So you're running for President?

The hottest topic in communication right now has to do with the candidates’ communications – what they say, who they say it to, and how they say it -- their tone of voice, their facial expressions, their gestures, their emotions; how people have interpreted what they’ve said; who’s liked…or hasn’t liked…what they’ve said, what they should – and shouldn’t -- have said, whether what they’re saying now jives with what they’ve said in the past, whether they really mean what they say or if it’s a pretense, and if so, then what’s their underlying intent and did they achieve that intent. Then there’s attention too to what their staff and associates have said and how they’ve said it and whether what they’ve said has helped -- or hurt -- their candidate. Assessing the impact of all of these communications that they, their staff, their associates, their supporters, the other candidates and their staff and associates and supporters have had then leads each of the candidates and their staff to think long and hard about how to improve their future communications, with the obvious desire of convincing us to vote for them. Which is to say that the candidate who is elected President of the United States of America by the public vote (and we all know that the person who receives the public vote is not necessarily the person who becomes President of the United States), may be the one who is the best communicator.

You -- like me – may not have run for president of anything for a long time. Nonetheless, if we think about our communications, the same analysis and rippling effects hold true as are evidenced for the Presidential candidates. What we say, who we say it to, and how we say it – our tone of voice, our facial expressions, our gestures, our emotions; how people interpret what we say, who’s liked – or hasn’t liked — what we’ve said, what we should – and shouldn’t – have said, whether what we’re saying now jives with what we’ve said before, whether we really meant what we said or if it was protocol or a pretense, and if so, then what was our underlying intent and did we achieve that intent – all of these are a part of the communication
mix!

Our communications have far reaching consequences! By being aware of that fact, we can't help but realize that we all need to try harder to say what we mean to say and to the person we're speaking to, and in a way that achieves the results we’d prefer.