Beyond Words: The Three Arenas of Communication and Influence w/ Erik Berglund (Part 1) - Ep. 24

Most leadership problems are just communication problems in disguise. So what if you could master communication by treating it not as a soft skill, but as a sport you can practice and win? In PART ONE, communication expert Erik Berglund unpacks his playbook, revealing the three distinct arenas of communication: information transfer, shared experience, and pure influence. He challenges you to recognize that your default communication style is likely a foreign language to others and provides the master key to unlocking how anyone—from a client to your spouse—truly wants to be persuaded.

💡 Unlocking the Playbook

Communication is a Sport, Not a Gift: Stop believing that great communicators are born, not made. Erik argues that communication is a professional skill that improves dramatically with deliberate practice and targeted feedback, just like athletics. He honed his own skills through early role-playing in high school, proving that anyone can level up their ability to connect and influence by treating communication as a trainable discipline.

The Three Arenas of Communication: To communicate with intent, you must first know which game you’re playing. Erik divides all communication into three categories: transferring information (teaching or explaining), sharing an experience (connecting and bonding, often nonverbally), and influence (causing someone to do something they wouldn't have done otherwise). Understanding which arena you're in dictates your strategy and clarifies your objective.

Adapt or Be Ignored: Your default communication style—whether it's driven by logic, abundance, or risk avoidance—is not universal. Trying to persuade someone using a "language" they don't speak is a guaranteed path to failure. The first step to becoming influential is acknowledging that your preferred method of making a point is likely not the way the person across from you needs to hear it.

🤫 PART ONE's Playbook Secret (The official No Trade Secret drops in PART THREE, but here is the hidden secret of PART ONE!)

The single most effective way to understand someone's communication style isn't through complex analysis or trying to read body language—it's to simply ask. If you need to persuade someone, ask them directly: "If someone had to make a compelling argument to you, what would you hope to see in that argument?" They will tell you exactly what they need to hear, whether it's data, stories, or a vision for the future.

🗣️ Words to Build On

"If you practice something and get feedback on it, you get better at it. And that doesn't just happen in sports." – Erik Berglund

"My primary way of thinking about communication is being influential. That means getting somebody to do something they would not have done otherwise." – Erik Berglund

"Recognize that your default style is probably not the way everybody around you would prefer to be communicated with... It's like they speak a different language." – Erik Berglund

👤 About Erik

Erik is the founder of the Language of Leadership and Loominary, and the host of the 'I have some questions' podcast. His work focuses on changing what people say and how they say it in order to be influential. His companies create skill simulation systems that allow people to practice the most difficult conversations before they occur in real life. He lives in Bend, Oregon with his daughters (10 and 7) and his wife of 13 years. 

🔗 Links & Resources

• Connect with Erik on LinkedIn
• Check out the I Have Some Questions Podcast
• Visit the Loominary website

🎧 Make sure to listen to PART TWO and keep waiting for that momentum to hear Erik Berglund’s ultimate "No Trade Secret" in PART THREE

Transcript

Jarome 0:00

Today's guest is Eric Berglund. Eric started leading people at just the age of 20 years old while running a residential painting franchise. By 29, he found himself managing people who used to be his peers and burning himself out in the process. His turning point came after a failed job interview, where one question from a CEO exposed just how little he truly understood about leadership. That moment sent him down a path that has since become his life's work. Today, Eric is the founder of Language of Leadership and Luminary, and is the host of the I Have Some Questions podcast. His work focuses on helping people change what they say and how they say it so that they can communicate with greater clarity, connection, consistency, and influence. Through Luminary, he builds skill simulation systems that allow leaders and teams to practice difficult conversations before they happen in real life. Eric has coached C-suite executives, fast-rising managers, and entrepreneurs across all industries. His core belief is simple. Most leadership problems are communication problems in disguise. And when leaders learn to communicate well, everything else starts to shift. Eric lives in Bend, Oregon, with his wife of 13 years and their two daughters, ages 10 and 7. Eric, welcome to the show.

Erik 1:23

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1:26

Yeah, and we met through uh a small group accelerator uh last year. And my first impression of you uh was definitely your ability to communicate with charisma. Like I I've and I'm I know that you have got that a lot from people, uh, but the way that you talk was something that, you know, like that is something that I've uh you know, has been a personal struggle of mine my entire life. But then also something that I'm consistently and constantly trying to uh level up on and overcome uh as I progress as a leader, um, as far as communication and being able to be uh you know be the energy in the room. And that from our first encounter, uh you the way that you just you speak and bring energy to a room and the charisma you have is uh is really like no one else that I've ever uh known personally. And so where did that come from? And have you always had that, or is that something you had to build over time?

Speaker 1 2:34

Well, thank you. That's a generous compliment. I appreciate it, and um it's a little bit of both. I mean, I I do I genuinely do think that there's probably a spectrum of people's natural ability to communicate effectively and to think on their feet and to do so with the intent of connecting with the other person across from them rather than just conveying information or something along those lines. And um so I I suspect that uh I had a decent start. Um, I've always kind of been that way. But I also, in high school, was involved in a high school business organization called DECA. And DECA allowed me to practice communication skills at a very young age. DECA uh was it stood for Distribution Education Clubs of America, which doesn't mean anything today, but it's effectively a high school business organization that lets you practice and role play um pretend business scenarios. We'd write business plans, we'd go to competitions where you'd have to deal with a difficult leadership situation or customer, and I was doing that at 14 years old. Um, more importantly, I was getting feedback at 14 years old. I was being coached. You know, I used to talk, I'm gonna do this. Um you won't be able to see it uh if you're not watching the podcast, but you know, I used to talk with my hands over my mouth. You know, if I was sitting in front of you, I might do that. And I wouldn't even do it intentionally, it wasn't on purpose, it just would happen. And so I had to get coached out of that. And that's really what I think um gave me an opportunity to pursue the career that I have, is I got early instruction on how to be a better communicator. But more importantly, I learned at a young age, if you practice something and get feedback on it, you get better at it. And that doesn't just happen in sports. That's what most of us are introduced to at a young age, is you sure you can get coached at something and get better at it. We call those athletics. You can learn how to shoot a basketball better, or throw a frisbee better, or ride a horse better, or play a musical instrument better. But professional skills, communication, isn't often treated that way. And I was exposed to that at a very young age. It took me a long time in my career to really mature into it, but that perspective, probably more than anything, has been the uh unlock for my ability to use communication as a tool that makes me a living and that I can use to help other people do the same.

Speaker 4:46

And so when you talk about communication, um, I feel like that's uh it can be a pretty broad word that can mean a lot of different things. And I think uh you know, when I think about communication today, it's uh I know it's a little bit different to what I thought communication was, you know, five, ten years ago. So how what does communication mean to you?

Speaker 1 5:14

Yeah, great question. Um, we could approach this a couple different ways, but I think it can be helpful to divide it into two or three camps when we think about communication. Um, often, especially if you're in a profession where you have an asymmetrical relationship with the knowledge required to do your job. If you're a specialist, if you're a CFO, if you're a doctor, if you're a lawyer, if you're an engineer, you tend to find yourself in a position where you are trying to transfer information and knowledge via your communication. You might be teaching somebody something, explaining something to somebody, educating somebody on something. And in that mode of communication, your job is to transfer information and knowledge. That's one of the categories we could we could subdivide communication into. Another camp that we could divide it into would be shared experience. When you're sitting around at the bar with your buddies, grabbing coffee, catching up with a friend, or drinking coffee with your wife in the morning, you're you're being comrades. Your communication isn't about uh information, knowledge, or transfer, though you're doing some of that. How was your day, honey? And you're hearing about their day, they're transferring that information to you. It's also not about the third camp that I'll talk about in a second, which is influence. It's just about sharing the experience of communicating together. Sometimes you and your best friend might sit around and not say a word, and you've heavily communicated in that moment. We send, we communicate in nonverbal ways all the time, the signals that we send. You know, there's almost a joke about men being able to sit around and not do anything together, and that's a great bonding experience for us. And that's super true. We communicate not just verbally, we send a lot of signals nonverbally with our body language, our head nods, our eyes, all sorts of things that we communicate with people in a shared experience, and that's a form of communication. But the third, and the one that I transact in the most, is influence. My primary way of thinking about communication is being influential. That means getting somebody to do something they would not have done otherwise. Being the proximal cause of change that causes a person to do something different than they would have on their natural trajectory. That's what my businesses are about. That's how I think largely about being an effective parent. That's how I think about being a good friend. All three of those modes of communication matter, but the bulk of my time professionally, communication falls into that camp of influence where our currency is getting somebody to do something different. Now, what that something is and who that thing is good for are pretty important questions. You know, you can be a manipulator or a scheming person who influences people to do things you want them to do, or you could just be a really good salesperson where you find the mutual win that's good for everybody. Or you can be a highly effective coach whose job is I can influence you in a direction that's purely good for you because I'm completely disconnected from the outcome of the situation. But influencing people towards an advantage, being influential in that way that gets them to do something they wouldn't do otherwise, that's the primary thing I mean when I think about communication. Unless we're in one of those other arenas where I'm just being your buddy hanging out or chilling with my kids, or if I'm in a mode where I'm teaching, right? If I'm on stage conveying a concept to somebody, I might be largely transferring information and knowledge in that moment. But if I were speaking to those attendees at the speaking engagement one-on-one, I would be transitioning probably more into that influential arena for communication. I've never, I don't know that there's not more arenas than that, but in my brain, that's kind of how I subdivide what communication means.

Speaker 8:48

No, I and I think that's a really helpful breakdown as well, because I think uh when I think about um in my business, what is the what are the two like the two that stand out are uh the transfer of information or knowledge uh and also the influence one. And I want to touch on the influence one a little bit. I had a question about that, but then on the second one, with uh when you brought up non-verbal communication uh and the guy sitting around and not saying anything, but still, you know, communicating, um, you reminded me about something my dad uh told me. Um him and his dad were uh were very close just like I am with him. And um I asked him a question because growing up, you know, we you know we had uh a mode of communication that uh sometimes a lot of the time involves uh not a lot of fillers of you know wasted conversation, I guess you could call. You know, we'd like we've never been the type to s do any sort of small talk. And I asked him about that because I noticed, you know, you know, if I would stay at uh you know a friend's house and then how you know listen to how he communicated with his dad, and it was like fundamentally different to how I've always communicated with my dad. Um and I asked him about that and asked like I remember I was maybe 15 years old, and asked him why why we were like that, and he said that uh him and his dad, who uh uh were close, is very close too. He said, That's just uh you know how he grew up with his dad, that you know, him, his brother, his dad, they would all see each other like in the kitchen in the morning uh when they were growing up, and he's like, We wouldn't say anything to each other, but we're just communicate with just like a grunt, like mmm, and like that was them saying, Morning, dad, love you. Like that was their way of communicating with just like making grunts. And I was like, Okay, that's pretty interesting, uh, because um, you know, we've I can't recall uh really any conversations my dad and I have ever had really that have been small talk, uh talking about the way they're talking about like things that we weren't we weren't we're both like genuinely interested in or deeper things is you know uh you know more life kind of centered stuff. Um so like that makes a lot of sense to me, and that's what that reminded me of. But then on the topic of influence, um uh I'm assuming then you you're probably familiar with one of my favorite um people uh on the topic of uh human influence and human behavior, which I think this kind of all comes connected, communication and influence and just the fundamental uh understanding of why people do the things that they do and human behavior. Um I'm assuming you're familiar with like the work of Chase Hughes then?

Speaker 1 12:05

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Chase Hughes and uh his breakdown. You know, I'm I'm pretty good at what I do, and I look at Chase Hughes and I'm like, man, there is such a bigger world of influence that I've never thought about before. So yeah, I'm a big fan of his.

Speaker 12:20

Yeah, no, similarly, I um I I just finished listening to uh his most recent uh podcast he did with with Rogan, and um you know, there's just more things uh that I learn every time I listen to him. I've got his book, I've not finished it.

Speaker 1 12:36

It's you know that it's like a fff the I don't think I realized he had a book, now I'm gonna have to get it.

Speaker 12:41

It's it's uh it's like a playbook of everything uh that he's learnt about uh human behavior and influence. And it was super interesting hearing him, because you touched on this about um you know the you know what you do with the ability to influence someone to do something that they wouldn't uh uh on their own perhaps decide to do. And he talks about a lot about how the tools that he does and he practices and teaches can be used for both good and and bad purposes. And um he chooses to use those uh to teach people how to use for good. Uh, but then the way he he talked he talked about how he learnt uh about influence and how the best of the best influence people by studying uh in California um recruiters into cults. And um and that was fascinating because you know influence comes into my business just as it does for you. And like I I I would say that that's the arena that I uh live in the most too when it comes to communication, especially when you're in a uh an advisory uh type position, like we both are in various different ways. Um and it um and so like that's been it's that's why it's such a big topic of interest for me, is especially when it comes to human behavior regarding money and f finance uh in a business, um and how to one communicate uh you know something uh that is to a lot of people a foreign language when it comes to numbers and finance, and then to try and help influence them to make uh a certain decision based on their business's finances that will help them achieve some greater outcome for them. Um and I what I've learned is that every single person, every single client that we um that we work with responds differently to different ways of communication. So my question for you is like how how do you find that for different people and what are some of the main ways that might be uh put different people in different categories for how they're influenced and how they receive communication in the most effective way? Because I found that once before um that you know uh by trying to, you know, I was I uh one instance was I was trying to to influence and communicate with a client through one realm uh that I thought was which was logical reasoning, but then when I I after the fact I did a whole debrief and ran different call transcripts and call videos through AI to pick up those non-verbal cues and body language and tone. Um and the analysis return that I was trying to communicate in this logical reasoning, which was the area that he was most uh least susceptible to being influenced on a decision where and it ranked the highest was on scarcity and fear, which is would have been good to know, but also not a way that I would want to deploy trying to influence someone through scarcity, right? But that was super interesting, and it had me realize in that moment that I've been I was trying to I was speaking, you know, I was trying to communicate with someone in basically a a language that they don't speak. So it's a great way to think about it. So like how do you how do you come a how do you navigate that?

Speaker 1 16:45

Great question. And um before we go forward, I want to go back, I guess, uh really quick, I want to touch on a few things that you shared there. The uh the viability of grunts and nonverbal communication should not be overlooked. Um, because of exactly what you're saying. The way in which the person sitting across from you prefers to communicate might be less words. It might be more words. You know, that dynamic of how you and your dad communicate versus the way you'd see a buddy communicate with his parents is is a shared experience almost everybody can understand. Right? And I live this. Uh my wife and I have different communication styles. At the end of the day, she needs to be able to share with me what happened in her day. And I, caring for my wife, need to give that time as a receiver of that and participate in that conversation. My way of communication, I've never once thought I should go tell somebody what happened in my day today. It's just, it, it just literally doesn't live in my brain that that's a degree of detail anybody would possibly want to hear about. I'll share the big interesting things. I'll share new ideas that I have, I'll share something that blew me away or surprised me, but that the minutia of my day, I'm just utterly uninterested in verbalizing to anybody, um, not resistant to it. It just literally doesn't occur to me to do that. And so we've had to find our way to figuring that out together so that she can feel heard and share about her day, and I'm not annoyed by it, and vice versa. She doesn't always want to hear my big stupid idea either. She would probably prefer more that I we just talk about some of the basic things of life. And that's just so we have to figure that out together, I guess is part of my point. Um, and uh recognizing that this is a common phenomenon kind of leads into a lot of what Chase Hughes talks about, which is as much as there are variations in the way people prefer to communicate, it's probably more fair to say that they're like striations or categories. It's not infinite nuance that uh, you know, eight billion people in the world, there's not eight billion preferred different communication styles. There's like five. Or, you know, call it 10. But the point is, like, there's only so many. And that's a lot of what Chase does really well is synthesize down all of the what we feel like is infinite perplexity and complexity. Then in reality, it's like, no, there's a couple different things. Such that he describes the recipe for influence is novelty and authority. And that's the lesson he took away from those recruiters in California was novelty is the disruption of the norm. Get you out of your flow state. He uses this example of if you were walking into a mall in California and a recruiter wanted to approach you, they would try to do something to disrupt you from the path of the store you were trying to walk into. Now, if they physically stood in front of you, that would be pretty aggressive. That probably wouldn't be that very helpful. But if they could come up with some unique way to distract you, now they're disrupted their intended flow states, and uh now they can display their authority in some way and they will have influenced you. That simple recipe is pretty fascinating. And it could be used for ill gains, it could be used purely for my own selfish desires or whatever. In our arena of influence, of authority, that doesn't go very well because, well, Google reviews. Because reputation, because we live in a world where referrals are the strongest source of business for us. And you know, that's that's if all you're doing is influencing people, then you're the way that's good for you, you're probably not going to have a very big tribe around you that wants to refer people to you for very long. So it's pretty short-sighted, and most people who do whatever they do for long enough recognize that, though obviously not everybody does. Um but this layering of nonverbal communication is a reflection maybe of the preferred style a person would like to be communicated with, is an important thing to think through, to recognize that your default style is probably not the way everybody around you would prefer to be communicated with, is maybe a more helpful way to think about it. Whatever your default style is, logic, vibes, energy, you know, there's a lot of assessments out there that'll help you understand not only your default style of communication, your preferred style of communication, but your the style you use when under stress. Because the the what you resort to under stress is probably what people experience more frequently than you realize. And somebody who went down the road to become an engineer or a finance major, probably's default style is logic. Not always, right? But like generalities exist for a reason. And a person who goes into sales, their default style is probably talk faster or be more curious rather than use logic. So your ability to understand or at least acknowledge, you don't even have to understand, just to acknowledge that your default style of communication might not be received that well. And you said it well. It's like they speak a different language. It's a really good way to think about it. The words you are using will not be understood in the intended way if you're leaning way too much on logic and rationale, but the person tends to view the world through the lens of scarcity or fear, trying to. Minimize bad things happening. If I go to somebody who has a background that's designed to help them reduce risk, like healthcare professionals, right? My wife, this for what it's worth, audience, the examples I'm sharing for my wife are things I've been given permission to share. I'm in a communication field, I have my own podcast, I believe it's important to maintain other people's secrets and confidentiality. These are examples I've been given permission to share, so I'm not talking out of turn here. But my wife comes from a healthcare background. She does heart surgery. If the person who does surgery on your heart does not prioritize risk avoidance, that should make you very uncomfortable. They are conditioned and almost like selection biased. The people who choose to go do heart surgery, the people who choose to do very risky endeavors with only one or two ways to be successful, but a million ways to screw it up. That type of career attracts somebody whose risk tolerance steers in the direction of risk avoidance. Conversely, if you go talk to a salesperson in any given industry and their primary way of thinking about the world is risk avoidance, they're not going to be very good at selling. It's very difficult to go create opportunity if you can't think in the lens of abundance all the time. So if you take somebody like me who views the world through a lens of abundance and big vision and let's dream and let's go get all of it, and I just use my default state of communication to talk to somebody who, by selection bias of their career and by training and reinforcement in their career, thinks through the world of risk avoidance, that can make it very difficult for those two people to speak the same language if you're not thoughtful about it. And that's just an interpersonal connection, not to say how you go lead a team of human beings to lead a business, how to hire somebody who might be a good addition to your company, or how to prospect and identify your next customer. So that was a long-winded diatribe because I think context matters. And if we just think, if all we do is jump to how do I communicate more effectively with this person, that might be okay. That's a good question to ask. But if you can zoom out a little bit and recognize the deeply human nature of not speaking the same language as other people just with your communication style, it becomes a little easier to approach that problem with a little more humility, a little more humanity, and a little more recognition that this doesn't have anything to do with being a good salesperson, a good leader. It has just to do with being a more effective human around the other humans that are naturally in your life. So, to your question, how do you actually figure out somebody else's communication style? My number one answer, ask. Like, they may not know, but if you've never asked the people in your life how they would prefer to be communicated with, and that you might not use those exact words, I can rattle off a couple different variations of that, but the the core concept being, I bet Jerome has a preferred way he'd like me to make an argument to him. I just bet he does. He may never have thought about it before. And we might have to go through the experience a little bit to really pin it down together. But I suspect if I ask him, I can either find out because he does know. So, Jerome, if I were to ask you, hey, if somebody had to make an argument to you, if somebody had to try to convince you of something, what's the most effective? Let's assume this is a person you have some degree of trust in. This isn't a stranger off the street recruiting you to a cult. But like, if they had to make a compelling argument to be to you, what would be maybe some of the fundamental things you would hope to see in an argument for someone trying to convince you of something?