A Bike Ride Into Leadership...Across Chicago

hi there

and welcome to my work from home space

and my living space

uh tonight i want to talk to you about

effective communication

in short i’m going to give you three

principles of effective communication

and tell you a story from my own life

that illustrates this

before that i’m going to try to reach

through the virtual environment

and make this a little bit more engaging

so i want you to think of an instance

where you were a ineffective

communicator

where you didn’t get your message across

it wasn’t effective your end goal wasn’t

reached there was some sort of

miscommunication

something along those lines

now if you’re anything one like me you

probably want to think of yourself

and have in your mind that you’re a

great communicator

and so your confirmation bias is

probably going to

filter out any stories that run contrary

to that

but try to grab one where you were a

poor communicator

and now choose the opposite of that so

remember a time where you were a great

communicator

where people came up to you afterwards

and said you know what

you you communicated so effectively you

got the message across that’s exactly

what you need to hear

i want you to hold those two as we walk

through

these three three principles here

so you know your abcs i’m gonna give you

your cdas

so the three elements of communication

we’re going to talk about tonight are

audience content and delivery

so as you think about that time where

you’re a great communicator think about

who your audience was

who were you talking to what were their

motivations and look beyond just

the number of uh of head count

or um or what their backgrounds were

and really get a sense for the flavor of

who that person is

were they were they working in a

corporate environment

where your communication needed to be

buttoned up was it on the back of

a tailgate where you could let loose a

little bit

and try to bond over common vernacular

what kind of language were they speaking

do they operate

at a fifth grade reading level an eighth

grade

a high school a college advanced degree

first grade

who are they and what do they want most

importantly

then think about the content what did

you actually communicate

what meat was there was it complex was

it a graph was an analysis

or was it a simple urgent message that

you had to get across

as quickly as possible and lastly the

delivery

this is kind of the the cart that

carries the content

um was it via email was it via zoom

was it in person was it over the phone

and what so beyond just

medium of delivery um how did the had

the delivery

method play into how the content was

received

and how that audience reacted so

uh if you’re unlimited time

now’s a great time to stop the video but

if you have time

i’d love to tell you a story from my own

life that that illustrates these three

so i moved to chicago in 2019

uh sorry 2018 june 2018.

i had never been here before i knew zero

people

and from the first day i showed up i

tried to bust open

chicago’s social communities and tried

to engage with as many folks as i could

and one day i met the fundraiser

person that organized fundraisings for a

large non-profit well maybe a medium

non-profit about 10 million dollars

revenue

um here in the city she came to me and

said

she said james uh here’s our mission

we’d love for you to be on board

um and i was like great how can i help i

just moved to the city

i know a few people this seems like a

great exchange here you introduce me to

some people

uh i get some community um and in return

i’d love to help you fundraise because i

really identify with your cause

and she came to me and said that sounds

great you should do a peer-to-peer

fundraiser

but before i agreed to sign on to that

um

i knew i i needed a reason why i had

done

a lot of fundraising before in the

nonprofit world

but i found myself getting burnt out

unless i had engaged with the nonprofit

in a very real way and had my own

personal story of why i was engaging

so i said hold on uh i want a volunteer

first so i volunteered a little bit

and as i saw the inner workings of the

organization i was blown away

i wanted to get my name behind

this organization and take them to the

next level so

uh i went back to her and said great

let’s do this

and her idea was well you have a

birthday coming up

instead of getting birthday gifts go

ahead and just say

make a donation to us

i want to go bigger i’ve always loved

organizing events and i’ve always hated

asking people for money

so perhaps fundraising isn’t in my

future but

i i was good at asking people for things

or their time because i knew i could

control

how good of a time that they had an

event but i didn’t know

how to ask people for money so instead

of fundraising on my own i instead

decided to host a bike ride across

chicago

we called it bike across chicago it’s

going to be 50 miles it’s going to start

north of the city in evanston and end in

the southernmost neighborhood

with points all along the way so we’re

going to start in evanston

cross over howard which is kind of the

chicago northern

border go downtown go out west to the

northernmost neighborhood

and then south to gail gardens the

southernmost neighborhood

and through this we would see 35

neighborhoods of chicago

and really get on the ground feedback on

how

how the city was doing um this was

particularly meaningful for me who had

never been to the south side or the west

side at that time

um so the logistics just seem to

be very attractive here um but

i had this problem now instead of me

simply going on this bike ride and

raising some money

i had to i had to rally a crowd i had to

communicate to that crowd

and get them to buy into my mission i

had to get them to put on helmets

rent borrow or buy their own bikes

and then bike 50 miles of me which is

kind of a large ask

for some people so uh

i targeted in on my audience my audience

were people that

i already knew through some other means

um whether that’s through work

uh most of my most of my audience were

at work so i’ll describe that flavor a

little bit

more depth but there were other people

that

i related to as well

this is a highly educated crowd it’s a

crowd that highly values their time

and is also not scared of an athletic

challenge

so i knew i could rope them in with

the the challenge of 50 miles right that

that would be um

that that wouldn’t be uh it was a

barrier for some but it wasn’t

insurmountable right um this was also a

crowd that

was highly incentive by bragging rights

um

so the fact that i’m convincing them to

buy 50 miles and i guarantee that

they’ll make it

um and that they could brag for the next

year that they biked 50 miles in a

single go that year

um that was another element that i

thought i could hook them with

um and lastly they’re highly educated

and they

uh they had they were from an upper

income

so um i knew that this would be a right

target for

my end result which is raising money for

this nonprofit um

now let’s talk about about the content

um

so for this section

i’m going to deviate a little bit from

that first year of the bike ride and

talk about

the actual content of the ride so it was

a great day uh

it was a little chilly um but as you get

biking and start warming up it

became just perfect um i want to

describe a scene to you

because uh this became the content of my

pitch

in years for the future we’ve done this

right now

three times so it’s a little bit chilly

we’ve been biking all day we’re

approaching austin

which is the western neighborhood in

chicago westernmost

and i don’t know if you’re familiar with

all of chicago but the green line runs

over i believe it’s i believe it’s lake

street

and there’s tons of glass on both sides

we’ve gotten a few flat tires

i’ve held back fixed them and then we’ve

caught up

and there’s a staff member from this

non-profit that’s that’s leaving us at

the time

and all of a sudden he pulls in the

middle of the intersection underneath

the green line and he goes james

leave your team and of course

i i don’t know the route uh i don’t know

what’s going on but he signals me to the

right so i take a right-hand turn

and all of a sudden the skies open up

and it’s sunny and it’s

warm and there’s hundreds of kids lining

the streets

on both sides waving signs and cheering

us on there’s my name on there

there’s the girl that signed up last

minute her name is on there

there’s all seven of us all seven of us

riders

are represented on signs there’s people

with balloons there’s kids shouting

it was just this amazing sight to behold

so we paused we stopped we recruit and

this girl ran up to me

and she slapped me across the face and

she goes james

i was just on the phone with my mom i’m

crying

my mom’s crying you gotta warn me

before you ambush me with 300 kids like

that

and throughout the rest of the day we

made two or three more stops that were

just as impactful

so pause that’s that’s the content

that i use in my pitch to get people to

participate in the bike ride going

forward

that’s the message that i want to send

across i want to communicate

the emotion of appearing from underneath

the l it’s dark

it’s gloomy there’s glass you can see it

right

and then the skies open up and it’s just

pure

joy i understand that this medium

uh isn’t the best so perhaps that

emotion wasn’t communicated

uh but that ties in my third point which

is delivery um

it’s best to communicate this in person

the urban studies done that majority of

communication is non-verbal

um and even though you can see me right

now it’s difficult for me to communicate

my energy it’s difficult for me to

communicate um

whether i’ve had a rough day any

anxieties that i have

and and most importantly uh this

delivery lacks feedback

i don’t know if you’ve turned off by now

i don’t know if you’re checking out

i don’t know if you’re listening to

anything i’m saying i don’t know if

my voice is too low or if it’s too high

if i was in person i could get

real-time feedback on how you’re

reacting to my message

and that i think is is one of the key

parts whatever delivery technique that

you choose

try to ensure that you get shorter

feedback cycles depending on what the

content is

and this content i’m looking for uh

i’m looking for a reaction right i’m

looking for someone to agree to go in

the bike ride with me

to agree to support my fundraising

effort

so it’s very important to me to know

what you’re thinking

and how you’re reacting to this for

instance if i was pitching in a very

formal environment if you if you were

the type of person

that i i was that it was very uh

very close to emotion that was very by

the book analytical

want to know the roi i probably wouldn’t

have told that story

i would have told the story about how uh

the

the fundraiser has grown by thirty

percent over three years

or every year for three years we’ve i

would have told you about the roi

of seeing these kids faces and uh

i actually i take that back i have told

you about their faces i told you about

their grades it’s an after-school

program so i would have told you that

for every dollar

um this is how many kids you impact and

this is

the grade point average improvement that

they would have seen

so delivery is very important and the

method that you deliver

the medium so those are my three points

audience content and delivery um thank

you so much for listening

um i hope that you’re doing well and

staying safe

bye now