The single most important aspect of business is the finesse you exhibit when you are with your “audience.” In coaching and teaching communication leadership, I often remind learners to “be kind to your audience.” And I constantly remind them to, “Take responsibility for your audience’s experience of you.”
Who is your audience? Everyone around you.
Whether you are sitting with your boss having a one-on-one conversation, texting a friend or standing on stage in front of 10,000 people: you are with your audience.
Consider how profound your silence is, if you aren’t active on social media. Consider the cost to you, if you are not treating other people like your audience.
Consider the consequences of being aggressive, withholding, menacing, lazy, jealous, insensitive or crazy (even momentarily).
Consider the power of communication with the intention to help your audience move forward – while you are also serving your own goals. Consider how that gives you a competitive advantage in a job interview, the chance for a promotion, and a referral from someone who simply knows you online, or any other situation that matters.
The terrible truth is: every word, every image, every frame of video, and even silence lifts you up or tears you down in the eyes of your audience.
This might include the people who share air with you, like at the office. It includes all your social media posts and comments, all the book reviews or LinkedIn messages you write. All the Skype, Facetime, and other relatively real time communication channels you use.
Got it? Anyone who can hear you, see you or otherwise catch your drift: those people are your audience.
The good news is: your greatest, fastest, and most profitable way to reach your desired outcomes is completely in your command. Your success depends on the next word you say, and the word after that, and so on.
Finesse in communication isn’t something tricky like it is in billiards, baking bread or doing anything that demands extraordinary skills.
Communication done with finesse kindly takes into account the ability of your audience to understand and focus on your message, and responsibly putting it in words your audience will embrace because they see evidence you are trustworthy and caring.
With everything you might do to create wealth and profit, consider how simple and productive it is to be kind and responsible.
Those two qualities drive offers and referrals to you, give evidence you are the most attractive candidate or partner, and give people the faith to sign contracts and do deals with you.
