The Master Communicator's Handbook

by Teresa Erickson

  Another example was a woman we worked with who was in charge of strategic communications within her organization. She wanted to map the relationships between her unit and the rest of the organization. She was astonished at the result. It revealed that her team had very strong relationships with two thirds of the organization, but very few lines connecting them with the final third – and she had always wondered why this department was so unresponsive to her strategic initiatives!

  Here’s a simplified example of one of these maps:

  There’s an additional level you can add to this if you are looking to connect with specific influencers. It’s similar to the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation.” This is the theory that we are potentially connected to everyone else on the planet by links of no more than six people. The “Kevin Bacon Game” best illustrates this principle. How many people would it take to connect you to Kevin Bacon? You probably know someone who knows someone who knows someone famous in Hollywood, and that person would know Kevin Bacon. That would be four degrees of separation between you and Kevin Bacon. Diagramming your relationships can help you find the best route to connecting with key people you might want to create an alignment with.

  Connect around Shared Values and Vision

  Here’s where rapport, vision, framing and storytelling all come into play, especially if you are reaching out to people you don’t already know. When we find someone with a common vision and values, there’s this tremendous burst of energy, like an atomic fusion reaction. It is as if we intuitively sense not only the great potential of aligning ourselves with others, but also that this use of our energy will bring us some kind of joy. You “click” with them, and that sense of “clicking” is the sound of connection. When people find a sense of common purpose, they will work long and hard together, often without any thought to financial reward.

  If you are meeting someone in order to gauge the potential for alignment, it is important to listen to the stories they tell, the heroes they describe and the metaphors they use. These reveal what philosopher of psychology Shai Tubali calls the primal narrative. These are the stories we tell ourselves about how life is, and about finding our place in the world.12

  For example, someone who uses sports metaphors and tells stories about big wins or losses in life might have a primal narrative centered on competition. If you have a similar affinity for competition, this might spur the two of you to want to join the “same team” in some common endeavor. The purpose is to see if you can find a common value. This will allow you to recognize each other as belonging to the same tribe. As soon as this happens, a sense of “in group” identity gets created which becomes the basis for collaboration.

  Similarly, if you are seeking to connect with others, think about what you value as ends in themselves. What stories do you tell that reveal your passion and vision? As we were mastering this concept ourselves several years ago, we realized we were not doing as good a job as we could at engaging new clients around the courses we were most excited about. So we changed our tactics. Instead of describing the content of our programs, we led with our passion for creating transformation through communications. This resulted in a remarkable shift. We found ourselves working much more with leaders who shared our passion.

  When you “click” with someone around shared values and vision, you find yourselves searching for ways to collaborate. How can you do this most efficiently?

  Compromise

  Compromise seems negative to many people. It implies a power struggle: giving up something in order to get something. In work and personal relationships we often approach compromise like negotiators seeking to maximize our gain and minimize our loss. But when it comes to alignment, compromise means something different. It goes back to the Latin root of the word, which implies a “com” – meaning “together,” and “promise” – meaning to “send forward.” So compromise can be considered a “sending forward together,” which is a great definition of alignment.

  Mature compromise is not a power struggle. Instead, you can acknowledge that the other person has a strong and independent will. In fact, you want that other person to be as powerful as possible. You also want them to stay different from you, because that difference brings different skills and resources, and makes you more powerful when aligned. Think for example of the comic-book heroes, The Avengers. Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow – each brings their unique power to the team, which is what makes them strong.

  Compromise, then, can be a way of working together that allows each of you to maximize your strength. Sometimes this means yielding to each other when there is conflict. Sometimes it means being willing to hold the tension of different views until you can find a way forward.

  We often do this ourselves when we create a new course. Tim, with his background as a non-fiction author, relishes complexity. Tim prefers to design course modules that contain a comprehensive theoretical explanation so participants can understand how fascinating these ideas are, and where they come from. As a former radio host and editor, Teresa is attuned to the ease with which a listener will be able to grasp content. To her, shorter is almost always better. Information should be practical, and any theoretical content must be followed by an example of its application. We’ve learned that when we value each other’s perspective more than getting our own way, we come up with something better than either of us could have designed on our own.

  One of the most amazing organizations we’ve worked with that puts alignment into practice is an NGO based in Washington named Machik.13 This is a group that works with Tibetans inside Tibet on education, environmental and social issues across the plateau. Once a year they bring together Chinese policy researchers from Beijing with respected Tibetan community and civic leaders for a unique discussion and exchange on the challenges of governance in Tibet. Previously these two groups never interacted. Most people are aware that these are uncertain times in Tibet. Yet the people who come together for this dialogue have forged a bond and commitment around the vision of a peaceful future for Tibet.

  In sum, alignment multiplies your ability to create transformation. The truth is, most people in the world follow their own desires, and often these push and pull us in different directions, so that the overall result is not momentum towards a particular goal, but a global inertia. You could even conceive of society as like a giant hot-air balloon or floating blimp. It’s vast, but motionless. However, if you blew on it from one direction with enough people and sustained force, sooner or later the balloon would respond to the pressure and begin to move in the direction you push it.

  That’s the power alignment can create. It’s a force that can change the world.

  References

  1. Collier, Richard, The World in Flames. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980, p. 352.

  2. Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, paraphrased quote from NPR interview on Morning Edition, 7 December 2012.

  3. Kelly McGonigal, “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” TedGlobal, 2013. https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.

  4. Able, Ernest; Kruger, Michael, “Smile Intensity in Photographs Predicts Longevity,” Psychological Science, Wayne State University, 4-8-2010.

  5. Carney, Dana R.; Cuddy, Amy J. C.; Yap, Andy J., “Power Posing – Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance,” Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, October 2010.

  6. Amy Cuddy, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” TedGlobal 2012. http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

  7. For more information on how to improve your voice: Dr Susan Miller, Be Heard the First Time, Capitol Books, 2006.

  8. Dr Dan M. Kahan, Washington Post Blog, 23 February 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/23/you-can-change-the-minds-of-climate-change-skeptics-heres-how/

  9. Carla Harris, Expect to Win: 10 Proven Strategies for Thriving in the Workplace, Plume, 2009.

  10. Simon S
inek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Portfolio Books, 2011.

  11. Dr Paul Zak, “The Neuroscience of Narrative,” Cerebrum, www.Dana.org, February 2015.

  12. Shai Tubali and Tim Ward, Indestructible You: Building a Self that Can’t Be Broken, Changemakers Books, 2015.

  13. For more information: www.machik.org

  About the Authors

  Teresa Erickson and Tim Ward are co-owners of Intermedia Communications Training, Inc. Together they have designed and led hundreds of communications workshops around the world, working with organizations such as WWF, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the Asian and African Development Banks, the World Health Organization and the United Nations.

  Born in Portugal, Teresa worked with the Voice of America for 19 years, from 1980 to 1999, as a producer, editor, and host for 7 years of VOA’s flagship public affairs program broadcast worldwide to 90 million listeners a week. Her reporting has won numerous awards and she has voiced award-winning documentaries for broadcast in Brazil and Portugal.

  Tim is a former print journalist and a well-known author in his native Canada. He has written eight books, including the bestseller, What the Buddha Never Taught, and Indestructible You (with Shai Tubali). Tim is also publisher of Changemakers Books.

  Contact:

  www.intermediacommunicationstraining.com

  twitter: @MessageCraft

  www.facebook.com/Intermediact

  Changemakers publishes books for individuals committed to transforming their lives and transforming the world. Our readers seek to become positive, powerful agents of change. Changemakers books inform, inspire, and provide practical wisdom and skills to empower us to create the next chapter of humanity’s future.

  Please visit our website at www.changemakers-books.com