Freedom Friday: The Reason You Are Struggling To Communicate

Transcript

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Hello everybody and welcome to the unlearned podcast.

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I am your host, ruth Abigail excuse me, aka, ra and this is freedom Friday, where I come and share something I've unlearned recently and how it has made us just a little bit more free.

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If you can't tell, I'm still dealing with the little sinus stuff, so forgive how I sound.

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Also forgive how I might sound on any of the other podcasts in the last four months, because that's basically how long this has been going and most of you probably understand what I mean.

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Okay, so this past we have been.

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I think it was this past Tuesday, so if you haven't listened to it, take a listen.

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We talk about the top fears of young leaders in our talks with middle adults, of young leaders in our talks with middle adults segment, and so what I wanted to do on that segment I kind of introduced a thought that I had based on my own experience.

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I wanted to kind of unpack that a little bit more to help with people who might have a fear of communication, and so that fear, um, and help us to unlearn, uh, what might be your issue, right?

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So, uh, those, the fear of communication in young leaders is noted as some of the one of the top things, um, that people are afraid of.

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That could be public speaking, that could be holding a meeting, that could be doing a presentation, that could be even making a call, that could be networking.

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Any opportunity for communication sometimes can be very nerve-wracking, and so I have in my experience.

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I have led teams on some level for probably 10 years, led teams on some level for probably 10 years and what I have found is that when I'm finding myself concerned or afraid about communicating, it usually is because of two main things Communication is comprised of.

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You have to have a few things to communicate well, but I want to talk about two specifically that I think are vital to have when you are communicating.

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The first thing is you have to have confidence in your communication.

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It's hard to listen to somebody who's not sure of themselves right and who's not sure of what they're saying, so you have to have a degree of confidence.

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The other thing you have to have a degree of is clarity.

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People don't like listening to confused communication.

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It's going all over the place, there's no real direction, you can tell that it's not been worked through properly, prepared to come out to the world, and I've been guilty of that, of both of those things, even probably on this podcast, right?

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So I have learned, as someone who communicates to people on a regular basis in some way, that those two things are highly important when you are communicating.

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So I'm going to submit that if you have trouble communicating, then you might need to have more of one of those two things.

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You might have a lack of confidence or you might have a lack of clarity.

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Well, how do I know which one do I have?

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So, again, from my experience, this is what I found that oftentimes, when you might have now, you might have one or the other.

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You might not have either one, but sometimes you have one or the other.

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So the question is like which one do I need to spend some time doing and how do I know?

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How do I know which one I need to spend more time on?

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So, when you are clear but not confident, when you lack confidence, oftentimes it comes across in your communication as being hesitant.

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You don't say things or you say things too late because you're not confident.

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I have absolutely done this.

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I've done this, especially sometimes when it comes to confrontation or having to deal having difficult conversations.

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I will.

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I my, my low confidence level has has driven me to have conversations too late, where now there's too much water under the bridge or there's been a hardened attitude, so now having a conversation is we're past conversation and it's not really worth it anymore.

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There's kind of been an attitude of don't really think anything's going to change, and so that's what happens when you can, when you are have a low confidence level, you either don't say anything or you wait too late to say something, and so if you find yourself hesitant in your communication at all, it might be because of a lack of confidence.

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Now then there's the other side of that right, where you might have confidence but you're lacking clarity, and a lot of times you can tell that you're lacking clarity when you begin to ramble, when you begin to ramble.

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So a lot of times, sometimes we try to communicate things that we're not ready to communicate.

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We try to communicate things that are fresh in our minds, that we might be very confident about.

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We're like man.

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We know this is the right thing to say, I know this is the right direction to go, but I haven't spent time teasing out how I'm going to say that, and if you don't spend time doing that, excuse me.

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If you don't spend time doing that, then it will come off as if you are confused when you're not confused.

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So it's important to spend time really honing in on how I'm going to say something, really honing in on how I'm going to say something.

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What are the things that people need to know right now, and that's not just a rambling off my idea.

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That is spending time.

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That's spending enough time with the idea to understand what portion of the idea needs to be communicated today and what needs to be communicated tomorrow, next week, next year, and what needs to be communicated tomorrow, next week, next year.

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So we have to spend time with things before we start talking about them.

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And so the question is all right.

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So I'm afraid to communicate, or I'm having some issues with communication.

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Which, which one of these things might it be?

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Do I need to build up my confidence or do I need to get better with clarity?

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So how do I?

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What do I do with each one of those?

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So for your confidence, right, confidence is often driven.

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It's an internal issue, okay, so if so, if you have low confidence, that is something that we have to work on internally.

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There are two things that I think can help be a weapon against your low confidence.

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The first thing is you got to be transparent and I know on the front end it seems real scary to be vulnerable about that.

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But immediately when you are able to admit in some form or fashion right that you, for whatever reason, you're just not confident, it helps to level set the expectation that other people have in this season, knowing that, hey, there's an element of this.

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I have to become more confident in my role, have more understanding and what it is I'm trying to do.

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I've I've got to, I've got to build up some confidence.

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And when you are honest about that, I think what one of the things that I have found is that the right people affirm the confidence that you actually have, because sometimes it may not be that you don't have it, you don't see it, and sometimes you need other people to help you to see that you actually are more confident than you think.

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But you got gotta be transparent about it.

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You can't front, you can't act as though you're confident and you're not, because your leadership, the things that are happening in your leadership, are saying one thing and you might be walking around as if it's a different way.

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So be transparent about it, Say it out loud and allow other people to pour something back into you that might dispel that fear, dispel that lie.

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I think the other thing to remember is confidence is seasonal.

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Sometimes You're not always going to be the same level of confident you are today in something else.

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A lot of times, confidence has to do with my level of competence in something and comfort in something.

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If I'm not competent in something, if I just got to a place and I do know I have these responsibilities, but I just got somewhere my confidence level might not be as high because my competence level is not very high.

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And so don't act a different way, like don't front about it, be honest about it, that's okay.

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And then spend time building your competence.

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That'll help build your confidence, okay.

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What if I have a clarity issue?

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And then spend time building your competence that'll help build your confidence Okay.

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What if I have a clarity issue?

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What if I'm confident, I'm sure of myself, but I'm not, for whatever reason?

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My communication is unclear.

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So your confidence is something you're going to have to work on internally.

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Clarity is a practice of preparation.

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If your communication is unclear, it probably means you have not properly prepared it, and so that is a skill, a skill of preparation that comes with practice and time.

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So, in order to get better with clarity, what you're going to want to do is make sure that you have prepared.

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Whatever it is you're going to say, don't go off the cuff, if you have a habit of doing that.

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Sometimes highly confident people and when I, when I'm in my, when I feel like I'm at my most confident, I'm so excited sometimes to share what it is that I have in my head that I don't prepare it and I just share it.

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And while it makes me feel good, the people I'm communicating with whether it's one person or a hundred people can't feel good with me because they can't get with me, because I have not helped them to get where I am.

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So clarity is helping people get where you, where you have already been in your head.

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You got to help to get them there, and the only way to do that is to prepare.

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So if you're, if you're not confident, you want to be transparent.

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If you have low confidence, be transparent about that and gain more competence in whatever area you have low confidence in.

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If you find yourself being unclear in your communication, you want to sure up your preparation.

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Your goal is to get people as excited about something as you are, but remember, you've been excited about that thing for way longer than they will have an opportunity to hold on to it, so you've got to prepare your communication With them by taking out time and thinking through how am I going to get this across?

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Don't allow your excitement to create confusion for other people.

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All right, I hope that was a little helpful.

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Those are two things I've really had to unlearn around communication.

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I don't know that prior to this, I had ever connected those two things to communication confidence and clarity and so I hope that is helpful.

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And that's really it.

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Yeah, that's it, we're done.

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We're done, we're done.

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So, uh, be sure to like, share, subscribe, uh, the unlearned podcast.

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If this is helpful for you or you know anybody it might be helpful, for shoot it to them, um, and help them out.

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Don't hold it to yourself.

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Help them out, uh, and we will be dropping another segment.

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Uh, on Tuesday, tuesdays and Fridays is when we drop our segments, so be on the lookout for that, and that's it.

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Y'all.

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Hope y'all have a great weekend and let's keep unlearning together so that we can experience more freedom.

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Peace.

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Thank you once again for listening to the Unlearned Podcast.

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We would love to hear your comments and your feedback about the episode.

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Feel free to follow us on Facebook and Instagram and to let us know what you think.

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We're looking forward to the next time when we are able to unlearn together to move forward towards freedom.

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See you then.

Freedom Friday: The Reason You Are Struggling To Communicate

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