Have you ever thought what exactly is communication?
I know some people who think communication is the act of sending an email, updating a policy, writing a newsletter or even sending a text!
Perhaps the best description I’ve found is “the imparting and exchanging of information”.
Now, for me the most important bit in that is “AND” and from what I see is the bit most people often forget. People often think communication is all about inflicting their ideas on someone else… and quite simply it is not!
Communication is about the free exchange of information, to allow each party to appreciate the others perspective, point of view and model of the world. This is true communication and leads to the very best results.
How to become a better communicator? Having spent many years in both the NHS and NLP world, here’s the things or the key points that have a huge impact on communication:
(1) Accepting the presuppositions of NLP These are assumptions that we can make regarding people. There are about 12 of them, and they give us a good basis for all communication. Eg, the first one is “To respect the other person’s model of the world” you don’t have to accept it, but it useful to respect it.
(2) Rapport Rapport is the basis of all communication, without rapport there can be no effective communication. Here I’m not talking about the “do you like movie X?”. I’m talking about building rapport at the unconscious level.
(3) Sensory Acuity This is about noticing the minute changes in a person you’re communicating with. Noticing the smallest physiological changes, that give indications as to how a person is reacting to how you’re communicating. How many times do people go on, and on, and on. Without noticing that the other person is either not listening or not interested?
(4) Chunk Size of language Chunk size refers to the level of abstraction/detail that someone uses in their language. Eg if someone speaks in abstract language, to communicate effectively with them, you also need to speak in an abstract way.
(5) Knowledge of linguistic presuppositions These are about the structure language, and there are little clues that let the listener know what is going on behind the smoke screen of what another person is saying.
Incorporating these things will absolutely help you to connect with others, and improve the quality of your communication.