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| 3 steps to powerful communication |
 How do you deal with today’s short attention spans? Connie Dieken, author of “Talk Less, Say More” says we need to apply three habits in this article excerpted from www.cnbc.com.THE results of a survey of 400 business leaders were nearly unanimous: 99% of businesspeople agree that attention spans are shorter today than three years ago and this is having a damaging effect on communication skills. Multitasking was selected by 93% of survey respondents as the leading cause of today’s declining skills. This confirms what you’ve been experiencing both in the workplace and in your personal life. People are not paying attention as you speak—they’re quick to pull the trigger and tune you out. It takes just three habits to conquer this 21st century communication challenge: connect, convey, convince. Connect: Capture people’s attention by giving them what they want and value so they’ll tune in. According to 71% of survey respondents, rambling or taking too long to get to the point is the major reason people fail to connect with others. Clearly, there’s a new urgency for you to get to your point quickly and banish long-windedness. But it’s not as simple as paring down the number of words that you use. You have to stay in their moment and frontload your message with what the listener wants and values most. What’s relevant to them, not just to you? Connect in this manner and you’ll engage and capture their attention. Convey: Use portion control to get your points across with clarity, not confusion. Seventy-nine percent of survey respondents said overloading others with too much information is the biggest reason people do not properly convey their messages. The key to ensuring that your message is clearly understood is to use portion control. Sprinkle in more visuals, present information in triplets, and tell stories instead of dumping data on people. These portion control tactics create better shelf life for your information than mere words. Convince: Create commitment to influence decisions, actions and beliefs. According to 60% of respondents, not explaining why you want others to commit to a cause is the biggest reason people fail to take action. When I ask leaders for their secret weapons to convince resistant people to act, most say they simply explain why they want people to do things in the first place . Revealing your reasoning, along with transferring ownership of your ideas to others, are the keys to persuading others to join the movement. Communication is the single greatest challenge in business today. It takes just three habits to conquer it. Apply these habits and you’ll become the powerful, influential communicator our impatient, attention-deficit world demands Comments (0)
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