Jefferson Fisher

They're listening to all those things long before the words ever come out of your mouth.

So if you want to be an excellent communicator, it is making sure that you treat those first seven seconds like they are liquid gold, because if something falls apart and it's oftentimes that it does, you get the chance to say, I need to say that differently.

I want to redo.

I need to reset this conversation.

If you feel that it starts to go off the rail immediately, you're

I need to say that differently and restart those seven seconds, right?

Because if you're not in the right mindset, if you're not in the right, yeah, I don't think another word for it.

If you're not in the right mindset, neither will they, because conversations generally don't go south in the middle.

So if we have a beginning and an end,

Conversations typically don't start to lose control in the middle.

It's at the very beginning.

Meaning at the very beginning, it set it up to have a hard conversation.

If I'm in an argument, let's say, and let's say it's me who gets frustrated.

I'm going to get frustrated really quickly, right out of the gate.

And you know what?

That's going to color the whole rest of the conversation for me.

And I'm going to have to be doing the mental work to try and dig myself out of that situation.

you know that mindset same for somebody else if they're trying to deliver something to you and you're not being receptive of it the good communicators say i can tell that this is not going where we need to go i'm going to restart it or let's push it for another time so to me the the first seven seconds of the conversation is sort of like the tail wagging the dog

I know if those first seven seconds aren't going well, it is rare that the rest of the conversation will somehow turn by itself naturally and improve.

What I typically like to do and what I'm going to encourage you to do is reset it.