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What Makes a Great Communicator

Communication is not just about being understood it's also about understanding.  Stephen Covey says "You need to understand before you can be understood." So you need to understand not only what the other person is saying in words, but also understand what they are saying through their body language and  their emotional responses and from this have the ability and skills to adapt your communication style to attain the outcome you required.

When you can start to communicate with this in mind that is when your communication skills will develop beyond your expectations.

A great communicator will hold a number of skills, understanding, attributes and knowledge:

The  chart shows that to become the best at communicating we need to understand and posess the skills and control of all six areas above:

Skills & Education:

Understanding  why people do not understand you. Being aware of the filters and distortion that your message must pass through before it can be understood and having the skill to listen and percieve what is being said in response to your message.  More details can be found in our earlier Blog.

Neurological Understanding:   

The skills and education is what we describe as the "Rules" but to play the game effectivly, like any game, you need to be able to read your opponent. What makes a great Poker player?  Is it someone who knows all the statistics of the cards and has a great memory or is it the one that can read the other players? have you ever watched the body language or wondered why in some professional games the players wear dark glasses? The best players are the ones that can a) Read their opponents and b) manage to control themselves from "giving away" what cards they have in their hand.

You need to know how the brain works to be able to read the subconscious messages shown and in doing so you will be able to manage your own.

The brain controls everything we do.  The recent growth in research and  studies into areas such as Emotional and Social intelligence is giving us an amazing amount of knowledge to not only create great communicators but also the knowledge and understanding to create great leaders, great salesman, great politicians, great parents, great husbands and wifes, great teachers... Infact whatever you do by learning, understanding and developing the above six areas you will become significantly better at what ever you do, you may even become a great poker player!

In our next blog we will be looking further into the science and communication relevance of EQ - Emotional Intelligence.

 Research carried out by Daniel Goleman on Emotional intelligence from What Makes a Leader, quotes: “Where senior managers had a certain critical mass of emotional intelligence, their divisions outperformed yearly earnings goals by 20%. Division leaders without that critical mass underperformed by almost the same amount”  Ref click here

Effective Communication Skills

To become skilled in communicating proficiently requires training and an understanding. You need to know how to send your message, be aware of why the message may not be recieved as expected, be able to activley listen to the response and through this whole process be aware of the non-verbal signals:

To become a great communicator you need to adhere to the following formulas and both learn and understand everything that affects your communication:

Before we begin to communicate a message, we need to consider what we want to say, how the message will be communicated and that what we say needs to be accurate.

1.       Know what you want to say, understand the message you want to send and what outcomes you want to receive.

2.       Decide the most appropriate method to communicate your message – effective communication relies heavily on the media you use i.e. would you negotiate with someone over email?

3.       Communicate your message focusing on being positive, accurate and truthful.

By understanding the filters between you and the receiver you can increase the success of the message being fully understood. There are five main categories of filters (or distortion) that you will need to contend with when communicating:

1. Distractions
2. Thinking Styles
3. Assumptions
4. Closed Minds
5. Priorities

Communication is not a completed transaction until the message has been fully understood. Therefore it is your responsibility as the sender to confirm that the message has been received.

 

Through the skill of active listening you will learn how to more effectively decipher people’s responses and quickly come to an agreed confirmation on what has been communicated.

“The problem with communication is the illusion that

it has been accomplished." - George Bernard Shaw

At the end of the day it is our brain that deciphers how we send and perceives how we receive the information.  It is said that 70% of our decision making is made subconsciously.

The Basal Ganglia is the part of the brain that creates feelings but this part of the brain has no neuron connections to the Verbal  Cortex (voice) so when you have just met someone or interviewed a candidate, you find that your are unable to clearly explain why you liked that person or selected a particular interviewee  .  Have you ever heard yourself say  “It’s a gut feeling that I can’t explain”?  By understanding the brain you will be able to understand why we communicate the way we do.  

Why do you connect with some people but not others? The importance of both Emotional and Social intelligence when communicating with people needs to be understood to help you make that better connection with the people around you.

To find out how we can help you and your organisation to communicate more effectivley with positive outcomes please contact us today on:  08 6262 4424
or email info@cronincommunication.com

"I am delighted to endorse Phill as I have personally reaped the results of his leadership sessions. In particular I have been made aware of practical insights into public leadership presentations. Knowing and understanding the physical responses of other leaders and people. His insights into personal discipline procedures and various ways in which to make my 'time' more valuable have been extremely productive. I wholeheartedly support and endorse Phill and trust that you will make the commitment, that I have now made, to regularly access his professionalism and experience to increase my personal political development and become more effective in my chosen vocation." Ian M Britza, MLA, Member for Morley

Communication On: Leadership

Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal

There are thousands of articles written on Leadership, this “Communication On” series focuses on the importance of where and how communication fits into the subject of Leadership.

Stephen Covey: “communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.”

Peter Drucker : "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers." To gain followers requires influence

John C Maxwell "leadership is influence - nothing more, nothing less."

Warren Bennis : "Leadership is a function of knowing yourself, having a vision that is well communicated, building trust among colleagues, and taking effective action to realize your own leadership potential."

Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester : "the process of influencing the behaviour of other people toward group goals in a way that fully respects their freedom." The emphasis on respecting their freedom is an important one, and one which must be the hallmark of Christian leadership. Jesus influenced many diverse people during his ministry but compelled no-one to follow Him.

As you can see from those who study and teach Leadership they all summarise using the skills of Communication and Influence.

Leadership requires the aptitudes of a number of skill sets, not limited to:

· Courage

· Focus

· Planning

· Excellence

· Attraction

· Support

· Monitor

· Reward

· Confidence

· Positivity

There are skills that can be taught such as planning, monitoring and rewarding, even the ability to become more focused can be taught, but areas such as Attraction, Confidence and Courage are developed by having Effective Communication Skills.

By becoming a skilled communicator and communicating positively, people will pay attention to you. By becoming a skilled listener you will grow your ability to influence people. This naturally will build your confidence and give you the courage to move forward with the knowledge that you now have the support of your people and the organisation behind you.

Communication skills are invaluable to a leader and therefore when planning your leadership training a strong focus should be made in this area, else you will be at the risk of diminishing any leadership programs you have in place.

Without the ability to effectively communicate your goals and visions your efforts will go in vain.

Research:

In the 2002 research 'What's Working™, The Mercer Survey of People at Work', Mercer asked a broad base of US and UK workers to share their attitudes and perceptions on a range of workplace issues including leadership communication.

A key finding of the survey was that among those employees who said their organisation does a good job of keeping workers informed; only 15 per cent said they were seriously considering leaving their organisation and 6 per cent said they were dissatisfied with their organisation. On the other hand, among those employees who said their organisation does not keep them informed, over 40 per cent were considering leaving and 42 per cent said they were dissatisfied.

Irrespective of whether an organisation chooses to have the 'hands-on' expertise of a communication professional, it is vital that leaders build a bridge of understanding through effective communication and develop communication skills to support this. Interestingly, the survey showed communication professionals believed that 81.6 per cent of senior managers recognise the importance of communication; however, only 35 per cent of respondents believed that senior management recognise that communication was a key element of their job. Additionally, not one respondent indicated that they strongly agreed with the statement that 'senior managers (in their organisation) are highly effective communicators' and only 37 per cent of respondents from top performing organisations agreed.

Even more significant, 80 per cent of respondents from poorly performing organisations indicated that managers from their organisation were not rewarded for communicating effectively, highlighting a lack of commitment from these organisations to developing critical management competencies. Top performing organisations fared better with 26 per cent of respondents indicating that their managers were rewarded for communicating effectively, but there is still room for improvement. This is a call to action for business leaders as we all know that what gets rewarded gets done.

Communication Skills 101 – Sending your Message

Communication is a two way street involving sending and receiving the message. To be the most effective communicator involves a number of procedures, skills and awareness. In this blog we will start to focus on the requirement of sending the message and later will look into what is required to effectively receive a message.

To communicate your message out you will need to follow these steps.

1. Send the message:

a. Be clear about what you want to convey

b. Use the most appropriate media to transmit the message

c. Understand the “noise” filters that the message will pass through

2. Confirm the message:

a. Actively listen to the response

b. Clarify any misunderstandings

c. Confirm the message and next course of action

Be Clear

Firstly you need to be clear in your own mind about what the message is that you want convey. You need to be accurate about the facts that you want to get across and what action, response or outcome you want to obtain from the receiver?

Appropriate media

When communicating you need to consider the most appropriate method to convey your message. If you want to explain how to put together an IKEA cabinet, you would send instructions via a document rather than trying to explain the procedure over the phone. If you were trying to resolve an issue with a work colleague a face to face meeting or phone call would be more appropriate and effective than say an email.

Noise filters

Noise filters are what your message must pass through when the message is being received, this falls into five main categories that we will look into in future Blogs . These include areas such as Thinking Styles, assumptions, distractions, biases and more.

Active Listening

Active listening is another very important skill that is required when completing the communication cycle. I will go into this in more detail in future blogs. Listening to what the receiver has to say about your message will help to steer you to understanding that your message has been received as you wanted.

Clarify

From the receivers response you have the opportunity to clarify and alternatively explain your message until it is understood.

Confirm

Finally you should now be able to confirm that all parties have understood the message and what outcomes are required.

Why do people not understand what I am saying?

It's frustrating, again you thought that you had clearly explained what needed to be done, by when and by what method.

So what went wrong? It didn't get done as you wanted, it was late, it was the wrong location, the wrong time... Again your head drops into your hands and you rock your head from side to side, "It must be me? Why does this always happen, why don't people follow my instructions, what am I doing wrong.....?"

Communication is a Process, and one that follows the same heritage that Claude Shannon a senior engineer from Bell Technologies first produced in 1949. The simple premises is that communication goes like this:

1. The Source - What is the message/content you want to communicate
   
2. Encode - How are you going to communicate the message


3. Noise - What filters will distort the message


4. Decode - How is the message interpreted by the receiver


5. Receiver - What is the final message that is received

The skill in becoming an effective communicator is by understanding the Theory of Communication, understanding the Rules and then putting into Practice what you have learnt.

In my next blog I will look into the "5 Filters of Distortion" this is the noise that we need to communicate through so that our message receives the minimal amount of distortion and has the best chance of being clearly understood.