“To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and it is as essential to all true conversation.” ~ Chinese Proverb

Listening is the most important part of a true connection in conversation. When we listen, we gain knowledge and understanding about people and circumstances. Everyone wants to feel heard, but most times people prefer to talk rather than listen.
Active listening requires empathy, affirmation and the ability to process and respond without taking over a conversation. When you listen to the world you will know more, build trust and increase your popularity with friends.

Slave To The Cell Phone. How many times have you put a person on hold so that you could answer your cell phone or text a message during a conversation? Not only is this blatantly rude, but you have officially disconnected from the speaker. This behavior makes the speaker feel unimportant and shows you are not committed to the moment. It is disheartening to a speaker to feel like a conversation on the cell phone is more important than a face to face moment. Turn off your cell phone or put it on vibrate answering only in case of an emergency.

80/20. Are you speaking 80% of the time or listening 80% of the time? A good listener will speak 20% of the time and listen 80% of the time. When listening, parrot back what you have heard to show you are paying attention and ask open ended questions so that the speaker will go into further detail about the topic. This kind of affirmation makes people feel heard and you will feel like a hero.

Bad Body Language. If you are visually distracted and darting your eyes around the room, the listener is likely to feel unsupported and will feel your attention is somewhere else. A good listener stands tall or sits up straight, leans into the speaker and makes eye contact. Focusing your eyes on the speaker makes him feel like the center of the universe and validates the conversation.

Enough About Me, Let’s Talk About Me. Don’t be a ball hog in a conversation by taking over with idol chatter about yourself. Sometimes in an effort to show you understand what is being said you may make a connection and inadvertently change the topic or divert attention to yourself. If you feel the need to express a connection with a personal experience, keep it short and simple and allow the speaker to continue leading the conversation until it is your turn.

Overly Critical and Judgmental. If you interrupt the person in the first sentence of the a conversation to pass judgment you have immediately lost the ability to establish a rapport. Looking for errors, being overly critical, and jumping to conclusions by passing judgment are quick ways to disengage from the speaker and leave you solo in the conversation.

Actively listening is a bonus attribute in every relationship. It requires an investment of time and effort to connect with the speaker by being present in the moment and lending your ears completely. This important skill will build rapport, enrich work environments, and ease tension in personal relationships. Give your eyes, ears and heart to another person and reap the reward of making another person feel validated and heard.

Cindy Platt is a parenting specialist who writes at Your Life’s Blueprint. Follow her on Twitter.

Communication is always looked upon as key factor in a person’s overall growth whether in career, personal or professional relationships. Therefore to truly be successful, one of the major techniques that must be mastered is the art of communicating – understanding people and being understood by them.

What is effective communication?

Many people confuse communication with excessive talking. Effective communication is not excess talking. It’s actually talking less, saying more.

It is the art of conveying a message effortlessly which most of the crowd understands and grasps quickly.

I meet a lot of talented people who can deliver excellent results when it comes to their work but struggle when it comes to communication. They can’t express or explain what work they have done in a convincing manner. It’s true that work speaks for itself but we are in the modern world and one need to have minimum level of effective communication. You will get right answers if you ask right questions. Communication helps you to ask right questions. Communication helps you to bridge the gap between what you know and what you want to know.

Let me share a few tips that have helped me immensely:

Breaking the ice

To become an effective communicator, first thing you need to do is to learn to break the ice. You need to get started with something (even by asking a question) whether be it in a meeting or a general discussion. You also need to be a good listener if you want to ask right questions.

Once you break the ice, continue with your normal tone and speak few words about relevant matter. Don’t worry if it doesn’t sound effective at first attempt. Your mind if powerful and it knows how to better your speech next time. It’s important to get started.

Let the words flow

Deliver your words like a flow of water. Speak to the point, be clear and maintain continuity. However you can pause in between to get the feedback of audience if you’re giving a public speech. Try to make your public speech interactive by asking questions or launching an on spot quiz. People love quizzes.

Don’t repeat words

Next thing is enhancing your vocabulary of words. You shouldn’t use same words repeatedly in your speech. Learn new words and add quality to your speech. It also helps to improve your written communication as well. This wont happen overnight but with little effort and consistency, you can enhance your vocabulary.

Pictures speak a thousand words

Effective communication also plays very important when it comes to expressing your ideas if you work in a creative field. Feel free to use few tools to aid your communication (in this case, a presentation) such as a drawing, a flowchart or a PowerPoint presentation.  Picture speak thousands words.

Learn time management

Effective communication needs time management. If you are presenting a research paper, learn to manage the time and set your internal benchmarks for completing certain portions of the paper. Aim to finish the presentation in allotted slot of time – and you won’t be rushed at the last minute, and unable to convey your arguments/points.

Participate

Try attending seminars where a seasoned speaker gives a speech about a topic. Observe his gestures and mannerisms. Observe his tone variations. Start putting your learning into practice. Soon, you will start noticing gradual changes in your communication pattern and an effective communication has positive effective in career and relationships.

Invest your time in learning effective communication.  It gives you unbeatable rewards.

About the Author: Naveen Kulkarni writes about personal development and ideas about productivity at his own blog Winning Ideas.  You can follow him on Twitter.

Don’t Forget to SIGN UP for the PTB newsletter!

Related Articles:

A Smarter Approach To Time Management

Tips For Breaking Bad Habits and Developing Good Habits

If changing who you are is easy, we’d all be doing it, right?

So, when a problem arises, why is our first reaction to focus on how the person involved needs to change? If you find yourself trying to solve problems by focusing on changing people, you have your first clue as to why it’s not working.

Bad communication styles are the root of most problems.  Closing the gap on what people said is the first step to transforming a bad situation into a positive one. See each problem as an opportunity to improve and transform; your business, your relationship…your life!

#1 Email is NOT your friend
Email is a communication tool for tactical instructions.  It’s great for next steps, follow up and task lists.  It is not a good problem solving medium.  Pick up the phone or set up time to work through issues. You could work for hours crafting the most conciliatory message, yet if the person receiving it is having a bad day, their mood translates your meaning and their reaction, taking an already tense situation to a level needed more effort to repair than the original issue. Unfortunately, we fire emails off like machine blasts, jumping precariously from one to the next and not taking time to use our words wisely.

#2 Conversations with the word “you” in it will set YOU up to fail every time
If it’s important fixing a problem, you are lying to yourself that you want the best result if the word “you” is in the communication. Remember issues aren’t people; they only relate to a person. Saying things like, “You make me feel like…” is a key indicator you believe the other person is at fault, which makes it a personal attack no matter how much you dress it up.

Statements like, “I feel,” or, “I am worried,” build rapport.  Statements like, “You make me feel,” do not.  Attach statements to the issue. A proper use of you builds rapport.  “I’m worried…what do you think?” is a great way to initiate collaboration.  Opening the topic for discussion might give you wonderful insights before you even begin to address the issue.  You don’t know, what you don’t know, until you ask.

#3 Learn to sell solutions the way top sales people do:  LAER them!

Listen.  Acknowledge. Explore.  Respond.  Even the best listeners respond too quickly. By jumping straight from listening to responding, you are debating. Debating rhymes with hating for a reason.  Don’t you hate it when you feel people ignore you?  It’s critical to let the other person know you heard them.  How can you do this better?

Acknowledge what they said verbally by clarifying their point, before you respond.  The “LAE” part of the loop can feel never-ending at times.  But guess what?  You are doing it RIGHT.  Now it’s a collaborative conversation, which is critical to putting issues to bed.

Let’s say you have a partner who is overwhelmed and it’s hurting your relationship.  You might approach the situation like this…

YOU: “I’m feeling sad that we don’t have more time for each other; how are you feeling?”

THEM: (perhaps defensively at first) “You know what? I’m doing my best, but I can’t keep up with all the kid’s activity, cook dinner, and keep this family afloat!  I’m drowning.  I get up at 6a.m. and run until I puke— no one even cares.  I can’t work out, the garage is a disaster and I’m exhausted. You want to come home to Utopia, but you have no idea what that takes!”

YOU: (hackles raised, but having read this post), ignore the you in the statement and don’t respond to the attack.  Simply acknowledge their pain, “I know how hard you work to hold this family together.  I appreciate your hard work.  What I hear you saying is you can’t find time to breathe, relax and find a few minutes each day for yourself?”

THEM: (leery of this approach but happy you noticed their efforts) “Thank you.  Yes, I just need a little help.  No one appreciates how hard I’m trying!”

YOU: (smiling and nodding) simply acknowledge (never go to E before A), “I really don’t know how you do it all without having a break down.”  Now explore the issue by saying,  “Do you think we should come up with a way that we all can pitch in and create a space so you can breathe, too?”

THEM: (relaxing, trusting you) “Well…I hadn’t thought about that.  But yeah, I think if we did x, y and z….”

YOU: (acknowledging the idea) “You know, I hadn’t thought of that.”  Now explore with a question again, “So you think if we did x, y, z we’d be able to streamline better?”

After flushing out their thoughts you can finally respond, “I’m so glad we discussed this.  I like your ideas and I have some ideas as well. Would you like to hear them?”

Again, by listening, acknowledging what they said, and validating you care by exploring their ideas further, state your opinion. Now the floor is yours to solve the problem, with a come-together-let’s-get-it-done attitude.

You can apply LAER to any situation.  Stop when you catch yourself responding first.  It’s a hard habit to break, but worth it.  And please, remember email is a lazy form of communication (so is texting).  At best, it moves your crap pile to their crap pile, until they start flinging it back.  Quicker solutions come when you dump email, use LAER and learn to compartmentalize people issues from system issues.

Last by not least; use my daddy’s 20-Minute-Rule.

If you talk about the same employee longer than 20 minutes, you need a new employee.  So, wouldn’t that translate to the personal space as well?  If you keep talking or stewing about someone or something for longer than 20 minutes, it’s time for a state of the union to make changes.  (Just don’t forget your new friend LAER.)

If you rank your relationship higher than your “ideas” or opinions, you’ll transform your relationship to one where problem solving becomes the catalyst for change in your life on every level.

Lori Taylor is a direct marketing specialist and personal development writer. Follow her on Twitter.

As mentioned before, I like to focus on receptive and expressive intelligence, which I call CQ. Passive Aggressive Communicators (whom I call the PACs) have a low dose of CQ and can often trigger your own CQ to plummet as well. It takes a great deal of skill, self-empowerment, and candor to remain unfettered and productive around PACs.

My way of dealing with these people is simple: when they are being slippery and elusive, I know I need to be forceful and direct. This cuts through their unclear communication and forces them to speak honestly. In the end, it’s better for everybody involved.

You know you’re in the presence of a PAC if you start to think to yourself:

1. “What is this person getting at? Why won’t they just say it?”
2. “I don’t understand what this person is saying, but he certainly is talking quite a bit.”
3. “When will she get to the point? She’s been floating around it for over ten minutes now.”
4. “I need some clarification before I can commit to this person, but he seems so enthusiastic. Does he understand what he’s proposing?”

This can be frustrating to no end. There you are, standing with a drink in your hand, listening intently to someone you only just met, and they are weaving a tale that doesn’t make a bit of sense. Still, you were drawn to them initially and you don’t want to throw away what may very well be a fruitful interaction. How do you respond? Try something like this:

1. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ve lost me. What is it you’re getting at?”
2. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I don’t understand. I have a few questions before you continue. [Questions]
3. “Hold on. I’m sorry, but I’m a little confused. In one sentence, what do you want me to know?
4. “That’s all well and good, but before I make any promises or commitments, I need clarification in a few areas. [Questions]

The important thing to remember is that passive aggressive people get wrapped up in a lifestyle of never being straightforward. Don’t let them pull you into that. Responding assertively to them may be unexpected, but your way of communicating – clearly, effectively – will leave no wiggle room for them to guess at what you’re saying. And, if anything, asserting yourself will raise you in their esteem as someone who is not interested in nonsense. That reputation is more valuable and comforting than all the fluffy chitchat in the world.

Now, you may have noticed that in 3 of my suggested responses, apologizing is always one of the first things I do. That’s because, as useful as candor is, compassion is an important balancing factor. In all those situations I could have said something like this:

1.  
   1. “Stop. What are you trying to say? Just spit it out.”
   2. “Hold on. You’ve been saying nothing but nonsense. What are you getting at?”
   3. “Get to the point already.”
   4. “Despite all your grandstanding, I’m still not sure if you’re serious. Do you understand what you’re proposing?”

Saying things like that can burn a bridge that you may want to cross later. Balancing out your candor with a dose of compassion is the best of both worlds: you’ve filled in the gap of your understanding and avoided being rude. By being compassionate, you’re being respectful to someone who you may have, admittedly, judged incorrectly. You cannot know a person’ whole story in a single night, but neither can you afford to waste your evening.

If you’re ever caught in a quagmire of someone speaking passive aggressively (PACs), do not hesitate to be assertive and to communicate clearly and effectively (CQ). You’ll get farther and it will save you a very unwelcomed headache later.

I hope this has been helpful to you.

Be well.

When communicating something difficult, or even something simple, the delivery comes from the lips of one person’s personal point-of-view. It’s not about opinion, it’s not about truth, it’s not about being wrong or right, it is only a phrase born from the combined forces of an individual’s heart, mind, education, socialization, culture, and personal experiences.

They have bitterness in their heart, there’ll be traces of bitterness. If there is hurt, traces of hurt. If there is love, you’ll sense that too. If they’ve read a lot about psychology, science, technology, history, religion, then those influences might also be felt or expressed. Whether a high school dropout, or a university grad, there is little difference. Education takes many forms in life, and many people pursue education – learning new things, enhancing their ability, knowledge, etc., and you’ll discover these flavours influencing their words. Along with all this, the relationships that influenced will have left more to further colour the point-of-view – the perspective – and now the jambalaya is almost complete.

Delivering a query, statement, or anything at all verbally, the risk doesn’t end with speaking. All that has been described about the speaker shaping and giving voice to those words is equally true of the listener. The heart, mind, education, socialization, culture, and personal experiences of the listener will also colour how they hear and what they interpret for meaning. I see it happen far too often. I’ve stumbled in articulating and finding the words that will empower the freedom we both look for, combined with equal portions of win-win. Sometimes, that olive branch is so elusive.

The smart people know it is still there, and continue striving to build the bridge of understanding. Though not at the expense of their well-being, or the others involved. Everything in life – from relationships to work – is a two-way street. Aren’t we all looking to be involved in two-way streets with most things in life? I admit, I try to get my-way street sometimes too, though most of the time, I’m into the win-win. Communication, asking questions, listening, and enquiring deeper are the only roads I know to work consistently.

Filters represent the tint from which we view life, the interference that distorts our audio, and the perspectives that taint our language. I’ve worked through many, and I still have many to recognize and grow through. We’ve all been doing this for a long time at varying rates and by varying degrees. A failure to recognize and control these impulses, perspectives, and opinions can have a negative effect on our relationships due to communication breakdown.

Years ago, I was adamant about a number of values and beliefs that I held dear. Today, I have a number of different ones, and some still the same. Then, I would tell my opinion and repeat myself over and over again, thinking that I had to get the other persons agreement in order to know they understood and accepted what I had to say, or what I believed. Little did I know, I could often be right, and the other person could still be right. It isn’t always just one avenue to truth.

I like to learn through experience, both seeing and doing. I have a good friend who is amazing with his mind and he loves to read. He remembers everything, from theories, book titles, authors, speakers, philosophers, and on and on. He blows me away with the level of knowledge he retains, where in my case, I retain more of the understanding and processes as opposed to all these detailed facts. In conversation, we make a complimentary pair because we recognize that our vision of what we see is from a different lens, and that these different lenses actually support each other and push each of us deeper along our path of learning and integration.

Sometimes, our differences can lead to some frustration. However, I’ve also learned that I can hold back reacting and sit on my observations of the moment for a day or two. What I discover is that as I reflect I can see how we’re saying the same thing even though it sounds or was understood differently. Then we meet again and I explain some of the insights I’ve gained to further explore that subject matter that created a disagreement. This brings both of us to a bigger place than we were before with what we know, how we know, and it enriches and broadens our perspective.

Often, a disagreement is not based upon valid fact, it’s an opinion based upon a previous experience or information picked up along the way. What is often not realized is that there is often more to discover. This isn’t about the first truth or realization being wrong, it is simply that there are more realities than just the one we each live. Incorporating more experiences from more people broadens the mind, opens the eyes, and increases opportunities for relationship and success.

At least, it feels right to me at this moment, and maybe there is more. For the most part, I endeavour to be curious and open-minded about other peoples’ lives and ideas. I do wish to share my own as well, and hope they would eagerly listen as well. Too often, this is not the case and a communication breakdown occurs. This is also where relationships and conversations go shallow in my world, versus the rich experiential relationships, where we are rewarding each others’ curiosities.