WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NO ONE IS LEFT ON EARTH WHO IS CAPABLE OF COMMUNICATING EFFECTIVELY?

• People are Failing at Effective Communication Across the Board
• Our Communication Crisis is Permeating Every Aspect of Our Lives because Tech Permeates Every Aspect of our Day
• We Need to Stop Being Apathetic about How We Communicate
• Skills-Based Communication Interventions Reverse Our Bankrupt Communication Landscape

From my perspective as an expert in communication, we are truly in a communication crisis. This can’t be overstated often enough, and the evidence is all around us.?

I had a graduate student named Chris who used to say ‘I fear for the Republic’ when one of our undergraduates would say or do something bizarre or strange. This saying then slowly started to be applied to ridiculous news stories we’d see about a business leader or politician saying or doing something that was just plain stupid. We would laugh and continue our day.

Chris was my student from 2014-2016 and since then, that response, ‘I fear for the Republic’ went from a funny idea to a legitimate concern. Think about how the communication landscape has changed in just the last five years.?

His quip emerged before the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections, before we knew how other countries were manipulating our social media feeds, and before the world experienced the collective trauma of the pandemic. The communication surrounding these events created a world of alternate realities, depending on where you lived and how your news feeds are curated. Communication came to mean whatever we wanted it to, adding to the grinding chaos of America today. Truth, accuracy and integrity became very hard to find.?

As a result, we’re living in a downward relational spiral that celebrates aggression, ruthlessness, individualism and ‘not giving any f*cks’. Even the ubiquity of that phrase underscores our collective default position and signals our apathy towards making anything better. We’ve lost our ability to empathize because we’re so scared of vulnerability and we have defaulted to destructive and inept communication. It’s damaging more than our relationships, our health and our communities, it’s also destroying businesses left and right. While this may seem trivial in comparison to our need for good interpersonal relationships and healthy communities, people need jobs and this means businesses need to do better.?

Communication is where this starts.?

We need to start giving some ‘f*cks’ again, because it’s what makes us a productive society, comprised of thousands of communities and millions of businesses large and small, filled with people who genuinely care. It is what makes us human. Looking at the world around us I now, honestly, fear for the Republic. This is why I teach communication and advise business leaders and entrepreneurs about how to communicate meaningfully and create impact.?

How Did We Get Here?

There are clear reasons for why we are in this crisis. They’re multi-layered and complex and mostly communication related, which means fixing them is easier than we think. This is the good part. Because they’re rooted in how we communicate, we have a lot of power. But first, we have to realize how it all started.?

The biggest catalyst that drove us into this crisis of communication is our obsession with tech as a lifestyle rather than as a tool. I’m not suggesting the oversimplified answer that tech is the problem, I’m saying that how we use tech and are encouraged, and sometimes required, to use it is the problem.?

In other words: we are the problem. It’s not the communication tools with which we think we can’t live without, it’s us. We’re in charge and we need to start acting like it. Since we have the ability to communicate and connect with each other, we have the power to fix this crisis.?

There’s no doubt: technology has transformed our lives in many helpful ways, but it can also be mighty destructive and painfully damaging. This has been proven time and again. The tools we created to connect us are the very things that are separating us and threatening some of the core characteristics of what makes us human. The ways we are currently using these tools are leaving us more isolated and less able to actually communicate effectively.?

How? Our species has survived because we’re stronger together. It’s as simple as that. There was no rugged individual who crossed the oceans alone or headed out into the wilderness to start a new colony of one. We’re built to connect and work with one another, and that requires a great deal of communication and care. At first, tech seems to allow us to connect more. But it doesn’t. How and what we communicate has degraded because tech is designed with efficiency and profit at its center, not the human condition.?

We are creatures of collectivism in which our tribe, squad, family, community or team all thrive when we work together and when we communicate meaningfully. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred and we tend to operate exclusively as individualists. This exclusive focus on self is not good for humanity and tech has contributed to thwarting the growth of the kinds of communications we need to be happy, healthy and successful. We broke what makes our species unlike any other in natural history. We created addictive tools that cause us to primarily focus inward and forget how it feels to genuinely connect with people. Tech only mimics that feeling.?

Tech is about one thing: efficiency and human feelings, experiences and connections just aren’t, and shouldn’t be, reduced to efficiency. We want and need signs of life and connection from other people. Relationships defined by efficiency are empty and cold and no one is actively looking for efficiency devoid of humanity, but it is passively and powerfully happening.?

We’re way off course and sometimes it seems too hard if not impossible to get back on course. But the truth is: we can get back to better communication, with less effort and anxiety than it would seem. I regularly see how embracing, practicing and focusing on communication skills can make a real and course-shifting impact.?

How Can We Do This?

When a skills-based intervention is applied to this problem, behavior and thinking can and do change, and quickly. When we make a concerted effort to be human (and not just tech-driven shells of humans), we remind ourselves of how good it feels and how beneficial it is, not only to ourselves, but to everyone we interact with. I call this ‘re-humanizing’ ourselves and our society. It leads to celebrating and prioritizing being other-oriented, through competent communication. These are the skills I teach.?

There is no quick fix or tech fix for this crisis, it’s purely human-centered, and humans aren’t always efficient. The way we solve this crisis is by taking personal responsibility and acting truly human again, using the depth and breadth of our ability to communicate. As I tell my students: you change the world by changing someone’s world. I know how hackneyed and hopeful that sounds, but I know it’s the truth, because I see it in my students, clients and those I coach. This starts with skills-based interventions, and it works because it shifts our focus back to where it’s been for millennia: onto the people around us.?

Incremental steps lead to quantum change. I believe that developing our communication skills are the incremental steps needed to create the change our world so desperately needs.