When you make a commitment, you create hope. When you keep a commitment, you create trust.

Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate to them in a way that increases your influence over them.

The principles for developing this skill include the following:

• Find common ground
• Keep your communication simple
• Create an enjoyable and interesting experience
• Inspire people
• Stay authentic in your communication.

If you want to be successful in connecting with people, you need to make sure your communication goes beyond words by connecting on four levels.

• Visually, you have seven seconds to make the right first impression.
• Intellectually: To connect with people intellectually, you must know two things: your subject and yourself.
• Emotionally: People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.
• Verbally: Words are the currency of ideas and have the power to change the world.

Always strive to simplify complicated concepts and processes so you can make them accessible for the audience.

Don't try to impress the people in the room; instead, transfer information and help make things understandable.

• Humor is something that will make the audience laugh and put them in a receptive mood.
• Heart will captivate people’s emotions and get them engaged with your message.
• Hope will inspire the audience and move them toward an objective.
• Help is something that will assist the listener in some practical way as they listen and envision applying what you are sharing.

• Assumption. "I already know what others know, feel and want."
• Arrogance. "I don’t need to know what others know, feel or want."
• Indifference. "I don’t care to know what others know, feel or want."
• Control. "I don’t want others to know what I know, feel or want."