Today, we welcome a new guest blogger to the salesforce.com fold: Steven Gaffney, an expert in office communication and an accomplished author and keynote speaker. To kick off his relationship with us and get acquainted with our readers, Steven graciously answered a few of our questions about his work.

Salesforce.com: Tell us a little about yourself and your personal journey to becoming a communication expert.

Steven Gaffney: My inability to speak due to hearing impairments as a child forced me to learn the importance of effective communication at a very early age. This problem stimulated my desire to help individuals transform the quality of their professional and personal lives through honest and transparent communication, and is what drove the foundation of the Steven Gaffney Company. 

What are the most common problems you see?

The number one problem I see in the workplace is lack of honest communication.  I don’t mean truth and lies, but actually withholding information. It’s not what people say, it's what they don’t say. If you can get that unsaid said, then an organization can move with speed, agility, and increased revenue and profits. That is how we have been helping some of the top organizations in the world for almost 20 years.

You advocate open, honest communication—is there ever a time to leave things unsaid?

Sure—there are always exceptions to every rule in life, but you don’t want to run life by the exceptions.  Even when people claim that a situation has been damaged because they spoke up to much, the reality is more often then not, they actually didn’t speak up enough. For example, if someone says they are upset about something, the big thing they are leaving out is they didn’t offer any solutions to move forward, so it is just viewed as complaining. Consequently, they view that situation as negative, rather then a positive force for change.

Suppose you work in an office where communication is broken, but you don't have the authority to mandate change. Where do you start? 

The key thing is focusing 100% of your energy around what you are willing to do about it and be the model you want other people to follow. When people say you can’t make others change, or that you aren’t in a position to facilitate that change, that is usually a cop out. Some of the greatest leaders of our timel—Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., for example—never held an official position of power, yet they changed the world forever. I’m not saying people need to change the world, but they can usually change their world by ceasing to complain about what can’t be done, and start talking about what they can do to inspire others to change. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

What's the biggest communication challenge you've faced, or that you've helped others face?

It’s hard to answer that question because for each client their challenge is critically important to them. I have been fortunate to be brought into many tough situations such as helping a leader change a situation from poor performance to top performance, from assisting with a merger and acquisition that went poorly, to an organizational change that disrupts the entire workforce, to even facilitating communication between a core leadership team that has had a history of not being properly aligned.

What's one unexpected lesson you've learned?

I don’t know if this is unexpected, but what makes my day so fulfilling is getting to learn from my clients as much as they learn from me. I get paid to help people, but in reality I learn more about my industry, and that helps me get charged up to take on the day.

Steven Gaffney is a member of the Million Dollar Speaker Group at the National Speakers Association and has received the Certified Speaking ProfessionalsTM, a distinction honoring the top 10% of speakers in the world. He has authored five publications including, “Just Be Honest,” “Honesty Works!,” and “Honesty Sells,” and has been speaking professionally for almost two decades. Hundreds of thousands of people have credited Gaffney’s seminars, coaching, and consulting services as making an immediate and lasting impact in both their personal and professional lives. This is why the leaders of the top organizations in the world say ‘Get me Gaffney!’ 

Learn more about salesforce.com by visiting our website, or download the free e-book below.