1: The Importance of Effective Verbal Communication
The chapter opens with a few anecdotes about Steve Jobs, who transformed Apple from a second-rate computer company into the most innovative and influential technology company in the world. Jobs was an amazing speaker, and could conjure excitement and hope in his audiences - and his ability to do so in keynote speeches and product introductions were a significant factor in driving the success of the company. This demonstrates the power of effective communications.
It's long been recognized that communication skills are critical to leadership - not only to give clear orders that can be executed without uncertainty, but to inspire in followers the enthusiasm to get behind the leader without hesitation. Numerous articles and books agree on this point, unanimously.
It is not merely the high-power leaders who need communication skills, but they are critical to success in any profession in which a person must deal with other people. There are very few professions in which a person can get through their working day without saying anything to anyone in a manner that is necessary for them to be successful in their tasks.
The great irony of the situation is that while many employers stress the value of communication skills, very little time or effort is invested in training employees to become effective communicators. And in the academic world, communication skills are seldom part of any academic program outside of communication-related degrees.
The author speaks to his own experiences with workshops on communication - particularly how badly designed and conceived they are. They provide little in the way of a framework to help students understand the way communication works, and often consist of merely a "list of tricks" without any sense of context in a broader practicum of communication. In essence, this is giving people tools without the knowledge necessary to use them, or to understand quite when they should be used.
It is also not sufficient to simply listen to good speeches. Much in the way that eating a thousand well-prepared meals will not teach someone to be a great chef, listening to thousands of well-delivered speeches will not make them a good speaker. They might be able to figure things out on their own by dissecting the examples, or they might not.
Another approach to teaching communication skills is mentoring, which is also marginally effective. To be effective, the mentor must not only be good at speaking, but at teaching others to speak. Most people simply are not good at both, so students learn bad information from a good teacher, or good information from a poor teacher.
Random Bits
(EN: The author switches channels rather abruptly and discusses some unrelated topics in brief sections without much in the way of transitions to contextualize them, so I'm using subheads of my own to try to make some sense of it.)
Storytelling
The author mentions to a CEO who is constantly seeking out work-related stories from within hos own company, that can serve to inspire others. This technique is highly effective in making a concept become personal, concrete, and memorable.
(EN: This is well supported by scientific research, which shows that "episodic memory" that presents facts in the context of a narrative is more effective in terms of the amount of data retained and the length of retention than "semantic memory" which presents information in a schema or structure that has no narrative element.)
Social Context
If society is the interaction of human beings, then it should be obvious that much of this interaction takes place by communicating. Informal speech is present in every social interaction, and there are a few instances in which formal speech is used.
Even those interactions that accomplish outcomes by physical action use a great deal of communication before action is taken. In any workplace, it is clear that there is a lot of talk before anything gets done, to get others to understand the common goal and their part in it, and to agree to the action that is going to be taken.
Technology
Today's technology has further broadened the reach of communications, enabling any person to be heard by millions, and enabling words to travel around the world in seconds. Most people do this very casually, without realizing the power they have to influence others through their informal online communications.
Benefits of Good Communication
When you communicate effectively, you reach people at a much deeper level and engage with their emotional beings. Naturally, this leads to better relationships with others, but it can also lead to getting more of what you want out of them, and becoming a figure of authority and influence with others. This can have multiple benefits in your career and social life.
Bilateral Communication
Most communication is not a monologue but a dialogue, in which being effective requires you to listen carefully to the other person and speak directly to their interests. Listening to what others say help you identify what those interests are, and the feedback they provide gives the speaker an indication of whether his message is effective or needs to be modified.
Even when a formal one-way speech is delivered, it must be crafted to the interests of the audience if it is to resound with them, or get much attention at all.
Sidebar: A Business Example
The author mentions an instance in which he was in charge of manufacturing "some large structures" on a project that was very tight in terms of budget and schedule, and in which there would be significant consequences if it was not completed on time.
At the onset, he recognized that the aggressive schedule could easily be met if the task could be done like clockwork - but doing so requires clear communication.
The greatest waste of time in any project comes from changes and rework when those who are doing things are not clear on what the outcome should be - which can arise when the requirements are not clearly communicated, or are later misinterpreted.
This, in turn, often arises from assumptions: the sponsor believes that others should understand what he wants without his having to tell them, or the workers assume they know what the sponsor wants without having been told. When they guess wrong, the situation must be rectified, work stopped, things torn down and built again, etc.
He goes into details about the way he was able to succeed on the project, which simply boils down to getting the sponsor to clearly state his needs at the onset, ensuring that they are clearly understood, and having frequent communication checkpoints during the process to address ambiguities that arose.
That is, without clear and frequent communication, the project would have been a miserable failure.
How to Read This Book
This book is written with an emphasis on speaking in public, though it can be applied to other forms of communication, both verbal or written, whether engaging with a large audience or a single person.
(EN: There's a section in which the book is digested into parts and gives a preview of chapter contents, which is more in the nature of marketing, so I'm dropping it from the notes.)