1. Overview & Welcome: Hello there. I would like to give you an overview for what you're going to get out of this course and essential professional communication skills. What I have done here is packaged together, five key communication skills that will help position you as an emerging leader in your professional setting. After doing live workshops on topics like this for about a decade and 1/2 I can say with a lot of confidence that this is how your boss wants you to communicate. So what are the five skills? At the end of this course, you will be able to communicate more concisely more clearly. You will learn better listening skills, how to build positive relationships with those around you, and you get an introduction to collaborative problem solving. Now, taken together, these five skills will help move your leadership forward very quickly if you put them into practice. So who is the course for? This course is designed for people who already have good, solid technical skills in whatever industry, whatever type of work you do. But you're looking to round out your skills on the leadership side, you want to get some foundational skills to help come across as a leader and work better with the people around you. So your first next step is to continue into the first lesson on concise communications strategies. I will see you in the next video. 2. Concise Communication: Thomas Jefferson once said, the most valuable of talents is that of never using two words when one word will do. He was talking about concise communication, and that is the topic of our video. You want to be concise, not long winded, because there are a lot of benefits to communicating concisely. First of all, it will help you sound more like a leader almost instantly because that's how leaders communicate. They're that nice, crisp sound. Second thing it will do, it'll be more likely that people understand and follow what you're saying, and that's a big part of why we communicate in the first place. Another advantage is that we have a lot more influence when our communication is concise. The overall main point of this video is that concise communication makes you sound more confident and like to share three tips with you on how you can be more concise and your very next conversation meeting in interaction. The first tip is a phrase or a statement that I would like to teach you. You can say the statement out loud, or you can say it in your head, and the statement is this. If I had to boil it down, I would say. And if you say this statement this phrase right before you share your actual message, it will train you into a habit of communicating concisely so out loud. It would sound like this. You're in a meeting. People are talking. You finally ready to say what you want to say. You give it some thought and then you say out loud. If I had to boil it down, I would say, and then you share your actual message. Maybe your messages. I think that Plan A has more advantages than Plan B. And what this phrase does is accused to you into the people around you that you're about to bottom line it. You're about to be very concise. And so having said this, it really prompts you to be more concise. It also gives your brain time to think in time to crystallize that message. Now you don't always have to say it out loud. In fact, many of the clients I've worked with and even I use this tip myself I simply say it in my head right before I share my message. And that cuse me to be more synthesized and more concise. So I just say in my head, If I had to boil it down right now, I'd say it sounds like what you're saying is you want to establish healthier boundaries between work and your home life and by prompting your brain to think that way and just saying it in your head. That's called self talking. That helps you be more concise when you finally do speak out. So that's tip number one. Tip number two is a little different. This is for everyday conversations at work and with other people, and in a conversation. That tip is this. You want to strive for short talking turns. That means when it's your turn to talk, you give about one or two sentences, and then in the conversation, you leave room for the other person to give. They're talking turn their one or two sentences, however long they talk, and by sticking to this discipline of one or two sentences per talking turn, you create a dialogue with the other person instead of a monologue. Monologues air really not okay and conversations if you approach people and you talk at them for extended talking turns a long time a couple minutes straight. It's gonna be a huge turn off on the next time they see you coming, they're likely to try to find a way out of that conversation. We all want a dialogue and by limiting you're talking turns to just one or two sentences will create that wonderful dialogue and exchange of ideas that everybody wants and effect. As an example, I would like to share with you some dialogue from a movie from the old movie Rocky, the 1st 1 that won the Academy Award. The dialogue in this movie is outstanding, and you'll notice that there really short talking turns between Adrian and Rocky and this scene right before Rockies. Big fight, Rocky says. I can't do it. Agent says What? I can't beat him. Apollo. Yeah, I've been out there walking around and thinking, I mean, who am I kidding? I ain't even in this guy's league. What you gonna do? I don't know. You work so hard. Yeah, but that don't matter, because that was nobody before. Don't say that. So you notice in that conversation is lots of back and forth. Short talking turns is the way to get there No, of course in the movie this is not exactly riel life because they're really working hard to appear the dialogue down. But it does give us an example of what a nice exchange looks like because in movies they know that people want dialogue, not monologue, and we should strive for the same kind of thing in our everyday conversations. So that's tip number two short talking turns. The third tip I want to give you is for meetings, and that is create a communication plan before your meeting. Now, what that means is is that whatever value that you're supposed to offer at this meeting, whatever participation you have beforehand, you want to create some talking points so that you're really on point and on message during that meeting. And then once you're at the meeting, you stick to the plan. He resist the temptation to go on tangents and pull the meeting off track. Now one of things this will do is when you share your talking turn really concisely. It leaves room for a question and answer and follow up, and you can flesh out some of the details during that. Q. And A. This is the way leaders do it, they come with a concise pitch and then they have a dialogue after that pitch. The other thing you want to do is if you're in charge of this meeting in any way is to make sure you end on time every time. And this helps create the overall impression that your concise. But it also gives you the self discipline to know that if we're gonna end on time, I really have to figure out what I want to say in advance. And so it's a kind of discipline that you can add to your meeting preparation. So those are the three tips for being more concise in summary. Concise communication makes you sound more confident in terms of your homework, your next step, the action that I want you to take. I would like to think of the very next conversation or meeting you have on your counter and use any of these three tips to be more concise during that interaction. I'd like to finish with a quote from Dennis Ross. If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought banks, and I'll see you in the next video 3. Clear Communication: like to start with a paraphrase from Aristotle. Clear speaking demonstrates clear thinking, and that's the topic of this video Clear communication, mainly through a three part framework that I will be showing you. And the main idea of this whole video is that this is the way leaders communicate. They almost all communicate in this three part framework, and I'd like to give you three tips to help you move in that direction. Now the first tip sounds easy, but it takes a little work to get there, and that is to figure out what your main idea is. If you're writing a college essay, this is called your thesis statement, and as you probably know, it takes a little bit of work and reflection and a lot of crossing out, rewriting things to figure out how to say your main point in about one crisp sentence that takes him work. But the extra effort it takes to get there will help you communicate much more clearly. So in any kind of meeting situation, conversation, presentation, email, voicemail, you have to figure out what your bottom line is. Tip number two. Once you have figured out what your bottom line is you want to break that bottom line down into three main points or three buckets. You want to figure out what you want to say 1st 2nd and third. And once you figure that out, you have a basic structure that you can communicate and offer. Now, if you're in a longer presentation or meeting, you have to preview these ideas and then gives some detail. If it's a short conversation or an email, you can just share them by listing them one at a time. So let's just assume for a second you've given your main point, and then you've previewed your three main points across. You've given a little road map 1st 2nd 3rd Next thing you want to do is circle back around to the 1st 1 and sign post. Remind people that you're talking about your first point. Once you give all the details for that first point, you go to your second point and you say secondly, and then you share your second point details, and once you're done with that, you say third and then you give your details under your third main point. If you only give your thesis in your preview statement. When you don't then remind people by sign posting each of the main points, it's easy to get lost in all the details of those main points. So it's very important if you want to communicate clearly to give those reminders. They're called sign posts, little points along the way where you remind people just in case they got distracted. Now I'm talking about my second point and finally my third point. Now I often get the question. Why three main points? What if I have 10 things that I need this year? Well, if you're still stuck with a whole bunch of items like 89 or 10 items, chances are you haven't taken the time to step back. Ah, level and think about how you might sort these into three main points were going to remember. Three. We're not going to remember 10. So usually, if you look at a list of 10 or so items, you can create slightly larger categories that you can bucket those ideas into until you come up with around three main points. Now, in any given day, if you have two main points or four main points, that probably doesn't matter. You always want to shoot for three, though, and that's a good discipline and habit to establish. Let's give some concrete examples. A couple years ago I lost about £50 naturally and many people have asked me, How did you lose £50? And this is how I would answer My headline was, I had a three part plan for losing the weight. First I counted calories. Next exercise. More and third, I stayed motivated with a friend. Now, if this were a normal conversation, I would just say it like that. But if we were having some kind of meeting update, let's say that I would circle back around, give my first main point again. The details sign post the second main point, then give the details sign, posted third main point and then give the details. But this was just a normal conversation, so I don't go into that. Let's give another example. Let's say you're gonna do an update in your meeting, and the question is, how are things going in your meeting? Your headline would be growth. It's great, but it's causing strain. First, employees were getting burned out. Second, it's been hard to hire new people and third quality is starting to slip. And again, If this were a meeting with more details, I would then add those details and give the sign post. Let's say you're visiting a physician and you have something wrong with your eyes and you would say, Doctor, what's wrong with my eyes and half after he or she examined you, the doctor might say something like this. You have pinkeye. That's the headline, the causes or it's a virus and it gets in there from touching your eyes. Symptoms or its red get itchy eyes, as you can see in the treatment, are these eye drops that I would like to prescribe to you. So that's how this sounds when you give a nice headline and three main points, it sounds extremely clear on the whole thing is built for your listener, so that'll stick. The third point I want to share with you is a tip about using this three part framework not just for communicating, but for thinking and analyzing and listening. And here's what I mean. This is a tool not just for expressing yourself, but for processing the communication that you were exposed to. So let's say you're listening and you're at the flow. You're in the flow of a meeting with some people that work or among some friends. I recommend that you start taking notes trying to figure out what people's headlines are and what their buckets are is an extremely valuable analytical skill that will help you distill the messages that you're hearing around you. You become an A plus listener for content almost overnight when you start doing this. So this is not just a way to express yourself like a leader and express yourself. Clearly, it's a tool that you can use the analyze and think more clearly. And if you're doing it when you're communicating and also when you're processing information, you really up your game in your skills in this area. So in sum, this three part framework will help you communicate much more clearly. You'll communicate like a leader, and you'll start to think like a leader as well, in terms of your homework, your action that, like you take the very next conversation beating email, voicemail presentation, anything where you know you're going to communicate. I would like you to shape it into this headline and three main points and watch this become a habit over time. And I'd like to finish with a quotation by Paul Meyer. He says communication is the key to personal and career success, so thanks and I will see you in the next video. 4. Improving Listening Skills: I like to share a quote with you from the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, he said. When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. In this video, we're going to talk about improving your listening skills, the benefits for improved listening or almost endless. It helps you develop a greater appreciation for other people. Helps you learn and understand more about the world. And it helps you communicate more effectively overall, because if you're listening more effectively when you speak your messages air, much more likely to hit their target. So in this video, my overall point is that listening is the best way to instantly improve your communication , and I'm going to share with you three tips to help you improve your listening. The first tip is to show other people that they matter with your listening, though these tips are all mindset tips, mainly, but in your mind before you enter a conversation. If you can commit to showing people that they matter, it's going to come across in the way you behave. No, when you show them that they matter, Where you're doing is you're taking your mind off of yourself for a little while and you're focusing entirely on them and what they are saying and when you're showing people that they matter. You know what this looks like because you have seen other people listen to you very carefully. When people are listening to you carefully, they're giving you their undivided attention. They're literally leaning forward in their chairs. They're making solid eye contact. They're caring about what you're saying through their facial expressions. That's what showing people that they matter looks like Now we could break this down until lots of behavioral steps, and I'll probably at some point develop a whole entire course and just listening. But if in my experience, if you can change your mindset and think in this conversation, I'm gonna show them that they matter. Most of the non verbal behaviours will come across that way, so that's the first If show them that they matter. Second tip is to listen to understand, not to respond. So you want to listen with an open mind purely to absorb what the other person is saying. It doesn't mean you're going to agree with everything they say, but you're listening just to understand, not to response. See what happens is is when we're listening to respond, we tend to queue up our next comment in the back of our mind and reforming that thought and were not really paying attention to what the person is saying in the first place. That's called a rebuttal response, and it leads to very poor listening. You're not gonna even comprehend very much if you're thinking about what you'll say next. You don't want to have this rebuttal tendency where you're gonna argue against it. Make your own point. Form your own thought, and you're thinking of that it's gonna throw you off track instead, what you want to do is listen with an open mind completely, just to understand that some people would say, Well, what if then they've asked me, What do you think? You can always say something like, Well, give me a second. Let me think about that and then form your thought and respond. It's a classy move, actually, in a conversation, to give something that they've said some extra thought before you respond. So that's the second time. Listen to understand, not to respond. The third tip is to show the speaker that you're following along with them and the two ways to do that by asking follow up or clarifying questions. And another way is just to respond in a short little statement that indicates that you're following along with them now. I was practicing this style of listening to show my wife when we first got married that I really was paying attention to what she was saying. So during dinner time, I said, Okay, during dinner today I am going to listen to whatever she says. I'm really show her that I'm following along. And she happened to be during that dinner talking about broccoli. And so I was doing my job as a listener and I was asking follow up questions and I was saying things like, How do you like your broccoli cooked? And she was saying, Well, not really steamed or boiled, but mostly I like it fried up really hot in a pan so that the edges get a bit brown and crispy, and I would say, OK, that's brown and crispy. I see that. Do you like the flower? It's about the size that on your plate right now or bigger, smaller, she said. We're really I like the flower It's of brothy chopped up very small. That's the best way to eat a little tiny bite size. And I kept listening and asking questions and showing her that I was following along like this, and she got really excited all of a sudden talking about broccoli. So that's what good listening will do to a conversation. And at one point she even said, like Hold on second, What are you doing right now? Why are we so engaged? Why do you like broccoli so much all of a sudden in this conversation? And I said, Well, I'm just working on my listening And as funny as it sounds, she really did appreciate the depth and detail that I was caring about her thoughts right there. So you want to listen and show them that you're following along and it'll lead to a wonderful conversation. So in summary, listening is the best way to instantly improve your communication. Overall, your homework assignment for this video is really simple. That very next conversation you have, I want you to listen completely to what the other person is saying using these three tips that we talked about and watch what happens, I guarantee you it will be a very different kind of conversation that you're used to having . I would like to finish with a quotation from the Book of James. Be quick to Listen and slow to speak. See you in the next video. 5. Creating Positive Relationships: C. S. Lewis, the famous writer, once said that friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art has no survival value. Rather, it is one of those things that gives value to survival. In this video, we're going to talk about creating positive relationships, especially in professional settings. There are a lot of benefits to creating more positive relationships. First of all, when you're positive with other people, it tends to enhance the overall atmosphere for everybody. Second benefit is it is contagious. Research shows that when you treat other people this way, they tend to reciprocate and treat you in a friendly way back so it increases the benefits for everybody. And lastly, one of the Boston benefits for leaders is that when people like them and get along with them, they're willing to go farther for you to get the job done. It's called referent power, so you increase your positive influence just by creating positive relationships with other people. So the bottom line of this video is that you can create more positive relationships through friendliness and likability with the people around you, and I'm going to give you three tips to help you move in that direction. So the first tip is the foundation for everything else that we talk about in this video, and that is you want to take a genuine interest in other people. I know that nowadays, this is not the most popular way to handle interactions and relationships because we're also self focused, and we're all consumed with everything that we have to get done. But you'll probably notice that the people who really touched you the most and who really reach out to you the most take a genuine interest in your lives. When we are only focused on ourselves. We don't tend to connect well with other people. And so what you want to do is first of all in your mind, say, I'm just gonna take an interest in this person right now. Make it all about them for a little while. Ask them questions about their work. Ask them questions about their lives outside of work. Ask them questions about where they're from. People love talking about where they grew up, and this is how you can do this. Begin to take an interest and other people and watch what happens to your relationships. Tip number two is be easy to get along with. You know, I know a lot of high maintenance people. They're fussy and controlling about things, and let's hope that's not you. But if it's you, make sure you are easier to get along with than you used to be. It really helps in a lot of ways. For example, if you have a tone of approachability, so when people come to you, your patient, your kind, your generous and attentive with your time, that's easy to get along with that are approachability. You also don't want to be high maintenance. You want to be low maintenance. High maintenance people get very fussy about things. They have a lot of particulars that they insist upon, and you don't want to be like that when change comes your way. Do your best to go with the flow to be flexible, to be easy to get along with. You don't want to be high, made it you want to be low maintenance. On the third tip is to be generous with your encouragement, no words of encouragement. That's one of the five love languages, and when you're pointing out specific things about what people are good at around you what you appreciate about them. It really can reach into their hearts and develop a bond between you both because it's one of the most precious things to us is when people are encouraging. I don't know about you, but I have literally gone two years in certain work situations where I got almost no encouragement from the work people around me. There are many toxic workplace is out there, and if you're in one of these, you can be a positive force for change by beginning to encourage what you see in other people. I use thes three tips every day at work, as some of you may know, Hi in a college teacher. And when I am in the classroom, even though I'm there to teach and they have to perform well to earn good grades, I know that positive relationships in the classroom create a better atmosphere for everybody, and it helps the students work harder. So when I get there right from the beginning, I take an interest in their lives, approachable and easy to get along with. I give them lots of encouragement, and as a result, we not just we don't just benefit from having a wonderful atmosphere. We also benefit because those students are much more willing to work harder in my class, my classes or challenging. But they will go the distance and they will rise to that level of high expectations because they know I care about them. I've showed that I care about them. When people know that you are for them, they are going to go further for you. That is the bottom line. And that is one of the best things about establishing positive relationships in addition to the benefit of relationships in general. Now, if you're in a professional setting, your supervisor of some sort this doesn't that mean you have to be friends outside of work and spend a ton of social time with people outside of the boundaries of work? I don't hang out with my students on the weekends, for example, and I know many supervisors want to keep a boundary between work and private life, and that's completely appropriate. And I support that 100% other people a little more flexible with those boundaries which can also work. But when you were at work, when you're face to face with people. The key is to build those positive relationships when you can, and you'll see that you don't really have to spend all that much time outside of work to bond with them. So in summary, you can create more positive relationships with people through friendliness and likability . By using these three tips, your homework is very simple. I want you to think of one specific person, the fact I want you to think of that person. Right now. I have somebody in mind, and I want you to take one or more of these tips that we've talked about this video and apply it in that next conversation that you have with that person and then watch what happens to that relationship over time. As you continue to do this, I like to finish with a quotation from the great Mother Teresa, she said. Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Thanks. I'll see you in the next video 6. Collaborative Problem Solving: in their famous book Getting to Yes, the authors, Fisher and Ury said that to make progress, we have to quote, separate the people from the problem. This video. We're going to talk about collaborative problem solving. There are a lot of benefits to becoming a problem solver. First of all, if you're offering solutions in any discussion, you were automatically adding value to that discussion, and you will be seen as much more of a leader. Another benefit is that collaborative problem solving is naturally energizing. People get fired up and excited when they're solving problems with other people. This can create the exact kind of atmosphere that you want to work in. The bottom line for this video is that leaders solve problems, and I'm going to give you three ways to move you in that direction. The first tip is about your mindset. You want to adopt a collaborative spirit toward other people, not a controlling attitude. In other words, you don't want to feel like you have to control the outcome, and so you have to steer the conversation in your favorite direction. Otherwise something bad might happen. You have to let go of control when you're trying to solve problems. The other thing you don't want to do, which is related is you don't want to see the other people in the room as potential competitors as adversaries because that is going to set exactly the wrong tone. If your argument against people in trying to win, then you're not solving problems together, you're not collaborating. You don't get any of the benefits of collaboration. Even if your solution gets picked, it's going to change the tone of the group in a very negative way. So instead you want to adopt a collaborative spirit where you see the other people in the room in that moment, no matter what level they're at as genuine partners that are there to help you solve that problem together next. It is also about mindset, and that is to be flexible. You don't want to think that there's only one right solution for whatever problem that you are trying to solve. When you get stuck thinking that oh, there's only one right way to solve this, it could put up a lot of boundaries between you and the other people around you. Abraham Maslow called this the law of the instrument. Other people call it the law off the hammer, and it goes like this. When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Now, sometimes a hammer is the right tool for the job, but a homey Sometimes it's very unlikely that your predetermined favorite solution is going to work. In every giving case, you have to be flexible. You have to look at all the possible solutions that the group is offering and then move toward the best solution in that particular case. And the third type is very practical in these discussions. You want to make sure that most of the time you're offering actual solutions, not simply pointing out the problem or pointing out the flaws and other people's solutions that they have offered. I've seen this happen time and time again in a group problem solving situation where somebody will offer a solution and then ah person will just start critiquing that solution and everybody kind of gets bummed out. And then another person offers a solution, and that same critic will talk, tell you why that solution is never gonna work. You do not want to be this person. Some criticism is necessary. Sometimes we need 1st 20% of a conversation to identify an analyzer problem, but that last 80% of the discussion should be focused on reaching a solution. And that's where you want to be. When you're offering solutions, you're adding value. Don't be the critic be the problem solver in the discussion. I use all of these tips personally. In fact, a few years ago I have very difficult conversation with a supervisor who was a couple of levels up for me. I had submitted a document I thought was really strong, and the supervisor called me into his or her office and told me for about an hour all the problems with this document. The person was not in a collaborative problem solving mindset, but I had to be. I had to look for a way forward in this discussion because I did not want to scrap months worth of work. And so what I did with every time they came up with a problem, I said, Well, what do we think about this? And what about this solution? How about we work it this way? And I went into that collaborative problem solving mode, an issue after issue, we worked through and found potential fixes for it. Now the person never really did snap into a collaborative problem solving mode. They were competitive, competitive, and they were really committed to seeing one right way. But I have maintained my resolve toward this collaborative spirit and got through the interaction about as well as I could. A few months later, that person followed up with me and they said, You know, I was really impressed with the way you handled that, and I was wondering if you would consider this leadership opening that we have now. That is the last thing I expected to come out of that meeting. But it goes back to the overall point of this video Leaders solve problems. Your homework is pretty simple in your next problem. Solving interaction. Maybe it's today. Maybe it's tomorrow. Maybe it's next week. I want you to spend only 20% of your time talking about the problem and analyzing it, and spent 80% of the time offering solutions. If you get into this habit, you will begin to add value every single discussion and people around you will see you as a leader in no time, I would like to finish with a quotation from Reid Hoffman, Easy co founder of Lengthen. Think. This quote goes right to the heart of collaborative problem solving, he says. No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you will always lose out to a team. Thanks, and I'll see you in the next video. 7. Takeaways and Action Plan: Well, welcome back. Congratulations. You're at the end of this video. We're going to talk about final takeaways and lessons learned from this short course. The first lesson I hope you learn is that people really do want you to communicate this way . I have been teaching communication in college and also doing workshops for the past two decades. And I can tell you time and time again, these are the kinds of communication topics that people want to get better at. Your supervisors want you to communicate this way. Everybody wants nice, clear, concise communicators who listen well and build positive relationships and so forth. So rest assured, these are the kinds of skills that will begin to move you in the right direction if you put them into practice. Second key take away is that these skills are contagious. When you begin to communicate more effectively, everybody around you is going to pick up on that and start to imitate those good communication skills. Now, the downside of this, of course, is that if you're controlling or negative ill pick up on those two. Those are also contagious. So it's that much more important to lead by example and set a deliberate, positive tone with your communication. As you finish this course here, I'd like to suggest a very simple four part plan to put these ideas into practice. Step number one is to look at your counter each week and figure out the different social and professional interactions that you have on your calendar that week. The second step is to make a plan for each interaction where you are going to pick one specific communication skill toe work on during that moment. The third step is to during the interaction practice that communication skill all the way through. So you don't have to worry about all the other things we talked about. Let's say you're gonna work on listening in a particular conversation, Onley work on listening and only work on, Let's say, asking good questions during that interaction. You don't have to worry about all the other stuff. You can get to that the next time around, and four makes and cheat notes to help you remember what you're working on. Let's say you're going to have a one on one conversation with someone where you might be taking notes in a professional setting and in that interaction you want to work on taking short talking turns. That's from our concise video short talking turns. If it were me, I would write in the top right hand corner of my note pad an abbreviation for short talking turns. I would write s t t Nobody else knows what that means. It doesn't matter. It's just a code and a reminder to you that during this interaction, I'm gonna work on short talking turns. And then every time you look down on, you know pad, you'll notice the S t t and that'll Qu it'll remind you to take short talking turns in that interaction. That's a four part plan to put these ideas into practice throughout any given week. My grandfather was fond of saying that you could move a mountain Ah, shovelful at a time. And I think at the heart of that message, this has a lot to do with all of the way we want to grow and learn and communication skills are no different. If you put these simple ideas into practice, you'll be surprised how much you grow over time. Thank you for taking this short course of being communication skills. I appreciate the opportunity to be on this professional development journey with you. God bless, and I will see you soon.