Do you know your 'why'? It’s crucial to have a conscious awareness about the way in which you communicate, but first a clear and definitive understanding of your overall purpose needs to be established.

I’ve just come off a briefing call with a new client, and one of the first questions I ask them is why?

Why they do what they do?  What they’re aiming for. What the end goal is. Their raison d’etre.  What gets them up in the morning?

It prompted an incredibly powerful and wildly interesting half hour of really drilling down. Once I'd helped them really establish and firm up their 'why', all of the constituent parts of what they were doing started to make sense and it gave them a new filter through which they could start making decisions.

Most importantly though, as the PR and the communications team that had been taken on to help them stand out for the right reasons, they had just  been given the most powerful tool possible when it comes to engaging with the people that matter - because their 'why' completely resounds with their target audience.

Suddenly, rather than it becoming a transactional relationship where they’re looking at selling a product or service to people, suddenly they are actually solving a problem - and that gives them commonality. It gives them a connectedness with their target audience.

It also allows them to start driving people to become part of their 'tribe'.

For those of you who know the American psychologist Seth Godin,  he talks at length about the power of a tribe and about human psychology, and how we are called to belong to something .  Quite often that something we belong to is hinged on a one-line ideology, a one-line purpose, a raison d’etre, or a 'why'.

So today I would love to know what your why is? What connects you? What problem are you solving? 

From my perspective, my personal why links all of the businesses that I am involved in. My 'why' is around helping people to communicate with absolute mastery. It’s that simple.

I truly believe that if we all bring conscious awareness to the way in which we choose to communicate, we can avoid miscommunication. We can avoid the dis-ease of conflict, unnecessary conflict.

I’m not talking about not exerting and standing up for boundaries, but actually we can do away with an awful lot of the unpleasantness, and unkindness in the world around us, just by communicating well and as intended.

So that’s my why, what’s yours? How does that land for you? Do share in the comments below, do you even have a why? Is it a journey that you are going on?

I’d love to know. I really look forward to reading your responses. Thanks so much.

Meet the Author

As one of the UK's leading experts in the applied psychology of language, Fliss has helped Boards, leadership teams, and c-suite executives from across the world to communicate with influence, integrity, and impact. A psycholinguist, voice dialogue, and NLP Practitioner, Fliss is also trained in influence and persuasion, and behavioural psychology, and is a certified empowerment coach and trainer. Fliss heads-up The Ultimate Advantage, a dedicated language and communications mastery coaching and training consultancy, as well as Zen Communications, a successful PR and content agency. She regularly speaks on all aspects of compelling communication and is a popular podcast guest.