Being Relational and Declarative in This New Era

Now that we’ve all acclimated to our virtual world, it’s time to lead others in a relational declarative manner. I use these two words, relational and declarative very specifically. And here’s why.

Have you noticed that passion, heart, desire, and confidence get lost during a virtual call? Somehow there’s humanitarian dilution when you’re not face-to-face with a client. Get it back by mastering being relational and declarative. And it’s in that order.

Relational and Declarative Behavior

Being relational means that you understand, and have proven you understand, the goals and challenges of your client. The result is that they realize you fully empathize with their challenge.

Once you’ve built this relationship, one based on trust, you can then be declarative by delivering your recommendation is made clearly, confidently, and urgently. Because you’ve established trust, you can deliver these recommendations with the confidence of knowing that your client is open to hearing them.

Review How You’re Coming Across

So much of what we all are doing these days relies heavily on video technology to connect with clients. Have you taken the time to see how you’re coming across to them? Currently, I’m coaching a dozen clients in just this manner.

What has demonstrably helped is when they videotape themselves with me watching them deliver an upcoming internal/external recommendation. We analyze their delivery and often find several behaviors that dilute from the relational and declarative delivery they want.

To help them, and you, I’ve created the following list of recommendations that are a guide for how best to present yourself through the relatively new medium of video conferencing:

  • Avoid starting a thought with the non-word, “So”
  • Eliminate the non-words; “ah/um”, they make you sound tentative
  • Pause more in-between your thoughts to make your thoughts have more gravitas
  • Look into your camera NOT your screen. You must train yourself to play to your camera. This communicates your desire to connect
  • Initiate your idea/recommendation/data with an agenda. An agenda controls the conversation
  • Timeline you’re meeting. If you have thirty minutes and three topics you’ve got ten minutes per topic, don’t run over
  • Synthesize what others are saying to respect their ideas, then move to your next topic
  • Close your meeting with Who needs to do What and by When

Experiment with video recording yourself to check for these delivery inhibitors. When you review it, be sure to pay as much attention to how you are delivering your recommendation as you do to the recommendation itself!

Let me know how it goes.