You can create your career success by becoming a dynamic communicator.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator you need to become a great conversationalist, a clear concise writer and a dynamic presenter.  Today I want to discuss how to become a great conversationalist.

Listening is the key to becoming a great conversationalist.  Dr. Joyce Brothers makes an interesting point about listening.

“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”

She’s right!

When you really listen to someone, really listen, giving him or her your complete and undivided attention, you are showing that you care about him or her as a human being.  What could be more flattering?

The US Department of Labor suggests several reasons for developing your listening skills.  Developing your listening skills will help you:

• Better understand assignments and what is expected of you.
• Build rapport with co-workers, bosses and customers.
• Show support for others.
• Work better in a team based environment.
• Resolve problem with co-workers, bosses and customers
• Answer questions completely.
• Find the underlying meaning in what others say.

Here are my thoughts on what it takes to be a good listener:

• Maintain eye contact with the person with whom you are speaking.
• Don’t interrupt – except to ask a clarification question.
• Use non verbal cues – nod your heard, lean toward the other person, sit still – that indicate you are listening.
• Repeat what the other person says – to be sure you understand, and to get clarification.

I have a worked out a listening to speaking ratio for effective conversations.  Listen two thirds of the time.  Speak one third of the time.  In this way, you are giving the other person more time to share his or her thoughts and ideas with you.  You will be flattering him or her by your willingness to listen.

Listening is more than just not talking.  To listen well, you need to mentally engage with the other person.  You need to focus on what he or she is saying, and you need to respond in a manner that indicates that you are paying attention.

You should listen the most diligently when you find yourself disagreeing with what the other person is saying.  It’s easy to tune out someone with whom you disagree.  When you really listen to what he or she has to say, you are not only demonstrating respect for his or her as a person, you put yourself in a position to learn something new.

The people who host many of the television political talk shows are terrible listeners.  They invite people who hold opposing views to be on their show.  They ask provocative questions.  And then begin to argue with their guest as soon as he or she begins speaking.  This may be good TV, but it is a poor example of how to truly listen and engage with another person.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful people have well developed communication skills.  They are good conversationalists.  They write clearly and succinctly.  They present well.  If you want to become a good conversationalist, you need to learn to listen well.  Focus your attention on the other person, pay attention to what he or she says.  Respond appropriately.  Listen more than you speak.  Show people that you value them and what they have to say.

That’s my career advice on how to become a great conversationalist by listening well.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

You can create your career success by becoming a dynamic communicator.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator you need to become a great conversationalist, a clear concise writer and a dynamic presenter.  Today I want to discuss how to become a great conversationalist.

Listening is the key to becoming a great conversationalist.  Dr. Joyce Brothers makes an interesting point about listening.

“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”

She’s right!

When you really listen to someone, really listen, giving him or her your complete and undivided attention, you are showing that you care about him or her as a human being.  What could be more flattering?

The US Department of Labor suggests several reasons for developing your listening skills.  Developing your listening skills will help you:

• Better understand assignments and what is expected of you.
• Build rapport with co-workers, bosses and customers.
• Show support for others.
• Work better in a team based environment.
• Resolve problem with co-workers, bosses and customers
• Answer questions completely.
• Find the underlying meaning in what others say.

Here are my thoughts on what it takes to be a good listener:

• Maintain eye contact with the person with whom you are speaking.
• Don’t interrupt – except to ask a clarification question.
• Use non verbal cues – nod your heard, lean toward the other person, sit still – that indicate you are listening.
• Repeat what the other person says – to be sure you understand, and to get clarification.

I have a worked out a listening to speaking ratio for effective conversations.  Listen two thirds of the time.  Speak one third of the time.  In this way, you are giving the other person more time to share his or her thoughts and ideas with you.  You will be flattering him or her by your willingness to listen.

Listening is more than just not talking.  To listen well, you need to mentally engage with the other person.  You need to focus on what he or she is saying, and you need to respond in a manner that indicates that you are paying attention.

You should listen the most diligently when you find yourself disagreeing with what the other person is saying.  It’s easy to tune out someone with whom you disagree.  When you really listen to what he or she has to say, you are not only demonstrating respect for his or her as a person, you put yourself in a position to learn something new.

The people who host many of the television political talk shows are terrible listeners.  They invite people who hold opposing views to be on their show.  They ask provocative questions.  And then begin to argue with their guest as soon as he or she begins speaking.  This may be good TV, but it is a poor example of how to truly listen and engage with another person.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  Successful people have well developed communication skills.  They are good conversationalists.  They write clearly and succinctly.  They present well.  If you want to become a good conversationalist, you need to learn to listen well.  Focus your attention on the other person, pay attention to what he or she says.  Respond appropriately.  Listen more than you speak.  Show people that you value them and what they have to say.

That’s my career advice on how to become a great conversationalist by listening well.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I’m in the home stretch of a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 

Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 111…

Become a clear, concise writer.  Make your writing easy to read and understand.  Use simple, straightforward language.

Clear, concise writing is one of three important communication skills.  Writing a book composed of noting but tweets certainly challenged my clear and concise writing skills.  Here are four enemies of clear, concise writing.

• Too many words.
• Passive voice.
• Polysyllabic (big) words.
• Jargon and cliches.

In this post, I’ll show you how to avoid these problems.

Too Many Words

I write in a pretty straightforward, clear manner.  However, when I reread my writing, I usually find that I need to cut, rather than add words.  Here are some sentences that I’ve picked out of some of the actual business correspondence I’ve received lately.  All of them have too many words.  Below, you will find the wordy sentence, followed by my suggested rewrite.

Wordy Sentence: At this point in time, we should, or perhaps I should say we must, proceed to examine our policy of sales incentives.

Rewrite: We need to examine our sales incentive policy now.

Wordy Sentence: I was unaware of the fact that your device could be used for security purposes.

Rewrite: I didn’t know your device could be used for security.

Wordy Sentence: The reason I failed to reply is that I was not apprised of the fact until yesterday that somehow the report had been unavoidably delayed.

Rewrite: I didn’t reply because I didn’t know until yesterday that the report was delayed.

You can see that I was able to cut down the length of each sentence without changing the meaning.  If you want to become a clear, concise writer work hard at eliminating unnecessary words.  Carefully read what you write, and ruthlessly cut any words that don’t add to your message.  You should use the exact number of words you need to accurately and completely get your message across – no more, no less.

Passive Voice

The active voice is always better than the passive voice.  It is more forceful and direct.  Here are some examples that illustrate my point.

Passive Voice: Plans for the conference will be made by my assistant.

Active Voice: My assistant will plan the conference.

Passive Voice: An error has been discovered by our staff.

Active Voice: Our staff discovered an error.

Passive Voice: The mistake in billing was rectified by the supplier posthaste.

Active Voice: The supplier corrected the billing mistake quickly.

Polysyllabic Words

Sometimes, it’s tempting to show off your vocabulary.  Unfortunately when you’re showing off, you’re probably not doing a good job communicating.  When my niece graduated from college, I gave her a copy of my just published book Straight Talk for Success.    I told her that I was trying for an “avuncular hip” tone, and asked her for her feedback once she read the book.

She looked at me and said, “What does avuncular mean?”  I said, “Uncle like.”  She said, “Why didn’t you just say so?”  She had a great point.  She’s no dummy, graduated magna cum laude and has gone on to some great career success early on.  However, she didn’t know what the word “avuncular” meant.  Whose problem was that?  Mine.  I should have used the most easy to understand word; in this case that was two words, “uncle like.”

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I used to enjoy Law and Order – especially when Jack McCoy was the Assistant DA.  “Hubris” was one of Jack’s favorite words in his jury summations.  I remember watching some shows where he used this word and wondered why he didn’t say “arrogance.”  They mean the same, and more people are likely to know the word “arrogance” than know the word “hubris.”

Several years ago, I read Stephen King’s book On Writing.  He is a big proponent of small, easy to understand words.  To illustrate his point about small words, he shared a passage from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath – one of my all time favorite novels.

“Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.”

That’s a 50 word sentence with 39 one syllable words and 11 two syllable words.  If you’ve read the book, you know how well this writing explains the lives of itinerant workers during the great depression.  The career advice here is simple.  Read over what you write, strike the polysyllabic (I mean big) words, and you’ll communicate better.

Jargon and Cliches

Finally, eliminate jargon and clichés from your writing.  Don’t assume that everyone who will read what you write is as up on jargon as you are. 

You might not believe me when I say that I don’t watch a lot of TV, as I have another great example from a TV show.  If you spend any time on the internet – especially twitter – you know what the expression “wtf?” means.  Cathy really likes the show, Modern Family.  I do too.  It won a couple of Emmy’s this past year. 

In one of the Modern Family episodes, the father was trying to show his teenage daughters that he was pretty cool and with it.  He said something like, “I know about these internet abbreviations….omg – Oh My God, lol – laugh out loud, wtf – why the face?” 

Remember, some of your readers may be as clueless about things you take for granted as the father on Modern Family.

Cliches are another problem for clear writing.  If “it goes without saying” don’t say it in writing.  When you say “To be perfectly honest…” I wonder if you’re usually not honest in what you say.  Read your writing carefully for clichés.  Cut them.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Follow the career advice in Tweet 111 in Success Tweets.  “Become a clear, concise writer.  Make your writing easy to read and understand.  Use simple, straightforward language.”  Reading what you write is the key to following this career advice.  When you read your writing, look for words that you can eliminate.  Make sure you write in the active, rather than passive voice.  Cut the big words, use the smallest word that communicates exactly what you want to say.  Eliminate jargon and cliches.  If you put these four common sense pieces of career advice to work, your writing will improve greatly.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 111.  What’s yours?  Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud