Your delivery can make you or break you
By now, I’ve listened to probably hundreds of hours of Dame Dash interviews on YouTube. I loosely agree; Dame Dash has probably the worst delivery in history. If you don’t know, sometimes he speaks in a way that is best described as abrasive. Across the internet, he is well known for holding firm opinions, and delivering them in an uncompromising Harlemite accent. It’s classic New York shit.
It’s delivered so poorly that your first response might be to shut yourself out from the idea that it might be true. Dame is an industry professional, with a record of success that must humans can only fantasize about. Successful artistes, music recording companies, multiple successes in the clothing industry, et plus. Probably most famous is his 2015 Breakfast Club appearance. The interview went viral because of his polarizing statements on the importance of self determination, ownership, and the spirit of entrepreneurship.
The internet didn’t like it at all at first. Bitter medicine. However, five years later, the comments on that YouTube video tell a different story. Many viewers have counterintuitively come to thank Mr. Dash for delivering his message so forcefully. They have come to appreciate the words, however crassly spoken, in hindsight.
Good delivery ≠ good info
There’s a flaw in our thinking: we automatically feel that something is less true because the delivery is aggressive, or unrefined. It’s effortless to dismiss a harsh fact in favour of a pleasant falsehood. (The other side of this is also true; just because a message is crafted in a way that appeals to everything you hold to be sacred, doesn’t mean it is true either).
Once I realized this, I immediately increased my capacity for learning, as well as my rate of learning new things. How? By practicing listening to assholes, people with “bad” delivery, and people who drop knowledge masked in terrible choice of words. You don’t need to like the delivery to ask yourself “Is it possible that any of this is true?”
There is no correlation between delivery style, and the value shared. Think of wisdom as a completely separate concept from the style of delivery. To use a real world example, wisdom is the Amazon package you’ve been waiting for, but the style of delivery is the UPS van outside your house. Acknowledge that it is possible for you to receive the package, even if the delivery van is in terrible shape, or the driver is reckless on the way to your home. You might not want or need the rest of the packages in the back of the van (and they aren’t even for you), but make sure you don’t refuse delivery of an important package because of your (unrelated) concerns about the delivery driver.
I like to think this is partly because the meaning is arguably constructed when the words resonate with something inside you, colliding with your subconscious. If someone rejects the words because of the delivery, does that mean the words aren’t powerful and wise? God forbid.
Rather, it is the recipient that must choose to reorganize their mind in such a way to see the meaning and value in words that are hard to hear. Once a message is sent, the senders delivery is fixed; it cannot change. The variable that is still in your power to change is openness and receptivity. That quality is what helps you see the value in a poorly delivered message. Once you realize where gold is, you don’t mind getting dirty to get it. (Those who choose not to get dirty can just buy it from you after.)
Listen with intention
The point, of course, is not to justify abusive delivery. It is to unlock added capacity for learning and rapid growth by increasing the surface area of people we are able to hear from, and the range of possibilities we are willing to consider. When those people have something to say, don’t allow a visceral reaction to their delivery to veil the insight being shared. Instead, work to get to the point where your default reaction is to listen deliberately, making an effort to listen even more so when the delivery is harsh. Their delivery is predetermined and fixed. Your response is not. The epiphany that your response is a weapon you can control, and not a reflex that controls you, is a key part of what is required to communicate with a high sense of agency. “Losing control” is not an effective communication technique, and often sets you back further than you were at the beginning of the conversation.
There’s also another thing that can stop us from unlocking this added capacity for growth, which is the faulty logic that hearing or accepting as fact just a part of what someone has said, is equal to accepting everything they have ever thought and said (and will say in the future). This kind of thinking lacks nuance, and doesn’t help you think critically at all. Your mind is used to operating this way as a shortcut, since the effort of filtering out the few topics on which you agree with a person (with whom you disagree about almost everything else) almost seems to not be worth it. However, to become the effective person you need to be in order to achieve your goals, you must stridently reject black and white thinking. Open yourself to the possibility that a person with who you largely disagree can actually make an argument worth considering. If not, it reflects poorly on you; shouldn’t your ideological nemesis be at least a little convincing? Otherwise, are they even worth opposing? Hasty, low value retorts are easy and cheap, but they rob you of the opportunity to consider the finer points of an argument. Remember, the goal is not to be right, or “win an argument”. Instead, it is to accelerate the rate and which you learn and grow, by being willing to consume and impartially address a position, even if you are at opposite ends of an idea. Above all else, to thine own self be true.
The other side to all of this is your delivery. Knowing all of this, you might be inclined to use whatever delivery you think is appropriate, even if it is harsh. You’ll rationalize this by saying that delivery doesn’t matter. After all, if you can mentally grasp this, shouldn’t your spouse, family, friends, and audience get it too? I’d say nah. To who much is given, much is expected. Exposure to this way of thinking actually puts a greater burden on you to communicate in a way that is not hindered by inelegant delivery. The onus in all human activities predictably falls not to the one who is “in the right”, but to the ones who know better.