TLDR;
In this episode of Uncommon Leadership, Michael Hunter sits down with Scott Harvey, an FBI-trained hostage negotiator, speaker, author, and business communication consultant, to unpack the often-overlooked skill that separates good leaders from great ones: the ability to connect through communication.
Harvey draws from his extensive experience, including his time as a D.A.R.E. officer and his work in conflict resolution and advocating for mental health discussions. His unique background provides a fresh, pragmatic, and deeply human perspective on leading with influence and building relationships that thrive.
This isn’t just theory; it’s hard-won wisdom from someone who has navigated life-or-death conversations.
Whether you’re leading a meeting or navigating a tense conversation, this episode is a masterclass in reading the room—and reshaping the outcome through the power of words.
For any leader who wants to be heard, trusted, and remembered, this one’s a must. Tune in today.
Want to get in touch with Scott Harvey?
Email: scott@speakingofharvey.com
Website: SpeakingofHarvey.com
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Presented By: Uncommon Change
Transcript:
Michael Hunter
Whether you want more innovation, more easily, you’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed, or you simply know that something just quite isn’t the way you know it can be. You are not alone. I hear the same from leaders every day. On Uncommon Leadership, we explore aligning personal fulfillment with business success, creating authentic teams, and cultivating the resilience necessary to move beyond simply surviving today’s challenges into thriving.
I’m Michael Hunter, and today we’ll uncover fresh insights into what it means to lead with resilience. Joining me today is Scott Harvey. Scott is a speaker, author, and coach who helps leaders and their teams build cultures of robust communication and leadership.
As an FBI-trained hostage negotiator and public information officer for 20 years, not to mention raising two kids all the way to adulthood and maintaining a healthy marriage for close to three decades. Scott knows what he’s talking about. His book, ‘Silence Kills’, is chock-full of assistance in developing communication that works in even super stressful situations.
Welcome, Scott.
Scott Harvey
Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here.
Michael
I am so looking forward to this conversation. When did you first recognize that integrating your whole self, bringing that into everything that you do, might be a valuable approach?
Scott
So it’s interesting, I got into law enforcement back in 1998.
I’ll date myself here, but 1998, I became a police officer to help people. And I thought that was gonna look a certain way. What I found out once I got into the job is it became all about my ability to communicate. I was the one that would talk people out of fighting. I can take you to the ground. I just don’t want to. Right?
I would rather talk you out of that course of conduct. And then I got into teaching the DARE program. I got trained as a house negotiator doing the media relations, and it just brought something out of me that I had forgotten I had. I was kind of a theater kid growing up and I kinda left that behind to do this law enforcement gig, but then I realized I was communicating for a living. I wasn’t playing a part, so to speak. I was just playing a bigger version of myself doing all of these things. And so, you know, realizing that I was communicating for a living led to me starting professionally speaking with about eight years left until I could retire, because at the time we had a 20-year retirement.
And so I knew I had a date on the calendar where I could retire. I wasn’t hap… it wasn’t forced to, but I could. But I realized at 43 years old, when I was eligible to retire, the public pension is not gonna support my family for what we need. And so I started speaking with eight years left. And started taking vacation time from the police department to do both jobs and, just brought that speaking ship closer to the dock so that I could step onto it when that retirement date became available.
And it came to a point where I was running to something instead of running from something. I loved my police job, but that’s also kind of a young man’s game. And I was not a young man much anymore when I was looking at retirement. And this speaking gig was something that I could do for the rest of my life, and it was just the next level of kind of what I was doing for the police department already.
Michael
What is it about communication that speaks to you so deeply?
Scott
You know, I think it’s interesting, Michael, I, you know, I had the luxury of growing up in the eighties and nineties where 90% of our communication was either face-to-face or it was on an old school telephone that was attached to the wall, right?
There was no digital communication. That wasn’t an option. And so, because I grew up that way, it just became something that I became good at. And today, one of the things that I see that organizations ask me to do more times than not actually, is to come in and tell their younger employees, I’m a big fan of this upcoming generation, but to tell their younger employees, yeah, they do have to pick up the phone and call people. Because they’re like, I, just, I can send an email, I can send a text that’s easier for everybody.
I’m like, you can, but they won’t connect with you that way. I learned growing up that you connect when you can see people’s facial expressions or when you can hear the tone in their voice. And so when we do conversations like you and I are doing now, where we can see each other’s facial expressions, Michael, we have a much better conversation than if we were texting back and forth.
You can pick up the nuance in my nonverbals, in my tone. I just think communication is something that you could do and practice your whole life and never master. You just get better and better at it. Or you can do like some of the underperforming younger people are doing today, and decide not to do it except digitally, and they are gonna put a ceiling on their career.
And so in order to help them bust through that ceiling, I train them to have the confidence to have the type of conversations that will actually make them more successful in their job. Because we do business with people we like, know, and trust, and the only way we can build that level of rapport is to get face to face, or at least get voice to voice because there’s something in the tone that allows people to connect in a way that digital will never replicate.
Michael
Lots of us spend lots of time talking with people. Over Zoom, in person, over the phone. What was it, what was different about the way you talked or the environment you were talking in, or the way you were brought up that was a training ground for you versus a just a thing that you did and you weren’t gaining mastery as you went?
Scott
Yeah, I think it’s like anything we can’t. John Acuff, who’s a friend of mine, he’s an author and a speaker. He says, “Stop comparing your middle to someone else’s end.” Like we wanna look at somebody that’s on a stage somewhere that’s giving a talk and think, I could never be that. Well, not today ’cause you never stepped on a stage.
But today, you could have a conversation with somebody on the bus on the way home, or you could have a conversation with the person who takes your order at the coffee shop and ask them a question or two about themselves. It starts with those little baby steps, and once you start doing that and becoming confident in speaking with people, then you just get in front of the room to lead the meeting and you’re speaking with a couple more people.
And then next thing you know, you are, maybe on a stage if you like it. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but you, every time we get better at communication, we can level up our job because the people who are not great communicators, they don’t necessarily want to level up or they sit there mad about the fact that nobody’s asking them to level up because they’re not great communicators.
So communication is something that is key to anything that you’re doing. I don’t care what your job is. Becoming a better communicator will make you better at it.
Michael
So are you saying then that you didn’t; you weren’t especially studying communication, you just did a whole lot of it and that became a study in its own?
Scott
Correct. I did not study communication. I did go to college because you can’t be a police officer in Kentucky till you’re 21. You graduate high school at 18. My public school math said that means I had three years to kill, might as well get a four-year degree. So I went and got a degree in police administration with a minor in Spanish.
There was no communication classes in my professional training or anything like that prior to getting hired at the police department. But once I became hired at the police department, the better I could communicate with people, honestly, the safer I was. If I was reading body language, if I was interpreting things that weren’t being said, I could do my job better, which means I could be safer, and I could keep other people safer.
So I got a 20-year training in reading body language, in asking good questions, in the DARE program when I was teaching fifth and seventh graders. All day, every day. You know, for the school year. I was on patrol some of the other days, but when I was teaching fifth and seventh graders, I learned very quickly if I’m getting quizzical looks back from them, if they’re looking kind of like a German Shepherd and you’re holding a treat and they give you that head tilt and everything. If they’re looking at you weird, you have to replay what you just said because maybe you didn’t say it in a way that they could understand. So that taught me to read the audience, read the room, see if they’re tracking with me.
When you’re leading a meeting, when you’re communicating with a group, you should be looking for people nodding their heads. You should be looking for people smiling, laughing at appropriate times. If you don’t see that, it means you’re not connecting. And so communication is a give and take. And so we’ve got to, with no intentional training on my part, it was training on the streets.
It was training in the DARE classroom. It was training in front of a camera, giving media releases to the local news. It was those types of on-the-job training. And then I got trained as a hostage negotiator. And it just kicked this up to the next level. it just made me realize that I can actually talk somebody out of ending their life or making a bad situation worse.
There was definitely officers on our SWAT team that were great at the use of weapons. That was never something I was great at. I could do it. What I was great at was communicating. And so I used my communication methods to get them to a point where they didn’t have to use their weapons. That was the ideal; that I talked this person out of whatever it was they were doing, and I loved helping people that way.
I loved using my communication superpower to keep a bad situation from getting worse.
Michael
I had a guest recently who taught me that, through the course of our conversation that every conversation is really a sales conversation. What I’m hearing for you is that every conversation is really also a negotiation, ’cause in every conversation we are trying to understand what the other person is in that conversation for and finding a way to help them get that in a way that also helps us get what we’re hoping for.
Scott
Yes. What you just described, Michael, was hostage negotiation in a nutshell. Like, I need to build a level of rapport with you that will get you to do what I need you to do, and then convince you that it’s your idea.
Now that sounds manipulative, right? But when you figure what I need you to do is not hurt yourself or other people and come out safely, then that’s a win for both of us. I agree a hundred percent with your past guest who said that every conversation is a sales conversation because you’re either selling a product or an idea.
And to me, I was selling a solution to their problem as a negotiator. They’ve gotten themselves in a problem. Doesn’t matter really how we got here. We’re here now. How do we make the next five minutes better? How do we make the five minutes after that even better? And that’s business in itself. Like I know, people don’t call us in the business world if things are great, they call us if they’re having a problem.
And so, how do we help solve their problem in a way that benefits them and benefits us? Because, as a negotiator, I would ask a ton of questions. That’s the key to communication is you’re asking a lot of open-ended, high-level questions because I wanted to find out what they thought was important.
What motivated them? What did they love? What empowered them? And then we would craft a solution to their problem that allows them to check as many of those boxes as possible. So that I know, let’s say that their kids are important to them. When this is all said and done, I will make sure you get a chance to talk to your kids, or your kids can see you.
You made a mistake and then you fixed it moving forward, and I can be sure and let them know that Dad may not have wanted this to happen, but once he realized he was in a jam, he did everything he could to fix it. You know, those are the type of solutions to problems that speak to things that we value.
And if you are in sales, I don’t really care about your product unless it solves a problem of mine. If it solves a problem of mine, then I’m going to listen to you. And as a negotiator, I wanted to let them know I was here to help them solve the problem they found themselves in.
Michael
So when you were making that cold call, effectively.
Scott
Yeah.
Michael
How did you, and in the communications that you have now, as you’re talking with someone that you’ve just met, how do you, in such a short amount of time, get to know, who the person is, understand what they’re really looking for so that you can help them, find a way out of the situation they’re in, whether that’s a hostage negotiation or this meeting that just went really poorly or asking someone out on a date?
Scott
Yeah, I will say this, cold calling is really hard. But it’s better than cold emailing. Cold emailing gets you ignored in today’s world. Like my email is full of spam, it’s full of junk. If I don’t know you, there’s not a good chance I’m gonna read your email. Okay. So, cold calling allows them to at least hear a voice behind it.
And to me, a cold call doesn’t start with something innocuous. It doesn’t start with, Hey, how are you today? Because I know immediately that this is a cold call and I just listen to it differently. So it asks a question of the person you’re talking to that’s bigger than ‘How are you today?’ You know, you might even call and say, Hey, I called you because John thought you would benefit greatly from what I helped him do. You know, I generally try to avoid cold calling. I like referrals, because then I can say, you know, Michael suggested I reach out to you because I was really able to help him with this problem, and he thought it’d be beneficial to you, too.
And then I start asking him about what they do and that kind of stuff, and that at least bridges the gap. It’s not necessarily cold. If you don’t have a mutual connection, you know what? I was training sales managers the other day, and they told me their biggest problem was X. Is that something you guys struggle with at your organization?
And if they say yes, then I say, well, here’s how I was able to help them. Do you think this would be beneficial for you? I’m not gonna tell ’em I’m gonna help them. Do you think this would be beneficial for you and your team? If he says, No, listen, if I can ever help you with anything else, I’d love to do that.
I’m gonna send you my contact information in a follow-up email. But if he says yes or she says yes, then we start talking about what their problems are because their problems are similar to the last place I was, but they’re not exactly the same. And so by asking ’em about their specific problems, we can say, you know, here’s some solutions we might try with your team.
Pretty certain they’re gonna work for you. And then we just go from there. But if there’s some kind of a warm lead that’s best, if not a warm lead, then somebody you were helping who was just like them recently. I was in a conversation with this sales manager. They told me this was a problem.
Do you guys struggle with this? If they say no, how did you solve it? Because he was struggling with it. I’d love to know what you did to solve this problem so that we can at least keep the conversation going a little bit, and I might learn something from this new contact that I can use to help the next contact.
Michael
So you might say then that the way that you approach every conversation is with curiosity. And whatever else is hope to come out of the conversation, it’s all coming from a stance of curiosity. I’m here to help. I’m not here to inflict, and I am here to listen, not talk.
Scott
Yeah. You know, one of the things I wrote about in the book, because it’s so key to communication today, is I tell people I never, as a negotiator, I never talked to somebody into doing anything.
I listened them into it. I would ask appropriate questions. I would gather that information like I’ve already talked about, and I would use that to craft a solution. Today, we’ve gotta be asking more questions and then we’ve gotta listen to the responses. That doesn’t mean a Survey Monkey that you send me, that means something that you are calling me and asking me questions about my business, asking me, and not asking leading questions.
But asking something like, what is something you’re struggling with today? Don’t call ’em and say, I know you’re struggling with communication, so here’s how we where we can help with that. What’s your biggest struggle today? And the beauty of a question like that is if I’m not the best person to solve that problem, there’s a good chance I have somebody in my contact information system or my CRM that could help them solve this problem. And so I can say, you know what, I’m a communication guy. That’s what I specialize in. You’re having an ops problem. I got a really good friend who does ops fantastically. Can I make an introduction between you two? Because then if I’m the introducer of these two awesome people and let them go be awesome together, that’s gonna build me some goodwill.
And they might, somebody might contact them the next week and say, I’m having a communication problem at my company. Do you know anybody? And they’re like, I know Scott Harvey. He connected me with John over here, who helped me solve this ops problem. You need to talk to Scott. And I didn’t even help person A.
But person A knew person B, when person B asked person A for a communication person, my name came up. So, yeah, I think, you know, being a good listener to what their problems are, plugging them into the right people, is most of the things we need to focus on today.
Michael
As you’re working with all these individuals and companies, and teams, how do you help them build cultures where they all feel safe and empowered to bring their unique talents into everything they do? Just as you’ve brought your love of communication and curiosity into everything that you do.
Scott
That’s a great question. And, you know, the best way I know how to answer it, the reason my book is called Silence Kills is because silence kills relationships. Silence kills culture. I tell people all the time, if you show me a husband and wife who are no longer communicating, their divorce is pending. It’s just coming because they’ve shut down communication. When we stop communicating, things go bad very quickly. So in an organization, one of the things that I see that stops communication is, honestly, very healthy teams, when there’s a conflict, when something comes up, and you know, Michael is my good friend who, you know, is a couple cubes over. He does this thing that I don’t think he should be doing, but he’s a good friend, and I don’t wanna say anything about it. Because I don’t wanna offend him, right? And so I just let it go, and he continues doing that thing, and then we as a team start suffering.
But I don’t want him to sound bad coming from me. The problem is silence doesn’t mean we don’t care. Sometimes it means we care so much that we’re afraid to jeopardize our friendship by saying something, because workplace relationships only go so deep, right? My best friend in the world will call me on my crap.
Without hesitation because we have years of foundation that allow us to do that. My work relations usually don’t run that deep. So I gotta work with Michael, I don’t wanna offend him. I don’t wanna hurt his feelings, so I don’t say anything. And what I tell organizations from an external and an internal standpoint is silence without rapport feels like we don’t care.
If I’m a coworker of Michael’s, and I know he’s doing this thing, and management or leadership is not addressing it, it feels like leadership no longer cares. When maybe they’re not addressing it because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. And so they say nothing and silence without rapport feels like we don’t care.
So the problem is when we become silent, Michael, we know what that silence means, but the person on the other side of it does not. And they will interpret it in a way that’s probably not super beneficial for us. So, getting teams to a point where the most loving thing I can do for a coworker is pull ’em aside individually, one-on-one, and talk about that thing that they’re doing, and give them permission to talk to me about things I’m doing. Because that’s actually super loving to see something that I see as a concern for them if they’re gonna continue working here.
The most mean thing I can do is not say anything and let them continue down that path until they get fired.
It feels loving to not say anything, it feels like I’m micromanaging if I say something, but it’s actually the opposite. The people who care about us the most are the ones who are going to course correct us along the way.
Michael
Right. We can’t, we may never recognize, realize that we are doing a thing. If no one tells us about it. A friend of mine told me a story recently of a consultant working in some company, and there was this one guy that just everyone could not believe how bad this guy smelled. And no one was gonna talk to the guy because they didn’t wanna embarrass him. The consultant, having nothing to lose, went over and talked to the guy and said, he said, “You have a; there’s a pretty strong odor when you’re around. Wonder if, like, you realize that that’s a thing and that it’s causing some; it’s not so pleasant sometimes.”
And the gentleman said, “Thank you so much for telling me.” It turned out his hobby was taxidermy, and some of the chemicals he used were super odoriferous.
Scott
And he can’t smell them anymore.
Michael
He not only can he not smell them anymore, he said, “I recently changed soap that I used to clean up afterwards, and I guess this one doesn’t work. I’ll go back to what I was using before.”
Scott
Yeah, I mean, those are the kind of things, Michael, like, you know, when you finish a meeting or you finish hanging out with friends and you get home and you see you’ve got broccoli in your teeth or something, you’re like. How long has that been ther,e and why has nobody said anything? Like that’s, you know, when I see something like that with somebody I’m out with, or even somebody I don’t know, like somebody brings me in to train their team or something and they pull me aside and I see, you know, a piece of breakfast or lunch, I’d be like, Hey, you have something right here.
Because I don’t want ’em to go the rest of their day. I’d rather them be embarrassed with me than to think back on how many times they were possibly embarrassed that day and didn’t know. So, to your point, the most loving thing we can do is have those difficult conversations. But unfortunately we live in a world that likes to bump up against awkward and then run the other way.
Is that an awkward conversation? For sure. But what’s on the other side of that, a freedom for that relationship that just kicked you guys to a next level, where now that you’ve told that guy, Hey, clearly we smell you and you don’t smell you. I just wanted you to know that. He now has permission. You can tell him If I’m doing anything that’s aggravating or you see me doing something that could cause me problems, please let me know.
And you know, I need to know that you have my back. You know, that shows him why you said what you said about the problem, and gives you somebody who’s gonna watch out for you as well, because we can’t read the bottle for or read the label from inside the bottle. It takes somebody outside, which is why I love working as a consultant with these companies, because I can come in and ask questions because I’m not emotionally involved in the outcomes.
Like, I’m not in the inner office interpersonal relationships, and I can say, you know, this is weird. Right? You know, whatever this dynamic is, you know, this is weird. You know, and sometimes I tell companies, you know, this is weird that they brought me in to train. Most companies don’t invest in communication training until they have a problem.
So this is weird. You work at a weird place, but I can call those things out because I don’t work there. And then after I talk, I have employees and team members that come up and tell me things they would never tell the boss because I have created an open dialogue from the beginning. And they’ll tell me things that I can then anonymously pass on to the leadership and say, here’s some things I heard from your team that probably we need to address.
Michael
The act of giving someone permission to give you feedback is that a useful way for, in these situations where I’m afraid to embarrass you or I’m afraid to embarrass myself by telling you something that might embarrass you? Yeah, it is that a useful way to say?
Scott
It is, and I tell people. Yeah, you know, there’s a great way to start and it’s just calling it out in the beginning, you know, obviously this is a one-on-one conversation.
I tell people all the time, praise in public, correct and coach in private. Like, don’t coach in front of the whole team. Don’t correct in front of the whole team. So ask somebody to come individually, take ’em to coffee, meet in the office, something like that, and say, this has the potential to be an awkward conversation.
I’m just gonna throw that out there. But in order for us to be our best, I need to talk about this thing. I want you to be successful here. In order for you to be successful, we need you to do X, whatever X is, right? And right now you’re just not doing that. And so, I think calling it out in the beginning to say, this is gonna be awkward.
I’m not trying to offend you. Honestly. I’m a huge fan of you. I want you to be successful here. In order for you to be successful, we need to make sure we’re doing this. And this is from a leadership standpoint. This wouldn’t be peer-to-peer. This would be from a leadership standpoint. But oftentimes, what I might have found, it’s the leaders who are afraid to have these conversations.
Because they don’t wanna have to replace this person if they leave. They don’t want it to be awkward every day in the office when they see ’em, just call it out in the beginning and say, man, this has the potential to be awkward, but I care too much about you to not have this conversation. And if you ever need anything from me, you come, let me know.
Right. You’ve given them permission to come in, talk to you about problems they’re having, because you cared enough to have an awkward conversation with them and nobody has told them this thing before. And so in the moment they may be sad, they may be hurt, they may be offended. Later, once they’ve settled down, there’s a good chance they’re gonna come back and say, “You know what? I needed to hear that. I wasn’t doing my calls like I should have. I wasn’t keeping up with my logs like I should have. I appreciate you giving me a chance to correct it.” In the moment, they might get defensive because they feel like they’re attacked. But later on, once they’ve settled down, they’ll realize you cared enough to course correct them along the way.
Michael
And it doesn’t have to be a super emotion, full conversation. If I’m not comfortable around emotions, it can be a very straightforward, logical, rational. “Hey, Scott. Notice you got some broccoli in your teeth. Wanted, knew you wouldn’t wanna be walking around with that all day. I thought you’d like to know.”
Scott
Yes. Yes, and then you can even disclose after that. Say I got home one day with a piece of broccoli in mine. I had no idea how long it was in there, so I promised myself that day I would never let somebody else have a day like I had. And then it becomes a joke. It becomes something you did to save them, the embarrassment you had at another point.
Michael
That helps build the emotional rapport with each other so that you can have those deeper conversations and awkward conversations more easily next time.
Scott
Yes. And I tell people all the time, when you’re having these deeper, more awkward conversations, there’s gonna come a point in the conversation where their verbals do not match their nonverbals.
For example, you say, you know, how are things going today? And they’re, well, they’re, fine. I mean, they’re fine. Their words are saying they’re fine. They’re non-verbals are telling you that it’s not fine. When those two things don’t match, the truth is always in the nonverbals. It’s very easy to fake our words.
It’s very difficult to fake the nonverbal, the tone, the body language, that kind of stuff. And so when they give you an answer like that, that’s flippant and rehearsed or something like that, and you can say, man, it doesn’t feel like it’s fine. They may tell you that it is fine. I don’t wanna talk about it.
Okay, that’s fair. If you do wanna talk about though, you let me know. And then you give them some time, and then you come back maybe the next day and check on ’em. Are things any better today? You don’t have to know what the problem is that you both know there was a problem. You can say, are things any better today?
They might give you a yes or no. They might actually tell you what was going on, but you picked up in their nonverbals and you, realized that what they were saying was not the truth. They weren’t lying to you outta maliciousness. They were lying to you. Maybe they weren’t ready to talk about it.
Maybe it wasn’t a work-based problem and they didn’t wanna bring that to work, whatever it is, but you’ve let ’em know that you care enough to pick up on their nonverbals and realize that they’re not as okay as they want the world to seem. Just like the rest of us, none of us are okay. As okay as we would like the world to believe we are.
Michael
I like those words. Are things any better today? It’s a nice way to show that you care. So that you know that they were hurting yesterday and that you hope things are turning around without having to get into any of the specifics, they may not want to go into.
Scott
Yeah. Yeah. And if they say no, an easy follow-up question is, can I help?
What can I do to help? And if they say there’s nothing you can do, okay. If there ever is, please don’t hesitate to ask. And then you can leave it, ’cause not everybody is as comfortable having these conversations as I am. And I’m not gonna force them on anybody, but just letting them know, to your point, that I know things are not okay.
And if I can help in any way, I wanna do that.
Michael
What is the business value of having all these awkward conversations?
Scott
Yeah. Interesting that you ask this because I’ve been researching this lately, because, you know, this is one of those things that businesses don’t want to invest in. They don’t wanna invest in communication training because one, they assume people can do it.
Or two, they think they’re gonna get some woo-woo. There’s not gonna be any ROI on this or anything. It’s just gonna be a wasted training session. And what the research pretty consistently tells us is about 18% of your payroll is spent on deciphering miscommunication. Meaning if you’re paying somebody 40 hours a week, it’s almost a full day of their week that they’re trying to read between the lines and figure out miscommunication.
You know, what do they mean by this? What do? They didn’t really explain this, so I’m gonna guess at what they wanted. And I may not do it right, but I don’t want to ask them. And so you are losing, you’re investing about 18% of your salary in miscommunication. So if you take that 18% and invest a fraction of it in a training program like I offer where I come in and train the team, if you invest a fraction of that, let’s say you get half of their time back.
So now you’re only paying 9% of somebody’s salary towards miscommunication instead of 18. You can pay for these type programs pretty quickly. And so there is a monetary ROI on investing in training communication for your team. That’s for the bean counters in your audience that wanna know, where’s my money on this?
The other thing that this does is it builds culture. You might say, I’m gonna bring in this communication guide. We’re gonna do a training. I want my team to communicate more effectively. And while you may not monetize the ROI at the end, you may not see that money. You might see it in people that stick around longer and you’re not training new employees all the time because now this is a place where we can have awkward conversations where we cannot be okay and still be valued, where we feel like my boss actually wants to know if I’m okay, my leader is actually investing in me.
I tell companies all the time when I come in and train, I said, the communication tactics I’m gonna teach you will make you a better wife, a better husband, a better mom, a better dad, a better friend. And it just might help you at work, too. Because if I can make you a better human, then work automatically gets better.
But at the end of the day, you were looking for a job when you found this one, and you’ll get another job if this one doesn’t work out. The communication tactics will make all of your relationships better, and so will make you a happier person. And if that information was provided at this company, I’m gonna be more loyal to this company because they cared enough to gimme some skills that helped my marriage.
That made me a better dad. That made me a better mom. My friends notice that I communicate differently. Now I’m actually listening to their answers, and I’m asking better questions. All of that has value that will never be captured on a company spreadsheet.
Michael
And on top of all of that, just by bringing in Scott Harvey to talk about communication or whatever the other training is, that is, not cares how to get 18% more efficient at the thing that is your primary, what you do all day. That leader, that company, is showing their team, their people, that they want their people to get better at life. Not just at what makes the money there, and especially when the topic is things like communication, that leader, that company is saying, I see you as an individual, not just one of my, however many employees.
And I want you to see you as the amazing, unique individual you are.
Scott
Yeah. Yeah. There’s value in that, you know? And when employees feel like you care, you can pay them less. Now, that sounds like a really weird way of saying something, but I’ve seen people making well into the six figures, you know, multiple six figures at a company, but it’s toxic, and they’re always looking for the next place to be.
And I’ve also seen people making 50 to 60,000 a year who say, you couldn’t drag me away from this place. I love the people I work with. I love the mission we’re on. I love the story we’re about. I wish they paid more. There’s just not more right now, but I’ll stick around until there is more. So, company culture trumps pay every day of the week.
Michael
Absolutely. As you’re working with these, all these people, individuals, teams, companies, you’re talking about communication, you’re really helping them find their way through all the change, uncertainty, and overwhelm that seems to be more and more what life is these days. What else do you do besides just help them with their communication that helps them through all that?
Scott
Yeah, so, you know, the main lanes that I try to stay in is, communication. I also do conflict resolution training, and I also have a training specific to normalizing the mental health discussion because that’s something in a post-COVID world we’ve got to be better at. We’ve got to make it okay for people to get the help they need to ask for the help they need.
Because I came outta the police world, Michael, and unfortunately when I was there, we, collect a lot of baggage, a lot of crap, a lot of mental stuff that weigh us down, and when an officer asked for help, too many of their colleagues saw that person as damaged goods and were concerned about their safety if they were on a call with them.
What they didn’t realize is every one of us needs to talk to somebody about our problems, and the person who is actually getting help to me is safer than the person who doesn’t think they need it. And so in a corporate world, we are losing people to the fact that they don’t feel like anybody cares where they work, that they feel like work is another sad thing in their life, and they go home, and things at home are not great.
If we can get work, a place where they feel like they matter, where they feel like they’re on an important mission, and they’re an integral part of that mission, then we give them something that they’ve been lacking in the rest of their life. So I believe very firmly that we’ve got to have these conversations.
We’ve got to make work a place where we can talk about anything. Maybe not in a large group, but if you need something from me, you come to me. If I can’t get it for you, I might know somebody who can. You know, we’ve got, I’m a huge fan of EAPs, employee assistance programs. Most companies have those and the employees don’t know they exist.
Meaning if I need help with finances for my family or marital counseling or parent counseling, that’s available free of charge for me, if I just let the EAP that my company has contracted with know I have this need. And it may not even go back to my company that I’ve asked, maybe HR knows, maybe not.
There’s some EAPs where it’s blind somewhere, it’s not so, but just letting people know that help exists, and it’s free of charge, and we want you to be as healthy as you can be. Those are some things we’ve gotta start informing people about. Once again, it goes back to you’re a human working with humans, and we all have our problems, and we all are trying to be better tomorrow than we were today.
If you need help, it doesn’t mean you are weak or can’t hack it. It just means today it’s your turn. My turn was yesterday, or it’s coming tomorrow. You know, nobody has a point where they don’t need help.
Michael
That sounds like it might be a great intro to practicing some of those awkward conversations.
Scott
It is, it is for sure. You know, and when we share it, as you know, as a speaker, I share stories from my life, real stories that make it okay for other people to share theirs. And I can’t tell you the people that come up to me after a training and tell me something that doesn’t surprise me, but shocks me because I’ve never even had a conversation with them except in front of their team doing a training.
And then they feel like because he’s shared his thing, I can share with him mine to let him know, Hey, you came here today for me because the story you shared was very similar to the one that I’ve been struggling with. And it’s funny, the more we share our stories, the more people come up to us and say, me too.
I think that’s the most powerful thing that anybody can say after a presentation is, that’s my problem too. And it’s so refreshing to see somebody who’s on the other side of that problem. Because I wasn’t always a great communicator, Michael. It’s something I’ve practiced at for years and been trained by the FBI to communicate effectively.
But it’s something that’s paid huge dividends for me. And so I want to take that knowledge that I’ve built over 20 years and distill it into a 90-minute presentation that condenses everything that I took 20 years learning into 90 minutes with handles that somebody can grab and apply to immediately when they leave the training.
Michael
And you’ve condensed that even further into five easy tactics that people can use for communication.
Scott
I did. Yeah, I put that out as a PDF. You know, I think it’s, just something that we’ve got to, it’s not complicated. That’s the thing. When people think communication, they think he’s gonna come in and teach us some kind of a really high-level strategy. I’m not. Because especially under stress, stress makes it to a point where we can’t do complicated. The brain under stress will not do complicated. It will do simple. And so the tactics I teach are very, very simple, very basic because they work in any situation, high-level communication stuff. There’s a time and a place for it, but not during a crisis.
And when you have somebody you’re having an awkward conversation with, there’s a good chance there’s a crisis. And they’re not even able to hear some of the communication because of the level of crisis that’s going on inside of them. So you have to keep it simple and basic. And that PDF can be available to your audience.
I shared that with you, Michael. Feel free to share that in the show notes or something like that. I’d love for people to have that.
Michael
I will have that in the show notes for sure. And if people love that and or love everything else we’ve talked about today, would like to ask you questions about better communication, maybe bring you in, have you work with their team? What’s the best way for people to learn more, get ahold of you?
Scott
They can learn more about me at speakingofharvey.com. That’s my website. It’ll tell them all about what I do and how I do it, or they can email me directly, Scott@speakingofharvey.com. I respond personally to my emails.
My assistant helps with lead gen and that kind of stuff, but I’m still doing my emails. And so if you email Scott@speakingofharvey.com, you’ll get me and we’ll get to work on your problem.
Michael
And I’ll have all those links in the show notes.
Scott
Awesome.
Michael
What, Scott, would you like to leave our audience with today?
Scott
I think if anything, I’d like to leave the audience with the fact that, you know, you may have come into this podcast thinking I’m not a great communicator, but hopefully you’re leaving it, realizing it’s gonna take a little bit of effort on my part. And the best way to get better at something is to do it.
And the lowest stake conversations are the bus conversations, the water cooler conversations, the barista, the waitress. If you can engage people like that in light conversation, it will give you the confidence to go into other conversations better, even if the waitress or the barista doesn’t respond.
Maybe we asked a bad question. Maybe we were awkward. Maybe we were creepy without meaning to, because these people aren’t used to being engaged that way, but that’s still something that makes me better. I realized that was not a good question. That was not a good opener. I won’t use that a second time. So we’ve learned something from that awkward conversation that never really happened that will make the next conversation that much easier.
So every day we’ve gotta engage in conversations with people we know or don’t know so that we can get better for when the crucial conversations come up.
Michael
And they’re just tiny experiments that provide us data. There’s no judgment back on us. I love it.
Scott
Yep. Yep.
Michael
Thank you, Scott, for joining us today.
Scott
Thank you so much. It’s been awesome.
Michael
This has been really great, and thank you, audience for joining us today as well. Scott and I are dying to know, what did you learn about communicating today? Where are you already an awesome communicator, and what is one change you’re going to make in how you communicate? Let us know.
Thanks and have a great day.