Communicating Well Takes Practice

Learn how to listen and you will prosper—
even from those who talk badly.

Plutarch

(Plutarch served as one of the two priests at the temple of Apollo at Delphi)

Communicating well takes practice. Even the greatest communicators of all times knew they had to work at their skill. The good news is that good communication skills can be learned. By practicing, you can change the way you communicate with others, and this can change your life.

Imagine your next board meeting, or staff meeting. John walks in and tells us that in a dream last night, he understood the meaning of life. The meaning of Life! Yes, the reason why we are here. He announces that he would like to tell us. So we all say by all means, please, this is something we all want to know. He comes to the front of the room and begins to tell us in great detail all the answers we are searching for… the meaning of life! Something the philosophers for centuries have been trying to figure out!

There’s only one problem. He tells us in Swahili. How many of you speak Swahili? So what do we hear? A bunch of clicking noises and sounds, that’s what we hear. Even though John’s knowledge, discourse and content were excellent, we understood absolutely nothing. Therefore, communication has not taken place, despite John’s efforts and knowledge.

This is extreme, but you have probably seen doctors, and lawyers and sales people make this mistake, each one thinking they are great communicators. Once a very bright and brilliant doctor explained something to me and all I could say was “I’m dazzled!” But I hadn’t understood a word he said.

How can we learn to be better communicators? The first rule is to remember that communication takes place at the receiver. Ask yourself, how can I, as the sender, learn to encode my messages so the receiver will understand? If you have not encoded your message in a way the receiver understands, no matter how eloquent and impressive you are, communication has not taken place -- it’s all been a waste of wind.

Management Expert Peter Drucker said that unless there is someone who hears and understands… the so-called communicator has emitted only noise -- like the doctor I mentioned who dazzled me with sparkling medical terms was not communicating. A sales manager making a presentation to a client, a computer programmer explaining a new program to a co-worker, a supervisor to an employee can make the same mistake. Doctors, sales people, and managers, (and people who understand the meaning of life) can be trained to take an audience-centered approach. But you have to learn… it’s not about you, it’s about your audience, whatever level of sophistication they have.

Secondly, in receiving information, ask yourself, how can I become a better listener? Stephen Covey identifies listening as one of the “Seven habits of highly effective people.” Tom Peters, in his book in search of Excellence that listening is one of the keys to effective leadership. Learning how to listen will change your life. I’ve always been surprised that they don’t teach listening in school, like they teach reading and speech. We spend most of our time listening!

You will listen to a billion words each year. But your average attention span while listening to someone talking is eight seconds. After each eight seconds, you will tune out, unless you can actively get your mind back. Why?

Because most people talk at rate of 125 words per minute. However your mind has the ability to process 700 to 1000 words per minute! Your mind works faster than the speaker can speak. So what does your mind do the rest of time? It’ plays, during its mental spare time! Your mind wanders. Your mind is like a drunken monkey -- it leaps from one thing to another. You can learn that the monkey is not in control -- you are.

Stay tuned for more on Listening Skills!