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The art of communication part 3: Build your style

My sons,

When it comes to communication, nothing replaces the value of developing your own authentic style. In a world filled with AI assistants and writing tools, there’s no excuse for poor writing—whether lexical, grammatical, or structural. A combination of LLMs (Large Language Models) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) embedded in our tools makes mistakes of this nature inexcusable. These tools remove many barriers from a language perspective, and should be leveraged for what they are - tools to aid in communication.

They are not, however, a replacement for knowing how to communicate well.

It may be tempting to use the latest LLM-based editors to generate your entire communication (I’ve seen things like performance reviews, broad team emails, and responses to feedback requests clearly written with an LLM), but that is a temptation that one must resist if one is to be a great communicator.

While these AI tools can quickly assemble coherent, detailed, well-researched, and well-argued pieces of prose, and while they can even do a good job in creating a style, there is no substitute for finding your own style and your voice as a communicator. And communicate you must.

In today’s increasingly complex world, communication and collaboration are essential to accomplishing anything meaningful. With so much noise in our midst and so many distractions vying for our attention, who and what we choose to engage will become increasingly precious. Research has shown that as the number of potential input streams increases, the number of people and entities with whom we engage in two-way communication significantly decreases. But while the number of entities has decreased, our interaction with those select entities has increased.

To put it in layman’s terms, we are more picky about who we engage with, and once we’ve found trusted sources for that engagement, we tend to stick with them and communicate much more with them than ever before.

Read

Despite all the advancements in all the world - from cutting-edge AI tech, advancements in robotics, space travel, and everything in between - reading remains the most impactful, world-changing medium we have. The collective impact reading has had on our world history is astronomical and is second to none.

Whether we’re talking about scientific advancements, religious beliefs, moral and philosophical exposition, or even practical applicational topics such as cooking and engineering, all of these ideas are best conveyed through the written word. The written word has immense power; power to change one’s mind, power to change one’s stars, and power to change one’s world.

So read.

Read and learn from the greats. Learn from their style, learn from how they formulate their communications, and learn from how they lay out their arguments. As you grow accustomed to their writing, you will begin to see their personal style and flair start showing through. Some writers are dry academics; others are witty eggheads. Some are whimsical philosophers; others write with great intensity. Some write like their lives depended on it; others write without a care in the world.

Whether you’re reading Shakespeare, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Bible, or Harvard Business News, each piece of literature that you pick up will give you a broader understanding of what is possible with the written word. You will find yourself gravitating towards a particular writer or writing style. You will find yourself up late unable to put down their work. You will find yourself tuning into their particular brand of communication. And slowly but surely, you will discover that your own preferences and sense of style begin to emerge.

Listen

In a world that is increasingly noisy, we have lost much of our ability to listen. Most of us listen with the express purpose of responding; instead of paying full attention, we’re thinking about what we want to say next. This type of listening is surface-level, and we will often listen without understanding.

Have you ever been in a conversation where the other party keeps interrupting you before you’ve finished your sentence? You can be sure they’re not really listening to you, and instead are thinking about their retort even as you’re making your point.

When we listen attentively without multitasking, without allowing our mind to wander to what we want to respond with, and most of all with the intention of truly hearing what the speaker is saying, something magical happens. Actually, a few magical things happen.

1. We create greater understanding. By listening actively, we notice more than the subject of their conversation; we notice moods, inflections of voice, and body language. All of these help provide a deeper understanding of the person that is speaking with us.
2. We elevate the speaker. Giving someone your undivided attention is a great blessing in our day and age. When we focus on someone, when we give them our best, we tell them that they matter.
3. We hear more than just their words. When we focus our undivided attention on others, we not only hear their words, we hear their emotion, hear their conviction, and see the roadmap of how they’re trying to express themselves. In essence, we see their style. And we pick up subtleties that we resonate with into our own.

When it comes to communication style, remember that human beings aren’t compartmentalized. Written, verbal, and non-verbal actions are all a part of our communication and are therefore all a part of our style! Listen to some of your favorite orators (if you don’t have any, find some). Not only do we resonate with what they say, but how they say it - their phrasing, their tone, their inflections, even their volume - all of these are parts of the communication that ultimately touches us and moves us to action.

Speak

The average person uses 10,000-16,000 words per day. The problem is that most of those words aren’t particularly thoughtful or intentional in practicing, honing, and developing one’s communication style. There is much that goes into one’s speaking style:

• Tempo. How quickly or slowly do you speak?
• Phrasing. Human beings are attuned to specific tones and phrasings in aural communication. Do you pause for effect? Do you use lyrical sentences and structures?
• Words used. Do you use big words? Small words? Complex ones? Forceful ones?
• Non-verbal cues. 93% of in-person communication is non-verbal. Things like eye contact, body language, facial expressions, and even relative distance to those with whom we are communicating play a role in our effectiveness.

These are but a small number of considerations. There are many others - do you use a lot of movie references? Book references? Colloquialisms? Popular culture references? All of these are a part of your speaking style and need to be intentionally crafted and developed.

A great way to practice and evolve your speaking style is to tell your story. Whether you’re telling the story of your career, your leadership style, or your personal influences, telling your story helps you refine your style and forces you to have a deeper awareness and understanding of yourself.

It has been said that you can’t know who you really are unless you know how to tell your story. I would go further and posit that you can’t have a stable identity unless you take in the incoherent events of your live and give your life meaning by turning those events into a coherent story. So much of our human experience is being able to know who we are and being able to express ourselves and to tell the story of who we are and how we got here.

As we practice telling our story and gauging the response of our audience, we can tweak and adjust our style and find the right balance to have our desired effect.

Put in the time

There is no substitute for intentional time and effort. So much of our daily communication is thoughtless. Change that. Be intentional. Get feedback. As you do, you’ll start seeing how by knowing yourself and understanding your audience, you can tailor your style to have the impact that you desire.