steps to communicating successfully by alan gillies preview

Steps to Communicating Successfully By Alan Gillies

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Steps to Communicating Successfully

By Alan Gillies

W W W . L 2 L G R O U P . C O M

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Steps to Communicating Successfully Copyright © 2009 by Alan Gillies All rights reserved. No part of this book may be produced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. L2LGroup. Tel: +44 (0) 844 873 3170 Fax: +44 (0) 844 873 3171 Email: [email protected] http://www.L2LGroup.com

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C O N T E N T S About the Author ............................................................................................................ 4 Chapter 1 ......................................................................................................................... 5

Effective communication .................................................................................. 6

Chapter 2 ....................................................................................................................... 11 Active Listening .................................................................................................12

Chapter 3 ....................................................................................................................... 17

Building Rapport ................................................................................................18

Chapter 4 ....................................................................................................................... 21 Conscious Communication .............................................................................22

Chapter 5 ....................................................................................................................... 25

Space or Proxemics ..........................................................................................26

Chapter 6 ....................................................................................................................... 29 Body language ..................................................................................................30

Chapter 7 ....................................................................................................................... 34

Map of the World ..............................................................................................35

Chapter 8 ....................................................................................................................... 38 Metaphors and Analogies ...............................................................................39

Chapter 9 ....................................................................................................................... 41

Trust ......................................................................................................................42

Chapter 10 ..................................................................................................................... 45 Transmission of Meaning ..................................................................................46

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 49

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About the Author

Alan Gillies has spent 16 years in the Pharmaceutical Industry working in the UK and Internationally, having held a number of Senior Positions, some of which he had responsibility for an excess of 250 Staff. He is a qualified Master Practitioner of NLP, certified by the Society of NLP set up by Dr Richard Bandler, one of the founders of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. His company, L2LGroup, provides Consulting, Training and Coaching Services on a wide variety of topics such as Marketing, Business Planning, Communication and Negotiation Skills to many sectors including Pharmaceutical Companies and Healthcare Providers. Alan also works as a Coach and Mentor to SME Owners and Entrepreneurs as well as providing support on a voluntary basis to assist young business owners via his involvement with the Princes Scottish Youth Business Trust. Previe

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E F F E C T I V E C O M M U N I C A T I O N

Chapter 1

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C H A P T E R O N E

Effective Communication Communication is all about the transmission of meaning to others. What is important is that 'meaning' is transferred. In other words, it is important that the other person understands what we want them to understand, and that they understand the intended meaning. More precisely, purposeful communication is the transmission of intended meaning to others, and implied in this is: That the sender of the communication has clear knowledge and

understanding of the meaning he wishes to convey, and That the receiver interprets the message in such a manner that he

receives the intended meaning. Hence for effective communication the sender must determine the purpose of the communication and use words which have the same meaning for sender and receiver. All too often other pressures get in the way, and rather than focusing on what communication is all about (i.e. The recipient of our communication

Communication is something that we all do, but whether we are as effective as we could be is another matter.

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understanding what we are looking to get across), we settle for knowing that we have said what we want to say. Effective communication is not about ensuring that we have said what we want or need to say, it is about ensuring that the meaning of our communication has been understood. In our jobs and our lives, if we learn to communicate effectively, there will be many benefits not just for ourselves personally, but for those that we communicate with as well. The purpose of this book is to outline three simple steps, and if we work on applying them consistently, we will ensure that all of our communications are as effective as they can be. Improving communication will make us more effective and efficient, and it will do this by ensuring that we get across what we need to - with it being fully understood .This will dramatically reduce misunderstandings where we have to repeat ourselves or our tasks because we or others didn't fully understand what was required in the first place. In a medical situation, a key challenge is often to get patients to comply with treatment or to take ownership for their condition or treatment pathway. Effective communication will improve compliance and shared responsibility by improving patients understanding of their illness and their treatment and WHY it is important for them to follow the guidance of their Health Care Professional. In all walks of life, being able to get across effectively what we need to - the first time, will greatly increase our efficiency and effectiveness in many ways. Talking or speaking is generally easy, while COMMUNICATING is much harder. Like many things the basic principles are not difficult, but consistently putting them into practice can be challenging. In the modern world where we are all pressured by time, performance targets and the constant stress of things that initially were supposed to make life easier for us - whatever did we spend all our time doing before email and mobile phones!! It can be easy to focus on just saying what we need to say and leaving the responsibility with others to ensure that they have understood. If we want to be effective communicators, we must take ownership for our communication and make sure that we are understood and not just heard.

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There is no doubt that the principles we will look at in this book are unlikely to be new to most, or indeed all of you, as the challenge comes in putting them into practice on a daily basis DESPITE the other difficulties we face. However, I guarantee that if you put in the necessary effort and practice, then not only will these principles eventually become second nature, but they will make you far more effective in all walks of life that require effective communication. In order to be considered effective, any communication has to be fully understood by the recipient or recipients of the communication. This is even more crucial in situations where the topic or concepts are or can be technical in nature, and also where it is crucially important that there are no misunderstandings or grey areas. In these sorts of situations – some of which could be life threatening, then it is our responsibility to ENSURE that we have been understood and to satisfy ourselves that this is in fact the case. There are a number of ways to do this and to help us confirm that we have been understood and that we have communicated effectively. We will look at these as we go through the rest of this book, which will focus on outlining the 3 Simple Steps that will help you to communicate effectively. It may sound simple - but often, people forget how to listen, and instead they just choose to 'hear' the message instead of really understanding what is actually being said. If the meaning of the message is distorted due to a misunderstanding on your part, it will result in miscommunication. The rule of thumb is, listen first to what is being said, and then formulate your response from there. We should aim to listen more than we talk, and to use techniques such as open questions to get others to open up to us. As I am sure we are all aware, Open Questions start with “What, Where, Why, How etc, and they are generally effective at getting information from people. Open questions have the following characteristics: They ask the respondent to think and reflect.

They will give you opinions and feelings.

They hand control of the conversation to the respondent.

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This makes open questions useful in the following situations: Usage Example: follow-on from closed questions, to develop a conversation and open-up someone who is rather quiet. What did you do on your holidays? How do you keep focused on

your work? To find out more about a person, their wants, needs, problems, and so on. What's keeping you awake these days? Why is that so important to

you? To get people to realize the extent of their problems (to which, of course, you have the solution) – I wonder what would happen if your customers complained even

more? Rob Jones used to go out late. What happened to him? To get them to feel good about you, by asking after their health or otherwise demonstrating human concern about them. How have you been after your operation? You're looking down.

What's up? Closed questions also have their place, and generally, they have the following characteristics: They give you facts.

They are easy to answer.

They are quick to answer.

They keep control of the conversation with the questioner.

This makes closed questions useful in the following situations: Usage Example: Ask opening questions in a conversation, as it makes it easy for the other person to answer, and doesn't force them to reveal too much about themselves.

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Its great weather, isn't it? Where do you live? What time is it?

For testing their understanding (asking yes/no questions). This is also a great way to break into a long ramble. So, you want to move into our apartment, with your own bedroom

and bathroom? For setting up a desired positive or negative frame of mind in them (asking successive questions with obvious answers either Yes or No). Are you happy with your current supplier? Do they give you all that

you need?

Would you like to find a better supplier? For achieving closure of an intended persuasion (seeking yes to the big question) - If I can deliver this tomorrow, will you sign for it now?

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steps to communicating successfully by alan gillies preview

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