5 Communications Tips to Transform Your Business

Susan Willett Bird shares tips on how to make conversation your most valuable business tool

We’re so hooked on technology to spread the word about our products and services we sometimes forget our most valuable tool of all is — face to face conversation. In fact, I believe it has become the world’s new luxury.

At my firm Wf360, we build narratives for companies so they can let the world know what they do in the most compelling way possible. In that work, we help companies and individuals learn to luxuriate in conversation, a skill they already have, but need to learn to use it well.

Here are some tips to improve your business communication and reach tangible results:

Be Interactive

What you say to someone may or may not stick, unless it turns into conversation, a two-way transaction. I’ve learned that in companies where people are encouraged, even required, to practice interactive conversation — innovation increases. In conversation — like intercourse, the intention is that both parties give something, and both get something. And in some cases, the result can be the creation of something new — an idea, an opinion, even a product — that didn’t exist before. It is given life by the conversation between the two people who are in some small way changed by the interaction between them. Ideas begin to take fruit when they are shared, discussed, enhanced — by people interested in exploring how the idea at hand can be improved. Their efforts to add their own expertise to the idea can take it from the drawing boards to execution.

Activate your listening Skills

It’s important to enter every conversation with “beginner’s ears” even if you feel you can predict what the other person has to say. Start with a clean slate…as if whatever you hear is new to you. You’ll find that kind of active listening means you’ll hear things you would otherwise miss. And those things could be the things you most need to hear. I recall the story a business leader told me of his being asked by a potential employer about one of his first jobs. He skipped over it lightly, thinking it was unimportant. But the employer insisted he explain in detail what his task has been. He said the employer listened carefully, so carefully he was told later — after getting the job — that the employer wanted to take a detail of what he had described and put it into use in his new role. He told me the example of the employer’s active listening changed the way he now listens to others.

Chronicle Great Conversations

Your life can be measured by conversations you’ve had, and the people with whom you had them. At the heart of every milestone in your life lies a conversation that marks it, and you remember. That chain of conversations has — ultimately — brought you to wherever you are today, in your life and your career. So make it a point to value every verbal exchange with others. I know a CEO who, at the end of his workday, chronicles the best conversations he had that day and what he learned from them.

Get conversationally promiscuous

When we’re surrounded by the chatter of texting, we’re left craving authentic connection. So jump into conversations instead. Anytime. Anywhere. Waiting in line? Put your phone away, say hello to the person next to you, and ask “How has your day gone so far…?” What you learn just may change you. Listen to podcast interviews…some are lessons in meaningful conversation. In your own work, consider holding ad hoc meetings in which one question gets asked — about anything — and every person around the table shares a different way to answer the question. The rules are clear that no answer is “right;” the point is to learn from others new perspective on subjects we think we already understand.

Turns meals into conversation fests

Your phone has no place at any table where food is served. Make every meal with others an opportunity for true exchange. You’ll walk away feeling satisfied in your heart and your head as well as your stomach.

And, maybe a new milestone.

Susan Willett Bird is an inspired communicator, an innovative connector of people and ideas, and a builder of brands. Basically, she is obsessed with the way people communicate with one another. She leads Wf360, a global consultancy she founded in 2000 to help clients apply Brandversation, a methodology that employs conversation not as a “soft skill,” but as a strategic tool that transforms business organizations into more profitable companies.

An avid TEDster (twice a TEDx Speaker) and Stanford Law school graduate, Susan is described as an “optimistic catalyst who feasts on information and business intelligence” which she puts to work engaging her clients’ constituencies, then making magic with the resulting content.