Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: Enhancing Communication Skills

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Imagine you're at a bustling party, surrounded by people, yet feeling isolated because every conversation seems to be happening through a screen instead of face-to-face. This week on “The Weekly Drop”, we tackle this modern conundrum of communication in a tech-saturated world. I share poignant stories of how eye contact and genuine conversations can break these digital barriers, especially for younger generations more accustomed to texting than talking. Discover how a young agent turned a tense situation among friends into a moment of understanding by choosing dialogue over devices. We also explore the DISC personality assessment to help you connect more deeply with yourself and others, enriching both personal and professional relationships.   Listeners will also gain insights from Chris Voss's "Never Split the Difference," as we unpack the transformative power of tactical empathy. This isn’t about winning arguments; it's about truly understanding and valuing others' emotions. Whether you're navigating the complex real estate market or just aiming to communicate more clearly in any professional setting, intentional listening is a game-changer. We'll discuss strategies for avoiding misunderstandings, like summarizing key points in writing and using AI tools for meeting recaps. Tune in for practical tips that promise to enhance your communicative prowess and foster more meaningful interactions.   💬 Did you enjoy this weekly drop? Tell us all about it in the comment section below!    ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford  ************* 💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.   ➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full-service title and escrow company.   ➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.   *************   ✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:   Instagram ▶️ / thejohngafford   Facebook ▶️ / gafford2   🎧 Stream the new Weekly Drop here: Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80gtZ4m4wl3DqQoJmK?si=2d60fd72329d44a9 Listen On Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/escaping-the-drift-with-john-gafford/id1582927283    *************   #weeklydrop #johngafford #communication #technology #facetoface #digitalbarriers #youngergenerations #dialogue #devices #discpersonalityassessment #personalrelationships #professionalrelationships #tacticalempathy #effectivecommunication #negotiationskills #realestate #misunderstandings #aitools #meetingsummaries #clarity #trust

From the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be, Escaping the Drift, this is The Weekly Drop with Jon Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you like, subscribe, and comment. And now, The Drop. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Escaping the Drift, The Weekly Drop. I'm your host, Jon Gafford, and this week, man, on The Weekly Drop, we're going to talk about something that is super important, which is how you could become or how anyone can become a better communicator.

Now, why is that important, John, you may be asking. And I can tell you two reasons. Number one, the first reason I want to talk about this is because if you are someone that has teenage kids as mine are, or even nowadays, a lot of adults, there's way too much head down in the cell phone. And as technology, which is designed to connect us, actually takes us further apart, the basic skill sets of how to connect with other people are becoming more and more scarce. You know, I see this in some of my kids' friends. It's very uncomfortable for them to have conversations. Eye contact is somewhat of a challenge. They're not comfortable doing it. They would much rather be texting me from across the room. I tell them, this is a skill that my

wife and I spend so much time with our kids, really making sure that they are going to be great communicators. Because I tell them of all the stuff that we try to teach you, right? Of everything I'm trying to teach you out there, if you can master this one skill, you're going to eat everybody else in your generation for lunch. Because while they're staring at your cell phones, I'm telling you, when you're 25 and you're going into whatever field you're going into, that ability to connect with others on a personal level that makes them feel heard and understood is going to help you dramatically over the competition. And I can also say personally, everything I have in my life,

from my businesses, the success we've had here, to my personal life, all boils down to every great thing I have, I will contribute. Obviously, it's not my smashingly good looks. I will contribute that to my ability to communicate with others, my ability to make others feel heard and seen and called the gift of gab, whatever you might want to have. But if you feel like that's not you or you would like to improve that, which hopefully everybody wants to do that, I'm going to give you five tactical things today that we're going to talk about that can help you become a better communicator. So I want to start out the first of this talking about something that is really, it should

be obvious to everybody, but it's not when you're in the middle of it, which I say all the time, the solution to most of your problems is probably on the other end of a very difficult phone call. And the reason I say that is because people get into a space and they get into their own head where they have a problem with another human being that becomes bigger and bigger and bigger because it's not dealt with, because it's not addressed, because it doesn't move forward. And I'm going to tell you a story. So a younger agent at my company came to me. He's a guy that's getting married and had a little bit of an issue because someone that he was very close to, one of his friends growing

up, that person is also in a serious relationship with another woman. And there's been a little bit of tension, it seems, between the two friends, the two male friends, their female counterparts. And I don't think the tension was ever really talked about that much. But it got to the point where my guy that worked for me, his better half had invited the other one to an event. And the other one, for whatever reason, had not even bothered to respond. And then the male counterpart turned around and invited the male person to do something with them. And it created a problem. He came to me and said, look, I like my friend, but this is going to be my wife. She feels very disrespected by his spouse. You know, I don't know what to do here. This is putting me in a really tight spot.

And my response was, well, you're having the wrong conversation. You shouldn't be talking to me. You should be talking to him and lay it out there. Tell him what's going on. And so he chose wisely to have that conversation. Immediately, of course, everybody is mortified that this has happened. The two women come together and sort out whatever issues they may have had. Everybody got to say their piece. Everybody gets back on the same page. Maybe not everybody's going to be best friends, but at least everybody's going to be cordial for the sake of the original relationship there. And I think that the two guys are probably better friends now on the other end of that

conversation than they were. And that's a conversation that, quite frankly, should have happened a year ago. It would have saved everybody a lot of trouble. So if you have a difficult conversation you've been putting off, please go have it because I promise it's not going to be as bad as it was. Now, number two, when you go into a conversation, you want to understand who you're talking to. And this is anything in sales, in life, your parents, whatever it is. Everybody has a personality trait. If you've never taken a DISC test, D-I-S-C, I highly recommend you do it just so you can understand what your personality is. There's a bunch of places you can take it

for free online, but also you will start to spot the traits in others as you talk to them. The main four things in DISC is you have D, which is dominance. I, which is influence. So D is like, I'm the boss. Low D is, hey man, whatever you want. High I is, I've never met a stranger. I like everybody. Low I is, don't talk to me. I'm going to be in the corner. I'm kind of a recluse. S stands for security. High S means, I really need everything to go okay. Low S means I have no risk aversion. Hey, man, let's try it. Let's go. And then S is conscientiousness. The high, or I'm sorry, C is the conscientiousness. The high C means every T is crossed. Every I is dotted. Low C is fuck fuck it, close enough.

But each one of these personality types will appeal to different things. For example, people that are high I, you might hear people say things like, oh, I feel like, like, for example, do you like this house? I feel like I can live here. I feel like it's good. That word, feel. I feel like it's a good house for me. Or versus somebody that might be high D, high C, which means they're thinkers and they're very analytical, I think the deal might be good. I think. One person says, I feel. One person says, I think.

So when you're approaching people with a conversation to communicate with them, communicate with them the way that they want to be talked to. And the book Five Stars by Carmine Gallo talks about communication is broken down into Aristotle's ethos, which is credibility, logos, logic, and pathos emotion. And you should be talking to people on the terms of how they want to receive information. If you have somebody that is very touchy-feely in the way that they speak, act, think, talking to them with logic is probably not going to work. If you have somebody that trades on logic, trying to get them to enlist an emotional response or using an emotional reason, probably not going to work either there. So know who you're talking to as you go into that. The third thing I would say

is learning to listen with intention. What is listening with intention? What is that? Well, there's a whole book on it. Again, Patrick King wrote a book called How to Listen with Intention, but really so many of us have conversations like we're playing tennis, right? You're waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can talk about what you want to talk about. You're not actively listening to what they're saying. You're not going through and making them feel heard. You're just waiting for your chance to open your mouth. And I got to tell you, I have struggled with this through my life so much. My biggest struggle with this was, especially speaking to high value, high caliber people, which was trying to match whatever level of what they were saying. Like, well, I got

this. Oh yeah. Well, I have this. Well, I did this. I did that. And that comes off as one upping. I got to tell you, I'm not, I mean, I wish I could say it was different, but you take me to a cocktail party, put a couple of drinks and I still catch myself doing this sometimes. So again, nobody's perfect, but when you listen with intent, when you listen intently, you're really trying to understand what the person is saying. And a great way to make that person feel heard as you're speaking with them is repeat back what they're saying by using phrases like, what I think you're saying or what I'm hearing or what I think you're feeling is this, and then give it back to them. Keep the conversation on them and intently listen, and they will actually love you for this. One of my best friends, so funny.

He's a very successful guy here in Vegas. His name's Noel Bowman. He owns the Ice Bars in 1923 around town. We've been friends forever. And I'll take Noel to a party. And at the end of that party, I will have no less than five people come up to me and say, oh my God, I love your friend Noel. And I'm like, yeah, he's great. And then they almost always ask the same question after. What does he do? Because he spent the whole time intently

listening and listening with intention to whatever they were saying to try to get to know them. Nothing makes people act more to you or feel better than knowing that they were heard, feeling like that you actually cared enough to listen. You know, Chris Voss and his book, Never Split the Difference, which we're very excited. We have Chris booked on the podcast for December. So that episode is coming out. We can't wait for that to come out. I'm so looking forward to having Chris on here. If you have not read Never Split the Difference, if you're in any type of a job that involves communication or any type of a job that involves anything, negotiation or dealing with people, Never Split the Difference is a must read for you.

I always tell people that's a must read. And he's talking about the power of tactical empathy in that book. And using, I hate his words because he's an FBI guy. Can we just say tactical empathy? It almost sounds like you're using it as a weapon, but letting people understand that you don't just hear what they're saying, right? Like the first part of what we talked about listening with intention was I hear what you're saying, but really addressing how whatever they're saying or whatever's going on makes them feel like, what is the actual feeling behind that? That is just a whole nother level of communication. Cause again, you know, I'm Oprah,

Maya Angelou, whatever. They will never forget what you said, but they will always forget how you made them feel. Or they will forget what you said, but always remember how you made them feel. I guess it was one of Oprah's favorite quotes. Maya Angelou, I believe, if I'm wrong, fine. Hit me up in the comments on YouTube if I'm wrong on that quote. But yeah, understanding that you're going, I mean, you can calm somebody on a heated argument. And Chris is so smooth when he talks about this, saying, you know, just like, man, you

seem really, you seem really angry. I understand how this would make you very angry. I understand how this would upset you. I understand this. Using that and acknowledging their emotions. Cause I think so often, especially in heated communication, when things are, when we're, when you're at adversity with somebody, when you're on opposing sides of a table, the instinct is to try to win. the argument is to discount those emotions, to discount. And anybody that's ever been in a relationship, I think we can all say that we've been guilty of that one way or another. But what is it? No woman in the history of calming down

has ever calmed down and been told to calm down. Yeah, it's that. That's discounting emotions is to try to win an argument. And you can't do that. Chris goes exactly the opposite way. Not only does he say don't discount them, but he says dive headfirst into them. Acknowledge everything that's going on. But when you're communicating with people, if you're listening intently,

not just waiting to hit the ball back over, if you're phrasing what you're saying to them in a way that they want to receive that information, if you're acknowledging their feelings, if you're doing all of the things that we talked about in this short, quick 12 minutes that we've been on here, you can still have a major problem in communication. And this, to me, is the biggest problem in communication, especially with what I do. In real estate, there is, because there's a lot of moving parts. Yes, contracts are on paper, but you have a lot of conversations with. Yes, contracts are on paper,

but you have a lot of conversations with clients where you agree to things hypothetically. You agree to things. Here, I have this idea. What do you think? Yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that. Hey, I talked to this guy. This is what we can do. What do you think? In any walk of life, and inevitably, a week, a month, two weeks, whatever it is later, you come back to that conversation and you say, hey, we talked about this and this and this. I didn't say that. We didn't have that conversation. What are you talking about? Now, this is where the problem creates. This is the problem that gets created by that. The prize for winning an argument with your client is losing a client. So this is what I teach to every single person that I train to do real estate. This is the 101 that I teach. Make yourself impossible to be misunderstood. Now, how you do that is every single time I would talk with a

client, I would talk with anybody that I'm doing anything that I might need to come back to. I will immediately after I hang up the phone, I will come back to that person and I will send them a text or an email and I will recap what we just talked about. The good news for you is now at the age of AI, every Zoom, you can put fireflies in it or some AI form and it'll spit you out a summary of the meeting of everything that was discussed, which is, I think this is exactly the reason that was developed. But if you're having a quick phone call or on the fly with somebody or a quick meeting with somebody on the fly, you need to recap that in writing. Because this way, if they come back two weeks later and they go, I never said that, and you go, no, look, I texted to you. And all of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, because that's

logic. And you can't argue, like if you don't have proof of that, they're going to argue like, I don't think that's what he said. And they're never going to trust you again. But if you have it in writing, now it's proof and they're never going to argue. They immediately acquiesce. I've never had a problem with anybody arguing with anything that I sent them in writing ever. Because there it is. You got it. We talked about this. I sent it to you. If there was a problem with it, you would have told me there was a problem right then. And they immediately calmed down immediately. So the best tip of all of these things that I talked about today that I can possibly give you is make yourself impossible to understand or to miss, to be misunderstood, not impossible to understand. All right, guys,

well, I hope you enjoyed this. If you like these short form content, again, they drop every single Thursday, but please tune in also on Tuesdays to our long form podcast, where I bring world-class guests into the studio. If you're listening to us or watching this on YouTube, make sure you give us a like and subscribe. If you're listening to us on one of your favorite podcast devices, make sure that you give us a great review and make sure you subscribe so you hit these episodes every single week. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.