Quick Summary
Presentation Outline
We typically believe that our preferred communications style – verbose or terse, direct or subtle – is the best way to communicate with others. The challenge is that we are asking them to work to adapt to our style. If we want to really connect with others, we need to move beyond our default approach and find new ways to speak the language of our listener. This is not nearly as hard as it seems.
- Connectors connect on common ground – When we start, the most effective thing that we can do is to highlight the places where we are in agreement – making the differences as minor as they can be. Once we have identified the places we agree – the common ground that we share, we’ve laid the ground work to have a deep conversation about the differences we have.
- Connecting increases your influence in every situation – When we invest the time to really understand the other person’s point of view, and we communicate that to them in a way they understand, our influence is significantly higher with them. This is very doable, and yet most of us are too busy to make the time to do it. We spend far more time “cleaning up the messes” we create from the lack of connection we have with others.
- Connectors do the difficult work of keeping it simple for others – Whatever we can do to talk to people where they are, get to the point, say it over and over, say it clearly, and be brief will strongly impact our ability to win others to our way of thinking.
Participants will walk away with a framework for connection that they can employ with their coworkers, partners, managers and clients right away. They will have some simple ideas that help them move from idea to action.
Target Audience
This presentation is ideal for teams of experts who are struggling to find practical ways to communicate with each other effectively. I have delivered this content to software and IT companies, engineering firms, executive leadership teams, professional services firms, human resources teams, and technology associations.
Possible Formats
Intended Outcomes
- Audience members will understand key principles of communication that they may have forgotten
- Participants will rediscover some easy ways to make their message more accessible to others
- Everyone will be able to identify specific people with whom they need to communicate more effectively, and can use ideas from this conversation to help them make the connection that they need.
Topic Authority
- Based on the principles from John Maxwell’s Best Selling book by the same name, I have worked with teams in technical organizations to tailor this content to the challenges that highly technical experts face every day. I have worked for the last several years with project mangers, application developers, and leaders in technology firms to help them overcome challenges that they are facing and really improve their communication, connection and collaboration with others.
- As a Founding Partner in the John Maxwell team, for the last several years I have been an executive coach working with teams in multi-billion dollar companies and have seen over and over again how implementation of these principles transforms culture and addresses key challenges that people are facing every day.
