Everyone Communicates, Few Connect

John C. Maxwell

• Editorial: HarperCollins Leadership
• Año: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781418554767
• Categoría: Personal Development
• Categoría: Communication & Public Speaking

The most effective leaders know how to connect with people. It's not about power or popularity, but about making the people around you feel heard, comfortable, and understood.

This book will teach you how to do that.

While it may seem like some folks are born with a commanding presence that draws people in, the fact is anyone can learn to communicate in ways that consistently build powerful connections. Bestselling author and leadership expert John C. Maxwell offers advice for effective communication to those who continually run into obstacles when it comes to personal success.

In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, Maxwell shares five principles and five practices to develop connection skills including:

• Finding common ground
• Keeping your communication simple
• Capturing people's interest
• Creating an experience everyone enjoys
• Staying authentic in all your relationships

Your ability to achieve results in any organization is directly tied to the leadership skills in your toolbox. Connecting is an easy-to-learn skill you can apply today in your personal, professional, and family relationships to start living your best life.

PART I

CONNECTING PRINCIPLES

1

CONNECTING INCREASES YOUR INFLUENCE IN EVERY SITUATION

According to experts, we are bombarded with thirty-five thousand messages a day.¹ Everywhere we go, everywhere we look, someone is trying to get our attention. Every politician, advertiser, journalist, family member, and acquaintance has something to say to us. Every day we are faced with e-mails, text messages, billboards, television, movies, radio, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. Add to these newspapers, magazines, and books. Our world is cluttered with words. How do we choose which messages to tune in and which ones to tune out?

At the same time, we also have messages we want to get across to others. I’ve read that, on average, most people speak about sixteen thousand words a day.² If you transcribed those words, they’d fill a three-hundred-page book every week. At the end of a year, you would have an entire bookcase full of words. In a lifetime, you’d fill a library. But how many of your words would matter? How many would make a difference? How many would get through to others?

Talk is easy. Everybody talks. The question is, how can you make your words count?

How can you really communicate with others?

CONNECTING CAN
MAKE YOU OR BREAK YOU

People cannot succeed in life without communicating effectively. It’s not enough just to work hard. It’s not enough to do a great job. To be successful, you need to learn how to really communicate with others.

It’s not enough just to work hard. It’s not enough to do a great job. To be successful, you need to learn how to really communicate with others.

Have you ever gotten frustrated while making a presentation because people just weren’t getting it? Have you ever wanted your boss to understand how much value you add to the company so you could get a well-earned raise or promotion? If you have children, have you wanted them to listen so you could help them make good choices? Have you wanted to improve your relationship with a friend or make a positive impact on your community? If you can’t find a way to communicate effectively, you won’t be able to reach your potential, you won’t succeed in the way you desire, and you’ll be forever frustrated.

What’s the secret? Connecting! After more than forty years of marriage, a long and successful career as a public speaker, decades of leading various organizations, and experience in helping people develop across the United States and in dozens of countries around the world, I can tell you this: if you want to succeed, you must learn how to connect with others.

CONNECTING IS KEY

I am convinced more than ever that good communication and leadership are all about connecting. If you can connect with others at every level—one-on-one, in groups, and with an audience—your relationships are stronger, your sense of community improves, your ability to create teamwork increases, your influence increases, and your productivity skyrockets.

What do I mean when I say “connect”? Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate to them in a way that increases your influence with them. Why is that important? Because the ability to communicate and connect with others is a major determining factor in reaching your potential. To be successful, you must work with others. And to do that at your absolute best, you must learn to connect.

Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate to them in a way that increases your influence with them.

How much healthier would your relationships be if you excelled at connecting? How would your marriage and family life improve? How much happier would your relationships with friends be? How much better would you be at getting along with your neighbors if you were able to connect with them?

How would being a better connector impact your career? What would happen if you were fantastic at connecting with your coworkers? How would things change at work if you were better able to connect with your boss? According to the Harvard Business Review, “The number one criteria for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.”³ That means connecting! If you learned to connect better, it would change your life!

CONNECTING IS CRUCIAL FOR LEADERS

I am probably best known for my writing and speaking on leading. If you want to become more productive and influential, learn to become a better leader because everything rises and falls on leadership. And the best leaders are always excellent connectors.

If you’re interested in a case study in connecting in the context of leadership, all you have to do is look at the presidents of the United States from the last thirty years. Because every move of those presidents is documented in the press at home and around the world, most people are familiar with them.

“The number one criteria for advancement and promotion for professionals is an ability to communicate effectively.”

— HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

Presidential historian Robert Dallek says that successful presidents exhibit five qualities that enable them to achieve things that others don’t: vision, pragmatism, consensus building, charisma, and trustworthiness. As leadership and communication consultant John Baldoni points out,

Four of these factors depend heavily upon the ability to communicate on multiple levels. Presidents, like all leaders, need to be able to describe where they are going (vision), persuade people to come along with them (consensus), connect on a personal level (charisma), and demonstrate credibility, i.e., do what they say they will do (trust). Even pragmatism depends on communications . . . So in a very real sense, leadership effectiveness, both for presidents and for anyone else in a position of authority, depends to a high degree upon good communication skills.⁴

And what do those communication skills depend on? Connecting!

Set aside your political opinions and biases for a moment and look at the abilities of some past presidents. Consider the differences in connecting skill between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter when they ran against one another. In their final debate on October 28, 1980, Carter came across as cold and impersonal. To every question he was asked, Carter responded with facts and figures. Walter Cronkite described Carter as humorless. Dan Rather called Carter stoic and disengaged. And as Carter made a case to be reelected, he seemed to bounce back and forth between trying to impress people by stating cold facts and trying to make his listeners feel sympathy for him and the burden of his job. At one point he stated, “I alone have had to determine the interest of my country and the involvement of my country,” and he stated, “It’s a lonely job.” He never focused on his audience and their concerns.

In contrast, Reagan was engaged with his audience and even with Carter. Before the debate, Reagan walked over to Carter to shake his hand, which seemed to startle the president. During the debate, when his opponent spoke, Reagan listened and smiled. When it was Reagan’s turn to speak, his appeals were often directed to his audience. He wasn’t trying to come across as an expert, though he did quote figures and dispute some of Carter’s facts. He was trying to connect. Many remember his closing remarks, in which he asked people, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Reagan told his audience, “You made this country great.” His focus was on the people. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the Great Communicator and his predecessor.

A similar contrast can be seen between Bill Clinton and his successor, George W. Bush. Clinton took communication to the next level as president. He equaled Reagan’s ability to connect one-on-one as well as on camera. When he said, “I feel your pain,” most people around the country connected with him. Clinton not only possessed Reagan’s connection skills but also added to them a mastery of the interview and talk show formats, which was critical when he ran for election. He seemed never to miss an opportunity to try to connect. So far, no politician has surpassed him in connecting with others.

Bush, on the other hand, seemed to miss nearly every opportunity to connect with people. His one clear moment of connection occurred immediately after September 11, 2001, when he spoke at Ground Zero. After that he usually fumbled and flopped when he tried to speak with others. His inability to connect alienated people and colored everything he did as president.

Communication expert Bert Decker publishes a list every year of the top ten best and worst communicators of the year. Guess who was on the worst communicator list every year during his last term in office? That’s right, President George W. Bush. In 2008, Decker wrote about Bush, “Soon after [9/11] he slipped back to the shrugs and smirks, and tangles of syntax and grammar. It perhaps reached a nadir in the response to Katrina. Such is not the communications of a leader. Having so little influence this past year, it is sad to put our president as the #1 worst communicator of 2008.”⁵

If you follow politics, you probably have a strong opinion about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. You can say what you will—either positive or negative—about their character, philosophy, or policies. But their effectiveness as leaders was definitely impacted by their ability or inability to connect.

Connecting is crucial whether you’re trying to lead a child or a nation. 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.” Talent isn’t enough. Experience isn’t enough. To lead others, you must be abl...