Freedom Friday: It’s Not Just What You Say but How You Say It

Hello everybody and welcome once again to the unlearned podcast. I am your host, ruth Abigail Smith, and you have entered once again into Freedom Fridays, which is when me or me and one of my friends comes to you and says something we've unlearned this week or how it has made us just a little bit more free. So I've heard this statement recently from an author, speaker, pastor. His name is Irwin McManus, and he said this in a podcast that I listened to recently called the Art of Leadership podcast, i believe is what's called, and he said this. He said the future belongs to communicators. So we all know that AI is really beginning to take over this idea of processing information, right? So we're in the information age, we're headed into an age where there's so much information that we have to create, you know, machines to process it so that we can digest it in a way that's palatable to who? we? to our brains, right? Okay, y'all know all that. That information is being processed by computers, but it's not necessarily being explained. So, if you think about it, we're in an information age and more of that information can get processed faster. Therefore it can get produced faster. But who's out there explaining the information? Who's making the connection from the information to the human brain. What is the job of communicators? Now, communicators can mean, you know it can mean speakers, writers, you know, podcasters, singers, actors, people that use language to. You know, communicate with people. But at the end of the day, we're actually all communicators. All of us use words to get a message across, right? Whether it's a friend, parent, teachers. You know whether it's just posting something on social media, right? We all use words to get a message across. So I think the thing I love about what he was saying was that the future belongs to communicators. If we don't learn how to communicate well, we're going to miss out on opportunities to impact people in this new future we're about to get into. I think one thing at least that I'm learning about communication is that there's a difference between communicating for a response versus communicating for retention, right, communicating for a response versus communicating for the sake of retention. So I'm going to use this. You know I'll use. I'll use the classroom, okay. So we've all gone to school. We know what it's like to be in a classroom, to listen to a single person in a room with, you know, 20, 25 other people communicate a message. For most of us that has existed in a bubble in one school building and you go from class to class and you listen to one voice at a time, and you were, basically, you know, you were challenged to retain that information. Well, now, right, we have millions of classrooms happening simultaneously that we have 100% access to all the time on YouTube, social media, online courses, anything you can. You can jump into a classroom at any point, right, with so much available, our brains have been trained at this point to really process information at a faster rate And therefore we actually, because we're processing more information at a faster rate, we're not retaining as like we used to. Now, let me be the first to say I'm not a scientist. I don't have, you know, i don't have actual numbers on this thing. I didn't do any studies. This is just my observation. So I work with young people. I've been doing that for years And you know, i've begun to notice, even in the 13 years I've been working with kids, a difference in how they even retain information, right. So Nowadays we're learning things through memes, we're learning things through 140 characters, we're reading blogs and feel like we're reading a book. We are retaining information that's given to us in five minute videos. People will distill 300 pages in a 10 minute video tech talk. That's how we are processing stuff. Now, that's not a bad thing, but we have to be aware that when we're communicating to people, that so much of it may not be being retained because we're not taking into account the way that we're retaining information on a regular basis. Instead, we're more so concerned about how they respond. Y'all know, y'all been in church, right? You've been in church and a preacher killing it, people done got into Oregon drunk, they going, you know all the music's hype and they hooping, hollering, all that stuff. Some of y'all, some of y'all don't know what I'm talking about. Some of y'all know what I'm talking about, right? So you have this and the moment is rich and you responding, and it is a call and response, back and forth experience. And then church is over and somebody calls you and says, hey, how was church? Oh, man, it was great man, we was up, church was high, it was amazing, da-da-da, the preacher killed it. Oh, wow, cool, that's dope. What they say, what they talk about, you know. Ah, ah, okay, they can't tell you, right, they can't tell you. They don't know, because in that moment it was a response that was being focused on focusing on the response and not focusing on retention. I'm not saying that you can't have enthusiastic response and have people retain, but sometimes I don't think that we pay attention to both as regularly as we should. And I think that something that I'm unlearning in this new age of communication is we really have to begin to speak to people in the way that they're used to hearing things, so that we can make sure that the things that need to be retained are being retained and it not just be about how they respond in the moment. If it's all about responding in the moment, we're not gonna make a real difference. Change doesn't happen in the moment. Change is not gonna happen in the session or in the service or in the meeting. That's not when change happens. Change happens when you leave, but if you don't remember what happened while you were there, there's no chance for change. And so I think we, as people who communicate whether it's one to one or one to 200 or one to 10,000, it doesn't matter We gotta make sure people are actually being able to digest what it is that we're saying, and if we're gonna do that, we gotta be up on how to do that I think sometimes we can be arrogant in our style And this is my strength, this is what I do that kind of thing. Well, if this is what you do ain't tracking what other people and can't nobody even really tell you what you said, that you're not doing it, well, something's not right. So I think we have to begin to adapt, adapt the way that we message things, adapt what we say when we say it, how we say it and even to whom we're saying it. Right? Some people, for younger crowds, they need it one way. For older crowds, they need it another way. For people my age is kind of in between, we need it another way, right? So I think it's important if we choose to use our voice and all of us can, we all have a proverbial microphone and a lot of us use it. Well, if you're gonna use it, you might as well get good at it, right? So I just think unlearning communication in the sense of like am I communicating to gain a response or am I communicating so that people can retain something? Right? Is it more about me or is it more about you? Because the response helps me, does something to my ego, does something to my sense of self, sense of pride, but retention helps you, right? So what kind of communicator am I gonna be? Somebody more concerned about the response I get or what it is I can give you? All right, so that's it, something I'm unlearning, and we will be back next Friday. Until then, keep gaining the courage to change your mind so you can experience more freedom, peace. Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned podcast. We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode. Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think. We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom. See you then.