5 habits of effective communicators

Habit 1:  Don’t say “But..”, say “And..”

The thing is the word “but” diminishes your previous statement; so if try telling your significant other “You look lovely BUT..”  I advise you to stand back having lighten the blue touch paper!  However, if you say when you say “And..” it builds on their point and having agreed with them, they are more amenable to accepting your suggestion.  So, “You look lovely but I don’t think those shoes work” might become “You look lovely.  (pause) And I want you to be comfy too, do you think you will be in those shoes?”

Habit 2:  Stick to the facts

We all make sweeping statements like “My neighbour does that deliberately!”  or “That will never work!”, but usually these are perceptions or projections or generalisations rather than facts.  So it is good to ask “How do you know that?”  or “What proof do you have?”  This kind of comment will limit you and your responses,  if you you stick to things which are provably true, then you are at least on firm ground moving forwards.

Habit 3:  Don’t be defensive

Regular readers will know that I have mentioned this before, but we just HATE being wrong, and we will do almost anything to avoid this.  So if we hear the other person say something which we interpret as criticism, we tend to not explore what they are actually saying or whether it is useful, true or helpful and instead bat it away.  This leads to the baby being thrown out with the bathwater and not only don’t we learn what they were trying to add, but we make them feel diminished and unlistened to.

Habit 4:  Silence is not only golden but powerful

There are two parts to this tip.  Firstly, if you are actually  listening to the other person, you need to keep schtum!  You also need to put all your attention into listening rather than thinking what you want to say in response.  The other thing is that if you keep silent, you force the other person to step into that uncomfortable space and elaborate.  As a facilitator, it can be very powerful to ask a simple question such as “What do think of that?” and then just wait.  The longer you wait, the more you will learn.  If you feel the need to jump in too soon, they can evade your question and you learn little or nothing.

Habit 5:  Make sure they heard / understood what you actually said

None of us are very good at listening, however, just because they can repeat the words you used, doesn’t mean that they interpreted them as you intended.  If it is important, take the time to check they have really understand what you meant.  If I say something like “Book me somewhere cheap..” You might find you have very different ideas of what cheap means, and that could be embarrassing!  The same is true of all those relative words like quick, simple, small etc. 

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2015 at 07:00 and is filed under Communication, Hints, Tips & Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.