How do we become a master communicator, someone who is always able to influence others in a powerful way?

What happens when we do not get the response that we want? We have two choices!

We can choose to blame the other person for not being receptive, for being unreasonable, close minded, stupid etc... But you know what? By doing this, there is nothing more we can do about it! We have shut the door on them.

For traditional communication theory, when two people communicate, both have an equal, i.e. 50% responsibility, for the success of the communication.

In other words, if A is talking and attempting to sell B an idea. A can do his best to communicate, but 50% of the success of his communication lies with B

If B has a closed mind and does not want to listen, the communication can never be successful. So is B to be blamed for the unsuccessful communication?

Unfortunately, people who accept this theory never become effective communicators. Why? Because by accepting this theory, we will always be limited as communicators. We will not always get the result we want! In fact we will seldom get the results we want.

Does this happen to you? You motivate your staff to work harder, they don't respond positively, so you give up!

You try to motivate your children to study harder, but it doesn't work, so you say, 'What's the point? They are just lazy."

You do your best to sell a product to a group of prospects, they don't buy, so you say, "I guess they are just not interested in this product."

A study of the most influential and impactful communicators in the world, revealed that they always took 100% responsibility for the success of their communication.

For example person (A) communicates an idea to person (B), and B did not respond successfully, still, person A would not lay the blame on person B.

Person A would take responsibility by accepting that his own communication was not effective. By doing so, A has the power to change the communication, until he gets the desired response.

Such great communicators adopt the belief that the meaning of their communication was the response they got, regardless of their intention.

To describe this further, if they attempted to communicate their sincerity, but the other person felt that they were insincere, they would take responsibility accepting that the meaning of their communication was 'insincerity', even though they intended to be sincere.

It could be their tone of voice or body language that made them seem 'insincere'. They would then change their communication strategy until they got the response they desired, i.e. being sincere.

We must understand that different people perceive the world differently. Everybody has different internal filters. When you tell a joke, a group of people may laugh while another group does not think of it being funny.

This does not mean the second group does not have a sense of humor. It is just that they perceive humor differently. As a great communicator, we must take responsibility changing our communication (joke) until we make our audience laugh.

The power to communicate is one of the most important tools we have as human beings. In fact, our ability to achieve our goals largely depends on our ability to communicate and influence other people.

Taking responsibility and having extreme flexibility is the key to being a master of influence. Taking responsibility for the way we communicate and for the results we get, we attain absolute power over the effect of our communication.