Andrew, an experienced IT leader, and Rory, a seasoned professional in information technology and service delivery, have shared their wealth of knowledge on the importance of effective communication within tech and finance industries.
Relive their valuable tips, techniques, and real-world experiences that can boost your digital communication skills.
See the full presentation here 👉 Presentation.
Key Takeaways/Shownotes:
- Gain valuable insights from Andrew, a seasoned IT leader and renowned Toastmaster, with years of experience in global information technology and project delivery.
- Discover the importance of establishing trust and maintaining connections in the digital age, as shared by Rory, an expert in information technology and service delivery.
- Learn practical techniques to improve effective communication in your professional context, focusing on the respectful exchange of knowledge, ideas, and insights.
- Explore the significance of conveying true, necessary, and kind information to build trust and credibility in your business communications.
- Understand the importance of concise and comprehensive messaging, leaving no room for misunderstandings and ensuring sustained audience interest.
- Discover the three critical questions to consider when communicating in the business environment: Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?
Watch the video:
Episode Transcript:
Emanuel: Enhancing communication in the digital age, we have Rory Facca and Andrew Mertens. And with everyone’s permission, I am going to read a short introduction that I had saved here on my screen, but somehow I managed to lose it because I sometimes do that, but I will ask everyone before anything else to go if they’re not subscribed, to go to, how about some marketing.com and subscribe to my newsletter.
That’s the newsletter that you wanna be subscribed to, to become a better marketer, a better person, and a better communicator. With everyone’s permission, I’d like to introduce Rory right now. Rory is an accomplished leader with over 30 years of information technology and service delivery experience in the financial service, outsourcing and transportation sector.
He has worked in numerous iconic Canadian corporations, including Bell, B M O, Aon, Telus, and most recently served as associated Vice President Technology Solutions at the TD Bank. Rory has a proven reputation for resolving difficult situations under adverse conditions, utilizing effective problem-solving and communication techniques to achieve success.
I can hardly wait for your presentation, but before we dive right in, I would like to introduce Andrew. Andrew is an accomplished IT leader with over 25 years of experience in global information technology and project delivery experience, operating in multiple senior management roles. And he has been actively involved in Toastmasters for 12 years, taking a progressively more senior leadership role, and was the district director for the 2022, 2023 Toastmasters year that just ended on June 30th, responsible for over 100 clubs in 2000 active members in downtown and Midtown Toronto, along with his team. And here. I’m proud to say I was part of Andrew’s team.
I’ve been working closely with Andrew for the past year, and I was, I’m so excited about this upcoming webinar. I can’t tell you how excited I am.
I already lost my words. Andrew is an experienced speaker, speech mentor, and workshop presenter, and enjoys helping others grow and gain confidence in the, their communication. Before I pass along the virtual microphone to our guest speakers, I like to say that this webinar is powered by Sessions.
Session is a app that we see, we are doing this webinar on, it’s available at Session dot Us and right now it has a lifetime deal on AppSumo. I’ll be dropping the link for more information. Also, thess web series are in partnership with Aspiration marketing and that’s why you see a fourth gentleman on the screen, Joachim.
Joachim, would you care to introduce yourself?
Joachim: Well, happy to. Yeah. Also Toronto-based digital marketing agency, full service marketing agency. We work on the content marketing side, SEO and web design site. Together with P P C and ss e o We’re partnering pitch as Emanuel did before.
If there’s anything where people are interested contact Emanuel and he’ll route you the right way.
Emanuel: Thank you so much. Joachim has been part of this series and you’ll be seeing more and more of us. That being said, we’re already just a little bit late, but I’ve talked to the executive producer of the show and he said he is okay if we go over the past time.
Without further ado, I’ll give it back to you, Andrew, and Rory.
Andrew: Thank you very much, Emanuel. Thanks for that warm introduction. And I do recommend Sessions by the way, just because I had some difficulty getting in. Don’t let that deter you. Roy and I actually spent last night in sessions and love the functionality.
We just going through a bit of a learning curve, but Emanuel, what I have noticed is that sharing is disabled. So while I do my introduction, if you can enable sharing for me, that would be really helpful because. We do have a slide deck to go through. So while, while you look at that, I’ll, I’ll begin the introduction.
Is that okay, Emanuel? Yeah. Okay.
Enhancing communication in the digital age, breaking through the noise. So first, right off the bat, I wanna, I wanna emphasize two points. So the first one is, this is a huge topic. Days can be spent on learning how to enhance communication, how to become an effective communicator. This evening, Rory and I are gonna touch upon one small aspect.
That’s all we have time for. One small aspect that we think is pivotal and foundational when it comes to effective communication. And if this doesn’t happen, then that communication, that affected communication will not follow. So that’s the first point. The second point is that, we have an amazing array of communication channels and media that exists today.
In fact, this meeting is an example of it. Me and Toastmasters, I’m familiar with teams. I’m familiar with Zoom. We’re now using a new one called Sessions. But all these channels exist, but just because they exist doesn’t mean that effective communication is happening. So again, tonight, Roy and I we’re gonna be teaching or sharing you or sharing with you a simple technique that I know will make an immediate difference in terms of your own communication.
So thank you for joining. It is a pleasure to be here and I’m really looking forward to what’s gonna follow, and I’m just gonna wait on Emanuel’s thumbs up.
Emanuel: Sharing is enabled for speakers and host. You should be fine.
Andrew: Yeah, it says Sharing is disabled for me. Oh Rory does it, is it, is it okay for you?
Now we do have a backup because Emanuel does have the deck. So he could always be sharing for us if, if we can’t get get it ourselves.
Rory: No, I’ve got sharing disabled as well, Andrew.
Andrew: Oh, okay. It just came online there. Emanuel. Just, sorry. It, it just, it just became enabled, so thank you. I don’t know what you did.
Oh, there was a delay in terms of it being enabled, but magic bus, magic sharing dust. Okay. So let’s, let’s get this show on the road. You can see that I assume?
Yes, we can. Yes. Okay, perfect. I cannot see anybody, so I, I’ve, I’ve now lost access to the audience, but Roy’s gonna be my chat monitor. So when I’ve, when I’m asking a question and then I’m hoping, we love interactive sessions, so I’m hoping this will be as interactive as possible. So when, when, when you put something in the chat, Roy’s gonna read it out to me and, and interrupt me there in an appropriate point.
So we have tonight’s webinar Enhancing Communication in the Digital Age, what Roy and I called, and, and this is a small aspect, small but pivotal, but we’re gonna talk about the trust factor. So our webinar tonight is called the trust factor.
Now, before we go into what this means, I do want to, and this is almost like the third, third critical point, what do we mean by communication?
What is the definition of communication? And this is what I’m gonna be asking you. This is the interactive part. If you could type into chat what communication means to you, we’ll come up with it. A definition that we can move forward with.
Rory: Andrew, sorry for interruption, but does Yes, everyone, is everyone still caught on the first slide with three pictures on it?
Andrew: Okay. That’s a good question. Yes, I’ve moved on.
Rory: Yeah, I, I, I know you did because I know what the slides look like. The, all that, all that I see is the, your, the slide one. I’ll
Andrew: say that. Let me stop sharing. Let me reshare. And
what do you see now?
Rory: Communication slide. Okay. A blank. A blank communication
Andrew: slide. Yes. Yes. We’re gonna get into the definition. If I happen to go scroll backwards. Do you see anything? Yes. The, the trust factor. Do you see the trust factor? Yes. Okay. I can’t tell you why I got stuck on the first slide. I will not go back to the first slide, so we won’t get stuck there again.
I’ll just move forward from here. So you can see the communication again? Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. So if you can type into chat what communication means to you. I’d love to hear what your definition is. What are some of the aspects that would facilitate effective communication from your perspective? Rory, if you could read out any, you know the, the comments now, I’m assuming, do people have access to chat?
I see one chat. Okay.
Rory: When individual said communication is getting the message right, I also have exchanging information clearly.
Andrew: Excellent, excellent. In fact, I like that exchange bit because communication, I agree, it’s an exchange. Now, some people might say, you know, this one way commun communication, but tonight we wanna talk about two way communication.
We wanna talk about an exchange. So absolutely. Any, any other comments coming through Rory?
Rory: No. We have the two and only the two
Andrew: Okay. So in exchange, I’m gonna say it’s an exchange of knowledge. That could be facts, it could be interesting information that you’ve read about, you wanna impart to somebody, you wanna get into a conversation, ideas, something that you’ve read, and it’s, it’s prompted an idea.
So you wanna share that idea. And insight. Insight’s always really important because you’ve had a, you know, an epiphany or a eureka moment and you wanna share that with somebody. Again, it’s an exchange. It’s, it’s a dialogue between two people. So, communication, exchange of knowledge, ideas, and insight. I’m gonna add one more critical word.
You’ll see that coming up in blue, a respectful exchange. And why I’ve put that there is that when it comes to communication, we never wanna close anybody down. We don’t wanna say something that’s going to trigger or cause them to become defensive and essentially become quiet, or they’re no longer listening.
We want it to be respectful in that we want to have that two-way dialogue. We want people to be communicating. Again, you know, the, the facts, the knowledge, the information they’ve read, ideas have come across any insights that they’ve, they’ve gleaned. So here’s definition that we’ll be working with tonight.
Yeah, sorry, Rory. Sorry
Rory: Andrew. We did have a third comment coming through and the comment is connecting
Andrew: with others.
Excellent, excellent. And I like that word connect. And you’re gonna see why I like that word. Connect shortly. So communication, a respectful exchange of knowledge, insights, and, sorry, ideas and insight.
There’s a flow to communication. So communication equals, and the first one is trust. So the tunnel was the trust factor. So in order for communication to take place effectively, there’s a foundational element, and that’s the trust. And then this is why I like the word connect. It is a connection. It’s a connection between people so that the connection needs to take place, it needs, it needs to take place
in an impactful way. So when you have trust, when you have connection, then you’re gonna see change. ’cause communication often leads to change because when we wanna communicate, there’s a message that we want to impart, and we’re hoping that that message will make a difference to somebody, that somebody will hear it.
It could lead to a call of action or just some inspiration. You know, we, which we’re hoping to influence people in a way that, you know, would, would benefit a, perhaps a core that we’re interested in. So trust, connect, and change. And if we look at, look at that from a pictorial perspective, you start with the foundation of trust.
And when it, when, you know, in order for trust to be present, the information needs to be true. It needs to be necessary, and it needs to be kind. Now, I’m just gonna put those words, single words, and we’ll delve more into that a little bit later on in, in a subsequent slide. But the trust is the foundation and then you have the connection.
So the connection to me are, are pillars. And it’s through connection that we understand, you know, who are we connecting with, what are we gonna connect about? Why are we connecting and how are we connecting? And the how is interesting as well, because this gets into the delivery mechanisms. And in Toastmasters we talk a lot about delivery mechanisms.
We talk about work of variety, body language. The effective use of a pause, for instance. All of that leads to an effective delivery, which helps us to be more impactful when we wanna get a message across. So that’s the connect, and then we get into the change. So we have it all leading through influence up into change.
And the change could be as simple as, because communication could be educational. So there’s a change in that the person that we’re communicating with now has more information that they had to, had to begin with, and they know more about something, it could be entertaining. We’ve made them laugh.
There’s been a change. So a standup comedian wants to be able to make people laugh. So there’s been a change. It can be inspirational, as I was mentioned before, it could be a call of action. So these are all different things or, or different aspects, different perspectives when we come to communication.
But this is a pictorial of the communication flow. I wanna take a few seconds for you to read this. So, so I’m, I’m gonna be quiet. Have a read of this and, and we’ll get back to this because this is all around the words that we say when we communicate.
The words of the tongue should have three gatekeepers. Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind? An Arabian proverb, one of my favorite proverbs. This has been very impactful to me. This, this quote. And these are three questions I always keep in the back of my mind whenever I’m communicating. And you’ll see those words that were part of the foundation of trust, true, necessary, and kind.
And what we’re gonna be doing this evening is we’re gonna go be going through each of these questions because it’s these questions and what we say that’s gonna establish that trust. It’s gonna establish and maintain that trust. And this is why we’re calling the webinar. The trust factor. So let’s have a look at each of these.
In turn. Is it true? May seem fairly straightforward, simple, perhaps common sense, but it’s really, really important that when we communicate with people that with communicating facts, we’re communicating things that have taken place. We’re communicating things , that, you know, have happened. Within Toastmasters, it’s a public speaking organization.
It’s something that we really emphasize. I mean, you can’t talk about things that you know didn’t happen, that you didn’t hear, that you didn’t feel et cetera. It has to be true. So I’m saying that from a generic perspective, but Rory is gonna be talking about this from a business perspective because, you know, we have, we have our day jobs, we have our careers, and it’s really important within the corporate environment that when we communicate within that environment and oftenly communicating to senior management, that, yeah, it definitely needs to be true.
So, Rory, I’m gonna turn this over to you and you know, let’s, let’s hear some interesting examples.
Rory: Thanks Andrew. And good evening everyone. In business, I cannot overstress the importance of a message being true, absolutely required to build and maintain trust. I’d like to tell you about a couple learning moments for me early, me early in my career.
I was in a meeting and my business colleague was presenting to our CIO, and about a third of the way through his presentation, he was making a point. The c I o stopped him and questioned the point a bit, and unfortunately, for my colleague, the point was wrong. So the C I O piped up and said, well, that point was wrong.
Why should I believe any other point you’re going to make? My colleague had lost our CIO’s trust. Well, several months later, as luck would have it, it was my turn to present to our c i o in front of my peers. He was asking me questions. I was answering the questions. I thought to myself, this is going very well.
On about the fifth question, I again answered the same way. I had been answering with what I think it, and he stopped me mid-sentence. My CIO stopped me. He sighed and said, respectfully, Rory, I do not care what you think. Both of these experiences are a little bit harsh, but very important lessons to learn early in my career.
Simply put the, our c i o expected information that was fact-based. That’s where my colleague fell down. He unfortunately did not have all the facts right, and the CIO’s looking is not looking for opinions or guesses. And, and, and that’s where I fell down early because I was beginning my sentence, well, what I think sir is, and that he, that’s why he shut me down.
So at the end of the day, the c i o and anyone in business, they want to hear a message that is true
Andrew: Great examples, Roy. And, and I like the first one and you’re absolutely right. I mean, If you get caught out in terms of presenting something that is questionable not true, then I can certainly see why the c I O would say, yeah, why would I believe anything else?
Because you have lost the trust there. But I like your second point as well, and, and I think it’s fair to say that, you know, talk factually unless you asked for your opinion. And, and then you could say, well, what I think is, and then you can say why, why you think that. So, so I really like the two examples.
And in fact, if, if I take that second example, how would you, how would you summarize that? I, I always like succinct, succinct phrases or succinct sentences. I always find ’em easier to remember.
Rory: Well, at the, at the end of the day, if you look at if you look at what people really want to hear when they, , when you’re talking about something that is true, they want to hear facts.
They did not ask, as you pointed out, Andrew. They did not ask, ask what, what do you think? What’s your opinion? Take a guess. So at the end of the day, I would say I would summarize this as never guess.
Andrew: Voila. Excellent. Excellent summary. Never guess. So thank, thank you for sharing that, Rory. You’re welcome.
Well, let’s move over to the second question. Is it necessary? Now, this is a really important one as well because we can say a lot of words when we’re communicating and sometimes we’re saying things that, is it absolutely necessary? Is it something that the speaker, or not the speaker, but the person that you’re communicating with.
Is it actionable? Can they do something without information? Because if we say something that they can’t do anything with, then have we wasted their time potentially. Have we wasted our time because we could have been saying something else more meaningful. So when it comes to communication, depending on what your purpose is, what it, what message you’re trying to impart, it’s really important that when we put that content together, when we put those words together, that every, every aspect of it is necessary.
And if we’re talking to somebody, let’s say somebody’s asked us for feedback and we’re, you know, conveying some information to them. Feedback has to be something that they can then work with and action. Because if we say something that, eh, okay, that’s great. You know, well, it’s not great feedback, but that’s feedback that I can’t do anything with.
And, and I’ll give you a really blunt example. So for instance, some people have said to me, Hey, Andrew, you have an accent. I can’t understand you. It’d be great if you got the accent. Oh, well, I can’t, it’s my accent, so that’s not gonna be helpful. That’s not actionable, so there’s no point in that person saying that.
Now, what they could say is, you know, here’s some techniques in terms of Andrew, slow down, enunciate more, because that gives people a chance to catch up because you do have a bit of an accent, and when you slow down, then people’s brains are gonna be able to catch up and understand what you’re saying.
That’s useful information. So the, is it necessary is a really important aspect of when we put our content together. And going back to the business world, Roy, I’m sure you’ve got some examples as well.
Rory: Thanks again, Andrew. So you’re, you know, leveraging your point about absolutely necessary information.
You’re absolutely correct and the business world is critical to deliver the right information in business. An individual as may be listening for your information to take an action. And depending on the level of the individual in the organization, this individual may have the ability to impact people, a team, a client, or even the company’s results based on the information you provide.
So in most cases, in business, people are looking for all the information they need to take an action. They’re, they’re typically looking to make a decision. Hence why you’re providing them information and recommendations. So the message has to be necessary. You have to ensure your message is comprehensive.
It has to include all the salient facts. And be concise. The message has to be as short as possible. It, it cannot have all these extra words, all these extra adjectives, which actually will distract the listener from hearing the true message You wanna deliver a good indicator of missing the mark. Here is a listener who begins to ask you more questions.
Or even more questions. That’s likely means that your, your message is not comprehensive. It’s not including all the information that that listener needs to hear, or that the, the listener may become distracted. He may pick up his cell phone and start checking their email. That’s a good indication that maybe you’re not being as concise as you should be.
You’re, you’re, you have too many words. You’re going down a garden path that the, that the individual does not even want to hear. So a good strategy to form a good message is, and as a lot of us have heard, is the elevator pitch technique. Pretend you just got on the, on an elevator on the 10th floor, and you have from that point to the time that the elevator gets to the second floor to deliver your message.
You need to craft a fact-based message that you can deliver an eight floors that’s about 30 seconds to ensure that the person listening gets all the necessary information they need. I learned this lesson when I was preparing a justification for replacing a client’s application. It would’ve taken me an 800 floor elevator ride to deliver the message that I had crafted.
I had so many words. I had justification. I had justification, layered on justification. Thank God, but before that, I went to talk to the client that I sat down with my manager. And we discuss it and he helped, helped formulate the message into a clear, salient points. It actually boiled itself down to three key points that helped sell the message. At the end of the day, the client’s application was old, that had old technology, didn’t support their current business, and it wasn’t flexible to support any their future needs.
Crafting a message that’s comprehensive in as few awards as possible takes a lot of
Andrew: practice
. . It. It absolutely does. And, and I think you said some really interesting, made some really interesting points there. And in fact, you know, breaking through the noise, when you have too many unnecessary words, there’s too much noise and the recipient can lose track of what are you trying to tell me?
And particularly when it comes to senior management, for instance, you know, they may suddenly get distracted and they don’t hear the pertinent information that they really need to make the decision. I mean, you mentioned. You know, they have to take action. You know, often we’re, we’re, we’re in meetings where the decisions can be made, the decision makers are there and they need the information.
And if you say something that’s unnecessary, it could take even take them down even, you know, a, a garden path or a rabbit hole that, no, no, I didn’t mean to send you that way. It’s, it’s ire, it’s irrelevant, it’s not necessary. So I thought that was that was really interesting. Another thing I thought was interesting.
That you mentioned. You know, if you start getting asked lots of questions, I always remember that when I was going before a senior leadership team, I would try to what, put my content in such a way that no questions were asked. Because if there were no questions that I felt that I did my job properly and that I gave them all the print information, they had everything that they needed, and they didn’t have to come back to me for questions.
I, I remember working for a company where we had a call center and the senior executive said, you know, any question you get to the call center is a failure somewhere. Your call center should be quiet because all the information has been provided in an understandable way and all the necessary information has been necess is, has been provided.
So, Rory, if you had to summarize one of the key aspects of what you just said, what, what would, how would you summarize that? Well
Rory: And, and many times when I’ve had some of my my team craft messages and all that, I would look at the message and I would say, this is great that all the, all the information I need to hear is in this message.
Go away and write it with fewer words. So the phrase I, I, I start coining is: less is more.
Andrew: Perfect. And there we have it. Less is more. Thank you there for Yeah, I mean, I type really quickly there to get the slide out there. Excellent. Let’s move on to the third question, and all the questions equally important.
I mean, it has to be true, you know, the information, it has to be the necessary information. Nothing beyond that, but it’s a kind? This is where you can really close somebody down. So depending on how you phrase something, how you put something together, the words that you use, the tone that you have, you, you never wanna close or make somebody defensive, because as soon as somebody becomes defensive, when you’re communicating, they’re essentially no longer listening.
Their, mind has gone elsewhere. And it doesn’t matter what, how important it is or what other important items that you wanna convey is not being heard. So is a kind is, is absolutely essential. And you think about today’s world and you think about some of our, you know, some of the, the headliners in, in the news, and you think about the things that they say.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we lived in a world where everybody was kind, where everything that was said was kind. Because then you can really get into that respectful, I used the word respectful before a respectful exchange. You, you, you’re not closing people down. You know, they, they feel listened to.
They, they feel important, they feel valuable, and, you know, you get a really good dialogue. Again, Rory, you know, I’m sure that you’ve got some examples out, out there in, in the business world that you’d love to share.
Rory: I definitely do Andrew, and as you already pointed out, , at the end of the day, it’s extremely important that the receiver of the message is receptive to hear the message so that they can process it.
To me, delivering a message in a professional and kind manner means following a couple core principles. The ones I follow is directness and respect. An example of, of how I apply this strategy. Several years back I took over a technology team. One of their projects was budgeted about $6 million. And during the handover meeting with the client, my predecessor advised the client for the very first time, unfortunately, that the, the $6 million project was running a hundred thousand dollars over budget.
Now, of course, the client flinched was a little upset. Internally, I’m thinking, well, that’s not too bad. That’s 2% over budget. But of course, you know, after the meeting I did my, I wanted to do my own digging. So I, I did a, a complete deep dive on, on the project, how it’s going amount to be spent, et cetera, et cetera.
And unfortunately, I determined the project was actually tracking 1.1 million over budget. Oh, that’s 20% and that’s a significant overage. So I had to decide how I, how was I going to communicate this even worse message in the kindest way possible. So I went back to my core principles, oh, you know, directness.
So therefore, you know what, let’s make sure we deliver it as soon as possible and as quickly as possible. I wanted to be respectful, of course. So I wanted to deliver without making excuses, without blaming people. And of course, as we pointed out and the, and when we talked about a message being true, we wanna make sure we are sticking to the facts.
What I also decided to do was to make the message as palatable as possible during the delivery. So I, I , I decided to use humor, so I came up with the following one-liner when opening up the, the meeting with a senior client a couple days later. I said, I’ve got very good news. The project is not a hundred thousand over budget.
I’ve got some very bad news. The project is 1.1 million over budget. Well, I definitely got their attention and kind direct and respectful way, but enabled us to quickly get over that and, and start talking about the details of why and start, you know, looking forward instead of looking backwards. I.
Andrew: That’s excellent.
Rory and I, I love, love that example and some of the key words that you’re using there. I mean, you, you have to keep people receptive. You want them to, to, to be taking in what it is that you’re saying. And I think using humor is a wonderful technique. It, it, it can be, you know, self-deprecating. It, it can, it can way, the way that you used it, Hey, good news, bad news.
But I think it doesn’t make the, the situation or the atmosphere as tense as it could be. It sort of likings it up a bit, but in, you say in a respectful way so that the information is probably more easily absorbed because you know, they’re thinking, Hey, you know, it’s not, The one, you know, one point to a hundred thousand.
It’s but then you, you come in with the, with with a zinger. So yeah, great example. So like going as we did before, how would you summarize? One of the setting points that you’re making, you know, from one of the examples there?
Rory: Well, you know, I, I, you know, if I, if I was to draw you know, a circle around all the points that you were making and the message I’m I, I delivered in, and the, you know, that the example that happened to me in my life, at the end of the day, you have to make sure that the person that you’re talking to while you’re delivering the message, Keeps listening, so I, I, the whole, the whole, the phrase I’ve also used is make sure you keep them listening through your entire message.
Andrew: Excellent, excellent. Thanks. No, absolutely. Yeah, we, we have to, you know, that, that’s the whole idea around communication is that, you know, both of us, I, I’m listening and the people, or the person I’m speaking to continue to listen as well. So let’s summarize what we’ve just been through and, and this is, you know, emphasizing the fact that trust, trust is the foundation. We won’t have time. And I to, to talk about connection. I mean, that’s, that’s a whole nother, you know, huge topic. But trust, you have to have trust to begin with, to establish, and then obviously to maintain that foundation. So we talked about the question, is it true? And, and we translated that from a business perspective.
In, in, into, you know, never guess. We talked about is it necessary. Again, we took one of the points from Rory’s examples and we said, well, less, less is more. You know? Absolutely. And then the last bit that we’ve just talked about is a kind and keep them listening. And when we keep these questions at the back of our minds, when we put together content, when we, when we are communicating, then this is gonna establish and maintain trust.
It can take a long time to establish that trust. We can lose it very, very quickly. So we have to have , these questions always at the back of our mind to ensure that, you know, we maintain that trust. Because once you’ve got that trust, then yeah, it’s gonna lead to absolutely effective communication.
So I wanna finish off, or we wanna finish off or, and I with a another quote, so let me just give you a few seconds to read this.
Communication is a lifeline of any relationship. Elizabeth Bourgeret. She’s a writer and we didn’t use relationship with in the definition of communication, but absolutely it is the lifeline. If you wanna have strong relationships, strong robust relationships, whether it’s personal, whether it’s family, friends, whether it’s colleagues, and professional communication is the lifeline and with communication.
But for that to be effective, we talked about the trust, the connection, the change. You have to start off with the trust. That’s the foundational element of any effective communication. And yes, we have a plethora of different communication channels today and, media, but they’re just simply tools.
That’s all they are. They’re channels, their, their media, they’re tools. We have to understand how to effectively communicate. Within those channels. Not, not that the channel drives the communication. There’s a difference obviously, between online and in person, but we can learn how to do that. But it’s that trust that’s going to, to lead to that effective communication.
And with that, I am gonna stop sharing and I’m gonna turn this back over to you, Emanuel. So thank you. Thank you, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Emanuel: Exactly what I
expected and more. I wanted
to make so, so many comments, but I think I would ask the audience, people who have attended if they have any comments or any questions for our two guest speakers. In the meantime, with everyone’s permission, I would like to read out loud and ask a question.
Who here wouldn’t like to know how to keep their current customers for years and years? Andrew Rory Joachim. Would you like to know?
Andrew: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Emanuel: Well, it’s a well known market, in fact that the, your best potential customers are your current customers. The acquisition cost of a new customer is high and you cannot grow business when there’s a leaking bucket.
Next month’s webinar will be happening on Thursday, August 24th. 2023 starting 7:00 PM and it’s called Learn five Keys to having customers that will stay with you for years and years. And our special guest will be Martha Chan. Martha is a success coach, a serial entrepreneur, and a consumer marketer who has owned two marketing agencies that served Fortune 500 companies and hundreds of small businesses for the past 30 plus years.
She currently owns samedaywebsite.com and bestcoachforme.com. And I highly encourage everyone who has participated here to join that webinar as well. But since everyone’s already subscribed to my newsletter, they’ll get a reminder as soon as I’ll send it. I don’t see any other questions or comments in the chat.
I see something I like this session was combined with real life examples. That’s a comment from somebody from the audience. I, I believe that too. So thank you so much for being able to provide those real life examples because many… it’s hard to relate when you are not. You just simply give.
Abstract examples, right? They, they can be interpreted as abstract examples. Any comments on the last comment?
Andrew: Sorry. Do you want us to comment upon more upon that? More the Emanuel? Emma? I mean, it is important because, You know, you, you can talk about the theory, it can be academic, you can talk about you know, here’s what we recommend, et cetera. But I think it, it provides authenticity. If, if you’re able to provide a real life example from your own personal experience, because then, you know, it works, then you, then you’ve tried it yourself.
You’ve, you’ve used it in action and you’ve seen the success of it. So I think real life examples is, is absolutely necessary and important for, for a whole variety of different reasons. Did you wanna add anything to that, Rory?
Rory: Oh, absolutely. Because actually, you know, it, it, when I was with my, my team and my staff in any coaching or mentoring opportunity that are, that, that presented myself, I, I would, I would use, you know, a, a story I would use something that scarred me or, or something that I learned from when I’m trying to deliver my message.
And what’s funny is people have come back to me years later and said, I remember the story. That you told me and under the story is the moral and the message. They, they walk away remembering the funny little story or the marginally tragic little story, but they, but which forces them, you know, by, by memory to, to by as of memory to remember what the message I was trying to deliver by, by telling them that.
So I agree with you.
Emanuel: Excellent, excellent comments. Now, I’ve been blessed by working with Andrew for the past year. And I was already familiar with the concept: is it true? Is it kind and is it necessary? And it somehow became like a mantra to me, right? Not just in providing feedback and providing an evaluation, but at an extent has the proper say, a gatekeeper for editing that comes out of my mouth.
- I was conscious at first, but I’ve noticed that well, I’m not sure I’ve noticed that I’m, I wasn’t as conscious as I was, but start applying it and not sure if that’s one of the reasons why, but the life tends to be, tends to be better. You’ll be more, more happier when you apply.
Apply this, I know, call it, call it even, even a filter. That being said said. Thank you so much for being present here tonight. I hope you had a great you had a great time as well, as much as I did. Sorry for those who couldn’t attend, but the good news is the recording will be available and, again, coming back to my newsletter, that’s the main source where you, where I’ll be sharing all the information, the links to the upcoming webinars, the recordings and the future plans. If you have anything else to add before we, close this session almost on time, this time. And to end it in the spirit of today’s webinar, after we’ll be closing the session, you’ll be asking you’ll be asked for feedback.
So what would the feedback for tonight’s session will be from your end, including the technical
Andrew: We, we, we did do our due diligence, Emanuel. I mean, we, we did last night meet up and do a dry run, et cetera. So I’m glad we did that because who, who knows what else we wanna run into today. But it is a learning session. It is a learning experience for us because we haven’t used sessions before.
I, I like this, the tool, the software. So thank you for introducing it to us. And we, we now have a, so I hope you’ll invite us again because we have a lot more to talk about, right? We, we do an effective communication series. We just touched upon one small aspects. I mean, there’s, there’s many other topics that we can discuss.
But we’ll be we’ll, we’ll be here early next time because we now know how to get in and, and who to contact and then how the whole thing works. I’ll be earlier inviting us and, and, and as Rory keeps pointing out, he got here earlier than me.
Thanks for inviting us, Manuel.
Thank you so much. Session is a new tool. It’s constantly grow, growing, and I believe you’ll hear more, more and more because they’re up to something, something big. So be patient With it. For those of you who want to try, I encourage you to, to try it. Right now, there’s a lifetime deal.
So essentially, okay, you can get it get a premium version of the tool for like starting 50 bucks up until 600 bucks, which allows you to have unlimited participants and unlimited moderators and so on. Basically saving you hundreds if not thousands of dollars down the road compared to how much Zoom will cost, including.
Other tools that this one tries to incorporate such as Calendly or in Eventbrite and so forth. Thank you again for your patience. Thank you again for the knowledge you have shared tonight, and I hope you’ll be here again as guests.
