Did you know that nine out of ten conversations miss the mark? That means 90% of your conversations are ineffective.

Now, when I first heard this, I thought, “What? There’s no way.” And if you’re anything like me, you may be thinking, “There is no way that 90% of my conversations are unheard—I’m an amazing communicator, right?”

Well, sadly, research out of Stanford would say otherwise. And I wanted to know why.

For the last ten years, I’ve been focused on and passionate about understanding effective communication skills. Before I went down this path, like a lot of people, I believed I was an amazing communicator. It wasn’t until I had my kids that I realized just how bad I was in conversations—and the repercussions it was having on them.
I learned three very important lessons that made me rethink how we’re raising our kids and the effects it’s having on our future leaders.

Effective communication skills are like parenting skills in that they are not taught. We’re just magically expected to know what to do and do it well—and it can be really hard.
We’ve all heard the saying that kids do what parents do, not what parents tell them to do. Kids are like wet cement—what lands on them makes an impression, so how parents do what they do matters.

Now, this applies to all of us because we are all children of parents. We all had parents or guardians that left imprints on us and shaped how we navigate and influence the world.

For example, in emotional situations, when our backs are up against the wall, what happens? We hear our parents’ voices coming out of our mouths—even when we swear we won’t do it.

This is something clients would confide in me. Friends would confess to me. I did it. We all say we’re not going to do it, and then in those emotional moments, the words fly out uncontrollably.

What I found so interesting was that everybody said it wasn’t working for them. Everybody acknowledged it wasn’t working at home, it wasn’t working at work, but nobody knew how to do it differently.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

Like a lot of parents in emotional moments, I would tell my kids to calm down. I would tell my kids to listen to me. I would expect them to manage their emotions. And when they couldn’t, I’d get frustrated.

Then, in a really not-proud parenting moment, when my daughter was three, I was yelling at her to listen to me. I was yelling at her to calm down. And she snapped back at me, “I don’t know how.”

Research shows that when parents can’t control their emotions or their fears, their kids never learn to do so either.

My first lesson: We repeat what we don’t repair.

Take a second and think about this: Who in your life taught you how to manage your emotions? Who in your life taught you how to understand your emotional triggers? Most of us are just told to do it. We’re not taught specifically how.

A poll from the After School app revealed that 45% of teens feel stressed all the time, with 35% of them doing absolutely nothing to manage their stress.
We don’t know what we don’t know.

But research is also showing that when we are emotionally skilled, we do better at work, we do better at school, we build happier, healthier relationships, and we’re less likely to partake in unhealthy or dangerous behavior.

If we want our kids—our emerging leaders—to be successful, to be healthy, to manage their emotions, to self-regulate, they must learn how.

And as adults and as parents, we can’t expect that just telling them to do it is teaching them how.

This is a picture of my son when he was three. He used to wear a little seersucker suit and a pink tie every day to preschool. It was totally adorable—and completely impractical. I had to wash the suit every night before bed because, well, he was three.
On one particular morning, I forgot to wash his pants. Like all parents, I had a long to-do list, and by 8 AM, I was already running late. As I reached for my car keys, I noticed out of the corner of my eye—he had no pants on.

When I asked him about it, he said, “I want my pants from yesterday.”

Annoyed with myself for not washing them, I politely explained the situation and asked him to pick another pair of pants. And he said, “No. I want my pants from yesterday.”
So, I got down on my knees, looked him in the eye, and said, “I hear you. I hear that you want your pants, but I feel like you’re not hearing me. They’re dirty. Can you please pick another pair of pants? We have to go.”

I was high-fiving myself. I thought, “We’re getting in the car now.”

Then I saw him turning seven shades of purple. He started yelling, “I want my pants! I want my pants from yesterday!”

Now he’s hysterical. And I’m mad. We’re late.

My frustration built until, finally, I marched into the laundry room, grabbed the dirty pants, shoved them in his face, and said, “Here. Your dirty pants. We’ve got to go.”
He took the pants, reached into the pocket, pulled out a toy, handed me back the pants, put on a fresh pair, and through snotty tears, said, “I’m ready.”

And I wanted the world to swallow me whole.

Oh. You wanted your pants—you didn’t want to wear your pants.
I immediately did a repair. I asked, “What can I do next time so this never happens again?”

And he said, “Mom, you could have just asked.”

He was right. If I had taken just one second and focused on him—on what he needed—we would have been out the door, relationship intact, drama-free, pretty much on time.

My second lesson: We value our to-do list more than we do our relationships.
These kinds of interactions don’t just happen with kids. They happen all the time in the workplace. We’re so focused on being busy and on productivity that we don’t take time to build relationships.

We get so busy checking off boxes, fixing and solving problems, being helpful—asking, “What’s the matter?”—that we forget to ask, “What matters to you?”

We get so focused on being understood that we don’t practice being understanding.
The truth is that we build relationships by interacting and observing our relationships with our parents.

The most successful businesspeople credit their ability to build relationships.
If we want our kids to have healthy relationships—personally and professionally—then we must start putting more value on being rather than doing.

My third lesson happened on a playground and this is what I like to call the algorithm effect.

We all have social media feeds, so think of your social media feed – it’s all it’s very beautiful feels comfortable, it’s carefully curated of all the things that we know like and trust.

And every once in a while, something different or scary or challenging pops into our feed, and what do we do? We unlike, we unfollow, or we block.

We just cut it out of our lives, and we go on with our day. This is actually now happening in real life.

When kids get into conflict, or they’re emotional – they have a difference of opinion – their feelings get hurt. It’s now not uncommon for parents and teachers to say, “Just ignore them.” “Walk away.” “Find new friends.”

We are unfriending, unfollowing, and blocking in real life. We are basically teaching our kids to cut out anything that is different, challenging, or remotely scary from their lives.

And rather than sit in it, and work through it, or understand it, we just cut it out and pretend like it didn’t even happen.

This is also not just happening on playgrounds. This is happening at work and it’s happening at home with family and friends.

What’s important to understand is conflict is not bad. Different perspectives are not bad; we need them in our relationships to be successful – personally and professionally – and that is how we grow, learn, innovate, and collaborate.

Conflict is never the issue. How we deal with conflict is what causes the issues. Now, I’m not anti-technology, but I am a pro-conversation. And remember we are in a conversation crisis! 90% of our conversations are ineffective.

Every time we teach our kids to unlike, unfollow, and block, we rob them of the essential skills they need to succeed: basic communication skills, negotiation skills, resilience, empathy, and compassion – these are not just buzzwords. We must learn, develop, and practice these soft skills.

And to say that we just need to have more conversations is not good enough because the truth is we don’t know how. Especially in challenging moments.

A recent report from CPP said that 85% of employees deal with conflict on some level.

Conflict resolution is not a part of our core curriculum in education, meaning most adults are going into the workforce with little to no understanding or skill on how to deal with challenging conversations.

The same report said 70% of people agreed that managing conflict was critical to effective leadership.

Playgrounds are where we practice the skills that we do in the workplace.

Suppose we want our kids, our emerging leaders, to be able to have challenging conversations, to be able to understand different perspectives, be resilient, and have empathy and compassion. In that case, we must teach them to step into conflict and work through it – not ignore it, not hide from it, not run from it.

The truth is parents are the most powerful influences in their children’s lives, more than TV, more than celebrities, and even more than their friends.

If we want to achieve the change that we so desperately need 90 percent of our conversations must be effective.

I leave you with this question to consider and act upon: What if we stopped telling our kids to be the change we need and started modeling it for them?

If we don’t show them how they are ever going to learn?

Thank you