This month Dave is primarily discussing an important communication technique to create a shared understanding.

How many of us have asked our employees to do something only to see the results not what we had envisioned? Everybody has their hand raised, right? It’s a very common issue, and the problem is reflected in the George Bernard Shaw's quote: "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

Andy Bounds is our Crestcom faculty member with expertise in communication, and has been voted Britain’s Sales Trainer of the Year. He talks about creating the big picture vision of what you hope to accomplish by focusing beyond the “thing” you want, to what the AFTER’s of that thing are. A couple of examples - lot’s of people buy newspapers every day, but nobody really wants a newspaper. They want the news, or the sports or the comics. And nobody wants toothpaste, they want cleaner teeth or fresher breath.

So when you ask for a report, you don’t really want the report, you want what you can do with the report (keep up on team progress, understand vendor performance, understand financial performance, etc…). There are questions you can ask of yourself, and that you can train your team to ask, that will help both you and them focus on the AFTER’s of any request that you might make.

Listen to Jeffrey and Dave discuss AFTER’s and how and why this skill is essential for leaders at all levels of your organization.