Communication Skills Power

Life is all about choices. And so is the way you communicate. You
can fill your days with frustrating high stress communication or
you can have days of low stress effective communication with your
peers.

Now take a moment to learn three ways to have low stress
communication.

1 Recognize Positive Intentions

When someone you are talking to is unkind, negative or downright
rude it is easy to get annoyed, angry and even aggressive.

However this will just makes the situation worse and even faster
than you can imagine.

There is a better way. Instead look for the positive intention of
the person you are talking to. What do I mean?

Ask yourself — what is the positive intention behind this
behavior?

If the person you are talking to is angry maybe the positive
intention is to express some hurt or frustration. What is
important is looking for a positive not to get the correct answer.

When you assume the person has a positive message hidden
underneath the negative exterior you will have more compassion
and patience and you will not feel so stressed dealing with the
individual.

2 Choose Your Own Emotional State

I talk a lot about the importance of managing your
emotional state. Why? Because it is an essential life skill.

Unless you are in charge of how you feel your ability to
communicate effectively will always be limited and dependent on
other people.

When you are in a potentially stressful situation and everyone
around you is losing their cool this does not mean you have to
join them! You will be able to contribute a lot more if you
remain calm and centered.

Staying calm and resourceful is a choice you can make.
Unfortunately it is all too easy to be a sheep and simply follow
the crowd. Nobody says you have to be a sheep!

Instead make a point of keeping yourself in a resourceful state.

3 Step Outside The Situation

Whenever I am in a highly charged situation I will often step
outside the situation — in my mind. This helps to defuse the
event for me.

You can do this too. Simply imagine that you are at the other end
of the room watching the interaction between you and the other
person or people.

It is as if you are a neutral observer with no emotional
involvement in the discussion at hand.

When you do this you will think of ideas to handle the
situation better and you will also feel less bothered by the
stress of the other people.

This is one technique you need to play with first in easy
everyday conversations. Once you get familiar with it you will
find it easy to mentally step outside the event while still
participating with the people in front of you.

Stress or relaxation which do you prefer?

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently
produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to
Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because
it is available for a limited time only at:
http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/report.htm

The book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers is
regarded as a self help classic. Have you read it?

I read it many years ago and I was disappointed by the content
of this book that has helped a lot of people take control of
their fears. Why? Because I believe we all have the power to go
far beyond feeling the fear.

And I really think it is important to learn how to transform fear
into courage by learning how to use more of your mind and how to
take charge of your emotions.

There are two ways to take fear and transform it into a different
emotional state:

- Release the fear by letting go of it.

- Change the way you represent the experience so that it no
longer makes you feel fearful.

Today I want to look at changing how you represent experiences to
yourself.

1 Pick a person you deal with on a regular basis who you find
intimidating. Get started by choosing someone who causes you to
feel mild fear.

2 Ask yourself — what does it get me feeling fear around this
person?

Typically you will answer that the fear causes you to be more
alert and careful. However the irony is that when you feel fear
you are less capable of responding well to the challenges of the
situation.

Let me give you an example. When I lived the corporate sales life
a number of years ago I had a crazy boss.

He would scream down the phone at me, thump the desk with his
fist in meetings and threaten to fire me if certain goals were
not achieved. I never took this personally because he treated
other people in the same way. Still I did feel fear when dealing
with him.

What did I get by feeling fear?

It meant I was careful to say the right thing and to do my job to
the best of my abilities to ensure he had no reason to have
another go at me.

Nevertheless it was not an ideal situation!

3 If you cannot influence the behavior of the intimidator change
how you feel.

In the case of my boss I matched his behavior to get rapport.
When he shouted at me I raised my voice to speak back. When he
slammed the desk I became more animated in how I talked and I
used my hands more when expressing myself.

This pacing will help. However it is not enough you also need to
change how you feel.

Before you start working with the following approach make sure
you are feeling energetic and resourceful otherwise you could get
dragged back into the fear itself.

Now take a recent encounter with the intimidator and run the
scene in your mind as if you are watching it on TV. Pretend you
are outside the event watching as a bystander.

Next, distort the images until the other person looks absurd.
Dress the person in silly clothes or even no clothes! Change
their voice until it sounds squeaky like a cartoon character.
Slow down their speech until it sounds like a worn out tape. Then
speed up the speech until they sound like a bumble bee.

Play the scene backwards, upside down or with zero gravity. Do
whatever you have to until the scene is ludicrous.

Keep playing with the sounds and images until you are either
laughing or at least smiling when you think of the intimidator.

At this point you have turned fear into a more resourceful
emotional state. Well done!

When you are new to this technique you will need to run through
it several times until you get the hang of it. And for difficult
situations I recommend using it daily to shake off those
unpleasant feelings of fear you have associated to that person.

4 Keep the benefits of the fear and not the fear itself

After step 2 above you know how your fear is serving you.

Let us say the fear gives you alertness, safety and carefulness.

How are you going to behave carefully around the intimidator
without feeling the fear?

You need to write down or run through likely scenarios in your
mind until you are well prepared to handle whatever is thrown at
you.

This step is very important and you are in trouble if you skip it.

In my case I was mentally ready to work elsewhere, I saved up
some money so that if I did get fired it would not be the end of
the world and I was always careful to only promise what I knew I
could deliver.

If I had just changed how I felt without dealing effectively
with the situation I would have been in a very difficult
situation.

Your goal ought to be to feel resourceful and to be intelligent
in how you deal with difficult people.

Using these tips will help you. How much this information helps
will depend on how much energy you put into applying this
approach.

When I look back on my aggressive boss situation I know that I
could have done even more to handle it better. So like you I am
always learning.

The important thing is to get started and keep heading in the
right direction. And take even one step each day to take you
forward.

NB: get help immediately if you are dealing with a violent individual

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently
produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to
Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because
it is available for a limited time only at:
http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/report.htm

1 Pretending You Are Interested When You Are Not

Do yourself a favor and be honest with yourself and the people
you spend time with. If you are really not interested in the
topic of conversation say so.

If possible change the subject or simply postpone that
particular conversation until another time.

Obviously if there is a danger of offending the other person you
will have to be less direct. In these situations it helps to find
out right away what the other person wants or expects from you.
Ask!

The conversation will right away become very relevant to you and
maintaining interest is a lot easier.

2 Disliking The Other Person

If you do not like the person you are talking to it will come
across at some level. Ask yourself — what could I like about
this person? This will help put you in a better frame of mind.

And look for things you have in common by asking yourself - how
is this person like me?

We all have something in common and commonality builds rapport.
Look for it and you will find it.

If you mechanically attempt to get rapport with people while
secretly disliking them you will never get that deep rapport you
are aiming for. In fact if your focus is on how much you dislike
the person you will not even want rapport and instead you will be
setting yourself up for conflict.

3 Wanting Rapport With Everyone You Meet

I made this mistake when I first learned advanced
communication skills.

All of a sudden, for the first time, I was able to get rapport
with anyone I met. So I did.

And I recommend you do the same to a point. With one exception.
There are some people you do not want to be getting deep rapport
with.

Take someone who is like a raging bull with a deep resentment and
hate for themselves and other people. Do you really want to feel
the same way? If you get deep rapport you will feel some of the
same feelings.

While you may need to be effective around such people keep your
focus on your real goal. Deal effectively with the individual and
maintain your own emotional state regardless of how upset the other
person is.

Pay attention to your emotional state when dealing with negative
people, manipulative people and others who will drain your energy.
With these people rely more on the weakest element of rapport -
words. And manage your body language without following their lead.

4 Not Speaking Their Language

We all have one primary sense whether it be visual, auditory or
feelings based that dominates our perception of the world.

You need to get good at spotting which modality other people use
and match their world to get rapport quickly and easily.

If someone is in a visual mode their words will be dominated by
words that express what they see. For example the car is red with
a white soft top and a huge back seat.

Whereas the auditory person describes the car in a different way:
it sounds like a lion roaring when you start the engine and the
CD player fills the car with deep, rich sounds that dance around
your ears.

Finally the person most attuned to their feelings notices the
smooth soft sensation of the leather seats and the warm firm
feeling when they hold the steering wheel.

If you use the wrong modality for the person you are talking to
it makes it harder for him to understand you. You have to work
harder to get rapport.

And when you speak to several people at once make sure you use
visual, auditory and feeling words to make sure you appeal to
everyone.

Make a point of paying attention to the dominant modality your
friends and family use. And you may have a breakthrough when you
finally discover why you are not getting deep rapport with some
of them while more easily getting along with other people.

Peter Murphy is a peak performance expert. He recently
produced a very popular free report: 10 Simple Steps to
Developing Communication Confidence. Apply now because
it is available for a limited time only at:
http://www.howtotalkwithconfidence.com/report.htm