Are you feeling tired of censoring yourself or feeling anxious about
saying the right thing in a communication?
Well, today I'm gonna share with you five simple tips on how you can
express yourself authentically, while at the same time keeping the
peace in a diplomatic conversation.
So let's talk about that.
What is diplomacy?
Diplomacy is the art of dealing with people with discretion and with
prudence.
So then by that regard, diplomatic communication is the art of
exchanging information, of sharing ideas, of also expressing your
opinions in a way that preserves the respectability, the ability to be
respected, to be trusted, and also to have your credibility and
diplomatic conversations and communication are so important in all
aspects of negotiations, all aspects of communicating with higher ups
and with the higher authorities, and also with managing conflicts and
building meaningful relationships.
So as you step up into strategic leadership, and as you step up into
executive and higher executive level positions, your ability to
communicate is important.
And if you think about communication skills at large, underneath
communication skills, you have diplomacy.
So as you go up in those rankings, your ability to have diplomacy and
to exhibit diplomacy is going to be increasingly important.
So let's dive right in.
Five simple tips for authentic diplomatic communications.
And I'm gonna give you these five tips using the acronym access, but
missing one s at the end.
So it's the French word for access A C, C E S, right?
So tip number one starts with A and A is active listening elevates
understanding.
When it comes to having communications, diplomatic communications in a
negotiation to build relationships, to create buy-in as well, these
conversations is not just about speaking, it is about active
listening.
And it is oftentimes, primarily about active listening.
So active listening is the art of understanding what your audience
needs, what they want, what they desire, what their objectives are as
well.
And when you are actively listening in that conversation, this is
where you are delineating.
You're trying to understand what are their perspectives, and most
importantly, what are their values?
Because their core values, any, any individual's values, their values
are what shapes their, their perspectives, their values are gonna
shape their actions and how they make decisions.
Your values shape your behaviors as well.
So the more that you can understand the contextual features of their
values, the more you will understand the depth of their behaviors and
their decisions and why they do what they do and why they respond the
way they respond.
So this is all part and part of active listening.
When you listen actively, you understand, you elevate understanding of
them, and therefore you un elevate an understanding between you and
them.
Tip number two starts with the letter C.
A, C and C means cultural awareness elevates adaptability.
When it comes to cultural awareness, the most important thing is to
understand and really seek to understand cultural norms, cultural
values, and cultural beliefs.
Because when it comes to cultural norms, for example, it could be that
there are certain cultures that have certain symbolisms and it could
be a certain patterns of behavior, certain word usages, or maybe even
visuals that are are, that are unique to that culture.
Seek to understand what are the differences between cultures, between
you and the individuals that you work with, that you work alongside
and leaders as well.
And when it also comes to cultural awareness, understand that
different cultures have different communication styles.
For example, certain cultures tend to more towards an explicit
communication style.
When you're communicating in an in an explicit communication style,
the expectation is for you to be straightforward to, for you to be
direct and to the point, get to the point, tell me what you're gonna
tell me and tell me exactly what you're gonna tell me.
Don't beat around the bush versus other communication styles.
Cultural communication styles tend to be more implicit, where it's not
about being straightforward at all.
It's the other end of the spectrum where there is more of a, a nuanced
communication where they, there is more reading between the lines.
We don't say exactly what we wanna say, we imply it, and therefore we
expect you to be able to read the meaning behind our words.
And so this spectrum between implicit and explicit style of
communications is very cultural specific.
So when it comes to culturally aware, it's not just about observing
their behavioral patterns and the words that they say and words they
choose to use, but it's also understanding the reason behind the
things that they say, right?
So if you're listening to this so far in terms of the A and the C, the
tips on how to have diplomatic and authentic communications, and
you're serious about developing this skill for yourself because maybe
you have a goal to step up and do strategic leadership or maybe you
have a goal to become an executive in, in, in your company.
And if you're serious about developing this skillset, then I invite
you below.
In the description below, there is a link.
The first link is to send an application to me and my team.
And this is to be a part of my mentorship and my coaching program,
where every single week I train you on how do you develop this
communication vernacular?
How do you become more diplomatic in your communications so that you
can become a culturally aware, so that you can develop the vernacular
to be able to be diplomatic and manage conflicts as well, to be able
to step up to leadership and all of these skills and the tools on how
to develop them.
I lay out the land for you in a blueprint.
If you're serious about that, then click the link below and I look
forward to working with you on the inside.
Tip number three is c and C stands for collaborative mindset elevates
consensus.
When it comes to a collaborative mindset, collaboration is nothing
more than looking for common grounds and therefore win-win solutions
so that people can work together closely and naturally as well.
So when you are going into conversations, diplomatic conversations,
how can you create shared wins?
How can you help another person or other people to achieve their most
meaningful goals?
And more importantly, go into it with the, with the mindset of how can
I understand what your values are, your highest priorities so that I
can help you so I can see how to help you fulfill your highest
priorities.
This collaborative mindset is the best way to create consensus because
when you create that consensus, the other parties that you are working
alongside of, that you are communicating with can really get a sense
that you're there for them.
And it's not just about you, it's not just about achieving your goals.
And it's not just about a one-sided win, but it is a win-win scenario.
So that is how collaborative mindsets can elevate consensus.
Tip number four, we have a C, C E and E stands for emotional
intelligence elevates trust.
Now, in terms of emotional intelligence, there's two parts to it.
There's an external part to it, and there's an internal part to
emotional intelligence.
The let's look at the external part first.
The external part of emotional intelligence is mostly about empathy.
It's about understanding.
When you are communicating with somebody, how can you pick up on their
social cues, their body language, even the energy energetics of their
presence and be able to understand these cues.
And when you are able to pick up on those energies, the body language,
the suggestions from their words, the meanings behind their words,
when you pick up on these cues, how can you be more empathetic?
Now, empathy is not about compassion.
Empathy is about once you understand the emotions, the energetics and
the emotions behind their responses and their presence, how can you
still show up?
And can you still communicate with them in a, with a collaborative
mindset in a way where you're not affected by their emotions?
Because here you are emotion, you are mission driven, you are center
and present and poised.
So that's the external part of emotional intelligence.
Now let's look at the other part of emotional intelligence, the
internal part of emotional intelligence.
The internal part refers to self-governance cuz you yourself are
coming into this communication as well.
Diplomatic communications are most frequently used in negotiations,
conflict management, and also in building meaningful high level
leadership relationships.
Now at this level, when you have conflicts, when you have
negotiations, you're gonna have differences and opinions.
You're gonna have differences and values.
Values that may appear to clash on the surface of conversations.
So your ability to, the internal part of emotional intelligence is
self-governance.
How can you still feel the range of your emotions but not bring your
emotions into it so much that you become needy or that you become
centered on your satisfaction of your values?
How can you ensure that your emotions are not so overwhelming that
it's taking over your ab, over your ability to think, to rationalize,
to make a data-driven decision, for example.
So that is the internal part of it.
Self-governance.
So with self-governance, that is on the line of achieving
self-mastery.
It's not about the absence of emotions, it's not about being stoic and
not feeling anything.
It's about how can I still feel the full range in being a human?
But at the same time, my emotions are not what define my decisions,
and they definitely do not define who I am.
Through the emotions I take that as feedback and that feedback allows me to be even more
authentic.
And that is self-governance.
So tip number four is that emotional intelligence elevates trust.
Because once you have emotional intelligence, you come across, you are
returned back to your authentic self.
Your authentic self is what is, who is centered, present, poised, and
you are more objective when you are authentic.
And finally, tip number five starts with a letter S and S is strategic
messaging elevates resonance.
Now when you are involved in a diplomatic communications, you desire
your message to resonate with your audience at the same time on the
flip side, it's important that your audience resonates with you as
well.
You resonate with them, they resonate with you.
Now to create that level of resonance, your message must match the
audience.
And there's a number of different ways that your message must, must
match the audience.
First way that your message matches your audience in terms of what are
their top priorities, what is the most important thing in their value
structure.
And you will have gleaned that context when you practice active
listening.
The second way your message is to match your audience is to understand
what is their communication style?
How can I match their communication style?
And you will have gleaned that information from having elevated your
cultural awareness.
And finally, to match your audience, your message to your audience is
to understand with respects to your audience what is the level of
awareness they have of the situation.
Because when you're in a diplomatic communication, you're either
negotiating, you are wanting to come to terms, collaboration, you are
wanting to move forward with something, you want their buy-in, there's
diplomacy there.
And so as a result of that, there's a certain outcome that you wanna
produce in collaboration with your audience.
So this is where you're trying to understand what is their level of
awareness of the situation.
Are they aware of the problem that we have on hand?
The issue that we're trying to address?
Are we, do we have the right diagnosis?
Are we on the same page with the diagnosis, right?
Are they aware?
Are we all aware of certain solutions, win-win solutions that are
possible for us?
Are we aware of which solution might be the best fit for our
particular needs and our particular value structures?
So where is there a level of awareness of the contextual feature of
the whole situation?
And that is the final and perhaps the most important part of creating
resonance with your audience.
And there's a step-by-step process that I go through in my coaching
and my mentorship to help you delineate this message to audience
match.
So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, let's take a
few steps back here, that culture awareness piece, cuz the most, most
common question that I hear is how do I understand how to communicate
cross-culturally?
And if you are wanting to communicate cross-culturally and improve
that skillset, then I have created another video that speaks towards
that.
How do we elevate cross-cultural communications?
That video is coming right up next.
So stay tuned and I'll see you there.