How to effectively deepen your conversation skills

• Sylvia Lafair
• April 17, 2018

Let’s chat here a bit about why as a leader it’s important for you to deepen your conversation skills…

When you walk away, hang up the phone, close your email trail, or shut down the texting after a discussion with a colleague take a moment and think about what kind of conversation you just had.

Was it a difficult conversation or a learning conversation?

Here are 5 important ways to think about how you operate when you communicate:

Difficult Conversation…………………………Learning Conversation

Proving who is right or wrong                                     Exploring how both sides make sense

Blaming other side to protect yourself                      Offering to hear each other’s contributions

Assuming you have the better answers                     Expect positive surprises as you engage other

Avoid anything that will escalate conflict                  Acknowledge that emotions need to be managed

Idealize your perspective as “the way”                      Be open to an outcome not attached to it

As I love to say, how you communicate, is really an x-ray of what is going on inside you.

Here’s a rule of thumb: Once you learn to manage what triggers you, the quality of your discussions will move to a higher plane.

In my upcoming webinar, I will be doing a deep dive into the three C’s of leadership: character, confidence, communication. You will be given tools for observing the key elements of your character (often areas we ignore because they are so habitual) and what you can change to give you more confidence.

Then you will get great suggestions for how to enhance your communication methods and become even more successful than you are now.

One more thought regarding communication…

The term ‘narrative’ is all over the media these days. It’s simply another word for ‘story.’ When you get stuck in explaining your story it’s so easy to forget to explore someone else’s story. Everyone comes to every meeting with their own version of what is going on.

Facts help yet, it’s the emotions that drive the conversation forward.

One of the most important leadership strategies is figuring out how to explain your story at the same time you explore your colleague’s stories.

• What is the core focus?
• How are situations being interpreted?
• What conclusions can be drawn from what is being said?

Then you can address what is missing, unclear, or flat out wrong.

Have you noticed that we have become a culture of short buzz word ways of talking with each other?

Take the time to deepen your conversation skills for effective leadership, professionally and personally.

Leadership Strategies: Damn it, Listen to Me!

• Kristen Poborsky
• March 15, 2018

Over the years, I’ve heard from leaders is that getting them to listen to me is one of the hardest obstacles to success. In this article, I address 4 levels of communication that will help you overcome this block.

Do you remember playing the game “Whispering Down the Lane” as a kid? Kinda old school, however, it should be required for any work team to learn about communication.

Here’s the way it’s played:

Group sits in a circle. The first person whispers to the person on right, something like, “Today is beautiful and I think we will get lots of work done.” The whispering continues to next person until it goes around the circle and comes back to the first participant, who then repeats aloud what they have heard.

It’s usually something like “I hate this damn game and can’t wait to get the hell out of here.”

I have always wondered what happens when words from my mouth travel invisibly over the airwaves to someone else’s ears. I wonder how with such limited communication skills we ever move forward in any relationships, at work or at home.

There’s an old “joke” from my family therapy days: A daughter who never got along with her father is sitting two seats away at a wedding. She meant to say, “pass the salt,” but instead said, “You ruined my life you mean, nasty bastard.” This used to be called a Freudian slip. Now we call it “the way of the world.”

Hummmm!

Today, we are so obsessed with social media and smartphones we spend much of our time super distracted and can’t even hear the honk of a horn or the whistle of an oncoming train.

This video is a modern version of the limitations we have about our newest nemesis, technology, and communication.

When we were tiny babies we learned to talk by mimicking grown-ups. While we learned to talk and walk by some inner mechanisms, most often, no one ever taught us how to listen, what to listen for, and equally important, how to respond.

There are four levels of communication to address:

• CONVERSATION: This is polite, skim the surface way for limited encounters. It’s the smile and nod technique. You meet someone and say “How are you?” and they respond, “Fine thanks.” Easy, breezy and onto what’s next.
• DEBATE: The world of winners and losers shows up here. This is based, at best on facts and innuendos, and at worst on rumors and gossip. It’s a ‘dog eat dog’ area where it’s constant punch and jab and punch and jab.
• DIALOGUE: This is a more mature way of responding where you really work at listening and building on another’s point of view. Everyone uses the bits of information from the others to come to new and better perspectives than you would ever get alone. Work collaboration soars with this method.
• TRUTH TELLING: This takes courage and calmness. Truth sentences are short and do not have an edge of blame to them. It’s about expressing your emotions, so you can be heard and also to reciprocally listen while taking deep breaths and looking for ways to come to a new level of understanding.

Want to get a better handle on how you communicate? Take our communication quiz and begin to listen with unplugged ears.

We all communicate with body and mind. The words we choose, the tone of voice we use, the body language we exhibit, even the speed with which we talk, are all part of communication.