Demand Authentic Communication! Work in Sports Podcast - a podcast by Brian Clapp - Work in Sports

Hi everybody, I’m Brian Clapp…. Wait for it… Vice President of Content and Engaged Learning at WorkinSports.com and this is the Work in Sports podcast.Not sure that rolls off the tongue yet, I need to work on the new title. I was in such a routine saying director of content for WorkinSports.com ...I could say it in my sleep. We have a lot to talk about today. First what the heck does it mean that engaged learning is on my title now?Well, outside of my work on the podcast I’ve been working in developing online courses as part of our plans to educate our audience on WorkinSports.com. I’ve been developing content for 6 years now, with over 500 blog posts and approaching 200 podcast episodes...but we wanted to ramp things up a bit, and online learning is the way.We’ve just launched our first four courses under our Work in Sports Academy courses are perfectly targeted for college-age students, or people trying to change careers into the sports industry. In these courses I’m not teaching you how to sell tickets, or scout a prospect - I am teaching you the tactics and strategies behind getting hired. Course 1: Gaining the RIGHT experienceCourse 2: Building and Maintaining your NetworkCourse 3: Your Resume, Cover Letter, and Personal brandCourse 4: Interviewing for Jobs and Internships.You can purchase them individually based on your needs… or bundle them as a package and buy all four for a discounted price. I’m pretty pumped about this -- and it is why my title now includes Engaged Learning.Now, on to today’s subject.We need to discuss Authentic Communication -- because I fear I have failed all of you and it’s been bothering me all weekend. So I get this promotion and I update my LinkedIn profile. I’m a LinkedIn addict, this is very normal behavior for an addict. As you all know LinkedIn makes your change in title a news item on your connections notifications pages. So, I have 5,600 ish connection and the onslaught of messages begins.Now, before I get into my rant I want to make something really clear - I appreciate all the well wishes, I really do and I am not scolding people for saying “Congrats on your promotion!”BUT, we need to really think about our actions. Ok, so dialing back a second, after the promotion gets posted on LinkedIn I’ve had 1084 reactions -- that’s messages, likes etc. 1084 people did something related to this notice. There were 4 types of responses:1: An open-ended response2: A customized response3: An autoresponder response4: A simple like of the status update.Let’s break these down a bit and get at the root of their purpose, thoughtfulness, and impact - starting with the open-ended response.This is the best of the best. Someone responded something like “Whoa, this is great news congratulations… so what kind of new responsibilities will you have?”Why is this the best? Because it actually engages your subject in real, authentic communication. Asking a question is the best way to get a thoughtful response, show you actually care about the person and prove you aren’t just blitzing through the networking steps. If you want to build relationships with people, that have depth and meaning, you need to ask more questions about the other person. Get them talking and sharing and explaining. They just got promoted, they are excited! Take advantage of their opportunity to deepen their relationship with you. Out of 1084 people do you know how many people did this?

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