Feb
27
2009
by admin on February 27, 2009
I think it is safe to say that the human race generally doesn’t like to be TOLD what to do. Why can’t you just “tell” someone what to do? Well, in some cases you can… If whatever you are proposing makes blatantly logical sense to both parties and there is equal benefit to both of them, then simply telling the other person what to do does work. The reality of the matter is that not all “scenarios” are created equal. What makes complete sense to one party on the first communication pass-through usually doesn’t make the same sense to the [...]
Feb
26
2009
by admin on February 26, 2009
Questions are one of the most powerful forms of verbal communication that a person has at their disposal. When you are in situations where you want or need to persuade someone, the saying really is true “you get more flies with sugar”. Well, in the delivery section of your communication tool box, questions really are the proverbial “sugar”. Gentle, tactful and skillful persuasion via questioning is MUCH more effective than anything other method available to you. What about flattery you ask? What we are speaking about in this post is structure and form, not content. Flattery is content… But since [...]
Feb
19
2009
by admin on February 19, 2009
If you are going to effectively communicate with someone it is imperative that you ensure that they are both hearing and understanding what it is that you are saying. Unfortunately this is very difficult to know for two important reasons: 1. We have developed incredibly powerful subconscious and automatic social mechanisms that help us to facilitate the flow of conversation. Head nods, “uh-huhs” and “mmm’s” are a few of the automatic and more often than not, meaningless recognition gestures that we use. These types of gestures are generally for the purpose of buying time and keeping rapport while communication is [...]
Feb
19
2009
by admin on February 19, 2009
Due to the harsh realities of the world and the undeniable necessity to have a mentally stable “human” in order to pass genes on from generation to generation, the evolution of a mind that can ward off negative emotion is one of the end results… There are five major factors that are working constantly to assure that our concept of self and our sense of reality stays in check and there is a sixth mechanism that helps to facilitate their usage during communication. Let’s discuss these first and then we can get into the practical mechanisms we can use to [...]
Feb
19
2009
by admin on February 19, 2009
Literally, the most difficult challenge in communication is in ACCURATELY representing and EXPLAINING the concept or feeling that you are currently experiencing. Without extensive analysis and research, the average person is completely unaware of how INACCURATELY they are communicating their thoughts. Thanks to evolved processes such as heuristics, metaphor and analogy, stereotypes and predictive categorization that occur during experiential and language processing, we are still able to make functional sense of each others communication. Suffice it to say though, that when you are describing a night out with the girls… The visual, auditory and somatic/kinesthetic representations that your mother is [...]
Feb
17
2009
by admin on February 17, 2009
Today we are going to finish our 4 part professional listening series by talking about quality listening habits that you can begin developing right away and we will look at skill preparation and development at the Macro and Micro levels. First let’s talk about developing quality listening habits. There is simply no silver bullet for doing this. Countless studies have shown that NOT using old habits atrophies the neural net that produces the habit and REPETITION develops new neural nets that create new habits. So the first step is to bring cognition back into the picture. We have already talked [...]
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