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Episode 85:

More than Words: Effective Communication

Ben Decker

Description

Host Heath Alloway talks effective communication with Ben Decker on Episode 85 of The Upstream Leader. The Chairman and Co-CEO of Decker Communications, Ben focuses on the pivotal role communication plays in leadership. Sharing insights on becoming a better leader through humble confidence, the impact of early communication habits, and the critical importance of non-verbal cues, Ben details his approach to improving how professionals communicate, emphasizing the need for intentionality, curiosity, and the ability to provide and receive constructive feedback. He pillories the “soft skill” label that communication is often saddled with due to its central role in professional and personal success, offering practical advice for introverts and those plagued with self-doubt.

About the Guest

A leading expert in messaging and leadership communications, Ben Decker raises awareness about the value of effective communication. As Chief Executive Officer of his own communications firm, Ben lives the company mission of transforming business communications. He has worked with hundreds of leaders in Fortune 500 companies to strategize and implement communication solutions that are practical, direct and attainable. Ben serves as an ongoing executive coach for C-level executives from several major organizations, including AT&T, Bacardi, Charles Schwab, Cisco, JPMorgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, McKesson, and the US Coast Guard, as well as start-ups and portfolio companies seeking to raise capital.

Ben Decker regularly speaks to large audiences, often discussing the importance of creating a communication experience, developing executive presence and developing effective communication as a leader. Ben has been featured at large conferences and kickoffs for companies such as Christus Health, Exponent, Hewlett-Packard, Marriott, Million-Dollar Roundtable, and Robert Half International.

Highlights / Transcript

Welcome back to The Upstream Leader Podcast! I’m Heath Alloway, your host for today’s episode. Our guest today is Ben Decker, Chairman and co-CEO of Decker Communications. Ben, it’s great to see you again. Looking forward to having you on the show.

Excited to be here. Thanks, Heath.

So Ben, we’ll jump right in. Something we ask every guest to get the conversation started is: what has really made you the leader that you are today?

That question can easily become a self-proclaiming self-pat on the back, so I’m a little worried about how to answer that, as one of our values in our company is “humble confidence.” So it doesn’t feel very humble to tell you why I think I’m the leader I am, but I’ll turn it into how I think I’m the person I am, which ties into leadership and communication, of course. Growing up, my mom passed away when I was young, and I had a lot of independence. The way I grew up was pretty close with my father, and we ended up going into business together after I had a different career. That allowed me to develop discernment, trust my own judgment, and learn the power of communications, which ties into education, influencing others, bringing people along, getting them to want to do something versus have to do something. Luckily, that’s the profession that I’m in, so I think that has a lot to do with it.

When we hire people, I always ask, just care. All I ask is that you care more. That caring is pretty innate in me—caring for clients, thinking about them, what’s coming up, what’s going on, is it going well? What can we do? So I think that ties into leadership. I don’t know if it’s servant leadership, but there’s more care there.

Yeah, and Ben, I think in most cases, people can see if you truly care or if it’s a, you know, fake caring. So, Ben, let me ask you this on your comment there, you said that you and your father were close and went into business together. I was reading your bio this morning, and there was a comment in there about how you were immersed in the Decker method pretty early on. It was something along the lines that you were videotaped before your junior high book reports. I don’t know if those were presentations or what that may be. How did that influence what you’re doing today? Or did it even influence what you’re doing today?

Well, it did. So it becomes part of your DNA. But if you think about kids today—Snapchat, Instagram—them seeing themselves so much on video, I actually think it’s a good thing. It hasn’t happened like this in generations past. In my generation—Generation X—you don’t normally see yourself on video. I did grow up seeing myself on video, realizing what I’m doing, the experience I create. So it was helpful to know what my face is doing, what my hands are doing, and I think kids are much more aware of what they’re doing and comfortable seeing themselves. I mean, I have three teenage boys, and with Snapchat and the pictures they take of themselves, even if they’re looking away—just quickly sending these pictures—it is very helpful to be aware of what you’re doing. That’s really what we do as a company. We help people become more aware. So going back to middle school, yeah, that had a huge impact on me and how I see myself and how I want to come across.

Very good, Ben. With that, you kind of got into this a little bit about what you do, but just to give our listeners a bit of a foundation for the work that you do, and I think it’s very important work that you’re doing, tell us a little bit about Decker and what you’re doing to help people from a communication standpoint.

Sure. It’s from CEO to sales, we are a firm based out of San Francisco, but we’re really nationwide. We have about 40 people who travel the country and the world, working with everyone from Fortune 500, Fortune 10, to startups and entrepreneurs, helping them communicate better. My airplane pitch is: “We help people in what they say and how they say it.” When I describe that to people on a plane, they often say, “Shoot, I could use that.” To which I say, “We all can.” You can always get better in communications. We help people become aware of how they come across. We use a lot of video feedback, put people on video, and get them in an environment where they can get private coaching, ideally, and be told the good, the bad, the ugly of what they’re doing, with ways of getting better—whether it be eye communication, voice, smile, hands, it doesn’t matter. But then, as for what you say, the content, we introduce a method to convey thoughts, ideas, keynotes, all hands, just a message with the goal of being influential. People need to know why they’re listening, know what it is you want them to do.

And that’s a big challenge—you and I work with a lot of financial advisors, accountants, CPA firms, you can get into informing and just sharing numbers and information. So much of our world at Decker is really trying to get people to think differently about their content and where do you want them to go? Audiences want that. They want to know what they should do. Then it’s about bringing it in a way that gets them nodding their heads, adding a touch of emotion to the message instead of just pure data, facts, and figures.

Well, Ben, I know people can’t see us on video, but when you said getting people to nod their heads, I saw myself just nodding my head as you were talking. So maybe after the episode—we’ll wait, and you can critique me afterward. We won’t do that during the show, but we’ll wait until afterwards. So, Ben, with what you do and the audience you just described, when you talk about communication, how important is that in someone’s leadership journey and the success of their own career?

Well, you can argue it’s almost everything. There’s a Bruce Barton quote that I quote oftentimes at the beginning of speeches or programs. I’ll paraphrase it, but basically, it says, “It doesn’t matter how much you know—from all that I’ve seen from doers, saints, writers combined, one thing is certain: talkers have always ruled. They will continue to rule. The smart thing is to join them.”

Now, I’ve shared that quote with hundreds of people, and some get offended by that quote—people who are experts in their fields, with an MBA, a Ph.D., people who are so smart. It’s not dismissing knowledge, but it’s about using that knowledge to open doors. You’ll have a low ceiling if you can’t communicate well. You can have the best idea, the best invention, the best innovation possible, but if you can’t communicate it well, you’re going to have a low ceiling. That’s the point. You have to communicate well to get people to buy in, to get people to want you to take that idea and run with it.

It’s the same with large corporations—a CEO says a message, and the problem is it doesn’t go through the organization. People don’t take it and communicate it well to the front line. So, that’s a lot of work to do, to make sure our message permeates, goes through, is absorbed, people get it, people want to. You could argue it is a huge part of the success of how people come across. I’m working with an Investor Day for a Fortune 500 company. They’re looking at shareholders and what matters to them. Right now, the management percentage is not as high as they want it to be. Meaning, as an investor, I don’t have as much confidence in the management team because of basically how they communicate. So, you connect that to any business, any industry, it ties in.

Well, Ben, with the importance that you just described there, why do you think so many organizations and leaders still say communication is a “soft skill?”

Yeah, it’s one of my least favorite terms. Usually whenever I hear it, I battle it and call it out as an elephant in the room. Same thing with what we—people will say, “Oh, you do presentation skills,” and it really limits how you think about what we’re talking about. Am I presenting to you, Heath, right now—or to your audience? No, you and I are talking. So, when people say a soft skill, it makes it seem optional, in my opinion. You can’t help but brand it as a “nice-to-have” rather than a “need-to-have.” “Soft skill.” No, seem like a mandatory skill. In fact, LinkedIn identified it as the number one skill for hiring this year. Communication is the top skill needed and wanted in hiring. So, “soft skill” is a terrible branding issue that I would hope every one of your listeners doesn’t think of it that way. Think of it as a higher, more critical skill, but “soft skill” treats it as if it would be good to have, but not, have to have.

And Ben, I think the other side of that is not just from a professional standpoint, but every aspect of your life, communication plays a key role in coaching your kid’s sports team, or how you communicate and connect with your friends. So Ben, I’m curious—I’m actually glad you answered it that way, because so many times I say this is a core leadership skill, it is a core people skill that we all should focus on and work at getting better at. I’m going to share some stats with you, and I’m curious to see how you respond to this. But I share in some of our presentations, we talk about being an advisor and truly listening to connect with people, and we see so many distractions. So some stats I’ll throw out: Say we spend over three hours on average on our cell phones a day, we get maybe 50 to 75 to 100 emails a day, maybe we spend that three and a half hours, we check our phone over 300 times a day. How do all these distractions that we are constantly bombarded with, how does that impact our listening skills and effective communication?

Well, some people say there’s no such thing as multitasking. So, think of it that way—can I do this and that? And the idea of being present and showing your presence—I mean, a lot of the coaching we do, we remind people and the communicators that it’s not about you, it’s about them—the audience, your listener. So how do you focus on them? We give an example in our programs where we discuss eye communication, and you bring up cell phones. If we pair people up, A and B, and, “A talk to B about their morning, it doesn’t matter what you say.” Then we instruct B to look at A while they are listening, and then we go and say, “B, look away while A keeps talking.” When B looks away, it becomes very distracting. Bottom line, we switch it around, just to talk about how it feels. It doesn’t feel good—it feels rude. Then we ask how often that happens.

So, to your point around distractions, if I’m at a cocktail party with you, Heath, and I want to see Joe, Sue, or Bob, but I’m here with you, and my eyes are going over there, looking at them—even though you and I have drinks in hand and we’re talking to each other—do you feel like I’m there with you? The answer is no, and that’s because of the distraction—whether it be a cell phone or a person—what I’m doing with my eyes. I need you to feel like I’m entirely there with you. That goes into the behaviors—that goes into tuning other things out, and focusing on you. So that’s purely eye communication. That takes intentionality because most people don’t realize what they’re doing. They have no idea what they do with their eyes. These are habits that we’re dealing with—codified habits.

You know, I could argue by your teenage years, you become pretty codified in your habits. We deal with people in the 30 to 50, usually, 30 to 60 range, and these are really codified habits. So you’ve got to change your habits—your voice, your eyes, your smile, what you do with your hands, how you stand—to show your presence, to show care, and to show you’re entirely focused on your audience, whether it’s one-on-one—as I’m looking at this camera with you—or if there are 100 people, what I do with my eyes and how I hold them and look at them, versus looking at the ground or the ceiling. If I look away, it seems like I’m not really present—I’m distracted, etc.

So, Ben, you mentioned the habits, and I had a car ride, we were going to help a friend pick up something over the weekend. He had just returned from vacation with his two kids and his wife. They went on a cruise, and he said they did not get the internet package—they couldn’t use their cell phones, couldn’t use any of the technology. He said it was alarming and really good—he was glad they did that—but he realized in the first couple of days how much he was trying to look at his phone or do something on his phone out of natural habit. So if we know those habits are there, how do we break that habit? How do we become more intentional about being present to show that we do care and that we are trying to connect with someone? Any thoughts on how to overcome those habits that, in a lot of ways, I would say, are blind spots, and maybe we don’t even realize we’re doing it?

I think that’s accurate. And I think it just takes intentionality. I spoke with a leader yesterday, asking her how she’s doing working on what we’re working on. She goes, “Well, I’m not really working on it, I’m fairly overwhelmed, I’m back-to-back-to-back. So, when I have an all-team meeting with thousands of my team, I leave one meeting and go right into it.” I challenged her on it—I said, “You’ve got to change your schedule, you’ve got to work with your admin to add buffer, to add margin, so you don’t go straight from one to the other. You’ve got to get your head right.” So Heath, I would tie that into what you’re describing as boundaries and setting up limits. I put screen time for my three teenage boys because I don’t want them always looking at their phones. I limit them because it’s become a habit—they just grab and look at it because it’s a habit. But if they are limited, they’ll do it less. So I’m just trying to steer that, just like you and I, we may want to, for example, on this podcast, I turned off my phone—I know you don’t want buzzing, I know you don’t want distractions, but I did that to be entirely present. That’s intentionality so I’m right here during this podcast. There are little things we can do, but that takes intentionality.

Well, Ben, something you said a minute ago, too, I want to go back to for a second. You said in communication, we have to remember it’s about them, it’s not about us. So I’m going to put myself out there a little bit—I hope I’m not the only person who has gone through this before—but sometimes, you know, even with self-awareness, I go back to networking situations, and I’m maybe more nervous or with more angst in those settings, whenever you meet someone new and those nerves are elevated, I’ve been guilty of all of a sudden, starting to talk about everything we do at Upstream, or when I was at a firm, if someone asked what I do, it was all about our services, offices, all the things about me.

I wasn’t doing that intentionally, but then I realized when someone walked away, I didn’t even remember their name half the time. I was so in the moment of meeting someone, it was all about me because that’s what I was comfortable talking about. And then I couldn’t even remember their name, chances are they probably walked away, they probably didn’t remember my name. I’ve had to learn how to shift that. So Ben, I guess one, is that natural in networking settings where people are maybe a little more uncomfortable in those types of settings?

It’s not just those settings, it’s actually a lot of corporate environments. We end up talking about ourselves, our thing, our widget, our company, our organization, our industry—we talk about ourselves because it’s what we know. There’s a great story that I sometimes reference, a Dale Carnegie story. You know, he wrote one of the great bestsellers on how to win people over with influence (which I think I just butchered the name, but you know what I’m talking about). He told the story of when he’s at one of his trainings, and he went to the back and the woman didn’t know who he was. He basically just asked her questions for 20 minutes, and he didn’t say more than five words. At the end, when he had to go, she said, “You are an amazing conversationalist. Thank you for this time.” And he didn’t say anything.

My point in bringing it up to you, Heath, is the idea of curiosity, the idea of asking questions, the idea of gamifying it, of sometimes in our programs, we’ll play hot potato, make a challenge to find out as much as possible about the other person. We could talk about your high school career. “Tell me about your high school. Where’d you go? Tell me more. Did you play sports?” It’s like trying to find out about the other person versus talking about yourself, because then you’ll turn around. “Oh, really? Where did you go to high school and what did you play?” I’ll answer it, but then I turn it around to show curiosity.

So in the networking environments, stay curious. Gamify it. Challenge yourself to figure out ways to remember names. That is a great skill. Heath. How I remember the name Heath. So for me, I’m a big fan of Chip and Dan Heath, brothers. So that helped me remember Heath. Literally, when I first met you, that’s what I did. Find ways to remember names, but that’s gamifying it.

So, Ben, when you say gamifying in that, being inquisitive and constantly asking questions, I go back and look at my kids—I have a six-year-old and an eleven-year-old—and they are always asking questions. Then as we get older and we feel like we have to be an expert or know everything. Where do we lose that in life? What drives that? Because I feel like at a certain stage in a career, we start to lose that power of questions. I start feeling like we have to have the answers. Is that something you see commonly with the people that you work with?

I suppose so. I don’t know if or where or how we lose curiosity or interest in others, because many people have a great amount of curiosity, great amount of empathy, and some of it’s innate. The rest of it, you and I have to be intentional to increase or grow. There’s no doubt about that. But I’ll tie affect to curiosity, because affect is a physical expression of psychological or emotional energy. As kids, we let it out. “Dad, give me some food, I’m hungry.” Kids are good at getting what they want. As we become teenagers, we lose affect, meaning we get—call it peer pressure, call it puberty, call it life is getting real, grades are getting real, becoming subject matter experts—and we get a little more held in.

We share this in our coaching, because as we get into that decision-making, we get really tight, and a lot of the work we do at Decker is trying to loosen people up and get them to speak with passion and voice and lean into the audience. That’s really focused on affect, to let go of the content because we focus so much on the content in ourselves, and we forget about the experience. I think there’s a little bit of tie-in with curiosity, meaning, we get so focused on us and what we do, and we lose sight of them, of Heath, where he lives, what he does, tell me more, because we get focused on what we do. I think there’s a little bit of a tie-in with how we grow up. In fact, now that I think about it, there’s a TED Talk by Sir Ken Robinson. He talked about kids being born with creativity and curiosity, and as they age, we kind of kill it out of them. That’s what we have to look into changing with our education systems. It’s a fantastic TED Talk.

Yeah, I love that. And as you’re talking, I think sometimes my own struggle is we live in a society of “busy”—the more you have going on, maybe you feel like you’re more important—but sometimes in that busy environment, we miss the time to take the extra five minutes and ask those questions: “How was your weekend? Tell me about your high school. Tell me…” you know, all those types. Sometimes we miss out on that. Truly that opportunity to connect with people.

Well and Heath, especially in Zoom. You think about the last few years, through any video interaction, we just go right into business. Now, if you’re in an office, there’s something about clothing or smell or the way the room is set up that we talk about something. In a Zoom, we dive right into it—in a Teams meeting, in a Google Meet, whatever video platform you use, we’re working with a lot of clients on how to fix that, because we lose the connection piece of, I don’t even know how Heath’s day was. We just dove into the process and the system. So that’s something you really have to be intentional about. That is an easy fix for the first couple of minutes, just a “How is everyone’s day? How are we doing?” Slow down and then dive into it. Sorry, I interrupted you, but that’s an important piece tied into video.

No, you’re fine, Ben. So, in a way, kind of almost planning unplanned time when we have those interactions to make that connection.

Yeah, back to intentionality.

To have those kinds of conversations. I like that. So, Ben, one thing I’ll go back to: We talked about those environments of networking or whatever it may be, whenever maybe the nerves are a little high. Ben, I don’t have scientific data to support this, but what I can say is, in the public accounting profession, there are definitely more self-proclaimed introverts than extroverts, without a doubt. And I think sometimes when that word’s used around business development or networking, it’s used as a negative. So, do you see that being an introvert as truly a negative when it comes to communication and connection with people?

Well, no. My worry about the word “introvert” is to many, not all, but to many, it can become a scapegoat and an excuse. “I don’t do well there because I’m an introvert.” And we use it as a scapegoat. In a lot of the work that we do, just to put it as plain and simple, what I’m trying to do with any executive is to pull out the backyard barbecue person. Now, that’s a term I use, but it’s like, if you think about it, you have a drink in your hand, you’re talking to friends. Are you an introvert there? And to most people, “No, I speak freely, I’m excited, I smile, I tell stories.” So why can’t we have that person be in a conference room, in a boardroom? And so that’s the gist, the bottom line of what I’m trying to do. We have Decker. That’s it.

Now here’s a real-life example: I was working with a leader yesterday who runs a multi-thousand people organization. She didn’t do great in an all-team meeting. She doesn’t like it. She’s just trying to get through it. But she likes board meetings. I said, “Explain that to me, because it’s usually the opposite for most people. I don’t like board meetings because they’re going to talk to me, and they’re going to look for something wrong.” She goes, “Because I know my business and they just want to talk to business. And I’m an introvert.” So I really pushed her. I said, let’s think about the introvert. The way you are at a backyard barbecue, are you this way? She goes, “Yeah.” I’m like, so let’s just try to be that way for your all-team, for all these moments that you show up, because that’s a big “aha!” to many people. Whether you’re an accountant, CEO, frontline, it doesn’t matter. If you think about how you show up every time and make it consistent.

Because the big thing is to take away an on-off switch. When I’m at a networking event, I gotta turn it on. Now, to an introvert, that’s very tiring and cumbersome and challenging. So what if we didn’t have to turn it on, but we just stayed curious? We asked questions. And who cares about us, but let’s find out about them. That’s gamifying. That’s changing the mindset of, it’s no longer about you. They ask you a question, like at a backyard barbecue, you’re going to answer it, but you’re also going to turn it around to them. So I get worried that it gets used as a scapegoat and an excuse too much. I get that we have to find our energy in different places, but be careful of using it as that excuse.

So Ben, let’s say a scenario where maybe someone is more introverted, and they meet someone that’s maybe more extroverted. Do you have any guidance on those different kinds of personality traits and what people can do to effectively communicate with someone who may have a different personality than what they do?

Yeah, and there are so many assessment tools: DISC, Genius from the Lencioni, table group, they have a great widget approach of trying to figure out your traits and what you’re good at. There’s half a dozen. It’s good to know who they are. It’s good to know within teams what they like, how they operate, and adjust accordingly. But shoot, I’ve worked with clients that do a total dissection of an audience, of a leader, as they look to sell and break down everything, and it makes you adjust too much. But just knowing that if they’re an introvert, they may not want to be super gregarious or big and talk. So you may want to lower it down a little bit based on them. Again, know your audience. That’s critical as you create messages, that’s one thing people don’t do well enough is really dissect their audience, really know them well enough. We can always do more, and just adjust to them. But in a network setting, you can overwhelm someone for sure by being too big, too much. You don’t want to not be yourself. And that’s a big thing where a lot of people think we’re trying to create robots at Decker. No, just bring out your personal self, adjust it accordingly. There are times you’ve got to turn up and turn down different things.

And Ben, with what you just said there and thinking about some of our conversation—say we have someone that maybe feels like they’re an introvert, or I’ll even probably take it a step further and say, maybe they struggle with self-doubt, or what we call the imposter syndrome of “My gosh, if I’m talking to someone that has 25 more years of experience than I do, how can I bring value?” So they just won’t speak up or they’ll hold in their thoughts.

Or maybe they’re in another scenario, similar but different. You mentioned in a meeting with a team, and maybe they’re only a couple of years into their career and everyone else in the room is 20-25 years in, and so they feel like, “Gosh, what value can I bring to this?” So they will not communicate or they’ll just hold it in. What advice do you have for someone that may be feeling that self-doubt and so they’re holding back on some of their thoughts or some of the value that they could bring, you know, in that team setting or to others that they meet?

You know, the interesting thing is self-doubt and imposter syndrome happens to almost everybody and you don’t realize that, you just assume it’s just you. I’m working with a leader right now developing a commencement speech, and she’s going to address self-doubt and imposter syndrome. And she’s a woman that runs a huge organization that’s fairly well-known, just to make it more real. Part of the challenge is that we can forget the value we bring. I’ll tie it into a quick story. I’m almost 50 years old. When I did my first one-on-one coaching, what I do, was about 20 years ago, with a gentleman from, I can say, Cisco Systems, who ran a huge part of the business. The person was in their fifties, I was very intimidated, I had a lot of self-doubt. They had every degree, literally Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and one other Ivy League, no joke, whether it be a JD, their law degree, MBA, etc. I was very intimidated. I had a lot of self-doubt. Who am I to work with this person?

Bottom line, they weren’t a great communicator, and I brought value to that person. The person’s boss’s boss said, “You transformed this person.” Oh my gosh. Now, that reminded me of the value I or we can bring just by helping them become more aware of what they’re doing and ways to fix it. We can forget certain values that we bring. So whether it be other people reminding you, whether it be finding your lane, whether it be realizing the gaps, that goes back to being listener-focused. When you stay listener-focused and you realize, “Oh, they don’t have this. Oh, they need this. They don’t realize that they don’t have it,” whatever it is, that gives you confidence. That helps address the doubt. And then it goes into how you communicate it.

My favorite tip in communications is “Audience only gets what you give them.” I’ll say it again: “Audience only gets what you give them.” So Heath, tie that in a couple of ways. What if I got one hour of sleep last night? What if I don’t want to be here on this podcast with you? Do you know? Do you need to know? Do your listeners need to know? No. And none of that’s true, but I can disguise it with my energy, with how I talk. Same thing when I finish—I might think, “Shoot, that was terrible. I should’ve said this. I needed to do that.” Well, do they know? Do any of your listeners, do you know? No, you don’t. So “Audience only gets what you give them” helps address that doubt. It helps address like, I lost my place. I don’t know what I’m talking about. You don’t need to show it. So I’m not just talking about covering, but it helps that doubt of making sure every communication experience is pretty good.

Ben, I love that. I wrote that down. I may have to use that if you don’t mind at some points. I think, like the term “sales” in public accounting sometimes has a very negative connotation to it. But the way I kind of phrase it is, if you know you bring value to your clients, and you’re making a difference in your client base, it’s your role as an advisor, there are other people out there that can benefit from that, and they don’t know that if you can’t talk to them about it. So I love that thought process of maybe sometimes we underestimate our own value and the difference we can make with clients.

Ben, something else that I see a lot of in our profession. We’ll say the profession of “nice.” I’m so lucky. We have so many great professionals. They truly care. They’re truly passionate about what they do, but sometimes struggle to have the hard conversations—maybe we’re afraid we’re going to hurt someone’s feelings, that’s on our team or maybe a client that we work with. So sometimes we’ll avoid the hard conversations. And so in those settings, Ben, sometimes emotions can be high. Something you shared when I had the opportunity to hear you speak was about nonverbal communication. Can you talk a little bit about, in those situations, how our nonverbal… I guess, let me ask it this way, Ben: What percentage of communication happens nonverbally? Because that stat was pretty impressive to me.

Well, you know, we’re coming into a political season. We’re going to watch debates, I think. Let’s see if there’s debates. But anyways, we’re coming into a political season. Oftentimes what happens is my friends or people I know will ask me, “Hey, Ben, what did you think of that?” And I turn around to them and say, “Well, what did you think?” And what I’m sharing with you, Heath, is I see the same things you see. The only difference is I’m thinking, “How can I fix it?”

So when you bring up nonverbals, you and I see the same thing—whether it be someone’s too serious and they’re talking about something positive, whether it be they’re giving an inconsistent message. So what you’re bringing up is what we talked about with the three V’s: verbal, vocal, visual. It’s really everything happening in a communication experience. Here we are on a video call, so you can see me. So there’s visual included. I would say a video call and in-person tie into all three of those. They’re all happening. Now, on the phone, there’s no visual. So I won’t tie that in now. But we ask people, “What do you think counts most in communications?” And everyone thinks differently on it. Some people think the words, the verbal, like if there’s closed captioning, what I’m saying, that’s the most important. Some people think the voice, vocal, the sound of my voice, and then some think visual, what they see of someone.

Then what we do is we do an exercise to show them the power of visual. They realize that we do follow the visual, the power of the visual. The numbers are specifically verbal is 7 percent, vocal is… I think it’s 37-38 percent, and then visual is 55 percent. Change the math. I’m not great at math. I studied psychology, I think your listeners—

Our audience are accountants. They may correct everything you just said.

They sure did. And so I apologize to your audience, but they could do the numbers correctly. But you get the gist of it. Now, those numbers aren’t from us, they’re 30 years old from Albert Mehrabian, a professor at UCLA. He wrote a book called Silent Messages, and it’s really based on an inconsistent message, meaning when I am inconsistent, what will you believe? The studies show that if I’m inconsistent, you’ll believe what you see most when it comes to trust and believability. Meaning if I’m saying “I’m excited to be here, I can’t wait to talk to you and have this session,” but I say it with a serious face and I say it with a monotone and I look away, “I can’t wait to be here. I’m really excited.” The question is, what will you believe? You’ll believe what you see. Secondly, what you hear. Lastly, the words that I say.

My point, tied into an inconsistent message and this challenge of showing you care or showing your heart—most business communications, most communications are inconsistent in the work we do. We’re just honestly, you know, in addition to the backyard barbecue, all we’re trying to do is make you consistent. If you’re consistent, we have no role, we have no job. Chapter 2 of our book, I think we called it, “Business Communication Sucks,” because it’s inconsistent. We say one thing, but sound and look a different way. So we’re just trying to be more consistent.

And that ties into harsh feedback. If you want to show you care, there’s a great book by Kim Scott called Radical Candor. I recommend everyone read it. Many of my clients commit to it. But it’s the idea, and they share a good story that I think gets to the gist of it. It’s a Sheryl Sandberg story when she was at Facebook. She might’ve been at Google, I forget. But basically, she had a team member that used too many fillers, and she said she gave them feedback. “Heads up. You use too many fillers, and it affects how you come across.” “Alright. I get it. Okay.” And she had to come over the top and say, “No, you don’t get it. You don’t sound smart. It takes away your credibility. I’m worried about you.” There’s a sense of care that came in. Now that’s radical candor. The employee felt the care, felt wanting them to be better. “This is for you, not for me.” That’s radical candor. So that ties into showing how you feel. That’s a consistent message.

Ben, it’s funny you mention that. I pointed to it right here behind me. I actually have that book on my stand here. It is a great book. Something you said there that I think is critically important. You talked about the person receiving the feedback. If someone knows or they go into a situation where they are getting the kind of feedback that maybe they didn’t want to hear, what guidance would you have for them just to help create a win-win scenario? Because sometimes, let me just share it this way, Ben, early on, when my coach was giving me that kind of feedback, I immediately went up to a wall and would start to try to justify the things that I did. And it was absolutely not receiving the feedback, and it actually probably killed the conversation instead of encouraging that kind of conversation. So what guidance would you have to those that are receiving that kind of feedback to help them be more successful?

Don’t forget the why. I think what we do as communicators or as those giving the harsh feedback, we forget to give them the why, and the why is really showing you care. Otherwise, we’ll get tackled. “Heath, you’re doing this wrong. You can’t be doing this. You’ve got to fix that.” Now there’s no why in that. “Heath, if you fix this, we’re going to be able to get you to that VP level because, at that point, you’re going to have a lot more people and here’s what it’s going to look like when you get there, but this is what’s holding back. And this is what I’d love to help you get through to get you at that VP level in the next 12 months.” There’s the why. That makes you care more, that gets me showing you I’m trying to groom you and I care about you, Heath, versus “Just fix this.” And that’s where, you know, you bring up nice and a lot of people are afraid to bring up those harsh conversations, those harsh things of what to fix. So say whatever company, and add the word nice after it. That’s a common term: “Decker Nice.” We at Decker—we’re nice to people, and so we don’t give that. So name a company and then add “nice” to it, and that’s pretty consistent because people don’t want to give that feedback. But if you add the why, it changes everything.

Yeah, you have to, Ben. I think it’s nearly impossible for anyone to get better if we’re not having those kinds of conversations with each other and then receiving that kind of feedback. So, Ben, as we are close to wrapping up our time here, one thing we like to ask every guest: maybe a resource, whether that’s a book or a podcast or whatever it may be that’s really just made a significant impact on your own journey. Do you have any recommendations for our listeners?

I have a couple. I mean, with the podcasts that you can sign up for, everyone is different. A lot of people take walks and drive a car and listen to podcasts. I’m not at that point yet, but I have many peers and clients that do that, which I think is awesome. I tie up to Twitter and X like feeds, little morsels of wisdom. I find inspiration. So if you can find that, do that, sign up for that, find ways that it fills you up, that it comes to you. Because a lot of times we don’t go to it. But from a super biased perspective, Bert, who’s my father—I call him Bert—we’ve been in business for 20 years, Bert Decker wrote a book. Youve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. I think it’s a classic as far as so much of what you and I have talked about, he says, hHow to communicate, how important is it? And it’s basically, think about your accountants, CPA firms, and advisors, you’ve got to be believed to be heard. Think about what they say to clients, what it means for their finances to tweak. You’ve got to be believed to be heard. So that means they’ve got to think about their communications to be heard. Everything we’re talking about matters to them.

An additional one is—I’m a huge fan, I mentioned this earlier, of Chip and Dan Heath. They wrote a great bestseller, which is one of the best messaging books I think of, Made to Stick. It’s even memorable in how it looks, it’s orange with duct tape across. We partnered years ago with them and created a Decker “Made to Stick” messaging program because they liked our grid and we love their success principles. They’ve written books on Switch, Upstream, thinking about business, change management, how to fix problems. I think they have a great way to get people to think. Malcolm Gladwell books, those are things that are my go-tos.

Very good, Ben. Well, as we wrap up here with our time, if someone wanted to reach you, what would be the best way to do that?

Well, I don’t know. Our website, Decker.com. I’m not afraid of people. Shout out to me, I’ll give them—I think my email is somewhere on our website, Ben@Decker.com. It’s not that crazy hard to figure out, but I think people can get better in communications and finding a way to keep it as an intentional thing because, Bert used to put this at the bottom of his email: “The effectiveness of your communications determines the effectiveness of your life.” And you started out talking about that. I think that’s really validating. You brought up Little League and kids. It’s true. It goes into board meetings. It goes into spouses. It goes into so many things that we operate on a daily basis, and it’s not just presentation skills or soft skills. These are mandatory. We have to apply them to our world and everything we do. So just our website, explore and figure out what you need. Read the book, just stay in the process of getting better. That’s what it’s about.

Very good, Ben. Well, I love that you said the process of getting better, because I don’t think any of us can probably ever be perfect at communicating. So it is a process, and we continue to learn and continue to improve. So Ben, I greatly appreciate the time you’ve invested today. I continue to learn every time I talk to you, so I’m grateful for that, and Ben, I look forward to our next conversation at some point. Thank you to our listeners. We’ll talk to you soon.

Thank you for having me.

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