Pay attention to your delivery — You don’t know what the other person’s state of mind will be.
We are all competing in an attention economy. From pings and dings to blinks and rings, companies and content constantly compete for our limited time and attention. How do great leaders turn down the noise and tune in to the messages that matter most? What does it take to be heard above the noise? And how do we create communication that cultivates community and connectedness in a distributed, distracted world? To address these questions, we started an interview series called “Can You Hear Me Now?: Top Five Strategies Leaders Use to Diminish Distractions & Win in the Attention Economy.” As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Anita Kanti.
Anita K, a female powerhouse and certified Life Coach at Anita K Solutions specializes in collaborating with clients to meet their personal and professional ambitions. Anita K Solutions provides coaching services for clients through life transitions, relationships, cultural identity management, career advancements and develops unique solutions to achieve their personal goals. She has been featured in Huffington Post, FOX11 NEWS,
Cheddar News, Hallmark’s Home & Family, NBC’s The Doctor’s, Yahoo Finance, USA Today, India West, and more. Serving as an onsite coach for multiple organizations, for more information about Anita K, please visit, anitakanti.com.
Thank you for making time to visit with us. Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is one of your most memorable moments, and what made it memorable?
Among the many memorable moments I share with most parents is the birth of a child. One of my most memorable experiences was when my book was completed. As soon as I received my first official copies in the summer of 2019, my mother was over. In response to my pulling open the box, she picked up one of the books, looked at its cover, opened it, and smiled. It didn’t matter what was written in the book, but rather that I made her proud. I grabbed my cell phone, snapped a picture, and framed it for my home — the mom theme is something I treasure.
What is the most unexpected twist in your career story, and what did you discover from your detour?
Back in 2016, I was formally a Senior Talent Acquisition Specialist when I was asked to coach a client’s son. As a former Talent Acquisition professional, I am equipped to provide career support to others. As soon as I started receiving referrals, I decided to become a certified coach. Simultaneously, I was also working on building myself back up post-divorce. In the end, coaching found me. I tell my clients that we all have transferrable skills and sometimes innate talents that can be leveraged in other fields, hobbies, etc. Here is where cultivating your interests can be even more rewarding. My favorite saying is “Life is not what you plan”.
According to a recent Harvard Business School study, the most essential communication skill for leaders is the ability to adapt their communication style. How do you adapt your communication style?
At WrkSpot, my Director of Sales colleague and I came up with the 3 S’s to increase communication and collaboration:
- Smile for Startup Energy. Smiling is where it all starts; it’s simple but not consistent across businesses and the right energy is required for approaching and adapting to change.
- Solving for a Solution — This is a mindset with an execution-oriented approach.
- Sensitivity to Partners — Being sensitive to the needs and perspectives of partners is crucial for managing cross-cultural collaborations, clients, and customers.
This guideline auto-inspires our thoughts and behaviors off to a critical start for success.
Clarity is critical as well. What lessons have you learned about how to communicate with clarity in our distributed world of work?
Clarity is the key. The importance of communication can be attributed to several factors.
Firstly, it makes it easier for the recipient of your message, direction, or position to understand. The second advantage of clarity is that it prevents misunderstandings and conflict, especially in writing, and delayed responsiveness. Finally, creating a shared goal and a shared understanding of how working in a team matters make all the difference while promoting transparency in a distributed workforce.
I, as many leaders have learned throughout the pandemic, know how imperative this was, and what I learned and coach leaders on is the importance of clarity. Over the last few years, I learned the lessons on how to calibrate and connect through creative methods in what I call “social bridging”.
The pandemic taught me the value of clarity, just as it did for many other leaders. My lessons were the need to discover methods like “social bridging”. Our purpose is to connect with one another based on style and human needs in order to avoid isolation.
We often discover what works by experiencing what doesn’t. Tell us about a time when your communication didn’t lead to the desired results and what you learned from the experience.
This is ongoing development for us and should be. Experience teaches us. I personally discovered how to ask for help when I needed it as an adult during the closing of a former business. In the end, I did not achieve the results I expected and the communion with myself and my partner became a painful one. A turnaround was impossible due to the sheer lack of data, funding issues, and gaps that I could not close. This is what many entrepreneurs experience, which is golden and the takeaway that should move us forward.
What advice would you offer to other leaders who are struggling to have their messages heard and actioned?
As a leader, I would recommend being present, focusing on the outcome, listening, maintaining empathy, and motivating others. We must move from “I” to “we” and demonstrate these attitudes and characteristics. Being an authentic leader is not a fad; top-down management is out, and being in sync ensures your messages reach their intended audience. Deploying effective messages will be critical to your organization’s structure, employee engagement, and corporate culture.
Leading a distributed team requires a different communication cadence and style from leading a team in person. What are five strategies any leader can deploy to improve communication and clarity when leading a distributed workforce? Please share a story or example for each of you can.
1 . Pay attention to your delivery — You don’t know what the other person’s state of mind will be.
2 . Do an emotional check — Tune in and ensure you are not driving an emotion that could backfire.
3 . Be affirming — positively affirming others is a skill that can carry a long way.
4 . You are heard — make certain you are heard and equally hear the other point of view.
5 . Respect — feeling respected confirms you understand, value others, and want a beneficial outcome.
What are the three most effective strategies to diminish distractions when there is so much competing for attention?
Take an intentional break from technology — Taking that time out we tell our kids is the break we don’t realize we need is a way to avoid burnout, information overload, and multi-tasking. By doing so, one can focus on a meaningful micro escape like taking a walk in the sun, wasting some idle time, or completing a short physical mindless task.
Keep organized — Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize so you can do what matters. Using a productivity system or app can keep a solid structure in place.
Balance the mind and body — adequate night’s rest, hydration, social connections, mediation, exercise, and consciously choosing the right content to read and watch are good daily habits that keep us on track.
What is one skill you would advise every leader to invest in to become a better communicator?
That would be listening.
Active listening may not come naturally to many of us, but it is a valuable communication skill that can make or break a relationship in any capacity. In order to listen empathically, you must invest a lot of mental and emotional energy. Using our hearts and minds, it requires us to focus on the other person’s frame of reference beyond attentive listening.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
A kindness movement. It has been pioneered by many cultures both here and abroad, but we need to champion it more. Promoting random acts of kindness and giving monumentally brings communities and societies together. This results in breaking down walls, and bringing up our next generation with the message of belonging and harmony.
How can our readers stay connected with you?
I welcome to hear from others and my contact information can be found at anita.kanti.com
Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success.