How did Gates do it? How did a powerful Microsoft message emerge from his homespun talk about his home?

The answer is rooted in the nature of communication itself. Simply put, all communication comes across on three basic levels: content (what you have to say), identity (how you come across saying it) and relationship (how you want to relate to those with whom you’re communicating). Consciously or not, your listeners pick up all three.

Gates was smart enough to understand that tech talk by itself might not fly in this venue; he knew that to a tried-and-true, hard-core computer engineer like Ken Olsen, Microsoft products would undoubtedly be perceived as technically shoddy. So he sought to establish a relationship with this group of potential corporate customers based on who he is, rather than on the products he had to sell.

Everything Gates talked about, then, worked on two levels:  on the surface as straightforward content (“my house”), and underneath that, as an identity message. There were two dialogues going on at once:

Gates got both levels of his message across.

The lesson I took away from that evening: Much of the communication failure of senior leaders comes when they focus solely on what they want to say rather than on how they are coming across or how they are relating to those with whom they are communicating.  The latter two can completely shut off, outweigh, or invalidate the former.

Gates understood that perfectly.  Olsen didn’t have a clue. The evening had not been all that good for DEC.  And it was about to get worse.