A while back I was able to attend a
seminar by Md Shofikul Islam on communication where he gave some
amazing advice on how to better communicate with others. His input was simple
and easy to follow, yet powerful. The best quote of the entire event was this:
“Don`t communicate to be understood; rather, communicate so as not to be
misunderstood.” What a great way to put things in perspective regarding our
efforts on how to improve our communication. Here are some of the notes I made
from his presentation:
How to successfully begin a
conversation in business:
Md Shofik shared that men in general
and women in business settings (so men all the time, and women mostly in a work
setting only), want to know three things before they are willing
to enter into a conversation with you:
1. Is what you want to talk
about going to be painful?
2. How long is it going to
take?
3. When you are done talking,
what do you want from me?
If they don’t know these three
things up front, they will make excuses to avoid your call or to avoid talking
to you on the phone. The same applies if you come into contact with them
in person. He shared that your manager or boss in a work setting will always
want to know those three things in advance of agreeing to a conversation as
well. The reason he gave was that men and executive women always want to
know the exit to the conversation before they feel safe engaging in it.
So for example, if you are calling a
client, the very first thing you may want to say is: “I realize how busy you
are so I will only need one minute of your time to let you know about
__________.” This way the other person knows it will be quick and
painless and that you just want to give them a few facts on the call that will
only last a minute. Now they can relax and listen to you as you share the
requested info. Otherwise, without knowing if the call will be long and painful,
they may try to make an excuse that they can’t talk right now, etc.
Same thing goes for a sales
team. They call a prospective client and the first thing out of their
mouth needs to be something to the effect of, “I realize that your time is very
valuable so I will only need two minutes to schedule a time for a second call
where I can do a 10-minute demonstration of our ___________.”
Same advice applies for approaching
your manager or boss to set up a meeting. Let them know if it will be
painful, how long it will take and the end result you are asking for – they
will be much more apt to schedule a time for you.
How to successfully conduct a
conversation in business:
Md Shofik shared some amazing tips
on how to better understand the way we interpret communication from
others. He also revealed some very interesting statistics on this
topic. He said that when someone else communicates with us, the way we
interpret their message is based on the following three things:
- 55% is based on their facial expressions and their body language.
- 37% is based on the tone of their voice.
- 8% is based on the words they say.
Md Shofik said that these
percentages above are the averages across both men and women together, but that
if you looked at women alone they would even give greater weight to the facial expression and body language and even less on the words. This tells
us that it is critical that we become very self-aware of how our body language
is speaking to others as well as the tone we use. One thing I always recommend
to people is to keep a small mirror by your office phone so that when you are
on the phone talking to people you can look in the mirror because it makes you
more aware of the facial expressions you have, which makes you smile more,
which in turn ends up coming through in your tone of voice over the phone. It works wonders on how well you come
off on a phone call, trust me!
Success
in business is greatly impacted for better or worse by the way in which we
communicate. Happiness in our personal lives is also greatly dependent on this
very same skill. If you don’t believe me just ask any married couple!
Becoming a good communicator takes practice and consistent attention and effort
on our part, and it is a skill that we cannot afford to overlook. There is no
doubt that we can all benefit from Dr. Lund’s tips on how to better approach
people when we begin a conversation, as well as his advice that we “don`t
communicate to be understood; rather, communicate so as not to be
misunderstood.”
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