Communication is the New Bitcoin
Communication?
Communication is such a high-leverage skill. It influences how people perceive you. It can get you the opportunities that you want, but most importantly it gets you to be at peace with yourself because you’re able to accurately articulate you own internal state to others which ultimately increases the trust factor between you and people. The reason for using the term “bitcoin” in the title is simply to say that investing in your communication is one of the most valuable gifts you can offer yourself. In this post I will share about the importance of communication and the various lessons I learned on the journey of becoming a better communicator.
How it all started
I personally am a very introverted person which means that by default, talking to people was never a priority for me. I would much rather spend alone time doing my own thing than to hangout with friends. Activities like playing the piano or just watching nature documentaries (very nerdy thing I know) were preferred because I did not have to manage interactions with other people. But as I got older, I realized that extroverted and outgoing people have a social leverage that introverts don’t have and here’s what I mean.
Introverts tend to spend a lot of time in their mind and less so outside of it, and my case this was fine in was fine in my younger years but as I started to be more in control of my life, this quickly became a real struggle when it came to professional networking or even job interviews. The simple reason was that I had great stories and learning experiences that people could benefit from, but I had never learned to deliver them in a useful and concise manner. I recognized that I needed to improve on the way I communicate if I wanted to get far and achieve my dreams. That’s how I began a journey to discover how successful communicators achieve their craft. And this is not to say that extroverts are naturally experts at communication but rather that social anxiety is less of a barrier to them than to typical introverts. The truth is, if you want to get better at something, you have to intentionally work on it rather than being passive about it. And having personally observed the benefits of effective communication, I can almost guarantee that this is something everyone would want for themselves because there’s nothing such as being fully understood and trusted from just the quality of what you say. As I went on this journey of improving my communication skills, I made some very interesting discoveries which I would like to share with you.
The lessons
The first thing I learned on the communication journey is that, while you need to explore different communication styles to find your own voice initially, you eventually get to a point where you need to pick one style and focus you efforts on it. For me, I knew that I wanted to have a semi-serious tone and occasionally make people chuckle as I package and deliver my stories. Also knowing that I love technology and engineering, I started with a broad pool of technical podcasts about software engineering, and overtime I ended up sticking with The Peterman Pod by Ryan Peterman. I would basically watch episodes after episodes everyday because his videos not only very informative for my career, but Ryan is a pro at asking questions that lead to some fascinating answers. This in itself was a light-bulb moment because you could have the most talented person on the planet in front of you, but if you don’t know how how to get them to share their experiences you won’t make the most of the interaction. So after about a few weeks of watching those interviews and noticing things like conversation flow, pitch control, pacing and word choice etc., I gave myself some mini goals to start practicing these aspects in real life and I must say that it has been both terrifying and rewarding. I realized that the saying that goes “people’s favorite topic is themselves” is very true, and being an “interviewer” during conversations makes you a people magnet because it shows that you’re interested and you pay attention as they speak. When I recognized the immediate rewards of this practice, I continued to invest more time to watch and learn, not only from Ryan but also from his experienced guests because the art of interviewing is a skill that will always be relevant in this life I believe. Another thing that I learned in this journey of growing my communication skills is that you are your own best coach. And I say this because nobody has a clearer sense of how you want to sound like than yourself, therefore only you can give the most constructive feedback to yourself about the way you communicate. Since verbal communication was the bigger focus for me, I discovered that recording myself and re-listening to my own voice has had the most growth impact on my communication skills. And I get it, listening to your own voice may not be the most pleasant thing to do because we usually tend to be hyper critical and judgemental about ourselves. One thing I can guarantee however is that once you develop the habit of listening to your own voice, you’ll start spotting areas of improvement very clearly and take the right action to grow accordingly.
For me, I didn’t realize that my demeanor was just too serious and nerdy which made my jokes hard to land no matter how much I meant them. I would go on setting up this funny part within a story I’ve been telling only to be the only one to laugh in the end thinking that they would laugh or somehow understand the jokes As they saw me laughing. So Having discovered this weakness in my speech as I listened to myself continually, I was able to soften the tone of my voice given that I had a pretty good idea on what I wanted to sound like in the end thanks to the podcasts. This meant that I had to learn from comedians and ask direct advice from the people whose communication I admire.
TLDR
If I could go back, I’d start sooner. Back then, I was afraid of social interaction but having worked on my communication skills for a few years now, I can definitely say that it has been a confidence booster. If you read up to this point, I’d like for you to consider being more intentional your communication skills starting today because communication is more than a skill, it’s a currency.
Thanks for reading!