Connecting Creates Influence

“If I went back to college, I’d concentrate on three areas – learning to write and learning to speak to an audience”, US President Gerald Ford

Even a former US President Gerald Ford understood the importance of impactful communication and the difference it would have made on his political career. Many professionals struggle through their careers with similar handicaps. Few however ever realize that there is a much deeper perspective to communication than writing or speaking well. The real essence is in making connections.

I recall while on a shuttle-bus ride from the Hotel to the Johannesburg Airport, how a gentleman joined us on the board and completely turned the foul mood in a bus full of passengers who had missed their connecting flights from the previous night. As he walked into the moving bus, he wore a warm and friendly smile, shouted out a confident “Hello”, and began to chat with the passenger next to him. He turned around, greeted us all with a thumbs-up gesture, and it almost began to feel like we had met before. He immediately connected with us, and before we could say – “Jack Robins’, we were all laughing (or at least smiling) and being more positive about our dilemma. We learned during our ensuing conversations that he was a staff of the very same airline that had put us in that mess, and quite honestly, after connecting with him in this way, I didn’t feel like I was angry at the airline any longer, and so did a good number of us on the bus. I learned valuable lessons on connecting on this day, and I will share some of them as follows:

• Connecting creates influence, and is important in winning with people and achieving success (like the gentleman did)
• You can change a bad situation to a great one by being deliberate about connecting with the people involved.(like he changed our situation)
• Communication is beyond listening, speaking or writing – it is really about connecting (it wasn’t about how eloquent or how correct, it was about how well he connected)
• A positive attitude always ensures that you connect (positivity is infectious, that gentleman infected us quickly)
• Your attitude is conveyed in your body language, eye contact and your tone, and not much in your words or writings (The thumbs up, smile and confident tone did it all)
• Body language, eye contact and tonality are a reflection of your interest in others, if you are not interested in people, you cannot connect (he was definitely interested in cheering up his stranded customers)
• A great many academics, politicians, scholars (for example) are good at writing and speaking, but how many of them actually connect (he was just a lay man)

Four simple things we can remember as we learn to connect, and embark on our journey of positive influence are:
1. To connect, we must truly value people and connect with them;
2. Once we do, our body language, tonality and eye contact will reflect this;
3. When we write and speak, we must focus on the audience, and attempt to establish a real “connection”; and
4. We can achieve these and much more by being deliberate and focused about connecting.

Even as I share these words, I am focused on a number of friends and colleagues that I have seen struggle with communicating and connecting, and my sincere desire is to have made a connection with you, and by so doing influenced you to make better CONNECTIONS!