The Two Best Ways To Embrace This Important Four-Word Business Mantra

In business, your ability to communicate and connect with your intended audiences is the difference between struggling and thriving.

Specifically, ask yourself if:

• You’re frequently frustrated by your team’s lack of understanding?
• You’re perplexed that your business development efforts have fallen flat, even though you’ve specifically touted your product or service’s credentials
• Your colleagues and clients are ignoring your emails and not calling you back

There’s a four-word business mantra that, when acknowledged and embraced, has the power to change your results completely:?It’s not about you.

Far too often, we assume that everyone thinks, behaves, and communicates the same way we do. Worse, we make the mistake of focusing our sales pitches and communication about us rather than our intended audiences.

The finest leaders understand that by putting others first and adopting a service mindset, they can improve communication and connection, establish trust, deepen relationships, and grow their businesses.

Here are the two best ways to embrace that important four-word mantra:

1. Demonstrate empathy

Though often confused with sympathy, which is feeling compassion for somebody, empathy is about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and seeing things from their perspective. In other words, it’s all about them.

To be a more empathetic leader, you must shift your mindset to put people first. See them as human beings rather than a means to the end of a transaction or task. With your customers, practicing empathy means establishing a relationship where you practice serving, not selling. With your colleagues, it starts with giving them the benefit of the doubt and checking in frequently. By putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, you’ll better understand their needs, which is the foundation for successful communication.

Next, ask thoughtful and probing questions that draw out implications and feelings. Curious people ask lots of questions, leading them to develop a stronger understanding of the people around them. This also builds rapport and fosters a deeper connection.

Finally, listen more and talk less. This allows you to discover new ideas and detect potential problems when they’re still small. Add to that an open-mindedness to considering differing points of view, and you’ll make others feel valued and heard, better understand your customers, colleagues and partners, and then be able to use those insights to better serve and communicate with them.

2. Cultivate awareness

We all have those colleagues who are utterly clueless. Completely oblivious to those around them, their environment, and worse, their own behavior, they blindly make their way through the world, never quite understanding why they aren’t progressing in their careers.

If you want to ensure that you’re not that person, you need to cultivate three types of awareness: self-awareness, awareness of others and situational awareness.

Self-awareness is clearly understanding your strengths, weaknesses, beliefs, motivations, and emotions. It’s not just about knowing how you move through the world but also how your energy affects others. It allows you to understand that everything is connected—your interactions with other people, how they perceive you, your attitude, and your responses to them in the moment—and all can be enhanced through better self-awareness.

Awareness of others is impossible to do when you’re multitasking. Give people your undivided attention, and listen with the intent to understand, not to respond. When you’re focused on them, you send a message that they matter, improving your communication and connection.

Situational awareness speaks to your ability to perceive what is happening—or predict what will happen—in your company or industry environment. The more observant you are, the better able you’ll be to see the current reality and future possibilities. This will allow you to adapt your messaging and methodologies, aiding your ability to communicate and connect with others.

By embracing empathy and awareness, you’ll naturally adopt an “it’s not about you” frame of mind to improve your communication and connection, establish trust, deepen relationships, and grow your business.

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