EPISODE SUMMARY
Communication is always being emphasized in our personal and professional lives, but what strategies exist to help cultivate those skills? In episode 483, Dave Mastovich talks about how to use the MASSolutions core value of open communication to improve relationships and workplace efficiency.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
It’s the No Bullshit Marketing Show. I’m Dave Mastovich, CEO and founder of MASSolutions, the world’s only No Bullshit Marketing consultants. Today I want to talk about the truth about open communication. Why? First, it’s critically important to you about communication. But it’s also tied to a question I get asked a lot. Many people will say to me what they think No Bullshit Marketing means, or, just No Bullshit means. And so I, over the years, have had to explain what No Bullshit means to MASSolutions, and to me, and that’s built around the core values of the company. And one of those core values is communication. And that’s about communication with the team, communication with our clients or customers, and communication with our customers’ customers.
The key to communication as part of our core value, and what we try to bring to our customers and their customers, is that that has to be open communication, and No Bullshit communication. And open communication means a couple of things. First, it means being direct, with respect. Being direct with respect. When people hear the No Bullshit mantra, or they hear about the, ‘that’s bullshit’ No Bullshit button, they jump to that conclusion that I’m going to be in your face, or my team is going to be telling you, ‘You’re wrong,’ or, ‘That’s bullshit.’ It’s about being direct with respect. And so when we communicate with our team, amongst our team here internally, there needs to be direct but with respect. When we communicate to our clients or customers, it has to be direct or with respect, and when we communicate to our customers’ customers, it’s got to be direct with respect.
And what does that mean? From time to time, throughout my career, I’ve watched companies struggle with communication amongst the team, amongst the leadership team, the leadership team to middle management, middle management to the rest of the team. That’s one part of open communication. And that means that direct with respect is important because it’s not about getting in anybody’s face. It’s not about telling them they’re wrong. It’s about communicating openly back and forth, but being direct and transparent, and trying to do what’s in the best interests of the organization, group or team. One of the things that I’ve seen again and again throughout my life is people continually doing things because that’s the way it’s been done. And that leads to a lack of open communication. People get into a habit, they begin to do things a certain way. And they don’t communicate about how that could be done differently, and how that could help the collective team and customers. ‘That’s the way we’ve always done it’ is a phrase that I pushed back on when I was on the corporate side leading turnarounds, when I was part of senior management at multi billion dollar companies, and now as a leader of my company, working with many other companies. So ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ doesn’t cut it. That’s not having open communication, that’s falling back into a habit, that’s falling into complacency. It’s actually selling the team short and any company’s customers short.
There’s another piece of it with the truth about open communication that ties to confronting the brutal facts. People are going to rub each other the wrong way on a team, people are going to get frustrated with each other on a team. And here’s the thing that I’ve seen happen a lot: People will become frustrated with something that’s going on at the company. And maybe it’s that thing that they do just because it’s always been done that way. Or maybe it’s a style issue between another team member. And when something happens again and again and again, typically, what I’ve found has happened, is people won’t really bring it up and won’t confront the brutal facts directly with respect. What they will do is actually think that they don’t want to have a confrontation. So they then talk about someone or talk shit on someone. And so now that’s being indirect with disrespect. So the truth about open communication is confronting the brutal facts and having difficult, challenging conversations is hard for all of us. Doesn’t matter if you have that bullshit button. Doesn’t matter if you have one year experience or 10 years experience or 30 years experience. Doesn’t matter if you’re the boss, a team member, or a peer. Having direct, challenging, uncomfortable conversations isn’t easy. However, when it’s done, progress is made. And both parties feel much more comfortable because they got comfortable with being uncomfortable. So that’s part of the No Bullshit mantra and core values of MASSolutions, is the truth about open communication. It’s being direct with respect. It’s confronting the brutal facts. It’s having uncomfortable conversations and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, because the uncomfortable conversations are what lead to personal and professional growth for both parties, for the team, and for the company, as opposed to indirect communication, meaning talking about someone, or keeping it to yourself and letting it fester and being disrespectful talking shit on someone, because you’re venting – which we all vent, I understand there’s going to be venting done. I do it a lot, I do it too much. Venting is going to happen. But if you can take that venting, and then be constructive, and have some empathy, and be direct with respect, you can have open communication.
So these are pieces of that core value of communication, and what MASSolutions does amongst our team, with our clients or customers, and with our customers’ customers. So open communication is about empathy. It’s about transparency, it’s about being direct with respect, it’s about being comfortable with that uncomfortable conversation. It’s about confronting the brutal facts. And then it’s about crafting that communication, that story to solve that problem. Because No Bullshit Marketing is about leadership and communication. Because most challenges in life, whether it’s in the business world or in your personal life, come down to communication. Most communication is a big part of it. And it shows leadership to have that positive, difficult, challenging, open communication. And that’s how your storytelling needs to be built. When you’re looking to reach a target audience, you want to be able to communicate with them openly. You want to confront the brutal facts about why they aren’t currently a customer and what you need to do to get them to understand why they could be a customer. You have to be telling that story in a way that overcomes the preconceived weaknesses that they perceive about you. Because in today’s world, when you go to buy something, we already know the weaknesses of the choice we make. We’ve studied and saw that these two products, these two services are similar, and this one’s weak on this front, this one’s weak on that front, which one matters to me the most? So your storytelling has to be tied to this open communication. That’s a big piece of No Bullshit Marketing, it’s a big piece of leadership and communication, is open communication. Being direct with respect, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, and having those challenging, difficult conversations with team members, with clients. We work in a field where we’re gathering data. One of the first things we learn from a client is, ‘how do you do what you do? Why are you different? How do you make money?’ While we’re learning those things, we then do our own competitive intel, our marketing insights, and our interviews with current and past customers, and current and past and prospective employees and current and prospective referral sources. And we have to confront the brutal facts. We often have that uncomfortable conversation we have to put on and say, ‘here’s an opportunity for you because this is something where you’re not hitting the mark. This is an area where you’ve got a blind spot.’ And so open communication means being direct with respect, but getting comfortable with being uncomfortable about those brutal facts. So this applies to you as a person, as a teammate, as a boss, as the person under that boss, as a customer, as someone working with the customer. 
Open communication as a core value at MASSolutions is part of what No Bullshit Marketing is, it’s part of what No Bullshit storytelling is. Open communication with empathy, understanding the other person’s perspective, open communication with listening proactively, not listening, barely, and preparing what you’re going to say next. Open communication that’s direct with respect, and that confronts the brutal facts. All of that plays into your storytelling, both internally to teammates, internally to prospective employees and current employees, externally to referral sources, centers of influences, externally to current customers and prospective customers. Your storytelling is built around that open communication because the bullshit, the hyperbole, the exaggeration, the flat out lying, that stuff doesn’t work for the long haul. You might make a sale here and there by ;Oh, I thought on my feet during that sales call, I just told them what they needed to hear.’ You might make a short-term sale, unlikely, but you might make a short-term sale, but you won’t have a long-term relationship.
Speaking about that, telling people what you think they want to hear happens so much in the workplace. We tell team members and peers what we think they want to hear. We tell our bosses what we think they want to hear. And I’m not here to say that you immediately tell people a bunch of negative things, and you say it in a hurtful way. But what I am saying is just trying to think about what you think they want to hear, and then talking about that, is flawed, because you’re guessing what you think they want to hear. It’d be better to think about what is happening and what’s going on and what, based on your experience and expertise, you think could help, and present that in as positive a way as you can with substance and with specifics. That is much better than what happens daily, when people are telling someone what they think they want to hear. You might say you don’t do that. Maybe you don’t. But most people I know do. And here’s what I say back. When you’ve done it, when you’ve told the boss what you think they want to hear you, you told a team member what you think they want to hear, how would you feel on the flip side of that? Do you want to hear that? Or do you want to hear something constructive that can take things to another level? I want to hear something that can help me. Doesn’t mean I’m going to love it. If you tell me, ‘The podcast stinks for this reason. Here’s some stats to prove it.’ I’m not going to go, ‘Great, thank you, way to go.’ But I am going to listen. I’m going to try to learn. I’m going to try to adjust and try to make things better. So just because someone looks agitated because you told them something constructive doesn’t mean they’re mad. It means they’re frustrated at that moment, it might not even be with you at all. So think about that the next time you’re about to tell somebody something you think they want to hear. How do you feel when someone tells you what they thought you wanted to hear rather than what could have helped you?
Thanks for listening to another episode of the No Bullshit Marketing Show recorded here in MASSolutions studio in bold, beautiful, downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Remember, ask yourself, what’s the big idea? And build your story around the answer. It’s all about bold solutions. No BS.
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