Your Secrets Aren't Secret

Have you ever heard the expression, “If you tell someone your secret, it's no longer a secret”?

Well, here's another one:

Your secrets aren't secret, even when you don't say a word.

I'm pretty sure the secret formula for Coca-Cola is still locked away somewhere in Atlanta.

Our secrets aren't nearly as secure.

We give them away in every communication.

The interesting part is, we communicate on so many levels, but we usually pay attention to only one—the words.

Have you ever met someone and immediately gotten a feeling about them?

You can't quite explain it. You don't have the facts. You don't have any evidence.

You just know.

Maybe it's a salesperson with an electric smile and miles of manufactured confidence.

And somewhere underneath all that, you sense, “This person really needs this sale.”

You may never be able to explain exactly how you know.

But you know.

I suspect that's because there's a part of us that's constantly taking in information that never makes it to the surface of conscious thought.

And that part of us communicates, too.

I've learned something else about communication.

The more determined I am to make a conversation go a certain way, the less I actually discover.

For years, I'd enter conversations with an agenda. I knew what I wanted, what I wanted to say, and sometimes even which of my persuasive tools I was going to use.

And I thought I was being clever.

What I eventually discovered was that I was also tipping my hand.

People can sense an agenda.

You can see it on a first date. You can hear it in a sales pitch. You can feel it in a conversation with someone who's trying just a little too hard.

And here's the irony:

The harder we work to control what someone sees, the more we may communicate what we're trying to hide.

So I began experimenting with something that was initially very uncomfortable for me.

I started leaving my agenda at the door.

Not my intention.

My agenda.

There's a difference.

I could still want something. I could still have a purpose.

But instead of trying to make the conversation produce a particular result, I became curious about what might happen if I simply entered it ready to discover.

And that changed communication for me.

I remember talking with a customer-service representative about a computer product. I wasn't trying to get anything from her, except information.

So we chatted and I mostly listened.

She learned some things about me. I learned some things about her. We had an enjoyable conversation.

I wound up buying the product I was asking about.

The deal was done. The price was agreed upon. We were about to hang up.

And then she remembered that I conducted seminars.

She suddenly said, “Wait a minute. You're a teacher. You qualify for a substantial discount.”

I had no idea.

I hadn't asked.

I hadn't schemed my way into it.

I got an unexpected discount, and she got an unplanned sale.

That's what I mean by discovery.

Something neither of us had planned showed up because neither of us was trying to force the conversation.

Maybe that's the real opportunity in communication.

Not getting better at hiding what we're thinking.

Getting better at noticing what we're already communicating.

So I've come to like this little phrase:

Set an intention and stop scheming.

Have a direction. Then get out of the way.

Because there's something that can happen in a genuine conversation that can't happen when you're busy trying to control it.

You can discover – discover more, and uncover your fair share of secret surprises.

All the best,

John