Into the Wolf

How do we bring our minds and our communication to a place of openness and trustworthiness? By letting go of judgmental thinking. Sounds good, right? Well, how do we do that? We can start by being more curious about ourselves and others. It's impossible to be both curious and judgmental because curiosity is inherently open and wants to learn. If we can put ourselves in that mindset, we can open up our thinking and our communication. This podcast offers ways to practice thinking in a different way and how that might impact your communication.

It is difficult to communicate information to an audience without putting that into a story. It is also difficult to have your story heard if you aren't aware of the stories that are already out there. Communication rarely happens in an uncluttered space, so we have to be aware not only of our own story that we are telling, but also of the stories that already exist. This podcast is meant to give some examples of how we can be better storytellers and understand how our stories fit within a bigger frame of reference. 

Why do we have such a difficult time understanding how people receive us, and how can we give people better feedback on how they're behaving. It helps me to know that the way that we look at our own behaviors is fundamentally different than the way that we look at other people's. Everything that I do has a legitimate reason based on the situation I'm in, while everything that you do (from my perspective) looks like you just being you. The better we understand this conflict of perspective, the easier it is to understand why we struggle to understand each other and have a positive impact on each other. 

"Nobody cares what you know unless they know that you care." -Teddy Roosevelt In this episode I talk about the value of understanding the real differences between our intention and our impact in our communication. We often communicate with this assumption that everyone will (or should) understand our intentions and that our impact doesn't matter. The truth is that most of us care more about the impact we feel from our communication with others than we do about their intentions (or at least we like to assume we understand their intentions based upon the impact). The better we are at aligning our impact with our intentions, the more effective we are at communicating with clarity and trustworthiness.  

What gets in the way of understanding each other? When we often talk about strategies and ideas it quickly devolves into a debate about "right and wrong" rather than a sharing of ideas. This is true whether it's about politics or where to go for dinner. In this podcast I talk about the importance of identifying what is an absolute (capital T) Truth and what is a personal (lowercase "t") truth. The better we are at owning what is our own personal truth (Peppermint ice cream is my favorite) rather than trying to make them absolute Truths (Peppermint ice cream is the only kind of ice cream worth eating), the easier it is to both share our perspective and influence others. This episode discusses vulnerability, clarity and owning your own truth, which can lead to better communication and greater collaboration.