Leadership Story
The day we start giving more importance to Face-to-Face interactions will be the day we will understand the true meaning of communication.
--- Chintan Srivastava
Chintan Srivastava
Leadership (CSL)
Right from the leadership seminars he delivers to the
articles he writes, he focusses a lot upon communicating in the so called Old Fashioned manner of writing letters, sending greeting cards;
preferring a phone call over a text message and personal meetings over phone
calls. He is so obsessed with his mission of helping people
realize the importance of these conventional yet powerful ways of
communicating that people simply prefer to call him- THE CONVENTIONAL
COMMUNICATOR.
Just before he was about to leave for his
beautiful home in Frankfurt, we were lucky to catch him for a quick
session at one of his favourite cities- Istanbul, where he just delivered
a seminar to over 500 people.
There are so many aspects of
personal development but communication has always been one your prime
focus areas. Any particular reason?
It's the ESSENCE you see.
Communication- whether verbal or nonverbal is possibly
the only way you can transfer your thoughts and feelings to the other person.
Just because we do it on a daily basis, we just don't realize how crucial or as
I believe- what a blessing it is.
In my seminars, whenever I ask people that how
many of them had written a letter in the past 6 months or
even a year, at most I see 10 hands going up; at one instance, it was
just 4. That's why I always encourage people to make the most of this special
gift in the most extraordinary possible manner. Whatever you say, whatever you
write, do it from you heart, make people feel special.
Send cards and letters to your loved ones to express
how much you value them and give out small hand written notes to your friends
and associates as a token of your gratitude for their precious time and
company. You'll be stunned to see how much people value these small gestures
and these go a long way in building a lasting relationship.
But wouldn't that be impractical
in today's fast paced and globalized professional world?
It's not just the medium of communicating in which I
urge people to sometimes follow the conventional ways; it's also about what
goes inside. E-mail, text messages and phone calls are extremely
important especially in the professional world as they are quick. I would
certainly not recommend you to write a letter to your client or your
partner in another country and then wait for 2 weeks to get a reply for
something that can be sorted on an E-mail within minutes. What I mean
is, that personal touch in whatever you convey, that genuine sense
of concern for the other person, and displaying that feeling of gratitude
for the one you are writing to should be there no matter whether you
write an E-mail, a letter, or even a Whatsapp text.
In fact, why to just keep it confined to the written
ones. All these things can be efficiently done during a personal meeting or a
phone call as well; they are easy to implement and will be extremely effective.
Don't you sometimes think it's
overrated?
Absolutely Not! There's enough data &
research to support that. The surprising part is that despite of
training people for a long time now, occasionally even I get
surprised on knowing some amazing facts. An article published in the
August 2014 edition of the Entrepreneur magazine- 'How do top leaders spend
every minute of their day' finds that on an average, a top
executive spends around 5 hours everyday in verbal or written communication. That
is MASSIVE. We all know that right from the company policies to business
strategies, a lot of decisions are taken at the Top Management level and
effective/non-effective communication can greatly impact it. Still, right from
school to college to organizations, communication is something which is taken for
granted or considered secondary at
the least. Indra Nooyi rightly said- "You
can never over-invest in communication".
What about those who may not be able to express
themselves so well?
Many people think that saying or writing something
only in 'fancy' way will make an impact.
That's a communication stereotype as I may call it.
See it's not a competition, the gesture in itself makes it special. It's not
important that you decorate a letter or E-mail beautifully and write poetry,
although you may- but that's not the primary intention. Anything
expressed clearly, respectfully and above all with good feelings touches
the heart of the other person no matter how simply said or written.
Seeing that people have now become more comfortable
with text messages or E-mails, any tips on how can we become better at
face-to-face conversations?
Unless you frequently deal with emergencies, the first
thing to remember is that the person in front of you is always more
important than the phone. If you are about to start a meeting and are
expecting a call in the same duration, tell the other person upfront- "Sorry,
but it's possible I might have to take an important call in between; will try
to keep it short". This will show that you greatly value their
time and your conversation with them. Also remember that people can see
through people. One doesn't have to be an expert on body languages to
notice that you are either not interested in the person, or the conversation.
Rather, save yourself the embarrassment and avoid meeting in the first place if
you genuinely don't want to. Please don't do it just for the sake of doing it,
you won't be doing any justice to either of you.
Last but not the least- "For heaven sake keep
that phone aside at least for sometime". In your life you will rarely
come across a situation which could not be handled a little while later.
There's no point in checking your whatsapp or e-mail again & again and then
giving a lame excuse- "Oh just in case there's something
important"- No, it won't be because if it's urgent, people will call
you! Let me go a step further and call it an insult to the person sitting
in front of you if you're constantly getting distracted by a DEVICE- a
non-living, non-sensible piece of plastic.
Remember,
don't worry if you're not exceptionally brilliant at communicating. It's a
natural gift, a blessing that you have which can be conditioned and
improved with time. Value it, value others and the rest will be just fine...
AIM FOR THE PEAK!