By Gary Dean

If you have been disconnected during a Teams or Zoom call (haven’t we all?), or even one of those ‘old-fashioned’ phone calls, you know how frustrating it is.

Your connection is lost and so is your opportunity and ability to influence the moment.

This month’s article is about this very subject, disconnection in business, because whilst we all try to communicate in different ways (and to different levels of success), communication is rather pointless unless we connect. And I mean truly connect.

I have heard it said several times that people speak on average around 16,000 words a day. That’s a lot of talk.

How much of that is simply ‘noise’ and how much truly connects with others? Talk is easy, making what you say count, well that’s a rather more skilful endeavour because it’s only by developing an ability to identify and relate to others that you can increase your influence with them and thereby truly connect.

And in business we really need to connect initially and then repeatedly if we want to build success.

Building that common ground, that mutually understood meaning, is very difficult if what you, and your organisation, are really doing is focusing on yourself. Alas for many, that’s exactly the priority – self-interest dominates. Indifference is selfish and who wants to connect with selfishness?

Over the years I have been in so many situations where someone in the room just needed to spew out their well (or not so well) prepared speech or sales presentation on a topic that they never stopped for a moment to listen.

They never first took the time to look around themselves with eyes and ears wide open and check if what they wanted to communicate was even relevant anymore.

The outcome was always the same, they failed to connect. If your communication is unprepared in terms of relevance, uncommitted in terms of belief, uninterested in terms of the recipient’s current position and motivation and uncomfortable in terms of its delivery, you can never connect.

Connection always begins with an open commitment to someone else, and all poor communication is the result of misunderstanding or misaligned assumptions that ignore that commitment which means there is only ‘noise’ and little more. During my work as a strategic consultant, one of my key strengths is to ask questions in order to establish common ground.

You connect by investing time in building a rapport, and so many over communicators don’t build rapport because they fail to listen and respond accordingly. They can’t re-set, they can only stick to the script.

Communication for its own sake is a trap so many fall into, be it verbally, online, or in print, which is bolstered by the feeling that if you are communicating so much you must be getting your message across successfully.

This sadly is a fallacy deeply entrenched in many organisations and its people because there is no communications or engagement strategy in place, communication and connection are not understood, there is just the ‘enough mud at the wall will stick’ syndrome once again.

Connecting is not communicating alone, it is an intellectual process of investing in people to develop mutual understanding and empathy.

If you want to go from communicating to connecting, then you must start with understanding the values and motivations of those you wish to connect with, and that takes a bit more time and investment coupled to some real thinking and honesty.

And like so many elements of strategic plans in business, the effort required makes it difficult for many to start because it’s harder than just carpet-bombing information for example. However, the painful truth is that carpet-bombing is a method of the past that simply doesn’t work with today’s savvy customers; and why should it?

Customers now know by experience that their needs will be met by someone somewhere and they don’t need to work with organisations that are not listening and engaging with them effectively. And you can’t fake this, authenticity is key and imitating interest is quickly exposed.

Don’t assume that just because someone buys something from you, or shows interest in doing so, you already know what they want, know and feel; you don’t unless you connect.

I leave you with this simple thought in summary.

Just because you got some feedback it doesn’t mean you truly connected. You got a response – that’s great – but to connect you must find out if you were understood, if you understood, and therefore if you share the same meaning. This is the basis of a connection on which you can build because its credible and mutual.