If I could only tell you one thing about communication...

If I could bottle up everything I know about communication and presence and give it to you in one sentence, it would be this:

It's all about connection.

It's about connection to yourself (how you're feeling, who you are) and to others (what do they need, where are they right now.

That's it. That's the big secret.

When communication comes from deep connection with yourself (not a mask, or a ploy) and seeks deep connection with others (not to get something, but to simply bring them into your world, or to step into theirs), it succeeds. When it doesn't, it fails, to some degree or another.

It's an almost unquantifiable measure—how can I know I want to connect? How can they know?

Unquantifiable as it may be, it leaks out of every pore, and it's the reason that most people (non-trained actors I mean) have such a hard time when they feel like an impostor or are unsure of what they're saying. It's in the subtleties of tone, or the body language you're using (I sat with a client today who was talking about her business and kept touch her neck and pulling her hands through her hair—both pacifying behaviours, and both deeply informative about how she felt about what she was talking about). These are deeply ingrained behaviours, tracking back to the dawn of man as a social animal, and as such are hard to fake.

So when you're out of connection with yourself, when you're playing a part you're not being, that will come through. That's why when I work with people, the first thing we train is interoception, being aware of your body and your emotions. And we're not looking for “sad,” “angry,” “happy.” We're looking at fine grain emotional language, because understanding and moving through emotion is wildly different depending on the emotion in question. Nervousness is a different emotion than anxious and requires different tools and approaches to understand and move through.From Dr Marc Brackett. Also check out his wonderful (and free) app How We Feel.

Connection to others is the second key aspect of great communication, and the reason that so much of our everyday back and forth feels tense. It means that we before we speak, we're orienting ourselves to the other person—what's going on for them right now? Are they in a position to hear what I have to say? What about what I say will be upsetting and how can I mitigate it? How would they want to hear what I have to say?

The most obvious and felt example of disconnection in communication is the public speaker who reads of a script without ever once looking up, slowing down, and checking that the audience is with them. The script is pre-rehearsed, the lines are cued up, and away they go. But real connection is not like that—sometimes people need one more pass at what you said, or they need it rephrased. Sometimes people need a joke or an aside. And you only ever know this if you're focused on them when you're speaking, on the cocking of the head or the glazing of the eyes, on the confused eyebrows or downturned mouth.

Communication with connection is being curious about the other person's context and needs, and constantly running a process to monitor that as you're speaking to them. And it also means not talking when it's not a good time. This is such obvious and good advice (though oft ignored), that it's even brought in the Talmud, of all places! “Just as it is a good thing for a person to say that which will be heeded, so is it a good thing for a person not to say that which will not be heeded.”

Listen. If it's even a religious dictum to keep quiet when you won't be listened to—and trust me, religious people are zealous—it's definitely a good thing to do so in every day life.

So how do you do this? How do you build connection when you're speaking to someone?

Ask yourself:Is this the message they need to hear, or the message I want to say?What kind of language would they want to receive this in?How can I create opportunities for us to connect—laugh together, cry together, share a moment of awe?Is there a way for me to be conspiratorial with them, to welcome them into a secret club (yes this works even with thousands of people in the crowd)?

And here's one tip that is immensely useful: don't talk to the “crowd.” It's impossible for one person to connect with a thousand people all at once. Instead, talk to one person at a time. Think of it as a conversation that you're having with them and everyone else is listening in on. You're never talking to everyone; you're talking to lots of someones.

The bottom line is, as far as I can tell, to be genuinely interested and care for other people. If you come from that angle, you won't waffle or waste their time with irrelevant drivel, because you hate irrelevant drivel. You will give them something of value.

Most of all, you will break out of the loop of self-recrimination and evaluation that we always fall into under the scrutiny of the public eye. You're not on stage or in the board room to look good (or not only). You're there to connect, to give people what they need, to serve them.

Come from this angle and everything else will fall into place.

Don't fake it, be it.