Communication Isn't a "Soft Skill". It's the Door to Influence.

Your level of influence is not determined by your circumstances or your level of technical skills. Your influence rises to the level of your communication because communication is how you negotiate with reality. You see, communication is not just a soft skill. It is a mechanism that determines what you can access. Opportunities, resources, trust, even greater relationships are shaped by what you can articulate with influence. So if your impact or your influence is not where you desire to be, then it is a transmission problem. You have high value thoughts that are trapped in low resolution communication. And unless and until you improve that interface, the market cannot perceive your value, you are literally unable to live a life that's bigger than your ability to articulate it. So in this video, I'm going to talk about how to level up your influence by leveling up your communication. And we're going to start first by talking about the four elements of communication. And then I'm going to talk about the four principles on how you apply those elements into business relationships. So make sure you stay to the end of the video. There's four elements followed by four principles. Let's go. You're listening to Career Revisionist. The podcast where ambitious professionals pursue mastery, breakthrough, invisible ceilings, and accelerate into leadership. And now to guide you on the journey. Dr. Grace Lee, neuroscientist, executive mentor, and your trusted voice and career leadership. Let's start with what is communication. Communication is the strategic externalization of an internal map. So I have an internal map on how to uplevel your influence by upleveling your communication. And my ability to externalize that through words is communication. So communication is synchronizing two or more disparate realities through a common or a shared operating system. Yours and theirs. So when you are standing in front of an audience of two or more people, you have your own reality. Each person in the audience has their reality. So you have to have a way to synchronize those two realities or those multiple realities using a shared operating system. And that's how you externalize your internal maps. And this is important because in your mind, you have visions. You have thoughts. You have ideas. You have messages. You have opinions. You have your own importance, things that you want to share. And it's clear inside your head. You can interact with it. You have an experience with your own thoughts and your ideas. You have been been able to manipulate it. You've been able to play around with it and you've been interacting with it. But the trick is you want other people to do the same with it. You want them to experience it. You want them to be able to manipulate it. You want them to interact with it just as clearly as you have. And the only way to create that bridge is through communication. Because the really the outcome of doing this is that you want buy-in. You want to be able to influence. You want to be able to connect and to build meaningful relationships. That's the ultimate outcome. But the path there is through articulation. Now let's go into the four elements of communication. The first element is lexicon. Most people think lexicon means your vocabulary and how many words you know. So that's why a lot of the clients I work with, they started to improve their communication by trying to learn new words. But I submit to you that a good lexicon does not mean that you study the dictionary and you try to increase the number of words you know. Instead, your lexicon is really your precision. It's about how deeply you understand the words that you think you know. So think about it this way. If you have a shallow, if your lexicon is shallow, then your resolution is low. So for example, if a leader is only using the words good or bad to describe a situation, then it's really difficult to navigate the complexities of a crisis. So it's about making your lexicon deeper, deepening your understanding and the nuances of the words that you know. And the goal here is to increase specificity. So a high-influence communication is an individual who's very specific in their language. And they have multiple units of meaning that they create to increase understanding and appreciation for the circumstances and to really communicate their idea and their thoughts with precision. The second element of communication is syntax. Right, the first element, lexicon, that's the dataset. Sintax is the logic. And syntax is how you structure and order your words. It is really your thought process. How do you communicate your words in a specific order and in a specific structure so that conveys the meaning you want to convey? And that's why I always tell people, don't just focus on increasing your number of vocabulary words because you can have all the right words, but if your syntax is garbled, then the transmission doesn't come through. Sintax is more important than lexicon. So syntax is really persuasive flow. Depending on how strategically you order your syntax, you can create greater meaning, you can create a higher level of persuasion, you can also create a greater percentage of buy-in, just by really being strategic about your syntax. The third element of communication is semantics. Now this is the value layer. Semantics is the meaning derived from your message. It is really the bridge between what you say and what they hear. And this is really where trust is built and destroyed. So when you master semantics, that is where you can ensure that your high value thoughts do not get lost in translation. The fourth element of communication is medium and modulation. Medium is the platform you choose to deliver your message. And modulation really is the interface. Think of it like the hardware part of it. Your body language, your eye contact, your tone, your intonations. Right? This is modulation. And it's important to match the modulation with your intent. Because for example, if you're delivering a confident vision, but you're doing it with a really shaky voice, then your audience will receive some will experience some sort of cognitive distance because your modulation doesn't match the delivery. And as a result of that, the reject the value. So this is modulation and medium which go together hand in hand. In my experience, most people focus on the medium and the modulation. They try to choose their platform and they're fixing their PowerPoint slides and they're making it look really nice. They focus on their body language, their intonations. And they're so worried about how they look and sound confident. Most people focus their effort there. But true influence is actually one or lost in lexicon and in syntax. You see, if you upgrade and you refine your lexicon, it changes the way you see the world. Think about it. Your lexicon are the meaningful units. If you have a word to articulate what you see, it changes what you see. And if you deepen your understanding of words, just by the way you describe and experience to yourself, it changes your whole experience of it. It changes the way it changes the game. So changing your lexicon will change the way you see the world. But upleveling your syntax will change the way you lead it. Most of my clients already have a recognition that it's some aspect of communication that's important for them to close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be professionally. And if that resonates with you as well, then I invite you to work with me. And this is an opportunity for you to receive the kind of education on communication that you cannot get anywhere else, not in college, not on digital courses, not on training and communications on leadership. This is the time to communication training that where we go deep into the thought process of formulating ideas. We go deep into an identity that's required to be able to articulate with precision. And we go deep into an understanding on how to utilize communication effectively to build relationship equity and also how to set goals and achieve goals and also how to build a team around you of motivated individuals. So those are outcomes that are important to you and you desire that for your next level, then click the link below this video and speak to one of my trusted career advisors. And this is a conversation. It's not a hard sell. It's not a sales conversation. It is a conversation to get to know you, to get to know what's important to you and to get to know what that looks like for you. And if it's the right fit and you come into my mentorship, then I look forward to serving you. My team and my coaches will be behind you every step of the way and we look forward to offering our best to help you to achieve your next level. Now that we talked about the four elements of communication, let's shift gears a little bit but still related to talk about how to apply that to business relationships. And I'm going to be giving you four piece. The first P to apply this to business relationship is preparation and preparation is your intentionality before the conversation because your most effective communication with others is going to depend on your ability and your willingness to strategize before the conversation begins and there's two arenas, two arenas that to prepare for. The first arena is to define mutual benefit because if you are entering into a relationship through communication, which requires communication with another person and it's clear to you how you want to benefit from it but they may not benefit it but for it at all it's not a disadvantage. but they don't have a clear benefit, then really it's more about you. But if you went through a conversation where the benefit is clear to them, and as a result of them benefit you benefit as well, and vice versa. As a result of you benefiting, they benefit as well. If there's a mutual benefit, then you don't make the conversation about you. You make it about the mission to better both of our lives, or to better all of our lives, and that's meaningful, and you build relationship equity. The second arena of preparation before the conversation is by mastering the outcome. And this stems from defining mutual benefit. Mastering the outcome depends on your ability and your willingness to articulate the benefit to them. Because the onus is on you with the one with the intention to connect with the other person, and the one with the goal to deepen the relationship. The onus then lies on you, it falls on you, to be able to articulate the benefit to the other person. And if you think about it, the best way to benefit, the best way to articulate the benefit to the other person, is to seek to understand and appreciate what their priorities are, and what they value most. Because if you understand that, and you are effective in articulating the benefit in how that fulfills their top priority, then you will effectively have gotten, not just have received their attention and earned their trust, but it also builds relationship equity. And hopefully on the flip side of that, that it doesn't, that it benefits you as well, that you are vice versa. You can see the benefit to them and in turn the benefit to yourself, because then that ensures that the relationship and the equity is sustainable. The second P is pursuance, and this is where you are pursuing transformation over transaction. One of the most common mistakes I see in individuals entering into a relationship, or having intentions deep in a relationship, is that they focus more on the transaction. The transaction meaning, I got to close the deal, or I got to get the raise, or I want to get the buy-in, or I want to get the approval, focusing on the transaction. But I encourage you to instead focus on the transformation, which is the change that you make and the functional value of what you create for them. And this is an alignment, perfect alignment with business principles. Well, if you think about what constitutes a very clear and a very inspiring business mission, it is a client-centric mission, where in that mission statement, it's clearly defined, number one, who do you serve? Who does the business serve? Number two, what result do you produce for the people you serve? The meaningful result you produce for them. And number three, what's the change you want to make in this world? And when a business can define this mission very clearly, they can rather the people of support, who believe in the mission, and the mission is durable because of its clarity and because of its achievable. So if you are able to articulate that for yourself as well when entering into a relationship, not only does that mean that the relationship is sustainably growing for you and sustainably deepened for you, but it also means that you're aligning yourself with thinking more from the business as a business owner. And this is a win-win for you and it's a win-win for the organization when you focus on transformation. So a good rule of thumb here is to avoid self-obsession, which means that you do not fall in love with your own opinions, with your own beliefs, or with how many years it took you to gain your expertise. Oftentimes I see this in the workplace that these can be very competitive because it's sensitive in nature. And as a result of that, you are not obsessed with those things, but instead you're obsessed with what a partner would care about, which is the value you can provide for them. So avoid self-obsession and shift your focus. Once a professional interaction starts, it would be wise to make it all about them. Because the shift focuses on you, then you have a greater tendency to become nervous, to be very self-conscious about what they think of you, and to be very fearful that they may not like you, or that they may not agree with you, or that they may not appreciate what you are where you're coming from. So this is why it's important and prudent to make the focus all about them. What are they concerned about? What are they fearful of happening? What objections might they have? And what are the things that are the top priority for them? And when you shift your focus, it makes you, these are new as the communicator, you can remain present and focus and on mission. And it takes the edge away from the emotional psychology of needing to be liked, needing to be approved, and needing to be seen a certain way. And finally, manage your own expectations. While it is prudent to be clear on the value you hope to gain from that interaction, it is wise to remain focused on the value that you're going to give and not be distracted by the gain that you have from it. And this is where a lot of people get tripped up, because in a business environment, especially if you're working in competition with others, and when there are elements of zero-sum game in your environment, it's easy to become distracted by what you are gaining and what you're not gaining in this progression. And sometimes we're in several interactions with the same individual, and it's easy to get tripped up by assessing this situation and making a judgment that, hey, I'm not getting anywhere. You know, what I'm hoping to gain is not happening, and I've given, and I've given my best, and it's still not coming in my favor. I'm still not being able to gain what I want to gain from it. It's, we feel that sense of urgency to make a drastic decision and needed to cut things off, and this is where I'm talking about managing your expectations the most, because the diplomacy here is not about you. It's about your mission, your mission objective, and your most meaningful mission objective. And sometimes we go on this journey, and we don't end up achieving the thing we set out to do, our chief aim. But it's the progress that matters. If the progress was meaningful, if the progress was transformative for us, in the end, whether or not we achieved that initial thing that we aim for, is not the most important thing. Because if you're really plugged in and you're grounded in the process, the aim in the end, you shift your perspective towards it. So please, as you're going through when you're in your professional interactions, don't be distracted by your gains or your losses in the progress, instead manage your expectations. The third key is professionalism. And to me, professionalism means that you eliminate verbal laziness. And this is about increasing your resolution. Because you cannot solve a problem that you don't have the words to describe. And mentioned earlier, this is about making upgrading your laxicon. And it's not about increasing the number of words that you know. It is about deepening your understanding of the words that are already in your vocabulary. Because if you think about it, if you assess your speech, you may notice that you utilize a lot of placeholder words. Placeholder words are things. You need to say, "Oh, these things." Or stuff. There's a lot of stuff. Or you might say, "It's really good describing things. Really good." So these are placeholder words. They're very common. And they have such a wide nuance in their meaning. And everybody understands things to be very different. Things, stuff. Really good. Descriptors like that. And it's not really precise. These placeholder words are low resolution, low influence pixels. So eliminate verbal laziness means that you upgrade your laxicon. And you upgrade your precision in which you deliver your messages. The second step is to architect the user experience of your message. And this has everything to do with syntax. Having the right structure and the order of the words that you string together. Because if you are speaking to somebody and they have to do a lot of work just to understand what you're saying, then it's not possible to influence them. Because all their mental bandwidth is spent in trying to understand you. Good syntax is intentional and it's structured. And that's exactly what happens when you hear individuals and they're talking. They're saying a lot of words in their speech. They're stringing words together. But it seems like circuit or logic. Or it sounds like rambling. Or it sounds like they didn't really say anything of substance. Have you read that experience? Or have you ever had that experience yourself? Or not someone else, but you're speaking like that. That is in proper syntax. It's a lack of understanding of the user experience you create through your syntax. So as soon as the moment you upgrade your syntax with intention and through that level of upskilling your communication, then it changes the way people understand the meaning of what you want to convey. The last thing you want when you want to grow your influence, the last thing you want is for them to be able to think you meant something that you didn't actually mean. Because then now what they thought you meant is what sticks in their mind, which is not what you intended. And that mismatch can cost you when you're building your professional brand. It can cost you when you want to influence the decision in a certain direction. And it can cost you when in the future you want to be known for certain expertise. But that's not the expertise they assumed you meant. So think about the user experience of your message. And the third step is to increase your signal to noise ratio. And it's like this. an equation like this. When your lexicon, which is the dataset, plus your syntax, which is the user experience, when they're both optimized, then the semantics, which the meaning becomes clear. And this is where influence lives. It's in those three when they're upgraded and they're optimized. So the goal of professionalism in communication is to deliver a higher resolution transmission where your intended meaning is conveyed effectively to the listener. The fourth P is perpetuity in influence. So why perpetuity? Because I don't know about you, but if you're aiming for influence, I don't want to just be influential this year, but I want to be influential every year. And when I work with clients and help them to become more influential, I'm not just helping them for their next meeting. I'm helping them for every meeting thereafter. So that's why the fourth P is perpetuity in influence. And one of your ability, one of the limitations of your influence is that your influence is limited by your ability to articulate what other people can feel or sense, but they're unable to articulate it themselves. This means that you're bringing a focus on reality. Let's think about this way. Let's say you have this strange shooting pain in your shoulder and it moves, it travels from your shoulder to your elbow and then to the radio part of your wrist. And you've never really had the words to describe it. And then you meet this complete stranger, complete stranger who noticed you were holding your arm a certain way. And you didn't initiate a conversation, but they initiated it with you. And they turned to you and they said, excuse me, does your arm hurt right there? And then you're like, yes, it does. And if that's trained your side to say, well, does it kind of feel like this? And they started to describe the pain you were feeling. And they described it so well. And it was accurately representing the pain you were feeling. And they described it better than you can. Didn't they get their attention? How will you respond? You automatically will believe they have the solution to your problem. So let that be an aha moment. When you can articulate someone else's challenge, what someone else feels, what someone else is observing through their emotions, what someone else is going through, but they cannot articulate it as well themselves. And you come in or articulate it on their behalf, then they will already believe that you have the solution to your problem because you have effectively bought reality into focus. And that's what gives you perpetuity of influence. And when it comes to achieving that perpetuity, there are a couple of things I'm bringing to your attention as principles and rules to live by to develop that sense and that accuracy in your communication. When number one, it's everything I mentioned earlier in terms of lexicon synopsis and semantics. And the next thing is to be a gatekeeper of your own mind. And here's what I always teach my clients. I tell them that whoever pours the most money in your mind, that's who owns your mind. And if you think about it, there are authorities, there are institutions, there are systems and structures out there in the world who are pouring millions, even billions of dollars, to create content that you consume and it occupies a space in your mind. And it's addictive. It is very addictive. It's attractive. And they're pouring millions, even billions of dollars into it. And you let it into your mind and you keep letting it into your mind. And therefore, whoever pours the most money in your mind is the one that owns your mind. Now, I don't know about you, but I want the one who owns the most of my mind to be me myself. So this is where the concept comes into play to be a gatekeeper of your own mind, which means be careful what sources that you are paying attention to. Be careful who you are listening to. Be mindful of how deeply you are heating it without question. Who is it that occupies the most in your mind? Is it social media? Is it people that call themselves gurus? Is it the government systems? Some certain religious systems? Are it the education system, the medical healthcare system? Is it some institution that has put a lot of money towards putting a message out there? Is it a lobbyist? Who is it? Is it AI? Curating things for you? Is it a certain algorithm of AI? Who is it? Is it you? So be a gatekeeper of your own mind of who's message you let in? And who's message you don't let in? So that's the first rule of thumb. The second rule of thumb, a good principle to live by, and I'm sharing this with you because I am a practitioner of these things. The second one is to be an author, to be an author of your own thoughts. Now, in the education system, they teach you to be good in school by taking notes on what the teacher says. So you go to class or you go to a seminar and you're taking notes on what the teacher is saying and then you try to commit those to memory. And then you go into the exam, if you remember, as long as you remember what the teacher said, you can pass the exam and get a good grade. In the business world, out there in the marketplace, things don't work that way because if you try to remember what other people say and you just regurgitate what other people say, well, that's plagiarism. There are copyright protection laws against that. And if you're trying to copy what everyone else is saying, then you're not there. And you don't have the influence. You're not maximizing your potential. You're trying to be someone else and you're always going to be second best if you're trying to be someone else because they're the best at being themselves and you're only going to be second best. So it's not about imitating someone and it's definitely not about trying to copy or plagiarize someone. So stop taking notes on what other people are saying. Be an author of your own thoughts. So what does an author do? An author creatively writes stories. An author creatively, creatively creates character development journeys. And this is what you're doing for yourself. Don't take notes on what other people are saying. Take notes on what you think about as a result of what other people say. And when you do this and you're practice that it, you end up having chapters and chapters of your own thoughts, not someone else's, but your own. And this is what I really practice because I've been doing this for decades. And as a result of that and you experience it. And that's why my content is so deep, insightful. And it has cross functional, cross disciplinary insights in there because I take notes on my own thoughts and I'm very, they're very developed. Because most people are in a rush. They write the article, they post it out there, they put a video, they're very rushed and they don't take the time to really develop their thoughts all the way through. But I do because I'm an author of my own thoughts and I'm a gatekeeper of my own mind. And this is really important for perpetuity of influence because the better your talk is, the better your influence. And have you ever wondered why that's true? Why is it that the people who talk really well have greater influence? Well, it's missing a few steps and let me show you what those steps are because the better your talk is, the better your actions. When you can talk better to yourself and when you can talk better to other people, it shapes your perspective because if you have the words to describe the problem, if you have the words to describe how you're feeling, if you have the words to be evocative and evoke emotions in self and others, it changes your perspective. And when you change the way you see the world, your actions change. Take about it. If you see something the same way all the time, your life doesn't get better as a result of it and you keep doing the same thing. But if all of a sudden you get this aha moment and it changes the way you see it, you start doing something different as a result of what you see. So perception always changes your activity. Better talk, these to better actions and anytime you take better actions over time, it leads to greater impact which leads to greater influence.