Become a better communicator using your strengths

All of us can learn how to communicate more effectively using our strengths, even if, like many of my clients, we don't think we're any good at it.

The other day one senior guy complained that people glaze over and switch off whenever he presents at a meeting or leadership team.

‘What do they recommend?’ I ask.

‘They tell me to be more like Susan,' he responded. 'She is so concise in her choice of words. Or like Andreas who is so visionary, everyone would march behind him to hell and back.

‘Can you do that?’ I ask.

He shook his head.

‘They tell me to be inspiring like the TED presenters. I could never do that.'

That's very helpful advice! He's a physicist who lacks innate communication strengths. Trying to be like someone else is absolutely the opposite of what he needs to do. Rather he must learn to be more himself.

But how?

I encourage people to use the Clifton Strengths Assessment from Gallup to get a robust analysis of their strengths.

The physicist has a lot of thinking strengths.

‘Do you get criticised for giving people too much information?’ I asked.

‘All the time!’ he says

‘You’re a deep thinker and the detail fascinates you. But these are finance and salespeople, who don’t care about the detail. They want the essential three points 1, 2 , 3. Can you distil your message down into three points?’

‘Yeah sure.’

‘Give ‘em 1, 2 ,3 then say nothing more. Let them digest it. If they have questions give them a summary 1, 2, 3 that you’ve prepared. And if they have more questions, you can go into detail, but ask them first how much detail they want.’

He agreed and spent the next couple of months practising this new technique. He had such a breakthrough because his colleagues and boss really wanted to ask questions after his first three bullet points. They came to respect his expertise at a whole new level. His confidence grew massively. And here he was just being himself, communicating from his strengths.

Many others who struggle to communicate are often engineers, IT experts, and technical people who are really smart and in executive positions but struggling to communicate in a way expected at their level of seniority. They can learn to use their thinking strengths to communicate more effectively.

If this is of interest to you get in touch and we can discuss how you can improve your communication through your strengths.

I also made a video about this, you can check it here .