Happy Sunday Everyone:
I’ve had a few experiences over the past 3 weeks that has me thinking a lot about communication. How we communicate with other people and how much we control the outcome through how we communicate. The words we choose to use, the emotions behind the words, and most importantly, the intended and unintended consequences of both the words and emotions.
The first experience was me driving with a very close friend of mine. He’s very smart and very dry. He’s to the point and when you’re working with him, it’s all business with very little emotion. If you’re talking to him for 2 minutes you’d have to work hard to not understand this about him. He flips homes and often deals with hard money folks. He and I were driving to lunch and he answers a call, it’s a hard money lender, and the guy on the other line starts talking to him about “sharpening his pencil to get to the numbers”, and “really really trying hard to get the numbers to work”….he went on and on. It took him 10 minutes to say what he could have said in 2 minutes. I’m listening to this guy and could only think about two things: 1; This guy sounds like an idiot, just get to the point. 2; The self-reflective question of “do I sound like this to any of my clients or business partners?”. I judged the call correctly. When my friend hung up he looked at me and said “can you believe that guy”…I don’t ever want to be that “that guy”.
The 2nd and 3rd experience are both related to me, and my team. In both cases, loans went sideways. One had to do with something completely out of our control, one had to do with communication. The situations were both easily resolved but in hindsight, were both handled differently in how we communicated. In one incident we were overly apologetic. We focused too much on the apology “I’m so sorry”, “I hate that this is happening, we will do everything we can to take care of it”, “again, please know we’re sorry”, both verbally and in email/txt. In the other situation it was more “I appreciate you telling me this, I’m sorry you feel the way you do, and I will fix it now”. Looking back on them both, we were reacting based on the client/business partners emotions. In one case we had someone that was very emotional about the situation and we reacted emotionally, the other situation we had someone that simply needed resolution and we responded as such. In both situations, we weren’t purposeful in our communication we were simply reacting to what was coming at us. We were letting the situation be dictated by the other person’s emotional state.
Here are some of my own reflections on these 3 events:
* In our roles, we have no choice but to deal with a multitude of personality types. It’s our responsibility to gauge what those personality types are and adjust accordingly. It doesn’t mean being fake, but it does mean adapting. The guy communicating with my friend would have been better served being clear, concise, and direct vs. what he was. In the end, he sounded like he was full of s#@$.
* minimize filler words. Be purposeful with your words. Doing so will prevent rambling. The more we ramble the less we look like we know what we’re doing.
* When you get negative feedback, apologize once, and work to resolve the issue. I need people to know that I care, and my team cares, but I need to resolve the issue more.
* apologizing more than once makes you look incompetent and unprofessional. If I’m on the receiving end of a continuous barrage of apologies, I’m thinking “stop saying you’re sorry and fix my problem”.
* There is a difference between being sympathetic and apologetic. I don’t need to apologize for a problem I didn’t create. I do however need the client or business partner to know that I’m sympathetic to the situation, and take responsibility for being involved in a positive outcome.
* When dealing with overly emotional people, the less emotional you stay, the less fuel you will give them to continue down that path. Focus on the resolution and move on no matter how badly you feel the need to defend yourself against useless/emotional accusations. Making yourself feel better is doing exactly and only that…it’s not helping on the other end. To the contrary your fueling the emotional fire on the other end by making yourself feel better.
* If you are an emotional person (I am), be less emotional when dealing with conflict. Recognize this in yourself and work on it. I’m glad I’m an emotional person, it makes me who/what I am, but I still need to recognize when it can act as a detriment. Understanding your own emotions and then being able to control them vs. your emotions controlling you is a long term big win.
With all the talk of artificial intelligence, I think focusing more than we ever have on emotional intelligence will go a long way in our personal/professional lives.
Have a great week.