Hello family. Hey guys, I wanted to, um, come into your space today, uh, to share the following with you. So The single most important gift in the world in my mind is the gift of communication. The greatest tool of influence all leaders have is communication. You cannot influence where you cannot communicate. It’s impossible. So learning to communicate is a critical skill for any of you who think of yourselves as leaders, right? Of course, learn to communicate. But if you were to learn to communicate, the question becomes communicate for what purpose, what’s the outcome. 99% of the time, the reason we human beings communicate is to either get somebody to do something we want them to do Or to get somebody, to see something. And we want them to see. So either I want you to take action Or I want to change your perspective, but either way to do both of these things, I need to communicate. I need to influence. I need to, as the language says, persuade, So I hear are terms like selling and I’m selling is a portion of how you persuade, but the art of persuasion is much bigger than just the art of sales at the end of the day is how you transact. It’s how I get you to not only see the value but take action on the value that you see persuasion though. But persuasion is, uh, the broader science – How Effective Leaders Communicate by Vusi Thembekwayo
I spend a lot of time in our business internally with my own team, helping in particular, my management and executive team learn how to communicate. The reason this is important is because we’ve been growing fairly rapidly of late. And I’ve been stepping up the level at which I serve in the organization. And as I step up, I’ve had to create leaders to take over some of the things I used to do. And the only way to do this is not only if you capacitate the leaders to do the job, but it’s also, if you capacitate the leaders to inspire, to enthus,
To Persuade, Which means I’ve had to learn, how do you take a manager? Who’s good at reading a spreadsheet and teach them how to communicate and inspire people. How to persuade As we speak, I’m busy capital raising. We’re busy capital raising, which is such a funny experience, really, but you know, the art of capital raising is just the art of persuasion. It’s getting investors, whether they’re institutional, LPs, family offices, or high net worth to see the world, the way you see the world and back your thesis, It’s persuasion,
It’s Communication. And if there’s one thing I’m good at it is this. If there is a single gift that God has given me A gift where I genuinely and honestly believe I am unequal, It’s my ability to persuade. But if you were to do it, how would you do it? What’s the formula for learning how, how to communicate. It’s actually scientific. There is a process you can follow. And if you follow the process, you’ll get the outcome. The first part of that process is to understand motivations. Everybody does something because everybody wants something. We’re human beings. We’re creatures of an incentive. You don’t go to the gym and sweat bust your just because you’re bored. You go there because somebody served you, ads of somebody who looked really good physically. And you bought the picture that if I, I look like this, I’m gonna feel happier. The car you drive is cuz somebody served you an ad saying, if you drive this car, you might be happier. Even the school that you send your kids to, you send them to that school because you either believe it’s gonna give them the best education or it prepares them for the future or, but everything you believe or about the school. (How Effective Leaders Communicate by Vusi Thembekwayo)
You were persuaded, You were told. So there is an implicit motivation for the things you are doing. There are some things we do as human beings where the motivation is clearly explicit. Then there are some things where the motivation is implicit but make no mistake. There is motivation there. So the first part of learning how to influence and persuade is to be interested in your audience and not just this be interested in, what’s motivating your audience to want to talk to you. So I’m fascinated by you watching this video right now. Why are you watching it? What do you hope to learn? It’s a trade-off. You’re giving me your time and attention. And I’m serving content on top of mind in your head right now, but there is motivation there. The motivation for me is I wanna remain top of, for you. What’s the motivation for you? Why are you
Here? So the first part thereof learning how to a story and how to persuade is to understand the internal implicit motivation of the audience, the person with whom you’re dealing, having a conversation. The second thing to understand when you really want to learn how to persuade and influence is intent. So motivation is why people do what they do. Intent is what impact do they want to have their true intent? The motive, their, um, the outcome they desire here is a great way to think of it. My motivation, uh, for being a, My motivation for being a venture capitalist is that am excited about the future. And I love partnering with founders. Um, and I genuinely believe that I can make a difference in working with founders, building the future. My intent Would be to build a better Africa. So once you understand the motivation, the why people do what they do, the intent is then around, what is the impact that they want to have. Now you’ve gotta a, these into the conversation with the person. And I’m gonna give you an example of how you do that in a minute. The third is what is the end state, the desired outcome. (How Effective Leaders Communicate by Vusi Thembekwayo)
The end state In the most iconic speech of the 20th century, Martin Luther king said, I have a dream. In fact, he says, I have a dream. One day, The sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners, Will they be able to break bread in the table of brotherhood? I have a dream today. What did he say? He had A dream. What was he selling An end state, a desired outcome. Motivation. Why do you do what you do intend? What’s the impact that you want to have Desired outcome? Where are we going? And why do you want to go there? So how do you a, these then Into Something that really inspires people Well to a, them, you have to base them all on one thing, which is that the cause Simon Sinek says has to be a just cause people have to believe that the causes will worth pursuing you. Can’t just, I have a dream, but the cause is not worth pursuing. It’s gotta be real rooted and grounded in, in people’s perspective of the world. And if it’s not, then you’ve gotta communicate it in a manner that it becomes that
It’s gotta seem like a just cause I wanna build an electric car company. Why? Because we’re destroying the planet. I build a payment gateway company. Why? Because it’s hard for entrepreneurs to facilitate payments across Africa. I wanna build an ed tech, this why? Because education is prohibitively expensive for the pool and I wanna make it affordable. It’s gotta be a just Cost.
And you know, we’re kind of at that hockey stick of our growth curve, right? So we’re here. We’re, we’re like building up to the future, but you know, we are managing costs, crates So, so I was talking to a, a particular are a candidate and this candidate, you know, they like, you know, they’ve just finished a stint working at one of the leading investment banks in the world. They want to take three months sabbatical and really think about their future and where they want to go. They’ve got an MBA from, uh, Waterloo and like smart, smart kid. There’s an MBA. I think there’s an undergrad from Waterloo and MBA from, uh, uh, I wanna say MIT or something like this really, really smart young lady. So we get to the part of the conversation where it’s my, my turn. So she’s told me a bit about her. It’s my turn to convince her now That she should come and do this with us and recognize, I’m asking her to surrender a decade of her life, because that’s how long it’s gonna take at least five years. And that’s if we’re in the good innings.
So I said the following to her, I said to her, Tell me a bit about the, you grew up in, in Abuja, she’s Nigerian. And she starts telling me about this place. She grew up in, in Abuja And um, the friends she had and where her friends are now. And I said, when was the last time you went home? She says, no, I go home fairly often. I go visit and I see friends and mom and dad and family and granddad, et cetera, et cetera. And I said to her, I said, do you think That Abuja today Is the best version Of itself? Do you think, given the skills, competencies and talents of the people that emanate from Abuja, It’s the best it can be right now? She said, no, of course not. Come on. I was like, and why not? She said, well, frankly, because the top talent doesn’t always enjoy the Seats of power to influence things the way it needs to influence them.
So what would I say? What would you say if I said to you That if you came on board. And you helped us do this, One of the things we’ve got attached to this fund is we’re building a leadership foundation and 20% of the carried interest of this leadership of, of the fund, 20% of the carried interest is gonna be transferred into the leadership foundation. And we’re going to use the capital and the foundation to identify, Educate, and accelerate young leaders across Africa, Young boys and young girls. We’re gonna send them into engineering school. We’re gonna send them into political school, finance school, medical school with a single idea that once they complete their education, they must come back into the continent
And build it. Then I said to her, And we’re not the only ones to do this. There’s several other foundations doing this. As we speak, The difference is we’re not gonna wait until we’re worth a billion dollars in valuation.
We’re gonna start doing it. The, and we start making our carried interest. So the reason I need you to come on board name is Claire. The reason I need you to come on board Claire, cuz I believe you can help us raise capital with the right investors to take us to that point. And once we’ve reached that, I believe that you can become a critical part of our investment team to ensure that we identify the right companies that give us the right exit multiples so that we can best better the chances of capitalizing that leadership foundation And building the future. We want to build Claire. You can work anywhere. You can go and work at wall street and they will pay you 10 times. What I can afford to pay you. Hell they’ll only pay you 10, 10, and times more than I’m earning.
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But When you’re 50 years old And you look back at your life And you think about this inflection point, You will ask yourself a question. How have I lived? What impact did I leave behind? Did I use my skills To leave my people, my country, my world, a better place? Only. You will know the answer to that question, but I think that if you came on board with us, The answer would be yes. And that was it. We ended the call. I still haven’t heard back from Twitter. Hopefully, by the time she watches this, she would’ve come back and said yes, But realize the whole conversation about why she should in what we’re doing. Wasn’t about us. I didn’t say this is the business plan. This are the outcomes. I was like, what’s her motivation? What’s the intent. What’s the desired outcome. And how do I base it and adjust. Cause So go back, go back into your own business, into your own life. Look at some of the things you’re doing and ask and answer for yourself. The question, Motivation, intent, desired outcome. Just cause That’s how you persuade. That’s how you communicate. That is how you lead. Iam on fire. Right? I know. I know. I can literally hear this Boy is on fire.
All right, family. I hope you’ve enjoyed that. Have a kick time, leave a comment below and tell me some of the things you’d like to hear from us in future. Cheers.
How Effective Leaders Communicate by Vusi Thembekwayo
