The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively

by Helio Fred Garcia

Communication is the absolutely indispensable leadership discipline. But, too often, leaders and professional communicators get mired in tactics, and fail to influence public attitudes in the ways that would help them the most. The Power of Communication builds on the U.S. Marine Corps' legendary publication Warfighting , showing how to apply the Corps' proven leadership and strategy doctrine to all forms of public communication — and achieve truly extraordinary results. World-renowned leadership communications expert, consultant, and speaker Helio Fred Garcia reveals how to orient on audiences, recognizing their centers of gravity and most critical concerns. You'll learn how to integrate and succeed with all three levels of strategic, operational, and tactical. Garcia shows how to take the initiative and control the agenda… respond to events with speed and focus… use the power of maneuver… prepare and plan… and put it all together, becoming a "habitually strategic" communicator.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Communication, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Management

295 pages, Hardcover

First published April 11, 2012

Reviews

[Alain Burrese · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found “The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively” by Helio Fred Garcia to be an exceptional book on effective communication skills. Maybe it's because my own communication programs include lessons from martial arts and military that I really found myself engrossed with Garcia's book that builds on the U.S. Marine Corps' legendary publication “Warfighting.” Garcia took that book that has been used to build leaders and is a guide on strategy doctrine in the Marine Corps, and showed how the same lessons and principles apply to effective communication and how through effective communication you can achieve extraordinary results.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, Leadership and Communication: Connecting with Audiences contains the first five chapters. These focus on the concepts of: words matter; taking audiences seriously; words aren't enough; speed, focus, and the first mover advantage; and initiative, maneuver, and disproportionality.

The second part, Strategy and Communication: Planning and Execution only has one chapter, and this chapter focuses on goals, strategies, and tactics. In other words, the preparing and planning of your communications.

Part three, Building Skills: Getting Good at Communicating Well, provides four chapters that deal with the areas of performance, the physicality of audience engagement; content, word choice, framing, and meaning; audiences attention, retention, and how hearts and minds work; and putting it all together, becoming a habitually strategic communicator.

There is also an Appendix that shares some of the “Warfighting” principles for leadership communication for review.

Throughout the book, the “Warfighting” principles are shared, and then translated into guidelines for effective leadership communication. These are great guideposts for learning how to more effectively communicate. There are also many case studies and examples of where famous people or companies communicated effectively or didn't communicate very well and excellent lessons are taken from these real life examples. The book also contains checklists, questions, recaps, and summary lessons for the chapters.

I agree with Garcia that the concepts in “Warfighting” deserve a bigger audience, and I really like how he took those concepts and applied them to communication in an interesting and practical manner. All leaders who wants to be more effective with communicating should read this book and apply the lessons to their own situations. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to communicate more effectively. This book will not just show you, but guide you to using The Power of Communication.

[Chris Weatherburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Effective communicators take change seriously. They ground their work in moving people to be different, to think differently, to feel differently, to know or do things differently. Effective communicators also take audiences seriously. They work hard to ensure that all engagements move people toward their goal. That means caring about what audiences think and feel now, and what it will take to get them to about what audiences think and feel now, and what it will take to get them to think and feel something else. To do this it is important to listen carefully to the audience’s reaction, and adapting where needed.

Effective communicators also take words seriously. They know that words trigger world views and provoke reactions. They plan their engagements so that the right words are used to trigger the right reaction. Effective communicators also know that the best communication can be counterproductive if it isn’t aligned with action. Effective communicators take seriously the need to package all that an audience experiences—the verbal, the visual, the abstract, and the physical—into one powerful experience.

This book is grounded in nine fundamental leadership communication principles that together contribute to becoming a habitually strategic communicator:

1. See communication as the continuation of business by other means: It is intentional, it is interactive, it is intended to provoke a reaction.

2. To move people, meet them where they are.

3. Walk the talk.

4. Control the communication agenda.

a) Will those who matter to us expect us to do or say something now? If so, we need to act and communicate now.

b) Are others talking about us now, shaping the perception about us, among those who matter to us? Do we have reason to believe they will be soon? If so, we need to communicate quickly and fully before others define the crisis, our motives, or our actions.

c) Will silence be seen as indifference or as an affirmation of guilt? If so, we need to not be silent, but rather to engage fully to prevent the perception of indifference.

d) If we wait, will we lose the ability to control the outcome? If so, we should not wait.

If the answer to all four questions is no, then the leader should watch and wait, prepare to engage stakeholders, and then engage whenever the answer to any of them turns from no to yes. But as soon as the answer to any of the four questions is yes, the leader needs to overcome fear, inertia, embarrassment, or anxiety, and engage stakeholders effectively and quickly.

5. Remember that even small events, changes, or blunders can have big consequences.

6. Plan ahead and align tactics with strategy.

7. Invest in continuous improvement in communication skills.

8. Harness the power of language and of framing.

9. Understand how the human brain works.

When shaping communication recognise a paradox of crisis communication: that if you want others to not talk about you, sometimes you need to say more than you may initially want to. Because all effective communication is goal-oriented, intended to change something, an effective leader or leadership team focuses on what it wants stakeholders to know, think, feel, and do, and the ways to get those stakeholders to change so that they will know, think, feel, and do so.

Frame a situation – often before the audience do so that you have done it for them. Use mirror neurons to your advantage- show empathy first before providing a solution about what you are going to do about it. We feel first, and then we think. As a result, leaders need to meet emotion with emotion before they can move audiences with reason. Humans are wired to connect with each other. Mirror neurons allow people to actually experience sensory perception from afar. Humans are empathic. We feel with other people. Mirror neurons are a powerful connection mechanism, and effective leaders connect with audiences not merely intellectually and emotionally, but also physically. Leaders too often assume that facts matter, that logic prevails, and that if only they let the facts speak for themselves stakeholders will understand and agree

Primacy means the audience remembers what they hear first. Recency means they remember what they hear last. And the Rule of Threes means they can’t remember more than three things. This places a premium on keeping things simple and repeating key points.

When leaders are speaking to audiences that are under stress—even if the audience is merely tired or distracted—the leader can take the amygdala into account in determining how the content is structured and how the audience is engaged. Here are five ways to engage effectively:

1. Establish connection before saying anything substantive. And remember that the connection is physical. Techniques to connect include asking for the audience’s attention, if only with a powerful and warm greeting, followed by silence and eye contact. The key is to make sure the audience isn’t doing something else so that they pay attention.

You may want to think of the selective attention test by Simons and Chabris. Think of the leader as the gorilla, and the audience’s distraction as counting basketballs. You need to get the audience to stop counting and to pay attention to the gorilla. If this means nothing to you please see this:

2. Take the Primacy Effect seriously. Say the most important thing first once you have their attention. The most important thing should be a powerful framing statement that will control the meaning of all that follows. Remember that frames have to precede facts.

3. Take the Recency Effect seriously. Close with a recapitulation of the powerful framing statement that opened the presentation.

4. Make it easy to remember. Keep in mind how hard it is for people to listen, hear, and remember. Leaders need to constantly repeat the key themes, within any given presentation, and in general as a matter of organizational strategy. It doesn’t matter bored you may be with saying the same thing, thee audience needs to hear it, again and again. As a general principle, people need to hear things three times if they are to even pay attention to it. Due to the fact that any given audience member at any time may be distracted or inattentive, he or she is unlikely to hear or attend to everything that is said. Also, the fact is when people are under stress, they have difficulty hearing, listening, and remembering. So leaders need to repeat key points far more than three times to be sure that everyone has heard it at least three times. One of the burdens of leadership is to have a very high tolerance for repetition.

5. Follow the Rule of Threes: Have three main points. But no more than that!

VLOG summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtaXE...

[Hina Kharbey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book - definitely learned some things that I did not know before. The lessons have practical applications. There was a lot of repetition though, which started to drag. I guess the author was following one of his own points, about how repetition is important in communication so the audience retains more - but in a book, the reader can just go back to previous pages if he wants a reminder.

[Esra Dillon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Garcia, shows how to take the initiative and control the agenda...respond to events with speed and focus...use the power of maneuver...prepare and plan...and put it all together, becoming a "habitually strategic" communicator.

[Brent McGregor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably one of the wost books on communication I've ever read.

If you are looking for the usual progressive tactics book on spinning, distraction, and distancing, this pig is for you.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent guide on how much words matter for leadership. Not only which words, but when, how, and who says them. Learn tools that will harness the power of communication for your business.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suprisingly "compact" advice. Great examples/stories.

[David Rosen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Displaces "The Art of War" as the Best Book to Learn Communications Strategy

The "Power of Communication" has displaced "The Art of War" as the first book I recommend to colleagues looking to learn strategy.

The big take-away is that the only reason to communicate is to affect a change. Now, that could be anything from increasing revenues to attracting talent to securing permission to enter a market. But the point is that communicating for any other reason will at best waste resources and at worst crowd out other messages you're trying to get across.

Garcia covers a lot of territory, including using words as precision instruments, why framing matters as much as facts, and how evolution has shaped our brains to interpret stressful events in predictable ways. The most valuable parts of the book are the checklists that guide you through various scenarios and needs. Among them, how to create a communications plan that achieves a business goal, how to know if a situation (like a crisis) requires a response, and how to communicate to people who are in a state of fear and therefore interpreting information in a different way.

I keep one of these checklists in my wallet, a couple on my phone and the others in Evernote. (Try it -- tag each list with keywords for situations where you might need it and wham-o, instant guidance.)

In short, you should still read Sun-Tzu's "The Art of War," but you're best served by reading Helio Fred Garcia's "The Power of Communication" first.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy enjoyable read with so many real life stories to put lessons into context, about real people, known events and historic moments. Great even for the points you already know and appreciate as it helps reinforce understanding and application.
There are lots of repeated sections, copied and pasted as summaries which may be useful to some but when you've just read the something it sometimes feels likes you've accidentally flipped the pages back and have lost your place! Apart from that worth reading.

[marlece watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is a must read for anyone communicating with more than 2 people

This book was on a list of optional reads and so wasn’t something I would pick up. I was so engaged with it I read it in a very short time. Grateful for the content.

[Brian W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting. Uses Warfighting fundamentals to explain communication effectiveness. A good read for all leaders—the human dimension of how people listen, especially the part on frame work, in very interesting.

[Bburger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book, but a bit on the repetitive side (hammer your message)

[S'Saint Inaede · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like to read, hope I'll enjoy the book

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Garcia does a fantastic job of applying media relations and engagement lessons learned from real life engagements.

[Nirmal Jose · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. Primary Effect+ recency effect + Three rule
2. Communication should be driven for tangible action

[Zak Metz]

I was worried this was going to be a totally academic tome but it actually is more along the lines of a Malcolm Gladwell book, using fascinating examples of communication breakdowns to explain key points. There is way too much meat in this book to summarize it here, but I'll recount some of the real life incidents that make it such a great read. Some failures are subtle. Obama holds an hour press conference to explain health care reform, but is sidetracked at the last minute when he says the police behaved "stupidly" in a recent, apparently race-related incident. All the news after that was about that comment, and all the good he said about health care reform was lost under the wave. Nixon says "I am not a crook" and everyone pictures a crook in their mind. This is failing to frame an issue properly. Don't think of an elephant. BP spokesman says "I want my life back" but fails to address the lives of all those affected by the spill. Hurricane Katrina is rife with examples of poor communication, failures to accept responsibility, Bush's comment about them doing an outstanding job, and nobody admitting that they weren't. The examples were fascinating and they made the key points easy to grasp. Netflix's attempt to separate into two companies emphasized that people don't care about your company's logistical issues. You have to understand your audience's concerns and feelings and address those. You need to start with your business objective and build a strategy from that. You must understand your audience and speak from their point of view. You must deliver your message with finesse. Acknowledge the issues, express sorrow for those affected, then explain what you're doing to fix the problem, all in one news cycle. When you deliver the message, you must do so with authority and transparency. Like Letterman confessing that he had had sex with women on his staff. He dumped it all out, then back to work. Like McDonald's whose CEO died the night before their shareholder meeting, you must quickly take action, within hours, which is what they did by appointing a new CEO before fear gripped the markets. Home Depot was a huge failure in communication. Their stock price tumbled as the board elected an unknown to the leadership position who took the company a new direction and failed, became outright hostile to shareholders, lost their hearts, and lost their market capitalization in the process. Effective communication takes into account what the expected audience reaction will be, and may in the process expose issues in the action being communicated. Communication is fluid and requires flexibility, changing shape in reaction to changing conditions. It takes into account the human beings being addressed and their goals, concerns, needs, priorities, attention spans, and levels of desire to be in a relationship. It's not telling a story, it's getting an audience to listen and care. It's recognizing that the audience doesn't think, decide, or have the same values, goals, and concerns that you do. Interactions need to be framed properly. The facts don't speak for themselves. You must connect with the audience through their experience, triggering an emotional reaction. It must be paired with action consistent with the message. The audience's reactions and counteractions must be considered and planned for. It's not about saying what sounds good at the moment. You can't talk your way out of a behavior. Time's a factor. Get a competitive advantage by making the first move. There's so much more in this book that I'm sure I'll return to it as my role evolves and communication becomes more important than technical knowledge.

[Christina · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at how communication can hurt or help a cause. Includes lots of examples from current and recent events. Does include lots of government and military ties, not always positive. I had to read this for a class and was quite glad that it did not read like a textbook.

[Rosanne Acovski · Rating 3 out of 5]

a lot of military terminology and not as easy of a read as I thought it was going to be. However, there are a lot of valid points that can be implemented into everyday life and situations.
Overall good book. . . . not great!

[Derek Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an absolute must read for anyone in a leadership position. Admittedly my affinity for this book is because the author uses MCDP-1 War fighting as the basis but it's relatable to any profession.

[Mohammad · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب یک اثر فوق العاده و بی نظیر در باب ارتباطات هست
ارتباطات موثر در سطوح مختلف استراتژیک، عملیاتی و کاربردی رو با قلمی روان و بیانی روشن توضیح میده
جدا جای تاسف داره که چرا چنین کتابی به فارسی ترجمه نشده
اما خوندن این کتاب رو جدا توصیه میکنم

[Mithlesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting take on simple techniques. And explaining with loads of real life instances happening in last decade or so makes understanding the underlying principles straight forward

[Carrie Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has good information, but it is SO REPETITIVE that I almost lost my mind.

[J. Dakar]

One of my favorite graduate courses was "Crisis Communication Management," which involved developing the necessary skills to effectively communicate during emergencies. The professor should have made this book required reading.