An easy way to make sure you get listened to... every time

Posted on March 02, 2022 by Cassa Grant, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

Have you ever felt like the Boy Who Cried Wolf?

I did reasonably well in grad school.

But sometimes I felt like there were opportunities that I really wanted to be a part of but didn’t because I wasn’t making myself clearly understood.

You might be familiar with this feeling- you can see that there’s an issue, you alert your supervisor or team to it, and…

Crickets.

Nobody cares. Nothing happens.

And then you see someone else alert them about the same thing, and all of a sudden, things are moving.

Plans are getting made.

Improvements are happening.

And the person who brought it up is a big hero. (YOU should have been that hero!)

Technically, (as technically as you can get about this stuff) I’m an extrovert.

But I’ve watched other people with similar ideas to mine take off while I languished.

And I’ve watched other people who had similar (or in some cases, worse) ideas than mine advance up the chain while I remained in the same position.

Why?

Because I was talking too much about the wrong things… in the wrong way.

- I’d write 10 paragraph emails… when 2 would have been more than sufficient.
- I’d bring up EVERYTHING I thought pertained to the subject.
- I’d go off on tangents.
- I’d use jargon that was meaningless to anyone who wasn’t in my department.

And no one got my point.

So, how do you help people get your point?

I love a simple storytelling framework called the And, But, and Therefore.

I didn’t come up with it- Randy Olson from the University of Arizona did. I learned it from the fantastic Park Howell.

It helps you condense your message to what really matters and deliver it in a way that our brains are hardwired to understand immediately.

Here’s how it works:

+ You set the CONTEXT: what’s going on?
+ AND you raise the stakes: why does it matter?
+ BUT: what’s the problem?
+ THEREFORE: what’s your solution?

One of my favorite examples that Park gives is the song ‘Call Me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepson.

+ CONTEXT: Hey, I just met you.
+ AND this is crazy
+ BUT here’s my number
+ SO call me maybe.

You might even recognize that I’ve used this framework in this article.

To be an effective leader, you have to be understood.

When you tell the right stories well, people understand you. And you stop spinning your wheels.

In my 6-week intensive, Wonderleader, clear communication is one of the main things that I help offbeat leaders to work on in order to go from Freaked-out Doer to Confident Boss.

We also work on skill-building, subconscious blocks, and ownership/ self-responsibility. DM me if interested and we’ll have a quick chat to see if it’s fit.