Top 6 Secrets to Mastering Communication
Communicating with others is an essential skill in business dealings, family affairs, and romantic relationships, and is an essential part of any personal development effort. Do you often find yourself misunderstanding others? Do you have difficulty getting your point across clearly? When it comes to communication, what you say and what you don’t say are equally important. Being a good listener is quite crucial.
In my quest to become a better communicator, I came across a few things I will have to overcome before I succeed:
Challenge 1
Listen more carefully and responsively. Listen first and acknowledge what you hear, even if you don’t agree with it, before expressing your experience or point of view. In order to get more of your conversation partner’s attention in tense situations, pay attention first: listen and give a brief restatement of what you have heard (especially feelings) before you express your own needs or position. The kind of listening recommended here separates acknowledging from approving or agreeing.
Challenge 2
Explain your conversational intent and invite consent. In order to help your conversation partner cooperate with you and to reduce possible misunderstandings, start important conversations by inviting your conversation partner to join you in the specific kind of conversation you want to have. The more the conversation is going to mean to you, the more important it is for your conversation partner to understand the big picture. Many successful communicators begin special conversations with a preface that goes something like: “I would like to talk with you for a few minutes about [subject matter]. When would be a good time?” The exercise for this step will encourage you to expand your list of possible conversations and to practice starting a wide variety of them.
Challenge 3
Express yourself more clearly and completely. Slow down and give your listeners more information about what you are experiencing by using a wide range of “I-statements.” One way to help get more of your listener’s empathy is to express more of the five basic dimensions of your experience: Here is an example using one of the five main “I-messages” identified by various researchers over the past half century: What are you seeing, hearing or otherwise sensing?/ “When I saw the dishes in the sink…”
Challenge 4
Translate your (and other people’s) complaints and criticisms into specific requests, and explain your requests. In order to get more cooperation from others, whenever possible ask for what you want by using specific, action-oriented, positive language rather than by using generalizations, “why’s” ,”don’ts” or “somebody should’s.” Help your listeners comply by explaining your requests with a “so that…”, “it would help me to… if you would…” or “in order to…” Also, when you are receiving criticism and complaints from others, translate and restate the complaints as action requests. ….”).
Challenge 5
Ask questions more “openendedly” and more creatively. “Openendedly…”:
In order to coordinate our life and work with the lives and work of other people, we all need to know more of what other people are feeling and thinking, wanting and planning. But our usual “yes/no” questions actually tend to shut people up rather than opening them up. In order to encourage your conversation partners to share more of their thoughts and feelings, ask “open-ended” rather than “yes/no” questions. Open-ended questions allow for a wide range of responses. For example, asking “How did you like that food/movie /speech/doctor/etc.?” will evoke a more detailed response than “Did you like it?” (which could be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”). In the first part of Challenge Five we explore asking a wide range of open-ended questions.
Challenge 6
Express more appreciation.
To build more satisfying relationships with the people around you, express more appreciation, delight, affirmation, encouragement and gratitude. Because life continually requires us to attend to problems and breakdowns, it gets very easy to see in life only what is broken and needs fixing. But satisfying relationships (and a happy life) require us to notice and respond to what is delightful, excellent, enjoyable, to work well done, to food well cooked, etc. It is appreciation that makes a relationship strong enough to accommodate differences and disagreements. Thinkers and researchers in several different fields have reached similar conclusions about this: healthy relationships need a core of mutual appreciation.
Copyright 2006 http://www.BurstCreativity.com
Alexander Tretjakov
Personal Development Blog and Unconventional Thinking University
Author of MiWay Time Management System
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http://burstcreativity.com/freetimemanagementsystem.htm
Ten Simple Ways To Win Friends And Influence People
Do you want to be more persuasive? Do you wish you had the “gift of the gab?”
Eloquence makes wonderful things happen. It opens mind and shifts attitudes. It also wins friends and influences people.
The “gift of the gab” is the power of personal influence. This has been highly prized throughout history. It has been the source of interesting myths because people have long considered eloquence to be magical. They believe it to be as potent as a charm. In Ireland, for example, it is believed that kissing the Blarney Stone, a part of the Blarney Castle, will give you enchanting fluency.
When you know how to say the right things at the right time, you will develop a knack for turning the tide of fate in your favor.
So, if you want to be more persuasive, rather than at a loss for words, here are 10 tips on how to develop the “gift of the gab.”
By improving communication skills, you’ll be able to be able to negotiate anything better. You’ll be more persuasive. You’ll excel at interviews. You’ll sell more. You’ll also be able to positively influence your boss and colleagues. And, finally, your family and friends will start to see things your way.
Learning how to be an effective communicator starts with a self-inventory.
1. What do you know?
An effective speaker is knowledgeable. They are well-educated about their favorite subject. They can tell you many interesting things about it. They command your attention because they know their subject. They can cite facts and figures. They can also hook your attention with interesting interpretations. Thus, to be persuasive, you have to have be knowledgeable.
2. Do you listen?
How do you persuade others? You get them to agree with you. To do this,
you have to know what they have on their minds. You can only find out by asking open-ended questions and carefully listening to their answers. It’s almost impossible to be convincing if you have no rapport with your listeners. The best way to make others better listeners is to be a good listener yourself.
3. Do you have humility?
Natural born leaders have humility. They win friends and influence people by not assuming an imagined sense of superiority. They have a way of making people feel comfortable around them. They have humility. People open up to them and share their thoughts and feelings with them. Arrogant, smug people, on the other hand, unconsciously find many ways to make feel people resistant and uncooperative. Natural born leaders are approachable. They are not afraid to be human, even nurturing.
4. Do you maintain eye contact?
When you give someone your attention, you look into their eyes. This shows that you consider them important. They respond to your focus by returning the favor. Looking around or looking away when talking to someone tells them that you don’t find them very interesting. While it is not necessary to stare someone down during a conversation, sufficient eye contact will create a sense of rapport.
5. Do you have a sense of humor?
The fastest way to win someone over is to make them laugh with you. It’s almost impossible not to like, admire, and even respect someone who is humorous. It’s almost impossible to disagree with someone when you feel good about something they have just said, even if the remark was just a witticism.
6. Do you like other people?
Many people do not like other people very much. They would rather interact with computers, machines, or even interesting books. They, in fact, feel uncomfortable with other people. Eloquent, persuasive people are neither preoccupied nor introverted. Instead, they are open and receptive to what other people say, think, and feel. They are approachable and friendly because they have people skills.
7. Are you “full of yourself?”
Someone who is only interested in getting other people to listen to their personal stories, anecdotes, and experiences is not persuasive. If this self-interest expands to bragging, then the only thing other people are interested in is getting away from you as quickly as possible. If they can’t physically leave — for example, you are all seated down together at a dining table — then they mentally disengage from what you are saying.
8. Do you smile?
A smile, like eye contact, is a non-verbal, rapport-builder. You can better express what you’re saying when you smile.
9. Do you know someone who can be a role model?
One of the fastest ways to move away from feeling inhibited or tongue-tied is to associate with people who are natural talkers. Listening to them, you will automatically develop a knack for building rapport. You’ll also learn how to communicate effectively and engagingly.
10. Do you prepare your ideas ahead of time?
In a formal setting, such as at a job interview, a business negotiation, or a persuasive speech, knowing what you will say well ahead of time, will result in a marvelous fluency when you need to present your point of view. So, rehearse and practice what you intend to say.
These ten tips will help you learn how to win friends and influence people. They will make you warmer and more approachable. You will become someone whom others enjoy spending time with talking about things. These ten tips are the next best thing to kissing the Blarney Stone. These communication techniques will make you charming.
Saleem Rana would love to share his inspiring ideas with you. Hunting everywhere for a life worth living? Discover the life of your dreams. His book, Never Ever Give Up is offered at no cost to stimulate your success. http://www.theempoweredsoul.com/enter.html
Conflict: Unavoidable and Potentially Positive (Part 1 of 4)
When you’re the one who must deal with conflict you know what to do?
If you’re an executive, manager or human you resource professional, managing conflict is probably part of your job. So is recognizing when hidden conflict is the source of a problem.
The very word conflict has a negative impact on most people: you associate the word with war, destruction, hostility and pain. When you think of conflict as negative, even dangerous, you probably tend to avoid it whenever possible rather than learn how to deal with it effectively.
Conflict within an organization is not necessarily negative. In fact, it is a valuable potential source of energy for achieving organizational goals. Effective conflict intervention can help transform a conflict situation into an opportunity for change, growth and development of creative solutions to an organization’s most difficult problems.
Conflict may be open or hidden. It is relatively easy to focus on visible conflict. Suppressed conflict may be more difficult to identify and may masquerade as a variety of symptoms such as low energy, high stress, diminishing productivity, high turnover, poor quality of decision making, defensive behavior, nit-picking and so on.
Whether the conflict is visible or hidden, if you are the one who must manage it you need to be aware of its source and its contribution to the identified problem, as well as having resources for helping your group deal effectively with the problem itself.
You need to be able to:
Is Workplace Conflict Destructive or Creative?
Whenever you work with people, conflict is inevitable. The tension created by daily conflict either results in wasted time, decreased productivity, and poor decisions or the sort of internal competition that pushes each individual to do their best, if for no other reason that convince their coworkers that they can do it.
This inevitable conflict is either destructive or creative. The destructive conflict is toxic to relationships and hurts people and organizations and this is the one that needs managing. In my experience creative conflict seems to be cultural in nature. It’s how the people themselves react and address each other and the situations they face together.
If you’ve ever seen “American Chopper” on the Discovery Channel you know what I mean by creative conflict. There is a lot of yelling going on. These guys are not shy about sharing their opinions when they disagree with one another. If you were a stranger who walked into their shop you might think WWIII had broken out.
In fact, that is how they relate to one another – there is no ambiguity, they tell it like it is in the moment. Imagine how much more they accomplish because they use the tension to air their different opinions, right now – and then get on with it. It’s possible that this is just a TV show and these guys have nice quiet meetings in the board room, listening to various committee reports, before the speak up, but that’s not likely. I bet they are who we see them as being.
In three decades working with family businesses I have seen dozens and dozens of companies who harness conflict creatively, and in so doing get the most out of everyone as well as optimum results overall. They don’t waste time on what’s not working just because it was the bosses idea. They stop what they’re doing and point out the other person’s mistake then show them how to fix it. Nothing and no one or their opinion is sacred – it’s all about getting the job done.
Sadly I have seen experts try to get them to change their behavior, be more polite to one another and offer more politically correct input in an ever more constructive manner. In other words they (the experts) want other people to be more like them.
So instead of helping their clients manage the destructive conflict that exists, they are offering suggestions on how to fix what isn’t broken.
I am talking about the conflict that distracts employees and managers from otherwise productive use of their time. Studies reveal that up to 30% of a typical managers time is spent dealing with conflict. And that 42 percent of their time is spent reaching agreements with others when conflicts occur.
Sometimes destructive conflict is simply because the people don’t like each other. In the universe of family owned companies sometimes brothers, sisters, cousins, and in-laws are thrown together in ways none of them like. Conflict is the only way they have of displaying the frustration they feel about the situation they’re in.
It is no wonder that an estimated 65% of performance problems result from strained relationships like these. Between employees who are not happy with each other – not from deficits in their training, skill, or motivation.
The most common way that destructive conflict shows up is about “how” a certain task should be accomplished. I met a farmer once whose son (age 50) refused to do things the way he wanted them done. He sited an example by driving me on the back of his four wheeler (you could not get there any other way) to a field that illustrated his point.
He and his father before him had always plowed the field north to south – his son was plowing it east to west. I am not making this up. It didn’t have anything to do with soil erosion, conservation, or the environment – he was doing it this way against his dad’s wishes, just to get his goat. And it was working.
I bet you can think of things at your company that are being done a certain way because that’s the way they’ve always been done. And if you’re the one who wants to change history, good luck!
Destructive conflict about how things are being done, what things are being done, and whether or not a certain thing should even be done can paralyze the organization.
Wasted time arguing about things that don’t matter, an unwillingness to consider another person’s point of view based on their experience, and the blame game when the results are in all cry out for a self-help process you can use to manage your differences so that all conflict is creative.
The end result of a successful self-help mediation process is that you (as a group) turn together and focus on the challenge or opportunity you all face. You see the problem as the stumbling block and not your coworker.
Self-help mediation tools allow two individuals the opportunity to discuss their assumptions about the other person’s motives. In many conflicts the simple process of testing these assumptions face to face using active listening skills will resolve the issue entirely, because the parties realize the conflict is simply a misunderstanding.
Self-help mediation tools pave the way for more effective decision making. Obviously decisions made under conditions of conflict are going to be inferior to decisions made when cooperation prevails. If ongoing conflict (even a low grade resistance to cooperation) is present between people who share decision-making authority, the resulting decisions are likely to be flawed by the power struggles between those people.
As business owners we know that good decisions must be based on an optimum quality and quantity of objective information. So when information is withheld or distorted by those we are depending on to provide it, the decision cannot be the best one possible.
There is now doubt, workplace conflict resolution strategies – especially those that will allow you to do it yourself – will save you money, time, energy, and enhance your workplace by helping you make better decisions, retain your best employees, and design a future course for the business everyone will actively support!
Wayne Messick’s web site contains hundreds of articles full of actionable strategies. Workplace conflict resolution and the management of expectations is critical to your company’s success, so here are articles and resources to help you. http://www.ibizresources.com/conflict_articles/index.html