The Mindset Mentor - How to Master Communication

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

If you ever plan on speaking with humans in your life, you’ll definitely want to listen to this episode! In today’s episode, I will teach you the 3 parts to mastering your communication. Follow me on IG for more inspiration here: https://www.instagram.com/robdialjr/ If you live in the US/Canada and you want to receive motivational texts from me, text me now at 1-512-580-9305 or click here https://my.community.com/robdial Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button since you never miss another episode of the Mindset Mentor. And if you're out there and you've been listening to me for a while and you've gotten any value from anything I've ever put out, please do me a favor. Go to Apple Podcasts. Give us a rating and review. Whenever we get more and more positive rating reviews, it spikes the algorithm. Apple goes, hey, this must be a popular show. We should show it to more people. And that's how we grow organically is from you guys giving us a rating review. So I'd greatly appreciate it from my bottom of my heart if you would do that. Today in this episode, I'm going to teach you probably the most important skill that you can have in deepening your connection with other people.

That's a little bit of a buildup, I know, but I promise, we're gonna follow through on that buildup. It's gonna be good. And part of it is love. And I don't mean L-O-V-E. It's not the love that you're thinking of. It's actually something completely different. But what we're gonna talk about

is we're gonna talk about how to improve your communication with anybody that you are in communication with. This is something that really has changed me a lot, has changed my relationship a lot with people as well. And when I was younger, I was trying to become better at communicating. I was trying to become better as a public speaker. I was trying to become better to actually be a better manager. One of the things that I realized is that I was a great manager for people who were like me. If somebody was like me, I was a great manager. But if somebody wasn't like me, I wasn't a good manager because everybody's different. And so I started going on this quest of how can I become a better communicator and

everything that I do. And what I started doing, I got a tip from one of my managers who is a great developer of humans, men, women. And he said, what I want you to do is I want you to start watching people communicate. And what was really interesting about it is I started to notice the difference in the way that men and women started to communicate. Because if I can communicate with a man the way that he wants to be communicated with, and I can communicate with a woman the way that she wants to be communicated with, because we are very different.

Our sexes are very different. The way that we communicate and the way that we receive information and know that our information is being received by somebody else. And I started to realize, I started doing research. And one of the crazy things that I'll tell you about before I actually give you the tips is there was a research that was done. I don't remember the exact statistics and all that stuff, but it was like second, third graders. I think it was like really young kids. I think it was actually younger. I think it was preschool or first grade. And they were watching kids communicate. And so they had like a, you know, a fake wall, a fake mirror, and they were watching kids

communicate. And they realized that little boys, really, really young, would sit next to each other and face the room, like the front of the room inside of a school. And they would communicate with each other, you know, shoulder to shoulder, looking forward and both looking the same direction. They noticed that even in little girls though, what they would do is they would turn and square up their shoulders and start talking to each other face to face. And what they think that this is might be something that's evolutionary where, you know, men a hundred thousand years ago when they went out hunting, they couldn't necessarily really look at each other face to face. They got used to communicating by either being shoulder

to shoulder, back to back. And so a lot of times somebody will say, hey, you're not like, women sometimes have you ever been like, hey, my partner's not listening to me. Well, maybe it's because of the fact that he's not giving you the verbal and nonverbal cues that shows you he's listening. But in reality, he really is because men are okay facing, women tend to like to face each other. So, you know, men are okay facing away, excuse me, and women tend to go towards each other. And they think it's just an evolutionary trait of, you know, possibly women being around the campfire. So they were more face-to-face women holding their babies. They're more face-to-face with their

babies. And then it was just an evolutionary trait where men, they just went shoulder to shoulder, back to back. And sometimes it'll be face-to-face, but, but that's one thing that really changed with me as I started to realize the difference like in men and women communicating. And it became something that I wanted to become better at simply because I wanted to communicate with, I wanted to develop relationships and we've all heard it. Communication is the number one key for any relationship. It could be a romantic relationship. It could be a friendship. It could be family. It could be children, any other human that can fog a cup, which basically means they're breathing. And so if they can fog a cup, this will deepen

their connection. And communication is a skill, just so you guys know. Communication is not a talent. It's not something that people are just born with. It takes practice. It takes work of becoming a better communicator. And for someone who is an introvert like me, I'm a very big introvert. I tend to stay mostly an introvert, but I can pop into extroverts. So I'm a little bit of an omnivore, I guess you could say, but it's something that I had to learn because I was a really, really shy kid when I was a kid. And then at some point in time, I was like, you know what, if I'm going to grow up and I want to do what I want to do in the world, I'm going to have to start communicating with people and get better at it. And so there's a lady named Carol Kumpfler. She's a PhD and she brought down and

put the key to communication is literally into an acronym, which is three words, which is love, not L-O-V-E, L-U-V. Here's how you communicate effectively with another person. Okay. So the L stands for listen. And what you want to do is you want to listen with no need to respond. This is one of the things that we, I mess up on a lot. I know a lot of us mess up on is when someone's speaking, we're already thinking about what we're going to say to them. And one of the things that you can do that is challenging when you first do it. But one of my very first mentors forced me to do this.

He would say, Hey, listen, when someone's done speaking, count to three in your mind before you respond. And so somebody will stop talking. And now you have permission to talk. Believe me, it will feel a little bit awkward at first because we're not used to it. But what happens a lot of times is when you give someone space, as soon as they get done talking, they usually within those three seconds, start talking again. And what normally happens is that they actually go deeper into what they were talking about. Cause a lot of times you go very surface level with people. And a lot of times

if you give them space, they'll go deeper and tell you things that they never told you, or they weren't planning on telling you. And it allows them to open up maybe a little bit, be a little bit more vulnerable, maybe a little bit more honest with you. And then therefore it will help deepen a relationship. It's funny. And you guys have done this before and you know,, this has happened before. Well, you're, you'll be in a conversation with somebody and they're talking like 90, 95% of the time. And then they get done and like, man, this is a great conversation because people really just want to be heard. And so you want to listen with no need to respond. The most value that you can give someone in a conversation is silence. It is. Give them space and listen with no judgment.

And as a guy, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. It's hard as a guy. It's hard as a guy and also as a coach to not try to feel like I need to fix somebody, right? Like I feel like I'm like, oh, I could fix you, right? It's like built into me. I'm like, I've fixed people like you before. Maybe I should fix you.

But to just listen and to just let people speak. And don't try to fix it. You know, one of the books that really helped me when I was trying to get better at communicating was Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And it seems like it would be just a relationship book. And when I heard about it for years, I was like, oh, it's just a corny relationship book. No, it's a really good book to understand. There are major differences a lot of times between men and women, just as if they would be if we came from two different planets, which is hence where the title comes from. So, you know, listen, try to have no judgment and try not to fix.

Listening is a skill. Allow three seconds. How long can you go before you respond to somebody and give them the space to be there and to be able to communicate with you and be like, damn, that person really listened to me. Like I really feel heard. That is one thing that will massively change relationships with you. And as somebody who's a coach,

I literally coach coaches. I have hundreds of coaches that I've taught. One of the things that I say is you don't have to fix your coaching clients. You just have to give them space. You have to ask great questions and then you have to give them space for them to talk really is what it comes down to. And there's obviously a lot more nuances that go into it, but a lot of people just don't have a safe space to talk to somebody without judgment, not even their spouse. A lot of times they can talk to without judgment, not their parents. And so just be that person for them. And I promise you, you will see

all of your relationships shift massively if you can consciously go, I'm just going to listen. They always say, you only have one mouth and you have two ears. The reason why is because you should be listening twice as much as you're talking. So that is the first part of the love, which is listen. Hey, they say that you can't have it all, but that's not totally true. With Blinkist, you can have all of the most important ideas and key takeaways from the world's top nonfiction bestsellers, all in 15 minute reads or listens. Use these Blinks to get your inspiration, to learn more about books that you like to read and to broaden your knowledge and get new perspectives in life.

Blinkist takes the top nonfiction books like Atomic Habits, The Power of Habit, The 4-Hour Body, and pulls them into key takeaways and puts them into 15-minute text and audio explainers called Blinks. I love Blinkist because personally, it's short. It's to the point. No BS. Exactly like me, which is why I use it. And right now, Blinkist has a special offer for our audience. Go to Blinkist.com slash mindset to start your seven-day free trial and get 25% off of Blinkist premium membership. That's Blinkist, spell B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T dot com slash mindset. Once again, 25% off and seven-day free trial, Blinkist.com slash mindset. Hey, if you're a startup founder, you know that early decisions can make the difference between

success and failure in your business. One decision that thousands of successful founders have made is choosing Stripe as their payments platform. Over the past decade, Stripe has made processing payments simple and borderless, enabling ambitious businesses such as Instacart, Lyft, Shopify, grow their revenue and expand into new markets quickly. Even here at the Mindset Mentor, I've been using Stripe for years for our payments, as does the podcast network that we're a part of, Cast, which has trusted Stripe since 2015. What we love most about it is their APIs and their docs are incredibly easy to use, which help us integrate Stripe and start accepting payments in a matter of minutes and not days.

It's also freed up our team to focus on the business of producing high quality podcast shows while Stripe handles the business of payments and money movement. So whether you're an online or in-person retailer, software platform, marketplace, or subscriptions business, visit stripe.com to learn more about how Stripe can support your business today. That's stripe.com to get started today. The next part of the love is understand. And what I mean by understand is verbal and nonverbal communication. And this goes back to what I was talking about with men and women. A lot of times men will listen. And this is why sometimes women don't feel like they're being heard is because the person that they're talking to, if it's their boyfriend or this, their husband, they won't get

the verbal and nonverbal cues from them that they're listening. And so a lot of times women feel like they're not being listened to and men need to realize that they need to get better with their verbal and nonverbal communication. It's really interesting how simple a head nod can be or a, uh-huh. Tell me more about that. That's interesting. Yeah. Those things tell someone that you're listening to them. And this isn't just, you know, men to women, this is women to women. This is women to men. We should be giving verbal and nonverbal cues that we're listening to somebody. Head nods, square up your shoulders with somebody so that your shoulders are literally facing each other, you're face to face. And what you're going to want to do is you're going to

want to have somebody know that you're understanding what they're saying. You're understanding. Your verbal and your nonverbal cues are saying to them, I'm listening. I'm here. I'm understanding what you're saying. And it comes down to, you know, it's the reason why people sometimes, and this isn't just women to men, but this is also men as well. Sometimes you're just like, I'm not feeling, I feel like this person's not listening to me. I feel like they're not understanding me. Sometimes a person is listening and they are understanding you. They're just not giving you the verbal and nonverbal cues. And so what you're going to do is you're going to also reflect back to them what's going on. You're going to reflect whatever

it is that's going back to them. And what do I mean by reflecting? Repeat back to them to make them know that you're listening and you're also understanding. So if someone's like, oh yeah, I just was going through this and it was just a really hard day yesterday. How do you reflect back? Yeah, that does sound really hard.

Yeah, that does sound tough. That does sound like something that would be a struggle. Oh, I completely understand why you responded that way. Well, hey, just so you know, I'm here for you. Hey, how can I help? Yeah, I can't imagine how that feels. Give them a hug. You know, let them know you're not alone.

Yeah, this will pass. Hey, thanks so much for telling me that. Thanks so much for opening up to me and telling me something like that. That is what somebody needs to hear and need to see in you to know that you are understanding them. And normally what happens when

people are in that situation where they're pouring out their soul to you or telling you something is, and we're not just, I want to be very clear too. This doesn't have to be for like a therapy session with a friend. This could be anything. They can just be talking about anything at all, but really what they're looking for is they're looking to be understood. Nobody wants to be fixed. They just want to be understood. And so what it comes down to in the you is just to let them know that you understand, that you're completely aware of what they're going through and you're listening to them. And then the last thing that you want to do is, and it's part of what I just said with the understanding, is you want to validate. So it's listen, understand,

validate. So I completely understand. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. So you're validating them, not invalidating them. Because a lot of times what tends to happen is people will be in a conversation and then they're like, yeah, well, this happened with him. Oh, well, have you had a conversation with him about it yet? Or this happened with her? Oh, well, maybe you should tell her that's, and we automatically go to fixing a lot of times. Men and women go to fixing. And it's literally not about fixing. It's about validating. People want to be heard and they want to be understood. And I said this a little while ago, but being in coaching, you really understand that there's so many people that you're very, very close with and they have nobody that they

can talk to. And I mean like really talk to on a deep level and not feel like they're being judged, not feel like somebody wants to fix them or any of not feel like they're being judged, not feel like somebody wants to fix them or any of that stuff. Or people just invalidate other people's feelings as to why they shouldn't feel the way that they feel, which is one of the worst things you can do. So one of the best things you can do is just completely validate somebody, let them know that you're listening, listen to them, show them that you understand and then validate them. And then what will really help, and this is a coaching tip coming from someone who's a coach. I've coached thousands of people and I've coached hundreds of coaches who coached thousands and thousands of people as

well. And this isn't just for coaches. This is for everybody is if you know the answer to something, don't give them the answer. And you might be like, wow, that sounds really rude. Well, let me tell you why that is, is you want to not give them the answer. If there is an answer, ask them questions to allow them to come to the answer that you think is the answer. And I'm not saying by like manipulating them to think the way that you want them to think. What I'm saying is, and it's really interesting, just so you know, is when you ask questions to somebody and they come up with the answer, there's a couple of things that happen. Number one, they're 10 times more likely to remember that answer. And the reason why is because they made new neural pathways by actually having to

find that answer. So it is hardwired in their brain. Now, if you tell them the answer, there's a chance they might not remember it. And so pretty good chance they won't remember it, but they're 10 times more likely to remember whatever answer they came up with through the questions that you asked them. So instead of having the answers for people, how can you have the questions for people so they can think deeper so they can go deeper? Because we do want to, we do want to help people. We do want to solve their pain. We do want to get them out of whatever mess they might be in or whatever they need help with, of course. But if you ask them questions and not give them the answer, number one, like I said, they're 10 times more likely to call it. And number two, they're more likely to follow through on that thing because they see it as their idea,

not something you told them to do. And people will almost always follow through on their ideas, not the ideas that are placed upon them by other people. So you have to realize helping somebody grow is not about taking away their pain. It's helping them suffer less. So, you know, there's a big difference between pain and suffering. Pain is inevitable. You're not going to go through this life without any scars in some sort of way, but suffering is something that is optional. Pain is inevitable. You're going to go through, but suffering is optional. And so really what we're trying to do is we're not trying to take away their pain. We don't want someone to not have pain because a lot

of times pain is actually the biggest teacher for people. And it actually is the, if I'm being honest with you, pain a lot of times is actually the best thing for a lot of people. So we're not trying to remove somebody's pain or to protect them from ever feeling pain. What we're trying to do is we're trying to help them suffer less. So helping somebody grow is not about taking away their pain. It's about helping them suffer less. And even if you don't agree with them, here's an important thing, everybody, you can still validate them. Even if you don't agree with them, you can still validate them. validate them. Even if you don't agree with them, you can still validate them. You have to realize that. Don't place your opinions on other people. God, how many people need to hear that phrase right there? Don't place your opinions or your thoughts or your feelings

of what you think somebody should have done in a situation on top of somebody. You can still validate them. Do you want to know why? Because every single person is doing the best with what they have, which means that if you think about it, the person that you're talking to did the best that they could with what they had at the moment that they might be talking to you about, right? So our goal is really not to try to fix somebody. It's not to try to change them. It's not to try to judge them.

It's not to shame them, to guilt them, to do any of those things. It's really to come at somebody with love and compassion and understanding. We all just want to be understood. Don't you just wish that every single person that you met for the rest of your life would just understand you? God, wouldn't that be nice? Well, guess what? Every single person that's in this world wishes the exact same thing. So if we can come up somebody with compassion, we can come at them with love and understanding, we all just want to be understood. Don't try to fix anybody. Just don't try to fix anybody. Don't try to place your beliefs on them, whether it's political, religious, or anything else on

top of that. Let somebody live their life. Because here's the thing that I always say, is somebody might be completely different than you. They might have a different political belief, they might have a different religious belief. They might have a completely different convictions than you do is that you believe what you believe and you have the opinions that you have because of the way that you were raised and everything that you've gone through in your life. If you went through all of the exact same things that somebody else went through, whenever you're sitting with them, you would probably have the exact same beliefs and opinions as them. We have our beliefs and our opinions based off of the way that we were raised, based off of our upbringing, based off of our appearance, based

off of every single person we've ever met and every single thing that we've ever seen. So don't try to fix people. Don't try to give people their opinions. Don't come at them with judgment or guilt or shame. All we want is love and compassion and everybody just wants to be understood. And so if you can come at all of your relationships with knowing that communication is a skill and it's something that you want to work at, all of your relationships are going to be better. All you have to do is remember this acronym, L-U-V, listen, understand, and validate.

So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. That is how I communicate with all of my followers. Instagram is the main thing that I use. So if you want to reach out to me, reach out to me there. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure mission makes somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.