Clarity (n) – the quality or state of being clear

The definition you see above is from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Do you find it ironic that the definition for clarity does not give you a straight answer?

Clarity has become obsolete in our society along with proper English. “Did u get the msg i snt 2 u elr?” has become the new way to converse with teens and adults alike. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time deciphering the true message from a sea of shortened words and acronyms. Clarity has died in our world.

Unfortunately we cannot afford to lose our ability to communicate clearly. Communication is what gets us what we want in the world: jobs, food, relationships, and lifestyles. If you can’t communicate then you will not survive.  Clarity is what gives a string of letters and words a meaning.

When you speak to others whether physically or virtually, it is key that the tone you wish to convey is the tone others hear. For instance when you need an assignment in a rush it is inefficient to use words such as “ASAP” or “soon.” These words do not convey a tone of immediacy. Instead try “I need it now.”  When you communicate you must be sure your words do not give off the message that you are angry or upset. UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY ARE!!!!!

Clarity is what will keep your clients coming to you for their needs and will make the world a much happier place. It is frustrating to speak to someone and have no clue what they said. Humans are inherently social but our lack of clarity is disabling our society.

Please do not continue to contribute to this epidemic.  Your challenge is to simply think of what you want to say before you say it and ask yourself these questions: What am I trying to say? How am I trying to say it? How would I feel if someone said this to me? This method is infallible and will better every aspect of your life.

Happy Communicating!

Guest Post: by Lauren Taylor- Intern for Sauers Consulting Strategies

“This is Joe Smith—I am sorry I missed your call—I must be on the other line or away from my desk…so please leave your name, number and message, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.” Really? Is this the best voice-mail greeting we can leave? Why does it seem that I hear this on nearly every v-mail when I’m about to leave someone a message? Why do I even think about such things? Great question; a little crazy I guess, or maybe it is just being from Georgia…but that’s a topic for a different post.

Isn’t our goal to be unique in all that we do? Different? Friendly? Memorable? Creative? It is a given that when you do not answer your phone it means you are somewhere else. Right? 

So, why not have some fun? How about this? “This is Joe Smith—your call is very important to me—but I am away having even more fun at the beach…” Then quickly insert, “Now that I got your attention—just kidding—please let me know how I can best serve you and I will be back in touch in a prompt manner.” Note: Do not say (as soon as possible) because this means nothing. OR, if that doesn’t work, you could be like the airlines: “Your call is very important to us (this means not really) and for faster service (hint, hint) visit us online” (this means they do not want to talk to you). My point is to BE YOURSELF, but have fun at the same time. People need to laugh. I am not saying be unprofessional. Not at all, but don’t be a boring robot either.

So, how does your voice-mail sound when people listen to it? Go ahead and listen to yours. Does your message sound the same as everyone else’s OR is it unique? Remember that  Perception Is Reality, and the way people perceive your v-mail (for them to leave a message on) is their reality. So let me ask: Is your voice-mail message fair, good or great? What ways could you make it better and more creative?

Ryan Sauers @ryansauers

Communications is an integral part of our society. On a daily basis, babies cry for food, teens negotiate with their parents, and adults convey their thoughts to their peers. However all of the previous examples are considered ineffective unless the audience understands the message that you are trying to present.

Take the last sentence for instance; did you understand what I was trying to say?

Probably not.  That sentence was neither clear, consistent, nor creative, and did not display my content in a way that made a connection with you, the reader.

Think of your favorite speakers-Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, or my personal favorite, Mahatma Gandhi. All of these speakers use the Five C’s of Effective Communications unintentionally, and it makes them stronger communicators.

The Five C’s of Effective Communications include clarity, consistency, creativity, content, and connections.  If you simply include these qualities of communications in your daily life, your business and personal relations will improve.

In the next five blog posts I will go more in depth with each “C.” By the end of this blog series, you will be prepared to take on the world- at least in terms of communications.

Until next time,

Lauren Taylor

(Intern with Sauers Consulting Strategies)

WOW! We are already in the third month of this new year and there is no better time to learn new things.  So, that is exactly my plan for much of our year together. This post  will be an overview of the Adaptive Communications model.  It is the cornerstone of my Everyone Is in Sales book and will be quite helpful to us as we strive to become better communicators. 

The four articles that will come out in future posts will address (one at a time) the model’s four separate components.  So you know, this model is solid and built from countless hours of doctoral research and real world observation. In addition, it builds upon some of the most widely used personality assessments in the world such as DiSC and MBTI (which we are certified in). Thus, our unique qualifications enabled us to put all of this together in a simple and tangible manner.  So let’s get going…

What is adaptive communications and why does it matter? What will it do for you? What does this mean? How will it help you communicate your ideas more effectively?  Good questions…and I am glad you asked or were at least thinking in such a manner. As stated before, Adaptive Communications is a central part of the Everyone Is in Sales philosophy. It is a powerful way of understanding how we can maximize our interactions with others so we can more effectively communicate with them. It impacts every aspect of our lives.

In business, it can help us conduct more effective meetings.  In social media, it can help ensure that we understand how what we are writing might be perceived. At the baseball field, it can make us become better coaches. In addition, it can help each of us become a better spouse, parent, sibling and friend. If you are looking for a job, it will give you an edge. At your child’s school, it will help you more effectively communicate with your child’s teacher.  It can help you approach all of your personal and professional interactions more effectively. Simply stated, by following the principles in this model you will reduce stress, conflict and misunderstandings.  We all want this right? I know I do and the organizations I consult with have found great success in implementing this model.

You see, this model allows successful communications to occur. Such successful communications are vital in every part of life. They enable us to discover common ground with a variety of individuals, make the communications process more clear and rewarding, and enable us to better understand ourselves as well as those around us.

There are four areas of adaptive communications that will be covered in detail in future blog posts– so stay tuned.  First, will be the speak-first, think-later group vs. think-first, speak-later group. This distinction explains how a person prefers to direct their energy and expressions (external or internal).  Second, will be the big-picture vs. the just-the-facts group. This segment addresses how people prefer to assimilate information from the world around them. Third, will be the head vs. heart group. This aspect identifies how people make decisions on the information they have taken in.  Fourth, will be the 5 o’clock-sharp group vs. the 5 o’clock-somewhere group. This component deals with a person’s time orientation with the world. Do they like to make a decision and be done with it or leave things more open-ended?

In understanding Adaptive Communications, it is important to remember that we all move back and forth between segments in each of the four groups. Thus, how we respond depends on both the situation and context. Human beings are incredibly complicated and nobody can simply be labeled as a “this” or a “that.” However, we all have definite communications preferences. Remember the word preferences. This means we all have preferred ways (within each of the four segments) of how we are most comfortable  talking, taking in information, making decisions on information, and how we like to plan things/time orientation.

We will naturally communicate more effectively with a person who shares the same style as ours; however, we can become a much better communicator when we learn to “adapt” our preferred communications style to match the situation/context we are in.  There are no gimmicks in this process.  It is just the opposite. 

You see, when we learn to appreciate another person’s preferred ways of communicating  we can provide them with a message in a manner and through a medium that is more apt to be interpreted successfully by them (as the receiver of the message). So, in the process of learning adaptive communications, we must first learn and understand our own “default” communications style and then learn to recognize the preferred style of the person we are communicating with.  After we have done this, we can and should adjust our style to that of the other person.

Don’t you think having a better understanding of why you do what you do and why others do what they do— would make your life easier?  Well, guess what you are right. This is the journey we are on. Our destination will be making the complexity of human communications easier to understand. So, buckle your seatbelts folks… we are in for a great rest of the year.

Ryan T. Sauers

@ryansauers

Today, we have a guest blog post from Lauren Taylor who is interning with Sauers Consulting Strategies.  She references (in this blog) the 5 Why's Communications Model that she read in my Everyone Is in Sales book and gives her view on it.  Lauren is an incredibly talented senior at a great high school and serves among many other things as the Student body President.

By Lauren Taylor:

When children are young they have the habit of asking “Why?” Often as parents it is easy to become annoyed with the nonstop stream of questions. “Daddy, Why is the sky blue?” “Why do I have to go to bed now?” Why? Why? Why?

Why did we ever stop? The simple question of “Why?” teaches us as parents to better communicate with our children and teaches us as adults to not settle for a simple answer.  “Why” made us functioning members of society yet we gave up the habit.

 Why?

 It made us feel childish and we hit the age where we thought we knew it all.

Consider how our communication would be if we simply reverted to the use of why? Why is a trigger word that forces us to open up and explain. In the case of communications one must be able to successfully explain his or her point of view to others.  

My favorite style of communications uses The 5 Why’s Communications Model. By asking yourself or others “Why?” you are able to reach the source of the question or the problem and gain results. This method not only helps us to focus our conversations but gain a better understanding of others.

So try it sometime and don’t ask me why.

I often tell people that content is king.  And you know what—this is not quite right.  Why?  You see… content is good but great content is “king.”  Think about it.  Why do you become engrossed in a movie or a show? Why do you send a funny video to a friend?  Why do you enjoy talking with certain people?  Why do you like to read certain articles? The answer is simple.  We do these things because we love watching, hearing, or reading great content.  

We are all busy and whether we are in person (offline) or online (virtual) — it takes something special and unique to pull us in and “wow” us. We live in a world where many people have a short attention span.  So how do we accomplish this? The secret is simple.  It is all about great content.  Good content is okay but will always lose to great content.  With that in mind I am going to attempt (stress attempt) to show you what I mean.

The next time you have someone fly off the handle at you with the goal of putting you between a rock and a hard place consider their reasoning.  If your goal is to be clicking on all cylinders… do not settle for being stuck in a catch 22 situation or being limited by flavor of the month type thinking.  Instead, work through all the smoke and mirrors to ensure everyone is on the same page. What does this mean? 

Simple– cut to the chase and get to the bottom line. Most organizations seek to raise the bar in performance so they can get their foot in the door with new clients. However, you must be careful not to jump the gun in doing this or you will be going off half-cocked.  If you move too quickly without proper planning— it will be– close but no cigar. Then, you will be back to the drawing board and have a hard fall down from cloud 9. 

Wow.  Did you just read that?  How many of these expressions do we hear all the time?  A lot of them.  So, what is so intriguing about my writing them?  First, is it creative to try to put all of these expressions together in an original manner to make a point? Yes. Does it provide good content? Yes. 

For blog post to be engaging it must be more than my writing and your reading. It must be a two way dialogue or conversation.  It must be about taking the words that are on the device you are reading from—and have them transformed into a story worth sharing and acting upon.  Isn’t this what you want your customers to do when they think of you?  If you sound like everyone else you are lacking great content.

Always remember, people can duplicate your ideas but cannot replicate your DNA.  So, what do you bring to your stakeholders–online and offline—that is great content. Do you ever think about it? If not you should.  

What do you  think?

@ryansauers

The DiSC model below is often difficult for people to understand. So- my goal is to make it easy and helpful to you.

I am certified in MBTI and recently finished DiSC training and consult with organizations all the time to help them communicate better.  With that said, they are both great personality assessment tools. Both help human beings become more effective communicators. In the near future, I plan to show how different communication styles look in the social media sphere. But the focus of today is DiSC.

As you can see below, the  "D" is the top left green quadrant and stands for Dominance.  The "i" (yes lower case) is the top right quadrant and stands for Influence.  The "S" is the bottom right quadrant and stands for  Support.  The "C" is the bottom left and stands for Conscientiousness.

But what do these mean?  Ok- here is a quick way to understand.  

First: if you tend to be fast paced and outspoken in your action–  you fall in the top half of the circle.  In contrast, if you tend to be cautious and reflective in nature you fall in the bottom half of the circle.  

Second:  if you are more warm and accepting in nature you move to the right half of the circle (from top or bottom).  If you are more questioning and skeptical in nature you move to the left half of the circle (from top or bottom).  Thus, you end up in one of the four quadrants.  There is actually more to this but for now we will leave it at that for now.

But is there an easy way to remember them?  YES!

 Ok here you go:

1) Dominance: these people focus on the what!  And, getting things done.

2) Influence:  these people focus on the who! And, getting things recognized.

3) Steadiness: these people focus on the how!  And, getting along.

4) Conscientiousness: these people focus on the why! And, getting things right.

Ok, think about this and where you fall in the mix.  Where do you see yourself?  Others around you?  Why?

Ryan

@ryansauers

Do you know that what you focus on is what you will feel?  It is true. If you tell yourself something enough you will believe it.

Also, are brain does not undersatnd the word NOT. For example, if you tell yourself that you should stop eating cookies (your brain actually hears- THAT YOU SHOULD EAT cookies).  

So, again what you focus on is what you feel, and see.  However, our brain can trick us.

Look at the picture embedded below and tell me what you see.  Good luck.

Ryan Sauers 

@ryansauers

Well the title says it well.  How do you take on a big challenge?  Do you run and hide?  Do you hope it goes away?  Do you pretend it is not there?  Do you hope someone else handles it for you? Do you get overwhelmed? 

At times, we have all likely felt in one of these ways. However, this means we are operating in an ineffective manner. So what do you do? Glad you asked– peanut gallery.

There is an old expression in business that asks: How do you eat an elephant?  The Answer: One bite at a time.

No, I am not planning on eating, riding or hanging out with elephants– but the idea is still the same.  An elephant is very big.  Think of the elephant as your big challenge.  You have to eat (in this case that huge elephant).  We all start by thinking — there is no way this can be done.  But, it can be done. How?  Through a slow and methodical "one bite at a time" mindset.

How long will it take?  Who knows? But in the end you will have taken on and overcome your challenge. However, your approach must be daily, dedicated, disciplined, and determined.  The "4 D's."

Like the post I wrote the other day "never back up and never back down." 

So when facing a challenge change. Try this idea. Change your word choice to an opportunity. And, know that in few years you will look back on this time and see (if you do these things) how much you grew from the "challenge/opportunity." 

Until next time…  "KPF"  Keep Pushing Forward

Ryan Sauers

@ryansauers

@everyoneinsales