#2031 It’s On Me II
As a veteran myself I ask that you take a moment and honor the holiday this past weekend with a moment for silence for those who died so that we may live as we do.
Now for this week:
I got some good reactions to last week's message, so, as promised, I will continue with more thoughts on interpersonal communication.
At the base of all good communication is good listening. We've all heard that active listening is important, and that it starts with total attention. Of course, today, total attention is more challenging than it was when I studied NLP. I mentioned that one of the tenets of NLP is taking responsibility for the result of your communication. Another is to be in "Uptime "when the situation warrants extremely good listening.
Uptime refers to total attention and engagement. It is more than listening well. It is being immersed in a conversation – seeing nuances that give way to meanings beyond words. A simple example is the common reply, "I'm good." Delivered with sagging shoulders, a tilted head, eyebrows flicking downward, and a softened tonality and inflection on "good" indicates an opposite meaning to the words. Do it now yourself. Say, I'm good, but intentionally feel the opposite. Pay attention to your own posture, eyes, and tone. See what I mean?
Being immersed as a listener will reveal these "tells" without actively seeking them out. Remember the example last week of the 15-year-old driver seeing the squirrel dart into the road and consciously braking, vs. the experienced driver, for whom this move is unconscious. Seeing all of the nuances of communication is exactly like that. Immerse yourself in the listener, and many clues will become apparent. As you begin this practice, you will consciously notice them, and afterward, it will be akin to squirrel-braking.
Remember the levels of learning:
Unconscious incompetence - you don't know what you don't know.
Conscious incompetence - you know that you don't know something
Conscious competence - You know that you know, and you consciously deploy the skill.
Unconscious competence - Mastery; this is when you perform a skill without consciously trying, like braking for the squirrel.
So if mastering listening is the key to great communication, what about talking?
Many of the same principles apply, and meaningful conversation requires intention. Intimacy in conversation is not limited to romance or couples. It can exist between a father and son facing a frightening surgery or between close friends who feel safe enough to share something important or embarrassing and be met with understanding.
This aligns well with studies that found that, in deeper conversations, three things are happening at once:
First, people who disclose more tend to be liked more. Two, we disclose more to people we already like, and three, (perhaps most interestingly) we actually begin to like someone more simply because we have disclosed to them.
(You may want to read that twice)
Chicken or egg?
Think about it. We like someone more when we disclose something intimate, and we disclose more when we like someone. The other person likes us more because we've disclosed more, and the loop continues.
This isn't to say that every conversation needs to be weighty. Lighthearted jocularity and talk of the weather both have their place. What I'm aiming to do here is to show you how you can have deeper, more meaningful conversations (and therefore relationships) through the choices you make both in listening and in speaking.
Total immersion (uptime) offers clues that help you ask better questions, because you hear the words and the emotions and meanings behind the curtain.
Can it be this simple? Choosing to disclose more than what you had for breakfast or the traffic you faced on the way to the meeting makes you like others more and makes you more likable!
It isn't easy to be a good listener. Often, we are eager to offer our take on what's being said, and what we add is certainly valuable. The thing to keep in mind is patience. Listening well takes patience, and uptime takes discipline. A quick glance at the ubiquitous monitors that surround so many conversations will repel an intimate remark as if it were a mosquito and that glance were DDT. It will hover in the speaker's head, sense a silent barrier, and disappear without either of you seeing it hover or hearing the buzz. A look at your phone? That's more like swatting the emerging thought away.
All of this adds up to our constant theme of charisma. Whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, charisma applies. It applies in the sense that charismatic people tend to get things done where others fail because they get more information and experience less resistance, and isn't that what we all want? Don't we want to move through the headwinds of life more aerodynamically? Doesn't it make sense to whittle off those sharp corners before you try to fit that peg in that hole? Some folks do this with more confidence and words, while others can do it with understanding postures in their bodies and faces, using few words. I say this because we tend to equate charisma with extroversion, but the strong, silent types are equally as powerful.
Let's start this week with the competent consciousness of uptime and intimate disclosure, and see how it feels.
Let me know how it goes for you.