#71 - The Best Communication Resources I've Found [ft. Annie Miller]

Welcome to the Communication Mentor Podcast.

This is your host, Chris Miller.

First off, if this is your first time being here, I am so happy you're here.

And second off, the purpose of this podcast is for us to equip ourselves as better communicators so that we can grow in our careers, live a fuller life, and be more resilient to life stress.

We believe that life is better when you talk to people, and one of the best things that we can invest in is our ability to articulate our thought.

I am not alone here on the mic.

Rather, I have two dogs in the studio with me, as well as my wife, who I met at Wake Forest in the Graduate Communication Program.

It's one of my favorite things to be able to talk to my wife about communication because she is the person who I communicate to the most.

So I'm gonna quickly ask Annie a couple questions.

That way we can get into the swing of things.

The episode's going to be short, under 20 minutes, action-packed, have a little fun, and be sure to have a takeaway at the end.

So, Annie.

Yes, can I have a confession to make?

We started this episode once, and I was just not on my game.

We had two dogs that were panting.

Did you have me restart?

I had you restart.

Thank you, Chris Miller.

I love you.

You're a really great husband, a great communicator.

People used to, people, my family, they told us this, so I'm not outing them.

I actually think it's funny, too, but when we first started dating, we were talking about talking, met at communication.

So anyhow, it's just funny when you mention two talkers, two communication people.

It's good, it's good, but it's funny, because we talk about talking.

So speaking of back when we were dating, we'll go back even further and I'll ask you a time travel question.

If you could go back in time and witness any famous speech live, which would it be and why?

I'm thinking Biblical here.

I think I would want to witness Jesus speaking.

The Sermon on the Mount.

Sermon on the Mount, classic.

Talk about an OG public speaker.

That's what I'm thinking.

That's a great one.

Yeah, what about you?

I bet there's some awesome ones with Greek, Roman history.

Greek, Roman history.

But I think that the I Have a Dream speech would be incredible.

For sure.

Simply because it was so tense, and there was so much going on, and there was a moment that manifested with over 100,000 people at once.

Absolutely.

And just feeling that buzz.

Yes.

And witnessing it in person would be interesting.

Okay, so we'll move a little further.

We're gonna move to the present now, but you get to reach into the past.

You can invite three exceptional communicators from any period in history to dinner.

Who makes the guest list, and what's the first topic of conversation?

Whoa!

Wow, that's a tough one.

I feel like I need more time to think about that.

I think I'm bringing Jesus to the table.

And then I think I'm gonna bring...

Oh my goodness.

Thank you for watching.

Can I report back on that question the next time I'm on the podcast?

Sure.

Because I really want to think about that.

Are these things that you have thought about?

Do you have an answer to that one?

No, but I could come up with something.

Yeah, like I'm thinking, for you, I feel like you would definitely have Barack at the table, President Obama.

I don't think I'd have him.

You wouldn't.

I think I'd probably have George Washington.

He'd have the president, I'd have Socrates there.

Yeah.

Because he was a question asker.

Yes.

And George Washington.

And then I think it'd be fun to have someone like Muhammad Ali.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the three of them.

That would be a good trio.

And the first topic of conversation would be, what is most important about life?

Oh, okay, I love it.

See, you don't even need me tonight.

You could rock it solo.

No, I couldn't, because I wanted to talk to you a little bit about, you studied communication.

So did you, brother.

For undergrad and graduate.

And then you communicate often in your current role.

You did it, you had a Ph.D.

year.

That's so funny.

That's such a nice way of saying it.

If somebody weren't listening close enough, if I didn't just laugh out loud, they might not hear the specificity of that.

Whenever you were bachelor, master, Ph.D.

and now as a professional, has there been a certain book or resource that's resounded with you about improving your communication?

You know, one book that comes to mind, it's not about communication per se, but it really had an impact on me and emphasized the importance of relationships.

And you need communication to have good relationships.

And that's The Defining Decade.

I really loved by Meg Jay.

I really loved that book.

In fact, it was one, when Chris and I, one of our first interactions, I told you to read it and you did read it because you came back a few weeks later and you hit me with some facts from it.

I was like, whoa, you actually read it?

But that book, I really enjoyed.

And defining decade is 20s or 30s?

20s.

20s.

But I think those principles, they can be mapped onto other areas.

In fact, I think she's writing another book or she wrote another book about kind of a different decade, but the 20s are so transient for a lot of people.

And so she wrote about it in such a great, great practical, meaningful way.

And I took a lot from that as a reader about the importance of building my community wherever I was.

Yeah, so it wasn't just about like career or anything like that.

It was about relationships too.

Yeah.

What about you?

Some of the best resources of books that I have learned from are all from the Harvard Negotiation Project.

Okay, tell me about that.

They have several.

They have How to Have Difficult Conversations.

That is probably the mantle piece for me about books-wise.

I've read it a couple of times.

There's Thanks for the Feedback.

That's a good one.

Douglas Townshend-Lohan.

There is Getting to Yes.

They have several different books that I would strongly recommend.

If you are a professional, if you are a builder, an entrepreneur, a community organizer, you name it, and you want to improve your ability to articulate your thought, get those books.

Currently, Super Communicator.

I've been reading through that.

Charles Doohig?

Yeah, I've been reading through that.

And then the YouTube formula.

Daryl Eves.

I'm trying to get my YouTube game going.

But another one that I didn't really expect, but it's called Next Generation Leader by Andy Stanley.

And he goes through, he's the pastor of a pretty large church, and he talks about the power of leadership.

And one of the big tenets of leadership for him is the ability to communicate.

So he has some really good stuff in there about the power of communication.

But there are a whole bunch of books.

And I'd recommend people who are listening and who are interested and want to be able to ingest content that's going to help them grow.

Look at, go to my website, talktochrismiller.com, and click my newsletter, because I've written over 20 now.

Yeah, you've written a lot of good stuff.

20 different editions, and each of them, there may be one or two that are more ceremonial, but most of them are packed with at least a few different tidbits that could be applicable and practical.

That's called the Communication Mentor Newsletter.

Those are good recs, and it's a great newsletter.

Tune in, everybody.

What do you think trends or changes coming on the horizon regarding communication.

Or the field of communication?

Okay, I think that the low-hanging fruit answer is technology, technological changes, in that we have so many mediums that we can use to communicate.

We have in-person, we've got email, you've got the old-fashioned letter, snail mail, you've got texting, phone calls, FaceTime, Snapchat, Instagram, so many communication tools.

So I think that probably, it's been interesting to see how that has evolved even in the last 10 years, and the difference between now and then.

And thinking about my experience growing up, I think they say, I think researchers say, like, our age, you and I, Chris, around our age, is a very pivotal generation, because we remember what it was like pre-self-phone use and pre-social media, kind of, and then also the post.

So that's interesting, and there's so much research, great research happening on all of that.

But I would say that the biggest thing that I see that makes me really worried is, and I think COVID did some damage, I also think technology is a part of it.

It's a very complicated puzzle, but I think in-person communication is really suffering.

Interpersonal, real-time, small talk makes me really sad.

Yeah, but there's lots of ways we can improve that, so I don't feel hopeless, but I have observed it.

I agree with you.

And it reminds me of something that I was writing about.

The newsletter that I had sent out this week was about the four beliefs causing self-sabotage.

And if you listened to the episode previously, then you got to hear about those in detail.

But one of the main self-sabotaging beliefs is that we believe everyone's watching us.

It's called the spotlight effect.

We actually think more people are looking at us.

But really, what I wrote was, if only we had attention and retention spans that long, so our ability to maintain attention and then our ability to retain information.

Rather, our world is a dopamine coliseum, a bloodbath where we are bombarded by distraction.

Despite our biggest wishes or fears, the general public isn't paying any special attention to you because we're all pretty preoccupied.

Yep.

And...

That tracks.

That hurts the in-person.

So, Neuralink got implanted in that person.

And that could be something coming down the pipeline regarding communication.

Neuralink?

Neuralink, are you familiar with that?

That got implanted in someone?

Elon Musk.

Oh.

It's a neural chip, computer chip.

That is scary.

To where you're able to operate a computer without haptic feedback, without toggling it with your fingers or anything like that.

Just with your brain?

Just with your brain.

That is scary.

Oh, boy.

So that is live, but at a very, very limited capacity.

And then ChatGPT 4.0.

Some videos came out about that, where it was talking to one another and the inflection.

And one of the phones with ChatGPT 4.0 had a camera on it, and it was telling the other ChatGPT what it was seeing.

Whoa.

And they had a conversation all about that.

That's wild.

So that's coming down the pipeline.

The romance bots, the AI boyfriend, girlfriend.

I've heard about that.

Companions, Omri Galat, professor at KU.

We had him on the podcast.

Really interesting episode if you are interested in the power of AI in relationships and how that's going to affect it.

He looks at the chat bots.

He looks at the sex bots, the robots.

He looks at all of it.

And that's also coming down the pipeline.

That's really going to affect our ability to interact with one another because we're going to substitute.

I don't know if we're going to substitute, but we're definitely going to supplement our interpersonal face-to-face interactions with that.

Some people are at least.

And you put all those together.

That's just a few of the things.

I think there may be something about cell phones that will change in the next 10 years.

Probably not wrong.

I think Marquise Brownlee, he's a YouTube tech reviewer, he says, we've gotten to the point to where phones are pretty well optimized, they can do basically anything we want.

So the next thing will probably move beyond mobile phones.

But it seems like a lot of the technology is wearable or implantable, which I'm not crazy about.

No, neither am I.

I remember a professor at Wake Forest said, soon we'll all be floating balls communicating without moving our mouths.

That seems so extreme.

And also at the same time, there's so much changing so quickly that that statement seems less crazy.

You know, I think one of the things that you've written about this, you've talked about it a lot, all those things that you mentioned and the aspects of change that I mentioned, it's communication and relationships, we've got social muscles.

And if you don't lift weights, like you do with your own body, physical muscles, what's going to happen?

You don't get stronger, you either stay the same or you get weaker.

And so I think all of the factors we talked about can prevent people from lifting their weights, socially.

Yeah, it does make you wonder though, because historically, say caveman times, in order for you to be dominant, more than likely, you had to be physically dominant, you had to be really healthy, you had to be strong, you had to have good endurance, have to be able to survive adversity, be it crazy weather, social dynamics, physical pressure and assault.

But nowadays, some of the most successful people in our society, like you look at Bill Gates, he's not jacked, he couldn't run super fast.

Mentally.

But mentally, he's really smart.

So due to technology and Microsoft and the computer, he's able to be successful in our society without having to be really strong.

He no longer needs that.

He no longer needs the physical fitness.

And I wonder if we're gonna hit a point to where we no longer need the ability to communicate with people.

Oh, I don't think so.

Because we're going to be able to either communicate with AI, and that's going to be our main interface or I don't know.

I don't know.

No, no, no.

I mean, it's a good, I said I don't think so.

But when you when you take stock of things, change is happening, it's, it's wild to think about.

Could it?

You know, we might not need to be physically strong anymore.

For survival for optimization, we do to be healthy people.

So to think about how that if it maps on to relational health, because I you can't separate communication from relational health, it's the building block, it's the building block.

And it is proven that we have a need.

Yeah, we do have a need.

Thank you, Annie, for popping up here and recording with me.

You're welcome, Chris.

Thank you for having me.

I always enjoy chatting with you.

Hey, you are podcast royalty.

And folks will be back Thursday.

If you haven't already, check out the Communication Mentor newsletter.

You can find it at talktochrismiller.com.

And without further ado, we'll see you next time.

See you next time, folks.