If you’re a marketer in today’s uncertain world, you cannot afford to have messages that fail to connect, influence, and inspire.
In our latest episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Head of Strategy Roger Courville, CSP, picks the brain of Patrick Donadio, CSP, author of Communicating with IMPACT: Effectively Communicate Ideas and Achieve Greater Results.
During our chat, you'll hear Patrick discuss effective communication strategies, focusing specifically on how to implement his six-step "IMPACT" framework to create meaningful, impactful communication, whether in marketing, leadership, or everyday interactions.
Here are some key points you will learn along the way:
Six-Step Communication Process: Patrick outlines a framework called "IMPACT," which stands for Intention, Message, Person, Activate, Clarify, and Transform. These steps guide effective communication from setting an intention to ensuring the message is clear and transformative.
Importance of Intention: Successful communication starts with identifying the intention of your message. It’s crucial to take time to think before you speak or write, a step often overlooked.
Adapting to Your Audience: Effective communicators tailor their message to their audience, considering personality styles (introverts, extroverts) and even generational differences. Personalizing the communication fosters engagement and understanding.
Active Listening and Engagement: Communication should involve active listening and engagement. Both are key to creating an interactive dialogue rather than a one-sided monologue, whether in virtual or live presentations.
Nonlinear Communication: In today’s environment, top-down linear communication is outdated. The focus should shift towards a more dynamic, interactive style that invites feedback and keeps the audience engaged throughout.
Storytelling and Examples: Patrick emphasizes the use of stories, metaphors, and examples to bring data or facts to life, making messages more relatable and memorable.
Building Trust: Trust is built through presence, listening, and showing genuine engagement with your audience, particularly in leadership roles.
Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
UN-EDITED TRANSCRIPT ***
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: If you're a marketer in today's quite uncertain world, you can't afford to have messages that fail to connect. Or influence or inspire. Well, hello and welcome today. I hope we've got a solution for you and six steps to communicating with impact. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations, sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your hybrid inven and virtual event production crew with a, with a team that will help you focus on something other than tech and logistics, but we're not here to talk about us.
And I'm excited to welcome to you Patrick DiNadio CSP. And I'm going to come back to, I'm going to bring him on the screen, but I want you to see the book. that is going to be the basis of probably our jumping off point for today. He's the author of Communicating with Impact, Effectively Communicate Ideas and Achieve Greater Results.
He's spoken to and trained thousands of leaders in a variety of sectors, had his work published and profiled in countless places, NBC Nightly News, CBS, ABC, Time Magazine, CEO Magazine, Psychology Today, on and on. And. Patrick is one of the very few people in the world to hold the highest earned designation in two different categories.
He's a master certified coach with international coaching federation and noticeably, uh, notably, uh, is accomplished as a speaker. That's how I know him boasting the highest earned award from national speakers association, which is the CSP certified speaking professional. And that. is a heck of a lot of work.
Welcome, Patrick. Glad you're here. Tell us. Hello, Roger. Great to see you
[00:01:30] Patrick Donadio, CSP: again, my friend. Uh, nice to see you outside of NSA and in a place where we can help people be better communicators.
[00:01:38] Roger Courville, CSP: Totally agree. Patrick, I know you coach and train and speak to more than just marketers, right? But your acumen with communication skills is particularly relevant given the number of presentations on site or online that marketers need to make.
What's the biggest challenge that you see that prevents executives from ensuring that a message is received properly?
[00:02:06] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, I tell you, I'm a little biased, but I think it's really not being able to spend a few moments. thinking strategically because, you know, every communication starts with the thought and to be a really great communicator, you have to take a little bit of time to be more intentional.
And that's the biggest thing we live in a very fast pace, you know, hurry up, let's get going world. And I think so many times we just don't take a few extra seconds to think before we speak or write, right. Or whatever you do with communicating.
[00:02:33] Roger Courville, CSP: Right. Well, and I know the, I know that books are just kind of a launching point for a whole lot deeper level of experiential learning is probably the best way to put it.
But I loved, and I will just be frank about this. I loved the fact that your acronym of impact actually makes sense, right? We see those things sometimes and they're kind of force fit, but it was brilliant and I loved kind of the layout of your book. Just out of curiosity, what. What was even the genesis of you creating this practical six step impact process?
[00:03:08] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, you know, it kind of came as a fluke. I was a goodwill ambassador to Japan in the 90s. And so I was in Japan for like five weeks, uh, through Rotary International, uh, living with Japanese families and learning about the culture. And, uh, after a couple, you know, like weeks spending time with different families, I was kind of getting homesick.
So I was like getting tired of sushi. No offense. And I, I like fish, but I grew up as a Catholic, so fish sticks on Fridays were good, but you know, raw fish just didn't go well. And so I said to the one family, I said, listen, uh, can we go to McDonald's? I'm really kind of homesick. And the kids were so excited because, you know, they don't go to McDonald's very often.
And by the way, at this time in Japan, you know, the, the young, Children spoke English, they just were not comfortable, but they learned it. So we went to McDonald's, Roger, and you, we all know McDonald's, it could be any fast food restaurant. And I got the, you know, the fries and the Big Mac oo, it was a Big Mac.
Uh, but when I was in that restaurant eating those fries, it just dawned on me, because as I was tasting those French fries, I thought to myself, you know what, these taste exactly the same as they do right here in the States. And all of a sudden I said to myself, you know, if I could come up with a process or a recipe or a system that could recreate something to be that consistent, that would be amazing.
And that's how I started to think about, you know, could I come up with a recipe to help people become better communicators? And so that was back in the mid nineties and the book didn't come out to 2017. So, you know, I'm a slow learner. But part of the reason I think the acronym works is because I work so hard to make it work and I hear you
[00:04:35] Roger Courville, CSP: well And you know, I know for me the process about being in front of audiences and coaching executives and being in front of audiences and having Somebody come up and say oh, that's the thing that really made made a difference for me That's part of the process of what makes a book good, right to me writing the book at the beginning As opposed to somewhere down the road Is it can be it can be a real benefit?
So Can you walk us through those principles and maybe how they could be applied with, you know, in a corporate marketing setting, what are those six keys in the impact process?
[00:05:07] Patrick Donadio, CSP: I'd be happy to. And again, you know, I made it, I wanted to make it something easy to remember. That's why I force fed this acronym, but what initially it didn't really fit.
I mean, initially I came up with words that I just thought, you know, spelled impact, but the reason I think it turned out great is because I spent almost 10 years keep working on it, but let me give you the six keys. And again, You know, your viewers can take a piece of paper out and write them down. Uh, but again, it's the word impact.
The I is the intention, right? Every communication starts as a thought, right? Think before you speak. What's your intention for this communication? Now, it doesn't matter what the communication is. Whether it's being on an interview today with you, Roger. Whether it's, you know, putting together some marketing campaign for social media.
Getting up to speak in front of your team and at all hands meeting, right? Any communication starts with the thought. That's the intention, and we can dive deep in any one of these steps if you like. The M is the message and the method. So once you know the intention, like, for example, today, my intention is to be with you, Roger, to have a great conversation, to give your readers and viewers some great value.
So, uh, once you know the intention, then you think about what's the method and you can pick a variety of methods. As I mentioned, it could be a phone call. It could be an email. It could be a presentation. It could be, you know, social media today. It happens to be, you know, a virtual interview. And once you pick the right method to match the intention, then you want to form the message.
And every great message, basically, you know, this goes back to one on one communications, you have an opening, a body and a closing. So, uh, and the intention drives the message. I say, I like to say. Intent before content and then intent drives content. And that's the M. The P is the person. And, uh, we all know that we're not all the same, but introverts and extroverts.
So in the P step, we talk about how do you personalize? This communication to your viewer, to your receiver, and I talk a lot about it in the book. There's a variety of ways you can, you know, identify your audience, whether it be personality style or demographics or psychographics. So you got the IMP, I am planning, intention, message, person.
Then you got the ACT part. So now you have a great message. Now you think about how do I begin to bring it to life, right? A is activate. Two parts of the activation step. One is active listening, which we can talk more about because I find, for example, this is a skill set that a lot of people are not learning in school and even at work.
And the A is also for active engagement. And you and I know, uh, in the last few years with all that's been going on, engagement is a very, very important part of the process. Uh, C is clarify. So every communication, um, the meaning of the message doesn't always come from the sender. A lot of times it comes from the receiver.
So our job as a good communicator is to make sure we We build in redundancy. We, we build in things that are going to help make the message clean and clear and people get it. And then the last step of the process, and I'll be upfront with you Roger, when I first wrote this, the last step T was for thank you.
That was like, okay, that's the example where you're force feeding the acronym. But, you know, I sent it out to some of my coaching friends and I got some great feedback and the T became transformed. And it's how do you transform this communication into the intention you set? So it's kind of a secular process, right?
You started the intention, you come back to the intention. And, and this T step, which really is a lot about the coaching component is that there are two types of transformations. The internal transformation that we have to help with our receiver and the external transformation that we have, we have to help, you know, with the receiver and they're both a little bit different, but they're all about coming back to achieving the intention.
So there you go. It's a very simple process, easy to remember, but not maybe so easy to implement all the time.
[00:08:40] Roger Courville, CSP: I find that to be true in a lot of cases, but one of the things that I love. About this, uh, is, well, I mean, as you know, I spent a lot of, you know, spend 20 years teaching virtual presentation skills and one of the core challenges that I would run into is when people called for looking for help, they were thinking about getting training on zoom or go to or Webex or something like that.
When most of the time I say most of the time, because it was 99 percent of the time, the real problem was exactly what you're talking about here, right? What is the nature and structure of my content? How do I get in? How do I get out? How do I interact and connect? Because, uh, sadly in, in, well, probably in most presentations, but particularly in virtual presentations, we conflate the The modality with the the style, right?
Yeah. And you know, I say we can open up Microsoft Word and choose a way to write and writing a poem or a technical manual or different styles of writing, right? We don't say, teach me how to use Microsoft Word so I can become a better poet, . And yet that's, that's sadly what happens when people move into an online, uh, category.
Um, very, um, almost invariably, because yeah. Oh, it's a webinar. It must be 45 minutes with some Q and a at the end. No, it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, one of the things in your book that I really appreciate it is, uh, and I'm not going to remember exactly how you put it because I'm not looking at it, but it was like end.
We're at the end of the era of of linear communication. Tell me a little more about what you were talking about with linear communication being the thing we want to move away from toward.
[00:10:30] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Yeah. Well, you know, this is a very, a very old style of communicating, right? It's been around for a long time. In fact, we used to call it almost a type of leadership, right?
Autocratic leadership. Right. You do what I say, right? It's top down. It's, you know, parental leadership. It's, uh, control. Uh, but in today's environment, and you can take a look at all the studies, and that's why this whole idea of active engagement, you know, I've been following the Gallup studies for years.
I get Gallup all the time. McKinsey, I study all the research and really great communication today is not necessarily about what you say, but it's how you create this Back and float this back and forth, right? You have a message that's sent to a receiver, right? That's the old stuff. But then the most important part is you have that feedback loop.
So it's not, it's not a dialogue. It's not, I'm sorry. It's not a monologue. It's a dialogue. Right. So, so the idea of, um, making sure that we're engaging people all the time is a critical component. Whether, you know, you're doing like today, a webinar. I mean, again, I, I don't have people in front of me, but we're talking to people.
So we're making sure that we're using examples or stories or rhetorical questions, or, you know, I'm not just sitting here, I'm using my hands. Unfortunately, I'm an Italian. So hands are part of my communication style, but the idea of, you know, not just linear anymore. So every time you're getting out there to communicate, no matter what the format is, and really, you know, they're linear communication is really more email.
Uh, written communication is much more linear in the sense, but you can make even those kinds of communications. you know, um, nonlinear by incorporating a lot of different tools. So, so that's the, the key that I think a lot of leaders have to keep thinking about is how do they engage their receiver in the communication process?
[00:12:05] Roger Courville, CSP: Which key of those six is easiest to forget?
[00:12:09] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, unfortunately, uh, it's, it's the first step, right? Um, so many people are not just like, ah, I'm going to send an email and they start typing. I'm going to send an email. You know, I can pick up the phone and I say, look, the first step is to take 30 seconds and ask yourself this question.
Why am I communicating? And that's the easiest step, but the one that people skip most often. And, uh, in the book, I actually have, uh, I can even give it to you right now, if you want. I call it the laser focused intention template. And, you know, I'm all about processes and systems and tools. And, you know, Roger, you took a look at the book.
I mean, really the way I wrote the book, Rogers, I took my full day communication workshop and I had to transcribe. And then I started writing the book. So a lot of people write the book and then they create a. I took it the other way. I took what I was already teaching that I knew was working and people were liking and I wrote the book.
So, uh, the laser focused intention template is very simple. It's like, I'll give it to you. It's like, I'm going to talk with blank. So they will blank by blank. So, so the idea of in this process, you have the intention, I'm going to talk with blank. So first of all, let's start with the person, you know, so they will blank, which is the message and the intention.
And then you have some kind of a deadline or an outcome, which is the timeframe. So we have the intention, the message, you know, the, the person and also the timeframe. So you're really, you know, Only missing the clarify part when you even start to do this first step. So if people just spent like 30 seconds and said, and you know, Roger, before our start today, I asked you a lot of questions because I wanted to know what's the intention, who's going to be on our, our, our interview today, who's going to be watching, how can I best help them with their problems?
So, um, easiest step is the first step. And if people just spent, you know, 30, 60 seconds doing the first step, I think they'd have a great result. They get, they can stop watching right now. I hope they don't, but you know, if you just do this first step, trust me, you're going to see some amazing outcomes.
[00:13:57] Roger Courville, CSP: Yes.
And let me plug your book. Um, if you, um, I presume you might be listening to this either on YouTube, but at, uh, you can go to patrickdonatio. com, but I will have all of those links in the description. Also in the blog post where we post this, this video, uh, when it goes live, and I'll say this, Patrick's book is full of little quizzes and templates and little ways, things that you can go download, like the, like what he was just talking about, of things that he has made available to you.
I mean, it's It's a no brainer investment to go buy the book, I think, but just one of those little tools could transform tomorrow, uh, transform your day tomorrow in a way that I think is, is, is powerful. I, I didn't know that it came from your workshop. That's a, that explains a lot. It's a well laid out book.
[00:14:49] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, thank you. And again, I'm not here to sell the book, but I just want to share that I wrote the books that I wanted to read. So, I made the book very user friendly, it's got tabs, so once you learn the process, you go, Oh, I gotta, I gotta really work on the personal step, you just look through there, here's a piece step, boom, open it up, and you can take a look at, for example, the four personality styles, and who's my receiver, and what's their style, and how could I best adjust this communication, so, you know, it's like a workshop in the book, but the most important part is, again, get the book, don't get the book, the thing most importantly is, think about strategically how you want to plan before you communicate, and it doesn't take a lot of time.
You know, literally just a couple minutes can have a huge impact, but so many people just start, they just start talking, they just start typing, they just start, you know, writing, and they're not really being intentional.
[00:15:36] Roger Courville, CSP: You just used the term personality styles, and that was one of the things that I appreciated in the book, because it challenges you to consider your own and, and maybe the difference between you and, and the person or persons you're talking to.
How do you personalize a message? What are those four personality styles?
[00:15:54] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, a great question, Roger. And a lot of folks I think over the years now are more familiar with the personality profiles, right? We've had the Myers Briggs, there's the disc, there's the, you know, Herman Brain Dominant. I mean, you name it, there's a bunch of tools out there, but let me just take a step back in time and tell people this isn't anything new.
You know, in 400 BC, Hippocrates, Was already thinking about people were different and he identified them by body fluids. Now, I'm glad we don't use body fluids today, but you know, he had like the sanguine person, the hot blooded person, you know, the phlegmatic person. So the concept has been around for a long time.
The most important thing though, is that we, we think about it, we embrace it. And then Carl Young, and you know, in the twenties and, and William Marshton who came up with the DISC program, they all started to make it simpler and easier. And I don't care what tool you use. I think we all need to be conscious of the fact that.
We're not all the same, right? And you know, Roger, what's the golden rule? You probably know the golden rule
[00:16:49] Roger Courville, CSP: and the platinum rule.
[00:16:51] Patrick Donadio, CSP: I want to go to the platinum rule, but let's go to the golden rule. Cause most people know the golden rule,
[00:16:56] Roger Courville, CSP: right? I mean, doing others as you would have them do it to you. And
[00:16:59] Patrick Donadio, CSP: you're right.
Yeah. And I grew up on a tough neighbor. We had another golden rule do under others before they do unto you, you know, but the golden rule, I think you shared Roger is the one we most think about, but I think you're right. I want people to think about the platinum rule and that is to which by the way is another book by Dr.
Tony Alessandro, uh, is treat people the way they want to be treated. So a good communicator, uh, once they have an intention and a message, they think about the receiver and they say to themselves, how can I best adapt this to that person? So again, very quickly, we all know these, right? You have an introverted person, you have an extroverted person, you have an analytical person, you have a relational person.
We have all of those in different forms, uh, and in the book I actually talk about each style and how you would adapt to them. Um, it. And how, what are some of the downsides to different styles? So for fun, Roger, what would you say if you had to pick yourself? Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
[00:17:48] Roger Courville, CSP: Uh, an ambivert.
[00:17:49] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Ambivert. Okay. But naturally you have probably have one more than the other. How would you say naturally you are?
[00:17:55] Roger Courville, CSP: I recharge alone and I don't go to parties for fun. So more introvert.
[00:18:02] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Yeah, I hear you. And I think we all conflect. So I don't want people to feel like, you know, you're in a box and you can't go anywhere else.
But you need to know where you come from. And as an introvert, for example, you process information different than I do, because I'm an extrovert. So introverts process internally. They like to think. before they speak. Extroverts process externally. They like to speak before they think. So we both have to think about how we're going to approach this, particularly in a conversation.
In a conversation for me, more likely, if I don't think about it, I'm going to say something that's going to get me in trouble because, you know, uh, and the other side of the coin is, uh, you probably, if you don't think about it, uh, you're going to sit there and after the fact go, Oh, I wish I had said that.
So even knowing your own style, for example, is going to give you some clues or let's say we're conversing. Let's say I'm a leader having a conversation with one of my Subordinates. And I'm saying to them, listen, I'd love you to tell me more about what's happening with project X. And they're sitting there and they're like being very quiet.
Now, if you don't realize that they're an introvert, your first thought is, well, don't they know what's going on with, but no, they know what's going on. They just have to take some time to digest it. So a quick little tip, if you're communicating with an introvert, whenever possible, give them advanced notice, let them know what you want to talk about before they come to see you.
So they have some time to prepare it. Right. And if you're communicating with an extrovert, Um, if you think it's going to take 10 minutes, you know, plan for 20, because it's going to take longer. You know, these are simple little things, but again, if you don't think, and it doesn't take a lot of time, you're going to find yourself not being as effective as you could be.
So that's a simple, and we can go to all the steps, but the P step to me is very important. The other part of the P step, and we don't have enough time to get into that, is the whole idea of generations. You know, and you know this, and we all know that we're at work these days, we have different work generations, and we have different, you know, the Gen Xers, the Zers, the Boomers, and I'm, you know, but the point is, um, we can't just assume that one size fits all.
So we're communicating whenever possible. We want to think about the receiver and we want to make sure we find a way to adapt it.
[00:19:56] Roger Courville, CSP: So let's ratchet up the difficulty level there, since I know you do a lot of presentation skills, coaching and training, you're going to make a presentation, on site, online, I guess doesn't make a difference, but you know that there's going to be a hundred people there, and you know that audience inevitably is going to have introverts relationals.
What? How do you guide somebody into planning for something like that?
[00:20:21] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, I think it goes back to the number one, making sure you're clear about the intention, uh, and whenever possible. And I don't always have this opportunity, but when I work with a client and I know you, Roger, you do this as well is, you know, I want to know as much as I can about the audience.
You know, I have a pre call, I do my homework. I want to think about what their biggest challenge is. Uh, and again, coming in with that information, it gives you the ability to adapt. Um, a lot of times, you know, I teach at Ohio state, I've been teaching there for 20 years. Okay. You know, and I don't know who's coming that day.
We have these public seminars. So I, and again, it's a full day. I have a little more time, but at the beginning of my course, I, I do a little bit of assessment, I ask some questions, I get there early, I walk around, I talk to people, you know, try to get a flavor for what they want to learn today, start to build some rapport.
Uh, but the, the biggest thing is if you don't know who's in the audience, you got to build a program that's going to reach everybody. So that means, you know, you need to have something for the folks who are visual. You need to have something for the folks who are, you know, analytical. You need to have something for the folks who are auditory.
So A, you can't just get up there and talk for 20 minutes. B, you can't just have slides that are full of a ton of stuff that you're going to read from. Right? So, uh, the idea of knowing about the group and then building in, you know, enough variety that you can get a flavor for engagement. And then as you go through it, you know, you can adjust a little bit once you get to know them.
So I would say, first of all, anybody who's making a lot of presentations, uh, number one, have a process. I don't care if you use my process, but have a process where you think through before you get started, you know, some of the most important components of like, what's the intention? Who's the audience and what's their biggest problem or challenge.
Uh, number two, uh, create the content that's going to be relevant to that particular audience. And number three, make sure you make it as engaging as possible. So in the activation step, I'm kind of jumping around, Roger. I'll just jump there for a second. You know, I think every presentation should engage people physically, mentally, and emotionally.
And you can't just get up there like, and like I said before, and, you know, be a professor from the seventies and, you know, talk for an hour and expect people to pay attention.
[00:22:18] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, exactly. In fact, I even know, I remember, I don't remember where I saw it, if it was on your website or in the book, but you spoke about going beyond the facts.
And Therefore, necessarily including these other, these other elements. What's that old adage? You know, facts tell, but for stories sell,
[00:22:35] Patrick Donadio, CSP: but exactly. And, you know, a quick tip, Roger, we all know this, right? As, as speakers is that you really, you really want to start keeping a story file, you want to have an example, the story file so that when you talk about X, you know, and, and there's so many models you could say, it's like, it's story point application, it could be, you know, point application story, but you just can't have a point application.
points and no application or no, you know, context. So that's a very, very important part for all leaders and, and for leaders, if you don't have stories, uh, you know, I would ask your team to start to collect some stories. Hey, listen, team, you know, we're doing an all hands meeting, you know, in a couple, a couple of weeks, I'd love you to come to me and share with me.
What are some of the success stories out there so that I can weave some of these in as we're talking about our vision, our goals, or how we've done the last quarter, right? So there's a lot of ways to make it engaging and we can spend a whole, whole show just on presentation skills.
[00:23:25] Roger Courville, CSP: We could I got one thing to say
That's engaging The keeping a story file My my grandfather both my grandfathers were church pastors and one of them literally kept it Of course, this was in the days of actual files. It was like file cabinets, but he kept a file With manila envelopes that were labeled with whatever topics he wanted to, you know, file something under leadership or, or success or whatever.
And if he saw something in the newspaper or magazine or something, he'd clip it out and drop it in the file. And that, that influenced me. I mean, I can't, I don't even know how many I have stored away. But it's powerful because, because it reminds me how much I forget when I go looking for an illustration.
But to me, that's also a great place to drop your, your statistics, right? You want to, you want to tell a story, but you also want to appeal to that analytical drop in, you know, drop in something that said, Oh, one of the things that the Pew Research Foundation just found was, and that's a, that's a powerful kind of thing.
[00:24:34] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Yeah, it's very powerful. And again, if you're listening and you're a leader and you're, you know, presenting or communicating you or have your team help you start to create ways to bring that information to life. You know, I love statistics, but you know, just to give a statistic, you know, it doesn't really always give you the big picture.
So whenever I coach clients who are, you know, making presentations, use a lot of data, I say, how do you bring that statistic to life? So, uh, for example, I remember years ago, this just popped into my head. I used to be with the Crime Prevention Association, and we had this program on litter prevention. It wasn't a very popular program, but there was funding available, to help law enforcement enforce littering.
And I had to convince, you know, law enforcement that this is a big issue. So what I did is I knew that I looked at the data and it's like, you know, let's say for example, there are so many, you know, tons of litter on the highways in Ohio every year. So I said the data and then I came up with a little Bring It To Life.
So I went out, I figured out, How much a garbage truck can hold. I figured out how many tons of litter was collected. I divided the number of garbage trucks into the tons. And I said, you know, every year in Ohio, you know, over the make a number over four tons of litter are collected every year. In fact, if you put all of that litter in garbage truck, you'd have a convoy from Cincinnati to Columbus, Ohio, with all the litter that's deposited on the highways, it's not just a cigarette butt or a little can, it's a humongous amount.
of litter that impacts our environment. In fact, studies show that littered environments have a higher crime rate have. And so then you get the idea. So don't just put a number out there. You want to bring it to life.
[00:26:05] Roger Courville, CSP: I think I learned it from Patricia first, the first place I ever heard the, the, one of the things that you, uh, that you just use point story application.
And if it wasn't, um, I think
[00:26:17] Patrick Donadio, CSP: you're right. I've heard her say that as well.
[00:26:20] Roger Courville, CSP: I often will, uh, coach people to drop those into. An indi, you know, into the presentation, right? That doesn't have to be the, the presentation structure, even though it might use, might serve as forming the meta narrative, but drop it in, right?
I mean, it's just a, it's a simple little mnemonic that allows you to, to go, ah, okay, here's why I'm dropping that statistic now. What does it mean to the other person on the other side, and how do they actually do something or take action with that?
[00:26:48] Patrick Donadio, CSP: And, you know, uh, Roger, we've been modeling for your viewers today already.
A lot of things we're talking about, right. Um, we, we already opened up with the story when you asked me the question about how I came up with the concept, I opened up with the story. So I hope as you're listening today, you know, again, listen for content, but, you know, Go back and watch Roger's other shows, because I'm sure Roger's modeled a few, a lot of things that we're talking about today already.
[00:27:12] Roger Courville, CSP: Always growing, I tell you. This is, and this is different than presenting live, right? I mean, in this case, we can have a dialogue, but you know, presenting live at a webinar or, or even in person gives you a different set of inputs and outputs. In fact, that was one of the things I wanted to point out. To get your input on, um, when you get to the, uh, there was probably a couple different places in impact where it would touch down, uh, I think you touched on like in message, the, the understanding the medium through which you're going to connect.
Right? So talk to me about how you think about online versus on site. Right? Common complaint, big complaint. Oh, I can't see everybody. Therefore, one of the means that I'm used to getting feedback from is gone. Now what?
[00:28:02] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, you're exactly right. And we all, again, particularly for us presenters who are out there doing live for years, boom, all of a sudden, bing, we're all on camera.
And now the good news for me, Roger, and I don't know if you know this, but my undergrad degree is in radio television. So I was on radio years ago and for me, it was actually amazing that those, that muscle memory, you know, that came back to me about, I'm on there. Cause I was doing, uh, I was doing radio. I was doing like a morning drive time when I was in college.
And I had to think about, and I remember. you know, the producers. And now when you're reading the news or you're having a conversation between recordings, think about that woman who's having that cup of coffee and talk to her. So the idea of going virtual, I think was a challenge for a lot of us, but the most important thing was it wasn't really that much different except that a lot of it had to do with the mental preparation part.
It's like, if you're, you know, we all know about this, if you're not mentally prepared, you're not prepared. So when I, we went virtual, Um, the first thing I did was to remind myself to think about one person that I'm going to talk to. When I'm talking at the camera, I'm talking to who? Who's that person? And then I also reminded myself that we want these to be engaging.
And I think for me, virtual, um, was a great way to kind of test out one's ability to keep people's attention. Cause in live presentation, we did this all the time, right? We had an opening story, we had an exercise, we had a turn to your neighbor. And then when virtual came, luckily I'd have been using zoom already.
I knew about breakout rooms. I knew about, you know, chat and polls. And so I was right away getting people engaged with all these tools instead of just having a person on camera talking.
[00:29:37] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. I, I, I quite honestly sometimes forget to kind of think about communicating to a single person. One of my aphorisms is, you know, talk with, not at, which, which to be fair is, is, is a challenge because in a way, sometimes there are modalities in which we're talking at, um, unless we're really hyper conscious about it, right?
Email or radio, right? So how do you talk with someone when you're the one doing all the talking because you're the only one with a microphone, but it's possible, right? It could be learning something like, uh, you know, tools from rhetoric where asking a rhetorical question presents a mental trigger, right?
You know, what's who's got brilliant, uh, use of that, um, sir, Ken Robinson and the most popular Ted talk of all time, right? Why didn't? Fools kill creativity and he asks these little rhetorical questions throughout the 15 minutes or so, right? He goes even as simple as am I right and one way or another your brains got to go.
Yes. No Uh, can you repeat that? Can you repeat what I wasn't
[00:30:46] Patrick Donadio, CSP: asking you that question, but you're engaged,
[00:30:50] Roger Courville, CSP: but it's a great example of, cause I mean, that Ted talk is kind of like a keynote, right? He's not doing interactive exercises and turn to your neighbor, but it was a mental trigger. And I just thought, ah, that's a webinars or something.
[00:31:07] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, and you know, going back to, I think a lot of your viewers today are in the marketing arena and, uh, you know, believe it or not, I, I've done a little bit of marketing training. I used to coach lawyers on how to build their practice years ago when I first started coaching, but you know, you talk about talk to and talk with, I talk about push versus pull.
When you're communicating with your viewers, your readers, you want to be pulling them, not pushing them. So, you know, we all know this today, right? On social media, you want to have a question or you want to have somebody that's engaging. You don't want like, here's a picture of me eating a banana. Like, who cares?
You know, we're like, what's the point? So, um, two with push, pull, it's all about engagement. And, you know, again, it goes back to the activation step is that you should be engaging people. In my opinion, every two to three, every three to five minutes in some way, whether it be physically, mentally, or emotionally,
[00:31:56] Roger Courville, CSP: that's a good way to put it.
Here's something that you said that I thought was curious. Many people think communicating is an event. Why is this not always true?
[00:32:07] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, because we're all in that instant generation, right? I mean, and again, an event is something that happens once like, you know, let's go to lunch. Okay, boom, we're done.
That's lunch. That's true. If it's with a friend, if it's with a prospect, it's a process. It's not an event. I mean, I'm going to go to lunch. Perfect. I'm going to learn about what their needs are, what their wants are, what their desires are. I'm going to come up with some questions I want to ask during lunch.
I want to make sure that I'm present and listening. We have lunch. I'm listening. I'm, I don't want to take notes, but I'm taking mental notes. We wrap up lunch and then I'm going to go think about how do I stay in touch? How do I follow up? How do I build the relationship? Go a little bit deeper, right?
That's a process. So an event is doing something just once. It's like one and done. A process is something that takes a lot more time and really great communication is a process because if you think like an event, I'm going to send an email and we're done, you know, it's not going to work. I mean, maybe if the email is, are you going to see, I'll see you Friday at the meeting at four.
The answer is yes. Okay, boom. We're done. But so I really want people to think, and I love the, I call it the BDA before, during and after. Uh, and if you're out there right now as a marketer, you already know this. I'm sure you do when you're putting together a marketing campaign. Um, what do you do before?
What do you do during? What do you do after? So that's another little process I'd like to think about in addition to the impact process. So these are all different systems. Uh, and you know, Roger, I grew up in an Italian community. My grandparents all came from Italy. My parents are spoke Italian. I, unfortunately they didn't want us to learn it.
Cause you know, you're in America, you speak American, but I grew up with food and what's about food. Food's about recipes. So I mean to me recipes and you know, I've always been a part of my life. And so I'm all about systems and that's, these are the kinds of things that I think make us more efficient, more effective and more productive.
[00:33:48] Roger Courville, CSP: What strategies would you recommend for building and maintaining trust in, in a corporate environment or in how you think about, delivering a presentation or shape that however you want.
[00:34:02] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, as we know, and you, you know, look at the studies, the Gallup studies show that, you know, like what, only about a third of folks are engaged, right?
And, uh, so that means two thirds of folks aren't engaged. And when they actually asked why, let's just, and they have like seven categories, but let's just talk about direct supervisors. When they asked the question, why are you not engaged with direct supervisor? Uh, here's what they said. Didn't have the right knowledge of skillset.
Um, wasn't around or showed up or was there and was a poor communicator. Right. So, so these three things right there and are all things that build trust. If you're, you know, if you're not being present when someone's talking with you, Uh, if you don't make that connection, if you don't give them a chance to interact or speak, you don't build trust.
If you know, if you only can show up when you want something, if you're not like building the relationship on a regular basis. So, so trust is a, is a very important part of, of being a leader and building a team and you know, the higher you create that trust level, the better. So I think again, there's a lot of key components, but one of the key components is listening.
And if you allow people to share and talk. They begin to connect with you and connection is a very important part of building that trust.
[00:35:10] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah, it's actually, it's part of my doctoral work. I'm in the thesis Oh really? Of my, my doctorate and uh, part of it is on, on the nature of connection. And you know, I mean, we're made for it.
We we're created for whether, regardless of your worldview, we are. We're wired to be connected, right? And there's a lot of things that affect that, and we don't have another four hours here, so.
[00:35:38] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Let me just share one quick thing about listening that I want our listeners to pick up on. You know, I've been teaching communication skills for over two decades, and I'd say for almost all those, 20 some years.
Whenever I'm doing a workshop on communication skills, I ask the audience this same question. How many of you have had a formal 60 to 90 minute listening skills workshop? I ask this question all the time. And you know what? I'm amazed on average, But 15 percent or less raised their hand. I've had a formal, some type of listening skills training.
So right there, what does that tell us? You know, the most important skill set that I think a leader should have is not a skill set that we're taking the time to teach, to teach. So, um, again, we're talking about trust, you know, there's a lot of things that help build trust, but. My philosophy, and I've coached, you know, CFOs, CEOs, I've coached all the C suite folks, and the higher you go up in the leadership realm, the more important being a good listener is, you know, I almost think it's the opposite.
Like, you know, the higher you go, you get, I mean, you got to be a good presenter, but, uh, you know, one of my, CFO clients who just became the new CFO. Um, we were coaching together. She said that, well, I'm a new CFO. I said, that's great. What's your first, what's your first step? She goes, well, I'm going to go on a listening tour.
I'm going to go around for the next four weeks. I want to go around and I want to start listening. What are people saying? What are they feeling? What are they thinking? And I love that. So, um, and you don't have to be in a new role to go on a listening tour, by the way. You know, every leader should probably once a year, at least go on a listening tour.
[00:37:08] Roger Courville, CSP: Something you said earlier, when you were talking about having a process, um, made me think of something that I didn't interject with at the time, but, but speaking of listening, uh, particularly because, you know, two thirds, typically in any given year, two thirds or two, three quarters of my, of my presentations are virtually as opposed to, you know, in person or at a conference or something like that.
So one of the tactics that I embedded into my process was who is going to be there that I can get on a quick phone call with. I promise them it'll be 10 minutes. They give me three or four or five names and I just pick up the phone and start asking a few questions. Hey, who, after figuring out who they are, I asked to put on their listening hat.
for the other people that they know, right? I'm working with the Montana society of CPAs. Hey, you're, you're going to be hanging out with a bunch of your peers. What are their challenges? What are their, and I kind of turned them into my ears to try to get, Hey, who's, who's going to be sitting in front of me here.
[00:38:08] Patrick Donadio, CSP: I love that. Again, that goes back to the P step. You want to personalize the content. You got to do some homework, get asked some good questions, and you want to make sure, of course, you tailor your comments to the receiver.
[00:38:19] Roger Courville, CSP: Patrick, what questions should I have asked you that I haven't.
[00:38:23] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Um, am I a good cook?
No, I'm just kidding. You know, um, I think you've really done a very thorough job. I mean, I guess if we were getting ready to wrap up, you know, one thing that I would say to most people, and I say this All the time as I wrap up any presentation or training seminar is this not what we know? It's what we do with what we know and so many people, you know Know a lot some people forgot a lot and and life is a process, right?
We're a continuous learning person So I think that the thing that I want to just share is that if you happen to hear some ideas today that you thought were Interesting or helpful, but then put them into practice You know pick one thing that Roger and I talked about today that you felt could help you be a greater communicator communicator and make a bigger impact.
And, you know, tomorrow, this afternoon, uh, this morning, depending on when you're listening, you know, put it into practice. Cause what I always like to say, Roger is nothing changes until you change. And that's part of the transformation step is to transform your thoughts and your words into actions.
[00:39:23] Roger Courville, CSP: Let me add one thing to that.
If you pick that one thing and you go put it into action, send Patrick an email saying what you chose and what the, what the result was.
[00:39:36] Patrick Donadio, CSP: I love that.
[00:39:37] Roger Courville, CSP: Well, we all do. Right? I mean, that's, that's part of one of the challenges with a medium like this, where this video is on YouTube and, and I don't necessarily know, but you know what, I actually keep a file of those.
Every time somebody says, ah, you just inspired me or helped me or, or something like that. I actually keep a file. So on crappy days I can go, go, Oh, okay. I still actually help people sometimes,
[00:40:00] Patrick Donadio, CSP: you know, so amazing. That's. One of the steps on the internal transformation process is how do you internally transform yourself from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, which is a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day.
[00:40:14] Roger Courville, CSP: I'm
[00:40:14] Patrick Donadio, CSP: on the same page with you, my friend.
[00:40:17] Roger Courville, CSP: I would be delighted to have you back anytime. If you've got a little topic you want to tackle. I thank you actually for, for taking a few minutes here to, to share some of your, uh, hard one wisdom. with, uh, with our audience, Patrick Donatio. com, any other place that you prefer to connect?
[00:40:35] Patrick Donadio, CSP: Well, you know, LinkedIn is always great because I love, I love connecting on LinkedIn and I think LinkedIn to me is really a good place to help each other grow. So I'm, I'm not necessarily selling things. I'm trying to build relationships. And so LinkedIn, uh, just Patrick Donatio, just look me up on LinkedIn and put in a request.
Uh, and if you do, maybe mention you or heard me on Roger's show and because I get a lot of requests and I try to accept as many as I can. But if I don't see any real connection, I don't always do that. So mention Roger and yeah, let's connect there. Let's continue the dialogue.
[00:41:02] Roger Courville, CSP: Good point. Well, thank you, Patrick, for a little bit of your time today, uh, time today.
And thank you again to our sponsor, virtualvenues. com, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We'll catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.
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