Tag: mindful listening

The Secret of Interpersonal Communication

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Becoming an effective communicatorEffective Communication

I am sure that you have already attended a communications training of some sort in your life; be it to improve your communication skills, your team collaboration or to learn particular tools and methods that were supposed to enable you to become a better, more effective communicator.

As I wrote in an earlier post, communications is much more than its mere verbal aspect let alone a set of tools and measures:

Following a study of Albert Mehrabian, an American Psychologist, who looked into which aspects of communications are relevant to the actual understanding of information thus to effectively communicating:

  • The verbal aspect only accounts for 7 % (hence the content of what you are saying)
  • 38 % come from the paraverbal aspect of communication (intonation, cadence, volume or pace ) and surely not surprising:
  • 55 % from the non-verbal aspects.

BeatenbergOver the last weekend, I have been exploring a technique called “Insight Dialogue” which was recommended to me and really is mindfulness and awareness applied to interpersonal communications. While you pause and relax, you provide yourself with the opportunity to tune into your own feelings and emotions, stepping out of the habitual trigger-response mechanism and opening up, allowing (mutual) space for response rather than reactivity. While you trust what emerges and listen deeply, you finally propose an answer or input, which is truly beneficial to your counterpart or dialogue partners. You remain integer and compassionate not being entangled in emotions or feelings and clinging to words wanting to steer the conversation your way.

What a great way of connecting with each other and having a meaningful conversation. I am now even more passionate about including these techniques into my training, coaching and consulting work. Insight Dialogue certainly offers a wonderful way towards working on Self-Awareness and Management, Social Awareness and Relationship-Management all at the Center of Emotional Intelligence thus at the heart of Mindful Leadership.

Mindful listening: 10 easy tips

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“Spend your leisure time in cultivating an ear attentive to discourse, for in this way you will find that you learn with ease what others have found out with difficulty.”- Isocrates on Goodreads.com.

Mindful Listening
As a new week is about to start, let me share some really simple but extremely important tips for effective, mindful listening with you:

  1. Face the speaker and maintain eye contact
  2. Be attentive, but relaxed
  3. Keep an open mind
  4. Listen to the words and try to picture what the speaker is saying
  5. Don’t interrupt and don’t impose your “solutions”
  6. Wait for the speaker to pause to ask clarifying questions
  7. Ask questions only to ensure understanding
  8. Try to feel what the speaker is feeling
  9. Give the speaker regular feedback
  10. Pay attention to what is not said, to non-verbal cues

Enjoy your week!

Jenny

Photo credit: sadmafioso / Foter / CC BY-NC

The fight for attention in communication

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listening

Lately, I had again the ‘pleasure’ of sitting in front of people who were checking their various devices and answering e-mails whilst talking to me. I don’t know how you react and feel in such a situation but I can say that it leaves me:

  • Angry
  • Disappointed
  • With a sentiment of ‘emptiness’

Whereas with people you know and you usually interact with, you can easily voice your discontent in a nice and polite way, with people you don’t know, this is quite more delicate. Especially in a situation where your counterparts are in fact assessing or testing you, you don’t want to risk getting bad marks or being excluded from further processes. And still, the fact of not being attentively listened to actually has a very ‘sour aftertaste’, where you find yourself actually wondering whether what you had to tell was

  • Interesting
  • Worth being told

You might even think that maybe your performance or appearance was not as it should have been.

Let me tell you something: this is completely untrue! Every human being deserves being listened to, no matter what he or she has to tell. When setting up an appointment, even a telephone one, you ought to show respect and attention. It cannot be stressed enough how the course of interaction can be altered and positively affected if basic rules are understood and put into practice.

So, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation as described above, whatever the context and the circumstances, you might want to pause for a moment until you get the attention of your counterpart and politely ask for quality time. It will give you satisfaction and a sense of value even though you might not be able to change other people’s future behaviour.

How to survive the holiday period

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It is that time of the year again… You are going to see people who you might only see once a year; you will have to talk (a lot) and you will normally have to eat (a lot). You will also hand out presents and receive some back wondering why you always get underwear in the strangest colours and sizes… Remember that more and foremost this period of the year should be one where you can re-connect with yourself. Try to find some time to escape, if only for a couple of hours and:
– switch your multiple devices off (the world will still be turning without you even if some people say that our last days are close)
– relax
– breathe
– watch the people surrounding you and wish them happiness.
– stop running and enjoy the present moment
– take the time to listen to people and be there for them.
It can be as simple as that!
Happy holiday season from rainy Switzerland, Jenny

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Addendum – About cultural types, European culture and intercultural competence

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As an addendum to my last post on cultural types, European culture and intercultural competence I have at least to say a word about languages. With a smile I have to admit that thankfully nobody ever made me learn Esperanto[1]… what a funny thought that is: having one European common language. But: could a language really exist without having a cultural background? Interesting question indeed as in the common theories[2], language is determined by culture but culture also by language. It is true though that the more languages you speak the easier it gets when we speak about my particular domains of expertise at least which are communications, leadership and coaching. When being able to talk to your international team members in their language or to coach people in their language of origin, it truly makes a difference. Not only will you find that people open up easier but you are also not confronted to the barriers of communicating in a foreign language, as non-natives very often have difficulties to formulate their inner thoughts, worries or motivations in another language.

So, not only does a multicultural and multi-facet background give me access to intercultural skills but also the ability of speaking and thus being able to communicate in a variety of languages. This becomes very relevant when looking into emphatic listening[3] or mindful conversation[4] for example. If the ‘receiver’ of your message doesn’t understand what you actually mean and doesn’t ask (depending on the culture your interlocutor actually comes from, it might even be considered as rude to ask questions), the communication process will not function adequately resulting in misunderstandings and more.

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If you now apply this to digital means of communication like e-mail and such where it is even harder to communicate what you want to say – as you only have words and the tone of these to express yourself – plus you communicate in a language which is not your main one, you can imagine how difficult transmitting any message gets. From my experience, I honestly have to say that most of the problems arising in multicultural leadership/working teams stem from misunderstandings or misinterpretations from what has been originally said or demanded. In such an environment it is thus of crucial importance to pay particular attention to the original culture, language and behaviors of people so that a common ground for discussion and exchange can be found! And: I don’t think that Esperanto would have solved these problems J

[1] Please see Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto for reading more about what Esperanto is!

[2] See for example this excellent article in the Wall Street Journal “Lost in translation”: http://tinyurl.com/2bmmtfd or this link on language and culture: http://tinyurl.com/9pt2ldz

[3] As explained in my blog entry on ‘the power of listening’ for example.

[4] According to Chade-Meng Tan, mindful conversation consits of three components : listening, looping and dipping. See his book “Search Inside Yourself” p. 60-62.