5 Tips to Communicate Diplomatically but Authentically

when you're communicating in an explicit communication style, the expectation is for you to be straightforward, for you to be direct and to the point. Get to the point. Tell me what you're going to tell me and tell me exactly what you're going to tell me. Don't be around the bush. I'm Dr. Grace Lee and you're listening to the Career Revisionist Podcast for executives, team leaders, people and managers and ambitious professionals from all backgrounds. It's for those among us who can't stay stagnant and admire anyone who demonstrates exponential growth. We challenge ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and into higher levels of leadership. And we are determined to rise confidently in our industry so that we can make our greatest contribution using our knowledge and expertise. We have worked hard to become great at what we do, but only so we can achieve the goals that give our lives meaning and purpose. And while we persevere through a college education to get us here with our technical skills, we understand that to get to the next level where we desire to be, it requires a different kind of skills. And we're not comfortable with failure because we experience satisfaction when we are advancing. And while some of us work well under pressure, all of us perform the best when we are part of a winning team. And instead of just hoping to achieve what's important to us, we choose to become a more optimized version of ourselves to make it happen. We're not just A players. We are A plus players. And we are the source of consistent output that makes positive advancements in the world around us. [Explosion] Are you feeling tired of censoring yourself or feeling anxious about saying the right thing in a communication? Well, today I'm going to share it with you five simple tips on how you can express yourself authentically while at the same time keeping the peace in a diplomatic conversation. So let's talk about that. What is diplomacy? Diplomacy is the art of dealing with people with discretion and with prudence. So then by that regard, diplomatic communication is the art of exchanging information, of sharing ideas, of also expressing your opinions, in a way that preserves the respectability, the ability to be respected, to be trusted, and also to have your credibility. And diplomatic conversations and communication are so important in all aspects of negotiations, all aspects of communicating with higher ups and with the higher authorities, and also with managing conflicts and building meaningful relationships. So as you step up into strategic leadership, and as you step up into executive and higher executive level positions, your ability to communicate is important. And if you think about communication skills at large, underneath communication skills you have diplomacy. So as you go up in those rankings, your ability to have diplomacy and to exhibit diplomacy is going to be increasingly important. So let's dive right in. Five simple tips for authentic diplomatic communications. And I'm going to give you these five tips using the acronym ACCESS, but missing one S at the end. So it's the French word for access, ACCES. So tip number one starts with A, and A is active listening elevates understanding. When it comes to having communications, diplomatic communications and a negotiation to build relationships, to create buy-in as well, these conversations is not just about speaking, it is about active listening. And it is oftentimes primarily about active listening. So active listening is the art of understanding what your audience needs, what they want, what they desire, what their objectives are as well. And when you are actively listening in that conversation, this is where you are delineating. You're trying to understand what are their perspectives and most importantly, what are their values? Because their core values, any individuals values, their values are what shapes their perspectives, their values are going to shape their actions and how they make decisions, your values shape your behaviors as well. So the more that you can understand the contextual features of their values, the more you will understand the depth of their behaviors and their decisions and why they do what they do and why they respond the way they respond. So this is all part and part of active listening. When you listen actively, you understand, you elevate understanding of them and therefore you elevate and understanding between you and them. Tip number two starts with the letter C, A, C. And C means cultural awareness elevates adaptability. When it comes to cultural awareness, the most important thing is to understand and really seek to understand cultural norms, cultural values and cultural beliefs. Because when it comes to cultural norms, for example, it could be that there are certain cultures that have certain symbolism and it could be a certain patterns of behavior, certain word usages or maybe even visuals that are unique to that culture. Seek to understand what are the differences between cultures, between you and the individuals that you work with, that you work alongside and leaders as well. And when it also comes to cultural awareness, I understand that different cultures have different communication styles. For example, certain cultures tend to more towards an explicit communication style. Get to the point, tell me what you're gonna tell me and tell me exactly what you're gonna tell me. Versus other communication styles, cultural communication styles, tend to be more implicit, where it's not about being straightforward at all. It's the other end of the spectrum where there is more of a nuance to communication, where there is more reading between the lines. We don't say exactly what we want to say. We imply it and therefore we expect you to be able to read the meaning behind our words. And so this spectrum between implicit and explicit style of communications is very cultural specific. So when it comes to culturally aware, it's not just about observing their behavioral patterns and the words that they say and the words they choose to use, but it's also understanding the reason behind the things that they say. So if you're listening to this so far in terms of the A and the C, the tips on how to have diplomatic and authentic communications, and you're serious about developing this skill for yourself because maybe you have a goal to step up and to do strategic leadership or maybe you have a goal to be come and executive in your company. And if you're serious about developing this skill set, then I invite you below in the description below there is a link, the first link, it is to send an application to me and my team. And this is to be a part of my mentorship and my coaching program where every single week I train you on how do you develop this communication vernacular? How do you become more diplomatic in your communications so that you can become a culturally aware, so that you can develop me vernacular to be able to be diplomatic and manage conflicts as well, to be able to step up to leadership and all of these skills and the tools on how to develop them. I lay out the line for you in a blueprint. If you're serious about that, then click the link below and I look forward to working with you on the inside. Tip number three is C. And C stands for collaborative mindset elevates consensus. When it comes to a collaborative mindset, collaboration is nothing more than looking for common grounds and therefore win-win solutions so that people can work together closely and naturally as well. So when you are going into conversations, diplomatic conversations, how can you create shared wins? How can you help another person or other people to achieve their most meaningful goals? And more importantly, go into it with the mindset of how can I understand what your values are, your highest priorities so that I can help you. So I can see how to help you fulfill your highest priorities. This collaborative mindset is the best way to create consensus because when you create that consensus, the other parties that you are working alongside of that you are communicating with can really get a sense that you're there for them and it's not just about you. It's not just about achieving your goals and it's not just about a one-sided win but it is a win-win scenario. So that is how collaborative mindsets can elevate consensus. Tip number four, we have A, C, C, E, and E stands for emotional intelligence elevates trust. Now in terms of emotional intelligence, there's two parts to it. There's an external part to it and there's an internal part to emotional intelligence. The ex-look at the external part first. The external part of emotional intelligence is mostly about empathy. It's about understanding when you are communicating with somebody. How can you pick up on their social cues, their body language, even the energetics of their presence and be able to understand these cues and when you are able to pick up on those energies, the body language, the suggestions from their words, the meanings behind their words. When you pick up on these cues, how can you be more empathetic? Now empathy is not about compassion. Empathy is about once you understand the emotions, the energetics and the emotions behind their responses and their presence, how can you still show up and can use to communicate with them with a collaborative mindset in a way where you're not affected by their emotions. Because here you are a mission driven, you are center and present and poised. So that's the external part of emotional intelligence. Now let's look at the other part of emotional intelligence, the internal part of emotional intelligence. The internal part refers to self-governance 'cause you yourself are coming into this communication as well. Difflematic communications are most frequently used in negotiations, conflict management and also in building meaningful, high level leadership relationships. Now at that level, when you have conflicts, when you have negotiations, you're gonna have differences in opinions. You're gonna have differences in values. Values that may appear to clash on the surface of conversations. So your ability to the internal part of emotional intelligence is self-governance. How can you still feel the range of your emotions but not bring your emotions into it so much that you become needy or that you become centered on your satisfaction of your values? How can you ensure that your emotions are not so overwhelming that it's taking over your ability to think, to rationalize, to make a data-driven decision, for example? So that is the internal part of it, self-governance. So with self-governance. That is on the line of achieving self mastery. It's not about the absence of emotions. It's not about being stoic and not feeling anything. It's about how can I still feel the full range in being a human, but the same time my emotions are not what define my decisions and they definitely do not define who I am. Through the emotions I take that as feedback and that feedback allows me to be even more authentic and that is self-governance. So tip number four is that emotional intelligence elevates trust because once you have emotional intelligence you come across you are returned back to your authentic self. Your authentic self is what is who is centered, present, poised and you are more objective when you are authentic. And finally tip number five starts with a letter S and S is strategic messaging elevates resonance. Now when you are involved in a diplomatic communications you desire your message to resonate with your audience. At the same time on the flip side it's important that your audience resonates with you as well. You resonate with them, they resonate with you. Now to create that level of resonance your message must match the audience. And there's a number of different ways that your message must match the audience. First the way is that your message matches your audience in terms of what are their top priorities, what is the most important thing in their values structure and you will have gleaned that context when you practice active listening. The second way your message is to match your audience is to understand what is their communication style. How can I match their communication style? And you will have gleaned that information from having elevated your cultural awareness. And finally to match your audience, your message to your audience is to understand with respect to your audience what is the level of awareness they have of the situation. Because when you're in a diplomatic communication you're either negotiating, you are wanting to come to terms, collaboration, you are wanting to move forward with something, you want their buy-in, there's diplomacy there. And so as a result of that there's a certain outcome that you want to produce in collaboration with your audience. So this is where you're trying to understand what is their level of awareness of the situation. Are they aware of the problem that we have on hand, the issue that we're trying to address? Do we have the right diagnosis? Are we on the same page with the diagnosis? Are we all aware of certain solutions? When-win solutions that are possible for us are we aware of which solution might be the best fit for our particular needs and our particular value structures? So where is there a level of awareness of the contextual feature of the whole situation? And that is the final and perhaps the most important part of creating resonance with your audience. And there's a step-by-step process that I go through in my coaching and my meditation to help you delineate this message to audience. [Music]