Become a human again — V: Be a good communicant.
Being a human is also about knowing how to communicate with people, and we are all doing it wrong sometimes. Our brain is playing with us.
In case you have missed the last part:
If we all doing it wrong, what is communication?
Communication is about instant reactions.
Communication is about postures.
Communication is about voice.
Communication is about eye contact.
Communication is about humility.
20% of communication is the content.
80% of communication is about:
- interpretation (personality, context),
- tournures (langage),
- means (voice, message app),
- quality (volume, distance, vocabulary),
- satellites (gestures, noises).
You can’t efficiently send a message without taking care of all these metrics.
It’s time to learn how to be right in your communication with a zest of humanity.
It’s all about physics
You’ll probably not learn something here, but a lot of people forget these tips.
It’s fascinating to analyze how people and yourself are reacting or moving our body. We still are like primates: postures and gestures always have been the basics of human communication. It’s in our genes.
Stop monotonous voice
Speak like a song.
To apply it, imagine a continuous “bip” vs. an instrumental song. The song will be more pleasant. That is communication. The message will be more pleasing to hear, and it will be more persuasive with variance.
Your voice controls the volume, the quality of the words and the notes of your message.
Record your voice and listen to yourself to detect if you are wrong about it. Improve yourself by repeating and reading out loud. For instance, I always read my Medium post out loud. It’s an excellent exercise to practice English reading and apply variance in my voice, which is very monotone.
Make eye contact great again
Did you play a music song to people without speakers?
Probably not.
Your message has a destination too: your audience.
Speak to them. Look into their eyes when you speak. Avoid reading the presentation screen. Avoid looking down. Work your eye contact. Your global message will be more personal for everyone in the room if you look at them.
Your look direction is fundamental. There are three conclusions by analyzing the behavior of looking elsewhere:
- perhaps you are thinking about something; you will look up or down because you indirectly searching in your mind;
- maybe you are imaging something, or you are lying; you will look up or to the sky;
- perhaps you look in front of you, with a lost look without eye contact; you are maybe uncomfortable, or you don’t want to face people.
All those looks variants are your worst enemies, be careful.
Oh, by the way, this is the same for the audience: stop looking at your smartphone and listen to the speaker.
Tempo and clarity
I’ve spoken about music to help remember good speaking. It’s the same here.
Never put noise in your voice and your message. Make your content clear. Otherwise, people will give up their attention quickly.
Some people have repetitive verbal tics. It could be those bad ones:
- “… you see”
- “… you know”
- “… uuuuuuh … uuuuuh….”
- “Soooo …”
To avoid this, it’s simple. Take breaks during your speech by taking the time to think. Your brain will be focused on your mind, and not your mind + your “uuuuhhh”. It’s simple. Moreover, the audience will experience active waiting if you make pause, whereas they will not listen if you put useless noisy words.
The least you make voice noise, the more the audience's attention.
Did you ever see and listen to Apple Keynotes? It’s good training to recognize and analyze them:
The metronome syndrome and postures
More than your looking behavior, all your body, especially the trunk and the arms.
I define «metronome syndrome» as people who continuously do balancing when they do their presentation. The sign of this is impatience, no self-trust, and no mastery of their topic.
If you detect yourself as this during a presentation, stop it. Breathe and calm down your flow.
Use your hands instead. Be the chief orchestra of your presentation. Moving your hands can control and flow of your presentation. It’s a sign of ease.
When you answer questions, never cross your arms. It’s a sign of defense, defiance, and doubt.
Where is communication the worst? Crucial conversations.
Oh, crucial conversations. What a fantastic topic of communication. It’s a daily behavior, and we forget its presence every day, especially at work. The problem is that you will not learn it during school until you experience it.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about and want to learn more about this scourge, I advise you to read a book that will change your life, and your communication, before it’s too late:
I try to resume it here, but buy it, and read it. Please. You will thank me later.
What is a crucial conversation?
A crucial conversation is a discussion between several people who do not share the same opinion, on a subject that matters, with emotions that mingle.
When issues are essential, opinions diverge, and emotions are intense, banal conversations become crucial. The worst? The more important the conversation, the less likely we will handle it well. Avoiding or missing a conversation can have severe consequences for our career and our relationship with others.
So, when you master a specific topic, you’ll forget that people probably don’t know what you are precisely talking about. Perhaps they could wrongly interpret what you say or be offended.
Most of all, your audience and people are different. They will have mixed reactions according to how you react. The consequences? You and your colleague enter into a dance or a fight of arguments, incomprehension, not listening, and, worst: insults.
To avoid this situation, which can happen futilely (or worst: daily) in your career, you have a lot to do. Let’s go learn how to deal with it.
How to detect a crucial conversation? Violence VS silence
Emotions do not fall on us by chance, and it’s not the others who transmit them. As difficult as it is to admit, it’s not the others who drive us crazy. We dive into it alone. We scare ourselves, we are angry, we make ourselves sick. We, and only we, create our emotions. Once we have created our emotions, we have two options: acting on them or letting them take over. In terms of strong emotions, either we find a way to control them, or we become hostage to his emotions.
Listen to your heart and your body: they are the indicators of the start of a crucial conversation. When your emotions gain the upper hand on the topic, you face physical reactions:
- you feel your heart racing,
- you breathe more quickly,
- you start moving your arms,
- you start speaking at loud,
- or on the contrary, you go into silence.
There are two categories across those signs: violence and silence.
Signs of violence:
- Control: it consists of forcing others to share our point of view: cut the floor, exaggerate a speech, recall the main principles, change the topic, or ask oriented questions.
- Labeling: it consists of sticking a label on a person, a group of people, or ideas to generalize and classify them into a category.
- Attack: you try to reach the other: you devalue him, make judgments
personal, you assault him.
Signs of silence:
- Concealment: it consists of minimizing our remarks or saying only a few things. To be ironic, sarcastic or wrapping messages are common forms of concealment.
- Avoidance: it’s about staying out of the real problems. We speak, but without addressing essential topics.
- Withdrawal: it consists of completely getting away from the conversation. It’s about getting out of the conversation or leaving the room altogether.
All these signs came from our brain and our reptilian brain’s side. We react like animals in those situations. When you fear that others will not adhere to your ideas, you want to impose yourself. When you are afraid of being touched or hurt by the words of others, you fall back on yourself. These two reactions, to fight or to flee, are a response to the same emotion: fear.
People rarely put themselves on the defensive because of what you say. They put themselves on the defensive because they no longer feel safe in this conversation.
So it would help if you restore the security of the communication.
Without safety, you‘ll be lost and you’ll lose
When people feel comfortable enough to express themselves — and everyone understands the why and the how of different positions — it’s possible to build on each other’s ideas.
Firstly, when your heart is racing, take a break. Breathe, next, ask yourself: what do I want for others?
Next, never suppose something or make a preconceived idea of a situation. Ask. Always ask. To exchange is better than to suppose. Ask the interpretation of the other side. Re-said what you had understood, next conclude, and argue. Ask them to help you understand. Ask them how he sees things or what they think.
You have to be sure that the context of your discussion is clear for everyone before starting and that it’s not yourself who is telling your own story.
Make empathy your best friend
Humility and empathy are the keys when you talk about a sensitive subject to people.
Distinguish the facts of history by concerning what you have seen and heard. Return to the real source of your emotion: ask yourself these two questions:
- What did you see?
- What did you hear?
It’s like knowing your enemies, but for a kind purpose: better understanding to improve your communication. Don’t judge along with your own story.
Finally, remember to do the STESL process:
- Start with the facts: The facts are more comfortable to hear than the story. Even if you are going to have to share your story, do not make the mistake of starting with it.
- Tell your story: It’s your point of view and your interpretations. People have to understand you to better answer you.
- Encourage the other to answer: “I’d like to hear your story and understand what you thought about it.” Be fair-play and control yourself to let or encourage the other to answer.
- Speak carefully: To say things in a way that is too firm or decided does not encourage the other to open up, but on the contrary to close or counter-argue.
- Listen to all opinions: Be curious and patient in this step. Do not let your story take over the opinions of others. Listen to all views until their end.
Most of all, when you hurt someone by clumsiness or inadvertence, excuse yourself.
After this process, insecurity and misunderstanding will go away. So you’ll succeed. Before that, you have to conclude.
Concluding a crucial conversation
As in a plane trip, the two most risky moments of a crucial conversation are take-off and landing.
Take off, because you have to find a way to build a security zone, or you’ll see your conversation poking your nose or crashing in the first few seconds. That’s what I’ve mentioned in the previous post about safety and listening to all opinions.
The landing, because if you do not take care of the way to conclude and make your decisions, you risk that the commitments made are not kept.
Concluding a crucial conversation means making sure you make the right decisions and then their implementation. To conclude is also to put all the chances on one’s side to avoid traps of inaction and unfulfilled commitments.
The other difficulty in decision-making is non-decision. There are four categories:
- the unilateral decision
- consultation
- the vote
- consensus
Who? Do what? For when? How to follow up? According to the context, all these questions have to be answered. Finish your discussions with a quick resume to others. The exit has to be cleared.
Be crucial to yourself
Communication is a frequent topic but a complex one in our lives. There is no magic in it, but a daily practice, a collective sense of behaviors, on understanding and managing crucial conversations will be the keys.
We do not have an autopilot when we talk, so we have to be attentive all the time. You must continue to be alert to your alarm signals to apprehend the problems upstream by yourself.
So, be“crucial” to yourself.
You’ll feel better.
That’s the last part of the “Become a human again”. I hope this series helps you to make and prepare yourself to feel/be better in your life, with your friends, or at work. Read all the previous parts to learn new tips and habits.
Improve yourself every day, every year.
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” — Steve Jobs
It’s not finished yet! Subscribe to be ready for the conclusion and bonus part. I will share with you a recap of previous posts, books to read, methodologies, and experiences around personal development. Most of all, this will be the perfect post to share your experiences, perhaps your application of “Become a human again”, and your tips to all of us.
Thank you if you are still here 🍻
