I have coached almost 1,000 people since this all began. from individual contributors to CEOs.
The phrase I’m hearing more than any other, and more than I’ve ever heard in the past, is the expression, making a deep human connection.
People are longing for this connection. Eager to know how to create it, despite the big chunks of metal sitting in front of them, and the many miles separating the other person.
They’re wishing for this connection from you. In this article I’ll tell you how.
I was coaching a group of executives last week on this very building block of Causative Communications. They had an important message to communicate.
But they came across as disconnected, distant and, quite frankly, like uncaring corporate robots.
This isn’t who they really are.
They’re people just like you and me. They’re intimidated by being alone in a room, feeling like they have to perform, feeling like they’re being judged and talking to a camera that is dead, dead, dead.
And that’s how they came across. Dead, dead, dead.
What makes me a really good coach is that I clearly perceive and discern the difference between how a person is being and who they really are.
For a variety of reasons, reasons that I won’t get into in this article, people are not being who they really are. Too many times they don’t even know who they really are.
Who they’re being is who they think they’re supposed to be, except that they’re often very confused about even about who that is.
When you work in a large corporation, you think you’re supposed to be corporate and professional. And most people don’t fully understand what that is either.
When you’re dealing with communication, who you’re supposed to be is someone who makes a REAL human connection and communicates effectively.
It has nothing to do with your hand gestures. It comes from deep within you.
My job is to help people (like you) find this part of themselves (it’s actually easy because I know where to look).
And then help them express themselves and handle whatever comes back to them so as to build outstanding relationships, incredible understandings and positive outcomes. The three outcomes that always accompany REAL communication.
This results in joy.
I know you’re stuck at home and everyone you’re talking to is on the other side of your computer screen.
If you want to experience deep human connections, you have to create them. You’ll want to do what the group of execs I was coaching are doing.
Make the technology between you and the other person disappear. Create the feeling that you are right there with them and that they are right there with you inches from your face.
Create that deeply personal eye contact that happens in the best relationships.
Talk with them like you’re having an intimate conversation and no one‘s listening.
That’s what brings out the best in you. That’s what brings out the best in them. That’s what creates a deep human connection.
These executives, when they did this, were absolutely amazing.
In reality, we were all over the world. I was sitting at my dining room table.
But I felt like each of them was sitting around the table with me. And we were having a very real, very warm, very intimate, very caring, personal conversation.
I was swept away. The technology had melted away. I fell in love with each of them.
A couple of hours before, they had been strangers. They had been “corporate and professional”. Formal. Lips were smiling, surface was pleasant. But they were emotionally chilly. And kind of scary.
By the end of the coaching, we all just wanted to hang out. I felt so connected, I knew I was going to miss each one of them dreadfully as soon as the call was over.
They left me with a lingering good feeling. I got off the live meeting and was still smiling for hours after. I have no doubt each one of them was too.
It’s not so important that they created this impact on me. Or on each other. What’s important is that they now are able to create this impact on EVERYONE they talk with. Virtually and in person.
This is true power.
The world is longing for a deep human connection from you. The best thing you can do right now is to reach out to them, make the technology and distance disappear, and create it.
That is the work I do. Let me know when this journey (and its great, great rewards) calls to you.
Be the cause!