Connect with your audience

- The first time I remember going on an interview, I was 16 years old. Now, you should know I was not your typical high school student because my idea of a fun summer experience was interning at a modeling agency. While the interview was over half a lifetime ago, I can still remember how I communicated all the reasons I thought I would be an asset to the agency. And I did this in about 30 seconds. I'm a straight A student, president of my Key Club. I started my high school newspaper, and my parents tell me I should be an engineer just like my grandpa because I arrive 20 to 30 minutes early to everything. (exhales) You get the gist. All these years later, I can still remember how exhausted and gross I felt after my interview because I'd made it about me, rather than the agency I wanted to work for. Fortunately, the agency director loved the idea of free summer help, so I still got the internship, but I never opened a persuasive case that way again. Have you ever botched important communication by failing to first connect with the person or people you were seeking to influence? When we want to move people to action, whether it's to hire us, promote us, or anything else, it's vital that we warm people up and avoid bulldozing right into what we want them to do. Instead, we first want to establish credibility, likeability, and trust with any audience. When we are credible, we show through our communication that we have the education and/or experience to inform what we are recommending. I intentionally use the word show versus the word tell. In order to create credibility, consider how you can give examples that paint a picture of your background. If I could time travel back to my internship interview, rather than open with my accomplishments, which came across as bragging, I could've discussed how serving in a leadership role gave me the opportunity to flex my time management muscles, a skill that would equip me with assisting the agency to manage multiple client accounts. In pursuit of credibility, we don't ever want to present ourselves as a know-it-all or as someone entitled to other people's attention and consideration. These are instant turn-offs. When we think about how to begin communication that calls people to action, we want to consider how to open with verbal and nonverbal communication that immediately presents us as someone who is kind, compassionate, and easy to get along with. While people don't have to like us to take action on our ideas, when they do, it definitely helps. To showcase ourselves as trustworthy, we want to use communication that demonstrates to people that they can feel safe acting on our recommendations. We want them to feel and believe that we have their best interests at heart. One way that works well is to begin by acknowledging what we know is important to people and that what we will be sharing takes this into account. However we choose to begin communication that is designed to move people to take action, the key is that we neither dive right into listing all of our accomplishments, nor do we go straight into what we are asking for people to do. We want to ask ourselves the important question, how can I ensure that the way I start my communication makes it easy for the person or people I'm speaking with to connect with me? Credibility, likeability, and trust come from putting relationships first in our communication and showing people that we are worthy of their attention and consideration.