“To effectively connect with people on an intellectual level, you must know two things: your subject and yourself.”

A thought by John C. Maxwell from his book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect. (p. 62). HarpersCollins Leadership Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

OK, John, show us what you mean.

He says, “The first is rather obvious. Everyone’s heard another person expound on a subject about which he knows nothing. At best it’s comical. At worst it’s torturous. But most of the time, it simply comes across as inauthentic. As jazz musician Charlie Parker once observed, ‘If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.’

“I read a story about the great actor Charles Laughton that illustrates the difference between a merely good speaker and one who really knows what he’s talking about. It’s said that Laughton was attending a Christmas party with a family in London. During the evening the host asked everyone attending to recite a favorite passage that best represented the spirit of Christmas. When it was Laughton’s turn, he skillfully recited Psalm 23. Everyone applauded his performance, and the process continued.

“The last to participate was an adored elderly aunt who had dozed off in a corner. Someone gently woke her, explained what was going on, and asked her to take part. She thought for a moment and then began in her shaky voice, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want... .’ When she finished, everyone was in tears.

 “When Laughton departed at the end of the evening, a member of the family thanked him for coming and remarked about the difference in the response by the family to the two recitations of the psalm. When asked his opinion on the difference, Laughton responded, ‘I know the psalm; she knows the Shepherd.’”

John goes on, “There’s no substitute for personal experience when we want to connect with people’s hearts. If you know something without having lived it, your audience experiences a credibility gap. If you’ve done something but don’t know it well enough to explain it, the audience experiences frustration. You have to bring both together to connect consistently.”

He then says, “As important as it is to know your subject, it’s equally vital that you know yourself. Effective communicators are comfortable in their own skin. They’re confident because they know what they can and can’t do, and they gravitate to their communication sweet spot when they speak to people.”

John continues, “… it took me a while to learn this. I didn’t start out as an effective communicator. My first experiences in public speaking were in 1967 while I was in college. At that time, my strategy was to imitate other speakers I admired. What a disaster! When that didn’t work, I tried to impress people with my subject knowledge. Nobody listened! It took me eight years to ‘find myself’ as a speaker. And here’s great news: when you find yourself, you find your audience.”

That is so good, isn’t it? 

Yes, yes!