The Power of Brevity in a Noisy World
Episode Stats
Summary
Going all the way back to the laconic Spartans, the ability to be succinct in one s communications has been a sign of strength and a well appreciated gesture. But it s a skill that s never been more important than it is today when people are bombarded with information and don t have the bandwidth to digest long and convoluted messages. My guest today is an expert in helping people get to the point. He s the founder of the Brief Lab and the author of the book, "Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less." His name is Joseph McCormick and we begin our conversation with how his work grew out of his development of a communications curriculum for the military special operators. We then discuss how being brief is not just about conciseness but first about achieving clarity and the high cost of not shaping our communications with these qualities, especially in a world where attention is a scarce resource.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast going all the
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way back to the laconic Spartans the ability to be succinct in one's communications has been to
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others a sign of strength and a well appreciated gesture but it's a skill that's never been more
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important than it is today when people are bombarded with information and don't have the
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bandwidth to digest long and convoluted messages my guest today is an expert in helping people get
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to the point he's the founder of the brief lab and the author of brief make a bigger impact by saying
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less his name is joseph mccormick and we begin our conversation with how his work grew out of his
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development of a communications curriculum for the military special operators we then discuss how
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being brief is not just about conciseness but first about achieving clarity and the high cost of not
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shaping our communications with these qualities especially in a world where attention is a scarce
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resource joe explains why it's actually harder to exercise verbal discipline and it is to use lots
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of words and four techniques to make your messaging more clear and more concise we then discuss how
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to apply these techniques to shortening meetings condensing emails and distilling how you describe
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your role when people ask you what you do and we end our conversation with how to create more meaningful
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interactions during fluid conversations by actually preparing for these encounters rather than simply
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trying to wing it after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash brief
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joe mccormick welcome to the show thanks for having me so you are the founder of an organization
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called brief lab and also the author of a book called brief and what you do is you basically you
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train individuals and organizations on how to be more brief and get to the point with their
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communication and the backstory about how this all started is interesting because what happened was
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several years ago you got asked by u.s special operations command they came to you and said can
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you create a curriculum about communication for us so what was going on there what was the problem
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that u.s special operations command was looking to you to solve well think about when you think about
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special operations they're elite military people and they're they do everything at a high level
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and about almost a decade ago i got i got really one of the most important calls if not the most
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important call my career which was somebody from their command called me and said hey we heard about
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you and i was at the time ran a marketing agency and we just need to be taught how to be more
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intentional how to be clear communicators and people expect us to do this but nobody's ever taught us how
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and what they were trying to do was like fix it by like public speaking which wasn't working and
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and they do everything at a very high level but nobody ever taught them how to do it and they
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started realizing like we need help here because in the military they do briefings and those briefings
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are they're trying to simplify complex things they're doing it with a time urgency and obviously there's
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a lot at risk and they started seeing like hey this is not going well and and they called me and i and i'm
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so i'm like sure and that's where the the work started and and they started they actually actually
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asked me to like you should write a book about this and that's where brief came from i mean how did the
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needs of u.s special operations command how has that shaped the entire you know your entire i guess
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philosophy or training that you do with brief i mean when it started it it started as just a unit
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asking for help so it wasn't like hey we want everybody to it was literally there were individuals
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and people that were communicating at pretty high levels and what they wanted to be is is consistently
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clear when they communicated where they were taking out ambiguity there was less misunderstanding that it
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was easier for them to say or write and the person says i get it and i know what to do
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and that really was the genesis so i start what i started doing was designing courses and exercise
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and experiences to teach them to communicate like they shoot with precision so when they go on a range
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and they shoot they're not thinking well let's see how this goes there's a series of practices that
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they do to become very very accurate and what they asked me to do was teach us how to do that when we
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communicate and i had collected you know 20 some years of experiences doing this with executives
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at harley davidson and mastercard and some big brands and i worked in an agency in marketing and
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and i was i knew how to to be clear when when you're talking to your employees or your investors or your
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dealers or your customers and i just translated that into developing a class or course and the response
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was immediate they were like this is great give us more and that's validated and really drove
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the book and the brief lab as a business was created on that initial demand from the guys
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in special operations well let's talk about what are the costs you spend a lot of time in the book
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talking about this the cost of not being brief with your communications and i mean maybe give us
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some examples from your decades of work training people how to be brief where where there's the
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blowhard that's going on and on and it costs them maybe sometimes not a lot but sometimes severely
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i mean i think one of the things that there's there's a lot of different costs and i think
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when people start realizing the risks that they run communication for a lot of people is like
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well you communicate all the time so you should know how to do it well communicating in an environment
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where there's a lot of information is difficult and that's where i wrote a book called noise and
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it's all about constant information overload and there's a million things going on and how do you
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communicate in that environment it's difficult and some of the risks that people run when they're not
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clear and i define brief as being clear and concise it's not just being concise because if that were the
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case somebody asked you like hey how was your how was your program and you would go good you know
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that's not that's too short so brief is is in my definition is clear first and then making it shorter
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right so some of the impacts that people have is you you when you speak you misdirect people so you say
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something but they do something else and then you blame them or they tune you out so when you talk
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the more you talk the less they want to listen that's bad i mean if you're if you're in an environment
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where you where how you communicate gives you the ability to do what you need to do and people
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start tuning out or ignoring you it weakens connections it delays decisions so i'll hear from
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people and i spend you know when i spend time talking to people they'll be like oh i'll think
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about that let me let me uh let me get back to you oftentimes people do that because they're confused
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so they'll delay a decision there might be tension you don't get hired if you're interviewing you
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might not get funding you might not get support so there's a lot of impacts when people are bad at
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this no yeah you gave some really good examples like the ones that still got to me was like someone
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and this probably has happened to a lot of people who are in sales like they talk themselves out of
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a sale right the sale is there and they just keep talking and talking and the guy's like the person's
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like no i don't want to do this anymore well let's think about it's like it's like fishing you catch
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the fish and then you pull it in the boat and then you're done well sales people just keep on
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talking and they're like do you want to come on the boat you know they start and just keep it like
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the fish swing around and then they just fall off the hook one of the impacts where people sell is
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over explaining okay somebody asks you a question answer the question but you don't have to give them
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like you know 7 000 words and we're people are already i think one of the biggest issues in our
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world today is people are oversaturated you know their their glass is full or nearly full so when
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you're talking to them one of the things that i focus a lot of our attention on at the brief lab
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is your audience is drowning so don't make them drown more and if they've got a half an ounce left
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in the cup that you you can't give them 10 more ounces it just doesn't fit so you have to find ways to
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to shrink the message down to make it easier for people and and i found that people really appreciate
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it when you do like a simple example is imagine you had a sales presentation and you had 20 minutes
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and the person's like well i got it done in 10 nobody's going to be like oh you know i'm going
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to start complaining because it wasn't 20 they're they get time back in their calendar you've lightened
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their load it's all that well and so let's talk about the why you need to be brief you've talked
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about executives everyone's inundated with information just emails are coming in there's
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social media posts there's blog posts there's so much stuff you're trying to keep track of so there's
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that aspect being brief just is kind of lightens the load a little bit but you also talk about
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something that's also changing our culture because of all that information inundation
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people's ability to focus has also been weakening so you you have to get to the point a lot faster
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because they've sort of detrained themselves to focus on on things for a long time yeah i mean
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sustained attention attention spans are shrinking people are paying attention to many many things
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during the day we live in a 24 7 news cycle it's people talk to talk you have access to information
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constantly from your phone i mean it is you are in consuming mode all day long and it's a noisy
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world there's a lot of things competing for your attention so when it comes time for somebody to
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communicate you have to be able to cut through the clutter because you won't be heard and this is i
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think this is one of the things that people they think well when i talk people will listen to me it's
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like no they they can't it's almost like they're losing their hearing i know it sounds like a dramatic
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analogy but when the world is so noisy it's almost like people start to become deaf or it's harder to
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hear harder to focus so we have to adapt and i think that adaptation right now is critical for us
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absolutely critical because you can't assume people's audiences the audience that pays attention
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that's a that's a false assumption right and also people just become more impatient too i know i have
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when something takes i mean you think i had this experience the other day like something
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i wanted something on the internet for i forgot i was trying to access but like it took longer
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than it should have you know which was like maybe two seconds and i'm like what the heck is going on
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here and i saw the little spinning wheel in my browser and i was getting frightened i was like man
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this is stupid but that's the world that you're living that's the type of person you're communicating
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with everyone's like that it's like yeah it's like instant gratification i talked about this in one
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of my courses recently about like it's there's almost like a sense of like it's the illusion of
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immediacy is the term that i use like it's an illusion it's it's it's that everything i can
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have now well if you look at technology technology has trained us to if i touch my phone it does
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something immediately well we transfer that to people well if you're not if you're talking and
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it doesn't make sense to me i'm going to move on to the next thing is that good no but it's what
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happens people are trained by technology to have immediate response and they expect that the people
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they talk to too so what i'm teaching people is there's ways to manage people to help people
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manage their attention this is what we have to help people is how do you talk to people i can't make the
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world become less noisy or quiet i mean it is inundated with information so the question is how
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do you communicate in that world and and unfortunately people aren't being taught how to do that that was one
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of things compelled me to help people focus and to get to the point and and when you start to do that
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people feel relief because it's like oh got it i know i know what you're saying you're making a
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recommendation or or whatever and you're helping people and that and that's that's good and that's
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where that's i think that's where the relief comes from comes from why is this hard to be brief like
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why people have a hard time with this which is kind of counterintuitive you think you know saying
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fewer words would be easier but actually saying more is a lot easier it's a lot easier and there's
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a lot there's a number of reasons why if you think about the way people communicate there's an impulse
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when people communicate the impulse is you start talking and you'll figure out where you're going
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imagine if you did that when you're driving i don't know where i'm going but i'll figure it out
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you're all over the road so there's there's a number of reasons i call it like there there's like
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seven capital sins people are their cowardice is one they're afraid if i just tell you like
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you know something very direct i i so i'm gonna i'm gonna beat around the bush or confidence people
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are really smart and they're super confident they can't stop talking another one is callousness
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they're they're not sensitive to other people they get comfortable they're just confused themselves
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so they they can just kind of talk out loud and they're like i don't even understand it so if i
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keep on talking it'll make sense and it doesn't it makes less sense people are some people are just
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complicated they don't know how to be simple and i think the last thing is careless so there's a lot
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of different reasons why people struggle with it but the thing about it being brief is it's not just
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about being concise it's first and foremost being clear so what you say makes sense to people and it
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is the the i i kind of equate it to like comedy comedy is all about being funny and if i mean brief
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isn't about being concise it's about being clear comedy is about being funny so those things are
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intentional practices i do certain things and when i do it's clear and when i don't it's confusing
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and that's really what's at play so i mean it sounds like the reason why a lot of people can't be brief
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is that a lot of times they just don't even know what they're going to say or what they're what they
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want to say they don't do any prep beforehand and it ends up they just it's a word vomit basically
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whenever they do try to they try to figure it out on the fly and that's just that's never going to
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work well people are busy so they're one of the excuses why don't have time to prepare well okay
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that imagine a comedian doing that i don't have time to prove my comedy so i'll see what happens
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it's not gonna be funny so in the world of being clear preparation is really important and people
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don't take enough time to prepare that that's one really really big thing the other thing is just
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trimming you know if you've got to send an email and the emails you know let's say three paragraphs
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long and could you make it two if you just took a few more minutes can you cut it down a little bit
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can you give me some bullet points you know break it up a bit i don't think people think about the
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damage that they do the noise that they create for other people when they're not being clear and concise
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if you're not being brief this is my conclusion you are creating noise for people
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meetings updates recommendations pitches progress reports you name it if you're not preparing it
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it's probably going to sound noisy and staticky well let's talk about some techniques that you train
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organizations on how to be more brief and there's four techniques you talk about in the book the first
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one is map it this is very military right you see the military origin there so what does map it look
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like what are you doing in that with this technique i mean if you think about like if you think about
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what you learn in school like creating an outline i learned this technique years ago called mind
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mapping and mind mapping is visual outlining and it's just draw the pictures of what you're going
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to say on a page i think bubbles on a page and i've i've developed kind of map out your you know
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what's your main idea put that in the middle what are some support ideas put those in kind of bubbles
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around that main idea and then what are support ideas around those ideas and it's like it's creating an
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outline what outlines do it's it's so interesting when i when we teach courses people like i'm like
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what was the difference the difference like they say to me when you map it out it becomes
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structured organized what happens with communications it's disorganized but when it's disorganized my
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brain has got to reorganize that well people can't do that because their brains are saturated so they
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don't so it's confusing so when you map it out you create an order it's like uh it's things become
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easier to follow because they're structured so that's yeah that's that's the first one and also
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when you map it out as well whether you're doing a mind map or you know sort of the typical outline
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you learned in school that i i still outline like when i write an article i still outline right like
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one two and then like sub points a b c like the other thing that it does it allows you to like cut
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information you're able to see well do i really need this point probably not yeah i mean the thing that you
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when you do an outline it's in a traditional outline which is super interesting is mind mapping
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is just a visual version of that it's they're not any different is when you start if you think of
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like point one sub point a then bullet like you kind of but you start to see layers of detail
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and i i have this construct right here is like level one detail is the most essential information
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right so that's okay that in an outline level one how many level one points i need to make
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level two would be like mid-level detail level three is like full documentation right so i would
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describe like level one is like the trailer and level three is like the movie when you create that
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level of detail what you help people do is not get hung up on stuff that's the minutiae and outlines
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force you to do that it's like just what you said right it's like all right do i really need to say
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that no okay i'll just cut that or no i really need to say that that's now that's essential
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information and that's what gets people to clarity is what's moving like essential from
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inessential and the other thing that's useful about outline i use when i when i give like a
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presentation or something you can outline and you can fill in as much minutiae as you want right
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and let's say time doesn't allow for some of this stuff well you still have your main points you know
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you can hit one two three and you'll have a great presentation it allows you to be flexible and adapt as
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well that's precisely right if you think of it like if i've got five important things to say
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and i say those five things i'm good if the person has more time i can i can say more but i've hit
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those five key things and that is exactly what people need to be taught how to do which is say
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the most important things so the people get it it makes sense to them and then if there's more time
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you can go deeper but you're not you don't defer you're like you don't defer default rather to the long
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version you're like i can explain it in a minute i can explain it 10 minutes i can explain it in an
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hour what do you have and then that control gives people a comfort and confidence and i've seen this
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with the people that we work with and it's really really something makes makes it so much easier for
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the audience at the end of the day all right so outline your middle school teacher was on to
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something when she was teaching you outlines yeah yeah that's exactly i said i'm the ghost of your
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eighth grade english teacher right well the another technique you encourage or teach people
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how to be more brief is tell it which is using stories so how do people when they typically explain
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something if they're not using storytelling what are they doing usually and why is storytelling better
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they're talking theoretically so you know they're like well you know i let's say that they're
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describing their business let's say that they they um they own a hardware store or like or they do
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it support tech support or something they speak theoretically you know we are a provider of cloud
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solutions for the internet that are in the audience is like i think i understand what you're saying but
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but then there's this moment like let me give you an example well what that does to people that are
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their minds are all over the place is it helps like ground the the person for a moment like i've got an
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example of you know what i do tell them tell me a story illustrate it give me an analogy anything to help
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paint a picture it helps people so much because they have they're trying to do that themselves but
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you just do it for them and and that's just i've seen this so many times i actually ironically i'm
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gonna give you a story so i would we teach people how to do briefings you know this short briefings in
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these units within special operations and i'll have people come up like what do you guys do and then
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they'll stand in our courses and they'll be like i do blah blah blah and then you're listening you're
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like i think i understand and then i'm like why don't you give me an example and it's amazing
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when they give an example how much clearer it gets okay i was on a deployment and we were in this
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country and then i went here and then i talked to this guy and then we did you just illustrated in
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that story in 30 seconds what you guys do if you if you prefer like the theoretical version or the
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practical with the story people always prefer the story so give them a story right yeah people and
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people remember stories more than like a list of facts it is incredible like it's like the trojan
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i i liken storytelling to like the trojan horse strategy of communicating you can pack so many
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details in a story and once you give them the story the memory recall for the details is crazy
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it's crazy and it's so simple but you got to prepare it you can't just most people can't do that on
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the fly you have to think in advance okay if i'm going to do a sales presentation or
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i'm going to a job interview you got to start thinking about some examples or stories
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and those things can really really help you well yeah i learned this in law school so you know i took
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a legal writing class you have to and one of the things you have to do you have to write a brief
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and when you start your brief there's like a statement of facts and you seem like oh it's a
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statement of facts just list like x happened blah blah blah but actually what you had to do is you
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had to spin those facts into a really like readable narrative because the idea was you want the
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judge to like not just kind of glaze over this list of facts you want them to be engaged and you
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also be the storytelling you can kind of i don't want to say manipulate but you can kind of you can
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you can frame the story in a way so it's you know beneficial for your client or whatever but yeah it's
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all it all comes back to storytelling well it's what's interesting is magicians do this when they do
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magic many of them are telling you a story and the brain sort of locks onto the story and you start
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listening to the story and the pieces start connecting and they they in this case magicians
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they misdirect your attention to something else so you don't see the magic but but the same thing as
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you're doing this with a judge the judges you start to you're helping manage their focus
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just connecting the dots and it is i'll tell people like if you if you can use an illustration or an
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example you know do it because people prefer it you know always give it give the audience what you
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want and i think one of the things people can do is just like let me give you an example and just
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give them one it's it's so powerful storytelling is i it's incredibly powerful we're gonna take a quick
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break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so another technique or tactic is
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something you call talk tracks and this is talk t-a-l-c what's this about what are you trying to do with
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this i just formed a little simple acronym which is you know it stands for it stands for talk
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active listen converse so the idea is when people communicate one of the biggest mistakes that they
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do is they the analogy i use is the saying rather is it's more like tennis and less like golf when
00:22:30.600
people talk they just talk at you and they just kind of like pound the ball down the fairway and
00:22:35.720
communication is is i say something and then i listen to your response and then we converse and we
00:22:40.820
go back and forth it's getting the audience getting the person you're talking to into a conversation
00:22:45.540
and in creating this rhythm where i say something and you say something it's actually it's exactly
00:22:50.060
what we're doing right now and it just it's those pieces of a person says something i actively listen
00:22:56.060
then i comment i converse back forth back forth at work and also personally you create balance in
00:23:01.980
conversations it's it's almost like it's like a game changer really and how does how does that help
00:23:06.820
structure your conversations for brevity i mean you think about like i'm talking to a person
00:23:14.860
and i'm listening to how they're responding to me is gauging if they're hearing anything at all
00:23:21.140
you know it's it's you you assume that person people hear you but how do you know and the answer is
00:23:28.280
by the response well if you didn't give me a chance to respond then you don't know if they heard you
00:23:33.000
so i think in in basic conversations you know let's say that you're you're going to your boss
00:23:38.680
and you're making a recommendation like hey boss uh you got a few minutes and the body boss like sure
00:23:42.760
and you walk in your boss's office and you're like hey uh and then you just start talking about all
00:23:47.880
these things you're going to do and your boss doesn't have at some point your boss might just
00:23:52.540
like all right i don't know what this person's talking about like and then they can't you got to
00:23:56.560
stop it break it up a bit say a few things stop see what your boss says it's like playing tennis
00:24:01.320
say something she says something back then you say something and then you get a conversation and
00:24:06.280
you're actually on the same page having the same conversation and that people miss that more than
00:24:11.500
they hit it all right so we talked about map it so use an outline tell it use stories when possible
00:24:17.040
or actually just use stories all the time anything can be spun into a story talk it so use talk tracks
00:24:21.960
so pay attention to your audience there get feedback you know look and listen for their feedback what
00:24:25.880
you're saying and then the final one is show it and this is using visuals this can get tricky
00:24:31.000
though because a lot of people they've all heard they've all experienced death by powerpoint right
00:24:35.220
where you they're in some presentation and there's like a visual slide for like every sentence the
00:24:39.580
person is saying so how do you use visuals in a way that attract attention and doesn't cause
00:24:45.860
people to you know their eyes to glaze over and stop paying attention you just you just have to
00:24:51.320
think and sometimes there you can can i draw a picture do i have a whiteboard do i have a flip
00:24:56.120
chart can i draw a diagram you know there's a like you know there's a book about how to illustrate
00:25:01.520
stuff back of the napkin kind of stuff sometimes even going back to the story like i can verbally
00:25:06.580
describe it just is there any any is there a picture a picture's worth a thousand words so if i'm
00:25:11.260
if i'm doing a powerpoint presentation i got a couple slides give me a big image a prominent image you
00:25:16.480
know not not just don't try to jam a million bullet points on a page is there is there some visual that
00:25:22.440
can carry the day in your presentation so just these are just anything you can do to kind of help
00:25:27.400
the audience see it is the point well that's a good point don't the bullet yeah the bullet points
00:25:32.040
like don't put your outline of your speech on the powerpoint slide and like you push the button and
00:25:37.620
like the thing you're saying like shows up on you know slides into the flies into the screen like that
00:25:42.560
it's like what when that happens like why why are you even talking i can just read this yeah i mean i
00:25:47.560
think when you look at like when you look at this this whole thing about being brief and the book
00:25:52.480
brief and you know this business that teaching people how to communicate certainly presentations
00:25:57.640
are a moment but that really doesn't take up a lot there's a lot of stuff written on that actually
00:26:01.500
like how to do a ted talk and i i think what people struggle with a lot more than that because that
00:26:06.080
happens kind of few and far between unless you're like obviously in the presentation business
00:26:09.640
there's a number of other moments that people just struggle with that they don't even think about
00:26:14.320
you know like the drive-by i walk by my boss's office or i pick up the phone or i'm sending
00:26:19.440
somebody an email or i'm i'm in a program or project i'm making a recommendation i'm running
00:26:24.960
a meeting meetings are a big one you know where it's not clear it's really not brief they're long
00:26:30.980
they're noisy and you know that one for people they just they're like well this is i guess what we do
00:26:37.040
you know that's why people love the movie office space you know they feel like sense of you know
00:26:41.940
meeting the bobs you know it's like there there are moments where like yeah presentations are one
00:26:46.460
of them but there's a lot more other moments where people can prepare like all right i'm gonna i'm gonna
00:26:50.360
run a meeting what's the meeting about who's coming why are we here what are we going to talk about like
00:26:58.540
the preparing agenda in advance it's amazing how few people send agendas before meetings and they
00:27:06.440
expect the meeting to have be on time be clear get something done it's insane you know so that's
00:27:12.560
that's a new one that i'm trying to tackle which is how do you how do you run a meeting you're running
00:27:16.720
them on zoom you know are you how are you preparing for it i'm just making sure people show up
00:27:22.180
so those are other areas where people need to be clear and concise and you know meetings well
00:27:28.260
yeah let's talk i mean i like to spend you know the the rest of this conversation talking about
00:27:32.120
specific instances where we can apply these principles we've been talking about and meetings
00:27:36.940
is one of them i mean everyone hates meetings you have a whole section of the book on how to make
00:27:40.400
meetings briefer and like as you just said like the number one thing you do is just like have an
00:27:44.320
agenda most people when they have a meeting there's no agenda or if there is an agenda it's very vague
00:27:49.140
it's like well we're just gonna do a status update and it's like you're there for 45 minutes while
00:27:55.080
everyone goes around the room saying what's going on and that's just a complete that's a complete waste
00:27:59.800
everyone's time because that could have been exchanged via an email or a document
00:28:03.780
and just that wasn't even there was like no planning there so you just wasted 45 minutes of everyone's
00:28:09.080
time i it's you know when you think about like if you got a meeting invitation and then you got a
00:28:15.000
notification that was canceled what would be the first your first emotional response yes oh that's so
00:28:21.600
great right you're like this is great i just got canceled like think about how bad it is that the
00:28:26.740
first response is that's like okay and then compare it to like a bunch of your friends invite
00:28:31.840
you out to a bar and they canceled you're like oh man i gotta cancel that thing that's terrible
00:28:35.940
so how would you make a meeting useful well number one is if it could be an email don't have it
00:28:42.300
if you can be in the position of authority don't have it or if you are gonna if it's a necessity
00:28:47.440
prepare an agenda and i i likened uh um meetings to having like a like a dinner party people over your
00:28:54.100
house all right so who are you inviting what kind of food are you serving when does it start
00:28:59.940
when do you have you know cocktails when when does dinner come on is there dessert like what's the
00:29:05.020
like the flow take five minutes ten minutes kind of write out the agenda like okay this is what the
00:29:10.800
meeting's about this is why we're a couple this these are this at the end of the meeting how will
00:29:15.400
you know what's successful could you have a minimal level success like i just led a meeting here
00:29:20.680
at our offices in north carolina with a bunch of colonels it was a room full of it was 10 colonels
00:29:26.000
and they asked me to run this meeting it was a pretty intense meeting it was above it was an
00:29:30.160
entire morning and i was asked by somebody special operations to run this meeting and the the topic
00:29:36.880
was pretty intensive and i had a lot of very very high-ranking people in the room i spent time
00:29:42.320
preparing an agenda and i sent the the guy that was the meeting owner my agenda this is who's coming
00:29:48.420
this is what we're going to talk about these are the agenda topics and at the end of the meeting if
00:29:52.260
the meeting doesn't go where we want it to go what's the minimal level of success in this case
00:29:57.180
we had we would identify 10 a list of 10 things and i did that and it was so funny because i bumped
00:30:03.960
into a guy that was in the meeting he's like man that was really great like that was actually
00:30:08.480
productive we got stuff done well think about the question you asked me earlier but what's the risk
00:30:12.440
if you're not brief you're not clear and concise if you run a bad meeting people don't trust you
00:30:16.220
they don't want to go to your meeting nothing gets done morale saying i mean there's a lot of
00:30:19.540
risks with bad meetings and it's something that people gotta fix with meetings my philosophy has
00:30:24.660
always been like you go to a meeting with like specific problems you're trying to solve that
00:30:29.500
can't be solved via email if you try to do it email via email would take like 50 or 60 or 70 emails
00:30:35.980
like that's dumb that just takes every that's you know you're you're splitting everyone's attention
00:30:40.520
you're sucking everyone's bandwidth instead just get everyone in the room for 20 minutes and say
00:30:44.360
we're going to talk about x problem and the goal is to have an action point on how to solve this
00:30:49.900
problem in the meeting and that's it direct you have to tell everyone that so everyone comes in with
00:30:54.040
those ideas like you know try to solve this problem and you can usually crank it out or get
00:30:58.440
get things resolved 15 20 minutes instead of you know belaboring it through tons of back and forth
00:31:03.840
emails or like a long email or a long meeting where there is no set agenda to solve this particular
00:31:09.500
problem yeah i mean think about like i talk a lot about getting to the point and this is what
00:31:15.140
people struggle to in meetings is in 10 words or less tell me what the objective of the meeting is
00:31:21.340
what is the point of the meeting that is hard for people to do because they're like well we want to
00:31:27.760
talk about things it's like okay but but what is the objective of the meeting what are you trying to
00:31:32.360
do with these people in this amount of time is if that's not clear it's hard to be clear because you
00:31:39.180
don't accidentally land on the point that's why people go in down rabbit holes and they get distracted
00:31:44.120
then people dominate the agenda and it's it's it becomes mayhem it's just mayhem so what i'll tell
00:31:50.060
people is sit down and write out in 10 words or less what is the objective of the meeting do that
00:31:55.900
to identify the three causes of you know retention in the company or to finalize the 2021 budget or
00:32:03.800
be very specific and then why do we need to do this right now and to your point it's like you're
00:32:10.460
absolutely right meetings are for for discussion primarily for discussion and decision not for
00:32:15.880
information dissemination so if you're just sharing information a meeting there are better ways to do
00:32:19.940
that you can use slack you could use email you can do a pre-read but when we come together
00:32:25.540
we talk and we make decisions and that for people love that if you if you do that i've i've seen the
00:32:31.800
before and after is is people are so encouraged well let's talk about emails because people are
00:32:37.680
just inundated with emails executives are inundated with emails how can you write an email in a way so
00:32:42.380
that people like the person you send email actually take action on it and not just put into the trash can
00:32:48.360
or spam okay so the first thing is what's the point of the email like don't underestimate the
00:32:52.400
importance of the subject line so that's the first thing i'm going to look at is what's the point of
00:32:56.140
the email so in that subject line what are we talking about people generally misuse that like it's
00:33:01.000
very generic follow-up no thank you the second thing is what's the call to action what do you want
00:33:06.320
me to do is this for my response is it for my action like what do you want me to do do answer yes
00:33:13.440
no give me a response by like people are very they have to be clear about the point of the email and what
00:33:18.260
you want me to do with it and if you're just disseminating information you don't want them
00:33:22.500
to do anything then tell them i don't this is purely acronym fysa for your situational awareness
00:33:28.040
you don't need to do anything you just need to know that's fine just tell me for your is this for
00:33:32.700
your action do i want your feedback generally speaking there's like for your awareness for your
00:33:38.640
feedback for your decision tell me what do you want me to do and people don't do that and it's very
00:33:43.640
very hard to respond to them and then you just delete them or just ignore them all right so yeah
00:33:48.840
like don't bury the lead in your emails oh yeah killer don't bury your lead tell me what the point
00:33:53.580
of the email is and put some bullet points and write them try to make them shorter but write them
00:33:59.140
like you would want to read them a big block of text did i take time to prepare it before i hit send
00:34:05.960
ask myself if i'm receiving this email is it easy to know what the email is about and how to respond
00:34:12.880
if the answer is yes send it if the answer is no don't send it because it's just noise for somebody
00:34:18.320
i get emails from people that are like a lot of us marketing campaigns but i'm like you guys are in
00:34:25.140
marketing and you're writing emails that are so easy to delete they're so easy to delete because you
00:34:31.200
don't it's just like no it's it's so and emails another is is one another one that people struggle
00:34:37.140
with is role definition what do you do it's a question that people get all the time that's not
00:34:42.720
it's either too brief like i file papers and they think that's funny or they give you the long
00:34:47.240
version so like explaining what your elevator speech is you know that and and there's there's a simple
00:34:55.140
way of fixing that like tell people first what your title is i am you know i'm the managing director
00:35:01.440
and founder of the brief lab and and then the next thing is what are you responsible for i'm
00:35:05.360
responsible for for setting the direction of the company and writing books and recording my podcast
00:35:09.660
then give them a couple little examples what you do and then an end you know that's it short sweet
00:35:16.880
what is your role definition of people like anybody who works at a company should have this down to 30
00:35:23.660
seconds what's my title what am i responsible for what are some of the things i do and what's the
00:35:28.880
impact i have that's it short sweet and you have to prepare it you can't do it on the fly you have to
00:35:32.600
prepare that's that's another area that's a recurring theme a brief brief conversation brief
00:35:37.620
communication requires preparation it requires like you have to you actually have to kind of spend a
00:35:41.600
lot of time to be brief which is sort of counterintuitive you know why this is and it's really
00:35:47.180
it seems so obvious like people are like yeah you got to be brief you got to be clear you got to be
00:35:52.380
concise but it takes time and here's the thing i'm taking time to make it easier for you that's the
00:36:00.080
point i'll spend a half hour preparing a five minute update i had a conversation with a guy
00:36:07.540
i don't i don't know what administration it was if it was the current administration or president or
00:36:13.540
the prior president he prepared 40 hours for a five minute briefing 40 hours i'd done work with his
00:36:21.840
organization 40 hours for five minute briefing do we spend five minutes preparing enough before we give
00:36:27.500
our boss an update no we just go in there how's how's your day good what's going on you start
00:36:32.320
talking preparation is everything that's what that's what professionals do clear communicators prepare
00:36:38.000
amateurs don't another sort of situation that you go into specifics about in the book and how to
00:36:45.560
how you brevity can be useful is delivering good news but also delivering bad news so how can sane
00:36:52.840
saying less actually make good news more impactful and bad news less impactful so one of the things
00:37:00.940
that i just i i saw this once and it was really amazing i was participating at a at a national marketing
00:37:07.740
summit for harley davidson and they asked me to speak and they did something called a shout out i might
00:37:12.900
i might be getting the name wrong but it was a shout out so it was all the all the marketing people for the
00:37:17.020
whole company and what they would do is really really cool is between like agenda items in this
00:37:23.420
conference they would do a shout out so it would imagine like hey my name is bob and i want to do a
00:37:28.260
shout out to sally okay and then the room would get quiet and then bob would tell the entire organization
00:37:33.780
why sally needed public recognition the longer that was the less effective it was the shorter and more
00:37:41.480
concise and clear the more impactful it was because people could hear more and less say what it is that
00:37:48.260
she did and why it was so impactful but don't give a speech and i saw that i'm like yeah good news
00:37:53.340
just say it your impact on this was singular and you did this and this bam done same thing for bad news
00:38:00.600
you got to fire somebody you got to give somebody a performance review doesn't mean you need to be a
00:38:06.560
blunt object but you need to make it shorter because you wouldn't want it to be longer either
00:38:11.080
you know imagine like somebody calls you in their office and like they're like you know hey uh you
00:38:16.740
know carlos you got a minute i need to talk to you about something and then it turns out to 15 minutes
00:38:21.100
where the person's just giving them going on and on and on and on no that's not you wouldn't want
00:38:26.640
that so don't do that to somebody else make it shorter prepare it it's like here's the deal carlos
00:38:31.380
you need to know about this because it's important you don't show up to work enough you know you need to
00:38:35.920
show up to the meeting five minutes early instead of two minutes late or whatever whatever the issue
00:38:39.900
is but i'm telling you this because i want you to be better and somebody's got to tell you and i just
00:38:45.120
told you so i need you to fix it and let's talk about it in a week and see how you're making it
00:38:49.080
better that's all and then it's like all right done versus you know being the hammer so both of
00:38:55.100
those there's two sides of the same coin really yeah i know with bad news i think i have the tendency
00:38:59.900
i think a lot of people have the tendency when you're delivering bad news you think well if i just say
00:39:03.020
more to like make people feel better right because you're just like but actually i think a lot of
00:39:08.280
times you just you're talking to make yourself feel better this is like the person pulling the
00:39:13.220
bandit off saying if if i pull it off really slow it's not going to hurt as much and you're like
00:39:18.980
wait i just did it and it's really really painful but no it's like you when i counsel people when you
00:39:24.640
when you're in this in this moment of dealing bad news is you first have to think about it before
00:39:29.060
you do it and then you have to think about what you're going to say you can't be deciding that in
00:39:33.460
the moment because what happens is that people don't know what they're going to say and then
00:39:37.600
they're fumbling over it and it makes it longer so what i would recommend to people is all right
00:39:41.780
let's say that you have to give somebody i mean this is an extreme example of bad news but let's
00:39:46.620
say you have to somebody's going to fire somebody these are conversations by the way that people
00:39:50.780
remember 20 years later so it you should prepare for it as the deliverer of the bad news what i always
00:39:57.020
tell people is first ask the person hey do you have a minute and then set the condition what i'm
00:40:02.780
going to tell you is difficult it's hard for me to say so the person's it's almost like you're
00:40:08.180
tightening your stomach before you get punched so the person knows bad news is coming and then you
00:40:12.960
might say to a person i don't need you to respond right now i just need you to hear what i'm going to
00:40:16.400
say so then the person knows that you're really not inviting them into a conversation you're just
00:40:21.300
telling them the bad news and then you write it out but you've said this before you've practiced
00:40:26.220
to saying this so you're not saying it because there's a lot of power and then you tell them the
00:40:30.580
bad news you're like we are cutting your position from the organization effective immediately the
00:40:35.940
reason why is because the company's not making enough money and i'm really sorry to do this to
00:40:39.900
you but today's gonna be your last day and i'll give you some more information on this in the next
00:40:44.140
you know hour in terms of a pack whatever and you prepare it but it's short sweet empathetic
00:40:50.160
and it just makes it better and i don't want to deliver that either but somebody's but preparation
00:40:55.680
i think again to your point earlier is is absolutely critical and something you bring up in the book too
00:41:00.960
is that a lot of conversation or communication that happens in a workplace is fluid it's not
00:41:05.880
happening via email it could be happening in like around the water cooler or you're walking just sort
00:41:11.160
of in the hallway and passing and even in those moments like you you make the case that you should be
00:41:15.780
prepared to be brief in those conversations if you if you only have someone for like two minutes you
00:41:20.540
have to be ready to give them a pitch or say something that's first clear and then concise
00:41:25.620
yeah i mean i what i worked i've worked in a lot of different environments but you're always people
00:41:31.140
are bumping into each other and they're checking in they're seeing what's going on and and you have
00:41:36.080
to be ready you know you you so you i would always be thinking like if my customer called me what would
00:41:41.660
i say if my boss stopped me in the hallway what would i say if i you know so these are moments that
00:41:48.240
are that i know are going to come what do i have for them i want to give them a little nugget
00:41:53.780
like hey making a lot of progress on that project or i need your help with some research just be ready
00:41:59.740
for that if the phone rang how would you you know what would you say i think people they're there
00:42:05.580
they just wait for formal settings to do that but business is a lot of like a lot of these
00:42:09.280
it's very informal it's very fluid and being ready for that just makes you more valuable to
00:42:14.940
a person like all right this person's like johnny the spot every time i bump into them they've got
00:42:18.720
something for me whether it's good news or bad news or an update they're ready with something
00:42:22.580
and as i was reading this book i mean this book is primarily directed towards work life but this
00:42:28.560
stuff can also be applied to your personal life i was thinking you know communication with your kids
00:42:32.400
right like your kids are inundated with information their attention span is minuscule so you have to
00:42:38.880
be concise with them if you want them to to listen you have to we're not concise you have to be brief
00:42:43.020
clear and concise with them in order to to communicate with them i mean it's if you think about being a
00:42:48.100
parent i mean it's like giving instructions to kids you know doing your homework being clear
00:42:53.680
conversations on the dinner table i mean the quality of that stuff goes a long way and we just talk past
00:42:58.960
each other this book brief is really about the quality of the communication it's clarity it's how
00:43:05.880
intentional i don't say things to say them i'm thoughtful when i communicate and obviously that's
00:43:11.660
the home family is the most you know the personal life is conversations i have with people on the phone
00:43:16.960
am i listening to them you know how was your day you know and being able to answer that in a thoughtful
00:43:22.780
way telling kids you know things that that they need to hear that are heartfelt you know thanking people
00:43:30.420
those those those things go in an enormous way and i think i think one of the things i'm happy that
00:43:36.100
you said this outside of work because it's not all about my job it's like what is the quality of my
00:43:39.840
communication with people that i care about right and then again even then it requires preparation i
00:43:44.260
think we have this idea that communication in our personal life it just sort of in order for it to be
00:43:49.380
authentic it has to just sort of spring up naturally without thinking about it just happens on the fly
00:43:55.120
but really i mean my most meaningful conversations have been where i've thought about what i was going
00:44:00.260
to say before i talked to the person you know like something that my i knows my wife does and i'm
00:44:05.400
really impressed that she does this kate is you know we're about to go have you know we're going
00:44:09.620
to see some friends you haven't seen in a while like she'll make like a list the things she wants
00:44:13.460
to check in on with those people and it's great because like the conversations it's a lot more
00:44:18.960
meaningful and and i i enjoy those conversations more when there's sort of a structure outline to it
00:44:24.400
you know you know that the doing things like your your wife is doing is requires people to have time
00:44:32.180
during the day to stop and to think and be thoughtful so those people people like that you
00:44:38.600
want to be around because they're thinking about you before they even start talking to you in the
00:44:43.640
book noise that i just wrote this just came out about a year ago one of the things that i really
00:44:48.040
recommend that people do is they schedule quiet time every day because we're so our lives are so busy
00:44:53.720
and we're jumping from zoom call to zoom call and it's just we're living in this crazy world and it's
00:44:58.000
like there's no time and to lower the noise we have to have quiet and in those moments of quiet we can
00:45:03.440
think okay what are the things i want to check in and it's it has almost a two-fold benefit it helps
00:45:10.460
me and my brain lower the volume but it helps me become thoughtful and who doesn't want to be around
00:45:16.780
a person that's thoughtful i'm thinking about other people about what matters to them and when i do that
00:45:22.260
i'm lowering the noise for them so but it only comes from quiet you need you need some time of
00:45:27.000
quiet that we can prepare where i'm sure she's going to spend a few minutes to do that doing it
00:45:31.060
on the fly is difficult well joe this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn
00:45:35.240
more about the book and the rest of your work so the the easiest place to go to is thebrieflab.com
00:45:41.020
so it's t-h-e-b-r-i-e-f-l-a-b.com and we have resources we have a podcast we've got you know
00:45:49.420
plenty of tools like people can download the book is available on amazon there's a lot of places book
00:45:54.680
brief also the book noise and yeah that'd be the easiest place for people to go fantastic well
00:45:59.760
joe mccormick thanks for your time it's been a pleasure pleasure is mine my guest today was
00:46:03.760
joseph mccormick he's the author of the book brief it's available on amazon.com and bookstores
00:46:07.660
everywhere you can find out more information about his work at his website thebrieflab.com
00:46:11.940
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash brief you can find links to resources where you
00:46:16.320
delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check
00:46:27.820
out our website at art of manliness.com where you find our podcast archives well as thousands
00:46:31.560
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