One Thing About Your Communications

1. Immature people always want to win an argument, eve at the cost of a relationship. Mature people understand that it's always better to lose an argument and win a relationship."
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3. - Author unknown
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5. Communication and human relations, along with motivation, are leadership traits that often are over looked for their importance in your success. In fact, if you only increased your understanding of effective communication, the role of listening and the role of feelings, and did nothing else, your career and life would be improved.
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7. Take a moment to evaluate, really think about this question, what are the biggest recurring communication challenges in your workplace? Tough question isn't it?
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9. As a certified business coach who spent 39 years as an executive, and 25 of those years as a credit union CEO, I can share with you that tense situations are negatively impacted by the way communication does not happen. With the advantage of 20/20 hindsight, I can think of a lot that should have been done differently.
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11. If you will accept the premise that all communication is meant to elicit some behavioral response, then it follows that we never get the response we want when our communication is poor, and we only sometimes get the response we desire even if our communication is good. Any communication that does not prompt a specific action or emotional response, increased knowledge, or an improved understanding is not effective.
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13. For example, consider a credit union executive who has to endure a channel of communication (almost always one-way) with an examiner... I disliked that part of my old job. My nemesis was a high "C" in his DISC personality, while I was a high "D". Most of you have taken the DISC assessment but as a reminder, a "C" type is reserved and task-oriented, cautious, calculating, concerned, careful and contemplative. While nor polar opposites, a "D" type is outgoing and task-oriented, dominant5, driving, demanding, determined and a decisive doer. We don't sit around comfortably and listen to "C" types pontificate.
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15. If he had known that I didn't understand his requests, or cared enough to ask, he would have realized that he was guilty of poor communication and I had not even heard his request. Now back to you specific organization... how many opportunities are there for miscommunication to occur? Even a simple instance of communication causes conflict and confusion. Multiply that 100 times and you begin to get a picture of the potential for miscommunication in our everyday lives.
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17. There are emotional aspects to communication and it requires more than exchanging information. Your feelings and emotions can change during a conversation and affect the outcomes, or you may simply not like or respect the other person so there is a bias at the beginning. Effective communication asks us to be open, to trust, and have mutual respect and perhaps a shared vision. If you are more determined to win an argument than to retain a relationship, the communication will fail.
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19. Before that next meeting, pause and ask yourself, how you feel about the other person's ideas and how the other people feel about your ideas. You cannot engage in conversation if you are still evaluating the other person's ideas, and the same is true if the other people don't believe your ideas.