A Note From Your Instructor, Nick... 

 I love coaching and public speaking and communication. I also love helping people with their communication challenges, whether it’s preparing for a new pitch or a custom talk or articulating a transformational strategy to engage an organization around a bold, unique vision. 

I know I help people.

But fundamentally I at the beginning of 2019 I was worried. With everything that’s going on—businesses shuttering, recession looming, mass unemployment inevitable—people are scared, including myself. I am worried that no one will require the services of a communication coach in a COVID or post-COVID world. But then this happens...

I open the door quietly. My wife is hosting a Microsoft Teams meeting, well into her fourth or fifth hour of meetings, even though it’s only 11 a.m. She sees me and mutes herself. She motions to her screen and says, “Take a look... ”

This is what I see.

 It’s an infinity mirror image of someone’s screen. I let out a little laugh (I have an odd sense of humour), but as I do I catch Helen’s eye and I realize she’s not laughing. She’s exasperated. She says, “It’s been fifteen minutes and we still haven’t started the meeting.” 

I smile and squeeze her shoulder with encouragement.

And that’s when it hits me: my work has always been important, but now it is vital. People have always taken the skill of communication for granted because they could. Or they thought they could.

You learn to walk naturally. For the most part, you learn to talk naturally too. And for most of us, “winging it” when speaking in public is par for the course. But here’s the hard truth: winging it rarely works in your favour or your audience’s favour.

Online communication is even more challenging, and we have to make an effort—a real, consistent effort—to ensure our ideas are understood.

Online communication is harder because we often can’t read facial expressions or see body language to pick up cues. We often aren’t close enough to leaders or comfortable enough to ask them quick clarifying questions to ensure we are moving forward in the right direction. We don’t have impromptu opportunities for connection.

So yes, it’s getting much more difficult to communicate. And our work lives, the way we spend the majority of our time, can become a source of frustration. 

Why is it so hard to communicate clearly? There are two key reasons: the tools and the content.

 The exponential growth of communication technology has made our world smaller and more challenging to navigate. We have more tools and technology than ever to help us communicate: Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack, Skype, Yammer, Zoom, and the list goes on.

Oh yeah, and we still have telephone and in-person meetings too.

Each of these tools can be extraordinarily helpful, but the way we have layered and combined these technologies, which were designed to help us communicate, can actually make our world of work more complex and confusing. 

How many times have you received email communication from a colleague that started in one thread, continued in another, and then hopped to another and another? Following the message or actions becomes very difficult. Especially when you cannot recall who sent it and you have to search for the information by subject! It can be maddening.

This is compounded by the fact that we are living in one of the most gloriously innovative eras in the history of the world. These same exponential technologies are converging to create remarkable innovations and discoveries in energy, finance, food, biology, engineering, the environment, medicine, and more. Each of these areas are experiencing unprecedented growth and breakthroughs in process, product development, and solutions. In some instances, areas of focus are combining through the use of emerging technologies, which makes the content even more complex, requiring greater expertise and specialized knowledge. There are experts trained in all of these areas, but they are not trained in how to share their knowledge or their progress.

So, we have a communication problem sweeping the world, caused in part by technology tools and in part by the sheer complexity of the content.

The 3 Step Purpose Practice is the first step in creating clarity out of the complex...