Secret art of communicating
WITH a background in running advertising agencies, Warwick McCormack has worked in companies all over the world most of his life.
However for the past 15 years he has been a mentor for businesses and community organisations in New Zealand, Australia and across the Pacific Islands.
The co-founder and international director for an organization known as Thinkers, Mr McCormack is one of the guest speakers at the Fiji New Zealand and New Zealand Fiji Business Councils 2022 Joint Conference this week at the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa, Denarau Island.
He believes that there is a real problem with communication these days with the younger generation having issues with face to face communication.
According to Mr McCormack the biggest problem in communication is the illusion that the communication was actually done when in fact it wasn’t.
Therefore his topic of discussion would be the secret art of communicating.
With the younger generation preferring to text instead of having face to face communications, how are conversations going to take place.
Mr McCormack said it was really about four things that could be done to improve communication skills among family, friends, employer and employee.
“We have to prepare better. We have to be more passionate about what we’re talking about. We’ve got to bring that passion into the conversation. But it’s got to be aimed at the listener.”
Mr McCormack has been visiting Fiji for the past nine years and has been a mentor to chief executive officers in Fiji.
The art of communication is very important, according to Mr McCormack.
“If you’re leading an organization, and you’re talking and hoping to motivate your staff, you need to say strangely enough motivational things.
“You can’t depress your staff into working better, you can only motivate them. The truth of the matter is you can’t even do that because people need to motivate themselves.
“All you can do is hopefully give them a channel by which they can actually motivate themselves.”
He said it was very hard to say nice things when people were actually talking about COVID or people being laid off.
“Albert Einstein said, everybody is a genius but if you measure a fish, by the way, it climbs a tree, you’ll think it’s somewhat stupid. Walt Disney said pursue your dream. Anything can come true.”
His advice is to think about what we have to say before saying it.
“We’re communicating all the time. We spend most of our lives on phones, mobile devices. The average New Zealand has spent 17 hours a week looking at their mobile device. So the terrifying thing is a real scarcity of attention.”
The other thing is different generations have different aspirations.
He said people were learning this now, especially today’s modern bosses.
“The information and how they’ve used it to get where they are today probably isn’t going to help them for the next five years. Things are changing dramatically.
“The average age in Fiji is 28 years old. That’s millennials and Generation Z mostly. They have a completely different way of looking at communicating and a completely different way of how they think of a job.”
Mr McCormack said talent was the biggest thing businesses had inside any organization and it was important to retain the talent.
He stressed that Fiji was a “powerhouse waiting to go off in the Pacific” with most of the talent being sucked out of the country by countries such as New Zealand and Australia with the offer of better paying jobs and better work conditions.
“Young people (the talent in organisations) have a completely different way of looking at communicating and a completely different way of how they think of a job. Now if you don’t understand that as their boss, as the leader, how are you going to communicate with these people? How are you going to put the passion and drive into them?”