EntreLeadership - #227: Christy Wright—Communicating With Intention

Episode Date: October 12, 2017

Our own Christy Wright knows that the lifeblood of any business—big or small—is straightforward, intentional communication. And she shares that advice daily with women all across the country who are taking the leap into starting their own businesses. Tune in to this special bonus episode to find out how communication can make or break your business—not to mention your bottom line. entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership 1-Day Live Stream Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders by leaders, four leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Another bonus episode for you, good people, because we care about you so much. My guest is Ramsey Personality, dear friend, business coach, best-selling author,

mom, wife, Christy Wright. The superlatives continue. This is fun because we're going to be together for our Entree Leadership One Day event. And we're going to give a little bit of the talk of what. You're doing a new talk on maybe one of the most important business functions there is. I agree. It's messy.

It's hard, but it's worth it. Communication. Specifically, you're going to be talking about the breakdowns and communication. So what are some of the big problems that we face as leaders, as business people with communication. Sure. Well, anyone that has been around Entry leadership for a while

knows that we communicate differently based on your personality style. So, for example, things that we struggle with, Ken, with being high D, high I, we may struggle with something different from someone that's a high S or high C. But overall, if we were just going to lump this into like, let's say, three major categories,

you could really see kind of three common themes. One, we plain say the wrong thing. Like, you just say something you shouldn't have said. Immediately you regret it, or maybe two days later, you regret it, and you just didn't say the right thing. Another problem is where you might say the right thing, but you said it in the wrong way. And I do this a lot. And that's a lot of times us coming from a place of reacting.

So you're emotional, you're mad, you're something happens, and you immediately react. And maybe what you said was true, but you really said it in the wrong tone and the person couldn't even receive it because you said it so highly emotional, highly dramatic, etc. Or you say the right thing, but at the wrong time. And if you say the right thing at the wrong time, again, that person can't receive it. And so what I'm going to be talking about at the event is really understanding all the different variables that affect our ability to communicate with our team. And then what it's going to do is it's going to set these leaders up to be able to communicate in the right way to the people that they were trying to lead to make the impact they want to make. But you've got to adapt depending on who you're talking to.

So we're going to talk about all those different variables and how to control those different breakdowns. Yeah. And this is really a freeing talk. Like if you really dive in and listen to this talk and apply it, you realize that I've been. talking to people, talking at people. I'm not actually communicating. Right. Communication's an art. That's why it's difficult. It is. It is. It's an art and a science and it's funny because I think so often leaders want to bang their head against a wall because they're going, why don't you get it? And they feel like it's the team members problem that they're not getting it. It's probably your problem because you're not adapting your communication style. It's on us as the

leaders to lead the conversation, to adapt your style, depending on the personality, the situation, the context, whatever may be going on if you want to make that impact. And one of the things that I think is a real struggle for entrepreneurs is we're tired, we're spread thin, we're putting out fires all day every day. So we are focused on the fastest route to transfer information. Like if I can send you an email that's like, do this, XYZ, that's the fastest route. That's not necessarily the route that's going to get the most buy-in, create loyalty, create lasting impact, or team members that are going to be able to spread that message for you. So what I want to talk to leaders about, especially at this one day event, is how you can take a little bit longer route. It's going to take a little more time,

but the buy-in's going to be greater and the impact's going to be greater. When you take time not to just transfer information, but to actually communicate for buy-in, where the team member gets it. Like a light bulb goes off. They're like, yes, I can take this and run with it. All right, let's talk about the consequences or maybe the attributes of an organization that is not exhibiting healthy communications. So there might be little pockets, but as a whole, whether it be a small business of 12 people or 200, when communication isn't done right and done intentionally right, what does it look like? Well, I think one of the struggles in business is this idea of communication feels like a nice idea, but it's really hard to put dollars to it. Like, oh, does this really affect my bottom line?

But it does. And to your point, communication, when you don't do it well, when you have poor communication, when you have breakdowns in communication, or whatever the different habits are in your culture, there's a real lack of trust. Bad communication creates a broken trust in organization, but that in and of itself has real results in your bottom line. I love the book by Stephen M.R. Covey, the speed of trust, because he says organizations move at the speed of trust. So the higher your trust, the faster you move,

the more money you make, the more time you save. The lower your trust, the slower you move. The more money you waste and the more time it takes because you're trying to go back behind people. And so when we start to understand that communication builds trust and trust has real results in your bottom line, then maybe we'll lean into that and actually say, you know what, this is worth the time and investment to create great communication, intentional communication on our team, because I'm going to see real effects from it. Give me an example of maybe somebody that you've coached or here at Ramsey Solutions. You've been here longer than I have, maybe where you've seen leadership or day specifically model essentially what you just laid out, modeling trust and communication.

Well, I think one of the hardest things is transparency. And as leaders, a lot of times we're scared to be transparent because we feel pressure to have it all together, to have all the answers, to not get our feelings hurt, to maybe hide some of the ugly stuff behind the scenes. So they try to cover it up. But in fact, that ambiguity is what creates the distrust. So Dave, and that's a great example, one of the things that he models and teaches our leaders is to be transparent. And so when in doubt, overcommunicate. So Dave will easily stand up in front of a staff meeting. and he has before you've heard him and he'll go you know what this person's leaving and it hurts feels like a friend like this really hurts and you see the vulnerability of your leader and you're going wow he's human you know what someone like that someone that's vulnerable that's courageous that's authentic and transparent you'll go to the battle lines for them because not only are you clear on what's actually going on in the situation versus gossip and guessing and assuming you know what's really happening that person's leaving but you also sense and experience the humanity of your leader and what it's like going through that versus trying to hide it or fake it or cover it up.

Because here's something that you just said, we can't cover it up. No, yeah. Like they may not know the details, but they know something's up. That's right. Right. And it breaks trust further the fact that you won't call it out or stand there. Like have the backbone to speak up and speak the truth. People will respect you for it.

They may not like the information, but they're sure going to respect you for saying it. That's right. Okay. So what's a big takeaway that you want our entree leadership audience? So we're giving this podcast audience a little sneak preview. What's a big takeaway that when we do that event and those people leave, hearing your talk, what's something you really want them soaking on? Well, one of the things that I think we really try to do at all of our events,

certainly on Trail Leadership, is we want to give the inspiration, but we want to give the application. We want to give them tangible takeaways. And really, that's kind of what I'm teaching. That's what I'm teaching these leaders to do with this communication talk. I want to teach them how to communicate with their teams that results in action. And I love the quote. I'm going to use this at the event.

The effectiveness of communication is not defined by the communication, but by the response. So did you communicate in a way that led to actions to the results that you were looking for? So I'm going to teach these leaders how they can communicate to lead to actual tangible results that they're looking for. It's going to be so good. She's Christy Wright, of course, the bestselling author of Business Boutique. And I've got to give a plug real quick for everything you're doing over there because there's so much tie in between Entree leadership and BusinessBoutique. BusinessBoutique.com. You've got an event coming up this fall as well. But we're going to be together for this Entree Leadership One Day live stream. And you folks that are listening on the podcast can

get a special discount. All you've got to do is text E1D discount. E1D discount, no spaces. And you're going to text that to 3344. That's 33444. The price is already up for everybody else, but you can get it at $29. And I want to point out, and Christy, I know you love this. I mean, you could literally go grab the mailman, four or five women in your social club. I don't care who it is. One price, $29, and if you can get them in front of a screen,

you can learn. And this is really good stuff. Thanks, Christy, for hanging out with us. It's going to be a fun day. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited about it. All right, folks, one more time, you can get that discount by texting E1D discount.

3344. That's 33444. So on behalf of Christy Wright, our producer Eric and our engineer Will. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.