As we get started this morning on this wonderful subject of communication, let's make sure I've communicated properly. So hopefully each one of you has a two-page handout, because that will be important as we go through. And you also have a copy or a piece of plain white paper, hopefully 8.5 x 11, because we have a couple of exercises to do. So thank you for joining us this morning, and we'll get started. So the premise of this presentation as I travel and talk with lots of businesses is two things. First of all is that communications is a learned skill. And that means that if we practice it, if we get feedback on it, if we work on it, we can get better. It's not something that we're born with. And secondly, that communications is simple, but far from easy. And so I'd like to start out by illustrating that with a simple little cartoon. So I'd like to introduce you to my friend Jeff. And Jeff was in a store and looking on the shelf for something, and he happened to run across someone else's phone. Someone had inadvertently dropped their phone, placed it on the shelf, and he noticed that the screen said ice. And so being a good Samaritan, he pushed it, and it rang, and he met Evan. Now, he said to Evan, hey, I've got your phone. It's not your phone, but it's probably one of your parents. Would you please tell them I'm going to put it at the customer service desk? And the response was, sure, I'll let my mom know, thanks a lot. So sounds like communication, however, the story goes a little bit further. A few seconds later, that same phone that Jeff picked up rang, and it was Evan on the line, and his message was very quick. He said, hey, would you please tell my mom she lost her phone? At which time Jeff said, well, wait a second, I'm the one who called you who found the phone. And Evan said, okay, thanks, and quickly hung up. Well, about 30 seconds passed as Jeff was heading back to the customer service area with the phone, and the phone rang again. And Jeff said, gee, based on that number, that must be the young man, Evan. I'm certainly not going to answer it this time, and so he let it ring. And a few seconds later, this text message showed up. You lost your phone, it's at customer service. So in some cases, we would say communication took place, but I would contend with you that while there was a lot of activity, we didn't generate understanding, and we didn't generate the desired behaviors. And so that's part of what I want to talk about with you today and remind you about. So to get started, one of the famous English writers, Samuel Johnson, made this statement one time, people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed. So my goal today is not to instruct you, but it's to remind you in this fast-paced world that we're living in that focusing in on a few things and executing those really well will make a huge difference in the area of communications. So if we look at communications and its potential impact on both your business culture and the performance, communications can create lots of effectiveness or ineffectiveness. And here are just a few ineffective things that communications can impact. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations and errors, in fact, we'll share with you some research in a few minutes that literally billions of dollars are lost every year because of that. It can even impact huge things like issues of integrity or trust where our actions don't match up with the words that we've either published or said. And probably one of the most important ones is the last one, wear and tear on relationships both internally but also externally as well. So getting it right can eliminate a lot of waste. Getting it wrong can create a lot of challenges. And so here's seven simple questions that kind of play into this whole area of communications. Can your employees clearly define and use all those common business terms that you're using in communications? Simple things like customer, quality, customer service, value, accountability. What I find in many cases is that businesses are using terms but they have multiple definitions, therefore they have multiple interpretations, and that creates waste. Can your employees effectively use all the business acronyms and metrics that are being used in your organization? In fact, there's actually a website called Acronym Finder that now lists more than five million acronyms. We use terms like B2B and CRM and KPI and lots of ROA, ROC, ROI, ROS, et cetera. So as we're speaking and using those acronyms, do our employees really understand what they mean and how they impact them? The bottom line is acronyms, if not well understood, can create exclusion because only a few people understand them and use them effectively versus inclusion and having everybody understand them. Third, can your employees see leaders effectively asking questions, listening, and generating understanding? In other words, do they see the modeling that you hope that they will do or do they see and get mixed messages? Can your employees provide candid, respectful feedback to leaders and coworkers or does information have to be filtered because we don't want to share something that somebody's going to be disappointed about? Do they see active listening and actions being taken on their opinions and ideas, whether they are solicited informally, simply asking people what their thoughts or ideas are, or more formally in the form of feedback or focus groups, et cetera? Can they easily understand your organization's position on social media? A question that lots of organizations struggle with today is, is it okay if I'm friends with my coworkers and my subordinates in social media? How and when should I use mobile devices, even those things that are simple like what are we going to do with a cell phone if we're driving in a car, and then what's your position on disconnecting when you're on vacation or you're on holiday or you're away from the office? Because in the world of electronics communication today, we can stay connected 24-7. And then finally, can your employees easily access information they need to do the job and get questions answered quickly, whether that's going to a resource, an individual, to a database, to a website, to a manual, et cetera? These are all common things that lots of organizations seem to be struggling with. They're all under the umbrella of communication. And in addition to that, there's some very interesting insights out there about communications. I've picked five that I'd like to share with you today that tie in very well to what we're going to talk about. First of all, the biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply. And I'll share with you some recent research that was done about how quickly our attention spans are and how quickly we interrupt. Secondly, when you talk, you're only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you can learn something new. And so giving and receiving the feedback is an area where many, many organizations today continue to struggle. Third, new technology gives something important, but it also takes something important away. We increase speed and accessibility, but not necessarily the understanding that we're all desiring. Fourth, there's a huge difference between information, which is giving out, versus communications, which is getting through. And there's a tremendous amount of information out there today. I would contend with you, not as much communication. And finally, make sure you tell me what you know and what you think you know. Make sure I know the difference. There's lots and lots of information out there. It's best to stick to the facts. And if you have some other opinions to go with those facts, it's extremely important to differentiate those. So what I hope over the next few minutes that I can help you with is perhaps to find a little bit better balance, a little bit better balance in the area of communication. My definition is it's simply the correct proportion for you. And so you can't find or make more time in the day, but you can reset some boundaries or limits. And so I'm going to encourage you through two exercises that we're going to do to look at perhaps establishing or reestablishing some boundaries and or limits in this area of communication so that we can eliminate some of the waste and frustrations that ineffective communications creates. And we'll do that by simply looking at this technique called more or less. I need to do more of something and less of something else. And so here's an example of I need to do more active listening and less talking in one-on-one discussions. Or perhaps I need to be more active participant versus multitasking in meetings. And so a couple of times during the remainder of our time together, I'm going to ask you to take a minute and reflect on what we've covered and to write down a couple of things that you would like to consider to find better balance and perhaps do a little bit more of in the area of communication. So we'll be covering these four topics, the current environment, operational definitions, some barriers, some research, and then some real practical reminders. And so to get started, let's take a look at the current environment of communications. And it is a fast-paced one. First of all, and you'll see this on your sheet, according to research, U.S. adults are now spending more than 12 hours a day on major media, defined as digital, TV, radio, and print, with nearly 50% of that time being spent with digital, i.e. computers and mobile devices. So that's 12 hours and more than 12 hours in every day. If we factor in sleep, that doesn't leave very much time for all the other things that are happening. So it is by far getting our attention. Secondly, about one in four employees today say they spend at least an hour at work on personal calls, emails, and text messages. So it's creating a distraction. In fact, another study by salary.com indicated that 61% of employees admit to wasting 30 to 60 minutes a day on personal calls, emails, and texts. So your policies, your practices, the culture that you have elected to have with all the media and electronic devices out there today will impact how much productive time that you're getting and you're paying for in your organization. Third, emails. Latest research says that there are over 200 billion of them generated every single day. It's no wonder that we can't keep up with them. And interestingly enough, we're becoming, in many cases, information addicts. We are hooked on emails. A recent AOL study found that 60% of us check our emails when we're in the bathroom. And 15% of us even check our emails when we're at church. And so when we hear that magical little ding, we immediately get distracted and we immediately are looking for that information. Not necessarily communications, but information. Next, we need to work on listening. Research shows that untrained people listen at about 25% efficiency. And so listening is a skill. It takes time. Active listening is even harder to do because of all the distractions that we place in the business world today. Next research has to do with that nearly 40% of performance feedback actually hinders employee performance. One of the things that I continually have seen in my career is that supervisors have a hard time giving and receiving feedback, especially during performance review time. And so we don't like telling people that they need to improve, they need to get better, they're not doing something well. And so too often, many leaders gloss over that and therefore we don't get the change that we're looking for. And we also create, as we talked about earlier, that wear and tear on relationship. Next, about 15% of our collective time in organizations is spent on good old-fashioned meetings. And yet many, many organizations struggle with very ineffective meetings, and we'll talk about that a little bit more. And then finally, additional research has indicated that 70% of small to medium businesses believe ineffective communications is their primary problem. Between departments, between locations, with the different generations of employees that they have, and even with their customers. So this area definitely has a huge impact on business performance. In addition to this, we also know that communications has a huge impact on customer service. So in this particular case, I went out and looked at a number of studies that had been done over the last several years about what customers dislike. And it's interesting that the majority of the issues fall into the category of communication. Things like not knowing my history, reading scripts and quoting policy, not being listened to and being talked over, or forcing me to repeat myself to several different individuals. As well as not only the interchange with an individual, but also the different media that we have them go through as customers, being trapped in automated systems looking for the right number to push to get to a – talk to a live person. Or having information not be transferable between one communications channel and another. And so not only is it creating – communications can create effectiveness and efficiency internally, but it also has a huge impact on this area, critical to us on customer service. So one of the most important things in the area of communication is starting with clarity. And so for the rest of the presentation, I'm going to be using a few key terms and I want to make sure that we're on the same page with those. And so I'm going to define four of those for you from my perspective. So the first one is business culture. There's a culture in society, but there's also a culture within each and every business that you have. And it's simply the accepted or perceived way that you do things here. And so for this area of communication, it would be things like, what's the accepted or perceived way to share information in our organization? What's the accepted or perceived way to listen? What's the accepted or perceived way to provide feedback? What's the accepted or perceived way to respond to questions or inquiries? What's the accepted or perceived way to deal with differences of opinion? All critical parts of each and every culture that you have in your organization. Secondly, it's impacted by what's reinforced and tolerated. And by far, the biggest challenge is the toleration because each and every individual has a different tolerance level for different behaviors. And so trying to agree on what those boundaries are for the whole organization is extremely important because at the end of the day, in your business culture, communications will impact how your employees think, how they behave or act, and how consistent that is. And ultimately, it will impact both perceptions and results. And so that's the first definition I would like you to think about. Secondly, this subject of communication, remember, it's more than just sharing information. It's giving and receiving. And we have a tendency to work very hard in the giving side, and in some cases, not as much on the receiving side, but both are critical. The second thing is that communications in your organization serves multiple purposes. It can inform, it can teach, it can influence, it can help, it can also be entertaining and playful. But communications definitely serves multiple purposes. It's also directional. You have communications that are flowing down. You have communications flowing up. You have communications flowing between different departments, divisions, locations. And you also have one that in some organizations is extremely strong, and that's the great one, which flows in all directions. And then finally, communications involves choices. Choices like, should I share this information? Who should I share it with? What should I share? How should I share it? All of those individual choices that we make every single day are impacting your business culture and they're impacting performance. The third is hearing. Hearing is simply perceiving sound. My family would say that I need to look at this particular thing because in some situations they don't think that I can hear them as well, especially when there's a lot of additional noise around. But that's totally different than listening, which actually requires more energy than speaking. And again, it's about receiving and interpreting information. So those are the four key definitions that I'd like you to think about as we go through the rest of this presentation. So what are some common barriers to communications? And you'll notice the visual in the center of the page, it's all about can the message be understood? If we don't create understanding, then people don't know what I need to continue to do and what I need to consider changing. So it's all about generating understanding. And so what are some common barriers that we experience? Well, research would say there's a variety. I put them into four categories for you. The first one is organizational. The number one issue in an organization from a communications standpoint is to strive for and achieve clarity. We need to get clarity for things like alignment to the mission and the vision, to the goals. We need to also make sure there is clarity in what we are accountable for and what someone else is accountable for. The second thing organizationally, barrier-wise, is that we sometimes think that in the area of communication that the only way that we communicate is by writing something down or presenting something or sharing it verbally. But there are actually four processes in your business culture that inform. We inform through our formal and informal communication, but we also inform through our policies and procedures. We also inform through the processes that we're trying to use across multiple organizations, locations, departments, et cetera. And we also create barriers because of information overload, which we'll talk about a little bit more. But these are three very common barriers that organizations create. They do not provide clarity. They do not make sure that their communications, their policies and procedures, their processes, and their measurement systems, which all inform, are in sync. And we just continue to put more and more information on people and create overload. The second common set of barriers are personal. The first one is fear. Sometimes people are very fearful of asking questions or presenting unpopular positions or opinions. Sometimes communications is impacted by relationships and strains on relationships. And communications is also very much impacted by resistance to change. And most organizations continue or are going through some type of change. The third common set of barriers are physical. Sometimes those include equipment. Electronic communication devices are great today, but walkie-talkies, cell phones still create issues, dead zones, static, broken up messages, et cetera. Distance and time have been eliminated with some of the communications, but in most of those cases, then, we're relying simply on electronic, and we'll talk about that. And then just physical distractions like noise, things that can take our attention away, or that infamous ding as a new email comes in. And then finally, cultural. Again, going back to the importance of the accepted or perceived way we do things culturally, but common barriers in communications include competition. Holding on to information in some organizations becomes very powerful. Another one is feedback. People are really trying to provide frank, respectful feedback, and instead, information continually gets filtered. And so ultimately, decision-makers don't have the most accurate picture or information to make those decisions. And then trust. At the end of the day, if I don't trust the messenger, if I don't trust the message, then communications will not create understanding. So these are some common barriers, and there's lots and lots of research about those. So at this point, you've listened to me for a few minutes, and so I'd like to do an exercise with you. Hopefully, you've been able to get an 8-by-11 sheet of paper. And so what I'd like you to do is take that piece of paper for a second in your hand, and I can't check you because I can't see you, but I'd like you to put that in your hand and then close your eyes. And now what I'd like you to do is follow the instructions. With your eyes closed, I'd like you to fold a piece of paper in half and rip a corner. Please keep your eyes closed and fold that piece of paper again and rip a corner. And then one last time, I'd like you to fold that piece of paper in half, and I would like you to rip a corner. And when you finish those three things, I'd like you to open your eyes and unfold your piece of paper. Now, my question to you is, does your piece of paper look like this? What I've tried to do very quickly is illustrate for you the challenges of one-way communication and also the challenges of not having that visual reinforcement. Very simple exercise. This is what I created. This is what I was hoping you would do. If we could do show-and-tell, my guess is that not all of your pieces of paper would look exactly like that, but it's a simple way to illustrate that two-way communication and asking questions and visually seeing things is much, much more powerful, and we're probably going to get closer to the same answer than only having one-way instruction and one-way communication. So, if you want to send me a picture of your piece of paper, what it looked like, I'd love to see it. At the end, you'll see my email address. So, if we continue down in your handout, we're now on point number seven for additional research, and what I'd like to do is just share with you some research that's out there that helps explain the importance of communications and some things that perhaps we haven't factored in and or how powerful they are. So, first of all, recent research shows that ineffective or poor communications is big business. It costs businesses in excess of $30 billion a year in the U.S. and the U.K. because of misunderstandings, because of errors, because of inconsistencies all created by communications. It's big business, and it's a big cost savings if you can get it right. Secondly, and probably one of the most important things that I've discovered in my career is that communications is not one step. It's actually three steps. So, the first step, lots and lots of organizations have and continue to work on, and that is sharing information, and we're sharing information at probably the most amount of information, the fastest amount of information than ever before, but as we talked about earlier, sharing information is not communication. It's simply sharing information. Step two is to generate understanding. Without understanding, I don't know what to continue to do or to change. I don't know how it applies to me, and so lots of organizations have spent a lot of time in step one sharing information, and so they've tapped into the world of technology and websites and mobile devices, et cetera, and so they're sharing it at record paces, and what we're doing is overloading our systems with information, but we're not creating understanding, and understanding is highly impacted by what leaders believe is their role in your organization every single day to help people understand all that information and how it applies to them. And so, step number one is to share information. Step number two is to generate understanding, and then step number three is to reinforce key messages. So all the information that people are being asked to look at, listen, and receive, the bottom line is what are the most important messages and how are we repeating those in a variety of ways so that people understand they're important? That requires leadership to go through all the information and decide what are the two or three key takeaways that we want people to do. And so I'd encourage you as you look at your own personal communications and your organizational communications to make sure that all three steps are being done, and steps two and three are definitely impacted by what leaders feel their role is in the world of communication. Next, research would indicate that critical messages have to be repeated a minimum of seven times before they're retained. Why? Simply because there's so much information out there, if we don't hear things a variety of ways a number of times, it just gets lost with all the other information that's out there. And so I've had people challenge this, especially some of my friends who are engineers, and they've told me, well, you know what, if there was a fire and I shouted fire, you all would get the message real quickly, I wouldn't have to repeat it seven times, and I absolutely agree with them. But in the same regard, I would say that when you're talking about things like policy, procedure changes, changes in metrics, changes in strategy, those are the types of things that absolutely need critical messages repeated. So putting them on a website, having an all-employee meeting, or sending an email out is a great start, but I would challenge you that most organizations don't take critical messages and repeat them enough. This piece of research, studies have shown that 20 to 30% of everything we say is not interpreted as we intended. So 20 to 30% of everything we say is not interpreted as the way we intended. Wow. So there's a lot of waste there. And if we walk away from a conversation or a meeting and think that everybody got it, because everybody's head was shaking up and down, we may have missed an opportunity because not everybody did get it. Next, visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text in our brain. That's why it's so important that many of the things that we are doing today mobily are only creating text messages real quickly. That's why we love to get pictures. That's why emoticons have become so popular. Visuals register so much faster and are much more impressionable in our society and in our world today. It's 60,000 times faster than the written word in text. I've been trying to practice this this morning, but human beings on average can process four times faster than we can speak. That's why we get easily distracted. And so, bottom line is, in a presentation like this where I can't see you, one way that I can help is by giving you a handout to fill in. The other thing is by using this little thing that I've been doing, which is revealing the information in small bites instead of putting it all out on a page together. But we as human beings have this wonderful thing called a brain that processes information so fast, and we easily get distracted because we can process four times faster than the average person speaks. Next, very interesting research, we hear the word no four to seven times more than we hear the word yes. And so, no creates a negative, no creates, in many cases, a defensive stance, and it's one of the reasons why so many organizations struggle with feedback, because people have heard no so many times. So balancing out saying yes versus saying no and reinforcing things and finding what people are doing right before you tell them what they're doing wrong is a huge, huge motivator. And finally, we are very quick to make impressions. Research would indicate that we make initial impressions in less than a tenth of a second. So very quickly in our mind when we see something, when we hear something, we automatically are drawing a conclusion. So unless we actively listen, it's very easy for us to get distracted and to start thinking of our own solutions. So at this point, I'm going to take about a 60-second break, and I'm going to ask you to do an exercise at the bottom of page two of the handout that I gave you. You'll find a little section there, and it's number 10. To be more effective in communications, I need to do more of something and less of something. So far, we've covered the seven basic employee questions at the beginning. We looked at some current environment with technology and information and meetings. We looked at the importance of communications and customer service. We looked at four common barriers, and then we just went through a bunch of research, which helps explain why communications is so challenging. So I'm going to ask you to take about 30 seconds, 30 to 60 seconds, and I'd like you to just for a second reflect, and maybe write down one or two things there that you need to think about doing more of and less of something else. And then we'll move on to the practical reminders. I would hum the Jeopardy song, but I'm not going to do that and distract you. What would you think about doing more or less of what we've covered so far in the area of communication? Maybe for you personally, maybe for a friend or a co-worker, maybe for your organization? Okay, my clock says I've given you about a minute, and so we'll move on to the last section on Practical Reminders. Divided this into four sections, all H's, Head, Heart, Hands, and Habits, and hope that some of these Practical Reminders will reinforce things you're already doing, or perhaps cause you to reflect a little bit and consider doing a little bit more of them. So we'll start with the head. The head has many things. It has eyes, it has ears, it has a mouth. So the first thing I'd like you to do in this picture is stare at the center plus sign in this picture, and really stare at it for a minute, and what is happening to those dots around as you stare intently at that plus sign. Hopefully most of you, if not all of you, will be experiencing a phenomenon where those spots start to disappear, and this is an illustration of blind spots. Blind spots are a natural thing that happen, and they happen because we're focused on something else. No one or no organization is immune to them. It's not a flaw or it's an automatic behavior, and bottom line is we're too close to something to properly see it, and so understanding what our blind spots might be in the area of communication are extremely important, and one of the best ways to discover our blind spots is to get feedback. Feedback from a trusted peer, feedback through a formal measurement system, feedback from someone from the outside, but the bottom line is we all have blind spots, and without working on blind spots, not identifying and not managing them can be extremely dangerous, extremely dangerous. We're too close to properly see them, and so my question to you is do you know what your communication blind spots are? Would you like to know? Would you be more effective if you knew what they were and could work on them? Secondly, tone and inflection are extremely important. Here's two simple examples. If you take that first box, I know the answer, and I know the answer. By changing the tone or inflection on individual words, you can get a different definition. Just like in the second box, if you say, I'm excited to be with you today versus I'm excited to be with you today, you get a totally different message. You get a totally different amount of energy, and so as we rely on mobile devices and we're talking with people, we can pick up a whole bunch of meaning by tone and inflection. If we just tune in to listening for it. Third, we talked earlier about attention. Research indicates that, on average, human beings will give you 17 seconds to hold their attention before they get distracted and mentally disconnect and or start looking for a rebuttal so they can interrupt you. 17 seconds. So you better make sure you're a very effective communicator and you get your message across in 17 seconds or you also work on more active listening, one of the two. And then finally, information overload. This is a graphic which basically indicates since 1986, we've got five times as much information being shared with us, and the bottom line is that that creates overload. According to one study that I looked at from Mindjet, interruptions caused by information overload cost U.S. companies about $650 billion a year. $650 billion a year because of overload. People don't know what the most critical messages are, therefore they select. They don't respond to things in time. They're just struggling. And so how do you manage the information overload? How do you help people know what the most critical messages are and most critical things to focus on for the day? A huge, huge opportunity. Secondly, the heart. The heart's really about caring. It's about not just what I say but how I say it. And so, for example, here are a few key practical reminders in this area. First of all, in many parts of the country, including where I am in the Midwest, this is a great time of year where we're cleaning out our gutters for the wintertime. And it's amazing the stuff that gets in those gutters. Well, we have gutters in communications too. Things that have temporarily got in the way of good communication flow or things that have been in the way for a long time. And so sometimes those are misinterpretations. Sometimes those are relationships. Sometimes they're nothing more than not understanding terms, words, et cetera, intentions. And so cleaning those out before you have your conversations are extremely important. The next two, shut down words and phrases and killer phrases, we'll talk about in a minute. And then finally, a good practical reminder from the heart is can you be a communication plusser? And a plusser is somebody who's reliable, somebody who's engaging, somebody who's generous with their time. And they're the type of person that when you're speaking with them, they say to you, well, that's interesting. Can you tell me more? Say more. What's your opinion? They're adding and making you bring out more, which makes you want to share more with them. The two items that I talked about earlier, shut down phrases and killer phrases, let's look at a little bit more. When we use words like you don't seem to understand, there's nothing I can do. Sorry, that's the policy. Don't tell anybody but, or when we hear people say you should, you never, you always, or let me tell you, those will cause us to shut down and stop listening. So look for those. Tune into those because people may stop losing and paying attention when those words are used. The other is killer phrases, things like, we tried that before. Remember, we're different. That's not my responsibility. It will never work. That would take too much time or effort. In all cases, those killer phrases are shutting down communications and in many cases, they're resistance to change. One of my favorites that I've always enjoyed was I was consulting with an organization and I put the first one up, we tried that blank and the organization said, oh, we tried that in 1968. Well, over 40 years had passed and they were remembering it because it was so important. So nothing had changed in 40 years and therefore we could not try it again, that killer phrase and one that was remembered. The third practical area is hands. Hands are about actions. Someone once made a great quote that said, we judge ourselves by our intentions, everybody else judges us by our actions. And so I'm going to show you some pictures of some people and faces. And very quickly, we can interpret what they're thinking. For example, the first gentleman looks fairly happy with a smile. The one below him looks like he's questioning or he doesn't know. Someone looks bored. Someone looks excited. Someone looks angry. Somebody looks frustrated. And somebody looks hurt. And yet, no words were spoken. There's no audio with this. And that's partly because of this factor in communications, that 58% of human communication effectiveness is body language. It's the stuff that we pick up visually. 35% of communication effectiveness is not what we say, but how we say it. And so the tone of our voice. And then 7% are actually the words that we use. Again, my friends have challenged this over time, especially those that are very analytical and said, well, again, I can pick some words that would be more than 7%, and I would agree with them. Most of those are inappropriate for the business world or in life. But we can pick some choice words that would cause people to react quickly. We also see trying to put tone in our electronic communications. Emoticons are a simple one, underlining bold colors. We're trying to add tone to those messages. But at the end of the day, we are going to get the most powerful communications possible through face-to-face. Now, with multiple locations and working multiple shifts, et cetera, that's a challenge. And so I would encourage you that when you have those types of situations, it's to make sure that you do create some face-to-face and make sure that when you have those face-to-face, that they are high-quality situations, high-quality conversations. And then secondly, a practical reminder is a picture is worth a thousand words. If you look to the right-hand side, you could see a very nice description of a creamy, delicious, yummy, fudge ice cream, smooth chocolate chip mint strawberry ice cream with chunks, et cetera. But if you look at the picture to the left, you can already figure that out. And what's interesting here and a practical reminder is that if you hear a piece of information, three days later, you will remember 10% of it. But if you add a visual, you will remember 65%. Wow. Think about all the communications that we do with only words and or text. But to add a visual, we can significantly increase the understanding and also remembering. Very critical. And then finally, a practical reminder has to do with habits. If we have a behavior and want to create a new habit, we have to reinforce that behavior 17 to 21 times. That's why change is so difficult, regardless of what factor it's in. In this case, if you want to create a new communication behavior, you need to reinforce it 17 to 21 times before it becomes a natural habit that you naturally do. So here's three habits I'd like you to consider. The first of all is we are seeing more and more people use closed questions versus open questions. So the three questions below in red, are you feeling better? Are you open on weekends? Are you happy with service? All can be answered with a simple yes, no. They do not create dialogue. If, however, you change and create an open question, how do you feel today, you will get the opportunity perhaps for a much broader dialogue and discussion. Or, what are your hours on the weekend? Or, what did you specifically like about service? So think about and look at your pattern and become aware of your pattern. How often do you use more closed questions than open questions? And where are those opportunities where you can use open questions to create better dialogues and hopefully better relationships and understanding with your employees, with your leaders, with your customers, with your suppliers, et cetera? Next, digital etiquette. In your organization, is there digital etiquette and is it documented and reinforced? As it pertains to things like texting and instant messaging, cell phone usage, e-mails, Internet. Are things like when you should use a blind CC, when you should use attachments, when you should use reply all. All of those types of things are important because, if you remember, we are now in the digital world, according to research, spending more than 12 hours a day in that world. So what are the basic rules of engagement? Does your organization define those? Do they reinforce those? And then finally, meetings. They're a traditional mechanism that we use, but there is so much waste in meetings. It's amazing. Bottom line is, are they concise? Are they informative? Are they participatory or downloads? And one thing that happens over and over and over again is we leave meetings and there's no clear actions to be taken. And so do your meetings have clear actions afterwards and who's going to do what? Research would also say that to have an effective meeting, it should be able to be done in 30 to 45 minutes. Many, many meetings drag on much longer and it becomes a form to simply exchange opinions and ideas. So how effective are you in the meeting spot? So, given those practical reminders, we're back to number 10 on your handout list, and that's finding a better balance. And so, if you think about what we've covered in the last few minutes in practical reminders, we've talked about blind spots, our attention span being only 17 seconds before interrupting, the importance of tone of voice and inflection, information overload, shut down words, killer phrases, communication effectiveness being 58%, body language 35%, tone 7% word, the use of open and closed questions, digital etiquette in meetings. And so I'd like you to take just a minute now, if you would please, and think about what's something you could consider doing more of in this space to improve communications and less of for you, for a co-worker or a friend, and for your organization. And then we will conclude in about another two or three minutes with a wrap-up. So again, I won't give you lots of interruptions, but I'd like you to reflect just for a few seconds and fill that out, if you would please. Okay, so to wrap up, I'm going to leave you with a couple of things. First of all, I made notice here of the Miller Law. Miller Law has to do with short-term memory, and it was discovered that, as human beings, we can, in our short-term memory, typically pick up and remember seven items, plus or minus two. It's one of the reasons why telephone numbers are seven digits. So what I've tried to do here is to give you what I hope were some key takeaways about communications for today, using the Miller Law. So first of all, communications is imperfect. It is an art. It is a science. It is a skill that can be learned if we practice. We can get better at it. It starts with clarity. Without clarity, we will go in lots of different directions and do lots of different things. It involves both giving and receiving. We have to work on both sides, and giving is not the only thing that's important, and we struggle with receiving. The ultimate goal is to create understanding, not to share information, but to create understanding. What do I need to change? What do I need to continue to do? What do I need to do better? Communication works for those who work at it. It's not something that we are born with, and so continuing to refine, to get feedback, to continually improve will make your organization and you even better. Communication can be enabled with technology, but technology is just causing us to be able to share information faster and faster. When we communicate effectively, it can enhance trust, relationships, and customer service. Trust and relationships, both internally and externally, and communication impacts both your business culture, the accepted or perceived way you do things, and overall performance. So in conclusion, I found this quote from an author which I thought was great. I sort of kind of said something a little like that, but maybe not clearly enough to sound like that, but it's what I meant. Sometimes that's exactly how communications happen. Remember, communications is simple, but not easy, and I thank you so much for your time today. If you're interested in more information, here's my website, my email address, and if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them, drop me a line, or we can address them now. So Rebecca, I'll turn it back to you. Thanks, Brian, for a very interactive presentation. Hopefully the participants found it beneficial. I mean, it was definitely engaging for me. I don't see any questions on the docket, but certainly, as Brian said, please feel free to reach out to him at his email or sub-site if you have any additional questions, and thank everyone for joining the webinar. Thanks, Brian. Thank you. Everybody have a great Thanksgiving.

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