153 | The Ultimate Guide To Improving Your Communication

Folks, we talk a lot about communication on the show, but this show turned into something much more! It turned into our Ultimate Guide To Improving Your Communication, but it all started with answering a question from one of our listeners.

Here’s how to achieve high levels of quality communication:

Don’t forget to download your guide to the secret power of body language:

Get “Do’s And Don’ts Of Body Language”

The Question

Justin wrote, “I have to start with the obvious. Thanks for all that you guys are doing and keep killing it. I know you’re always open to suggestions for podcast topics, and yes we are, so I wanted to throw out the idea of doing something high level on communication, and maybe topic in with your top 10 recommended books on communication.

I loved your list on the poverty mindset. I know how important you think communication is, and I think most of your listeners could benefit from what you have to say on the topic and from the books you recommend. Thanks again, and keep up the good work.”

First of all, thank you Justin! We appreciate you, and the inspiration you gave us for this guide!

Here’s everything this “Ultimate Guide” has to offer:

1. Episode 153 of The Chris LoCurto Show, where I break all this down for you folks.
2. “Do’s And Don’ts Of Body Language For Effective Communication” download.
3. 11 Ways To Achieve High Levels Of Quality Communication.
4. My reading list for improving communication.
5. DISC Personality Profiles link.

Start by downloading “The Do’s And Don’ts Of Body Language:”

Next, take action on these 11 ways to achieve high levels of quality communication:

These 11 items are all things I want you to be thinking about.

If you want to have high levels of quality communication in your relationships, or at work… wherever it is… then these are things you need to be focused on.

If you want to be a great communicator, lead your team well, and do the things that create success for team members and yourself… then these are things you need to be focused on.

If you can master this list, you will become a great communicator!

1 Verbal Communication

To have great communication skills, you have to start with caring for the other person. Yes, I said caring! Caring that they are not only an emotional being, but that they are a child of the Most High God! Which means He cares about how you treat them!

For communication sake, caring means that you are focused on leaning in the direction of the other person, so they can successfully understand what you are saying. This happens by understanding how they receive information, by staying calm, being focused, polite, interested, and to match the mood or emotion of the situation.

You first have to understand the person you’re talking to. How do they receive information? If they received it in sound bytes, it they need the scroll that is 10-feet long, if they need energy and excitement with it, if they need understanding and the least amount of conflict.

Whatever it is, you have to start by understanding how they receive information. That way, you can give it to them well. By staying calm in the process, by being focused on the things that you’re saying, by being polite, by caring about matching the emotion of the situation, whatever that is, the mood of the situation, make sure that you are following all of these pieces.

We are so usually focused on our own feelings that we don’t think about how difficult we make it for others when we communicate. I watch people be so absolutely short in their verbal communication, and give so little detail that there is no wonder why the other person doesn’t understand. If that is you, you’re not doing a good job verbally giving information.

2 Non-Verbal Communication

Your body language is constantly speaking. I am always watching every bit of body language from our attendees. It doesn’t matter who it is. Anybody coming in, I’m always watching body language. It’s nonstop. It tells me a ton about what they are experiencing.

It even tells me what they’re thinking. I can see things by the way that they respond. You can see specific responses that will tell you what people are thinking. There are all kinds of things that I watch. I watch whether people cross their legs.

Do they cross them towards somebody against, away from somebody, whatever it is? Do they put themselves in a position of power, where they feel more powerful when they’re talking?

All of that stuff is nonverbal communication, all of your facial expressions, your eye contact, whether you have it or whether you don’t, your posture, your gestures with your extremities.

Even the way you position yourself physically in a room, where you put yourself, where you stand, do you put yourself in the middle of conversations? Do you put yourself to the outside?

Whatever that is, all of that is revealing a lot about you, and for better or for worse. It could be good. It could be bad. Either way, you’ve got to understand that your body language tells a ton. You’ve got to understand your non-verbals.

3 Listen

Great communicators are incredible listeners, not good listeners, incredible listeners. Crappy communicators cannot wait for the other person to take a breath, so they can speak. You know them.

You’ve experienced those people. That may be you. Listening is half of the equation that makes me great at leading and coaching people.

Without it, I wouldn’t have any clients. They wouldn’t want to hang around. If all you do is communicate what you think someone needs to hear without listening to them, how will you ever know if you’re communicating successfully? If you’re going to communicate well, you have to listen really well. 

4 Patience

It needs to be at least equal to the content you’re communicating. Let me give a quick dive on that. You hear me say all the time it is your job as a leader to make your team successful. If you’re trying to make a team member successful, then your patience has to line up with the thing that you’re trying to teach.

If you’re trying to teach them or communicate to them how to make coffee, probably, not a whole lot of patience needed here. We probably need to run through this once or twice, but you really should have this after that. If you’re trying to delegate large tasks, then you have to have patience.

You have to understand that you may not be doing a great job communicating, or the way that they receive it may take more time. Understand that.

If you are just giving somebody an update, then understand that the patience for that is considerably less than making a team member successful on a large delegation project. If you’re giving an update, have the patience for them to ask questions, and make sure that they understand what it is that you’re updating on. 

Then if the ox is in the ditch, if it’s an emergency, then the patience is considerably less. “Hey guys, this is something we’ve got to do right now. Now unless somebody has some phenomenal input, we’ve got to go. Go, go, go.”

I’m the kind of leader who is always trying to teach. I’m always trying to make my team successful. I would spend a lot of time making sure that they understand stuff. If there is an emergency, if there is something we’ve got to get after, then there have been times that I’ve walked up to a team member and said, “Hey, listen, I don’t have time to explain this. I need you to do this. Just go in this direction right now. This is something we’ve got to do. We’ve got a problem. We’ve got an emergency. Just make this happen. I’ll explain later, or we can talk through, or when the situations are normal, then I will sit down and teach. This isn’t the time for me to teach. I need you to go move in this direction.” 

You’ve got to have patience, but make sure that it’s equal to the content that you’re communicating.

5 Ask Questions

Questioning is one of the best ways for you to gain perspective. It is the thing that shows people that you’re interested in them. It’s the thing that shows them that you’re listening. It also helps you to get a lot of information.

We don’t do a good job gaining perspectives. Since we’re not asking a lot of questions, since we’re not getting a lot of perspective, what tends to happen is we make uninformed decisions, or we show people that we don’t really care. We don’t want to dig further.

We don’t want to know more, and so they don’t care. They give up. You’ve got to make sure. Ask questions. Ask quality questions as well. Care enough to find out. The more perspective you have, the greater decision-making process you have.

Decision-making processes are usually junked up because of a lack of perspective. Make sure you’re asking great questions. I’m talking about the stuff that helps you to get real, good quality information. The more you do that, the better you’re going to be at communicating.

6 Respect

You have to respect people. You have to respect their situations and what they’re maybe going through. Stop and respect people. Respect their time. Respect their emotions.

7 Problem Solve

In high levels of quality communication, you have to be able to identify exactly what the problem is. You do that by dissecting the problem, so it’s fully understood. This goes back to question asking, listening, and patience.

You do that by gaining the information, not just talking or making statements about it, but gaining great perspective and then setting up a system of strategies or objectives to solve the problem.

Then taking that information, and putting together whatever it is that you’re going to do to solve the problem, putting together some objectives to get this thing done, whatever that is. Great communicators are also great problem solvers, or at least they can guide information to getting the problem solved.

8 Socially Aware

Understand you have to be in tune with other’s emotions. It is absolutely essential to understand. It is something that you need as an interpersonal skill. Is somebody going through something incredibly painful? Did they just lose a relative, or did they get fired from a job, or, or, or?”

Whatever that is, be aware. Be in tune. See how they are. Also, being aware of, like I said, what are people experiencing. If you’re the leader, what are they experiencing with the work that you’ve put on them? Have you done too much? Have you done too little? Are they being demeaned, whatever it is? Think about those things.

9 Self-Management

You have to be in control of your emotions. You have to be thinking about what is appropriate behavior. You have to be responding appropriately with appropriate behavior to the situation itself. What does it need?

If you’re flying off the handle on something that is absolutely small it does not require what’s nothing really requires, you’re flying off the handle. If you are overdoing it because you’re stressed out, if you’re overdoing it because of something you’re going through, you can’t just sit there and think, “Well, I’m going to respond this way. I don’t care what anybody thinks.”

It means you got to control yourself. You have to not get angry. There are times where I could be totally frustrated with a team member because of something that’s going on. The first question I have to ask, I have to self-manage myself, “Is this my fault? Did I not do a good job communicating? Am I the one to blame here? If not, then why didn’t I catch this?”

I first always try and look at myself, and say, “How are you the one who is contributing to this problem,” and solve it? Don’t get a little crazy. Don’t get frustrated. Understand what’s happening. Be aware of yourself. Be aware of your behavior.

10 Responsible and Accountable

You have to be responsible and accountable with your actions, with your communication. Responsibility says personal responsibility, being mature. If you say that you’re going to do something, actually do it.

If you say that you’re going to do something and you don’t, take responsibility. If something crashes or goes wrong because of something you did or did not do, take responsibility. “Guys, I am so sorry. That is my bad. I did that. I know I failed that. I screwed that up.” Whatever it is, take responsibility.

Also, hold yourself accountable for your own actions. One of the things I’m always doing or at least trying to do with myself is I’m always trying to tell myself, “Hey man, look at this situation. You need to act. You need to take responsibility. You need to apologize. You need to do whatever.”

That part of accountability and holding my own self accountable by calling my own self out helps me to be not only a great communicator, but it also gains a lot of respect. It also gains a lot of loyalty, because when others see that I am very quick to call myself, and I think I’m right, I think I’m right.

The moment I realize I’m not, “Hey, I’m wrong. I’m sorry, I’m wrong. I screwed that up. I did this or whatever.” That is a part of accountability. Get on it. Take responsibility. Hold yourself accountable.

11 Assertive

This should not be used as a license to be a jerk. I am not talking about you being assertive in the jerk way, where you just start ripping on people. That is not what I’m saying at all. What I am saying is that it goes hand and hand with what you hear me saying when it comes to things like healthy boundaries.

If somebody’s trying to control you, trying to manipulate you, just not respecting you in this situation, then you may need to go ahead and give a little push back. You may need to go ahead and be a little assertive. Put a good healthy boundary in place. I am not saying being assertive by being a jerk. Please understand that.

Next, check out my reading list to help you bring your communication to a new level:

As promised, here’s the list of my top favorite books that will help you take your communication to the next level! I also included some bullet points on what you’ll find in each book… if you haven’t read these yet, you’ll definitely want to add them to your reading list!

Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently, by John C. Maxwell

• John C. Maxwell says if you want to succeed, you must learn how to connect with people. 
• 5 Principles and 5 Practices to develop the crucial skill of connecting.

How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

• 3 fundamental techniques in handling people.
• 6 ways to make people like you.
• 12 ways to win people to you way of thinking.
• 9 ways to change people without arousing resentment.

Safe People, by Henry Cloud, John Townsend 

• Solid guidance for making safe choices in relationships, from friendships to romance.
• They help identify the nurturing people we all need in our lives, as well as ones we need to learn to avoid.
• Learn to recognize 20 traits of “relationally untrustworthy” people.
• Discover what makes some people “relationally safe,” and how to avoid unhealthy entanglements.
• You’ll learn about things within yourself that jeopardize your “relational security.”
• Find out what to do, and what not to do to develop a balanced, healthy approach to relationships.

Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson

• Prepare for high-stakes situations.
• Transform anger and hurt feelings into powerful dialogue.
• Make it safe to talk about almost anything.
• Be persuasive, not abrasive.

Made To Stick, by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

• This book will transform the way you communicate ideas!
• Shows us the vital principles of winning ideas, and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick. 

Communicating for a Change, by Andy Stanley

• Andy Stanley and Lane Jones offer a unique strategy for communicators seeking to deliver captivating and practical messages.
• In a highly creative way, the authors unpack 7 concepts to empower you to engage and impact your audience in a way that leaves them wanting more.

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell

• As a concept, a “tipping point” is that magical moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, then spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. 

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey 

• Focus and act on what can be controlled and influenced, instead of what can’t.
• Define clear measures of success and create a plan to achieve them for both life and work.
• Prioritize and achieve the most important goals instead of constantly reacting to urgencies.
• Develop innovative solutions that leverage diversity and satisfy all key stakeholders.
• Collaborate more effectively with others by building high-trust relationships of mutual benefit.

Boundaries, by Henry Cloud, John Townsend

• Biblically-based answers to tough questions.
• How to set healthy boundaries with our parents, spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and even ourselves.

 Last, but not least… DISC Personality Profiles:

Every time I teach an organization about personality styles, and it gets implemented in the organization, what follows is the comment:

“We had no clue how chaotic life was inside of our organization until we learned how to communicate the correct way!”

Understanding personality styles is vital to every single team member on your team.

(In my business, we accomplish this using the DISC Personality Test.)

In fact, this is one of the most requested topics for me to speak about…

That’s why I’ve created a video and workbook to take your entire team through!

Winning At Communication

If you implement everything in this guide… I promise you, your communication will DRASTICALLY improve!

We love hearing from you, so please share your story of communication improvements with us!