Communication: Part 4

This is part four in a series on communication. You may want to take a look at Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 before you continue.

Listen to the five-minute Communication: Part 4 audio program from Coach’s Corner. 

I had the distinct privilege (and misfortune) to play high school basketball against Magic Johnson, so I followed his career pretty closely through college and the NBA.

In my last post I shared that I once heard  Magic Johnson say he felt 100 percent responsible for the success of every pass he threw. If he threw a great pass but the receiver muffed it, he felt 100 percent responsible for the failure. Wow. Tough, but great if you really care about the transaction!

Communication: Part 3

This is part three in a series on communication. You may want to take a look at Part 1 and Part 2 before you continue.

Listen to the five-minute Communication: Part 3 audio program from Coach’s Corner. 

Here’s a quick exercise for you: Spell the word top three times really fast.  No, really… do it!  Either out loud or in your mind. Top, three times, really fast.

t.o.p. – t.o.p. – t.o.p.

Then spell it backwards three times really fast.

p.o.t – p.o.t. – p.o.t.

Then tell me really quick, “What do you do when you come to a green light?”

Communication: Part 2

This is part two in a series on communication. You may want to take a look at Part 1.

Listen to the five-minute Communication: Part 2 audio program from Coach’s Corner. 

One of my favorite expressions is

I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions speak too loud.

If you just read part 1 in this series you may think I’m repeating the same post, but I’m not. I just like that expression and will talk about it again in this post.

Communication: Part 1

Listen to the five-minute Communication: Part 1 audio program from Coach’s Corner. 

One of my favorite expressions about communication is

I can’t hear what you’re saying because your actions are too loud.

Universities spend four years teaching communication to students majoring in communications. I’m going to attempt it in just a few blog posts. Cool challenge! Also ironic, communicating with you about communication without being able to show you my face, or see your expressions, or listen to your comments or questions. Truly a challenging form for effective communication.

In this series I’ll talk about four aspects of communication:

• What communication is
• Why it’s so important
• Why it’s so difficult
• Some of the ways it’s done well… and not so well.

Silence

Be still and know that I am God…

A key to being a good leader is being non-anxious in anxious situations. (For more on this, check out Rodger’s series on Anxiety and Leadership.) One practice that has helped me grow in this capacity is silence.

By nature I am not a silent person. I’m active, busy, always forward moving. I have trouble sitting still and trouble resting. In order to have a day of rest, I have to make it a goal to check off at the end of the day, and even then it’s hard (but the fact that it’s a goal keeps me on track – goal-oriented person that I am). On top of that, our culture doesn’t encourage silence—quite the opposite, in fact. We are spoken at and marketed to every waking minute. Many of us expect engagement and entertainment every minute of the day, even falling asleep at night to the sound of the TV.