Eloquent. Intelligent. Clever. Articulate. It’s a pleasure to listen to a well-spoken person.
Communicating, as opposed to speaking, requires that a message is sent and that a message is received. Do you ever feel like you are just not getting through to someone? You may try to rephrase what you are saying, say it again or remove distractions. All these tactics work on the speaking end, but fail to take into account that in order for the message to be received the person on the receiving end must be ready, willing and able to be communicated to.
The ability to hear and understand is often the easiest to ensure – is the person intelligent, educated on the topic and experienced in the area being discussed? It is the “ready and willing” that can be missing. Are they worried, upset, offended, personally distracted, colored by their experiences, their successes, their failures, and their interactions with you that have gone well or badly in the past?
You communicate with a variety of people on a variety of topics every day. However, I would guess that there are a few key interactions that are most important. Maybe you:
- are trying to ease tension between two team members
- are working with a particular employee in whom you see great potential
- are developing leadership skills within your middle managers
- are trying to decrease turnover in your sales team or front line employees
- wish to access the creative potential of all your employees to improve your bottom line results through increased efficiency or new product development
- desire to improve the customer service offered by your organization
These are the situations where you may wish to spend a bit more time evaluating your effectiveness in communicating:
- Is your message clear? Are you sure what you wish to accomplish? Have you outlined it to the extent that someone else can grasp your full message?
- Are you communicating to the right people? Are they able to lend their expertise, assistance or suggestions in this area? Are you leaving anyone critical out?
- Are they ready and willing to listen and respond? Where are they coming from? What is important to them? How do they see the situation? What is on their mind right now?
To get your message across the best thing you can do is get the other person talking about it.
- What questions can you ask to get them involved in conversation so you can listen to how they view the situation, the options and possible solutions?
- How is this communication making them feel? Worried? Inadequate? Overconfident? Overall, are the two of you communicating or are you talking to a wall?
You can do a lot of talking and very little communicating if you aren’t speaking, asking questions and listening purposefully. Who is it that you find it most difficult to get through to?