Tag Archive for: communication skills

The Importance of Congruent Messages When Persuading

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I had in interesting Facebook exchange not
long ago. Someone posted a picture of an attractive young woman wearing a
t-shirt that had the following message on the front, “To be old and wise you
must first be young and stupid.”
To be honest I didn’t pay attention to the rest
of the post, which read, “Reinvent yourself with enhanced awareness, renew
yourself with enhanced tolerance and regenerate yourself with enhanced wisdom.”
Focused on the picture and the saying
imprinted on it I light-heartedly commented, “But if you’re too stupid when
you’re young you may not live long enough to become old and wise.  : ) ”
My Facebook friend replied, “@Brian: You mean
ONLY stupid people die young?? Just to refocus your observation on the quote
which is my thought – it is not on the t-shirt.”
I replied one last time to let him know I
didn’t think only stupid people die young. Of course, the more stupid things
you do, the more risk you run of harming yourself, but even people who make
good decisions experience bad things.
This week’s post isn’t about Facebook or the
stupid things young people sometimes do. What stood out to me after the
exchange was the following communication problem that’s all too common – the message
was incongruent.
You see, the picture of the attractive lady
stood out and in my mind the message on her t-shirt had nothing to do with my
friend’s quote, which was what he really wanted to convey to readers. Again, his quote
was, “Reinvent yourself with enhanced awareness, renew yourself with enhanced
tolerance and regenerate yourself with enhanced wisdom.” If there was a
connection, then how many others missed it too?
When you’re trying to communicate with
someone, perhaps even trying to persuade him or her, you’d better be sure every
part of your message is congruent.
For example, if I conduct a sales training
session for business professionals I’d be foolish to not dress in a suit and
tie or sports coat at a minimum. If I went to a training session dressed as I
do on the weekends my appearance will detract from my message. People have
expectations about how a sales trainer will dress just like you probably have
ideas about how a minister should look at a wedding or a lawyer in a courtroom.
When there’s a mismatch people can lose focus and the last thing you want is
someone focused on how you look rather than your message.
We also have expectations for the environments
we find ourselves in. We don’t act the same in church as we do at work, a bar,
or in a college classroom. We conduct ourselves differently in each place and
acting like you’re talking in church to a room full of college students will
lose them faster than they can update Twitter.
When you want to communicate a message make
sure everything has a purpose and that every part of the message builds to your
main point. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say after a
training session, “It was pretty good but he kept going off on these tangents
that had nothing to do with the workshop.” If you have stories to share, make
sure they add to the message and don’t detract from it.
Practice helps and perfect practice makes
perfect. Do you ever ask someone for feedback on a presentation before you give
it? Running through your presentation with another, as you would if your audience were right
there, will help you in multiple ways. One big way is to make sure the person
sees how everything ties together. If you have to stop and make the connections
for them then you might want to rethink your approach.
The same can be said of writing. Have someone
proof read your articles and blog posts. Have them challenge you and if
something doesn’t make sense, ask yourself if there’s a better way to convey
the message. Again, if you have to take extra time to explain what you mean
then that should be a signal that other readers might not get your point
either.
Communicating a message is like traveling to a
destination. Usually the shortest, most direct route is best. If you want to
get there in a hurry then limit your excursions and make sure everything is
working together like a well-oiled machine. The extra time and effort will be
worth it when people go, “Ah, I get it.”
Brian Ahearn, CMCT®
Chief Influence Officer
influencePEOPLE 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

 



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5 Pointers to Become Listening STARS

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Over the last few years I’ve conducted quite a few workshops on different sales skills. The workshops are designed to get people to practice the various skills they learn in our online training environment. One of my workshops focuses on active listening skills. In this post I’ll share five pointers from that workshop to help you become listening “STARS.”

What I’ll share are not principles of influence but they impact influence because if you’re not a good listener then your best attempts at persuasion will probably fail. Listening is
important because it helps you learn about the other person, hone in on similarities, and build on the liking principle. Listening is also vital when it comes to the principle of consistency because only when you hear someone can you tap back into their words and ethically engage consistency.

Listening is an active skill so you need to do several things if you want to excel. Unlike some skills, listening skills are all things you can do. For example, I often tell workshop attendees I can’t dunk a basketball. Never could and it’s not likely at 48 years old, standing just 5’9 tall, that I ever will. It’s a skill I don’t possess and can’t acquire no matter how hard I work at it. If someone told me my career depended on dunking a basketball I’d start looking for a new career. But not so with listening skills! Each of the five pointers I’ll share is within your capabilities if you’ll
simply make the choice to employ them.

To be listening STARS, you need to remember Stop, Tone, Ask, Restate and Scribble. We’ll take a brief look at each of these.

Stop – First thing you need to do when communicating with another person is stop everything else you’re doing so you can give them your full attention. People who think they can multi-task are fooling themselves. Scientific studies show people who try to multi-task end up taking longer to do both tasks and are more prone to errors. My own personal experiment, which I’ll share at the end of this article, verifies this.
Tone – A person’s tone of voice is important for a couple of reasons. First, it indicates mood. You can usually tell by the tone of voice whether someone is happy, sad, angry, stressed, relaxed, etc. The other reason tone is important is because it gives more meaning to the communication. For example, the sentence, “I can’t believe you did that,” can mean many different things depending on the word or words the speaker emphasizes.
Ask – Make sure you ask good questions. This helps clarify the message the other person is trying to deliver. It’s also a great way for you to find out things you think are relevant to the discussion, even if the other person doesn’t think they’re important.
Restate – It’s not enough to think you know, or think you understand what the other person said; you need to verify you’re on the same page. Restating what you think you heard, and then putting the message in your own words is a quick, easy way to make sure you fully understand the message as it was intended.
Scribble – Take notes. Remember, note taking isn’t to write a novel, it’s to capture key points and key words to jar your memory as you recall the conversation. Too often I see people take the focus off of the speaker because they get so intent on writing as much as they can but in the end they miss a lot because this is a form of multi-tasking.
Let me share this about multi-tasking. During the listening workshops I read a short, one-page story to each class. As I read I have one-third of the class just sit back and listen, another one-third takes notes, and the rest of the people are distracted as they try to connect scrambled numbers from 1 to 72 while listening to the story. After I finish I give a 10 question quiz to everyone. Having done this with nearly 200 people what I found was those who took notes got about 60% more questions correct than the distracted group who were busy connecting numbers while trying to listen. Those who just sat back and actively listened got nearly 75% more questions right than the distracted group. Wow!
Two learning points come out of this exercise. First, as mentioned above, if you take notes, be brief so it doesn’t become a distraction. Second, and more importantly, stop whatever you’re
doing and give your full attention to the person speaking. That means put away your cell phone when you’re in a meeting or conference. You can say all you want that you can do both but you will miss more of the message because odds are, you’re probably not the statistical anomaly who breaks the mold.
So let me ask this – what would it do for you if you caught 60% to 70% more of a prospect or customer’s message than your competitors? I’d imagine it would do a lot for sales and service. To wrap things up, if you want to be master persuaders then make sure you’re listening STARS. Make the choice to follow the five simple steps I’ve outlined above and you’ll be on the path to becoming a much better listener.

Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.