What's Uggs Got to Do with It?
Christmas morning, my inner 8 year old child is out in full force. Tearing open gifts. I stopped dead in my tracks when I opened this gift from my boyfriend.
Uggs. My boyfriend has always been “ugh” about my love of Uggs. I was shocked.
“Honey, you hate Uggs. Why did you give me a pair?” I asked him.
“I love you more than I hate your Uggs,” he replied.
This told me two things. One, I've got me some comfy new shoes! Two, this dude loves me so much he bought me something he despises.
Every time we communicate – whether is to 1 other or 101 others – our communication contains two messages. The first message is the content and the second message is about the relationship.
It’s this second message, the relational message that is most important when we are building relationships with another person, a team or even an audience. The relational message is the one most over looked by leaders and speakers.
Think about these examples:
An employee single handedly saves a project that is going poorly. The next time her boss sees her, the boss says “Hi there. How are you? Now that you’re done with that project, do you have time to work on these numbers?”
The content: I have more work for you to do.
The relational message: I see you as a resource not a human being.
Or the speaker who shows up for a conference with a PowerPoint presentation that looks like a doctoral dissertation and proceeds to read it to the audience word for word.
The content: No idea – no one is going to listen to that!
The relational message: I didn't care enough about my audience to try to make this interesting.
When you lead a team or give a presentation, always think about the relational message you are sending to the other people. Are you uplifting them by giving them a pair of new Uggs or bogging them down by giving them a case of the “Ughs”? Are you building your team members self-esteem or squashing their dreams?
All communication is about relationship building. Every time you speak you not only deliver content, but you send a clear message about how you feel about that person or audience.
Next time you speak think about what relational message you want to send? Feel free to share comments here or on Facebook!
A very powerful message and something to remind us that our words have power. Personally, professionally and permanently.
Thanks Noelle! Words are powerful! They can build or destroy depending on how we use them!
[…] inspire a “WTF?” instead of a click. My first blog post fell into this trap. It was What’s Uggs Got to Do With It. It sucked. I’m ok with that as we all have to start somewhere. The title made sense once you […]