July 25, 2023 • 11 mins
Interviews became easy, teams worked better, and promotions were abundant - when I focused on communication skills.
These are skills anyone can learn - in this episode, Bill opens the door on why communication matters so much at work.
These are skills anyone can learn - in this episode, Bill opens the door on why communication matters so much at work.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Good afternoon. Took me a minutethere, and happy to Tuesday. It
has been crazy and I feel likeI'm behind schedule on recording podcasts. Just
finished a move and not always,at least in my experience, always throws
(00:24):
off schedules. So what's topic fortoday? Communication specifically around careers and and
how to supply to mental health.You might ask, well, because when
you feel comfortable about communicating at work, you're way less stressed number one,
you have way more confidence self confidencenumber two, and you achieve what you
(00:48):
would like to wigh easier. Thisis all good for your mental health,
and it's a reduction in anxiety andpotentially even depression because you're able to make
forward progress in your career the wayyou want to. The thing that triggered
this whole thought process was a conversationwith an old friend of mine about career
(01:12):
success, and as we were talking, one of the things that consistently came
up was inter personal effectiveness i e. Communication and the unsung value of that
skill set, because frankly, alot of the success that I've had in
my career was because of how Ithought about and how I approached communications as
(01:38):
a tool as a skill in mycareer toolbox. And and I'm always fascinated
when I meet people who want toadvance their careers and communication isn't something they're
focused on, and they're suffering,they're struggling, they can't get ahead,
(02:00):
because well, if you can't communicatewith other people, then it's unlikely that
you're going to get the kind ofpromotion or even the kind of notice that
you want. And so really,in this podcast, I'm just gonna talk
about why should be paying attention tothis stuff and why it's so valuable.
(02:21):
We'll get into nitty gritty in laterepisodes, otherwise this sing will be ridiculously
long, and I don't want that. So the first thing is, why
is this stuff matter? Why shouldn'tyou just be able to say whatever you
want and other people get it well, because communication isn't about what the words
that come out of your mouth.It's about what the other person hears.
And if you don't believe me,then look at all the marketing content in
(02:44):
the world. It's all designed togive you a perspective, a thought process,
a desire for some kind of aproduct or service. It doesn't matter
whether it's the latest alcohol or takea vacation in Abitha or whatever it happens
(03:04):
to be. All these things aredesigned specifically to communicate something to you and
to get you to take on avery specific kind of behavior. It's the
same thing when we communicate with peopleat work, or when we talk with
our partner, or when we're talkingwith our kids, or even we're ordering
dinner and a restaurant. There's thecommonality across the board that what the other
(03:29):
person's person hears is what's most important. I'll give you an easy example.
If someone came to me and theytold me the winning billion dollar lottery ticket
numbers, I'd be very very happy, except what if they said that to
me in the language that I don'tunderstand, like Greek. I don't speak
(03:53):
Greek. If somebody came up andthey told me that the winning lottery ticket
numbers, they told me in Greek, they yelled at me in Greek,
they screamed at me in Greek,I still would not understand, and I
would completely miss out on the valueof that conversation. It's the exact same
problem if we both speak the samelanguage, and I see this at work
(04:15):
all the time, where someone willhave a great idea and they'll say,
oh, we should do blah blahblah whatever it happens to be, and
nobody wants to do it, andthey say no, or they say I
don't see why there's value there,or whatever it is. They basically give
some version of no. This issuper demoralizing. I've been there. I've
(04:41):
been that person that problem, andthat being demoralized is one of the reasons
that I started learning how to communicatebetter. Once I learned how to communicate
better. When I propose new ideasand I framed it and I couched appropriately,
people said, that's a great idea, we should definitely do that.
(05:03):
How'd you figure that out? Andthat made a huge difference in both how
I communicate with people on my teamand the outcomes that we got, as
well as leadership, as well aspeople in other parts of the organization as
well as clients and prospects. Ifyou can't communicate with all those people,
(05:28):
you're stuck in your career. Thelevel of your ability to do to write
code, or to fix cars orto paint houses is actually less important than
your ability to communicate. And mostpeople don't They don't understand this. They
think that Oh, I'm a greatwhatever, and that's going to drive my
(05:51):
success. And the reality is it'sonly going to get you so far.
And the person who communicates well,even if they're not nearly as good as
you are at the skill, they'reactually going to go further than you.
When I was running software teams,I was not the best software developer.
As a matter of fact, Itried very hard to make sure that everybody
(06:13):
I hired was way better than meat writing code. My job was to
make sure that they wrote code reallywell, really effectively, that they knew
what code to write, and thatthey got great support so they could do
that job. And they did becauseI was good at communicating. I interviewed
(06:38):
a guy one day and he wasstruggling to get a job, and he
had the most amazing academic background,Like it was just crazy, and people
were contacting him all the time onLinkedIn because of his academic background. Unfortunately,
he could not get past the firstphone screen. People would read his
(06:58):
resume and they would say, ohmy god, this guy's amazing. They
would call him on the phone andthen they would never call back again.
They would never email him. Hehad this happen hundreds of times, and
when I finally got a chance totalk with him, I was super curious
about this, like, you knowwhat's the problem. Well, he can't
communicate, and he doesn't think communicatingis important, and he was insistent that
(07:20):
everybody else should bend to meet hisneeds. And frankly, when a company
hires you, they're not going todo that because there's no scarcity of people
to hire. He had the wrongmental model, and his lack of ability
to communicate meant that all his yearsof academic prowess were literally irrelevant. Nobody
(07:43):
cared once they started talking with him. You can be great at whatever,
but if you can't talk about it, then you're not going to be able
to get ahead. A huge partof that getting ahead is how do you
help your team grow, help yourteam operate better. Whether you do or
don't have a leadership title doesn't mattereither way. And this is one of
(08:09):
those things where people are like,oh, I'm an individual contributor, it
doesn't matter. Well, if youwant to get a promotion, you have
to start acting like somebody who deservesa promotion in advance before that promotion is
going to arrive. Because getting apromotion is a result, it is not
the starting point. You've already proventhe value of your work in that leadership
(08:30):
role before they give you a title. And yes, that means you'll be
doing work for free, but that'show you get promoted. You don't get
promoted because your boss is hoping you'llbe good at your job. You get
promoted because your boss knows you're goodat your job, because you've already proven
your value. And there's some peoplethat are afraid to do that because they
have this mistaken idea that they shouldget paid first. And the reality is,
(08:54):
why should anybody pay you if theydon't know if you're any good Because
it's going to be harder to demoteyou back down if you suck after they
give you a promotion. And besidesthat, when you get promoted, there's
leverage there because now you're responsible fora bunch of other people. And if
you suck at that, that's evenworse for the company because now it's not
(09:15):
just you sucking, it's you plusall the people to report to you.
And that is a very very expensiveproblem. So you need to prove an
advance your value. And again,this is all about being able to become
a good communicator as an individual contributor, so you can be set up for
that promotion. I don't understand whythis isn't taught as a normal thing in
(09:37):
schools these days. It should bereally simple to understand, but just not.
The Other part of this is communicatingup the food chain to it to
your leadership. If you can communicateeffectively with them, you can make all
kinds of things happen, and ifyou can't, you can't. And part
(09:58):
of the reason that my career wasable to go the way it was the
way it did was because I couldcommunicate up the org chart and that resulted
in two things. Number one,better support for my team, better understanding
of why the work my team wasdoing was valuable, and when we needed
(10:20):
to make a change in something,it was easier for the executives take to
say yes because I could explain itreally well because of communication skills. That
also meant that my team trusted memore. My team knew that I had
their back better and they gave mebetter quality work because of that because they
had better psychological safety. Those aresome of the reasons I can think of
(10:46):
to focus on your communication as anindividual contributor at work. By the way,
total side benefits on this. Whenyou do this, it does wonders
for a year, parenting irrespective maritalstatus, and be your relationship with your
partner. So again, this isa really good thing to go after.
Next episode we'll be talking more aboutwhat are the mental models and mindset you
(11:09):
need to have to make this happen, and then where do you actually and
how do you start to work yourway up the communication ladder to get to
be really good at this stuff.Hope you're having a good one, Thanks
for listening.
Good afternoon. Took me a minutethere, and happy to Tuesday. It
has been crazy and I feel likeI'm behind schedule on recording podcasts. Just
finished a move and not always,at least in my experience, always throws
(00:24):
off schedules. So what's topic fortoday? Communication specifically around careers and and
how to supply to mental health.You might ask, well, because when
you feel comfortable about communicating at work, you're way less stressed number one,
you have way more confidence self confidencenumber two, and you achieve what you
(00:48):
would like to wigh easier. Thisis all good for your mental health,
and it's a reduction in anxiety andpotentially even depression because you're able to make
forward progress in your career the wayyou want to. The thing that triggered
this whole thought process was a conversationwith an old friend of mine about career
(01:12):
success, and as we were talking, one of the things that consistently came
up was inter personal effectiveness i e. Communication and the unsung value of that
skill set, because frankly, alot of the success that I've had in
my career was because of how Ithought about and how I approached communications as
(01:38):
a tool as a skill in mycareer toolbox. And and I'm always fascinated
when I meet people who want toadvance their careers and communication isn't something they're
focused on, and they're suffering,they're struggling, they can't get ahead,
(02:00):
because well, if you can't communicatewith other people, then it's unlikely that
you're going to get the kind ofpromotion or even the kind of notice that
you want. And so really,in this podcast, I'm just gonna talk
about why should be paying attention tothis stuff and why it's so valuable.
(02:21):
We'll get into nitty gritty in laterepisodes, otherwise this sing will be ridiculously
long, and I don't want that. So the first thing is, why
is this stuff matter? Why shouldn'tyou just be able to say whatever you
want and other people get it well, because communication isn't about what the words
that come out of your mouth.It's about what the other person hears.
And if you don't believe me,then look at all the marketing content in
(02:44):
the world. It's all designed togive you a perspective, a thought process,
a desire for some kind of aproduct or service. It doesn't matter
whether it's the latest alcohol or takea vacation in Abitha or whatever it happens
(03:04):
to be. All these things aredesigned specifically to communicate something to you and
to get you to take on avery specific kind of behavior. It's the
same thing when we communicate with peopleat work, or when we talk with
our partner, or when we're talkingwith our kids, or even we're ordering
dinner and a restaurant. There's thecommonality across the board that what the other
(03:29):
person's person hears is what's most important. I'll give you an easy example.
If someone came to me and theytold me the winning billion dollar lottery ticket
numbers, I'd be very very happy, except what if they said that to
me in the language that I don'tunderstand, like Greek. I don't speak
(03:53):
Greek. If somebody came up andthey told me that the winning lottery ticket
numbers, they told me in Greek, they yelled at me in Greek,
they screamed at me in Greek,I still would not understand, and I
would completely miss out on the valueof that conversation. It's the exact same
problem if we both speak the samelanguage, and I see this at work
(04:15):
all the time, where someone willhave a great idea and they'll say,
oh, we should do blah blahblah whatever it happens to be, and
nobody wants to do it, andthey say no, or they say I
don't see why there's value there,or whatever it is. They basically give
some version of no. This issuper demoralizing. I've been there. I've
(04:41):
been that person that problem, andthat being demoralized is one of the reasons
that I started learning how to communicatebetter. Once I learned how to communicate
better. When I propose new ideasand I framed it and I couched appropriately,
people said, that's a great idea, we should definitely do that.
(05:03):
How'd you figure that out? Andthat made a huge difference in both how
I communicate with people on my teamand the outcomes that we got, as
well as leadership, as well aspeople in other parts of the organization as
well as clients and prospects. Ifyou can't communicate with all those people,
(05:28):
you're stuck in your career. Thelevel of your ability to do to write
code, or to fix cars orto paint houses is actually less important than
your ability to communicate. And mostpeople don't They don't understand this. They
think that Oh, I'm a greatwhatever, and that's going to drive my
(05:51):
success. And the reality is it'sonly going to get you so far.
And the person who communicates well,even if they're not nearly as good as
you are at the skill, they'reactually going to go further than you.
When I was running software teams,I was not the best software developer.
As a matter of fact, Itried very hard to make sure that everybody
(06:13):
I hired was way better than meat writing code. My job was to
make sure that they wrote code reallywell, really effectively, that they knew
what code to write, and thatthey got great support so they could do
that job. And they did becauseI was good at communicating. I interviewed
(06:38):
a guy one day and he wasstruggling to get a job, and he
had the most amazing academic background,Like it was just crazy, and people
were contacting him all the time onLinkedIn because of his academic background. Unfortunately,
he could not get past the firstphone screen. People would read his
(06:58):
resume and they would say, ohmy god, this guy's amazing. They
would call him on the phone andthen they would never call back again.
They would never email him. Hehad this happen hundreds of times, and
when I finally got a chance totalk with him, I was super curious
about this, like, you knowwhat's the problem. Well, he can't
communicate, and he doesn't think communicatingis important, and he was insistent that
(07:20):
everybody else should bend to meet hisneeds. And frankly, when a company
hires you, they're not going todo that because there's no scarcity of people
to hire. He had the wrongmental model, and his lack of ability
to communicate meant that all his yearsof academic prowess were literally irrelevant. Nobody
(07:43):
cared once they started talking with him. You can be great at whatever,
but if you can't talk about it, then you're not going to be able
to get ahead. A huge partof that getting ahead is how do you
help your team grow, help yourteam operate better. Whether you do or
don't have a leadership title doesn't mattereither way. And this is one of
(08:09):
those things where people are like,oh, I'm an individual contributor, it
doesn't matter. Well, if youwant to get a promotion, you have
to start acting like somebody who deservesa promotion in advance before that promotion is
going to arrive. Because getting apromotion is a result, it is not
the starting point. You've already proventhe value of your work in that leadership
(08:30):
role before they give you a title. And yes, that means you'll be
doing work for free, but that'show you get promoted. You don't get
promoted because your boss is hoping you'llbe good at your job. You get
promoted because your boss knows you're goodat your job, because you've already proven
your value. And there's some peoplethat are afraid to do that because they
have this mistaken idea that they shouldget paid first. And the reality is,
(08:54):
why should anybody pay you if theydon't know if you're any good Because
it's going to be harder to demoteyou back down if you suck after they
give you a promotion. And besidesthat, when you get promoted, there's
leverage there because now you're responsible fora bunch of other people. And if
you suck at that, that's evenworse for the company because now it's not
(09:15):
just you sucking, it's you plusall the people to report to you.
And that is a very very expensiveproblem. So you need to prove an
advance your value. And again,this is all about being able to become
a good communicator as an individual contributor, so you can be set up for
that promotion. I don't understand whythis isn't taught as a normal thing in
(09:37):
schools these days. It should bereally simple to understand, but just not.
The Other part of this is communicatingup the food chain to it to
your leadership. If you can communicateeffectively with them, you can make all
kinds of things happen, and ifyou can't, you can't. And part
(09:58):
of the reason that my career wasable to go the way it was the
way it did was because I couldcommunicate up the org chart and that resulted
in two things. Number one,better support for my team, better understanding
of why the work my team wasdoing was valuable, and when we needed
(10:20):
to make a change in something,it was easier for the executives take to
say yes because I could explain itreally well because of communication skills. That
also meant that my team trusted memore. My team knew that I had
their back better and they gave mebetter quality work because of that because they
had better psychological safety. Those aresome of the reasons I can think of
(10:46):
to focus on your communication as anindividual contributor at work. By the way,
total side benefits on this. Whenyou do this, it does wonders
for a year, parenting irrespective maritalstatus, and be your relationship with your
partner. So again, this isa really good thing to go after.
Next episode we'll be talking more aboutwhat are the mental models and mindset you
(11:09):
need to have to make this happen, and then where do you actually and
how do you start to work yourway up the communication ladder to get to
be really good at this stuff.Hope you're having a good one, Thanks
for listening.
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