Connecting Makes You a Better Leader
/Connecting increases your influence in every situation. Everyone needs to communicate. Our world around us proves that with endless platforms of social media, texting, instant messaging, emailing, and phone calls. We communicate for relationships and we communicate for work or to make a sale. But how many people actually make a real human connection when they communicate? Just because you're sending the vision or a message doesn’t mean people are receiving it. If we learn to connect we can communicate more effectively.
Everyone Communicates Few Connect
This is a great book, chock full of easy to do but brilliant thoughts on effective communication.
If you would like for me to come to your church or office and teach this material please let me know. As a Certified John Maxwell speaker, I will do one free Lunch-N-Learn.
“Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate to them in a way that increases your influence with them. ”
“The number one criteria for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.”- HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
President Gerald Ford once remarked, “If I went back to college again, I’d concentrate on two areas: learning to write and to speak before an audience. Nothing in life is more important than the ability to communicate effectively.
Reread those statements, the best way to advance in a corporate career hinges on your ability to communicate effectively. President Ford remarked that he wished he were a better communicator and that nothing was more important than communicating effectively. Speaking of Presidents one of the best connectors and leaders in American history was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson’s ability to lead others was a direct extension of his ability to make a personal connection. Many leaders in world history demanded respect and demanded that people follow them but Jefferson earned that respect and people followed him because people felt connected to him.
The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
Historian and Biographer Jon Meacham writes of Thomas Jefferson in his book “Thomas Jefferson; The Art of Power, he shares several stories about how Thomas Jefferson was a master of listening and connecting with others so that they would walk away feeling that he was their friend.
“He immersed himself in the subtle skills of engaging others, chiefly by offering people that which they value most: an attentive audience to listen to their own visions and views. Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think. A grandson described Jefferson's tactical approach to personal exchanges. "His powers of conversation were great, yet he always turned it to subjects most familiar to those with whom he conversed, whether laborer, mechanic, or other.”-Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power.
The author shares that even as Jefferson listened to a woman share about how she made a particular meal, he paid close attention and listened with intention and not just out of flattery. Here he was an aristocrat and politician but he stopped to listen to someone normally deemed lower in class than he. How might your communication and inversely your leadership ability expand and grow if you could learn to be like Jefferson:
Listen Intently
Ask Questions
Show genuine interest in the person being talked to.
“…the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think….”-Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power.
Bibliography:
Maxwell, J. C. (2010). Everyone communicates few connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently. HarperCollins Leadership.
Meacham, J. (2012). Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Random House.