Today, we dive into the essential role of communication in leadership with our guest, Michael Delisser. Michael shares his insights on how many executives falter due to poor communication skills, especially as they rise in their careers. He emphasizes that as leaders, our success increasingly hinges on our ability to connect and communicate effectively with our teams. We’ll explore practical tips for enhancing communication skills, including the importance of self-awareness and leveraging technology responsibly. Join us as we unpack these valuable lessons and discover how to foster stronger relationships in our professional lives. Unstoppable Success delves into the intricate dynamics of effective leadership and communication, featuring Michael Delisser, a seasoned consultant and author of "Leadership Acceleration." Michael shares his unique journey into the world of leadership, which began in his teenage years, observing his father coach Fortune 100 executives. This early exposure to high-stakes corporate environments highlighted the crucial connection between communication skills and career success. Through engaging anecdotes, he emphasizes how many leaders fail to recognize that their technical expertise alone cannot sustain their careers; they must also cultivate robust interpersonal skills to inspire and motivate their teams. As Michael points out, the failure to address communication shortcomings can lead to career derailment, making it imperative for leaders to actively work on their skills. The conversation shifts to the modern challenges of communication in an increasingly digital world. Michael argues that reliance on technology has eroded essential face-to-face communication skills, resulting in a generation less prepared for difficult conversations. He critiques the trend of using AI in communication, warning that while it can offer convenience, it risks compromising authenticity and emotional connection. Both speakers reflect on the importance of practicing difficult conversations to build meaningful relationships in the workplace, asserting that true leadership requires vulnerability and a willingness to engage with others on a personal level. As the discussion unfolds, Michael provides practical tips for enhancing communication skills, starting with self-awareness and understanding one's strengths and weaknesses. He encourages listeners to embrace AI technology responsibly while ensuring it complements, rather than replaces, genuine human interaction. Ultimately, the episode serves as a reminder that effective leadership hinges on the ability to connect with others, fostering an environment where open dialogue and constructive feedback can thrive. Michael's insights offer a roadmap for aspiring leaders seeking to navigate the complexities of modern communication, emphasizing that personal growth and relationship-building are at the heart of unstoppable success.

Takeaways:

1. Effective leadership hinges on strong communication skills; neglecting them can derail careers.
2. Self-awareness is crucial for leaders; understanding your strengths and weaknesses is key.
3. Utilizing AI responsibly can enhance communication, but personal interaction remains irreplaceable.
4. Feedback is a gift; seek honest input from others to truly improve your self-awareness.
5. Connecting team roles to a greater purpose boosts motivation and engagement significantly.
6. Incorporate diverse perspectives when developing ideas to strengthen and enhance them effectively.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. delisserconsulting.com
2. delisser.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Daylisser Leadership Consulting
2. University of Utah
3. Fortune 100
4. Amazon
5. YouTube
6. LinkedIn

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Success where we hear from amazing leaders and their game changing insights on leadership on business and how we can all have unstoppable success.

And today I have the great pleasure of introducing you to Michael Delisser.

He is of Daylisser L Leadership Consulting.

He has a great experience.

You actually are certified with flow, right.

And you have been a couple of degrees, one a master in communication.

You're from the University of Utah, great experience, has been in a lot of different places and he has just recently come out with a book called Leadership Acceleration.

And so Michael, talk to us and welcome to Unstoppable Success.

Talk to us about leadership and how you got here.

Well, how I got here was an interesting story.

It started when I was a teenager actually.

My dad did executive outplacement coaching with Fortune 100 executives who've been fired.

And so I got to sit in on these coaching sessions and he had prearranged, you know, let his 15 year old son to sit in.

And you know, I wasn't much of a threat to these high powered executives.

What not to do.

Yeah.

So I got to sit in and watch him coaching them.

And my father's role in helping these executives have been fired was to help them find new careers.

And part of doing that was helping them work on the things that got them fired in the first place.

And the biggest thing that really kind of woke up in me a passion was watching these very senior leaders that had most all of them have been fired based on ineffective communication skills.

So they had made mistakes, some regard, whether it's emotional outbursts in a meeting or an ineffective presentation or saying the wrong thing in a meeting or just ineffectively being able to motivate others.

But there was a consistent pattern that all these high level executives had been promoted based on their technical skills up the ladder to the point that their communication skills caught up with them.

And you know, the higher you get in an organization, the more dependent your success becomes on your communication skills because you're no longer doing the technical work.

You have people that work for you that are doing the technical work and your job is to motivate them and get results out of them.

So that was the first learning for me that, you know, if you don't really work on developing your communication skills, sooner or later they're going to come back to bite you and hurt your career.

So all of these executives that seemed unstoppable ended up being very stoppable because they didn't continue to develop their communication skills.

Okay, so lots of different questions, but.

But I'm really curious what your take is right now, because so much of what we have going on, right, is, is like the, you know, 130 characters.

People forget actually that this is actually a phone I'm holding up.

For those of you that are watching this, it's actually, I'm holding up my, my, my cell phone.

This is actually a phone that you can actually put to your ear and actually talk, you know, and communication seems to be.

Hurting.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of contributors to that.

Right.

I mean, so I would argue that today the situation is much worse than it was over 30 years ago when I was watching my dad.

Because now what you have happening is an entire generation of people that grew up communicating on their phones as opposed to face to face face, Right.

And so how many times have we seen two people in the same room texting each other?

How many times has someone broken up with someone by phone and using a text instead of having the hard conversations?

So I think what happens is with technology becoming more and more of part of how we communicate, people are getting less practice at the difficult conversations, less opportunities to develop their skills in the moments that matter, and being able to communicate in those conversations that are really important.

And as a result of that and AI, so now people are starting to use AI to communicate, to help their communication in some regards.

But AI creates an authenticity issue when your emails or your texts that you're writing using AI are not actually sounding like who you are as a person.

The minute that other people realize you're using AI to communicate with them, then you lose your credibility with them as well.

So there's so many things that are really hurting people's ability to really develop those skills that really matter in the moments where they need to be personal and come across as someone who cares and someone who really wants to strengthen a relationship.

And those are the things that people are hurting in the most.

And I think a lot of it has to do is they just don't have as much practice because technology is, in a sense, we've become complacent in building our skills because we're too reliant on technology.

Right?

Yeah, I so agree.

There's, there's so many times.

And you just, you know, you just don't want to have that hard conversation.

And, you know, part of you, it's like the cop out, right?

To cop out, to just shoot, you know, send the message.

Right.

Versus actually speak it.

Because there's emotion that comes out with that.

Right?

Yeah.

We have a tendency to use the path of least resistance.

Right.

Whichever's easiest in the moment.

And that's not necessarily what's easiest, isn't going to be what's going to be best for developing relationships with your peers with your direct reports.

I mean, the easy way out is sometimes going to actually hurt your credibility and hurt your relationship.

So.

Right, right.

So now that we've got, you know, like, you know, where we are today, like, what are those, like, top five tips that you would say to somebody listening to this that like, could hone in and help their.

Help their communication so that they can become the good great leader?

Well, it all starts with self awareness.

You have to know what your strengths are and where your limitations are.

And if you know those, you can leverage your strengths and you can minimize or work around your limitations.

So number one is always self awareness.

Number two, surprisingly, would be learn to use AI to communicate, but use it responsibly.

In other words, there was a great quote, and I can't remember the name of the Harvard professor.

He basically said, AI will not replace us, but people using AI will replace people who are not using AI.

Right.

So you have to learn to use it, but you also have to know that in the moments that matter, those times where you have to strengthen a relationship, convey that you care, help someone become more motivated, all of those situations that really do require our ability to demonstrate emotional intelligence and our ability to communicate well, those are the skills that you really have to work on.

And those are the ones that you need to have self awareness on so you can identify what are the few habits you have that may be hurting trust and hurting relationships.

And how can you turn those into habits that are going to help you enhance relationships and build stronger ones?

So those are some of the top things that come to mind.

I could probably rattle off a few more.

But it's about self awareness.

And then once you have self awareness, can you become good at catching yourself in the moment where you're doing something that's ineffective and replacing it with something that's more effective?

And so challenge number one is knowing what you do.

Challenge number two is getting good at catching yourself.

And then challenge number three is having an alternative behavior that you can use that'll be more effective.

So in the moment you catch yourself, you can find a way to respond in a different way than you normally would that'll be more beneficial for the relationship or that moment in time.

So, you know, so I think I so agree with you, like self aware and leveraging our strength is so important.

But I'm curious, like, how would you help somebody become more self aware?

The most important thing is getting feedback from people around you that really know you and have seen the way that you communicate or how you come across.

There's a really interesting set of.

There's research in the book that I, that I just wrote, which is from Tasha, and I can't think of her last name, but this particular social psychologist says that, you know, 95% of people think they're self aware, but really 10 to 15% of them actually are.

And so number one is acknowledging that most of us are not as self aware as we think we are.

But number two is asking for feedback continuously and constantly and doing it in a way that makes people feel safe giving you that feedback.

Because there's a difference between self perception and self awareness.

Self perception is what I think I know about myself, and self awareness is when other people give us feedback that help reinforce that what I know about myself is actually accurate.

Right.

And so true self awareness really only comes through getting feedback from others.

I mean, sometimes it can come from watching yourself communicate if you have the opportunity to record yourself or things like that.

But if you don't develop that self awareness, if you're not constantly looking for it and hungry to learn from it.

Right.

All feedback is a gift if you use it to improve your ability to communicate with others or your ability to be effective in your roles.

So regardless of how it's said, if you can get to the point where I'm an objective observer, just listening to this feedback and I'm going to figure out how I can use it to improve.

Those are the most important things, is constantly asking for it, creating a safe environment for other people to give it, and really going to the people that you communicate with the most because they're the ones that will.

They're the ones that will be most likely to help you increase that self awareness.

Very true.

And I think you also.

Would you not agree that you also have to ask them to be brutally honest?

Like, don't sugarcoat.

Right.

Like, don't sugarcoat.

It's not going to hurt my feelings.

Yeah.

And, and that's.

It's another piece that I go into in the book about personality types and how if we are more of a people person, sometimes we don't say what we're thinking because we don't want to hurt the other person's feelings.

So you have to, as a person asking for feedback, say, look, you actually would be hurting me by not being honest with me.

I need to know so I can improve.

So I'm asking you to be direct, deliberate.

Don't worry about how it comes out.

Just, just blurt it out and say what you're thinking, because that's what's going to help me the most.

And then the other side of that is no matter how it gets blurted out, you have to respond positively or you'll never get feedback from that person again.

Up.

You know, I was listening, you know, Hidden Potentials by, you know, Adam Grant and he's got, he talks about like, you know, he, he, he started off, he was like a horrible presenter and speaker and people used to sugarcoat what his response was until he kind of flipped the switch and how he was asking for the feedback.

So, you know, it's so important to get that feedback and to hear from others and to, you know, as we always like to say, like what that constructive criticism, it's constructive.

You got to take it, you got to do something with it.

Yeah.

I actually had a professor in college that kind of forced me into self awareness in an uncomfortable way.

I was given a presentation and two minutes into the presentation, he literally stopped me in front of 30 other students, said, michael, I need to give you feedback.

You're using way too much filler speech.

You're saying and ah.

And it's literally making it hard for me to hear your messaging.

So for the rest of your presentation, I'm going to raise my hand every time you say um or ah, just to help you become more self aware.

And of course him saying that to me now for the first time, every time I saw his hand go up, I started realizing just how horribly bad I was at the filler speech.

And that made me even worse.

And a couple minutes later he stopped me again and said, okay, now you're focusing on it too much, so I won't do it anymore.

But I had this humiliating experience in front of all these students and I did not want to go back to that class and I had to give three more presentations in front of them.

So it really motivated me, that bad experience really motivated me to improve.

And by the end of the course, I had really made some progress on it.

And I learned over time that, that the habits we have when we present typically come out in regular conversations.

So you can work on reducing your filler speech by actually working on it in a one on one conversation and then it'll Translate into your work 1.

But long story short, it's great to get feedback in a nice environment.

Sometimes it's that harder experience that causes you to be motivated to want to change.

Either way, as long as you're open to learning from it and not being caught up in how bad the experience was.

Like I said, every experience you have can be used to improve your effectiveness with others and your relationships with others if you can get by the experience itself and focus on what you can learn from it.

Yeah, no, it's so true that.

Well, key thing is learning from the experience is so important.

It's.

That is so true.

And I, I would actually say if anybody listening and, and, or watching this on YouTube, if you have the chance to watch yourself and record how you speak or in your giving a presentation, I highly recommend it.

It's painful.

Like I know myself.

Like I hate listening or watching myself speak because, you know, that cringy feeling that we always get when we watch ourselves.

At least I do.

But do it because you'll.

The feedback, you'll see yourself.

Yeah, it's an absolute requirement.

When I, when I coach someone or I teach presentation skills or persuasion skills, I require them to do a recording of themselves and, and I go over it with them.

You know, it's part of my coaching at all times.

I do it with executives.

I did it for 12 years, as, you know, teaching MBA students.

I mean, for.

But no matter who I'm working with, whether it's sales teams or executives, I require them to see themselves because I can give them feedback.

I can say you said 50 times.

But when they see it and they see the impact of it, something turns on in the brain and it's uncomfortable to watch.

Nobody wants to watch themselves present, you know, but if you don't do it, you may be missing out on the opportunity to really see yourself as others do.

And that is probably the biggest learning.

I mean, I could tell you anything about what to do, but when you see yourself doing it, you will have a bigger, better outcome of it than just hearing me talk about it.

Yeah, it's so true.

So let's talk a little bit about your book and leadership and acceleration.

Because, you know, I think it's, it's from listening to you on a different podcast.

You shared that there are activities and action items for people to work on throughout the book.

And I'm curious, you know, leadership.

You know, one of the things that I say about leadership all the time is that we, and as you shared, we have to be self aware and we also have to know our own values.

Yeah.

So what are some of the key things that you would tell somebody right now if they want to be a better leader?

What, you know, what are the top three things that they should do besides grabbing your book?

Well, I mean, I think in general, people need to have a clear vision and idea of who they are as a leader.

If you don't know, a lot of people get thrown into leadership roles and they don't stop to think, what kind of leader am I going to be?

They just start leading, you know, and so number one is being clear on what are your values?

You know, what are the things that you want to convey?

What are the leadership practices that you believe in most deeply and what represents how you want to make people feel and what you want your legacy to be with others?

Is it developing people?

Is it helping people grow?

There's all sorts of things that motivate us to want to be leaders, but you have to be clear on that.

And I do this now in leadership programs where before I do anything else, I say, figure out what your purpose is, what are the things that motivate you and what type of leader you are.

Because in those moments that matter, when you are needing to make a key decision, you want your values and your purpose and your mission kind of be driving how you make the decision as opposed to just making a decision.

Right?

So to be authentic to yourself, you have to know what kind of leader you want to be.

That's definitely number one.

The second one is be that person that you are.

Right?

And a lot of times people think, oh, I need to be a motivational speaker or I need to do this.

No, you don't.

You need to be who you are and you need to convey who you are authentically.

Not trying to be like someone else, being who you are.

Just work on how you convey messages in a way that speak to your audience's needs.

And whether it's one on one or in front of a group or.

The biggest mistake I see people do is they speak to others from a standpoint of here's what I want.

And they don't stop and customize their message to say, here's how what I want can help you personally or help our customers or help something else.

So your ability to really make it you messaging and us messaging as opposed to me messaging, that's another big mistake people make as well.

And finally, you have to care about developing people and care about them as people and recognize that if you really want to get the most out of your teams, you have to find a way to make them want to follow you and want to.

And a lot of that has to do with helping them understand how their jobs connect to purpose.

Right.

So when you look at the research out there, like 85% of executives say I can live my purpose in my role and only about 15% of non executives say I can live my purpose and my role.

And so if you don't take the time to connect the dots and say in this role that you do, here's how you impact the bottom line, here's how you help our customers.

And one way or another, every role in the company has an impact.

And so if you can help them connect the dots, they'll feel more purpose, they'll feel more excited, they'll give more discretionary effort.

Yeah, that is so true.

Like finding that purpose.

And you know, something that just that, that really resonates with me in this.

And you shared it says, you know, it's not about what you want, it's what, what do, what do the other people want.

And I think it's really important listeners.

To.

Take this to heart where you can find what your team members want individually and then relate it back to the purpose both of the company so that they feel the personal drive for it because they want it.

And it connects back as you shared might go back to the purpose of the company.

And when you tie those together and the team source.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's, and that's.

It is a big shortcoming because a lot of times when we're thinking, when we're present, let's say you're presenting an idea to a senior leadership team and you're even presenting your idea and you're saying, hey, here's my idea and here's what it can do.

But they don't take the time to sell the problem that the idea actually solves.

Then basically you're just pitching an idea without giving them the pain.

You know, when people feel the pain, they want a solution.

But if you just give a solution and don't feel the pain, there's not a motivation on them to act.

So part of the messaging is presenting the message in a way that conveys a pain or a gain that is relatable and wanted by your audience, not what you know, this is impacting my department, great.

But here's how it's impacting the customer and here's how it's going to impact the rest of the organization.

Here's how it's going to help our future.

If you do all of those things, you know, selling them on the pain And.

Or the gain of eliminating pain or potential future possibility.

That's when you start to really have people want to hear your ideas and actually adopt them.

And something that you just said, I think is really important.

I just really want to bring this out.

It's it.

You said if somebody shared, you know, here's my idea, take it away from you.

Right?

I mean, in some ways, like, let's take us out of it.

Not that I, you know, we know that you may have been coming up with this, but if you present it as the global.

Yeah, well, and I'll take it a step further.

The minute you say it's my idea, you're limiting your ability for that idea to be effective.

I can tell you in.

In 25 years of teaching and presenting, I've never once created a training session in isolation that was as good as a training session that I developed with the input of people that think differently from me.

So the minute you're thinking, you know, it's ego that drives us.

It's like, ooh, I have an idea.

I want everyone to know my idea.

Now, what you should probably do is take your idea, share it with four other people, integrate their ideas, make it a stronger idea, then present it even better.

If you integrate people from your audience, they're now invested in saying yes because you got them involved in the process.

Our ability to make sure that we are always thinking about getting others that think differently from us to poke holes in our ideas, it'll always end up improving our ideas because we all have blinders to some degree.

And the degree to which we incorporate people that think differently is going to improve it.

My book, I'm not an organized or structured person, but my book, when I was getting reviewers, I got a number of reviewers, and I deliberately went after people that were very structured and very results driven because those are the two areas that I wasn't strongest in.

And the feedback they gave me made that book so much better because they were able to see things that I wasn't, and I was able to incorporate that and make it stronger.

That's it.

I love that.

I absolutely love that.

Absolutely love that.

And.

And being able to get that feedback is so important.

And when you're getting that collective buy in from people, right.

It.

It just makes everybody bubble up more and then everybody.

You know, as you said, it's like you're going to get people in your audience who want to say yes to something and that are excited about it.

And if you're running a team, the more people on the team that can have input in it, they're going to be so excited because they feel a sense of value and worth that they were part of the process.

Yeah.

And I've done that with like before presenting to a CEO, I went to almost all of his direct reports and got their buy in and thoughts on it.

And then by the time I went to them, I said, yeah, I've run this by your entire team.

They gave me a number of ideas to make it better and all.

And by the time I even got to the idea, the CEOs already more interested because his whole team had gotten input into it.

Right.

And so it becomes a collective idea as opposed to the training guy coming with an idea, you know?

Right, right.

So you know, Michael, as you're going in and you're working with people, you know, if, if someone's like, okay, I need one thing that I can do between now and the end of the year to increase my leadership and be that unstoppable, what would it be?

Right.

So a lot of times we end up working on multiple things at one time or we just work on something because someone give us feedback on it.

But you have to stop and say, is working on that going to have enough impact to make it worthwhile for the time I'm putting into it?

So what I always do when I work with people is I narrow it down to the one or two things they believe are the biggest impact ideas that if they implemented would cause them to improve.

And you start with that.

Right.

You start with the one or the two.

So you want to make sure you're picking the high value items and really focusing on what's going to make the biggest difference.

And then from there it varies based on what you chose.

Right.

So for one person it might be, hey, I need to stop cutting people off and being a better listener for someone else.

It might be, I need to control my emotional reactions, you know, or.

But you got to pick the one thing that's going to have the biggest impact because otherwise you could spend a lot of effort and only have a little bit of an impact.

Yeah, I love that.

I Absolutely love that.

All right, so listeners, you got to do me a favor and I could talk to Michael all day about this because it is so important.

Leadership is to me the crux of how we run ourselves and how we run companies.

We first also have to start with being the leader of ourselves.

So do me a favor and connect with Michael.

How can our listeners connect with you the best?

Well, if they can find me on LinkedIn, that's where I post regularly.

I put up articles, I put up snippets.

I also have a YouTube page that is just snippets from different podcasts and things that I've been on that give you just one or two things to focus on.

Right.

And so the YouTube page is if you just look for deliser consulting, delisir is spelled D E L I S S E R and D L Eser Consulting on YouTube.

And you'll find my YouTube page.

You can go to my website, which is deliconsulting.com and out there there's a link to, to the.

The book is available on Amazon and there's a link to the book on my website.

But I.

You can learn a little bit more about the different, you know, services that I do and all.

And, and just a quick comment about the book.

You know, there's a lot of leadership books out there.

What I tried to do is do something that was going to immediately give people an opportunity to improve in whatever area they want to focus on.

So the book itself is set up where there are self assessments in almost every chapter.

So if you're having trouble focusing or you're doing a lot of multitasking, there's a self assessment there and then there's specific actions you can take to improve in that ability and then ways you can apply it on the job.

And so what I did throughout the book, it's almost like a self directed guide on how to improve your leadership effectiveness.

And it all starts with doing a self assessment, raising your awareness, giving your alternative behaviors, and then helping you figure out how to apply those behaviors in the moments of matter.

And so it's set up as that kind of a guide.

And if you want to find that book, it's on Amazon.

It's called Leadership Accelerators with an S on the end.

Or you could just click on my website and they're right on the front page.

There's a link to the book and then again that is delisirconsulting.com so it's D E L I sser.com you could just do delisser.com as well.

So awesome.

So listeners, do me the favor and connect with Michael.

I will have a link also to the book in the Show Notes and a link to his website and LinkedIn all the social.

So you will be easily able to just go to the Show Notes and grab all those things.

So do me the favor and make sure that you do.

And also, please do me the other favor listeners, and hit subscribe and share this podcast with other business associates and colleagues.

Because leadership is again, the crux to being the most unstoppable person you can be.

And it all starts with you.

So thank you all for listening.

I'm Jacqueline Schrer, your host of Unstoppable Success.

Thank you, Michael, for being an amazing guest, and thank you listeners for listening.

Thanks for having me.