Understand Your Audience

What are your core beliefs about effective communication?

One, try to be as clear as you possibly can, sometimes concise, which sometimes is an issue for me, I'm not as concise as I'd like to be, and to be clear about the audience to which you're speaking, understand your audience about what you're speaking. I've had a lot of opportunities to present to folks, so being able to think clearly about what you want to communicate. One of the things my speech writer already says, "Kevin, if you got more than three things you're trying to tell people, that's way too much, way too much."

Pick one.

Pick one, and then pick it again and say it again and say it again. When people leave, they say, "Okay, he talked about this 10 times," and that's -- so making sure you don't get too broad, making sure you repeat what it is that you want folks to know, and you tell them and you tell them again. So those are the things that I try to do when I communicate if I'm doing it effectively, which not all the time. You're easy to talk to.

I've learned how to listen. So that actually segues into my next question, how important is listening to the communication process?

Extremely. I would say early in my career as a supervisor, I wanted to get to the answer first. Now I realized that the best answer is to sit and listen to what people have to say. I wasn't always as patient as I currently am. I learned that I need to listen to folks. And as you know, there's a difference between hearing and listening. Oftentimes people say, "I heard what you said." No, no, no, but did you listen? Did you get the message that I was trying to deliver? So what I've tried to do is learn to slow down, look at that person right in the eye, and try to make sure I'm connecting with who it is and what they're saying so I can fully understand what message that they're trying to deliver to me. Not easy, but I try hard at it. It's patience.

Yeah. Well, there is a difference, right, between, "Oh, yeah, I heard you, I heard you" and truly hearing. And truly hearing means you need to truly listen.

Exactly. Active listening is what you want to focus on.