#82 - I Talked to the Einstein of Communication, Exploring the Communication Equation [DOUG TAYLOR]

Have you ever had a moment where you were speechless?

You're standing there, no idea what to say, completely taken back.

I remember when I was a junior in college, I wanted to join an oratory competition.

I went to the first round of auditions, I went to the front where the judges were all looking at me, and I stood there silent.

It was my turn to speak, but I had no clue what I was going to say.

That was due to lack of preparation, but I've also found myself completely prepared, yet still speechless, wishing that there was a guidebook or some formula that I could pull on.

Well, in this episode, I want to share with you a new tool.

I have a conversation with Doug Taylor, he's the A Communication Consultant and the author for the Communication Equation Newsletter.

He's created a formula that we can use, and it follows down to effective communication.

So in this conversation, we're going to lay out the Communication Equation.

I'm going to ask him some questions about the Communication Equation.

When it would work, do some real life examples of how it would work.

I think it's really important for us to have tools in our toolbox.

We may not always remember these, just like the Ford Method when you're having a conversation.

But the more time you spend digesting concepts or heuristics like this, then the higher likelihood you're actually going to pull on them when you need them.

So this is Doug Taylor with the Communication Equation.

Let's hop into the conversation.

As Sonny walks through the frame, first time in the backyard studio.

So I'm sitting here with Doug Taylor.

Doug, could you tell me what is the Communication Equation?

It is a framework that I've come up with over the years, and basically my whole thought process with it was to figure out a way to simplify just the craziness that is communication.

Like people stress out about it a lot.

I know if they're even thinking about it at all.

As somebody who really came from a place where I was not at all remotely skilled with communication whatsoever, I was a very painfully shy, awkward kid.

The awkward part might still be there, but as I've gone through, you know, my adult life now as an attorney, I thought more and more about this and was like, there's got to be some way that you can approach any setting where communication happens and have kind of a consistent, flexible way to, you know, apply something to it to get the results that you're looking for.

The equation laid out, it's just, it's letters in a math format.

It really has no math whatsoever involved in it, which that's by design because I would have lost myself if I tried to do that.

But it's just EC, which is the effective communication part equals CAM.

And it's credibility plus audience, which I have called this audience IQ.

It's kind of like whenever you, communication instruction in general, one of the big fundamental rules is know your audience.

And that's really important.

But I was thinking into that, that it doesn't quite go far enough.

There's more to it than just knowing who your audience is.

You have to figure out what their position there and how they're perceiving what you're about to deliver to them.

Like the best speakers don't necessarily think about themselves before they're going to go speak.

They think about the audience before they're going to go speak.

Right.

Yeah.

And so audience IQ is just kind of an all encompassing element that takes into consideration, not only who the audience is, but like where they're at kind of.

And then the message design part is pretty straightforward.

There's, that's where you get into a lot of kind of the tactical stuff like strategic techniques and things like that.

But that's what a lot of people think of, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And actually, another reason that I've thought this was such an important concept to focus on is that when you, when you think of communication instruction, taking a class, anything like that, books on communication, it all, for the most part, tends to focus on the delivery aspect.

You get a lot of very kind of surface level, make sure you're breathing properly or have confidence and that kind of stuff.

And that stuff's important.

But when you're trying to communicate effectively, there's a purpose behind that, and there's an intention there.

And the only way that you can kind of get that outcome is to have something with your message.

Like you can be the most polished, charismatic, flawless speaker from a delivery standpoint, but if you're not saying anything meaningful or useful, your audience is going to forget it.

Yeah, no impact.

Like one of the books that I read early on in this process, because I'm kind of a communication nerd, I read constantly about all kinds of different aspects of it.

And this book that was really influential to me is by a guy named Tim Pollard.

It's called The Compelling Communicator.

And the book focuses more on presentation structure, but he tells a story at the beginning of the book that kind of sets it all up about how on back-to-back weeks of just traveling for business, he encountered two different types of speakers.

One of them was more of kind of a business presentation to corporate types.

And it was this guy that was very well dressed, you know, flashy suit.

And he was up there and he was speaking perfectly and charismatic.

The audience was, you know, connecting with him.

And even he was at the time, he was like, I found myself like, like engrossed by this guy.

But then once he was done, he was like, I realized, like, I don't really remember what he said at all.

And he asked some people on the way out.

He's like, what was he?

He had like a list.

He was going through of like eight points that were needed for the company or something.

And he asked just a couple random people outside in the lobby.

He's like, what was his third and fourth point again?

And they're, I don't remember.

And he's like, and then the following week, I was, I don't remember what the reasoning was, but he was at a high school and he was watching.

They had brought someone in who was a Holocaust survivor.

And it was like a 90 something year old woman who was in a wheelchair.

She couldn't move very well, but she had this just riveting story that even the, you know, teenage high school students were just like blown away by.

And there you could hear a pin drop in the room.

And it was like one of the most profound, impactful speeches he'd ever heard.

And by the way, he's the CEO of a communication consulting firm.

So he knows he's seen a lot of stuff like that.

So that's high praise for sure.

And he's like, that shows right there that it's more about your message and the content of it than it is about how you're delivering it.

The biggest misperceptions about communication.

What do you think most people get wrong?

I think the biggest thing that they get wrong is probably not understanding how inherent it is in everything that we do.

And the reason for that is just communication is something that is a natural instinctive act that humans do.

I've had stuff I've written that compares it to breathing.

It's that simple because it's how humans express anything.

Because it's so common, because it's so natural, we just tend to not think about it.

And so there's kind of two camps.

There's people that just give it zero thought, and there's people who are just overwhelmed by it because of that.

They do realize how common it is, but their approach to it is, there's so much there that I can't begin to dive into it.

It's one of those things that people are either naturally good at or they're not.

And if someone feels that they're not, they just get stuck in that position.

But really it is a skill that anybody can learn.

I feel like I'm like a walking example of that, like because, you know, I'm not somebody who would have ever imagined ever that I would be successful at anything speaking related.

But just learning about it and focusing on it and practicing is, it's a skill that you can build for sure.

What's your thought about how to reduce social anxiety?

That's a good question.

It's a deep question.

But I think the best way, like you said earlier, is just to encourage circumstances where people, you know, I don't want to say are forced to, but just are put immersed in it kind of.

I know that's like immersion is a technique people use to learn languages and learn all kinds of things like that.

And I think that's, there's definitely a lot of truth to that.

Like when you have to do something because of the situation that you're in, you learn fast.

And I think that people would realize, you know, how important certain elements of communication are if they just put themselves in those situations more frequently.

A lot of other subjects take the credit that communication deserves.

For instance, law, the legal field, being an attorney, it's so important how well you communicate.

Being a doctor, the medical field, being able to communicate with your patients and have great bedside manner, being an engineer, communicating technical information to a simple message, it's so important.

But since communication is an ingredient and not the actual outcome that people see, it doesn't get enough credit, but it's so vastly important.

I've always said, never let your ability to articulate a message be outpaced by your creativity or be outpaced by your ability to come up with something because most people find themselves where they have something they'd love to say, they have something they'd love to contribute to this world, yet they're unable to articulate it.

That's why I think what you do is so important.

That's why I think your equation is so important.

So you had mentioned people will message you and you'll be able to help them out with certain parts of the equation.

Let's do a little game here to where, what would be, we'll go through the equation, okay, and let's just go from the first part, the second part, the third part.

What would be a question that you would receive that you could use the first part of the equation to help them with?

And then let's help them.

Okay.

Yeah, this just kind of a vague description of it would be, somebody who they've had a working relationship that's gone pretty well and so they've become friends based on that.

So they're, they're friends and colleagues.

And somehow, I don't know, there's somehow there's been a miscommunication in terms of, you know, the goals that one of them wants the other to do.

And that's, it's a relationship to, in terms of the workplace where there's superiority, I guess, like one person is subordinate to the other.

And that's the person who I'm talking with.

So, they come to me and they say, you know, somewhere along the line, our wires got crossed, and I have inadvertently offended this person.

And they've kind of cut me off.

I don't really know what it was I did, but I've tried to get back in, and, you know, figure out a way to fix it, ask them what the problem is, but they're at a point where they're not even wanting to talk anymore.

And so the first step, as it is with, you know, whatever the situation is, is defining what your effective communication is.

And I'll go on a little side note with that.

My big thing for all of it is that I view all communication to be persuasion.

And that sounds kind of different, I think.

And I had a post on this the other day where I think part of the reason for that is that persuasion has kind of had a bad rap.

It has a negative connotation where people think that it's means manipulating and sleaziness.

And and that's really not the case.

Like when you think of any form, any act of communication that you do, what you're trying to do is get your audience to do something.

Oftentimes, that's like a literal physical act, like buy my product or vote for this person or whatever.

But a lot of times, it's not.

But that doesn't mean any less that you're not trying to get them to do something.

If you're a teacher, for example, giving a lecture to a class, your audience is the students in your class, and what you're asking them to do is learn and process the material that you're teaching, and to come away with a new understanding of something they didn't know before.

So it's kind of that reframing that's really important.

So your first step is defining what your effective communication is, and that's just your goal.

What do you want the outcome of this interaction to be?

And I like to try to put kind of specific metrics on that so that you can see and know very clearly whether you've succeeded or not, because that helps you go back later and, you know, amend or fix things if you need to.

So in this situation, your effective communication would probably be from a starting point.

You could say that it would be to kind of reopen the lines of communication with this person, get them to where they're willing to talk to you again.

And further down the road, it would be to maybe repair the relationship, convey to them that you're sorry for whatever you did that has offended them.

And then that kind of goes into a whole aspect of apologies, which is a very specific type of communication, has its own kind of pathway for that.

Yeah, so that's your starting point.

You define your goal.

Effective communication.

You define what your effective communication is.

And then the credibility element, for example, you'd get into each one of those and the credibility in this instance, the things about your personality, your credibility that were strong before, that have been damaged by whatever the interaction was that took place.

So figuring that out and bringing that to light.

Obviously, you know your audience at this point, so you know quite a bit about them based on your relationship.

So that part should be pretty easy.

And then, like I said, the message design part, that's where you would get into the specifics, and that's where, like here, you would be using an apology.

And that's where a lot of the stuff that I've got, things that I teach about those kinds of things.

Like with an apology, you're going to have several parts to it.

It's like...

Yeah, what makes a good apology?

It's an acknowledgement, and then kind of the acceptance of fault, and then showing some kind of future change.

And that last part, the demonstration of a future change, that's usually the most effective part, if the apology is going to work at all.

What does that look like?

It's...

You need to...

Lay out a plan to the person of, not only do I realize what happened, and accept the fault for that, but here's what I'm going to do moving forward to make sure it doesn't happen again.

It can be as simple as just saying, you know, I realize and understand that when I said XYZ, that was hurtful or offensive to you.

I see now how it could be taken that way, and I'm sorry for that.

I should have been a little bit more thoughtful with my words, and I'm going to do that moving forward.

I won't be as simple as, I'll think before I speak, kind of thing.

I will no longer call you blank blank blank.

Yeah.

So that's, I mean, that's just like a very quick high level walk through the equation type thing.

And in a situation like that, that's a pretty, you know, obviously things like that are stressful and emotional.

So I don't want to downplay that, but it's a pretty simplistic problem, I guess.

Your effective communication equals your credibility combined with your audience IQ combined with your message.

If you could only pick one of those things, and you had to dial in on that one thing for the next 10 years, which one would you pick?

Just personally speaking, what's the most interesting to me is the message element.

That's how my brain works, and those are the things that I find interesting.

But I think in terms of communicating well as a whole, the audience IQ is by far the most important.

You can have a perfectly designed message, but if you're delivering it to the wrong audience, it's going to fall on deaf ears.

It doesn't matter.

And really, your audience IQ shapes your message design to begin with.

You can't have that without first getting into your audience because you can't really start to design that message until you know what the parameters should look like based on your audience.

So I think that's easily the most important.

The message.

And what makes a perfectly designed message?

What does that look like?

What does a perfectly designed message look like?

Well, the kind of go-to framework that I use, I call my bullseye method.

And it's based on, and this is again, this kind of the idea for this is from Tim Pollard, who I mentioned earlier.

It is from his book.

Compelling Communicator.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But basically the human brain, when we decide to take action or not take action, it kind of goes in a certain pattern.

We go from facts to beliefs to the decision on action, whatever that is.

Act or don't act.

So to create a good message that is persuasive, which, like I said, that's the end goal.

Whatever you're attempting to persuade to do, to create a good message there, you kind of reverse engineer that and you go backwards.

So you say, what do I want the audience to do?

And a bullseye method is just kind of a visualization, like the purpose, I call it.

That's the center of the bullseye.

The next ring out is your audience's perceptions.

So you say, what do I want them to do?

What beliefs do they need to have to do that?

And then the final ring is what facts do they need to have to form those beliefs?

So you work through that and have elements that kind of answer those questions.

That's the general format that your message takes.

So what do I want them to do?

What facts do I need to have to get them to believe that?

The beliefs are in the middle.

What do I want them to do?

What do I want them to believe?

Yeah, they have to, because if someone's going to do anything, big or small, whatever we're talking about, they're doing so based on a belief that they've created.

So say I want them to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club, and then beliefs would be, I need them to believe that volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club would be worth their time and that it would be beneficial to their life somehow and better for the community.

Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of beliefs that can go into any decision really, but something like that, you've, they would have to believe that their efforts are going to be helpful.

Like a lot of people with charity and non-profit messaging like that, a lot of people fall into the camp of, you know, well, I'm just one person.

Like whatever I do is not going to make enough impact, so I just won't do anything.

So yeah, part of the belief would be whatever it is that you're doing that I'm asking you to do is going to be directly beneficial and helpful for the organization.

Another belief is that it's something...

The way that I break this down is to say that you show them that they can, you show them that they should, and then you show them what happens if they don't.

It's kind of, those are the three ways to kind of overcome those objections, sort of.

So showing them that they can, that's kind of in direct response to the general idea of, you know, like, I don't have time or I don't have money, those kind of objections, be like, no, this is actually very easy, takes five minutes of your time, or, you know, doesn't cost much money, those types of things.

Show them that they should, that's kind of more of like a social form.

Like, that's where you could get into the, like, yes, your contribution's gonna matter, it's gonna help, you're gonna be able to contribute to the organization doing X, Y, and Z, that's gonna help the kids.

And then show them what happens if they don't.

That's kind of painting out the alternative.

And it's like, you know, not necessarily in a threatening way, but just like, if people don't take this action, you know, say the action is donating money.

Like, if people stopped their donations, we would lose all of our funding, and we wouldn't be able to provide these services.

So it's showing the importance of the action in those three ways.

And so that gets them to a point where they can have those beliefs and say like, okay, well, I now believe that, you know, I can do this act, I should do this act, and there's, you know, a downside if I don't.

And then to support that, you go back to the final step, which is, you know, okay, what kinds of facts and evidence do I have to start giving them that will create those beliefs?

And for this, say the Boys and Girls Club example, that would be maybe kids with after school care have 20% more likelihood to graduate from high school.

Yeah, exactly.

Things like that are perfect for that.

That's where you're getting into, like to make it easy to remember on the bullseye visual that I use, I have all three of those.

It's three P's.

It's your purpose, your perception, and your proof.

So it's just evidence, facts, forms of proof.

And like you said, statistics are a great way to do that.

Actual stories that you have, like in the sense of a case study type thing, like an example of where this specific thing that you're talking about actually has happened in the past.

It's like Robert was a part of the Boys and Girls Club, and now he's a surgeon.

Yeah, exactly.

And how cool.

But unfortunately, we don't have enough volunteers, so we no longer will have surgeons.

Right?

Yeah.

I think, have you ever done a deep dive into, this is an interesting question, but have you ever done a deep dive into what I would call the dark side of communication?

For instance, a cult leader who is very good at persuasive messaging like that?

Not a deep dive.

It's some I've thought and read some things about it.

I know that there's a lot of kind of techniques and ideas based on kind of cognitive biases that people have using those in marketing, for example.

And a big one that comes up is loss aversion.

As people are kind of biologically predisposed to react more strongly to the concept of losing something than they are to gaining something.

And that's something that people are kind of have split views on, because some people view it as being manipulative to kind of prey on people's fears with that.

Which I think the biggest thing in any of that for just being ethical with communication in general is just looking at the end result.

If the end result is a pretty simple bright line, really, if the end result is your benefit, then yeah, it's probably a little bit manipulative.

But if the end result is something that benefits your audience, then those tactics don't have that connotation to them really, because if I'm trying to get people to stop smoking, for example, and this person has tried everything out there, and they're also just at a mental point where they're like, no, I don't really want to anymore.

I don't want to mess with it.

None of this stuff has worked, and I'm not really mentally ready to stop anyway.

So if they're at a point like that, they need something to reach them better.

So it's like, do you want to lose your ability to breathe?

Right, yeah, yeah.

So using a technique that's maybe in a different context could be seen as preying on their fear.

In that context, you're just trying to kind of open their eyes to a legitimate concern for their own well-being.

It's just fascinating to me that like therapists and CIA, undercover spies probably use a lot of the same techniques.

Because like you said, we are naturally wired to connect.

They just use them for vastly different purposes.

Right, yeah, yeah.

I think that's the key is just what that end goal is.

That to me kind of determines where you fall on that ethical spectrum.

Here's a question.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately, and with this podcast, a lot of it's conversation, and we can measure life through years or months or days, but we can also look at it, look back on life, and think about some of the biggest conversations we've had.

What has been one of those for you?

What's been one of the biggest conversations you've had?

Oh, man.

I think the answer is pretty easy, honestly, for me.

It's a very personal one.

But it was a conversation I had with my wife.

Prior to her becoming my wife, I had gone through some issues of my own and had ended our relationship and really came to a point where I spent a good several weeks, like, down in the dumps and realizing what a mistake I had made.

And like, this was not for the reasons that I thought it was.

And there was a lot behind it that was just not who I was.

And I had to do a lot of that apologizing to even get a chance to speak to her again, because she was understandably not very pleased.

But then once I was able to, that conversation was hugely important.

I can remember all the details of it.

Were you nervous?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I remember I was still living in Topeka at the time.

And I remember the whole day, like I had the planning everything out.

And yeah, just a very nerve wracking time.

You were thinking a lot about the message.

Yeah, very much so.

Effective communication is this.

Yeah.

This was before I'd really kind of put like labels on all of that stuff.

But it was that kind of thing was really going through my mind for sure.

Because it was supremely important.

And thankfully, it worked out.

And she's your wife.

Yeah.

Praise God.

Yeah, exactly.

I had a panic attack before I proposed to my wife.

Really?

I just felt a lot of pressure.

Yeah.

I had never ever done anything like this, but I wanted to, and I was so excited to.

And it was so interesting seeing how my emotions were manifesting one thing.

And have you ever seen Inside Out before?

And there's an emotion control center.

And in the second one, once Anxiety enters the chat, Anxiety goes zung, zung, zung, zung, zung, zung, and she kind of gets in this thing where she, she can't be stopped, but she takes over the emotional control center.

And it's so wild how that happens.

And that even though we're really excited, and we feel one way, you know, sometimes we manifest our emotions a different way, but that's a really good one.

Yeah, definitely had an impact for sure.

You lived to tell the tale.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to figure out how to address the softer side in conversation, because I feel like moments like this, asking you that question and hearing your answer, it's really sweet.

Right.

So it's like, how do I marry that by also highlighting your expertise, you know, by also highlighting the Communication Equation?

Well, that's, I think it goes really to the credibility aspect.

Being able to show that vulnerability.

When I talk about credibility, and like I said, I'm weird in a big acronym person, so I have this thing I use for credibility, that I call Speaker, it's S-P-E-A-K-R.

And that's just kind of a checklist of the different types and things you can use to build and boost credibility.

And the R in that is relatability.

And being able to convey something relatable to your audience is an instant way to become credible and become somebody that they trust.

And so I think that's a big part of that is, if you're able to just, you know, be yourself and be kind of on a natural level and maybe share some part of yourself in a story like that, that's helpful to your communication as a whole because it boosts your credibility like that.

Hey, thank you for coming on.

Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate you.

It's been fun seeing you.

One thing I admire is one, you're writing and two, consistently you're sharing and distributing your writing.

And I think that's so cool.

I think you've invested a lot of time into creating resources about the Communication Equation.

And I think it's only going to grow because that's infrastructure, right?

That's IP.

And the beauty about intellectual property is once you create it, then you can build from it.

So right now, it's like you're building that foundation.

Just keep doing what you're doing.

I appreciate it.

Yeah.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me.

It's been a blast.

All right, folks, we'll see you next time.