What We Believe
Authentic Communication Matters’ core belief is that excellent soft skills—a proficient ability to write, communicate, cooperate, collaborate, etc.—have become bigger predictors of success than one’s vocational mastery, subject expertise and institutional knowledge. We activate this principle by marrying workplace realities and the liberal arts and sciences’ world of ideas to help weave new behaviors and processes into any organization’s fabric. We completely customize training and curricula in order to meet client need with remarkable precision. Our approach quells the skepticism about training outcomes evaporating the instant employees return to the chaos and fires of their usual demands.
Why it Matters
Some Thoughts About Communication and Successful Working and Learning Environments
Most people don’t feel heard
Often, people believe that they never get their ideas fostered, originality credited, “can-do” attitude praised, or contributions acknowledged. Instead, they think that intractable and lazy people get all of the attention. And 80% of the time, they’re correct.
There’s no one “right” way to communicate
Some people gravitate to formal jargon; others reject certain phrases for fear of betraying their essential selves. While Standard English is the benchmark in professional settings and the academy, our dialects, slangs and colloquialisms provide unique opportunities to express our individuality. Remember, “appropriate” language is situationally and culturally adaptable and always in flux.
Motivation, influence and trust fall through the cracks of indirect communication
We often feel ill-equipped to communicate what we really think. At times, all communication seems like one big charade. We’ve all shared rooms with unacknowledged elephants and avoided conversations. While collaborating with people entails suppressing some of our most immediate impulses, there is always plenty of room for hard truth.
Metrics aren’t everything--and we naturally overvalue certain data points
Compensation and grades do not solely dictate our worth, nor should they serve sole motivators to work hard and succeed. While metrics serve as objective evidence to show us which way the needle moves, other compelling, less tangible, indicators exist. If we don’t look at them, we don’t see a complete picture of progress.
Engaging our clients, students and customers is not "value-added"—it’s a mandate
We guess way more than we ask people what they want and need. When people understand how what they do directly relates to a larger mission, they become more invested, obstacle-averse and solution-focused.
Strategic, holistic, sustainable and innovation are current buzzwords
The real question isn’t what they mean, but how can they be usefully and appropriately applied.
We, ourselves--and nobody else-define our destinies
It’s not the rote tasks or difficult people that make us feel trapped—it’s our inability to see beyond them that does. We spend more time trying to control things we can’t control than we do trying to figure out what we can control.
