Why Most People Miscommunicate

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Dear listeners, most of us were never actually taught how to communicate. We were taught that to say, but not how to say it in a way that builds real trust. And somewhere along the way, a lot of people started believing that communication is a skill you either have or you don't. That some people are just naturally magnetic, naturally persuasive, naturally easy to connect with. But what if that's not true? What if the you the way you speak, the way you show up, and the way you make people feel is actually something you can learn, grow, and most importantly heal into. That's what today's conversation is all about. And I think it's going to stay with you, dear listeners. So hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm your host, Abek, and this is the podcast, or I'd rather say this is the space where we have honest and grounded conversations about the things that actually matter. Your well-being, your relationships, your sense of self, and how you show up in the world every single day. And today, dear listeners, I have a lovely guest who has spent decades helping people do something that sounds simple, but genuinely one of the hardest things human beings can do is communicate with trust, empathy, and real influence. So, yes. So that man is none other than, please welcome, Sean Weaver. So welcome to the show. Thank you, Ravik. Lovely to be here. Amazing, amazing. So, dear listeners, before we delve deep into the discussion today, I'd quickly love to introduce with Sean. So, Sean is an international leadership communications coach, keynote speaker, trained psychotherapist, and the author of The Highly Trusted Advisor. So he's worked with organizations like Johnson Johnson, Bank of Ireland, Vodafone, and Financial Times. And his core belief is that the greatest thing you can offer another person is the feeling that they have truly been heard. So I'll not take much of a time. Sean, it's it's so good to have you here and uh welcome again. Thank you. Amazing. So uh Sean, like before we get really deep into this discussion, I'd I'd I'd love to stop start with something a bit personal. Like you have spent over decades, three decades rather, in this space, like coaching leaders, speaking globally, writing books. But uh communication is not just a kind of profession for you. So it it feels like it's something you have lived deeply. So what first made you realize that how we communicate or how we don't is actually connected, like how we feed on the uh inside.

Match The Other Person’s Style

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Yeah, I think that's a that's a fair summation, Avik, in terms of communication. Really, communication is the meaning of the communication is the response that you get. So if you're not getting the response you want in a relationship, be it a business relationship or a personal relationship, we often tend to put the other person at fault. We somehow think it's their problem. Instead of realizing that if we're not getting the communication we want from people, there's a large part of that is down to how well we are communicating our message to them. So communication operates both at an emotional level and at an intellectual level. And we sometimes forget about the power of the emotional piece as well. So there's often situations where a person's personality, in terms of how they process information, can have a huge impact on how well they recognize and engage with the way you think you're communicating a message. But in fact, from their perspective, you're not communicating in a way that's meaningful for them at all. The very best way to describe that is if you if you can imagine, if you fold your arms, for example, and take that as a metaphor for how you communicate. Most of us, when we fold our arms, we don't think about it. We feel perfectly comfortable, and you know, we're perfectly unconscious about it. And as long as we meet people who fold their arms the same way as us, then that's great. You don't have to think about it. But if you try folding your arms in the opposite direction, yeah, all of a sudden it's not so comfortable, right? Okay. And you have to think about it, and you've got to slow it down, and you've got to be prepared to be a little bit uncomfortable while you're doing it. And that's really the secret of communication. The secret of communication is recognizing where the other person is at. And if they're different to us, to learn to realize that, become aware of that, slow down our communication, be more conscious of our communication, and by that be more aware of how they respond to us when we're communicating with them, so that we can start to match their preferred style of communication. And doing so, we build more meaningful relationships. Ah, correct, all right.

SPEAKER_03 5:24

So I mean, uh, so so I want to tackle something like right at the start, like because I I think there's a there's a huge misconception also sitting at the I mean, I mean, like how people think about the communication, especially if I have to say uh when it comes to the personal development, right? So I believe there's a lot of miscom uh miscommunication, but and it's it's this the idea that communication is mostly about the words that you choose, the confidence in your voice, and how well you excel an idea. So the curiosity is like what I'm thinking of, like is when you sit with someone who's really struggling to connect, whether in their relationships or their work or even with themselves also. So, what's the thing that they're almost always getting wrong that has nothing to do with what they actually say?

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I

Questions And Listening Build Trust

SPEAKER_01 6:20

think the one if I were to teach anyone a single skill set to be more effective at communication, it's to not to be afraid to ask questions and then to stop and listen. I think the powerful thing about questions is it encourages the other person to engage with you. It allows you to manage the conversation, but more importantly, it allows you to understand clearly where the other person is coming from, what's meaningful to them, what matters to them. And once we can explore and discover that, then we're in a far better position to connect with them and communicate with them on their level. And I think what's really, really powerful in communication is that someone feels comfortable with you. They feel there's no perceived threat in the communication, you're not going to make a judgment about them. And the really the best way to do that is to wait to hear somebody else's opinion before you prepare to give your own. Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

I understand. And I think this is where it gets really personal. Like, do you find that the communication patterns people have professionally are usually a kind of mirror of something they are carrying personally? What do you say?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I think it's a mirror error. It's an indicate, it's an indication of their personality type. So different people process information in different ways. So some people process it visually. So they see a lot of pictures in the head. And so they tend to speak very, very quickly because what they're trying to do is explain what they're seeing every minute or every second that passes. So they become very verbal. There's a lot of sound, there's a lot of noise, there's a lot of uh conversation going on as they try to explain to you what they understand. Then you get other people who are more auditory or verbal. They're all about the sound. They process information through sound rather than pictures. Others process information through how they feel about things, others process through how they analyze the world around them. There's different ways of doing it. And depending on the personality type you're dealing with, the speed at which you speak, the speed at which they process information is a very important part of that. So the person I just mentioned, for example, the visual person, this is a part of their genetic makeup. It's part of their personality makeup, their condition and development since they were children, will tend to speak, as I said, very, very quickly. But if they're talking to somebody who's much more feeling-oriented, much more, as we say, kinesthetic, they like to take time to understand, to get a feeling, to be comfortable, they don't process information that quickly. So they can often find a person like that very overwhelming, almost intimidating. So what's becomes really important is to recognize where you are and then recognize where other people are at, and then learn to flex your behavior to work with them in their style. Now, if you're not in a position to learn those kind of models, as I've said before, the very best skill you can have is to learn to ask questions and listen. And then you very quickly find out by watching the other person how fast they speak, how slow they speak, what's important to them, and then you can start to match them at that level.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

That's just an important reframe because we often treat communication as a professional skill, a tool for the workspace, a workplace, but they listeners, like what Sean is pointing to is that it starts much earlier than any Zoom call or boardroom meeting, anything. It it starts with how we learned to be heard and or not heard, I would say, as as people. Right. So we'll also look into the root

Insecurity And The Threat Response

SPEAKER_03 9:59

causes as well. I mean, let's say for a moment, like I I think a lot of a lot of people feel like bad communicators have actually been I mean, just been communicating in survival mode for a very long time. Maybe they learned that speaking up was not safe. Maybe they got quite it the more they were talked about or talked over. So, what tends to happen underneath the surface, like at that root level, that turns someone into a person who struggles to be heard or who struggles to truly, truly listen to?

SPEAKER_01 10:34

So, what do you think? Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question because someone who struggles to be heard is often, and someone who's who who speaks maybe too much are kind of struggling with the same issue, which is deep insecurity. So, as you put it very well, Avic, the issue is people might have learned it they shouldn't speak out. You know, maybe they were maybe they were uh somehow ridiculed or perhaps you know abused in some way, verbally or otherwise, when they didn't they learned it's better for me not to ask questions, it's better for me not to say anything. And then others just never felt they were ever heard, and so they need to do their best to make sure you hear what I say. And so they learned the opposite. They learn to be very directive and very confrontational in their communication. So act interestingly, they're both working from the same space, which is basically the insecurity that if I speak out, I'll be somehow corrected. And and and this, and the other thing, insecurity that if I don't speak out, I won't get hurt, and no one will know I'm here. I I hate to sort of have to come back to the same core. But the real power in communication is how well I can build a relationship with the other person. And in most relationships, when we meet people, either in business or in a personal situation, we all exhibit what's known as a threat assessment. So when I meet someone for the first time, or you meet someone for the first time, we are going through a psychological process which allows us to identify whether this person is safe or whether this person is dangerous. And then within a couple of seconds of making that internal unconscious process that goes on, we've made the decision that either this is someone I can get along with, or this is someone I have to get away from. And that's that traditional fight or flight type situation which drives a lot of fundamental unconscious behaviors. Now, that can make or break a relationship. And we have to move beyond that. And the way we move beyond that is again, I come back to my original point, becoming masters of questioning, of asking questions, of making suggestions, of simply positioning things and allowing other people to come to us. And here's the interesting thing about that. What people don't appreciate is that the person who asks the questions is really the person who's in control of the conversation. As soon as you ask a question, you automatically have the attention of the other person. And so I can ask a question that gets so, for example, how valuable would it be for us to continue this conversation? And the next thing you're thinking about, well, the value about having this conversation extended, for example. That's immediately what your head goes directly through, because our brain is conditioned to respond to questions. And you can also position that as a suggestion. Would it be okay if I asked you to close the door? That's a request, right? But it's something that people respond to a lot more efficiently than if I were to say, just close the door. One's an instruction, the request. People always respond to requests rather than instructions. And this is one of the things I work with leaders and particularly sales people around, is this capacity to be able to manage and guide the conversation without appearing intimidating or threatening in any way?

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Exactly. And for someone who's been in that patent for years and years, or maybe decades as well, is there a moment you have seen where something shifts, where they start to communicate not from fear, but from something more solid?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, I I I mean, I can see it when I'm working with people. You know, you send them away to do a little bit of work, and the little bit of work might be to try one or two questions in a meeting, as opposed to simply not engaging or simply talking all the time. So they either have to learn to step up and ask a question, and the other thing is is to step back and ask a question. And let me give you an example of what I mean. Um the beautiful thing about a question is you don't have to own the question. So, what I mean by that is if I were to say, Well, what if we were to take it in this direction? And someone jumps up and says, Well, I think that's a silly idea, you can simply say, Well, I'm just asking a question, trying to understand where we're going. So you have this wonderful flexibility available to you when you ask questions, that if you turn around and go, Well, I think we should go this way. And then somebody disagrees, and now you have an argument on your hands, you have a confrontation. So I think where the shift is, where I've seen a lot of people, is when they start to realize actually, if I use questions, I actually get my way more often than if I don't use questions.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

No.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Because I'm able to condition other people's thinking to go in the direction I want them to go in. Exactly.

Collaborative Leadership Through Suggestions

SPEAKER_01 15:18

And this is actually very common for a lot of leaders. A lot of leaders can be very what we would term command and control approach. Like I'm the boss, I tell you what to do, you do it, right? The problem with all of that is that, first of all, you're expected to be the expert, and not everybody's an expert on 100% of the things, 100% of the time. And the second thing, there's no guarantee that other people will engage with that or take any responsibility for that. But if you make a suggestion, so what if we were to take it from this perspective, would you be comfortable doing that? All of a sudden you move from this direct command and control type approach to a much more collaborative leadership approach, a more collaborative communication approach. Now you're empowering people, you're giving them an option to answer yes or no to your suggestion. And if they take the suggestion on board, then they're more likely to do it for you. Much more powerful for leadership or communication than it is in the traditional command and control style.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

I also would love to talk about something practical or reflective part as well. Like you have created something called the highly trusted advisor framework. And yes, dear listeners, Sean has created a highly trusted advisor framework. And Sean, like I I I know like it's it's built primarily around the leadership and the sales, but at its core, it's really about human trust. So am I wrong or am I correct?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

No, absolutely. You're absolutely correct. And and not only about human trust, but the fact that there's levels of trust in human relationships. So many of us will know people that we trust, that we know we like them, we trust them, but we don't share everything about ourselves with them, right? And then there are people that we've such a high level of trust with that we've no hesitation, no limitations, no restrictions. We put everything on the table. We are completely ourselves with them. And in those relationships, there's far closer, not just trust, but influence, engagement, empathy is always present in those situations. And and my my argument is that the more of those highly trusted relationships we can create, the more fulfilled our life will be, and the more influential will you be in the lives of others.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

Exactly. Exactly true. So here here, I'd love to ask like, what would be the one shift in how someone communicates that you have seen genuinely change not just their professional relationships, but their personal ones as well. Like something that anyone uh listening right now or could actually start with. I mean, if they can share.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Not be the first to speak. Okay. Okay. Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

In other words, in other words, silence is a powerful communication tool. It's a powerful communication tool because you don't have to be the first person to answer. And when you're not the first person to answer, that that does a number of things. Number one, it encourages the other person to fill the silence because that's what most people are trying to do. Second of all, it allows you to understand where the other person is genuinely coming from. And then third, it allows you to give an answer based on the reflective response to what you've received from other people. It it also conveys what we call gravitas. So, in other words, when you're not the first person to speak, it looks like you're considering all the issues, which means that you're taking time, you're reflective, it's a considered response, and it adds more weight to your response than if you're just the first person to jump in and give an answer. So silence, and it doesn't even have to use any questions like I spoke about earlier, just learning to be not the first person to speak, and even better to get to a stage where people invite you to speak because they're surprised you haven't spoken so far.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Exactly. So I mean, exactly. And and I I really love that, and I want to uh push a little bit further because I I think there's something emotional underneath, like even the most practical communication techniques. Like, so is there an internal conversation someone uh needs to have with themselves before the external ones become uh real?

Self-Talk, Stress, And Lasting Change

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, I I think we we kind of have to look at the sort of language that we use when we speak to ourselves. So there is a thing called modal operators of necessity, which are words like I must, I have to, I need to. Many of us use this internal dialogue all the time. And the problem with that kind of dialogue that I must, I need, I have to, is it causes huge levels of stress inside the body. It raises the cortisol level, which is the hormone that drives stress. And then we tend to use other people. You have to do this, you must do this, you need to do this, which raises the stress levels in them. So, so one of the things you definitely want to do is you want to challenge your internal dialogue before you commit to the message that you stand. And language is such a powerful element of communication. And and the real problem in really good language, no matter how expert you are, the research shows this all the time. The simpler the language you use, even for the most complex of ideas, the more successful you will be as a communicator. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Ooh, that's interesting. And and and also like uh, you know, would love to bring the setbacks part as well. Like personal development is really a straight line. Like most people try to change how they uh I mean, how they communicate, they make progress, and then life happens. I mean, stress comes back. Old patterns resurface, they find themselves setting down again in the exact kind of situations they had been working on. But what do you say to someone like who's been trying to grow in this area but keeps sliding back?

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, I think I mean that's more of an internal communications as in the inner dialogue that we have with ourselves. If you're constantly falling back into old patterns, it means you haven't set sufficient motivation to make the change. Most change, real lasting change, is not in a straight line, as in from zero to hero. Most change happens in the stepped manner. So you go up a certain level, you take time to reflect, consider, devalue where you are, you set another goal, you take it up another notch, you now reflect. So you think about incremental. The Japanese have a term called kaizen, which means incremental improvement. So rather than try and do everything in one leap, to do so in small steps and then get comfortable with the new you. So if you've made changes about yourself, you kind of have to become comfortable. And embed that change before you take the next step. Because if you don't, then what happens is your image of yourself, how you how you perceive yourself, doesn't change. And then whenever you face a difficulty, you'll just revert back to who you were originally, which was the not perfect self, but the one you were comfortable with. So if you make small steps in terms of who you want to be and where you want to go, if you want to change habits, behavior, skill sets, whatever, it's about taking consistent small steps and getting comfortable at the next level before you move up to the next stage again. So breaking everything down, that whole journey into much smaller steps that try to do everything in one go. If you do that, what will happen is your self-image will change over time. And as how you perceive yourself changes, then the world around you will change to adapt to that. Because your expectations will be different, your behaviors will be different, your actions will be different, and all of those will change the relationships and the environment in which you find yourself living in.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Exactly. And sorry, I would say one other thing, I think, which is really, really important.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

It's okay to fail.

unknown 23:12

Right?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Okay to fail, right? And here's why it's okay to fail. The brain is designed to learn from failure. Yes. Like if you ever tried to cycle a bicycle, I guarantee you you fell off more times than you actually managed to cycle the bicycle. But eventually what happened was the brain made sense of all those failures, learned what it would not do the next time until eventually your psychology changed and your and your brain gave you the capability to be able to balance and move at the same time. Life is like that, right? You should embrace failure and in the sense that failure is there to teach you. Now, failure is failure in our society is taught of as something bad, right? That if you fail, oh, it's terrible, you're useless. But that's not the case. Smart people understand that if I don't fail, I don't learn. If I don't learn, I can't move in those incremental stages I talked about, right? So a person who sees failure not as failure, but as a lesson, then from then on, there's only lessons and success. Failure disappears. So it's to be willing to fail, but to be willing to take the risk to fail in the first place, but most importantly, to learn from what that failure has taught you. Because when you learn that, you will never fail at that again. You may fail again differently, but you will never fail again like that, which means you become stronger, you become better, and you've moved on on that developmental path.

SPEAKER_03 24:40

I totally agree, uh Sean, because the thing is, like you you're totally, totally right that in our society, failure is considered as something it's very bad, or and it's been perceived uh that it is something uh related to the capability also. But it's not like I mean this, like if if we are not failing, then we are feeling that taking that confidence into your overconfidence. We are not building something, we're not learning something. But yes, it's totally right that even if we fail, it's a good chance to stand still again, prepare and stand again. So I mean that's that's the good part of it. That is the motivation for sure, I'd say. And and thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, it's really, really dictating.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yeah, I think it's I think it's important. I think I think one of the reasons that we have to understand about ourselves is what drives our motivation. So I talk motivation is motive in action, right? And there are two types of motivation that drive the the human self. There's away from motivation, whereas where you want to get away from something. I don't want to be that person. So I want to be this other person. And the problem with away from motivation, moving away from something instead of towards something, is that it's short term, it's very stress-based and it's really survival-oriented. So it doesn't last in the long term. To make real change on our journey of personal development, we have to have a clear idea of who we want to be, what we want to be doing, and where we want to be doing it. Because now we're not moving away from something that's short term and stress-based. We're not driven by that energy. We're driven by an energy of aspiration. We're driven by an energy of desire, we're driven by something that's positive. It's low stress, but it's long term. And I think it's important to understand what your motivations are and why you want to be the person you want to be. But if you can clearly understand that, you can literally become anybody you want to be. Part of my training was in analytical hypnosis as part of psychotherapy. And one of the things we absolutely know is that we can change our memories, we can change our thinking, we can change our brain images, we can literally reprogram ourselves to become whoever we want to be. Um outside of the normal laws of physics and and and and aging, what have you. You know, we can we can literally make our lives what we want to be.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

Exactly. I agree. I agree. So, Sean, like I want to ask something like

Write It Down Then Reach Out

SPEAKER_03 27:09

that. I want to aim not just at the listener who is in a leadership role or just trying to grow professionally, but at the listener who is sitting with something much more personal. Maybe it's a relationship where they feel completely misunderstood. Maybe it's a it's a version of themselves that they have been trying to express for years and years, but never found the words for. So for that person, someone who's who who hasn't told anyone yet, like how lonely that silence feels, what would you want them to hear right now?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

I think the first thing to help a person in that situation is I would I would say externalize it. So, in other words, write down your thoughts. Right, write down what you're thinking. Because as long as these things remain in your brain, you'll experience anxiety, you'll experience fear, you'd experience a degree of threat. But when you write it down on paper, you're you're you're telling the subconscious, look, I've recognized this, I understand these are the issues I'm dealing with. You brought it to your conscious mind. And once it's on paper, you now can start to evaluate it and look at, okay, well, this is where I am, where do I want to be? And then you externalize that. So you write down the plan for where you want to be in six weeks' time, six months' time, what you want to say to somebody. You simplify that, you break it into steps, and and and then you and then you move in that direction. But first you've got to, you've got to you gotta brain dump all the stuff that's eating you up from inside. And the reason it's eating you up inside is that the subconscious part of the brain wants to protect you, but it actually believes it's protecting you by bringing up all these fears and elements and anxieties and things. Whereas if you write it down on paper, obviously everybody needs to see this, but if you write it down on paper, all of a sudden the brain, the unconscious goes, Oh, okay, so you recognize it now. I don't have to start, I don't have to worry you with that anymore because you know what's there. And then the next stage is to apply your critical faculties. Okay, this is where I am. Where do I want to be? What are the areas that I want to address? Or what's the message I want to give this person? What's the outcome of this meeting, this conversation I want to have with them? And then how do I simplify that language? And how do I engage them with the conversation by maybe using more questions and suggestions rather than simply downloading information to them?

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Amazing. And so, Sean, like if someone wants to connect with you, how they can connect?

SPEAKER_01 29:39

If they want to connect with me, just look look me up on LinkedIn. Uh Sean Weefer on LinkedIn. I run a company predominantly called salesmentor.pro. I tend to mentor sales teams to increase their competencies around consistent performance, closing deals, upsells, and retaining clients. So a lot of it's communication, and I do some leadership work as well. But the best place to go would be to go to LinkedIn.com and feel free to connect. And if they've heard it on your show, Avik, please DM me, let me know. Always happy to have a conversation.

SPEAKER_03 30:10

Amazing, amazing. So, dear listeners, what I can do is I'll make sure that you never miss anything. So I'll put all the details and the links, everything into the show notes for you easily friends, so that you can quickly visit and you can reach out to Sean. And thank you, Sean, genuinely. This is the kind of conversation that doesn't just teach you something, it invites you to look at yourself a little differently. And I hope that extra changes don't always announce themselves lovely. Sometimes they live quite quick and say. So until next time, this is your host awake, and this is healthy mind, healthy life. Take care of your mind, take care of your heart. And remember, a healthy mind really is a healthy life. So thank you so much.