11

USE THE Cs

“The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

—JAMES HUMES

Matthew Kauth had always been a passionate and faith-filled man. When he chose to enter the seminary to become a Catholic priest, it didn’t shock those who knew him best. It was during his seven years of education in various seminaries throughout the world when he discovered a leadership gap in the church. He described the gap as a “lack of patrimony.” This is anything that is “handed down” in an institution—part of its tangible and intangible “wealth.” He felt this two-thousand-year-old profession was lacking a structure to help its men develop into the priests God had called them to be.

All great leaders, when they find a problem, set out to fix it, regardless of how big it may seem. After years of work and research, Father Kauth determined he couldn’t solve the problem on the macro level, but he could do something on the micro level. In a meeting with his bishop, Peter Jugis, an opportunity to create a brand-new seminary presented itself. Together they decided this institution, called St. Joseph College Seminary, would be built on patrimony—something radically different from its predecessors.

St. Joseph College Seminary wasn’t immune to the common challenges new ventures face when it came to financing, location, and most importantly men to enroll. Father Kauth was taking an enormous leap of faith to start a seminary without knowing if anyone would show up. He then noticed a trend that young men were more likely to discern a call to the priesthood upon graduating high school instead of after college.

In 2016, during St. Joseph’s first year, it had space for up to eight men, and exactly eight signed up. The next year, it created capacity for eight more men, and nine signed up. Since one had left the previous year, the seminary was at capacity again, this time with sixteen young men. The success didn’t stop there. The third year, eight more signed up and the seminary was able to find space for that exact amount again. The success rate was surprising to Father Kauth, who knew how difficult it was for a young man between the ages of 18 and 25 years old to commit to exploring a religious calling. What started as a small dream in one man’s head became a reality during one of the most turbulent times in the history of the Catholic Church.

The Way You Feel Is the Way You Live

Every person experiences a roller coaster of emotions at one point or another during his or her life. Many make whimsical and capricious decisions based on their response to those emotions, and one bad decision can lead to a chain reaction of poor decision making. Because of this, the way you feel tends to be the way you live. Father Kauth didn’t want to live like this, and he definitely didn’t want the seminarians at St. Joseph’s to live that way either. He wanted them to live toward a purpose, and this meant having to say no to a lot of things in order to achieve something greater.

Father Kauth was keenly aware that these young men were up against some difficult outside forces, but he knew that structure and consistency would help them avoid living by these swings of emotion. Consistency comes in many forms, but Father Kauth knew in order for St. Joseph’s to be successful, his leadership and the routines of all those involved had to be close to unchanging. The seminarians had to have a routine they could count on, so they could feel secure and be a part of something. This meant setting up a daily structure that better resembled one of a Navy SEAL than a man studying for the priesthood.

   5:30 a.m.: Bell rings

   6:00 a.m.: Mental prayer

   6:30 a.m.: Lauds

   7:00 a.m.: Holy Mass

   7:45 a.m.: Breakfast

   8:15 a.m.: Classes

   1:00 p.m.: Lunch

   2:00 p.m.: Recreation

   3:00 p.m.: Free time

   4:00 p.m.: Latin

   5:30 p.m.: Vespers and rosary

   6:15 p.m.: Dinner

   7:00 p.m.: Study

   8:15 p.m.: Confession and grand silence

   9:15 p.m.: Reading

   10:15 p.m.: Lights out

As rigorous as this schedule is, it gets tougher. The group practices grand silence from 8:15 p.m. to 8:15 a.m., which includes handing in their cell phones and speaking to no one. Outside of a Sunday afternoon, they don’t watch any TV or listen to music.

When the men arrive at St. Joseph’s, they instantly hate the schedule. They find it overbearing and have difficulty conforming to the structure. But after a couple of weeks, the consistency yields contentment and achievement. Father Kauth believes people live on achievement and want to see themselves doing something worthwhile.

While the consistent daily schedule is important, the communication between the leaders of St. Joseph’s and its seminarians can’t go unnoticed. Father Kauth knew that everything leaders do is communication and each transmission of communication whether it be verbal or through body language has to be received in the best mode of the receiver. When I attended one of their private evening prayer sessions, I was blown away by how the group recited Latin songs and prayers in sync. There was a vibrancy and commitment that was contagious. The only way for the seminarians to be in this kind of unison was for it to be taught and communicated in the way they best received it. While there is no doubt there is a higher calling at play, there are two important lessons someone who is building the best can take from Father Kauth and St Joseph College Seminary. Each day leaders must focus on consistency and communication.

Consistency

Consistency is the steadfast adherence to principles, truths, or standards of behavior. It’s often confused with intensity, but being consistent is far more important. Take for example brushing your teeth. What keeps your teeth healthy is not the intensity with which you brush them, but rather the act of doing it twice a day. The same is true in leadership. Steadfast adherence to principles and standards of behavior will make you a more successful leader and help you build the best possible version of your team. If you lack consistency, you create a sense of uncertainty and doubt in others that is almost impossible to overcome.

While this might seem obvious, being consistent with your principles or standards of behavior can be one of the hardest things for you to master. Just think about all the things you need to be consistent with day in and day out. Showing up to work on time; work ethic; being an example for your people to model; setting goals and achieving them; building strong relationships; setting and maintaining standards of behavior; coaching others; being relentless, diligent, thoughtful; the list goes on. All of a sudden, being consistent looks like a pretty tall order. Instead of allowing it to overwhelm you, keep one word in the forefront of your mind: steadfast. The more you are steadfast with your leadership approach each day, the better the overall outcomes will be.

Communication

In order to get people to want to follow you and join you on your journey, you must be able to speak to your audience. I am not breaking any news here, but it’s impossible to be a highly effective leader without being a great communicator. As we examined leaders who truly elevate others from all industries, one of the main places of separation from all other styles of leadership was their ability to communicate at the highest level. They all had an ability to talk about their agenda in a way that spoke to their people’s emotions and aspirations. They knew hearing or seeing what they had to share wasn’t enough. Their message had to be personally meaningful to their people, or it wouldn’t be carried out or comprehended.

Communication has more to do with the audience than the person doing the communicating.

A significant communication skills gap was identified in a recent study by LinkedIn of human resources recruiters and hiring managers. Of the respondents, 94 percent said a person with good experience and exceptional communication skills is more likely to be elevated to a position of leadership than someone with more experience but weaker communication skills.

In order to help you be a more effective communicator, I am going to focus in on something I call the 3 Cs of Successful Communication. Your words have to be Clear, Concise, and Conclusive. Regardless whether you are using oral or written words, each and every message should pass through the 3 Cs test.

Be Clear

When was the last time you finished reading an e-mail or listening to someone talk and at the end, you were completely confused by what they meant or were asking you?

Lack of clarity is all too common. While people are listening or reading they are scanning to figure out two things: should I care, and what am I supposed to do? While these sound like deep questions, you process them naturally without much thought at all. This is why the clearest communicators will almost always win in the long term because people know exactly what is being asked of them and what the communicator is trying to say.

To ensure your written communication in the form of e-mails, text messages, or Slack messages are clear for your intended audience, ask yourself these questions before hitting send:

   Is it clear what I am asking them to do after they finish reading it?

   Am I asking for more than one or two things?

   How simple or complicated is what I am asking?

Similarly, when speaking, consider if you’re answering the same questions. Unlike written communication, most verbal communication happens in real time, which doesn’t allow for a natural moment of pause to evaluate the clarity of your message. This means having clarity when speaking requires a lot of practice and repetition. A great way to evaluate how clear you are with others is to ask a simple question prior to moving on: “To make sure we are on the same page, can you let me know what you heard?”

Obviously, every situation doesn’t allow for this question, but it’s a great way to test the clarity of your messages following a one-on-one conversation.

Be Concise

If clarity is the most important thing when it comes to effective communication, being concise is a close second. People are obsessed with having everything right now, so the more concise you are the more likely you are to get your message across to others. If that wasn’t enough, the human brain is wired to conserve energy and attention. If you aren’t concise, your audience’s brain will start to change its focus to conserve the energy and attention they have left for something better.

While concise certainly could mean shorter or more brief in nature, you can still have an hourlong meeting, a 20-minute video, a 500-word e-mail, or a 40,000-word book that is concise. Use as few words as possible to get your point across. If being concise isn’t your strong suit, here are a few tricks to help you:

1.   Twitterize it. Twitter became famous for only allowing 140 characters per tweet. The company has since expanded a tweet to include 280 characters, but the exercise remains the same. Give yourself a character limit in written forms of communication and make yourself convey the message at hand in less than 280 characters. Carefully edit your messages down to include only what’s critical.

2.   Turn on the timer. Disrupt HR is an organization created to give a voice to human resource professionals and their ideas. Instead of copying the popular TED Talk format, the founders of Disrupt HR chose a completely different way for presenters to share their ideas. Each presenter is given five minutes, uses 45 slides, and those slides automatically change every 15 seconds. You can use the concept of turning on the timer as a way to ensure you are concise. At your next team meeting set your phone time for five minutes, and when it goes off you are finished talking. After just a few meetings like this, you will find yourself communicating at a level of consciousness you never thought possible.

Be Conclusive

Donald Miller wrote in his book Building a StoryBrand that our brains are constantly thinking about whether or not what they are reading or listening to is going to help them survive or thrive. In other words, if what you are communicating isn’t connected to helping your audience survive or thrive, they aren’t going to pay attention for long. While this can be tricky, leaders who build the best are intentional about using their words in a conclusive way that helps the recipient determine the potential positive or negative outcome of their response.

Today’s modern professional is being constantly bombarded with everyone’s best life on social media. Finding ways to connect with people’s heart or mind about what good could happen if they do something or what bad thing might happen if they don’t do something is crucial to keeping them engaged and choosing wisely. A few questions you can use to evaluate if your messages are conclusive include:

   Have I communicated why this is important to the person receiving it?

   Have I communicated potential benefits in the future?

   Have I communicated what bad things might happen if action isn’t taken?

Leveraging the 3 Cs of Successful Communication will without question help you better connect with and be on the same page with your people. Get in the habit of asking yourself, “Am I being clear, concise, and conclusive?”

Hold On . . . It’s Not Just Verbal or Written Communication

You are communicating all the time as a leader regardless if you think you are. Researcher Albert Mehrabian published a book, Silent Messages, in 1971 that coined what came to be known as the 7 percent rule. In the book, Mehrabian discussed his research on nonverbal communication used by salespeople. He concluded that prospective buyers based their assessment of credibility on factors other than the words a salesperson spoke—the prospects studied assigned 55 percent of their weight to the speaker’s body language and another 38 percent to the tone and music of the person’s voice. They assigned only 7 percent of their credibility assessment to the salesperson’s actual words.

Over the next four decades, researchers and organizational psychologists have argued over the validity of Mehrabian’s research in today’s time. Regardless of what side of the fence you sit on, the important thing is to remember that your communication with others goes beyond just verbal or written communication. Be aware of and focus on expressing positive and encouraging body language as much as humanly possible.

Most every seminary, Catholic or not, has as much if not more resources than what Father Kauth started with. What has separated him as a leader and the seminary as a whole is a consistency and a communication style that is unmatched by other seminaries. Not only is it fueling the seminary’s growth, but it’s a model we all can learn from and leverage with our own teams each and every day.