(How) Are You Talking to Me?

I had a fascinating lunch recently with Jay Liebenguth who hosts two business-oriented radio programs on KCTE-1510 AM in Kansas City. Jay is also involved with LEGO SERIOUS PLAY ™, a very cool approach to teambuilding and innovation that centers on people working with LEGOS to express the stories and possibilities that they see within an organization. As Jay described facilitating the process, he mentioned that in many cases, this technique helps give a voice to people who might otherwise have difficulty communicating the depth of their feelings or perceptions of a situation.

His comment triggered me to draw the cartoon in the upper right on the tablecloth (don’t worry, it was a paper tablecloth). While there are a number of posts on this blog about finding your best thinking style, we haven’t addressed identifying your best communication style, so here’s a quick thought on the topic.

Broaden your thinking about what communication is. Don’t limit your perspective to simply writing a report or delivering a presentation. Think about communication as transferring information – knowledge, perceptions, feelings, emotions, talents, joys, accomplishments. And these can be transferred among people in a myriad of ways.

Making this switch will ideally open up your thinking about your best communication style. It may be making really cool cartoon character cakes for your kids. It may be sewing or pop culture or photography. Could be genealogy, collecting bobbleheads, or even building things with LEGOS.

The point (and the challenge) is to consider how you communicate well in potentially non-traditional formats and bring the passion and skill you have in those areas into your business communication. It may take some creative thought; it may take some courage. But be assured, the benefits of incorporating your strongest communication styles into more parts of your life will far outweigh the effort or risk!