Only 7% of your communication is the words you choose, yet we spend our time crafting the perfect words for our presentations, pitches, and difficult conversations. Don’t get me wrong, the words are important. They’re just not as important as we make them.
93% of what matters is not the words. It’s the other “stuff” that creates meaning for our listeners. It’s your body language, eye contact, intonation, emotion/conviction, and voice. All these things create context for the message you’re delivering.
When you have a challenging message to deliver, a sensitive conversation to have, a crucial conversation waiting to happen, it’s better to ask yourself how much trust you have in the relationship than plan the right words to say.
If trust is high, you can use the wrong words, muck up the details, and basically enter into it unprepared because you are afforded the opportunity to make mistakes.
If trust is low, you can prepare, do everything right, have all your proverbial ducks in a row, and still have very little room for error. It could be a one and done opportunity that makes or breaks that conversation and/or relationship.
So, this begs the question, what can you do to build trust every day so that when the time comes, you can enter your conversation authentically and worry less about the words?