If I may make a suggestion, if you only listen to one podcast this week make this the episode you choose. It may make a real differenct in how you approach communication and your success.

As you personally attend to your success business, effective success chaining requires productive communication with everyone you link to for input and with everyone who links to you. Importantly, communicating for success is not something totally different than normal conversation. It is, rather, simply normal conversation and a little more.

When you are having a simple conversation, neither you nor the other person has an agenda beyond expanding your relationship a little, enjoying each others company, and sharing whatever comes to mind. When you are communicating for success, one or both of you has an agenda beyond simple conversation. That agenda always includes, at a minimum, expecting the other person to do something, either while you are communicating or later. It may be as simple as letting you know what they think about something, giving you the benefit of their knowledge and experience, providing some new information, doing something you have asked them to do, or getting back with you later when you have more time. It may be very complex, e. g., developing a contract, working out the final plans for a big event, or planning for world peace. Whether the agenda is simple or complex, that agenda is the primary difference between simple conversation and success communication.

An interesting characteristic distinguishing the most successful people from others is they communicate for success regularly but seldom just have simple conversations. Whether they have another agenda or not, they always have a personal success agenda. They are continuously scanning for new information, looking for innovative ways to think about things, searching for unusual perspectives, developing potentially beneficial relationships, and seeking out opportunities to expand and enhance their success business. They never miss a chance to work on their success.

If you would like to make communicating for success so habitual you seldom do anything else, follow Simon’s rules for making every conversation a success communication opportunity. …