The Modern-Day Communicator’s Manifesto

And the Key to Creating Core Comprehension

Many of us have never been taught what is arguably the most important fundamental of communication, how to communicate to create understanding. That’s not right.

Dear Fellow Communicators,

I have frustrating news.

Despite our advanced degrees, many of us have never been taught what is arguably the most important fundamental of communication.

We are taught things like grammar, language, and syntax.

We are taught how to organize thoughts and ideas into long papers.

We are taught rhetoric based on more than two-thousand-four-hundred-year-old perspectives.

But most of us are never taught how to communicate to create understanding.

Most of us are never taught how communication dances with decision-making in the mind (and how to not dance like Carlton).

Most of us are never exposed to the insights the science fields have uncovered about human communication preferences.

Even with all of the experience we’ve gained and advanced evolutionary moment in history, we continue to communicate blindly as both a profession and a species.

After 20 years running a strategic communication and public relations agency that applies behavioral science to our profession, I can no longer stay silent.

I’ve seen too many young communication pros spend $150,000 on a communication degree, yet not begin to know how to create communication that connects.

I’ve watched too many seasoned communication pros make what are, to the sciences, obvious communication mistakes that cost them dearly, sometimes even their careers.

I’ve seen how incalculably high the price of misunderstood communication can be to entrepreneurs, leaders, companies, and countries. And equally so to citizens, seniors, children, parents, anyone and everyone on the receiving end of confusing communication when it matters.

We are long overdue for an intentional shift in the communication industry to create with behavioral…