Communication

‘The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been achieved.’

George Bernard Shaw

Overview

Let’s face it when you communicate with someone who is constantly on ‘transmit’, it can be a bit like talking to the radio! Those who spend too much time in their own little bubble can, if they are not careful, end up working on the assumption that the other person has understood the message they are trying to get across. This is when successful communication breaks down and becomes an illusion.

It is, of course, a lot easier to see something from your own perspective and much more difficult to look at it from another person’s, especially when we all have such different personalities, backgrounds, ideas, beliefs and values.

There is a danger that if you are not careful, poor communication can lead to negativity, insecurity, backstabbing and blame. This in turn can also affect your stress levels and self-esteem, especially when you don’t understand something or feel that you have been misled. However, communication can also have a very positive effect when it works well and can make people feel valued, respected and even loved.

Being present when you are with someone is key, not just because you will be able to properly listen to what they are saying, but also because it is important to the other person’s self-esteem. When we feel we are not being listened to, it can make us feel insecure and lower our self-esteem. Active listening is therefore really important. Being present also means not using your mobile phone or other mobile technology whilst you are having a face-to-face conversation with someone else, as this can make you look as though you are not interested in the person you are with.

You talk to yourself subconsciously a great deal and you need to give yourself permission to listen to someone else. This means you literally have to command yourself to think ‘I am now going to give this person my full attention and really listen to what they have to say’.

Avoiding interrupting, jumping to conclusions, filling the gaps or making judgements will help you to listen to the whole message, not just to a part of it, which is a trap we can all so easily fall into.

Self-confidence is also a huge help when communicating as it enables you to communicate your message clearly and assertively. This means getting your message across in a positive, concise and constructive way that works just as well for the person who is on the receiving end as it does for you.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.‘
Plato

Communication – Steps to Success

Understand your communication style
Positively accommodate other communication styles
Be present when you are with people
Develop mobile technology etiquette
Actively listen and focus
Be positive and assertive.

Assertive Communication

Assertive communication is the ability to express your thoughts and opinions while respecting the thoughts and opinions of the person you are communicating with; it is appropriately direct, open and honest, and clarifies your needs to the other person.

People who have mastered the skill of assertiveness are able to greatly reduce the level of interpersonal conflict in their lives and therefore significantly reduce a major source of stress.

Intelligent Communication

The key to excellent communication is to communicate intelligently and positively. Interestingly, a theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr.

Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard University. He suggested that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on IQ testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr Gardner proposed eight different bits of intelligence to account for a broader range of human potential in both children and adults. These intelligence are:

Listening Skills

Listening to and understanding what others communicate to you is the most important part of a successful interaction. When a person decides to communicate with someone, they do so to fulfil a need: they want something, feel discomfort, or have particular feelings or thoughts.

In deciding to communicate, the person selects the method or code that they believe will effectively deliver the message to the other person. The code used to send the message can be either verbal or nonverbal. When the other person receives the coded message, they go through the process of decoding or interpreting it to understand its meaning. Effective communication exists between two people when the receiver interprets and understands the sender’s message in the same way the sender intended it.

The Three Basic Listening Modes:

Positive Self-speak

Have a good listen to your personal vocabulary – how do you speak to yourself? Vocabulary is something you will very rarely pay conscious attention to, yet it can give away a host of information about us to the perceptive listener.

Like appearance, vocabulary and speech form part of that important ‘first impression’, you make on other people. While the tone and timbre of our voices creates either a pleasing or grating effect on the listener, our choice of words conveys our attitude and emotional stance. There is a very interesting relationship between vocabulary and attitude.

When you describe an emotional state or use words to express an emotion directly, you reinforce that emotion. If, for example, you say, ‘Damn!’ when you make a mistake, you reinforce the anger you feel about that mistake. If, however, you say ‘Oops!’ instead, you are conveying to your subconscious mind that the mistake was minor, something not worth getting too excited about.

Modifying your vocabulary is one way to reduce the number of times you experience strong, stressful emotions like anger. The same principle applies to positive emotions.

Have you ever asked someone how they are and they answered, ‘Not too bad, thanks’? What if they’d answered ‘I’m feeling good, thanks for asking!’ instead? How would that affect the person’s attitude towards his or her life?

Positive self-talk is a great way to improve your energy levels. Most people know it by its more straightforward name – ‘affirmation’. But you need something a bit more focused than the traditional ‘Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better’. When you are using positive self-talk to improve your energy levels you need to make sure that your subconscious is in no doubt as to what you are talking about.

You need to be very clear as to what you are trying to encourage yourself to do. A much more concise affirmation would be, ‘I go for a walk every day in the park when I get back from work and it is very enjoyable’. This way, the mind is left in no doubt as to what you are trying to achieve and what is required of it.

When you are making affirmations to improve your energy levels, it is very important that all of your affirmations are not only in the present tense, but are also in the positive. It is very important to keep your affirmations in the positive as the subconscious mind is not well able to process a negative.

Rather than trying to get the subconscious mind to extract a positive action from a negative affirmation, it is much easier to put the affirmation in the positive in the first place. A good example of this would be the affirmations of someone who is trying to lose weight. If the affirmation is in the negative: ‘I will not eat fast food any more’, it is very difficult for the subconscious mind to process.

The mind not only has to process the negative – as in what you are not going to do: eat fast food; it also has to then decide, subconsciously, what it is actually supposed to do instead: eat well (which in itself is not a clearly defined concept). But if you put the affirmation in a positive sense, ‘I will eat fresh fruit and salad every day’ then it is very clear what is required of your mind and it is much easier to process this into action.

When you are engaging in positive self-talk, it is necessary to do so on a regular and consistent basis. The effects are usually cumulative and you should find that the more you do it, the more effective it is in helping you to build up your energy levels and in improving the way in which you live. This is partly due to the effect of saying something over and over again, but also, if your mind is used to you using affirmations and to processing them into action, it is more likely to be able to process new affirmations as it is just following the pattern of the previous, albeit different, affirmations that you have used in the past. This way you can enjoy the benefits more quickly – but you still need to use repetition of the positive self-talk until you have achieved the desired results.

One way you can use this to build your energy levels is with an affirmation such as ‘I am happy and always have enough energy to enjoy my work throughout the day’. This places the affirmation in the positive and also in the present. It states very clearly not only what you are hoping to achieve, but also what is actually happening.

Using positive self-talk can not only help to increase your energy directly but it can also help you to adopt other ways of doing so, such as exercising and improving your diet. Exercising and eating well can have really beneficial effects on your energy levels, but can be very hard for many people to get used to.

Using positive affirmations also can help you to change the way you eat and make it much easier for you to get used to doing an exercise programme. It is important not to limit the way that you use affirmations to just the direct benefit that you are looking for. If you consider all the different ways that you can use affirmations, you will find a great many ways in which they can benefit you.

The most important thing is to consciously and regularly listen to yourself and the words that you use to condition your thoughts, which in turn trigger your emotions, which shape your actions, which ultimately define your world!

Social Styles

Understanding your communication style is very important. Psychometric (translated from Latin, meaning measurement of the mind) tests are good at helping you to understand your strengths and limitations. One popular model is based on four personality types and social styles. Below is a brief description of each of these type and styles.

It may be worth trying to work out which style describes you best. Whilst we cannot cast people into concrete pigeon-holes and we may demonstrate attributes of each style, it is likely that one style will be dominant.

Communication

‘The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been achieved.’

George Bernard Shaw

Overview

Communication – Steps to Success

Understand your communication style

Positively accommodate other communication styles

Be present when you are with people

Develop mobile technology etiquette

Actively listen and focus

Be positive and assertive.

Assertive Communication

Assertive communication is the ability to express your thoughts and opinions while respecting the thoughts and opinions of the person you are communicating with; it is appropriately direct, open and honest, and clarifies your needs to the other person.

Intelligent Communication

The key to excellent communication is to communicate intelligently and positively. Interestingly, a theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr.

Listening Skills

Listening to and understanding what others communicate to you is the most important part of a successful interaction. When a person decides to communicate with someone, they do so to fulfil a need: they want something, feel discomfort, or have particular feelings or thoughts.

Positive Self-speak

Have a good listen to your personal vocabulary – how do you speak to yourself? Vocabulary is something you will very rarely pay conscious attention to, yet it can give away a host of information about us to the perceptive listener.

Social Styles

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