I came to communication coaching by accident - or fate, depending on how you view such things. My first love was music. (Rock singer-songwriter.) Back in the mid-'90s, I had a recording studio in my basement in Minneapolis, and started doing audio production for professional speakers. I'd go to their presentations, record them, and then edit it all together into a final product. (Back then, cassette tapes.) I enjoyed the work quite a bit, and met some wonderful people along the way.
At one point, though, I started to notice something curious: The person I would come to know would be quite different from the one I'd see in their presentation. They weren’t really different, of course, they were just giving a different impression. But that's what was so intriguing to me. What was causing the difference? What specifically were they doing that was causing the gap between who they were and how there were coming off?
Enter John Miller. When I started working with John in 1996, it was as his speaking coach. We worked hard at closing whatever communication gaps he had at the time, and the difference was tremendous, as it was with the managers and executives I worked with over the years as well.
Later, John asked me to help him write his first book, Personal Accountability. And to my great good fortune, he's asked me to co-write every other one of his books since then: The bestselling QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, Flipping the Switch, and the new Outstanding! 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional.
QBQ! has been something of a phenomenon (over 700,000 copies sold), and for the past several years, most of my work has been conducting keynotes and workshops on that material. But the truth is, as much of a blessing as all that has been, it's still a sideline to my real passion: helping people communicate better. That's why I’m so excited, with Don’t Just Talk, Be Heard! and its related programs to be back at it, helping teams work better together and individuals be more effective leaders.
See, we go through our lives, putting ourselves out there in whatever way we do. But to the extent we have one of these gaps, what we put out there doesn't get reflected back quite the way we expect it should. It's not something we're aware of, and it happens at a very subtle level, but the effect of it is that it keeps us a little bit removed from the world, a little distant from the people in our lives. We don't think in those terms, of course. It's just the way it's always been. And we don't even notice it, really. Or at least we don't until it changes.
But once we start closing the gaps, what we're putting out there does start to come back the way we expect. And all of a sudden, we feel more welcome, more understood, more accepted and appreciated. We're more connected to the people in our lives, and it really does completely transform how we feel about ourselves and our place in the world.
So that's what makes me so passionate about this work: I love seeing the difference it makes in people's lives. The benefits go far beyond work, and are transformational in the most fundamental ways. And, as corny as it sounds, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world to be a part of it.
The Don't Just Talk book was written for people who want to communicate better at work, and for managers and executives who want to be better leaders. But in reality, the material applies to everyone. Beyond that, we offer coaching and feedback programs, because that's what's necessary to make a real change. To that end, we provide clients with what they need to know in order to work better as a team, help identify and develop the skills necessary to be more effective leaders, and share ways to improve all their work relationships.
Thanks for checking out our website. I appreciate you taking the time. If we can be of any help to you or anyone you know, please let us know how.
Until then ...
All the best!
David Levin