Quotes About Communication

If you are leading a change effort, you need to remove the ambiguity from your vision of change. Granted

Intimacy escalates with turn-taking

If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction.

making messages "emotional" is to make people care.

it was like "peeling an onion" where we were going just slightly deeper on each exchange and when finished, we had moved quite a bit.

Language is often abstract, but life is not abstract. Teachers

5. In individual relationships, we believe that relationships grow closer with time. But that's not the whole story. Sometimes long relationships reach plateaus. And with the right moment, relationships can deepen quickly. • Fisherow and her team turned around the troubled Stanton Elementary School by relying, in part, on short parent-teacher home visits before the start of school. 6. According

companies often emphasize features when they should be emphasizing benefits. "The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world's best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy

The point of the Clinics is not to wow you with our creative genius, and it's fortunate for readers and authors alike that this is not the goal, because we are not creative geniuses. The point is simply to model the process of making ideas stickier. In contrast to traditional disclaimers, this is something you should try at home. Think about each message and consider how you would improve it using the principles in the book.

What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage," became the most e-mailed article on the Times website in 2006, and it led to a book on the same topic.

the value of asking more questions and listening to the answers.

As recounted in his book It's Your Ship, one of Captain Abrashoff's first moves was to interview every one of the 310 crew members on the ship. He learned their personal histories and their motivations for joining the navy, and he sought their opinions about the Benfold: What do you like most? Least? What would you change if you could?

a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story. A clever observer will note that this sentence can be compacted into the acronym SUCCESs. This

Our relationships are stronger when we perceive that our partners are responsive to us. (The term used frequently is "perceived partner responsiveness.") Responsiveness encompasses three things: Understanding: My partner knows how I see myself and what is important to me. Validation: My partner respects who I am and what I want. Caring: My partner takes active and supportive steps in helping me meet my needs.

There are, in fact, only two ways to beat the Curse of Knowledge reliably. The first is not to learn anything. The second is to take your ideas and transform them.

When you want someone to behave in a new way, explain the "new way" clearly. Don't assume the new moves are obvious.

Be simple. Not simple in terms of "dumbing down" or "sound bites." You don't have to speak in monosyllables to be simple. What we mean by "simple" is finding the core of the idea.

Ambiguity is the enemy. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors.

In situations where your herd has embraced the right behavior, publicize it. For instance, if 80 percent of your team submits time sheets on time, make sure the other 20 percent knows the group norm. Those individuals almost certainly will correct themselves. But if only 10 percent of your team submits time sheets on time, publicizing those results will hurt, not help.

This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has "cursed" us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our listeners' state of mind.

This three-part recipe—a (1) clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself—provides a blueprint for us when we want people to confront uncomfortable truths.

Nonresponsiveness is corrosive.

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?

The Curse of Knowledge: when we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it's like to LACK that knowledge.