Communication is an often misunderstood concept. We constantly and easily communicate. From phone calls and Zoom calls, to Tweets and Instagram posts, the act of communicating is easier to accomplish than ever.

But that is only the act of “communicating. It does mean that you have successfully communicated.

To succeed at communication is not to simply speak your mind - it is to be heard and understood. An everyday example of this is when your coworker asks how you are doing and you shrug and say, “not bad, yourself?” And they respond, “not bad.” Most would say that communication took place there, but as you both actually don’t know anything about the real answer to your query, you haven’t really communicated at all.

As a professional communicator, the question you need to always be asking yourself is not simply, “Am I saying what I intend to say?” but rather, “Am I being heard and understood.”

Now to speak words precisely, to give powerful and memorable illustrations, to build a speech that will resonate far after the audience has gone home, these are all complicated tasks that take skill and practice. Teaching those skills is of course why The Centre for Public Speaking exists in the first place.

But there is a very very important part of being heard that is often overlooked. In order to be heard and understood, your audience needs to be willing to listen to you in the first place. To do so, they generally must believe that your intentions are good.

I call this “The Daniel Gilman Principle.” Yes, after the founder of the Centre for Public Speaking, my younger brother. Over the years I have watched him unintentionally use this principle to great effect.

The Daniel Gilman Principle is simple. It is the axis of how much someone disagrees with you, juxtaposed against how much they believe you care about them. As both my brother and I worked in politics, I was able to watch as he frequently worked with people who passionately disagreed with him on most topics. He was able to do this because of his ability to convey that he cared about them as an individual.

Consequently, he was able to move projects forward, to earn himself an audience with groups and individuals who would dismiss most people who held positions like his, because before trying to convince them of his ideas, he first took the time to demonstrate care for who they were as people. 

You can read many books on this. You can watch this excellent TED Talk on body language. But if you simply remember, that no matter how much your message burns within you, people are most likely to listen to you, if you take time to show them that you above all care about them, then you will be given the opportunity to be heard and understood. 

Then you will have succeeded in real communication.