Take a piece of paper and write down two adjectives that best describe how you want to be perceived, no matter whom you’re communicating with or through which communication medium.

Whether you identified confident, credible or trustworthy, it’s all or nothing. You can’t be confident Monday to Wednesday and slack the remainder of the week and expect to be perceived as confident. If you wanted to lose weight or start eating healthy, exercising and eating healthy three days a week will never give you results. You need to be all in!

Impact is the result of being consistent. For example: I’m guessing you take time to prepare your message prior to participating in a high-stakes conversation, to ensure you sound knowledgeable and confident and have impact on your listener. You may even go to the extent of standing up and practicing your delivery prior to this conversation. Do you put in the same amount of effort preparing for a conference call that you facilitate? If not, you’re not all in. If your day-to-day communication doesn’t have impact, it will be extremely difficult to have impact during your high-stakes conversations.

If your listeners don’t see and hear consistency in how you communicate through all mediums, there’s a strong probability they will not perceive you as confident, credible, trustworthy or the adjective you identified.

It is more difficult for you to turn it on and off all day, every day. When you focus, hold yourself accountable and practice enhancing your communication skills on a consistent basis, you no longer need to “turn it on” from one conversation to another.

Where Do You Begin?
• Today ask a peer, friend or family member what perception they have of you based on your verbal and non-verbal communication.
• Is this feedback consistent across your personal and professional relationships?
• Is this feedback consistent across communication mediums: presentations, meetings, virtual and face-to-face conversations?
Call To Action
• Begin today to create consistency in your life by signing up for Take 5™. Take 5™ helps you commit to practicing the skills and techniques required for enhancing your impact and influence. Every Monday morning you will receive training tools to help hold yourself accountable and be consistent in all communication mediums.