Quotes About Communication

Lead with questions, not answers." "Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion." "Conduct autopsies, without blame." "Build 'red flag' mechanisms." In other words, make it easy for employees and customers to speak up when they identify a problem.

Tell someone else about the regret in person or by phone. Include sufficient detail about what happened, but establish a time limit (perhaps a half hour) to avoid the possibilities of repetition and brooding.

Each team member takes thirty seconds to report on their progress.

To oversimplify just a bit, the left hemisphere handles what is said; the right hemisphere focuses on how it's said—the nonverbal, often emotional cues delivered through gaze, facial expression, and intonation.

We're persuading, convincing, and influencing others to give up something they've got in exchange for what we've got.

salespeople adept at improvising "can generate ideas, incorporate changes quickly and easily, and communicate effectively and convincingly during sales presentations."5

One of the most effective ways of moving others is to uncover challenges they may not know they have.

A]n important takeaway from our study for corporate executives is that communications with investors, and probably other critical managerial decisions and negotiations, should be conducted earlier in the day.

Identifying problems as a way to move others takes two

When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories." —ROGER C. SCHANK, cognitive scientist

As some have noted, introverts are "geared to inspect," while extraverts are "geared to respond."35 Selling of any sort—whether traditional sales or non-sales selling—requires a delicate balance of inspecting and responding. Ambiverts can find that balance. They know when to speak up and when to shut up.

Treat everyone as you'd treat your grandmother, but assume that Grandma has eighty thousand Twitter followers.

But the most effective self-talk of all doesn't merely shift emotions. It shifts linguistic categories. It moves from making statements to asking questions.

Physicians sell patients on a remedy. Lawyers sell juries on a verdict. Teachers sell students on the value of paying attention in class. Entrepreneurs woo funders, writers sweet-talk producers, coaches cajole players. Whatever our profession, we deliver presentations to fellow employees and make pitches to new clients. We try to convince the boss to loosen up a few dollars from the budget or the human resources department to add more vacation days.

Hoy día sólo llegan las ideas brutalmente simples —afirma—. Se mueven más ligeras, viajan más rápido.»

They think they know a lot about me, because I know a lot about them.

But all of you are likely spending more time than you realize selling in a broader sense—pitching colleagues, persuading funders, cajoling kids. Like it or not, we're all in sales now.

It's about leading with my ears instead of my mouth," Ferlazzo says. "It means trying to elicit from people what their goals are for themselves and having the flexibility to frame what we do in that context.

power leads individuals to anchor too heavily on their own vantage point, insufficiently adjusting to others' perspective.

In one typical study, researchers found that physicians interrupt the majority of patients in the first eighteen seconds the patient speaks during an appointment, which often prevents the patient from describing what brought her to the office in the first place.

Power can move you off the proper position on the dial and scramble the signals you receive, distorting clear messages and obscuring more subtle ones.

Nowadays, everyone—whether we're the head of an organization or its freshest hire—faces a torrent of information. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the typical American hears or reads more than one hundred thousand words every day.

The monsters want to talk, to share what happened. They want me to remember and write it all down.