cases, you have a tendency or a bias to one or two of them but we need to learn to communicate in all four to make sure that our point hits home, make sure that we grab the whole audience. It allows you to navigate in flow from one of the other when you do this up front and understand it.

So, the first is the one I was talking about with myself and that is a Data Wonk. I call them a Data Wonk.

This is the person that is a much more Detailed Thinker now on the bottom versus a much Bigger Thinker here at the top.

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So, what happens here is that we need to realize that we’ve got the levels of thinking that we’re trying to navigate, we’re trying to make sure that they understand and that we communicate with them.

So, if I’m dealing with a detailed thinker like myself, an analyst, someone that is looking at data;

  • I want to see data.
  • I want to see proof.
  • I want to see these things.

So, if you talk about something that’s really conceptual and it’s a big picture stuff, it may not grab me and that becomes a problem. So, I need to be able to communicate with that. The other thing is to realize that detail thinkers or people such as myself, we’re typically, our choices are made from a Low Emotion standpoint versus some people make more emotional decisions.

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Now, there’s a, now this is a, what I would like you to do is think about this not as an absolute but as a spectrum. So we all have levels of emotion, we all have levels of thinking, we all have different levels and we move within them.

As a communicator, we need to communicate through all of them and so how do we navigate that?

> Is to be aware of these folks.

So Data Wonks, data wonks typically have the traits of being very grounded, very systematic, very analytical and there is a desire to see proof before they move or make a choice. So, we need to make sure that we give them proof in dealing with that.

The other part of that is that if I go over to this side here, you’re dealing with what I call the Storyteller because now we’ve moved still at the detailed level but more emotional.

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I mean, think about it, when you see someone that’s telling stories, there’s a lot of detail, there’s a lot of life that comes to it, there’s a lot of descriptive information and adjectives that allow you to see and be in that story. So there is a fair amount of detail and there is a whole lot of emotion because all of a sudden you see yourself in that story.

So the typical storyteller is someone that’s a relator, they’re typically are much more memorable because of the stories they tell and they are compelling because the story themselves is typically more compelling.

So, then we go up to the top right. In the top right is what I call the visionary and visionary, they are high emotion and much more bigger thinker.

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You think about someone like an Elon Musk is a very visionary person, a very high emotion person in the sense that he instills emotions, he generates emotions out of people, people jump on the bandwagon with him.

They’re very passionate. They’re very idealistic. They’re people that will come to a thing, a problem, a situation, an issue with what my friend Brian Tracy calls Zero Based Thinking. In other words, if we could do something, let’s visualize what it would look like, how would we do it and that type of thing. So, I think it becomes important to understand that.

And then the communication pathway is what I call the Architect.

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This is the person that you will see drawing things out. They’re the builder; they’re practical. They’re trying to find simplicity on the other side of complexity. They’re very visual in nature, logical in process.

  • So, you may see them using processes.
  • You may see them using doodles and diagrams and things of that nature.

So, when you think about communicating it becomes important to realize that you have an audience that has a bias to one of these four but by and large, in order to get your points across, to be able to speak to the big thinkers, to the detail thinkers, to the low emotions, the high emotion; we need to build out our insights, our ideas, the things we know to satisfy and bring in the data wonks, the storytellers, the visionaries and the architects.

And when we do that, we’re going to capture and captivate, the whole audience in one of those different biases. But if you come in like I said, mine is probably Data Wonk and Architect is probably the two strongest ones for me. If all I did was speak from that perspective, I’m not going to capture anything.

So, when I first started to move away from accounting and working with entrepreneurs and building thoughtpreneur practices and that type of thing, I needed to learn. I needed to learn how to work on the right side to be able to bring vulnerability, to be able to bring emotion into it because I came from a world of bullet points, I came from the world of data, I came from the world of statistics, I came from a world where most of the people in the audience were the data wonks so they loved the data and I could just be comfortable. I was speaking to my people.

But the fact of the matter is I want to communicate effectively. If I want to communicate more broadly, If I want to communicate and shift people’s thinking, if I want to shift them into action, if I want to create movements, I need to have the flexibility to develop myself to be able to speak, to communicate in the four different communication pathways.

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And so, that really is the process and like I said, the key here is to at least understand and identify that there are the four communication pathways

  • The architect,
  • The visionary,
  • The storyteller, and
  • The data wonk

And understand that maybe you have a bias to one or two of them and to realize that we got to get rid of that bias and figure out how we can take our insights, our ideas, the ideals we have, the wisdom we have and communicate it out in all four pathways to really make a difference. That’s what’s going to start to separate you. That’s what’s going to start to do the things you really are looking to do, to raise yourself as we talk in the last episode to that authority level to have that impact focus if we’re going to look at it that way and to be able to be seen as the go to person because you are shifting minds, you are shifting thinking because you understood how to communicate more effectively.

So, let’s do that. Let’s go back in and now start to ask yourself, when you’re going to communicate an idea, when you’re going to communicate an insight;

  • How do I communicate to the architect?
  • How do I communicate to the data wonk?
  • How do I communicate to the story teller?
  • And how do I communicate to the visionary?

> Because when you do, things are going to open up.

I hope that you found this of help to you. I hope you found this of value. Again, if you want to get a copy of this, if you really want to understand this, then just go to MelAbraham.com/session075. You can download it or if you’re out and about again, you can just me a text. MYLEGACY one word 38470 and I will make sure I send you the download link.

Do me favor? Let me know what you’re thinking. Let me know what’s going on with you. Let me know how I can help you. Let me know what you want to hear about next and we can make sure that we get it up on one of other episodes. Try to give you some tools. Try to give you some templates to make it easier for you to shrink that learning curve to bring that to life. And if you have a specific question that you want to ask me, just go to AskMelNow.com and leave me your question and we will get to it. We will make sure that we get to it.

Do me a favor? If you would, share this with someone. Share this with someone that maybe could use the tools to communicate more effectively because I really believe that communication will solve lot of society’s problems. It will shift the dynamics of your relationships, your business, your success, everything you have in your life and do one last thing, Subscribe. Hit the subscribe button right now. Stay with me. Make sure that you stay on this journey with me because I’m want to have a dialogue with you

I’m want to be there as your back pocket mentor. I want to be the one that can help you out if you have any questions. So you can post the questions, leave me your questions. Subscribe, stay with me, share this and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Until then,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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