In order for effective communication, your message must be received and understood by the listener in the way that you intended that message to be understood. The barrier and obstacle to that challenge is when the receivers gets the message, they personalize it by adding their own interpretation to it.

Listening is the foundation of effective communication and entails much more than just hearing sound. Feedback must be received in order to maintain accuracy of the relay, and this requires you to be more than just a speaker, but the ears that listens and the eyes that observes.

There is noise all around us. So does the bones ringing in our ears equate to listening? Listening requires effort, it requires interpretation and processing. Effective listening is more than just listening to words, but going in the dominion of listening to thoughts, beliefs and feelings. Its empathic listening, it’s tough, and it requires lots of practice and work.

Decide to listen, force yourself to concentrate, and then use your imagination on your listeners frame of reference and point of view. Observe their level of enthusiasm, their vocal inflections, their facial expressions and the body language. What nonverbal clues are your receiving?

Ask questions to clarify and confirm that you received the intended message; but do it without interrupting. Check your speaker’s reactions and emotions to your questions or feedback. Was your feedback accurate?

This skill requires practice, and no matter how much you practice you will never reach perfection. Every person has their own biography that they live in. On top of that, each person adds their own interpretation to the biography of their life. Some of the influence factors include:

1. Difference in attitudes.
2. Difference in the level of information.
3. Difference in communication skills or styles.
4. Difference because of social systems.
5. Difference in the sensory channels: some people comprehend by listening, some by seeing, and some by doing.

The uniqueness of individuals is what requires us to be vigilant at listening. Even if you practice, and you can get good at it, but the process of listening will never become automatic, and you will always have to put in the effort. In whatever external circumstance that we find ourselves in, we should always take the responsibility of tackling the roadblocks to effective listening. So what internal obstacles can you run into:

o Emotional distance or interference: focusing only on the facts and not the feelings.
o Your expectations: Hearing what you expect to hear from others instead of what is actually said.
o Defensiveness, resistance to change, stereotype, or even automatic dismissal. For example when you say, “Our company has never done it that way.”
o Not seeking clarifications: assuming that you understand already.

Body positioning: How can you position your body to assure your listening is more effective?

1. Make eye contact. It’s more than just for demonstrating interest and attention; it’s for reading the eyes and emotions that it imparts.
2. Lean in with your body slightly. If you lean back, it makes you want to relax, while as learning forward will help you pay attention.
3. Avoid distracting movements or behaviours; like playing with something in your hand. Clear your mind and figure out how you can make your currently listening more effective.

If you were alone in the world, then okay … but you live in a community and your success is related to the quality of relationships you can build. It’s really quite obvious; in marriage you need a lover, in business you need client and vendors, and on a deserted island you need an imaginary friend.

Everyone needs a support system, and it needs to be in place before you need it. Even the Messenger of Allah sought support from his family before going public with the dawah. Once he came inside with dirt all over his head. The weak followers of Quraish had completely trashed him. His daughter, Fatima, cleans him while crying, and he responds, “Do not cry my daughter, Allah is my only protector.” And then remembering Abu Talib, he continues, “Quraish did not actually affect me until Abu Talib died.”

We are not prophets, but they were examples for us and they followed the natural course of action to reach their goal, and if we don’t follow that course we won’t accomplish anything of significance. This includes seeking help of others – whether it’s to achieve personal goals, or professional. A well developed support structure provides guidance and assistance when needed. You would often find Messenger of Allah seeking advice from companions like Abu Bakr, Umar, Saad bin Muadh, other companions, and his own wives.

A well developed support structure provides you a place to test out your thought and get reality check on complex ideas. It also provides you feedback; some people can be poor judges of their own behaviour. A well developed support structure provides emotional support; the example of Khadeeja (radheeAllahuanha) for Rasoolullah. Rasoolullah (May peace and blessings be upon him) talks about his wife, Khadeejah (radheeAllahuanhu), “She believed when people rejected, she said I was saying the truth when people were saying I was lying, when people held their money from me, she gave me all of her wealth, and Allah gave me all my children from her.” A well developed support structure challenges you to reach your potential.

Self accountability is tough, but of course not impossible. Ideally you want to build relationships that can hold you accountable, but when you don’t have those relationships or support, adapt to self accountability. When you do have those relationships, or perhaps you are working in an organization, conduct appropriate meetings that will hold you accountable. Your accountability should revolve around structured chaos with objective of solving problems and removing obstacles.

Triage reporting: Reporting should be done based on severity of the need and where the problems really are. The sessions should be around the most important goals and focusing on the obstacles that are blocking the goals from its fulfillment.

There should be openness with problems and challenges; sometimes discussing problems is like picking on a scab, but pain is not the problem itself but the relationship that you have with yourself in confronting the problems, or relationship with your coach or colleagues.

Clearing the path: the sessions should end with empowerment so that you leave energized with creative excitement. Your teammates or coach should help you out, whether it is by brainstorming solutions for the challenges or helping you “get it.” You can do that yourself as well (strategies coming soon). Working in a team environment should be clearing path for others; a task maybe hard for someone and for you it may be as easy as sitting down.

Assess your level of commitment at each accountability session. Frustration can definitely lead to rebellion. The question is how can you empower yourself so that you are leaving your accountability session with creative excitement.

To achieve results you never achieved before you need to do things you never done before. Ask yourself, “What should I do differently?” One type of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. What really ends up happening is that you don’t end up getting the results you are aiming for and you are even worse than before.

Develop massive action plan to make your goals into a reality. List everything you need to do to achieve your goals. Prioritize your list on the most important things that will have the greatest impact on the results. 20% of the list will achieve 80% of the results. What are those specific actions? Use the RPM tool.

Plan weekly and work on the biggest and most important tasks first.

What gets measured gets managed, and what can’t be measured can’t be managed. How do you measure “well” or “good” in a project?

Develop a clear scoreboard: What type of measurements do you want to put in place?

1. Ones that accurately tracks progress.
2. Engage able and Doable: Ones that can be influenced by yourself.
3. Ones that drive the right behaviour.
4. Ones that focus on results rather than just activities. (sales calls vs. actual sales)
5. Ones that are leading rather than lagging. With leading, you can make real time adjustment and corrections; with lagging, you have already lost, and you are assessing what you can do differently next time.
6. Value of the measure has to be more than the cost of the measure.
7. Accessible; visual, bold, colorful and concise.

Define the core of your objective: Build a citadel with a core foundation and then build circles around that core. When going gets tough, you can fall back to the core. It was the strategy of the Jews of Khaybar. It was an excellent strategy, and the only way your core can get disabled is if it’s the will of Allah. Define the core, establish it, and then move out; but always return to core if the expansion fails. If the citadel can hold, you can save the kingdom.

Define the core that you can rely upon:

o Core competencies – support and strengthen them: What are your core competencies that you can use as an immediate asset? How can you expand to support these core competencies? Evaluate your current competencies and build around them. If you are not getting better you are getting worse; because everyone else is simply getting ahead of you.

o Core skills: Knowledge of the business, Knowledge of the market, Is it worthwhile paying a person who has this intellectual capital?

o Core relationships: Who are these people that you can’t afford to do without? What resources can these relationships provide for you? What support will the relationships provide? How can you increase your relationship with them?

o Core products and services: What are the most profitable; most popular, and what are the top sellers?

Understanding entropy: Entropy is 2nd law of thermal dynamic, which states that all close systems runs out of energy; which means that unless you give it a push externally the energy with die down. Example of this in our application is building relationships. If we ignore the people we need the most, we will eventually lose them. So we occasionally put energy in the system by rebuilding relationship with them.

An air traffic controller lands one plane at a time. If he tries 2 or 3, then he knows he risks the possibility of those planes crashing. He lands one, and then the next one on his radar. We tend to focus on seven to eight goals, when the optimum thing to do is focus on 2 to 3 most important goals, and to do them with excellence.

How to define the most extreme goals (acronym SMART):
o Specific and Clear
o Measurable at the standard of it being explicitly linked to the larger strategy.
o Actionable and Executive
o Reasonable and easy to communicate
o Time Bound – Deadline driven

At an organizational level, the problem of not acknowledging the extreme goal multiplies exponentially as it trickles through all department. Imam Maududi (raheemullah) gives an analogy of a clock. The organization needs to work like a clock, and the leaders job is to assure that. If one gear is not properly aligned with another gear then the time itself can start lagging. We need to assure that all parts are spinning in an alignment with the most important goals.

Questions to ask:
o Do you know what the most important goals are?
o Do you know how you are doing on those goals?
o Do you know exactly what you are suppose to do to achieve those goals?
o Do you have a support network to assist you plan and celebrate your achievements?

The Realm of Fulfillment: When you are working on the important things, without any urgency, you are in a better position to prevent problems. You can work on increasing production capability by building relationships, recognize strategic opportunities, appropriately vision, plan and prepare. You can actually give more thought to your actions. Working in this realm requires you to be disciplined and allows you to be in control; and that is your key to balance and self confidence.

The Realm of Demand: When things are urgent and important, you are living in emergencies and pressing problems. Your tasks are almost always deadline-driven, and you are always in crises. Although the most essential things get done, you are always putting out fires. That can lead to stress and burn out. You are working very hard, but your focus is very short-term without unsatisfactory long-term results.

The Realm of Delusions: The delusionary things are urgent, but not important. These are the interruptions, requests from others, and reaction to other’s problems. These are the things that distract you from important work. It can lead to broken promises, it can lead to feeling victimized and out control, and it wants you to please others in an instant by doing their bidding urgently while you leave the important stuff. Other people’s lack of planning should not lead you to urgency.

The Realm of Distractions: These are the activities that are not important, and not even urgent. It’s the idle chit chat, browsing through your email and paper work, looking busy. Opportunities are lost because of carelessness. It causes people to become dependent on others. And it leads to loss of self confidence and self esteem.

Clarity of the end results are related to your goal. Goals are the results. They allow you to grasp the understanding of how you know when you have arrived at your destination; thus, they are measureable and observable. Keep your goals simple, clear, concise, and most importantly “smart” (specific, measureable, actionable, reasonable, time bound). Goals are hierarchical, with lower-level goals being the means to achieve higher-level goals.

The goals need to be backed up by intent and purpose. Your intent answers the question what direction you’re heading in. Purpose is a broader statement than a goal, and it explains the overall direction and intent.

A purpose drives you to action. As you write your intent and goal statements, a hodgepodge of ideas for achieving your goals will likely come rushing out at you. Your action plan defines what steps are required. Your action plan should include the key requirements for achieving the goal: sequencing, scheduling, steps, milestones, resources needed, who needs to be involved, assumptions, time demands, and so on.

The clearer the goal—what you are trying to accomplish—the better the chance of achieving it. Effective leaders lead by clarifying goals, then determining and managing activities to achieve them. Furthermore, success is measured by how well goals are achieved—”What gets noticed is what gets measured,” and “What gets measured gets done.” In a team environment, you would make your goal setting a collaborative activity. The goal setting process starts at the top and then cascades down; and at each level of the cascade it is clarified in real time.

Communication does not fall under the realm of efficiency; rather, it falls under the realm of effectiveness. You can’t be efficient with people, because effective communication requires you to build relationships, and relationships are built on case by case basis. Quality time to one family member may mean one thing, and to another family member completely different thing.

However, if you were to make your communication efficient then you would need to learn to fight unconventionally; which would be to focus on a goal you need to achieve and then deciding to a method to penetrate people’s mind. You would do this dazzling them into lowering their defences by hitting their emotions, stunning them with images and powerful symbols.

You can’t be direct. Logic alone only goes one ear and out the other; it is only when emotions are added that the heart can force the mind to capture the message. Emotions are what will allow you to penetrate your audience’s defences. The more deeply you penetrate, the more you occupy of their mental space, the more effective you will be in making your point.

Consider Rasoolullah’s first call of dawah to the public. When he stood on the mount and called out a warning …

“Wa Sabaha.”

And then he further stirs emotions by mentioning the imminent danger; there could be an army behind the mount awaiting to attack. But the imminent danger that Rasoolullah was intending was far more dangerous than any army; it was the imminent danger of hellfire.

Entertain the people with emotions and then sneak your ideas through the back door. What really changes us are not words of others, but our own experience, something that comes from within ourself, that shakes us up emotionally, breaks up our usual patterns of looking at the world.

Three parts for efficient communication:

1. Inspiration: providing epiphany moments and clarity with emotions.

2. Isolation: Educating and providing deeper level of understand by giving formless ideas form.

3. Motivation: Exhibiting the logical result of the education, proving applicability and motivating that application.