Eliya Elon 🤓

As with any skill, only through unfiltered, honest feedback can we improve our communication. Exposing yourself to as much, high-quality feedback as possible will help you improve the aspects of your communication that are lacking, and elevate the aspects that are already strong.

Many of us listen while waiting for our turn to speak. Active listening, by contrast, is about devoting one's full attention to the speaker and keeping the mind open to their message. Doing this is absolutely critical in building rapport and empathy, which are, in turn, key ingredients to a productive and mutually beneficial relationship between salesperson and client.

Your audience has a limited amount of mental bandwidth, and there are lots of things competing for it. The best way to outcompete those other things is to boil down your message into a single idea. Figure out the essence of your message, and then state it as simply and concisely as you can. If you have time, restate the same message in a different way to maximize the probability people will absorb your point.

The reason Archimedes had his eureka moment in the bathtub was that he was relaxed and vulnerable. Obviously, we can't start taking baths in the office, but we can cultivate an environment where people are comfortable being vulnerable and opening themselves to the possibility of failure. One way I try to do this is with the rule that, during a discussion or problem-solving sessions, we can only disagree with a proposed solution if we present an alternative solution.

Diversity of thought comes from diversity of background--people of different ages, genders, races, religions, and creeds bring different thinking patterns and ideas to the table. The reason that that's important is because the wider variety of ideas you have at your disposal, the more fierce the competition between ideas becomes. This accelerates an evolutionary process in which bad ideas die and good ideas thrive which, over time, means faster innovation.

Desperately trying to be creative works about as well as trying your hardest to remember something you've forgotten. There's a reason that so many people have their best ideas in the shower--because creativity strikes when you feel relaxed and open-minded, not time-pressured and stressed. The same principle holds for creating an environment where your team can be creative--make it relaxed, non-judgemental, and low-pressure. Give people the time and space to let creativity grow. In my experience, this yields far more creativity than any lighting brainstorming session.