People don’t care about what you say, and won’t really listen, until they know you care about them. What you say isn’t as important as what they are hearing.
Two key factors to improve your communication are your “words” (what you say) and the “music” (what you mean: actions, body language, emotions) that supports what you say.
Getting the words and music to have impact means:
- Your words matter a lot – so select them carefully
- How you say the words matters even more
- How people feel when you speak to them determines what they do
- Your actions validate or undermine your words
- How you listen determines what others will or won’t do
- Using body language that reveals empathy and compassion (read my previous blog on this topic for more ideas)
- Remembering what you said and then acting on it
People hear what you say but don’t understand because their reference point, values and experience are different from yours. Just because they don’t agree with you doesn’t make them wrong. Seek to understand them and they may reciprocate.
Aligning the words and music means seeking and listening to understand and then communicating to connect and be understood.
“Seek to understand first then to be understood” Love your Blog Ralph. How we communicate is vital to what we want to convey and how it might or might not be interpreted. Ever since I was exposed to “Managing by Strengths” and understanding how we communicate through our ‘Temperament’ which is something we are born with, it has given me insight into, first to understanding what someone else’s ‘Temperament’ might be before I start a conversation. Not always perfectly understood however one can easily restate what is that we wish to convey so that we are better understood.