 This New Year, consider making a resolution to practice 12 months of conscious, healthy communication. Most people navigate through important moments of communication on automatic pilot, reacting from emotion rather than intention. But we can transform our relationships by getting off autopilot and being proactive with positive communication. (Tweet it!) As communication researchers and partners in work and marriage for decades, we’ve experienced both the joy and challenge of personal and business communication and we’ve found some simple steps to resolving conflict and building trust in relationships:
Confronting issues is never an easy matter, but avoidance can be hazardous not just to our relationships, but also to our own health. Here’s wishing you a happy, healthy, communicative 2020! We want to hear from you: do you have a New Year’s resolution that could lead to stronger communication? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.
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 Whenever we ask people to share stories about stressful family encounters at the holidays, we are amazed at the outpouring of fraught memories. But reliving the conflicts of holidays past won’t help us deal with the present. This season try something new. When Uncle Joe or Aunt Blanche blurts out an unwelcome opinion or a political jab, resist the temptation to engage in point/counterpoint. This quickly devolves into a situation where everyone feels the only way to “win” is to get louder and LOUDER!
Instead, ask for more information about your relative’s point of view—and actually listen to that information. (Do this even if the point of view they are sharing is a direct criticism of you.) Only true listening can provide you the information you need to have influence. And it is only when your “adversary” feels heard that they will even begin to consider another point of view. (Tweet it!) Additionally:
Be realistic: You are not going to achieve perfect harmony with everyone at the dinner table. But with a little resolve you can certainly improve your batting average. And with the current political landscape, every bit helps. Happy holidays! If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  Humility: The ability to accurately acknowledge one’s limitations and to assume an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused. Though this trait might be in short supply these days, social and personality psychologists interested in positive psychology are increasingly researching it, according to The New York Times.
Humility, it turns out, is highly correlated with other positive traits. In one series of experiments, Elizabeth Krumrei Mancuso of Pepperdine University scored volunteers on a measure of “intellectual humility” — awareness of the incompleteness and potential fallibility of their views on political and social issues. This type of humility was strongly linked to curiosity, reflection, and open-mindedness. Other research has found that people who score high for humility are less aggressive and less judgmental toward members of other religious groups than less humble people. And humility researcher Dr. Krumrei Mancuso contends that humble people are apt to hold onto their convictions and are less easily manipulated. With humility attracting so much attention, some wonder whether it can be taught. The conundrum is that those most open to learning this trait probably need it least. Meanwhile, the good news is that between 10 and 15 percent of adults score highly on measures of humility, depending on the rating scale. “That’s at least 25 million humble people in the USA alone,” notes Benedict Carey of The New York Times. Do you believe you are one of the 10 – 15 percent of adults capable of being humble? How does this trait influence your perspective and your relationships with others? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 85% of companies have undertaken a transformation during the past decade. The same research found nearly 75% of those transformations did not improve business performance in the short or long term.
Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project and author of The Way We’re Working Isn't Working, attributes this unimpressive success rate to a natural human tendency: the resistance to change. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, he says, “Transforming a business also depends on transforming individuals — beginning with the most senior leaders and influencers. Few of them have spent much time observing and understanding their own motivations, challenging their assumptions, or pushing beyond their intellectual and emotional comfort zones.” (Tweet it!) In short, organizational transformation is likely to stall when people slip back into old behavioral patterns, despite their best intentions to start anew. To counter this mindset, Schwartz and his associates pose a series of provocative questions for leaders and their teams to ask themselves:
Sound strategy can spur transformation, Schwartz contends, but not without “continuously addressing the invisible reasons that people and cultures so often resist changing…” Do you ever find yourself backsliding into old behaviors at work, despite a desire to change? How do you counter this tendency? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs.  We’ve long maintained that how you say what you say is critical in your ability to persuade. Now new research from The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that one specific way to be more influential is by speaking slightly louder than you normally would, and by varying the overall volume of your voice (speaking both more loudly and softly, in turn). Tweet it!
“Every time we interact with someone, we’re trying to figure out how much they know about what they’re saying, how knowledgeable they are, how confident they seem,” said Jonah Berger, an associate professor of marketing at Wharton and a co-author of this study. “We found that the cues related to speaking volume made speakers seem more confident, which made them more persuasive overall.” In our conversations, we think a lot about language, and a lot less about paralanguage — the means of delivery of our message. But whether we think about it or not, its effects are salient. So, the next time you debate whether to send an email or make a call consider this: Simply hearing someone’s voice can make their message more influential. Are you conscious of how you use your voice when you try to persuade? Do you deliberately change the volume of your voice in order to influence? To join the conversation, click "comments" above. If you would like to learn more about creating a habit around masterful communication, check out our online learning programs. |
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