I thought I had made myself clear …
As a coach I pride myself on being a good communicator, and so you would expect. Yet there are many occasions where I aim to communicate as clearly as possible only to be confounded by the response. I thought I had made myself clear, why did they answer like that, what part didn’t they understand! Sound familiar?
The challenge faced today are the wide and varied methods and modes of communication we now use, or don’t. With that comes the necessity for a far deeper understanding and ability to communicate effectively. Not sure where I’m going with this? Well have you ever read a message, post or comment and immediately added the theatrical interpretation in your mind or verbally. An innocuous response suddenly in your head made to sound angry, vexed or plain pissed off! Yet when you talk to them they are nothing of the sort.
What about email, written by the boss a detailed well thought out message, which you would assume to require a similar detailed response only to get ‘thanks’ and worse still ‘THANKS’. Our failure to communicate can in some respects boil down to an old appropriate yet today misunderstood rule. Treat others as I want to be treated. Essentially we assume, even when we feel we are communicating effectively that our message or the message being received has been interpreted as it was expected to be.
Here’s where it all goes wrong so often. Our communication is the response we get but don’t expect! Well there is a plethora of communication top tips, I want to share with you two critical areas of focus to assist your ability to communicate more effectively. One building on your skills and the second rather more interpersonal in understanding and knowing who you are communicating with.
Two Critical Communication Factors
1) Active listening (or the lack of it):
One of the greatest failings for most us is we simply don’t don’t listen. Listening is different from hearing. Hearing is the physical act we do with our ears. Listening is a mental act we do with our brains. Most of us who fail to listen do it, not because they are poor hearers.
So, what about listening? Many factors contribute to a person’s poor listening behaviour or habits. They include, but aren’t limited to:
- Distractions in the environment.
- The other person’s body language.
- The history of the relationship.
- Unresolved issues between the people involved or either person.
- A lack of interest in the subject.
- The pace of the other person’s dialogue.
- A limited vocabulary for either person.
- The personal prejudices or judgements of either person.
- Personality style differences and not being understood.
Any or all of these can get in the way of a person “getting, or understanding your message”. Observe the other person’s non-verbal messages while you talk with them. They will tell you, without a doubt, whether they’re listening to you, or not. If there’s any doubt that they’re listening, ask them a question concerning what you’re sharing in the middle of one of your sentences. If they don’t answer it, it may because they’re not really paying attention. So why bother with the rest of your message?
Additionally in your ability to understand the written word, its always helpful to know who you’re speaking too, their personality type (point 9). Check the link for an article I have written on personality types.
How about improving your listening skills? You can do that if you:
- Stay focused on the other person.
- Look for the main theme of the other person’s message.
- Focus on their key or major points.
- Control distractions.
- Stay in the present.
- Make lots of eye contact, and use responses such as, “I see,” “uh huh,” “Hmmm,” “Really?”.
- Pay attention to those things that draw your attention away from the other person and the message.
Improved listening will have a tremendous positive impact on all of your relationships. Listening to others is one of the greatest compliments you can pay another person.
2) Hidden agendas:
Every relationship has, to some degree, a hidden agenda. Things you don’t share because you want to avoid conflict, hurting the other person’s feelings, or just don’t want them to know what you’re really thinking or feeling. People don’t always say what they mean or what they’re feeling. They hide their true attitudes, feelings, or issues. In a sense, they repress or “stuff-down” what’s really going on inside them. So, why is that?
If a relationship isn’t safe, and you don’t feel you can share what’s really going with the other person for fear of rejection, invalidation, criticism, or any other negative response – you’ll edit your message. You won’t be able to hide it non-verbally, but you’ll use words that avoid sharing with the real issue.
Whether in a business or a personal relationship, too much hidden agenda is a sign the relationship is in trouble. If the difficult things you can talk about are increasing, the relationship is probably getting better. The opposite is also true. Relationships are either getting better or getting worse. They are dynamic…they don’t just remain static
What would be the advantage of getting rid of some of your hidden agendas? Simply put, they can kill you. One of the major causes of stress is repressing feelings that need to be expressed. Expressed so you don’t carry them around, letting them negatively affect other areas of your life.
We’ve all seen hidden agendas in the business world destroy companies from the inside-out a lot faster than any outside issue or challenge they might have, right?
What is a safe environment? It’s an environment in which you can be honest without fear of judgement, ridicule, criticism, invalidation, or delayed retribution. If you’re fortunate enough to have relationships based on honesty, consider yourself blessed. Most relationships have some areas that are avoided. This can be acceptable, as long as they are not critical to the success of the relationship.
The best policy is to get these things off your chest sooner, rather than later. Men tend to have more hidden agendas than women because women are generally considered better at expressing their feelings. This doesn’t mean they always express them in a positive way, but they do get them out in the open.
If you have a lot of repressed “stuff” in any of your relationships, you might want to begin letting the “stuff” go, express the feelings, or walk away from the relationship before it becomes too destructive on your own emotional well-being, health, and wellness.
