Image Source: Sarah Stacke

As leaders, our success hangs on the effectiveness of our communication. If we can’t connect to our teams or stakeholders, if we can’t engage with our people and get our message through to them, then we just can’t succeed. It’s that simple. If our communication is going to be effective, then we need to think about the way we shape our message, because the truth is…it’s different for each of us. No two people either present or receive a message in quite the same way. We all interpret things differently, each seeing the world through our own individual looking glass.

So how is our unique style of communication shaped? What colors the glass through which we see things? Could the way we connect with others, the way others see us be shaped by our own perceptions and bias?

As leaders, these are really useful questions.

If we can understand ourselves in these terms…and if we can stretch that further and make the effort to understand how others in our teams and wider communities are also affected by their own experiences, then we can really tap into some communication gold dust. We can shape our communication with others – the way we see them and the way they see us – into something much richer, more engaging and far more productive.

Walter Mosley – Letting The Weight Go

I just adore Walter Mosley’s smack-me-between-the-eyes personal take on this idea. I’ve listened to this story time after time and I never fail to be moved. (I urge you to take a few moments and listen to him speak – it is truly something else!). His view? That the way we communicate, the way we interact and are received by the people around us, is shaped by our own personal prejudices, biases and experiences. He sees these forming a huge load that we drag around every day, that shapes and defines us, that is grafted to us. He wants to confront them because he sees how they affect the way he responds to other people, but ultimately…he is afraid because he sees himself as inextricably defined by them.

Image Source: Apartment Therapy

For Walter, his experiences shape his identity. They are the weight that he carries and that ultimately, holds him back.

I love this.

“My enemy wasn’t the language but the way that language affected me” – Walter Mosley

“What they were saying to me, even though they weren’t talking to me, they were talking to each other…was “you got to let that weight go”…that weight that was grafted to me, it was a part of me…it’s guiding my life, it’s governing my life, it’s making me make assumptions about these people that I don’t know and didn’t understand…and they were saying “you got to let that weight go” – Walter Mosley

So we have the opportunity each and every day to confront our own weight and ask ourselves how it defines us. This becomes a very personal challenge – to give ourselves the chance to set aside the looking glass, to sit back, reflect and understand how our own perceptions and experiences influence the way we communicate – the way we hear others and the way others hear us.

But How Do We Do This?

But how do we do this? I like to think that the route is different for each of us but in my own case, I’m a zealot for self-reflection – stepping back each and every day to take time to look at who I am, how others see me and how I see myself. It can be confronting and at times, downright scary, but it’s a central part of my routine and gives me a wonderful sense of space and balance – much like any other personal meditative practice.

I also love the idea of tapping into our networks – our peer groups, mentors, professional communities, friends and family – and asking them for ideas and reflections. Ask what they think of your messages, think about how you respond and what their words mean to you. But be prepared to challenge yourself, to really confront the weight and let it loose.

Because when you get right to the core of this, we want people to understand us. We want our messages to stick. We want the people around us to respond, to get us. The trick is though, that we need to find a way to look at the world without peering through our glass.

To be the best, most effective leader that we can, we need to recognize this. We need to spend the time and energy understanding how the looking glass influences us, so that we can look past it and find better, more personal and engaging ways to connect with our team…free of that darned weight!

And Finally…

This is a really personal reflection today and I confess I found it quite draining to put together. It’s definitely part of my own long and bumpy journey towards throwing away my looking glass! As always, I’d love to hear your stories or thoughts. We have some wonderful discussions on Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook so please, feel free to drop a comment.

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