Order of Man - 5 Strategies for Killer Communication ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart

00:00:05.000 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:10.420 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who

00:00:17.220 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:22.760 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.

00:00:27.780 I'm your host and founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here and welcome

00:00:32.220 back. If you're listening, you won't really know what I'm talking about in the next 10 to 15 seconds

00:00:38.120 here. But if you're watching on YouTube, youtube.com slash Order of Man, you can see that I finally got,

00:00:44.960 I think for the most part, my camera worked out, still working through some of the fine tuning and

00:00:50.640 refining and making it the way that we want to make it. But it looks like we're getting there.

00:00:55.480 So please bear with me. I want to continue to make this a good experience for you.

00:00:59.860 And part of that is experimenting with new technology that will help us reach more and

00:01:04.900 more people. And on the topic of reaching more people, that's actually what I wanted to talk with

00:01:09.320 you about today, because we're going to be talking about five key strategies for communicating

00:01:15.520 effectively with other people. This is so important. Guys, if there's one skill that you can

00:01:22.500 develop in your life that will drastically and radically improve the results of your life,

00:01:28.280 it's your ability to communicate effectively with others. So I'm going to get into five key

00:01:32.740 strategies to be able to do that. Before we get into it, just want to make a quick mention of my

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00:02:27.620 use the code order. You're going to save some money. That's the biggest thing. You're going to save some

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00:02:35.740 what we're doing here. So that supports everybody. So originusa.com and then use the code

00:02:41.260 order order, O-R-D-E-R at checkout. All right, guys, let's talk about effective communication.

00:02:46.380 As I said earlier, it's the single greatest strategy that I've used in my life to produce

00:02:53.440 the results that I have. Whether that's on the home front, on the business front, the career front,

00:02:59.760 the political front, wherever, you're always going to have to deal with other people. And if you can't

00:03:05.880 learn how to effectively communicate with those individuals, then you're not nearly going to get the

00:03:10.940 results from them and from the project and the task and then whatever it is you're working on

00:03:16.120 that you could otherwise, if you learned how to communicate effectively. So I'm going to share

00:03:20.620 my most powerful strategies for communicating effectively with other people. Again, this works

00:03:27.540 on any front. Number one, you have to know what your objective is. If you don't know what your

00:03:34.360 objective is, if you don't know what you're trying to accomplish, there's no conversation,

00:03:38.400 there's no question that you could ask, there's no conversation you could have, there's no dialogue

00:03:43.680 that can take place that's going to come out with any sort of meaning or significance.

00:03:48.720 This is why I get so frustrated with small talk. Small talk, sure, maybe it serves its purpose.

00:03:53.980 But if you're anything like me, you have way more important things to do than talk about the

00:03:59.120 weather or the baseball or the football team or whatever it is people talk about. You want to talk

00:04:04.620 about something more significant, more deeply than who hit the most home runs last year, which

00:04:12.020 I have no idea. You guys, some of you guys might, but I have no idea. You want to get deeper than

00:04:18.580 that. All right. You're concerned with your relationship with your wife. You're concerned

00:04:22.520 with the relationship with your kids. You're concerned with making sure that you're picking up

00:04:27.560 new clients, that you're asking for referrals, that you're communicating with your boss. If you're in

00:04:33.540 the political realm, that you're reaching your constituents, if you're doing charitable work,

00:04:40.280 or you're coaching a sports youth team, you want to be able to effectively reach and connect with

00:04:46.840 those you're trying to serve. But the first thing you need to do is know exactly what you want to

00:04:50.700 accomplish. Because guys, if you don't know what you want to accomplish, then anything that you say,

00:04:55.860 any question that you can ask really isn't all that relevant in the grand scheme of things.

00:05:01.640 So what exactly do you want? And when I say, what do you want? I'm talking about getting crystal clear,

00:05:06.760 not, Hey, I want to be more successful. Not, I want to have a better relationship with my wife.

00:05:11.960 Not, I want to connect with my kids. But if you're talking about the relationship with your wife,

00:05:15.860 maybe it's, you want to be more intimate on a regular basis. Okay. That's your objective.

00:05:19.640 That's the starting point. If it comes to playing or coaching youth sports, what's the objective?

00:05:27.020 Is it to win? Maybe, but even deeper than that, it's to teach these young kids about life through

00:05:34.560 baseball or football or basketball or wrestling, wrestling or powerlifting or whatever your thing

00:05:39.760 is. That's your objective. If it's to serve your clients and work with those clients and have better

00:05:45.120 communication with them, what is your objective? Is it to serve them more effectively? Early on in

00:05:49.860 my financial planning practice, all throughout my financial planning practice, in fact, I wanted

00:05:55.080 to serve my clients. I wanted to help them. I wanted them to become debt-free. I wanted to help them with

00:05:59.360 their investment and retirement strategies, with their insurances, with their legal documents.

00:06:05.600 And so my objective was to educate them in a way that would serve them most effectively.

00:06:11.360 And if I know what that objective is, then I can more effectively communicate with them because I'm

00:06:18.100 able to frame my discussion and the conversation, the questions I'm asking in that light, in that

00:06:25.000 context. So number one, know specifically what your objective is. Number two, you need to seek to

00:06:31.520 understand what their objective is because they're not always in alignment. If I'm speaking with my kids

00:06:39.940 and I'm telling them to take out the trash because I want the house to be clean and I want all of us to

00:06:45.960 have responsibility with the trash, my children's objective might be to do as little as they possibly can

00:06:51.980 and to hurry and go watch that TV show or go play with their friends. I remember when I was little, you

00:06:59.460 know, on Saturday, I'd ask my mom, hey, can I go play with Billy? And she says, yes, you can as soon as your

00:07:05.260 chores are done. So her objective was to make sure the house was orderly and tidy and clean. And my

00:07:11.120 objective was to go play with little Billy. Those objectives are somewhat at odds, but she could

00:07:16.600 tailor her communication in a way that made sense to me, which is, hey, the sooner you get this done

00:07:22.320 to the best of your ability, the sooner you can go play with little Billy. That made sense to me.

00:07:28.080 And that's why we need to seek to understand. If you're only looking at your communication through

00:07:33.440 the lens of what you want, you're missing a large part of the con, you're missing half the

00:07:37.800 conversation, which is what does the other person want? What does your client need? You know, if you're

00:07:44.100 in a financial planning practice and you want to sell a bunch of investments or mutual funds to a

00:07:49.200 client, but they're really worried about making sure their insurances are taken care of, like why in the

00:07:55.320 world would you talk about investments? Talk about insurance or vice versa. The point is, is that you

00:08:02.120 really need to understand what people's objectives are, what their motives are, what it is they're

00:08:08.100 trying to accomplish, how they receive information. There's also a lot of other things that come into

00:08:14.680 play. Like, do you remind them of somebody? You know, if the way that you communicate is very

00:08:20.340 similar to their parents and they hate their parents, you're going to have a hard time connecting

00:08:26.440 with that person. So, you have to understand what it is that they're after, who they are as

00:08:34.340 individuals. And it might seem counterintuitive because if you're like me, you've got a lack of

00:08:40.540 patience. You want to get things done now, but I can assure you that the more you take a deep breath

00:08:45.960 and you slow down and you start to think about who they are as individuals and how you might be able to

00:08:51.260 serve them, it's much more efficient. It's much more effective than just trying to fit every square

00:08:57.360 peg into a round hole. It's not going to work. And so, along these same lines, and this is point

00:09:03.540 number three about number one, knowing your objective. Number two, seeking to understand

00:09:07.420 is number three, is that you should always be asking questions. Questions are such a powerful thing,

00:09:15.300 whether it's a client you're working with, your wife you're wanting to communicate with,

00:09:19.360 your kids you're wanting to connect with, or anybody else. Asking positive, good, solid questions

00:09:27.680 is an incredible way to build up rapport with other people and to figure out what they want and then to

00:09:35.400 also enlist them to what it is you want. And contrary to popular belief, there are bad questions.

00:09:42.740 You know, the popular belief is there's no bad questions only, or how does it go? It was no bad

00:09:50.200 questions. There's no bad question. Well, there is a bad question, but better said, there's good

00:09:57.480 questions, good questions. And that's what I want you to consider as you're working with other people

00:10:03.500 is what are good questions to ask? Number one, here's another little framework for you. They're specific.

00:10:09.420 If you want to work with a colleague or maybe an employer or an employee of yours, and you want to

00:10:17.200 really know what makes them tick to see if you can find alignment between what they're after and what

00:10:22.120 you are after, and you want to ask this person questions, you need to be specific. If it's broad,

00:10:30.020 you're not going to get as good a response. So if you say to an employee, for example,

00:10:33.460 hey, what do you want out of life? You're not giving that employee any direction and they don't

00:10:39.900 know what you're looking for. A better question is, hey, what are you trying to accomplish by

00:10:46.980 working here over the next six months? You can see the difference. What do you want to accomplish

00:10:52.940 out of life versus what would you like to accomplish here while you're working with us over the next six

00:10:58.640 months? That's more specific or even more specific. Hey, Steve, I put you on this assignment of client

00:11:07.080 outreach, and I would like to ask you if we were to measure the results and the success of this project

00:11:14.200 that I've tasked you with, how would you measure whether or not it was a success or a failure?

00:11:21.020 That's even more specific than what you'd want to accomplish. The more specific you can get with

00:11:26.980 your questions, the better off you're going to be and the better answers you're going to receive.

00:11:32.140 Let me give you another example. If you were to go do a little experiment today and you said to the

00:11:37.040 next 10 or 15 or 20 people you saw and you said, how are you? The overwhelming majority of them would

00:11:44.600 say, I'm good, doing well, doing okay, or something like that. If on the other hand, you said, hey,

00:11:52.500 Steve, good to talk with you. What's been the best part of your day so far?

00:11:57.980 That's going to elicit a completely different response than good. Okay. I'm doing fine.

00:12:05.200 And that's what you want in communication. It's a two-way street, right? You want them to participate

00:12:09.900 in the discussion and you want to participate in the discussion. The next point about asking solid

00:12:14.720 questions is making sure that these things are relevant. All right. So many times we ask questions

00:12:19.380 and it's like, I don't care about that question. I don't care about the answer. If you ask me a question

00:12:23.940 about who won the Superbowl, I don't, honestly, I don't even know. I don't even think I could tell

00:12:32.800 you who won the Superbowl because it's not relevant to me. And I'm not saying you should

00:12:36.480 or shouldn't think it's relevant. It's just not relevant to me. So if you're asking one of your

00:12:43.200 employees something that has nothing to do with either themselves or their job performance,

00:12:48.480 it's a wasted question. Make it relevant. Something that's crucial, something that's important,

00:12:55.040 something that's on your client's mind or your employee's mind, and you're going to have a better

00:12:59.440 time with those questions. Now, this is the third point with regards to asking good questions.

00:13:04.000 And it's crucial, especially in today's society, because we don't do this too often. And that is

00:13:11.160 to be honest with your questions. Honest with your questions. If you're asking me a rhetorical

00:13:20.500 question, that's not an honest, you're not actually looking for the answer, right? So that's not an

00:13:24.980 honest question. If you're asking me a question to be a smart ass, then that's not an honest question. 0.92

00:13:32.780 If you're asking me a question to tee me up so that you can move into your next talking point about 0.95

00:13:38.700 why all the things I say are wrong and why I'm a horrible human being, that is not an honest

00:13:44.580 question. An honest question is one in which you are genuinely striving to understand the answer to

00:13:53.720 said question. That's how you know whether or not it's being honest, is that you can understand the

00:14:00.300 other party and you can begin to look at it and understand more about the way that you show up.

00:14:06.780 So ask good questions. When I'm doing a podcast and the single greatest thing that has improved

00:14:10.900 my ability to podcast effectively is to ask smart questions. If I say, how are you? Not a great

00:14:16.300 question. If I say, how has the book launch been that you launched two days ago? That's even better.

00:14:22.860 If I said, what's the favorite, if you had to pick your favorite chapter out of the new book that you

00:14:28.500 wrote, what would it be? That's an even better question. It's specific. It's relevant to the

00:14:34.500 discussion we're having. And it's honest. I genuinely want to know why. And then I'll typically follow up

00:14:39.220 with a follow-up question to that one based on my level of interest and the level of interest that I

00:14:44.960 think you guys would have as listeners of the podcast. So let's recap real quick, and then we'll

00:14:50.160 move on to points four and five. Number one, know what your objective is. Number two, seek to understand

00:14:57.300 as Stephen Covey would say, the other person. Number three, ask good questions, specific, relevant,

00:15:04.920 and honest. Number four is to tailor your communication. So now you know what you want.

00:15:13.320 You have some degree of understanding what the other person wants based on striving to understand

00:15:19.460 them and asking good questions. And now you can tweak and you can adapt and you can adjust the way

00:15:24.100 you're communicating with people. A lot of the times we'll hear, especially in this like man, self-help

00:15:29.060 space of the zero F mentality. And I don't care what anybody else thinks. And if they don't like what I

00:15:33.680 have to say, that's their fault. And it's on them. Bad attitude. And not only is it a bad attitude,

00:15:39.920 it just doesn't work.

00:15:43.320 Now there might be people you don't care about, or you don't care about their response to your

00:15:48.320 inquiries. And that's different. But if you care about something, you need to tailor your

00:15:54.260 communication to a way that they're going to understand. The way that I talk to my children

00:15:58.700 is different than the way that I talk with my wife. The way I talk to my wife is different than 1.00

00:16:02.960 the way I talk with you guys or members of the iron council. In fact, quite often my wife will say,

00:16:08.260 are you talking to me or are you talking to your podcast listeners? Or she'll say,

00:16:13.680 you shouldn't talk to me like you do with your guys. And she's a hundred percent, right?

00:16:18.500 I'm not going to talk with my wife the same way I'm going to talk with you guys. I'm not going to

00:16:22.220 talk with my five-year-old son, the same that I'm going to talk about or talk to my wife of nearly 20

00:16:30.800 years now. You guys get it? Tailor your communication. Now I know it doesn't sound

00:16:37.080 like you're a bad A, like everybody wants you to believe, oh, well, zero Fs and if they don't like

00:16:41.540 it, they could leave. And that sounds bad A, right? But that's not the point of communication,

00:16:46.020 not to present yourself as the tough guy. The point of communication is to find mutual

00:16:51.040 understanding and then find some common ground and move forward towards yours and or the person you

00:16:58.900 are communicating with your objective together and to figure out the best way forward. And that means

00:17:06.600 that sometimes you don't, you don't get to be a bad A. You got to take a step back and exhibit some

00:17:12.260 more empathy or more understanding. Maybe you need to be a little bit more patient or deliberate

00:17:17.760 or tolerant or whatever. And you can't just plow through everything that's in front of you.

00:17:24.140 I say this through experience. That is my default. Something's in front of me,

00:17:28.440 plow through it. Doesn't matter what's in the way. Doesn't matter who's in the way. Doesn't matter

00:17:33.040 what wake of collateral damage I leave in my path. I am getting from point A to point B and you better

00:17:38.520 get with the program or you better get the hell out of the way. And sometimes that works.

00:17:44.980 And oftentimes it doesn't because I need to get on the same page with people and I need to tailor my

00:17:51.660 communication in order to get them what I want to do, want them to do. If for example, I want my kids

00:17:59.340 to take out the trash, I could yell at them and say, take out the dang trash, do your job. I could do

00:18:03.620 that and I'll get compliance. They'll do it. But that isn't my main objective. My main objective is

00:18:09.560 for them to see the importance of taking out the trash and the importance of taking care of the house

00:18:14.300 and the importance of responsibility and the importance of sacrifice and contributing to

00:18:19.120 the household. And therefore my communication is going to be different than if I'm pissed off and

00:18:23.980 just want them to take out the damn trash can. So tailor that communication. And then the fifth 0.99

00:18:30.240 point, and I always end every con I'm looking at a trend here. I always end every conversation with

00:18:34.820 this point. So hopefully you guys can see how important this is, is you need to evaluate.

00:18:38.980 Wait, in this case, you need to evaluate the response. If you tell your kid to take out the

00:18:43.300 trash and the response is one of defiance, then what do you need to do differently?

00:18:49.760 Do you need to force the issue? Maybe in some cases, but more often than not, I think that maybe

00:18:55.240 you ought to seek to understand, tailor your communication in a way that's going to be effective,

00:19:01.320 ask good questions, specific, relevant, and honest, and see if that now leads you to a better outcome.

00:19:07.440 If you have an employee at work and you're seeking to understand why they're not doing

00:19:11.800 what you would like them to do, maybe there's a misunderstanding.

00:19:16.560 Maybe they don't entirely get it. Maybe you communicated something that sounded

00:19:20.820 logical and reasonable to you, but it wasn't received that way. And so you drop the ball

00:19:26.380 and all it takes is a five minute conversation to get them back on the path.

00:19:31.100 Maybe you bump into defiance and wonder why people don't like talking to you. Well,

00:19:35.880 maybe that's because you're an a-hole every time you have a conversation with somebody. 0.96

00:19:40.120 And wouldn't you want to know that? Wouldn't you want to evaluate whether or not people are

00:19:44.800 responding to your communication? Because if they are, then good, figure out why.

00:19:51.720 Why do people listen to the podcast? Why does my wife listen when I say something or I make a request 1.00

00:19:59.220 of her? Why do my children take out the trash with relatively mild pushback? Because that's always to 1.00

00:20:06.480 be expected. I hope it's because I've garnered some influence and authority and credibility in their

00:20:12.140 eyes through my desire to understand them, my ability to tailor my communication, and my desire to ask

00:20:20.980 them questions so that I can fully understand who they are and what they want to accomplish and find

00:20:25.680 some commonalities between what they want to accomplish and what I do. But you've got to

00:20:30.880 spend time evaluating it. And this is not to beat up on yourself or other people. You know, I might be

00:20:36.920 saying, well, you know, I evaluated and they're being an asshole. Okay. Stop for a second and ask 1.00

00:20:44.460 yourself a better question, which is not how are they behaving, but why are they behaving that way?

00:20:48.840 Specific, relevant, honest questions. And if you can understand why they might be behaving in a way

00:20:56.940 that you interpret as being an asshole, you might be able to come at it a bit differently and actually 0.99

00:21:02.000 elicit an appropriate response. And then in turn, get them to act in a way that you would like them to 0.99

00:21:07.880 act. Guys, communication is crucial. It's the one thing every time, every day I get a question. Hey,

00:21:14.720 what's the one thing you would do? What's the one thing about growing a business? What's the one

00:21:18.280 thing with this? Communication. You will always be working with other people and your ability to

00:21:24.340 communicate effectively is going to spell the difference between success and failure for yourself,

00:21:29.780 for your family, neighbors, community members, project team members, employees, employers, etc.

00:21:39.720 Learn how to communicate effectively. And the last thing I would say as a bonus is just be patient.

00:21:44.720 Be patient, offer some grace, be understanding. It's very easy to get riled up when somebody says

00:21:51.720 something that you don't agree with or don't like. And very rarely is it attributed to malice and more

00:21:57.840 often it's attributed to the fact that people just suck at communication. So maybe somebody said

00:22:06.800 something to you that rubbed the wrong way, but they actually didn't mean any ill intent by it. They

00:22:12.540 were actually trying to help you. So offer some understanding, some grace. And if you do, then

00:22:17.560 maybe that's going to be productive. Just the same way somebody has misinterpreted your words and the

00:22:24.640 way that you want to communicate. You say something and they take it out of context and they blow up and

00:22:28.780 they get pissed off. And you're sitting here like, why are they so mad? I was just trying to help them

00:22:33.360 become a, you know, a better employer, a better business owner. Okay. Well, you'd have malice in

00:22:40.700 your heart. They just misinterpreted it wrong, which means that maybe you can do a better job

00:22:45.020 about interpreting it, about communicating it, and then evaluating that response to see if you can do

00:22:50.460 it better or differently next time. This is the path to communication. And if there's one thing you can

00:22:55.820 learn about how to work with other people and how to produce desired results in your life,

00:23:00.180 it's the ability to communicate effectively. And these are the first five steps. There's a lots

00:23:04.080 of other things you can do, but these are the first five. Number one, know what your objective

00:23:08.360 is. Number two, seek to understand other people. Number three, always ask good questions, specific,

00:23:16.060 relevant, and honest questions. Number four, tailor your communication based on the feedback you're

00:23:20.920 receiving. And then number five, evaluate the response. And once you've evaluated the response,

00:23:26.600 then you start the cycle back over. Okay. They did X, Y, and Z. That's what I wanted them to do.

00:23:32.380 Now what's my new objective. Okay. Here it is. Okay. Now what are they trying to accomplish? Here it is.

00:23:37.960 What questions can I ask to clarify as needed? Okay. I got those. Tailor my communication based on

00:23:43.120 those responses and then evaluate whether or not that is something that's going to work for us.

00:23:48.920 That's it guys. Very simple. Not always easy to implement, but what I would encourage you to do is

00:23:53.280 just write these five little points down and then evaluate yourself at the end of the day.

00:23:57.840 Is this what I did? Or did I just try to bull rush through everything and everybody in my path?

00:24:02.280 And that might work temporarily, but it's not going to work over the long haul.

00:24:06.200 All right, guys, you've got your marching orders, how to communicate effectively.

00:24:09.460 You've got your five steps there, write them down, document them, do them today. And then give us

00:24:14.220 some feedback. Hit me up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, wherever you're doing the social media

00:24:18.140 thing. Keep sharing, keep applying, and let's keep going. We'll be back next week. Very,

00:24:25.500 very special podcast next week, guys. So trust me, you're going to want to subscribe if you are not

00:24:31.020 already subscribed. And also leave those ratings and reviews. All right, guys, we'll be back then.

00:24:36.600 Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

00:24:40.540 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

00:24:45.340 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - March 11, 2022

5 Strategies for Killer Communication ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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