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 www.BurstCreativity.com

Alexander Tretjakov

Personal Development Blog and Unconventional Thinking University

Author of MiWay Time Management System

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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 His book Never Ever Give Up tells you how. It is offered at no cost as a way to help YOU succeed. The Empowered Soul

Why is listening so difficult, and what can we do about it? Why do rumors and hearsay continue, and how do we stop them? The first step is to uncover the root of these problems, which in turn will provide some solutions.

Problem One: People Don’t Listen

Although studies differ on the matter, many conclude that people speak about 150 to 200 words per minute and think at least 600 words per minute — and probably a lot faster than that. Whatever the research, it is universally accepted that we all think faster than we speak. Therein lies the challenge. Our brains operate significantly faster than the rate at which someone can speak.

When we’re listening to someone, we have the time to add a significant amount to what that person is actually saying to us. We think. We add those extra words. We interpret. We twist. We alter the message! After all, a brain has got to do something with all that extra time!

While your boss or your spouse or your best friend is talking, your brain is chugging along, embroidering all manner of frills and lace around the edges of the real message. While your brain is doing all this tinkering with the incoming words, it is also repeatedly hitting the save button, dumping the whole thing — the real words and the embroidery — into your memory. The problem is that your brain doesn’t bother to separate that information.

So there is just this one file labeled: “Conversation Last Monday with Sally about the New Project,” and everything gets dumped into the file willy-nilly. On Friday afternoon, when you sit down to sort out that conversation about that critical new project, you mentally open the file and start removing pieces of information — without the slightest clue whether the information you’re extracting is what Sally actually said or some bit of word juggling your bored, overactive mind produced. This is a primary way that misunderstandings come about. Sally said X and you think she said Y — and you remember it quite clearly!

To make matters worse, I recently read one study that said the average attention span of a human being is eight seconds. So, when something you hear triggers a thought, your excess mental capacity wanders off to follow that trail to another thought, then another thought, then another thought… and suddenly you’re daydreaming instead of paying attention to what is really being said.

So we alter the messages we hear and our tiny attention spans won’t even let us completely hear anything without disconnecting and wandering. It is a miracle that any messages get through at all. So it’s true — people don’t listen. If individuals and organizations would simply operate with that understanding, we would all be a lot better off.

Problem Two: Hearsay Is Always Distorted

Unfortunately, we tend to forget all about childhood games as we get older. But we would all do well to remember the game of telephone and what a kick we got out of the distorted message at the end of the telephone line.
The truth is that we encounter an adult version of this phenomenon in the workplace, but we seem to have forgotten the point of the game — that messages passed from one person to the next get distorted. In fact, in our workplaces, we often think hearsay information is… the truth!

Let’s be conservative, and for the sake of this point, assume that people speak at 200 words per minute and people think at 600 words per minute. (The discrepancy is probably a lot worse.) Even in this scenario, we can say that when we tell one person what another person said — hearsay only one person removed — the message is garbled, possibly up to and maybe even exceeding, a factor of four. The reason is this: in the 200/600 dichotomy, we have time to add four hundred words to what someone is saying to us – two times the original amount. If we pass what we “heard” along to someone else, they in turn may add their own additional 400 words to what just said, thus creating a factor of four. And that doesn’t even account for exacerbating factors — such as a listener’s animosity or preoccupation. Such factors could further distort the communicated information.

Let’s face it: when someone tells you what someone else said, it is always distorted — and that is just one person removed! But real life dictates that things usually don’t stop there. In real life that one person tells someone else who in turn tells someone else. That is why the role of “ambassador” in the workplace is problematic.

Allow me to examine a typical scenario in which this dynamic plays out. A project manager often acts as an ambassador between the client and the project staff. So the project manager meets with the customer to find out the customer’s desires, goals, and expectations. Later the project manager holds a meeting to inform the project staff what the customer wants. What happens? You guessed it, the information is distorted. In fact, the real-world scenario may be worse. A project manager doesn’t usually get a chance to meet directly with the client. Instead the project manager meets with the client’s assistant. Thus, the client tells the assistant to tell the project manager who tells the people who work on the project what the client wants. It is a miracle that anything is accomplished accurately at all! The truth is — a lot of the time it doesn’t. And the cost is enormous in terms of productivity, profitability, stress, and decreased morale.

Solutions

Lack of listening and hearsay information is real problems and should not be ignored. Rather than wishing the problems didn’t exist, follow these twelve rules, and you will see a huge difference.

1.Check out rumors by going directly to the source.
2.Don’t pass rumors on.
3.To ensure clarity, paraphrase back to people what you hear them say and have people paraphrase your statements back to you.
4.Take notes and document what someone says in a conversation. Have them verify the documentation is correct. Remember, in a dispute, whoever has the most documentation usually wins!
5.Repeat and summarize your message.
6.Keep messages as short and simple as possible. Let the details follow your main message, just as newspaper articles are written.
7.Establish frequent milestone meetings (to make sure everyone is on the same page). If the project is moving along successfully, you can decrease the frequency of the meetings.
8.Develop a powerful network within your organization so you can crosscheck the information you receive.
9.If you manage people, pass on information in a lot of different ways (verbal reports, written reports, memos, e-mails, town-hall meetings, websites, etc.) to ensure that people at all levels receive the true message.
10.If you manage people, check in with people at all levels to ensure the information they are receiving is accurate and to hear feedback.
11.If possible, do not act as an ambassador. Instead, coach, support, and encourage people to talk directly with each other — especially when they have a problem with each other. If need be, facilitate a meeting between the two parties.
12.Eliminate distractions. When someone is talking to you, do not file, type or
perform any other activities. If you are on a conference call, exit out of your e-mail program or, better yet, turn your monitor off. Remember, it is hard enough to concentrate on what someone is saying without distractions. If you work with someone who gets easily distracted, try to have any meetings with that person in an area with few distractions.

If we accept and remember that people don’t listen and that hearsay information is always distorted, we can develop procedures, processes, and systems that in the end will make everyone’s life easier and more productive. These twelve rules will set you on your way. Don’t just think about implementing them, do it. You can make the difference!

– Copyright, 2007 Steven Gaffney Company, All Rights Reserved. To distribute or replicate this article in any way please contact the Steven Gaffney Company at 703-241-7796 or via email at http://stevengaffney.com/