All of us know that culture is very important, both in personal life and business scenarios. The way we behave, talk and show up our emotions, are all part of our culture that we saw and followed since our childhood till date. We are comfortable in our culture and our total persona stems from this culture. People in our society and surroundings are all used to the same culture and hence, we are at peace with ourselves and our surroundings as well.
Very rarely, we realize that this peace prevails as we respect each other’s values and ethics, by the way, we interact with them, talk to them. We trust people with their commitments, their words. Communication plays a greater role in our lives than what we give it credit for. We always do what we are requested for willingly compared to when we are ordered to do the same thing. The tone and texture of the communication bring love and respect for the speaker in the minds of the listener. As per Ms Judith Glaser, famous author of “The Conversational Intelligence” there are three levels of conversation:
i) Level 1 - Transactional - how to exchange data and information
ii) Level 2 - Positional - how to work with power and influence
iii) Level 3 - Transformational - how to co-create the future for mutual success.
When we communicate with someone, we need to keep the following in our mind:
i) Be mindful of our conversations and the emotional content we bring - either pain or pleasure... Are we sending friend or foe messages?
ii) Conversations have the ability to trigger emotional reactions - they carry meaning and the meaning is embedded in the listener more than the speaker.
iii) Remember the words we use in our conversations are rarely neutral.
If our conversations don’t blame the listener, either directly or indirectly, the listener will be more receptive to whatever we are trying to convey. We must know the reason for our speech. Are we appreciating someone, or do we want to put someone down? Most of you will agree with me that our interactions, especially in a business environment, are meant towards progressing to a common goal. It is obvious in this scenario we should not talk about something that slows down the desired progress.
However, experience has shown us that despite knowing the above fact, emotions take over the conversation from both the listener and speaker side. This results in a blame game and defensive explanations. This does not help in achieving the desired result, at all. The culture of blame has to be changed in the organizations if we really want to take our business to the next level.
And the simplest way to do it is – Be fully aware of YOUR CONVERSATION.
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