Clarifying Your Message

What would this mean to you?  People ask you what you do and you paint a clear and vivid picture for them, specifically tailored so that they remember what you do.  And they want it. Would that have an impact on your career?

Some are born with the gift of gab.   They are comfortable talking about themselves and their passion comes through in their descriptions of their businesses.   If this isn’t you, you need to pay attention.  If this is you, you doubly need to pay attention.

Because you want to be remembered in the best possible light.  And for most people, that means that you do less talking than they do.  So if you have a well-crafted message, great.   It’s a powerful tool to have at the ready when the time comes.  It’s just that the time doesn’t really come that often.

No, the first step to making the best impression is not the well crafted message.  The first step is understanding your narrative.  How does what you do impact others?  What questions can you ask that reveal whether or not the person with whom you speak is a good fit?  If there was one thing that they could remember about you, what you choose?  (Hint: you need more than one answer to that question because that one thing will be different for different people.)

By understanding your narrative, you can react and respond (with a generous portion of additional clarifying questions) in the moment of the conversation.  This ability and habit will set you apart.

Peace and Joy,

Tom Dardick

New Beginnings

This New Year marks for me a new beginning, exemplified by the launch of my new communication consultancy, Dardick Inter-personal Communications, LLC. People ask me what prompted my shift. The complete answer is numerous factors, but in essence it’s this: it allows me to more fully live my God-given purpose.

What that means is that I get to do more of the things that I want to do, that I’m good at, and that add the most value to others. What are those things? What is my purpose? In a nutshell, it is to Reveal Truth. One important way I get to do more of that is by helping people refine and deliver spoken messages in a variety of settings.

I follow a process. The rest of this article will focus on the first step of that process – clarifying your message.

I have helped professionals with their presentations to groups. I’ve also helped them distinguish themselves at job interviews. This same process also applies to team project meetings, annual performance reviews, employer interviews, and conducting coaching or accountability meetings. Increased effectiveness always begins with a crystal-clear understanding of your purpose and how it serves the people with whom you speak.

Refining or clarifying your message may sound easy, but it often isn’t. Most of us can’t precisely and readily answer the question: “What is your purpose in life?” Likewise we often lose track of the purpose of a particular presentation or conversation. We often include unnecessary information or opinion out of habit, lack of preparation, the befuddling heat of emotion, or a hazy picture of what matters to our audience.

A great way to immediately improve your effectiveness in meetings of any kind is to begin at the beginning. Focus on your purpose and those of your listeners. By developing your statements of purpose, you will avoid many common missteps.

I’ll leave you with a word of warning. You will improve, perhaps dramatically, but you’ll never get it as clear and perfectly suited to your audience as possible – unless you use an experienced partner as a sounding board. Why? We can’t see our own blind spots.

I LOVE to help people see their blind spots. They always experience “ah-hah” moments, because they’ve always experienced particular troubles, and now they finally see ways past them. So get a good partner with whom you may rehearse your message.

The greater your partner’s understanding of various communication styles, motivating factors, speech craft, and acumen applicable to your particular audience and situation, the better quality feedback you will enjoy. One golden nugget that causes you to make an effective adjustment can make the difference between a strike out where you feel at best placated and a home run where you inspire your listeners to take immediate action.

Peace and Joy,

Tom Dardick
Principle, Dardick Inter-personal Communications, LLC

The Wisdom of Forrest Gump

If you’re not familiar with the movie, go watch it as soon as you can – it’s that good.  It was made as a social commentary about American society from the late sixties to the early eighties.  Either intentionally, accidentally, or both, the filmmakers transcend mundane observation and capture timeless wisdom.  This is a movie [...]

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Intelligence vs. Wisdom

Are you one smart cookie? Do people consider you a font of sage wisdom? Can you be one and not the other? Intelligence is defined by our comprehension and perceptive powers. Wisdom is defined by the wholesomeness of our deeds. While intelligence helps our decision making, and a person who makes good decisions is usually [...]

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Motivation to Make Changes

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Projecting

Recently, my thirteen year old son Collyn decided to improve the life of his pet hermit crab Rocky. He felt that Rocky would enjoy life in his little terrarium much more if he had a fellow hermit crab to keep him company. He was dismayed to find Rocky’s new friend dead and dismembered within a [...]

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The Clueless and the Repentant

In our couples bible study, we are working through a series entitled Love & War by John and Stasi Eldredge.   In the associated book, a sentence really struck me.   “There are two kinds of people in the world, the clueless and the repentant.”   This stood out to me because I’ve observed a [...]

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The Power of an Hour

One thing, perhaps the only thing we all are gifted with equally is the twenty four hours in each day.  Our fates are shaped by how we decide to allocate those hours.  This is where our lives become very different, because not all hours are created equally.  Some of them are stunningly more rewarding than [...]

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The Trusted Advisor

A powerful way to improve the quality of your relationships and add security to your career track is to cultivate your value as a Trusted Advisor. We all want and need people around us who offer us guidance and support that we can count on to help us reach our objectives. We rightly treasure those [...]

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The Little Things

Neither my wife Kathleen nor I like to throw things away. But, somehow, we recently found the resolution (after ten years) to clean our garage. It was comical how much stuff we had piled up in there. There were plenty of surprises. I can’t tell you how many clear plastic straw wrappers from juice packs [...]

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