Gina London
Unlocking the values of communication,
COMMUNICATION is everything. No matter your age, your school, your industry, your position, your responsibility, your title. How you impact others and yourself in every facet of your life from every and any angle boils down to your style of communication. Your style is comprised of the choices and habits you are developing all the time — over time.
Who you are, then, is largely who you actively, or inactively, have chosen to become.
This past week, all over the United States and in numerous cities — including Dublin — across the world people have risked their lives during the ongoing pandemic to gather in large, risky numbers to march in solidarity of improving the way human beings choose to treat other human beings. The fact that some of the marches turned violent and others were peaceful illustrates the series of choices those human beings made during their demonstrations about the choices of others.
How you behave, how you choose to work, what you choose to produce, who you are and who you become is linked to how you think. Even the seemingly smallest or almost subconscious thoughts we decide to act upon in a nanosecond, can potentially have big consequences. Understanding that companies are investing more and more in learning and development programmes to help their people grow and develop more positive awareness and consciously build constructive strategies and approaches that allow them to connect more positively to others — and themselves.
Which prompts me today to remind us of some foundational fundamentals or values.
Guiding principles that can help us reset, relearn and recommit to develop ourselves into the kind of thinking and acting people this world so desperately needs.
1. HUMILITY
Two thousand years ago, Socrates asserted intellectual humility was the virtue of highest importance. His discovery stemmed, it seemed, from a visit with a smarty-pants colleague.
Socrates said: “Neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy
I know what I do not know.”
Wow. There’s a lot in that. This was one of the most respected thinkers of his time. Yet, he didn’t buy the hype. He knew there was so much more to know. He didn’t delude himself in false grandeur. Embracing intellectual humility is the starting place for leadership. It calls for a willingness to examine our lives, an ongoing curiosity about the world around us, a desire to seek counsel, perspectives and insights from others and a longing to learn. Yes. Yes. And yes.
2. COMPASSION
Seeking the perspectives of others will connect us to the foundational value of compassion.
Last Wednesday, LinkedIn’s executive chairman Jeff Weiner posted that while “feeling another’s anger is critical in creating the right sense of urgency towards change, it’s not enough. Empathy, ie feeling what another person feels, is a means to an end. What we need now, more than ever, is compassion — the ability to walk a mile in another person’s shoes, seeing the world through their perspective… compassion equals empathy plus action, and if we’re going to materially change our behaviours, it will be action that we need more than anything.”
3. REFLECTION
You may not consider yourself close to Socrates, but like him, it’s essential to examine who we are. Carve regular time to think, reflect and acknowledge what we’re doing and what is happening as a result. You’ll likely find some thoughts and behaviours you want to keep and others you want to weed out.
4. RESOLVE
Maybe you have never given the above three values or guiding principles much thought. Maybe you’re ambivalent. Maybe you decidedly eschew them.
But if you’re not actively renewing a commitment to the mindfulness required to maintain intellectual curiosity, growth and compassion in the form of intentional communications, negative behaviours may result. We must gird ourselves daily.
Simply put, don’t wait for some distant chief executive or government leader to evoke the cultural shift or craft the policy you desire.
By the way, Mahatma Gandhi did not actually say the often quoted, pithy bumper-sticker phrase, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. Instead, the non-violent civil rights leader who successfully campaigned for India’s independence from British rule provided a longer, more powerful statement. Gandhi said: “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”
This starts with re-examining and course-correcting our values and thoughts which are manifested in our words and actions.
You can choose to take conscious responsibility and ownership for this series of feedback loops or you cannot. But either way, make no mistake, each of us is always communicating, by default or design.
Write to Gina in care of SundayBusiness@independent.ie
With corporate clients in five continents, Gina London is a premier communications strategy, structure and delivery expert. She is also a media analyst, author, speaker and former CNN anchor. @TheGinaLondon