***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be welcoming Steve Woodruff. I first had a chance to learn from Steve through his book, Clarity Wins, and now he has a new book, The Point, in which he offers tips on crafting messages that stand out and motivate people in today's noisy world, essential for all of us as we lead our teams and organizations. 

I'm sure you will learn a lot from Steve as I have through the years and through this conversation as well. I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming. Mahanatmahantavikoli. com. There's a microphone icon on partneringleadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there.

Don't forget to follow the podcast on your favorite platform. And when you get a chance, leave a rating and review that will help more people find and benefit from these conversations, that will help more people find and benefit from these conversations. Now, here's my conversation with Steve Woodruff.

Steve Woodruff, my friend, welcome to partnering leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:01:16] Steven Woodruff: It's great to see your face again. 

[00:01:18] Mahan Tavakoli: Steve, you have a book, the point, how to win with clarity fueled communications. Can't wait to talk about that. But before we do, we'd love to get to know a little bit about your origin story, Steve, whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become?

[00:01:37] Steven Woodruff: I grew up in Connecticut Central Connecticut, and my parents were middle class, mother was a teacher, father was a draftsman, I was one of four boys in fact my dad was one of three boys, and I had five boys, and so it's been boys, and then as I just mentioned to you this morning, as we're recording, our first granddaughter showed up.

I have to figure out what girls are now. But, I grew up really enjoying being a learner, reading a lot, and enjoying words and language. So I did pretty well in school. But I had dreams of becoming first of becoming an astronaut because I've always been into science fiction and that didn't work out with the lack of clear 2020 vision. 

And then I thought, I'll be an astronomer. So when I went to college to Vanderbilt in Nashville, I went because they had an astronomy program and there I came to the realization that astronomy is primarily physics and calculus, and I hate formulas. I don't like math. I did not do well.

And so I got some clarity on my first year that I'm an ideas and words guy. I am not a numbers guy. And that really did shape the way I went majored in psychology, and then I was doing some teaching, and then I went into the business world and have been in sales and marketing roles for medical devices, for software, a lot of it connected to healthcare and the pharmaceutical industry for the last 37 years.

And during that time, when you sell, when you consult, When you market, the big challenge is how do you get your point across? Because there's a thousand other competitors out there and some of them are competitor companies, but a lot of it is just plain noise. How do you break through all that noise? So my challenge all my professional life has been how do I craft words to gain Influence to gain attention, to sell, to market.

So when it came around to actually writing the books, they are the fruit of decades of trial and error, lots of error, and trying to learn how to do both. How to use writing in a short, punchy way that will gain attention and that will make the point quickly with people, because in business, we don't have hours and hours to gain any attention.

We've got moments. So a lot of the emphasis of these books is the tools and the approaches that I've developed that other people can apply to getting to the point quickly and helping transmit your message in a way that rises above all the static in the marketplace. 

[00:04:32] Mahan Tavakoli: You have become an expert on that clarity that you mentioned, Steve, which is more important now than ever before, because there is so much noise in our world, whether the number of emails, the amount of information that is out there, what we see on social media, so from your perspective, Steve.

What is the importance for clarity in communication, most specifically when it comes to organizational leaders and managers?

[00:05:03] Steven Woodruff: So one of the things that mentioned, our competitor, if as a leader or as a salesperson or a marketer or anybody that's trying to communicate at all, our competitor is that noise.

It's everything else. So people are getting anywhere from 50 to 200 emails a day. We're looking at screens for seven to 10 hours per day. That's the competition that we're facing. People are checking their phones a hundred to 300 times a day. And if you think about how fragmented people's attention really is, and it's only getting worse, what we've got to do is somehow package our message as a leader or as a marketer in such a way that we can effectively compete.

Now, I've mentioned I don't like math, but I can sometimes enjoy the numbers and the most striking number that I've come up with that shows the challenge is that our brains, the human brain is processing 11 million bits of information per second from all five senses. There is a torrent of information of continuous input coming into the human brain. It always has been ever since you were born. And when I am talking with you and when I am focusing on one person or on one screen or something, that's a 60 bit information flow. We can focus on 60 bits. So if I'm going to have your attention and if I'm going to communicate effectively, I've got to win.

The 60 bit focus battle against 11 million bits of competition. That is humongous. And the interesting key to this, the brain science, is that we have this wonderful neurobiological filter called the reticular activating system, and its job is to focus. And it's looking for the one thing that's most important at this time.

The relevant thing. So if I'm going to lead effectively, I've got to speak the language of what's relevant to you, what matters to you, what's important right now, because the RAS, the reticular activating system, is going to seize what's important. And if I'm just blabbing on and on about stuff, and it's irrelevant, I'm just part of the 11 million bits of background.

[00:07:41] Mahan Tavakoli: That is incredible to think about how our brains are pulled in so many different directions. And for anyone to be able to communicate effectively, they therefore need to have that targeted clarity. So you go through in your book, the four core rules for the clarity fuel formula?

Would love for you to talk us through what those rules are. And how can an organizational leader or a manager think about applying those in communicating to their team and organization. 

[00:08:18] Steven Woodruff: So .

So if I'm going to lead effectively, if I'm going to do anything as a professional or even just personal, because this applies to everything, personal business. I got to get to the point. And we've all thought this so many times. We've sat in a meeting with somebody that's leading or presenting and we've gone, will you please just get to the point because you don't know where it's going and we will lose the attention and the focus of our audience if we don't get to the point.

So that's the second rule. Now, the one that precedes it is almost comically simple. It's first, you got to have a point and shockingly enough, a lot of times people communicate and they couldn't even articulate where they're going. What's the purpose? What's the intended result? And so if I'm going to be an effective communicator and leader, I've got to know, just like I have to plug in a destination on a GPS, I've got to know where I'm going.

I got to have a point, then I got to get to the point quickly because the RAS is demanding up front real fast, what's the relevance? The third rule is now we have to make sure we get the point Across, which means that even though we're saying the same words and speaking the same language, it doesn't mean we have the same meaning.

So if I use the word marketing, I have definitions and ideas and experiences in my mind and so do you. But if we just talk about marketing and we don't define what we're actually talking about, we may be talking about totally different things. So a leader may be saying. To one of their people. I really need you to be more efficient about this.

What does that mean? Explain that because I may have a totally different idea of efficiency. So we can never assume that people are really grasping where we're going. And that's why I've got to define and simplify and illustrate our terms. So you've got to have a point, get to the point, get the point across.

And then particularly in business and particularly in leadership. The goal is to get on the same page. What we're after is alignment and agreement and results and actions. So if you look at that sequence, that is actually the sequence for effective communication for anything. For a presentation, for running a meeting, for a one on one coaching session, for an email, even for a 30 second TV ad.

So you gotta grab attention with something that's relevant, and then you've got to explain a little bit about what's going on, and then you end with the call to action, see your doctor about so and so. it's the same sequence. And that's why... It's universal. There's one set of rules that we can apply to all communications, because this is what it means to be brain friendly.

And this is the sequence that the human being and the human brain wants. It's 

[00:11:47] Mahan Tavakoli: universal, Steve. And it's something that I see violated on a regular basis. So one of the things that I do is that I work with CEOs and their leadership teams. That gives me an opportunity to sit in on meetings and observe interactions as people are, whether presenting, they're working on their strategy or talking through some of the priorities, how the metrics are looking, so on and so forth.

[00:12:21] Steven Woodruff: First of all, a lot of times people are speaking in order to be speaking. They don't necessarily have a point. They're hoping the point will spill out somewhere. Somebody tell me what I'm talking about here. 

[00:12:26] Mahan Tavakoli: And then on the getting to the point one, people higher up in organizational hierarchy tend to take longer and longer getting to the actual point, therefore losing their audience.

[00:12:37] Steven Woodruff: And that's why a lot of this really needs to start with leaders. Leaders need to set the example. If you look very simply at just having a meeting. There are two most common things this can be applied instantly. Email design, and having a meeting. Let's say you're going to set up a meeting with a group of people.

The first thing you want to do is have a point. And what does that mean? Right now the people in that group, they're thinking a certain way, they're feeling a certain way, and they're acting a certain way. As a result of this meeting, how do I want them to think and feel and act differently? What's the delta?

What's the change? What's the shift? If you can define the shift, that's the point. Interestingly enough, that applies to anything. Email, advertising, marketing. It's what's the shift? You've got to articulate it. Now, if I know what the shift is, I can create an agenda that will get us there, and then at the end, I can create a summary, which is the same page.

We want to get on the same page. You know what the problem with getting on the same page is? Nobody makes the page. It's our job as leaders to write the summary and the page and say, here's what we're doing. That way you can have aligned expectations and accountability. If it's left floating around... 10 different people will walk away with 10 different things. 

[00:14:14] Mahan Tavakoli: What you just said, Steve. In my view is one of the most important things for CEOs, leaders of teams and organizations to keep in mind as they're communicating. I love the way you put it. At any point in time, people are thinking and feeling a certain way. You need to acknowledge that they are not all feeling and thinking the same things you are feeling and thinking.

And then think about where do I want to take them, have that specifically in mind and take them there through some of the tools that you mentioned, including storytelling. So that clarity is really important.

[00:14:57] Steven Woodruff: Absolutely. That's one of the biggest problems one of the things I talk about is the curse of knowledge, which is we assume we have a bunch of stuff in our head, and we assume that our audience, one or many, they all have the same information in their head.

And so we don't go through the exercise of saying, what they really actually know and thinking, how is this impacting them emotionally? And so we come in and we just spill stuff instead of really leading people to a certain direction. And when you look at the design of an email, or a meeting, or a white paper, or a website or whatever, you still go through this process.

So I'm going through a rebranding right now with my website. And websites can have lots of different goals, lots of different structural designs, but the thing you gotta do is right up front say, what do I want to happen here? And I told our designers, look, I just want someone to call and talk to me for 30 minutes.

If I can talk to somebody. It's game over. Okay. I don't need to spill a million things on the website. I don't need a whole bunch of detail. I just want people to say, Hey, I ought to talk to this guy. This looks interesting. So that means very simple, very brief. But the temptation is to say, I got to say everything no, that may actually defeat the purpose.

[00:16:18] Mahan Tavakoli: Sometimes I fall into that trap as well. The fact that in our minds, we have a much more complete picture of whatever it is we're communicating need to take the time to think about where.

Other people are at before being able to communicate effectively to them, whether it is a new person coming to a website or it is team members in an all staff meeting, listening to the CEO, or it's an email we're sending to someone else. They don't have the full picture and context that we do. Therefore, it requires a different kind of thinking to be able to clearly communicate our message. I was working with one of my pharma clients on their onboarding program for new trainers so they bring successful sales people out from the field and turn them into sales trainers for a period of time. They wanted to refine their onboarding program. So I talked to some of the people that had been through it.

[00:17:18] Steven Woodruff: And it turns out that there were just this list of very simple things that nobody was thinking about because they just work in headquarters and assume everybody knows it. And, where's the men's room? Who do I call when I'm having a computer problem? And so we identified just these relatively straightforward things that were gaps, but no one was thinking about the experience of those people coming into the new environment.

They were just dumping. And maybe not all the best stuff. 

[00:17:48] Mahan Tavakoli: That's trying honestly to see things from the other person's point of view, which is something that Dale Carnegie wrote about you also mentioned stratification and sequencing of information, how does that happen?

[00:18:04] Steven Woodruff: Stratification is one of the most important things that I talk about in the book. And the analogy I often use is people want the needle, not the haystack. So the biggest problem with communication is dumping too much unstructured information. If we dump too much and it's not structured in a way that I can digest it.

I'm just inviting people to tune out. so If you go to a really nice restaurant and you order your dinner, what you don't want is for the chef to come out and just dump a bunch of ingredients on the table. And say Mahan, have a good time, and we'll start with dessert. No, that's not the right sequence. So with our information, and I use the imagery of a pyramid, three levels. The top level of the pyramid is the point. What is the actual real point, the needle in the haystack? What's the main thing? And I need to start with that to grab you. To get your attention and to say, here's the important thing.

Once you feel like, okay, I'm engaged, this is important, I've bought the right to move to the next level, which is to talk a little bit more background, some of the story, some bullet points, some kind of context. Then at the bottom of the pyramid is the details. That's the stratification, and I usually think about it in three levels.

Brain friendly communication is stratified. I've got to grab your attention. I've got to help you see a little bit more and then give you the option to go into the deep end if you need to. But if I just throw it all out there, I'm telling you to do the work. I'm making you work and the brain doesn't want any more work.

It's doing 11 million bits per second. Thank you very much. Don't give me a bunch more static and noise.

[00:20:00] Mahan Tavakoli: And even the visual imagery that you use there, Steve, I just want to highlight the fact that. You beautifully do what you advise your clients and you write in the book, people should do just that image of the chef coming out and dumping all the ingredients in front of you makes it more likely for me to understand the message you are looking to communicate and makes it much more memorable as well.

You have a point that you want to make. And in that case, that. analogy that you're using helps support that point that you're making. Now, in your book, you also explain eight tools. All of them begin with S that can be used in Support of us communicating our message would love for you to touch on a few of them.

I've spent a lot of time, Steve, on stories and the power of stories and storytelling for leaders. I do think that's essential. Would love your Thoughts on snippets and symbols, how those can play a role

[00:21:11] Steven Woodruff: I talk in the Clarity Formula about four rules and eight tools, and you brought up just now the analogy tool. Which is where I talked about the chef. I talked about the haystack. That's symbolic language. So the human brain loves symbolic language. If I can create a mental picture, if I can relate something new to something known, your understanding, your uptake will be much quicker. 

And if it's an interesting analogy, it'll be memorable. So using symbolic language for any type of communication is a Huge win. Stories is another one. That's another one of the S's, and we all know that the human brain is hardwired for stories.

We love stories. If you present me with a white paper of eight pages of facts, I'm not likely to remember any of it. If you tell me an interesting story, That actually contains that information, I will remember. Snippets and specifics are things that are great because they are little pieces of information.

People won't always remember everything we talk about in this podcast, but they will probably remember 11 million bits versus 60 bits. Why? Because it's a very interesting and striking snippet. It's a specific, it's a number, it's a statistic. It's something that, again, is brain friendly. So what we've got to do is learn to use these tools in order to make it so easy for the human brain to process.

And another one I talk about, and leaders do this all the time, is side by sides, compare and contrast. This is like this. This is unlike this. So I'm taking something you already know and I'm saying this is actually like that. Oh, I get it. And so all of these eight S's are turn on the light, I get it quickly things.

And I didn't make any of them up. We human beings have been using these tools forever. It's just that I happened to turn them into eight S's. That's all. 

[00:23:23] Mahan Tavakoli: What I find, Steve, is that in many instances, whether it is with stories or other aspects of some of what you mentioned, leaders that I interact with and work with intuitively understand the value of it, but there is a huge difference between.

Knowing what we're supposed to say and do, and then being able to do it because we go through this. I share with them podcast guests that I've had on storytelling, the importance of it. They tell me, aha, I really get it. That's powerful. And then the next time they have a talk, I'm sitting in there and they don't tell a single story that engages the audience.

There is a huge separation between the audience nodding and saying. Yes, Steve, I've heard that before. That makes sense. And being able to do it. So what are your recommendations on people being able to bridge that knowing, doing gap in being able to communicate with clarity?

[00:24:26] Steven Woodruff: Let's go to storytelling because you brought that up and storytelling is very important.

Storytelling sounds hard if you're used to being a business person and speaking in business terms, technical terms, whatever, it's like, what do I have to do? Become a poet? No, you don't. What I like to do is say, okay, here are some specific kinds of stories. Okay. Thanks. And that makes it simpler.

So you started this podcast with one of the ones I often do is tell me your origin story, your origin and evolution story. And I'll do it this way. Obviously, when you graduated from high school, you had something in your yearbook that said, you're going to do this or that. Right now, Mahan, you are this.

How did you get. From here to here. That's an easy story to ask for. And so a success story is another one. Tell me about some of the greatest successes that you've had. So if you break it into those specific things, give me a client case study that was a failure. Give me this success. Give me this origin story.

Give me that. Then it's Oh, this isn't so hard. I know how to do those. actually, I do those. Nobody told me that's the label for them. Okay. And in fact, I tell people this is the key to great networking as well. If you can be what I call a story asker, if you can ask people for their story.

You will be the greatest networker in the world. Doesn't matter if you're an introvert, if you feel clumsy, if you have a hard time speaking just ask people their story and sit back shut up listen and keep asking questions. Because stories really fuel human connection. Both asking them and telling them so sometimes it's just a matter of saying here are the types of stories that you should be telling. As a leader. Oh, okay. I get that. 

[00:26:25] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that Steve and a mentor of mine years back told me there aren't boring people. There are boring questioners. So if someone comes across as being boring, you have asked them a boring question.

What an outstanding way. To ask people their story and you gave a couple of great examples that make it more specific rather than the general, what is your story? And that brings out the uniqueness in each individual. And every one of us is a unique person. So a great question to bring that out as well.

So the points that you make on clarity are relevant, whether people are communicating verbally, writing. Email presentations, all of those. It's also important on personal branding, which is something I got a lot from your previous book on as well. Steve so how does clarity play a role in branding specifically personal branding?

[00:27:29] Steven Woodruff: So I work a lot with emerging leaders in organizations, and these are people that are moving up that are high potential, but often they don't know how to present themselves.

Effectively in the organization or on LinkedIn or in networking. And I see the personal branding clarity at two really crucial levels. One is we've got to have clarity about who we are. So this is the self awareness part. Of being in touch with our strengths this is I asked for success stories and origin stories.

When I asked for those stories, I'm actually fishing for somebody's unique characteristics for their differentiators for their brand. I can often tell people after a half hour talking to them what their brand really is. And they think I'm a magician. No, I've just picked up the keywords and the things.

I've just asked questions so getting to that point of awareness is incredibly liberating for leaders and emerging leaders and anybody in the organization. But once you do that, then you've got to put it into a compressed message can get across to people. And I use the analogy of what I call a memory dart.

I'm only going to get one pixel in your mind. you're going to give me a little bit of memory space. I better put exactly the right idea in your head. About what I want you to think of me. You're not going to memorize a white paper about me. You're going to think about probably one thing.

I poo the term elevator pitch. Only for two reasons. Number one, nobody wants to talk in the elevator. And number two, nobody wants to be pitched. I use the term memory dart. And this is where symbolic language And using analogies is really powerful. So at one point, somebody years ago called me the king of clarity.

And I thought, Ooh, that is some really cool branding, a little pretentious, but memorable. And I decided to run with it, despite my New England upbringing of, who are you self proclaimed royalty. But the fact is, I want people to think. Clarity. Steve Woodruff, clarity. That's all. I don't want you to think anything else.

I got to be pigeonholed. When it comes to personal branding, when we are networking within and or outside of an organization, we want to have these nice, compressed, easy to digest, Statements, snippets, symbols on LinkedIn in our networking so that people can refer us accurately and think of us accurately.

And that's our job. It's not their job to figure us out. It's our job to plant the seed in their minds. 

[00:30:21] Mahan Tavakoli: Steve, you mentioned a couple of things that I learned from you, both in reading your past book and the interactions we had back to 2018, 2019. And I wanted to highlight a couple of them.

One is you said you want to be pigeonholed we assume when we give people the elevator pitch or in many instances a longer than an elevator pitch with lots of jargon thrown in there that people are going to have any desire to listen to it or they will remember it.

First point that I got from you, it still takes effort. To work on it is you do want to be pigeonholed because when you are, people are more likely to remember you. So that's one. The second one, you said you need to have clarity on who you are. Steve Woodruff, you are one of the people I have repeatedly quoted over the past four or five years.

 You can't see and read the label of your own jar. Sometimes you need others to look from the outside and help you be able to read that.

So having that clarity from an outsider's perspective is of real value before then you can run with it and pigeonhole yourself. 

[00:31:54] Steven Woodruff: That's correct. Other people actually have a clearer view of us than we do. We're too close to, we're subjective, we're us, we take for granted certain things about ourselves that other people realize are magical and that for us are just like, eh, I just do that.

Sometimes everybody else has a real grasp of your superpower, of your real value. So when people validate it and you attach words to it, and that's why I do a keyword exercise with people on personal branding is you got to settle on four or five keywords that really sum up differentiating value of Mahat, okay?

You got to have those words. And when other people affirm those words, And feed you those words and explain why. And then you begin to see your story through those words and you go, oh yeah. So it took me into my mid forties before I settled on the word consultant, I was wrestling with imposter syndrome as a marketer, as a salesperson, I was trying to be something I wasn't.

And I finally. Settled on the fact, look you're an analytical person. You've worked with words and ideas. You figure stuff out. That's good. And it just brought a huge sense of peace finally. Okay. I'm a consultant and then it gave me clear direction on, okay, what am I going to do with my life? And my books are an extension of my consulting analytical makeup.

That's all. We're very unhappy when we're trying to be something we're not and somebody else hasn't helped us to read the label. But once we do... It's incredibly liberating and powerful.

[00:33:43] Mahan Tavakoli: We have to have that clarity ourselves. It's actually very close to the first one of your four core rules.

Have a point in this instance. You have to have that clarity before you can communicate the clarity. So a lot of times we're struggling to communicate the clarity because we don't have clarity ourselves, let alone hoping to be able to communicate in a way when other people would have the clarity.

[00:34:10] Steven Woodruff: You've made the connection and you're correct.

Have a point applied to personal branding is. You've got to know who you are. You've got to know your superpower and your differentiators. And if you don't, then you can't network effectively with others and say, here's where I'm going. Here's what I'm all about. Here's where you want to put me. And some of this is goes way back.

You asked about my origin story. My dad was a very inventive person. He had this workshop in the back and he would create stuff. He had a relatively humble job as a draftsman and he didn't have a college education. He had no upward mobility in his work, but he was more than that.

He was a creator and I saw that he had hit this ceiling continually in his life. He was never going to go anywhere. That stayed with me. I thought, you know what, if I have a chance to really run in my strengths, I'm going to do it. And when I started my company 17 years ago, a lot of it was the ripple effect of watching the frustration of my dad never really accomplishing what he could have.

If someone had given him the right words and the right avenue to really reach his potential. 

[00:35:33] Mahan Tavakoli: You are giving the right words and the right avenue through your great work. In addition to your books Steve, are there any resources whether it is on clarity, communication, or branding, you typically find yourself recommending as valuable resources for leaders of teams and organizations?

[00:35:54] Steven Woodruff: From the perspective of marketing Seth Godin's work especially his book, Purple Cow. Cause there he talks about differentiation and how to create differentiation. That's part of the whole clarity thing. As far as a good book came out some years ago, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, was a really good book, remains a very good book, a manual or handbook on how you can create good sticky Language.

 And I found much help in that book as well as being a good practical guide for someone that wants to make their communications more powerful and more punchy. 

[00:36:35] Mahan Tavakoli: Those are outstanding recommendations and even think about the title, Purple Cow. That title.

By itself sticks and is very sticky. Steve, how can the audience find out more about you and also your new book, the points, how to win with clarity fueled communications.

[00:36:57] Steven Woodruff: The point is available on Amazon, Barnes Noble, all the other online sellers. It's through Morgan James Publisher, so it is being distributed into physical bookstores as well as online.

The first book, Clarity Wins, was self published on Amazon, and so that's only available on Amazon. And then my website is stevewoodruff. com. And that has a description of what I'm all about, and then people can contact me for that 30 minute call and then I'm most active on social platforms on LinkedIn.

I've been an early adopter on a lot of social media, but I've really narrowed my focus more and more to LinkedIn. So I have a newsletter there, and I share a lot of resources, articles, information, and so I welcome people to connect with me there.

[00:37:45] Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding resources. And I really believe that ability for us to clearly communicate becomes much more important as. The demand for our attention also skyrockets. I think clarity and communication has been important.

You look back hundreds of years ago, it was always important, but the demands for our attention are just going through the roof. You have great insights on how we can have that kind of clarity in order for our message to resonate. Thank you so much for your insights, Steve Woodruff. 

[00:38:22] Steven Woodruff: Thank you, Mahan. Always a pleasure to talk to you and to your audience.