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Yes, welcome to the biz communication show, I’m your host Bill Lampton the biz communication guy, bringing you tips and strategies, communication tips and strategies that are sure to boost your business. To start with, let’s use our imagination for a minute. Picture me walking across a college campus, and walking there on a nice day. In fact, it’s a pretty warm summer day. And as I’m walking along on the campus, I say one of my friends, Frank, Frank is from another fraternity. But even though we are fraternity rivals, he and I are very good friends. So we start walking along, and we’re going a good little distance on the Millsaps college campus in Jackson, Mississippi, we get to the Christian Center, and then we get a few steps farther to Maura Hall. And as we’re walking along, Frank and I start chatting about classes and girls and other things that college students would be talking about. And then all of a sudden, we got got a bright idea. We said, why don’t we leave campus for a little while and go get a couple of beers. And here we are on again, a very hot summer day, and South Mississippi. So those two beers sound really fine. Then we keep on walking, chatting about different things. We pass the science building, we go past the student center up to the parking lot. And as we get to the parking lot, I turned to Frank, and all of a sudden I said, Frank, where’s your car? Fright looked at me and said, Bill, where’s your car. And among all the cars in the parking lot, there was none for me. And there was no car for Frank. So we didn’t get our beer that day. But we did get a very valuable lesson, which helped him and helped me many hundreds of times since. And that message quite obviously is always check your assumptions. Before acting on them. He and I had assumed that the other one had a car. That’s what we were acting on. We got our taste buds going for those two beers. We didn’t get the beers as I said, but we got a wonderful lesson. Now let’s switch to those of us who are in management positions. I was in management. At the vice presidential level for two decades, I learned plenty about what to do and what not to do. And I probably thought back many times to that lesson with Frank, walking across campus with me. No car, and therefore no beer. I thought about that. And then I’m wondered how could managers executives apply this lesson? Well think about it for just a minute. Let’s say you assume that people in your company, your corporate Corporation, your organization, your association, let’s assume that they know the goals. I mean, after all, which organization hasn’t spent laborious countless hours and meetings with all kinds of different divisions and different departments trying to come up with a one paragraph, concise definition of the organization’s goals, it would be unlikely if your organization has not done that. So the manager, the CEO, the CEO, the supervisor, whatever your level, you might assume, well, everybody knows our goal, but do they? What if they were having coffee or lunch with someone out of your organization? And that person said what are your goals? What’s your mission? What are you really all about? What are you trying to accomplish? What are your goals for this year? So it’s in WARNING for managers to constantly recheck, restate, repost, read, discuss the goals of the organization. And then also, managers can never assume that instructions were understood perfectly. You can never assume that instructions were understood perfectly. Now, this is where feedback becomes so important. Instead of assuming that somebody got your instructions perfectly, ask them what they understood you to say. This, of course, as we all know, is called reflective listening. You give a comment. And then you say to the person who received the comment, and I repeat back to me what you believe I said, What’d you think I said, What you heard that I said, and this is a great way to check whether or not your assumption that they got it was correct. If they didn’t, you keep up the reflective listening until you get it right. And then something else is very important. Do all of our people that we work with our colleagues, our associates, even our head people, do they all understand the deadlines? We assume that they do? We’ve sent memos, we’ve sent emails, we’ve discussed the deadlines and meetings. Why do people miss deadlines? They just do? They have so many other things going. So we cannot assume that they’ve automatically gotten the deadlines. And once again, reminders, restating, reissuing memos, emails, whatever it takes holding meetings. This is how people meet deadlines, not because they heard it once. But because it was restated and clarified many times. Frank and I did not get our beer. But Franklin and I, as I said earlier, got a much more valuable result from that walk across campus. And the result was that we learned don’t ever trust your assumptions alone without checking them Are you may take a long walk, that doesn’t result in anything, but a lot of energy, and a lot of sweat. Thanks for being with me today. I really appreciate those of you who joined us on the video portion and those who are with us on the podcast. They were thus far every edition of the biz communication show so that we can help you have tips and strategies that will boost your business. And before we sign off, I want to invite you to check my YouTube channel. Go to the search bar type in my YouTube ID bill Lampton PhD and then you’ll find not only this video, but you’ll have access to videos that I’ve been posting there since 2007. Some of them solo presentations like this, many of them are interviews with my guests on the biz communication show. While you’re there, hit the subscribe button and watch my introductory video there at the start of YouTube when you go to my channel and at the end of that short video you’ll see as if subscribe button head and then you’ll have regular access to everything I posted previously. And when I will post in the future. Certainly I invite you to to look at my website as the biz communication guy quite logically. My website is biz BZ biz communication guy.com And then I will definitely welcome a phone call from you at 678-316-4300. Again, that number is 678-316-4300 Give me a call so that we can discuss your communication problems and challenges and how I can assist you with them and no obligation at Introductory call once more, thank you for being with me today on the biz communication show where I help you find winning words and ways
