Communication is an area that we can forever improve on and its an important area for anyone interested in personal development.  With my recent discovery about Appreciative Inquiry and looking more carefully at how to employ a new method of communication, I’ve realized there is much we do in communication that is based on habits.  These habits are often harmful and promote bad communication styles.  Most of us are trained to be advocates in our communication, that is one who argues there case, pushes what they want and seeks to find approval of that communicated message and to find followers doing so (Oh ohhh…, that might include a few bloggers then as well!).

The One Communication Mistake We All Make

There is one mistake everyone makes from time to time in the way they communicate.  This is when we send our message instead of communicating in a way that ensures our message is in fact received.  This happens when we are impatient or not considering the other person’s perspective and we simply think that making our voice heard and our message sent is in fact communicating.  Well, it is not.  Communication is all about how you actually deliver your message and so you cannot simply send your message without knowing it is actually received.

Don’t make the mistake of sending your message simply to get your ideas out without regard for others.  Keep your ego at bay when you want to be heard and consider whether it is an appropriate time for the receiver as well as you to communicate.  Remember, if they are not going to hear it, then it isn’t worth saying.

Getting Past Being Right

The next mistake often made in communication is that of having to be right.  Many of us just love to be right and it is a conversation and healthy communication killer.  If you do not stop to listen to other perspectives and accept new ideas in the way you communicate, this having to be right habit will surface often and it a tough problem to break.  Trust me, I know from experience.  I can’t say I’ve broken this habit myself but its something I’m much more aware of and I do notice it and stop myself often.  If you simply state that you disagree AFTER listening to another person’s angle and actually ensuring you understand it, you can still debate things in conversation but if you have a habit of telling someone else how they are wrong, you can immediate kill the conversation.

Criticism

Criticism for some people is very easy and its often the first thing on your mind when you hear other people’s ideas.  I think this is closely related to the bad habit of having to be right and this one comes more subtle but even more dangerous because often it isn’t even founded in anything.  Being critical and voicing it often comes very easy to most.  Its a way to express creative ideas but unfortunately, when it is delivered as critism, it is often a power trip for a creative mind to show their creative powers over another’s idea.

All three of these bad communication habits lead to adversarial communications and they can harm your relationships with other people.  Be aware of these in your conversations and look to eliminate these bad habits by replacing them with good communication habits.  Listen more than you speak, try to actually understand what others are telling you before debating it and don’t tell them they are wrong or make generalizations about people with words like always and never.  Keep your criticism at bay and do your best to keep conversations going by showing interest in others, inquiring more about what they want to talk about and by staying open minded of other’s ideas.  These steps will help you practise good communication techniques and can lead you away from the bad habits that bring upon adversarial communication.

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 20 Comments »

Questions are a critical piece of any conversation and there is an easy way to use them to build better conversations and depth while communicating.  That method is simply by using more open ended questions.

Open Ended Versus Closed Ended

There are two types of questions that are important to know in order to keep your conversations going and to build more rapport with others in conversation.  They are open ended and closed ended questions.

Closed ended questions can be answered with a single one or two word response.  They are often a yes or no question and don’t leave much room for elaboration, interpretation or opinion.

Open ended questions on the other hand are questions that cannot be answered with one word responses.  They require some thought and some details to reasonably answer the question.

Build a Conversation

Simple response closed questions don’t leave much room for elaboration or really a full response.  These are often question using phrases like, did you, when, do you want to, will you, have you, etc.  Each of these just need a couple words to answer and they don’t transition well from one topic to another in a conversation.  They leave little room for new ideas and they don’t spark much creativity or imagination which leads to new questions.  That is where open ended questions excel.  They provide much more detail, thoughts, comments and bits of information that can more easily form into new ideas and transitions.  Here are some examples of typical questions in an open format:

• Tell me what you think about that?
• What is it you like about the idea?
• Why would you suggest that?
• How do you plan to achieve that?

Let Others Talk More Than You

Open ended questions also ensure that you give others a chance to talk more than you.  It forces you to listen more in any conversation because you have to wait for a longer response with these questions.  You can still lead a conversation by steering with your questions but at least the open questions will allow room for a more elaborate expanse.

Open questioning is also a great tool to promote creative thought, problem-solving skills, and cognitive growth in others because it forces a person to spend more time contemplating their response instead of just giving a disconnected yes or no response.  The thought needed behind may seem simply but it forces an association pattern that makes a person relate something of meaning that they response with, to the person or conversation.  This inherently builds a stronger bond with, better memory of and definitely a more engaged conversation.

Ask Them to Talk About Themselves

Similarly to simply having someone talk more, having someone talk about themselves, their own thoughts and their feelings on a subject shows that you have some genuine interest in them and care enough to want to take the time to listen.  This is immensely powerful both for seeing how the conversation topics affect that person but also to strengthen that relationship more.  Whether you know the person well, or you are already a close friend or family member, these personal and open ended questions only lead to an even stronger bond with a longer more meaningful conversation at the outset.

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 8 Comments »

Some of my previous articles have been based on communications and while I’ve covered several different topics for improvement such as listening , speaking , and writing , I didn’t get into any specific areas that are typical breakdowns with communication for all three of those topics.  Sometimes, its a situation or problem that presents itself that makes communication difficult and so the things we know about great communication fall apart.

So, I want to look more specifically now at the communication skills needed and techniques to use for mediating and communicating in difficult situations.  Situations like disagreements, arguments, difficult decisions and other difficult situations (mad customers).

It’s easier to control the quality of the communication as an onlooker or mediator than it is when you are directly involved in these stressful or conflict situation.  So, here are a few areas and techniques that can help you mediate a difficult situation and help to control the quality of the communication in it before things get worse.

Paraphrase and Question to Discover Feelings

People rarely get their point across well in difficult situations and no matter why, it is always useful to paraphrase what anyone is saying to be completely clear about what they are saying.  Putting someone’s words back to them and asking if that is correct often highlights how wrong something might have come across or that you didn’t get the point at all.  If you proceed with action or discussion on something that you interpreted wrong, it is easy to make things worse very quickly.  Paraphrasing as a mediator ensures that all parties clearly understand the message someone is making and it keeps you from appearing to change someone’s message.

Questions in response to someone’s message is also very valuable as it helps to get to the bottom of things.  This requires you to ask reflecting questions that makes someone think about their message.  Asking why someone has a certain comment and asking how it makes them feel are simple yet very effective at finding real opinions and underlying feelings in what is being communicated instead of what is reacted on and displayed at the surface.  Quick reactions and communication often begins with defensive, aggressive and exaggerated comments that make things worse.  Use questions to dig deeper at these and find out why they are said and the feelings that drive that message.  These feelings are the important part and a mediator who can get them revealed quickly can move things forward to a smooth resolution very easily.

The next steps are crucial as well in being a good mediator, but this is the most important step to actually solving a problem and to prevent it from escalating into a bigger communication battle.  The reason for this is that feelings are very personal.  Two things happen when they are revealed:

• Personal feelings expose you and make you vulnerable.  This is required to have trust from others and it can quickly turn a bad situation around when others trust you and want to hear what you have to say.
• The impact it has on someone’s feelings is hard to ignore.  Most people react quickly to that and become more understanding and empathetic to those feelings once revealed.

Empathize Without Claiming To Know How One Feels

Feelings are very personal to everyone, so its important to leave those feelings unique to the other person.  Don’t claim to know how someone feels or say you’ve felt just like that.  You never really know exactly how someone feels and its usually comes across as arrogance if you try to claim to understand.  Most people feel vulnerable sharing feelings so while you definitely want to empathize and tell them you are concerned and care about how they feel, you should not take that feeling from them and claim it yourself.  A defensive person will often just argue back that you don’t understand and then you’ve lost any trust and chance to empathize with them.  Even if you have been in a similar situation or experience, it’s impossible to know exactly how they feel, so don’t pretend to!

You can empathize and relate to their situation, just leave their feelings for them to own!  Change your wording to something like:

• I can’t know exactly how you feel but I’ve been in similar situations and I was upset as well.
• I’m sure it’s difficult and I care about how you feel in this situation and I want to help you and support you!
• I’m confident that you can handle it and I hope to help in any way I can.
• While I can’t possibly understand exactly how you are feeling, I can see that you are unhappy.
• I’d be happy to listen if you have more to share to me help understand more about how you feel.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone that gets upset with this type of empathetic response and none of them are intrusive to their personal feelings so they don’t lead to a defensive response.  Show that you care and want to help, and leave the rest up to them.  Don’t try to take away or claim their feelings as your own.  It doesn’t help!

Speak Calmly, Slowly and Stay in Control

Another important thing to keep in mind for mediating any difficult situation is your own communication.  Your speech, reactions and body language have an enormous impact on others so you must be very careful with them to ensure you do more help than harm.  You must remain calm.  Even if you need to step into an argument of yelling and name calling, you can only be effective at this if you stay calm yourself.  Yelling and screaming to appease a situation only works do a degree if you have authority and power to do it and it doesn’t make you look like a mediator wanting to solve the root problem, but just someone who uses their power to control things.

So, you want to stay calm and speak to all parties in a similar calm tone with your speech.  Speak slowly if others are worked up and quick with their words.  Speak softly if others are yelling.  Humans unconsciously shift their communication style to match other parties so you need to keep people calm and under control.  If you do this, others will naturally gravitate to match this, even if they are emotionally charged up!

Give Everyone a Chance to Express Themselves

If there is one thing that will make people hate a mediator most, its if that mediator doesn’t give everyone a chance to express themselves.  You must give everyone a chance to speak when you take control of a communication breakdown.  Tell everyone that they will all have a turn, don’t accept ANY interruptions and control the order and time each person has to make their points. You should avoid cutting people off if they have a lot to say, but make sure that everyone has an equal chance to share their thoughts, if they want it.

Making sure that everyone has a chance to express themselves can also require you to draw out people’s thoughts by questioning and probing them directly.  Some parties will withdrawal and reserve from conversation but it’s just as important to make sure they have a chance to express themselves as anyone else so sometimes you need to push this a bit to help keep some balance for who is heard!

Never Get in the Middle and Communicate For Someone

Speaking of people who withdrawal, some parties just stop communicating with each other after some kind of breakdown and they expect a mediator to then step in and do all the communication.  Never let this happen!  The only way to solve a problem with communication breakdowns is by better quality communication between those initially involved.  Even if mediating a communication problem has led to private conversations, never take on any part of the communication yourself.  Don’t offer to talk to someone privately or on their behalf.  If feelings were hurt, are still hurt or there is more to be said to get past the problem, leave the communication between those directly involved.  You can still attend, help calm the situation and get people together to discuss and even push people a little to reveal what needs to be said, but you should never communicate for someone else.  It will only lead to you appearing to take sides and you will quickly become a go between with the communication getting more and more sparse.  If you are asked to give someone else a message or tell them something, say NO!  Always ensure the communication responsibility stays with those originally involved.

A Mediator Doesn’t Come Up With Any Solutions

Staying in control always means staying objective and mediating all sides. You never want to be taking one side or deciding how to solve a situation yourself.  Similar to not getting in the middle and communicating for someone, when a problem exists that needs attention and a solution, never provide that solution as the mediator yourself.  You might have some ideas or suggestions but always let the parties involved decide how to address things and attend to the situation.  If you force any solution you can quickly appear to be taking sides or just as easily, prematurely accelerate to a solution that others are not yet ready for.  If they are not yet ready to forgive and move forward, work with them on that and wait until they are darn good and ready to pick their own solution.  If you are truly empathizing with everyone, you must leave the decisions, solutions and communication up to them and only be available as a mediator, ready to listen, help and guide people towards a solution without getting in the way.

Posted by Mike King under Business | 1 Comment »

People put a lot of attention to the thoughts and opinions of others and this high value we place on each other affects our reactions quickly without hardly knowing it sometimes. Often, our natural reaction is to be defensive which even leads to retaliation sometimes (unfounded retaliation as well).   As soon as you become defensive and fight back in any way, you are changing your thoughts and feelings at that moment. Some related articles I’ve written about this may be of interest: controlling your emotional response to other s and master your own state of mind. Those will help you to keep control in general situations and when you can easily decide what to do about your thoughts and emotions in conversation.

Unfortunately, not all conversations are easy to stay controlled in and often a personal attacks, blame, untruths, criticism or even revealing personal details can hurt us deeply and with immediate impact.  That immediacy often makes us loose control and we don’t think about our response, so quickly fight back in retaliation to defend ourselves.  Whatever that defense looks like, there are ways to help control it and ensure it is justified response and not just an emotional one.  Emotional responses as a quick reaction nearly always make a situation worse and it can easily escalate the things beyond repair in a relationship.  So, learning to avoid becoming defensive will reduce that potential greatly.  Not only that, but it can leave you feeling like you’re in control and help you to quickly diffuse a difficult situation.  Here are some areas to consider to accomplish that.

Pause and Breathe

The first and likely easiest step to avoid becoming defensive is to simply pause for a moment and breath.  Just added a minor delay to your reactive with a deep breath is enough to calm you down and control your response.  Not only is it helpful to prevent an outburst, but its also helpful simply for your communication skills to ensure you do not interrupt or begin your own response before the other person is done.  Since this is a useful communication skill, you can practice it in any conversation, not just the ones where you are at risk to become defensive.  If you develop a habit of pausing before responding, it will be natural when a situation arises and there is a risk of responding defensively.

Let it Go!

The next thing that you can do to avoid being defensive is to understand that many other factors may have led to some kind of verbal attack from someone else and that its not a personal attack at you.  Everyone has other factors in their lives that affect their moods and reactions from day to day and most of the time, what gets directed at you, isn’t because of you.  Knowing this helps to stay separated from the attack and consider that you may not be the cause so there is no point in getting defensive.  Also, there is really no point in being defensive even if it is your fault since it typically just makes the matter worse and leads to further arguments.  Just LET IT GO!  Ignore what impact or reaction you might otherwise take and practice just taking it in or ignoring it.  It doesn’t matter what you do with it, if you simply let it go.

Think First, Then Respond

So, if you can actually do the previous step and let go of the attack to prevent your own defensive action, then you can actually stop and think for a minute.  Doing this will help you to stay objective and open minded.  That is the exactly what you need to be in an otherwise defensive reaction.  Think about what the other person is actually saying and think about what they intend with their message and why they might be saying it.  Think about controlling your own reaction and think about what good a reaction will do BEFORE you respond.  If you take this time to think about your response, it’s easy to make a more helpful response, or at least one that won’t take offense, fight back and make matters worse.

Ask Questions

Asking reflective questions are then an excellent technique to use to ensure you are getting the right message and that you look to understand why a person has shared with you their message.  It’s rare that people accurately describe their intended message when they are mad so its very helpful to ask reflective questions and to ask for clarification that will make sure the message is in fact clear.  Ask things like the following:

• So what you are saying is …
• It sounds to me like you are upset about …
• Can you describe in more detail WHY this is important to you?
• What triggered or caused you to see this as a problem?
• Is there something I can do to help you with this then?
• What do you suggest to ensure this doesn’t happen again?

All of these are just samples of questions that can help you dig a little deeper and to offer at least a minimal level of compassion.

Say Thank You.

If someone has become so heated up that they finally get upset or challenge you on some topic, it’s likely that they have been feeling it for a little while or that it’s happened a few times and that person is finally now confronting it. A very quick way to diffuse the attack and to calm the situation is to thank them for letting you know or bringing up the concern or whatever it is.  You don’t want to thank them for actually being angry or upset, but you can thank them for being willing to confront it.  Many people bottle things up and leave what should be said, unsaid.  That doesn’t ever resolve the situation.  Here are some suggestions of how you could say thank you to diffuse the situation.

• Thank you for bringing this up, if you hadn’t we would never have resolved this.
• I’m glad you were willing to confront this issue, thank you for that.  Now what?
• Thank you for not ignoring this, obviously its important to you, so let’s work together to resolve it!
• I never knew you felt that way, thank you for telling me.

Ask Yourself what can be Learned?

If you’ve been willing to stay calm, ask questions, say thank you and stay in the conversation.  It’s quite likely you can easily resolv ethe matter and come to some agreement and conclusion.

However, any difficult conversation or confrontation is usually founded in something.  It’s often not what actually surfaces but there is definitely something to be learned by it.  Perhaps the person was justified in a harsh reaction towards you or maybe there was something that triggered them that you did.  Maybe you are simply the stomping grounds for an unrelated problem.  Whatever the situation, you can ponder this to find better ways to react, ways to change your own approach, take in the feedback if it is about your self, or look at how you could have helped or prevented the situation from escalating in the first place!  Closely examining a difficult conversation is crucial to improving the next one find yourself in or that you need to have with someone else. 

Posted by Mike King under Life | 3 Comments »

Generous Writing

With the world of text messaging, email and internet everything, there is still a high quantity of communication systems that use text.  They are doing it in a more segmented, small content system however. The good thing is that there is lots of medium to write in and many opportunities in our lives and jobs to use writing to communicate.  And better than that, there are people who are willing and wanting to read what you have to communicate.  There are many places where writing can be used and generally in business, there is room for more writing.  Whether its for status updates, issue reports, instructions, directions, requests or simply email messages there is value in being generous with your writing.

I don’t mean to be generous by writing longer messages or more wordy content, instead be generous with what you write about and how often you write.  Writing a follow up message or thank you note even after a discussion can be a huge plus with your communication as it reinforces what you had to say and puts a reminder out to your audience which helps to clarify your message and the repetition helps it be remembered.

Style

Develop and watch for your own style in your writing.  Consistency with how you write and your approach to putting your ideas to text can lead not only to having a style of your own in your writing, but it also builds on your personality and reputation if you are consistent in how you write.  This is especially true in business as written messages and instructions can be a critical part of your perceived personality so don’t take your writing style for granted.  Be careful of your tone, clarity and any emotional content you include.

Put some style into your formatting and use white space, lists, and headings to organize your content and keep the attention of your readers.  Pictures can definitely help with this as well but are not always necessary.  A few others specifics of style which can improve your communication are to avoid slang, jargon, abbreviations, and symbols.  These all help keep clarity.  Spend some time to refine your style and be careful to keep it consistent as it will have impact with how well you can communicate your written text.

Outline and Plan Your Writing

Its never a bad idea to plan your writing, whether its an email message or a long instruction manual, you should always outline what you want to write and plan it out before beginning to write your content.  For example, I always put down my headings for an article before starting to write the paragraph content to ensure I cover the topics I want to and that I can fit things into some structure that is prepared before I begin to write.  Putting just a couple of minutes in up front will help you focus your writing on what you intend to cover and will help to keep off topic components out of your writing.

Careful of Negative Emotions

Emotional text is very difficult to clearly write and so main recommendation when it comes to writing anything that has some emotional attachment to it, is DON’T!  Just don’t write it.  Unless you are a very careful and practiced author, most people cause far more problems in their writing than they solve when they include any emotional content.  This includes writing about how someone made you feel, your feelings (not just opinions) on a subject or feedback to someone about how something made you feel.  If you find yourself writing under any kind of strong emotional state (especially negative emotions like fear or anger or jealousy), do yourself a favor and just stop writing.  You are better off communicating by phone or in person for these subjects and best left not recorded in text.

Now, emotions can play an important role in getting your message across if used to deliver a passionate heartfelt text.  This is where emotions in text can be useful, just keep in mind they are hard to express.  Think of how a novel author can write for several paragraphs to describe the feelings and thoughts of a character in a story.  It can take the same level of detail and attention to express your own emotions accurately with no room for interpretation so make sure you include enough detail to minimize any room for question.

Proofing

While some will argue that its a waste of time to spent much time proofing work for minor errors, there is much more to proofing your written work than just the obvious problems that can be overlooked.  Other reasons are more important and the most would be to ensure that what you’ve written makes sense and is worded in a way that delivers the intended message.  Eliminating simple spelling and grammatical errors is also important as any mistakes will slow down and distract your reader from what you are wanted to communicate.

Take care and time to ensure what you’ve written is said well and change any content that is not clear when you proof the work.  Good writing should never need to be reread to be understood and it should make your point without complex and difficult language.  Take the time to make it concise and to the point while proofing, looking to eliminate unnecessary wording and sentences.

I hope these tips will help you to have more impact with your writing and to be a better communicator.  If you missed any of my previous articles in this better communication series, you can check them all out below.  I’d love to hear any comments about this article or others in this series.

Better Communication: Using Questions Regularly

Better Communication: Listening for Improvement

Better Communication: Control Your Speaking

Posted by Mike King under Life | 3 Comments »

As I continue to look at communication skills and cover various areas of it, speaking is definitely an important one.  I am certainly not a skilled public speaker or presenter and while that is a common skill for communication, this article is about controlling your speaking for every day communication and not focused on large group public speaking.  I’ll leave that to the experts.

Speak at the Right Pace

It is important to speak at a controlled case so that your audience can easily understand you.  Speaking to quickly makes you sound uneasy, nervous, or even unsure of yourself.  Speaking too slowly will make you seem unconfident, or simply not convincing.  You want to ensure you can get your point across clearly without your audience having to struggle to understand you.

It is very useful to record your self or practice speaking at the right pace with a friend listening so that you can tell and listen to your own pace.  I can see it’s like

Breathe

Your breathing rate can relate to your speaking rate, but more importantly, you should have a calm tone, consistent rate and a normal comfortable breathing pattern.  It’s OK to pause your speech in order to take a breath and get your thoughts in order.  Silence is a powerful message when communicating, it allows the other person time to think and reflect on what you said.  Saying "Um" or "ah" frequently when you speak can be distracting and never helps you get your message across.  So, remember that silence is OK and remember to breathe.

Engage Your Audience

My third tip to improve your communication is to always look for ways to engage the audience, whether it is one person or a group.  Some of the ways you can do this are:

• asking them questions
• surveying with hands up or signaling them to respond
• lead them to finish your sentences
• have them repeat what you have said
• read something out loud with them

There are many ways you can actively engage your audience and an active audience is always more attentive.  Use this to make your audience more engaged with the conversation which allows you to better communicate with them.

Use Gestures and Movement

Speaking of keeping your audience’s attention, gestures are a great way to do this.  Not only your hand gestures as you speak but your entire body’s animation and movement.  You may not be in front of a large audience or you might just be sitting behind a meeting table at work.  It doesn’t matter where, adding some natural movement and gestures to your message livens it up and makes what you have to say easier to remember and engage with for others.  Presentations really require special attention here as some additional movement is critical when displaying pre-developed content as it doesn’t have a whole lot of movement and expression.

Facial expressions I lump here into gestures as well as your expression with your mouth and eyes are key to showing interest, noteworthy points and your own engagement in a conversation.

Get to The Point

While I know that I personally have a severe lack of patience and appreciate knowing what someone is talking about, I still do appreciate a good story behind a point that someone is trying to make.  Its important to not lead on your audience too long before making your point and it is often best to simply state it first and then explain any reasoning or findings that brought you to that particular message.  Whether someone is patience or not, you don’t want to loose the attention of your audience before you’ve made your point as its nearly impossible to get it back once lost.

Staying on point also means keeping your message simple.  Stay on one topic and don’t jump around your main points attempting to cover too much material.

Don’t Use the Word But

There are a number of words that are never helpful in communication and "but" is one of them that is in the top 10 list and a personal pet peeve of mine.  That word is used to essentially negate everything before it so knowing that, you might as well not have said anything before it and left the "but" out altogether.  A terrible mistake in communicating with others and unfortunately a habit of many people when debating a subject is to agree with someone’s point and then negate that using the word "but" and stating their own opinion to replace the original idea.  Don’t do that, it does nothing but harm when communicating with others.  This is a really tough one to control and something worth paying attention to if you have a habit of using this word.  Work to simply eliminate using it by just forming two separate sentences instead.  Or you can use the word "and" instead of "but" which show agreement plus your own point of view instead of something to replace it.

This is a subtle element of improving your communication with speak and it is also a very important one!

Speak With Passion

I’ve saved the best for last here, at least as far as I’m concerned.  Speaking with passion is not easy and the scary part is that a lot of people aren’t passionate about anything to even know what that might mean.  What it means to me is that you speak with an enthusiasm and conviction towards the subject that an audience can see that what you have to say is absolutely true and dear to you, that you believe in what you say and that you want to successful communicate.  Speaking with passion will be visible in difference ways for each person and is often seen by:

• high amounts of movement and expression
• massive pitch and volume swings
• vivid details and imaginative descriptions of the subject matter
• visible or audible emotion
• total engagement with all parties completely unaware of distractions

There are much more detail to get into on each of these communication topics and I’d love to hear from you on techniques you use or find useful or what other areas of communication you have the most interest in learning more about?

Posted by Mike King under Life | 2 Comments »