Enhance Communication

Enhancing Your Effectiveness

Are there ways to become better, more efficient at conveying your desires?

Can understanding and implementing revised strategies and tactics really increase your effectiveness? Improve your Results? Enable your Success?

Learn and use these Six Techniques for communicating -

The following are attitude-conveying actions that – when applied - are absolutely guaranteed to bring you better benefits.

The focus placed on when applied is there for a reason. One secret of the truly successful is that they have habituated doing things in a certain way. You can get more of what you want, more easily and more often, when you actually DO these things– as opposed to silently agreeing intellectually that, yes, these are valid points… It is when they are practiced that results begin showing up in your experience.

We’ll get to the “Focus on ME” part in a moment – Right now we’ll focus on:

……When you’re being REACTIVE… (focused on what others want)

1) Repeat for clarification – check back question
When you repeat what the other has said, and ask for agreement (!) you cement in their mind that you are listening to them (and this also gives them an opportunity to improve and/or expand what they wanted to convey). As in, “..so you’re ___, OK?”… “If I understand correctly, you ____, right?”

2) Give them Your UNDIVIDED ATTENTION.
If your focus drifts and you have to guess at what they are trying to get across or have to ask them to repeat themselves, you convey that their concern is just not all that important to you. When you focus exclusively on them, you are conveying that they are - at that moment - the most important thing in the Universe to you, and this dramatically increases your effectiveness.

3) Verify to clarify – right?
In every case there is some information you can give them about themselves that conveys that you know who they are and care enough to get it right (which reinforces that you’re paying attention to them) – you RELATE to them, and this simultaneously let’s them know you are thorough and wanting to get them as close to exactly what they want as is possible -You make a connection. “So that’s ____, right?” (this can work even better as a statement – which is done with vocal inflection – drop your pitch as you close the sentence)

Since you DO want to understand (don’t you?) and get them what they want, so you can have what YOU want, let them know it -by convincing them that you care enough about their concern (by using these three tactics) to make sure you get it right the first time. Bonus tactic – take notes if you can.
Call people by their Names…

..More on Enhancing Effectiveness

What three things are guaranteed to enhance your effectiveness when YOU are the one initiating the conversation?

……When you’re being PROACTIVE... (getting others to focus on YOU)

1) Ask questions!
To grab attention and cut off interruptions– to become instantly “in charge” of the dialogue, ASK A QUESTION. We’ll presume you won’t be rude and interrupt someone with a question– Can you take a moment? Is this a good time? Have you got a minute? Even innocuous, non-threatening questions like these put you in control of the conversation. And if you ever sense control slipping away– you guessed it – Ask another Question.

2) Introduce something NEW!
Everyone loves to feel special – and getting in on new stuff before everyone else is one of the easiest ways to give them that special feeling. Have a REASON for the conversation. People will literally “Light Up” and suddenly get enthusiastic when they think there’s a reason (or even a good excuse) to. Face it – when someone tells you about “same old, same old”, it doesn’t get you excited, does it? Then don’t expect to be effective if you have nothing new to offer. Come up with something! Even if it’s a new twist on an old idea. You’re effectiveness just got a whole lot better because you offered something New and by doing so you captured their ATTENTION!

3) Use Inaudible Audibles (or Body Language)
Body Language conveys an amazing percentage of your message, so if you are physically present, USE it! (study to see what works or simply keep thinking to yourself “I love you” over and over – it works). When conversing long distance (like to the person in the next cubicle, or even further away) USE YOUR VOICE to convey that you care what happens in the conversation (if you don’t care, frankly you’re better off being quiet, because you’re not helping yourself by speaking without paying attention). And Use
PACE – speed up or slow down for effect – practice makes better.
VOLUME – you want to draw them in? – speak softly
TONE & PITCH– want to put them to sleep? Speak in a monotone.
Believe it or not people can hear you smiling. They can also hear if you’re distracted. And they may not consciously process it, but they ARE affected by YOUR MOOD. And most will take even a “phony” smile over a genuine frown any day of the week. So SMILE RIGHT AT THEM !

NO, it may not happen every time we interact with another human. We all have habitual ways of interacting– and we place varied importance on the conversations we have – some are critical, some not so important. But IF we will begin to consciously APPLY the tactics above, we can’t help but become more effective. And the more we practice, the better we’ll get and as we get into the HABIT of Repeating for clarification, Listening Attentively and Conveying we have been focused and we Relate to them, asking Questions to engage folks, Giving them something NEW to think about and Delivering our message with Enthusiasm, we will come to habituate enhanced effectiveness.