Successful communication is often crucial for success in professional life. Former secret agent, detective, and bestselling author Leo Martin explained what matters in this regard at the 24th AUGUSTA P
B4B WIRTSCHAFTSLEBEN SCHWABEN: How does your past as a secret agent help you assess your conversation partner?
Leo Martin: My job at the secret service was to recruit informants in the world of organized crime. This means convincing complete strangers who work in the criminal underworld and are dependent on it to cooperate with us. This doesn't work through money or coercion, but solely through strategies of psychology and communication. Both can be learned. At the secret service, we were trained to quickly understand others and their motives in seconds. That was the only way we had a chance.
Why is communication so important in the workplace? Each of us lives in dependencies. Our professional success and well-being largely depend on other people. Communication is the most important tool to win over business partners, customers, employees, or executives for our goals, ideas, or projects.
Former secret agent Leo Martin at the AUGUSTA networking event
Which types of communication promise the most success? We humans have been communicating analogously for thousands of years. Face-to-face contact has many advantages when it comes to winning others over or convincing them of our ideas. With every other medium, our effectiveness decreases slightly. However, digitally, we have the ability to reach many more people simultaneously. Which way is more successful depends on what we want to achieve.
Does digital communication bring more opportunities or more challenges? Digital communication has created new challenges. We communicate at a significantly faster pace, with lower attention, and sometimes only in incomplete sentences. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and conflicts happen much faster as a result. At the same time, these new methods offer many advantages for us. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. However, digital communication should always be prepared for and followed up with analog communication. This means that digital communication should not replace personal contact but cleverly complement it.
Is there a master plan to gain the trust of a negotiating partner? Trust is built when my counterpart feels understood and knows exactly where they stand with me. The master plan for trust is therefore clear yet respectful communication. It's never about asking, "Can I trust you?" but rather, the more important question is: "What can I trust when dealing with you?"
