[Music] [Applause] friends i have a confession to make i sometimes do stupid stupid things for instance when i'm at home having made dinner for the family and i want my kids to join us i'll bring out the phone and send them a message dinner is ready this is really embarrassing because they are not in another part of the city they are in their rooms 15 steps from where i'm standing and i can see on your face you realize as well as i do that this is a crazy stupid behavior but i still do it why
you know why because i'm lazy and it's so easy wouldn't you agree that it's much easier to inform than to engage that it's much easier to pretend that you're efficient when you're just adding to the digital noise and i should know better for the last 25 years i've been studying the success factors of analog communication in an ever more digital world things like what you say how you sound how you look how you listen and those are skills you need if you want to achieve results when you cooperate when you sell and when you lead
if you want to be a great leader you also want to be a great communicator you want to communicate with energy with clarity and with empathy energy so that i believe that you believe clarity is you take away as many misunderstandings as possible and empathy so i feel that you get me and this is really hard to do it takes time to master this effort willpower and it's so much more tempting to just cruise down the digital highway to enter the candy store of digital tools and digital toys where you can swipe left to right
or like something or just spend time there so the question is as we go down and as we wander deeper and deeper into this digital candy store are we losing our communication skills are we risk losing it at least and the answer unfortunately is yes there are challenges that we should be aware of first as the digital consumption goes up the level of empathy is going down especially but not only among young people and this is alarming but it shouldn't come as a surprise really because the time you spend in your bed or so far
by your desk interacting in the digital space is time you don't get to practice social skills in your analog space second we are more and more impatient 25 years ago the communication experts said that we had an attention span of about 20 minutes which coincidentally is the maximum length of a ted talk recently though i was told by a university professor that we are down to three and a half minutes the change is staggering we are becoming the scanning generation scanning for likes and executive summaries and nuggets of information quick things quick fix instant gratification
the third challenge is that we are constantly constantly interrupted more than ever before and just imagine yourself being in a face-to-face conversation with somebody and the phone rings you don't have to pick up the phone but you do have to pick up the conversation because you you just got disconnected and this will only increase as we add more and more communication channels because here's the thing just because we add more and more communication channels doesn't mean we add more and more communication quality you know we used to only have two channels a couple of million
years back body language and voice a couple of hundred thousand years ago spoken words three channels a few thousand years ago we invented the written language four channels now we can even skip body language and voice and then of course it progressed and with electricity came the broadcasting services like radio tv newspapers and then we have telefax telephone computers sms email mobile phones video conferencing chatting powerpoint god bless us all and then of course social media with all the messenger services around it multiple channels so what can we do in this situation i say we
should reclaim and enhance our focus on analog communication skills over the years i've gathered some 12 15 communication truths or principles or lessons and i'd like to share some of them with you right now first three generic ones universals before we step into some more practical hands-on lessons as well so are you ready okay fasten your t-split because here we go lesson number one you cannot not communicate everything about you communicates what you wear what you eat what you drive what you say what you do everything if you enter the office looking like that or
if you if you come to the school to pick up your kids looking like that you might think that you are oh so busy oh so cool a top performer but chances are that your colleagues or your kids will think whatever is on that screen is more important than me and i know about i don't know about you but i've been that person you know to my kids when i picked them up from kindergarten and they say can you please turn off the phone when you pick us up daddy it doesn't feel so good when
you hear that first lesson second you cannot say what you mean our brains are not computers we don't have linear thought processes we are messy so whatever comes out is not exactly what you intended and it gets worse because every one of you have your own interpretation of what i just been saying and that goes for you as well everyone and depending on your own filters you will have different memories of what i've been saying afterwards take that with you as well and let's go to lesson number three you have a power you can make
people feel the way you want them to feel what you think what you say what you do will affect not only how you feel but also how they feel which will affect how well they perform so be careful what thoughts and words and actions you cultivate because they will make an impact if you praise me i'll get happy if you cry i'll get sad if you show me 51 boring corporates powerpoint slides i'll get sleepy cause and effect so those were three universal ones generic ones let's go into some more practical ones hands-on lessons as
well are you okay with that get rid of that okay so now we have to look at you know what i mean with practical ones well where do you really exercise your leadership on a day-to-day basis if you're a manager in an office environment you spend at least half of your time in meetings am i right monday meetings status meetings project meetings management team meetings kickoff rallies conferences customer meetings meetings meetings meetings all the time so let's put the next three lessons in a meeting context and now you have to imagine you have to imagine
that you are a you're the head of product management for your company and you just got an email from the vp of sales and she apologizes and says really sorry i'm double booked in one hour a new potential client will come to the office five people the ceo she will be there the purchasing director and some other people as well and since i'm double booked you have to take care of this meeting one hour from now that's the scenario okay so one hour later you're at the reception you have booked the conference room and you
google them so you kind of find out who they are and now you're standing there you know your heart is pumping your hands are a bit sweaty they are running late which is good for you because then they can control your breathing here you know and then the entrance doors opens five people steps in it's them they see you and unconsciously when they walk toward you at that moment they will form an opinion of you whether or not they like you and whether or not they perceive you as a threat let's do an exercise very
soon here you will see a person a and a person b on this screen and you can observe three things about them and your task is to within a second from when you see it shout out which one you like the best do you understand the task you cannot you cannot analyze here it's just you know one two three all right good are you ready one two three most of you said a right but then you start to laugh now because you say oh but oh this is the same they are not the same the
order of your observation matters this is called the primacy effect but we know it as the first impression and here's the thing if your whatever first impression your client has they don't want to change their mind according to the center for body language in belgium communication experts 70 of all first impressions last so the fourth lesson is first impressions last now you have done a great job because all of those five people perceive you as person a isn't that nice yeah so they like you unconsciously already now let's build some more trust and take them
to the conference room let's go for lesson number five it's better to be interested than interesting this is the number one trade for any good salesperson but it's also the number one trade for any good manager people want their managers to see them to recognize them to be attentive curious doesn't mean that they have to agree on everything it's just a matter of respect that they see them how do you do this it's pretty straightforward you ask questions and you listen not to respond but to understand big difference if your customer in this scenario this
potential client trusts you this is where you win the business if your people trust you this is how you win their hearts so be curious be interested be present which by the way is a big challenge if you forgot your phone on the table and it starts to buzz and beep and flash because you can't help but to react in real time you just have to look at the phone it's the exact same reaction as your ancestors 10 000 years ago were in a forest everything was calm and quiet and the branch snapped all their
attention would go towards that sound is it a hostile tribe member who wants to enslave me is it is it a hungry tiger wanting to eat me is it is it perhaps an attractive person who i can mix my dna with you know prolong my lineage so i can become you you know in the future so you look at the phone because you have to you don't have a choice of course what you should do is to turn off the phone what you should absolutely not do in this scenario is this look under the table
like swipe left swipe right good you don't want and you don't do this of course you don't do this but it takes me to lesson number six your body speaks louder than words now let's get really practical here and work on some non-verbal communication clues uh we start with okay this one you're in this scenario okay you're in with the client this potential client and you don't want to look arrogant do you no you don't but do you know that the difference is only one inch between looking arrogant and normal one inch 2.54 centimeters let's
do a test pair up two and two face each other and say nice to meet you and then you do it again and you lift your nose one inch feel the difference go ahead try it now thank you now try to detect that with your head in your phone that's gonna be tough let's take a couple of more it's time for you to present to these potential clients you stand up and you do this what does this signal this means that you're comfortable being vulnerable means that you're inclusive and that you value other people's opinions
great you think i'm going to do this all the time no you're not if you overdo this you come across as insecure and emotionally weak oh i don't want that i'm going to do this okay good now you're signaling certainty this you're stating a fact not to be debated if you overdo it you will come across as rude and insensitive to other people's feelings balance it let's take one more eye contact you have the client in front of you five people you know the ceo the purchasing director some other people how long should you look
at someone before it's time to switch the general rule of thumb is three seconds then you have time to establish a connection get a nod move on you don't want to do this if you don't dare to look at someone then you will come across as nervous and stressed and not very trustworthy on the other hand if you lock eye to only the ceo the decision maker very soon i'm not even blinking here very soon two things will happen the rest of the people will feel excluded out from the meeting including the purchasing director not
good and the ceo she will also feel something because i am signaling either aggression or lust so so from a non-verbal communication perspective i either want to kill you or make babies you know and i must say that neither of these two options are appropriate in a business context would you agree try to detect that with the phone in front of your face i know i know i sound like a grumpy old man i get that i get that but you know i'm i'm i'm generation x i belong to generation x i've been through the
transition from analog to digital and i'll tell you right now i love technology and i love what innovations can do for us i do never want to go back to the days of slow screeching modems and and stupid you know computers with kilobytes of memory and even more stupid phones without internet access no i don't want that i just want us to realize that there are risks and challenges coming with the easy way of using digital tools and digital toys so we need to balance that and work with the other part as well are you
up for the challenge i hope you're up for the challenge because this for me is not just an idea worth spreading this is a call for action thank you [Applause]
