Developing your communication skills to become more
effective can be a tricky thing.
After all, it is difficult to stop and analyse you
communication with someone midway through that face to face conversation or
when you are on the phone. If you stop suddenly to try to process the way
things are going the other person will wonder why you have stopped and, in a
prolonged silence, they will, inevitably, fill that silence by saying something
else which will throw you off your train of thought anyway.
Many communication experts have honed their knowledge
through years of study. Body language experts, for example, have studied
endless hours of footage that they have been able to watch, rewind and watch
again to gain their insights, naturally this makes them able to spot how people
are using body language almost instantaneously but for the rest of us, trying
to analyse body language while talking to someone is near impossible without
having to disengage from that conversation, which, in turn, means we lose
something from that communication.
Communication is something that happens in the moment, it is
instinctive. How many times have we walked away from an encounter and thought
to ourselves “I wish I had said that not that”
One way to develop yourself is to take one particular theme
at a time and taking time alone to reflect on that theme. So here is a
suggestion for that theme and a challenge for you to complete it!
A challenge for the week.
Newton’s Third Law of Physics tells us that for every action
there is an equal and opposite reactions. If we think about this in terms of
communication we can develop our own sense of how effectively we communicate
and how communicating with others impacts on us.
For example, think about a manager who hands a folder to an
employee and says “this needs doing immediately”.
On a simple level that action means that the equal and
opposite reaction is that the employee has to stop doing whatever they were
currently engaged in.
[For the pedants out there who say “but what if they were
doing nothing?”. They still have to stop doing nothing in order to do
something, besides if they were doing nothing what on earth are you paying them
for!]
On a more complex level, different employees will react
differently to the action demanded. One may enthusiastically relish being given
the challenge whilst another may inwardly worry at the amount of work they had
to get completed by the end of the day.
The crux of the matter is that every communication action
elicits some form of reaction, albeit not necessarily a scientifically equal and
opposite one.
So the challenge for the week is for you to identify the
reactions to you communication actions. Obviously it would be impossible for us
to analyse every single interaction we have, so the aim this week is to pick
something every day, a team meeting, a performance review or an appointment
with a customer, something that is in your diary and before that meeting think
about the type of reactions you want to your communication actions.
Then, following the meeting, reflect on the actions and
reactions that took place. Did you get the reactions you wanted or expected
from you communication actions? If not how could you change your actions next
time. It is also equally important to reflect on your reactions to what other
people said, did they fill you with doubt or have you nodding enthusiastically
in agreement?
The more opportunities we get to take time to reflect on
communication the better we can develop our own sense of communication when we
are in the middle of it so there is no need to stop midway through but we can
analyse as we go.
One way of learning is to share thoughts and experiences so
I have created a Facebook Page for you to add you thoughts and comments on your
communication actions and reactions (link below)
So take the challenge this week, share your experiences and,
most importantly, become a more effective communicator.
