4 Tips To Improve Your Communication Skills

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have now yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you love this podcast and you live in the United States or Canada and you want to receive inspirational texts from me sporadically throughout your week, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 1-512-580-9305. Today, we're going to talk about communication, and I'm going to give you four separate steps to help you improve your communication skills. There's one thing that you cannot run from as a human.

0:41And that is that if you want to be in this world, you're going to have to communicate with other people. And you could either be good at communicating with other people or you'd be terrible at communicating with other people. And I want you to understand that communication is not something that you're necessarily just born with. Communication and becoming good at it or better at it is a skill set. And so it is a skill set which means that if your skills are not good right now, your skills can always become better. And so for me, I'll tell you my story. It's pretty wild. Like I would have never thought I was somebody who would put out a podcast when I was a kid that would speak to hundreds of thousands and millions of people throughout the course of a year.

1:19When I was younger, I was a super shy kid. I'm still very introverted and I can push myself to be extroverted at times. You know, and I wasn't a very outgoing kid. I didn't have a girlfriend until I was in eighth grade. And then I realized in eighth grade when I didn't have a girlfriend, I was like, if I want a girlfriend one day, I probably need to stop being so shy. And so I kind of hated speaking, but I forced myself to start speaking. And then when I got into my first sales position, they just pushed you to get on stage. We had team meetings twice a week. And so eventually, once you're there for a couple of months, they're like, hey, you're going to speak at a team meeting.

1:52And I had to speak starting weekly. And then I started speaking every couple of days. And then I had to get to a point where I was basically speaking for six hours a day for five years straight. I was doing interviews. I was talking with people. And there were group interviews that I was running. And so I started studying communication. I started reading books. I started watching other people and seeing how they're communicating and watching somebody who's a great professional speaker and what are they doing that I'm not doing. And so what I'm going to go over with you guys is just what I see as the four pillars of really great communication.

2:22And if you start using these in your daily interactions, you're going to start noticing that you're a better communicator and people will start changing the way that they speak to you and you'll get more meaningful conversations out of it. And so let's dive in. The first one is to become a better speaker. Shut up. So what does that mean? In order to have a better conversation with someone, get better at listening to the other person. Listen more than you speak. You're given two ears and one mouth because you should listen twice as much as you speak. If you've ever been in a conversation with someone and they talk almost the entire time and then they get done and they're like, oh, that was such a great conversation.

2:57You're like, I barely said anything. People want to speak and they want to be heard. And so this is a phrase that one of my very first teachers used to teach me when I was younger. And he would say, give up being interesting for being interested. Be more interested in other people. Be more curious. Ask more questions. And when you're using active listening to somebody else, it requires your full engagement. And so what you want to try to do is you want to try to silence your internal dialogue and keep your focus on the person that you're talking to so that you don't have to figure out, oh, well, what am I going to say next?

3:30Oh, well, I want to tell them this story. What's the question I'm going to ask next? So just try to be a little bit quiet and try to put more presence into just listening to the person. Next thing you want to do is you want to be able to acknowledge what they're saying and validate what they're saying. How do you do this? You nod your head. You make eye contact. You provide small verbal affirmations like, oh, yeah, I understand. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, I see. And then what you want to do is you ask open-ended questions. So to be able to encourage somebody else to keep speaking, ask them questions that are open-ended, which means not yes or no questions, but it's questions like, well, how did that make you feel?

4:06Well, what do you think the next step should be? Those questions allow them to go a little bit deeper. Every once in a while, it's really important to also reflect and summarize so that people can tell that you're listening as well. And so it shows that you're engaged. And so it's like, oh, man, that's crazy. So she said X, Y, Z to you. and then you actually are reflecting backwards. They said, oh yeah, she said this and then they go a little bit deeper. Another thing that's really important, I gave this tip to my sales team earlier this week or actually it was last week and they're like, it's crazy how much more people will speak when you do this.

4:37And my very first one-on-one coach used to tell me this. He would say, give a couple seconds after someone stopped speaking before you respond. And so what he would say is go, okay, someone stopped speaking. And in your head, you go one Mississippi, Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. And if you get to three, then you can respond. If you don't get to three, then let them keep going. Lots of times that people will do is they will stop speaking and then they'll start speaking again in those three seconds. And they will then go deeper into their story. And the deeper that they go into their story, their thoughts about themselves, their thoughts about the world, the more that they feel heard.

5:14They usually don't give you everything the first time. And so if you're in sales, do this as well. Someone gives you an answer, and then you can speak, right? It's just a little bit extra time. And we just call them power pauses is what we called them. And so remember this, this is what's really important about the whole thing. People just want to feel seen and heard. If you can make somebody feel seen and heard, that requires no verbal from you. You could just sit there and listen and let them go. And maybe every once in a while you ask them a couple of questions to help them go longer. People will feel like, man, that was such a great conversation.

5:47I really like him. I really like her. I feel like they're a really great listener. So that's the first thing is make sure you get better at your active listening skills. The second thing, this is something that I really had to work on for a long time when I was younger, is nonverbal communication. And so there was a study that was done back in the 1960s, and there's a guy named Dr. Albert May Rabian. And he said that when you communicate out of 100 % of communication, 7 % of that communication is words, 33, I'm sorry, 38 % is tonality. And 55 % is your body language. Body language is your head knots.

6:23Your shoulders are squared up with the person. Your facial expressions. And just as a vast generalization, women tend to be better at nonverbal communication than men. And this is something I learned when I was way younger. My very first mentor was really, really good at developing managers from sales reps to managers that were women. He had the most people in the entire country develop from sales reps into managers that were female. And so I asked him, I was like, hey, how do I get better at like communicating? How do I get better at managing? Because to manage men and manage women are usually a little bit different of a skill set.

6:58He's like, read the book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And he's like, and also what I would say is don't do this in a creepy way. But when you go out in public, just watch women communicate with each other. Watch how men communicate with each other. And so there was a study that was done years ago. and what they found is they went into a school of like five and six-year-olds and they had a giant wall that was just a one-way mirror two-sided mirror actually and so they could watch these children and what they found is that boys often engage in activities that require them to be side by side so like playing a video game participating in sports and their conversations usually occur being side to side like next to each other shoulder to shoulder and this might give the impression of them communicating in the same direction and like, oh, we're just going to, you know, we're going to talk in the exact same direction.

7:46So that's what they found is that little boys tend to be shoulder to shoulder. And so when they were watching these children that were inside of the classroom, little boys would sit at their chairs and they would both face the front of the classroom, but they would turn their heads to each other. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. In my opinion, what they think as well is they think this goes back to hunting. So it's just kind of built into our system over hundreds of thousands of years. And there is a reason why they're not looking at each other. It's because they don't want to miss an animal or they don't want to be killed.

8:17And so a lot of times, like I've been hunting many times and I'm not square face to face with my friend. We're usually either shoulder to shoulder where we're walking through somewhere or we're back to back so that we can see 360 degrees and we'll have a full conversation never looking at each other, right? What they found though is with little girls is that on the other hand, like boys will be shoulder to shoulder looking at the front of the classroom. Little girls, even at like four or five, six years old, tend to form small intimate groups where they're face to face. And they actually look at each other, they square up their shoulders.

8:50This is why women tend to be better with body language than men. You know, obviously that's a vast generalization, but it tends to be that way. And they're better at showing that they're listening is because they're usually facing each other face to face. and so they found these little girls would literally turn their chairs and be face to face instead of the little boys that were facing towards the front of the room and so like you know if you've ever been in a situation where where guys you're sitting there and you're you know your girlfriend or your wife is like telling you a story and she's like you're not even listening to me and you're like what are you talking about i heard everything that she said he might have heard it but he probably didn't get the visual cues the head nods the uh-huhs the yes okay the reflecting back of the conversation.

9:31And so you got to just be conscious of your body language. If you want to be a really good communicator, you know, maintain an open posture, which means like don't cross your arms, don't cross your legs because that can appear defensive. And that's usually subconsciously somebody picks up on, Oh, his arms are closed. Like they're not consciously thinking, Oh, his arms are closed. He's closed off, but it just feels like they're closed off. When you're listening to somebody every once in a while, lean slightly forward to convey that you're interested and you're engaging with them. Maintain eye contact with them.

10:00It shows that you're listening, that you're attentive. And then watch for nonverbal cues in others. Recognize when someone is becoming disinterested, which means that they're looking at their watch or they're looking away or they're looking towards a door or they're feeling uncomfortable in the situation, which is like shifting their weight. You know, when I'm coaching people and I'm one-on-one, I'm always watching their body language because their body is usually showing me cues that they're not telling me. And so I'm like, hold on, you just took like a really deep breath right there. What happened?

10:26Oh, well, I was thinking about this. And then you go a little bit deeper. And so you want to be attuned to other people's nonverbal signals and also pay attention to your nonverbals as well. Okay. Next one. Number three is your tonality. You want to get good at regulating your pitch and your tone. And so if you have a calm and steady tone, it can deescalate tensions. If you're in the middle of a fight, whatever it might be, fun conversations can be very tonalities, be louder. So 38 % of communication is your tonality. And so I'm going to give you an example of what I mean by this. So if we take the phrase, you might say 38 % is tonality.

11:02Yeah, it is. So if you go, I didn't say she stole my money. We're going to take that phrase, that sentence. I didn't say she stole my money. And I'm going to emphasize different words to show you how just the exact same sentence emphasize on each word differently will show how the sentence changes. So if you say, I didn't say she stole my money, that shows, you know, someone else said it. I didn't say it. If you say, I didn't say she stole my money, it's I'm denying the claim or the accusation that I said she stole my money. I didn't say she stole my money. I didn't say she stole my money. Now I might've hinted or I might've written it down, but I didn't verbally communicated is what I'm saying.

11:45I didn't say she stole my money. I'm not accusing her specifically, but somebody else. I didn't say she stole my money. Maybe she borrowed it. Maybe she found it, whatever it might be. But I didn't say she stole the money. I didn't say she stole my money. Means I didn't say she stole money. Could have been something else that she stole. It could have been somebody else's money that she stole. And then you could say, I didn't say she stole my money. She might've taken something else from me, but it wasn't my money. It's the exact same sentence. But when you change the tonality of it, the sentence changes completely.

12:21And so I always tell, especially when I'm talking with my sales reps, I say, you can say pretty much anything that you want to. You just have to make sure you're saying the correct way. And so if you're sitting down with somebody and you could say something like, when are you going to change your life? And it's like, that feels kind of aggressive. But if you say, when are you going to change your life. It feels like, oh, it's not as aggressive right there, right? And it's just the tonality that you use with people. So if you want to start mastering your communication, as you're saying the words, words are only 7 % of what you're saying.

12:53The other 38 % of it is just the tonality and the other 55 % is your body language, which we spoke about just a minute ago. So the sentences change as your tonality changes, as your word emphasis changes as well. And so that's the third one. And then the fourth one is get better at being clear and concise. Less is more. I don't know if you know anybody like this. One of my best friends, he will just talk. And we have this joke where I'm like, dude, can you just land the plane? And so because he'll just talk. And for those of you guys that are watching on YouTube, I'll literally take my hand as if it's a plane and I act like I'm landing a plane because he just knows he can go off on tangents.

13:35And sometimes he talks and a lot of the people around him are like lost. Like, where are we going in this? And so you have to understand when you're like really one of those people who beats around the bush, there's a lot of, if you look at anybody that you really think is a really great communicator, they're clear and they're concise and they usually don't use big words, big words and complex thoughts actually make you seem less intelligent to the listener. There was a study that was done that actually found that people use big words and complex words. People actually see them as less intelligent, which is wild because you think, oh, they're using such big words.

14:13They must be so smart. But if people can't understand what you're saying, they equate it automatically to this person isn't that smart because I don't understand them. You know, Einstein said if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. I remember a conversation I was having with another one of my friends who uses big words and complex thoughts. And I was like, man, you're giving this speech to people and you're kind of like speaking over them. I was just giving him a tip. We were talking back and forth. He's like, well, I can't help it, man. This is why I speak.

14:42And I was like, okay, I'm interested. Are you speaking from the stage so that the audience hears how smart you are or so that the audience can understand you? And he was like, oh, shit, I've never thought of it that way. I was like, yeah, that's what you kind of want to start to think about that. Let's kind of get an idea. What if you spoke with more easy words? Whenever I, people always talk about with the podcast that I don't speak over people and then I try to say things very clear and concise and simply like that is my thing that I'm trying to get better at all of the time. And I try not to speak over a seventh grade reading level because the average person in America doesn't have above eighth grade reading level.

15:20So I want to speak to where most people can understand. There was a study that was done. I love the title of it. a guy named Daniel Oppenheimer, and the study was called Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilize Introspective of Necessity, Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly. The title is supposed to obviously be very funny because he's making jokes about this. But in his research, Oppenheimer found that when content is made more complex and it's unnecessary, readers or listeners rate the author or the speaker as less intelligent. And so on the opposite side of that, when content is very clear, it's very straightforward, people rated that communicator as much more intelligent than the other one.

16:03So don't use big words. I mean, you can use big words if you want, but if you understand that 50 % of the people are not going to understand what that word means, try to convey your message as simply as you possibly can. Being clear and concise helps the listeners understand, which is what you're trying to do when you communicate with people is have them understand, not be like, Hey, look how fucking smart I am. And so I was like, Hey, can't we just, you know, be a little bit more clear, a little bit more concise, land the plane, let everybody know, Hey, we're all talking on the same level. I'm not trying to speak over you.

16:33I'm not trying to show you how smart I am. I want as many people as possible to understand what I'm saying. So why don't we just be a little bit clear, a little bit concise as well. And so those are the four tips, the four steps, the four strategies to help you be a better communicator. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram stories, tag me at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it organically and through grassroots. And we want to keep impacting more people over here. And so if you would share it, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.

17:05And we'd be able to impact more people's lives. So if you do that, I would thank you for that. And with that, I'm gonna leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.